Soldiers in Hiding

by Richard Wiley

  “Very well,” said the major. “I am standing him in the yard to break his spirit. It worries me that he has lasted so long. You have been given the job of guarding him. You are feeding him candy so that his spirit will be bolstered. What makes you think that you can do that?”

  Instead of answering the major, Milo turned to look directly at me. And then slowly he raised the Noh mask, fastening it to his face. I could not see my son in that final look he gave me. I could only see Jimmy. Yet when the mask covered my son’s face the power of the moment increased. His was the most classical of masks, the one most devoid of carved emotion. Now all three of them wore masks. They were all of a piece, gone from the rest of us. The major seemed to calm under the inevitability of it all.

  “It was a hot night and I was pulled to the window of my office often,” he said. “I could see you carelessly standing with your rifle in your hands. The prisoner’s face was reflected in the moonlight, but yours, as always, was in the shadows.”

  “I was merely doing my job,” said Milo. “I gave him nothing to hope for.”

  “What you gave him was sweet and I wanted him to learn a bitter lesson,” said the major. “You gave him hope itself.”

  “Death was everywhere,” said Milo, “but perhaps when I gave him candy he did not think he was going to die. It was not hope but only a thought. Was that too much?”

  The two of them had been speaking normally, standing firmly upon the stage, but I began to see the dusty landscape of the Philippines before me once more. The even lights of the major’s warehouse became the hot spotlight of the major’s prison. The American prisoner hung before us by some thread of reserved strength but was so weak he was ready to fall forward into the dust. Clearly the candy had done him no real good, yet his face still held a distant and beguiling look. If it was not defiance it was something close, disrespect, perhaps, or superiority. The major let the lilt of Noh bother his intonation once again. He seemed to realize that he had been cast as evil and put, at least, his voice into it.

  “I will not have the outcome changed,” he warned. “You should go back now whence you came, before it is too late.”

  “I am here to represent my father,” said Milo, and as he spoke, though I had not seen him move, his face turned darker.

  “The uniform you are wearing makes me remember that you were a common private,” said the major. “Do you think that by changing clothes you can judge me? You have no authority here.”

  The two men had remained so still that what Milo did then, though slight, was startling. He took a quick step in the direction of the major, away from the American prisoner in the circle. And when he stopped he removed the small microphone from the belt of his uniform and spoke into it. “Nothing you can do will alter the events, major,” said my son. “It is that you cannot change the outcome, not that you will not have it changed.”

  The major, in his own turn, was swift then, for while we were all caught up in the echo of Milo’s words, in the loud magnification which came from the speakers in his shoulder pads, Major Nakamura reached inside the breast of his kimono and knocked the microphone from Milo’s hands with a suddenly appearing gun.

  “Very well,” he said, turning the butt of the pistol immediately in the direction of my son. “Here is your weapon. Shoot him. Shoot him now.” The microphone had fallen to the floor and slipped away from the action in a slither of sound. It was a noise that made my spine tighten.

  Milo was languid in taking the pistol from the major’s hand, but once he had it he walked directly over to the American officer and placed the cold barrel against his head, just above his ear.

  “What would you have me do?” he asked.

  “Shoot him,” said the major.

  Milo pulled the hammer of the pistol back but then stayed his finger, letting it rest near the trigger but not letting it touch. “I will carry out your order,” he said. “But is there to be no blindfold ?”

  The major was stopped by what my son said but caught his breath for only a second.

  “Maki,” he said, “bring a blindfold. Bring something with which to pin it behind this man’s head.”

  When I heard my name I froze, though it had become terribly hot under the lights. They were only acting but what was I to do? Was I to enter in? I had no mask.

  “Maki!” shouted the major. “Do as I say!”

  I stepped forward. “There is nothing, major. There are no blindfolds.”

  “Yes there are!” the major shouted. “There were blindfolds!”

  “I await your orders,” said my son. “What is it that you would have me do?”

  Major Nakamura wheeled around, staring once toward the audience, once toward the lights that burned from above. “Shoot him, then,” he said. “Shoot him now!” But Milo had released the tension in his arm and let the pistol come, still in his hand, down to his side.

  “You see,” shouted the major. “It was insubordination! I was within my rights! Then as now it was war. I was the commander of all these men!”

  The major took the pistol from Milo’s hand quickly then, and pointed it at my son’s head. And before I could do anything he pulled the trigger, sending a vast and horrible amount of sound spinning toward the ceiling of the room. It had happened again! I opened my mouth and felt the launching of my son’s name from the very floor of my soul. “MILO!” I screamed.

  “Milo!” the warehouse answered back.

  I fell to my knees just as Milo fell, in his slow descent, to land, arms akimbo, upon my lap. But the bullet, this time, had not been aimed as perfectly as before. The major, wherever he had aimed, had sent a glancing shot off the wooden forehead of the perfect mask that Milo wore. The mask split evenly down across its nose and through the red and tightly pursed lips. And as I sat there staring I saw my son’s real face again, born from under his murdered one. There was a mark on his forehead, a bruise, but the bullet had gone somewhere else, flying off into space with its sound.

  There was commotion and I was aware that the pistol had been taken out of the major’s hands. Milo’s face had been sweating terribly so I pulled the Velcro stripping and let the jacket fall away from his chest. He was breathing normally, slowly getting ready to open his eyes, when I looked up and saw that Junichi, so brave and loyal, was still wearing the mask of the American soldier, the white man’s mask with its little bit of defiance across the nose and mouth. This time he had survived the war and had in his hands the microphone, the one the major had knocked away from Milo. He held the microphone to his mocking mouth and tipped his head toward the light as he spoke. “All soldiers die,” he said. “None of them are guilty.” His voice, of course, came from my son, who was alive and sleeping across my lap, his long hair dangling down from beneath his cap.

  THE KADO IS CLOSED NOW, ITS CLIENTELE GONE DOWN the road, but we are all inside awaiting this evening’s broadcast of my show. Everyone is at a loss as to what to say. The keys to the bar are on the counter next to a note from Sachiko explaining that she has gone back to Hiroshima for a while. She has taken the cash receipts and left the rest to me, so that, at least, has made things easier. I will probably sell the bar, though it has not been a bad business and its location is just right.

  Kazuko has cooked the goose we forgot to give the major and it is standing on the counter now, next to Sachiko’s note. Were there customers the goose would go quickly but since we are alone in the bar I cannot predict that it will. We are not hungry. Nor are we drinking heavily in anticipation of how the nation will take such a display as they are about to receive.

  It has been nearly a week since we went to the major ’s warehouse for our strange encounter with the past, and during that time Milo and I have kept ourselves busy with the editing of the show. Milo, in fact, has been all business. He has changed. His critical eye is so vastly improved that I think it must be Jimmy’s final legacy to him. In case after case, during the week, Milo made choices without waiting first to see where I stood on the matters. A
nd he viewed the final wounding scene, the one where the major would have murdered again, with so much cool distance, so much objective balance, that I thought for a while he had forgotten his part in it. Only once, during our editing, did I speak to my son of the war, and then I admitted to him that Major Nakamura was not the only murderer onstage that day. I told Milo the story of what happened after Jimmy was killed, of how I was singularly unhesitant in putting a bullet through the head of the man Junichi had so mournfully played, the American captain from Los Angeles. My weapon had been a rifle, I told my son, longer and more finely aimed than the major ’s poor handgun. I let him know that the American was weak and blinded and I told him that I had known what the American was thinking at the precise instant of his death: He was picturing his family and my bullet divided the scene for him, cutting through his thoughts like scissors through a family photograph.

  I had been wondering, this week, whether Major Nakamura’s condition has always been worse than my own or whether we moved him to it with our warlike arrival at his store. His wife had said that he was not well, but by comparison to what we found my own eccentricities are mere duck spittle. We left him alone, you know, when we carried Milo from the building, no one saying anything more. So far as I know he may still be wearing his mask, may still be sitting, all hunched up, his mind in the Philippines, his body on the floor of that warehouse of his. Should I feel better after having riled a mad old man? There was never anything in all of this so simple as revenge. What I got, in the end, was a verdict on my own behavior, that is all, a final Not Guilty after all these years. And I am only hopeful, now, that I might live to be the sensei’s age, that the events of a week ago will have time to mend me well before I die.

  It is oppressive in this bar; the others feel it as much as I. Ike is sitting in the corner separated by a short distance from his ever-silent wife and children. He has told me, though Kazuko doesn’t know it yet, that he and his family will be returning to the Philippines when all the public interest in him has died away. He should not have come back, he said, and I told him that I knew he was right. It was only his illness that brought out whatever in him has remained Japanese, and he should continue his healthy life now that he is well again. Isn’t it amazing? A man returns to his native land after many years nurturing a disguise. But when he is finally home, finally among his family once again, the disguise will not be removed. Where is the disguise? Where is the real man? As Ike sits so undemonstrative at the bar I have to wonder when he will begin to ask those questions of himself. When he gets home where will home be, how far will it have gone from him?

  Junichi has been eating more of the goose than any of the rest of us. He has made several sandwiches and taken them behind the bar with him where he is setting the dials on the television set and turning the volume high. None of us, it appears, has remembered the time, for when the picture comes clear we hear only the final strains of my theme song and what we see is a group of worried soldiers coming around a corner and slowing at the entrance to an old store. Nakamura’s sign is banging in the early breeze and there is the added sound of artificial wind, something my producer made up to heighten the drama of the moment. The soldiers are unsure of themselves and thus give off a dangerous air. When they knock upon the door it is an expectation of trouble which comes through the screen and the viewers sit carefully forward to watch.

  Alas, though I am not sorry that it will be seen, I cannot sit through the show myself. I stand while the others are settling, and opening the door to the Kado, slip quietly into the street. It is fine out here, cold but mild enough for walking. It seems impossible that only two weeks have passed since last I moved from the Kado to do my drinking in the larger bars. All of the pressures of the underworld were with me then but I had misdiagnosed them badly. Since then I have learned that what I am is only the tip of what there is and what tip does not follow the movements of the mass below?

  I had thought to walk down the street a ways but I am stopped by the sound of the door opening behind me. Kazuko is on the street, hurrying to catch up and wrapping her shawl around her as she comes. I wait, fearing she might fall, and when she gets to me I take her arm in mine. “Come,” I say, “we will have a drink in the seclusion of a place we do not know.”

  There is ice on the street, a fair chance of slipping, though I hadn’t noticed it when I was alone. Roppongi is an area of the city where winter doesn’t hinder activity, and as we arrive on the main street we find ourselves swept into the light and easy flow of the crowd. Quickly I look to see what tricks the glow from the Kado’s light might play from such a distance, but there is nothing there. Kazuko nudges me. “I could work, upon occasion,” she says, and it takes me a moment to realize that she is talking about maintaining the business of the bar.

  When we come to the entrance to our son’s favorite club I ask my wife if she’d like to go inside. But as always the bar is crowded, and there are two small lines of people at the door. While Kazuko and I wait, leaning against each other and moving a little in the cold air, a foreign-looking man comes around the corner and down the street toward us. When he gets precisely beside me he pauses and looks about him as if tentative and I speak to him without a thought.

  “What is it that you are looking for?” I ask. “How is it that I might be of help?”

  Kazuko is looking at the man with understanding in her eyes while he explains his dilemma to me. I am watching my wife’s face carefully but listening to his every word. From his accent I can tell that he is American. From his story that he is utterly lost.

  Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts Portland, Oregon

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  At Hawthorne Books, we’re serious about literature. We suspected that good writers were being ignored and cast aside as a result of consolidation in the publishing industry, and in 2001 we decided to find these writers and give them a voice. We publish American literary fiction and narrative non-fiction, although we won’t turn down a good international title if we find one. All of our books are published as affordable original trade paperbacks, but feature details not typically found even in casebound titles from bigger houses: acid-free papers; sewn bindings which will not crack; heavy, laminated covers with French flaps and built-in bookmarks. If you like to read, we think you’ll enjoy our books. If you like to write—well, send us something. We’re always looking.

  Core: A Romance

  Kassten Alonso

  Fiction

  208 pages

  $12.95

  ISBN 0-9716915-7-6

  FINALIST, 2005 OREGON BOOK AWARD

  THIS INTENSE AND COMPACT NOVEL crackles with obsession, betrayal, and madness. As the narrator becomes fixated on his best friend’s girlfriend, his precarious hold on sanity rapidly deteriorates into delusion and violence. This story can be read as the classic myth of Hades and Persephone (Core) rewritten for a twenty-first century audience as well as a dark tale of unrequited love and loneliness.

  Alonso skillfully uses language to imitate memory and psychosis, putting the reader squarely inside the narrator’s head; deliberate misuse of standard punctuation blurs the distinction between the narrator’s internal and external worlds. Alienation and Faulknerian grotesquerie permeate this landscape, where desire is borne in the bloom of a daffodil and sanity lies toppled like an applecart in the mud.

  JUMP THROUGH THIS gothic stained glass window and you are in for some serious investigation of darkness and all of its deadly sins. But take heart, brave traveler, the adventure will prove thrilling. For you are in the beautiful hands of Kassten Alonso.

  TOM SPANBAUER

  Author of In the City of Shy Hunters

  KASSTEN ALONSO takes the reader on a wild ride inside the mind of a disturbed man as he descends into madness and violence. A beautifully written book. Impossible to put down.

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  Author of A Million Little Pieces

  KASSTEN ALONSO’S AMAZING Core will startle you. A fierce story that taught
me to read it as I went deeper and deeper—it’s as if this book is written in a rich, beautiful language I’d once known and somehow forgotten. I’m happy and terrified to have it back.

  PETER ROCK

  Author of Bewildered

  Decline of the Lawrence Welk Empire

  Poe Ballantine

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  376 pages

  $15.95

  ISBN 0-9766311-1-3

  “IT’S IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO BE CHARMED by Edgar Donahoe [Publishers Weekly],” and he’s back for another misadventure. Expelled from college for drunkenly bellowing expletives from a dorm window at 3:00 am, Edgar hitchhikes to Colorado and trains as a cook. A postcard arrives from his college buddy, Mountain Moses, inviting him to a Caribbean island. Once there, Edgar cooks at the local tourist resort and falls in love with Mountain’s girl, Kate. He becomes embroiled in a love triangle and his troubles multiply as he is stalked by sinister island native Chollie Legion. Even Cinnamon Jim the medicine man is no help. Ultimately it takes a hurricane to blow Edgar out of this mess.

  I’M DRUNK AS I WRITE THIS and I wish I would’ve never left San Diego. San Diego is PARADISE. Billings, Montana is a PIMPLE ON MY BUTT. Edgar, Edgar, I loved you, why did you run away to a desert island? And why didn’t you take me with you? I would’ve fought by your side. I would’ve drank with you all night and waited tables at that hotel. Jesus, the booze there is cheap. When I called your parents they said you’d gone to New YORK. How was I going to reach you? And why didn’t you mention me more than once in your new novel about love and betrayal in the jungle? I thought I was your best friend, Edgar. I feel so bad about Bev. Oh, Edgar, Edgar, please forgive me (and put me in your next book, O K ?).