King’s grip gave way, and John crawled below the line of the ridge, past Smith’s corpse. He stuck his head up, could see the bunker, but no bullets came. The machine gun fired a few indiscriminate shots toward where King was lying, and a few rifles cracked, tearing up the ground where John had been. None came toward his position. He climbed up over the ridge and began crawling forward, using the two-foot-high grass as cover. His hands were shaking, his throat so dry that he longed to go back to Smith’s body to check his canteen. He had left his own with his backpack and the company. He ignored every instinct crying out inside him to run back down the hill. Every movement forward felt unnatural, insane, but still he kept on.
John moved out to what he hoped would be an open expanse on the right. For all he knew, there would be a whole battalion of Japanese up there, and these would be the last few seconds he’d ever have. He thought of Penelope, remembered the way the sun had illuminated her skin in that hotel room in Honolulu before he’d shipped out. He could almost feel her touch again, could almost hear her voice. He thought of his father, his mother, his brother, and his sister and fought back the bitterness he still felt. He didn’t want to feel that way. Not now. He remembered fall in Pennsylvania, and how the red leaves carpeted his parents’ backyard, and how he and Norman had kicked through them as children.
The shower of bullets didn’t come. He slithered forward on his elbows, rifle in hand. The bunker came into clearer view, a hundred yards away on his left, and just beside it, a mortar position. They were waiting. They would tear the company to pieces. Three Japanese soldiers sat readied at the mortar position, staring down at where King and the others were. The bunker was built into the ground, and a heavy machine gun protruded from its dark window. The Japanese were moving the gun from side to side, searching for any movement. John rolled onto his back and held the rifle above his chest. He thought about King. Should he return to him and try to make it back down to the rest of the company? The Japanese hadn’t noticed him slipping through. He was in a perfect position to flank them. The machine gun wouldn’t be able to stretch around to where he was at this angle. He was likelier to be picked off if he tried to make it back down. The Japanese would make sure he didn’t have the chance to report their positions.
He crawled on, fifty yards from the mortar now. The Japanese soldiers were still staring down the hill, unaware of him. He was close enough to hear the men talking. One of them laughed. John jumped up, brought his rifle to his shoulder, and fired. He ran toward them, squeezing the trigger again. One of the soldiers went down, hit in the neck. The other two reached for their rifles as the roar of the machine gun began again, shooting at nothing. John saw his bullets strike one man in the chest. The last soldier raised his rifle, but John already had him and loosed off his last two rounds, hitting him in the head with both. John was still running, hot breaths thundering in and out of his lungs. He reached for a grenade on his belt, stopping at the mortar position to heave it toward the entrance to the bunker. It landed just as two Japanese soldiers were emerging, and they disappeared in a shower of mud and gore. He ran to the bunker, unhooked another grenade, and tossed it into the opening from six feet away. He hit the dirt as the concussion rocked the earth around him, almost lifting the roof off the bunker. A scream rang out as the figure of a man stumbled out, samurai sword aloft, his crazed eyes protruding from a blackened face. John reached for his rifle, pulled the trigger, but the hammer clicked—empty. The bloodied and burned soldier stumbled toward him, slicing down on the ground as John rolled away and reached for his knife. Half the man’s face was gone, the skin hanging off like ribbons. He swung the sword at John again, but his swings were languid and weak. John grabbed at his arm, pulled him on top of him, and thrust his knife into the man’s stomach. Hot blood spurted, and the soldier’s eyes widened, life ebbing from his body. All fell silent. John pushed him off. Coated in the man’s blood, he raised himself to his knees. The hiss of the wind in the grass came again and a deep darkness fell, the silhouettes of the company advancing up the hill to support him barely visible against the evening sky.
Washington, DC, February 1943
They had overstarched his shirt.
“Stop pulling at the collar,” Penelope said, radiant in her red-sequin dress. “You’re going to mess it up, you idiot.” She seemed livid.
“It’s fine, Penny. What does it matter?”
“It matters because people are watching.”
She took him by the hand and led him into the ballroom. He felt out of step, as though he weren’t there at all. The men in his platoon were in his thoughts always. The memories seemed to drag him back. The part of him that truly mattered was still there, would always be there.
He looked at his wife. She was as beautiful as she had been in his daydreams. Though they were together now, holding hands, she was nevertheless inaccessible. Something was lurking behind her smile, behind the kind words she’d offered upon meeting him at the train station. Her obsession with what others thought and felt seemed more alien to him than ever. Had she been like this when they’d first met in college? That fall evening in Princeton came into his mind. It had been a meeting of two great families—the ultimate merger. It had seemed forced at first—a ball at her parents’ nearby mansion arranged almost specifically for them to meet. His first impulse was to reject the whole charade, but her beauty, and the urgings of his parents, drew him in. And he had loved her for a time—until he realized that the man she wanted wasn’t the man he wanted to be. He felt her grip on his hand loosening as they weaved between the tables to where his parents were standing, waiting for them.
His father was friends with senators and congressmen, had met the president once, back in ’38 when he’d toured the factories in Philadelphia. The photograph still hung above the desk in his study. He’d used his connections to get John home for a month’s rest he had never asked for.
John still bore the marks of his time in the jungle, but the scabs were healing. It had taken him days to get clean, to scrub the dirt out from under his fingernails, to make himself presentable. People were watching. His father greeted him with a handshake. He hugged his sister, Pearl, and shook his brother Norman’s hand, though he couldn’t quite look him in the eye. This was the first time he’d been seen with them in public since he’d been back. This was their chance to show him off in front of their peers. Penelope kissed each of her in-laws and waited for John to hold out her chair before she sat down. Pearl sat on one side of him, with Penelope on the other. Pearl’s husband was with the air force, stationed in England. The bombing raids on Europe had begun. Her eyes betrayed the worry she was working to hide.
The time for speeches arrived, each speaker proclaiming the urgent need to purchase war bonds. John’s father took his turn and, motioning to his son from the podium, asked John to stand. He did his duty, holding up the Silver Star he’d won in Guadalcanal for clearing the machine-gun nest and saving King’s life. The entire room of more than two hundred people stood as one to applaud. He felt Pearl’s hand on his shoulder, saw Penelope standing back, clapping with the rest. He sat down once the applause had ended, the weight lifted.
Dinner ended, and a steady stream of family friends and well-wishers, some of whom he knew, came to shake his hand and tell him how much they admired the job he was doing out there, how they’d be right beside him if they weren’t so damned old. His wrist hurt from shaking hands. His face ached from smiling. Penelope charmed them all, and old men opened their checkbooks.
The music had begun when John’s father called him over. He was standing beside a silver-haired, rather dumpy man in his sixties wearing a tuxedo.
“John, I’d like you to meet someone. This is William Donovan. Bill, this is my son John.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Donovan said, offering a bone-crushing handshake.
“John wants something more than I can offer him.”
“What are you talking about, Dad?” John had a sense of where the conversation was going—it was one he and his father had often had, one that always left him feeling guilty.