Ice-Cream Headache by James Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

back-talk. When I give you an order, you do it. Call Alcorn down here like I said.”
    “Okay,” I said. I leaned on the culvert and called loudly, my face turned up to the cliff. There was no answer. I flashed my light covered with blue paper. Still no answer.
    For a second I couldn’t help wondering if something had got him. The Japanese invasion of Hawaii had been expected every day since Pearl was bombed. It was expected here at Kaneohe Bay on the windward side where the reef was low and there was good beach. Nobody doubted they would get ashore.
    “What’s the matter?” asked Mazzioli sharply from the darkness. “Is Alcorn asleep?”
    “No,” I said. “It’s the wind; it carries off the sound. The light will get him.” I picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them up the cliff with all my strength, trying to make no noise the Greek could hear.
    Sixty feet up was a natural niche and the BAR man was stationed there twenty-four hours a day. It was a hidden spot that covered the road and the road-guard. In case of surprise it would prove invaluable. That was Lieutenant Allison’s own idea. The road-guard was Hawaiian Department’s idea.
    Alcorn had stayed up there alone for the first four days after the bombing. In the four days he had one meal before somebody remembered him. Now he and the other man pulled twelve hours apiece.
    The road-guard was part of the whole defense plan. It was figured out in November when the beach positions were constructed. The defense was to mine the Pali Road and Kamehameha Highway where it ran up over this cliff at Makapuu Point. It was planned to blow both roads and bottle them up in Kaneohe Valley and force them north, away from Honolulu. They were great demolitions and it was all top secret. Of course, in December they found maps of the whole thing in the captured planes. Still, it was very vital and very top secret.
    A rock the size of my fist thumped into the sand at my feet. I grinned. “You missed me,” I called up the cliff. “Come down from there, you lazy bastard.” I barely caught a faraway, wind-tossed phrase that sounded like “truck, too.” Then silence, and the wind.
    The machinegun apertures in the pillboxes up the hill all faced out to sea. Whoever planned the position had forgotten about the road, and all that faced the road was the tunnels into the pillboxes. To cover the road the MGs would have to be carried up into the open, and it was a shame because there was a perfect enfilade where the road curved up the cliff. But they couldn’t rebuild the pillboxes we had cut into solid rock, so instead they created the road-guard.
    The road-guard was to be five men and a BAR from up above. That was us. We were to protect the demolition when the Jap landed. It was not expected to keep him from getting ashore. We were to hold him off, with our BAR, till the demolition could be blown behind us. After that we were on our own. It was excellent strategy, for a makeshift, with the invasion expected truly every day. And the road-guard was vital, it was the key.
    Every man at Makapuu volunteered for the road-guard. The five of us were lucky to get it. The job was to stop and search all vehicles for anything that might be used to blow the demolition. The Coca-Cola trucks and banana trucks and grocery trucks and fruit trucks used this road every day to get to market. We stopped them all, especially the Coca-Cola trucks.
    In a couple of minutes I heard a scrambling and scraping and a bouncing fall of pebbles and Alcorn came slouching along the sand at the road edge, blowing on his hands.
    “The Greek wants you, Fatso,” I said.
    He laughed, low and rich and sloppy. “I think I’m deef from this wind, by god,” he said and scratched inside his field jacket. “What’s he want now?”
    “Come over here,” Mazzioli ordered. We walked over through the blackness and the wind and I felt I was swimming under water against a strong current. The Greek swung his blue light