Eyes of the Emperor

by Graham Salisbury

  “Ain't got no snakes in it,” Burns said. “Come on, put it on.”

  Slowly, I picked up the pieces. First, I put on canvas coveralls, then a pair of padded pants, a padded jacket, padded gloves, and a headpiece made of wire netting that sat all the way down on my shoulders to cover my throat. Then Burns pulled a hood up over my head.

  I must have looked like a freak.

  Within a minute, sweat poured out of my hair, dripping into my eyes. I could hardly move. When PeeWee puts this thing on, I thought, we'll never find him again.

  “Take this,” Burns said, handing me a small whip. “All right, form up,” he said to the handlers.

  Burns and the other handlers took their dogs and formed a circle around me, leaving about thirty feet between them. Smith stood ready with Kooch. Burns's dog, King, was a Labrador that looked like a small bear. Shig's pit bull, Spit, was there, too, though Shig had gone on to scout-dog training with Chik.

  I hobbled around, checking out the dogs, now all around me. They looked gray and fuzzy through the wire mesh. Something big was coming. I was tight as a rock and drowning in sweat.

  The handlers switched to the leather collars.

  Every dog's ears turned toward me, the freak monster in the center of the circle.

  Burns nodded to me. “Just do as I say, and stay alert.”

  He looked around at the handlers.

  “Move in!”

  All six dogs crept toward me, tugging at their leashes. I stood slightly crouched with my arms out, ready. I prayed I wouldn't have to move fast, because I'd just trip and fall, I knew I would, and that was what scared me the most, the thought of being on the ground with six dogs ripping into me.

  Each handler walked his dog closer, saying, “Watch him,” and the dogs, with heads low, closed the circle, their eyes fixed on one thing. Nothing mattered to them but the monster with that whip in its hand.

  Me.

  “Watch him, watch him.”

  When they got within five feet, the dogs were growling low and tugging so hard the handlers had to dig their heels into the sandy soil to hold them back.

  “Use that whip, now,” Burns said. “Just like you did with the burlap sack.”

  I crouched, legs spread to take on the impact if the dogs jumped on me.

  Hesitantly, I brought the whip out, wagging it, threatening one dog, then another, turning around the circle, slapping at them. The dogs growled and raised their lips. Showed their fangs.

  “Watch him!”

  The sound of angry dogs closing in was so awful that my fear burst inside me. “Pop!” I called. “Pop!”

  The dogs started lunging on every side.

  I whipped at them, thinking about the ones at my back, spinning around, turning, turning, watching them all and cringing at the thought of getting blindsided.

  King lunged, leaping for my face.

  “Out!” Burns yelled.

  King stood down, his eyes fierce.

  The other handlers pulled back.

  My heart slammed as I gasped for air, shaking, my legs quivering, screaming to get out of that suit and that circle right now, right now. For a moment I thought I'd peed my pants. But no, no, I hadn't.

  The handlers re-formed the circle, their dogs settling beside them.

  I waited, gasping.

  “Stay alert,” Burns said. “We're coming in again, only this time it will be one at a time … with no leash. They'll be snapping at you, so watch them closely. What we're doing is teaching the less aggressive dogs to be more fearless, and more vicious.

  “The dog will approach you in the same way, but this time when you threaten him, he will be allowed to attack you. When he does, you catch him with the sleeve on your forearm. Is that clear? Let him bite into it.”

  Jeese!

  I tried to slow the trembling.

  Stop. Think. Watch.

  Kooch was first.

  Smith walked him forward.

  I wagged the whip.

  Smith wrapped the leash around his fist.

  Kooch lunged.

  Smith yanked him back and got down on his knees, pulling Kooch close, whispering to him. But the dog eyed only me, just the monster, the freak, the enemy.

  When Smith removed the leash, Kooch set his head low and crept in, stalking.

  Silent now, way scarier than when he growled.

  I stepped back.

  In a blink, Kooch attacked.

  I raised the sleeve as he leaped, holding my left forearm out in front of me. Kooch clamped down on it. His weight almost pulled me to the ground.

  I could hear the other dogs going crazy, could even see some of them lunging at their leashes, wanting in on the action.

  Kooch jerked and pulled. He tossed his head, trying to rip the sleeve off. I felt like a rag in his teeth. I stumbled forward and back, almost falling. Only my sea legs kept me on my feet.

  “Out!” Smith commanded.

  Instantly Kooch let go and stood down.

  I staggered, breathing like a freight train, watching Burns, waiting for what would come next.

  One by one, each dog came at me and took a bite out of that sleeve. One dog missed and caught me on my leg, his teeth breaking through the padding into my flesh. I buckled and fell, slapping down on him with the hard end of the whip.

  The handler got him off quickly. I kicked away, scurrying back in the sand.

  “Enough,” Burns finally said.

  When I got out of the suit I must have looked as if I'd just come out of the ocean. A haze of whiteness clouded my eyes. I felt like I was going to pass out. I hobbled back over to PeeWee and Cobra, blood swelling on my torn pant leg.

  Burns tossed me a canteen. “Drink the whole thing. We'll doctor up that leg when we get back.”

  I caught my breath, then tipped my head back and drank until there wasn't a drop left.

  Cobra's turn in that suit was coming. PeeWee's, too. But not today. Burns was done.

  Cobra and PeeWee helped me limp back to the boat. The cuts were deeper than Burns cared to admit, but they didn't need stitches. Hydrogen peroxide and bandages were all I got.

  “Didn't go too good today, huh?” Leroy said, pulling me aboard.

  “You don't know the half of it,” PeeWee said. “He's lucky to be here at all.”

  Leroy shook his head. “Sounds crazy.”

  For sure.

  “Going get worse,” Cobra said.

  “How can it get worse?” I said. “Unless they turn all those dogs loose on us at one time.”

  PeeWee cringed.

  Cobra fell silent, brooding the whole way back to Ship Island, carving dirt out from under his fingernails with a pocketknife.

  After evening chow Chik sat on his bunk with his elbows on his knees glaring over at Golden Boy, who was censoring his latest love letter. Every now and then Golden Boy would laugh, and Chik would squirm and slug his hand with his fist.

  “He laugh one more time, I going over there and rearrange his face,” Chik mumbled.

  “Who's that letter to, Chik?” I asked. “Helen or Fumi?”

  Chik turned and glared at me. “What you think is the meaning of the word private? Because that's what a letter is, ah? He shouldn't even be touching it, let alone laughing at it.”

  “Yeah, but it must be funny,” I said. “Who you wrote it to?”

  “Your ma. I told her you never stuck your nose where it don't belong. That's why Golden Boy laughing.”

  “Must be Fumi,” I said. “Helen, you don't care that much. But Fumi—ooo la-la.”

  Chik jumped up and got me in a headlock, and we wrestled around until he accidentally let out a fut and we started laughing. That felt so good, to laugh.

  “I like read um when you done, ah?” Shig called to Golden Boy.

  Chik threw his pillow at Shig, who ducked and came up making a kissy face at Chickaboom.

  Poor Chik. He was such an easy target, because he would never get mad. He just liked us to think he would. />
  Cobra was still quiet. Thinking about getting into that attack suit was bothering him. I knew he didn't want to do it. Who did?

  I peeled off the bandages on my shin and checked out the bites. Five deep cuts shaped like dog teeth. Ricky Kondo brought over the first-aid kit and painted them with iodine, then wrapped the wounds back up with clean gauze. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

  “Naah. Like a bee sting, is all.”

  He nodded. “That leg'll be little bit stiff in the morning, but we got the day off, so you can take it easy.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Golden Boy came over with Chik's letter after he'd cut out the stuff Chik wasn't supposed to say. The letter looked like a chain of cut-out dolls.

  “You gave away too much classified information, lover boy. But I left all the good parts in it, all the smooching.”

  Chik snatched the skeleton of his letter.

  “That was the closest your ugly face ever going get to girls as nice as mines, laughing boy.”

  The next day Shig said, “Who like come look around with me? Last time I was on top the fort I saw a pig, a wild one.”

  “Shig,” I said. “Ain't no pigs here.”

  “Got. I saw it.”

  “But pigs don't eat sand.”

  “Got, I tell you.”

  I could see he wasn't lying. Maybe it wasn't a pig, but he'd seen something. “Count me in,” I said. “I got to move this leg, anyway, work out the soreness.”

  “Let's go.”

  We fought our way through scraggy low bushes and sea grass until we found pig tracks.

  I studied them. “Ho, you might be right, Shig.”

  “Of course I'm right. They must live way down there in those trees. I wonder how pigs got on this island.”

  “Brought um from the mainland when they built the fort, prob'ly.”

  “Maybe had pigs with yellow fever and they put um here.”

  “Pfff.”

  We followed the tracks. One set. One pig.

  Sometime later Shig spotted a black dot in the distance, heading away toward the trees. “There he is, look. Ho, if we can catch um, what a feast we could have.”

  We jogged ahead, trying to close the gap.

  In the distance two small planes were heading our way from the Mississippi coast, fighters, like the Japanese ones that attacked Pearl Harbor.

  I shaded my eyes. “Must be an airfield over there.”

  “Forget that, we got a pig to catch.”

  We kept following the tracks.

  And the planes flew closer.

  “There he is,” Shig whispered, about a hundred yards away from the pig.

  Minutes later the two fighters flew in over the island, an gling down, making a shattering racket.

  The pig started streaking in and out of the bushes.

  “Hey,” Shig said. “Now how we going catch it?”

  The planes dropped lower.

  Me and Shig froze, because they were heading straight at us. They started shooting.

  Bababababababa.

  Babababababa.

  The pig swerved and darted one way, then back the other way. “They shooting at that pig!” Shig said.

  “Hide!” I yelled.

  We dove under some shrubs and dug into the sand.

  The planes kept coming, still shooting, the bullets zipping by the pig, then by us, way too close, sand erupting less than twenty yards away.

  I covered my head.

  Then the planes rose straight up, circled around, and headed back toward the mainland. We stood and brushed the sand off as they shrank away.

  “Those buggas was shooting at us!” Shig said.

  “No, they never even saw us. They were target practicing on the pig, is all.”

  “Could fool me.”

  “We ain't going catch it now,” I said.

  When we got back to the barracks we had the best story yet to tell the guys, only when Shig told it, there were five planes and they were shooting directly at us and we dodged bullets like football players. Some guys had even seen the planes, but they swore they had only seen two, and no one believed they fired their guns.

  But who cared if they believed us or not? Everybody knew we had been getting shot at ever since Schofield—shot at with stupid work details, ugly words, marches to nowhere, angry dogs.

  Nothing new.

  “You can only teach the dog one thing at a time,” Smith said. “He can't concentrate on more than that.”

  “Pfff,” I said. “Sound like some guys I know.”

  Smith looked at me, startled. Then he smiled. “Me too, now that I think of it.”

  We both chuckled.

  A week had gone by, and my leg was almost healed. Cobra and PeeWee had both taken a turn inside the attack suit and survived.

  Today it was just me, Smith, and Kooch.

  “I heard we're sending hundreds of thousands of troops over to England,” Smith said. “There's going to be a massive attack on Europe.”

  That news jolted me into remembering there was a war going on. “That's where we were supposed to go,” I said, which was a lie. The army was never going to send us anywhere to fight.

  “Then you're lucky you're here. Those guys are walking straight into a nightmare.”

  “We doing good in the Pacific?” I asked. “You know about that?”

  “Some good, some bad, I think. Don't really know. But did you hear the Japs bombed Alaska?”

  “Alaska?”

  “Dutch Harbor.”

  “Man.”

  We sat thinking. What a mess this war was, a big dangerous mess, and I couldn't even fight in it.

  “All right,” Smith said, “we got work to do.”

  He put a hand on Kooch's head. “Okay. The dog knows how to track you. He knows you're the enemy, and he will attack you even when you don't have a whip or a burlap sack. He will go after you when I say so and he'll stop on command. That's all good. But we're not there yet. We got to step it up.”

  He ran his hand over Kooch's head, petting him, but Smith kept his eyes on me. Behind him on the ground a pair of heavy coveralls and a set of attack sleeves lay bundled on the sand.

  I waited, thinking, Whatever.

  I was scared, sure, because now I had a pretty good taste of how dangerous those dogs could be. But what could I do about it? Nothing. Can't be helped.

  Ho, why did I think that?

  I'm becoming Pop, I thought. Was that good or bad?

  “I'm not sure you can handle this,” Smith said. “I'm wondering if you have the guts.”

  “Anytime,” I said.

  The corner of Smith's mouth twitched up, just a whisper. “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  Smith studied me, almost smirking. Then he took off Kooch's chain and put on the leather collar. Kooch's ears shot up. His eyes froze—on me.

  Spooky.

  “All right, smart boy, you understand the way this works. But now what we want is for the dog to find you using nothing but your natural Jap scent. That's been the goal all along. That's the only reason you're here.”

  He paused, waiting for me to react.

  But there was no way would I even blink. I glared at him.

  Smith grinned. “Perky today, aren't we?”

  I tried not to change my expression. Like Pop.

  “Anyway,” Smith said, “today you're going to go out there and hide in the jungle, just like back when we first started this.”

  Fine, I thought. I knew about alligators and snakes. I knew where to hide. I also knew Kooch would find me no matter what I did. So how were we stepping it up?

  Smith had a gleam in his eye. He winked. “Only here's the difference, Kubo: this time…he's going to be loose.”

  Something broke in my gut, like when you're on a boat and you get the first signs that you're about to throw up. “You mean no leash?” I squeaked.

  “Well, I'll have him on the leash until I see that he's located you.
But when that happens I'll set him free. I'll be right behind him, of course, to call him off after he attacks you, and he will. You're a Jap. We want him to attack you. We want him to kill, too—not you, of course, just your kind. But the dog's obedience will prevent that in this case, because when I call him off, he'll obey.”

  If I looked at Smith one more second I would go after him. I could feel it rising inside me. If I was Cobra, Smith would be spitting teeth.

  I turned to Kooch, looked into his icy eyes with ice in my own. He didn't twitch. Kooch was somewhere else. This dog here wasn't the one who'd eaten horsemeat off my neck and kissed me back in the before time. This one had blood on his mind.

  I blinked.

  Smith kicked the sleeves and coveralls toward me. “The full attack suit is too bulky for what we're doing now, but these will protect you if you don't do something stupid, like turn and run.”

  Behind me the jungle waited. Already I was thinking about which way I'd go. Had to be good, because this dog would hunt me down no matter where I went. He would win.

  But Kooch used to like me, I thought, hoping it might be true. I glanced again into those unmoving eyes, cringing when I remembered how vicious he'd been in the attack circle, the hammer of his jaws on my arm, the depth of his growl. I tried to put a smile in my eyes. You going remember I was your friend, right, boy?

  Smith dipped his head toward the sleeves and coveralls. I picked them up but didn't put them on. Do that later. Now, they'd only slow me down.

  “How much time I got?” I said.

  “Thirty minutes. Get out there as far as you can. This is for real, now. No leash, remember.”

  “Who can forget?”

  “I want you very hidden, you hear? I don't want him to find you by sight. I want him to smell you. When we send him to the Pacific, I want to know he's going to do his job.”

  “He going find me okay,” I said. “Because he's prob'ly the best dog you got on this island. But it ain't going be Jap blood he smells, no. What he going smell is just me, just my scent. Human scent. Because we don't smell no diff'rent from you or anyone else.”

  Smith humphed. “We'll see about that soon enough, Kubo. We have a little test coming up.”

  “This program ain't going work,” I mumbled.