Mackenzie groped deep into his worn, old-style musette bag and brought out what at first appeared to be a tightly bound bundle of long johns. This he unwrapped carefully as if unswaddling a baby, and at last held in his hand a bottle guard of soft, handsomely tooled Morocco leather. Stamped on the side, in faded gold letters, was “S.M.—A.L. ’42.” He took the glove off his right hand and rubbed the lettering tenderly with his blackened fingers, as if touching the face of a child, or a girl. He quickly replaced the glove. It was too cold, and there might be too little time, for overlong sentiment.
Tinker, who had been watching curiously, finally asked, “What’s that, sir?”
“A bottle of Scotch.”
“A bottle of Scotch!” Tinker’s voice was shrill, and Mackenzie could hear the echoes bouncing across the gorge.
Ekland suddenly stopped shaking his head and swayed to his feet, and the captain noticed movement from the others on the ground. They had been watching, listening.
“Is that honest-to-God a bottle of Scotch in there?” Ekland asked.
“It is. Wonderful twelve-year-old Scotch. No. Older than that. I’ve had it since 1942.”
“You been saving it all this time?”
“I have.” The men were getting up now, one by one, and gathering around him, regarding him in wonder and bewilderment. “I’ve been saving it for now.”
“Why now, sir?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Ekland,” the captain said, raising his voice a trifle so they all could hear. “This Scotch was given to me by a young lady and she told me to save it for a really important occasion, and I consider this an important occasion.” He didn’t feel it necessary to explain further. The most important thing that happens in a man’s life is death, its conclusion. Now that they were no longer completely benumbed, they would understand that. It would sink into them. They would understand his words, and prepare themselves.
Tinker, with the tactlessness of the very young, asked, “Who was the lady, captain?”
“My wife.” He added, “She wasn’t my wife then, but she was my girl. It was just before we sailed for New Zealand to be staged for The ’Canal.” He looked across the gorge. On the opposite side, the north, the hills rose in almost perfect cones, bare of vegetation and flying ghostly banners of snow. On his side, the south, were perpendicular cliffs. He was thankful that the road pressed close to the cliff, for it was his only flank protection, or had been thus far. The Mongol horsemen were still black specks on the hilltop directly across the ravine. He kept staring at them, but his mind was not in this bleak land.
He was in that penthouse cocktail lounge, “The Top of the Mark,” on a spring night so perfect that the Bay bridges were pendants of diamonds, instead of pearls as they seemed on nights less clear, and every light in San Francisco was like a cut jewel. It was their last night together, and they were holding hands under the table, and whenever they didn’t think people were looking, they kissed. He had been a senior at Stanford when she was a junior, and now that she was a senior he was a freshly created second lieutenant of Marines, his bars shining embarrassingly, like spurious gold.
And she had this package with her, wrapped in silver paper and red ribbon in the way of women, and he had been kidding her about it the whole evening, and then all of a sudden she was no longer gay, and she’d said, “Sam, I’m going to give you this now.”
“Oh, it really is for me!”
“Yes, Sam, it’s for you. Now, stop trying to grab it! Before I give it to you you have to promise me something. Promise not to use it until there is a really important occasion.
“Isn’t this an important occasion? I’m leaving you. I’m going away. I’m going somewhere out there.” He nodded towards the Pacific. “And it’s the last time I’ll ever leave you. All that’s important, isn’t it?”
“Sure, Sam, but there’ll be bigger days. I can just look forward and see them. Can’t you?”
“What’s in it?” he joked, hefting the package. “Female magic charm to keep the boy from harm? Hand grenade, new type?”
“Don’t unwrap it, Sam. Not now. There’ll be times when you’ll need it more. Wait and see. Promise me you won’t take it out of the box until you’re aboard ship.”
He saw how grave she was, and promised, and kissed her without caring whether anyone watched or not. And they drank a last Scotch and fizz, and lifted their glasses to the stars, and he said:
She said, “That’s cute. Who wrote it?”
“I don’t know,” he lied. Sometimes he made up in his head little bits and pieces of verse, but at that time he never told anybody about them.
He drove Anne back to her home in Los Altos, and they tiptoed across the gravel in the patio, so as not to wake her parents, and he did not leave until dawn’s first breath blew the morning’s mists back into the sea.
That last night in Los Altos he would always treasure in the locket of his heart. Even now, watching the wind off Siberia whip plumes of snow from the hostile hill, he could almost see and feel her lithe and vivid dark beauty, and kiss the throb in the arch of her throat, and smell the rich jasmine which that night she had worn. Now, when he was bone cold, she warmed him with the thought of her body.
Then someone jostled his arm, and he turned in anger.
Beany Smith, the Jersey City boy who couldn’t hold his liquor and had been in the punishment detail for seven days back in Pusan, and who even now should be in the brig for attempted rape at Ko-Bong, crowded forward, his eyes alight. “You goin’ to divvy that up with us, captain?”
For a moment Mackenzie didn’t speak. He hated anyone to touch him. He hated to be shoved. He controlled himself, and said, “Sure.” He unzipped the top of the leather bottle guard with his teeth. From its safe bed of soft wool thick as rabbit fur peeked the top of the bottle, crowned by its black and gold foil.
Beany Smith counted heads. “Seventeen of us. That makes one good slug apiece, captain.”
“I don’t drink,” said Ackerman, the quiet Pennsylvanian who was bazooka man and a corporal. “I’m an Advanced Adventist.”
“So can I have your slug, Ack?” Beany Smith asked quickly.
“You’ll be damn lucky to get a smell of it, Smith,” said the captain. “You’ve been trouble ever since I saw you, you son-of-a-bitch. I had to lose a hundred and sixty-odd men and still have you!”
Mackenzie stopped suddenly. It was ridiculous for him to be eating out Beany Smith at this time, and place, when he had accepted destruction and dissolution for himself and for all of them. He looked around at the circle of grubby faces and frost-cracked noses peering at him with interest from under the hoods of the parkas, and it was then that he realized that in the last few minutes there had been a definite change in the condition, and the morale, of Dog Company. His men were on their feet, and therefore they could march and handle their weapons, and he would be derelict as a commander if he did not use the capabilities of his company to the utmost, and inflict maximum damage upon the enemy.
This was his decision, and he instantly took under consideration the first tactical problem—the effect of one drink of Scotch on one completely exhausted Marine with a stomach utterly empty. It would start them moving, all right, and they’d feel hopped up and warm for forty-five minutes to an hour. But when the alcohol died within them there would come inevitable depression, and if they collapsed again, they were through. He determined his course. “You’re each going to get a drink,” he said. “But you’re not going to get it until we’re back inside our own lines.”