Seto tried to spit on the ball where the mud had dried. His mouth was too dry, and his tongue like sand.
Should I leave my home?
He rubbed his thumb over red threads. Such nice, tight stitches. Seto thought of his father laboring over his sewing machine. Had his father ever admired stitches on a baseball? Seto wished he could ask his father. But knew his father must be dead. Seto sighed.
I am too old to move.
He rolled the ball between his hands.
Will men come hunt me now? Or can I chance going up to hunt my supper? I will starve if I gather no food tonight.
Seto slammed the baseball to the ground.
I am starving already.
He buried his head beneath his arms. The dirty white ball mocked him. He was no longer imprisoned in his father’s tailor shop. Yet Seto still could not go outdoors and play baseball.
He tucked the ball into a box with his sewing kit. He wiped his eyes, then crept to a broken coconut shell and examined the empty brown husk. Alas, he had scraped out the last white meat for bait and did not fetch another coconut in his haste to escape watching eyes.
Seto crawled to his stove to sip final drops of river water he had boiled. He found the pan empty. Evaporated, every drop.
He had no choice but to go up and search for food and bring back water.
Later. When Sun sleeps behind horizon and Moon shines her face above trees. At twilight I go up… for a moment… these tired bones will try once more to quench my thirst and feed this hungry flesh.
Seto picked at shredded pago bark to weave more cloth.
If I think too much, I go mad.
CHAPTER 21
NIGHT CRAWLERS
JANUARY 23, 1972
In the dead of night, I slipped out of bed. I pulled on blue jeans and a black long-sleeved knit shirt with an aqua surfboard on back, and “Hang Loose” printed on the front. Only “Hang Loose” was the last thing I planned to do. I dug out black socks and black leather church shoes from my closet, but didn’t put them on until I reached the tool shed.
I unlocked the front door and creaked opened the screen, pausing only long enough to hear if anyone woke up. All clear, I tiptoed to the shed, shushing Bobo as I opened the door.
Blood had seeped through the T-shirt around Bobo. I carefully unwrapped it, and winced when I tore it away from my dog’s fur that was matted with brown dried blood. I dabbed more salve onto the wound, ripped the T-shirt into strips, and tied the three cleanest cloths around him.
I stroked Bobo’s back, hugged his neck, then got up and searched for a weapon. I stretched to reach behind the oil can perched on the shelf above my head. I fingered the cold metal of the gun Tatan used to shoot Simon.
No, not the gun. Someone might hear.
I lifted Tatan’s machete from two pegs, slicing air as if sharpening a barber’s razor on a leather strap.
I couldn’t imagine hacking a man to death. Too messy.
My eyes raced over tools mounted on the wall—claw hammer, plumber’s wrench, screwdrivers…
Nothing… not there… Ah! I knew what to use.
I checked out the wheelbarrow where I’d laid the tools to dry after washing blood off them.
Seemed right. I picked up the knife I slit Simon’s throat with.
I fetched a rope and wound the cord, thumb to elbow, then hung it over my shoulder.
I rubbed Bobo behind the ears and led him back to his bed of rags. “Stay here boy,” I whispered hoarsely. “I’ve got business to take care of. No one’s going to hurt you, or Nana, again.” Bobo clapped his tail against the dirt floor as if he approved of what I was about to do.
I slipped out the door, latched it to shut Bobo in, and headed for the boonies.
At the baseball diamond I paused and stared into dense dark foliage. I listened into the darkness, trying to gain courage to press on. All I heard was the lowing of cows. Moooo, moo.
I tried to think of Sammy and his baseball in the boonies. It would be no different than running in to find my ball. Or racing into the jungle to rescue Sammy from the enemy. I closed my eyes. Behind closed lids, I conjured up a vision of my nana crying. The tears turned into rain in a jungle where I saw Sammy cowering, scared, crying for help.
I lunged from home plate to thick underbrush without looking back. I walked past mango groves and tangantangan vines to the banyan tree. I listened for taotaomona spirits whistling through the leaves, but heard nothing but a mosquito buzz, buzz in my ear. I stepped over roots and pressed on past pandanus trees to the thicket of bamboo where Bobo had scratched something manmade.
I crouched behind a palm and cluster of tall ferns and peered into the eerie dark, searching for the Japanese straggler.
Just so the soldier didn’t spy me first.
I swatted a mosquito from my ear and listened. Crickets and bullfrogs sang, Chirp, chirp. Croak. Ribbet. Ribbet. Chirp, chirp. Croak. Riiibbet.
Cautious… curious… I struggled with whether or not to lift the bamboo mat and see what lay beneath.
Later. After I’d taken care of him.
With no sign of the straggler near the bamboo grove, I stalked to the marshy reeds. I crouched in weeds and peered up and down the banks of Talofofo, looking for the Japanese soldier.
Everything was still as death; not a soul to be seen, beast or man.
My stomach churned. With anxiety? Relief? I wasn’t sure which.
Maybe he moved elsewhere.
I thought about giving up the hunt and going back home to my safe, comfortable bed when I heard taunting in my head. Chicken. Buullk, bulk, bulk, bulk. Chicken. The soldiers murdered. They raped. Don’t you care? No one will know… no one…
I stood, shifted the rope back onto my shoulder, fingered the knife, and walked upstream. I thrashed through underbrush rather than risk being seen on the open banks. I searched in all directions for signs of the soldier.
Slant-eyed devil? Where are you?
Swish, swish, splash.
I halted. I squatted back down in weeds and looked at the river. Ripples circled out on the water.
Probably a dumb old fish.
I started to get up again and head back when just feet ahead of me reeds parted. I sat on my haunches, keeping my gaze on the reeds.
A grimy little figure dressed in coarse shorts and a shirt the color and texture of coconut husks blended with the underbrush like a chameleon. He dipped something into the water and scooped it up again.
My feet inched closer… closer… until I drew close enough to see the soldier filling a canteen stamped US Army on the side. Close enough to smell the man.
Eeww. Worse than pig poop.
The Japanese soldier pulled up a poorly woven shrimp trap made from split reeds. Empty. I relaxed my grip on the rope. The soldier checked two more traps, all empty. No wonder, they needed mending.
With knuckles swollen like plum seeds, the man thrust into a coconut a crude metal object the shape of a big wooden spoon lashed with a rope to a piece of wood. I’d never seen anything like it before. What’d he have it tied to? The butt end of a rifle?
The straggler twisted the homemade tool and cracked the coconut open. He bent his head back to drink the sweet milk.
Yeah, that’s it, rapist. Keep your head back.
I gripped the knife and rope, got down on all fours and crawled slowly, quietly, toward the soldier. If I could get behind him, I could wrap the cord around his skinny neck and slit his throat.
The soldier scraped coconut meat with the metal tool. He put coconut shavings in the traps for bait.
Good. The soldier didn’t see me. Just another foot and I could… do… it…. I knew I could. I slit Simon’s throat, hadn’t I? And Simon was my friend.
The soldier lowered the traps into the river, then moved a few feet over to pull up another trap.
I quit crawling. I didn’t want him to see me.
I kept my eyes glued on the soldier’s every move. I watched the wisp-of-a-man sc
rounge for fallen breadfruit. He picked up a rotten one, then dropped it. I tried to imagine this puny walking stick with funny black shocks of hair sticking out in all directions committing vile, evil acts maga’hagas whispered about.
This is a Japanese soldier, I thought, psyching myself up to kill him. One who beat our tatas and raped our nanas. I’m justified in taking his life. I’m justified. He murdered our people. No one will know. No one will care.
I watched the hunched-over skeleton pluck snails from a tree trunk. He didn’t look like a soldier. I wondered what Sammy’s eating. Was he finding fresh fruit? Or was he hunting beetles, cockroaches, and rats?
The nearly starved man cupped his hand and chased a frog. The frog hopped away and plopped into the river. The straggler was in such bad shape he couldn’t even catch a frog.
It was hard to believe he was once a murderer.
The sickly old man who looked more animal than human lifted a rock and dug out white fleshy grubs to put in his sack.
Maybe he wasn’t a rapist.
I rubbed the handle of my knife between my thumb and forefinger. I squinted into the darkening boonies in the direction of my home, then back again at the straggler.
The straggler unbuttoned his shirt and pants, took off his clothes, and quietly lowered himself into the river to bathe. The top of his head above the water’s surface looked like the back of a turtle swimming. It reminded me of the stories Tatan told me about the turtle that birthed our island. It was as if I could hear my tatan calling me “Little Turtle.”
The dirty soldier lifted his head and looked past me with slanted, fearful eyes. Black marbles, glassy as a doe’s, only instead of lids, skin lay over his eyes like the backs of spoons, with an extra fold near the outer corners… like Sammy’s. Where was Sammy hiding? In a cave? In a jungle? Would some Vietnamese boy find him and kill him? Or have mercy on him?
“Another day,” I whispered to the taotaomonas.
I slipped back past the marshy reeds. I wove through the dense underbrush, and walked by the bamboo thicket.
Woo. Woo. Wind called me through bamboo like the sounding of a conch shell.
I ventured over to the thicket.
Gong. Gong. One large bamboo shoot drummed against the others.
I looked at the woven mat, then stared in all directions to see if the straggler was coming back.
Probably still searching for food.
I bent down and lifted the mat. Underneath was a hatch like on a submarine, beneath the hatch, a bamboo ladder.
I searched the thicket again for signs the straggler was near.
I’d be quick about it and out before the straggler got back. I lifted the hatch and stole down the creepy hole.
Down two steps, three, four…
The air was warm, sluggish, thick.
I’m suffocating. Like I’m sealed shut in a casket.
I strained to look below but couldn’t see because it was too dark. I lowered my rope down the shaft but didn’t feel it slack up.
Was it a bottomless pit?
I hesitated. Five, six, seven steps more…
The stench smelled of burnt coconut oil and death.
I can’t breathe! I’m suffocating!
Woo. Woo. Gong. Gong.
Wind scattered leaves on bamboo overhead, sounding like skeleton bones.
Surely taotaomona spirits were warning me to get out.
Like a bat spooked out of a cave, I scurried up the bamboo ladder. I stomped the hatch down and tossed on the mat. I rushed to a banyan tree and trembled among its roots.
I’d rather take my chances with taotaomonas than go down a shaft so deep and dark even spirits were afraid to haunt.
Scrrrape. Thump. Scrrrape. Thump. Scrrape. Thud.
I hunched down and peeked around the tree. I scaled the roots, then trunk, then branches to peer out toward the bamboo thicket.
The straggler had returned, dragging his burlap sack. Like a skittish deer, he looked in all directions.
The Japanese man peeled back the mat, opened the hatch, and lowered his sack and canteen below.
I shivered, afraid my loud telltale heart would give me away.
I climbed down the banyan and was ready to drop to the ground when the man reappeared and sat on the brink of the pit. He stripped off his filthy burlap clothes, folded them neatly, and descended again into…
Hell. That soldier lives in hell.
CHAPTER 22
SURRENDERING
JANUARY 23, 1972
Does he think I did not smell him? I have become like an animal with a keen tracking nose. It must be because I am nearly blind between darkness of my cave and soot from burning coconut oil. But I smelled him. It is just a matter of time before the boy and his dog find me.
Seto sighed deeply and sunk to the floor of his cave. He lay still, as if already dead. What would he do when that day came? He was too tired and weak to fight. Instead, his back bent over like a tailor bends from too many years of sewing in dim light. Maybe it was time to surrender. What would it matter to anyone? Japan was defeated. What happened to the emperor? Is Seto’s father even alive? He thought not. Although, his father’s ghost never visited him in his cave.
He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the smell of burnt coconut oil and mildew from the packed dirt. He coughed in painful spasms until he curled into a ball, gasping for breath.
Maybe it was time to surrender. Seto had already proved he was a coward and could not go the way of the cherry blossoms. His stomach groaned from hunger. At least as a prisoner he would get fed.
Maybe it was time… maybe…
Seto was too tired to get up and cook the few provisions he had gathered. He was so very, very tired of it all.
CHAPTER 23
MISSING TATAN
JANUARY 24, 1972
I woke up suffocating, strangled in my sheet like a mummy. I felt like crap. I’d even slept in my clothes. I couldn’t have dozed off for more than a couple of hours. The alarm clock faced away from me. I was too tired to bother picking it up and checking the time. Then I remembered, and groaned—I had wanted to kill the Japanese soldier.
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill that pathetic old man in the boonies.
What if it were Sammy? I wouldn’t want someone killing my brother in the Vietnamese jungle, or mountains, or wherever Sammy was hiding as an M.I.A. (It made me feel better to imagine Sammy hiding in a cave beside a river like the Talofofo.)
No matter how much I hated what some soldier did to my nana. No matter how much I hated what happened to Tatan to make him so bitter. I didn’t want to become what I hated. I didn’t want to live in hell.
I had to tell someone right away about the straggler living in the boonies. But who?
I fought my way out of the sheet, nearly falling on the floor. I sprung up and ran to the kitchen before taking a shower.
Tatan sat at the table drinking coffee and eating an egg and chorizo tortilla.
“Where’s Tata?”
“Humph, that all you got to say to me? No buenas dias?” Tatan asked.
Tatan acted like he forgot to take his “purple mushroom.”
“Buenas dias, Tatan. Now, where’s Tata?”
Tatan went back to reading Ayuda Line, a question-answer column in the Pacific Daily News, and drinking black Kona coffee. He said to no one in particular, “I see they building more hotels on Tumon. What the Japanese couldn’t conquer, they buy.”
“That’s good, Tatan. Means Sammy’s Quonset Hut will make more money.”
Tatan glared at me.
“More tourists, more sales,” I said. No response. I gave up. “Where’s Tata and Nana?”
“At work.”
“How come?”
“’Cause of all those damn tourists.”
I didn’t know what to do. Was it safe to leave Tatan home alone? The straggler had a knife, and he’d cut Bobo. Should I skip school? Should I call Tata at work?
I opened a jar
, stuck my fingers in, and fished for pickled mango.
“Hurry,” Tatan said. “Or you miss the bus.”
“I’m t’inking about not going to school today.”
Tatan gave me the atan baba. “You go. Or else.”
I knew better than to challenge Tatan with “or else, what?”
“Tatan, if I go to school today, will you promise me somet’ing?”
Tatan scrunched, then lifted his eyebrows. “If?… promise somet’ing?”
“Promise me you won’t go in the boonies today.”
“Or else?” Tatan said. “What?”
“Just promise me. No boonies today,” I pleaded.
Tatan furrowed his eyebrows.
I flicked my eyebrows up. “Or else… I no go to school today.”
Tatan stood, pointed his finger toward the door and roared, “You go! ’Cause I say so!”
I grabbed my books and slipped on my zoris by the door. I creaked open the screen door just wide enough to squeeze out without letting Bobo wiggle in. I must’ve been so out of it the night before that I didn’t lock the shed back up. Bobo had worked the rags I’d wrapped him in down on his rump and looked like he was doing a crazy hula. I dumped dog food into Bobo’s dish and fixed the rag back around his cut. That’d have to do until I came home after school. I craned my neck toward Tatan and hollered into the kitchen, “Promise. No boonies. Please.”
Tatan was already buried back in his newspaper. He mumbled, “Deal,” then raised his head, pounded his fist on the table, and yelled, “Go to school!”
I ran down the dirt lane. It was the first time I could recall Bobo didn’t follow me. I was concerned he wouldn’t be a very good watchdog anymore either.
At school I was bursting to tell Tomas and Daphne. But they couldn’t do any more good than I could. In class I got yelled at for not paying attention. Oh, I was paying attention all right—to the clock. The hands clicked so slowly I daydreamed of smashing the glass to hurry them along. What if Tatan didn’t listen to me and went into the boonies? Why hadn’t I told Tata or someone when I first suspected there might be a Japanese solider living behind our house? How could I have been so blind to the signs someone was there? I had to get home and check on Tatan.
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