Dark Full of Enemies
Jordan M Poss
Northern Europe, December 1943
Vestfjorden, Lofoten, and Narvik area
Dark Full of Enemies
The chieftain went on to reward the others: each man on the bench who had sailed with Beowulf and risked the voyage received a bounty,
some treasured possession. And compensation, a price in gold, was settled for the Geat Grendel had killed cruelly earlier— as he would have killed more, had not mindful God and one man’s daring prevented that doom.
—Beowulf, 1049-56
And let us not be weary in well doing.
—Galatians VI, ix
1
The two Americans arrived at the pub just in time to see the fight. They had left the staff car up the street and walked through the cutting winter air to the front of the pub, where the younger of the two wiped at the window with a gloved hand and peered inside. He saw what seemed to him a typical pubgoing crowd—old Brits in tweed and ties, young Brits in khaki, alone, and young Brit women with Americans in their brown class-As fawning over, pawing at them, plying them with ale and spirits. Even through the window he could hear, or at least feel, the rhythm of pub chatter.
“See him, Sergeant?” the other man asked.
“No, sir.”
“Dammit. It’s not like McKay to wander off. They said—”
“Wait.” The Sergeant scrubbed the window again. A lady in a flowered hat, seated on the other side, gave him a crosswise glare. He peered in undeterred. Through the press of brown and khaki and check and herringbone and houndstooth, the earth tones of working people and soldiers, he saw one man in drab green, alone, at the bar, with his back to the window. The Sergeant looked more intently, wiped at the window again, trying to make out his face. A young couple pulled away from the bar and threw on their coats as if it would not long matter how warmly they were dressed and hastened to the door, and the man at the bar turned and picked up his bottle—a Coca-Cola—and took a sip, and turned back. The Sergeant caught a glimpse of an old book open on the bar before him, and grinned.
“It’s him, Lieutenant.”
“Thank God—let’s go in.”
The Sergeant and Lieutenant slipped in past the exiting couple and looked again at the bar, now in the warm haze of tobacco smoke and the press of bodies. Captain Joe McKay sat reading, oblivious. The Lieutenant scoffed and shook his head.
“Bookworms.”
“Got to unwind somehow. All right, let’s get him.”
“Wait, Barnes.” The Lieutenant put a hand on the Sergeant’s arm and nodded. “Watch this.” An Australian corporal, his khaki blouse open at the throat, hair hanging over his ears and stuck to his forehead, reeled to McKay where he sat at the bar and leaned in, close. The Lieutenant shook his head. “My God, this is going to be good.”
Barnes watched. The Australian said something, and McKay did not react. The Australian glowered, repeated himself, and again, nothing. The Australian lifted himself, looked back across the pub—at a woman, also sheets to the wind, it appeared to Barnes—and turned back to McKay. He grabbed McKay’s shoulder and opened his mouth and took a hard hit, a lightning strike to the side of his head, and dropped.
The pub fell silent instantly, quickly enough for the woman’s gasp to be heard. For a long moment McKay stood, a lone green-uniformed figure at the center of every stare in the room. He looked down at the Australian, at the floor, at no one in particular as he searched the room. Barnes saw, for a moment, helpless confusion.
“God, Heyward.”
“All right,” the Lieutenant said.
They stepped out of the dark doorway into the room and Heyward raised his hands.
“Don’t worry folks,” he said, and one or two folks broke their gaze away from McKay and looked at him. “We’ll take this from here. Nothing to worry about.”
Barnes took the lead and pushed through the room to McKay, who saw him and nodded a hello, but did not speak.
“Captain,” Barnes said.
McKay turned and closed his book and tucked it under his arm. He reached into his pocket and dropped a pile of change on the bar without counting it—probably twenty times the cost of his Coca-Cola—and muttered to the barkeep, “Sorry bout the trouble.” Heyward stepped up and knelt and rolled the Australian over. A big bruise already spread from the temple toward his left eye and his nose was a mess—he had landed facefirst on the tile floor. McKay saw and nodded again to Barnes and they made for the door.
“Bloody yank,” an old voice said from one of the back corners of the pub. Barnes glanced back. An old man, old enough to have fought the Boers, had roused himself and stood braced against his table and the wall. A few people nearby glanced at him, neutrally.
“Come on, Captain.”
Barnes retrieved McKay’s overcoat and green officer’s cover from the pegs in the foyer and McKay pulled them on.
“Bloody yank!” the old man said, more insistently this time, and to encouraging murmurs from the crowd.
“Aw, now, don’t do that to our friend, here,” Heyward called. “He’s not a yank, he’s from the great state of Georgia!”