A Grey Moon Over China Read Free Page B

the basin, her head turning with the warning in her eyes:
Don’t.
That’s what I remembered—her dark eyes turning toward me and their warning:
Don’t.
    I let out my breath and ran a hand through my hair, then turned to look along the flank of the hill. Polaski was watching me.
    “Pretty little thing,” he said, “isn’t she?”
    “Who?”
    “Miss Chan.”
    The image of Mexico faded. “You stay away from Chan.”
    “Really? I was thinking maybe I could diddle her for you, Torres, tell you what it was like.”
    “I said leave her alone.”
    “Sweet on Miss Chan, are we?”
    When I didn’t answer he picked up a rock and pitched it carefully down the hill.
    “Man-u-factured Intelligence,” he said. “Man, those MI fucks have got it made. Jobs when they get out . . .” He reached for a bigger rock. “Don’t go crapping out on me again, Torres.”
    “I didn’t crap out on you. You fucked up and the Army busted us.”
    He toyed with the rock. “So what do you see in her, anyway?”
    “Someone who’s still all right, Polaski. Someone whose insides haven’t been taken out and pissed all over like the rest of us.”
    “Nice,” he said. “Nicely said. So what’s she see in you?”
    I didn’t answer.
    “Come on, Torres, I’ve seen the way she looks at you all the fucking time. What’s she see in you?”
    “I don’t know. Come on, Polaski, what did you drag me out here for?”
    “Because I need you, all right? I need your brains. Is that what you want to hear?”
    “For what?” I said.
    He didn’t answer.
    “For what?”
    He rummaged in his pack. “You tell me.”
    “Forget it, Polaski. All I want any more is out.”
    He got his radio into his hand and called Tyrone Elliot; he’d seen Elliot’s helicopter beating its way toward us across the ocean, just above the waves.
    “Yes, boss,” said Elliot.
    “Make a detour, Elliot. Get Torres’ ass out of here. He needs something to do.”
    “Yes, sir,
Herr Feld Marschall
, sir. Tell him we’ll snap his little wetback ass off the ridge,
sir
.” The radio shut off with a squeal.
    “Get out of here,” said Polaski. The helicopter changed course and headed toward us. “Go back where you came from, maybe.”
    I stood up. “So what about you, Polaski? Where did you come from?”
    He was sitting a few yards away from me, facing down the hill, and now he put the radio down carefully between his feet. His movements were slow, calm. He looked down at the radio, then stayed that way, his head down, the muscles working in his jaw.
    It was what I’d expected. The only other time I’d asked him about himself was at the school, after we met, when I asked him if he had family, and his reaction was the same. His face lost expression and his eyes narrowed, and he didn’t look at me or speak. He just walked away. When he returned three days later our relationship had changed: There were things that belonged in it, and things that didn’t.
    I left Polaski stewing on the hillside and slogged up past the digger toward the ridge, while I scratched at my bites and thought back to when I met him.
    I’d been in the U.S. two years when the Army picked me up and selected me out for Tech-War School. Until then I’d been working the reforestations in the summer and trying to stay warm in the winter, asking at doors for books and food and huddling under blankets at night to read them. I walked the streets during the day and tried to sound Anglo and think Anglo, trying to get out of the trap. In cities filled with poor I was the poorest, a wetback off the Gulf boats that snuck around the border wire, and I knew my only chance for a job was English and machines.
    Then without warning I was in the Army. Polaski appeared a few days later, as though out of nowhere. Streetwise and confident, quick on familiar ground and sly when out of his depth. He picked me out for my skill with the books, then over the weeks grew prickly and watchful as though mindful of losing a