TO THE WHITE SEA by James Dickey
This fire was made by nature, and refined
More than all other fires, with particles
Diminutive, quick, and irresistible,
For lightning bolts go through the walls of houses
As, voices do, or noise; they go through rocks,
Through bronze, they can fuse bronze and gold together
In a split second; wine evaporates
Under their force from bowls or jars which show
Never a crack; and this occurs because
The heat is so intense it opens up
All of the pores, and, boiling through, it melts
The motes of wine, dissolving them in ways
The sun could not accomplish in a lifetime,
So burning is this force, this flash, this fire ...
LUCRETIUS

Si je suis ... d'une autre etoffe,
La trame n'en est pas de vos oiseaux de mer 
Mais de leur froides proies ourdie.
Which means
If I was made of another material
The idea is not of sea birds
But of their cold prey
OLIVIER LARRONDE
page 1
Tinian Island, March 8, 1945
"We are going to bring it to him," the Colonel said with satisfaction.  A lot,
more than usual.
    "Fire.  This is what you've got to look forward to.  This is what
he's got to look forward to."
    He leaned into it, from the heels, you could say. I sat and waited, looking
straight ahead.
     "We're going to bring it to him." He looked down the rows of us, but I
didn't watch him do it; all this was like before.  "To the enemy, you know.  Up
yonder, friends.  Up yonder to the north." He pointed at the ceiling, not
north.  "North and fire."
     "Fire," he said again.  "We're going to put him in it.  That's saying,
friends, that we're going to put fire around him, all around him.  We're going
to put it over him and underneath him.  We're going to bring it down on him and
on to him.  We're going to put it in his eyes and up his asshole, in his wife's
twat, and in his baby's diaper.  We're going to put it in his pockets, where he
can't get rid of it.  White phosphorus, that'll hold on.  We're going to put it
in his dreams.  Whatever heaven he's
2
hoping for, we're fixing to make a hell out of it.  Soon, good 
buddies.  We just got the good word this morning.  White phoshorus
and napalm.  That's our good stuff for the little yellow man and
his folks.  We're going to make him a present of it, in his main
city.  Bestow it.  Give it away.  With both hands.  With three
hundred airplanes.  Tokyo is going to remember us.  Within a week,
I clue you.  That's all I can tell you right now.  But we're going
all the way with incendiaries.  All bombs.  No ammunition.  No
gunners.  All payload, all fire."
     I sat up a little.  Some of the other gunners were grinning
at each other.  This was a raid they could sit out, another day
and a night they would live. I didn't feel that way, though.  I
couldn't see any point in the pilots and the other crew going up
amongst the fighters without any protection, and I didn't really
want to sit out any raids playing Ping-Pong and watching Andy
Hardy moves.  No ammunition, no gunners. I wondered who had
thought that up.
     "But we're not there yet," the Colonel said.  "The firebomb
strike is going to be gravy.  It's going to be history.  But
tonight' just regular, gunners and all.  We rendezvous at angels
nine, at sixteen three seven.  Your course is three-five-six
degrees true.  The target is Tokyo."
     I sat back.  The mission would be like the others, and my
part of it would be the same. I was glad the Colonel had quit
talking about fire.  That had nothing to do with me.

We had a couple of hours, and most of us went back to the Quonset
hut to check over Personal equipment and do whatever we wanted. 
We had worked on the plane all morning, the
3
crew and armorers mainly, and it was ready, just as ready as it had
been the other eight times.  The armorers were good.  They knew
what they were doing, and I finished servicing my place in the tail before any of the others got through. I field-
stripped the twin fifties, but there was really no need to do it. 
The parts were all nearly brand new, and the springs to the
belt-holding pawl and the belt-feed lever were as strong as if
they had just come out of the machine at the factory. I made sure
that the belts were straight in the boxes and wouldn't twist
when they fed.  That was all I needed to do, as far as regulations
went.  With that done, I was not in any danger from my own
equipment, unless I got excited or panicked and fired the guns
too long, so that a shell cooked off in the chamber.  That had
happened in two or three of the other planes, and one gunner, a
new guy, was killed.  But I never felt like there was ever any
possibility of that in my plane, at least not at my station back
in the tail.  When I was through with the guns, I checked the
intercom jacks and the electrical outlet, and as far as the Air
Force was concerned, I was ready to go.
     But I had one or two more things to do that were not regula-
tion.  When they brought the chest chutes in and stacked them, I
waited until the riggers left and took some tire tape and taped
one chute by the harness snap to the bulkhead - I don't like
anything of mine to be loose.  Then I soaped the inside of my
plexiglass and cleaned it down good with a rag I took out of the
latrine.  We were set to take off at sixteen hundred, which is
what the Air Force calls four o'clock in the afternoon, and I
wanted to be able to see as much as I could.  It would be night
when we got up over Japan, and even though at night you fired most
of the time at the flashes you saw the Nip fighters giving out
with, there might be something I would be able to see,
4somewhere along in there, and if that was so, I wanted to see it
good. I was finished witb everything, then, and sat looking
through the plexiglass at the runway until the others got ready to
go back.
     The hut was all right, at least for what it was, though they
kept it too hot in there.  The crews went over their stuff, the
things they carried with them and on them, and talked about it,    
and I got ready to go over mine.  The armorers and mechanics and
riggers and the other enlisted men who were not air crew were
around and about, and they all tried to be friendly and do what
they could, but there was so much difference of feeling between
them and us that any talk you heard or got into was so hard to be
honest about, so hard to keep going, that it didn't seem to me
like it was worth it.  Some of the crews played cards with the
others, and there was a lot of letter writing.  If it had been me,
I wouldn't have done it, because if you've got your mind on
somebody who's not in the air with you, you're giving something
away, and you might not could get it back. I didn't know anybody
back in the States or the territories, since my father died just
before I went into the Air Force, and even if I knew people to 
write to, I would have kept them clear of what I was doing. I was
sorry for the married fellows, and even sorrier for the ones who
thought they wanted to get married.  There couldn't be anything
sadder than writing from where we were to a person who was out of
it, and who wanted you out of it. I laid my personal equipment, or
most of it, on the cot and started going over it, not because I
had to or thought I should, but because I like to: liked the
equipment, and the reasons I had got it together the way it was. 
They were all good reasons.
     An open-bay barracks bothers some people, who will tell you
5
all about their privacy, and what it means to them, and all that,
but you can be just as private as you want to anywhere you take a
notion.  The other crews let me alone, pretty much; they knew how
I was.  Every now and then one of them would ask me something, and
I'd tell him what I thought.  But they'd been on the same
missions; they had their own ways of doing things. The new guys,
though, the replacements, always wanted to talk, and I looked up
and there were two guys standing over my bunk.  Recruits were
always coming around, these or others like them.  Some I knew and
some I didn't. I had never seen either one of these before.  One
was a pale, redheaded fellow who I judged hadn't been out from the
States very long.  The other was taller, as rough looking as a
placer miner.  He had a snake tattooed on one forearm, with the
sleeve pushed up on that one and not the other, and a hardscrabble
beard, probably two or three days old.
     "You fixing to fly this mission?" I asked him.
     "Yeah," he said.  "What's that to you?"
     "You better shave, then," I told him, "while you got time."
     "I've already said it, and I'll say it again.  What's that to
     you?"
     "You been up before?"
     "No," said the redhead.  "We both just got in and been
assigned.  This one is the first one."
     "You're going to be up there seven or eight hours, and at
least part of the time you'll be on the mask.  It'll fit better if
you shave.  If you don't, your face will drive you crazy.  The
main thing is that if you're on mask discipline, you can't get at
your face and it can give you a bad time."
     "I'll do it or not do it, little man," the tall one said.
     "Have it your way," I said, and went back to going over my
stuff.  But they wouldn't leave.
6
    "Take off, will you?" I said.  "I've still got to count tip up  and check off."
    "You say you're gonna jack off?" And I didn't look up,
he went on.  "If I've got time to shave, you can do that. You're
giving me free advice.  Take some of mine."
     They stayed, shifting from one leg to the other. I packed the
fishhooks and twine into my emergency kit.
     "You the big Nip knocker around here?"
     "My name is Muldrow.  You don't need to know any more than
that."
     "Four kills.  That right?
     "Seven."
     "The board says four."
     "Go read the board, then."
     "Does it bother you to kill people?"
     "No," I said.  "That's what I'm here for." Then, "What
business is that of yours?"
     "Don't fool with him, Arlen," the redhead said, looking back
and forth between us.  "Don't fool with him.  The other guys
told us that just as soon as we got in.  Don't fool with this
one."
     "This little prick?" the tall one said.  "He don't have his
guns now. I could bust his back with one chop."
     I pulled both feet tip on the bunk. "He's right," I said. 
"You better listen to him.  Don't give me any trouble.  You might
lose that snake, and that would be too bad.  Your mama might want
it."
     He leaned over, and I organized, bunching.
     "Do you like mone?" I asked him.
     He wasn't sure.  He didn't know where I was taking him.
     "Yeah," he said finally. "Yeah. I like money."
     "You got any?"
7
     He felt around. "Some," he said.
     "Yeah. I got twenty." 
     "I'll bet you fifty against twenty that I'm stronger than you
are."
     "How're you gonna tell?"
     "I can tell right quick.  It's just something we take on, you
     and me. We both try to do it, but you can't do it and I can.
That's all.
     "I could bust your ass in half, you little shit."
     "Maybe but I wouldn't try that either.  You're missing the
point, mama's boy.  Let's see if you've got any guts.  Let's see
if that snake can give you what you ain't got."
               "Try me," he said.
     "You see that brace right over your head? That long two-bv-
four?"
     He looked up.  "I see it."
     "Jump up and grab it.  Chin on it."
     "I can do twenty."
     "One is enough'."
     He got off the floor, and I must say that he looked good
it; he might have been a basketball player.  He chinned on the
brace, and came down. "How's that, asshole?"
     "Average," I said.  "Now jump up and catch it like this." I
showed him: four fingers together, thumb opposite - a pinch grip.
     "I ain't ever tried it," he said, glancing at his hands.
     "Try it."
     He jumped and caught the brace, but couldn't hold.  He tried
hard but he fell, purple in the face.  ",No grip," I said.  "No
grip, no guts. That's what they say." He went an even deeper
color,
8
with veins and frustration.  "Stand clear," I said, and launched
up from the bunk to the brace. I caught it pretty well with one
hand and then adjusted.
     "You see where I am," I said, keeping my voice down, down and
level. I had quit swinging by this time.  "Now watch."
     I went up slow to the bar, holding the pinch with everything
I had.  Everything was in my fingers, thumbs, forearms, and
wrists.  My body had almost no weight, only strength, main
strength. I went up a second time, a little faster, and then once
more, slow again. I dropped off and the two of them jumped back,
like a snake or a linx had hit the floor between them.
     "Now," I said, turning square into the tall one.  "You want
to shake hands?"
     "You mean ... How do you mean?"
     "Friendly or unfriendly."
     "You think you can mash my hand?"
     "Put it out there."
     "No," he said, "I don't think I'll try.  You got me
convinced." He made a kind of smile, but I didn't answer.  "With
the grip you got, might not be too much left."
     "Maybe a few bone splinters," I told him.  "I might could use
those.  You can sew witb them, you know." I waited a second.  "I
was raised up north.  Some of my best friends are Eskimos. I could
use a few needles out of your hand. I'll put 'em in my emergency
kit.  Might be just the thing, later on."
     He smiled again, with not much strength.  "I think I'll hold
on to them," he said.  "I need them to fire the fifties."
     "OK, then," I said. "Pay me."
     He had trouble getting out the twenty, but he gave it to me.
I handed it back.  "This is for using your head," I said, "and for
9
not making any more trouble. And for shaving before we take off. Go
on, now, do what I tell you."
    He left.  The other boy, the redhead, stayed. Can I ask you
one thing, Sergeant Muldrow, Just one?"
    "I guess," I said. "What is it?"
    "I've been assigned to your crew.  Have you got anything
special you can ... clue me in on?"
    "No," I said. I looked at him finally- "Don't waste your 
ammunition. Never fire at anything out of panic.  Make it count.
That's all."
    "How about the crew?"                                       
    "Major Sorbo is a good pilot.  He's cool enough.  He knows
what to do.  You're lucky to be on with him."
     "If you don't mind me saying so, I'm lucky to be on with you,
too. I never have to ask anybody but once who the best gunner in
the squadron is. The juys--the Major and the rest of them---you
don't fly with them, they fly with you. It's a damned honor.  I'm
fucked if it's not."
     "Well," I said, "there's not any reason to go on and on. I
don't do anything special. I just wait for what I want and then I
center in and cut loose.  So take your time.  Be fast, but take
your time. Know what I mean?"    
     "Not exactly," he said. "But I'll work on it."
     "You do that," I said.  "I'll see you later on, out on the
truck."
     "Just one more thing.  How did you learn to do this?" How can
you be all that sure?"
                                                                                                  "I learned just like you did. Buckingham Field, Fort Myers, 
Florida.  That where you went to gunnery? Or Harlingen, maybe?"
10"No. I was in Florida, too.  At TyndalI. I just barely                          
graduated.  I come from Florida, too."
     "Well, you got through, anyway.  You're here. Just do what they taught 
you in gunnery school."
     "You mean you never shot a gun before you went to gunnery school?
     "I didn't say that," I said, facing him a little more and looking at him,
but not for long, because I don't spend time on anything I can't use.  "I was
raised in Alaska, on the north face of the Brooks Range, which is away from 
everything, facing away from the States, and I could shoot as soon as I could
hold a gun." That was not quite true, though, and I set it straight.  "No, I
could do it before that. My father would prop the rifle up on a stump, and I'd
get down behind it and cut loose."
     I would like to get back to that, I told myself before I could think about
it. I was impatient, I guess.  It couldn't be too soon for me, to get down
behind the twin fifties, like behind a rock, and cut loose when the time came,
when it was time for it. I looked up from the Florida boy into the rest of the
hut.  The trouble with the whole damn place was that the people - the gunners
and the rest of the enlisted personnel - were trying to make it look like
somebody's house, a home of some kind of person, when it could never really be
like that, be anything like it. There were posters of different places in the
States - a lake, a field full of flowers, the buildings of some city or other -
and all over the hut were pictures of people, mainly women and
children, little children, and mostly ugly, and even a Christmas
card every now and then, over this guy's bunk, up from me, and another one
farther a along. All that was strange, and wrong.  The hut was nobody's house.
The people who were in it ought to have taken I't like it was, and for what it
was.  There was no
11
reason for Betty Grable to be up on the wall in a white bathing suit, with her
fat ass in your face, looking over her shoulder.  Not a one of those gunners,
not a one, had any idea what the real feeling of a home is like, like it used
to be when I came in off the snowshoes, when maybe I hadn't brought anything
back with me, hadn't found anything to shoot, and found the trap lines empty,
too, and would just come in off the snow and look right straight into that red
wall, the wall my father had painted, just for the color.  There's not much
color on the Brooks Range, and vou're glad for a little whi . le when you come
back to your place, and before you go out into the snow again, where you
belong.
    "They said you didn't talk much," the Florida boy said.
     "Who told you that? I don't mind talking, I'll tell you anything I know."
     After a while he said, "All this don't bother you?"
     "No.  And it ought not to bother you, either.  You've got a good pilot and
a good crew.  The airplane's been checked out every which way.  You got every
chance in the world. "Just get up there and do what you know.  Get them Nip
fighters on the pursuit curve, like they showed you in gunnery school, showed
you in the mockup.  Let 'em slide on down the string, lead 'em just like it
feels is right, and cut loose on 'em.  They'll back off, or go down.  If they
don't do nether one, keep on shooting.  Keep the Nips off you with that fifty
caliber and the Major will get you on back here.  He'll do it.  And that's a
fact."
     That seemed to be not too bad a thing to tell him, because he got
friendly, or tried to get friendly, and sat down on the foot side of my bunk,
running his eyes back and forth over what was there. I picked up my knife and
the sharp-stone I used with it,
12
and put a touch or two to the blade, whether it needed me to or not.
     "What kind of life is that?" he asked after a while, like I knew he would. 
"Is it issue?"
   "No, it's not issue," I said. I let him hold that.
   "What kind is it, then?" he asked.
     "It's a bread knife," I told him.  "The only difference is that I brought
the point on down real fine.  The edge is good, too.  Kitchen steel is good
steel.  As good as you can get."
     He seemed not to understand, so I spelled it out for him.  "Look," I said,
bending the knife almost double.  The light from the roof bulb curved, wires
and all, into the light of the blade.  "That means it won't break off.  It's
not like one of these stiff issue blades, like a bayonet or a commando knife,
that ain't got any give to it.  This one will bend, it'll go around."
     "Go around what?"
     "Go around something, say, like a rib.  It'll go around and come back. 
It'll straighten out on the other side and keep on going."
     "Where do you keep it on the mission? Do you stick it in your flying
suit?"
     I looked at him. I looked at him and stood up.  "No," I said finally.  "I
put it in the case and strap it, or tape it, to my left hipbone, with the blade
going down my leg."
     "And you're left-handed? "
     "No," I said again.  "I'm not left-handed. I pull the blade out across me. 
Cross-handed, you could call it."
     He was not going to understand, so I went on.  "That way, the handle is in
your hand so that you can hold it lower than the blade and come up." I showed
him.  "Come up with it.  The other way, where you pull it out with your right
hand, from
13
your right side, the blade ends up higher than your hand, or level with it, and
you have to come down when you use it.  You can't do nearly as much with it
that way. With a knife, you need to come up." I showed him.  "So I pull the knife in just two moves, to do what
I want.  Once across, and then up." I waited and watched.  "Up, and up hard. 
If it hits anything going in, the blade will just flex and go on around." I put
the knife back in the case.  " And that's what you want."
     I wasn't going to give him a chance to ask me what he wanted to; I
wouldn't have told him anyway.  It was just something I had learned in Alaska.
I sat back down and tried to get him interested in the other equipment.  It
wasn't hard to do. I had a mixture of the same emergency stuff he had, along
with some other things he didn't have.
     "What are these for?" he asked, pointing.  "Some kind of lucky stones?
From up in Alaska?"
     "No, but they might be lucky on down the road." I picked them up. 
"They're flints.  To make fire."
   "Don't you have matches in your emergency kit?"
   "Sure, and I take 'em along, just like you.  But there're just so
many of them. When they're gone, you got no more fire.  With the flints, you
got all you want."
   "Can I try? Can I try them?" he asked, like a little boy.
   "Sure," I said.  "You can try all you want."
   He did, and nothing sparked.
               "How do you hit them together, Is there a trick to it?"
     "In a way," I said.  "It takes practice.  A lot of years. Everybody in
this barracks could knock these rocks together all night and there wouldn't be
a single spark.  If you needed fire, you wouldn't get it.  You'd all freeze to
death."
   "Show me."
14
     I did, and blew out the spark on the banket.  "There's plenty
of fire in the rocks," I said. "All you want. It stays there.  The
rocks have kept it for a long time, just waiting for this blanket,
in this barracks building.  But I won't burn you up," I said. "I promise."
     "We got to go burn the Japs up," he said, coming back to where we were,
"In a couple of days."
     "That's right," I told him. "Napalm and white phosphorus.  That's going to
be our big play. Just like the Colonel said." I grinned, myself. "But not to
tonight.  Tonight is just routine.  Tokyo one more time, with the frags and the
two-thousand-pound GPs. Guns and gunners and all, right up there amongst the
fighters.  It'll give you a chance to knock on 'em".
  "Yeah," he said, and turned away.
     But he came back. I couldn't get rid of him.  "Is this emergency 
equipment OK?" he asked.
     "Sure," I said.  "If you know how to use it." I took apart my kit. 
"You've got a little knife.  It's not hardly more than a toy, but there are
things you can do with it.  You've got fishhooks and some twine. You've got 
matches in a packet that's supposed to be waterproof.  And you've got a little,
a real little, compass. Didn't you get briefed on all this?"
     "I did, but I don't remember much about it, to tell you the truth."
  I held up the compass.  "This is not a bad little compass,"
I said. "You can hide it easy. You can even stick it up your asshole if, like,
the situation comes up.
     "I can't figure out what the situation might be," he said, and was
relaxing, which was a relief.
     "You can't ever tell, I said. "You just can't ever tell."
15
     "Do you put the kit in your leg pocket?"
     "No, I tape it right square onto me." I hit my chest with my fingers. "I
like to keep everything together."
     "You sure use a lot of tape."
     "I do, I said. "I don't like to have anything loose, where it might get
away from me, or I might have to hunt for it. Hunt for it on the way down,
like."
    When I sat down, he lost his relaxation, and even might have changed color
a little; that'd be hard to tell under those kind of lights, though. 
    "What would you do if you went down."
    "I don't know.  I'd have to see when I got there."
    "I do remember one thing from the briefing, the first briefing I got when I
came in." He breathed a lot, and then did it again.  "You can't expect any
mercy, from the Japs when you go down."
     "No, you can't.  But why should you get any? This here's a war, and we're
up there knocking their cities around. Ain't no need to talk about mercy. They
cut off your head. Balls too. Them first, most of the time.  So don't go down
if you can help it." When he didn't say anything, I changed gears. "Remember
this: if you go down, it ain't going to your emergency kit that'll save you."
    "What will then?"     I touched my head. "Whatever you can come up with that's already in
there." I looked at him and propped up on my elbows.  "There's plenty in there
that you ain't using.  If you go down, thats what you need."
     "I don't know if I got anything....anything like what you're talking
about.
  "Sure you do.  You ain't got what I've got and I ain't got what you've
  got."
16
I picked up the flints and juggled them in one hand.  "But
we've all got something.  It comes out of where we've already
been."  Stuff that's happened. Stuff that's stayed with us."
    "You want to tell me?" Then, "Will you tell me?" "Tell you
what?"
    "What you've got.  What you remember."
    "Well," I said, thinking, "all the time I was growing up, I
was hardly ever off snowshoes, except in the summer, which is
mighty short up on the Range. I hunted all the time, and trapped. 
My father had a bunch of lines, and I walked 'em over and over,
years at a time. I got to know what lived up there in the snow,
and how they lived.  Some of the animals, and birds, live by being
able to hide, and the others live by being able to find 'em.  But
being hard to see, to make out, is part of it on both sides.  The
rabbit don't want the lynx or the weasel to find him, and the lynx
and the fox and the weasel don't want the rabbit to know they're
around till it's too late." He kept waiting, and I said, "I could
take you up on the slope right now, or on out into the muskeg, and
you wouldn't be able to see a single animal that was there. And
they'd be all around vou.  Stillness is a big thing with rabbits
and marmots.  The meat hunters will get after anything that moves. 
But the rabbits can fool 'em a lot of the time.  In that snow, all
you can see are the eyes, and you have to be close to 'em to do
it.  Without the eyes there's nothing there.  Or there might as
well not be."
     He was not sure, but it didn't make any difference to me.     
     "You ever see a human do anything like that?"
     "Well, no," I said.  "A human's not a rabbit or a Ivnx.  But
you can do something like it.  Don't think you can't. You don't
have the fur, but you got more sense than them."
     I've never seen snow," he said, changing the subject, because
17
he saw I didn't want to say anything else about that one.  "I like
the ocean, myself."
     "I do, too," I told him.  "But for me the ocean ain't the
ocean unless it's got ice in it.  It's just what you're used to, I
guess."

A little after fifteen hundred the trucks came for us, and I it
climbed in with the rest of the crews.  As as it turned out, onlynine planes were making the strike, which meant there was likely
to be more fighter concentration. I told the Florida boy, who was
riding with me, that we'd have more to shoot at, but it didn't
seem to make him feel any better.  As for me, I was pretty well
rested, and ready for whatever might be up there.  The mission
would take around fourteen hours, which is a lot of time to sit
and think, with nothing going on most of the time.  When we got to
the ship I stretched and loosened up, and felt over myself for my
gear. I had a .45 and two clips, my emergency kit and a can of C
rations, and my knife, down there where it should be. I stretched
some more and said hello to Major Sorbo. 
     "Ready for'em, Ace?" the Major asked me.
     "Not an ace yet," I said.  "Maybe tonight."
     Along with the others I got in, then went back to my station
to see if everything was exactly like I had left it.  It was,
except that somebody had put a tarp cover over the pile of chutes,
and I couldn't think of any reason I might need to take it off,
though I would've liked to check the one chute that was taped
down. I was more or less sure it was all right, and I got in
behind my guns, hooked my suit up to the electrical system, and
plugged my headset into the jack.  After a while Major Sorbo
started the engines, and we wheeled out to take off.
18     The back end of an airplane is not one of the worst places in
it. There were at least a couple of yards between me and anybody
else, and it was like I had all that section of the plane to
myself.  When I called in on the preflight check, Major Sorbo
might have been back in the States, he seemed so far away, off in
another part of things.
     We took off, and I settled in against the side of the plane
until we got up past the Jap picket boats, and the night fighters
scrambled and got after us.
               That new gunner, the Florida boy, had got me thinking with 
his questions, and there was not any reason I couldn't just go
along on the same track, just to have something to do.  I had left
off when I was telling him about the icebergs, and I started in
now, thinking about them like I remembered. I looked out through
my plexiglass, and it came to me that clouds and icebergs were a
lot alike, because they were beautiful just like they were, and
there was no use to them at all.  There was no reason for them to
be like they were, and have the shapes that they did, except that
that was the way they happened to be, for nothing.
     Where my father and I had lived was on the lower side of the
north slope of the Brooks Range, in a kind of a draw that kept off
most of the wind.  It was easy to follow the draw on down to the
flat country at the bottom of the mountains, and it was also easy,
more or less, to stay on the slope where you could see more, down
under you.  We had most of the traps along the slope, in different
places from the flat up until it got too steep.  We had our best
luck where there was some slant, but not too much.  My mother died
before I ever knew anything about her, and my old man, who was 
originally from Virginia, got hold of the land up there for almost
nothing, learned to make out with weather and the traps, and as
soon as he could he brought me
19
over from Barrow, where I was born, to the cabin. I never did go
to school, at least notwhen I was young.  My father taught me to
read and write and what he'd been able to learn about staying
alive up in that country.  He had his own reasons for being there,
which he never did get around to telling me, or that I ever really
understood.  It may have been he got into some kind of trouble,
back in Virginia or somewhere in the States, though I don't
     think it had anything to do with the law.  But something had     
happened to him that made him want to be by himself; or maybe he
was Just that way all the time.  Like I say, he never did give me
the straight of it.  But he liked it up there in that place,
where you hardly ever heard anything but the wind, and where
anybody who didn't know how things were could get lost as quick as
he could take five steps.
     But I was brought up in the snow. Until the time I was
fifteen, I used snowshoes more than I used my natural feet; my
feet felt wrong when I took off my shoes.  My father used to tell
me I was half snow goose and half wolverine, and before I was more
than ten or eleven I was showing him stuff that I'd picked up by
myself, rambling around all over, as much as I could, from
Teshekpuk Point to the Colville River and back.  In all that time
I never saw but one wolverine, and my father never did see one;
he's just heard the stories about them, like the other trappers. 
But I was proud of mine, which I saw on the gut pile of a down
caribou, because I knew then that the wildest animal in the world,
the one with the most stories about him, the most bad and strong
magic of any of them, had looked at looked at me - looked right at
me, for a good half a minute, through the feather snow.  That was
enough.  I'm glad my old man thought of me like that.
     It bothered me that I had told the Florida boy anything.  He
had probably already forgotten evervthing I'd said, in the 
20time-wasting time before the mission.  But what I knew, I knew.
Wherever it's cold enough, I can get along.  Snow and wind are
ight                                                                                                                                       right for me.  Dark weather is right.  Nearly everything about the
cold is good.  The cold weather birds are the best to eat and the
prettiest by far; there's not a bird in any jungle that can
compare with them.  The cold-water fish are better, and stronger,
and taste like fish ought to taste; the cold water makes the meat
good and firm.  And I love fur, and the animals that grow it. I
like to sleep in a fur parka with ice all around me.  Eskimos, the
Nanamuit in our range, at a town there, Anaktuvuk, showed me how
to cut the slabs of snow and ice, fit them, and seal thein, so
that you've got yourself a real quick strong house. When you get
in there, you don't need anything but your parka.  It's all good;
you're OK.
    I nodded back against the airplane, took off my glove, and
felt the aluminum.  But it was the wrong cold.  The cold of high
air is not real, it's not honest.  Cold should be connected to the
ground, even if it's at the top of a mountain.
     I eased back again and started to move with the caribou from
the tundra through the tree line into their winter range.
     I looked at my watch.  It had moved some, more than I would
have thought.  We were probably past the picket ships by now. I
got into position behind the guns, and as soon as I did, the Major
called and told us we were over the Kanto Plan, and that
we could expect fighters. We all knew the Kanto area could
scramble a lot of them.
     I charged both guns and fired off a few rounds, and then
leaned forward and watched and waited. I had a way of doing things
that was about half the Air Force's and half mine. When I came
into gunnery school, it took me time to adjust to the way you set
up the lead when you're in an airplane and the target is
21
another airplane. I had shot with a lead all my life: birds, caribou,
rabbits, you name it. But I had never shot at anything that
was moving when I was in something moving myself, and for a
while it threw me, threw me off.  But there's really not all that
much to it.  If you're in the tail of a plane, you've got real
good visibility.
     In the daytime you can see anything that's close enough to
shoot at you.  At night it's a little different, because the other
aircraft has to shoot first, before you can tell where he is by
his guns.  That bothers some people, but there's no need for it
to.  Usually the fighter will open up before he really gets into
the range where his guns will do him any good, and when he does
that you've got him, because when you see those gun glitters, you
put together a couple of things and set him up.  According to
which side of you he's on, he's I got to put his inside wing down
and the other wing up to get his guns on you.  If he's on the
right side of your plane, the starboard side, he's got to put his
right wing down; if he's on the port side, it'd be his left wing.
When that happens you've got the situation you want, because the
line that maneuver puts him on is all in your favor.  It's like
the
fighter was sliding down a string, and he is; he can't shoot at you
unless he's on it.  All you have to do is put your sight in front of
him, according to where he's on the curve, track with him,
                                                                                                         and let him have it.  My favorite shot is two widths of the sight 
                                                                                                                                            ring - two rads - down to one. I let him have a three-second 
     burst, right in there.  But zero rads is not bad, either, when 
he's dead behind you, and usually under you, before he breaks off
and down. When he's at zero rads, you go right at him, right into
his teeth with the fifties, and you can make him live hard.
     So I waited for that.  We were close to the bomb line, I was
22
sure. The bombardier didn't have the plane yet, and the bomb 
bay doors were not open, but there was that tension you always
feel all over the ship when the time comes close to drop.  There
should have been fighters, and there weren't any. The part before
the bomb run felt all right, but the rest of the situation didn't.
     Then something hit us from underneath.  Or, more like it,
something hit at us, like it blew up the air right below us.
"Hold on," Major Sorbo said, real loud; I believe I could have
heard him without the intercom.  "We got to leave this altitude. 
Hold on."
     The 90 millimeter had never been on us this early before, not
with the first crack of ground fire; it usually took them a lot
longer to get us bracketed.  We began to lose altitude, and I
sucked on my tongue to clear my ears.  We leveled out, and even
before the half G of pull left me, I saw the sparkle of a fighter.
Like always, he was too far off.  He had showed on the port side 
of us, and I kept that in mind, and swung the guns.  Then he was
close to us, much closer than I would have thought, and firing.  I
fired back, but wasn't on him. I didn't think he hit us, though at
least not bad.
     Another fighter showed on the same side, and this time I was
ready for any rate of closure he might have.  He fired again, and
was in range, and hit us a little somewhere up the fuselage, as
near as I could tell. He fired again, and this time he was on his
curve. I led what I figured was two rads and cut loose.
Nothing happened. I waited a second, until I judged he was
point-blank line astern and below, and cut loose again, all three
seconds.
     The whole sky lit up. I must have hit his tanks, because the
explosion was all over the place, and he was gone. I asked the
23
major if he had seen the plane blow, and he said yes, everybody
did, and get off the horn. I went back to watching for guns, but
I was not really satisfied with myself, because I had been wrong
on one or two points, and I never had before.  The two fighters I
had credit for had been knocked down in daylight, but the other
three, which I know damn well I got, were at night. I know,
because I do aerial gunnery in a certain way. I don't shoot at the
plane, I shoot at the pilot.  Or I shoot where I think he is, a
according to my feeling about it, which is like guessing, but not
quite.  You know that the pilot is halfway between his guns on
most fighters, and right behind them on the others, and you just
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      estimate that.  When he fires at you from his pursuit curve, his
guns have a relation to each other, a tilt, an angle, so that you
can more or less tell how fast he's coming down the string.  You
feel, you guess, and then you fire.  If he fires a little before
you, you try to nail him between his guns, but when he's in close
range, I try not to let him do that. I shoot before he does, by
guess and by God.  But all the time I'm going for the pilot, not
the plane.  The thing inside that I shoot by - guess or God or
whatever you might want to call it--tells me when I'm on.  The
four confirmed kills that I had were hit that way; there was no
blowing of the tanks, no fire.  They were confirmed because they
were going down out of control, and the people on my crew could
see them, and some of the crews on the other ships could, too. I
nailed the other three at night the same way, but                  
the planes didn't explode, nobody saw them go down, and I didn't
get credit.  But they went, same as the others. I led them in;
they came to me, came right down my throat. I fired on that split
second, and they were gone.  Long gone, I'm telling you. I know
what I'm talking about.
    At the new altitude we went into the bomb run.  The 
24
bombardier, Lieutenant Madison, took over the plane, and we
steadied on through the run, getting off the two-thousand-pounders
and the payload of incendiaries we had, maybe as a warmup for the
big raid the Colonel had been talking about. It's always a relief
when you get the bombs off the racks and out of the plane.  Major
Sorbo circled us without drawing flak or any more fighters, and I
could see two fires, one a lot bigger than the other, where we had
hit the city, or the other planes had.  It was an easy enough run
so far.  We were supposed to have dropped some
two-thousand-pounders, some incendiaries, and some frag bombs on
the Kiba area of Tokyo, the waterfront, and we had, and now we
could pick up the home heading and get out of there.
     The next thing was not fire, though later I realized that it
had to do with fire, had fire in it, but it did not seem like fire
that was separate from us, or that could have been to one side of
us, or above or below us.  No, it was like the inside of the plane
had exploded and we, each one of us, had exploded.  It was like we
were inside an explosion, or maybe we had exploded from inside
ourselves.  That's as close as I can come to saying it. Major
Sorbo was just coming out of the turn for home when it happened.
     When I could think, I saw that I was over the butts of my
guns.  The wind was knocked out of me, but I could move all right,
and I held on to the strap of my seat harness and turned around.
     The plane leaned up on one wing like it was going into a
turn, but it kept leaning.  Nobody could have been controlling it
and making it go any such way.  Then the nose went down, and I
knew we were completely gone; everybody on the flight deck was
probably dead.  One of the waist gunners, I think it might
25
have been the Florida boy, was stretched out right in the middle
of the air, his arms and legs going wild trying to fetch up
against something solid, to get hold of a chest chute.  Then he
was gone on the floor, on the wall, the ceiling, I couldn't tell.
Equipment was flying all over the inside of the plane.  You
couldn't tell what anything was, except that I saw a chest chute
bounce off one wall and a hand reach out fort and miss, and the
chute was not there, or the hand.  We were nose-down now,
spinning, the wings going around the airplane.
     "Man, I am here," I heard myself say, and it didn't surprise
me too much. I unbuckled from the seat, and just as soon as I did
I banged against a wall.  But I was holding on to the seat-strap
web, and I kept holding on to it, and worked my feet forward into
the plane. I got banged around a lot, swinging like a clapper in a
bell, but I caught on to another web strap - it inust have been
one of the ones for storage - and pulled on toward where the
chutes had been, and the hatch was.
     The chute I had taped was still taped, the only one there,
and I pulled it loose, and, one hand after the other, holding to
the strap with one hand and buckling with the other, I snapped the
chute to my chest, over the emergency kit, everything going round
and round, faster and faster.
  The hatch was only a few feet farther  on, and I scrambled and
twisted along to it, and pulled the pins.  The hatch stayed. And
then the only lucky thing of the night happened. The ship
yawed like it had been hit again, and swung me on the strap
away from the hatch, so that I could get my feet around. When the plane swung back the
other way, it swung me, too, and I hit the hatch with both feet,
with everything I had.
     It was gone. I could see the swhirling outside the hole in
the plane.  The air would knock your teeth loose, but it was
26
outside air. I had my door to the open, and went out through it,
and had the whole thing, the whole sky.
     The first thing was the cold, but like I said, not the right
cold.  I was tumbling - sometimes I saw stars and sometimes I
didn't see anything, anything but black - and the wind seemed to
whip the air out of my nose sideways.  But I could see enough to
tell that I had some altitude, enough to open the chute, and I
waited a little to figure the best way to do it.  You're supposed
to be facing the ground, with your head a little lower than your
feet, when you pull the chute, so that when the lines pay out and
the chute opens, the risers will swing you under, and you won't
get that terrific grab up through the crotch, that might be bad In
a lot of ways. I spread out my arms to try to stabilize, and it
was as easy as something in a dream.  It crossed my mind how out
of control the plane had been, there at the last, and how easy it
was to control the way I was falling, and for a second it seemed
to me that a man ought to be able to fly without an airplane.
     But that was dangerous: I could have held on to the notion
too long. I felt for the handle, and took hold of it with my right
hand, though I hated to pull my arms back in; I was balf believing
they were wings.  Dangerous, like I say.  Then I put my left
forearm across my face, because with a chest pack the risers whip
right across your face when they come out, and pulled.
     Something stuck.  I pulled again, and it still stuck. I
pulled again, hard as I could, and the handle came away.  It felt
like I had thrown loose my whole arm, thrown my arm away, but I
was still falling, turning over from the position they'd taught
me. What the hell, I thought; that's all I can do.
     I was shot, through the armpits and between both legs.
27
There'd been a loud pop, a crack like a rifle, and I was sure I
had been hit.  My face had taken a lick, too; I felt of it, and it
was wet on one side.
     But the chute was open. I looked up at it, and started to
make my thinking include it, and the reason for the cracking
sound, and the new hurt under my arms and between my legs.  The
chute. It was the chute. I was in a very big, quiet place In the
middle of the air, and not shot.  Not shot. I couldn't get rid of
the idea that I had been.
     I looked around from my float, from my big wie calm place in
the middle of things.  Swaying back and forth, I concentrated on
the situation.  It was the first time I had ever tried to concen-
trate and sway at the same time, and it was not a bad feeling,
though I wouldn't want to do it every day.
     Right under me was dark, but to my left was a lot of silver,
very beautiful, too.  Water, sure enough. It went way out, out
into the moonlight as far as I could see. I was not far from all
that silver, and I started to wonder about where I would hit. 
Breaking a leg was not part of my plan, but you can always do that
in the dark, and I couldn't see anything right under me at all. I
felt for the risers, because I knew I could control where I hit,
or control it to a certain extent.  But I didn't have anything to
sight on except the water. I think I could have slipped the chute
enough to land in the water, just barely, but what would have been
the good of that? I didn't need to be wet, I needed to be on the
ground with no broken bones, dry and figuring.
     Even though I couldn't see where I was going to come down, I
was not near enough to the ground so that I couldn't spill part of
the chute and make a move, a little move, in any direction I
wanted, but it was the dark or the water, no matter what, and the
more I thought about it, the more I wanted the land.
28
How close to the water, though? How close to the docks, or
whatever was there? I didn't want to land on top of a building
that I couldn't get down from, or on somebody's roof, if I could
help it.
     I was getting closer. I could hear a siren, a lot like the
ones the Air Force has. I looked inland toward the fires.  The
smoke came past me, and there was cordite in it from some of our
bombs.  About a half mile from me there was a lot of stuff
burning, and I hoped that would keep people away from where was
going to hit.
     I was still high enough to get a fairly good view. I could
see the docks now, and the ocean spreading out in another way from
the first way.  Between me and the water there were some big
shadows, tall, thin, and bent, and I could see through them, see
the ocean, like silver cloth that's been slong out and ruffled and
sewed together with black thread: all that, on the side toward the
moon.
     Quicker than I would have thought it could be done to me,
there was a terrific clutch up between my legs.  Under my shoul-
ders, too.  My shoulders stopped where they were, and so did I,
jigging up and down in the harness, wondering what the hell. I
must have still been fifty feet off the ground, and I was hanging. 
Not hurting, but hanging, and could have swung myself if I'd
had a mind.
     I looked up at the risers.  The chute was collapsed and hung
up on something, one of the things that made the long shadows,
maybe, or were the long shadows themselves.  Though there were not
any lights, I could make out the space between the buildings and
the water, and I couldn't see anything that looked like a man.  If
I could get down without anybody seeing me, I could go on to
whatever might be next, on my own.
29
                                                                                                                                                           But I couldn't just hang there in the smoke, which was colored
with red and seemed to have some kind of wind that came with it,
shifting back and forth, turning one way, then back the other. I
felt down in it with my feet, felt around on all sides,
twisting in the harness, trying to make contact, but there was not
anything there for me. I pulled on the risers to see how my
strength was, and I had some. I started up the lines, arming it
out, hand over hand. And I reached the bottom of the nylon, like a
sheet half off a bed, I went past it to where the chute was
caught, and felt for what it was caught on.
     It was a gantry, a loading crane, I was on, and at least
fifty feet from the ground.  Holding to the metal, I unsnapped the
chute an freer, 'ust 'n a second. I worked up the crane and d was
a lot
out the arm to where the chute was caught, and cut it loose.  A
backswirl of the crazy smoke-wind caught it, and it disappeared,
collapsing, toward the buildings back from the docks. I housed the
knife, crawled head-first back along the arm, and started down the
main body of the crane, not hurrying, but little by little,
watching and listening all-out.  The crosspieces of the thing hurt
my feet pretty bad when I put both of them in the same place, and
on one section I just had to slide down one of the main beams -
shinny, kind of - but I did it.  Getting to the ground was
something I could tell I was going to be able to do, by now.  When
I got to the top of the cab, I turned loose all the beams and
struts and looked around, and there still wasn't anybody there.
     I saw a ladder on the cab, and I used it.  The ground was
level cement, and full of power. I leaned against the wheel of the
cab, in the shadow away from the moon.  The smoke was still 
blowing, though maybe not so much, and somewhere in it, down the
dock from where I was, I heard voices, and they were coming. 


30
I hit a stillness, a new stillness like a marmot's, and two little men came by,
shorter than me even, almost transparent with smoke, talking right into each
other's face. I hadn't had tune to find the chute, and I hoped they wouldn't
notice it, wherever it was. I had my hand on my knife but didn't even crack the
blade to light, to any sort of light. I didn't want to give light a chance at
it, even though I was in the shadow of the crane.  They went past till I
couldn't hear them.
     Using every bit of cover on the dock, I went looking for the chute, and
finally found it spread and crumpled over some barrels and boxes, like it was
making a display. I bundied it up and shoved it under the boxes, piled some
other boxes and crates on it, then walked back a ways toward the crane - it was
friendly -and tried to size up the situation, decide what to do.  I really
didn't have any notion just then; just a feeling something like the one I got
when the guns of the fighter sparkled and I knew he was on the pursuit curve; a
feeling that was a kind of guess but not completely; a guess with another thing
added to it, something I didn't have a name for. I didn't want a name.  It was
not words.
     What did I need? Where the bombs had hit had been concentrated in one
place, I had seen from the chute, but the smoke was fading off now and I
couldn't hear any more sirens.  In other words, I couldn't bank on people
having to deal with the fire.  And the bomb drop was only in a small part of
Tokyo.  Since I hadn't seen any night watchmen on the ocean side of the docks,
I thought I might have a look down the streets between the dock buildings and
try to find out what they went into. I edged out past the corner of the
warehouse nearest to the crane, looked as far as I could toward the city, and
then started down
31
that way, in the fullest and longest shadows I could find. If I saw
a single person, I would turn back and try something else.
     I got almost to the end of the building, and could see a little way into
the blacked-out blocks, when I heard voices - not one or two but a lot.  A
whole crowd went by the end of my truck alley, talking fast.  There was no 
light but moonlight, but I could make them out against the cement of the
street, and the lightcolored buildings on the other side. I couldn't have dealt
with them. I had no odds going for me.
     Using the same shadows, I went back to the dock and to the crane.  What
had bored me before, the words of the Colonel at the briefing, all his talk
about fire, came up in my head, and all over me.  Fire was what I needed, fire
from my own side. I needed a whole city in panic, a lot of confusion, as much
as there could be, and things would be different. I didn't know
when the raid would come, but I knew that it would be soon.  Soon.  Maybe a
day, another night. I would find a way to wait it out.
   In the first shadows again, working from one crane to the other, I made
it to the end of the dock and just stood paying attention, all the attention I
had, to what was there, to what was only a step or two away, or might have been
in a few more.  Where the docks and the warehouses gave out there were more
docks, more warehouses.  But I was interested in the field between, and what
happened when it came together with the water.
     There was no ladder down. I couldn't tell exactly, but I judged it was not
far to the ground, though. I hung by my hands off the edge of the concrete, and
dropped.
     I hit almost right away.  The field, whatever kind of ground it
32was, was slanted toward the water, and I didn't count on that, and
hit wrong and fell. I rolled and had my knife out and ready to
come up, but there was nobody around.  Since it was out, I took
the satisfaction of watching the blade flash off the moon. I
looked around and did it again, and the satisfaction was as much
as anybody could have wanted.
     I could see a lot better, too, and I won't say that it wasn't
because of the knife flash.  Steel that good, and the ocean, that
big silver light full of thread - well, you can't tell what might
happen.  Like I tell you, I believe in things like that.  It don't
matter why.
     The field was set against the water by a kind of wall, cement
- a breakwater, I think somebody called it. I inched along the top
of it on my belly, like a lizard, running my hand, trying to feel
if there might be some kind of hole in it, some place I might be
able to wedge into.  It took a long time to do it, and I really
hadn't come all that ways from the docks when I felt into
something, something not concrete, but hard and wet. I smelt of my
fingers and knew where they'd been.  Using one of my matches,
letting it burn nearly all the way down to my fingers, I got a
good notion of what was there: a sewer pipe that fell off into the
ocean, big enough to hold a man; not running too much, but some. I
let myself down and put my feet in.
     The smell put my eyes out. I mean, it hit my eyeballs like
the worst light, and one that would never quit.  My eyes, you
know, and that was not meant to be.  But it was a hole, and I
could go on into it if I wanted to. I took out another match and
lit it, though I knew that sewers could blow up.  That would be
something else, I said to myself, to get out of a B-29 on fire and
blow yourself up with shit gas.  But nothing blew, and I went on
33
up amongst shit and other stuff, to where there was a turn, where I
was damn sure nobody would come. To do it, they'd have to come the
same way I had, and I couldn't think of anybody who'd do that, not
even the japs, no matter what.  For one day, maybe for a day and a
night, I had shit and safety.  What else, I asked myself, what
else have you got a rigtht to ask for in the enemy's own damn
country, his main city? What else?
     I broke back out, and the big air was good, I tell you.  The
moon was higher, and the stars were so strong they seemed to be
blasting light at me, like stucus or screw heads that had that
kind of power. I broke off a stalk of something from the field and
marked the sewer, and started back along the breakwater, this time
standing up.  So far, things were working.  The whole thing was
working, right where I stood, where I walked along the silver
ocean of the japs and looked out over the big sewed-together bay.  
     When I got back to the crane I had a sudden thought: how
quick could I get to the pipe? I looked at my watch and took off,
running light as I could along the front of the warehouses, my
moon shadow in front of me. When I hit the end of the dock I took
off, right into the air over the field, like I was trying to jump
from the cement loading slabs of my dock toward that other one off
as far as I could see, and I hung up there over the field-dark for
the longest time, almost like being in the chute again, except
that this time it was just me instead of a lot of harness and
nylon, and when I hit this time I didn't fall. I found the stalk
of stuff I'd left at the edge and let myself down into the
hole and swung in, my eyes stinging.
     I came out again and went back to the crane, listening for
night watchmen but not all that much. It was two-thirty in the
morning. I didn't have any notion of sleeping in the shit pipe, so
34
I climbed into the cab.  It cut off the wind and had a big seat,
big enough for two people. I took the control handles, set them
off from the seat, and stretched out. I didn't know when they went
to work on the docks in Tokyo, but I figured I could get at least
a couple of hours of fresh-air sleep before anybody came.  Before
that, I would hit for the pipe.
     I wanted to sleep in control, and not just like some
desperate guy with no chance.  There were certain things I had,
and I knelt down on the floor of the cab and went over them,
holding the matches down below the windows.
     My knife I knew about, and left it alone this time. I laid
out my .45 and two clips.  There was no telling where I might use
them, but it would have to be either in a place where nobody could
hear or in a situation with so much noise and confusion that
nobody'd care, or even notice. I thought about the Colonel's fire,
and decided that I would wait a day or two in the whole
concentrated stink of Tokyo, crammed into a little pipe, for them
to bring the fire: for them to bring the fire, and make a
situation where I could operate.
     I needed to get outfitted, and that meant I needed some
clothes different from a wired-up combat rig, a flight suit 
underneath it, and GI brogans. I couldn't last long in Tokyo,
either in daylight or at night, in what I had on.  If the fire
came - when the fire came - I would go out with the .45 and get
what I needed.
     I broke open my emergency kit and spread the stuff on the
seat, wondering what situations might come up where I'd use it -
use this thing and then that thing.  There was a little knife that
I could use for litfle doings, like cutting string or scaling
fish.  There was a packet of fishhooks and some twine.  There 
was a silk map of part of Japan, like a handkerchief printed with
35
a topo layout of Japan up to the strait between Honshu and
Hokkaido, and another piece of silk that had an American flag on
it, and writing in five or six different languages; the intelli-
gence officers told us that Japanese was one of them. I couldn't
read them, but all the crews had had to memorize what they
said: said: I am an American aviator. My aircraft is destroyed.  I
am an enemy of the japanese.  Please take me to the nearest
American authority. The government of my country will pay you. 
Like I say, I couldn't read any of this stuff, bul I looked at all
that writing, in Annamese, Burmese, Thai (it said), French, and 
Japanese, and I struck a blank wall on whether I should keep it. I
looked by the match light, before the match went out, and tried to
make a decision.  But it was funny, anyway, and I think I laughed
right there in the cab, and real loud, too.
     It was quiet there. I sat on the floor of the cab with my
things on the seat: gun, bullets, fishhooks, map, blood chit with
all the languages, and leaned back against the metal of the wall. 
Nothing, nobody, could be more out of luck.
     Except that there could be.  Both times it was myself, and I
knew that when I got down into the pipe - when the sun came up I
had to get down into it - I would be even worse off, and if the
fire didn't come down on Tokyo, it was only a question of time
before somebody would find me, if I didn't drown in the flood of
Tokyo shit, and no matter how hard I fought or however many I
might be able to kill, I would lose. I would have my balls cut
off, I would have my head cut off, and that would be it.
     But not yet. I took out the C rations and wound the key
around the can.  It was not so bad: a kind of cold hash, and I ate
it all, and stretched out on the seat when I'd put my stuff back
the way it was.  There was really nothing to worry about. I had
36
the next day planned, and the Colonel's B-29S would come, or they
wouldn't.  That was not up to me.

There was a long dream in which a buffalo, something I had never
seen except in pictures, ran across in front of me, and for some
reason I couldn't move my eyes or my head, but had to stare front
and center while he went by.  He was big, and for some reason I
felt like I could even ride on his back, but I couldn't reach him,
or give him any notion of how I felt.  He went by me on some kind
of a raised platform that was like a breakwater.  It was the
breakwater that made the buffalo be there like he was.  There was
no doubt about it in the dream, or when I woke up, either.
     It was all good, I mean it.  All the problems were for the
next day.  Nobody was going to check the cab of a loading crane
between three and five in the morning, no matter what the city
was, no matter what the war was. I woke up, more or less, saw that
it was still black dark, saw one star, and went back, waiting for
the buffalo to come across again, on a line just above the ocean. 
That was something beautiful.

Light, and I was dead. I knew it, and kept watching.  Sometimes I
looked, actually, and at other times I looked in my sleep and it
was the same; through my eyelids it was the same; I could see the
sun, and water.  But when I heard feet, and voices amongst them, I
knew I couldn't give away any more. I raised up, and twenty or
thirty guys were going by, right by me, on their way
37
somewhere.  As much as I could, just at eye level over the bottom
of the window, I watched where they went.  The light was It was
first dawn, and if I was going to get into my hole, I had better
do it before much longer.  Little by little I let myself out of
the cab and dropped down between the rails.  Most of the men had
gone into the warehouses, and as far as t could tell the few
others would go in when they got around to lit. I looked at my
watch.  It had taken me nineteen seconds to get to my hole before. 
Could I do it now? Could I time it so that nobody saw? Out on the
Range, the Brooks rannge, I had got where I was scared of the
human voice; you didn't expect there to be one. I knew now that,
when I made my move, if anybody sang out, I was dead. I crouched
down between the rails and put my head up one more time.  All but
two or three of the men had gone into the warehouses.  They were
opening them up with big sick clangs and scrapes of galvanized
iron. I stared at one guy especially, who kept hesitating and
looking back out at the ocean. I made him the one that things
turned on, and when he took a step or two toward the buildings, I
broke.
     I was on the wall in a second, not hunching but putting my
head down and digging, but digging light, and there was not a
sound but me.  When I got to the piece of reed I had stuck up, I
hit the top of the breakwater side-on and slid over, my feet going
into the hole. I even broke off the stalk with my hand as I went
down.
     There I was.  All the time I was growing up, I was on the
side of the hunters, the foxes and weasels and lynxes, on the side
of the wolverines, because we were doing the same thing: we were
hunting the others.  But when I got my feet into the sewer pipe,
and was sure I was in that hole in the side of the sea wall, that
I had found it and had come back to hide in it, I knew a little
38about things from the other side that I hadn't thought about, or
thought about enough. I knew how the marmot feels when he
makes it to his hole, how the badger feels, how the snowshoe hare
feels when he understands that the color that's been give him is
right, that it works - or works right now, anyway - that nothing
can get him because nothing can find him. Any animal would have
had a etter hole than I had, but it was all the same thing:L we
were in our place, me and the rest of them.
    But my God, it was awful. I wasted another match, and resked
blowing up on shit gas, to get back to the curve, and went on up
beyond it and sat down in the shit and other slow-moving stuff.
I waited, but I couldn't stay there long, and edged on out toward
the ocean until I could see it, and smell it, through the shit and
God knows what else was in there.
    All day I was in it.  All day, counting on the night and the
fire. I had put it into my head that shouldn't show anything
around the curve of the pipe, because if 
anybody found the chute, there world be an all-out search. 
Somebody might even have a look into the pipe, or at least shine a
flashlight up it.  But I would be sure to hear them before they
saw me, and could duck back.  So, as it turned out I spent most of
the day at the curve, looking out at the sky, which was a little
blue circle at the end of everything, and that filled up with
whatever I wanted to be there.
     The caribou had been good to me, in my mind, especially since
we took the first hit in the 29; before that I hadn't known
how good.  Them coming out of the woods was a beautiful thing to
think.  In such huge space they were, in snow that was more like
ice, a little cautious, a little slow, but all of them coming, and
then all in the open, in the overcast light that makes the snow
more merciless than it is any other time, in the long afternoon
that never ends.  And then they are gone off into the
39
winter range, and there's nothing left but the snow.  Let there be
a little more fall-down, I said, more snow.  The caribou are good,
the tracks are beautiful and good, but let the snow drift
them down, let it drift them under.
    It happened.  The eye of the pipe I was in went away so far
that there was not any more of it; everything there was snow. 
The snow of the Brooks Range, or some other snow. But snow.  Snow,
not a track on it. I knew, then, what I neede to do.  The
little compass would point north, no matter what I did, whether it
was outside my body or in it.  North was north, and it would
stay that way.  And there was the pull of something else to go
with it: that other thing that was not called north but was at the
same place, the thing nobody could say.
     By feel I pulled out the compass again, though I didn't want
to take too much of the adhesive off my body tape.  It would be
better, though, if I knew whether the compass was luminous or not. 
It was, and that was good; night was going to be my time, at least
until I got to the heavy snow.  "An asshole compass," I said out
loud, my voice coming back from the sides of the pipe and 
maybe having some kind of roundness to it, from the shape of the
galvanized tin or iron, or whatever I was in, looking off at the
little circle of nearly black blue that was the bay, the ocean,
the rest of the world.  "Some compass," I said to the echo. 
"Right here I've already got a pretty close connection to half the
assholes in Tokyo." The pipe walls told me it was so, and the
slow-moving stuff I was sitting in. I wondered how I would smell
when I got out among people.  Something would have to be done
about it, first thing.  "Come on, boys," I said to Tinian Island,
out through the round walls and the little ocean at the end of
them.  "Come on with all that fire.  Let me out of this place. 
Come on, night.  Come on, fire."
40     I thought of the snow, and one long kayak trip I took with an
Eskimo buddy, Tornarssuk, east toward Kaktovik, hunting for seals. 
At one place we went by a big glacial berg that calved off about
half a mile from us with a sound like a woman who had been reamed
up through the gut. AA,,hen the ice slid off the near s ide of it,
the brightest blue I ever saw in my life came right at us, it
seemed like, so deep and pale it could have been some new kind of
scientific thing, a new kind of light that nobody had ever seen
before.  The ice just slid down off it, and it was there, a thing,
a new color just invented, but one that had also been
waiting in the ice for a long time, a real long time, just for two
juys in a kayak to see it. We were the only ones who did.
     We sat there for a while. Tornarssuk took his paddle out of
the water, and so did I. We just stared off at that pale blue that
came  to us out of the big white, that came to us and went right
through us, and I didn't ask Tornarssuk what he was doing or why
he was doing it for so long, because I knew all that.  There is
not much color in an Eskimo's life, not more than three or four
colors that are strong and simple: white most of the time, for
almost everything that's on the ground; the blue of the sky when
it's clear; the gray-green of the ocean when the floes break up;
and red, which is blood, the brightest blood in the world,
wherever you see it up there.  So I let Tornarssuk stare on, let
the split glacier coine into him as it must have been doing into
me - that pale, concentrated, pure, huge-sided light.  And I used
it now, in the shit tunnel, as part of the plan I was making.  In
the pipe I sat like I had in the kayak with Tornarssuk, with the   
iceberg coming through me.  Every now and then I brought in
the red of the far wall of my father's cabin, as I would see it
coming in off the Range, as red as any blood in the snow, but
always I came back, without trying, to the calm ocean and the
41
berg, with the pack ice around the base of it, sending that light,
just-invented blue color at me, keeping my paddle out of the
water.  That was the afternoon.
     The blue-black at the end of the pipe left me, little by
little, and even the circle of the pipe, at least as far as my
being able to see it was concerned. I would give it another hour
by my watch, and then poke my head out and see if I could pick up
Polaris.
     I didn't make it to the end of the pipe, or at least not
right then.  The whole thing squeezed together all at once, from
all sides but especially the top, and drove my eardrums back into
my head, pushed toward each other by some big quick clamp, like
earphones coming together a hundred times harder than they were
supposed to. There was a sound when this happened, but my head
hurt so much from the in-driving on my drums that I didn't
remember it until later.  It was a big thump, though, one that was
in the air, most likely it was made out of air but had body to it,
a lot of body, just for a second.  The pipe shook with it; the
water going past me sloshed.  It happened again. I sucked on my
tongue and started to crawl.  It was not Polaris I was looking for
now: those were explosions.  "Come on," I said, crawling hard. 
"Come on.  Let them have it.  More. All you got." And then let me
have it. There in the shit pipe, heading for the outside to stay
out, I called that fire down. I did all I could from where I was.
     I got out and stood up, and looked back inland.  There was a
low red glow, very wide, with some white in it. I hadn't even 
straightened up when four or five more bombs hit, all in a line
and spaced more or less even with each other.  The line must have
covered at least a mile, and right away the fire went wider, and a
lot a lot higher.  There was already smoke, though the docks, at 
least my part of thein, hadn't been hit.
42
     But there were people on them, and I wasn't used to that at
night.  They were running back and forth amongst the cranes, and
in between the bombs I could hear them screaming and gabbling. 
That was the way I wanted it, sure enough, and I took
off across the field toward the fire, running easy.

The field was tough and springy; my feet went down, went forward,
and came back under me. I was not afraid of holes. I felt very
light and a little better than usual, even.  When I was a boy, in
the summer, and the snow melted off the lower part of the Range
below our cabin, I used to go down to where there was a field - a
field that was like a road, though nobody had made it or used it -
and run, the first day I got the snowshoes off my feet. I was so
used to them that it was hard to believe I wasn't still lifting
them step by step, and slowed way down from even normal walking. 
But after the thaw I'd go down and run with just my feet, and the
whole land - the flat and the mountains to one side, and
everything I could see - speeded up, and I really took off. I felt
like I was the fastest thing in the world, the fastest-moving, the
fastest thinking, the most free human there was.  And freer than
that: freer than any lynx, any mallard, any salmon or tern or
bufflehead. I wouldn't be able to tell you that I couldn't fly;
that would be next.  Going over ground so fast and so free that it
was wrong, except that I liked it so much, was so different from
moving over snow that I wished every year for a few minutes that
it would never snow again, or that we could move off the Brooks
Range and live somewhere else.  But when the snow came back I was
ready, and happy to get back on the shoes where I belonged. 
There's too much
43
easiness in just running on your feet. it's dangerous.  The snow-
shoes are solid, solid-down: they give you a balance you ought
to have.
                              But now I was running just in my GI boots, and over the field I
had the summer feeling. I had the freedom and the drunk power, and
I knew I had better watch myself, and slow down before I went much
farther.  The smoke was beginning to sting my eyes bad; I was
going right into it.  As near as I could tell, two streets came
together at the edge of the field, and every time the smoke
shifted I could tell that there were plenty of people there, not
going back and forth but all moving one way.  They kept crowding
past, to my right. I could hear them: a long moaning sound they
all made together, and a sharp scream like a bird, or more like a
trapped rabbit, rising out of it. I slowed down until I was almost
walking, and then saw that wouldn't do because all of them were
running, or trying to run, even if the whole movement of the crowd
was slow, even slower than they would have been going on
snowshoes. I picked up to a jog, because I wanted to get in
amongst them at about the same speed, the same pace, and blend in.
     I wasn't there yet, though. I was maybe seventy-five yards
from the people in the crowd nearest me, but I couldn't say it was
exactly that far.  The wind would shift back and forth, and clear
the view for a few seconds, and then the smoke would thicken up
and I had to guess.  The smoke didn't act like any smoke I had
ever seen, and I listened more the nearer I got to the streets. 
In amongst the long moaning of the people there were low heavy
crumps, like a rifle firing with a blanket around the barrel. 
This was the three-hundred-plane raid, all right.  This was it. 
The more I listened, the more I could hear the incendiaries
hitting behind the crowds in the street.  Then all at
44
once I felt my back warm up, a heavy slash of heat, and I turned
around toward the docks.  Up and down where I had been was on
fire, with the deep orange of napalm and also the blue-white of
white phosphorus, which is not so much like any fire you'd know,
but was more like the end of a blowtorch, all spread out and
shooting up curlicues and wriggles of itself like tracers that had
gone crazy, and were meant to.
     Even in the situation I was in, I couldn't get over the
smoke, the way the smoke acted.  In a low red light that was over
everything before I even realized it was there, the smoke would
all of a sudden stir itself, whirl around, and cut one way or the
other.  It would jog and slant, and settle, then jump and swirl
again and go the other way, or come right at me.  The incendiaries
were hitting everywhere, in front of me and on both sides, but
nothing else behind me; there was no more heat on my back.  Now,
though, as I got closer to the streets, whenever the smoke would
blast one way or the other w'th the bombs - it was hard to believe
those quick jumps and jogs were not something the smoke was doing
to itself - I could see fire, low fire, buildings and not just
white phosphorus twisting in the air, down the street I would be
on if I kept running and came off the field and didn't turn.
     Through the blasts of smoke I got into the crowd, making the
turn to be in their direction and slowing down to their pace,
which was a kind of fast shuffle. I couldn't tell much about the
people, even the ones who were right next to me, except that they
were women, a couple of them with babies.  There was one old man
bent over like a squirrel. I just caught a glimpse of him,
and then he went down under all of us, and we went on over him, on
past him.
     The smoke in front of us stopped, stopped dead, and then
45
came back and hit us square, face-on.  Then I was on top of
somebody on the ground, and there was another one on me, or maybe
two. I rolled a woman - I'm sure - to one side and got my feet
under me.  The others were getting up, and it bothered me that I
might have stood up too quick and would show my difference, even
in all the confusion.  The new fire was right in front of us, on
both sides of the street, and all of a sudden I looked down,
because something was wrong.  The zipper of my flight suit caught
the light, and caught it strong just for a second, and without any
pain I had the notion that I had been gutted, ripped right down
the middle by fire, by lightning maybe, and that I was dead from
it; that I had come out on the other side alive with another kind
of life, still holding the print. I bent down again, and got up
slow with the others.  Nobody had noticed a thing.  We started,
and turned off into another street, the smoke Jumping and slanting
with the bombs.  The sound of the crowd around me was made up of
high yells, all you could put up with, but around them all was the
low sound, which must have been coming from the whole city.  How
all those high screams could have added up to that one low tone,
like a glacier when it first begins to calve off, was not
something I could explain.  It must have had something to do with
the buildings echoes - all those voices beating back and forth off
the walls.  Maybe, but I don't know.  
    On the second street the smoke was bad, even worse than on the
other one, and for the first time I noticed how terrific the heat
was, and steady, not just near the fires we could see. I kept as
close as I could to the woman in front of me - for a while it
was the same one - so that my zipper wouldn't show in the
flames, but I knew I had better do something about my clothes
while I could. I looked around as much as I was able, and I
46
started to figure, in there shuffling with the rest of them,
sweating like a thaw, and adding up what I had with me.
I was sure glad I was a great believer in tape.  My bread knife
iding down my leg, almost a part of me, just as much in place as it had been in the Quonset hut back at Tinian, and the
emergency kit was square in the middle of my chest, breathing with
me, and ready to do all the things it could do, from cutting wire
to stripping down vines and cleaning fish. I had my .45 and one
extra clip, and that was something I could use in what I needed to
do; wanted to do, you might even say.  It was one of those kind of
times.  And there was a war on, too, as the colonel and everybody
else used to tell us.  That was all right with me.
     In the building we were going by there were plenty of doors,
some that shut on the street and some that went back a ways. I was
interested in the deep ones, and I looked along the left for what
I wanted.  There was hardly any sidewalk, and I could be in one of
the doorways in two pushes and one big step, or two at the most. 
There were a couple of men in the crowd now, on the side I was
edging toward.  They were ahead of me, but one of thein was about
my size, and I figured that there would be more than one to come
along later, when I was ready.  And I had noticed something else. 
A lot of people, even the babies, had things, some kind of
bandages, over their noses and mouths, like doctors in hospitals;
like some of the ones at the base hospital at Buckingham Field,
when I was in there for the trench mouth I got from eating GI
food; I used to see them go by the ward.  That would help, not
only now but later on.  The officers in indoctrination, in the
course we had to take called The Nature of the Eneiny, told us
that a lot of Japanese wore those things all the time, even when
they were not in an air raid.
47
And again, I knew that would help, and that there was more
advantage I could give myself once I had picked out the door.
And there it was, so deep it might have been an alley. I slid and
slanted and jumbled over through the women, and then made my two
steps, one big and the other more or less ordinary, and I was in.
I backed up some more to get the shadow, and got it all, all I
could use.  There was plenty of time now.  Plenty of time, and
good conditions.
     I felt my face. I had shaved before the mission as I always
did, because the oxygen mask fits a lot better that way, and my
beard hadn't even begun to grow out.  But that was not what I was
thinking. I ran my fingers along the wood next to me and looked at
them, and the tips were black; the smoke had sooted up everything.
I took a good smear of soot off the boards and went across my
forehead with it, then more down my cheeks and nose and around my
mouth.  As the color of my face disappeared and went to another
color, there was something inside me that changed, too.  It moved,
and then sat still.  In my mind there was a shape I couldn't
exactly make out, but it seemed to be in a crouch, pulled up into
itself and ready, and that was the feeling I got from the soot,
the stronger the more I put on. I did the back of my hands the
same way, and then concentrated on the crowd going by, screaming
and moaning, and not one of them even giving a flicker of a look
toward me.  Millions of them could have gone by, and none of them
would have seen me. I was dark now, the same as the shadow I was
in.  Some of the people were pretty smudged up, too, but I had not
made myself like them in any way; it was just that now I wouldn't
stand out. I was not like them, I say again; like something else.
     I had another thought.  Working with little moves, I pulled
out the blood chit, the silk handkerchief with the American flag
48
on it, and all the languages -Japanese was one of them, which I couldn't get
over - that said that my aircraft was destroyed, I was an enemy of the
Japanese, that my government would pay anybody who'd help me. I turned the flag
and the writing to the inside and tied it around the lower part of my face. 
Almost everybody I saw had on a mask or cloth, and now I had mine.
     It was time. I zipped down the flight suit and took the .45 out of the
holster. I hit the clip with the heel of my other hand to make sure it was
seated, and then let the safety off and charged it, and at the same time I
brought the crouching shape up front in my mind, and had what it wanted me to
have.  There was not a flicker of light on the gun barrel. I put my free hand
on the wood next to me to get steady, and all at once it jumped and shook. I
figured the second story had caught fire, or somewhere up above me had, but I
couldn't see for the smoke.  On the other side of the street the fire had
already come down to the ground floor; I could tell by the crowd edging toward
me.  In there amongst the people, and close to me, I looked for my size.
     About five yards from me a man, I think, went down.  The crowd went over
him.  He tried to get up, but before he could make it to his feet somebody else
tripped over him, and this time nether one got up.  Out of the smoke another
man stumbled, and in a second I knew he was about right, about what I needed. 
For some reason the two that should have been on the ground were not there,
maybe had been shoved off to one side by all that panic, all that pressure, but
the one I had my eye on was still stumbling where they had been, correcting,
you might say, trying to get his feet all the way under him, and I let him 
have a couple more steps.  He came right to me, like every animal or bird I'd
ever shot, or like the Nip fighters sliding
49
down the string of the pursuit curve.  If you want to kill something, have it
coming toward you.  If it comes without knowing you're there, it's the best way
of all. I stood up in the doorway and came up with the .45 and shot him right
straight into the face, at the same level as mine. I didn't want any blood on
the clothes, or any holes.  The sound of the gun was hardly any louder than the
general noise, and the muzzle flame was just one more little bit of fire,
exactly like all the rest of it, and gone quicker than you could think.
     The blast knocked him back, the shock - a .45 at close range is like a
hand-held 30.06 - and he went down, with the two or three other people behind
him. I doubled into a crouch, watching hard.  The others scrambled back into
the crowd and left him, all but one guy who pulled him to the side, and then
moved with the others again.  The clothes I wanted were lying about half under
the feet of the people on my side of the street.  He had been dragged a yard or
two by his feet, and I couldn't see his head; the others were swarming all over
him, to get on.  Nobody turned back.
     I holstered the .45, stepped out, and then went down on my knees amongst
all those feet; they were going by me like they were going by the dead man. I
took him by an arm and a leg and hiked him up on my shoulders, like I was maybe
going to carry him on with the rest of the crowd, wherever they were going. 
But all I did was take two or three steps and lurch back into my door, then
rolled him off and rolled down beside him.
     I stayed there still as I could, then reached a hand.  The building was
roaring over us, and pieces of wood, some of them big and heavy, were falling
faster and faster, and I thought that maybe the whole thing was going to come
down on us in the next few seconds. I hoisted up to my knees and took hold of
the


50middle of myself, under the throat, pulled down the zipper in one
sweep, came out of the flight suit in a couple of moves, and
started pulling off the dead guy's coat and shirt.  They were all
right by feel; even wearing them over my dungarees was not too
fight.  The pants were good enough, too, but the shoes were too
short. I couldn't come near getting one of them on, sitting in the
door frame now like I was doing, not too much different from the
way I would have back in the Quonset hut.
     I stood up and took one last look at the guy.  The top half
of his head was gone, but with the fire flickering on him and the
ground smoke swirling in and out of the door, he didn't look too
bad right then.  His hat had been blown off with his head, so I
would have to do without it, but I had a crew cut anyway, and my
hair is black, so it didn't make all that much difference.  It
would not be a bad idea to have a hat later on, and some other
shoes, but I knew I couldn't stay where I was any longer.  The
building was going to go any second, I was sure. I balled my
flight suit up and flung it 'nto the fire.  Nobody was going to
look at my feet.  Breathing through the blood chit, the American
flag, I stepped out.
     It didn't take me long to pick up the kind of shuffle-stumble
the crowd was moving with, screaming and moaning.  For some reason
all of us turned a comer, away from the docks, and just as we did
there was a crash inside all the other noises - a terrific
crash inside the big moaning sound the whole city must have been
making - and a building fell in.  Whether it was the one I had
been in I can't say, and it doesn't make any difference, but I
think it probably was.  People kept shoving in from the side
streets, and we were pushed closer and closer together.  It was
hard enough to breathe through the smoke, but all that being
pressed on made it a lot harder.  For a spell there I didn't have
51
any doubt that I could raise my feet up off the ground and the
rest of them would just carry me along.  It would be better for me
to work myself out to the near edge, on the side I had come
in from, but still stay amongst them, and not separate myself
out, even if I'd been able to.
     I managed it, and could breathe better.  There was only a
little fat woman between me and the buildings, and a short,
screaming man in front.  Whoever was behind me I didn't need to
know.
     Over the knife and the einergency kit and the .45, I had on
somebody's old shirt and coat.  They were loose and coinfortable. 
The pants fit all right, too, but they had a pocket only on the
right side and no pockets in the back. I was holding the extra
clip for the gun in my hand, and I putt in the pocket, which was
deep, real deep. I had everything but shoes, and I planned to get
some before I cleared the city.  Shoes, and a bag like the ones a
lot of people in the crowd were carrying. I was going to have to
take everything I needed with me, and wen I got out of the fire 
and into the cold, I'd have to be able to keep warm enough to 
stay alive.  But even when I got to the real cold - the cold like
the Brooks Range - I wouldn't need clothes as heavy as most people
would have to wear. Still, it would be better if I could find some
heavier than the ones I had on.  Actually, I looked forward to
getting hold of a parka somewhere; that would be like home, sure
enough.  As I shuffled along with the little screaming people,
breathing through the blood chit, the American flag, my eyes
almost shut with smoke, I thought about the parka.  I'd like it to
be one with wolverine fur around the head, because ice doesn't
hold to the hairs; all you have to do is brush it off. I didn't
have any idea whether there were any parkas in Japan, but if
people lived in the northern part, on the big island
52
the map said was up above the one where I was, they'd have to
have the clothes for it. And if there were animals up there,
they'd have to have fur, and the humans would've found a way to 
get it.  But wolverines? Again, I didn't know.
     Wolverine fur was maybe too much to hope for, but it wasn't
costing me anything to think about it, or how I would get it if I
found it. I hadn't counted on any of the other stuff that had
happened, either: that my B-29 would get the ass knocked off it,
or that I would bail out, get hung up on a crane, or that I would
hide in a sewer pipe full of half the shit in Tokyo, or shoot
somebody for his pants and coat, or join up with a bunch of little
people trying to keep from being burned up by American
incendiaries.  So ... who knows, I said to myself.  Who knows I
won't find a wolverine parka up north of here.  Who could want
anything better?
     I thought of my father then, too.  He was good for me; he had
taught me everything I knew, until I was old enough to teach him. 
The day that happened was the best day of my life, I can tell you. 
It was not when I took off my snowshoes and ran the flat of the
valley, but the day I put them back on, and knew there was going
to be nothing but snow for a long time.
     I hadn't been keeping track of the direction of the mob I was
in, but just moved along with the others.  After a while, though,
I started to notice something I couldn't see any reason for.  The
crowd seemed to know where it was going, like way off in front
there might be somebody leading the rest of us. I couldn't see how
that would be possible, but there seemed to be a general direction
we were headed in.  Twice buildings fell in front of us, one no
more than fifty or sixty yards off, and both times we turned into
another street, and then back toward the way we had been headed. I
thought we might be trying to get out of the
53
city, but we just went on and on, and the buildings on both sides
were just as close together as they had been down by the docks.
    And then things changed all at once.  The wind was steady now,
coming from behind us, like it was pushing us along.  The smoke
was as bad as ever, but it blew forward, past me.  People stepped
away from both sides, and I could tell that the shape of the crowd
that had been made by the streets and buildings was not the shape
any longer.  There was not a whole lot more room, but there was
some: nobody was shoved against me. I was still with a lot of
others, but they had fanned out, as near as I could tell, and they
were moving a little faster, like something they had been looking
for was in sight. I couldn't figure how any of this could be, or
how any of them could see any better than I could, so I fell back
on what I could hear, and tried to tune in on any new sound coming
through that low, long moaning that just went on and on.
     Sure enough, there was something. I thought it couldn't be
what it sounded like, but when I saw the man in front of me get
shorter and shorter, and not fall, I knew that he was moving
downward, and that he was walking into water. I followed him down,
and in.
     The water was not inuch cooler than the air, but the crowd
had quit moving, most of them.  The people around me were just
standing and screaming.  If they had walked into that lake, or
whatever it was, to do nothing but stand there and scream as loud
as they could, for money or some prize, they couldn't have done it
anv better, or any louder, or got more breath out of all that
smoke to keep it up like they did. I waded through them, with the
idea that the water farther out might not be as hot.  Some of them
were trying to hold the others up - not all these were kids,
either - and some were trying to push the others
54
down and get on top of them.  There were piles of people eve here. 
They'd build up a little and then everything would fall apart and
go under water. I didn't believe that many of them could swim, but
some of them were moving out from the shore like I was, boping for
water the fire wasn't so close to.
      The water was about up to the middle of my chest when I
stepped in a hole and went under. I came right back up, though,
and leaned forward to go on.  There as something, a woman, 
in front of me, and not turned the same way I was.  She was
looking right at me, right into my face. I felt myself. The blood
chit had come down and was around my neck.  The soot had maybe
washed off me, too, or most of it.  It was the first face I had
looked at since I'd bailed out, and the first person who had
looked at me close up.  Even through the smoke there was plentY of
light, and she couldn't believe what she was looking at; my face I
must have been real pale in all that red glow.  Her mouth opened
and she screamed, and started to raise her hand to point.  She did
scream, but the sound was not any different from all the others,
and sbe didn't scream but once.  Under water I ran the knife into
her with my move.  The blade hit bone and traveled around it, and
the only thing that stopped my hand was her. I pulled the blade
out and put it back in the case, and was holding her down pretty
hard as quick as anybody could have done it.  But after a second
or two could tell there was not any reason to hold her down, and I
turned loose and moved on, pulling the chit up where it belonged.
     The water was not cooler, no matter where I went.  When it
got up to my chin I stopped; there was no use to swim, just to be swimming.  Besides, I was worried about the .45. I Might be able
to use it again before it had a chance to rust, but I had better
do it in the next hour or so.  The bullets were probably all
right, but
55
I wasn't sure about them, ether.  If I had to depend on a gun, I
wanted to know that it would fire when I used it.  If it wouldn't,
or even if there was any doubt, I would get rid of it 
and use the rest of what I had. I was not sure I wouldn't rather
do that, anyway.  Not having a gun wouldn't bother me at all. I
wouldn't miss it nearly as much as I would have the knife, or the
compass, or even the fishhooks. I started working back through the
stacks of people, and the ones just standing and screaming, toward
the shore, and the crowd who thought that water would do them
any good.
     I had got used to panic.  It was what I had wanted when I was
in the pipe, and was what I had to go on from the Colonel's
briefing, and all his talk about what three hundred 29S were going
to do to Tokyo, as he said, within a week. I remembered my time in
the pipe, and the Tokyo shit going past where I was hunkered down
thinking about the caribou clearing the tree line into the winter
range, and the ice calving off the berg in a slide, freeing up
that blue window that didn't have anything behind it, but just
showed the inside of the ice, a color that's not anywhere but
there, I would bet anything on earth - all that time, all that
time hunkered down in the pipe, with the shit going past me and
falling into the bay, I had been pulling for the fire raid, the
firestorm, and the panic.  Wading out of the water now - the bay
or lake or river or whatever it was - I felt that panic, that
whole city-panic, and in the water it was different from what it
was in the streets and the smoke.  It was heavy-electric - and to
tell the truth, I don't know what I mean by this, but it was a
feeling, and maybe one of those that don't have words - and in the
legs: in my legs but it felt good, coming from all those other
people.  It was in the guts and the balls, and that was the best
of all.
56
     While I was in the water, I didn't do anything but enjoy it, but when 
I got closer   when you don't want to: sleep holds to you, and your position
and your feeling is so good that it seems wrong to change it.  But I needed
shoes. I needed some shoes like theirs, and a bag, and I started to think
again.
     It didn't bother anybody that I was moving the opposite way from the
others, going toward the fire. I probably didn't need to, but I stumbled a
little, even waved my arms like I was drunk, or maybe like the fire had got me
in the lungs, or that the whole thing, the firestorm, was more than I could
cope with and had driven me off my nut. I went face-forward through the crowd
coming toward the water, going back to the main smoke and the fire like I'd
lost something there - something or somebody, some damned thing.
     I made It back into the streets, went up a block through the bunches of
people, and turned up another street from them.  This time there was hardly
anybody there, maybe because it was so goddamned hot, hotter than anywhere else
I'd been.  While I could, I figured to blacken up again, and I did, from the
closest house to me, Just wherever I happened to be. I took my time and made
myself up pretty good -better than before, if I do say so. I didn't need to see a mirror; I could feel
how thick the stuff was on my face and hands, how heavy it was, how much of it
it I put on me. I kept slathering on the black, the soot; I kept
putting on the smoke.  It was like getting back into something I knew,
something that was right for me, only a lot better version of it than before. 
All I needed now was shadows, because I was as much like them as I could ever
have wanted to be: shadows I needed. I would get the shoes from them.
    I held still in all the smoke, trying my eves this way and that
57
wav up the street.  But the pipe kept coming to me. I couldn't shake it,
or the feeling that what I had said there, said to myself, and on out the
black-blue opening of the sewer out into the ocean, had been picked up, picked
up by the crews andeverybody who was connected with putting those B-29s Up there over the town. I
had called for that fire from a place where I was as good as buried. I had called that fire do If I didn't, who did?
     I kept looking for people, for somebody with fair-sized feet and a bag. 
It was so hot that it was just possible to stand it. I thought that maybe if it
got any hotter my clothes would burn, wet as they were.  But nothing like that
happened, and I started forward into the smoke and the bad - the worst - heat
because I figured I could catch somebody there who couldn't help himself, who
would just be trying to get away.  That was the right street, if I could stand
it.
     The buildings on the left were burning worse than the right - my black
left hand was a lot hotter than my right - and all at once, like some acrobat -
a clown maybe; clumsy, but an acrobat -- man shot out of a second-story window
on the right, went across the street over me, and crashed through a window on
the other side.  Nobody will believe this, but it happened.  In all the noise
and smoke this guy just appeared in a blast of sparks like about fifty shotguns
at midnight, like the kind of thing you see made into slow motion by a movie,
and went right over the street into another building.  The window he went
through buried him in sparks - other sparks, but the same. I can't get over the
way that happened: he turned over in the air, like he was just learning how to
do it, and then hit in through the window of the other building.  He really
went.  For a second it was slow, when he made the turnover, but really how
58
he moved was fast, real fast and interesting, unexpected.  It was
not something you'd see every day.  Hurtled would be the word; I
can't do any better.
     I went on under where he had been, and I couldn't help
smiling, under the chit, the American flag, when I caught myself
looking up, to see whether there'd be any more coming over: the
rest of the act, the other guy shot out of the building, the gun. 
Gun, you bet, that was it: coming over me in the sparks of a
shotgun.
     It was bad, though. I thought about heading back, maybe
picking up another street, but the good happened, right then.  Two
guys, one bigger than me and one smaller, came toward me. The
clothes of the little one looked like they might have been on
fire. I believe now they were; the sleeve of his left arm was
burning. I let him go by, and then stepped out right in front of
the other one.  It was important to do it that way, with just him
and me. I pulled the .45 and leveled it right into his chest. 
Shoes, you son of a bitch.  Shoes. I squeezed off.
     Nothing happened. I didn't even bother to try again. I was on
him with the knife in a second, hit him once and hit him right,
and was already dragging him before he was dead.
     I wiped the knife off on his pants and unlaced his shoes and
mine, sitting there in the shadows cooking, both of us, like meat
not quite close enough to the fire to get done.  But it was not
bad, either, in a way.  There was something coming through me that
the fire couldn't touch, and a lot of times later on I've thought
about it, remembering that it was true; I'd been a guy sitting on
the hot rocks - or maybe cement - of a street, pulling on the
shoes that were going to walk all over hell, and walk right out of
it, and on - and on and on, up into the snow. I wanted that tree
line, I wanted that move into the winter range
59
with the caribou.  There never had been such real snow as was in
my mind right then, pulling on those shoes.  Snow, man, I said:
snow and the North Star, Polaris.  Snow and the icebergs, and the
ocean when it's what it really is, like I had told the guy, the
recruiting the barracks.  The ocean is not the ocean unless it's
got ice in it.  That's the real one. And that's the truth.
     I stood up to see whether the guy had anything else I could
use. I had forgotten about the bag I needed, but damned if he
didn't have one, a fairly big one.  There was nothing in it but
some kind of musical instrument, I guess it was, and a short
knife with a long handle, which I didn't figure to use but kept
anyway. I put my GI boots in the bag, picked up the waterlogged
.45, and pitched it and the extra clip into the fire. I was glad
to see them go, to tell the truth.
     I went on up the same street.  It had had what I needed, and
I pushed on, though the heat was so terrific that I didn't really
see how anybody could live. I didn't hear any more bombs, and
figured the raid was over.  Tokyo didn't need any more fire, and
probably wouldn't see any more until the end of everything.  It
was so hot that I kept looking at the arms of the coat I had on to
see when they'd take fire.  And then it got hotter, goddamn it,
and hotter than that. I didn't think my clothes would catch; I
didn't think that anymore then. I thought I would take fire
myself, inside the clothes, and that the clothes, shoes and all,
would burn up after I did.
     The street ended in a wall, and that's what saved me, I
guess, because I would have gone on. I know I would have.  A
strange thing to say, but I was more or less happy with what I
had, and the thing that made me the happiest was that I had got
rid of the .45 and the clips, and that I had an excuse for getting
rid of them.  At the wall I turned to the right, which I figured
was
60
more or less north.  The pull that way was not real strong then,
but it was definite. I could have checked the compass, I guess,
but I went by the feel.  Like I say, it was definite; the smoke
and fire couldn't touch it. I moved along for a couple of blocks
and things got cooler. I sat down in my singed clothes and my new
shoes and opened the bag again: I opened the bag I had.
     The knife was a pretty little knife, there in the flicker. 
The handle was long, and with a kind of string weave around it,
and there was carving at the end of it.  It was strange, though. 
For such a short blade, the handle was a lot too long.  It was
more like the handle that should have been on a sword - one of
their swords that they swing with both hands - instead of a blade
that size.  The steel was stiff, which I didn't like, but the
blade was so short that flex probably wouldn't have done any good:
you need a long blade for flex to do its stuff. I had put down two
people with my bread knife, like I knew I could, and neither one
of them had made a sound, or at least any that I could hear.  That
ought to tell you something.
     I moved on through the streets, according to the pull and the
feeling. I guessed some, too; I won't tell you that I didn't.  As
near as I could tell, I was working crossways through the main
push of people, all of them going for the water.  It made sense to
them, I guess, though I'd reckon as many drowned as were burned
up.  The water seemed to turn them against each other, and a lot
of them held the other ones down and tried to get on top for a
second.  That was a bad mistake, I could have told them - one poor
bastards trying to stand on top of their own kids, th
just for one inore breath of smoke.  What if they'd got it?
     I was surprised at how tired I was, there on another street,
and then another one. I knew I had better get out of the city and
hole up somewhere, because I felt the worst of the panic, the
61
part that was best for me, more or less begin to d'e out - felt it
from where I was now - and I thought that maybe I should try to
sleep some, and build up.  You watch any animal hunt - look at a
lynx, for one - and they come right out of sleeping into hunting. 
That's the time to do it.  You don't want any tiredness to get
into it, because it all has to happen so fast. I wanted that
quick, that quickness. I wanted the quick whenever I could get it.
     But I sat down again anyway, and opened the bag.  The instru-
ment, whatever it was, was round, round as a wheel, and the
strings, which were real tight, caught the fire, caught off the
flames in the low part of the building I was sitting against, and
I thought, what the hell, why not see what the thing sounds like. 
So I hit one of the strings and bent over to listen to it.  You'd
have thought I was caught up in the way the thing rang, in a low
way, off those black bricks and boards, and there might have wa
been something in that, I admit it. I hit that string, and then
the next one to it, and then both of them together.  You could
tell that that was not the way they were supposed to sound - or I
more or less supposed that anybody who knew would be able to tell,
because I had not ever heard anything like it, quite.  It was a
tinny kind of noise, and it had somethinging in it -- if I can put
it like this - that was like the singing somebody would make way
back in his mouth, between his throat and his nose.  It was like
that except the person would have to be young, like a kid, like a
real young girl.  Well, I hit all the strings at once, one after
the other, and this time it bothered me, because it was a sound -
whether it was music or somebody's voice, or maybe more than one -
that didn't go anywhere; it just hung there and made you
dissatisfied. I put the thing in the bag, but when I did, I knew
that I would probably fool with it again, somewhere between
62
me and the snow, and that maybe it would not be such a good thing
to be doing, so I took it out and leaned it against the place I'd
been sitting, to add one more thing to the night, one more thing
that there wouldn't be any way to explain.  There were going to be
a lot of things like that in Tokyo after the fire quit burning. 
But it would have been the strangest of all, I reckon, if somebody
had seen me sitting there in the smoke, twanging on that little
white wheel.  They would have told the others, maybe - whoever
lived - but nobody would've believed it.  Or maybe somebody would
have.  Like they say, it was one of those nights.
     I got up and went on, and I won't say that I didn't make, or
try to make, somewhere in my throat, something like that last
sound, the one that could have been a lot of voices, all young,
and maybe all girls.  They were in me somewhere, and wouldn't have
been there except for that little wheel with the strings on it,
round as a full moon, with a rack of tin along through it. I
couldn't get that sound, but I could hear it. I knew it was there,
and maybe I'd get it later on, when I went through the tree line,
or saw the ocean with ice in it that made the whole thing the
truth, as real as it could get.
It had been night so long, in some places with fire bright as day,
that I had got used to the idea that there wasn't going to be
anything else.  But in the way I was going, the fires were def-
initely less than they'd been - less bunched up, less high, and
less hot. I kept moving according to my gut feel, even though I
had to jog this way and that way amongst the streets. I did change
streets a lot, but the people were all just like each other.
63
Nobody said a thing to me, and my main trouble was in trying to
look as confused and aimless as they did while I held on to my
heading.  The smoke was still bad, and there was no way I could
get a look at the sky.  It was probably clear, if I could've seen
it.  The 29s had cracked down and hit the city where they wanted
to, and must've had all the visibility they wanted.  But for me
there wasn't any sky, yet. I checked the compass, and I had been
right, more or less; my guts had been right.  Sailors and Eskimos
have the same thing, and it's probably stronger with them than it
is with anybody.  But the hunters are next, next to the sailors
and Eskimos, who are next to the fish and the birds.
     As well as I could, I kept looking through the smoke to the
east, to see where there might be some orange in the sky that
wasn't fire.  A new situation had come up for me now, as I got
clear of the worst of the raid and most of the heat. I had to
decide whether I wanted to stay amongst people - whatever people I
could find - and work north, maybe, from one group to another, or
more or less to go along by myself.  The worst thing that could
happen would be for somebody to say something to me, because there
was no way I'd ever be able to make any kind of an answer.  If I
grouped with people, that might happen.  No, it was bound to
happen.  But if I kept to myself I would stand out, and would have
to depend on my clothes and the blood chit, and on getting away
from anybody who came up to me. I decided to stay with people for
as long as I could, not with small groups but with the largest
ones I could find heading north out of town.  Groups had paid off
for me pretty well so far, and I still had a situation in which
everybody was confused and scared to death. I still had panic
going for me, and I thought I probably should use it till it ran
out and I had to try something else.
64
    I was almost clear of the main city, now.  The fires were low -
you could have stomped some of them out with vour feet and the
smoke not nearly as thick.  Instead of the houses being jammed up
on each other, and all burning, there were some now with spaces
between them, and not all of them were on fire.  But I had never
seen such an arrangement of houses in my life.  Even an Eskimo
village would not have been so weird to somebody who had never
seen one before.  The houses were little and squarish, and the
yards, as near as I could tell, were kept up pretty well.  But
between every three or four houses was a Nip fighter aircraft
sitting in somebody's yard like a car would've been back in the
States.  That was a hell of a thing.  They must have had some way
the fighters could taxi down the streets and on out to the strip,
wherever it was: some easy way to the strip, because there were
sure a lot of fighters.
     Walking past the houses and the planes, which I got clear of
after a while, I was with a small group of women, two with little
kids, and three old men. I kept my head down, and decided that if
one of them said anything to me, I would just mumble and shake my
head, like all my words had been struck out of me, or burned out
by the fire.  The squatly woman right ahead of me was carrying her
little girl on her back, and she didn't seem to be bothered at
all. I would look at the road for a minute, and then, in the low
fires that were still around us, at the little girl, and her look
was always there, waiting for my eyes to come up from the road,
come up from my feet, and meet with hers again.  I must say she
was very pretty; with those bangs, nobody could have invented a
Jap doll that'd be any prettier.  We must have gone on a couple of
miles that way, and all the time the panic was leaving the people
I was with. I thought that when more of it left they would begin
to talk, and I hoped to be able to pick up
65
a word or two and memorize it before any of them said anything to
me.  If the worst happened, I could handle this bunch, and maybe
even without having to kill any of them. I didn't want any of that
to happen, war or no war.  This was not the time for it.
     I drew in what was there. I drew in a lot of breath, and I
could have it.  I could have it.  That's the way it struck me: I
could have it without gagging and coughing. I straightened up. I
took my eyes off the road, and away from the little girl, and
looked east.  There was orange there.  It showed through the
smoke, but it was damned well orange, and not fire, and it was
big.  Not the sun, the Fireball Mail yet, but just before.  The
Rising Sun, I thought.  I'm in just the place for it.  The Rising
Sun.  There it was, sure enough.
     And if I could see the sun, I ought to be able to see the
other sky, too: the last of the stars. I was almost afraid to look
north, but I did.  The Dipper was there, canted way up, and
Polaris was there, off the two front stars. I pulled out the
compass, and the needle and the star trued up. I grinned at the
baby, right into those bangs.  It was nice. It was all right
there.
     But I left them, and walked on by myself.  There was almost
no traffic on the road.  Every now and then a military carrier
would come by - a truck or something that looked like a jeep -
going away from town, but I didn't see more than two or three
civilian cars, or even more than a few bicycles.  You'd have
thought that people would be getting into everything that would
run and heading out, but it might have been that the crowds in the
streets kept anything from getting through, or maybe most of the
cars in town were burned up - I saw the gasoline in at least one
blow sky-high, with somebody in it or were where the people they
belonged to couldn't get to
66
them.  Anyway, I had to give up any idea I might've had about a
ride, either by stealing a car or truck or by stowing away in a
heavy hauler with a tarp in the back. I might do something like
that later, if I could, but it was not going to be possible for a
while. I had to walk.
     The light was coming now.  The sky was clear. There was even
a little chill, and that changed my blood, and I began leaving the
dream of all that heat, that night with all the crowds and white
phosphorus in it, and the shithole of the pipe, and the water
where whole families killed each other for one more breath of
smoke. I say dream, and not nightmare, because I didn't think
about it that way.  Sure, it was bad enough, the worst heat I was
ever in, and the firestorm killed a lot of people; I didn't know
how many, but it must have been in the thousands.  But for me
there were things that were worse, things that I reckon you could
say would be like nightmares.  Not having a weapon was one of
them, and being in a situation I didn't have any control over
would be another.  But that hadn't happened yet.  In the aircraft,
when it was hit, I got out because I had taped the chute to the
bulkhead. I had got down off the gantry and into the pipe. I had
outfitted myself the best way I could, and now I had got clear of
the city, and the night was over.  The night, not the nightmare. 
A dream, maybe. But if you say nightmare to me, you don't mean a
fire raid on Tokyo.  You'd have to be talking about something
else.
     More light came, and now you could see the sun behind the
houses. I looked at the backs of my hands, which were as filthy
black as I could have wanted, and I knew my face was the same, or
maybe even blacker.  But the people I had looked at, the ones I
had walked out with, even though they were pretty smudged up and
streaked up, were not - not one - as black as I was,
67
and I was afraid that the job I had done with soot from the
buildings was maybe too good, and might inake me stand out even
more than I would have if I hadn't done it.  It was a real problem
now that I was out there by myself, with no fire and hardly any
smoke and no panic around me: last night's big city-panic that
felt like the breath of life to me, in all that smoke.  There was
a lot of weight in my body now. I was fired and I had to find a
way to get some rest.  My black face began to bother me more and
more, and I did what I could to streak it with my fingers, but I
was not sure that that wouldn't make me even more strange looking,
make me stand out more, and that was the last thing I wanted.  But
still, nobody said anything to me. I kept my head down, thanking
God that my hair is dead black and that I had it cut almost as
short as the Japs'. I felt like that was part of my luck.  But I
was nervous right then.  I'll tell you the truth, I was. I was
between plans, and I needed to move on to the next one I could
come up with.
     It was a time I wouldn't want to go through again. I tried
not to get the full force of where I was: the whole, real
situation.  Even though I had been through the firestorm the B-29s
had made, the idea of the war - of any war - had more or less left
me when I was in there shoving through the streets with the people
trying to get out, or in the water with them, or even when I had
hit the three of them I'd killed.  War was in back of the things
I'd done, sure, but when I'd done them, the war didn't seem to
have anything to do with it. I was not carrying out anybody's
orders, that's for sure.  But now the war - the idea, the fact, of
the war - came back, and for the first rime, really, I admitted to
myself the worst I could, which was also the truth. I went over
the truth from that side.
   I was in the enemy's home country.  Everybody was my enemy.
68
Even if there had been one person in Japan friendly toward me, one who would do
anthing to help me, there was no way for me to find him. I didn't have any way
to speak to anybody, even to tell him I would kill him if he didn't do what I
said. I had tried to pick up a word or two from the crowds, and thought I had
one there for a while, but I forgot it; and anyway, I didn't know what it
meant. I needed a few words, just a few, and I needed to know what they meant. 
There must be ways I could work this out, but I didn't know them yet.  Right
now I was hungry and tired, though the little chill was just right for me; if I
could find a place to lie down, I would sleep for a long time.  And I had two
high-energy candy bars in my survival kit.  If I could sleep, I would eat them
when I woke up and got going again.  But in every direction, in everybody I saw
or who saw me, death was there.  My own death was all around me, and there
would be a lot of torture connected with it.  Everywhere I looked there was
beating, fire torture, mutilation, castration.  Getting my head chopped off
would be the easiest part.
     What did I have, myself? I started outside and worked in. I had my knife,
still right where it should be, and the emergency kit; I had what I had brought
with me.  In the kit I had a compass, fishhooks, and twine, and a little short
blade. I had a silk map of the area, like a handkerchief, though it only showed
up to the tip of Honshu, the Tokyo island. I sat down behind a low wall between
houses and took it out and looked at it. Hokkaido, the northern island, where I
wanted to go, only showed as a little nudge of land right at the very top of
the map, but there was one place between the two islands that was fairly
narrow, about fifteen or twenty miles, as I judged, and I might be able to get
across there in a night, if I could find a boat.  They
69
had told us in briefing that fishing was a big thing in Japan, and I figured
there would be all kinds of boats, because there is alwavs a lot of fishing
when two stands are close together, no matter where they are, if people live on
them.
     That was the outside stuff. I didn't have anything in the bag but My issue
shoes and the short-handled knife, and I didn't think of anything in the bag as
being nearly as important as what I had on me.  Or in me.  It's harder to think
about that than it is about knives and fishhooks and maps, but when I got down
to it I started to feel better, a lot better. I knew what I had done, and I
knew what I would do.  Sure, I didn't know everything I'd do, but I didn't feel
like I had any limits on me when the right situation came up.  Like I say, I
had something that didn't have any limits on it. I would do what many another
wouldn't, and the best thing was that I knew I would do it; there wasn't any
doubt.  It was funny The idea of the war caine back in with this other
thinking, but it came in a different way, not on the bad side but the good. I
looked up over the wall to get a fix on somebody, some other person, and
1-iiake a nd of concentration that way, but there was only an old man walking
by, up the road, with an old woman about ten feet behind him, all bent over
with carrying a bundle of sticks and logs that looked to be about as big as she
was. They would do, though; they were there. I said this to myself after I
ducked back down: this is my war as much as it is theirs; what they can do
to me I can do to them.  But I had to admit to myself that that notion didn't
come through to me with the power that it ought to have had, that it probably
would have with somebody else.  No. The war wasthere, and I'd have to deal with certain things connected with it,
certain situations, and they'd come up. But the war was not the
main thing.  It might have been to them, to the others, to the
70
japs, but not to me.  There didn't need to be any war.  There were
not any rules, except the ones I made.  Everything would ride on
that.
     The north was the big thing I wanted: the biggest there could
be. When I got out of the Air Force, if I ever did, I planned to
go back up there as soon as I could, any way I could. I didn't
belong anywhere else, even behind the twin fifties in the tail of
a B-29, where I was pretty good, if I do say so myself.  But you
can't live there. I didn't belong anywhere, really, but above
seventy degrees north, on the north slopes of mountains like the
Brooks Range.  And, I said to myself, what is the difference
between going there after the war and going there now - like I
say, however I could get there? Snow fields are all the same. 
Snow in the air and on the ground is the same, and water is the
same, and ice in the water is the same.  Ice, big ice, which is
the best.  But ice, and the same.
     And there was another thing that came from there. I hadn't
lived most of my life up above seventy degrees for nothing.  There
were things you could do.  Up there, some things were natural,
part of the skin and feathers and fur and eyes of the animals that
lived there, the birds and the fish.  And there were ways that you
could do what they did, not by being natural but by thinking about
it, by figuring what might work: what might keep anything,
anybody, from seeing you, and ways in which you could stay in that
situation till whatever it was went by.  And ways, too, you could
come out of it: come out on their blind side and be on them and
done with them before they ever knew you were anywhere around, or
even if you were in the world. I had seen the snowshoe hare lie
down, lie down in a bunch of low bushes, and make an outline of
himself.  First there's an outline in the snow, and then there's
not any outline.  I've seen that.  The
71
only thing left is the eves, and I've seen the hare close his
eves, and I could have walked over the place where he was, and
unless I stepped on him I never would have seen him, or known that
he was in the world, ether.  Most of the t'me I never saw the hare
close his eyes, and I couldn't find him.  But once or twice -
once, to be honest, when the hare was in open snow and not in any
bushes - I saw the eyes closing, I saw the whole thing the whole
disappearance.  I've seen that; that's what I had. I had it. I was
there with it.
     And I've seen the lynx work, too, with his long legs moving
slow, not wanting to touch the snow crust but going over it just
the same.  I've seen him move through dead limbs, and the shadow
spots on his sides would make you think that the limbs
of the trees, the bushes and twigs, were moving too, going
somewhere without breaking the snow.  You could do that, I told
myself down beside the wall.  You could do it; you can do it.  You
can use the snow, but you don't need the snow.  You need just one
thing.  One.  You need the color of the place you're in.  Even in
the big rush of good feeling, when the colors came over me
and I feel like I could be any of them, any time of the day or
night: when I felt like I could lie down in green or yellow, in
purple or red, in the moonlight or the sunrise, and I could stay
until I got ready to get up and go on, and nobody would know, or
fall out of any of them, like a hawk: fall on somebody's back, or
right into his face like a blaze of light flashing through him,
or doing anything I wanted, I knew that it was only part of the
truth, only part of the truth that would be, from here on.  There
would be lots of colors between me here and the snow fields there,
between me and the ocean and the bergs, and there was not any way
I could take advantage of everything between the place I was now--
this wall--and where I was trying to get to.
72
But there would be long stretches - there were bound to be
long stretches - where the color was more or less the same,
and if that was true, I could find some way to tap in on it, take
advantage of it, make it work for me. If there were colours in
Japan, if there were colors in the world, I could go with them; I
could get into them, be with them, be what they were. I could,
damn it: I sure could.  When I came on a long stretch of color -
stayed in it for a day, maybe - I would try to make the best way
to do it for the next day.
     But right now, with the air clearing, and people coming out
of the panic, I had to deal with the right now.  More than
anything else, I needed to be able to come up with an answer of
some sort to whatever might be said to me. I needed to get where I
could I hear people talk, and pick up the thing they said the
most, no matter what it was.  The Tokyo raid was bad news, and
anything I heard would most likely bave to do with it.  There
might be plenty of other things to talk about, but it seemed to me
that if I heard sounds out of people, and some of them were the
same, then they would almost have to do with the raid. I could
keep to my black, tarbaby look for a little while, and my head
-low mumbling, and myself as somebody who had been so hard hit, so
burned, so tucked up by the raid that I couldn't say anything
anybody could make out. I could do it long enough to get a couple
of words, maybe half a sentence that I could use, and then use it
when I had to, keep going on and on with, over and over, ike a man
made into an idiot by fire and smoke, by American B-29s. I wanted
people to feel sorrier for me than they did for themselves.  That
would help, until I got to the colors.  At night I would look
over the colors: the color where I was, and then get ready to go
through it, go through it to the next one.
73
I decided to stick to the roads as long as I was let alone.  The
sun was up good now, but we still had the chill. I looked
out over the wall and, when they went by, fell in a few steps
behind them.  One of them turned her head, but I saw that she was
going to do it, and I put my eyes onto my shoes as they went
along.  "Taihen, taihen," one of them said. I went over it in my
mind when another one said it, or the same one said it, I would
branch off. I stumbled and made like I was going to fall, and the
same one who had looked before, looked back, but didn't do
anything.  We walked on, and she said the same thing.  She said
it: "Taihen, taihen." I went over it again, and again.  None of
them looked back, and I was gone. 
     Whether it was food first, or sleep, I didn't much care.  The
farther I went, though, the more sleep came to me, came forward at
me. I had been tired out on the Range, on the snowshoes, when I
could hardly lift one off the snow and put the next one in front
of it, but in some ways this was just as bad. I kept looking for
somebody who was as tired as I was, and who nobody was bothering:
some poor guy, an old guy maybe, living in a ditch, who nobody
cared about. I would have gone down in a ditch without any
argument if I thought nobody would come up on me, but that was not
really the kind of sleep I wanted.  Some sort of hole, I thought,
some dark place.  But where was there anything like that around?
The road was open, and in another half mile went up among some
hills, but that didn't do me any good, none that I could see from
where I was. I went over my word - taihen - or maybe it was a
couple of words, and tried to make them like I remembered the
sound, but I didn't have any real confidence. I went on, toward
the hills and 
74
what looked like it might be a little bunch of stores, just where
the land started to climb.
     When I got next to the buildings there was a crash, something
that sounded like a crash of glass, and that's what it was.  A
bunch of women were breaking the window of the store, and I waited
to see if there would be anything for me.  The women who had
busted the glass went in, right through the splinters,
and in a minute they were throwing things out to the others. I
eased up to the bunch catching the stuff, but didn't make any try
to get what was coming out; I thought I might go in when the rest
of them left.  Finally they did leave, and I went in.
     There was not much, but I found some rice in a bowl and parts
of a fish - the head, too - like you might feed to a cat. I ate
it, all I could get, and licked the inside of the bowl.  Right
then a woman - maybe one of the women who had broken the glass -
came back in and grabbed me by the coat. I turned around with my
hand going across me, ready to come up through her if I had to,
but there were eight or ten others behind her, and I mumbled my
word - mumbled my words, mumbled something - put my head down, and
staggered out.  I let her and the others beat me clear of the
store, and not one of them got a good look at me. I was pretty
sure of that, because they all kept screaming at me, and I could
more or less tell that it was the same kind of way they would have
treated any bum. I didn't mind all that much. I had got a little
something to eat, and even while they were kicking me and beating
me any way they could, the fish and rice were doing good, and
after I was on the road again, I felt I had got hold of some new
blood, a transfusion or something.  With some sleep on top of
that, I could make it a long way.
     I went around the first turn up off the flat, looking for a
ditch
75
or bushes.  There was some scrub and weeds, but nothing deep,
nothing dark.  There was junk along the side of the road paper
boxes and a can or two - and all kinds of paper with Japanese
writing on it. I kept moving in the orange sun that was getting
higher and turning yellow.  They had told us that Orientals didn't
have any respect for life, and wouldn't even help a man who fell
down sick in the street, or who they just came up on, lying out in
a field or i n somebody's yard, but there was not anything like
that where I was walking.
     And then there was. I saw the sun, very yellow now, not at
all orange anymore, slant up and off glass, which just as soon as
looked was a bottle, and beside it an old man was either dead or
unconscious or asleep. I stood off from him and waited for some
other people to come by, to see how much attention they would pay
him. I sat down like I had some business with him, my head down on
my knees.  Every now and then somebody would walk past. I would
look up just enough to watch them pass by, but nobody even glanced
toward either the old man or me.  It was bright winter sunlight
now, bright and yellow, and I got the feeling, stronger and
stronger, that nobody gave a damn who I was or why I was there.
     The old man didn't move.  The most important thing about him
was that he had a hat, canvas, and I took it and put it on,
because it had a good brim, and it would make it easier to hide
the shape of my eyes, which I couldn't figure how to do anything
about.  But there I was, right out there in the yellow open
Japanese sun, with Japanese clothes and shoes on that I'd got from
killing two people, and a hat from one who looked like he was
already dead, with a bread knife and a survival kit and a bag with
wet shoes in it.  From under the hat I could look out a little
better, and what struck me then was what I had noticed before
76
but hadn't thought about as much: there were hardly any young men
around, or even teenage boys.  The only male people I saw were
little kids and old men, and that was not bad for me, not a bad
sign. I wondered what they did for police, because I hadn't seen
any.  In the trucks and jeeps there'd been a few men in
uniform, but they were in service. I didn't know what ajapanese
cop might have on, but the military had the only uniforms I'd come
across.  And that was good, too.
     Out of the smoke I could see the women better, and honest to
God, I don't understand how even the Nip men can tell one from the
other.  They all had flat dish faces and round shoulders - maybe
from carrying all that cordwood - and walked with little steps, so
little that I don't see how they ever got anywhere; a mile
would've taken them all day. I pulled the hat down, closed my
eyes, and stretched out by the old man. I listened to the women
tiptoe past on the hard road, and, even though the day was warming
up by now, brought the tree line to myself just for a minute, and
then it went, and that's all I can remember from that first day
out of Tokyo.

When I woke up it was chilly again; I sucked in the air before I
opened my eyes.  Then I sat up, pulled the hat down low, and
looked around.  The old man was gone. I don't have any idea how he
left.  Maybe he hadn't been dead, or if he was, somebody who knew
him might have found him.  Either he had been alive or family had
come after him. f people'd just been cleaning up the streets,
they'd've got me, too.  Or that's the way I figured, anyway.
    It was coming on for night, so I'd been down a long time. I
77
was really rested.  For one thing, I like to sleep on the ground,
and I'd slept on a lot worse ground than that was, ground where
you have to keep clearing rocks out from under you. I hadn't felt
a single rock; I was just a little stiff.  Nobody else was coming
past, though there was a light in the house next to the place
where I had eaten the rice and the fish. I got up and walked past
it, on up into the low hills. I figured to walk all night and, if
I could, go for a place to bed down that was darker and quieter. I
wanted to be under something the next time: to find rocks, where
there'd be overhangs.  That way, I wouldn't be hemmed up. I'd have
some cover, but I could scramble out either way.  Always leave
yourself a way out, my father used to tell me.  Fight with
something to your back, especially if you're fighting more than
one guy.  But sleep where you can go the other way from whatever's
after you.
     The old man had left the wine; I had it in my bag.  When it
got dark enough, I uncorked it and took a long swallow, and then
another one.  It was like sour water, and kind of bitterish for
wine, but my head began to work faster right away, and the
good side of things started to show up.  The nights were when I
would use the roads, as much as I could.  Any car would have to
show a light, and I would be where they couldn't see me before
they could even think, before the light got anywhere near me.  If
people were walking on the road I could hear them, and even if I
happened to run into somebody, some guy walking the other way,
maybe, the advantage would be with me rather than him. I wasn't
worried about one guy, or even two or three of them, especially at
night. I hadn't seen any one person I couldn't handle, and handle
pretty easily. I just had to keep the situation like it was, and
find food wherever I could, and a place to sleep during the day. 
Those were the main things.  In daylight, whenever
78
I wasn't too tired, I could get off the roads and take out through the fields,
or woods if I could find them.  The middle part of Honshu was not supposed to
have many people - or so the briefing officer had told us - and was even
supposed to be wild, with a lot of woods and lakes, a lot of rivers.  Maybe
there would be some snow in the mountains, if I could get up into them.  Snow,
but not enough.  For that I was sure I'd have to get over onto the other
island, and move due north whenever I could.  It was going to take a long time.
     I had another shot of wine, and finished the bottle.  The houses were
farther apart now.  The lights in them were low, like everybody was telling
secrets. I started to think about another house, not one of these.
     I took the blood chit down off my mouth and breathed the new dark, and the
cold that didn't have any smoke in it. I was going to need something heavier to
wear before long.  No matter how much you like the cold, it'll still freeze
you.  You've got to keep your feet warm, or the ground will get them, get your
toes.  And you've got to look out for your hands or the air will make them
things you can't use.  It's against my way of doing things to take along too
much stuff, but if you're going where I wanted to go, there are certain things
you have to have. I could get by with my Tokyo shoes, and could switch off to
my old GI brogans whenever I had the chance, or if I wanted to, but I needed
socks.  Socks and gloves. And a scarf, a heavy one. If you can find a way to
keep your neck warm, it helps everything else, even your feet. I don't know why
that is exactly, but you ask any trapper and he'll set you straight, right
quick.
     The farther you go, the more stuff you pick up.  If I could, I wanted to
get hold of a bigger bag and make myself some sort of back-pack out of it, one
I could also use for a sleeping bag, so I
79
could lie down anywhere and get some rest.  The idea of a house, one off from
the main roads, or from any road: some farmer's or woodcutter's place, in the
fields or back amongst the hills, would be what I was looking for. I thought
about the house, what would be there and how I would get it, and worked on my
words.  As far as I was concerned, still, the word or words I had picked up had
to do with the fire raid; with the napalm and white phosphorus; with the people
choking and scrambling in the streets and the long moaning noise that came 
                                                                           out of them; with the buildings falling in and the guy turning a somersault 
over me and crashing into the building; with the shoving and the stumbling and
the smoke.  All that seemed a long way off now.  There were some things about
it that I could hardly remember.  What mattered was the road I was on, and that
I could use something else to eat, and maybe some more wine.  There was a house
somewhere that would give me what I wanted.  There was one. But it was probably
two or three days off, maybe a week.  That's the way I reckoned, but the more I
thought about it, the more I knew it was somewhere, and that I'd find it, one
way or the other. I wondered if I would have to use the word there. I couldn't
tell, but I thought probably not.  Still, I kept saying it as I walked along,
not knowing what it meant, trying to get it right.
     Except for me there was not a sound.  The moon came up, and I could see
where I was going for maybe fifty yards ahead.  The later it got, the farther I
could see, until I could look across the open fields that were on one side now,
and make out the low hills bulking up on the other side of them. I don't know
why it is, but every big space I had seen in Japan seemed to have the
same kind of stitched-up look about it - a big piece of silver
sewed up with black thread.  The bay where I'd come down in

80the parachute looked like that, and now these fields did too,
moving out on my left off through the moon: that silver and black,
that sewed-together look, that sewed-together feel of it, was the
main Japan that I had.  It took a real hold on me, and was realler
than anything I'd seen or been through. And blood: I thought about
blood, too, and couldn't reach it. I had killed three people, and
I couldn't remember that I had seen any blood at all. I had stuck
the woman under water, and she never came up. I had shot the guy
for his clothes, back in the fire, but even though I'd blown the
top of his head off, there was not any blood that I'd noticed, and
the same thing was true about the guy I'd gutted for his shoes.
     I thought I would stay with the road I was on, which was
going a little east of north, until the inoon got higher, and I
could strike out across the fields by compass. I was not having
any trouble this way, though.  At first I was worried because the
road had so many curves in it, and they were so close together. 
Every time I could see far enough ahead to make out the curve, I
would wait and be sure that no light was coming.  Then I would
move on up to the bend, look around it, and wait again. I did this
for around two hours, but I wasn't making much distance that way,
and as soon as the moon got up so that the shine was straighter
down, I hit off across the fields.
     The ground was soft but had some giveback to it, too; I
thought that there was probably a crop in it ready to come up. 
What did they grow in Japan, anyway? The only thing I had ever
heard of was rice. They even made whiskey and wine out of it,
which must take some doing. I sighted on Polaris, and moved where
it said.  The hills were more or less parallel to my track, but if
I maintained due north, I would be sure to run into some more, and
then mountains, which suited me fine. I didn't
81
believe I would be walking in the open fields all night, though I
couldn't be sure of that, either. I was going along pretty well
when I made out a house in front of me and off to the left.  There
were no lights in it, and no sign of any people. I angled out to
go around it before another notion hit me: maybe the big open
spaces after all those crowded streets, maybe the cool and quiet
after all the screaming, changed me and caused me to do things a
little different.  Whatever it was, I swerved my track again and
went toward the house, closer and closer, quieter and quieter.  It
was not the house I wanted - I knew that - but I might learn
something, anyway.
     Learn what? I stopped in the soft of the field to puzzle it
out.  Even in the dark I could get to know something about a 
Japanese house: how it was put together, how you got into it, and
maybe a little about how the rooms were - where the kitchen was,
and so on. I moved in closer, up to the nearest wall, right up to
the window, which was not glass, but from the look of it was like
some kind of heavy paper.  It cracked a little, just a very little
bit, and I steadied with my hand against the wall, and leaned to
look.
     I would have bet there were people in the room, but when I
first put my eyes where they should've been, I didn't see any-
thing, anything but the other wall.  But the wall was not steady;
it moved one way and another and seemed to back away, almost to
disappear, and then settle down again where it was.  A low light
was making that happen.  It was on the floor, which was maybe a
foot higher than where I was standing: a candle in some kind of
frame, and around it there came to be three people sitting on the
floor, an old man and a woman and a little girl.  They were either
eating or just about to eat, or had just finished. I made out some
bowls and dishes, but I couldn't tell
82
what was in them, or if anything was.  Then the old man reached
for a bowl, and I knew they were going to eat.  The girl passed
the bowl, and bowed almost into the flame.  Except for the people
and the bowls and dishes and candle, the room was bare.  I reached
across and pulled the knife slow, slanted it and held it close to
the crack. I wanted that light, the light of that one candle, to
flash off my blade - to flash 'ust once, whether they saw it or
not. I never knew whether they did, but the flame couldn't have
missed the blade, because I angled it so that the light would hit
it, no matter how it was shining.  That was my mark, and I left,
jumping out of my tracks in the field, with the tracks springing
me up.
     After a while I looked back at the house, and even thought of
going back, because everything had been so easy for me. I had
forgotten to do one thing, which was to try to catch their talk,
mainly to see whether they would use the word I had been
practicing, and to check how I said it against the way they did. 
It would have been some satisfaction to me to know that I had at
least one word I could bring out if I had to.  But it didn't seem
worth it, and I went on.  Really, though, I didn't want to take
any chances with my sign, or try to make another one, or do
anything that might tone down the strike of that candle on the
blade.  That was a pure thing, just what I wanted, even if I
hadn't seen it.  If they had seen it - and one of them, at least,
must've - they wouldn't have known what it was, which was all
right with me.  They might not know what it was or what it meant,
but it had been there. I was in Japan, and I had leveled my sign,
and put it in.
     I came up on a fence, and went over it into another kind of
ground, harder but not real hard.  The moon glowed off it like it
hadn't off the first one, and the going was a lot easier.  Tokyo
and
83
Tinian Island were in the same time zone, and when my watch said
three-thirty, that's when it was. I could go for about an hour and
a half, and then I had better look for a hole.  There weren't
going to be any high rocks on this night, no overhangs or caves.
     I went on for an hour, an hour and fifteen minutes, and there
still was no shelter. I was wide open, the only man in the fields,
and I didn't want the light, even the first light, to catch me. 
If there'd been anything growing high enough, or just growing at
all, I might have made do in the fields, but there was nothing
anywhere.  There were no more houses, no more barns or sheds or
hog wallows where a man could lie down and shove the animals out. 
But the animals would have him if he came in.  The animals would
usually have him.  They would come back around him.
     I was getting tired again, and I went due north against the
big dark black, where there were not any stars. I went right for
that.
     There was that time, I can remember it.  My foot kicked
straight into something, something that felt like a bank.  It was
not a hill, exactly; it was not a mountain; there was not any
feeling of rock; no bone.
     Soft. I went from the soft fields to the soft bank, and
kicked into it again.  My foot buried.
     I could climb it. I could scramble. I could get up.
     I got up, and the moonlight hit me like saving my life.  The
moon hit me when I leveled, when I quit climbing and leveled.  The
ground underneath me was level, by God, and I hadn't climbed up
but just a few feet. I stood where I was, and turned around and
looked back, looked out.
     Crops were growing at the levels; they were growing with me?
That must have been the answer to it.  A level was underneath
84
me, which I had just come froin, and there was another one up
above me.  And another, on above that one.  If I could coine up
the first one, I could get to the other ones, and on up. I could
top out, I could crest. I could crest with it.
     I turned around, from the sewed-together moonlight down on
the flat fields, and started to climb in the other moonlight, the
one in the levels.
     God help me. I went up. I went up and up them.
     But I didn't want to clear the top. I sat down high, high up,
and now I looked back again, and the whole sleep was there, the
sleep of the other people.  The house was down there, where I had
made my flash.  My mark was down there somewhere, amongst the
people: three of them.  It was down there with the little candle,
and I was up on the levels, big levels, the levels of the world,
like they were in that place.  That place, and not any other
place.  The levels were the levels, there in the moon; they were
the only levels.  That's where I was, and I opened my mouth and
said it. I had the word, and I was ready to give it to them. 
Everything was silver and thread.  Everything was levels.  I was
ready. I was ready for some other levels, just up behind me, and I
was ready to sleep all day in one of them.  Terraces, that was the
name of them.
     I sat down. I was getting used to sitting down in Japan. 
What worked in one place would work in another one. I had laid
down by the dead man with the bottle of wine, and he had gone off
from me, and maybe lived, gone off with his folks and left the
wine. I sat down solid on the level where I was - the level
somewhere amongst the other levels - and felt around.  Was this a
place I could sleep all dav? en would they come out to work? Could
I hear them, when I was asleep, climb up the levels - the hard
climb in the soft dirt, and then the straight
85
foot, the foot that wasn't climbing but was yours, and the flat
you came out to be standing on? The flat above the flat you had
just come from? That made you think about the flat just above you,
and the one above that?
     I was bushed again. I had come up through the levels under-
neath me; the ones over me I would leave for later.  Right now I
felt the sag.  But at the same time I felt the old flash in the
candle, and I knew that the three people handing the bowls around
would know; would know that something tfiey were not used to had
gone by them, that they hadn't suffered; had gone through them;
had held the candle in their house for just a second.  After them,
there would be a lot of others.
     Like I say, I felt around.  There was a lot of straw, and
there were sticks all over.  What about sleeping in the sun, I
said to myself.  On just this level.  What about covering up with
this stuff and waiting till you hear them? First hear them, hear
them climbing.  And then make your move.  Were these flowers, or
what, they were growing?
     There were twigs and stems all over the place.  Nobody had
cleaned up the levels of the hill, or at least not the one I was
on.  I figured to get a little night sleep, when I had my mind
right, and get out over the top of the hill before anybody came to
work, if they were going to.  Farming was something I didn't know
much about, and farming on terraces was so far from anything I
could imagine that I didn't even try. I ought to do something,
though, about being spotted if I overslept; I didn't want just to
be lying there. I looked around and felt around, and I could pile
things up, pile up sticks and twigs and leaves if I wanted to, and
I did; I did that. I made three long low piles like bundles, not
right together but about ten or fifteen feet apart, and I figured
to get down behind one of them and stretch out
86
and sleep when I felt like it, when I felt more like it. My idea
was to work kind of like the man at the fair who my father took me
to one time in Barrow when I was a little boy.  He had three
shells and a pea.  He put the pea under one of the shells and
moved them around, and you were supposed to guess which shell had
the pea.  If somebody thought there might be a man behind one of
my piles, he wouldn't know which one, and that short minute of
confusion might be just what I'd need. I stretched out behind the
last pile I'd made - not the middle one - and settled down to get
my mind like I wanted it, so I could sleep deep and strong.
     I got out my knife and my sharp-stone, and my two flints. I
wasn't going to light a fire - I didn't need it - but I wanted to
feel them: to feel the shapes, and know that fire was there, and
had always been there, in the ground, in the hill or the mountain,
that didn't know anything about fire but had it for the one who
knew, and would give it to him.
     I started working on the knife, holding the stone in my left
hand and running the blade down it at around a for -five-degree
angle - that I knew better than the color of my eyes like I was
trying to cut into the stone, trying to shave it, you might say. 
However sharp it had been, it got sharper.  Knives are big with
trappers, and every one of thein will tell you he can put on an
edge finer than any of the others.  The ones who haven't been up
in the north for a long time think it's a good edge if you can
shave with it. I even knew a logger who could shave w'th h's ax.
But shaving is just the beginning of it. I can put on an edge that
will cut gauze, a long piece of it, if you hold the blade
edge-up and just pitch the gauze in the air and let it come down
across the knife.  It'll come down in two pieces, and you can win
bets with it. I couldn't do that well, up behind my pile, because
87
I didn't have any oil, but I could get the steel to the shaving
stage without any trouble, and I thought about shaving when I
finished.
     But I was having a good time with it. I kept turning the
blade one way and another in the moonlight, and I won't say that I
didn't make it a little bit sharper.  Like I say, you have to know
how things are: how to get what's there for you, that maybe nobody
knows but you. I must have a feel about knife-shine. I must have
had it all my life. I never really knew how strong it was until I
held the blade in the window of that house so it'd pick up the
candle.  On my level of the hill it was good to compare the strike
of the moon off the blade with that other strike - the gleam, it
must've been, which is a word I don't use but I know the meaning -
the house gleam down there in the field under the terraces.  That
gleam caught in somebody's eyes.  It was in somebody's head right
now, trying to understand what had caused it.  It was in that
house, and it would stay there. I ran the blade down the stone
five more times on each side, sharpening by feel and by the moon.

I slept pretty well, not cold except for my feet, but they 
bothered me, numbed out; I had to stomp on the ridge to get them
going. When I killed the pins in my toes I moved on.  It wasn't as
far to the top as I had thought - a couple of hundred feet and I 
six places where the hill tabled off into smaller and smaller
flats.  And I found a little path switchbacking on up; it was
right there for me, and easy.  When I got to the top, I took a
good long look back down the way I had come.  For some reason I
wanted to see
88
people, even one person alive, moving. I can't tell you why.  It
might have been that It would be better for me to know where the
closest person was, and even what he was doing, which I I meant I
would have the advantage, if it came down to that.  Even if it was
just in my mind, I needed the distance between, whatever the
distance would be.
     There was not any point, though, in just standing there 
waiting for somebody to show, and I turned to the other side,
where the terraces stepped down north, into another valley.
    To one side I heard a dry, stiff hustling sound. I had heard
it plenty of times before, but not below me.  Before I saw the
birds, I knew it was feathers moving fast, hissing like a hot
iron.  The sound was not above, like I say, but I glanced up an
ay, as I usually did.  Then I looked level, and then down and off,
the way I had come up the night before.  There were two birds, big
white ones, mostly neck and wings, barreling straight for the top
of the ridge about fifty or six feet from me, under the crest and
going for it like they were trying to hit it, cut through it,
take it clean off, and for a second I thought they would, that
they had the speed to do it, and their own reasons.  They were
dead white, and big.  Their necks and wings were longer than
anything I'd seen except tundra swans, white-stretched and going
all-out like dogs to take the hill apart.
     Without a feather changing, they lifted and went over the
crest, clearing it by a foot or two, and then were back down at
the same level they canie froin.  It was something you'd like to
see happen more than once, but if a thing is strong enough when
you see it, once is enough.  It was flying that would lilake any
airplane look ridiculous without any trouble.  Later I tried a lot
of times to see the top of that ridge, not like I did see it,
standing there, but like they saw it, coming right into their
eyes
89
head-on, bigger and bigger, and knowing that they could go right
through it if they wanted to, but something in them - or n the air
that knew what they needed - right at the last second lifting them
just enough, and back down, and on. I watched them make a line
away from me, very straight, and then go out of sight.  That was
all, but they went north and I followed, down the terraces and
into the flat of the next valley.
     I used a road part of the way, and passed people now and
then, going along talking to each other. I tried to walk like they
did, with short steps and my head down, and nobody even looked at
me. To tell the truth, I was off the road more than I was on it,
gong through fields that were about half grass and half sand, and
it wasn't till later that it came to me: I was doing what I could
to make as straight a line as the birds, the tundra swans, or
whatever they were. I looked up every so often to see if any
more would go by, and they did, though higher than the first two.
     The business of being in the open bothered me, though there
really didn't seem to be anything for me to worry about, at least
not right now.  But as I went, I kept looking for places to put
in, and more or less grading them by how much concealment they
could give me in how much sun.  It Is easy to hide in the dark;
anybody can do it anywhere.  But in daylight you've got to know
what you're doing. I wanted to travel any time I could, and take
my chances. I couldn't make nearly the time I'd like to have
made if I just moved at night, but since nobody was bothering 
me, I figured to make as much distance as I could any time I could
do it.  And if I struck inland as well as north I would be in 
mountains, my map told me, and though the going might be harder,
there wouldn't be as many people, and there'd be more places to
stay out of sight.  As long as I could make it in the flat

90day and night, I was that much better off Birds went over, and I
was as inuch on course with them as if the long neck of any one of
them was the needle of a compass.
     It was cold, and though I could control that if I could find
what I wanted to wear, I was still not as comfortable with the
temperature as I wanted to be.  The sun was thin, with a few higb
clouds, and a wind blew across me from the northeast, the sea
side. I moved up to my left onto another terrace when I saw there
was nobody on it, and sat down to think things out.
     In front of me, far off and down, was a heavy stand of trees. 
There might be something for me there, and I decided to go down
and have a look when I could make out a way that was not too
obvious. I had forgotten about the birds in my mind-move toward
the trees, but now they came back before I even had to think about
them.  They were going by at a great rate, dozens of them, and as
I sat there I saw more, coming from all over like they were homing
in.  From every which way they were getting there, and I saw more
than one lift its head and rear back, setting its wings like
flaps, to go down out of sight on the other side of the trees.  A
curved line of bushes was between, and if I could get on the far
side of it, away from the road, it shouldn't be hard to work on
into the grove. I eased down the side of the hill, and with my new
short enemy steps slanted along toward the bushes.
     It was almost too easy, but when I slid through the bushes it
came to me that if I happened up on anybody now, I would be in a
rough place, because being behind the bushes would have more the
look of somebody trying to keep out of sight than if I had been in
the open or on the road. I quickened up a little on my Japanese
steps to get into the trees, where they would be hard put to deal
with me, because trees and I have got an
91
understanding, especially when it comes to hiding from something,
or getting after it.
     The trunks were very close together with a lot of low
branches; a lynx would've loved them. I could have got up into  
them and moved along the limbs from one to the other, but there
didn't seem to be any use in that; no one knew about me.  Here I
was in a place in a country that seemed to have all the land
cultivated that it was possible to farm, and it was like
timberline forest, or just a little farther south of that. I stood
still, listening for a scratch. Where I come from, if you hold
still long enough in woods that thick, you will hear a scratch -
bark making a sound in some way - and then you can locate what's
making it: a pine marten, a squirrel, maybe even a fisher, because
everything that lives in trees or uses trees has to deal with
bark, and no matter how quiet the animal is, the bark will give it
away, sooner or later, if it's dry. Or if your ear is good enough
and there's no wind or rain, even if it's not dry.
    All I heard was the whistle of wings, though, and the change
in the sound of them when the bird would brake back and set e
down.  They were coming dovrn on water, I knew before I saw it. I
went up a tree about ten feet, put the needles aside just enough,
and looked out. I thought of a fisher marten, which s just about
my favorite animal: how he would look out. I did that.
     The lake was about thirty acres, with swans all over it, 
hundreds of them. I had never seen so many birds at the same time,
even when the geese were migrating, up home.  They were actually
crowded, and that's something you don't expect birds to be. It was
surely not all that hard to get food, wherever they had come in
from.  It's true enough, any animal or bird is glad to eat food it
doesn't have to work for, but it seemed to me that there
92
must be something else here than food, though I never did find
out what it was.
     The fisher faded off me, except for his eyes and the fact
that I was hungry, like weasels always are, and I got back into
myself to figure out what might be the advantages.  It was just
the middle of the morning, and there wasn't much I could do until
the sun went down.  But seeing all those swans convinced me that I
had business there, and I needed time to make out my next move.
     It was a park, and while I sat in the tree a few people,
women with little children, came in and walked part of the way
around the lake, and fed the swans pieces of bread.  Neither the
mothers nor the children seemed any too enthusiastic about what
they were doing, and most of them didn't stay long. I was not
interested in them. I was looking for somebody who was there all
the time, because there was a fence around the lake, and a little
shack at the side of it nearest me. I figured somebody must live
there, or use it in some way.  Probably there was only one guy,
and I waited to find him.
     It didn't take that long, or anything like it.  A little girl
and her mother went up to the shack and knocked on the door, and
an old man in baggy clothes came out.  He bent down and gave the
little girl something, and then went back in. I didn't have any
way of knowing whether anybody else was inside with him, but I
didn't believe there was.  Or if there was, it would likely be
only one. I came down out of the tree, stretched out behind it,
put my hands under my arms, and went to sleep. I was hungry, but
your mind gets sharper when you're hungry, and it was a good
feeling in its own way. I felt good and strong, and fast, and
quick.  My time as a fisher had done me good. My eyes burned
through the leaves and needles when I opened them.
93
I slept a long time, curled up and not too uncomfortable,
and when I woke up the sun was just leaving. I couldn't see the lake
from the ground, so I went up the same tree until I could.  There
were no people in sight.  All I could hear was the rustle of
feathers as the swans brushed against each other, and the whistle
of feathers on the ones still in the air, changing their beat as
they pulled up and settled in.  A dim light was in the shack, and
I planned to wait until I knew the park was closed and empty
except for whoever might be in the shack. With the dark I felt
my strength grow until it was better than any sensation I or
anvbodv else has ever had - a million times better than fucking or
being drunk.  The breath in and out through my nose had fire in
it, except that it was cold, colder than the air. I slid down and
stepped clear of the trees.
     It was no trouble getting past the fence. The top rail was
smooth metal, and I just put one hand on and vaulted over.  The
swans nearest where I came down made a shift, a little flurry, and
then were just like the others, crowding, a few of them dipping
their heads. I moved along toward the shack, in the shadows; there
were plenty of tem. I got to the one window.
     There was nobody but the old guy, with light shining on his
bald head, in the middle of short bristly hair.  He was bent over,
and I waited until I could make out what he was doing.  After my
eyes came good I saw he was working on something on a table,
and when I could see even better I could make out it was a swan
with its whigs spread. The neck was in some kind of a clamp, and
when I moved a little I could bareiy tell - but I could tell -
that the old man was fixing one of the swan's legs, putting a
splint on it and wrapping it with string or tape.  The swan
could't bring its head up, but the light caught its eye; there was
something in it that had any interest.  People in hospitals have
the
94
same look. I tried the door, and it was not locked.  Then I pushed
on in, little by little.     He never heard me.  For a second I stood right behind him and
watched his hands work on the swan's leg. I pulled the knife and
took the step, the one step. I had him under the throat, lifting
him off the floor, and ran the knife through him right to left,
all the way through. I held him until he quit kicking both legs
kicked together - and then let him down slow.  He was close enough
to my size, and I pulled off his coat and shirt and pants.  There
were some bags in a corner, and I took the biggest one and put the
orbers over him.  Then I went back to the table. I cut off the
swan's head and started pulling out feathers and putting them into
the bag. When I had got one side plucked, I cut out a piece of the
leg and ate it.  People have a hard time getting used to the idea
of eating raw meat, but it is not really much different from the
way it is when it's cooked. I ate all I wanted, and then plucked
the rest of the feathers. I aimed to fill the bag before I left. 
Then I could work for cold weather, sure enough.  There were a lot
of things I could do with feathers.
     I needed more, though. I would have to go after them on the
lake, grab the swans out of the crowd they were in, any way I
could.  My notion was to panic some of them and force them out of
the water, and then take what I could get.
     I left the bag in the shack and went out.  The swans were
just like they had been, a big shifting blur on the water, making
those strange noises they make, all neck but still sounding like
they were a long way off, no matter how close you were.
     I worked the shadows, then let them see me as I came nearer.
There was a corner to the lake, and some of them punched up ill
that.  When enough of them got in, I picked up a stick and
95
pitched it.  Three or four slapped and flapped up out of the
water, and I hit the shadows again, and worked around. There were
tmo left on land when I got close enough, and I grabbed the
nearest one. I made the mistake of catching it by the wing and one
leg, and it turned and bit me right below the eye.  That
thing really clamped down, without making a sound, and wouldn't
turn loose till I tore it off.  You couldn't believe a bird could
be as strong as that one was, not even a bird that big.  It bashed
me with its wings and it was like being hit with a soft hammer,
but one that had a whole lot of power in it, soft or not.  To tell
the truth, I was afraid to turn it loose, afraid it would come
after me if I did, and maybe the whole lake of them would
hit me then, from the water, the land, the air, everywhere. I
dragged the swan into the water and held it down with everything I
had, held it and kept on holding it.  After a long time it died,
and I was left with that long neck in my hands and the wings down
limp: all that power, and the thing so light. I couldn't believe
it. I went for the bag, dragged the swan into the dark, and
plucked it.  And ate a little more, too.  Then I went
back into the water and found the stick I had thrown in, and from
then on I used it. I found out I could get close to the swans
without all that stalking, and when I did, I could level a hard
lick along where their heads were, and I'd hit one or two of them,
and one of them really hard, usually.  It wasn't easy, and I
missed some, but I was at it nearly all night, plucking them and
then slitting them open, letting them fill with water and sink. I
raised a lot of hell with those birds, and if I'd been able to
carry more sacks I could've had more feathers.  But by the time I
finished I had all I really needed, and I put the bag over the
fence, went back through the trees, then through the bushes, and
was in the open again, and on the road if I wanted it.  My face
was bleeding
96
pretty badly - flowing right on - and I kept trying to sleeve
it off as I walked.  But then I got to laughing, not a whole lot
but really, when I thought of the old guy back under the burlaps.
He could say that I killed hill for his feathers, which is the
God's truth.
     The bag was great. I hefted it and shook it around, and the
feathers made a sound like they did when they were living by on
the real birds.
     All the time I've been alive I wondered at the strange things
that come to my mind when they don't have any reason to come.  The
trees had made me think of the fisher marten, and a big wave of
love went over me when I thought I night be like it was, and have
the eyes it had.  Now it was the swans I had killed, and also the
ones I had not killed, and would never kill; they were all the
same bird. I shook the bag and the feathers scraped and whistled,
and I laughed again. I looked up as some more birds passed over,
going to the lake.  Seeing the swans in flight, hearing them, it
was hard not to think I could fly myself, and I didn't turn my
thoughts, because on that particular road, at that time, they were
right.

I wanted to lay up for a day or two, and sew. I had some thread in
my emergency kit, though I didn't think I had enough. I could come
on more thread, though, I believed; there would have to be some
wherever I went. I had two coats and two pairs of pants, all of
them more or less the sizes to fit me. I might have to cut a
little in one place or the other, but that was all right.  Though
it was not cold enough for it where I was, I wanted to make an
insulated suit, with feathers between the two layers of
97
clothes, and then carry the suit in the bag until I was ready for
it. That meant I needed one more suit for the weather until I got
up into the snow, and if I was gong to make the suit any time
soon, I needed the extra clothes before I started sewing.  When I
thought it over, I decided not to do it until I had the other
suit, which I would find some way to get in the next few days. 
That was good enough, and I went on, shaking the bag now and
again, for the sound.
     The last part of the night I stayed on the road, checking my
compass now and again, ready to get off into the fields if the
road swung too much from north. I was pretty sleepy after a while,
and went on not really paying enough attention to what I was
doing.  Then I heard somebody yell, and out of nothing
three or four people were running straight at me.  If they came up
to me and talking developed, I was out of luck. I looked right and
left for shadows, and hit the ground next to a dirt bank with
my feet pulled up under me until they got close.  They came right
on, and I got ready.
     Then they stood there, and one of them said something, and
then something that sounded like the same thing. I stood up slow
and put up a hand like I might be asking for something, or even
begging: begging maybe for them not to hurt me, hit me, maybe for
them to understand me. I held my hand flat between his eyes and
mine.  He took half a step in, and I straightened up
with everything I had and took him in the middle of the chest with
my shoulder, lifting at the same tune.  Before he even hit the
ground I was past him and the others, running like the first day
the snow had melted and I was clear of snowshoes: like I was on
the floor of the valley, and enough weight taken off me
and my feet to make me light enough to fly. I had the bag of
feathers and the other stuff, but that didn't slow me down at all.
98
They were yelling and going on behind me, but there's never been a
one of those little people who could catch me when I had the
summer-valley feeling. I let my stride out, and I have to say that
I was really moving, and not afraid of a thing.  When I turned a
corner of the road I was gone, not where they probably thought I
would go, into the grass to the left, but over a wall to 
the right and behind a little house, and around on the other side
of it, and then down flat in what was probably a garden, long
stems all around.
     I put the bag of feathers and my other stuff under me and
waited. I had seen a lot of rabbits wait, and marmots, and mice
and even lemmings.  The snowshoe hare can stay all day in one
position, all night, as long as he wants or thinks he's in danger,
or even could be in danger. I can make out a hare when a weasel
can't see one.  I've done it. I've seen a white weasel go by a
hare when I was looking right at it; a lynx might've seen him, but
I'd put myself up against one of those, too. I was still: still
like that, and kept my eyes closed, and listened.  Nobody came. I
couldn't hear anybody search, and I couldn't hear any sound from
the road, either. I listened to the other side then, and heard
something I didn't like.  The sound must have been there all the
time when I was concentrating on what was close to me.  There was
a far-off noise of cars - trucks maybe, most of them; they kept
shifting gears - and though the sound broke every now and then, it
always picked back up and went on and on. I wouldn't have been
surprised if it was a truck convoy, and that meant I was not only
fairly near a highway but maybe another big town.  I didn't
remember that there'd been one on the map, and it was maybe more
likely a military base of some kind.  With my attention on the
birds for the last few hours I hadn't taken any notice of
aircraft, though there must have been some, would
99
have to have been.  Lying in the long bare steins on the bag of
feathers, I listened for them among the far-off trucks and other
cars, jeeps, whatever they were.
   I stayed an hour, and in that time I heard two aircraft.  Both
of them cut their engines, which had to mean they were landing. 
Putting things together, I read a strip or even an air base some-
where around, maybe not too far.  That meant I'd better get back
up on the terraces, or any other hills I could find.  A few
civilians I could get around; a whole lot of the military in one
place, most of them armed, I couldn't. I got up out of the weeds,
the stems, picked up the bags, and headed out over the wall due
     west, which was quite a concession, but sometimes you have to 
make them.
     There was still some moon, going down fast, and I went up
three terraces, then four, then five, and walked along the last
one.  The Japanese didn't seem to keep any lights in their houses,
though I saw one every few hundred yards - I was heading north
again; Polar's was right in front of me - and even though I didn't
make very good time, I was going more or less steadily toward
where I wanted to go. I looked for a place to hole up and sleep,
when it began to get light.
     There was something in the way, and it didn't move. I went to
it real slow, with my hand on my knife, what I called my bone
knife.  It still didn't move, and when I got next to it I saw it
was a rock.  Smack there on the terrace; I hadn't seen a rock that
big since I'd been in Japan.  Back on Tinian they used to brief us
on Japanese customs, their food, their habits, their religion, and
all that. I never paid much attention, but I did remember the
thing they have about rocks.  They were supposed to have whole
churches - temples, I guess they call them - where they have rocks
put around in a certain way, and they sit down and look at
100
them, as still as a snowshoe hare that thinks the lynx is after him. What a
damn lot of foolishness I could never have thought up in a thousand years, but
this big rock in the middle of the terrace was maybe something like that; if
they'd wanted to farm that place, they would sure have got it out of there.  It
was big as tall as I was - and rough, and I wondered how they could have got it
up there.  It must have weighed tons; it would have taken a good many men to
push it over.
     But I didn't want anybody to push it over.  It was what I needed, just
like it was. I got down behind it where the terrace shelved up, and when I got
in a little under it, I practiced a couple of moves. I could roll out either
way, to the north or to the south, depending on what I had to do and how quick
I had to get up.  When I was satisfied, I stretched out as far under the rock
as I could get and still roll fast and move, and relaxed in the rock dark, as
pure as dark can get. I put one hand on my knife in the position to draw it,
and touched my dick with the other.  It was the same as it had always been. 
That was good, real good.  Nobody had done a thing to me. I pushed up under the
rock a little farther, even, and thinking about the one or two low stars to the
north, but mainly about Polaris, which was not going to move, I went to sleep.
     It was a good long sleep, for I had let myself get tireder than I should
have.  Lying with my head on the sack of feathers, I had the feeling that the
rock got warm along with me, and that I was in the place I'd rather be than
anywhere else in the world.  Just before I went all the way into the dark - my
own dark, inside the rock's dark - I kept thinking of the snowshoe hare and the
lynx, and the stillness: the stillness of two kinds.  In that picture - image,
whatever you'd want to call it - I saw the way, or I think I did.  Camouflage,
when you look at it right, is one of
101
the most interesting things of all.  I'd seen a lot of it up on the Brooks,
seen it in birds, seen it in aninials of all kinds up there, feathers changing
colors, fur changing colors, to hide better, to hunt better: both sides.
     To be invisible and still to know what was going on, that was something. I
wondered what it-would be like lo be a ghost.  AN'hen I started thinking about
camouflage, like I say, I knew what I wanted to do - no, what I had to do.  It
was going to be the way.  Not the way out of Japan - by now I had almost no
notion of ever leaving Japan. If I had had to go back to the States or to the
Territory, I wouldn't have any idea what to do. I was so much involved in what
I was doing now, the interest of it, the possibilities: the way up to the
north, the other big island the maps and the briefers told us was all mountains
and snow, where there would be the kind of animals and birds I grew up with,
the kind of cold that cleans out your insides like fire, where there's ice in
the water and I could live like I was used to living, like I wanted to live. 
There ought to be places between me and the mountains and the snow fields where
I could more or less pick the colors, and take them on, at least in some way. 
If I took my time - and I had plenty of it - I should be able to fit the color
of some of i-ny situations - hillsides, fields, woods and tune to them: tune
myself to them by color.  Maybe this wouldn't always work, and maybe I wouldn't
always be able to do it, but I planned to try.  It was worth it, worth a lot. 
It might be worth everything.
     I drifted into sleep with all this on my niind, and there'd been very few
nines when I'd been happier.
     What happened then was what should have happened, and it clinched the
thing for me. I was in snow, and bushes were over me like the rock was over me.
I was dead white, and still, stiller
102
than the rock, than the bush. I was waiting, and I knew I would
wait for as long as it took. I guessed that the field around me
was wide open; the danger was there.  Plenty of fear I had, and in
the dream - daydream at night, or whatever it was - I was afraid
to move.  But then, too, I was not only afraid to move, but I knew
how not to move. I closed my eyes and knew that I was dead white,
and might not be found.  But as I lay there everything slowly
started to change. I was not afraid: the main sensation I had was
terrific hunger, more than I'd ever had.  The stillness translated
into that, turned into it. I was not under the bush anymore. I was
outside, but I was just as still.  My muscles, though they were
crouched, were not pulled up to make me small, but gathered, and I
could tell they were longer. I looked for the breath of the other
thing; I looked for the eyes.  Breath, breath, I held my own,
there in the open field with one bush.  Something was there.  All
it had to do was open its eves and I would be on it.  It would not
have a chance.
     I woke up in the same position.  When I turned my head the
feathers crackled. I gathered myself up and rolled out in the same
way I'd practiced the night before, but there was no need.  I
crouched, stayed in the crouch for a moment, and stood up.  The
light before the sun was coming on; I could see the roughest
places in the rough rock.
     The snow field and the two kinds of stillness left me, though
they had told me what I needed to know, and I began to listen and
look for more aircraft, the reality of them.  The traffic, though
farther away, was still there, and I was more sure than ever there
was an air base somewhere around, maybe even over the next hill.
     The hill curved, the terrace curved.  When I came around I
looked down into the valley on my right, and stopped.  There
103
were houses close together, and in front of three of them were
aircraft, parked in yards.  Thev were jacks, the big new barrel-
shaped fighter the Nips had just brought into combat. I had never
seen one in the air, but we'd been briefed on them, and told to
watch for a plane that looked like the P-47, the Jug, but didn't
have as big an engine.  The jack is a clumsy-looking crate, even
more than the jug is, and it looked even clumsier standing next
to those Japanese houses where civilians lived.  They weren't
camouflaged, and one of our fighters could have got all three of
them on one pass.  It didn't matter all that much; that was
somebody else's problem. What't did tell me was that I had been
right about there being an ai base not far away. The jacks would
have to get to a strip to take off; they sure couldn't use the
dirt road they were parked next to.  The likely thing was that
they would use the road as a taxiway to the strip, and it wouldn't
make sense, even to the Nips, to have their roads cluttered up
with aircraft for long stretches. I was close to a strip, I was
sure, and when I came around the next curve it was right there in
my face.
     It was a big field, real big, going out as far as I could
see, but there were no aircraft up.  Around the tin hangars, which
were starring to catch the sun, a few people moved around. I would
have to make a big detour to get past the place, and I was
beginning to put my mind to it, watching the hangar area because
there was not anything else to look at except rows of parked
aircraft - mainly Bettys and Zeroes, with a few more of the big
uglyjacks - and empty field going out to the horizon, when my eyes
concentrated before they knew it, and I went down on my belly,
wishing I had field glasses or the kind of sight a hawk has.  A
bunch of men were with one other, and were walking him along. 
Even as far away as I was, I could see that his
104
hands were tied behind his back, and that could mean only one
thing.  Or it meant tAo things: he was an American, and what they
told us at Tinian about being captured was the truth - the Japs
were going to do what we'd been told about. I wondered if it was
somebody who'd been shot down in the same raid I was, or in some
other raid, but it didn't really matter.  They came out through
the rows of planes to an open space just off the near end of the
hangars, and stopped.
     The wind picked up, coming from there over me, and I
listened, listened hard.  There was nothing I could get, and I put
more strength into my ears, and cocked one, cupping it.  But I
didn't need to, and I probably wouldn't have needed the wind,
either, though with the wind there was not any doubt.  The guy
screamed, standing there with his hands tied, and screamed again,
something that sounded like a name, but if it was, I didn't catch
it.  The others shoved him down onto his knees, and he fell over
to one side, moving his legs.  One of the Japs pulled him by the
hair back to his knees and he screamed again, and this time it was
not a name - just a sound, high and carrying. There was a lot in
that sound, and if I hadn't known what made it, I would have been
hard put to believe it was from a human.  It was not like any
animal, either; it was different from all of them.
     The sun was pretty near blinding, now, off the tin roofs of
the hangars when you looked that way.  The shimmer of it spread on
the tin, and in some way seemed to stand up off it into the air
and curve, one wave bending out toward the ocean and the other
over into the hills.  It went into the bunch of men, too, and for
a second it seemed like some kind of magic that the blaze from the
roof had put into somebody's hands, there in another curve, short
and flashing in and out of the dry cold light that should have
been hot.  The rest of the group stood back, and
105
there were just two of them then, at the edge of the cement, on
the grass this side of it.  The man on his knees was still. The
Jap with the light in both hands bent his left knee like somebody
getting ready to hit a baseball, and brought the sword around in a
fast lick like a man who knew exactly what he was doing, had done
it before.  The American's head fell forward but not off.  Blood
jumped in front of him at least a yard, and before he went down
the Jap with the sword hit him again, and this time the head came
off and rolled over. The body jerked and lay there pouring out
blood, and one of the other Japs came over and kicked it a couple
of times, hard.

There was nothing more to see.  Before they picked up the body and
the head I was already moving off, keeping low, and over the crest
onto the terrace on the other side. I leaned against the bank with
the feathers, checked my compass, set my mind forward, and started
west, to spend however much t'me 't took to get around the base.
     I made a wide detour, very slow, going ahead a few steps at a
time like I was on a stalk; I would probably be on a still-hunt
before long.  It was cold but not too cold. I had been looking
forward to sewing my suit of feathers, but I didn't really need it
yet, and besides, I wanted some other clothes to wear while I did
the sewing.  Right then I concentrated on making time - slow time
- around the air base, and gave it as much room as it needed. 
This took me back over a good many ridges and terraces, and on
some of them people were working, but I moved so they were all far
away from me.  From what I could tell, the Japanese, the men and
the women both, like to spend a lot of
106their time crouched over.  More than half of them wore glasses,
and it struck me that all of thein, or most of them, were near-
sighted and couldn't cope with anything unless they could get
their eyes right up next to it. I could see them working with
whatever they planted on the terraces, bent way over and staying
that way, moving around little by little, or down on their knees
peering at something right in front of them.  Only once did I see
anybody turn his head and look anywhere else but at the ground. 
The guy saw me, but I just stood there and then bent over like
they did.  When he looked back down at the ground, I was gone.
     When I had been traveling on the terraces for two hours I
slanted, not due north vet but northwest, and by that time I was
off the terraces and into real hills, steep ones, like foothills
are, some places.  That suited me a lot better, because there were
not likely to be people, or only a few now and then, since there
was no work to do on the hills, amongst the trees, except maybe
picking up kindling, and no food.
     It was very quiet, and as I topped out over one hill after
another, and never came on anybody, I decided I would knock off
the traveling and rest up. I still had a little raw swan meat, and
knew I had better eat it before it went bad from carrying it and
sweating on it, and I pulled up in a corner where that particular
hill made an angle, and figured to have myself a picnic and rest
my feet.  Whenever I could quit the- sweat-out of moving in
daylight I was cheerfal, and felt like I'd spent the day pretty
well, and hadn't got caught or had to fight or run.  Since the
night before, and iny notions about camouflage, I had got inore
confidence than ever, and I looked forward to being still and
turning my mind on that subject again, for the good feeling.
     I did all that.  First I thought about camouflage, but I
couldn't
107
add a whole lot to what I'd already come up with.  Even though it
was cold enough, there was not any snow yet. I wasn't expecting it
here, anyway; I wasn't ready for it. I was moving through hills
and short fields covered with needles - spruce needles, though not
the kind in Alaska - and I thought brown had to be the good color,
an easy color to pick up from.  The dirt was almost the same color
as the needles.

But I wouldn't do that tonight, I told myself, chewing on part of
a swan wing. I wouldn't.  I'd give myself a vacation, and think
forward, on up to the other island where the big snow was, where
it always was.  When I got to the deep snow I would roll in it,
roll in it like a bear. I could feel every sense I had get better
just thinking about it.  The light went and the moon came, and
another light. I put the bag of feathers over my feet, and then
opened it and put my feet in amongst the feathers, which was
great.  When my feet got warm the rest of my body did, too.  If
you know anything about cold-weather people, you'll know how true
that is.
     I got up before dawn and traveled, slanting a little west
again as the sun came up over the hills.  The land was higher now,
and the hills were steeper.  There were no roads at all.  When the
sun was about level with me I topped out over the highest rise yet
and there was a lake below me, a fairly big one, around a hundred
and fifty acres, as I judged. I thought about seeing if I could
get down into one of the coves, where I could hide in the bushes
along the edge and try to fish with my emergency hooks and line. I
was almost out of swan meat and would have to have something to
eat soon, to keep going.
108
     I had never seen a lake so empty since I left Alaska; there
were people and boats swarming all over the ones in the States. 
The blue of the water was sure an interesting color, and as the
sun came up and hit down and across it, the color deepened and
brightened in a way that would really hold your eye.  I'd seen the
sun on water lots of times, and always liked it, but there's one
thing I always look for that I haven't seen but once or twice, in
summer after the ice melts on the Brooks and there's water
standing in lots of places.  The sun on top of water is one thing,
but the sun in it - down somewhere under the surface where it
makes a kind of a box shape, you could say, a box that changes,
that goes in and out like it's breathing - that's something else
again, I'll tell you.
     This lake had that for me.  It might have been my angle from
it, or the angle of the sun, or maybe both, but I saw that gold
box with the sides thinner than anv paper, alive down there, alive
with itself.  It was big, too, the biggest yet; it would've had to
be big for me to see it from that far.  Then the box was gone, but
I took it for a good sign, and knew I could go down and do
whatever I wanted, near where it was.
     I made little steps down through the trees - mostly needle
trees but also a small kind of oak with wide, stout branches -
watching all the time.  There was a cove right under me where the
trees grew down to the edge of the water, and I slid into it and
looked around.  I'd thought I would fish, but now I wanted to use
the time another way.  It was warmer, and I could have sewed my
cold-weather gear together if I'd wanted to, got the feathers into
the clothes and not have to carry the bag anymore.  But if I did
that, I would have to wear what I made, and if there was even a
chance that it would be warm anywhere, I would sweat bad, lose a
lot of strength, and not have anything I could
109
do about it. Wait, I said; on the cold and the weather that would
make a suit of feathers feel like it was something that God made
just for you. Wait for the other island, I said.  Or the full
north of this one.
     I sat down in the bushes to rest my back.  The lake took on a
different tone this close: it was a lighter blue. What I wanted
was to get another glimpse of the sun down in the water, under it a
few feet, or way down, maybe, I wanted the conditions to put the
sun in a box, in that red-orange box that went in and out, that
beat like a heart in a way nobody could ever have thought of, but
was there.
     I couldn't find it, though, no matter what, no matter how I
angled my head through the bushes.  But I had seen it from the
hill, in a way that must be like you'd see a ghost, and that
heart, that sun in a box, I had.  It meant a lot to me. I kept
thinking about it: the underwater cube, about half box and half
diamond.
     I peeled my emergency kit loose from my side, openedi it, and
took out the fishhooks. The kit itself was exactly like it had
been when I taped it to me on Tinian. I had looked at it once, in
the cab of the gantry on the dock where I came down, but I had
taken the time to put it back together right, and it was still no
different from when it came from the factory, or wherever the Air
Force got it.  The fishhooks were bright, with the kind of
brightness that makes metal seem new, whether it is or not. They
caught the sun, and with each of the four I held the shank and
bent the curve out a little.  When you get the hook in the fish's
mouth you don't want him to be able to nose up against the shank
and tear loose.  It should be just him and the hook, and you
pulling on it from the other end.  That's something they don't
teach you in factories, but the machines could just as easliy do
it as not, if they knew what they were doing. I packed
110
the kit again and taped it back.  The adhesive was still strong
enough, and I could pull it loose two more times, or maybe three,
before I would have to think of some other way to carry it. But
that would be later.
     I looked back up through the bushes onto the hillside, and
then leaned over and picked up a handful of dirt. I could do it; I
believed my notion was right; it would work.  Beginning with my
feet, I rubbed the dirt into my shoes and clothes, into the skin
of my hands and face.  It took me an hour to do the job right,
taking off the pants first, and then the shirt - or coat, whatever
it was - to do the back parts. I wanted the dirt dry, and kept it
that way, and rubbed it in, heeling it with my hand to put on as
much pressure as I could.  Now and then, as the sun got higher, I
matched the color of the clothes - my color now - to the slant of
the hill. I kept doing this, and in the end the match was surely
close.  If I kept still I was sure I would blend with the hill,
with anv hill around there.  Then we would see.
     I worked on my face and hands again, looking into the sun on
the lake, getting farther froin its color, darker and darker, but
not too dark.  There was not a sound, except a little sift of air
at the level of the water.  Sitting there on my heels, I was
quieter than it was, and I waited, halfway between the snowshoe
hare and the lynx, enjoving both sides, hiding and still-hunting
at the same time.  Something flowed back and forth between the two
kinds of invisibility, the two kinds of stillness, until finally I
couldn't help it, didn't want to - I bent forward on one knee and
pulled the knife up along my thigh and out.
     Light on things was different in Japan, I was thinking; at
least it was for me. Especially it seemed to catch metal and water
at another angle, and catch it quicker and stay longer, always
quivering. I tilted the blade, running the sun up and down it. I
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wondered if anybody on the other bank would pick up the flash.  It
was a long way over there, though; nobody would come if anybody
noticed, it would be like the house where I had flickered
the fire of the candle off the blade: the family had
looked up and around, and then gone back, to eating; and forgotten
about it.  There had been a sign set in that house, and this was
another one. I bent over close to the water and laid the           
blade flat on it, and then a little under, still catching the sun.
I didn't run the light along it this time, but held it steady,
making it balance like the bubble in a carpenter's level, branding
the blade from inside.  Very satisfying it was, for sure.
     After I wiped off the blade and put it back, I opened the
survival kit and got out the simall GI knife and sharpened it. I
washed the dirt off my face, sat on a rock where I could clean off
the hair in the lake, and shaved.  It was not so bad, shaving
in cold water, by feel, the light cutting clean while the sun hit
the fresh skin. I waited for a few minutes before I smeared on
more dirt, just to keep the freshness feel longer and watch the
light on the lake at the same time. When I'd done that, I put on a
new face of dirt and was ready to try it out.
     Going up the hill, I kept matching myself with what I came
to, with whatever I passed. I would look at the back of my hand
against a bare place on the slope, and if I had kept still, and
there had been my distance at all between my hand and whoever was
looking, it would have been hard to tell it was there. When I was
about ten years old my father took me south, all the way down into
the States, to Colorado, because he thought that maybe we ought to
move there, get off the Brooks Range so I could grow up with more
people around, not just Indians and Eskimos. We stayed in Colorado
a week.  Neither one of us liked it, and we went back north as
soon as we could.  There was nothing for us
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amongst all those cars and stores, where you have to ride everv-
where. I did get off into some of the hills around Greeley,
though.  It was summer, and real hot, and I remember climbing down
part of the trail, and out of the corner of one eye I saw a rock
move. I went over real slow, and it didn't move; it was just a
rock, a dull slope and the pattern of it.  And then it moved
again, like a wave of rock, coming to life and flowing, almost
floating, over the other ground with the same marks.  It was a big
rattlesnake, the only one I ever saw and when it quit moving again
I got as still as it was, and took it in. We both stayed a long
time, and then it started off again. When it moved the whole
canyon shifted a little.  This time I stayed where I was and let
it flow away until I couldn't see it, because it had blended in
even better than before or was under another rock or was just
gone.  From watching the animals and birds up on the muskeg, on
the tundra, and on the Brooks, I've always believed that if camou-
flage is good enough, if it is right exactly, the bird or the
aninial will not just be invisible, it won't be there. When the
rattlesnake did something so that my eyes - which can see what the
others can't - couldn't pick it up, I knew I was right.  My hand
on the bare place on the slope, there in Japan, was like that. 
Like that or just about; it was almost somewhere else, or just
not.
     I moved part of the way up the side of the hill, and when I
couldn't see the lake anymore I started to travel again, walking
the slant and being quiet.  My camouflage made a lot of difference
in the way I was moving, like I had put on some other kind of
dimension, you might say; that was the feeling of it. And because
it was, the trees and bushes and pine needles and rocks that were
on the slope were different, too. I used the trees in another way
from what I was used to. When I came to a bare place the other
dimension was stronger, like it even stood out
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from me, stood off me a little, and everything in me and on me got
better.  Where there were trees I slid from one to the other on
the downhill side of them. Where there were spaces between I went
over them, not hurrying, facing uphill, not just to see what might
come down from that side, but to give my camouflage a chance to
work, give me a chance to check it.
   The only thing that worried me were the bags. I had done
everything I could to make them the same color I was, but they
were were still loose from me, not right on me like everything else I 
had, and I didn't trust them not to swing or separate from me in
some way that somebody might notice, if he was to look.  But
nothing like that happened, and I went right along, and must have
made a couple of miles, concentrating on the different shades of
brown - needles and bark - as my own brown came past them and
through them. I was hungry.  I'd been hungrier, but I knew that
before long I would most likely have to be around people again,
for their food; I didn't want to go another day without eating
anything.  It takes energy to walk, a lot of it, especially when
you're walking the side of a slope and have to do a certain amount
of balancing. I was thinking about this when I heard a shuffle, up
from me and maybe fairly far off. I was between two trees. I
stopped right there and waited. I could have got down behind the
next trunk - it was only a few steps - but I didn't.  If there
were people, they wouldn't be close enough to see my eyes, no
matter where they were.
     It was people: four women and two girls, all in long black
dresses.  They were picking up sticks and tying them into bundles.
I couldn't hear any sound from their handling the sticks: the
shuffling was made by their clothes.  Strange that the sound
carried that far: about fifty yards, where they came out of the
trees. I stayed where I was, and when all six heads were down I
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put the bag on the ground behind me and got real still again,
waiting for one of the heads to turn.
     That happened.  One of the women, old and almost baldheaded,
separated off from the others and came down the hill.  One step
she took, two, then three, looking at the ground all the time. I
looked with her: looked for the same sticks she was looking for. 
Neither one of us found any.  Then she raised up Japanese women
seem to have a lot of trouble raising up, but she did - and had
her eyes on some place a few feet to the north of me.  She turned
to go back up the hill, and when she did her eyes went across me
like a ray, the beam of a flashlight, if you can think of it that
way in broad daylight, and then went right on by.  Nothing about
me registered at all, and I breathed and waited more, halfway
hoping she'd do it again, because my invisibility was strong, the
strongest yet.  It stood off me like a wall, a circle; she
couldn't break it.  Come on, old lady, I said, almost out loud. 
Come across me again and not see me.  Come back the other way this
time, going north.
     She bent down again, though, and went back to the others,
doing as close to crawling as a person could and still be on feet. 
They talked a minute - me all the time standing right out there in
the open between the two trees - and then got all the bundles of
wood together in a pile, picked them up, and put them on one
woman's back or the other, and in those shufflesteps moved up the
hill.  When the trees closed in behind them I followed, out of
sight but going where they were, at least for a while.  When I got
up over the ridge they were gone, and I forgot about them and just
walked, staying on the ridge and having no more to do with them
except to remember the woman's eyes going past me, around me, over
me, like a flashlight
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bea in broad daylight: something inside the other light that
couldn't see.
     I didn't run into anybody else that afternoon, and I moved
along more or less like I wanted to.  There didn't seem to be any
reason for me not to stay on top of the ridge where was easier to
walk, and so I did.  The notion came to me that I might try to
work inland more, because from what I could tell, and from my map,
it was steeper there, and I might not be as likely to run into
anybody.  But for now things seemed to be pretty much in my favor
the way they were, and there was no sense in me changing them just
to be changing. I walked the ridge, looking down both sides every
few steps, until it began to get dark.
     It had warmed up some, and was really not uncomfortable
weather at all. I knew what I was going to do.  First I wanted to
make something unusual, so that if somebody found it they would
look at it and not me.  In the last light I piled up a lot of
branches and twigs and pine straw, and shaped the whole thing more
or less the size of a man, like I did before, though he would've
been bigger than I am. I had the pile, my straw man, ust under the
east side of the ridge. I didn't want to put him on top, because
there was not any reason to cause suspicion if nobody came along. 
But if I put him down under the crest a little, and somebody found
him, I'd be sure to hear it when it happened, and I could move off
in the dark.  Sound was what I depended on. I had all the
confidence in the world that this would work. I can hear as well
as anything on two feet, and most of them on four. I can listen
with any animal.
     After I finished under the ridge, I went down about fifty
yards and made another pile like the first one, but this time
behind a tree; the head and feet stuck out only just barely. When
I'd
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checked it from every position I got inside, put my hands under my
armpits and my feet in the sack of feathers, and stretched out. I
could still feel the ray, the beam of the woman's eyes, go past
me. I left my listening on, wide open, but with the woodwoman's
eyes going past me, and past again, like a lighthouse beam going
around and coming back. I knew I would sleep, and I did.  Never
better.

I got up at first light and went to check my man under the crest. 
Nobody had bothered him, and I left him like he was, with a
friendly feeling for him watching out for me all night. I needed
to eat, that was all. I hoped the day would figure that out for
me.
     I decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to walk the ridge
all day, because I was almost sure to come on somebody on one side
or the other, and I didn't want to stand out against the sky or
the trees for a long time, either; that would be maybe putting
more weight on my luck than it could hold.  Besides, the ridge was
dropping, getting closer and closer to the floor of the valley
between banks, and when the land flattened out there'd be people,
more than likely. I slanted down the bank and worked up and over
the ridges to the west until I found one I wanted, then moved up
to look down the crest, to see what was on the other side, and
plan for it.
     At first it didn't seem any different from the brown side of
the hill, like the other hills and slopes I'd been on.  But it was
not exactly the same when I stayed with it, watching.  About a
hundred yards off, part of the hill was moving, and it was not
with wind.  There wasn't any wind, and the movement seemed to be
going away from me, like parts of the bank stepping back-ward
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and upward on each other, lifting one foot, one bunch of needles
after the other, to climb, but not moving from the same place. I
had never seen anything like it, or felt anything like it. I
held on there, in the feeling, for a couple of minutes because I
thought I shouldn't break it. I didn't really want to know what it
was that was stepping backward up the hill in the same place,
going but not going.
     The feeling left me, or thinned out some, and I wanted to
know. I moved, not toward the other hill but to one side, and the
shape of the thing came clear. It was a wheel of some kind,
turning backward, like a ferris wheel I'd seen in Colorado on that
trip with my father. I couldn't hear any sound from it,            
but now and then there was a spark - a sparkle would be more like
it -- some somewhere in the wheel.  It'd flash out when I got to
looking for it, but hit me quicker or slower than I expected, like
a game, like something blind-siding me because it knew it could. 
It was not steel, not glass or tin; it was water-flash, not any
other kind, and it was being carried up, backward and around.  The
thing I was looking at was a water wheel. I went toward it, tree
by tree, then across the floor of the draw where there were not
any trees, then tree by tree up the other bank, dead alone, the
same color as the hillside and the wheel.
     It was fed from a spring behind it, in a low position you
couldn't see from the forward side. I drank with both hands, and
watched the buckets fill and come down and forward and under, then
up back-ward and around, and top out over the ridge, where people
must have got the water when they needed it.  The wheel and
everything about it - the rims, the spokes, the cross-strips that
held them together, the buckets, the pins they turned on - was a
job of work you wouldn't see every day, going around on itself
like it was, not making one sound you
118
could hear until you were right there at it, and with it, until
you were as close as I was.  Even then I could barely make out a
faint splash as a bucket went under the spring, and a little wet
grinding-swinging noise as it passed the bottom of the curve and
started up. I hadn't known until just that minute how good the
Japs were with wood.  Everything about the wheel looked like it
ought to have been made out of metal, engineered metal, but it
wasn't.  Wood was better; this way, it was.  A real balance was
part of the whole rig: I had the notion that air could have turned
it just as easily as water was doing.
     I went over closer, where I could see into the buckets as
they came past.  A tree was right behind me, and in every bucket
as it started to lift, a reflection of branches and leaves was in
it, trembling, rocking, being held and raised with a lot of care,
like the water in each bucket that went by was worth more than the
last.  It was a thing I didn't mind watching, didn't mind getting
in there with and staying for a while.  The way the water was
raised lifted something in me, too, that at any other time might
have too much weight, would stay where it was and not climb, or
even move.
     When I turned, an old woman was looking right at me from
about ten feet away.  She might have seen a man made out of pine
straw and dirt, holding a brown bag, but she saw me, eyes and all.
I had got used to holding still when I thought somebody might be
watching, and I didn't want to give myself away like the snake in
Colorado, so that I saw the rock move and turn into him. I was
already nailed now, though. Where the woman had come from, how she
had got so close without my knowing it, I could never figure out
because I never heard a thing.  She was just near me, a rag around
her hair, her head cocked and her mouth a little open. I couldn't
let her go, or stay.
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     I had the knife through her before she could even blink, and
then pulled it out and put it through her again.  She hadn't had
time to scream, but I got into my stillness again - deep - and
from there went over the whole valley with my eyes.  There was not
any change. I picked up the body, which was hardly bleeding, and
carried it over behind the tree that had made the reflection in
the buckets. I looked back at the water and wheel, and it gave me
a notion of something to do.  Behind the tree I sawed off the head
and put pine straw and leaves over the body, making a shape like
the one I had left on the ridge the night before, to watch out
over me while I was asyeep. When I took the head and fitted it
into one of the buckets, just as it came past. I watched it rise
up toward the crest of the ridge, but before it got there I left,
keeping to the lower side of the slope until the wheel was out of
sight behind me.  A head for a head, I thought.  But really, when
I'd done it I didn't have that idea at all.  It was just something
that came to me later, after I was gone.

All the rest of the day I traveled west and north, moving over one
ridge after another.  The ridges were about the same height, but
the whole land was climbing, me with it. I thought the country
would probably top out and leave me on a plateau, and if that was
so, I'd have to be even more careful than I already was.  Walking
the slopes, I was protected on one side until I cleared the crest,
and I was more or less confident that my hillside brown would
pretty much keep me from being seen, at least at a distance,
though it still bothered me that the old woman had got up on me
without my knowing it.  If it had been anybody else, or more than
one, it might have been bad. I went
120on, doing my best to make sure that noting like that would happen
again. Three times I saw people, always below me, picking up wood,
all women and kids except for one man, whose voice, sharp and thin, was the only one I heard.  They were
far down from me, all the time with their eyes on the ground, and
I eased by them little by little until I was out of sight, and
could pick up my pace.
     In the late afternoon wind started to blow, and when I came
up over another ridge it didn't fall off to the other side. I had
my plateau, and now I tried to figure what to do with it.  Being
as cautious as I could, I went along it, still angling west, and
caine to a kind of guily, with walls about ten or twelve feet
high. I thought at first that 1 t was a road, because it was
getting too dark to see, but when I slid down into it I could tell
it was not a road.  But the gully was not natural, I could tell
that, too.  The bed, covered with leaves and pine straw, had been
cut out for some reason. I walked it as free as air, near the west
bank. I thought the middle would be just as good, and more room,
but when I tried to cross, my foot caught on something and I went
down.
     When I was down I was already feeling, though, and in a
minute knew what the situation was.  The sides were cutbanks, and
under the leaves and needles were railroad tracks, closer together
than anv I knew about, but tracks thev were. I looked north along
them, and in the new moonlight I could see a wink of metal forward
from nie, and then, now that I knew what I was looking for,
another one farther on. I walked ahead in the moonlight, one foot
on the west side of the tracks and the other in the middle, and
even on the curves I didn't stumble again.  I felt freer than I had
in a long time, going along with no slope to climb or pull back
against, with no trees, nothing to go around. I walked until I was
tired out, and then climbed up the
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east bank - it was not quite as high - put my feet in the bag
of feathers and my head on a pile of pine straw, and went into a
good strong sleep.
     When I woke up I was sorry the night was over.  Walking the
tracks in the moonlight had been a good thing; after every curve I
would look for the glints along in front of me, and they kept
springing up, white with some blue in it, like runway lights set
to show you where to come down, to be safe for a little while on
the ground after the night's raid.  Finally I stretched, and slid
down the cutbank. I knelt down then, and put my ear to the 
                              track. I had done this a few times before, in western Alaska 
where they have railroads, and also in Colorado, but I had never
heard anything. I wondered what the sound was supposed to be.
Somebody had told me that you can hear a train fifty miles off if
you listen to the rails. I bent down, solid on my hands and knees,
and listened again.  Nothing.  But I stayed there and thought
about my listening - my ear, I guess you could say; my bran, my
head - gong both ways down the track, but mainly forward, through
the woods, on over the mountains ahead of me, over roads and
bridges, through towns, on and on, never getting where it was
supposed to end up, but just going.  The places I thought of -
with my head on the track like somebody who was trying to commit
suicide when the train came or who was just practicing for it -
were only one or two of them in Japan: the city on fire, which I
blanked out because it didn't interest me, and the road where I
drank the bottle of w'ne.  The track to the north - really, that's
all I wanted - went up into the snow and over the frozen water. I
believed that if I or somebody could've made a record of it and
called it "Frozen Water," people would've believed that's what it
meant.  The sound was nothing, but the listening was level, dead
level, like
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looking over a lake of blue ice that didn't have the other side. 
There wouldn't be any animal tracks on it, but maybe snow falling.
I put snow there, and it was twice as good, twice as much as what
it was.
     I got up, and pictures of lakes and the tundra faded; the
muskeg went, and I leaned back against the cutbank. I decided to
follow the track, but not walk along it, where it would be easier
to get trapped. I climbed out, and keeping the edge of the cutbank
in sight, started to work forward through the trees.  They were
wide apart, and most of them were big; there were lots of cones
and needles on the ground.  As I went on they seemed to take on a
shine, especially the cones did, and I picked one of them up.  It
was wet - not soaked, but wettish. I didn't like that, but went on
anyway, checking the bark of the trees.  They were all like that,
wet on them when the air had condensed.  And it was warmer, too. 
How could that be? The sky was overcast with light gray clouds,
fast cold-looking ones, and the woods were not still, sumpish;
there was air from behind, moving with me into the sick-feeling
trees.
     I went on, the land dropping.  As this happened I began to
feel like there was something ahead of me: something concentrated,
stopped up, maybe, something I probably wouldn't like.  The more
the land dropped, the more I felt this, until what had caused the
feeling came at me, almost not there, as dim as it was, but there
just the same, shifting a little with the air as it climbed out of
itself, spread, still climbing but thick enough to reach back down
to the ground.
     It was steam.  No wonder the trees are sick, I thought,
inhaling the stuff that had always made me queasy, and was doing
it now.  There was a town in the inidst of it. I could see some
low houses when the air moved, and something came back to me
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from the briefings on Tinian.  The Nips like heat, the intelli-
gence officers told us.  They live from one steam bath to the next
one, and they'd stay in steam and sweat all their lives if they
could. I looked around then, and the situation made sense: the
village, the steam, and the railroad.  None of the trees had been
cut.  That meant the steam was made by either coal or wood, and I
was fairly sure that it was wood, from the smell of the steam,
which I should have noticed before but probably didn't want to
believe when I first picked it up.  How could anybody live like
this, I wondered, half sick still but not getting any worse.  Who
would want the trees around him to be wet, unless it was rain? Or
the leaves or the rocks? I knew it from what I saw, and from my
breath.  Nobody should have to live like this.  It was all wrong,
I was sure.  They didn't deserve the world.
     I put my eyes on into the steam, farther and farther, using
the wind shifts that moved the heavy air to one side or the other. 
Whenever it happened I tried to get some notion about how big the
town was and how it was laid out, how I could get past it the
easiest.  No matter how hard or how long I looked, I couldn't make
out a lot, there was so much of that warm, feathery fog hanging
down.  There were no people in it that I could see.  They were
probably in the buildings, wallowing in hot water, hoping they
never had to get out.  If that was so, it was good from my
standpoint, but I knew better than to trust the notion too far. 
The way I do things is to concentrate real hard on the first part
of a problem that leads to another part, and then bear down on the
next one, the saiue way, when I get to it.  Sometimes you find
yourself in a situation where it's better not to think, but just
to let go of everything and ride - there's a split second when you
tell your brain to go out of you and something
124
else in yourself takes over.  You don't have to worry any more; it'll all work
out.
     This was not one of those times, though, and I boned down on what choices
I had and what advantages I could give myself I had to get past the town - that
was first. I could pull back and go around it, which would have taken some
time, but I could have done it. I could try to walk through at night. I doubted
if there'd be an electric light in the place, and I might just ease on through
and nobody say anything to me.  But somehow that didn't suit me all that much. 
The situation might give me a chance to do something really interesting,
something it called out of me, and that I ought to do.  My mind kept coming
back to the train, and I thought of open freight cars full of logs: logs laid
in the same direction as the tracks. I thought about being carried along, too.
I had been walking long enough; I had just as soon ride for a while.
     I decided to give the train one more day.  Even though there was a lot of
stuff on the tracks and between them - cones, needles, leaves, branches, pieces
of bark, twigs - there were some things you could guess about as a result; they
gave you something to hash over.  Either the tracks were not used at all, and
the railroad had just been left there to the weather, or they were still used,
but hadn't been for at least a week or so. The last notion seemed to me the
best, because the banks hadn't crumbled, or at least not much, and even though
it didn't look as though anybody had been to much trouble to keep them up, they
had not just been let go, either.  Again, one more day, I said. I really wanted
the train to come. I looked forward to it, up there on the station platform of
pine cones and wet rocks.
     I slept most of the afternoon, feet in my feathers, and then
125
went dow and listened to the tracks again.  Still nothing. The lake of ice went
farther and farther in my brain, the far shore of it did, and never ended,
because the no-sound of it never quit, and the sound of the no-sound.
     I hadn't realized how tired I was, and went back to sleep as the moon,
which had halved itself going through a cloud, or gave me the notion that it
might have done it that way, rose over the woods and came down on the tracks,
shining straight away from me toward the village until they got to looking like
needles, points of light that would go through anything.
     I woke up hungry.  It was barely light, and I lay like I used to do,
topping the Brooks Range looking south, when it got warm there, as warm as it
ever got.  There was something about Japan that bothered me, now more than
before.  In all these woods, among the trees, under them, in them, and over
them, there were not many birds, and I hadn't seen any animals at all.  The
ones in my head got stronger, though; stronger because of the absence of the
others.  Luck or not, I couldn't tell you.
     But I believe in luck, which sometimes you can push and sometimes just
comes, even when it doesn't have to.  Blind-side luck I don't count on much,
but I did then, while I waited for the train.  Once in the morning and another
nine in the early part of the afternoon I went to the track and listened to the
ice stretch away.  Then, when the sun got down far enough so you could look
right at it without blinking, I bent down again, and it was different.  Inside
the ice sound was another one, a steady beat with a wire hum through it.  Not
music exactly, but near. I lounged out on my belly and put one ear to the track
and then the other, making sure I laid my hand to the steel: there was not a
quiver. I waited, and the humming waited.  It must have taken an hour for it to
get close enough for me to go up the
126
bank, kneel on one knee behind a push, and get ready for what
would come.
     After a while it was there, the engine fuming the curve real
slow, like an animal at this time of day - heavy twilight - put-
ting one foot after the other on strange ground, careful about
noise.  The engine went by, and I concentrated on what was
unwinding behind it, moving past the curve into the straight. 
There were three closed cars, and the rest was open-car wood, some
of it lashed but the logs of most of it stacked, the ends of the
top ones pale as targets, coming under me and on by. I didn't
think about it, but I knew what I would do. I picked up my bag of
feathers and the other sack, waited for the engine to start around
the next turn, took one long step and a short one, left the bank
in the air and dropped to the logs, about ten cars back from the
coal car. I landed solid, and sat down on a log, watching the bank
and the trees on it ride sideways and backward, like I was
sightseeing or something, even though there was nothing to
surprise me; I had been there. I knew how far it was to the town,
and I knew I had time.
     But I kept on looking, anyway. I shifted around amongst the
shapes of the logs until I got into a position like I was in a
chair, and crossed mv feet like I might have done if I was in one,
and kept watching the trees go by.  I've always been one to get
comfortable, no matter where I was. I can take a piece of ground
my size, or anywhere near it, a couple of rocks or branches or
just my shirt or coat, and kind of arrange it myself, and if I'm
the least bit tired I'll be asleep in five minutes.  If, later on,
the train went through the town and I stayed with it, I already
knew which logs I would lie down between, and how I would put my
feet and head, so as to sleep with the position, and add the
train's motion to make it better and deeper. I looked
127
forward to that, because I had been on a train once before, going
to Colorado, and I remembered how good the sleep was.
     But now it was treetops, after the sun had gone, but with a
little light left in the high branches.  We slowed, and must have
been close to the town. I was going in amongst the logs when I
glanced back up one more time, and something, some part of a
shadow, moved, not catching any light, but with the shape of a
body to it. I just caught a glimp like part of the new dark, a
kind of a holt that went from one limb to another, but I saw it
had legs and a tall, though I couldn't make out the head.  Some-
thing like a marten, about the same size, from what I could tell. 
A fisher cat - it could have been that big.  But that thing went
through my heart like a charge of buckshot, I can tell you, and
those logs around me, that whole train, I't up.  You get those
charges sometimes, and the charge has got more power to it a lot
more - when vou ow you're not fooling yourself, that the thing has
hit you from a real place, that it's got the truth in it, and the
whole truth.
     The train slowed more, and kept on slowing. I went amongst
the logs for real then, pushing this way and that way, finding
which logs I could move, what I could make them do.  It was like
building a blind.  The arrangement had to look natural, but for
this it had to look arranged, too, like the logs had been put in
the car that way - not too arranged, though, because nobody except
maybe the Germans would have logs in perfect formation.  It was
lucky for me, in a way, that the logs were as heavy as they were,
because I like to change things around when I get the chance. I go
on the notion that anything can be better than it is; you can
really make it better.  But there was not muuch I could do or,
really, that I needed to do. I wedged one of the top logs over
onto another one, rolling it as much as I could, so that I could
128
slide in and down and out of sight. I did what I could to make sure the top log
wouldn't roll back and pin me me there, because if I got trapped and they
tumbled the logs out I would be mashed up pretty good.  But, like I say, I did
what I could, and got down.  It was not bad there, and I waited until the train
stopped.  It was dark now and I turned my listening on full power.
     I didn't have much idea about how you unload logs, but the station side of
the car probably unhooked and let down, and the logs rolled onto the platform,
or onto whatever carried them off from the station. I didn't think they would
do my car first because of where it was, but, even though I didn't hear any
grinding of steel or logs bumping or anyone's voice, I still thought I ought to
lift up and glance around, maybe like a marmot looking for hawks. I eased up
out of my wood hole, and then up over the side of the car, tilted, getting Just
one eye clear.  Even that way it was warmer, blurred, still - no air, or might
as well not be any. I hated to think what it must be like inside the houses:
little people, mainly women and old men, most of the women dumpy and fat, slick
with soap and sweat and pouring stagnant water on themselves and each other,
dim lights flickering on them, chattering with a lot of teeth, most rotten.
What an enemy!
     Four or five men were down the platform from me.  A vehicle like a weapons
carrier was backing and angling alongside the train, and I ducked again when I
heard metal on metal - a short sharp groan - and a load of logs rolled and
bumbled down.  It was time for me to move, and keeping as low as I could, I
went up over the opposite side of the car, dropped to the gravel, and elbowed
and slid under the train, coming out on my back, facing into the bolts, rolled
a foot or so away and listened.
129
     How long I couldn't say, because I didn't want to move. I mean, I didn't
want to move a little and stay where I was; if I was going to stay I wanted to
be as still as I could.  The thing that bothered me was that I didn't have any
plan. I didn't know what I was going to do, either there or when I got up. I
didn't like where I was, because there were too many uncertain things about it,
but I couldn't think of any reason to get out, or any place to go if I did. I
looked at the bolts and rods, and their arrangement                            
to see if I could get anything back.  Nothing hit me from the way they were;
they were just there.
     Then it was all solved.  The train gave a jerk - it happened so fast that
I thought I was dead before I could move.  It only went a foot or two forward,
just enough to change the bolts and rods over me.  It was fast enough, though. 
The next jump might do me in.  Or if the train started and was dragging
something along underneath it, that would be the end, sure enough. I rolled out
the same way I had come in.
     It was real dark where I was, and I couldn't make out a thing.  I hadn't
even looked on that side of the train when it was moving, and now I had to feel
around, first along the car and then behind me.  There was a bank about ten
feet away, and when my eyes got a little better adjusted I saw that I could get
up on it from that side better than from the other, and decided that's what I'd
do when the time came.
     But what now? I could stand there, I could sit, I could go back under the
train.  Or I could wait a while - how long? - roll under the train, check for
feet and noise, and then, if things seemed clear, move out and look around. 
About then, there was a long scratching screech of metal -which I was sure had
plenty of rust in it - and I heard the logs from a car down the line rumble and
bash.  They unloaded one car after the other,
130
coming along toward where I was, but two cars down from me they quit.  They
were near enough for me to hear voices, and after the banging and wood-whooming
of the logs going down into the carriers, everything got quiet again.  This
might be good.  If they didn't come back it meant that the rest of the wood was
supposed to be dropped off somewhere else, that the train would go on.  Another
thing: a feeling came through the side of the train that the business on the
other side had been finished. I can't tell you how I knew, but I would have bet
on it. I took the chance and went under the car again. I could see the wheels
of the carrier and a few feet shuffling around it, like feet of people who are
pushing something, and then everything was gone, and dead quiet was with me. I
hedged out, edging on my elbows, cleared the train, and backed up against the
car.
     The carrier, full of logs too big for little men, was just going around a
corner.  The men were bunched far up toward the engine, but nobody looked at
me. I separated myself from the train just then, before anybody could see me
there, or see me leaning, walked by a couple of buildings, shuffling, and into
a street.
     Underfoot was dirt; there was almost no sound, either from me or anything
else.  A light over one of the buildings might as well not have been there. 
The windows had wooden shutters on them, and at least two were boarded up and
nailed.  A few people passed me, walking like shadows, going slow and bent
over, and not talking or, as far as I could tell, looking at me or even at each
other. I didn't have the slightest bit of anxiety, and hadn't had any ever
since I got on the train. I went along like the others did, and as far as it
mattered to the town, it didn't seem as if I was any different froin the other
shadows. I didn't feel as if I belonged there, exactly - that would have been
hard - but nobody was
131
interested enough in me, even as an enemy, to break whatever routine they were
used to.
     I turned another corner.  Down the street, which had two lights on it
instead of one, there might be, I believed I could tell, something a little
more worth my time.  Still listening for the train to whistle, or to grind its
wheels or bang its cars together, I bent and foot-dragged along toward the
lights.  There was something different, sure enough.  Part of the light, I saw,
was on the ground, and came from one of the buildings.  When I got to it the
window was not boarded, but heavy-steamed glass.  No one was looking in.  No
one was on the street anywhere. I went back and forth along the glass, trying
to get my eyes through the steam. I couldn't at first, and then I found a place
where the glass had been rubbed across from the inside, maybe by somebody's
back or shoulder, and the heat hadn't had a chance to thicken up again yet.
     I could make out forms there.  No, one form.  It was getting dimmer as I
watched, dimmer and dimmer, but the energy of my focus on it made it last a
little longer, maybe, than it would have any other way.  A naked girl was
standing on the other side of a pool, facing me. I hadn't seen a woman naked
since I was a civilian, back at Point Barrow just before I came to the States
to enlist: a college girl from Kansas working with the Unuluk Eskimos one
summer who took up with me because she thought I could get her out into the
country around the Brooks Range, and other places she couldn't make it to on
her own. I told her she was trying to fuck herself on up through the tree line. 
That was all right with her, she said; better than all right.  She was a good
enough girl in some ways, strong and smart, with calves like a couple of kegs;
she could walk.  But I didn't take her, as it turned out. I was going into the
Air Force, and
132
didn't plan to go back out on the tundra before I enlisted, to
keep from getting drafted.
     As I say, she was the last before this, and she was not bad. 
A naked woman in a room with you, one who you can see from both
sides at the same time - the Kansas girl liked to stand in front
of a full-length mirror so I could see the back side of her while
I looked at her face-on from an angle - is right there with you;
she was double there, you could say.  But the Japanese girl was
dissolving, disappearing, going away for good into steam, but
still in front of me for just a minute more.  She could not have
been stranger if she'd been standing in powder snow - snow as fine
as flour; no, finer than flour - or in a cloud.  Her face was
toward me.  Her eyes were more or less on a level with mine. 
There was not any way she could see me, but I bet she felt me; I
was concentrating on her feeling me.  She picked up a bucket,
filled it with water from the pool, and poured the whole bucket
over her head. I couldn't see the water run down.  All I could
make out was an explosion of steam without any noise where her
head was.  She lifted her arms straight up and shook herself -
that was for me, I'm damned sure - as the water ran down into her
bush. I didn't see that that was where it ran, but it would have. 
The dark place, there at the middle of her, was the last of her I
saw before the cloud was solid with cloud, and I turned and went
back the way I came.  When I cleared the first corner and didn't
see anybody, I had the thought to straighten up, and I did.  Until
the train came in sight I went along like I usually would, and
didn't even change when I passed another bunch of shuffling
shadows. I eased right on by them, walking American.
After the dark of the streets, I thought that the place where
133
the train had stopped would be lighter, but it was not.  It was
just as dark: dark up toward the engine, dark under the wheels. 
It could have been stretched along one of the streets buried be-
hind me, maybe where the one window was, but on back farther into
the town, and it would have looked just like it did now.  All at
once, when I was about twenty-five yards from it, the train
jerked.  It settled, then jerked again. I thought fast. I might
make it from the dark of the street to the dark of the train, then
under and, when I started, back up onto it from the street side
and in amongst the logs where I'd been.  But if I tried to scale
the side of the car from the near side, I'd be a lot more likely
to be seen.  If there was one eye in that town pointed even
anywhere near my direction, that would be the end of it.  On the
other hand, if the train was getting ready to start out, under the
wheels would be the last place to be.  But if I wanted the train -
which I did, because I believed I understood it, that in a sense
it didn't mind me, and was even in favor of me - I had to take the
chance, and I took it.
     Crossing the dirt betmeen the buildings and the train was
only four or five steps, and in the last step I was already
rolling.  That's one of the good things you learn in Basic
training: how to roll.  And I never rolled better; old Sergeant
Brickley would have been proud of me. I was under the same car,
staring hard at the bolts and rods again, when the train jerked -
jumped, this tune - and I thought sure I was gone. I wondered
where the blood was spurting and why I was not paining yet.  But
nothing touched me, and the train was still again. I was paralyzed
for a second, but I shook it off and scramibled out the other
side. I took hold of the metal slats of the car, and it pulled on
my hand pulled and kept on pulling. I wasn't worried, though, 
134
because no train starts fast. I walked along beside it, holding
on, then ran a little, pulled up and left the ground, hanging on
to the car until trees came in around me.
     It didn't take long for that to happen, but before we got all
the aay clear of the town, a guy I didn't make out until it was
too late looked up from the roadbed and saw me.  He pointed and
hollered, almost close enough for me to kick him, but I didn't
try, because we were picking up speed now, and there was nothing
he could do about it.  We were gone before I could have kicked; I
could have caught him a good one if I'd of seen him in time.
     When we were in the full night dark I climbed back up.  My
swan bag was right there, and the other.  The log I'd been able to
move, so that I could either use it as part of a chair or get in
under it and stretch out, was in the same position; the only
question was whether I wanted to ride sitting or go to sleep. I
lay down, watching past the big friendly wood next to me out into
the tops of trees, out into the sky, which was clear and flying.
The first thing that came into my mind, then, was how long
this could go on. My situation there were not many things I could
be sure of, and it was good, every now and then, to check - to
check in with - the ones I knew wouldn't change, and would be with
me if I used them right.  Up through the logs I looked for the
North Star, but from that position I couldn't make it out. I broke
loose my emergency pack, pulling the tape off my side, and got out
the compass. I put it on a log and hiked around so I could look at
it straight.  As little as it was, the dial was easy to read, and
I propped up on an elbow and watched the needle hold steady as the
train went around one curve after another, and farther north. 
That was a good time for me, I can
135
tell uou. I still had a lot of the dirt and leaf mold I had put on
me, back at the lake, to camouflage myself on the hills, the brown
slants and valleys, and it gave me a very right feeling to know
that the logs and I were the same color, or just about.  Nobody
was gong to be fooled by it where I was, riding by myself through
the woods; nobody else knew it.  But I knew it, and took my
pleasure, on and on, a long t'me for lots of miles.
     I couldn't sleep, didn't really want to. I sat up in the
chair position and watched the trees rush.  If you put your eyes
to one place and things keep flying by you, your brain starts to
change.   I've felt it happen before, on take off in the 29, or
sometimes when we landed, though when you're tired it doesn't work
as well; you're not interested in vour brain.
     But I was interested in mine now.  In fact, I had never been
more interested. That may have been because I was in woods.
There was the mix between me and the trees that there always is.
It didn't bother me that I didn't know which birds and animals
were there, or even what some of the trees were.  Back before the
town I had seen a body move from one limb to another, and that was
enough for me; I would come back to it.  It would be better now, I
thought, while I didn't have any problems                          
right on top of me, to give my mind some kind of rest.  Not sleep,
maybe, but just by letting anything come into it that
wanted to, anything I remembered, anything I thought was good or
bad, anything I could make up or that had stayed with me for
whatever reason it might have. I put the compass away and leaned
forward into the rushing of the trees.
     The riding itself was first.  Rocking through the woods side-
ways on the enemy's logs, I admitted to myself finally that I
didn't like to fly; I hadn't ever liked it.  In a plane there is
not enough of a sense of - well, what would you say? -- of riding.
136
Not nearly enough. I had plenty of that now, which was maybe why I
was happy. I was in the middle of a stream of trees, and out into
the snatching blackness of it I could put anything I
wanted to, anything of my life, anything of anybody else's.  Where
was the pull of the snow? I asked myself.  Right where it had
always been; I didn't even have to feel for it.  We turned another
curve, and the compass needle fixed itself just as much due north
in my mind's eye as it had when I'd been looking right at it,
on the log.  We were going there.  Which snow, what part of it?
What was in it? I saw the caribou moving out of the woods, onto
the barrens.  The wind coming right into my face, staying on my
closed eyes like another kind of fire, made the focus of my mind's
eye - or eyes, maybe - a lot sharper than it usually was. I could
make out anything I wanted to as the horns came out of the trees:
first one big bull, and the others after him, giving up dark for
open snow, their herd-heads going lower as they moved free, where
the danger was, where the danger might be. I didn't have a gun, in
my mind; didn't want one. I pulled in close to the lead bull and
watched his eyes, as big as a buffalo's, to see what he might be
looking for. I knew he couldn't see me, but just looked on
through, onto the snow beyond. I stayed where I was and he walked
through me; the rest of them, too; the whole herd went through me,
and it was a nice feeling to know that I could come and go any way
that suited me.  Well, I thought, if riding on top of these logs
can inake me see things that are that pleasing, and with sight
that strong, e train was the right place for me to be. I had all
that pleasure of the herd going through, with those big eyes not
having the slightest notion of what was going on. I thought that
later I would bring up sonie other things I liked and knew about. 
But first I had to do what I could to solve a couple of
137
problems, so I could go back full-time to the wind and whatever it
would bring me. I had all night, maybe longer.
     I pushed back and down into the logs, and brought up the good
and the bad.  The good, or part of it, was that the train was
going north, and every minute I was getting closer to the snow and
the mountains.  It sure beat walking, I can tell you, even though
I liked walking and snowshoeing better, when it was time for
them.  But I planned for the train to carry me as far as I
could manage.  How far would that be? and how long? I didn't have
any idea of where any of the other towns were, the ones that the
train was supposed to service.  But there was plenty of wood on
board, and I thought it was more or less reasonable to believe
that the towns were not real close to each other, or else the
people would all have got together in the same place. I doubted if
we would unload any more I at night, though of course maybe we
would.  That was the thing that bothered me most: I would go to
sleep and the train would pull in somewhere and people would come
climbing all over the logs and find me.  I needed sleep, though,
and it was warm where I was. I put my feet in the feathers again,
and tried to see if I could bring up any more problems.  There
would be plenty later, but right now, with the train pointed
through the trees toward Polaris and making around forty or
forty-five miles an hour, I felt like I could go to sleep with the
motion of the train, hoping I would wake up if the speed slacked
off, and get down onto the ground again and into the woods before
they gave out and cleared away for a town. I put all the good and
bad out of my mind, kept all pictures out, and was gone in a
minute, not dreaming.
     I woke up in four hours, and it was still dark.  As far as I
could tell we hadn't stopped anywhere; that part of things had
been lucky. I felt very good, even though I was a little hungry. 
But I
138
was rested, and we had made a lot more miles, all of them north. 
I decided to keep my head down and try to think more forward in
time. I had made up my mind to get to the north island, Hokkaido,
and I would have to cross at night, working hard all the time. 
Twenty miles of water is hard to make, rowing or paddling a kayak
or whatever I would be able to find and steal.  There wouldn't be
any kayaks, but I can make better time paddling than rowing:
paddling on both sides with a double blade. I could see something
like that happening, but I needed the wind. I wanted to call up
water for just a second, to make sure of one tbing.  Then I would
go back to it for what I knew it would bring me, that I wanted
more than any water that ever was.
     I raised myself up, and the air hit me with that one big,
ongoing cold push, and I was hunkered down in the snow in white
fur with my eves ready to close if anything I didn't like showed. 
This surprised me, because I thought I would be in the air
somewhere, up over a mountain or maybe a glacier, like something
in a dream, something that needed meat.
     But I stayed, and watched.  The wind was coming in over the
snow, and over me, and there was no way to tell, except for the
feel of the wood bark under my hand, whether I was moving through
trees with the thing I was on making the wind, or whether I was
still, with the wind running toward me over the snow, and maybe
the snow making and sending it. I could see the snow of the tundra
just as well as I could make out the trees of the woods in Japan -
or maybe could see it better, for it was closer to how I felt and
what I wanted. I gave all I had to the snow, and it was there, in
a long slope lying forward from a foothill, with about two hundred
yards of level ground between me and the beginning of the slant.   
Marmot? No, hare.  That
139
                              would make me white, in my waiting.  There was no lynx anywhere
where I could see, but the possibility of one somewhere around
rayed out and around me like electricity. I can tell you right
now, it is exciting to hide.  And there are ways of doing it that
are better than others.  When you hide without any cover, without
any concealment except the way you are, and the country around you
is like you, and there's not any difference that anything but you
could tell between you and where you are, then you're in another
place from where you seem to be: a place that's completely yours,
and will be as long as you lie still.  You amount to more than
color, there, more than your fur or your skin the color of the
country, because when you close your eyes - all you have to do is
close your eyes - you're gone from that place, too, not in it
anymore.  You're the same as it, the same as it is.
     I didn't close my eyes, but slitted them down to be as near
to being completely gone as I could and still see, and waited in
the wind for the lynx I could tell by my skin was somewhere
around.
     I never saw him, though, and the wind died, then came up
again and was water, and ice was over me. I was still again, but
in another way, with the wind in the form of a current. I could
feel the curves of it in front of me and behind me - where I had
been and where I was going - and I was hanging in a kind of
hoisted standoff with it, holding what I had, keeping my head into
it, maintaining.  It was not as good as hiding in the open white
in white - but it was good in its way. I was in the dark, almost
dead dark, but I knew that ice was over me, and snow over that,
and there was a place right at the forward limit of what I could
make out that looked like it might be a hole, and I moved up on
it.
  Moving was easy; the resistance of the current made it easier;
140all I had to do was move my body a certain way and my face split
it to the heart. When I got under the hole I took up muy kind of 
hanging-there again, and looked up past the jagged edge of the ice
straight into the blue sky.  For a second the other sky came back
to me, the one that had been on a level with me, that I
awatched change into a round hole with two stars in it, at the end 
of the pipe where I had hid on the Tokyo docks before the big
raid, damn near dying of shit gas, of waiting for the fire to
fall. That went away, and I was clean again in the current, my eyes on
the blue through the ragged ice. I went on, like a bullet with 
with a long jaw, on and on, bending with the curves, straightening
and hunting, hanging when I wanted to, where I felt like it. 
There are a lot of things people don't understand about fish:
how everything in the world looms up, looms until you can almost
see through it, and how a fish's eye cuts it out sharp when the
thing just wants to be a dun shape, and loom, and you won't have
it that way.  A fish's eye cuts things into clean outlines and
then lets them go back to being dim when he's through with
them, when he goes on past. And there's always the feeling of
slotting through, but you never touch the sides of the slot. As I
say, there are a lot of good things about it, but hard to talk
about.
    And then I was back on land, and had flowers on me, gray-
and-black flowers all over, and claws as long as a man's hand. I
had weight again, but not as much as you'd think for my size: if
I'd been any lighter I would not have left any prints on the snow.
   I went over it, looking for eyes. I ate almost nothing but
bares, hares on their big feet like snowshoes, when they forgot 
to close their eyes in the middle of white. My ears tingled in the
wind, and the air above my ears, as I carried my gray flowers,
141
on foot after the other, looking for something in the field to
disappear, two things together, to go out like candles. I was
waiting like floating. My marks were like a ghost had made them,
or the next thing to it.
    The wind did all that, made it for me - the snow, the water,
into and what I was in them - when I gave myself all the way
into what I wanted most, in the places where I wanted it.  For the
longest time, maybe most of the night, the train didn't make any
sound, or couldn't have told you if it did. Every now and then,
while my mind and the solid air were still making the snow, I
would watch the trees with nothing there but them, no pictures in
between.  Then the sound of the train would come back, and the
feel of it moving me, and splits and the wavers in the track would
rise up through the logs, and the logs would be real, the way they
were sliding longways through the other trees.
     What I really wanted was to see the shape, the shadow, move
through the branches, like it had done before we stopped in the
town.  It had been there.  It was, I can tell you, a real animal
in real trees, and not one that I got out of the wind and laid
over the woods and the dark sky. Mostly the trees were just a
black wall going by, sometimes almost close enough to touch, I'd
have bet, but a wall that quivered like it had angine behind it,
or something that was trying to get through. Whatever the animal
was, I couldn't see it in that wall.  It was when there was a
break in the trees, and the sky showed between them, that I looked
the hardest for whatever it was to take the leap across the free
space. I had just caught a glimpse of it, back there, but
believed I remembered that it was bigger, a lot bigger, than a
squirrel, and bigger than a marten, but not as thick in the body
or heavy as a wolverine.  It might have been about the size of a
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fisher - a black cat, like my father used to say. I was watching
for something about that size. I don't know why I thought I would
see it again, but I did think so. I even felt like the whole
situation owed it to me to show me whatever it was in a long jump
- a short one would have done - where the trees got loose from
each other for a second, and I could make it out. I felt that if
that happened there was nothing in the world that I couldn't do,
no place I couldn't get to, nothing I couldn't eat or fuck or
kill, whatever.  Finally, though, I let the wind give me back the
snow, and I went into it with everything I had, like before.
     It was night now, another night.  Snow again, a slope down to
a long valley almost like a tunnel.  Caribou were in it again,
moving through the valley, but I was not one of them. I was on a
hill with some others like me, watching them, waiting for the rime
to move about a mile to the floor of the valley, going down in
twos and threes when the stragglers fell back, and we knew it
enough.  We went when it was time, faster and faster down the
slant, the snow not breaking under us, eye-first into the wind we
made, and cut out a calf.  The others came up, and we sat around
looking at each other while the rest of the herd disappeared. I
didn't call up the eating part, because it would have made me
hungry, there on the train, and I didn't want that when I couldn't
do anything about it.  Even though it was night in the other
place, and I was in the Japan wind, I felt the stillness we were
sitting in the snow with the blood and the down calf in that
valley in Alaska, and finally I did what the others did, and
howled. I thought, why not do the same thing here? Why not join up
with what I had in my mind right then, who would hear me? And so
there, on the train, I howled, putting my head back like I should
have done. I don't know how long I kept it up,
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but I was raised on that sound, and even though I don't remember
that I'd ever tried it before, I'm sure it was not too much
different.  Nobody would hear me, and it might do some good.  I
believed it did, anyway, and I kept it up for a while.
     Then I was white, and hunting again, but for something
smaller. I was not like the lynx anymore, but was after something
about my size. I had a taste for blood in my mouth, in my whole
body - my body that borrowed something from snakes - that was
stronger than anything in life, that had more power than the sun
and the moon shining together.  It was not just being hungry; it
was way more than that, a lot more necessary.  It was the taste,
it was the color of it, the heat.  It was what it came from:
something alive and now not, the steam rising out of it before you
tore it apart to eat.  Everything about it was enough to drive you
crazy, but you like it and want more, have to have it and will do
anything to get it, will go for the color and the heat and the
steain a long time after you've eaten all you want, and more.  As
soon as all the blood was out, you go looking for the next one, to
do it again.  You? I? Who? What had me was more than I was. I
couldn't help myself and didn't want to. All I could do was what
it said.
     The dizziness didn't leave me, and the need didn't leave me,
but I was bigger, and not white anymore. I was as strong as a bear
and could climb like a squirrel. I was climbing, was not in the
snow anymore, looking for mice and rabbits.  A dead tree this
time.  Most of the branches were gone, but a few at the top, a
nest.
     I climbed up and looked in.  There was a big bird, dead
white, live white, with black speckles on his chest.  He pulled
back to the rim of the nest as I pushed in. I saw he couldn't fly
- was too young maybe, as big as he was - but the wings went out
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anyway, a spread that covered up everything in white feathers, and I fired my
head at him.
     I stumbled into the air, because it didn't matter whether I could fly or
not.  The last thing I saw up there, with the swaying, was the eyes over the
teeth, and then they were gone, and so was the nest.
     In Japan the trees rushed clear - rushed, swept, I don't know -and one
more time I looked for a four-legged shadow to cross the open air, to show for
a second against the clean sky.  If there was ever going to be the right time
it was now, when I was falling in Alaska, tumbling, like when I bailed out over
Tokyo, and yet not like it.  Nothing crossed, and the trees flashed solid
again.  But in Alaska I was still falling, and hope was going.  Inside the
hopelessness, though, was something else that had just come into it, but had
been there, too, in some kind of way. I jolted, a little like when the
parachute had opened, but it was better this way.  The chute had saved my life,
but this was better - better, believe me, there are better things than life. I
was whole in the air, long wings left and right, the color of snow, the color
of cloud, and I was not falling but riding, riding over the whole frozen earth,
whiteness everywhere under me, the land pushed up in hills and mountains, the
rivers like white roads made out of white, going through white, the woods
covered with snow, all hanging, all hanging with me, and pure, the whole earth
as pure as it could get, and still, real still.  All I heard was the air I was
in, the wind holding me up in myself, over everything.  Pure air: pure: pure. 
Pure riding. I looked up, and white cloud was there. Where I was, the clouds
didn't have to be dark to snow, and these were not dark, but it was snowing,
and I climbed up through it oni air that was doing it for me, riding, rising,
not moving a wing, to be inside the cloud. The wind was
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making another kind of sound, and I was everywhere, wanting to fall on
something and kill it, fall all the way down, maybe thousands of feet: fall but
not yet, because I was riding. I was riding in snow and on snow, in the
whiteness where whiteness counted for the most it could.  It held me that way,
and I was riding.
     Something under me - everything - jumped, and I woke up. Somehow or other
I had got down amongst the logs again, and even had my feet in the bag of
feathers.  The train was jerking and slowing, and there was a little light,
more than I should have let come. I didn't have any idea of when I'd gone to
sleep, but I must have settled down without knowing it, and one of the logs had
rolled part of the way over me, balancing on others, so that I had to struggle
a good bit to get out.  The train had slowed down even more, was jerking and
bumping, and I knew I had better get off, because I didn't want to risk another
town, and this one in daylight.
     I hated to leave the train, in a way, and I hoped I could remember some of
the things that had come to me out of the wind.  Before I dropped off I lifted
my head and tried it one more time, but I could hardly feel the air move past;
that part of things was over. I did get one last flicker, though, just before I
jumped.  It was of a whole lot of deer heads.  Just the heads, either because
the bodies of the deer were buried in the snow or because the heads had been
cut off and lined up.  They were in a long row going out of sight, and if I had
wanted to put a name on it, or maybe had the notion of making a picture out of
it, I would have called it "Deer Head for Infinity," or something else just as
crazy. I dropped off onto the ground, fell, rolled, got up with my bags and
headed into the trees, feeling great.
     It was rocky, where I was now; everything for me was uphill. I
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went up over the rocks, big ones and, in between them and on top
of them, a lot of little ones that would move and slip if you so
much as touched them, seemed like.  It was a place where you had
to pay a lot of attention to what you were doing, where you put
your hands and feet, and I did pay it, because a fall on that
stuff would have been bad.  I didn't mind skinning my knees or
elbows, but I darn well didn't want to break anything.  That would
have cut me out of commission, sure enough.  At the beginning I
was careful - more than that.  Since my bailout I had lost some
weight from all the walking, and from not having much to eat, and
I could tell it, going up the rocks. I could jump farther if I had
to, and when I landed my knees didn't bend as much as they would
have before.  And I believed I could run faster, too.  For some
reason, on those jumbled-up rocks the thought came to me of the
flat land on the south of the Brooks Range, and the way I would
run in the late spring, the first day I got off snowshoes.  That
was a wonderful time for me, when it seemed like half my weight
was gone, and I could just fire out full blast down the valley
with nothing to stop me, nothing to keep me from going faster and
faster, until there was not any limit to me, and my feet damn near
left the ground.  Going up the rocks a little at a time was like
that, though I couldn't tell you why.  It's just the way you think
at certain times, I guess, and the way you feel when you're doing
it.  After a while I noticed it was kind of a surprise - that I
wasn't paying all that much attention to where I put my feet
anymore, but was going along just the same, with the rocks more or
less cooperating with me, if you know what I mean.
     I topped out, and stayed low.  In front of me was a
poor-looking valley, more like a gully or a draw, and then another
ridge of hills, probably pretty much like the one I was on.  Even
with the
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rising mood I had, and the advantages of the lighter weight, I was
fairly tired from all the climbing, and it came to me that I had
not been scanning what was around me nearly enough. I took a good
sweep now, before I started down.  Far off to the left a small
shape with legs, probably not a woman, was moving along the floor
of the draw, and I sat down behind a rock until it went out of
sight, carrying a bundle that bent the man almost double.  He
went, and after him I looked for the south side of
the Brooks Range.  It could have been the last of May.
     But it was not quite that late in Japan, and that would work
for nie where I was going. I was in the valley left and right,
though, and the main need I had was to run, because I couldn't
believe I hadn't just stepped off snowshoes.  A few steps, maybe. 
I did't, and was picking up speed. I had what I wanted, and was
getting more.  But my own speed scared me. I didn't know what I
was doing; a few more steps and I would have really been gone. 
But I didn't give my speed a chance, a real chance, to take nie
out of control, and slowed down in time. I was breathing hard,
harder than the running would have caused, and I looked right and
left again, and then onto the next slope, rocky like the last one,
and steeper.
     I couldn't help it: I ran at the bank and went up over the
first few boulders like they had been put there for me, and would
stay, so that I could do the same thing again lf I ever came back. 
From those first rocks I lifted, springing like, on and on, not
looking at the top or anywhere around me, or even at the next rock
that would come to my foot, and for a little while, I swear, I did
it with my eyes closed.  But then something told me that this was
like running on the floor of the draw, that it was dangerous, and
I ought to cut it out: slow down, not be crazy, at least not here.
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  When I slowed and stood on a pointed rock, my feet holding toward
each other like pliers, but slanted, I was pulling in the air
again by the buckets.  It filled me to the brim with that place,
and I was happy to be there.  But when I got hold again and took a
sight on what was in front of me and above me, I didn't feel all
that good anymore.  The rest of the slope was more like a
mountain, and it would have been hard to do any jumping from then
on.  And, believe me, I didn't plan to close my eyes again,
either.
     So I went up.  It was cold and overcast: pleasant cold, not
the real stuff, and I started to sweat a lot. I was having to use
my hands as well as my feet to climb, and though the hill didn't
get any steeper, after I was about halfway, it did seem to stretch
out and get higher, and it took me most of an hour to get to where
I was, even near the top. I had hold of myself real well, though,
and kept looking back and down, and tried to keep behind the
biggest rocks whenever I could, so that I wouldn't be visible for
more than half the time.  The notion of what might be on the other
side of the hill started to get stronger, because if I had to keep
climbing like this for two or three more days without anything to
eat, I would end up in bad shape, and might have to do something I
ought not to. I couldn't make more than a couple of miles a day
going along like this, and I couldn't do anything at night at all;
I'd 'ust have to hole up.  But I was getting close to the top of
this particular hill, and that buoyed me up some.
     The light had changed, and it was afternoon, the sun out now
and headed for the level where the top of the hill was.  It kept
striking off the rocks I was climbing, or was about to climb, like
it was brushing over them, and then would come around and brush
over them again.  But on one it stopped, and even though
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I was ready to go by, I stopped when the light did.  It was not on
a big rock, either, but on one that stuck out of the yellow dirt
at a strange angle, not like a rock would have done. I
straightened up, took some more air, bent down, touched it, and
pulled on the part that was showing.  It came up without any
trouble, and I sat down and went over it, brushing off the dirt. 
It was a bone, a human pelvis, and there was not any doubt about
it.  That's a damn strange thing to be inside of somebody, I said
to myself.  And it was, and is. What I know about skeletons has to
do with animals and fish, and I had never seen anything like this
except in the medical and first-aid books my father kept in the
cabin.  But there the thing was, with the sun leveling onto it and
then into it and through it, and it hit me that I could turn it -
I was right there, and no one else - so that the light would come
down through the hole in it and make a shape on the ground, on the
slant yellow dirt of the hill, and it did, though not just like I
would've thought.
     Bone, damn sure.  It had the feel, as it was in my hands, of
something that had belonged in life.  Where was the head?
Where was the rest of it? I couldn't see any other parts, but that
was not really something I was interested in. I took a good long
look at what I had, and at the sun through the hole, which seemed
to burn up a point on the ground. I saw something there, felt
something. I remembered, at Barrow, the Eskimo women pounding for
needles. Would this be possible? Bone, all bone; bone is bone; I
would need to be able to do it. I positioned the pelvis.  There
was a rock - it could have been any rock, in here.  There was
another rock, and there was not anything to say I couldn't put the
pelvis down and hit it with another rock, or that the whole thing
wouldn't splinter into needles I could sew with, using what I
already had, and what I could get:
150winter clothes for where I was going to go, no matter what.
Most of the things that live have got bones, which was a good thought.
     I socked it.  Nothing.  Crumbs. And one half-assed piece, a kind of
triangle, that I couldn't help thinking was telling me to fuck off, it was no
use.
     And it wasn't. I had a bad time right then. I could remember, but I
couldn't remember enough.  It was in that dim light, through the ice - the ice
window, the ice panels, an igloo with burlap - that I could still see it: the
old woman Ungalikuk, I think her name was, sewing what she was sewing, but I
didn't have what she had.  My attention, my interest, had not been strong
enough.  There was no use trying to bust up a pelvic bone, it just wouldn't
work. I was ashamed of myself.  Needles it would have to be, though, somewhere
up north.  But I had learned something I hadn't thought I'd learn, even so.  It
would have to be the long bones, where the grain ran right, not the center of
things, not where the body hung together.  Leg bones.  Or arms, maybe.  They
would carry the needles.
     I got up and dusted off my hands, climbed over the ridge and a lltde way
down the other side of it, and picked up my heading.  I went on like that, not
making very good time. I slid a couple of times, not bad slides, or long, but
bothersome, because I had got so self-conscious about breaking a foot or a leg,
I would have done just about anything to keep from it.  Finally I went down on
the road, because there was nobody around, and I didn't see any reason not to.
I walked on the flat road for about two hours, and made maybe five or six
miles, when I heard something I didn't like, the sound of an engine.  No, more
than one, because the noise had that seesaw to it that you get when more than
one engine is running. I went up the hill again to the
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next curve and got down behind some rocks, not big ones, but when I stretched
out I was sure that nobody from the road could see me, especially with the up
angle.
     It was a truck convoy, all the way out of sight and moving very
slow.  The trucks, about the size of a GI six-by-six, were covwred with 
dust, and if the soldiers in them had wanted to camouflage them to look like
the road, they couldn't have done any better.  When they were about halfway
around the curve, the lead truck stopped, then all the others, one by one.  A
man got out of the first truck, went back to the second one, and said something
to the driver, then to the third and on down the line.  Wherever he had been,
soldiers got out of the cabs and beds and stood around waiting.  They were as
dusty as the road, but even with that, I could see that most of them were ether
old men or kids, though they were all in uniform.  All the time I had been in 
Japan I had never seen a Japanese soldier whose uniform looked good on him. 
They were always too baggy or hung wrong in some way, and none of them was ever
too small; they were always too big.  What that might mean I didn't have any
idea, but these were worse than most, even.  As far as I was concerned there
had never been such a bunch of sad sacks in the world, trying to be an army.
     The original guy, the one from the lead truck, was taking his time, and I
knew that until he came back the convoy would sit where it was, stuck in the
dust. I was stuck, too, but like I usually do I tried to get some notion of
what might work for ine, if I would have a chance to steal a truck or some
 other type of motor transport, and it would be an advantage if I knew the
setup from the driver's standpoint. I scouted along the line, and fixed on the
truck where I could see into the cab better than into any of the others. I
could barely make out the gears, and would
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have to see the driver shift when he got back in, though I didn't
think, really, that I would be able to pick up that much
information, because the driver's body would be in the way. I
might get a glimpse of his hand shifting, and that would be
something.  Thinking that way, and waiting as the sun went on down
and nothing happened, I tried to connect some of the few things I
could remember that had to do with the Japanese and machinery. I
didn't have to go far. I didn't need any more than anybody with
good sense would have known: the Japanese love machinery, and they
try their damnedest to be like white people, especially Americans. 
If it weren't for us they wouldn't have any factories, any cars,
much less any airplanes. I would have bet that the trucks had the
same gearshift as American make.
     Finally, after about an hour and a half, the head guy came
back, got in the cab, and the convoy started to crawl. I kept my
eyes on the one truck I'd picked out, and sure enough I caught a
flash of the driver's hand as he upshifted, and it was exactly
like I thought.  He put the truck in third, and as far as I could
tell kept it there.  In a few minutes the end of the line went
around the far curve and rolled through all the dust that the
other trucks had stirred up.  After the whole line had gone, the
dust still hung there, lifting up little by little, though it
never got as high as I was.  Because I thought that maybe other
traffic had built up behind the convoy, and might be coming along,
I kept high and made what time I could, though it didn't amount to
much.
     There was always the problem of night, and I didn't have any
plan this time except to keep going as long as I could.  I'd
always be able to bed down on the side of the hill, even if I had
to dig out a place where I could lie level, and sleep with my feet
in the bag of feathers.  It was not something I looked forward to,
but if
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that was the only way to go, I would do the best I could. I had
been in worse places, because it was not really cold, not the kind
of cold that I liked and could work with, but just kind of chilly,
as people back in the States would say, and I would be able to
sleep all right without any cover.
     It was coming on for dark, but I could still see well enough
to move, and I went up to the top of the ridge to get as good a
view as I could.  As soon as I topped out, I was surprised.  There
were some lights ahead of me, not many, but definite and split in
the middle.  If the ridge went on as it was doing, I could, when
it got a little darker and if I took my time, go past the village
on the slope, and then, if I wanted to, go down and see what was
there.  I was looking for certain things, wherever people lived. 
One of them was food, and in the last few days, based on what I
had been doing, and bringing back the years on the trap lines, I
had got more and more into a state of mind telling me it was best
to look at myself like I was a machine that needed to be taken
care of in certain ways.  Sleep I could manage almost anywhere. 
But eating was different.  Every day it was a new problem, and
every night. I didn't want to lose too much weight, for if I did I
would be too tired to do some of the things I might have to do,
and some I might want to do.
     I came up on the village.  The road ran through it and sepa-
rated the groups of little lights, split them right in two like a
river would have done.  In about an hour I was past the town, and
it was almost dark.  The moon was Just rising, and it was full,
really beautiful.  There was no need for me to try to stay under
cover where I was, and I stood up straight, shook my swan bag
until it evened out, checked ttle equipment taped onto me, saw
that my knife was loose and hanging right, and went down
toward the last light to the north.
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   It wasn't really the whole of dark yet.  That would be in
around fifteen minutes, or so I judged. When I got to the flat, I
expected that there would be some people around, but thatthey wouldn't bother me if I didn't bother them.  There was not
anybody, though, and I came on toward the house, the one house I
had picked out, little by little.  This time I didn't have any
notion of flashing my blade on whatever light there might be
inside; I had already done that. I ducked behind a tree and
tried to spot what I had an idea might be there.  In the rising
moon, a man came out of the house and went into the ground.  That
was what I had been looking for.  The Japanese are big on
caves.  They had told us back on Tinian that the Japs can dig like
moles, and will do it whether there's any reason for it or not -
the old men, the women, and the kids.  They store all kinds of
stuff in caves, and where that man, as quiet as his shadow, went
out of sight I knew there must be a cave.  When he came out a few
minutes later carrying two sacks, I knew this was a right guess,
amongst the wrong ones I had been making.  Again I waited; I was
used to it.  If the man needed something else, he would come back
after it fairly soon, and when he didn't I would make my move,
keeping low, in whatever shadows I could find.
     I would have to use my flashlight on this one, though I hated
to waste the batteries or risk somebody seeing it.  When I got to
the hole in the ground, I saw a short ladder going down about
three or four feet, and that under it the ground was level. I
hesitated for a minute, because a man can get trapped in a place
like that. I had to get in and get out fast; there couldn't be any
fooling around.  Following niy beam down, I got to the floor and
looked around.
     Sure enough, there were stacks of things, bags and big square
tin cans. I didn't want to fool with the cans, but there was
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probably rice in the bags, or some of them. I picked one up, and
could handle it. I tried another one, and it wasn't any heavier,
but made some kind of sound when I shook it, like leaves, dead 
leaves, and I thought maybe dried fish, the scales and all.  That
would be enough; I would take whatever it was. I turned to the
left and there were two human heads between me and the moon. I
dropped the bags and put my hand on the knife.  Someone was
talking, and then someone else, and I could tell that they were
kids, probably young ones, and they were looking

right at me. I turned off my flaskiight, left the bags, and
started up the ladder.  When I got to ground level, they had
backed off, but they didn't run.  That was good, real good. I went
down the ladder again.  The bags were made out of coarse
thread, and if you could find a loose end, you could pull off
however much string you wanted. I pulled loose a section and
knotted the ends together, then went back up where the kids looked
as though they hadn't moved a muscle.  The moon was rising behind
them, and I put my hands into the string and began to weave.
     I made the moves with as much motion, slow motion, as I
could, like I was a magician or something, making passes over some
kind of object or person, casting a spell, you might say.  When
you have lived as many winters as I have with no place to go
except out on the sides of mountains and in fields full of nothing
but snow, nothing but a few trees when you're down low enough, and
the only walls and roof you know are those in your own cabin where
you live with your father, you pick up lots of ways to entertain
yourself.  My father had taught me how to make figures with 
string, designs and games.  That was one of
the things we did when we were not trapping mice, harnessing them
to milk bottles with string, and making them pull the bottles
around the floor.  We even had teams of them, and ran races.
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But right now I was weaving a complicated design we called Jacob's
ladder, where, if you know how to do it, the string twines around
itself, loops in and out and around, and comes out as a real
interesting kind of ladder, like something that a combination of
an engineer and an artist might have dreamed up.
     If you watch somebody do it, you can't tell what's going on
except that it's a tangle of string, until right at the last;
that's the best, and I was saving it.  To get steady, I sat down
on the ground so the kids could get close to the string, and as I
got ready to make my last move, their breath was warm on my face. 
The moon was big now, real big, and I glanced up at it so they
would do it, too.  Then I turned my hands over and there it was,
the big silver-blue moon caught in the ladder.  The kids came
closer, so they could see it Just like I saw it, and then little
by little I changed the position of my hands, so that the moon
walked step by step from the bottom of the ladder to the top, and
then out into space again.
     I got up, and without any fuss pulled the kids up, a boy and
a girl.  They were real little, not more than four or five, and I
don't know to this day why they had come out to the cave, because
they couldn't have moved anything in it. I put my finger on my
lips, then went down the ladder and brought up the two bags.  I
took the string from around my wrist and put it around the neck of
the bigger kid, the boy.  They were both looking at me, and before
they had been standing there too long, so that I would have to
figure too much, I turned them around toward the house and,
shushing one more time, gave thein an easy push. I watched for
just a second or so to see if they would run, but they didn't. I
saw the boy reach for the string, and just as that happened I
turned back to the road, walked on very fast with the bags until   
I was out of sight of the house, and then
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started up the hill, using my flashlight whenever I thought I ought
to, and making good time for the conditions.  In about half an
hour I topped out over the ridge and went down the other side
about twenty or thirty yards. When I came to a flat place I sat down and opened the bags with my knife. Sure enough, one of
them was rice and the other was dried fish, cut up, heads and all. I ate
a few pieces because I was damn hungry, and then some of the rice, raw. I
wished I had had something to drink, because eating makes me thirstier
than it does most people, 
but there wasn't anything, and I chewed the fish as much as I
could to make it juice, but doing that made things worse, because
of the salt. I put the bags on the downhill side, kicked open the
sack of feathers, put my feet in, wrapped my arms around me with
my hands in the pits and went to sleep fast. The moon was like
heat on my face.
     I don't remember that I felt much chill that night.  As the
light began to come I woke up in a sweat that seemed to have been
caused by the temperature in some way. I felt fairly bad, and I
wondered if I was beginning to catch a cold. I didn't like that,
because it meant that I would tire out easier.  But the worst
thing was the thirst. I was really very thirsty, thirstier than I
had ever been in my life, except for the time when I ate some snow
before my father could tell me not to do it. I was about four or
five years old, and I thought the snow would just melt in my mouth
and I wouldn't be thirsty anymore.  You've got to melt it another
way however you can find, he said. I knew now that I had better
not eat any more of the fish, so I closed up the sack.  The two
bags were too heavy and bulky to carry for any distance, so spent
some time getting a reasonable amount of rice and fish slabs into
one bag, sorting out the heads and putting them in
with about half the rice and a good many of the slabs in the
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other bag, which I kind of half buried in the dirt of the bank. 
Then, from the top of the ridge I went over the whole landscape,
concentrating on whatever might tell me how to find water.  My
mind went back to the water wheel and the old woman, and I saw
myself dipping out double handfuls from the buckets as they went
up past me, diving into bucket after bucket, drinking all I
wanted.  Everything in front of me was dusty, though.  The only
possibly good sign I could make out was that the hills to the west
looked like they might have some trees, because there were darker
patches that I didn't believe could be made by anything else. I
decided to cross and try that side of things, hoping for what
might be in the next valley over.
     It took me most of the morning to get across the valley.  It
wasn't all that far, but my heaviness was dogging me bad, and even
though I just had the two bags now - fish and rice, feathers - it
was still hard going.  Some people - women - passed me on the
road, and I trudged along behind them like I was going the same
way, but when they went around a turn I started up the bank.
     I had been right, for there were trees, small ones like scrub
oak, and because the slope was steeper than the one I had just
come from, I pulled up, some of the time, on the trunks and lower
limbs, and when I got to the top I was really sucking wind, really
tired - "joe'd," my father would have called it.
     I blew a minute and then started down, because there was a
big flat at the bottom and no road that I could see. I worked
along the lower slope, where there were more trees than had been
on the other side.  Underneath, the land kept falling away until,
as far off to the north as I could see, something flashed through
the dry leaves of the trees.  In an hour or so I came out over a
big flat lake. I say flat because I' had never seen a lake that
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wasn't flat, but I mean something else.  As I got closer to it,
it seemed to me that the lake must be very shallow all the way
across, and when I scanned out through the trees, and made out 
a man standing two or three hundred yards from the shore with the
water not even up to his knees, I knew, I had heen right.
     I stepped out where he could see me, but he didn't even
glance my way.  He was fooling with some stick; or stakes that
were rickety and kind of pulling in one another which probably
meant that there was a net run between them. I knelt down and
drank as much as I wanted, then moved on, because what I was
looking for was not the lake itself but what fed into it.  If
there were fish around I aimed to have some, and I like fish that
live in water that's moving.  I've fished in lakes a lot of times,
and through the ice a few, but what I really like is a good
stream.  Water over rocks has got a private understanding with me,
and if a creek has one fish in it, we'll get together, no matter
how long it takes.
     I spent the rest of the day going up the lake, taking all the
time in the world, and as the lake tailed off I found exactly what
I wanted.  Woods on both sides closed down on a creek, and I got
out into it and moved up it, not on the banks but on the rocks. 
My cold had not come on me, and the rocks in that running water
took all the heaviness off. If there were fish in the lake, there
would be some in the creek, but they would be more alive, and
would taste better.  The best thing in the GI survival
kit was the packet of fishhooks, I remembered with a lift of blood
in the stomach, and went on up the creek sure enough, but in the
good sense - there is one - jumping from one rock to the other, my
soft bags banging at me, not worried at all, where I was, about
breaking bones or spraining an ankle; it wouldn't happen. I felt
so good, to tell the truth, that I didn't see
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how anything could stop me, but the one thing that did stop me was
perfect, it made the world right.  A waterfall about fifteen feet high was
there in front of me, and I stood on my last big rock and looked at it with the
low sun striking gold across that pure white: whiter than cloud, whiter than
egg white, whiter than snow, whiter than an eyeball, whiter than anything.
     There was a dry thicket downstream a few yards from the falls, and I set
up a kind of camp there. I could really take more time, and I wondered if I
might not want to stay maybe a couple of days and rest up, make things
comfortable eat and drink as much as I wanted and really get myself recharged.
I could fish at night as well as in the daytime, and I could make a fire here,
and cook. I didn't see any reason in the world why anybody else would come
here. I couldn't see any signs that the place had ever been visited, and I was
sure I could stay as long as I had a mind to. I put off that decision, though,
and broke out the survival kit, with the packet of fishhooks and the nylon 
twine that went with them. I wanted to work by the last of daylight so
as not to use up any more of my flashlight, and even though I was going to make
a fire later, I didn't want to tend a fire and fish at the same time; some
things ought to have all of your attention.  Besides, I wanted to fool with 
my rig, make it right, and see myself doing it. I cut off a short piece of the
string and tied it onto the main line, then found a rock and maade a sinker out
of it.  I cut off some more twine, rigged two hooks, and baited them with
pieces of the dried slabs. I sat back in the thicket and cast out, just this 
side of the falls and almost under them.
     The light was down now. The gold had been pulled off the falls, and the
whole of that straight-up water was turning blue.  The sound was the best sound
on earth, and with that, and with pulling the line until the most sensitive
alert area
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that existed anywhere, in anything alive or dead, was in the forefinger of my
right hand, where the string went across it -- I could have felt it if a fly
had lit on the line everything locked into the good.
     For a while nothing happened.  The line going out of the
thicket seemed to shorten; it was just that I couldn't see as far along it as
before.  But that was not important. I might just as well have been blind,
because what mattered was somewhere in the water, and my finger would be the
only way to know it.
     A difference, then: not a strike, not anything you could call a strike,
but more like a change.  Not much change, but there. I pulled some and felt it
happen just a little stronger, then turn into a real fluttering tug, and I
pulled, not too hard but quick. Something was on.
     I brought it in, and risked my flashlight for a second to look.  It sure
wasn't a trout, which for some reason I had expected it might be. I had never
heard of any fish in Japan except the carp, which they told us was supposed to
be magic in some way -- the Emperor's ponds, so they said, were full of them -
and this might have been one.  It had a fair amount of meat on it, and not a
whole lot of fight, and I laid it down on some leaves and baited up again.  The
same thing happened twice, and I quit, because I didn't think I could eat any
more. I raked up some tall gsass and leaves, and made a circle with some rocks
to keep the fire closed in on itself, and then took out the flints.
Ever since I was a little boy I had used them, and it had been a long time
since I couldn't raise a spark on the first shot. That was still true, though I
couldn't get a leaf to burn with the first one.  But on the third or fourth try
a leaf caught. I lit another one from it, then ianother from that, cross-stood
some twiggs over them, and when they caught, some more over those, and in
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a while I had a very nice fire there, with the rocks wheeling around it. I
pulled in as many twigs as I could from where I was sitting, slit the fish
open, gutted and filleted them with my issue knife.  To do things right I
needed to boil the rice, and thought I might use the lid of my survival kit; it
was not supposed to break. I made a kind of grill of branches, scooped up some
water, and put the rice on and let it stay long enough to absorb the water. 
Then I stuffed the fish, sharpened some twigs, ran them through the sides to
hold things together, and did what I could to cook, keeping the fish over the
flame with a couple of branches.
     It worked out pretty well, if I do say so.  It may be that I was hungrier
than I thought, and the smoke smell got my glands going, but I never tasted
anything better, and was so anxious to get the next fish going that I spilled a
whole handful of rice into the fire while I was doing it.  With the last one I
thought I would try something else, so I cooked some more rice but left the
fish raw, and ate that way. I must say it was better cooked than not, but it
was not bad the other way, either.  When I finished and raked up leaves to make
a bed before I put out the fire, I felt so comfortable and secure, with the
waterfall standing like it was watching over me, looking out for me, that I
made the decision I had been putting off. I would stay one more day, and two if
I felt like it. I would get cleaned up in the creek, and even shave, though I
didn't have any soap.  When I went out of there I wanted to feel like I could
take on anything.

Two days it was, strange and good. I didn't see another living thing except the
fish, which were easy to catch and tasted better
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and better.  During the days, I went out and ran on the rocks, almost down to
the lake and then back, breathing deep and sometimes almost singing, but I
couldn't tell you the tune.  If anybody was to try to think of having fun in a
place and a situation like I was in, with not a whole lot of a chance to stay
alive, he would have a hard time believing it.  There was no friend anywhere,
only thousands of people who wanted to cut off my head, castrate me, do
anything they could to me.  But fun it was, anyway, those two days and three
nights.  Before I left I knew every rock, from the waterfall to the lake, and
the last afternoon I went up and down them twice, trying for some kind of
personal record, running with the current and then against it, with the banks,
and racing downstream with special leaves I set going.  The leaves were dry and
there were some big ones, and I picked them by how much they curied up on
themselves and rode high in the water, going through the rapids better than any
body'd have believed.  These things happen, you know; all you have to do is
watch. When I won the last race, just by a hair, I turned back and went all-out
for the waterfall, racing the bank shadows, the branches and spikes alongside.
     In between races I swam and shaved.  The water was cold enough to turn
your skin a bright blue, but it was worth it, and when it got dark enough so
that there wouldn't be any chance of my smoke being seen, I heated some water
and shaved by feel as the dark came on, whetting the blade of my GI knife every
now and then, and getting the hairs off as close as I could.  Clean and dry, I
lay down on the leaves by the fire and watched the thicket grow almost solid
over me.  Almost, but not quite, because between the spikes I could see stars,
some in the places I wouldn't have expected, and some where I would, as though
the were inade to be there. I was too happy and lazy by then,
164
and full of fish and rice, to look for Polaris, but I knew where
it was. I wished I had had sense enough to find out more about the
stars, the names of them and where they were at the differ-
ent seasons, when I had the chance.  The navigator of my ship
Lieutenant Stennis, was a real shark at all that, and he would
have shown me about the stars, the constellations, and anything 
else I wanted to know if I had just taken the trouble to ask him. 
It would have been fun to pick out different stars through the
twigs without moving from where I was, to know their names, to
feel the difference that knowing a name makes.  But I was left
with what I had: being able to find Polar's and pick out two or
three of the biggest constellations, like the Dipper and like
Orion, which is the prettiest thing up there.  It didn't take much
of this to put me to sleep, and I have never slept better in my
life, as safe under those spikes and crooked branches and twigs
and stems as if I were lying inside a rock, one that let in air,
and through which you could see stars whenever you opened your
eyes.

I was not happy when I left, though in a way I was, because I knew
the feeling couldn't last, and that I couldn't make it last just
by staying there, even in a place I felt so right about.  It had
done it's job. When I climbed up past the waterfall, clean with my legs
feeling about twice as strong and sure as they had since
     I left Alaska, had the confidence I needed. I was moving with 
plenty of new power, as though I had eaten something magical, or
swam in water that had radium in it, or had a transfusion of 
something that was better than blood.  No blade could penetrate
165
me.  A bullet fired right at me would have curved and gone
around.
     I worked back east, a little east of north now, because by my
silk map it looked as though I would have to do this to come out
on the north coast where the strait between Honshu and Hokkaido
was the narrowest.  It would take me some time to find the right
place.  If I was lucky I could do it, because I would be able to
see the other island from this one. 
     When I came out of the woods there were long fields with
terraces on the other side of them going up the hills, and the sun
was warmer than it had been for the last few days.  There was some
traffic on the road, so I stayed fairly far west of it, and went
along pretty well, moving close to the trees in case I needed to
get back amongst them for any reason.  A few people were in the
fields, but nobody bothered me as I noticed before, the Japanese
spend most of their time looking at the ground, and they don't
even seem to like to look at each other.  The heads stayed down,
every one, or at least until I was gone.
     The woods gave out, the hills flattened some, and there was a
lot of open space now, which bothered me. I sat in the last
bushes and looked out over the terraces in front of me.  People
were working in the lower ones, though only a few. I had had to
deal with the terraces once or twice before, but I'd climbed up
at night, and I felt that if I kept on operating that way I could
not make the distance I wanted. This seemed like it might be a
good time to try to work out some way of getting across the
terraces in daylight, if I needed to.
     I had come far enough east, I believed - though I was just
guessing - and could work back to the west, at least a little. I
seemed to have better luck that way, better conditions, better
166
going. I didn't have any particular plan for getting through the terraces
except to pretend to be working like the others were doing, and just maneuver
to the edge of the next terrace and scramble up onto it when nobody was
looking. I didn't think my bags would bother any of them, because they all had
stuff around them, wherever they were. Just before I left the trees I had a
notion that stopped me for a minute and gave me something to look for; it was
always better if I had that.  All these terraces, all this land, this work in
the fields - who got the benefit? I didn't know anything about the government
of Japan, and didn't care, but I had the idea that the govemment didn't own the
land, that it probably belonged to families, to people who had inherited it or
maybe bought it, which meant there would be rich people somewhere around.  Rich
people, and the houses they lived in. I might have passed some of these but not
paid any attention to them - or enough, anyway.  This would be different.
     I made it across the first terrace by keeping as much distance as I could
from any people, and climbed up onto the next level, where there were only a
few workers a couple of hundred yards away, bent over like always.  On the
third terrace a man stood up, put one hand on his back and the other over his
eyes, and hollered something at me. I bent down and wondered what I would do if
he came to me.  He didn't, and edging over a little slower than I had before, I
got to the bank and went up.  It took me all afternoon to work into the top
field. I came to a path there, and even though I was on the ridge and anybody
could see me, I went along it until it dropped and led through a clump of those
same little trees that grew around the waterfall.  They were spaced different,
though; I didn't have the feeling I was in a real woods or among trees that
grew like they would have if
167
they were wild. I probably knew more about Japan already than
I thought I did. I had noticed, for one thing, that the Japanese like to
arrange whatever they can get their hands on, to have as much neatness as they
can; arrangement's big with them. I had never been in a forest of arranged
trees, but it was easy to walk there, and not bad.  After about half a mile I
came on the house.  It was bigger than most of the houses I had seen in Japan,
and to the side it had one of those weird arches of wood that look like they
might be big doors or gates, except there's never anything behind them.  They
just sit out in the open.
     My way is to wait, as long as I have to. I got fairly close to the house
and set up behind a tree that lined up with another one between me and the
house.  Arranged trees are good cover, I could see that.  As it was just
beginning to get dark, about quitting time for everybody and everything except
the predators, a bunch of men came along the same way I had and went to the
house.  A door opened - slid open - and another man stood there, not coming
down, and talked to them.  There didn't seem to be any excitement in the talk,
and nobody moved his arms around.  The Japanese are very excitable, and if the
slightest thing bothers them, whatever is not exactly what they're used to,
they talk fast and loud and throw their arms.  There was not any of that,
though, and I took it to mean that none of them had thought there was anything
strange about my being in the terraces, if I had even been noticed at all. I
didn't recognize any of them, but they must have been some of his workers;
there was nobody else for them to be.  Finally they left, and the night kept
coming.
     About the time the first stars started to show, a dim light changed the
house.  On my side was a window, a big one, and there just have been a blind
over it, because the light was not
168
only dim but had a haze to it like it was shining through cloth,
the kind bandages are made out of, or maybe slats real close
together. I moved up.
     I saw things like this as being no different from a stalk,
and used everything that was there, going from shadow to shadow,
and from my toe to my heel on every step.  Nobody in the house
could have heard me, even if be had been listening.  Looking,
maybe; listening, no. I stepped up on the one wooden board that
took my eyes to the level of the window, and started to try to
penetrate.  At first I couldn't make out anything, but when I got
used to it, I could see a couple of shadows, and they were sitting
down. I moved side to side, and up and down, until I found a chink
that gave them to me.  There was an old man and a woman not quite
as old.  The man sat near a corner, and the woman was putting
things on the floor, probably getting ready to eat.  She moved
very slow, and after a few minutes got up and went into another
room.  To do this she had to slide a part of the wall, or panel,
and she didn't make any more sound than I had.  Everything was so
quiet; it was more quiet than anything in the woods.  She came
back with some bowls and dishes, and the man, without any hurry,
came and sat cross-legged where the food was, and near something
that looked like they probably cooked on it.
     I went over everything I could see, which was not a whole
lot.  There were three sets of panels, and before I went in, I
thought it would be good if I knew what was in the other rooms, if
I could find a way to look in. I moved to my left and around the
corner, but there were no windows on that side. I went around.  In
what I took to be the back, there was a window but no light. 
There was a door, too, and I pulled on it just enough to see that
it would slide. The other side of the house didn't have a window
169
either, so I came back to the door, pushed it open just enough,
left it that way, and went in. I could have waited until they went
to sleep, but there might not be any light then, and I would be at
a disadvantage I didn't want.
     I was at one, anyway. I thought I had better not try to make
out just by feel in such a dark place; I would be sure to hit
something, trip, make a noise. I risked one step, feeling with my
foot, then another, which should have put me in the middle of
the room. I needed to find the other door, and there was nothng to
do but use the flashlight for a second, let the setup brand
               on my brain, move a couple of steps, cut the light, and take hold
of the panel. I should come out behind the man. I figured to take
them fast.
     I got set for the light, and hit the switch. The door, with a
big red dragon design on it, fire out of his mouth and all, was
right in front of me, and out of the side of my eyes I could tell
that this was a room used mainly for clothes and stuff that hung up.  There
was a bed almost flat to the floor that I had just missed in the
dark. I could have busted my ass, might even have pitched through
the screen flat on my face.  Luck, sure. I pulled out my long
blade, made for American kitchens, and put my hand on the door. I
knew which way it slid.
     I moved the panel.  It didn't make any sound, but he heard
it.  He was on his feet in a crouch before I could even take a
step, and was halfway to the wall before I tried to cut him off. I
couldn't get the shot with my knife I wanted, but I tried anyway
and missed, and drove through the panel, which was paper, or
something like it.  By the time I pulled back, he had a sword that
he held with both hands, like a baseball bat.  He came at me
flat-footed, and then with a loud low scream like an explosion 
swung the blade. I backed off and held up my knife, and it was
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gone like a bell had rung and made it disappear; that was his
blade on mine. I heard my knife hit the wall, the panel, and for
the first timee since I had been in the room I made a good move. 
I faked and went around him, as fast as he was. I jumped faster
than he could turn, and was down the panel and through it closing
it before he could get to me.  It was dark in there - not
completely dark, but almost.  Now, I thought, now.  And then:
No, not now.
     I pulled my issue knife, my short one. The panels were closed
at both ends, and even if I couldn't hear thein move, I would know
it as soon as one of them changed. I had my hand on the one I had
just closed, my fingers as sensitive as they were on the string
when I'd fished by the waterfall.  If he moved the panel at my end
I would hit him through the paper before he knew it.  If he tried
to put the sword through the paper, hoping to hit me blindside, he
would miss, and would have given himself away.  I'd be all over
him, too, if he did it. I had my eyes on the panel at the far end,
and if it showed any new light I would ease my own panel, look
out, and locate him.
     Nothing happened. He knew I was there, somewhere along
                              the panel, and he knew that I would try to kill him if I could, 
and probably his wife as well. I felt building up the need to take
a risk, maybe just a small one, to find out more than I knew
standing there in the dark with half my nerves in my hands and the
other half in my eyes.  That couldn't last for long, and I knew
it. I believed he would not think I had stayed at the same place
where he saw me disappear. I slid the panel a crack, didn't move
my feet, and looked out.
     There was no one in the room.  Now what? My first thought was
that he had left the house and gone to get some other
171
people.  He might have gone out the back, the way I had come
in, and taken his wife with him.  But I was willing to gamble that
he hadn't.  One of the other things I had noticed about the 
Japanese, besides how excitable they were, was their pride, 
especially the men; the women didn't have much say. And this old
man with the sword was a soldier - a samurai, or whatever the name
is - and would have that pride.  He would defend his house.  He
would not let some stranger run him out.  And as I kept looking
into the empty room, more came to me.  If the guy was a warrior,
from the warrior class, like they say, he would not only fight,
but he would want to fight.  He was the quickest man I ever saw in
my life.  He had probably been using that sword, in one way or
another, for fifty years, and this would be his last chance to use
all that training.  Quick, he was quick. I didn't say fast.  Fast
means running; I didn't know whether he was fast that way but it
didn't matter. I didn't plan to run.
     The only other possibility was that he was still in the
house, behind one of the other three panels, and if that was so,
he had me in the same position that I'd had him in.  He was
invisible; I had to go look for him. I had to move the other
panels, and he would be in there in the dark, and he would be able
to see my silhouette as soon as I let the light in. And that was
not all: he could move from one paneled-off room to another.  We
could keep this up all night, until somebody made a mistake, or
guessed wrong.  And I was at one other disadvantage, too. I was up
against somebody who could hear better than I could. I hated to
admit it, but it was true. I would never have believed it in a
million years.
     Disadvantage; advantage, maybe.  Most of the movies I had
seen in my life were cowboy movies. I hadn't seen many, but in
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at least three or four of them was a scene where two guys are 
shooting at each other from behind rocks, and the hero pitches a
rock over behind some other rocks, the other guy raises up and
fires in that direction, shows himself, and the good guy mows him
down. Why not? I thought in the dead quiet. Why not something like
that? I felt around and pulled some silk stuff off the wall - a
gown or a dress of some kind - and balled it up very slowly, using
one hand against my side.  This would have to be a soft sound, not
a rock making a big clatter, bouncing off other dry rocks, but
soft, real soft. I leaned out a little and pitched the silk so
that it would fall close to the middle of the room. I slid the
panel down to a fine crack and watched.  This was my bait.
     Up in the cabin I used to read a lot. My father was a good
hunter - pretty good, anyway, but not as good as he wanted to be.
He had a lot of books up there in the cabin with the one red wall,
with the snowshoes and rifles, and the mice pulling the milk
bottles.  More than half the books were about hunting: hunting in
Africa, and India, and places all over the world.  There was even
one story about men hunting each other, like big game.  The thing
that struck me the most of anything I read was about a man who
hunted alligators in the Everglades swamp in Florida with an
Indian who took him around and showed him where the big alligators
were.  The hunter was going for the biggest trophy in the swamp
with a bow and arrow, and the Indian had to get the alligator to
come in for a close shot. What stuck with me was that the Indian
touched the surface of the water with the end of a pole, just
barely touched it, and the alligator came, and the guy shot him
with his bow.  This was something like that: my touch on the
surface of the silence was the roll of silk out in the middle of
the floor, and I
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watched the other panels, one after the other, and then back. 
Believe me, I watched.
     And finally one moved, just a hair.  It was not the one I
would have expected, the one opposite me, but the panel I had
first come through, in the room that went to the outside, where I
had left my shoes.
     Things had narrowed down, but I was still up against his ear. 
No matter how quiet I was, he could hear me.  The logical thing
would be to move down to the end of my room, which was like a long
dark hall, open up real sudden, and jump him through the other
panel as hard as I could and as fast as I could.  But if he heard
me - and he would - he would then be able to make a move of his
own, would hit me with that fantastic speed, or would be gone.  Or
I could move out into the center of the room                and dare him to come
at me, but right away I knew I wouldn't do that. He had too much
quick, too much training for me; the life I had behind me would
not stack up to his, at least in hand-to-hand.
     I could step out, let him see me, cross the room, and go in
behind the other panel.  That way he would have three choices.  He
could change panels and come into the dark hall where I would be,
and we could have it out there. I would be able to see him come
in, and he would not have all that much of an advantage in the
dark. I liked this. I wanted to pull him, like the guy did the
alligator.  The sound of silk had done part of it, the sound of
silk falling.  It might be that the dark would do the rest. I
believed he would come in there with me. I had the image of him
staying outside, in the main room, and stabbing back and forth
through the panel, and I knew that wouldn't work, and he would
know it.  And he would know also, that I'd learned enough not to
stand up against him in the open.  It was my
174
notion that his pride would bring him into the room behind the
panel on the other side. I felt this so strongly that I didn't
believe there could be any other way to go.
     I stepped out and went over.  It was like crossing water so
deep there was no bottoin to it.  The depth was the danger in
itself.  There is that pull, you cross on top, and you know what
you've been over. I got to the other side, opened the panel and
closed it, knowing that he had seen me and would have to deal with
my new position.  It wasn't like on the side I'd left, where I was
sure I couldn't stay very long.  Here, on this side of the depth,
I was not worried about that. I would stay as long as it took.
     Not long, not too long.  The far panel opened, the light came
in and stayed on the wall of clothes, on the bed between.  The old
man flat-footed forward, his sword at something like port arms,
except that both hands were on the handle, the blade across his
body, hip to shoulder.  But this tune was new, he was new: his
head was forward, peering, in a way it hadn't been in the main
room. I could maybe risk some sound, and I hit my bare heel on the
floor. He took another step and swung, but he was at least ten
feet from me.  He smung again, backhanded, and then went into his
crouch - his defensive position, must have been.  It was clear; it
was clear, slow, then right away.  Sound was his, but mine too, if
I could use it.  Sight was mine, and in the almost-dark there was
no way he could use it.
     I hit the floor again, the mat. He began to fight, but he was
fighting a ghost, or maybe more than one of them.  He still had
that marvelous quick - I had never seen anything better but it all
went into the dark, and into his form.  The moves of that long
blade in the dim light were like a weave of steel, a net of metal
and light.  He thrust out, he pulled back, he swung the sword like
a ball bat, he came forward, he backed up, and all
175
the time his balance was perfect. I didn't breathe kind, almost
caught in that net, for a second I thought I had everything. I
thought I did.  But I couldn't wait, and I didn't. I would not
ever forget, though.  He must have been almost blind.  But still
quick, too quick. I led him with sound, he came in, he came onto
my knife. I held it for him, just so.  Even though his jugular
must have been cut, judging from the fire-out of blood, he stayed
ed on his feet, still making his moves, holding his form, holding
on to his ancestors who niust have been soldiers, sure enough. 
Then, with the blood coming weaker, he went down, rolled, and I 
hit him through the back of the neck, cut the cord, and finished
him.  He was still from then on out, but for me he would always be
the one who made that weave of steel.  Any lick would have cut
through both forelegs of a bull elk, and I would always be just
outside, but watching; that was the best.  "You're a good one," I
said.  "You sure are. I can use you."

I went back into the main room, got my knife, which was
just                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       like it always was, except the relation was not quite the same.   
I needed to find the woman, and started through the rooms.  She
was down behind some clothes, near the door where I had come into
the house, not too far from my shoes, and I ran her through twice
without her making a sound, then laid the body out and put silk
over it. I felt that maye some of the good had come back into my
blade, but I knew also that it would take more than that to get
back what had gone out of it when it got knocked loose from me.
     I dragged the old man's body out of the long hall and
stretched it out near the table where he and his woman had
176
been eating. I was thinking bone, long bone; I was thinking
needles.  If I got up as far north as I meant to, I would have to
be better than any Eskimo; what ever I could pick up in the way of
know-how I had better get. I was still disgusted with myself for
the time back on that yellow slope, with myself and the pelvis. 
This would be different, I was hoping. I peeled back the guy's
sleeve, and with my small knife I cut open the inside of his
forearm, running the tip of the blade down the bone from his elbow
to his wrist.  Then I pulled a low stout bench from the wall it
had been next to, laid the arm on it and brought down the handle
of the old guy's sword as hard as I could, three or four times. 
The bone cracked well enough, and I pried loose three long
splinters and broke them off.  The fire in the cookstove on the
table was still going, with some meat in the pot, and I ate it
while the bone splinters dried.  It was good meat.  I didn't think
there would be much of it in Japan, the way the war was going for
them, but this guy was rich, and I guess he could have had about anything he
wanted. When I finished, I took up the splinters and looked them over.  They
were dry now, and the points on them were sharp, as sharp as any needle you
could want. I didn't want to work with them that night, but I did need to know
if I could make eyes in them, so I took one of my fishhooks to see if I could
penetrate the bone, and it turned out OK. I guess I could have straightened out
the hooks themselves, and sewed with them, but I wanted them like they were.
They had the waterfall in them, which was maybe the best place I had ever been
in my life.
     I was real tired, but maybe a little more excited than I should have been,
so I walked around the room real slow, seeing what was there.  It bothered me
that there were no pictures or decorations, but I was not quite right about
that, because off from
177
the light, in a corner, was the table with a vase on it and one
flower.  Funny,, the flower didn't seem to be there in any way an
ordinary person would put it.  It's hard to explain, but it was
like it was there as part of an arrangement from which the other
flowers had been taken away.  It reminded me of the jackstraws my
father and I used to play with up in the cabin.  You let a whole
bunch of sticks fall any way they want to, and so far as you know,
they should've come out that way - even that they wanted to, and
knew about it before they fell, and even made it happen like it
did.  This flower had that about it: one jackstraw, right there,
and right.
     Up above the flower was a picture - I could barely make it
out - of a young guy in a military uniform, probably the old
man's son, or grandson, maybe. I went into my first room, got
my shoes from outside, and lay down on the pallet. I was not
worried about anything. I thought about the needles with a lot of
pleasure, because I had done something I never had before, and if I was going
to live off the count when I got to where I was headed, as I planned to, this
would help.
     I slept pretty well, and it was first light when I woke up.  Everything
was very quiet, and I spent som time getting myself reorganized. I thought that
when the sun came up the men who had talked to the old guy the day before would
probably come back, but that they wouldn't come into the house without being
asked.  Sure enough, about eight o'clock there was a light knock at the door,
and I was sure it was the same people. I sat on the mallet until they went
away, and then started going through the house for anything I might be able to
use. I didn't believe the others would be back that day, but I didn't think,
either, that it would make sense to stay there more than just that day and
plenned to leave before the sun broke again.
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     The old man and I were about the same size, though he was a
little heavier.  That was good, because the bagginess of his pants
made it easy for me to fill the layer between two pairs of them
with feathers. I spent all day sewing, with strips of silk I cut
out of some of the stuff hanging on the wall, and by the time I
finished I had two pairs of pants and two coats, all layered with
swan feathers.  That would do for a start; that would do pretty
well. I needed some socks, or at least something I could wrap
around my feet, and some gloves, and I found some with three
fingers, but they would be all right since I didn't have anything
else.
     I started the charcoal fire at the table and ate more meat,
and then spent the last part of daylight going everywhere in the
house I could, looking for light metals, anything thin and strong
and, if possible, flexible. I wanted to streamline my bag, make it
as light as I could and still have what I needed, and not any
bulkier than I could help. I had some feathers left. I could have
used them all, but for some reason I didn't want to: I guess I had
'ust got used to having them with me.  The clothes I had sewn were
hardly heavier than the feathers themselves, and with the other
feathers, a couple of long things like skewers I wrapped up in
silk, gloves, an extra pair of shoes, and a heavy hat with ear
flaps, I had what I wanted in the bag.  That, plus the stuff I had
taped on me, would be all I needed. I thought for a while that I
iiilght take the old man's sword, because I could use it for
hacking brush, say, or chopping light kindling.  But in the end I
left it, because I couldn't see any way I would be able to do any
fighting with it. I wanted to remember how the old man looked when
he was coming after me, like the sword was a part of him, and the
air in front of him was like a net - not on fire exactly, but
electric, sparking. I put some more silk
179
over him, dark silk, and the sword on top of that, without the
scabbard. I stowed the bag next to the back door by the woman's
body and lay down again, and might even have laughed a litfle at
the idea that I would be leaving before the break of light, the
only American gunner in Japan who was sighting on Polaris and 
carring two feather-lavered coats and two pairs of pants, shoes, a
flap hat, what was left of a bag of swan feathers, and two pairs
of three-fingered gloves.

I woke up slow, and there was nothing around me.  Then, in my
mind, and more or less in the dark in front of me, too, there was
that net of light again, the swarm of spark strokes that had come
from the sword of the old blind fighter.  This was a new place to
start from, and a new way.  Suddenly I could think a long distance
ahead of me. I saw mountains, lakes, roads, and rivers, and on all
of them it began to snow.  The landscape moved upward, and was a
kind of combination of what I had seen in Japan and what I
remembered from Alaska, which was a lot, everything that mattered. 
There was a boat in it, because - and this came in last of all - I
was going to have to cross water to the other island, and I
already knew I would have to do it at night; that was exciting. I
rolled over and sat up.
     I decided to use a little of my flashlight again, to portion
out the light like it was water or food, like somebody who was in
a lifeboat after a shipwreck, tiiavbe with some other people,
would have to do.  Before that, I needed to try to get a line on
where I was as I lay there watching the storm of sparks from the
sword. I had been in Japan for a week or so, and I tried to
estimate how far from Tokyo I had come.  On foot, not very far:
180
fifty miles, maybe.  My main distance had been made on the log train, and
I didn't have any real way to tell how many miles I had covered. I had spent a
lot of the time making pictures in my mind and projecting them out on the
landscape - the deer heads moving toward infinity, or somewhere - but even if I
hadn't done that, I still couldn't have come up with much of an estimate.  The
train had been slow but steady, and I may have made a hundred miles, or even
more.  That sure was the best I could do in the dark. The map and the light
would have to come now.  Light, a little of it, a very little, a short ration.
I spread the silk map on the floor and smoothed it out: silk, everything silk;
I had even brought some of it myself.  If I had estimated correctly, or even
guessed anywhere near right, I had made two hundred miles, or maybe even as
much as two hundred and twenty, and needed to go about that inuch more.  The
notion that I had come halfway from Tokyo to the northern tip of Honshu was
encouraging, even though I knew that the guess was off, had to be off, and
maybe by a long way.  Still ...
     I looked for lakes, and there were a lot of them.  They all had rivers
running into them; I couldn't be sure that any of them had a waterfall just up
from it.  One was near where my estimate had brought me out, and if that was
so, I had another checkpoint, though that could have been far out, too; far off
my reality.  If I was where I guessed, I was not far south of a range of
mountains, and if I slanted a litfle to the northeast I would pass between it
and a town called Morioka.  If I made it through there, held course for about
thirty miles, I could then take up a true-north heading and work my way onto a
peninsula that would bring me as close to Hokkaido as I could get.  Then would
come the boat and the night water.  That was a new thrill every time I thought
about it. I remembered the deep, pure
181
interior blue of the iceberg, with Tornarssuk and I stopped beyond words, both
paddles out of the water.  What a thing that was: the only color in the world,
a new color, with life in it, the life of the heart of ice, which came clear
when everything between it and us tore off, slid, and fell.
     There didn't seem to be much population on the peninsula, though there was
bound to be some, because Japan depends a lot on fishing - so said the Colonel
- and right along the coast there had to be a good many people.  People and
boats.  That would be for later. I saved my forward thinking about Hokkaido for
later, too; that was special in another way. I left off all that, switched out
the light, stowed it, and got up, the last thing in my head the idea that I
could scout out my position on the peninsula by knowing - or believing, anyway
- that I would be able to see Hokkaido from the shortest distance to it over
the strait. I surely should be able to see it, since it didn't look to be more
than twenty miles, or maybe not even that.
     I got my gear together, put on my shoes, and went out. I didn't even take
a last glance at anything in the house.  There was not anything to see that I
hadn't already seen, and the old man and woman would lie there until somebody
found them. I planned to be a long way from there when that happened.
     I struck off to the northeast through woods and hills. I was still in the
same clothes, but the idea that I had two coldweather outfits in my bag gave me
confidence, especially together with the fact that they had been sewn with bone
needles, that they had that kind of life. I was looking forward to getting into
one of them.  That would have to be at a special time, and at a place that had
something for me.
    The hills were pretty steep, and though I didn't run into
182
anybody, or have to make a lot of detours to keep away from
people, I didn't make very good time, and got tired faster than I
would have liked, with all the climbing.  The hills were like
foothills, and I thought that there was probably a higher range to
the west, which I wanted to stay away from; it was not time for
the mountains yet.  In the afternoon there were some snow
flurries, and I reckoned that I might have to get into one of my
new outfits sooner than I'd thought.  Still, I didn't yet.
     Since I was getting so tired, I found that I kept pulling off
my course.  My feet, without my knowing until I realized it, had
been trying to search out level ground, to make things easier. I
crossed an east-west road, went through some trees and bushes, and
then found myself moving up on a situation different, a lot
different, froin anything else I had ever been close to, or even
thought about.
     There was a light ground fog over a big field that I couldn't
see the ends of, to left and right. I hadn't noticed any fog, or
that the air was moist, but as soon as the field developed in
front of me - or half developed is more like it - the fog was
there as though the field had made it.  More than that, had made
it for what was happening there.  Some people were moving around,
and I watched them, and it wasn't long before I was studying as
much as watching, they were so quiet and strange.  The fog was not
thick enough to do anything but blur the outlines of things, and
it was not hard to see that the people all men, I thought -were
dressed the same, in long white dresses or robes, their eyes all
on the ground.  They seemed to be looking for something, and a few
of them had baskets.  They were just there in the field, in that
fog, blurred, but they could not disappear.
    Verye slowly they crossed back and forth, and every now and
183
then one of them would pick something up and put it in a basket. 
Nobody had ever had a dream so quiet as this one which had
movement in it. I remember going to sleep one summer in the
Classen River valley and opening my eyes and finding a whole herd
of deer, with two big bucks in it, standing not fifteen yards
away, looking at me. I closed iny eyes and opened them again
almost right away, and they were gone. I had not heard a thing,
and to this day I don't know whether thev were ever really there
or not.  That was the quietest movement up until now.  Nobody said
anything, nobody did anything except sleepwalk back and forth,
crisscrossing without touching, not speaking, like they were all
going to do this forever, through all the seasons, through rain
and snow and sun, whatever there would be. There must have been
seventy-five of them at least, and with a .50 caliber or even a
hand-held -30 - I could have laid them all down in just a couple
of three-second bursts. I don't think any of them would even have
looked up, but just gone on crisscrossing until there was nobody
left to cross.  Believe me, they were not I'ke solders, and I had
no fear of anything to do with them.  While I was standing there
the fog thickened a little, and I took a couple of steps clear of
the woods, and came out where they could see me, if any of them
wanted to. Just as soon as I had set up in my new position, one of
the men, out in the middle of the group, straightened and came
toward me, not with any special hurry, but different by his
motions, working through the others toward me. I let him coine,
not wishing for machine guns; no need.
     For some reason I was thinking about the feet of the men in
the field, and the way they were taking their bodies around back
and forth, between, and among each other, but never with any
contact.  Japan must have done something to me without my
184
knowing it, because things came into my head that had never been
there before.  The feet of the spider are the quietest; they must
be.  The quietest and the farthest off, no matter how close
they are.  It was those kind of feet that were coming, from the
others that were like them.
     He came up to me and stopped, straightening more, with an
effort.  He was not japanese, and had on gold-rimmed glasses.  "I
guess I ought to ask you," he said in English.
     I was not surprised.  "Ask me what?"
     What are you doing here?"
     I smiled, I really did, because I was not going to ask him
the same question. I didn't want to know, particularly.  If we got
to talking, I was sure he would tell me anyway.  "You knew I was
not a Nip?"
     He seemed a little puzzled, probably because he didn't under-
stand how people in the service put things.
     "Not Japanese."
     "Yes, I knew it," he said.
     "You mean, you know it now, when you can get a close look."
     "No, I knew it when you came out of the woods and stood
there.  No Japanese would do that. You were too straight. You
looked like you owned the place." He looked off and back.  There
was more fog than there had been, and the others in the field were
mostly just arms and shoulders now.  The ground was pretty much
gone.
     I glanced past him at the heads in the field crossing each
other.  He lifted a thumb toward them without turning around. 
"Don't worry about them.  They don't even know you're here.  They
are off in a state of mind.  It doesn't have anything to do with
this field, or with you.  Or with me either, for that matter."
185
I picked up my bag.  "I'd better move.  Can I go straight on
through?
     He turned, this time toward the heads going back and forth
and in and out, then he smiled carefully, like one of the company
clerk-typists back in the squadron.  "Well, maybe not straight
through, but if you want to, you can make it on over to the other
side.  They won't bother you."
     I stepped past him, and for a second didn't know what had
happened to my arm, because I believed I was already on my way. 
He had hold of me, and not just by the sleeve, either.  "Don't
go," he said in a different voice.  "Don't go yet." He looked at
me, peering, kind of.  "Stay with us. We'll take care of you.  You
need to hide, don't you?"
     "I been hiding." I shook loose.  "It would take me a while to
tell you all the places.  But the Nips ain't laid a hand on me up
to now, and as far as I can tell they don't know where I am." I
jounced the bag up and down to settle what was in there.  "But
some of them know where I've been.  Some would, by now. I better
move on."
     He had me again, and for some reason I waited this time
before I shook him off.  There seemed to be something really
important to him, and there might be some advantage in it later
on, though I didn't have any idea what it might be.
     "You can rest up here," he said, building up his eagerness.
     "One place and another.  Outside. A couple of nights under
some logs.  That's the closest I've been to sleeping under a roof,
except a couple of nights at some guy's house.  It was maybe too
quiet in there."
     "We've got plenty to eat, all you want.  We've got some fish,
186
rice, dried vegetables, maybe some fresh, too.  I'll see. I won't
say you can stay as long as you like, because I don't think you
want to be a monk." He smiled again, and I wondered if he had ever
typed out forms.
     "You're right," I said.  "Religious, I ain't." 
     "You're military, right?"
     "Air Force. I bailed out over Tokyo the day before the big
firebomb raid.  I've been moving north ever since.  But, like you
said, not in a straight line." I might have smiled, too, but not
the way he did.
     "Firebomb raid?" He was puzzled again. "What does that mean?"
He peered more.  "Where does everything stand? Is the war almost
over?"
     "Maybe so.  We laid down a whole lot of fire on Tokyo. And we
could do it anywhere.  We've got long-range aircraft, and we can
go where we want.  We can bum up this whole island--everything."
         He turned to the field again. I had forgotten there was any-
body in it.  "Most of them don't even know there's a war on, and
don't care.  A few of them might, but they're just like the
others.  We never have any contact with anybody but ourselves. 
There's a military base just a couple of miles down the road, and
we never even see any soldiers, except sometimes in trucks going
by."
     "Is this a north-south road?" I asked.  "I mean mainly?"
     "Yes.  It goes up to Morioka, and then on."
     So I had been more or less right about where I was, and felt
good about it. I wondered now, with the kind of confidence this
gave me, if it might not be a good idea to stay for a couple of
days and see if I could pick up some things I could use up north. 
I needed heavy socks, especially.  There might even be some
187
snowshoes, and some more blades.  The longer I thought about it
the more I liked the idea, because if I was able to get up 
into the real rugged mountain country in Hokkaido, I would have to
hunt and trap, and the more blades I had, and the more twine and
cords, the better off I would be. I looked forward to all that
like I was going on a vacation, but the right equipment would make
it better, sure enough.
               "Where would you put me up?"
     "Our temple is across the field.  You can't see it with all
this mist, but it's not far.  Most of the space is open, but there
are a few rooms, and I can get you one, I think.  Maybe you and I
could stay together." His peering changed, but I couldn't read it.
     "Are you sure these others won't make anything out of an
American staying with them? An American soldier? That's hard to
believe."
     "You can believe it, though." He paused.  "This mist is just
right for these people.  They're like ghosts, like zombies.  They
just float." He pulled my sleeve.  "We can go up there now if you
want to.  I'll show you what we've got."
     I shook the bag again and followed him, moving among the
heads and shoulders, and I must say that I felt as secure and
trouble-free as I had since I'd been n Japan: as much as at the
waterfall, and, before that, watchi ng the red box kite under
water at the lake, when the sun hit clean and made it.


    Past the field we began to move uphill, and I could make out a
path.  This went on for maybe three hundred yards, and we came
whitout a long low building with one of those weird curled-up
Japanese roofs, like soinething on a postcard from a place you
didn't particularly want to go to.  He stopped, and I stopped.
     "How long have you been here," I asked, though I knew I might
set him off to tell me all about his life, which I was sure
188
I would have to listen to if I stayed, but didn't want to now. 
There were other things to talk about.
    "Six years, since '39 - Time enough to get used to it."
    "Seems simple enough from what I've seen.  All you do is
wander around in the fog--float, maybe.  And then eat and sleep
and shit, I guess."
     "We do a few other things," he said, on the stairs now. 
"I'll tell you about them later on.  Show you, too, if you like."
     He slid the door and we went in.  Everything slides, I
thought.  I hadn't seen a hinge yet, except on the water wheel
that one time. I wondered why the wood didn't warp, with all the
fog and wet, in a tongue-and-groove situation like that.  It never
seemed to happen, though.  The building was cut in half, or just
about, by another set of panels, but just a few feet forward, and
sunk down from us was a kind of courtyard - that's the only way I
can say it - made out of rocks.  There were a couple of big ones,
boulders, and all around them were rocks about the same size,
round like they had come out of rivers and creeks.  At the far
end, catercornered from us, part of the yard was bare, very raw
looking with the ground not covered.
     "What's this all about?" I asked. I remembered hearing about
this on Tinian, but here it was different.  "Do they park cars in
here? Trucks, maybe? Some kind of equipment?"
     "No, it's a garden.  You ask what it's all about.  This is
it.  This is what the temple is all about."
     "A garden?" I said, looking out over the bare rocks, all set
even with each other.  Not a thing was growing there, not even one
of those runt trees the Nips like.
     "The whole thing is ceremonial," he said, as if that
explained everything, or anything.
     "What do you do? Just look at it?"
189
     "We  do do that, and we think.  Meditate.  Try to become noth-
ing." He quit talking and then smiled.  "Just lately we've been
doing more than that.  A few months ago we tore the whole thing up
and threw the rocks out into the field where you first came up on
us.  That's what we were all doing out there when you came,
looking for the rocks."
     "Why did you tear it up to begin with?"
     "So we could build it back.  Over there in the corner's the
only place that's left.  Pretty soon the whole thing'll be lust
like it was, just like it's been for hundreds of years."
     A notion struck me.  "If the rocks are all that religious,
ceremonial, like you say, wouldn't it have been better to leave
them like they were to start with? I mean, isn't it important that
the thing stay like it was when you got it?"
     "It is like it was.  We've been very accurate.  These people
believe that what their ancestors did, they can do the same.  They
can make the same."
     "You mean to tell me that every one of those rocks is in the
same place it was before?"
     "I don't think we're quite that accurate," he said.  "But
there's really no difference.  It works the same way."
     "It couldn't be, could it," I said, and couldn't help myself,
"that you just didn't have anything else to do?"
     "We don't talk like that around here," he said.  "Building
the garden back is plenty to do.  Takes a long time, a lot of hard
work.  They can't see it any other way.  It's all natural to
them."
     "But you see it," I said.  "You're an American." I knew it,
though he hadn't said so.
     "I've got to where I think pretty much the way they do," he
said.  "That's what I came over here for."
     I looked around, first out into the rock yard they'd been
190working on and then along the building that was put up around it.
"I can stay here tonight?" I asked him.
     "Sure," he said.  "Nobody will bother you." Most of the other
men - monks, I guess they call themselves - were still 'n the I I
field down the hill picking up rocks, but a few moved along the
wooden walkway that went around the yard.  No one even glanced at
me, and I didn't pay niuch attention to them. I couldn't get rid
of the idea that none of them had legs, and were like the ones in
the field of ground fog where I'd first seen them. I couldn't get
rid of the idea that none of them had legs, and were like the ones
in the field of ground fog where I'd first seen them. It seemed
righter for them just to be floating around.  They were real
quiet, and I thought probably nothing would have suited them
better than to disappear, and not just the legs, either.  It was
like being in among a bunch of ghosts, or half ghosts anyway.
    "Where would you like me to put my stuff?"
    "I'll show you.  There's no problem.  If there's anything
we've got, it's plenty of room."
     We went to the walk-way, south, and he slid open a door. 
There was another hall inside, and down it was another door and a
big room with nothing in it but a mat and a wooden pillow n the
corner.
     "Who sleeps here?"
     Anybody who happens to be in this part of the building when
he's sleepy.  First one and then the other. I sleep here sometimes
myself. Things are not territorial here.  Nobody owns anything."
     I put my bag down on the mat, and the other stuff I'd been
lugging around.
     "Would you like something to eat?"
     "I could use it. What have you got?"
He looked up and smiled, meaning to be a little sly, I thought.
191
     "What I just told you is not strictly true, you know.  It might
be true for the others, and probably for most of them it is.  But
it's not true for me.  Not quite, and no harm done." He hesitated,
then went on in a lower voice.  "I came over here just before the
war, and my mother used to send me things, mostly food that she'd
put up, canned and all.  She's good at that.  I've got a stash. I
could cook you some bean soup, and you can have all the figs and
peaches and damson plums you want.  I've had the stuff for a long
time and don't eat much of it myself, but I keep it." And then, as
though he was sure that this was something that would interest me
a lot, "I alwavs check the tops of the jars.  If they bulge,
what's inside is no good.  But my mother's lids never bulge."
     "Good.  No bulges."
     "Make yourself comfortable, stretch out, and I'll bring you
some soup and some of those preserves."
     I sat down and propped up against the corner.  It was the
emptiest place I had ever been in.  No muskeg or mountain range
could give you anything like the feeling of there being nothing to
the place.  The building had been made by people, but it didn't
seem to have anything to do with them.  It was like those gates
you see in Japanese towns and in front of houses that just sit
there, nothing on ether side of them. They open from air into air,
and there's nowhere to go.
     I must have dozed off, because the American woke me by
shaking my shoulder. I pushed him off and sat up.  The soup was
good. I just drank it out of the bowl like you would from a glass
or a big cup. I hadn't realized how hungry I was, and I asked him
to get me some more. When I finished I ate a whole jar of peaches,
and a lot of plums and figs, and filled up real good.  For some
reason it didn't make me sleepy. I felt more like I had had
192
a drink, but even more strong and alert than that would have made
me.
    "I might had better be moving on," I said.  "I'm used to it."  
    "No," he said, and I couldn't tell why he should seem anxious
about it.  "Stay as long as you like.  Or at least stay tonight."
     "I guess I could do that." Then, "But no more.  This place is
not for me, I can tell you, figs or no figs.  There's not anything
in it."
     "That's the idea.  It's the only way the spirit can live."
     "You better feed the spirit some more figs," I said, and ate
two or three more.
     "Are you sleepy?"
     "No. I feel pretty good."
     "Would you like me to put on a show for you?"
     This surprised me, I don't mind admitting.  "What have you
got in the way of a show?" He pulled on my arm. I shook loose and
stood up.
     "Come outside," he said.
     "You mean outside outside? Or outside inside?"
     "What?"
     "I mean, with the rocks on down the hill, in the fog, or the
ones you got hemmed up in this empty building?"
     "Inside," he said, smiling again, a little more direct this
time.  "Always inside."
     We sat on the edge of the walkway.  Snow was coming down on
the rocks, and it was getting dark.
     "When does the show start?"
     "It's already started.  It never stops."
     "You just mean the snow?"
     "The snow falling on rocks.  Did you ever see anything more
beautiful?"
193
     "Yes, I can damn well tell you I have seen a lot of things more
beautiful than that."
     "What, exactly?"
     "I've seen a fisher marten climb a tree and get lost in the
branches of needles.  That was one of the best, because I knew he
was there, and because I couldn't see him. I like to see a whole
herd of caribou, every one of them taking his time, all moving
together through the tree line. I like to be at the tree
line, going either way, into the trees or leaving them behind. I
like slopes a lot.  Any slope is better than a flat.  Any natural
rock is better than these you've got here.  They'd look better in
some creek, going along for miles."
     "You must cleanse your mind," he said.  "Those things you
mentioned make you unhappy."
     "They don't do no such of a thing," I said, bringing up the
bend in the creek just below the south Brooks Range, where I
had buried the college girl.  That bend had power in it, a lot of
real power.
     "If you stayed here with us and learned to contemplate,
learned to concentrate, learned to comprehend the meaning of the
stones, you would never be unhappy.  You would understand the
secret of the void.  That is the place of the spirit."
     "The void? What is that?"
     "Pure emptiness.  Nothing.  Nothingness."
     "You sure got the right place for that.  If you and them
others want nothing - or nothingness, like you say - you got the
right situation, the right place to live with it.  More power to
you.  I'll take the pine needles around the fisher marten that
don't move until he's ready to come out after something.  That's
some kind of strong fast little animal, I'll tell you.  He's not
fooling around.  Him, I'll take." A quick thought hit me.  "I saw
194
some military transport back down the road, not far from here.  What do those
Nip soldiers think about all your rocks and what you're doing here?"
     "They don't bother us.  Some of them are engineers, and they work mainly
on the coast.  They expect an American invasion.  They're building what they
call pillboxes, coastal fortifications.  Once they offered to grade a slope for
us, but nobody followed up on it, because we didn't know what we wanted the
slope to do. We might have built some stairs on it, but it wasn't that
important.  There could be some things later on that they might do for us, if
we did something for them. I don't think it's a bad idea to keep on the good
side of soldiers.  But, as I say, we don't have much contact.  They think we're
something from another world.  And that's all right with us.  Maybe we are."
     "Is it right for you? I mean really right? How did you get into this? Why
did you come over here? Just to lose yourself.
     "I came here to lose myself, because the self I had back in St. Louis
didn't suit me.  It was OK with other people, but not with me."
     "What did you do there?"
     "I was in school, premed, and I had written around to get into medical
school somewhere. I was accepted at Tulane, and probably would have gone there
if I had stayed."
     "I've heard New Orleans is not bad.  One of the gunners in my outfit was
from there, and went to Tulane.  Played basketball."
     "I couldn't get interested in a game if you paid me. I used to read all
the time. I read a lot of philosophy. I read a lot of books on religion, and
even about magic.  Time, theories about time - I used to like those."
195
     "Time? at kind of theory can you have about time?" Time is time."
     "Some say not.  Some say that what most people call t'me is not real
time."
     "What is it, then?"
     "What you call time is nothing but a convenience. A clock is just a
machine.  Real time is different from that.  Real time is what you live, and
not the moves of a machine.  Real time is not mechanical." He turned to me -
turned on me - quicker than I would have expected.  "Do you dream a lot?"
     "About like anybody else, I guess."
     "Well, you are really two people.  One of them lives the mechanical time
of the clock.  The other one of them watches what the first one does.  He
watches from the dream, when the spirit comes loose from the clock.  The second
self can go backward in time.  He can also go forward."
     I had never heard any kind of talk like this, and I tried to head it off. 
Not that it bothered me, but I couldn't find any way to connect with it, or get
interested in it.
     "Have you ever dreamed something that turned out to happen later on?" he
said.
     "No. I don't think so. I can't remember, anyway, if I ever did."
     "When I was doing all that reading I ran across stuff like that, and it
interested me a lot more than medical school did.  Somehow or other I wanted to
get loose from science. I wanted to get into a situation that operated
according to different laws, or maybe didn't have any laws.  As near as I was
able to tell, the best kind of concentration of that kind of thinking, which
goes beyond thinking, or before or behind thinking, was in Japan.
196
That's where they start with the void and try to get back to it. 
A total blank.  That's what they want in Zen."
     "In what?"
     "Zen.  Zen Buddhism.  That's what it's all about." 
     "About nothing?"
     "It's a very creative nothing.  If you ever get there, you'll
know what I mean.  Or you won't know, and that's the best."
     "Maybe for you.  But I like the rocks in the creek, with
water running over them, and not just put in a yard for somebody
to stare at.  That gets old.  It's already old, as far as I'm
concerned.  I'm going back and sleep on your rags, where you
showed me."
     I got up, but he didn't.
     "Remember your dreams," he said.  "Later on, you might want
to keep a record of them.  Write them down.  You might be
surprised at what your observer brings back and tells you about. 
He's been into the future, and you might like to know about it."
     "I don't want to know about it.  I'll know about it when it
happens.
     I told him good night and left him there, staring into the
snowfall.  The rocks were almost out of sight now, and the yard
was smooth and bright with new moonlight. I made it back to my
room and my corner.  All my gear was there, and even though I had
some rags and parts of blankets, I put my feet in the bag with the
feathers and my arm over my eyes and went to sleep.
     After a while I woke up and believed right off that somebody
was standing over me. I reached out and felt around, but there was
nothing there. I didn't hear anybody move.  It bothered me,
because I'm never that sure of something and wrong about it. I
197
got up and walked back and forth, and then lay down again, but
couldn't go back to sleep right away. I would never get used to
this country, I was sure.  At least not the parts of it that had
people. When I got up north it might be better. I wondered what
the animals would be like.
     A pain, very quick and very hard, hit me in the right side,
and another one in the face, mostly in the nose and teeth. I
opened my eves and the room was full of feet and legs.  Somebody
was shining a light on me, and I saw the rifle butt come down
again, but moved so that the plate only scraped my head just above
the ear. I turned and came up on all fours and a rifle barrel
moved forward down the light and ended up between my eyes.  Some-
body pulled me from behind, and slowly I got to my feet.  There
were eight or ten men in the room, all about my size or a little
shorter, and all in uniform. Very dinky they looked, too, espe-
cially the caps.  A kid would know better than to wear something
that silly looking.  A couple of them pushed me back against the
wall, and another rifle came in; this one had a bayonet on it. I
thought that maybe the guy was going to finish me, and if he put
the bayonet in deep I was going to make somebody live hard - at
least one of them.  The blade only penetrated my coat and shirt,
but I could feel the blood run down.
     The soldier behind the light, whom I couldn't see, kept
screaming something at me that could have been "American," though
it could have been something else.  Every time he said it I'd get
another hit, either with somebody's fist or with a rifle butt. 
One of them smashed into my mouth and I could feel a front tooth
go. I spit it out, and tried with with tongue to see how the next
one to it was: loose, but still in.  That Japanese excitability
had hold of all of them.  They screamed at each other as much as
they did at me, and I figured that the only advantage I
198
might have was that they couldn't account for me.  It may have
been that they thought I was a spy, because I was not in uniform
and had turned up in such a strange place, but why I would be
spying on a Zen monastery during wartime had them completely
baffled.  The trouble was that they took their frustration out on
me, and I guessed I was balanced between two things: their
excitablity and frustration, where one of them would shoot me or
stab me just because he couldn't think of what else to do.  That
was one possibility.  With all the hits, the blades and rifle
butts and fists, I was not thinking very clearly, but I did
suppose that if they could control themselves they would take me
to somebody else who might be able to find out who I was and what
I was doing there.  That was the other part of the balance.
     Some way or another I was on my feet again, with the guns and
blades leveled.  The Nips sounded desperate, and I was afraid one
of them was going to shoot.  They seemed to like stabbing more,
which was something I could understand. I held on, and let them
chatter and poke, while I got my feet fixed on the ground solid,
just so they would be that way. My face hurt a lot, but I was
still fairly strong in the legs, and that was the best I had right
then.  Two of them went behind me, pulled my arms back, and tied
my wrists.  The rope was thick, which was also good; it always
surprised me how much rope there is in Japan.  Somebody gave me a
shove.  There were two of them at the sides and two in front, and
all of them were trying to get me to go a certain way, which was
to the outside.  Before we went through the door I looked around
for the American monk, the one I had talked to about the rocks and
snow, but though there were three or four monks standing around,
he was not one of them.  It was just as well; I didn't have any
hate for him. I was not
199
mad at all.  He had to be like he was - for the rest of his life,
too, and that was bad enough.
     We went down the hill from the building, and there was a
covered truck parked by the road.  Strange: as soon as we hit the
open air my eyes crossed, with the pain and everything else, and
even though I tried to focus on the truck, I saw it less and less
like it must have been.  It kept swimming and surrounding itself
with yellow, which later, when I thought about it, I reckoned was
probably the yellow of the valley where I had watched the convoy
that was stalled, and tried to learn the gears.  A few more 
shoves, then four of them picked me up and pitched me into the
back of the truck like a sack. I lay there on my side in the
corner and pulled my feet up, so that nobody would bother with
them.  One soldier threw a tarp over me and I stayed still, my
face hurting bad, testing the rope a little, just to begin, and
listening to their chatter outside, which was as excited as ever. 
The one guy sat down in the other corner with his gun pointed at
me. The truck fired, blew, and started, and we turned around,
headed back south.
     The road was rough.  It bashed upward and bumped around a
lot, and it seemed like every lick was aimed at my face. I felt 
around inside my mouth with my tongue, and I was missing three
teeth, with another one loose.  That was not going to kill me
though like I say, I was hurting pretty good. As quiet as I could
make myself, I concentrated on the rope, but I couldn't
get it loose behind my back no matter what I did.  But that was
not the only way to go. If I could pull my legs up enough to get
my feet through, I would have my hands where they belonged.  That
was going to be hard, but after edging around some I didn't think
it would be impossible. With the road bumping like it was, it
might seem to the guard that I was just joggling like
200everything else was, like he was himself. I could see the barrel
of his rifle waving around. I was at the point of trying to put
one foot through when the guard got up and lurched across to me.
He braced himself against the cab, drew back, and kicked me hard. 
nothing broke, or at least if it did, I didn't hear it.  He
kicked me again, not so solid this time, and leaned over and
screamed in my face. I reckoned he was telling                     
me not to move around. I was afraid he was going to throw back the
tarp, but he didn't.  He worked back across, picked up his rifle,
and sat down.  I lay still again, and would, for a while.  My
hands were where I had left them, just at the far side, the behind
side, of my ankles.  I little more, I thought, not much but a 
little more.
     Still, still as a fisher marten on a branch I was, and my
feet came through. I lay there with my hands; there was no hurry.
I thought about how odd it was: all the riding I had done in
Japan, when I had planned to do notbing but walk. I went back to
the log train, and how good some of the riding had been,
especially the night part when I could Put Out from my mind
anything I wanted, overlay Japan with it, and watch the Brooks
Range become eve thing in the world.  From the train I could get
the whole reason for there to be icebergs, for one thing: those
big shapes made out of shadows, shadows th at somehow or other had
taken on a lot of weight, or that somebody or something had given
the weight to, which maybe they shouldn't have. I couldn't do the
same thing here, not like I had on the train. I tried hard,
though: tried to see the line of deer heads in the snow, all
pointed one way, the horns trued up like right dress on parade. 
Maybe it was because iny face h,rt so much, and now my ribs, that
I couldn't get things to come right. The deer kept breaking
formation, busting up out of the snow, when all I wanted was the 
heads. Maybe it was that I was hurting, and my 
201
eyes were still about half crossed, or maybe it was because the
truck was headed in the wrong direction. I don't know, I really 
don't.  But my hands were in front of me, and when the deer heads
wouldn't line up I knew it was time, or almost.  It was
getting to be time.
     I already had a one-two-three, or a sequence, like the Kansas
girl would probably have said. I could take a couple more kicks
if I had to. I started the number one move, which was to move,
and move a lot. I thrashed around under the tarp, and I also
started singing, as loud as I could, an old Baptist hymn, "Love
Lifted Me," which had stayed with me for some reason, though
I only heard it once.  The guard got up again, like before.  He
braced on the cab.  It felt like a curve we were going around now,
and he had to break his grip and brace again. Then he kicked me very hard, a good one.  That was the second
part.  He kicked again, harder this time, even.  It was still the
second part. I thrashed around some more, and then went quiet. I
waited.  He bent down almost in my face and screamed as loud as he
could, as he would have to.  He spit on me, and I had him.
     And I had him good.  There may be stronger hands somewhere in
a man my size, but I haven't seen them yet. I kicked the tarp off
and we rolled around, but I knew as soon as I had a hold of him
that I could kill him, and probably could have done it with one
hand, like with the Kansas girl.  But two is better than one any
time, and I got his head back in the corner where I'd been, and
bore down.  After not very long he shook, not fighting but like he
had a chill, then stiffened out and relaxed. I held on for a
minute or two more until I knew he was not dead but good and dead,
and then turned loose.  Using the rest of my teeth, it was easy to
get the rope off, and after I did that I picked up the rifle and
looked it over. It was bolt action, like an old Springfield
202
or Enfield.  There was a round in the chamber and no safety that
I could find, and I knew how close it had been back at the
monastery, with all those excited Nips with their fingers on the 
triggers - closer, even, than I thought when it was happening.  I
put the tarp over the guy and went over into his corner, making
the plan.
     There were three of them up front, and I was sure that
they didn't know anything had happened, else they would have
stopped and come around to have a look.  That wouldn't have been
good then, but it would be now; it was just what I wanted.  I
fired over the tailgate, worked the bolt and fired again, to see
if the weapon would feed all right.  Then I pulled the rifle into 
the dark and sighted down it, so that I could cover the whole area
that showed through the space. I got set just as the brakes
slammed on. I didn't think I could get all three of them, but two
would be fine if the third guy ran, and one would be enough.
     The first Nip showed - more from under, it seemed like, than
from the side, the curb side - lifted his rifle, and screamed into
the cab.  Then he fired at the tarp, and anothe Nip showed from
the driver's side.  He fired at the dead man, too, because the
other one was doing it, and I blew the second one's head in,
because there was less of him showing, and he was closer.  Before
the other one could fire at my flash I hit him through the chest,
and he went down and crawled. I stepped up to the tailgate and
blew down on him, and was going to hit him again but the pin
clicked: I was out of firepower. I could have got the two other
guns, but I didn't think it was a good idea to show myself to the
third man. I changed my mind around and thought with him.  He'd
believe that I'd have to come out the back of the truck, that it
was the only way I could move.  But it wasn't.  Using the dead
guy's bayonet, I cut open the canvas top,
203
eased up onto the roof, and got still again. It wasn't in the Nips
to run off; the last one was still in the cab, probably following
orders.  But with all the firing he would have to show.  He didn't
have any notion of what was going on, but no solder is just going
to sit when there's action that close to him, orders or no
orders.
     I lay with my toes against one of the struts that held up the
canvas, keeping tension. I was just as glad about the guns.  Let 
him find them, if he could get to them.  And I wanted to fall on
him from above.  That appealed to me; I would do it before he
looked up, before he could raise the rifle or even get out of the
driver's side, I was more or less sure about that. Why should he?
Why scramble under the steering wheel when he didn't have to? More
than that, he had got in from the curb side, and that would bring
him out the same way; I didn't even glance over my shoulder toward
the road. I put the blade half an arm's length over my head, so I
could stiffen or flex, either one. I drew back a little, to get
more pressure on my feet. I could wait. I could up to a point,
anyway. If any traffic showed, I would slip down at the first sign
of a light and take off, but I had been making more plans while I
got ready, and wanted to follow through on them.  One more Nip
soldier and I would have a new piece of the future, one that would
work, and in a different way from anything I'd done up to now.
     The door cracked.  It definitely moved.  It closed, then
opened wider.  A head came out and turned back toward the tall. I
wondered if he could see the bodies, or either one of them; I
hadn't had the sense to move them out of sight, or to use them as
bait.  He kept coming out and craning to see.  When he was more
out than in, when one foot was going toward the ground
204
but hadn't reached it yet, when his balance was wrong, I pushed
hard with my feet and fell, head down and blade first, sighting
along the steel and ready to give it the rest of my arm just as
soon as it made contact.
     I hit him, but not good enough. I had cut him bad through the
neck, but the blade didn't go through, and the rest of me collided
with him and we fell on the ground.  He had let go the rifle to
grab his neck, and I went after it there on the road shoulder. I
couldn't get my feet under me, but hitch-kicked
toward the gun, which he had stepped on either because he wanted
to or by accident.  No matter about that. I couldn't get it; I
tore up my fingernails trying. I got up and hit him in the side 
of the face with everything I had, stepping into it and turning my
body to get all the weight and swing I could.  He pitched forward,
not falling but almost, and I uppercut him with the same hand. 
His foot was off the gun, but I saw it would be easier to grab the
bayonet from the scabbard in his belt. I did and rammed it into
him, coming up. When he was on the ground I went through him twice
more.  The blade was too stiff, not like my bread knife, which was
why I had to use it so much.  I looked around.  There was no
traffic, no light yet, nothing but three bodies and the power
space over them, over and around.  One by one I pulled the bodies
off the road, down the bank, broke off weeds and twigs, and
covered them up some, hurrying now, for there would likely be a
light soon.  Somebody would come and break my luck if I didn't get
on with it.
     I picked up the guns, went to the cab, and got in.  All my
stuff was there, the bag of feathers, everything.  The bag was
pushed in, like one of them had put his feet on it. What I usually
carried on me had been thrown into the bag, and I fished it out by
feel and put it back where it belonged.  Having my long limber
205
knife with me, having the compass and the emergency stuff - the
things I had been issued and had modified, and the things I had
picked up along the way - was like a transfusion.  No, not like
some blood had been added to mine, but like a new ration had been
put in, a whole fresh supply from somebody better than I was. When
I remembered the flints and the fire in them, the strength of the
new blood went up even more, and up from that. Even before I took
hold of the gearshift I knew I could work it, whether I had
learned the right way in the yellow valley or not.
     The gears were the same. When I cranked the engine and
shifted down and turned around evervthing fell into place. I
didn't look at the dials; I didn't care how much fuel I had. I
would run as far as I could, and when the truck quit I would leave
it, wherever it happened to be.  That was not the point just
yet, but it was taken care of. The main thing was that when I
turned and swung north the whole situation was mine again.
Too late I remembered that I hadn't checked for Polaris, just to  
do everything right, but I could do without it for a while; there
would be plenty of other times.  There was something closer: I was
sure that the compass in the emergency kit came to true
north not just where I carried it, over my heart, but somewhere in
my body, in my mouth and nose that hurt so damned bad,
maybe.  The direction of the needle was just as steady. The pain
was part of it, and the whole dark of the night was another 
piece of my equipment as I went through it on a powerfu runway of
road with no lights but mine.
     The engine sounded all right.  It wasn't missing or knocking,
even though it wasn't the smoothest in the world; that             
didn't bother me one way or the other. What did bother me, a
little, was that everything I could reach was loose: the light
206
switch, the ignition, gauges were bugging out of the panel
like the eyes of a frog you'd stepped on, and the gas pedal, the
clutch and brake pedals had at least two inches of side-
               waysplay in them.  Everything in the truck was loose and rattled
and didn't stop.  The road was rough, not paved very well, that
made it worse, and especially bad on the teeth I had
left. The pain centered around the one that had been almost
knocked out, but not.  It was hard to get my attention on other
things.
     I concentrated on driving, with the truck's particular 
problems, and on my lights going forward on the road.  The way
they were jumping around made the shadows interesting every time I
passed a tree or a pole.  The shadows of people, too.  A few of
them were walking, both ways, but they didn't pay any attention at
all and didn't even look at me, although they must not have seen
very many vehicles, judging from the traffic.  No one passed me
from behind; no one was following.
     I was pretty familiar with the performance of the truck by
now.  Like I say, it was the worst I had ever been in. When I was
at Buckingham Field, in Florida, waiting for my class in gunnery
school to start, the personnel officers had to find something for
us to do, and I got assigned to the motor pool.  It turned out to
be not a half-bad deal. My instructor was a big tough southern
guy, Sergeant Hough, who had spent some time on the dirt-track
circuit down there. He could drive a jeep past what it was
supposed to be able to do, and was pretty near as good in any
other vehicle.  He taught us how to get the most out of whatever
we were driving: the most mileage, the longest use, the quickest
acceleration, how to use the vehicle as a fort or in an ambush. He
taught us how to conceal it, how to ram with
207
it, and how to wreck it if we had to: get down on the floor and
grab one of the pedals.  Muldrow, keep your head down when the
vehicle rolls over, and if it doesn't have struts, the wind-
shield and the body of the vehicle below the windows will keep you
from getting killed.  It was the best learning I ever did, except
from my father. I got as much from Hough as I could, because I
knew from the beginning that what he told us would work. with him
was the one time I didn't want to do things my way, because even
then I could tell: it would be part of my own way, and we would
blend it later on.  Driving that road through Japan, I thought
about Sergeant Hough and brought him into the situation with me as
as much as I could.
    According to his instructions I gunned up to about six when
the road was deserted and seemed straight for a while. I slowed
down for the curves, not because I didn't think I could take them
but because I didn't want to screech the tires and make things
seem frantic, like somebody was after me.  There was no need for
that, and I didn't do it. I was making good time on the straights
and didn't need to be what Hough called a cowboy.  Dark and
desertedness and speed were together, were one thing. I drove that
way for three hours. I would think I made at least a hundred and
fifty.  Now and again I took to worring about the gas, what I
would do when it ran out, but Hough told me not to worry, just
drive.
     Aside from the poles, and a tree or a person now and then,
walking along with his head down, I hadn't seen much of where
I had been or where I was.  That started to change now.  There
were houses, more and more of them and closer together, little
houses like the one where I had set the flicker of my blade. 
Since
208
I had done that, I knew the flame was in every house in Japan. I
couldn't believe, now, that I didn't know this was happening when
I was doing it.

For some reason, the last thing I had figured on was a town, much
less a city. I drew a complete blank on the whole idea and didn't
have the slightest notion about how to handle it.  But I was going
straight into the problem.  A city: I would have to either come
out of it - come out the other side of it - or stay there.  It was
Morioka, according to where I had been and the direction I had
been going, but it very well might not have been.  Suppose it was
not? Was I screwed, with nothing I could do? No, I didn't think it
would be that bad as long as I could adjust.  North was still
north, though I might have misjudged the distances and the places. 
But my silk map said Morioka and the road on up to the ocean.  The
gas was holding, and I felt I still had some miles yet.
     If it was Morioka - I prayed for Morioka - it was only about
seventy-five miles to the tip of the island, and a whole new game. 
Hokkaido was salvation: it had got that way in my mind, and
stayed.  The lectures on it from Tinian were the only ones I
remembered, because it was all talk about cold and mountains,
snow, rocks, a little game, wind, high places.  Hardly any
population up at the north end, my silk map said, and why would
the Air Force tell me or give me anything that lied? Up there,
monkeys lived in the snow, which was hard to believe and didn't
seem right.  But it must have been right, for up there.
But Morioka? Morioka was jammed together around me
209
now.  On the road there hadn't been many vehicles, very, few all
night.  But here it was like they came around me from all sides
and hemmed me up. I couldn't say I was not close to panic, for the
sun was coming up, more and more light.  Anybody who looked right
at me could tell that I was not a Jap.  And where did the road go?
The road I was on, where would it take me? I couldn't read the
signs, and my main hope was that the town was built around the
highway - like inost erican cities, or a lot of them - and that if
I kept straight on I would come out the far side, headed right. I
thought of that, and the ocean, and the bergs.
     But things got worse, a lot worse. With the light, people
poured into the streets, and there were vehicles - some of them
milita - all around me, and carts, bicycles, wheelbarrows, wagons
of every kind you could think of, including kids' wagons.  And
right in the middle of things I was nearly stalled.  There was no
way I could move.  Panic: I was nearly there.  My head was
working, but it didn't give me anything. The nearest I had ever
come to something like this was in Tokyo, in the fire, when people
were jammed up in the streets and I was hunkered down in the door
with the .45, waiting for what I wanted. The panic, that huge
panic of all those people, the fire and the smoke and the heat,
were a kind of safety for me; I could pick and choose.  This was
different.  The only panic was mine, and I didn't have any
camouflage: no hillside, no pine straw, no rocks, no bushes, no
snow.  It is terrible to be exposed like that, I can tell you. I
pulled down my hat as low as I could and slumped, to wait it out.
There was no telling what the holdup was.
     Something banged on the door, not the driver's door.  It was
not a gun butt or anything hard, but it still put a shock wave
through me.  The bang came again, but not any harder.  There
210was not any urgency in it, or any authority. I leaned over and got a glance. 
Two kids, about eight or ten, were going along the stalled traffic, hitting
everything they came to with sticks.  That was all, that was all.
     What should I do? I had the two guns with full clips, and I could have
made a fight if I had to. I could have got out and run, and tried to lose
myself, but that wouldn't have worked for long.  Again I drew a blank.  The
Brooks Range left me, the fisher marten left me.
     Nobody seemed interested in me except the kids and their sticks, and they
came and went. I stayed low, leaned up, and looked around at the city, at the people.  Life was going on: men but more
especially women, were carrying things, crossing the street with short steps. 
There was a lot of wood, bundles of it that the women and girls were toting,
and every now and then a log that it took two or three or even four of them to
handle. I wondered if it might be possible for me to go to sleep, but that
would have been taking things too far, giving away too much.  A cart was in
front of me, and a boy on a three-wheeled bicycle was behind.  This was the
hand that I had been dealt for right now, and there was no way I could have
changed it. I sat for what must have been at least an hour, all sorts of things
running through my head, and none of them any good.  But somebody blew a
whistle, and the cart pulled off to one side. I could move forward about half a
block, and I did.  A truck like mine pulled in ahead of me.  Behind me from the
same street another vehicle, another military vehicle, closed up, near enough
but keeping distance, more or less like Sergeant Hough had taught us to do back
in Florida.  We crawled through the streets with the kids rattling sticks along
us like they would have along a fence.  Then we stalled again.  The truck in
front of me stopped and the
211
driver got out.  He grabbed hold of a woman with what looked
like a bundle of laundry on her back and hit her across the face
very hard.  She stumbled over to the side of the road, and we went on.  This
was the way people treated each other over here; I was getting used to it.  But
she was out of the way, and we could move.
   It was a much bigger town than I had any notion it would be
when I started through it.  At first, as far as I was concerned, I was just in
between the truck in front of me and what looked to be about like a six-by-six
or a weapons carrier from back at Buckingham. I wondered where we were going,
going like we were going.  But in the end, the direction was all that mattered,
and I drove along out of town, keeping distance, not getting any closer to
either the truck or the weapons carrier.
     The town dropped off us little by little, and we were in the scrubby
country, clocking along at about thirty-five or forty. It was not bad at all; I
could have been driving in a convoy anywhere.  A convoy? I thought.  Could that
be what it was? I craned, half stood up from the seat, and tried to see over
the truck in front of me.  Sure enough, there was another truck in front of it,
and I reckoned there were probably others in front of that one, too.  Here I
was, damned if I wasn't, doing what I was doing: driving a truck in an enemy
convoy.  Who would have thought anything like it? Believe me, I wouldn't have. 
It was not anything I could ever have imagined.
                                                                                                                                                                                                               I couldn't tell what, right off, but something was getting to me, and I
didn't like it at first. I didn't like it, and then I did like it. I realized
that I had hardly seen any of the land we had been going through because this
feeling - this other feeling - was getting at me from the inside and I didn't
know what to do with it. Usually I would have made myself happy by the idea
that I 
212
was controlling things; that I was actually driving one of the enemy's trucks,
just as the Japanese military personnel in the other vehicles were doing; that
I had taken them in, and they were taking me in the direction I wanted to go. I
did feel that, and I tried to encourage the feeling as much as I could.  But it
was being crowded out by another one that had a real disturbing side to it. 
Disturbing is the word; I can't think of a better one.  What was it, though? I
couldn't fence it off, I couldn't pin it down.  It just came over me.  First,
the feeling of being trapped, of being locked into a convoy, started to leave
me little by little.  Maybe it was the constant speed that we were all moving
forward with.  It may have been that I was right out there in full view, not in
a Japanese uniform, not disguised as anything, and still free.  Maybe it was
because I didn't look at anything but the vehicle in front of me and the other
one behind, in the rear-view mirror.  Whatever, I was comfortable, more
comfortable than I had been since I bailed out, except possibly that time next
to the waterfall.
     But this was not like the waterfall, really.  Other things were part of
it, which were caused in some way by my being in a line of trucks.  Even the
fact that they belonged to the enemy was not as bothersome as certain parts of
the military life began to be. I could not get past the idea that I was under
orders, was following them the same as the soldiers in the other trucks and
vehicles were doing.  It was hard to believe - it was hard for me to believe -
that this notion was more reassuring than anything else: there was a sort of
plan that I didn't have to make myself just now.  That was good, and I rode
with it for a long time, most of the morning.  In with the idea of following
orders, though, came two people: my father and Major Sorbo, my commanding
officer and the pilot of the 29 I'd bailed out of.
213
My father had been the loner of all loners. He made himself
that way, and it was right for him.  Because of something that had happened to
him back in Virginia - he never told me, but I always thought this - he had
taken it on himself to get as far away from other people as he possibly could. 
To him that meant Alaska, and it made the life I lived while I was growing up. 
He wanted me to be like him, and believe me, I wanted to be like him.  He was
not a natural outdoorsman or any kind of pioneer type, but all the time I was
living with him up there, I could tell that he took right to it.  A lot of
times he told me he wished he had been raised like he was raising me.  In a way
we grew up together, learning the same things, the same ways to connect with
the land, the mountains, the animals and fish and birds, and with the seasons,
and most especially with the cold.
     I was more sure than ever, now, that I had to get to Hokkaido, and if I
could, up into the mountains on the northern part, by the ocean.  If I could do
that, I could do anything.  It would be like opening the door of the cabin on
the Brooks and having that red wall my father'd painted hit you like a blast,
an explosion, more than just a color, after being so long in the no-color of
the snow, under the emptiness of the sky, blue or overcast, either one.  That
red wall was my father's only strangeness, though other people might have told
you different.  If they did, none of them ever told me.  It wouldn't have
mattered anyway; I knew what I knew.  If I could make it to northern Hokkaido,
it would be like throwing the door open and having that red wall come at me,
and I would live, or at least die, where I wanted to be.
     Well, I thought, God help us. The spirit of the team. I never had it in my
life, but I had it now, damned if I didn't, driving in the enemy's convoy.  Any
of the others in it would have killed
214
me, cut my balls off, or my head, or both, gouged my eyes out,
spilled my guts all over the road, wound them around barbed wire,
strung me up, used me for bayonet practice.  But in a way I wanted
to go where they went.  We were all under orders.
     I never took my eyes off the truck in front of me, whose
driver I never saw.  In the rear-view mirror, I did get some
notion of the guy behind me.  He was just a kid.  He smiled a lot,
as though pretty much to himself, and it seemed right for him to
be doing that, in the sunlight we were in, going along. I
wondered, from that, if the Nip in front of me was catching a
glimpse of me every now and then, like I was doing into the truck
behind.  What would he see? Off one of the Nips I had shot I had
taken the hat and put it on.  Even if I had had his whole uniform,
though, I wouldn't have passed for a Japanese soldier in a million
years, but in a rear-view mirror, with just the hat on, I might do
all right. I didn't think anyone would notice all that much; we
were going along.
     The road was rough but pretty good, and we began to make a
lot of turns. I wondered if it might be possible to get out my
map, to see if the country around the ocean was hilly or
mountainous, but the map was not very good on terrain, and I
doubted if it would have helped much. I was not real anydous about
getting to the ocean, but, like I always do, I started to make
plans, plans with a big forward sweep to them, all the way to the
mountains at the tip of Hokkaido, on past the monkeys in the snow. 
In any place in the world there is game.  If there was snow or
tundra or even rocks, the gaine I understood would be there, and I
Icnew how to get it. I could outthink any animal or bird that
lived in the cold, by thinking more like he did than he could do. 
All I had to do was get there.
215
    We rode.  There was nothing else to do, and by now I had got
used to it. I could not bring up in my mind any notion of how the
line of trucks was going to end up or where it was going, but I
was sure of one thing: I was not going to turn off the road I was
on, no matter what the rest of them did.  It bothered me that all
this would stop, later on, and everybody would get out.  That
would be hard to handle, but I didn't think it was likely.  If the
convoy was going to some army base, or to a depot or a
fortification of some kind, it would not be on the main road;
there would have to be a turnoff.  If there was, and I didn't
turn, they might take out after me, and I would have to gun up and
run for it.  But I didn't think that would happen, ether.  If they
turned and I didn't, a few of them might think it was strange,
maybe, for a minute or two, and then forget about it and get on
with what they were doing.  Besides that, we were curving around
so much that only two of them at the same time could see me; the
others wouldn't even notice, no matter what happened.  So that
part of it should be all right.  Maybe.
     None of this happened, though.  On into the afternoon, when
we had come down into a valley and were on a straight stretch
     for a little while, the trucks started to turn, one by one.  Three
ahead of me, one of them went off to the right.  After a few more
     miles, the one in front of me turned off to the right, too. I
     looked in the mirror, and the weapons carrier just behind me
     turned -- it was to the left for him - and I saw the kid's smile
     for the last time: it wiped across and was gone. I waved, but only
inside the cab.
     The rest had turned off, and I was by myself again. I won't
say something went out of me when the convoy broke up, but I did
have more fear after it left than I had when I was in it.
216
There didn't seem to be any death in the line of trucks, and I had
lost the orders that somebody or something had given me. I came
back into my status, as they say in the Army, but I was
not in an army anymore, and never was again.

I came to be pretty sure, by now, that I might not he on the main
north-south road, because there was not enough traffic.  Vehicles
I saw were all military, but there were not many of them. I tried
to keep up an even speed, but once something like a jeep passed me
and sounded its horn, and the driver leaned out and made some kind
of signal. I held on, since there wasn't anything else I could do. 
He put his head out and looked back, and I got ready to fight one
more time.  He pulled away, though, and pretty soon I had the road
to myself again.
     By this nine I had a notion of how the gas gauge was set up,
and if I was right I didn't have much left.  There was not any way
to get more, because I didn't know where there was any, and if I
did, I would have had to steal it, which would have brought in
more risk tha I wanted: there are always a lot of people around a depot, or anywhere there's fuel. 
Besides, I was tired of driving.  Even the fact that I had made a
lot of distance didn't get rid of the idea that there was
something not fair about my doing things this way. I wanted to
pick up my bag of feathers and my other things and go on the way I
had been doing before I ran into the monks in the monastery fog,
before the American monk and I had sat looking at the rocks in the
courtyard. I thought of something I should have said to him when
he was coming at me with all that religious stuff he had learned
how to say.  This would have been good, I thought: when he said
217
something like, God is everywhere there is, God is in this snow, I
should have come back at him and said, No, the snow is in the
snow.  That would have settled his hash, and it made me feel
better when I realized I could have said it.
     Driving along on the dregs of my gas, I tried my best to get
back into my feelings and thoughts on the log train, where
everything seemed so easy.  Then, I could project forward and
back, and get involved in the landscape of my own head. The whole
world of cold and snow and wind and winter was all mine
then; it just seem to come to me. The caribou at the tree line, going from range
to range, were more beautiful in my mind than they were where they were   alive, and I remembered my 

father, now, as part of all that in a way he never really was.  It
was that red side of the cabin that hit me, the one whole wall of
blood red, but brighter than blood: brighter and brighter. When my
father painted the inside of the cabin, and made the
wall that way, he said it was because you got starved for color up
there in all that snow, and craved it like elk and caribou crave
salt. I believed him then, believed that was the reason for the
paint, but now I had come to think, without any notion why,
that there was another reason.  The red was more than the color
you were starved for.  It was something else. Something real
definite happened when you opened the door and came in out of the
snow and faced into that red wall. Whatever it was hit you like a
hammer right over the heart - not in the head or the guts but the
heart.  You could feel yourself stagger and come back.
     Now, in Japan, after all those years, I thought I had it. I
had what the wall really did.  It was nothing but this: you had to
               stand out against it.  In the snow, on the muskeg, the animals 
and birds blended with what was there, with what they were in.
218
The tern did, the ptarmigan and the winter weasel and the lynx did, and I did
my best to do the same thing.  But when I came in from the white and up against
that wild red, I couldn't do it anymore. I was trapped, you could see me, and there was death in that.  There's
no other way to put it: there was no place to go.  The background, the world,
was against me.  That's why the change came when I moved from white to red,
moved against the red and stopped.  Or maybe you could say I was stopped. 
There was always the need to look around, to look this way and that way, trying
to find some other place.  It was panic, sure enough, and I won't deny it.  But
there was also, along with the panic, a terrific joy, in that I knew I would
never be up against anything worse, any place where everything was against me,
where there was no way to turn, and when you reach that kind of limit you can't
keep the happiness down. I was at home in the snow; I was all right. I knew, in
the white outfit I used to wear, that if I closed my eyes I would be as out of
the world as the snowshoe hare - the snowshoe hare on one side or the lynx on
the other. I could hide or attack, wait for danger to pass or kill something
before it even knew I was there.  All the time I was growing up I must have
known, in my way, that the red wall where I couldn't hide was part of the
other; it made invisibility possible.  If the wall was a place where I couldn't
hide, it would make hiding better when the conditions were right. I don't know
why I believed this, but I did, and it seemed to work. I went along forward in
my mind.  Sooner or later I was going to have to get on water, and it would be
like the wall: no camouflage, no cover.  And it would have to be at night. 
That was one thing.  A few others shaped up, too, as the gas in the truck went
down. I needed to find where Honshu came closest to Hokkaido, and I needed a
boat with no engine, one that ran on
219
nothing but silence.  But first I had to get to the ocean, and then
we would see.
     Meantime my face was hurting pretty bad, especially my nose and mouth.  My
nose didn't crunch when I pinched it, so I thought that it probably wasn't
broken and would heal up in a few days or maybe a week. I had lost three teeth,
and another one that would probably come out, though I kept trying to stuff
it back in with my fingers, but couldn't tell yet if it was taking
hold. Whenever I left off from planning and let my mind wander, my head would
start to hurt, and I wouldn't feel as good about what I was doing, or what I
had been planning.  And so I knocked it off and began to wonder what I was
going to do with the truck.
     I could just have left it at the side of the road and gone on. I might
even have turned it around and left it headed south. I doubted whether that
would fool anybody.  Not for long it wouldn't.  If the Japanese had any sense
at all they would know they were missing a truck and some men, and would look,
and when they found it would want to know why it was here, this far 
north, no matter which way it was headed when they found it.  A good idea
seemed to be to run it off into the water, but I didn't pass any rivers or
lakes.  The map showed two lakes off to the west, but I didn't want to go
hunting for them.  They were too far off the track I wanted to take.  Some dirt
roads went into hills on the right, and one of them was the best I could do. I
couldn't think of any way to get the truck clean out of sight, so I turned off,
went over one rise and then another, didn't see anybody, stopped the truck, and
got out. I went all over the cab and the rest of the truck, looking for
whatever would help, but there was not anything. I went through the engine,
too, and pulled out some wires that I might be able to strip down and use for
220snares up north. I could have struck my flints and set fire to the
thing, but there didn't seem to be any real good to that, though I
would have done it if I thought it would confuse them a little and
buy me some more time.  As it was, I just walked away, topped out
the two rises, stayed on the east side of the hills, but high
enough so that I could check the road now and then, and went on,
carring my bag of feathers and fish heads and other stuff,
foraging around for a place to sleep.  If my silk map and I had
any sort of good relation, I was not far from the ocean, and might
even come out somewhere near the strait. I formed a picture of it
in my mind, which would not be anything like it would turn out,
but it would do for now, sure enough.
     No trees, but bushes.  Not plenty of them, or thick together,
but some.  If nobody came along, I thought I would rest up a bit
as soon as I had put some distance between the truck and me.  It
would not be bad if I ate something, the way I felt, slept until I
woke up, and then went on up north for the rest of the night. I
might even be able to use the road part of the way.

I slept in a bush between two other bushes, covered with leaves
and my bag covered with leaves, my feet pulled up and in the bag.
I was real tired, and dropped right off I believe I might have
tried to catch the reflection of lights from the road, but there
were not any, or if there were they went right on.
     I was rested when I woke up, but I could have used more, and
tried to go back to sleep.  It was cold, not the real stuff I
could get with anci into, and would be ready for, and prepared
for, but cold enough to make it hard to sleep. I didn't want to
wear myself out - believe me, not right now - and wished I could
221
have had as good a night's sleep as I did back in the house where
I fought with the old guy and his sword. Though the soldiers had
beat me up pretty bad, none of them scared me as much as that  
old guy did, because he was on to something I didn't know
anything about and didn't have any way to deal with. If I could
have got him out in the snow it would have been different.  He
     would have never known what hit him, or where it came from, if it
was there, before it was too late. I felt like I had lost
a round back there.  But the sleeping sure was good, and I
wished I had it back.
     I saw there wasn't any use in staying where I was, and got up
and moved on.  There wasn't much light, but I could see well enough,
and there was at least a chance that I could make a few
miles before the sun came up.  But the ocean - when would it be
there? A whole new turnaround of my situation, maybe even a whole
new life, would start just as soon as I saw it.  A day? Two days? 
and two nights? When? I was ready to kill somebody if he had a
boat.  That would be my decilion; I would pick him. I was looking
forward to more time that I would control. Let whoever it would be
come into my time.
    I kept walking, along the low side of a hill. One hill
connected to another, and I really didn't know whether this was
good or bad. I was real tired, and I was not walking anymore, much
less stalking, but I guess what you could call trudging, and this
could have been bad because my alertness was low. I remenber the
Air Force people talking about alertness--alertness in the air,
alertness at the base, alertness in your personal life--but I
didn't have any of that now. I was only fucking tired, and I was
trudging. The best things I had were leaving me, and I went on and
on. I really didn't care.     But there was a convoy.  It seemed to me that I had a special
222
connection with convoys, that there were guys amongst those trucks
who could understand me.  They pulled up.  This was good. My
interest took on, tired as I was.
     They all stopped.  This was something. I watched them, all
those trucks, over the crest of the hill.  There was a whole long
line of them.  Even at night you could see the dust; you could see
the dust around them in their own lights.  It was a scene that I
would not have wanted to be in, and yet I was in it, under orders.
Why not?
     I heaved up some, where I could get a look.  Everything had
stopped, and I watched the lights.  They were doing something to
the lights.  At first the low dusty hills were caught in the glow,
and it made the shadows strong.  Then everything began to tone
down.  The lights started to go, but not disappear.  The shadows
rounded off, and I inched up.  From what I could tell, the drivers
and the other people in the trucks were working with the head-
lights, putting something over thein. Thev were making slits
taking most of the light out of the light, probably with tape of
some kind.  The light kept dimming, and still stayed.  Still
stayed; then they all started up.  The hills shook.  The shadows
traveled and moved very easily as the trucks went on, on out of
sight.
     What about all this? I thought.  Were they heading for some
secret installation, or what? I couldn't tell, but I had another
notion, another interpretation, and if I was right things would
break in my favor.  In the dimming of the lights I saw the ocean:
a port, some kind of anchorage, something they didn't want to show
from far off, over an open space. I shook and gripped myself. 
Maybe I had made it through the fire, through the fields and the
terraces, through the fights, through my own
223
blood and gone teeth, through the lakes and the creeks, through
the stars, through the good times and the bad.  If the ocean
opened up in front of me, I didn't think there was anything I
couldn't do.  And if I could find a way to get to the other
island, and into the cold country, the real country, the mountains
and the isolation, and find just a little game, I believed there
was not a person in Japan, or any bunch of them, who could stay in
it with me. I had plen of confidence, if the guys in the trucks
had been dimming down for the reasons I was hoping for. I thought
I would stretch out, and move and take a look when the dawn gave
me a shot at it.
     I waited, lying between some scrub bushes, but I couldn't get
to sleep to save my soul. I was too excited thinking the ocean,
even the north island, might be in sight just over the next rise. 
There was nothing to keep me from trying to look, even just as
things were, and I decided to change, go forward a little. I
picked up my stuff and went on through the bushes.
     When I got to the crest of the hill I couldn't make out any-
thing. I couldn't see any better than I had before.  But the night
felt more open; the way you breathe is different when there's lots
of space in front of you.  There were some clouds and not much
moon, but I stayed and waited, listened and tried to see.  If the
ocean was really down there in front of me, something would flash
sooner or later.
     It happened, very faint and far off, but a dim flicker with
levelness to it that I didn't think anything on land could have
caused. What there was of a moon came out and it happened again,
and then again, and then all at once, all over. I was still not
absolutely sure that I was looking at what I wanted to see, but I
was on the knife edge of believing that I might be dead
224
sure, if I stood there long enough. I would have to wait for daylight, though,
to be as sure as I wanted. I lay down again, just under the south side of the
hill, made myself as small as I could and slept.

Light came.  The sky had cleared. There were plenty of stars everywhere, and I
lay for a while looking at them through the bushes; I had got used to looking
at stars through bushes.  Then, keeping low, almost crawling, I went up to the
crest of the hill and turned all my eyesight on what would be there, on what
was there.
     It was the greatest sight I have ever seen, I tell you.  About a quarter
of a mile away was a brown village of wood huts, and beyond that was the ocean,
blue-gray and restless and going out of sight. I scanned for the other island,
but it was not anywhere I could see it.  There must have been a dock or wharf 
in the town, because there was a big black ship next to it, and soldiers were
taking stuff out of the backs of the trucks and carrying it toward the ship. 
Some kind of loading operation was going on.  The ship was probably a supply
ship, and if that was true it would probably take a good long time to load.
     None of that would do me any good, though. I didn't want to steal a skiff
or a rowboat -- even if I could have with all those soldiers around - and just
get out on the water and hope for the best. I needed to know exactly where I was
going, because I would have to get across the strait in a night, and there
couldn't be any fumbling around about it, or the waiste of any time. I knelt
down and got out the map. As far as I was able to figure, there were not but a
couple of towns big enorgh to service any
225
kind of heavy shipping, and they were both west of where Honshu and Hokkaido
caine closest together.  It would be east, then. I needed to get away from the
soldiers as fast and as far as I could: try to make a forced niarch for a
couple of hours, then hole up in the bushes, get soine rest, and work east at
night for as long as I could stand up to it.  And I needed something to eat.  I
was tired of dried fish heads mixed with feathers and uncooked rice, but I was
not desperate yet. -The main thing was to move out, make a line where I could
check the ocean whenever it was light enough, and make time to the east
whichever way I could.
     I was in the bushes for two days and two nights.  I've never been so bored
with bushes or so tired in lily life.  I've crossed forty miles of muskeg, 
between the Tlicit River and Rabbit Creek, a hundred miles south of where I
lived, when the spring thaw was on.  The land was more than half water, and you
had to pull your foot out of the shit after every step you took, sometimes with
your hands, but that was not nearly as bad as this, because in the flats up
there you've got something to look at: coming on a nest in the hummocks, or
feathers where some preclator got a bird, and the live birds keep rising up out
of the water or planing down onto it.  Here, where I was now, in these
uninteresting dead hills, there was not one sign of life, nothing but scruffy
bushes with tough twigs. I thought once about striking the flints and trying to
boil some rice when the dark came, but I didn't have any water, and I decided
that the twigs were probably too worthless to burn, growing in that black soil
that was too sorry to grow anything else in.  That was most likely the reason
they hadn't terraced these hills, though there might have been some other
reason they didn't do it.  Both days, at early morning and twilight, I'd scan
die horizon for the other island,
226
but it didn't show.  If it was not east of where I had started
out, I had plumbered myself sure enough, because I didn't have the
energy to go back , the other way.  Everything was riding on my
being able to see the island, and it may have been farther off
than I had thought, too far to see froni anywhere on Honshu.  If
that was so, it was too bad for me - too bad, tough shit, and so
long.
     With all the thousands of twigs pulling at me for two days, I
didn't make a lot of distance, but I made some.  All the time,
nobody came up to where I was.  It may have been that all the
interest was in fishing.  Back on Tinian they told us how depen-
dent the Japs were on fishing, and looking down on the water and
the beaches I could believe it.  There were lots of boats of all
sizes on the beaches and on the water, everywhere you looked. I
watched a little during the day, and a lot at night. When it got
dark all the boats that were out, or going out, put on a light of
some sort, probably an oil lantern.  Exactly why the drivers in
the convoy had taped all the truck lights was something I couldn't
understand. I reckoned to myself that that was just like the
Japanese, and let it go at that; it's an answer you can't argue
with.
     I was discouraged, I don't mind telling you.  If the other
island didn't show pretty soon, I would be too weak and played out
to get to it.  Three things were in my favor, though, and they
buoyed me up, because there was nothing else but them to do it. 
First, the weather was good, and real clear; if anybody could see
Hokkaido from Honshu, I would be able to, if I found the strait. 
It had turned off warm and there was a fresh breeze, even blowing
over the hill.  Being as tired as I was from the twigs, I could
sleep good, and I did.  The third thing was that there were all
those boats, and if I played my cards right I could have just
227
about any of them I wanted. When people were not actually in them,
they just walked away, like it was never their idea to have
anything to do with them.  Half the time they didn't even bother
to tie them up, but just anchored them to the beach with a rope
and a heavy rock, or something that looked like a building block.
     Nobody took the trouble to guard anything, and it came to me
that I could change my plan now, and that I ought to.  Before, I
thought I would probably have to kill somebody, maybe even two
people, to get a boat, and if that was so, I could see how they
night come out into the water after me, though I hadn't made out
any patrol boats or military craft at all.  Right then I added one
item to the list of what I wanted to get, besides two oars I could
lash together to make a two-bladed paddle like a kayak's.  It was
whatever made the light - a lantern, whatever.  If I could get out
from the beach on the night part of the fishing shift, I could
just be one of the boy, out there working for a living.  There
would be that about the light: it would kind of make me official. 
That much was settled. I moved east over a couple of hills, and
the ocean moved off to the north.  Taking my time, I followed it. 
In broad daylight I stood up and looked.
     What happened then was more like a film on my eyes than
anything real.  It was a far-off film, but it did seem to me that
the ocean in one place was not like it was everywhere else. I
could not be sure, but it may have been that there was a
difference in one place. I blinked and tried again, and the same
thing happened. There was not a definite shape, but there was -
there might have been - a difference that I could feel more than I
could see. I got down, tried to clear my eves with my fingers, got
up, and tried again. I told myself not to fake it, not to make
things up. I wanted so much for the land to be there that it was
228
almost like I was trying to think it into the real world, whether it wanted to
come or not: land, a whole island where the real snow was, the real space, a
place where I could live the way I knew how. I gave it another try.  The same.
I had nine. I worked to the east over three hills, stood up, and scanned again. 
This time the ocean was dead even, all the wav left and right. I canie back to
the place where I had been, over a ricke little fishing village, and it was the
same as it had been before.  It was not so much that I knew something was
there, at the absolute limit of what I could see, but there might have been,
and right then I knew I had to go with it, and I would go with it. I didn't
think of it as mv onlv chance, because I kept that notion down, but all the
time I knew it was, and my blood began to pump. I sat down just under the brow
of the hill and got out my emergency kit for the compass, the asshole compass. 
No matter what we called it, the needle was true, as true as it was on any
other compass; I had checked it out. I raised up and sighted on true north, and
took a bearing on the part of the ocean that might have been not quite the same
as the rest. I made it out to be nine degrees east of where I was, and that was
good enough.  I put the compass back in the kit and checked my gear, evervthing
in it, and waited for the first of the dark and for the first of the boats to
go out.
     Before it got dark I took a last look at the land below me.  Past the
shacks of the little village was a long point of land, and I figured to go
around the village and out to the point and trv to find a boat there, where
there didn't seem to be anything but beach.  But by the wav the fishermen
treated their boats, leaving them just wherever they happened to come to, I was
pretty sure there would be some on the point, and unless a bunch of people went
out to them together, I felt like I could handle just one or
229
eeven two of them, and I might not even have to do that.  My plans began to
heat up.
     I needed the whole night, so the sooner I got started, the better.  On the
other hand, it would not be a good idea for me to try to go out with the first
group of them.  There would be too many at the same time.  It would be better
for me to be a straggler, but not too much of one.
     I hung back a while, watching how they put out. I concentrated on one,
just a young guy by himself. He put a few things in - I couldn't tell what they
were - cast the rope off the paving block, got in, and went on out.  And that
was that.  There was no hurry about it.  It was very, simple, something that
nobody would pay any attention to.  But that might be the hardest thing of all
for me: to keep it simple and slow and just do like everybody else. Any sort of
fast motion or violence would not be good. I gave up the idea of killing
anybody. I had to find myself an empty boat and get out on the water. That was
all, and it was everything.
     I started walking out toward the spit. I passed seven or eight people
getting ready to go, and nobody even looked at me. I went on beyond what little
light there was, out onto the spit. I would have been surprised if somebody
didn't keep his boat out there.  Maybe there would be more than one.
     But there were no boats there, and I wondered what to do next.  If I went
back through town and and the hills again, what would that get me? I wouldn't
do that no matter what. I was bound for the other island, any way I could get
there. I decided to try another fifty yards on the spit, where it got darker
and darker.
     And then I saw two boats right together. the smaller one would do, and
there was nobody around. I went to it and used
230
My flashlight, which still had some juice.  The boat was about ten
feet long, had oars and the lainp.  It also had some thm ropes in
it.  There was no reason to wait, and I got in and shoved off. 
The water felt like a million dollars, especially after all the
walking I had been doing on land through the twigs and thorns.  I
rocked a little, just for the feeling.  It was great in that big
quiet. There was not much moon, but using my flashlight again I
started to do a couple of things. I took the oars and the rope and
lashed the oars together so they would make a two-bladed paddle,
like I was used to.  That meant I could move the boat like a
kayak, facing forward; it was better for me to see where I was
going.  The oars were light, and would work well that wav.  Then I
got out the compass, set my heading, and looked for a star to line
up the heading with. I couldn't make out Polaris, but there was a
big star, maybe even a planet, that was not more than a few points
off the compass heading.  That would be good enough.
     There were only a couple of boats between me and the open
dark water, and I worked out past them. I didn't think anybody
would notice how I sat in the boat, but somebody in one of the
other ones said something, probably to me, then said it again.  At
first I thought I'd paddle hard, make a run for it, but I kept
down the panic and tried something else. I knelt down on the
floorboards, got out the flints, and lit the lamp.  That seemed to
do it, because nobody said anything else.  Like I say, maybe the
lamp was it, or maybe they just lost interest.  Anyway, I was out
in the big dark of water now, by myself.
     The only sound was mine, and it was a nice rhythm, one side
and then the other, holding to the course, putting the prow right
under the star, and moving toward it.  The water rocked me; I
rocked the water.  It was almost-black dark, but not quite.
231
I got where I could see a little, but not much.  Nothing happened
for four hours. I was into my rhythm, and deeper and deeper into
it. I didn't have any notion as to how much distance I had made
except by the time it took me to make it.  My main worry was that
I wouldn't be able to get all the way across in the dark. In
daylight I would be a sitting duck for sure, with no cover and
camouflage, and no scheme I could coine up with would be good
enough.  But that was not the pont. The point was that I was
moving on the water, and that I was moving the water.  But the
thought kept coming back to me: what was I doing here, halfway
between the enemy's countries, something nobody could even have
dreamed up, The water hit the sides of the boat as I kept up my
rhthim. Who had a better right to it? But again, what was I doing
here? The water was right felt right, I could have been here on
vacation and nobody would have said anything about it.  But I was
not fooling myself I was where I was.  But after a minute I didn't
let myself think like that.  Only for a second: did I think like
that, but it was wrong.  Only for a second: a flash, a night
flash.  Then, no more.
     But when the oars had come into my hands double-bladed,
a kayak paddle now, something happened to the strait between
Honshu and Hokkaido, something the place could never have
imagined, that would never he there again. The snow came back, 
and the real cold, the gut-blue water and the long stretches and,
above all, the ice.  There was the glacier.  the glacier was
coming to me with every dig of the paddle, every stroke, every
slant of the body to go with the paddle, left and right. I had
seen it, and would see it again, the real pure thing, the pure
color.  Believe me when I tell you that when the glacier
calves off thre is something that you don't get with every day.
232  You would have to be out there in a kayak, where it is quiet, no
engines; where you lift your paddle out of the water because there's not
anything else you can do.  The ice slides, you with your mouth open, slides
down and falls: falls groaning like a woman, somebody said, but it doesn't
sound like that to me.  If there was ever a woman in the world who sounded like that, I wouldn't want to be around.  No, it
was something else, something that the world said itself, that nobody could
know except what said it.  But there it was, right ahead of me, the shucked
out paddle of the glacier, the same color as the star where I set
the prow, and was going right-left for it, through the channel.  Well where I
was heading I couldn't get enough of remembering it, the pure blue: the pure
more-than-blue.  It was the most intense and most pure, a clean shot to the
inside.  And so bright, so deep bright, not like anything else, nothing like
it. When you were out in the kayak you started with some notion of walrus, of
seal, of whatever you might find on the floe, even a polar bear.  But when the
glacier starts to calve, all animals go somewhere else; there is nothing but 
what is. When I told you before that you wouldn't see this everyday, I was
right.  It was the most intense, and the most pure, it was - well, You could
say secret, the best of it, the heart of ice, the heart you never
had any idea was there, and when you saw it, knew had to be there.
                              That was what I thought about in iny rhythm.  And when I wanted to stop
and look, I stopped and looked, back and forward, but mostly back.
     Here I was, here I was. The log train had been snow, the fields where I
was going, where I hoped to get to.  It was the long line of deer, buried to
the briskets in snow, all facing one way.  You bet: the line of deer heads, all
pucks, bound for infinity.
233
But now it was the ice, the mater and the ice, the white sea; what I said
     I must have made ten miles by now. I was not sure, but I thought I had;
I had to think it. There were no other boats around. I rested a minute and
started out again.  But something had happened that I couldn't explain. I
didn't have the star anymore. I looked up. The sky was clear enough, and had
plenty of stars in it, but not that one. I knew that the star would not stay in
exactly the same place, but it wouldn't matter all that much; it would be close enough.
Hokkaido was a big island, but now I didn't know where it was except generally,
and if I didn't make it across at the narrowest point, I wouldn't make it by
daylight, and I would be gone - no hope, no chance, no north. I looked for the
star again.
     Between me and the land was as dark as anything you could imagine.  It was
that dark before, and it was that dark now. No, it was darker.  Darker, more
solid, and it might have been moving. I strained my eyes out over the water. I
tried to contrast.  And it came, and it was big.  An enormous ship - it
couldn't have been anything but a battleship - was right in front of me.  And
now I could hear it, hear it cutting the water. My boat began to rock, a little
at first and then more. I held still where I was, backwatering with the paddle.
I could handle it all right, and now I could make out more than I had been able
to before.  The shape in front of me was so damn big, it was like a mountain or
a city, going from left to right. I thought I even made out a couple of towers
on it. I had the impression that the whole thing was stiff, like it was cut out
of wood or cardboard, that it didn't really have any weight, that it was flat
and didn't have any insides, only an outline. And so quiet.  The faint sound it
did make was a kind of run-together bubbling, and it was strange to me, and
234
funny more than not, that a battleship, as far as I was concerned,
was a huge flat cardboard cutout that bubbled.
     I waited for it to pass, and the star to come back. just to
have something to do, I turned around and looked back, and what I
saw shook me up a litlle.  Another big ship was going by in the
opposite direction.  This one I could make out better, and t was
big, maybe even bigger than the other one. I was right between 
them, and the water around my boat and the boat itself began to
boil.  No bull elk at rutting time ever bucked more. The whole
strait was swirling around me from both directions; it was like
being sawed in two by water. I dropped the paddle on the floor and
held on, doing everething I could to keep from turning over.  It
would be bad news sure enough if I got thrown out and lost the
boat, or it sank.  Goodbye, goodbye, I said; this may just be it.
     But it wasn't.  Both ships went by, bubbling front and back,
the water came quiet around me, and the star was where it had
been, or alinost. I picked up the paddle, made a couple of
adjustments, put the prow under the star, grabbed hold of the
water on one side, shifted the blade to the other, and plowed on
forward, glad to be going.
     Three more hours, four, eight bours now. I was getting very
tired, my arms and my hands mainly, but also my back, from sitting
so long in the same position. I judged that it was about two or
two and a half hours until first light.  Two and a half, no more.
Were was Hokkaido? Had I plaved everything wrong? No way back, no
way out. I kept going forward.
     Another hour, and nothing.  My arms were about to fall out of
their sockets, iny hands were raw. I would not have been surprised
if I'd got seasick from the constant right-left, left-right
movement that it took to move the boat. I thought that maybe
235
my eyes had learned something about the situation from straining   
to look at the battleships, and it might have been that they
had. I did my best to concentrate the land into being where I
wanted to be, but I didn't make a very good job of it, be-
cause to add to my other troubles I was getting sleepy. I could
hardly keep my lids up.  They were not so much heavy to fall, just
determined to come down.  Don't do it, I said; don't let it
happen.
      But it did. I woke up and shook it off. I looked for light:
light would get me castrated, light would kill me.  Still dark, 
the star, still headed right.  My lantern had gone out.  There was
the same kind of dark that the first ship had made, the darker
than the other dark, the solid, the dark inside the dark. I
checked again, I strained my guts, I put everything I had into it.
If it was not land, I couldn't find it, and I couldn't make it, no
matter how hard I tried.
     I was almost sure it was, though, and as I came closer I was
more sure. I passed a boat a couple of hundred yards off, and it
sure hadn't come from the side I'd started from. I must be getting
close.  Closer and closer, and the best sign of all was that the
star was right on it, though a lot higher. I kept moving, I picked
up. I kept up. It was land, dark and solid. I didn't see a thing
about it, except that there were not any lights.  Patrols, I
thought; are there any patrols? Some guy walking the beach who
would shoot at anything, Anything that moved? Or a couple of guys,
talking that excited talk before they opened up, opened fire. 
There was nothing but silence, a great good quiet, as I drifted
in.
     I grounded, and it was a feeling, up through the backbone,
that you wouldn't forget.  Land. I right.  Land.  Now what?
     Could I risk the flashlight? There didn't seem to be any
236
reason why not. But I hung back, my thumb on the slide.  If I struck that light,
a whole barrage, an enfilade, might hit me, just because of a spark.
   But they were not expecting that spark.  They would not be that ready.
   I was already thinking ahead right away. First secure the each, then
then move inland, northwest at first.  So said my silk map, which had come to
be so much a part of what I was doing that I would not have taken on a big topo
map, to swap for it. I began to understand what they had told us on Tinian
about survival: cherish your equipment.  But I knew more.  A lot more.  I could
tell them about it, whoever would want to listen.
     Ground, solid. I turned to the boat that had got me across.  What to say"
What to do? There was no other way we would ever meet again, and we both knew
it. I kissed the palm of my hand and put it in the gunwale: that was all I had,
but it was what I meant.
     Then I turned to the new thing, the new island.  Now.  Now.  What to do?
There were no patrols, no coast guard, no nothing. What were things like here?
It was dark and that was good, but it liad its problems. The map - the silk,
the body silk said go northwest first.  Then, after you pass a certain point,
swing due north. That would be the point, right.  But first northwest, and get
away from the coast and the boat.  There was no place to hide the boat, and it
wouldn't have done any good if I had tried to drag it around and conceal it;
somebody would have found It.  So I left it where it was, wondering what the
Japanese would think of their own oars made into a kayak paddle.  Let them
wonder while I moved.
     Moved, moved inland, northwest. I needed a mile at least, and I could lie
down, let go, let everything go.  There was not
237
anything I wanted so much except just to let go. And yet the strait, the 
battleships, the whipsawing of the water, were right there, and the hills, if I
could find them, would feed in, would, like you could say, be fed by all that
water, by those ships, and the rest of it, to the northwest on the new island.
     I got the impression that there might be a town or even a city over the
hills to my left, and that I might be fairly close to it, but I didn't do
anything about it.  Before I left I sat down on the beach around a turn from
the boat and picked up stuff from underneath me: sand, shells.  None of it
would do, and I moved inland thirty or forty yards, with all the water I could
carry in my hands, to where there was real dirt. I plastered it all over me.    
Whatever was there: whatever, I would look like it.  Then I picked up my bag
and started walking, one more time.
     One mile, I thought. I was sure ready to sleep. trees, if I could find
them.  Bushes.  A tree.  A rock.  Not a road.  Not a field.  I didn't see a
soul, and could have gone on and made a little distance, but I was too tired,
and the light was coming up. I could see now, and I put in under some bushes
and lay down.  They were not much for concealment, but they were all that was
there, and I could hardly stand up. I was on the north island, and that was
enough for now. I felt very beat up and out of things, but I kept telling
myself that I had made it to the north island, and if I could just keep going I
could be in the deserted part of things, and I could stalk, could find a way to
trap. I would be where I could control and live. I didn't ask anything else.

I must have slept all day, because the stars were coming out when I woke up. I 
got on my feet, picked up my bag, and went
238
on in much better shape.  At first, when I had carried the bag around with me
everywhere, I thought that surely somebody would ask me about it, what was in
it, where I had got it, or make some kind of trouble about it.  Nobody ever
did, though, and gradually, from looking around a lot, I came to understand
that everybody in Japan is carrying something. They can't walk without carrying
something. The men can't, and the women sure-God can't.  So it was all right if
I went along toting a bag of swan feathers and fish heads.  Nobody knew, and
nobody cared.  It made me feel a lot safer.
    When it got full into night I started traveling again, using flashlight
whenever I needed to.  The ground was rocky and rough, and it would take me
maybe a couple of days to cover enough ground to turn due north again. I found
a road and moved along parallel to it, keeping it in sight but never on it.  In
three days I only saw three vehicles, and I began to think tha t Hokkaido was
completely deserted.  But I was not taking any chances, and was just as
cautious as I had been before.
     When I made the change from northwest to full north I felt like a
millionaire: better.  Polaris swung around and trued up, and the land started
to rise.  Underfoot was good; all I needed was snow, and game.  The animal
never lived that I couldn't stalk.
     I went on, and on, and up, traveling some in the daytime now, because I
saw I could. With all that time alone, took to checking myself, to see how I
was doing.  Three of my teeth were gone, but the gums were healing up all right
and didn't hurt so much anymore, and the tooth that had been loose had stayed
in and got solid again, and I took that to be a good sign. I could chew on one
side as well as I ever could, if I had something decent to chew.  For the rest,
I felt OK.  There was nothing
239
wrong with my hands, and my feet and legs were better than they'd been since I
left Alaska.  My nose would probably be crooked for the rest of my life, but
that didn't bother me at all.  Why should it? The main thing was that the land
was rising, and I was going up with it. I looked forward to plateauing out,
and living high and cold.
                                          It kept happening.  As I got higher the trees got better and started to
look like trees ought to look. I didn't know what they were, but they were not
far from being oaks, with thick dark and a lot of branches. I happened to
glance up into one of them just as a light snow - the kind the Eskimos call
eyelash snow - was beginning to come down, and I'll be damned if there were
not five or six monkeys sitting in it. I had never seen any monkeys except in
the Denver zoo, and these were not like any of them. I gave the tree a kick,
just to see if I could stir them up, but it didn't bother thein. I didn't want
to bother them; just playing a little.
     The snow was good, because when there was more of it I could get a fix on
what game might be around. I would be able to track. I had problems, though,
like always. With the snow my heart came up, and I also knew I had to do
something about my hands and feet.  The gloves I had got from the old warrior
were not thick enough for really cold weather, and my feet were numb enough to
be dangerous. What to do? I didn't have the answer, but figured, like all the
other times, that I'd find some way to deal with it.
   I sat down with my back to a tree, waiting for the snow to
settle and the animals to run around, to run from or hide or set
stalk, to leave me the signs that they had to leave. The ground with a nice
roll to it, the trees in a kind of open woods: there would have to be things
that lived here. I got up and looked for 
240a straight branch, and finally found one about fifteen feet from the ground.
I hitched up the tree, cut it off, and came back down. I trimmed the branch
and lashed on my short GI knife to make it a spear. That and my long bread 
knife were the only weapons I had, and unless I could find a way to trap something, I would have to
use one or the other if I found game. I didn't have any notion I could kill an
animal with my bare hands, or maybe my bare teeth, but if I had to, I would
try. Men have a real disadvantage, with such short teeth; almost
any animal is better off, even rats. I got up and tried out the spear, gave it
a couple of short casts. My throwing arm is not one of my strong poliits, so it
struck me that it would be best if I didn't try to throw, but worked in close
enough to stab.  The best of all would be to make whatever animal there was
come to me, come by me, or maybe I could hit him while he was grazing, nuzzling
stuff through the snow.  When animals have their heads down they can't see you.
That's why they always look up before they go back down.
     The spear was good enough, and I left the bag under the tree and went
looking.  When I was a few hundreds yards into the woods things began to happen
underfoot.  There were rabbits here, and I picked up the pugmarks of some kind
of cat. And there were hoofprints, too - the best sign of all.  All of these
had just come out in the last hour or so, which was also good.  It meant here
was plenty of life.  The hoofprints had me stumped, though. I didn't believe
they, were from deer; they were too small. What on earth, then? Some kind of
goat was as close as I could come. What kind of goat lived in the mountains on 
the north island of Japan? We had had some survival courses on Tinian, and I
tried to think back. But the truth was that I never
241
paid much attention to them, figuring that I knew more about it
than the instructors did, who got everything out of a book. 
     I went on in, in the general direction of the hoofprints,
checking mny compass now and again. I didn't want to lose track
of my bag; it was like home.  It was the closest I could get,
the closest I wanted.
     I followed one set of hoofprints, which was getting harder to do because
more snow was coming down, more flakes and bigger, but still not real heavy.
The sky was overcast everywhere you looked, and I expected that the snow would
go on for a long time. Ad then I saw - whatever it was, whatever they were. 
No more than twenty-five yards off was a herd of about fifteen, grayish, not
too much darker than the snow, in a clump of trees upwind frpm me. They were
about the size of goats, from what upwI could make out, with the visibility
like it was. They surely had to be goats of some kind: short goats and heavy,
that's the best I can say it. They were meat, though, and maybe hides, too, 
and I got over behind a tree to plan my stalk. I really wanted to fall on them
- or one of them - from above, like I had the Jap soldier in the truck. That
was the most satisfying thing that ever happened to me in my life, because if I
hadn't been as close to being a fisher marten as a human been can get, there
was nobody else who could: the fisher, which is the best animal ever made.
    I was about to step and move forward one tree when something spooked the
herd, and they came right toward me. I got ready, and had a big one picked out. 
But I didn't mave any move, because I was too surprised. The one I was getting
ready to hit had an arrow in him. And behind the foreleg joint, too, right in
the boiler room, the heart-lung section. Hee was already
242
staggering, and didn't have too far to go before he would fall and
kick.
     I took a stab at another one, but all I did was turn the
herd, and they went back the way they had come from.  They stopped
then, all together with their heads down and making a lot of
commotion. I heard a voice scream out, and it was not any goat
voice, nothing that came from those ghost-goats, and I realized
they were ganging up on the other hunter, probably goring him, and
might kill him, sure enough. I took a few steps and was there, and
stuck one of them deep, then pulled out and stuck him again.  He
moved away, but two of the others came off the guy on the ground
and hit me in the legs before I could even think.  One of them
didn't get in a good lick, and didn't do much more than just graze
me, but the other one did, and hit me in the big-meat part of the leg with both horns.  They went in deep,
especially one of them did, went in like needles.  They were as
sharp and thin and pointed as a mountain goat's horns.  This goat,
or whatever he was, was not fooling around: he even shook his horn
inside of me, to tear things up a little more. I stayed on my
feet; if I had hit the ground it would have been all over. I
jerked the horns out of me and kicked the shit out of him with the
other foot, and he and the rest of the herd took off, except the
one I had stuck and the other one with the arrow in him.
     I looked around. I looked at my leg.  It hurt bad but it
wasn't bleeding much yet; with puncture wounds the blood just kind
of wells up.  As deep as the place was, I knew there would be
plenty of blood and it would be hard to get it stopped. I put a
handful of snow on it and went over to look at the other guy.  He
was still on the ground, rolling back and forth, and I knelt down
by him, mainly to see what he was like.  He had a beard, a long
243
one, about half white.  A beard was something I hadn't seen in
Japan, not even a mustache.  He was not a soldier, and he didn't
even look like a decent civilian.  He was a scrawny guy, smaller
than I am, and was dressed mostly in furs.  He must belong to some
kind of tribe around here, was the best I could figure.  He was
not civilized, I can tell you.  That I would have vouched for.
  I went over to him, as best I could.  His outfit was torn in a
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          couple of places, but I didn't see any blood, and I was pretty
sure he was not hurt nearly as bad as I was.  We both got on our   
feet, and he stared into my face for a long time.  With him, I
didn't feel that I ought to pretend I was Japanese or try to keep
him from looking straight at me, and that was a relief.  He picked
up his bow, turned his back, and left.
     I was down to myself again, with nothing but two dead goats. 
The blood was welling up in my leg pretty good, but in a way I had
done what I came to do, with some help from another guy. I fell
down beside the goat with the arrow and started cutting him,
stripping away the pelt, trying to keep it as whole as I could. I
meant to try to make an outfit out of it.  But when I got that
meat bared off, I forgot about the hide. I started to eat, first
off the hip and then up around the spine, bringing the blood in
too, as much as I could get.  Don't let anybody ever tell you
blood is not good to drink. If you make gravy out of it there's
really not much difference between it and raw blood.  Eve now and
then I'd look at my leg, where my own blood kept coming, and I
couldn't get away from the idea that the more blood I lost, the
more I was replacing from the goat.  It was a strange thing,
losing and getting back at the same time.
     I ate and ate, cramming the hole in my leg with snow whenever
I thought about it.  The meat was like a transfusion. I hadn't
244
tasted meat in such a long time that it was like something from a
place I had never been. My body just went all around it, and I was
sure that I would live.  They say about the wolverine that it will
never be driven off a kill, that it w'll stay with a down caribou
or elk until the last piece of marrow is cracked out of the bones,
that it'll die before it will leave what it's eating. I could
packed my leg with snow again and finished stripping the hide off
the goat, then went to the other one, the one I had stuck, and
skinned him, too. I didn't eat much off the second one, but drank
some blood. When I got through I was real bloated and hurting bad.
I wondered whether that goat's horn had hit the bone of my leg. 
There was a deep electric feeling in the puncture that I couldn't
account for in any other way. I looked at the place and wondered
if I ought not to try and sew it up with some of my fishing line,
but I really didn't think that would do any good, and came to the
conclusion that it would probably be better to let it bleed and
clean out.  I've always healed up fairly fast, faster than most,
and even though it was a puncture wound, I believed I could trust
my luck, and my body. Just get the bleeding stopped: freeze it,
lots of snow.
     But I may have been fooling myself.  Since my leg hadn't
started to heal yet, and so didn't have the stiffness that you get
with clotting, I could stlil move around, though I had to take it
slow. I got together some brush and made a kind of lean-to, more
like a blind for still-hunting than anything else, and got into
it, pulling the bloody hides over me.  After that, I don't
know. I either fainted or went to sleep. Maybe both, but I don't
think I was even worried about what was going to happen to me, I
was so full of meat and hurt.  The night was coming on, and it was
245
still snowing, very peaceful and quiet. I was out real
quick.
     When I woke up I didn't remember where I was or what had
happened.  The snow had stopped, and it was colder than before. 
My leg was stiff when I looked at it; blood was all the way
down to the ankle.  Sitting up to look cost me a lot, and I lay
back down.  It was day, one day or the other, and the blinds had
chinks in it.  Through one of them a man was looking               
at me, and then I knew there was another.  Probably more than two.
I raised up and put some of the branches out of the way.  There
was not anything I could do, so I just lay there and looked back
at them.  Then I got up on the good knee.  They were all armed -
all ten or twelve - with spears and bows and arrows, but they
didn't make any move to use them.
    They seemed curious and even friendly, though maybe puzzled. 
The fact that I was an enemy of theirs and would kill thein if I
needed to did not seem to be a part of their thinking.  From
the way they looked and their expressions I would not have been
surprised to find out they did not even know there was a war going
on.  As far as they were concerned I might have dropped out of the
clouds, which I guess is true, in a way. I tried mv best to stand
up, and mostly made it. I pointed at my leg, and the closest one
to me bent down to look at it. When he straightened I could not
believe he was not really sympathetic toward my situation.  They
had a horse with them, a short shag one, and they pushed me-not
hard-toward it. I had never ridden a horse in my life, but it
looked like they wanted to give me some help, and I could sure use
it.  It cost me every bit of pain I could stand, but I got on, and
they were in favor of it, I could tell. I happened to glance down,
and one of them had 
246
my bag, from a couple of miles off. I was surprised at first,
and then not.  They were woods people, and knew what was on their
turf.
     We went along through the trees, every step that the horse
took going through my leg like the horn of the goat that made it.
Some goat, I thought, or whatever it was.  A lot more goat
than any other goat, even a mountain goat. I had never seen 
anything on hooves fight like that, or a bunch of them gang up on
anything. I tell you, I admired that animal, and I was glad the
woods people brought along the two hides I had skinned off them. I
didn't want to leave them behind in the blind I had thrown
together.
     I don't know how long it took to get where we were going. I
was close to passing out some of the time, but I didn't seem to be
bleeding as much as I was before. I could have been wrong about
that, though. I spent the time thinking about the damn goats. I
was glad I had eaten so much of their meat. 
     We went on,intoa village. My head was down and I couldn't see
very much. But what I did see set me up straight. Two guys on
those little horses were dragging a bear, a dead bearm,into a
clear space in the middle of the huts. I didn't even give myuself
a chance to see what the huts were like, or what the village was
like because they were dragging a bear into town, and that has to
maatter. It was a fair-sized black, not too much different from
the ones at home. They pulled him on his back through the
snow, his Paws up, and near to being stiff.  Most of the people
there came around him, very still, the guys with long beards,
247
little bent-over women and kids.  Nobody touched the bear, whose
mouth was open, with the big teeth and the tongue hanging out with
blood dripping off it. I was beeginning to haze out again, and
concentrated on the bear to keep me I couldn't do it for
myself, and the next thing I remember I was lying with my bad
leg up, probably on some furs in one of the huts. I was not
hungry, but I was real sleepy, and I went back under.
     I woke up once, when it was dead night. Whatever my situation
was, it was not as bad, and I eased my leg and fell, fell one
more time, and deep; it was best to do it.  Sleeping and waking
up went on for a while, and the people kept coming in and out.
They fed me real well: meat, probably bear meat as long as it
lasted, but chicken, tool which would have amazed anybody.  They
had bread right in there with everything else, made into little
cakes, and their gravy was the best yet, thick and salty.  They
seemed to be anxious to do anything they could for me, get me 
anything I signaled to them i wanted, and a lot that I never asked
for: heavy fur pants made out of the same kind of goat that had
gored me, and a long bearskin shirt like a robe,
fur gloves, mukluks, the works. I wondered if they treated all 
strangers like this, or if they ever saw any, and put down their
attitude toward me to the other guy the other hunter who had been
down under the goats. The fact that I had run them off him and had
got gored doing it might have been the reason, or else they might
have cut me up like the bear I had seen pieces of bears: bear
hides, bear paws, bear teeth on necklaces, bear paws nailed up to
the walls.  In my hut there was a big bear head right over where I
was lying, and I looked at it for a long time every day.  As, I
said, I hadn't known there were any bears 
248
round, for I hadn't seen any sign.  But these little men with
whiskers sure must have known how to find them.
    Finally I got to where I could sit up and stay awake for a
while and begin to have an interest in things.  The women, I think
it was, had eft the hides had taken off the goats in the hut with
me and I
thought might have a try at curing them, softening them, and making
clothes out of them in case I had to use them later. 
I had seen Eskimo women chew on seal hides, and knew more or less
how they did it, but I didn't have the knack and gave up before I
let myself get discouraged and frustrated. I signed to the women
who fed me that they could have the hides, to take them away, even
though I really didn't want to let them go. I had got where I      
liked them, in the same way I admired the animals they came from.
     My wound was filling in and didn't hurt nearly so much
                              anymore, even though that leg was stiff.  When I had been there 
about ten days, I'd udge, I tried to stand up on it, but it began
to pain me so much that I was glad to give it more time.  Five
days more I stayed there, doing the same things and limping to
another hut that had this big pit for a toilet.  The village was
the cleanest place I had ever seen men live in.  It was very neat
indeed; it was a pleasure to be there.
     I could walk around some now, and when I could do it without
favoring my leg so much, it seemed like it made the whole village
happy. I had never in my life seen such friendly people;
even Eskimos couldn't compare with them.  The men came 
back to see me, including the fellow the goats had been after.  He
wanted to see my wounded place, and I showed it to him.  He smiled
a little and looked me in the eyes, and we went outside together,
and dammned if they hadn't just brought in another bear, bigger
than the first one, as far as I could tell. This
249
time I watched what they did with him.  A bunch of them picked
him, up - he must have weighed about three hundred pounds
and carried him to a hut that had part of the wall knocked
out.  Some of the men ran inside, and the ones with the bear
handed him through the window to the others.  The fellow who shot
the goat touched me on the arm and pointed, and started toward the
house.
     I followed and went inside with the rest of them.  It was as
dark as my hut, and there was a low fire on rocks in the middle of
the room. I noticed, then, that there was a strange sound coming
from outside.  A good many women canie in, carrying it with them,
singing together and doing small-footed dance steps, or I guess
that's what they thought they were.  The bear was lying on the
ground in front of the fire, and one of the guys, in a kind of a
bear helmet, in bear fur and with a lot of bear teeth around his
neck, started talking to him.  The women and girls were singing
and dancing, and it was warm in there, and I went to sleep. I kept
hazing in and out all night, and the guy kept talking to the bear,
and the women kept up that high song, and moving around, moving
around me and the one guv and the bear. I held out till it got
light, because there was not anv other special place to go, and I
didn't want to hurt their feelings by walking out.  This was
important to them, though I couldn't tell you why.
     All the time I was growing up, I had never seen more than six 
or seven bears: two blacks like these, two grizzlies, one big
brown, and one polar. I had always stayed away from them, because
they, especially the grizzlies, will make a point to come after
you, and nobody would want that.  The can take your head off with
one lick.  More: they can take a horse's head off, or an elk's.
250
But this was different.  My feeling passed over to the other
side.  They showed me two cubs in a wood cage, and I thought at first that they
were being kept for pets, a couple of live ones in amongst all the pieces of
dead ones; it was good to see a bear move around.  But they were putting up
little sticks around the cage, painted sticks with the top ends shaved down
with the wood curling, and there was a lot of carrying on, with the women
singing and dancing and now the men coming into it, too, and I knew they were
going to kill one of the cubs, or maybe both, probably with a lot of noise and
singing and speeches. I was never one for any of that.  Whatever animal they
decided on, they could have done this with. They could have done
it with the lynx - if there had been any of them -- with the arctic fox or the
wolverine. I had been wrong, I had been dead wrong about them.  No matter how
friendly they were, these were men like all the others, and they did the same
things as the others.  They wanted bear meat and furs, and their guilt about it
set up all that singing, to agree on it, to put it right; set up all that
singing and dancing, and playing those twanging instruments that all sounded
out of tune. I say screw that.  The animals are a lot better than any such. 
Better, a lot better, than the people.  My heart turned around and locked.
     It locked more when they cut off the big bear's head and put it on a
little bench in front of the fire, and laid some of his own meat, with cakes
and wine, in front of it, the same stuff that I was getting ready to eat with
the rest of them.  We all waited while the singing went on, high and lost, and
I would just as soon have lost it.
    They finished chopping up the bear and passed out the meat.
And there was the head, sitting in front of the fire, taking everything in.
251
All the time I was thinking about the cubs.  But I didn't believe
the men would do anything to them that morning, because
they had the big bear to eat, and his head was looking on. As
soon as things quieted down a little I took off and went back to my hut, glad
to be out of the noise. I slept good, all day, and as the sun was going down
the women brought me some more to eat, more meat, some cakes and some saki, and
I went to sleep one more time, hoping the tundra would come to me, not with
grazing animals but with predators. I was reaching
it one more time, and went deep, and stayed till I was ready to
come back.
     I lay about half asleep, looking at the bear head on my wall, as I had
been doing for hours every day for the last two weeks.  But I could get up and
get around now, and I started collecting things in my head.  Four women came in
with some goatskins. I thought they were just being generous, but there seemed
to be something special about the skins, which had been made
into a thick shaggy shirt and pants.  They wanted me to notice something about
them, and I got it.  These were the hides I had skinned off the goats in the
woods, and I can tell you I was plenty grateful, because I wanted to have that
kind of vitality and fight and fire pass into me. I had already eaten a lot of
the goats, and now to wear them, too, would be luck beyond the best of luck:
the best I'd had in Japan, the best anywhere.  I lay back and grabbed them up
around me.  This was the good wilderness smell, and I didn't want anything
else. I went down for another night, and I knew that the next day would be
stronger for me.
     It was, sure enough. I was ready for anything, and when the men came for
me, acting as much as they could like new brothers in hut, out into the open
space, went with them, out of my hut, into the open space,
252
into the other house with the knocked-out window where the bear
and the bear's head had been.  It was all cleared away now, and I
sat down with the others in amongst the shaved colored sticks. 
The women were singing, and moved in and around us.  We were all
there with the two cubs.  They were nervous, as any animal is
liable to be when there is all that human carrying-on going around
them.  This was not something that ought to be done, and there's
not any doubt about it.  The people put poles do with the skulls
of animals on them. I could tell, without                          
too much trouble, bear, deer, fox, squirrels, some birds, could
have been pheasants.  But nothing like a fisher and sure-God not
like a wolverine.  A wolverine would have eaten up that whole
dinky little village in half an hour and not thought anything
about it.
     We sat there, and the women carried on, singing and dancing
to the point that you'd wish singing and dancing had never been
invented.  Everybody drank a lot, and so did I, for there was not
any other way to stand it. I kept looking at the bears, which were
going back and forth at a great rate, banging up against the bars
of the cage.  They were not happy with all this, and neither was
I. But that didn't seem to matter to the people around me and
around the bears.  The men took bows and arrows, and shook them in
front of the bears, and one of the guys took a long necklace of
bear teeth, reached into the cage, and hung them around the neck
of one of the cubs.  He looked good there for a second, but then,
with the hand-clapping and carrying-on, the bear started to howl
and bawl, and banged on the bars.  All this was enough for me. I
don't believe in cruelty, in tormenting animals, no matter how
much you dance and sing.  But that doesn't have anything to do
with it.  The thing that bothered me most was that the people
seemed to have come on the idea that
253
they were doing something special for me, that I was being let in
on something.  Believe me, I had news for them.
     Three men went over to the cage and started talking to the
bears, the women dancing and hand clapping behind them.  There
were big rocks holding down the logs on top of the cage, and two
young guys got up and took them off.  The cage opened up, and some
of the older fellows threw lassos around one of the bears and
pulled him out.  Everybody - men and women, and especially the
kids - screamed and clapped when the bear was dragged down, and
some other ropes went around him.  The younger fellows and some of
the children had got hold of bows and arrows, and they shot at
him, but I don't think any of the arrows were hunting arrows or
were strong enough or sharp enough to do any real damage; they
were just to make him mad.  They wanted to make him mad I was
never able to tell, but that is what they wanted to do, and they
did it.  He lurched around from one side to the other, half trying
to get away and half trying to get at the men who were holding
him, but he couldn't do either one.  The guys on the ropes were
used to this, I could tell.  They pulled him around in a circle in
front of all the screaming women and the others.
     The guy who had hunted the goats was standing next to me.  He
looked at me and smiled, like he was sure I was enjoying this as
much as he was, and that pissed me off worse than what they were
doing to the bear.  Finally they dragged him to a pole with a lot
of colored ribbons on it.  One of the older men, wrapped around
with bear hides, with two or three necklaces of teeth and claws,
kept talking to the bear like he was reasoning with him.  It
didn't do anybody any good, though, especially not the bear.  Six
of the young guys held him bv the legs, the head, and the tail,
and four others brought out some heavy poles, almost like logs.
254
Now what? I thought. What the hell now? They put the logs on both sides of the
bear's head and stood him on his hind legs.  A middle-aged man with a bow moved
up about ten feet from him, where it would be hard to miss, and shot him, a
good shot, a center shot at any range, heart and probably one lung. The bear
Jerked and struggled a little, then everybody turned loose everything and he
fell and didn't move. I have seen bad things happen in my life but never
anything that made me as sick or as mean as that. I didn't care what I did to
any of them.
     They cut off the bear's head and skinned him, and carried him into the
nearest hut.  But I had had enough, and went back to my own hut. I wanted to
get things together, to move out. I felt like I couldn't wait.  But I waited. I
would wait.
     In the weeks I had been there I had accumulated a good deal of stuff, and
I wanted to make some sort of selection of what to take with me, and coille out
with a weight that would have everything I needed and not be too heavy for long
distances. My clothes, all bearskins and goatskins, were all right. I had
mukluks and gloves. I still had most of my original stuff from Tinian, and the
bag of feathers, and odds and ends. I had the wires I had taken out of the
soldiers' truck I had driven, and I hoped to make some snares on up the road.
The women had made me a rack out of bones - bear bones, there was not much
doubt - for a backpack.  It was very stout and light, and the shoulder straps
were real strong. I had the skin I had been sleeping on, which I could use for
a ground sheet, and one of their spears was leaning in the corner; I could take
that.  The head was stone - stone-sharp, and that's sharp, for sure. That, Plus
my homemade spear from the goat hunt, would do me for weapons. I had tried out
one of their bows, but couldn't do much with it. I didn't want the trouble 
of carrying one of those
255
around with me, anyway.  The whole idea of a bow, was nothing but
frustration; the spears would do fine. I'm mainly a stalker, and not
somebody who operates from long range. I leaned my snowshoes against the pack
and lay down on the ground and went to sleep, figuring to wake up around three,
when most of the people in the village had gone to sleep, or at least I hoped
they would have.
     I didn't have any plans about where I wanted to go except to keep pushing
north, checking out the game signs as I went.  For these people in the village
to live as well as they did, with all the food they had, and the different
kinds, there had to be plenty of game, and I looked forward to getting off by
myself, in any place I wanted to, any place I liked where there were no people,
and set things up to live, live there, maybe build a shack out of branches or
rocks, or whatever was around, and just see what happened.  All the time I had
been in Japan I judged how the next day would go by how well I slept, and that
depended on how I felt when I closed my eyes. I nudged the pack and the
snowshoes with my foot, and knew that this would be good night. I wanted to
sleep deep in it, but not all is the way through it.
     I woke up on time, and nobody bothered me.  There it was.  Everything was
around me. I stayed a minute.  My bearskin ground sheet was lashed into the
pack, but I remembered the other nights I had been there, when I lay on the
bearskin as I might have done on the bear, if he had loved me. I got up. I
touched the snowshoes and the pack mid the old GI knife on the stick and the
spear with the stone head. I put my brain all through the pack, to see if
everything was there. I looked for the things I might have forgotten, and they
were not there; then they were all in the pack. To say it another way: they
were there. I left
256
the hut and walked to the other one.  A light snow was coming down
on me, light and steady, on everything. I went to the hut where
the other bear was, the last one they had.
     Inside, the light was real low.  The fellow from the goat
hunt was there, like he was on guard duty.  He looked at me like
he always did.  He pointed to the bear in the cage, lying down. 
He pointed, and one more tune he smiled at me, real brotherly, I'm
sure he thought it was.  He touched my arm, and that was it for
him.  He was dead before he even thought about it. My bread knife
was through him and out the other side, a lick that nobody can
live with. I waited a second with him still standing, and then
pulled out and let him go down.  That was not one of the worst
times, I tell you. I hit him one more time, in the throat, and
went to the cage. I had a problem, for a minute or two, getting
all those wood catches unfastened in the dark, but I did it, and
opened the cage.  The bear didn't seem to want to come out, but I
grabbed him by the neck fur with both hands and pulled him clear.
I dragged the guy over and put him in the cage, and then tried to
get the bear out of the hut.  Finally he got the idea. I gave him
a boot in the ass, and he took off through the village, heading
for the woods if he had any sense.  One is enough, I said, and
went back, all set.  There was nobody around, but I was ready to
fight, with men, women, or all of them.
     But I walked right out, the snow falling, real even it was,
and probably it would come down for a long time.  That would take
care of the tracks.  If it had been clear, I would not have been
hard to follow, but like this there was no wav for them to tell
which way I was headed.  They might have figured I was going
north, but even then, I don't think they would have followed me.
If this was so, it might have been that thev were afraid of me,
but probably that was not it. I don't think they were inter-
257
ested in me, except as something strange that had been there for a
while for no reason, and then gone off for no reason. They were
hunters, though, and good ones, and I watched my back trail pretty
close.  But they didn't come, and I went on all night feeling like
I owned things, and there was not a sign of them.  They just
wanted the bears, I reckon, and that was all right with me.
I slept in a grove, good and warm, with the bears sheet over me
and the sky clear and cold and full of stars again. I could not
really believe I was where I was, that all this territory was
mine, that I could go where I wanted to, find what I would find. 
For the first time - even with my busted-up face and my gored leg
that still hurt some and everything that had happened - I felt
young, young and on top of the whole situation, to go on up north,
to go into it.
     When I woke up it was like the beginning of everything.
There was nothing like this cold: clear and right at zero. 
There's nothing like it, nothing.  It threads down through vour
nose like steel that gives you life, gives you soine reason to get
out here and live in it, do things, find out what's around, what's
in the world where you are. When I ate the goat meat was the
closest thing to it, but I had been hurt then, and bad hurt, and
it was not like that now.  My leg pained me a little, but I could
use it almost as good as the other one, and the notion of ranging
all to me than over this new count in this cold gave more energy
any beer or whiskey on this earth.  Beer and whiskey and wine are
all right for bars, but that cold wire down vour nose, the the
real wild count is wire from the woods and the tundra,
the real wild country, is258
something else.  And that was where I was now, what I had. I went
on. I wanted to go on anywhere it was like this. I had waited a
long time, and it was as good as home, as the north face of the
Brooks, or even better, because now I didn't have any father, much
as I loved him, as much as he taught me.  It was just me now, and
what I could do, and how I could make out.  It was all mine.
     I kept traveling: three days, four.  There were bigger trees
than I had seen anywhere in Japan, and then there would be long
open stretches.  Open.  Empty. I like empty. I also liked what I
had come through to get where I was; I liked my knocked-out teeth
and my thigh gored to the bloody bone. I had gone through it, and
I carried the marks of it here. I had got here any way it took,
and there was no human thing or animal thing that could stand
against me. fn the middle of one of the biggest bare places, one I
could hardly see across, I stopped and put both feet together in
the best of breathing in the sky, and the good, the great steel
went down both nostrils and all over me, and if heaven has got
anything better I don't want to know it. I can't know it, because
heaven has not got it.  Not yet.  The clear cold was so wonderful
that I damned near cried. I could stand in it, I could sleep in
it, I could jump up and down in it.  What I did was dance, danced
on the snowshoes, as much as I felt like, which was plenty.  Then
I went on, still dancing a little.
     The land dropped some.  It fell off in tremendous plateaus
that I footed across hour after hour, looking at the tracks of
whatever was there.  Rabbits were around, a lot of them, and I
came on some hoofprints that might have been made by the same kind
of goats that gored me. I didn't see any bear sign
though, and reckoned most of them were back of me, back up higher
where there were more trees, and probably rocks with
259
caves where they could hole up.  In a way I was disappointed that
I couldn't find anything that had to do with bears, because I had
a connection w'th them, one I never had in Alaska.  A connection
for sure, like with the goats. Goatskin and bearskin I had on, had
all around me, and on my hands and feet, helping me to live, to
get along.  And I had the round purple scar on my leg, which had
quit hurting and was feeling great, even though the hole of it
would not ever leave me.  That was all right: I've got that goat
right down to the bone, in my left leg, and he won't leave.
     Bears, though: it might not be a situation I'd want, to run
up on one of them in the open. I didn't have any reason to tangle
with them, but I wanted to know where they were. I just did,
that's all.
     On the fifth day from the village, I had just finished eating
some of the dried salty meat I had brought from there, and was
starring across another field. I cold-trailed a rabbit just to
have something to do, and went with it for about half a mile, out
into the middle of a field.  The rabbit wasn't doing anything but
traveling - not too fast, from the print make.  He was going
north, generally, zigzagging but vectoring out north, and I
appreciated that: I was not in any hurry. I was getting to like
him for leading me on, for not going too fast, for not being in
sight, both of us going where we wanted to go.  But then the
tracks stopped, just gave out, never went anywhere else for as
long as there was.  His prints stopped in the middle of the open,
the middle of the flat-field snow.  It was not something I had
never seen before, because I had, but it really startled me to
find it here.  Something had come down out of the air and got it. 
A hawk, an eagle, an owl - there was no way to know.  It was like
the rabbit had taken off into the air, as it had, in a way it
260
wouldn't have liked.  There was some blood on the snow but not much.  Some
blood and no fur.  That was it.
     I spent an afternoon in the trees without seeing any game, or much sign. 
About two o'clock I came out on another plain. I was getting used to plains and
the time it would take to cross them, and knuckled down to slog on through th's
one for the hours until it got dark.  But in the iniddle of the field, this
time, there was soineth'ng, a kind of clot.  It was not like the other flats,
not pure.  A clot, sure; it didn't belong there.  Or maybe it belonged there
more than I did. Maybe, maybe not, maybe both. I went closer.  A wing lifted
out of it.  Lifted, went back.  It was a hawk on a down rabbit.  A down hawk on
a down rabbit that, I could understand. I went on in. I didn't want the rabbit;
wanted to see things go on. I wanted to see what happened, and how it was
happening now.
    It was a real big bird, bigger than any hawk I had ever seen, but not as
big as an eagle or an osprey.  He stood back off the rabbit, clappering his
bill, as I came in.  Then he took off.  It all came back to me from the time I
was little. I really do like to watch things flv.  But this was not any wild
hawk.  He circled and I caught a faint sound - a bell - that went around the
circle with him, around me and the rabbit. I just barely heard it once, I
but it was there.  He gained altitude. I picked up his angle with the compass,
because it might be worth something; the hawk and I and the rabbit were a] I
going the saine way. I put the rabbit into my bear pants.  He was not too
clawed up, none of the fur was split, no ineat was showing, and there was not
much blood.
     I slept that night in the wide open, in another field like all the others
I had been going across. I was tired, but the spread of stars was so enormous
and the clearness going up to them and all around them was so great that it was
hard for me to go
261
to sleep for just watching.  It was all about too much for me, especially since
the land had dropped off more and I thought it might be possible that I was
getting near the ocean, where everything would end and I would begin - begin to
I've for the rest of my life, the way I wanted to, in a place that was made for
me.
     I got up early and the ground fell, fell more. I topped out over a ridge,
and the dav was dead still; the sun was dead still.  There wa s what looked
like a shack way off in front, and a rise behind it, and I would have bet my
life that the ocean was on the other side of the rise.
     There couldn't be anything in the shack to hurt me, and no wav for whoever
wasn 't to tell anybody that I had showed up. It took me most of the morning to
get to it, and when I was about seventy-five yards away a big bird took off
froin it, maybe from inside it , and went back out the way I had come, the
ridges, over the field where I had picked up the rabbit.
     There was no concealment, no notion of hiding, no stalking, no camouflage. 
All I wanted to know was who was around. I didn't think it would be anything
like the little bearded people, the bear people, because thev needed their
village; you couldn't imagine them without it.  But somebody lived here.  Smoke
was coming out of the place and standing in the air without blowing
it was real still. I thought it would be funny in the wrong
way, for me to knock on what passed for a door, so I just pulled to one side
the slabs of wood and branches and went in.
     There was nothing much in there, but a pot of something was cooking a hole
in the floor, and behind that, in the dark of the back wall, was a bunch of
rags and skins with a man in it. I went around the pot and over to him. He
raised his head. The light through the cracks caught him, and he was about a
thousandyears old, or sure did seem like it, with the kind of oldness that
onlv Oriental people have: the wrinkles are so damned deep, an
eighth of an inch at least, you'd think, and cut out, or cut in,
like with a razor blade that didn't bring any blood. I stood there
while he got himself together and got up, even shorter than I was,
hardly over five feet.  He said something. I said nothing, but
handed him the rabbit.  He looked at me like he couldn't believe
it, then took the rabbit and put it on the floor beside the pot. I
got ready to go, because he didn't have anything I wanted, but he
took me by the sleeve and wouldn't turn loose.
     I couldn't for the life of me tell what he wanted, but then
he pointed at the pot and maybe at the rabbit, and all I could
come up with was that he wanted me to eat with him. I was not all
that hungry, but I didn't see anything wrong with it, so I sat
down on the floor to see how he would go about things.  He didn't
make anv move to do anything with the rabbit, so I took the GI
knife off my branch spear and started in to gut it and clean it. 
I'm pretty good at this, and I could tell that he thought so, too,
and when I finished he chopped the meat up and put it in the pot,
along with whatever else was in there.  We ate it all, and it was
verv good.  Living with the bear people, I had got used to cooked
meat, but I didn't want to lose the likin for meat when it was
raw, because if vou have to cook it before you can eat it, vou
can't live the way I wanted to, and was probably going to 
have to.  Anyway, I finished my part, had all I wanted, and got
ready to go again.  He stood up on the other side of the pot and
mad on with his hand.  He pulled at my sleeve again and 
pointed to the door.  He went out and I followed him around to the
side of the shack.  There, on a low perch tied together with
strips of what looked like hide, were two big birds with cloth
around their heads. I could see their beaks, though, that beauti-
263
ful hook they both had, and nobody had to tell me thev were
predators.  One of them was probably the hawk I had seen in the
field, the one that had brought down the rabbit. I went closer,
and the biggest one shifted on his perch.  My God, they were
big! I had seen eagles, from a distance; these were not quite
as big as that. I had seen plenty of hawks, too, but never this
size. I didn't have any idea what you'd name them, but like all
meat eaters they had the look, even with their heads in rags: if
you turned them loose, they'd get after something.  The old guy
put a piece of leather around his forearm, tapped on the perch
with his other hand, and pulled the bird off the wood, guiding it
over to his arm.  This seemed all right, and we stepped clear of
the shack and out into the snow.  He took the rags off, and it sat
looking around with quick jerks.  Finally it got to me, and I knew
a thing I had never known before.  Predatory birds, most of them,
have something like the eyesight a telescope                   
gives you, or field glasses, and right then I was sure that it
could not only bring things close up, but see through them, too. I
had that seen-through feeling, like I had been shot by something
that wouldn't kill me but would change me.  The old man lifted his
arm and the bird flew, first dipping down almost to the ground,
then going up, working hard at first and then, getting into it,
working easy.  This is something, I thought; this is really some-
thing. I say I'd changed, and the longer time went on the more
I knew it: I had sold birds short. I would let that idea stay with
me and see what came of it.
The old man pointed back to the hut. I shook my head and the
sleeve tightened up my shoulder straps.  He grabbed me by
again, and there was not any doubt that he didn't have the
slighteast notion I was any danger to him, an enemy, some part of
a war with his country. The snow was his country, the snow
264
and the hawks, the hawks and the rabbits, and getting on everv
day; there was nothing else to it.  If I stayed, say, for a night,
he couldn't tell anybody I was there. Hawlo would he tell? It
would not be like the American monk at the monastery, who lived
not far from a military base he wanted to get in good with.  There
wouldn't be any harm in staying for the night.  Besides,
I wanted to see the bird come back. I had got real interested,
like I say.
     Maybe it was the rabbit that did it.  The old guy was mighty
old, and I couldn't see how he had the strength to go out and find
whatever game the birds brought down.  He might have starved to
death even if his hawks killed ten rabbits a day, because he
couldn't go out and find them and bring them back.  That was his
problem, though, and not mine. I didn't think anywhere beyond the
one night.
     In a couple of hours the bird came back. I was outside the
shack taking a piss when I saw it.  It was making a long circle,
and the old man was out to meet it.  When I saw those feathers and
that beak and those eyes again, I knew that the bird was
never going to be an "it" again, but "he"; that would be best. 
The old man got him back on his perch and put the rags over
his head.  He looked close at the claws, and pulled me down to do
the same thing.  There was no blood on them.
     And so I stayed.  With that night I started living there. I
figured I would for a while, anyway. I didn't have anywhere
special to go anymore.  And I had been right on one thing: the old
man was so weak that he could hardly get up to feed the birds and
take care of them.  More and more of that I learned how to do. 
They got to where thev would come to my forearm just as well as
they would to the old man's, and it was good to feel the grip in
those feet, which would hold with just enough
265
pressure to keep the balance.  But behind that was a tremendous
force, a power that I couldn't even guess at, heartless and right
there when the bird needed it. With the bird sitting on
my arm moved he would tighten, and if I moved more than just a
little it could have been bad.  But I never did, and we got along.
I would feed them - usually rabbit meat, but sometimes birds
they'd knocked down - with the old man, but when he saw that I
could do it all right he just stayed down and more or
less let me take care of things. I was glad to do it, for the
birds were the best predators I had ever seen, and I had seen a
lot of them.
     I began to transfer my feelings - or soul, or spirit, or
whatever you want to call it - to them, because thev did more than
any other creatures for the wish I had that was inost like tile:
not only the need to attack but to fall on something from above. 
Up until now it had been the fisher marten, which is the fastest
thing in trees, and also one of the best hunters on the ground:
they can tear up a porcupine before you can even think; thev have
good camouflage and good moves; and I had enormous respect and
love for them.  But the birds were different. -There was another
side to them, another dimension, vou alight say. I never put names
to thein. Naines are chickenshit; they didn't need any names. 
There's this about them, and when I realized it I was nearer being
what I wanted to be, and needed to be. I would tell anybody who
hears me saying this, look around vou and be honest with vourself. 
For most of vou, flight is no't in you, and never will b'e in vou. 
Even when vou're in aircraft it's not.  The great thing about the
birds, especially if tliev're predators, is that anvbodv who loves
them and u'nderst'ands how thev operate gets to be like them; his
mind, his imagination, can flv 'with them, and the birds know it. 
The hawks were flying day
266
and night, whether they were in the air or on the perch.  They're
always out there over the snow, over the woods and trees, over the
rocks, with that superhuman eyesight, with power over
everything they can see, or ever will see. I don't think God
himself could ever want anything more.
     In the morning, if it was not snowing too hard, I would go
out and take their eyes out of the rags and then turn them loose,
one at a time.  The old man just liked to hunt one bird a day, for
some reason, but I hunted both of them, because it made more
sense.  Besides that, I had the pleasure of watching two takeoffs
instead of one, and two flights. When a bird left my arm he seemed
to fall, just enough to open his wings and get them going, and
then beat hard and go up.  The feathers made a sound, a whisper
sound, when he was really working, but then didn't make any at
all.  And when they came back in, whenever they got ready to, it
was in a soft swoop, and they'd fasten on my arm, first hard and
then easy.  Every day I was glad that I had got out of the trees,
as much as I liked being there. I was glad that I had gone from
the trees up, from the fisher marten to the hawk, over the snow,
high, and seeing everything.
     The day always started good, because the birds were in it,
and I was with them, and in a way going with them.  I'd give them
a little time - an hour or an hour and a half - and then put on my
snowshoes and head for the big fields, because that was where I
could usually - but not always - find them. I covered a lot of
territory, with some woods and frozen creeks in it, and I couldn't
always connect with them.  But most of the time I could; they
would head for the open places to come down in, and I would take
whatever they had brought down and head back for the shed and the
cook pot.  It was a situation I could not ever have had any other
way, or at any other time.  There was
267
not anything lik it.  After the birds left in the morning, I went 
out with my snowshoes and the bear spear I had picked up from the
bearded people. I was in another mind, which I liked
better than the other one I had.  The birds were in it; and what
they would do, I would try to follow and pick up, and go on.
     Could the snow, could the snow and the cold and the birds,
have knocked me out, made it where I was crazy? If this was crazy,
I was for more of it. I couldn't tell about any of it, but it was
all great; it was greater than great. I went out with my spear and
with what I knew about the real cold - the snow and the wind, and
what you have to do with them, and can do with them, and how, if
you know what you're doing, it all works together - and went with
the birds over the open fields. I went into a snow situation where
I didn't know who did what, or out
where anything was, or would be.  That was part of the good.  You
couldn't want any more freedom, and I didn't want any more than I
was having; there was not any more.  Every time I left the shack I
was already over the fields with the hawks, looking down like they
looked with those wild accurate eyes, with a heart way up in the
air, where it belonged all the time, ready to come down, ready to
fall from all that height on what was put there for them to eat,
for me to eat, for me and the old man.
     Almost every day I went out with the bear spear. I had really
come to love that thing, especially the head of it, and never got
enough of it.  The stone of the head was saw-toothed, which means
that somebody had chipped it, chip for chip.  That shows you
something about the human mind, because when a cutting edge is
made that wav it doesn't cut, it rips.  Lots of injury, lots of
blood. I appreciated that, but mainly I just liked to look
268
at it and feel of it, because it was beautiful and delicate and
must have cost a lot of time.  To learn how to make it would be
something it'd be worth your while to do.
     Like: I used to go out, and maybe there was wind and a light
snow, or maybe it was clear. I was all of everything, the bear-
skins I had on, the snowshoes and the spear, and the birds
overhead. I went out every day into what would be, whatever was
there.  Really, I was just supposed to bring back the game the
birds had downed, but it was more than that, a lot more.
     There was a lot of time.  When I got into the first big field
and didn't see anything, I was ready to foot it across into the
next one.  But there had to be something to do, instead of just
snowshoeing and nothing else, so I took to chucking the spear. I
used to scale it out as far as I could into the flat snow.  The
spear had great balance, and if you threw it right, would ride up
and then nose over and come down just exactly as you'd think a
spear ought to do.  That was a beautiful thing, and I couldn't get
enough of it. I threw the spear hundreds of times, and after a
while I really didn't care whether I ever drew down on either an
animal or a man with it: that was not why I did it, not anymore. 
The thing was the arch of it, the flight that was not too much
different from the way the birds did now and again.
     As far as game was concerned, I got to be sort of
halfhearted.  I took a couple of shots at rabbits, one of them not
bad, if I do say, but never hit anything. I was more interested in
spearing the snowbanks, which I got to where I could do pretty
well.  My arm was better than I had given it credit for, and all
those days out in the snow fields, with nothing to do but throw,
it got better, until I was real proud of it. I didn't even know
how far
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the spear would go. I just scaled it out, then went and picked it
it again.  This was something, and I'll pass it on to anybody
who's listening to me.  Just get yourself a spear and start
throwing it.  If you could have the situation I had, vou would be
throwing out over level snow, snow that went on and on. In the
best field, the one where the hawks came down more times than they
did anywhere else, you could just barely see the trees on the
other side, and I would believe, every time I pulled my arm back
to throw, that I was going to put it all the way out into the
trees, trees that were a good mile and a half off.  No
possibility. No matter when I cranked back my arm  the spear in it,
the feeling, what you might call the wonder of it and
I'm not afraid to use that word now and then, when no other one
will do.  Lord, I thought every time I pulled back mv arm,
                         what if it never comes down? And if I was right on the edge of 
everything with nothing but the big nothing out in front of me,
and turned loose the bear spear, where would it go? The birds
didn't know anything about all of this, but I can tell them now
that it was part of it, part of them, part of what went with me
when I went out to find where they were, where they had come down,
what they had killed.
     Again, one more time. When I would throw into a snowbank,
when I laid the spear in there with everything I had, I imagined
what I might be hitting.  It could have been anything, animal or
human or something on the other side of it, all of it - beyond,
wav beyond.  Beyond.  Beyond was what I said when I leveled the
spear, beyond what I thought when I threw it, when I put
everything I had into it. Bevond when it was in the air, a real
balance, a true balance, and when it hit the snowbank.  It was
snow that had taken it, had taken evernthing I had to give, had

270
taken my body and gored my leg and my new arm. A lot of the time I
gorgot what I was out there to do. But then, with all the rmbling
and thowing, I waould most likely come on one of the birds. There
was some strange game around there. There were plenty of rabbits,
some of them with ears long enough so you could call them hares,
like snowshoe hares, and two or three times there was a real odd
animal, somewhere between a racoon and a dog, which the old man
called a moyuk. I would have thought that they were too big for
the birds to fool with, but they killed them just the same, and we
ate them. The hides were not bad, and when we had some sun I cured
them out, though I never did find anything to do with them. 
    Snow, and the push, the thrust of the new arm, which had got
much better than the one i'd been born with. The spear and the
arm, the snowbank with the hawks over it, sweeping, penetrating
with their superhuman sight, maybe even piercing into the
snowbanks, seeing what I might be hitting. I gave it my whole
thrust, my whole body, and the hawks circled and saw. That was it,
and who could want anything else?
     When I got back to the shack--or the shed is what it really
was--I used to look at the spearhead real close, because I was
always afraid that there might be a rock in the snowbank that
would chip the point, or even break it. i had really come to love
that head, and the whole spear, and more than one time I was sorry
I had killed the little bearded man who had hunted the goats at
the same time as I did. I wish I hadn't done it now.
     I wondered where the bear people hadd got that kind of stone.
I remenbered a guy, a kind of nut or fanatic at Point Barrow,
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who used to go out and hunt with a bow and arrows, and always used
stone points that he chipped himself; it was some kind of black
rock that he got from New Mexico. He would take a lot of time with
those rocks. I never went with him out on the hunt, but I really
liked what he did: all that chipping hour after hour, day after
day. He swore by those stone points, and I could see why. They
were beautiful, and they worked. He killed a sea leopard with
them, and you don't see that every day. My spear with the chipped
head and the hawks. The hawk's view, which was beyond any man's.
It was being able to see what you don't. It was being able to see
into the snowbank, into the stone. To see beyond what any human,
any man who has ever been born, could see. Like I tell you, out of
the snowdrift, into the snowdrift, into the stone. 

But now. Now. I was asleep, and the birds were not restless. I
thought that maybe the old man might need something, some water I
could get out of the snow, something. I went over to him and did
what I could to shake him, but there was no shake in him. No
shake, no breath. I put my head down on him, and there was not
anything. I mean, nothing at all. Could it be he was dead? He was
dead. He was dead and he was mighty dead, and that was all. No
rabbit meat would bring him back, no moyuk, no nothing. I put all
the furs over him and went back down, myself. Sleep was enough for
me. The next day I would bury him and then take over. I had more
or less inherited from him, and nobody could say it was any other
way. I don't have any doubt that it would have been all right with
him. We had eaten a lot of rabbits together, cooked and fed the
birds, and 
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he'd nodded his head when I chucked the spear at my best, really
got it out there.  That was enough.

But now.  But now. This was the thing you call sleep. In it was
the Canadian lynx. I have always loved the fisher marten, and now
the hawk, but in a way maybe the lynx is better than the marten,
because his camouflage is better.  Unless.  Unless. Unless the
animal is so close to the space he is in that there is not any
difference.  All the time I'd been in Japan, all the time I'd been
living, this seemed to me to be the truth of the thing: you can
get to the perfect blend if you know exactly how to do it, and if
the time is right.  The same thing is true of the predator and the
thing he is after: both.  Both. True of the lynx and the snowshoe
hare. I just felt, in the middle of the night, that it was my time
now, and I believed I could do it. I believed that everything led
up to where I was.  The notion rose up in my throat, and there was
not any doubt about it anymore.  There were people outside the
hut, and maybe a lot more than had ever been there. I was ready to
deal: I had my terms.
     The old man was dead, that was sure. I was not, and that was
sure, too. I could look, I could see, I could feel.  Where to
turn, where to put the eyes? Outside.  There was something out
there. I went to the reeds and branches, which were all I had as a
door.  It was snowing, not bad but steady, and I looked out.  At
first I couldn't see anything but little flakes. I kept watching,
because I could tell it was not like the other nights. I didn't
have the conviction that I could go out with the spear and the
birds into the open fields the next day.  No, that was over. I had
had
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everything I would ever get from the situation.  This was some-
thing else.
     There was air, not steady but in quick pulses.  The wind,
blowing like it was doing, would have to gust, to set the snow
aside, sooner or later.  Enough for a look.  Enough, just enough.
It was enough. I saw one black shape, and right away I could see
that there was not just one.  There was another one beside it, and
on the other side, too.  The whole ridge was full of men, and I
would have bet that there were others behind them. Everything told
me it was right; that they should be there.  It was not the bear
people. This was a whole lot of other men, most likely civilians,
and maybe some soldiers, too, don't ask me. I don't know.  But I
was ready for them.  It was time.
     I tell you, it was right for them to be there. I knew I was
close, and that this was the time.  It was, it was. The birds had
helped me - I had come down with them on game from hundreds of
feet, because I understood what was going on and so did the hawks. 
That was the best feeling of all: to come down, to have all that
air behind you, that would always be there, any time you were in
it.  The birds had helped me, but had never been able to get me
all the way there.  They were open, and coming down, and it was a
part of what I wanted, what was right, but not all.

The real deep part was what I had always been sure of: to blend
with the place you're in, but with a mind to do something.  To do
something, then to leave, so that nothing around you could
do anything about it until it was too late.
     Right now, it was time.  Again.  Now. I stripped off. I
kicked open my old bag of swan feathers and slung the feathers out
on the floor. I was saying - I was saying - that many a Canadian
lynx, many a fisher, because his camouflage was too perfect,
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disappeared into where he was, and was not ever heard from again. 
On the other side, I most believe that same thing could happen
with the snowshoe hare, had happened a whole lot of times.  There
must be plenty of rabbits on the other side, a whole heaven of
them, ready to be the stillest that it is possible to be.  A whole
heaven of them, and I like to think about that.
     It was my time now.  The feathers were all over the floor. 
The old man was dead, and the guys with the guns - one of them
fired and blew in part of the door - should be out there, trying
to gun me down, to blow away anything that moved. I had news for
them. I opened up my right arm, the one that scaled the spear out
toward the woods.  Blood poured out, and I smeared it, put it all
over me. I cut the old man's throat for whatever blood there might
be, and got it on me everywhere I could reach to. I hit my knees
to the floor and rolled in the feathers, like I was rolling in the
snow. I was close. I was very close.
     I walked out and I knew I had found it, what I had been
looking for all my life, in all the blood and the tucking and the
right arm and the fast move, in everything I had done and
everybody I had had to deal with. I knew I had found it, but up
till now I had never had the full thing.  In the wind the swan
feathers fluttered on me, and I could have flown. I could have
flown with the hawks and the swans if I had wanted to.  But I
didn't want to. I wanted to stand there.
     I laid my bread knife in the snow and stood up straight
again.  They fired, a lot of them fired, the whole ridge sparked
and crackled.  Splinters flew off the shack behind me. A bullet
went through me but didn't touch me.  It was happening. More
splinters flew off behind.
     When I tell you this, just say that it came from a voice in
the wind: a voice without a voice, which doesn't make a sound. 
You
275
can pick it up any time in snows, where you are, or even just  
when the wind is from the north, from a anywhere north of east or
west. I was in the place I tried to get to. I had made it in
exactly the shape I wanted to be in, though maybe just a little
beat up.  But the main thing was that I had got to the landscape
and the weather, and you can remember me standing there with the
bullets going through, and me not feeling a thing.  There it was. 
A red wall blazed. For a second there was a terrific heat, like
somebody had opened a furnace door, the most terrible heat,
something that could have burned up the world, and I was sure I
was gone.  But the cold and the snow came back.  The wind mixed
the flakes, and I knew I had it. I was in it, and part of it. I
matched it all.  And I will be everywhere in it from now on. You
will be able to hear me, just like you're hearing me now. 
Everywhere in it, for the first time and the last, as soon as I
close my eyes.