Down These Strange Streets

Epilogue

THERE WAS BUZZ FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS ABOUT THE NAVY MURDER, and I eventually heard that they arrested a seaman named Joe. But no one ever questioned me, and I never heard what they did with him. And I didn’t try to find out.

I saw the Cutthroat only once more, at a distance, just a few days after the fifth of July. He was boarding a ship at the dock in Sweeper Cove. It didn’t look like he was sneaking on. So I think he probably made it back to Fort Richardson and finished the war with the Alaska Scouts. But I don’t know.

The lieutenant colonel left Adak less than two weeks after that. I didn’t hear where he had been sent. But a few years after V-J Day, my curiosity got the better of me, and I made some inquiries. I learned that he had gone to the Philippines and had died at the outset of the Battle of Leyte in October 1944. A kamikaze had hit his ship, and he had burned to death. He never received his promotion.

I never spoke with Pop again. I saw him around throughout the rest of July and the first part of August, because he was hard to miss. I even passed by him on Main Street a few times. Once he gave me a nod, and I gave him the same in return.

That was all that passed between us until Pop was transferred to the mainland. We had all heard it was happening, since he was the camp celebrity and there was a lot of debate as to whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he was going. But no one seemed to know just when it would occur.

Then, one evening in August, I came back to my bunk after a long day of working on a new runway at the airfield. And there was a manila envelope on my pillow. Inside I found the bent eagle feather and a typed note:

CLEARING OUT JUNK. THOUGHT YOU MIGHT WANT THIS. YOU OWE ME A ZIPPO.

P.S. WHEN YOU BRAG TO YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT HAVING MET ME, DO NOT CALL ME “POP.”

D.H.

I have not honored his request.

Toward the end of the war, I heard that Pop had made sergeant and been reassigned back to Adak in early 1945. But by then I was gone. I had been sent south to rejoin my old combat unit and train for an invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Then came the Bomb, and I was in Nebraska by Christmas.

Now, as an old man, I take the bent eagle feather from its envelope every fifth of July. Just for a minute.

My life has been good, but not much of it has been a surprise. I saw most of it coming a long time ago.

But then Pop slapped me awake. He slapped me awake, and he kept me from seeing the end.

I’ve always been grateful to him for that.

I don’t know whether he was a Communist. I don’t know whether he subverted the Constitution, supported tyrants, lied to Congress, or did any of the other things they said he did.

But I know he wore his country’s uniform in two world wars. And I know he’s buried at Arlington.

Plus one more thing.

Just today, decades after I first saw that hardback copy on another guy’s bunk...

I’ve finally finished reading The Maltese Falcon.

And you know what? I wish I could tell Pop:

It’s pretty goddamn good.