Out on the Rim

The three who survived the ambush on the black-sand beach were the 19-year-old second lieutenant of infantry; the five-foot-four guerrilla; and the huge, somewhat crazed medical corpsman who had sweated, starved and raved away 16 pounds in the week that followed.

Yet it was Hovey Profette, the Arkansas medic, who first noticed the two Imperial Marines in the valley below, some 40 or 50 yards away, as they slowly emerged from a grove of neglected coconut palms. “Shoot the little fuckers,” the medic urged in a hoarse whisper.

Booth Stallings, the second lieutenant of infantry and putative leader of the ambushed intelligence and reconnaissance patrol, flattened himself between the pair of sun-baked black rocks. After brushing away what seemed to be four dozen flies he squinted down through the afternoon haze at the two figures in their mustard uniforms. Both Imperial Marines had stopped and were glancing around with the apprehensive air of point men who suspect someone is about to shoot at them.

“I’d say that second little fucker’s at least six-two, maybe even six-three,” Stallings said.

“Imperial Marines,” the guerrilla murmured. “There is a minimum height requirement.”

For the fourth time that day the medic’s terrible rage exploded without warning. It surged up his 18-inch neck in a bright wave, turning his curiously small ears a lipstick red and twisting his face into a fat pink angry knot that Booth Stallings thought might never be untied.

“You ain’t even gonna try and shoot ’em, are you, Lieutenant Pissant?” the medic said, enough menace in his soft question to make it a death threat.

Booth Stallings shook his head no as he continued to gaze down at the two Imperial Marines who were now moving slowly across the clearing that once had been planted to maize. “They’re scouts, Hovey,” Stallings said, forcing a measure of reasonableness into his answer. “They’ve got a squad behind them at least. Maybe a platoon. Maybe even a company.”

“Probably a company,” the guerrilla said in the flat, almost toneless Kansas accent he had acquired at the hands of a Thomasite maiden lady who had landed on his shores in 1901 and spent the next 40 years teaching little brown boys to speak and write American English the way it was spoken and written back in Emporia.

Hovey Profette, still crimson-faced and seething, ignored the guerrilla and stuck out his right hand for Stallings’ rifle, the sole community firearm. “Gimme the piece,” he demanded. “I’ll shoot the fuckers.”

Stallings again shook his head no, trying to insert a trace of unfelt regret into the gesture.

“There’s no rear sight, Hovey,” said Stallings. “That dead guerrilla I took it from must’ve pried the sight off and thrown it away. Guerrillas think rear sights just fuck things up — right, Al?”

Alejandro Espiritu, the five-foot-four guerrilla, smiled politely. “An old and much observed military tradition in my country.”

“You know what you are, Lieutenant Stallings, sir?” the medic said, his voice almost too loud, his color far too high. “You’re just a... a great big pile of yellow shit, that’s what.”

Hovey Profette lunged for the Garand, tore it easily from Booth Stallings’ grasp, jammed its butt into his own right shoulder and was sighting down the sightless barrel when the blade of the guerrilla’s bolo sliced almost halfway through the 18-inch neck.

The medic made a sound that was part sigh, part wheeze and collapsed atop the unfired rifle. A gurgling noise followed that Booth Stallings thought went on forever but lasted only seconds. When it was over, Hovey Profette, infantry medic and failed conscientious objector, lay dead on the tropical volcanic ridge that afforded Imperial Marines on one side and a fine view of the Camotes Sea on the other.

Stallings jerked the sightless Garand from beneath the dead man. Not bothering to wipe away the blood, he flicked the safety to off and aimed the rifle at the squatting guerrilla who ignored it and went on wiping Profette’s blood from the bolo with a handful of wild monkey grass.

“Why the hell didn’t you just nick him a little?” Stallings demanded.

Espiritu the guerrilla carefully examined the two-foot bolo before shoving it back down into its homemade wooden scabbard. “He might’ve screamed,” he said finally and pointed with his chin down into the valley where a long line of Imperial Marines was now moving quickly across the clearing. “A company at least,” he said. “Just as you and I thought.”

Booth Stallings shifted his gaze to the hurrying Japanese Imperial Marines, then to the dead American medic, and back to the Filipino guerrilla. It occurred to him that this was the second Filipino he had come to know well, the first having been Edmundo something or other from San Diego who, like a robin, had appeared each spring near Stallings’ grade and junior high schools, dispatched by the Duncan Yo-Yo people to demonstrate their product. Edmundo could make a Yo-Yo do anything, and for three childhood springs Booth Stallings had taken a limited number of private lessons at an exorbitant 50 cents an hour until, turning thirteen, he had discovered masturbation, Lucky Strikes and girls in approximately that order.

“So what the fuck do we tell the Major?” Stallings asked.

The 22-year-old guerrilla seemed to ponder the question with care. “We — you and I — will tell Major Crouch that our fallen comrade died bravely defending the rear.” He paused to gaze thoughtfully at the dead Profette. “The wild pigs’ll eat him by morning.”

For a dozen seconds Booth Stallings stared at the still squatting guerrilla with a frozen expression that agreed to nothing. For during those twelve seconds Stallings had stumbled across what to him was a new and comforting credo, an epiphany of sorts, that neatly excised the moral imperative and left him not only comforted, but also wiser and older. Much older. At least 26.

Still wearing the frozen expression and oblivious to the sweat that ran down over it, Stallings spoke in his new cold grown-up voice.

“You’ve got a whole lot of elastic up in that head of yours, don’t you, Al? I mean, you can make it stretch and wrap around just about anything you want it to.”

“I think,” Alejandro Espiritu said, almost smiled, thought better of it and started over. “I think we should recommend poor Profette here for a posthumous medal — a Bronze or Silver Star perhaps?”

Booth Stallings gazed down at the dead medic and lapsed Quaker. “What the fuck,” he said. “Let’s go for the DSC.”