Last One Out

Listen, stupid," Mack told Billy. "You always say you ain't got no luck in life, but now that's changed. This is going to be the biggest thing ever happened to you, so you hear me good and you don't do nothing but what I tell you, see?" "Sure, Mack," said Billy. It was night and moths were tumbling around the overhead light in Mack's bungalow down near the waterfront. There was a third man in the room, a fat man in a white suit and dark glasses who sat in a corner, drinking beer from a paper cup. Anybody who wore dark glasses made Billy nervous, and he said: "Listen, I don't want to break no law."

"Law? You ain't going to break the law." Mack laughed, screwing up his boxer's face with its mashed nose and ridges of scar tissue. "You going to be a hero, stupid. You going to have your picture in the papers. And you don't have to do a lick of work. You just going to take a vacation in the sun."

"Tell him," said the fat man in the white suit. "I don't have all night."

Mack took a pull at his beer bottle and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "OK," he said to Billy. "You heard about them old Jap soldiers turning up thirty years after the war, and they don't know nothing about what's been happening, but all of a sudden they're famous, and people write books about them and all?" He grinned, squinting at Billy across the table. "Well, why let them Japs get all the glory? I mean, they lost the war. Who won it? We did. Well----"

The fat man got impatiently to his feet. He had something in his hand that gleamed when it caught the light. "We've got it all worked out," he said to Billy, and he tossed what he was holding onto the table. It was a pair of military identification tags on a chain. "That's yours," the man said. "You're a dead man come back to life. You're Robinson Crusoe." His face was pale and puffy and his teeth showed yellow when he spoke. "You're the last one out of World War Two."

•

The fat man was a publicity agent from Los Angeles named Carraway who for years had dreamed of some sudden, single success that would liberate him from the second-rate crooners and hoofers he served and despised. He needed to find a star--but where? How? There was no talent in the sleazy world he lived in.

One day, as Carraway was leafing through the newspaper, his eye chanced to fall on a story about the discovery of an elderly Japanese soldier in a Philippine jungle. His first reaction had been one of envy, as he reflected on how profitably a Tokyo publicity man could promote such an unusual client ... magazine articles, personal appearances, a best-selling book, even a movie. If only he could have such luck! And then he thought: Why not? The idea made his pulse jump and brought hot sweat to his skin. "Why not?" he said aloud. "Why not?" He hurried to his apartment to think things out.

He knew he couldn't plant a middle-aged American warrior on a populated island and pretend that he had been lurking in the bushes there for 30 years. No, his man would have to be found on some deserted atoll, where he could have drifted after his ship went down. Fine, thought Carraway. But what about the sailor's identity? This would be a tricky problem, indeed. After further meditation, Carraway concluded that he would need a partner--not just any partner but one with special job qualifications.

Carraway's long association with the entertainment world had sharpened his instinct for human corruptibility, and with a certain amount of patience, he managed to find what he wanted--a Naval records clerk willing to participate in a speculative enterprise. With the help of this public servant, Carraway obtained the names and particulars of several sailors lost at sea who had no wives or other close relatives to come around raising difficult questions. All he had to do was make a final selection. In the meantime, he began sketching out projects for commercial exploitation.

To play the part of his hero, Carraway needed a man with a Navy background who, if not handsome, was at least pleasing in appearance, as well as docile and trustworthy in nature. Beyond that, the fellow would have to be such a nonentity that he could vanish from his present life unnoticed. How could such a man be (continued on page 114)Last one out(continued from page 108) found? Carraway could hardly run an ad in the papers.

One day he went to San Diego to promote a burlesque dancer and ran into an old acquaintance, a beefy night-club bouncer named Mack O'Neill. After a few drinks, Carraway hinted at his difficult casting requirements. "Say, I know just the guy you want," Mack told him. "Matter of fact, he's right outside the bar, waiting for me. Come over to the winder here and you can see him good. There he is, Carraway. That's Billy Johnson."

Carraway took a look. Across the street stood a tall, gaunt man with shaggy gray hair and a slightly bewildered expression.

"Billy's kind of dumb," Mack said, "but he ain't feeble-minded. He's just slow. Know what I mean? When I tell him something, he don't forget it. And when I tell him to do something, he does it." He gave Carraway a wink. "I told him to wait for me there, and I been in here over an hour and he ain't moved."

"I need a man," said Carraway. "Not a dog."

"Don't get me wrong, Carraway. Billy's OK. It's just he's loyal to his friends. And I'm his friend. He ain't got no others. One's enough. Hell, I'm good to him. When he don't have no money, I slip him a few bucks."

"Has he ever been in trouble?"

"No, he ain't got no police record. No wife, neither, and no folks, nothing."

"What does he do?"

"Do? Why, Billy don't do much. Sometimes he washes dishes and sometimes he digs ditches or picks fruit, stuff like that."

Carraway nodded, frowning thoughtfully. "And you say he was in the Navy in the war?"

"Yep. We was on the same ship. A can--you know, a destroyer. I was pretty wild in them days--looking for trouble, you know?--and they wasn't a man on the ship I didn't take on." Mack burst out laughing. "Them gooneys didn't know I was a pro, see. They couldn't understand how come I was cooling them so quick! But Billy, he stood up against me an hour or more, even though they wasn't much left of him when I was done. It didn't leave him no smarter, that's for sure!" Mack cocked his big, battered head and gave Carraway a shrewd glance. "Listen, Carraway," he said. "I don't know what you got in mind, but if you're lookin' for some guy you can make up any shape you want, Billy's your boy." He chuckled. "Provided you cut me in. Because Billy, he does what I say, see?"

"Get him over here," said Carraway. "I want to see how he walks and I want to hear his voice."

"Sure," said Mack. He went to the door. "Hey, stupid!" he bellowed, and Billy jerked his head up at the sound of the familiar voice. "See if you can get across the street without gettin' run down!"

Carraway watched Billy approach. "Perfect," he said under his breath. Billy moved with a dreamy hesitation, gazing around as if he'd never seen a car before--or a street, either, for that matter--and his long-jawed face bore an expression of innocent wonder. A Gary Cooper type, thought Carraway, already envisioning him bearded and in castaway rags. But he wasn't sure about him yet. "You sure he's got all his marbles?" he asked Mack.

"Depends what you want him for," said Mack. "You ain't plannin' to run him for governor, are you? Hey, dummy," he said to Billy, as Billy came up, "this here's a talent scout who's goin' to make you a big movie star, so say hi to the man."

Billy looked at Carraway, noticed the extended hand and shook it.

"He wants to hear what you sound like, stupid," Mack told him, "so you speak out and say somethin'."

Billy thought for a few moments. "Ain't nothin' comes to my mind," he said finally.

"Tell him that poem I learnt you last month."

Billy thought again. Then he recited an obscene version of Mary Had a Little Lamb. He spoke slowly, but his voice was firm and deep, and Carraway was satisfied.

"You drink, Billy?" he asked.

"Beer," said Billy.

"Got a woman?"

Billy smiled and Carraway noticed that he still had most of his teeth. "I had a woman," Billy said, "but she took off last month. Nina was a nice girl."

"She was a cheap whore," Mack said. "She wasn't no good for you, Billy, and you know it." Billy looked down at his shoes but didn't say anything. "You know that, don't you?" Mack repeated, with irritation in his voice. "That Nina was just a cheap, no-good whore, right?"

"Guess so," said Billy, still staring down.

"I run that bitch off," Mack told Carraway. "These women, they latch on to Billy like barnacles, see, so ever' so often I got to scrape 'em off. They take advantage of his trustin' nature, understand, and he's like a slave to them."

"Lucky he's got a friend like you to protect his independence," Carraway remarked dryly. He stepped back a pace and looked Billy up and down. "All right," he said to Mack. "He'll do. Let's have a drink and I'll tell you what it's all about."

The two men met several times in the next few weeks, working out the details. At the end of that time, Carraway went down to Mack's bungalow with the identification tags and Billy was told what was going to happen to him.

•

The following week, Billy and Mack flew to Hawaii and stayed in a shack up in the mountains that belonged to a friend of Mack's, and it was there that Mack taught Billy the part he had to play, following the material Carraway had written.

"They ain't no more Billy Johnson," Mack said. "You never even heard that name. He's gone. He don't exist. OK, sailor? Now, you tell me--what's your name?"

Billy shook his head. "Don't know."

"That's right," said Mack. Then he squinted at Billy's neck. "What's that you got there? What's that you're wear-in'?" He reached out and lifted up the identification tags. "Hey, here it says 'J. E. Williams, Jr.' That your name? You named Williams?"

"Can't remember."

"Well, you're wearin' these dog tags, so you must be Williams. That right?"

"Seems I heard that name somewhere, but I don't know if it's mine."

"Why, it's got to be yours, sailor."

"Yeah? Well, if you say so, maybe it is."

Carraway had insisted that Billy be drilled on this point. Loss of memory would be the only protection against the questions that only the real Williams could answer. And suppose some ex-shipmate showed up to chat about old times? "He won't need to say he's Williams," Carraway assured Mack. "Once he's found down there, the newspapers will identify him as Williams fast enough."

"Suppose they take his prints?" Mack had asked.

"I've taken care of that," said Carraway. He had made up a fake Service record for Williams, with Billy's fingerprints on it, which the cooperative Naval clerk had substituted for the original. Carraway wasn't anxious to have this forgery subjected to a close inspection, however, and had decided that Billy would not apply for Williams' back pay. No point in being greedy, he thought.

Billy spent every day in the sun to tan his body and he let his hair and beard grow. "Ain't nobody going to recognize you," Mack said with satisfaction. Every Saturday, Mack went into Honolulu for some recreation, but he didn't take Billy. "Suppose when they find you, they give you a checkup and you got the clap?" Mack said. "I mean, where the hell would you have got it? From a sea gull?" So Billy stayed in the cabin and thought about Nina and waited for Mack to come back.

"You're a man that's been throwed away on an island for so long you can't remember," Mack would tell Billy as they sat outside by a stream, fishing. (continued on page 173)Last one out(continued from page 114) "You don't know nothing. You ain't even sure who you are, except you're a sailor off a destroyer. What destroyer? What's the name of it?"

"Don't know."

"The Kincaid, is that it?"

"Can't remember that."

"Well, you got to be Williams, and that was the ship, and it got sunk by a sub in 'forty-three, but man alive, you fetched up more than a thousand miles from there, and how come you survived, drifting all that way with no water? You must of have a boat and caught some rain, huh?"

"Could be."

"OK, tell me--who won the war?"

"Well, I don't know that. It's over, I guess."

"You're damned right it's over, and we won it, Williams. And who's the President?"

"Last I heard, it was Roosevelt."

"Right. It was, but it ain't no more. Say, you know what television is?"

"Television? Never heard of it."

"Well, what about the atom bomb? Know what that is?"

"Nope. I never heard of such a thing...."

Billy spent months in the mountains to let his hair get good and long. After the first few weeks, Mack moved to Honolulu, where he took a bouncer's job. He went up to the shack once a week with provisions. Billy practiced making fires with dry wood and learned how to split coconuts on rocks. He also got handy with the only tool they'd let him have, an old Navy jackknife. They were going to leave him on his island for two months, so he would have time to build a hut and cut paths and make the place look as if he'd been living there a long while.

Carraway made one visit near the end and was pleased with the way Billy looked.

"This ain't thirty years' worth of hair," said Billy.

"It'll be enough," Carraway said. "You can say it got in your way, so you hacked some off with the knife. Hair doesn't grow for more than a few years, anyway. I looked it up."

Billy thought about that for a minute, and then something else crossed his mind and he asked: "Them old Jap soldiers they been finding, how come they hid away so long?"

"Brainwashed," said Carraway. "They were told they couldn't surrender. They had to keep on fighting and never give up."

"Lord," said Billy. "Hiding out and fighting for thirty years? Why, they must be the toughest, meanest men alive, them Japs."

"Yes, yes," said Carraway impatiently. "Now, listen. As I told you before, after you've been down there those two months, we'll get the story going that there's somebody on that island, and the Navy will send a patrol boat down for a look, and that's how they'll find you. The news will hit the papers fast. I'll make sure of that. Then the minute they bring you back, I'll show up and say I'm your cousin--Williams' cousin--and after that, you leave everything to me and Mack."

Late one night, Mack drove Billy into the city and down to the waterfront, where they boarded a big, rusty fishing boat. Down below was a tough-looking man with a scarred face and gold teeth. Mack didn't bother with introductions. "You stay in this here cabin all the time," he told Billy, "and the captain, he'll tell you when you've got to where you're going."

"You ain't going to forget about me down there?"

"Don't worry, dummy. We spent too much on you already and we're damned well goin' to get it back."

Mack took Billy's wrist watch and all his clothes, giving him in return a costume of palm fronds he'd gotten an old Hawaiian granny to twist together, handed him the jackknife and shook his hand goodbye. "Watch out for them sharks," he said encouragingly as he left. Billy settled down on the deck of the cabin, listening to the fading footsteps, and after a while he fell asleep. When he awoke, it was daylight and the ship was out of sight of land.

On the fourth night, the ship anchored in a calm sea. A rubber life raft was dropped into the water. Billy was taken up on deck. He climbed down a rope ladder to the raft, where one of the sailors was waiting. The man pushed off and rowed until the distant whisper of water breaking against a reef got loud. The raft began to buck and pull. The oarsman yelled something at Billy and gestured furiously at the water, so Billy put his knife between his teeth, took a breath and splashed into the Pacific.

He hadn't been warned about the coral and it scraped him raw as he got washed across the reef. He was afraid that the captain had gone to the wrong place--suppose the reef was all there was?--but then he felt sand under his feet and caught the scent of plants and trees. He hauled himself up onto the beach and sat there gasping and shivering to wait for the dawn.

•

The island was a speck in the Pacific, the jagged tip of a dead volcano thrust up in a small lagoon walled by the coral reef. Its center was a miniature mountain, some 50 feet high, whose slopes were clothed with vegetation and clumps of curving palms. The air had a warm, sweet, lazy smell to it and Billy guessed there'd be coconuts and other fruit in the forest. He tried to estimate the size of the island as he walked along the beach. Must be two miles around and a half mile across, he thought. On the western side, there were some black boulders scattered down the slope and into the lagoon that looked as if they'd been spit there by an ancient eruption. The sand there was black, too, and at first he thought it might be from an oil spill, but when he picked up a handful and found no stains on his fingers, he realized it was a natural color. He stood there for several minutes, gazing at the sand, the water, the sky. Everything was clean and fresh. Even the air tasted good. He splashed some water on his cuts. The salt made him wince, but it was a cleansing pain and he knew he'd heal fast.

Just back from the beach were some trees he'd never seen before, with large, round, rough-skinned fruit. He picked one, cut away the rind and tasted the inside. "Can't say I much care for it." Billy said aloud, "but then, I ain't exactly in a position to be particular." He found a fallen coconut and opened it; after he ate the meat, he decided to try mixing some of the mealy fruit with coconut milk, and the result was quite tasty. "Guess I won't starve, anyhow," he remarked, pleased by his success.

At sunset, he ate some more of the breadfruit-and-coconut mixture and leaned back against one of the black boulders along the shore to watch the sky. In the lagoon, a fish broke the surface, sending out ripples that caught the multicolored light.

"Why, this here's a goddamned paradise," Billy said. "Right out of the Bible." This reminded him that Carraway had said they might make a saint out of him, with his leather-brown skin and long hair and beard. People in California would pay money just for a look at him. Billy wanted to know what a saint did. Mack told him that being a saint was soft work, except there'd be no drinking and he'd have to eat light.

"You think a saint can chow down on steak and potatoes?" Mack had asked. "No, sir, saints got to eat crackers and birdseed." All this had depressed Billy, for he didn't think it would be much of a life for him. But he had no choice, so he had said nothing. He'd never had much of a choice, anyway. As far back as he could remember, there'd always been Mack to decide things for him, and even now, sitting on the empty beach watching the sun drop, he almost expected to see Mack step out from behind a tree and yell, "Hey, stupid," and tell him what to do.

It got dark and the air turned cool. Billy realized he should at least have picked up some palm leaves for cover against the night. "Got to start thinkin' for myself," he muttered, shivering and rubbing his arms. In the morning he would start building a shelter, he decided, and it occurred to him that this would be the first place he'd ever had of his own, which encouraged him. "It ain't so cold," he told himself more cheerfully, and he lay down on the sand and gazed up at the moon and the stars until his eyes got heavy and he fell asleep.

The next day, he found a thicket of bamboo at the base of the slope and laboriously cut some for his shelter. There were pathways back in the forest, but he couldn't tell if they were natural or not. He guessed that people might have tried living on the island once, because it didn't seem likely that the bamboo and the breadfruit would be growing there unless someone had brought in seedlings. But he saw no signs of them--no crumbled huts, no graves, no clearings. He didn't climb the slope. He didn't care for the looks of it. The vegetation was thick and tangled and he thought there might be snakes. Nobody would build up there, anyway, he thought. It was too steep.

He found he could dig clams out with his hands. He built his first fire and steamed a few clams on heated stones. He wasn't supposed to make fires after dark; he couldn't risk being spotted by some passing ship and rescued too soon. But he didn't think any ships ever passed that way, although he had no idea where the island was.

By evening, he had one wall of his shelter finished--20 bamboo stakes pounded into the sandy soil a few yards back from the beach. He'd gathered a pile of leaves for a mattress and stretched out in the moonlight. He awoke once during the night and scrambled to his feet, peering over his bamboo screen up at the peak, but everything was quiet and he didn't notice anything moving anywhere, so he lay back down.

At the end of the week, Billy had finished his shelter. It had three sides and a roof on which he laid palm leaves weighted by stones. "That ain't bad for a starter." he said, admiring it. "I'll build me a real house back in the woods later on." He hadn't succeeded in making a net, but he found he could spear fish with a sharpened stick of bamboo. After his midday meal of baked fish and steamed clams and breadfruit mixed with coconut milk, he felt peaceful and contented. His loneliness didn't bother him much. Going back into the world would mean taking orders from Mack, and from Carraway, too, and having to remember all the things they'd taught him to say and not to say, and he'd probably be as lonely there as he was now.

He hoped that the rescue ship didn't arrive early. "I ain't in no hurry at all," said Billy.

•

It was on the morning of the tenth day that he found the footprint. He had gone around to the western shore collecting flat stones for the oven he was building and he was searching among the black volcanic boulders that lay in a tumbled chain down the slope and into the lagoon, like giant steppingstones. A man with springy legs could hop from one to the other, all the way from the water halfway up the hill, Billy reflected.

Then he saw the print in the sand. "Oh, Lord," he said, and his heart jumped. Was it really a footprint? He stooped down for a closer look. It had the general shape of a foot, but he couldn't be sure. "A man don't make just one footprint," he told himself, glancing anxiously about. "Not even a one-legged man." But the indentation was just below one of the boulders, and he couldn't help thinking that a man who lost his balance and slipped off the rock might land on one foot and leave a depression just like the one before him.

"Oh. Lord," Billy said again, and he forgot about his ovenstones and went back to the other side.

He tried to convince himself it hadn't been a footprint he had seen. "Some bird done it." he muttered, although he knew better. No bird could have made that mark. He thought of going back for a second look, but he realized that by now the tide would have erased it, and this bothered him, for it meant that the mark had been made within the past few hours.

"They ain't nobody else here," he said, and he looked despairingly up at the tiny mountain, the only part of the island he hadn't explored, and he wondered now if it had been his instinct that had warned him not to climb up.

He felt shaky. Someone hiding out on the island? Someone who'd been there all along, watching him? He sucked in his breath and he yelled: "Hey, up there! I'm a friend! A friend!" His voice came out shrill and tight. "C'mon down and let's have some fish: how about it?" He thought he saw movement high up among the leaves near the peak, but it could have been from a breeze. "I'm Billy Johnson from San Diego!" he yelled, spreading his arms wide and grinning. "Cook you up a nice lunch, what d'ya say, huh?"

There was no answer but silence.

Billy wiped the sweat off his face. "Lord, Lord," he muttered. "Suppose he don't understand English?" And he lowered his arms and sat down on the sand, feeling sick.

He was too upset to eat. "Ain't nobody else here," he kept repeating, but he sat with his back to the water, scanning the peak, the slope and the trees along the edge of the beach, and he kept his knife and bamboo spear close at hand.

I made a mistake, hollering, he thought. Now he knows I seen his print.

As the day wore on, he collected all the dry sticks and leaves he could find nearby, and at dusk he lighted a fire. "Why, that poor bastard's prob'ly as scared as I am," Billy told himself, but he doubted it. Everywhere he looked now, he seemed to see the gleam of watching eyes.

"Hey, the war's over," he called into the darkness beyond the fire. "Hey, banzai. Let's make friends, huh?" To keep awake, he chattered out everything he could think of, getting the Bible stories he remembered from Sunday school mixed up with the dirty poems Mack had taught him, and every so often yelling out to the unseen watcher. "Hey, kamikaze. I ain't going to hurt you. Hey, Tokyo. C'mon down and let's shake hands!"

Before dawn he fell asleep and the fire died. When the sun hit him, he jumped up in a fright. Lord, he thought. Can't go on like this. He tried to eat some coconut, but he gagged on it. He prowled up and down the beach, carrying his knife and spear, casting glances into the forest. "Last man out of the war," he muttered, remembering what Carraway had said. "Last one out, yeah--but it ain't me." He gazed about hopelessly at the sun-swept beach, the calm and shining lagoon and the fragrant tangle of vines and trees that shimmered in the gentle air. "Just my rotten ol' luck," he whispered, ready to weep. "Same ol' Billy Johnson luck!"

•

The Navy patrol ship arrived a few weeks later, more or less on Carraway's schedule. It anchored outside the reef and sent its helicopter in for a pontoon landing in the lagoon. An officer and two enlisted men climbed out, waded ashore and began looking around. They spent more than an hour on the island but found no trace of habitation. Billy's shelter had vanished and all other signs of his brief visit had been erased. The Navy men didn't climb the tiny peak, but the helicopter had crossed over it before making its descent and they had observed nothing but the usual screen of tropical growth.

The officer concluded that the fire reported by the fishing craft must have been caused by lightning, although he could find no charred trunks or burned-over scrub. Finally, he gave the order to depart. The men waded out to the helicopter, which lurched into the air, and flew back to the patrol ship, and then the ship, too, turned and steamed away. Before long, the waters of the lagoon were calm again and the horizon was empty and everything was as it had been before.

Billy swam out from behind one of the black boulders on the western side of the island, where he had hidden. "All clear!" he yelled, waving. From behind another boulder, farther out in the water, the Japanese cautiously appeared and smiled and waved back. Billy waded up to the beach. It wouldn't take them more than a couple of hours to reassemble their hut, he figured, and their little store of tools would be right where they'd concealed it, in a rock crevice up on the peak.

He turned to wait for his companion to join him. They still had problems in understanding each other, but with the help of gestures and sketches in the sand, Billy had figured out that there'd been a hospital plane from Kwajalein headed for Japan that was blown off course in a storm and then crashed at sea not far from the island, with just this one survivor. He guessed she'd been a nurse, because she knew just which fresh leaves to put on his foot when he cut it once. She'd learned all about the island, too, and showed him where the different kinds of shoots and berries grew and how to catch the most elusive fish, and, best of all, she was a fine, strong, loving woman. Mack was right, he thought. His luck had changed. "I don't see no reason to leave," Billy remarked amiably as she came up to him, wet from the water and laughing. She didn't know what he'd said, but she guessed what he meant, and she threw her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his chest.