Last Rites td-100

by Warren Murphy

  "It can wait."

  "No. It cannot. This man is dying, as are the others of his tribe-your tribe, Remo Williams-from the mouse disease that is well-known in my land. You must comb the desert for mice and their droppings. Only by ridding the land of mice can this plague be arrested."

  "I want to be with him. In case-in case he dies."

  "I have promised you that I would take you to your father if you completed the Rite of Attainment. I have kept my part of the bargain. Now you must keep yours."

  "I can't go now," Remo protested.

  "You will if you are your father's son."

  Remo looked to Sunny Joe Roam and back to the Master of Sinanju. Tears started in his eyes. "You can't make me do this."

  Chiun indicated the unconscious man. "With his dying breath, he would ask you to save his people. Your people. You know this."

  "Okay. But he'd better be alive when I get back."

  "I make no promises," Chiun intoned.

  "One more thing. If he comes to, ask him why he abandoned me."

  "Are you certain you wish to know this?"

  "Yeah. I gotta know."

  Chiun nodded silently. He handed Remo the tubular gong of Kojong. "This will help you in your athloi." And taking the gong, Remo went out into the desert night, his eyes hot and wet.

  REMO MOUNTED THE HORSE, Sanshin, lashing it into action. As he rode, he struck the gong. It rang angrily. Mice jumped out of their desert burrows. The gong's extended note seemed to send them fleeing.

  Soon Remo was driving them before him. They were everywhere.

  Stripping Sanshin of his saddlebags, Remo used them to catch the rodents. He tore across the desert with his thoughts racing ahead of him like uncatchable ghosts.

  He couldn't bring himself to kill. They were only mice. So he carried them to the jeep and locked them inside. Soon they filled the back and front seats, sniffing and clawing at the windows, trying to escape.

  When he had cleared the surrounding desert, he entered the deserted hogans he found here and there, driving the mice out with the gong and cleaning the interior with brittle-bush whisks.

  In the deepest part of the night, Remo came across a solitary wind-scoured headstone.

  It was a simple slab. It stood alone in the desert beside a eroded hump of red sandstone that lay at the end of the depressed crust of sand.

  There was a name on the stone. No date, just a name. No stonecutter had carved the name. The letters were too irregular, but they had been carved deep and with great force.

  The name was Dawn Starr Roam.

  Remo knew instinctively it was the name of his mother.

  On that spot, a thousand emotions both cold and hot running through his bones, he broke down and wept bitterly angry tears over what he had never known and only now truly missed.

  NEAR DAWN, a light rain fell from the desert sky, and Remo opened his eyes to see Vega and Altair burning faintly on either side of the Milky Way.

  He sat up. And in the sand beside him the gong suddenly rang. It was very faint. Nothing seemed to have struck it. Unless it was raindrops.

  The faint sound faded. Then it came again. Nothing struck the bar of steel. Unless it was a ghost.

  Remo stood up. And to the west he heard the sound of the gong's mate coming across the sands.

  "Chiun. He's calling me."

  Grabbing the gong, Remo pulled the mallet and struck it in response. Then he took off over the sand, toward Red Ghost Butte. The carrying gong note pierced the still air again, and the gong in Remo's hand answered.

  The notes blended into a single sustained cry that didn't subside until Remo reached the cave mouth.

  There stood the Master of Sinanju, his face a shell of sorrow and unconcealed pain.

  "Don't tell me...." Remo said thickly.

  "My sorrow..."

  Remo squeezed his eyes tight as fists. "Nooooo."

  ". . . is only as great as your joy," Chiun continued aridly. "For you have gained a father, and I have lost my only son."

  Remo's eyes popped. "He's alive!"

  Chiun nodded. "He awaits you within."

  Remo started in. "Well, c'mon"

  "No. It is not for me to do this. I will remain here. For it is the seventh moon and it is my custom to bathe in the bitter tears of Kyon-u and Chik nyo, whose sufferings I understand only too well."

  Chapter 24

  Two days later three men rode into the Sonoran Desert on horseback.

  Sunny Joe Roam took the lead. Remo rode on his right. Balanced on an Appaloosa pony, Chiun followed at a respectful distance, his face creased with pain like crumpled paper.

  The sky was utterly cloudless, and in the clear desert air objects and people possessed an unnatural clarity, as if cut from glass. Overhead the sun beat down like hot jackhammers.

  "I owe you two my life," Sunny Joe said after a while.

  "Our blood is the same color," said Chiun. "More than that, I owe you some answers."

  Remo said nothing. It was a subject no one had wanted to address in the two days that old Bill Roam had recuperated from the Sun On Jo Disease.

  "For you to understand," Sunny Joe began, "you have to understand who I am. Long, long before the white man came, my ancestor Ko Jong Oh arrived in this desert. He came from the land that comes down to us as Sun On Jo. They say all us redskins are Asians originally. So I always figured he came across the Bering Strait from somewhere in China. Anyway, Ko Jong Oh settled down here among a tiny group of Indians and married one. We think they were head pounders."

  "Head pounders?" Remo said.

  "That's what we call the Navajo, on account of they used to bash in the skulls of their enemies. That's to differentiate them from the Hopi, whom we call cliff squatters.

  "Now, Ko Jong Oh was a mighty warrior and magician, and he took this tribe under his wing. In gratitude, they took the name Sun On Jo. He taught the Sun On Jos the ways of peace. War and fighting and killing were forbidden. Only Ko Jong Oh and each eldest son descended from him were allowed to fight. And only then to protect the tribe. For it was handed down from the mouth of Ko Jong Oh that if any of his sons brought attention to himself, it would bring down the wrath of the Great Spirit Magician himself, Sun On Jo."

  Sunny Joe looked back at Chiun.

  "I told you this story that time a few years back, chief."

  "And I have told you the legend of my village," Chiun returned coolly. "But you did not believe that our legends were one."

  "I'm still on the skeptical side. But we'll get to that." Sunny Joe resumed his tale. "Every eldest male heir of Ko Jong Oh is taught the way of Sun On Jo. How to track game stealthily, to see farther than the hawk, to become one with the shadows. All the better to protect the tribe. When I was born, disease and poverty had claimed many of the tribespeople. It hit the women especially hard. When I came of age, the Sunny Joe before me, my father, took me up to Red Ghost Butte and before I was invested as his successor, he told me that the tribe was dying in spirit. Too many had left for the cities or were buried under the red sands. There were no women my age. And none had been born in a long time. My father thought it might have had something to do with the atomic fallout over in Utah and New Mexico."

  Sunny Joe shrugged. "Doesn't matter now. But if the tribe was to go on, I had to go out into the greater world and find the land of Sun On Jo and beg of the Great Spirit Magician for one of his women to be my bride. Otherwise, the Sun On Jos would not survive the century."

  Remo grunted.

  "So I packed my bag and piled into my old Studebaker, and since west was the direction from which Ko Jong Oh had come, it made sense that I go west. Well, I didn't get very far until I ran out of money and had to look for work. So I fell into stunt work. It paid, didn't demand all of my time and, between shoots, I could travel. Let me tell you I traveled all over the globe. Sometimes with a production, other times on my own. I was searching for Sun On Jo, studying maps, talking to people. But China had gone Communist, and
every way in was blocked.

  "I was in Japan during the last days of the occupation when I ran into a Korean who told me of a place called Sinanju way up in North Korea, whose warriors were feared and respected throughout Asia. By that time old Marshal Kim Il-Sung was in charge up there, and as an American I couldn't get there for money, marbles or chalk."

  "What year was this?" Remo asked.

  "I'm getting to that. About that time the Korean War broke out. I watched it seesaw back and forth a while, and when MacArthur took Pyongyang, I saw my chance. I up and joined the Army. After basic, I shipped out for Korea. I asked for action and I got it. They handed me a BAR and put me right on the line. Chosin Reservoir. MiG Alley. I saw it all. It was a terrible war. But I guess all wars are terrible."

  "I did a tour in Nam." said Remo. "Marines."

  "If I had been around, I would have knocked that notion out of your skull on day one."

  Remo said nothing. Sunny Joe went on.

  "I was with General Walker's Eighth Army when we took up positions along the Chongchon River in October 1950. Our orders were to hold a bridgehead north of Sinanju. Mountains to the east. Mountains to the west. I never saw so many mountains outside of Arizona. Or such a bitter winter. We had the North Koreans licked, but there were rumors the Chinese were about to take a hand. While we were digging in, they attacked. Wiped out the entire Eight Cav at Unsan. We knew we were in for it then.

  "Me, I just wanted to take a look around Sinanju, but I was stuck where I was. So I hunkered down as we pounded the enemy and they pounded us back, with Migs and Yaks and U.S. Sabre jets screaming over our heads and the winter closing in and the bigwigs chanting 'Home by Christmas.' They just never got around to saying which Christmas. Sound familiar, Remo?"

  "Yeah. It does."

  "Anyway, by early November my unit, the Nineteenth Infantry, were still trying to hold the bridgehead, when the Chinese swooped down on our battery position with their mortars and small-arms fire, blowing bugles to freeze the blood. We fought practically eyeball to eyeball, dead Chinese stacking up not thirty yards from our gun shields. Before long we were surrounded, Chinese knife men killed some of us in our sleeping bags. It was a grim night, I will tell you. I was sure I was going to die."

  Sunny Joe hung his head at the memory.

  "We withdrew under fire, abandoning the bridgehead. The tide was turning, just as it would all war long. Then on the night of November 6, the Chinese forces broke contact and went into full retreat. To this day, no one's ever been able to explain it. They just up and marched into the mountains, never to be heard from again. You won't read about the Battle of Sinanju in too many history books, but for my money it was the worst conflict of the war. They had us cold. But they bugged out."

  Remo looked back to the Master of Sinanju.

  "You were not near the village of Sinanju, brother of my ancestors," said Chiun. "But in Sinanju town, a lesser place. And on the night you describe, the Chinese ran because to do otherwise was to die."

  "What do you know about that?" Sunny Joe asked. Chiun pulled himself up in the saddle proudly. "On that night I left my village called Sinanju at the edge of the West Korea Bay, and descended upon the Chinese, driving them back to the Yalu."

  "You and what army?"

  "I and no army. Just I."

  "Is he kidding?" Roam asked Remo.

  "No," said Remo.

  "The noise of battle was keeping the women and children awake at night," Chiun explained. "Besides, I did not like the Chinese in my land. It had too many squatters already."

  "What about the Americans?"

  "They looted and raped no one, and so I suffered them to live."

  Sunny Joe grinned crookedly. "Well, you saved my butt that night. If what you say is true."

  "It is true," Chiun sniffed.

  "Anyway, during our retreat I finally got to see Sinanju. It was a typical Korean town filled with frightened refugees. I talked to the locals. Nobody had ever heard of Ko Jong Oh. Or Sun On Jo, or any of it. It had to be the second-biggest disappointment of my entire life." Then, glancing at Remo, he amended, "No, make that third."

  Remo looked away.

  Sunny Joe continued. "Well, the war finally ended and I went home. Landed back in Hollywood. I didn't know what to do with myself. My father had passed on while I was at war, and as I saw it, I had failed to find the land of Sun On Jo. So I fell back into stunt work. TV was coming in, and there were Westerns galore. I doubled for the best of them. Worked my way up to stunt coordinator and eventually did some acting. I played black hats and white hats. Spoke my first line on a 'Rifleman' episode. It wasn't all glory, though. I took a lot of falls and broke a lot of bones.

  "Around that time-guess it was a few years before, now that I think about it-I took me a wife. Figured if I made enough money I could return to the reservation with cash in my pockets enough to make up for my failure.

  "Then my wife told me she was going to have a papoose. It was the proudest day of my life. I was hoping for a son. You know, a Sunny Joe to carry on after me."

  Remo plucked a needle off a saguaro and rolled it between his fingers thoughtfully.

  "Well, she did give me a son. A dark-eyed, dark-haired squalling little boy. I near to have burst. But the birth went bad and she sickened. Within a week she was no more."

  Remo sucked in a hot breath. When Sunny Joe resumed talking, his voice was twisted. "It broke me up inside. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I couldn't think. I didn't know what to do. You see, I had made plans, but now they had come apart. I couldn't see starting over. I couldn't see raising a boy without a mother. Not in my line of work. Not with the travel and the hours. There was nothing for me back at the reservation.

  "So one night I flew east, picked out a nice Catholic orphanage because my wife had been raised Catholic, laid the boy on the doorstep and walked away with my guts a great big ache and agony."

  "That was me," said Remo, his voice dull.

  "Now, when I got started, I did my stunt work under a stage name, William S. Rome. Turned 'Roam' to 'Rome,' after the city. Figured it sounded more Continental or something. Didn't want the reservation elders to know it was me. In the back of my head I thought I might go and claim that papoose as my own one fine day. So I gave him a name that no one else would have. I juggled 'Rome' to get 'Remo' and gave him my first name as his last, adding an S for 'Sunny Joe.'"

  "What did you name the baby?" Remo said softly. "Truth is, my wife died before we could decide on a name. She wanted to name him after me. But I favored something he could call his own. Hell, if he's still alive, he'd be a grown man by now. He can call himself whatever he wants. He's earned that right."

  "So did you not claim that child?" asked Chiun.

  "Well, time passed, the work took me here and the work took me there. I got into movies and, when that dried up-and it always did-I went back into TV Black hats mostly. When detective shows replaced Westerns, I played hoods, and when science fiction took over from detective shows, I played Klingons and Cylons and what have you. Producers realized that with my height and thin frame I looked good in a rubber suit, so I played every kind of monster you could imagine. Pretty soon I was stuck as a central casting creature."

  "Were you in The Sea Is an Only Child?"

  "Yeah. You see that one?"

  "No," said Remo, not elaborating.

  Sunny Joe shrugged and went on. "One year I was in Italy making Spaghetti Westerns when I read about a Newark cop who had been electrocuted for some two-bit killing. The cop's name was Remo Williams. That told me I had waited too long to claim my only son."

  "Didn't sound like you were ever going to," Remo said distantly.

  "Maybe I never would have. I won't lie to you. Life had dealt me some pretty sorry hands. I wanted my son to start clean and not end up some Hollywood brat too spoiled for his own good, or worse, a half-breed reservation alcoholic with no culture to call his own."

  "That's one way to look at it," Remo
said stiffly.

  For a long time no one said anything. There was only the soft crunch of hoofs in sand. Remo flung the saguaro needle away. It clipped the stinger off a scuttling scorpion.

  Sunny Joe noted this without a flicker of surprise coming to his eroded features. "Well, more time passed," he said, "and I got old. Never did make it big as an actor. Too many broken bones and noses. I saw the tunnel one time too many, and decided to retire among my people, whom I had been supporting. Well, you know what happened. The Japanese came to Yuma and hired me as stunt coordinator. Then all hell broke loose. After the occupation, I started getting offers. It was good work at first, then they revived old Muck Man from back in the seventies and I found myself sweating in rubber suits all over again. Only this time I was a star. Nobody knew my face, but I was a star. I was about ready to pack it in when the death-hogan dust kicked up. So I come back. You know the rest."

  Sunny Joe plucked a needle off a saguaro and threw it ahead of him. The tailless scorpion caught it in the head and fell over dying. Remo and Chiun exchanged glances.

  "Where'd you learn to ride a horse like that, Remo?" Sunny Joe asked all at once.

  "Outer Mongolia."

  Sunny Joe Roam grunted. "So what've you been doing with yourself all these years?"

  "Government work. Hush-hush stuff."

  "Say no more."

  They rode a little farther along.

  "You haven't asked me why I'm still alive if I was executed back in New Jersey," Remo said.

  "I ain't convinced you're that Remo Williams." They came to the long wash of crusty sand. "Of course there's one way to find out."

  "How's that?" asked Remo.

  Sunny Joe pulled up his horse, and Remo and Chiun followed suit.

  "There's an old prophesy of Ko Jong Oh. He said one day a man would come from Sun On Jo and he would be known not by his face or dress or language, but by his ability to do what only Sunny Joes could do."

  "What's that?"

  "To cross Crying River without making it cry."

  "Where's Crying River?"

  Sunny Joe pointed to the sandy wash. "That's it right there. In the spring it's Laughing Brook. But when the summer heat sets in, it dries right up. We get some rain, and the sand crusts up. You walk across it, and it sounds like potato chips. They didn't have potato chips back in the days of Ko Jong Oh. So they said the sounds were maidens crying."