That might even be true, too. What was wrong with the newsreader, anyway? From what Stas was able to gather, the Americans’ naval war against Japan in the Pacific hadn’t always gone their way. Now, though, they’d taken back that island, Halfway or whatever it was called. They could build ships the way Russia built tanks.
And if they kept Japan busy at sea, and if China kept swarms of Japanese ground troops tied down, the Hammer and Sickle might yet fly over Vladivostok again. General Secretary Stalin might be able to have his newsreaders boast about bringing another war to a triumphal conclusion without blushing too much while they did it.
“I flew against the Japanese in the Far East for a while,” Mouradian remarked to Isa Mogamedov.
The Azeri nodded. “Yes, you’ve said so before. What was it like?”
“Well, there was the time when I was walking over to see some planes and the officer who’d been in those parts longer warned me to keep an eye open for tigers,” Stas said. That made Mogamedov sit up and take notice, all right. Stas went on, “And it was cold.” He shivered, remembering. “Cold enough to make the worst winter day this side of the Urals seem like springtime.” He did his best to impersonate a Russian: “Cold enough to freeze the Devil’s asshole shut.”
Mogamedov’s off-key chuckle told him his best wasn’t good enough. “Not eager to go back there, you’re telling me?”
Stas shrugged. “I serve the Soviet Union! But if the Soviet Union wants me to serve it somewhere warmer, I won’t apply for a transfer to Khabarovsk. Like I said, still tigers in the woods over there, too.”
“And Japs,” Mogamedov added.
“Yes. And Japs,” Stas agreed. “But if the Japs kill me, they won’t eat me-or I don’t think they will.” He knew a lot of what he thought he knew about Japan was Soviet propaganda. He wasn’t so sure where, if anywhere, that stopped and something resembling truth started.
The newsreader began bragging about Stakhanovite shock workers shattering aluminum-production norms. A vodka bottle came by. Stas swigged from it. No, he didn’t usually drink like a Russian, but when you listened to hot air like that, what else were you going to do?
Poker. Craps. Acey-deucy. Poker. Baseball. Craps. Poker. Chow. Sleep. Poker. Life on Midway.
Oh, and there was the radio. Some of the Marines there clung to it as a lifeline to the wider world they were no longer allowed to touch for themselves. Most of the time, Pete McGill steered clear of it. As far as he was concerned, it hurt more than it helped.
So he was one of the last to hear that the USA and Russia had agreed to an alliance against the Japs. When he did hear, he had trouble getting excited about it. “What good does that do us? We’re still fucking stuck here on this shitty sandbox,” he told the poker buddy who gave him the news. After a moment, he tossed a sawbuck into the pot. “Call.”
The other Marine laid down three eights. Grinning, Pete showed him three tens. The other guy said something about his mother. At another time, in a different place, Pete would have tried to knock his block off, or maybe to murder him. On Midway, nobody had anything to spend money on, so it didn’t seem to be worth much. Insults were devalued the same way. They’d used the ordinary ones so often, everybody ignored them. Ranking someone’s mother over a medium-sized poker hand was like blowing a C-note on a cup of coffee. The Marines did it all the time, and didn’t worry about it.
After collecting his money, Pete said, “I don’t wanna end up here for the duration. I want to go out and kill Japs, goddammit.”
“I want to go to Honolulu and screw me the first broad I run into, is what I want,” the other Marine said. “Hell with the Japs. I have paid my dues with those fuckers, and somebody else can take my next turn. You’ll find me singin’ ‘Roll Me Over in the Clover’ with that Hotel Street chippy.”
“Yeah, I want to get next to a woman, too,” Pete said. “You bet I do. I’ve been here so long, some of you jerks don’t look as ugly as usual.”
A couple of the leathernecks in the poker game made as if to pull away from him. One fellow lisped, “I hope I’m not one of them, thweetheart.”
Everybody laughed. “Mighty Joe Young’s sister might go for you, Hank, but I don’t,” Pete said, and they all laughed some more. You could laugh when a guy played at being a queer, or you could punch him. Pete didn’t know any middle ground there. Hank was a natural-born plug-ugly with shoulders as wide as a desk, so laughing seemed a better choice any way you looked at it.
“Do we really want to play kissy-face with the Reds?” asked the Marine who’d told Pete about the alliance. “Those guys are bad news, nothin’ else but. You kiss them, it’s like kissing a pig.”
“I don’t care,” Pete said as he anted for the next hand. “As long as Japs end up dead on account of it, that’s all that matters, far as I’m concerned. If I can’t kill ’em myself, I’m happy when somebody else does it for me.”
“Man,” the other Marine said. “You’ve got it bad, don’t you?”
“I guess maybe I do,” answered Pete, who knew only too goddamn well he did. “They killed my sweetheart in Shanghai. They messed me up. I’ve been messing them up ever since.”
They all knew his story. They’d been on Midway by themselves for so long, everybody knew everybody else’s story. Everybody was sick to death of hearing everybody else’s story, in fact. It was like going to a party where the phonograph played the same three records over and over till the neighbors started banging on the walls.
Pete tossed in his cards. It wasn’t that he couldn’t discard most of them and maybe draw something better. But the odds weren’t great, and better probably wouldn’t wind up good enough. Smarter to throw away and live to profit some other day.
When the sun sank into the Pacific, he unrolled his sleeping bag on the sand and went to bed there. They were putting the barracks back together. U.S. bombers had done a terrific job of smashing them up. But the weather was fine and mild. The dunes were just about as soft as the kind of mattress you’d get on a military-issue cot or bunk. Why bother, then?
Little by little, discipline on Midway was corroding. Pete could see it, but he couldn’t see what to do about it. Nothing they did here now mattered, and they couldn’t get off the island to go some place where what they did would count.
Stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck.
The next morning, he ran into the quartermaster sergeant who’d issued him the new helmet he wouldn’t get to use in action. Sure as hell, Vince Lindholm had pitched a hellacious tantrum when he realized he wasn’t going to escape Midway, either. Since then, he’d settled down and turned into an ordinary Joe.
Pete waved to him. “How the fuck are ya?”
“I’m fucked, all right,” Lindholm answered. “We all are. We didn’t even get smooched.”
“No. We all aren’t fucked, and that’s part of how come we’re so fucked up.” Pete realized he should probably have to pay a sin tax on his syntax, but that was how things had come out of his mouth. He went on, “How’s about you requisition some broads for the island? If anybody can get us some pussy, I bet a quartermaster can.”
“I wish!” By the way Lindholm said it, he really did wish. “The French would do it, or the Germans.”
“Even the Japs,” Pete said. “I don’t think there were any of those waddayacallems-comfort women, that’s the name they use-on Midway, but they set up whorehouses for their men all over the place.”
“Any gals who did come here would be trapped on this lousy place as long as we are,” Lindholm reminded him. “You wouldn’t get a hell of a lot of volunteers for that.”
“You might,” Pete said. “Long as they didn’t play cards or shoot dice, the girls who did come would be millionaires by the time they finally got to leave. And some of ’em might even figure it was their patriotic duty, like, to buck up our morale. I went round and round on this with a doc a while ago, but he was too high-toned, like, to want to try and do anything about it.”