“She’s a nice girl, but a tease. She’s got half the crew crazy over her and is the cause of more cases of blue balls than you can shake a stick at.”
“That’s an image I’d rather not linger over, kid. G’night.”
“G’night.”
As I was coming down the companionway, there she was, cute Betsy, waiting on the steps; she wasn’t in her nightclothes—still the shorts and a loose-fitting boy’s shirt that she bobbled under.
“Sit with me,” she whispered. “And talk.”
I was tired, but I sat, on the stairs; she snuggled next to me, wanting to be kissed. So I kissed her, all right. I put my tongue in her mouth and one hand on her soft full left breast and another on her rounded rump and she pulled away, wide-eyed, and said, “Well! I never…”
“That was my impression,” I said.
And she jumped to her feet and bolted down the stairs and disappeared into her cabin.
The next morning, after breakfast in the main cabin, I emerged from the bathroom in my dark suit with clerical collar and received bemused looks all around, particularly from Betsy. She sat before her plate of powdered eggs and fried potatoes with her eyes as wide as a pinup girl’s, and I leaned in and kissed her cheek, and whispered, “Bless you, my child.”
There was laughter ’round the table, but good-natured, though Betsy flushed and hunkered over her eggs. I thanked the crew for their hospitality and friendship, and kissed Exy on the cheek, too, and ruffled the hair on the two tykes’ heads.
From the deck of the Yankee, the island that was Saipan was a vague shape in the distance, but rising at its center, like a green peaked hat floating on the sea. Another island could be seen as well, off to the right, smaller, flatter.
“That’s Tinian,” Johnson said. He wore a navy blue, anchored skipper’s cap, white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, loose brown trousers and white deck shoes. He pointed toward Saipan. “That anthill in the center of things is Mount Tapotchau, fifteen hundred feet of her.” Then he traced the horizon with his hand. “The coastline here on the western side is almost completely fringed by reefs, except for the mouth of the bay. Few years ago the Japs dredged a deep-water channel to the shore, to improve the anchorage. You’ll see some good-size ships in that harbor.”
Hayden was on the other side of me, but his eyes searched not the horizon but the sky, which was as gray as cement. “I’ve seen prettier days,” he commented.
Tiny brown shapes were moving away from the island. Boats?
“Sampans,” Johnson said. “Okinawan fishermen. They’ll travel for days, looking for flocks of terns, meaning schools of sardine and herring are nearby. And that means bonito and tuna.”
“That’s a relief. I thought it was the Jap armada.”
“Not yet,” Johnson said with the faintest smile. “Not yet.”
Soon we had set off in the dinghy, Captain Johnson minding the motor, with Hayden on the middle seat and me up at the bow. My nine-millimeter Browning was in the travel bag, under several more changes of clerical wear; other than underwear and socks, my real clothing had been left behind. In my right hand were clutched two envelopes, and in my left a passport.
From where I sat as we putt-putted across choppy water, warm wind whipping our hair, I was watching the Yankee recede, and I felt a pang of regret out of proportion to my brief stay on Captain and Mrs. Johnson’s ship. It seemed to me I was leaving America, perhaps Western civilization itself, behind; and the faintly decadent sweetness of rich boys paying big bucks to play Popeye, and a rich girl who wanted a shipboard romance with a mysterious government agent (strictly above the waist, you understand), lent a bittersweet flavor to this lonely ride under a broodingly gray sky on rough gunmetal waters. Then the Yankee disappeared and I looked over my shoulder.
The shape of the island was no longer vague. A long undulating beast, with the central hump of Mount Tapotchau, crouched on the ocean’s surface, a study in brilliant greens and dull browns, myriad jungle shades. But we were not approaching a primitive world: the tiny boxes of buildings indicated a city, and toy boats that were massive freighters hugged a concrete pier. We were skirting a coral reef now, heading toward a much smaller island, just a glorified sandbar.
“Maniagawa Island,” Johnson said, with a nod. “That marks the entry to the harbor.”
As we drew closer, Saipan was dashing my expectations: the island seemed larger than I’d imagined, as did the surprisingly thriving town of Garapan that spread out upon the flatland beneath the hills. The little city had banished the tropics from its confines; but on either side, coconut palms swayed as per South Sea Island routine, and flame trees, with their dazzling scarlet flowers, dotted the coastline, exotic flourishes of flora.
Garapan, however, might have been a port city in the northeastern U.S.A., with its rectangular concrete wharf embracing freighters and fishing boats alike, the factory sprawl and towering black chimney of a sugar refinery, and row upon row of boxy houses in grid formation. As we neared the formidable jetty, other details filled in: a train pulling in along the pier, warehouses, telephone poles, streetlights. So much for leaving Western civilization behind.
The dinghy chugged into the harbor unnoticed; we pulled alongside the concrete pier, cut the motor, but did not tie up. Over at left, near a smaller, separate jetty, two flying boats floated near the refueling tanks and repair shed and ramps of a modest seaplane base. Down from us, at right, native workers in loose scruffy pants and usually no shirt and no shoes (like the rich boys on the Yankee) were unloading heavy sacks—sugar, Johnson said—from a freight car of the quaint-looking little steam-engine choo-choo that rested on narrow-gauge tracks; other workers were hauling sacks up a gangplank into a freighter. Supervising were pith-helmeted Japanese in white linen jackets over buttoned-to-the-neck, high-collar shirts with white trousers and white shoes; it was not quite a uniform….
Someone in a real uniform had noticed us, however.
Muscular, spade-bearded, perhaps twenty-five, he wore a light-green denim shirt, open at the neck, with matching shorts and cap, and this uniform would not have been impressive at all, might even have seemed silly or childish, had that revolver in a black holster not been on his hip.
“Naval officer,” Johnson whispered.
Our one-man welcoming committee pointed a finger at us: Uncle Samurai Wants You. Well, at least it wasn’t his gun. He seemed unhappy. He told us so, in a spew of Japanese.
Johnson responded in Japanese; it sounded clumsy and halting, but our host considered the skipper’s words carefully, then called out and another denim-dressed officer trotted over, a chubby individual who received some instructions, and trotted off again.
Then our spade-bearded welcoming committee unsnapped his holster, and withdrew and pointed his long-barreled .38 revolver at us. The tarp between Hayden and me covered a similar gun. But there was no need to go for it; our host was just keeping us covered.
Behind him and his gun, beyond the warehouses and the train tracks, sat a typical jumbled waterfront—bars, cheap restaurants, small stores, wooden-frame buildings mostly, a few brick. Very few automobiles were in sight; people walked, or rode bicycles.
“How much of their lingo do you know?” I asked Johnson in a near whisper, as we bobbed in our boat.
“That one sentence,” he said. “It was a request that he bring an English-speaking official to meet an important visitor.”
Our host barked at us in Japanese; my psychic translation was: “Shut up!” I heeded my instinct.
We weren’t kept waiting long. When the chubby officer returned, I thought at first he’d summoned one of the men supervising the unloading of the train. Positioning himself before us, feet planted, hands clasped behind him, was a small, somber, rather skeletal-looking gray-mustached fellow in that white pith helmet, linen jacket and trousers getup.