Waldo frowned. “Mr. Ferris is gone from these parts three months and more. Last seen on a Chinese steamer heading for Ceylon. And well understood not to be coming back.”
“I’m tapped out,” Springfield admitted. “Ferris took me good. I was running a pretty solid business in spice and batik, even with the war coming. Maybe especially because of the war. But he … promised…” Confidences whispered under starlight as the insects whined against the netting. She tried again, her head growing hot and tight under Innerarity’s infuriatingly sympathetic gaze. “I made a bad deal, Waldo. I’m living on the last of my credit now.” She turned the hobo nickel over in her hand, felt its patina through her skin even under the table and out of sight.
Somehow it all came down to the damned coin. Yet she hadn’t been able to get rid of it yet.
The words “until death do us part” sprang unbidden and unwelcome into her mind.
“All the more reason to leave, eh? Seat’s yours, no need to pay.”
“Not in coin,” she replied.
With those words, his face closed and his frown drew tight. Springfield knew she hadn’t been fair, but damn it, this was Waldo. Not someone who had any right to have an interest in her.
“Besides,” she added. “The Japs might never get here.”
He stood up, tossed back his gin in one huge gulp that must have burned all the way down. The mango slice tumbled into his mouth with the booze. “You just keep telling yourself that, Spring. Who knows? Might even be true.”
With that, the lieutenant left, taking his big shoulders and his manly ways with him.
After a while, Springfield signed her chitty and trudged up to her room. Doubtless the waiter would report what he’d heard to Inigo van Damme, the manager. Then the manager would ask, again, about her bringing her bill up to date.
She was fairly certain they wouldn’t take a lone skull-faced nickel in payment.
* * *
That night Springfield McKenna had the dream again. Japs in their mustard-yellow uniforms and peaked hats walked the muddy streets of Merauke. The city was under occupation, the Dutch and Australian defenders vanished as surely as if they’d never been here. There weren’t even blood spatters or bullet holes. Just Japanese soldiers everywhere. Stolid. Silent. Shuffling. Staring at her with empty eyes.
They all marched to the beat of some distant tin drum. A rattle that carried from the hills outside of town all the way down to the portside slums along the banks of the Maro River. Even the endless nightly concerto of insect and bird and jungle screech had quieted in the face of that beat.
She heard that noise. Metallic. Small. Sly. It carried everywhere. It informed her heart and doused her hearing and set her thoughts to smoldering.
With a sweaty, fetid start, Springfield realized she was awake. But the beat that had carried through her dream of invasion still echoed.
It was the nickel. In her bureau drawer. The coin was rattling. Marching like a tiny army of its own through her dreams and through her life.
She slid from her bed and tugged on a pair of airman’s coveralls. In the sticky heat of the New Guinea night, Springfield didn’t even bother with foundation garments or makeup. She just dressed swiftly and angrily, then took a discarded cigarette tin in hand and stood before the bureau.
Inside, the skull-faced nickel rattled on its own. Counting time. As if it were one of those deathwatch beetles.
“You bastard,” she hissed, though Springfield couldn’t have said whether she was talking to Roubicek or Innerarity or her father or who. She yanked the drawer open with a savage tug and captured the dancing nickel in an empty tin. It rattled a moment, then fell quiet.
“You bastard,” she repeated, and stalked out into the night.
* * *
It wasn’t far from the Hotel Hindia-Belanda to the waterfront. Though in truth, nothing was far from anything else in Merauke. She scuttled the few blocks, keeping to the deepest shadows where possible.
As she approached the dockside, a single shot echoed. Springfield froze. She wasn’t especially afraid of men with guns, but she had a lot of respect for what they could do in a careless moment. The only thing stupider than being shot in a war zone would be being shot by accident.
“Damn it all.” Springfield froze next to a stack of fish traps that reeked of rot and creaked slightly in the wind questing off the night’s water.
A voice called out nearby, indistinct but with the overtones of Dutch.
Someone answered cautiously from farther down the docks.
A short laugh, barked with the clipped nervousness of a man under pressure.
Then another shot.
Her nerve broke. She ran back toward the Hotel Hindia-Belanda, cigarette tin clutched so tightly in one hand that the metal was being crushed. When Springfield reached her room, she dumped the coin out on the scarred marble top of the bureau amid the grimy doilies and empty atomizers. The skull grinned up at her.
“I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy,” she told it with a glare.
Waldo’s offer of a seat on his flight was looking better and better. She absolutely hated that.
* * *
Rumors the next day were of Japanese spies on the waterfront, and graves being violated at the cathedral. Springfield was hard-pressed to see how those two could be connected. That didn’t stop people from speculating.
She used her copious free time to pack one small valise. It wouldn’t do for van Damme to think she was leaving with her bill unpaid, after all. And nothing a woman wanted or needed in Merauke was going to be too hard to replace in Darwin, or wherever she wound up.
Lieutenant Innerarity wouldn’t be footing her bills, Springfield promised herself.
She packed her last pair of silk stockings, a few necessaries, and one nice red dress. Just in case. With her dark hair and pale complexion, the color was striking, setting off her green eyes to great advantage. At least, that’s what her mother had always said. Springfield figured she’d need all the advantages she could get.
Her gulden were pointless outside of the Dutch East Indies. Let the hotel staff squabble over the small stack of coins. She still had two hundred American dollars, the last of her working capital remaining from Ferris Roubicek’s taking of her wealth and pride. That was what she couldn’t give to the manager. What she couldn’t afford to lose.
A few clothes, a little money, a nail file, and the nickel.
That was it.
Half a decade working here in the islands, a place where being a woman wasn’t an automatic disqualification from business, by virtue of her being an American. All she had to show for five years was a valise that could have carried half a dozen newspapers. A little money and a red dress.
Even the rest of the clothes she’d leave behind. She’d meet Waldo at dawn in her coveralls.
That dealt with, Springfield decided to go out. She couldn’t stand spending the day under the suspicious eyes of the waiters and the bartender. Everyone knew the white people were one panic away from leaving.
* * *
That night, she dreamt again of Japs in the streets. They shuffled as they walked, dragging their feet and staring downward as if afraid to say anything that might compromise their fealty to their emperor. They were everywhere in Merauke, filling the streets as if division after division had landed and overrun the place. Shoulder to shoulder, chest to back, the soldiers moved in eerie silence except for the beat of their one tin drum.
She refused to wake up for that damned coin.
Absolutely refused.
* * *
In the end, Springfield awoke for Waldo Innerarity. Or at least his knock.
“We’ve got to get moving, love.” His voice through the door was low almost to the point of being indistinct.
Her ride out. The dreams, the shots. It was over here in Merauke, her whole party done for. Ferris Roubicek had blown out the candles, but even the cake was nothing but crumbs now.
Springfiel
d had slept in her flight overalls. She tugged on a pair of men’s low quarter boots, ran her hands through her hair twice, grabbed her valise, unlocked the door, and threw it open.
“I—” Waldo swallowed his words as he stared at her.
“Ain’t seen a woman before, flyboy?” She chucked him under the chin. “Let’s go before the manager busts me.”
“Too late, I am afraid.” Van Damme stepped up behind the lieutenant. “You cannot be leaving us without a settlement?”
“Not at all,” she began sweetly, but Waldo elbowed Inigo in the gut, effectively ending the discussion. Springfield shot him a wild look of thanks. She reached into her valise for the skull-faced nickel, intending to leave it for a tip, but all she could think of in that moment was the marching Japanese in their endless, mindless numbers.
“Get out while you can, van Damme,” she whispered, the best tip she knew to give him. But Innerarity was already tugging her arm away, away, away.
* * *
The RAAF flying boat looked like a real beast as it floated at the dock. Beyond, over the hills east of town, the sun pearled the eastern sky the color of the inside of a compact. “Short Sunderland,” Waldo said, as if that meant anything to her. “The boys are aboard already. Don’t say nothing you don’t have to, it’ll go easier on us all.”
Springfield felt a sudden and unexpected attack of cold feet. She stood on the dock, looking up at the looming side of the aircraft. Something whirred—bilge pump, starter motor, she had no idea.
She felt as if she were being invited to climb into her coffin.
“Waldo…” Springfield whispered.
“Come on, Sheila.” He tugged at her arm. “We’ve got to be away before the sun comes up.”
Before anyone sees me getting on the airplane, she thought. Then she remembered Inigo van Damme gasping on the floral carpet in the hotel’s upstairs corridor.
She was committed now.
“I’m ready,” Springfield whispered, mortified at the squeak in her voice.
Innerarity helped her aboard. As she stepped up the gangplank, she could swear she heard the skull-faced nickel rattling in her valise.
* * *
Takeoff was an agonizing bounce and drag over the waters offshore. The Short Sunderland was a roaring, stuttering monster that clearly had no affinity for the air. It coughed around her, reeking of electricity and fuel and exhaust and the sweat of nervous men. Cigarettes, too, though no one was smoking right then.
Perversely, Springfield wished she had a Lucky Strike. She didn’t smoke, never had, but she’d always envied the easy way people who did could handle their nerves. Light up, take a draw, strike a pose. It was much more elegant than wringing one’s hands and hoping for better.
The airplane lurched and banked. She looked out the porthole at the Arafura Sea gleaming in the dawn’s light. Sharks lurked in the waters along shore, visible in their silhouettes. The muddy beaches were littered with storm debris, the swamps thick with trees. Shadows still lay across the land in contrast to the ocean’s morning glow.
The Japanese were down there somewhere.
Springfield glanced around the upper cabin. The rest of the seats were empty. Which was strange. Surely other people had wanted to leave Merauke as badly as she. Though the RAAF wasn’t in the habit of giving rides to anyone who just happened along.
It occurred to her to wonder once more what Waldo wanted. But then, that was obvious enough. Not him, she told herself. Though in truth, not anyone.
Not since Ferris Roubicek. Nor since long before him.
She found the nickel in her hand then. It lay cold and heavy, like a bullet. Heavier than a coin should ever have been. Springfield could feel it vibrating against her palm. Not in time with the overwhelming drone of the engines. Rather, the coin set its own rhythm. The rhythm of a thousand shambling Japanese.
Then one of the engines coughed harder. It emitted a blatting noise. Springfield shot a look out the window to see a haze of smoke coming from her side. Left. Port. Whatever they called it on an airplane.
The engine coughed again, stuttering before it settled into the slower rhythm of the nickel.
The little metal door leading forward banged open and Waldo leaned into the passenger cabin. “What the bloody hell happened?” he demanded.
Springfield closed her fist on the coin, feeling guilty for no reason she could name. “Something’s wrong with your, um, port engine.”
“I fewking know that.” He stalked over to stare out her porthole. “Damn it, we can’t just turn back.”
The airplane bucked then. A series of thumps echoed from the outside.
“Japs,” shouted Waldo, and rushed back to the flight deck.
Japs? But they walked in slow silence, taking over the world by numbers and rhythm. Not through violence in the air.
Outside her porthole, a slim aircraft slid by. She could see the big red circle on the side, painted over the jungle camouflage. Why paint an airplane like a tree? Who would it hide from in the blue, blue sky?
Three more of its fellows followed.
Zeroes. Even she knew that word, knew what those planes looked like.
One waggled his wings in salute, as if they were just friends sharing a pleasant morning’s flying.
The flying boat banked hard to the right, tilting her view toward the clouds still colored salmon and rose. Springfield McKenna watched the heavens glare as around her Lieutenant Waldo Innerarity’s airplane began to die. In her hand, the nickel pulsed like a beating heart.
* * *
The shoreline came rushing upward, a green fist folded over the troubled rim of the ocean. Waldo, or whoever was up on the flight deck with him, brought the Short Sunderland in hard, skimming the wave tops. Springfield supposed they were aiming for a welcoming stretch of beach. All she saw was the end.
Smoke curled through the cabin, and both engines were ragged and stuttering. The flying boat wallowed like a puppet with half its strings cut. The Japanese were surely out there, following their prey to earth. Sharks on a dying swimmer.
Then the great fist of the land grabbed Springfield and punched her in the chest, took the air from her lungs and the fire from her belly and handed her only pain and pressure in return.
She was not so lucky as to pass out. Rather, she was thrown back and forth in her seat, somehow held in place by the flimsy safety harness, as the world outside the porthole dissolved into a mass of spray and sand and smoke.
“Out, out, out,” someone was shouting. Springfield didn’t know who. It might have been her. She still couldn’t breathe, couldn’t talk, but she could unclip her belt and tumble from the chair and slide across the carpeted wall and see nothing but sand out of the opposite porthole set into the floor.
A man was screaming as well, the kind of scream someone lets out when their arm is ripped off. She ignored that, ignored the smoke and flames and reek of fuel and the irregular chatter of gunfire outside, to claw her way toward the portholes where the world still peered through. New Guinea was briefly surprised by her latest invader before the jungle would come to claim them all.
A few panicked moments later, Springfield found herself hidden away among great, tall roots. She watched the RAAF flying boat burn while one of the Japanese Zeroes lazed overhead, laying down gunfire on the beach every second or third pass. In case any of the Aussie airmen inside had notions of surviving their crash.
She stared impassive, tears streaming down her face, unfeeling, grief-stricken, the coin clutched in her hand like a beating heart, waiting for the fire to die and all of Innerarity’s crewmates with it.
Springfield McKenna knew then that her life had been bought too cheaply.
* * *
Night brought wakefulness once more amid the reek of smoke and jungle rot. She didn’t even realize she’d fallen asleep. The snarl of the last loitering Zero had been in her ears, until it was replaced by the chatter and howl of New Guinea’s moonlit jungles.
The
tree she’d wedged herself into still protected her. Sure, there were some bugs crawling down the leg of her coveralls, but they seemed to be using her as a throughway, not as a meal ticket.
At least someone is getting some good out of this.
The coin was quiescent in Springfield’s hand. She slid from the tree’s embrace and stepped aching onto the sand. Her body was bruised in places she didn’t even know she had. The skin on the side of her head felt sticky and tight in a way that suggested she really didn’t want to look into a mirror. The surf rolled in before her, foaming wave tops glowing slightly in the light of the three-quarter moon.
“Now I give you back to the ocean,” she whispered into her clenched fist, then cocked her arm to throw the skull-faced nickel far out to sea. She might have been a girl, but Springfield McKenna could throw. Two seasons playing left field for the Jax Maids down in the Crescent City had proven that. Before she’d had to leave the country.
“Ferris,” screamed Springfield, her eyes filling with tears for Waldo and the men she didn’t even know, “you bastard.”
A voice groaned out of the darkness. “Sheila…”
She aborted her throw, spinning in place to face the sound. “What?”
Someone was crawling toward her across the muddy beach. He creaked as he came, moving no faster than the shambling Japs of her dreams. “Spring…”
Dropping to her knees, Springfield peered at him. “Waldo?”
He made another three or four crawling steps, then collapsed to roll over on his side. “I…”
She looked close, trying to peer into those Andaman blue eyes. All she saw was rippled, bubbled skin. The smell of crisped pork filled her nostrils. His teeth gleamed unnaturally large, lips burned away and gums drawn back with the heat.
His breath … He had no breath at all. Lieutenant Waldo Innerarity had exhaled his last trying to reach her.
Springfield jumped to her feet and swallowed the urge to scream. This was another dream. All of it. The flight. The Zeroes. The crash. This. Waldo.
She backed away from him, slowly, her heels kicking at the slimy mud. Stumbling into a tree root, Springfield turned to catch herself on a branch.
Except it was no branch.