The Year of Counting Souls

by Wallace, Michael

  “We’re not cut off,” Kozlowski said. “There’s an unexploded bomb or two in the road. Once it’s time to go, we’ll disarm the ordnance and be on our way. We’ll come around the back side into Bataan, and nobody will be the wiser.”

  He glanced away as he said this, and to Louise it was obvious he was lying, but nobody else seemed to notice it.

  “Now get to work, all of you. Johnson, I want that new latrine dug. These villagers are complaining about the old one draining into their stream. Nalty . . .”

  Louise studied Miss Frankie as Kozlowski sent the men off in one direction or another. The woman kept wringing her hands, looking around her, as if the rising mountains were a prison. She was breathing too hard.

  “As for you nurses,” Kozlowski said with a sharp look at Louise, “I recommend you get back to work. Too much worrying does nobody any good.”

  Louise grabbed Maria Elena as the young woman turned toward the hospital. She looked up at her quizzically, but Louise didn’t speak until Frankie was inside.

  “I need your help.”

  “You mean with Miss Frankie? She shouldn’t talk to the lieutenant that way, miss.”

  “That’s only the last straw. I was already worried.”

  Maria Elena nodded. Her dark eyes were solemn, her pretty mouth pursed. “I’m worried, too. She only makes it worse the way she talks all the time.”

  “We have to keep an eye on her. Calm her down. She’s a risk to herself and others. She’s all right when she’s busy,” Louise said. “That’s the key. Keep her occupied, lost in her work.”

  “I understand.”

  “Don’t take her work. Don’t do too much—it doesn’t do any of us any good.”

  Louise glanced up to see the hospital door open and Frankie stick her head out.

  “What are you two mumbling about over there?” Frankie asked. She came out. “It’s about me, isn’t it? Are you two complaining again?”

  Maria Elena shrank back, but Louise ignored the intrusion and said smoothly to Maria Elena, as if continuing an ongoing conversation, “But I wouldn’t deworm the patients on a suspicion. Verify that it’s parasites first. Examine their stools under the microscope.”

  The Filipina nurse seemed to recover her balance. “Yes, miss.”

  “For one, we’ve got a limited supply of medications. For another, I’m not convinced the intestinal issues aren’t caused by a change in diet. From city food and army rations to rice and mungo beans. Plus all the tropical fruits. Too much at once if you ask me.”

  “I know what you’re doing,” Frankie said. “Trying to push me aside. You think because Dr. Claypool favors you that you’re suddenly above me. That you can give orders to the other nurses and shove me out of the way. And I saw you flirting with Kozlowski so he’ll favor you, too.”

  Louise bristled, face on fire. “Flirting! That’s strictly against regulations, and . . . and that’s not the point! Our job is to calm these men, not get them worked up. You need to get hold of yourself.”

  “Worked up? What do you mean, worked up?”

  “Exactly what I’m saying. Worked up! You get them all agitated, Frankie. Well, guess what? These men are sick and injured, and they need rest. That’s physical and mental rest. What do you think our job is here? It’s not to argue with the army, it’s not to second-guess our orders, it’s to do our damn job.”

  Frankie’s voice climbed. “So they’re worked up. They need to be. We never should have come up here, and you know it. What are we doing, anyway? We can’t save all these men here, we need to get them to a hospital, not keep taking in more patients. For the love of God, we need to go. We need to get out of here. We can’t wait to be bombed, to have the Japs come and take us captive. For God’s sake, do you know what that means? You must know!”

  Frankie was actually shouting now, and a few men passing with shovels looked their way, alarmed. A young Filipina girl from the village, barefoot and carrying a basket of rice on her head, stopped with eyes wide. Fárez’s dog materialized, barking excitedly.

  The corporal himself came limping outside with his crutch, wincing as he called out Stumpy’s name. He took in the scene, frowning. “Is everything okay?”

  “Everyone needs to calm down,” Louise said.

  It was more to herself than to Frankie. She’d pulled Maria Elena aside precisely to stop the head nurse from reacting this way. That sort of hysteria could easily spread to the injured men, many of whom were eighteen, nineteen years old. Boys, really. Instead Louise had let the other nurse goad her into an argument.

  But Frankie wasn’t done. “I won’t calm down! This is crazy, this whole thing. Look at us. We’ll be trapped up here if we don’t take the back road. Why aren’t we taking care of those bombs? Why aren’t we sending for help?”

  “Please, Miss Frankie. Let’s all, everyone, calm down. You, me, everyone.” Louise took a deep breath. “It was one radio broadcast. We don’t know if it’s true, and we don’t know what it means.”

  Frankie’s breath was coming so quickly now that she seemed to be hyperventilating. She wobbled on her feet, and looked ready to swoon, and that seemed to be the only thing cutting her off from a panicky scream. Louise and Maria Elena caught her arms.

  “Oh my God,” Frankie said. “Someone help me. My heart is giving out. I’m going to die.”

  “Take her inside,” Louise told Maria Elena. “Tell Dr. Claypool what happened. How bad it was. If he could sedate her—”

  “Don’t sedate me!”

  “Corporal, help us, please,” Louise said.

  Fárez stepped forward to help Maria Elena lead Frankie inside. Louise thought maybe she should follow, but she needed to be away from them. She, too, was shaken by the news from the radio, by the sense of inevitability. By Frankie’s panic. There was no back road out of here. The Japanese had already seized the populated areas of Luzon outside the Bataan Peninsula, and surely they would penetrate the mountains to attack rebellious pockets, to cut off supply lines, to force villagers and tribal people to submit to imperial authority.

  The bamboo telegraph flowed both directions. It seemed impossible that it wouldn’t also carry news down to the Japanese. The villagers had warned of Sakdals: bandits and thieves who were already working for the enemy. A bounty of a hundred pesos for every American turned in, dead or alive. Fifty pesos for Filipino soldiers in hiding.

  “Miss Louise, are you all right?”

  She turned to see Corporal Fárez studying her in the dying light. He must have come back outside while she was standing here, stunned. He leaned against his crutch, and his young face was earnest, worried. Stumpy had wandered off to sniff at the brush, no doubt looking for another rotten treat. The dog was limping, and she thought she should have another look at him, see what other ailments he had now that the mange was clearing up and he’d been dewormed.

  “You should be in bed, Corporal. We can’t keep stitching you up again because you can’t be bothered to let yourself heal.”

  “I was worried.”

  “Stumpy can take care of himself. He already rules the village.” Louise smiled. “Have you seen how the village dogs follow him around? He struts through Sanduga like a king.”

  “Worried about you, Miss Louise. You lost your temper. You don’t do that very often.”

  “More than you think, believe me. I’m sorry, Corporal. I was wrong, I let her get to me. There’s really no excuse.”

  “Please don’t you apologize to me, Miss Louise. She deserved it and more.”

  Louise glanced at Stumpy, who was still sniffing around in the grass. He lifted his leg to mark the spot, and when it came down again, he hobbled off.

  “He’s limping, Corporal. Did he injure himself?”

  “Um, yeah, I saw that. He’s all right, don’t worry about it.”

  Something about Fárez’s tone made her curious. “Did he get in a fight? What is it?”

  “It’s, well, kinda funny. I took Stumpy to the doc, but he
didn’t have time for a dog right now. Said to come back in a few days when he’s not so tired. Claypool’s an old man and all and needs his rest when he’s not working, which is most of the time.”

  “Bring him here, and I’ll take a look. I’ve got time right now.”

  “Well, I don’t know exactly, it seems like maybe not the right thing for you to look at.”

  “Huh?”

  Fárez looked away, and though his skin was too tanned to show it, she heard a blush in his voice. “Miss Louise, it’s kinda embarrassing, but it’s not something you can take care of. He’s not right back . . . you know, back there.”

  “Back there? You mean his groin? Or does he have an abscessed anal gland?”

  “Miss Louise, please!”

  “Corporal Fárez, I’m a nurse. You must know what things I’ve seen on men. A dog’s ailments aren’t going to embarrass me.”

  Fárez must remember that she’d seen him undressed, having attended Dr. Claypool when he was operating on the corporal’s gluteal muscles, not to mention draining pus and cleaning him up when he couldn’t get himself to the bathroom. So Stumpy was limping a little—how bad could it be?

  “Call him over here. I mean it, Corporal,” she added in a mock-stern voice when he didn’t immediately obey.

  Fárez complied. Or tried to. Stumpy, for all his limping about, was spry enough to play a game of tag with the corporal. Every time the man bent to grab hold of him, the dog danced out of the way with a delighted bark. Louise stood casually, watching out of the corner of her eye, as if disinterested. When Stumpy came her way, she grabbed for him and took hold before he could squirm free and make a run for it.

  It was getting dark, so she carried the dog back to where light was bleeding out from behind the blankets hung in the hospital windows. There she had Fárez hold the dog’s front quarters while she inspected the rear.

  Louise found the source of the dog’s discomfort and his owner’s embarrassment. One of Stumpy’s testicles was swollen to the size of a small apple. She prodded it, and the dog didn’t protest but kept licking the corporal’s face. Its limping was apparently caused by movement of the oversize object, not by pain from the testicle itself.

  “Is it bad?” Fárez asked.

  “A tumor, I think, but it’s hard to say for sure. Probably not aggressive, but we’ll need to have the whole thing taken off regardless.”

  “Taken off!”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll put him to sleep, stitch him up again. He’ll barely feel it.”

  She set Stumpy on the ground, and he set off with a trot that was only slightly less jaunty than usual. Fárez stared after him.

  “Just one of them, right?”

  “Just one.”

  He looked back at her, still frowning. “But he’ll still wake up being only half as . . . you know.”

  “Half as manly?”

  “Miss Louise!”

  He sounded so anguished, so earnest, that she couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t make fun, only it’s . . . He’ll be fine with one testicle, Corporal. In fact, he’d be fine without both of them, would never notice it. I’ve done it before.”

  “You’ve done what? Wait, really?”

  “Castrated dogs. Yes, of course. We always had dogs on the farm, and you know what happens if you let nature take its course. They breed without restraint, and you end up needing to put down puppies. That’s far more cruel than castrating a few male dogs. It’s not an invasive procedure, just a cut and then you draw the testicles out and—”

  She stopped when Fárez dropped his crutch and had to catch himself against the wall. He looked gray, like he was going to throw up or faint. How this man had gone through battle and injury and watched other men die was a mystery.

  Louise steadied him and picked up the crutch. “Are you okay, Corporal? Do you need the smelling salts, the fainting couch? Is your corset too tight? We could loosen it a bit.”

  He managed a chuckle at this. “I’m sorry. It’s silly, I know.”

  “I’ll take care of Stumpy, don’t you worry. He’ll never know it happened.”

  “What about the other dogs? What will they think of him?”

  “What will the other dogs think of him?” She patted the young man’s shoulder. “Why, I promise they’ll respect Stumpy just as much as ever, even with only one testicle.”

  Fárez was quiet for a long moment. “Well, okay,” he said at last. “But could you do me a favor? Don’t tell me when it’s going to happen. I don’t want to know.”

  “Corporal, if Stumpy is my patient, and I’m acting as the doctor, that means I’ll need a nurse.”

  “You mean Miss Clarice or Miss Maria Elena?”

  “They’re far too busy. I mean you, Corporal.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Sammy lay motionless when Miss Frankie and Miss Clarice entered the ward to do their rounds. Frankie made Clarice empty bedpans while she checked on the patients. Sammy feigned sleep as they worked their way toward him.

  Feigning sleep was something he did a good deal of these days. He interacted with the others as little as possible. He’d all but stopped talking to them after the lieutenant interrogated him last week, tired of the overt hostility from Kozlowski and from Sammy’s fellow patients. He’d hoped that cooperating would help, but it hadn’t.

  Kozlowski had blustered plenty, but when Sammy said he didn’t have information, knew nothing about Japanese troop movements beyond the order to seize Manila, the American hadn’t struck him or harmed him in any way. Merely threatened. Sammy wasn’t afraid of the lieutenant; in fact, he wanted the man around as much as possible so the injured soldiers wouldn’t attack him.

  But Miss Frankie was another matter. When the other nurses were not around, she engaged in petty cruelties, like poking roughly at his bandages, or moving his bedpan so he had to get up and grope in the dark. Once, he’d nearly soiled himself.

  Frankie wouldn’t give him morphine those first few days and made Miss Clarice bathe him, saying he was too disgusting to look at. Under other circumstances, Sammy would have complained to either Miss Louise or the doctor, but he knew it would get back to Miss Frankie, who would no doubt make him pay.

  Tonight Sammy’s fellow patients had seemed especially agitated. They’d caught bad news on the radio, although it wasn’t clear what. Something about the Japanese army advancing or lack of resupply from their own side. When they saw Sammy watching, they turned their abuse to him: he smelled bad, he looked like a monkey with buck teeth, he had yellow skin. It was all stuff he’d heard before, but concentrated tonight. Aggressive and real.

  Finally someone told the abusers to lay off, and that set off an argument that only died down when Miss Louise came in with a stern word. Sammy, who’d remained silent through all of this, sent quiet thoughts of gratitude in her direction.

  When the lights went out, he struggled into a position that both kept his legs straight and didn’t put pressure on his abdominal wound. It was impossible to get comfortable. He worked on a poem he’d been composing for the past couple of days, hoping it would put him to sleep.

  Sammy’s cot was in the corner, out of reach of the other patients. Also, farthest from the door and on the opposite side of the room from the window, perhaps to prevent him from escaping should he decide to take his chances in the jungle.

  Now, as Frankie approached his isolated spot, he wondered what she intended. Not to empty his bedpan—Clarice had already seen to it. His bandages had been changed that afternoon, and his leg was immobilized in plaster. He was facing her and let his eyes crack open as she approached. She stood over him, a dark, watching shadow. There was something in her hands, but he couldn’t pick it out in the dim light filtering in from the hallway.

  Frankie was a tall woman, big boned. With her strong features, she’d have been considered ugly in Japan, like all of them but the little Filipina nurse. Otherwise, there was nothing inherently unpleasant about her face that Sammy coul
d see. She seemed to be aging well, anyway. A couple of the older soldiers in the ward even included Frankie in their talk about the nurses and their relative attractiveness.

  But that was when the ugly look didn’t creep over her face, as Sammy had seen several times. When she poked too hard at Sammy’s wounds, there was a cruel upturn to her lips that rendered her whole face as unpleasant as an oni, an ogre from Japanese folklore. She wore that look now, a sneer, a glint in her eyes.

  Frankie glanced over her shoulder at Clarice, who was leaving the room with a bucket of waste from the emptied bedpans. When the younger nurse was gone, Frankie turned back around, and now Sammy caught sight of what she held in her hand. His stomach turned over.

  It was a syringe.

  Let her. The thought came unbidden to his mind. Let her stick the needle in, let the sleep wash over you. Think of a suitable death poem, and let it end.

  Frankie stood over him for a few moments, then dropped the syringe into the pocket of her nurse’s dress. She wasn’t going to do it. Perhaps she hadn’t meant to at all.

  Sammy moved. He propped himself on an elbow and yawned loudly. “A little morphine would help.”

  “What?” Frankie asked. She sounded startled.

  “Morphine. Isn’t that what’s in the syringe? It would deaden the pain. I wouldn’t mind.”

  Her lips curled. “I’m not going to waste morphine on you.” Other men stirred around them at her raised voice.

  “Ah, well. My mistake.”

  Sammy made a show of trying to get comfortable but didn’t close his eyes until she’d moved off. In a moment, she’d left the room, and he allowed himself to breathe more easily. His fellow patients settled back down with grunts and shifting about.

  He couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d been standing above him with a lethal dose of morphine, concentrated enough to stop his heart. A little prick in his sleep, hardly detectable above the background discomfort of fleas and mosquitoes.

  Until that moment, Sammy hadn’t seriously considered trying to escape. For one thing, how? Hobble into the jungle and attempt a lengthy trek to the lowlands while his enemies searched for him? He’d be fortunate if the Americans recaptured him instead of the Filipinos. American soldiers may hate him, but they had rules and generally followed them. The Filipinos would be all too happy to take their revenge for the atrocities of the Japanese army.