The Reckoning

by John Grisham

  On the table, there were four small bottles of pills next to the deck of cards. The dealer glanced at the bottles and said, “Got a few pills left. A buck a pop.”

  Without a word, without a warning, Clay growled, “You bloodsuckin’ sack of shit!” He attacked, kicking the table and sending the cards and bottles flying. The dealer jumped up, yelled “What the hell!” and threw a roundhouse right at Clay, who was charging. Clay ducked low, and with a right upper cut caught the dealer square in the testicles. As they popped together, he screamed and fell to the dirt. Clay kicked him viciously in the face, then dropped to his knees and pounded away as a blind rage overcame fatigue, starvation, dehydration, and whatever else Clay had at the moment. All was forgotten as he could finally, after days of wanting to fight back and kill the enemy, deliver some resistance and revenge. After a dozen or so shots to the face, he stopped and slowly stood. He said, “You low-life son of a bitch. Making a buck off men who are dying. You’re lower than the damned Japs.”

  The dealer was not done. He managed to maneuver onto all fours, undoubtedly with more pain in his crotch than in his bloody face, then stood, although unsteadily. He glanced around and noticed that a crowd was gathering. Nothing was more enjoyable than a good fistfight, primarily because so few of the prisoners had the energy to start or finish one.

  He was bleeding from the nose and the mouth and a cut above his right eye, and he should have stayed on the ground. With a limp caused by his aching balls, he stepped toward Clay and growled, “You son of a bitch.”

  The word “bitch” had barely escaped his mouth when a fist smacked it with such speed that the punch was barely visible. With a perfect left-right combo, Clay drew even more blood. The dealer wasn’t much of a boxer and had never brawled with a cowboy, and as they sparred he had a terrible time landing a punch. Clay circled him, firing away and pretending he was punching a Jap. A hard right to the chin dropped the dealer again. He fell onto the board he’d been using as a table, and Clay, still in a rage, grabbed the board and began pounding his hapless opponent. The sound of hardwood cracking against his skull became sickening, but Clay could not stop. He had seen so much death that life was now cheap, and who in hell cared if he killed a man he considered lower than a Jap?

  A guard with a bayonet on a rifle stepped next to him and stuck him gently in the back. Clay stopped his pounding, looked at the guard, and stood. He tried to catch his breath and was suddenly exhausted.

  The guard smiled and said, “No stop. Fight more.”

  Clay looked at the battered face of the dealer. He looked at Pete, who was standing under the tree and shaking his head no. He looked at the gaunt men in the crowd who’d hurried over to watch.

  He looked at the Jap and said, “No. I’m finished.”

  The guard raised his bayonet, poked Clay in the chest, nodded at the guy in the dirt, and said, “Kill him.”

  Clay ignored the bayonet and said, “No. That’s what you do.”

  He took a step back, fully expecting the guard to lunge at him and begin something awful, but the guard only lowered his rifle and stared at Clay, who walked to the tree to retrieve Pete. The crowd slowly dispersed as the dealer came to his senses and started to move.

  Pete had found a new best friend. An hour later, they were hiding from the sun behind the barracks. The odors inside their building had become so noxious that they tried to avoid it. Pete was sitting under a tree with Clay nearby. They were chatting with others, whiling away the hours, when the same guard found them. He addressed Clay, who stood and bowed and faced him in anticipation of a bad scene. Instead, the guard pulled a small bottle from his pocket, handed it to Clay, nodded at Pete, and said, “For your friend.” Then he turned in a perfect about-face and marched away.

  The pills were quinine, lifesavers for Pete and a few others in his barracks.

  Chapter 28

  As was her ritual, at 6:00 p.m. Nineva left supper on the stove and walked to her cottage. Liza watched her leave through a bedroom window, thankful once again that she was gone and the family was alone. In the nine years that Liza had lived in the main house, she and Nineva had learned to coexist, often side by side as they canned fruits and vegetables from the garden and talked about the children. With Pete gone, they leaned on each other daily, with each trying to appear stronger than the other. In front of the kids, they were stoic and confident that the Allies would win the war and he would be home soon. Both women shed plenty of tears, but always in private.

  On Tuesday, May 19, the family was in the middle of supper, and the conversation was about the summer. Vacation began tomorrow, and Joel and Stella were eager to start the three-month holiday. He was sixteen, a rising senior, and the youngest in his class. She was fifteen and would be a sophomore. They wanted to travel some, perhaps to New Orleans or Florida, but the truth was that no definite plans could be made. They had not heard from their father in over four months, and this uncertainty dominated their lives.

  From just outside the kitchen window, Mack started barking as a wave of headlights swept through the kitchen. A car had approached and was somewhere out front. Since no one was expected, the three gave each other a fearful look. Liza jumped to her feet and said, “Someone is here. I’ll see who it is.”

  At the front door were two men in army uniforms. A moment later, they were seated in the den, facing the family on the sofa. Liza sat between Joel and Stella and held their hands. Stella was already in tears.

  Captain Malone said solemnly, “I’m afraid I have some bad news, and I’m sorry. But Lieutenant Banning is now missing and presumed dead. We do not know for certain that he is dead, because his unit was unable to recover his body. But, given the circumstances, the men with him are reasonably certain that he is dead. I’m very sorry.”

  Stella’s head fell in her mother’s lap. Liza grabbed both and squeezed them close. They gasped and cried and held each other tightly as the two officers stared at the floor. The men had not volunteered for this assignment, but they had their orders and were now making such dreadful visits almost every day throughout north Mississippi.

  Liza gritted her teeth and asked, “What does ‘presumed dead’ mean, exactly?”

  Captain Malone said, “It means we did not recover the body.”

  “So there’s a chance he’s still alive?” Joel asked, wiping his cheeks.

  “Yes, there is that chance, but I caution you that, under the circumstances, the men with Lieutenant Banning are reasonably certain that he was killed.”

  “Can you tell us what happened?” Liza asked.

  “We have some details, but not many, and I’m not sure how accurate our facts are, ma’am. Lieutenant Banning was captured when the Allied forces surrendered to the Japanese on the Philippines. It was last month on April 9 and 10. The men were being marched to a POW camp when he was injured and left behind, as were many men. He was then killed by the Japanese soldiers.”

  At that moment it didn’t really matter how he died. The shock of the moment blurred the details. The horrible truth was that Pete Banning was gone and they would never see him again. Husband, father, patriarch, friend, boss, brother, neighbor, and leading citizen. There were so many who would share their pain. They wept for a long time, and when the officers had nothing else to say, they stood, offered their condolences once more, and left the house.

  Liza wanted nothing more than to go to her bedroom, lock the door, get under the covers, and cry herself to sleep. But that would be indulgent and was not an option. She had two wonderful children who now needed her more than ever, and while she wanted to collapse into a puddle of tears, she instead stiffened her spine and took the first step.

  “Joel, get in the truck and drive down to Florry’s. Bring her back here. Stop along the way and inform Nineva. Tell Jupe to get on a horse and spread the word among the Negroes.”

  Word spread rapidly enough, and within a
n hour the front yard was filled with cars and trucks. Liza would have preferred to spend the first night in quiet mourning with just her kids and Florry, but things were not done that way in the rural South. Dexter and Jackie Bell arrived in the first wave and spent a few moments alone with the Bannings. He read some scripture and said a prayer. Liza explained that the family was not ready to confront a horde of well-meaning mourners, and they huddled in her bedroom while Dexter quietly asked folks to come back later. At ten o’clock, they were still arriving.

  In Clanton, the gossip was of nothing else. At 8:00 a.m., Dexter opened the sanctuary of the Methodist church so those who knew Pete could stop by for a moment of prayer. In the early hours of the tragedy, much was made of the fact that he was missing and not officially dead. So there was hope, and the hope inspired his friends and neighbors to pray long and hard.

  Later in the morning, Dexter and Jackie returned to the Banning home to sit with Liza and the children, who were still in no mood to greet the crowd. He quietly encouraged people to leave, and they did. They arrived in carloads and delivered cakes, pies, casseroles, food no one needed but there were traditions to follow. After a few soft words with Dexter, and once they realized they would not be allowed to hug and cry with Liza, they quietly left the house, returned to their cars, and drove away.

  Liza made the decision that there would be no memorial service. There was a chance her husband was still alive, and she and her children would focus on that and ignore the bad news. Or, they would at least try to. As the days dragged on, Liza began seeing a few close friends, as did Joel and Stella. The shock gradually wore off, though the aching, numbing pain did not.

  Routines developed to maintain normalcy. The family ate breakfast and supper together, often with Nineva sitting with them, a new wrinkle. Each weekday Dexter Bell arrived around ten for a short devotional—a verse or scripture, a comforting word, and a thoughtful prayer. Jackie came occasionally, but usually he was alone.

  Two weeks after receiving the news, Florry took Joel and Stella to Memphis for a long weekend. Liza insisted they go in an effort to get away from the gloominess of their home, and to have a little fun. Florry had some eccentric friends in Memphis who could make anyone smile. She and the kids checked into the Peabody. Joel’s room was not far from where he was conceived, though he would never know it.

  While they were away, Dexter Bell arrived each day for the morning devotion. He and Liza sat in the den and talked quietly. From the kitchen, Nineva listened to every word.

  * * *

  —

  Some black-market paregoric worked, and Pete’s third round of dysentery improved but did not go away. His malaria lingered too. He could function with it, though at times the chills and fevers caused him to lie in the dirt and shake from head to toe. He hallucinated and thought he was back home.

  He and Clay sat in the shade of the barracks and watched the parade of dead bodies being hauled to the cemetery across the road. By late April, twenty-five Americans were dying each day. By May, the number was fifty. By June, a hundred.

  Death was everywhere. The living thought about dying because they saw the dead bodies, which were often piled haphazardly. They thought about dying because they too were facing death. They starved a little more each day and came closer to a collapse from which they would not recover. Diseases were running rampant and there was no way to stop them, and it was inevitable that one of a dozen would arrive any day now and bring a miserable death with it.

  Pete watched men give up and die, and on several occasions he was tempted. All of them were hanging on by a thread anyway, and only those with an iron will to live managed to survive. Giving up was painless, while living meant waking up in the morning and facing another day in hell. Some were determined to cling to all hope and survive whatever the enemy threw at them, while others grew too weary from the suffering and closed their eyes.

  Pete survived by thinking of his wife and kids, his farm, and his family’s long and rich history in Ford County. He recalled stories he had heard as a boy about old wars and battles and feuds, all colorful tales that had been handed down from one generation to the next. He thought about Liza and those wonderful days at the Peabody when they were spending nights together, something no well-respected couple would think of doing in the 1920s. He thought of her body and her constant desire for physical pleasure. He remembered hunting and fishing with Joel in the woods on their land and bringing home deer, turkeys, rabbits, bream, and crappie that they cleaned by the barn and gave to Nineva to cook for supper. He remembered Stella as a little girl with those beautiful eyes curled up on the sofa in her pajamas listening as her father read bedtime stories. He longed for the warmth of her soft skin. He wanted to be there when his children finished college and got married.

  Pete had made the decision that he would not die from disease or starvation. He was a tough farm boy, a West Point man, a cavalry officer, and he had a beautiful family back home. Perhaps luck had given him a stronger physical and mental constitution. He was tougher than most of the others, or at least he told himself so. He wanted to help the weaker ones, but there was nothing he could do. Everyone was dying, and he had to take care of himself.

  As conditions worsened at O’Donnell, the men talked more and more of escape. As prisoners, they were expected to attempt it, though in their condition it seemed nearly impossible. They were too weak to run far, and there were Japs everywhere. It would be easy to get outside because of the work crews, but they were not healthy enough to survive in the jungle.

  To suppress the urge to run, the Japs implemented some rules that were simple in their understanding but exceedingly brutal in their application. Initially, if you ran and got caught, you were to be struck with a bullwhip until you bled to death. To demonstrate how this rule worked, the guards rounded up several thousand prisoners one afternoon for a show near the commandant’s quarters.

  Five Americans had tried to escape and been caught. They were stripped naked and their hands were bound together above their heads and attached to ropes looped over a rail so that their toes barely touched the ground. At first it looked like they might be hanged. All five were emaciated, with their ribs jutting out. An officer with a bullwhip strutted in front of the prisoners, and through an interpreter explained what was about to happen, though it was rather obvious. He was an expert with the bullwhip, and his first stroke against the back of the first soldier caused him to scream. The bullwhip popped with each blow, and his back and buttocks were soon bloodied. When he appeared to be unconscious, the officer moved a few steps to the second soldier. The mauling lasted for half an hour, under a hot sun. When all five were bloodied and still, the commandant stepped forward and announced a new rule: If a prisoner escaped, then ten of his comrades would be whipped and left to die in the sun.

  Needless to say, the demonstration curtailed many escape schemes that had been in the works.

  * * *

  —

  Clay found a Filipino Scout who was working as a truck driver and had managed to establish a black market for food within the American section of O’Donnell. His prices were fair and he offered tins of salmon, sardines, and tuna, along with peanut butter, fruit, and cookies.

  Pete and Clay made a decision. They would take the cash hidden in Pete’s canteen cover, buy the food they could afford, share it between themselves but include no one else, and try to survive. The scheme would take both of their efforts because it was difficult to hide and eat black market food. Everyone was ravenous and watching everyone else. They felt lousy hiding and not sharing, but they damned sure could not feed the sixty thousand starving souls at O’Donnell. Clay’s first haul was a tin of salmon, four oranges, and two coconut cookies, and for $1.50 they ate like kings.

  The plan was to stretch the money as far as possible, and when it was gone, they would think of something else. The extra food energized Pete and he began roaming th
e prison looking for his old friends from the Twenty-Sixth Cavalry.

  * * *

  —

  The Japanese rarely entered the camp and had little interest in what went on there. They knew the conditions were inhumane and deteriorating, but they simply ignored the prisoners when possible. As long as they remained locked up, and worked when they were instructed, the Japanese didn’t seem to care.

  However, the piles of dead bodies could not be ignored. The commandant ordered that they be burned, but General King pleaded for a more respectful burial. The Japanese might believe in cremation, but the Americans did not.

  With the Americans dying at a rate of a hundred per day, General King organized burying rituals. Groups of gravediggers took turns at the shovel, while other groups hauled the bodies. Most came from the morgue at the hospital, but there were decomposing bodies all over the prison.

  Pete and Clay learned that those who stayed busy lived longer than those who sat around in a stupor, so they volunteered to dig. They left the barracks after breakfast and walked to the American cemetery just outside the main camp, about eight hundred yards from the hospital. They were handed their tools, old spades and pieces of metal bent here and there and barely able to scratch up a pound of dirt. An American officer stepped off the boundaries of the next mass grave—six feet wide, twenty feet long, four feet deep. The diggers began their work. There were dozens of them and the work was urgent because the bodies were rotting.

  They arrived in blankets strung between bamboo poles, or on litters fashioned from old doors. The burial parties used anything that would haul a hundred-pound skeleton, many of which had begun decomposing in the heat. The rotting corpses emitted a noxious odor that stung when inhaled.