Greybeard

“And another, fast as you can,” Timberlane muttered, kneeling over the natterjack and feeding in a magazine. Charley switched over to automatic, and kept the lever squeezed for a burst. The shells squeaked like bats as they headed for the target. On the hillside, little brown figures scampered for safety. Timberlane brought up his revolver and aimed at them, but the range was too great for accuracy.

They lay and watched the pall of smoke settle across the slope. Someone out there was screaming. It looked as if only two of the enemy had escaped, beating a retreat over the brow of the hill.

“Can we chance going down?” Charley asked. “I don’t think they’ll bother us. They’ll have had enough.” They dismantled the gun, shouldered up the child, and continued warily down the slope. As they approached the waiting vehicles, the surviving member of the ambush came to meet them. He was a willowy man of no more than thirty, with dark eyebrows that almost met in the middle and fair hair cropped close. He came forward with a pack of cigarettes extended towards them.

“You boys came along in very good time. I’m obliged for the neat way you received my reception committee.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Timberlane said, shaking the man’s hand and taking a cigarette. “We first got acquainted with that little section over the other side of the hill, at Mokachandpur, where they shot up the rest of our fellows. They’re very personal enemies. We were only too glad to have the chance of another pot at them.”

”You’re English, I guess. I’m American, name Jack Pilbeam, Special Detachment attached to Fifth Corps. I was on my way through when we saw your craft and stopped to see if everything was okay.”

They introduced themselves all round, and Timberlane laid the unconscious boy in the shade. Pilbeam beat the dust out of his uniform and went with Charley to look to his companions.

For a moment Timberlane squatted by the boy, laying a leaf over his thigh wound, wiping the dust and tears from his face, brushing the flies away. He looked at the thin brown body, felt its pulse. The fold of his mouth grew ugly, and he seemed to stare through the fluttering rib cage, through the earth, into the bitter heart of life. He found no truth there, only what he recognized as an egotistical lie, born of his own heart: “I alone loved children dearly enough!”

Aloud, he said — speaking mainly to himself — “There were three of them over the hill. The other two were a pair of girls, sisters. Pretty kids, wild as mountain goats, no abnormalities. Girls got killed when the shells were slinging about, blown to bits before our eyes.”

“More are getting killed than saved,” Pilbeam said. He was kneeling by the crumpled figure in the shadow of the ambulance. “My two buddies are both done for — well, they weren’t really buddies. I’d only met the driver today, and Bill was just out from the States, like me. Guess that doesn’t make it hurt any less. This bastard war, why the hell do we fight when the world’s way down on its reservoir of human life already? Help me get ‘em into the agony wagon, will you?”

“We’ll do more than that,” Timberlane promised. “If you’re going back to Wokha, as I presume you must be, we’ll act as escort to each other, just in case there are any more of these happy fellows perched up on the ridges.”

“Done. You’ve gotten yourself company, and don’t think I don’t need it. I’m still trembling like a leaf. Tonight you must come on over to the PX and we’ll drink to life together. Suit you, Sergeant?”

As they loaded the two bodies, still warm, into the ambulance, Pilbeam lit himself another cigarette. He looked Timberlane in the eyes.

“There’s one consolation,” he said. “This one really is a war to end war. There won’t be anyone left to fight another.”

Charley was the first to arrive in the PX that evening. As he entered the low building, exchanging the hum of insects for the hum of the refrigeration plant, he saw Jack Pilbeam sitting over a glass at a corner table. The American rose to meet him. He was dressed now in neatly creased olive drabs, his face shone, he looked compact and oddly more ferocious than he had done standing by the dying jungle. He eyed Charley’s Infantop flash with approval.

“What can I get you to drink — Charley, isn’t it? I’m way ahead of you.”