JAMES DICKEY
455
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 right 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 studs 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; swung in,
and my eyes were 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 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 scat, 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
forty-five and two clips. There was no telling where I might use them,
but it would either have to be in a place where nobody could hear, or 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
