The Cloud Atlas

EVEN THOUGH IT WAS almost 10 A.M. when I got to base, I had decided to follow through on Gurley's orders. To be honest, part of me wanted to escape Gurley and the growing mess-which now included a balloon crashing in our backyard, not to mention a forest fire-and part of me thought I might be better positioned to help Lily. Little Diomede might be a barren rock in the Bering Sea, but it was well out of Gurley's sight. I'd discover a way to sneak off and find Lily-and Gurley would never know.

But Father Pabich would.

“My favorite sergeant!” he said when I walked into the terminal.

“Father,” I said, quietly.

Either Father Pabich didn't detect my anxiety or didn't care. He got up from the crate he was sitting on and came over to crush my hand.

“You look like twice-baked dogshit, Sergeant,” he said. “I'll take that as evidence you've been working hard.” I thought he might take silence as evidence I agreed, but when I didn't answer, he said, “Sergeant? Haven't seen you around, haven't seen you at Mass. Only one good excuse, and you better have it.”

I took a deep breath, trying to reacclimate myself to the real world: the war, Elmendorf, Father Pabich. I tried to smile. “I've been saying the rosary?” I said.

“Goddammit, son. Learn that joke from your little Protestant friends? Just for that, let's have you say the rosary, three times, each day this week.”

“Sir,” I said.

“I warned you,” said Father Pabich.

“Father?”

“And pray a special devotion to our Blessed Mother,” he said. “Now then-”

Two other soldiers walked in, and Father Pabich smiled and shouted at them as well. I was relieved to be out of the spotlight, and maybe sad that I no longer warranted it. He brought the two men over, introduced me-two Polish boys from Chicago. Good boys. They were shipping out to the Aleutians, and he was going with them. They'd be there for six months; Father Pabich, two weeks. Laughter. Some of the soldiers out there hadn't seen a priest for a year, he said. Any longer and we might lose them to a wandering Russian Orthodox missionary. Laughter. The two Polish guys looked younger than I, and even more embarrassed. We all smiled, though, and sincerely, because this was our priest. One of us. For us. And here he was, in Alaska, the abrupt edge of the world, tending to the likes of us-when we all knew none of us had souls worth tending. We were boys, after all, about to leave our teens, and we were being sent out to kill people.

Though Father Pabich had been out to the Aleutian Chain just last month, he was going again-all the other chaplains, of every faith, had been called elsewhere. Not that anyone begged for the duty. The conditions were too harsh, the men beyond saving: those who didn't kill themselves or each other were often done in by the weather. Father Pabich had almost been stranded on Kiska during his last trip.