MacArthur's Ghost by P.F. Kluge

Author:P.F. Kluge [Kluge, P. F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2013-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

“We’re almost done,” Harding said.

It was late, past two, and the neon boil down in Olongapo was simmering down. The ones who were destined to get drunk, get laid, get in fights, had accomplished this. They were tucked away, and now the night belonged to men who couldn’t sleep. The wee hours, the cool of the evening, when memories spanned the years the way radio transmissions bounced around the globe, odd songs from faraway places. Charley Camper returned from pissing. He brought more beer.

“I was thinking,” he said. “Right after the war, when folks want to know what you did, what you saw, you don’t want to talk about it. Years later, you’re ready to talk things over, no one wants to hear it. Am I right?”

“Yes,” Harding said.

“Then you come along,” Charley said. “And here we sit.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m glad you made it,” Charley said. “You too, Griffin.”

“But you’re not done yet,” Harding cautioned.

“I know. But I will be in a minute. And then I can get back to worrying about my wife, the California condo woman, Ms. Century Twenty-one. And my California girls. Other night, one of them told me she thought she was ‘ready to go all the way.’ You believe it?”

“The older one?”

“Uh-uh. The younger.” Camper glanced from Harding to Griffin. He shrugged. He laughed. “A world of problems. You know something? I think it’s nice we talk about the dead. Like we were saving them from being forgotten. For a little while, anyway. It’s like a visit. Seeing ‘Mean’ Meade again. Sudul. Yeah . . .”

“And Polshanski,” Harding said. It sounded like a reminder. That’s how Camper took it.

“Yeah,” he said. “And Polshanski.

“Where the rice fields ended, the swamps began. I mean swamps. Ponds and bogs and reeds and rivers and islands. A wonderful place, what with leeches below your waist and mosquitoes up above. No way of knowing how long the swamps went on. All we could do was point toward the one place we knew that wasn’t swamp. That mountain. Arayat.

“We spent the night in the swamp. That was the worst night I ever had. The mosquitoes! They were everywhere, not just on your face and hands, but around your ears, like aircraft in a holding pattern, dozens of ‘em standing by while one or two came in strafing. I tried waving ‘em away. Then I waited for them to land, so I could swat ‘em. Then I waited for them to bite so I squashed them in my own blood. I was crying, I was so hurt and frustrated. Christ, with the Japs on our tails, you’d think we could meet them on solid ground at least, in uniforms that weren’t covered with mud. You’d think we could meet them without being bit and cut and feverish, on feet that weren’t swollen, with toenails falling out. Your life on the line and you smell like shit!

“At dawn we joined the navy. There was an old raft pulled up into the reeds, a dozen

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