Dark Full of Enemies(57)

He remembered his book, but there was no light. He considered bringing out his flashlight but decided to stay ready for J?rgen’s return. He would finish Thucydides later, if he could. He doubted the Germans would let him keep it. He settled further against the wall and felt very far from the sunny Greek seas.

He looked at the others. Petersen had gone out to wait on the dock with Magnus. Ollila knelt, one hand on the shrouded Mauser, carefully finishing off his pork and bread. Graves sat beside him. McKay could not tell, but he seemed to sleep. Lucky man.

He looked at Stallings. Stallings looked at him.

“How you doing, Grove?” Stallings lowered his head. McKay could not tell for sure, but he looked sick. “Grove?”

“I’m all right, I’m all right.” He took a breath ridged with tremors and fought to hold it in. He sighed it all out anyway. “I’m all right.”

The man was not all right. “What’s up?”

Stallings shook his head. “Just the jitters, is all.”

“I understand.”

“I haven’t much liked nighttime, you know, since Sicily. And heading out like this? I meant what I said—I asked to be here. No more chickenshit duty, you wasn’t lying. But…” He shook his head again. “I just don’t like the dark.”

Don’t nobody change, he had said when they met again. You’ve just proved yourself wrong, Grove, McKay thought. He remembered a Grover Stallings whose waking hours were the witching hours—carousing from dusk until his fellow cadets doused him in icewater at the break of day. He would sneak anywhere at night, had suggested climbing mountains in the dark, never once entered a tent at night during any camping trip they had been on. No matter where they went—Clemson, out for the holidays, camping, mountaineering—Stallings would disappear at night. It was his time, he would say, and grin and leer, and make clear without words that the night was made for his flesh. Booze, women, a werewolf tromp through the woods.

McKay looked hard at him. Stallings held his stare a moment but looked away. McKay looked into the dark, too.

“You know about Guadalcanal?” McKay said.

“What about it?”

“The Japs, how they would attack at night?” He found himself describing a rolling wave of screaming men with one slow sweep of his hand. “They’d charge, en masse.”

“Shit. Yeah, I heard about that.”

McKay looked for words. “Every night, it seemed like. Something always happened. Probes, patrols—even if they didn’t mount a full-on attack. They even had this son of a—this fighter pilot. He’d buzz Henderson Field, the airfield, and our positions all night long. Kept us up all hours, thinking we were about to get bombed.”

“Did you ever?”

“Not by him. But we got acquainted with the Jap navy real good.”

McKay waited.

Stallings took off his cap and ran his hand over his scalp. He exhaled. “Shit, I know you been through hell. I’m not trying to be down in the mouth.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

Stallings was quiet a moment. “We landed under fire, ya know. Opposed landing.”

“I heard.”

“Looking back, it wasn’t too bad, but in the pitch dark? Coming in after puking your guts out in those fucking landing craft for hours? I’ve—I’ve never been so goddam scared in my life. Tracers fucking everywhere. We moved inland pretty quick but it was hard to figure out what was going on in the dark. I thought I’d got lost a couple times, and dammit if I—if I didn’t have to shit. Well, you know I wasn’t gonna shit my pants. I was scared but for some reason I got even more scared of shitting my pants and wallering around in it for God knows how long. I didn’t even think I was gonna live but I was gonna take a crap come hell or high water, and I’d already been through the high water, so, you know. So I squatted down right there on the beach with the tracers going around me like I was taking a shit inside a fireworks show. It seemed like it took forever, and then I was up and buckling my britches as I was running God knows where.

“And then—then I got really scared. What the hell was you thinking, Grove, squatting down like that in the middle of a war. That’s when I thought I’d got good and lost. I was wandering around the beach in the dark with every Nazi on the island shooting at me but at least I had clean britches. Hell.

“Well, right about then I just up and stumbled into some guys from a squad in my platoon. I was the platoon radio man and the looey in charge was panicking, thought I’d been killed and left them without contact with the rest of the company. Chewed me out when I come in. When the sun come up we saw we’d lost a few guys in the landing, but by then we was in position and ready to go.”

Stallings stopped. “We can smoke, right?”

“Sure thing,” McKay said.

Stallings drew a cigarette and lighter and lit up as he continued talking. “You ever seen a Tiger tank?”

“Not in combat,” McKay said. He had seen them in Germany, on flatbed rail cars. He may as well not have seen them, given what he knew Stallings would say next.

Stallings offered him one of his cigarettes. McKay hesitated, looked at Stallings, thought of Sicily, of Guadalcanal, and took one. He took out his own lighter and lit it. “Thanks.”