The Year of Counting Souls

by Wallace, Michael

  “The American nurse could help you,” Sammy said.

  “There weren’t any bone worms,” Oto said sullenly. “So don’t keep lying.”

  “I’m talking about that old wound. Nobody saw to it, and now it’s healing badly. It will trouble you for the rest of your life if you don’t get it cared for.”

  “What does that matter? We’re all going to die here, you know that, right?”

  “My brother won’t kill you for this. We’ll be punished and let go. Well, you’ll be let go.”

  “Die here in the Philippines,” Oto said. “And if not here, then on some other war front. It is our duty to die for Japan.” His voice was resigned. There was no glory in the thought.

  Sammy blinked, surprised at Oto. Not only the way the slow wheels were turning in the man’s head, but where was the unblinking faith in the cause of this war? The kind of faith fostered by the indoctrination given to soldiers? “Read This Alone: And the War Can Be Won.” In thinking so poorly of Oto, wasn’t Sammy guilty of the same sort of dismissive attitude that his fellow Japanese so often exhibited to the Americans? Or how the Americans spoke of the Japanese, for that matter?

  “You don’t know that,” Sammy said. “Soldiers will survive the war. Most of us, I suspect, will find ourselves home again one day.”

  “I hope so,” Yamaguchi put in. “There’s a girl in my hometown I would like to marry. So pretty, her face is like the moon.”

  “A girl,” Oto scoffed. “You’ll never see her again. She’ll never wait for you, and you’ll be dead anyway.”

  “You need to take care of yourself,” Sammy told Oto. “If not for your sake, then for the sake of the war. An injured soldier is a bad soldier. The American nurse said the doctor could see you fixed up properly.”

  “That ugly foreign devil isn’t going to touch me again.”

  “Have it your way.” Sammy affected a shrug. “But she’s not our enemy. I know that much.”

  Terasaki turned. He’d been squinting into the sun while the others talked. “You don’t know your enemies, Mori. That’s your problem.”

  “Maybe I don’t.”

  Sammy’s morbid thoughts were reasserting themselves, and inopportune comments threatened to come out. No point to it, but he couldn’t help himself. What he wanted to say, what he was about to say, was that his true enemies were the makers of war themselves.

  They’d never beat the Americans—did these men even have an idea how big the enemy’s country was? How vast its lands, how many people it had, the scale of its industry? China was on Japan’s very doorstep and was weak, yet they couldn’t subdue it. How would they conquer America? And if they didn’t, how would they keep the Americans from returning, their fleets rebuilt, their armies huge, organized, and vengeful?

  Millions of Japanese would die. Ancient cities would burn. Perhaps the entire nation would be destroyed, its people enslaved for generations to come.

  And it would be a self-inflicted defeat. Sammy’s enemy wasn’t the Americans. His enemy was the men who would destroy Japan. The ones who’d started the war.

  Only the arrival of his brother stopped him from speaking these thoughts.

  His brother Yoshiko and Fujiwara were leading one of the American nurses. It was Miss Frankie, and Sammy’s hopes sank. A coward and a bully. Why was she here?

  Frankie’s eyes darted around, as if looking for an escape. Looking for someone to rescue her. She briefly glanced at the sweating, nearly naked men staked in the rice paddy, visibly shuddered, and looked away.

  “Are we going to stake her?” Fujiwara asked.

  “If we need to,” Yoshi said. He switched to English. “Tell me what I’m looking for.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frankie said. “Is there—is there something special you want to know?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t know what you want!”

  Yoshi switched to Japanese again. “Release Corporal Mori.”

  Fujiwara’s eyebrows went up, and Sammy gave his brother a sharp look, surprised. The adjutant came over and untied the cords holding Sammy’s arms behind his back. The first sensation was pain, followed by shooting tingles down his arms as he pushed himself to his feet.

  “Why are you letting him go?” Frankie asked. Her tongue darted over her lips. “I thought he was guilty. I thought you were mad at him because of what he said about China.”

  “What happened last night?” Yoshi asked.

  “Miss Louise told you already. That’s all I know.”

  Yoshi gestured to the empty stake. “Two days in the sun. You won’t die—you’ll get water once a day. Other than that, I think you will find it a very unpleasant experience. You’ll be burned, sick, delirious.”

  “What?” Frankie’s face hung slack. “Me?”

  “Take off your dress.”

  “No, please.”

  “You’ll be as exposed as these men here. No more, no less.”

  “But they’re men. They’re . . . and I’m a . . . Please, no. Don’t make me, please.”

  Sammy stared at her, willing her to look at him. She could do this. He knew the hatred she had for the Japanese. She could suffer a couple of days in the sun to save Lieutenant Kozlowski’s life and spite the Japanese secret police.

  Yoshi drew his sword. “Take off your dress, or I will cut it off.”

  “I’ll tell you!” she cried. “I’ll tell you everything.”

  He gestured with the sword tip. “What? Quickly, I have no patience.”

  “Miss Frankie—” Sammy said, but nobody was looking at him.

  “It was all a lie,” Frankie said. “The injured man is one of the rebels you were shooting at.”

  “I knew it.”

  “If that’s what you thought,” Sammy said to his brother, “why didn’t you question the injured man instead of the nurse?”

  “They brought him in last night,” Frankie continued. “His name is Kozlowski. He’s the whole reason we were up here in the first place. We’re a field hospital behind enemy lines. When the men were healed, they’d go off and join the partisans. Some already did. I’ll tell you what I know. I’ll tell you how they did it.”

  Frankie talked on and on, giving far more than Yoshiko had requested. She told about Fárez and the others, how Louise was the leader of it all, how Sammy had helped them, even knowing everything the Americans were doing. Her voice was high and excited, and there was a look on her face that wasn’t shame, or even fear. No, Sammy thought, it was eagerness. But she didn’t have an endless amount of information and was soon repeating herself. Yoshi ordered her to shut up, then translated for Fujiwara.

  “I’ll ask you again,” Sammy said. This time he said it in English for Frankie’s sake. “Why didn’t you question the lieutenant if you thought he was the guilty party?”

  “We’ve been ordered down from the mountains,” Yoshi said. “There was no time to break the man.”

  His brother had answered in Japanese, but Sammy responded once more in English. “Ordered by whom? This Colonel Umeko people keep talking about?” Sammy stopped and frowned as something occurred to him. “If you’re not going after the partisans, why not let the nurses have their patient? If you’re leaving anyway, what does it matter? He’s one more prisoner of war, nothing more or less.”

  “He’s the leader of illegal military forces in the area.”

  “Which you’re now going to ignore. So what does it matter?”

  “Untie the other men,” Yoshi told Fujiwara. “We’ll need every loyal Japanese to guard the prisoners.” To Sammy he said, “You will get dressed and go to the hospital to tell the Americans.”

  “Tell them what, exactly?”

  “We leave first thing in the morning, and we will march all the way to Santa Maria in the lowlands. The men will be prisoners of war. The nurses will be relocated to the internment camp at the Santo Tomás camp for civilians in Manila.”

  “They can’t march that far
,” Sammy said. “They’re sick and injured.”

  “Nobody will stay behind. They either move or they die.”

  “You mean you’ll kill them,” Sammy said in English. “They either march or you shoot them. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

  “Tell them. And take this woman with you.” Yoshi finally changed back to English to say this last part.

  Frankie’s face fell. “I don’t think I should go back. Not with your brother. He’ll tell them what I said.”

  “That isn’t my problem.” There was a malicious element in Yoshi’s voice. “Go!”

  Sammy didn’t tell the people at the hospital everything that had happened, but he told them enough. Captain Mori knew about Kozlowski. A colonel with the Kempeitai had ordered Mori and his men to march their prisoners out of the mountains. If they were unable to go, they would be killed.

  The men and women of the hospital listened without commenting, but the fear was a fresh wound on every face. They all knew what this meant. Not everyone had made it in the flight from Sanduga to Cascadas. Now they were expected to travel all the way to the lowlands, marching at the whim of the Japanese soldiers and driven along by Sakdals.

  Sammy glanced at Louise as he spoke. She was looking through the room, her eyes settling on one man after another. Doing a silent diagnosis, he thought. This man would make it; this man wouldn’t. This soldier may or may not survive, depending on the pace set by the Japanese. That was Louise, always thinking about her patients, counting them all equally.

  “There’s one other thing,” Sammy said. “If you have any thoughts, any plans for trying to mitigate this disaster, don’t say them in front of Miss Frankie.”

  “Me?” Frankie said, her tone outraged, her expression indignant. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Sammy wasn’t fooled. He knew what she was about to do. He’d watched her face on the way back to the hospital and sensed her wicked mind hard at work. There was a fishhook ready to impale Frankie, and she meant to wriggle free before it did. He waited for her to make an attempt.

  “You’re the one who spilled the beans,” she said to Sammy. “You told your brother everything. The moment you were alone, you said it all. Treacherous right to the end. Of course we never trusted you. We knew you’d do it.”

  Sammy didn’t say anything. His eyes met Kozlowski’s, where the man lay in his bed; then he glanced at Dr. Claypool, sitting still and gray, and Louise, who studied his face.

  Nobody in the room said anything. A few men whispered, and there were hard looks at Frankie. She looked around, eyes widening.

  “What, you think it was me?” Frankie said. “This Jap”—the word sounded vulgar coming out of her mouth, not a casual term, as so many used it, but a profanity—“went right to Mori and told him everything. Of course they threatened me, said they’d tie me naked to a stake, but I wasn’t going to breathe a word. It was him.” She pointed at Sammy. “I heard him with my own ears. It’s his brother, of course he told him. They stood around discussing it. I heard everything!”

  “And the entire conversation was in English?” Louise asked.

  “Yes! They both speak it, don’t they?”

  “Sammy looks dehydrated and sunburned, like he was staked out in the sun himself.” Louise’s voice was calm as a judge’s about to deliver a verdict. “But apparently not. Apparently he was talking to his brother in English, and you happened to overhear it all.”

  If there had been any lingering doubts on the faces of the patients, they were gone now. Instead, angry mutters and poisonous glances, all directed at Frankie.

  “He’s a liar!” she shouted. “You’re not going to believe him, are you? As God is my witness—”

  “Shut your mouth,” Kozlowski said. “Someone stick her in the corner so I don’t have to look at her.”

  Frankie resisted, still proclaiming her innocence. It took two men to get her there. Kozlowski, injured and wincing in pain as his morphine seemed to be wearing off, told her to shut up or he’d have her subdued. That finally silenced her.

  Once she was put in her place, Sammy and another man moved Dr. Claypool’s and Kozlowski’s cots to the other side of the hospital, as far from Frankie as could be managed. When that was done, Sammy and Louise joined the doctor and the lieutenant in a private conference. There was much to discuss before nightfall.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Louise and Sammy sat down next to Kozlowski’s and Claypool’s cots where they’d been moved to the front door of the hospital. She studied Sammy’s face, her admiration growing as she thought about what he’d done for them. Far more than she could have asked or expected.

  Kozlowski spoke first, using a low voice that perhaps the nearer patients would pick up on, but not Frankie, sitting sullenly in the far corner. “Why did your brother leave you alone with us again?”

  “Because he knows I won’t try to escape,” Sammy said.

  “He doesn’t know you very well, then, does he?” Kozlowski said.

  “He knows me well enough. Whatever we plan, I won’t be running.”

  Kozlowski shook his head. “I don’t get you, Mori. Why not? You think you still owe them loyalty?”

  “You can’t go back,” Louise said. “Come with us, you’ll be treated well. Won’t he, Lieutenant?”

  “Damn right.”

  Sammy shook his head slowly. “No. I’ll help you, but I won’t run. That’s a step too far.”

  “Are you sure about this, Sammy?” Dr. Claypool asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  A thoughtful look came over Kozlowski’s face. “Okay, I got it. I don’t agree, but I understand.”

  “You do?” Louise asked.

  The lieutenant winced as he propped himself on one elbow. “Reporting crimes against mankind, helping a wounded man get treatment—that’s the stuff of a man’s conscience. This is another matter entirely.”

  “That is right, sir,” Sammy said. “I won’t desert.”

  “He’s a good soldier,” Kozlowski explained to Louise, who was still baffled. “The captain knows it in his heart, and that’s why he let his brother come here. He knows he’ll return.”

  Louise was anguished knowing everything that faced Sammy if he went back. “You don’t have to do it. Nobody will think less of you if you come with us.”

  “I will. That is enough.”

  “In that case,” Dr. Claypool said, “you should go back now, before they wonder why you’re missing.”

  “They don’t need me. They don’t want me. My brother isn’t going to come looking for me, and if he does, I’ll go with him.”

  “That’s not what worries me,” the doctor said. “We’ve got planning to do, and we can’t have you knowing what we decide.”

  Now it was Sammy who looked confused. “Why not?”

  “You’ve done enough,” Louise said. “If you’re not coming with us, then you have to leave for your own good.”

  “You’re all weak and sick, and you need my help. I can stay here until morning or until they come and fetch me.”

  “What we need is for you to save yourself,” Louise said. She touched his arm. “Sammy, please. Go to your brother. Do what he says, bow your head, take your licks. Whatever it takes to stay alive.”

  “It will be a long war, Mori,” Kozlowski said. “Some of us aren’t going to survive it. Maybe you’ll be one of the ones to die. But for God’s sake, don’t throw your life away. What we do will be desperate, and one way or another the Japanese will be furious when we make the attempt. You can’t put anything more on your head than you already have.”

  Sammy looked back and forth between the three of them. He looked confused at first, uncertain, then rose to his feet and held out his hand for Lieutenant Kozlowski.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Kozlowski returned the handshake and a solemn nod before settling back onto his cot. “Good luck, buddy.”

  “And you, Doctor,” Sammy said, shaking Claypool’s
hand as well. “Thank you for your work. It was very kind of you to treat me.”

  Claypool managed a smile. “Miss Louise would have given me hell if I hadn’t.”

  “Yes, I know.” He turned and gave her a solemn bow. “Thank you, Miss Louise.”

  She was sick with worry for him, knowing this might be the last time she ever saw him. There was sadness in his eyes of a depth she’d never seen before. And something else as he looked at her, something that took her breath away.

  He loves me. And I—

  “Please don’t look at me like that,” she said in a soft voice. Both Kozlowski and Claypool had averted their eyes.

  “I am prepared to wade into the river. I have composed my jisei. It is on my lips already. When the time comes, I will speak it and cross to the other side.”

  “Don’t say that. Stay alive, for God’s sake. It will be over someday, and you’ll have a whole life ahead of you.”

  He looked into her eyes. “I will try. I promise that much.”

  “Go!” she urged. She touched his hand. “Go,” she repeated more gently.

  He nodded and turned toward the door. Moments later he was gone. A long silence passed. Louise’s heart thudded in her chest.

  “So you want to escape,” Claypool asked Kozlowski.

  “I want to try,” he said. “Half of us will die if they march us out of here. You and me among them, Doc.”

  Louise turned away from the door, forcing herself to stop thinking about Sammy. She had spent some time calculating earlier and had an answer to Kozlowski’s implied question.

  “I count five who are goners,” she said, “including the two of you. Two more are suffering malaria or dysentery who could go either way. They’re weak and dehydrated and might not survive a long, hard march. And Ocampo lost both his feet—how could he possibly make it?”

  “We have to make the attempt,” Kozlowski said.

  “We’d be on the run,” she said. “Some men would die anyway.”

  “Then we’ll die free men.” There was firmness in Kozlowski’s voice that belied his weak, pale expression. “Not on a death march at the hands of the Japs.”

  “And what about the healthier ones? The nurses?” Louise needed him to understand how the ledger would balance if they tried to escape. “Let’s say we get away. The sick ones will slow us down. Captain Mori will come after us. He’ll catch us again anyway. Some men and women who’d have had a chance as prisoners will suffer. He might even kill us all.”