The Corps I - Semper Fi Page 8

  "The Corps's paying for it," McCoy said. "Why not?"

  "Yes, of course," Sessions said. "Is there anything of interest here that I could credibly have a look at?"

  "There's Kempei-Tai (The Japanese Security Police) watching this place. They're not going to think much if two Marines leave here to get their ashes hauled. They might get very curious if a newly arrived missionary did the same thing."

  "I wasn't thinking of going to a brothel," Sessions replied, chuckling. "I was suggesting that it would be credible if the Fellers, while I was here, showed me the sights. And that while so doing, I might come across something of interest."

  "If the Japs have German artillery, it's not going to be here in Nanking," McCoy said flatly. "And I think the less attention you call to yourself, the better it would be."

  "McCoy, I am simply trying to do my job," Sessions said, annoyed at what he considered McCoy's condescension. He wondered what Captain Banning had told McCoy about him.

  "That's all I'm trying to do, Lieutenant," McCoy said. "Captain Banning said I was to do what I could for you, and that's what I'm trying to do."

  As the whores later confirmed, nothing was happening in Nanking. So at half past ten, McCoy decided that there wasn't anything more to be gained from spending the night in the whorehouse. He put on his clothes, paid off his girl, and went to the room Everly had taken.

  "I'm heading back in," he told Everly, who was standing there in the doorway a little dazzled by the interruption. He had wrapped a towel around his middle. It threatened to fall.

  "Do I have to?" he said.

  "Just be at the mission at five o'clock," McCoy said, after a moment. Everly was a fucker, not a fighter; and he didn't drink dangerously. There was little chance that he would get in trouble. On the other hand, if he spent the night in the whorehouse, it would give the Kempei-Tai agents who had trailed them something to do. And the report they would write would state that a Marine had hired a whore for the night and stayed with her.

  He returned to the mission and searched in vain through the small mission library for something that had nothing to do with Christianity. Then, disappointed, he retreated to his room, undressed to his skivvies, and took from his musette bag one of the copies of the Shanghai Post that had accumulated during his last trip to Shanghai. After he'd read it, he started in on the crossword puzzle.

  Someone knocked at the door. Certain that it was the boy, he called permission to enter in Chinese.

  It was Mrs. Feller, a very different Mrs. Feller from the tight-assed lady he had met that afternoon. She was wearing a cotton bathrobe over a silk gown; and her hair was free now, hanging halfway down her back. It was glossy and soft, as though she had just brushed it. Then he noticed-more than noticed-the unrestrained breasts under her thin night clothes… The Reverend was about to get a little, after what presumably was a long dry spell.

  "Do you speak Chinese?" she asked, in Chinese.

  "Some," McCoy said, in English.

  "I just wanted to see if you or the other gentleman needed anything," she said.

  "No, ma'am," McCoy said, chuckling. "We're fine, thank you."

  "Why are you chuckling?" she asked, smiling.

  "Hearing you call Everly 'the other gentleman,' " McCoy said.

  "Where is he?" she asked.

  When McCoy didn't reply, her face flushed.

  "Mrs. Moore told me an incredible story about you," she said. "I can't believe it's true."

  "What did she tell you?"

  "Now I'm sorry I brought this up," she said. "I shouldn't have."

  He nodded his acceptance of that.

  "But do they call you 'Killer'? Or were they just teasing my husband and Mr. Sessions?"

  "Some people call me that," McCoy said. "I don't like it much."

  "But you're just a boy," she said, after deciding that the rest of the story was also probably-if incredibly-true.

  "I don't like to be called a boy, either," McCoy said. "I'm a corporal in the Marine Corps."

  "I'm really sorry I brought the whole thing up," she said.

  McCoy nodded.

  "Breakfast will be at six-thirty," she said. "My husband wants to get on the way early. Is that all right with you?"

  "Yes, ma'am," he said. "We'll be there. Thank you."

  "Then I'll say good night," she said.

  He thought that he would really have liked to get a look at her teats. Chinese women, by and large, didn't have very big teats, and it had been a long time since he had seen an American woman's teats.

  Come to think of it, he had seen very few American women's teats. Before he had come to China it had been a really big deal to get a look at a set of teats-not to mention actually getting laid. But getting laid in China was about as out-of-the-ordinary as blowing your nose. And in fact he had come to see there was no big difference between Chinese women and American (the story that their pussies ran sideward had turned out to be so much bullshit); but it would still be kind of nice to make it with a real American.

  He would, come to think of it, really like to jump Mrs. Feller, though he immediately recognized that dream as the same kind of fantasy as wishing he would make sergeant next week… out of the goddamned question for two hundred different reasons.

  He turned his attention back to the crossword puzzle.

  (Four)

  The Christian Missionary Alliance Mission

  Nanking, China

  0830 Hours 15 May 1941

  The Christians of the mission put on a little farewell ceremony for Mrs. Feller. After maybe fifty Chinese had manhandled the wooden crates onto the bed of the Studebaker, they went to one side of the courtyard and stood in some kind of a formation. McCoy settled into the front seat of the car, and watched.

  Next came maybe fifty little Chinese kids dressed in middie-blouse uniforms (which reminded McCoy of the uniform of the Italian marines). They lined up in four ranks. Finally, the missionary equivalent of the officers appeared-all the white Christians and half a dozen suit-wearing Chinese Christians. They sat down on a row of chairs set up on a sort of platform against a wall. One of them rose and said a prayer. Then the Chinese kids sang a hymn in Chinese. McCoy recognized the melody but could not recall the words.

  One of the Chinese Christians gave Mrs. Feller a present. She thanked him, and they sang another hymn, this time in English. The Reverend Feller then gave what was either a sermon or a very long prayer. Then came another hymn.

  All this time, McCoy was looking up Mrs. Feller's dress. He hadn't started out to do that. But the way she was sitting up on the platform, and the way he was looking out the Studebaker window, that's where his eyes naturally fell. And then it got worse. He was originally looking at a lot of white thigh. But then she had uncrossed her knees, and put her feet flat on the little platform just far enough apart to show all the way up. And she wasn't wearing any pants.

  He didn't believe what he saw at first. Ladies didn't go around without their underpants, and she was not only a lady, she was a lady missionary. But there was no question about it. She was sitting there with everything showing.

  And then Lieutenant Sessions came over and sat beside McCoy. The minute he did, Mrs. Feller crossed her legs.

  Did she suddenly remember how she was sitting? Or didn't it matter, since only an enlisted man was getting an eyeful? Or was she playing the cockteaser with me, and stopped only because Sessions showed up?

  When the ceremony was finally over, and the officer-type Christians walked with Mrs. Feller to the Studebaker, McCoy did not get out from behind the wheel to open the door. He had a hard-on.

  Mister/Lieutenant Sessions, obviously anxious to get the show on the road again, opened the door and motioned for Mrs. Feller to get in.

  "If you don't mind, Mr. Sessions," Mrs. Feller said. "I'll sit with Corporal McCoy. I get woozy if I ride in backseats."

  She got in beside McCoy and smiled at him.

  "I'm sorry you had to wait," she said.

&n
bsp; "No sweat," McCoy said, devoting all of his attention to starting the engine.

  "I always wondered how you did that," she said.

  "Did what?" he asked. In spite of his misgivings, curiosity forced him to look at her.

  She was holding up his hat press (A device that keeps the brim of the felt campaign hat from curling). He had put his campaign hat in it when he'd got in the car. It was the rainy season, and humidity was hell on fur felt hats.

  "Oh," McCoy said. "That."

  She put the hat press back where it had been.

  "Very clever," she said.

  "Okay to go?" McCoy asked.

  "Get the show on the road, McCoy," Sessions said.

  Mrs. Feller waved to the Christians, and blew several of them a kiss.

  For somebody who got screwed as much as she probably got screwed last night, having been away from the Reverend all that time, McCoy thought, she don't look all that worn out.

  Then he realized he was wrong about that. The reason she was going around without any underpants was that she and the Reverend had screwed it sore.

  She half turned on the seat, pulling her dress above her knees in the process, and started talking to Sessions. "Where are you from?" And "Where is your wife from?" And "How much do you like the Marine Corps?" That sort of thing.

  McCoy kept his eyes off her knees as much as he could.

  He had it made now, he told himself. It would be real dumb fucking that up by doing something dumb with this missionary woman. He had probably the best duty of any corporal in the Corps. For all practical purposes, he didn't have anybody telling him what to do. And the Corps was paying all his expenses, even what he spent getting laid. And it was even better than that:

  When he filled out the "report of expenses" Captain Banning made him do about once a month, he put down on it usually twice (sometimes three times) what it really cost him. He wasn't greedy, and Captain Banning probably thought he was getting a bargain. But the prices McCoy listed on the report were what Marines would be expected to pay for a room, a meal, a whore, or whatever. Marines who spoke Chinese didn't pay half what Marines who didn't speak Chinese did. Not a month had passed since he'd gone to work for Banning that he hadn't been able to add a hundred dollars to his retirement-fund account at Barclays Bank. And that didn't include his gambling money.

  They always spent two days in the Marine Compound at Tientsin on the way to Peking, then two days in Peking, and then another day at Tientsin on the way back to Shanghai. As regular as clockwork, he'd been taking ten, fifteen dollars a night from the Tientsin and Peking Marines. He hadn't been greedy, which wasn't easy, because there were Tientsin and

  Peking Marines who played poker so bad it was sometimes hard not to clean them out.

  It was hard to believe how much money he had in Barclays Bank.

  And he could fuck the whole thing up by doing something stupid with this missionary who went around without her underpants.

  When they were out of Nanking, the humidity started to close in so bad that the outside of the windshield kept clouding over and he had to run the wipers every once in a while. It would be better whenever it started to rain. He wished it would start soon.

  Mrs. Feller glanced at McCoy to make sure he had his eyes on the road. Then she took a little bottle of perfume or cologne from her purse and shook a tiny dab of it on a handkerchief. She touched her temples with it, and her ears, and her forehead, and then quickly opened a couple of buttons on her dress and rubbed a little in the crack between her breasts.

  McCoy's erection was painful.

  He was sure, to make it worse, that she had seen him looking.

  Goddamn these missionaries anyway! If the Corps had wanted to find out if the 11th Jap Division had German artillery pieces, I could have found out, without dragging a bunch of fucking missionaries around with me.

  It finally started to rain, a steady, soft rain that meant it would probably go on forever.

  And now the inside of the windshield started to steam up. Mrs. Feller, trying to be helpful, kept wiping it with a handkerchief. Sometimes when she leaned over to wipe his window, her hand rested on his knee. And every time he could see her boobs straining against her brassiere and the thin cotton of her dress.

  It was still raining when they reached the Yangtze ferry at Chiangyin. McCoy was not pleased with what he found. Not only was one of the two ferries that normally worked the crossing tied up at a wharf and out of service, but none of the other vehicles in the convoy had crossed over.

  Several hundred Chinese were milling around. A few drove trucks, and half a dozen had oxcarts. But mostly there were hand-pulled carts, and people carrying huge bundles on their backs. That meant that they would have to post a guard on every truck. Otherwise, if they blinked, they would have an empty truck.

  Zimmerman told McCoy that when he tried to load the vehicles the night before, Lieutenant Macklin wouldn't let him. Macklin thought it would be better to wait on this side of the Yangtze for the car and truck from Nanking.

  Officer- type thinking, McCoy decided. You had to keep your eyes on the bastards all the time, or they would think of something smart like this.

  The remaining ferry was going to require three trips to transport all of the vehicles, so it was going to be at least an hour, probably closer to an hour and a half, before they were all across the river, which was at least four miles across at that point.

  McCoy went to Lieutenant Macklin and told him he thought it would probably be a good idea if he took one of the cars, two Marine trucks, and one missionary truck on the first trip. Two of the three remaining trucks could cross on the second trip. And the remaining truck, the pickup/wrecker, and the other car could cross on the third… if that was all right with Lieutenant Macklin.

  There was a nice little restaurant in Chen-chiang on the far shore, and McCoy could see no reason to remain on the near shore hungry, while there was a commissioned officer and gentleman (two, if you counted Sessions) available to supervise the loading of the rear echelon.

  And if he was just a little lucky, he'd be able to overhear a conversation (or perhaps even join in one) in the restaurant that might tell him something about Japanese activity farther up the road.

  Lieutenant Macklin thought that was as good a way to do it as any.

  "Sergeant Zimmerman can handle it by himself, sir," McCoy said, "if you'd rather cross with the first load."

  "I'll bring up the rear, McCoy," Lieutenant Macklin said, as McCoy had been eighty percent sure he would. "You and Sergeant Zimmerman go over and see what you can do to get the men something to eat."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  Might as well let Zimmerman feed his face first, too. McCoy liked Zimmerman. He was a placid, quiet German who had found a home in the Corps, started a family with a Chinese girl, and did not resent McCoy's unofficial-if unmistakable-authority on the convoys the way some other senior noncoms did.

  Ernie had some kind of rice bowl going on the Peking trips, McCoy was sure, but whatever it was, he did it quietly. And he didn't get fall-down drunk in a whorehouse as soon as there was the chance. Ernie understood Chinese, too, although for some strange reason, he pretended he didn't.

  He was also faster on the pickup than you'd expect. For instance, he caught on right away to what McCoy wanted when McCoy suggested that he eat at a different restaurant from the big one McCoy was going to. Ernie would pick up whatever he could learn about any Japanese activity farther up the road while he sipped slowly on a beer. Too bad Lieutenant Macklin wasn't as sharp, McCoy thought.

  The other two drivers McCoy took on the first ferry were PFCs, and they were on their best behavior because making the trips got them out from under the harassment of the motor pool. McCoy gave them his ritual "one beer, no more, or I'll have your ass" speech, confident that he'd be obeyed.

  When Ernie came into the big restaurant (six tables, plus a low counter), McCoy was gnawing on a nearly crystallized piece of duck skin. Ernie took off h
is wide-brimmed campaign hat, gave it several violent shakes to knock the water loose from the rain cover; and then looked for and found McCoy.

  Ernie was a man of few words: "The other Studebaker car's on the ferry."

  McCoy nodded, and Ernie left. McCoy shoved the rest of the crisp duck skin in his mouth, daintily dipped his fingers into a bowl of warm water, dried them, and reached for his hat. He put it on at the prescribed angle, twisted his head around to seat the leather strap against the back of his head, and started out of the restaurant.

  Then he changed his mind.

  Fuck him. So Macklin and/or Sessions sees me eating and having a beer, so what?

  He gave the proprietor a large bill and told him he would be back for his change after he'd returned the empty beer bottle and the napkin he was taking with him.

  Then he walked quickly to the ferry, keeping himself (more importantly, the campaign hat) out of the rain as much as possible.

  He didn't know why Lieutenant Macklin had decided to come in the second car rather than the third ferry trip, but it didn't matter: It was a to-be-expected thing for an officer- any officer-to do. No matter what an enlisted man decided, it could be improved upon by any officer. That's why they were officers.

  McCoy paid little attention to the Studebaker until it was off the ferry and, with its wheels slipping and skidding, had made it up the road from the ferry slip. Then he stepped out from beneath the overhang of a building where he had been sheltered from the rain, went into the middle of the road, and made more or the less official Corps hand signals to tell Lieutenant Macklin where the car should be parked.

  But Macklin wasn't driving the Studebaker. The lady missionary, Ol' No Underpants, Perfume on the Teats herself, was at the wheel. And she was alone.

  What the hell's going on?

  McCoy reclaimed the beer bottle he had been prepared to discard for either of the officers and walked nimbly-avoiding puddles where possible-to where Ol' No Underpants had parked.

  She saw him coming and opened the door for him as he approached. The way she leaned over the seat to reach the door, he could see down her dress, down where she'd wiped perfume between her teats.