Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

Her voice turned hard. “Well, you’ll just have to or give it up entirely. I’ll tell you again what I told you before, David: we have no future, only a present. Don’t spoil what we have trying to snatch what we’ll never have. Part of growing up is finding out that some things just aren’t possible.”

  He buried his head between her breasts. “I’ll make them possible!” His voice was muffled. “By God, we will have a future!”

  She stroked his head and stared unseeing at a brown stain on the ceiling that looked like a head with a screaming mouth.

  The second time he saw her was at Malolos. Burns had unexpectedly called him in to tell him that he was being transferred to San Isidro up in the Nueva Ecija province.

  “They’ll still go on sending their prisoners to Manila,” he explained, “but they want the information they can get from them soon enough to do them some good. It’s Aguinaldo himself they’re after now. They think if they can get him, the insurgent movement will fall apart entirely. Since they’re convinced that he’s somewhere to the north of them, they’re hoping that informants from the Ilocanos, who don’t like the Tagalogs, will sooner or later tell them where he’s hiding.”

  “But I don’t speak Ilocano. You know that.”

  “Many of them speak Spanish, and it shouldn’t take you long to pick up some Ilocano.”

  “If they speak Spanish, there are a lot of Americans now who speak enough for that.”

  Burns looked at him intently. “You don’t want to go.” It was not a question.

  “Tom, on purpose I’ve never discussed the war with you. I think it’s a dirty, brutal business caused by American greed.” As Burns started to say something, David hurried on. “Oh, I’m willing to do my duty, all right, but as I see it, here I am some use to the men in the hospital and what information our informers give us is usually so old by the time we get it as to be worthless. Their blowing the whistle on the fanatics here in Manila I’m all too happy to go along with, since their main aim is to burn us alive and the neutrals of their own people along with us.

  “What I don’t want to do is to go where the fighting is. Sure, I’m scared — only a fool wouldn’t be — but that isn’t the reason. I saw what happened when we took Malolos: the burning villages, the women and children who got in the way of the war, the mutilated men on both sides. I don’t want to end up hating my own people, Tom. My career is war, I know that, but this one is the wrong war for the wrong reason.”

  Burns reached into a desk drawer and brought out a bottle of scotch. Without asking David if he wanted any, he poured out a more than generous amount in each of two tin mess cups. “Here,” he said, handing one to David. “Drink up, you’ll need it You weren’t going to tell me how you felt about the war, were you? Christ, man, do you think you’re the only one? One of the reasons I agreed to send you is that I’ve been getting reports from prisoners and informers alike that the initial interrogations are becoming rougher and rougher. You haven’t heard of it because they don’t bother with prisoners who speak only Tagalog. They are after the ones who speak Spanish, and there is no worse command for that right now than the garrison at San Isidro.”

  “That simply reinforces my reluctance to go.”

  “It shouldn’t. If you can get the information without resorting to force, there will be no more need to use physical persuasion.”

  Physical persuasion. What a laughable euphemism for what Burns really meant: torture. “I see.” He paused. “All right, you have a point. When do I leave?”

  “How long will it take you to finish up what you have now?”

  “A few days maybe. Christmas is only a week away.”

  “All right, you can take leave the week between Christmas and New Year’s and report to Major Luce on, let’s see, the sixth. That will give you plenty of time to get there and find yourself a billet.”

  “Luce? I knew a Captain Luce at Malolos.”

  “Might be the same. Promotions come fast in a war. I hope you got on with him, because he’s the one you’ve got to get around with the prisoners. I’ll be curious to know what you think of him.”

  “I doubt it’s the same man. The Luce I knew was a good-natured brute with an amazing fund of salacious verse. All right, I’ll finish things off here as fast as I can and report to Major Luce on the sixth. Thanks for the leave, Tom. If there’s anything I can take north for you, let me know by the twenty-third.”

  In the event, he got away on the twenty-second, glad to put Duster’s head to the road to Malolos, and it was only with an effort that he kept the little horse’s gait down to a distance-eating trot. He remembered the excruciating run he had made with Victoriano and grinned. After sitting around Manila all this time, he was so soft that a run like that would founder him in the first five miles.

  It was late afternoon when the familiar track leading off through the abaca groves appeared. Heart pounding, he put the pony into a canter that turned into a full gallop as he thudded up the drive between the new young palms that had been planted in place of those destroyed by Otis’s artillery. This time he saw men working in the groves, and as he pulled up before the new house his horse was held by a groom. The house was smaller than the old one, but gracefully built, with the same wide veranda.

  He burst past the maid who opened the door and raced through the house calling, “Val! Val, I’m here!”

  When there was no answer he went through the empty kitchen and looked out across the garden in back. She had a basket on her arm and was clipping white Shasta daisies to carry to the house. Her back was to him as she knelt, but he could see that she had on her customary white shift that blended with the white flowers. His heart lurched in his chest, and he ran silently across the lawn toward her, at the last minute putting his hands over her eyes from behind.

  She gave a great start and gasped, “David! Is it really you?”

  He turned her around and kissed her thoroughly. “A good thing you didn’t guess anyone else,” he said, laughing, “or I’d have had to beat you.”

  Arm in arm, David carrying the basket of flowers, they walked across the lawn and into the kitchen. “Amelia, there will be company for dinner,” Valerie called happily. “Tell Rosario to kill a chicken — we’ll have it with the sweet-sour sauce.” She took the basket of flowers from him and put it on the kitchen table.

  Without a word they climbed the teak stairway and entered her bedroom, which looked out over the garden and a field of sugar cane beyond. He slowly pulled the shift over her head, delighted as always that she had nothing on under it. She in turn unbuttoned his shirt and undid his belt, laying her head briefly against his chest as she pushed the shirt back off his shoulders. They stood naked in the late-afternoon light and looked at each other for some moments without touching before he lifted her in his arms and placed her carefully on the bed. At first he sat on the edge of the bed and filled his eyes with her. Her body had a familiarity and yet an excitement that he thought would never cease to surprise and delight him.

  She pulled his head down and kissed him, her tongue warm and seeking against his, and with her hand she reached down and took hold of him. She stopped kissing him and smiled. “I think the little rooster is about to crow,” she murmured. “Come to me, love. Quickly now.”

  Through the entire week he did not leave the plantation, even to go into Malolos. “Captain Luce is gone,” she told him. “There’s a first lieutenant there now. I’ve only spoken to him twice, both times because he had a list of insurgents he wanted me to look for among my men.”

  “I noticed you had your men back. I take it they were with Aguinaldo?”

  “They were. Most of them had a bellyful of war and then some. I doubt anyone will be able to recruit them as guerrillas again. They remember too well their friends who didn’t come back.”

  They rode about the plantation, swam in the reservoir, and took picnics out in the countryside. Sometimes they made love under the trees that bordered the fields, the threat of discovery adding to the
urgency of their coupling.

  “You know,” she said one day as they lay side by side on the grassy slope leading down to the reservoir, “I can’t think when I’ve had a better Christmas. I’ve decided that St. Nicholas isn’t an old man with white hair at all, he’s a young man with red-gold hair.” She turned a wild flower between her fingers and watched him with smoky eyes.

  “Oh no he isn’t,” he countered with a smile. “He’s a golden girl with blue-gray eyes.” He stopped smiling. “Oh God, Val, there are only three days left. What am I going to do without you?”

  Her face shadowed, but she said lightly, “You’ll get along just fine. You’ll find yourself a beautiful brown Filipino princess and forget all about me.”

  “And you? Who will you find? A Chinese general? A Moro pirate?”

  “No, of course not.” She laughed. “I’ll press myself into a book like a dead flower and be discovered and puzzled over one day by a fat British planter’s wife. She’ll wonder what is this poor little dried-up thing in the shape of a heart.”

  He kissed her then, and they lay there content for the moment with holding hands and seeing the blazing orange of the sun even through their closed eyelids.

  New Year’s Eve they split a bottle of champagne on top of the rum they had had before dinner, and both became quite tipsy. She lifted her glass, sloshing out a little champagne that rolled in golden drops down her naked breasts, which he then kissed dry. Delighted, he then poured a little champagne into her navel. She did the same for him.

  “It’s not fair — your navel doesn’t hold as much as mine,” she protested.

  “Ah, it’s not the quantity but the quality that counts,” he laughed, and poured some between her legs.

  “Here’s to the new century!” she exclaimed later, raising her glass. “May we make love for another hundred years.”

  During the night before he left, he woke once and pulled her to him desperately. He remembered for the first time since he had known Valerie the scene he had stumbled upon between his father and his mother, and he smiled into the darkness. “If you are very fortunate,” his father had said, “you will one day know love …” Yes, he did one day know love, and now on the eve of parting the pain was already so great he almost wished he didn’t. One day the war would be over, and he and Valerie would be married and never, never leave each other again.

  “Goodbye, love — take care,” she said almost jauntily the next day as she saw him off.

  “Valerie, I —” he began, then stopped. “Oh Christ, I wish I had guts enough to stay!” he exclaimed and, putting his heels to the horse, cantered off down the drive with its new little palm trees lining the track on either side.

  It was only after he was out of sight that the tears brimmed over and ran slowly in wet tracks down her face. “Come back to me, love. Please, dear God, let him come back.”

  *

  At Malolos, Lieutenant Gunther told him he would be wise to wait over until the following morning and go on with a pack train headed for Baliuag. “The guerrillas are everywhere, and riding alone north of here is asking for a bolo between your shoulder blades. Don’t get off the main roads, either — they’ve begun a nasty habit of planting poisoned stakes on the narrower paths.”

  However, David knew that if he stayed, he would go back to the plantation, and he couldn’t bear saying goodbye to Valerie again. He drew a carbine from stores to add to his army .45 and rode on. Though he saw some deserted villages, there was no sign of guerrillas, and he put up for the night with the garrison at San Miguel before pushing on to San Isidro the following day. Finally on the afternoon of the sixth he rode into San Isidro, a pleasant-looking town set in the midst of the rice fields.

  To his surprise, David found that Colonel Frederick Funston had newly been put in command of the Fourth District, with headquarters at San Isidro, and Major Luce was now commanding a battalion that was only one of several quartered in the town. David had met Funston at the hospital when the colonel had had a wounded hand operated on, and knew that his men liked him. From what he had seen of him, he couldn’t imagine his tolerating any mistreatment of prisoners, and he felt relieved.

  Major Luce did indeed turn out to be the Captain Luce of Malolos — yet — in many ways he was a different man. The bluff, hearty purveyor of salacious verse had aged even in so short a time, with harsh lines on either side of his set mouth. A bout of dysentery had left him painfully thin, and David didn’t remember that he used to crack his knuckles compulsively.

  “The dirty little beggars,” Luce was saying bitterly. “They rose right up under our feet in that damned cogon grass and three of our men were dead and two horses hamstrung before we even knew they were there. We must have nicked at least one of them, though, because I found blood on the grass after they left. To make it worse, they did it all with bolos — they never fired a shot. God, what I’d give to know where their encampment is! If we just could have caught one of them, I’d find out soon enough.”

  Koestler and Wolfe exchanged glances but said nothing. David went on eating as if he hadn’t heard. He could tell already that the men were jumpy, all except for the company of Macabebe scouts, who were afraid of nothing. The constant skirmishing had worn the men down, for even this time of year forced marches were no picnic, especially forced marches that came to naught. Funston, instead of sitting on his fanny in his office, was setting up a headquarters cavalry troop and was already making forays himself to look for the phantom guerrillas.

  “It will help you to know in your interrogations,” the colonel had explained to David, “that we have several different guerrilla bands to deal with, and in addition a number of splinter groups. A guerrilla chief we particularly want to get our hands on is one of Lacuna’s captains, a man named El Gallo. Even though Lacuna and Tecson seem to be all right, El Gallo is a sadistic monster. He has a nasty habit of torturing prisoners and raising havoc even with his own people. Bear that in mind when you question the prisoners you are given. However, I won’t stand for physical coercion.”

  Not until David had been there for several weeks did Luce’s battalion capture any prisoners, but when they did, Luce himself brought them to David. “Not one of them speaks any Spanish,” Luce grumbled. “Let’s see what you can do.”

  There were only three of them, all young and hungry-looking and scared to death. First David questioned them together and was told that their leader was Gallo, but that he in turn was under Pablo Tecson. When he asked where Tecson’s camp was, the whites of their eyes showed and they said nothing. Next David separated them and questioned them one by one. At last he looked at Luce and shrugged.

  “I don’t think they know,” he said.

  “What do you mean, they don’t know?” Luce barked. “They damned well do know, and I’m going to get it out of them.”

  Knowing as he did Funston’s stand, David sat back and let Luce do what he would in the way of browbeating them. He translated but otherwise didn’t interfere. Of the three, the youngest seemed the most vulnerable — he couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old. As Luce shouted and made threatening gestures, he looked as if he might cry, and David saw a dark stain spread out at the crotch of his pants.

  “He’s terrified, all right,” David said finally. “If he knew anything, he’d have told you. Some of these guerrilla groups operate so independently that they don’t see any others for months at a time.”

  “He’ll tell me, all right,” Luce grated. “Orderly!” When the man stuck his head in, Luce ordered, “Bring me a bucket of water.”

  “Yes sir.”

  It was with disbelief that David saw him take the delicate head of the Filipino boy in his hands and force it into the pail until it was immersed. The boy flailed about but was no physical match for Luce. At last he could hold his breath no longer and choked. Luce pulled him up.

  “Dammit, major, what are you doing? He doesn’t know anything!”

  “Ask him! Ask him, you sorry bastard, o
r I’ll kill him outright.”

  David asked the boy again about Tecson’s hideout, but he could only shake his head. He was crying in earnest now.

  Luce pushed him under again. And a third time. Finally the boy all but unintelligibly gasped out that the guerrilla chief was camped in the mountains “over there,” pointing east toward the chain that separated San Isidro from the coast.

  Luce was jubilant. “See?” he said triumphantly. “Now tell him he’s going to guide us.”

  David, while repulsed by Luce’s violence, had to admit that it had worked.

  It was quite an array that set off early the next morning from San Isidro. Funston was there with his headquarters squadron, along with Luce’s battalion, all led by the boy on foot with a line tying him to one of the mounted troopers. David went along simply to see the dance played out.

  Before long they had left the rice fields and were climbing a grassy slope so steep that the horses were slipping and the horsemen had to dismount and lead them. By the time they had reached the first ridge, the men were winded and even the horses were blown. The ridge proved to be a knife edge so sharp that one of the horses actually fell off to its death five hundred feet below.

  Before long the men were straggled out in a long uneven wavering line. Two of the horses had slipped and pulled up lame. “Ask him how far it is now,” Luce demanded.

  The boy allowed it was only another four or five miles.

  “Four or five miles!” Funston exploded. “We’ll be too tired to see by that time!”

  They kept doggedly on, however, and at last Funston put out a point with the boy. “If their outposts see us,” he said, “Tecson will be long gone by the time we get there.”

  However, they saw no one until they came suddenly on their point riders milling about a clearing that had obviously been used as a camp. “There hasn’t been anyone here for months,” Luce said disgustedly, giving the boy a murderous look.

  David hid a smile. This probably hadn’t even been Tecson’s camp but rather an old one of Gallo’s; it didn’t look nearly big enough for a major guerrilla force. Of course that was the trouble with torture — the victim was all too likely to make up a story if he really didn’t know the answer you wanted.