by Rose Christo
He offered me a bag of licorice he'd gotten in the mail. I reached for it.
It was my fault. It was the way I grabbed it. My fingers touched his. It was only a second but I remember thinking that his skin looked light next to mine. I remember thinking someone in the army shouldn't have skin that soft. His eyes jumped. It was his standard end-of-the-world fanfare, the same way pretty much everything was end-of-the-world to him. Only this time he genuinely looked scared.
"Did you see the medal they gave to the sergeant?"
Milk's chatter ruptured the silent spell. The ocean moved again; the seagulls cried again. I turned away. I peeled apart the licorice.
"It was awfully small," Milk said, with a hint of cheek. "Serves him right."
* * * * *
It was September, and I missed my boy with a physical pain like a raw, infected wound. The sergeant sent me to Kamo District and made me hand out ration coupons to the teahouses, the breweries, the embroiderers. I was so busy thinking of Rabbit I forgot to feel disgust that we were policing the civilians like they were criminals. Rabbit was back in school now, learning to write in Cree and read in English and count in double digits. I wondered whether he was still friends with the boy who gave him bannock. I wondered whether he was still making trouble for Miss Theresa.
One evening when we were off duty Two-Ply made me go with him to the Noh theater in the south of Kamo. He got a kick out of the dancers in their ceramic masks. I didn't really understand it. They moved so slowly and deliberately I could have made myself a cup of yaupon tea in the time it took them to change from one position to the next. I guess it's a matter of what you're raised with. Cree dances aren't always fast; but even when they're slow, they're going somewhere.
At night Two-Ply and I went out on the raised red bridge outside the theater. The dogwoods were flowering in hazy white and sheer purple. Someone had tied lanterns on the branches, weighed them down with sand.
"I think I want to stay here," Two-Ply said.
I'd forgotten my watch in the barracks. Fox always had a different wristwatch. Maybe I should have taken one of his.
"We can't stay out too late," I reminded Two-Ply.
"I don't mean tonight," he said, smiling easily, swinging his arms. "I mean I want to stay in Japan."
I couldn't say I was surprised. In Japan he didn't have to use separate doors from the rest of us. He didn't have to cross to the other side of the street if someone shared the sidewalk with him. The locals might have stared at him; but then they stared at all of us. We were noisy foreigners with weird hair.
"Maybe I'll marry a geisha girl," Two-Ply said. "Wouldn't that be something, Chief?"
"Terry," I said.
I couldn't remember when exactly Two-Ply had told me his name. I think only Fox and the sergeant knew everybody's full names; but people talk around me, and I listen.
"You're worth ten of MacArthur," I let him know.
"I know," he said. It surprised me. I liked it.
"Just don't play the harmonica at your wedding," I said.
"Do you think Nips can play the harmonica? I know they can't say their L's right. Maybe their tongues are wired different. Who wires tongues, anyway?"
"Couldn't tell you," I said. If one thing never changed about him I hoped it was the word vomit.
* * * * *
Late at night in the barracks we all sat up playing Hearts. Irish kept winning. Someone had stolen a bra from one of the nurses and strung it over Pogue's ears. Pogue's face was red with anger.
"Where you from in Italy?" Irish asked Fox. At the start of the next hand he took three cards and passed them my way. I grimaced when I saw he'd given me the Queen of Spades.
Fox hesitated. "What do you mean?"
"You know Tonio from Easy Company? His family's from Naples," Irish said.
Milk played the Two of Clubs. Fox went about choosing his card the way he went about everything else--carefully.
"Say something in Italian," Irish said.
"You say something in Irish," Pogue spat. He threw the bra at Irish's head.
"I can see the backs of my eyes if I pull on my eyelids," Two-Ply told the ceiling.
"Stop. You'll give yourself a headache," Fox said. He finally played his hand.
Eventually the adjutant came around and told us if we didn't retire, it was demerits for all of us. Irish offered him some choice swear words. We turned off the lamps above our bunks and reluctantly went to bed. I stared into the shadows and remembered when Rabbit used to fear the dark. I remembered holding him so he wouldn't shake at night, so I could fight off the Windigo if they came to eat him.
When the others had drifted off to sleep I heard nails raking furiously through skin. I got up. I navigated the darkness by memory. I felt my way to Fox's bed and reached down and grabbed his wrists.
"Stop," I said.
He stilled. He couldn't help it if his hands were in mine.
His hands were in mine--his wrists--raw with scratching, but soft underneath. His skin was warm. I could feel his pulse beating against my palm. A muted current crackled through my fingers.
My eyes adjusted to the shadows. Fox's eyes were pale and clear. I wondered if he could see as well in the dark as the animal he was nicknamed for. I wondered, because his eyes were on mine and they weren't moving. He looked like he didn't know whether to punch me or roll over and die.
His wrists went slack in my hands. He chose neither. I felt like he was choosing something else. I felt like I was afraid of what he had chosen, afraid of the way my hands itched to touch his forearms, the way I suddenly noticed how short his eyelashes were.
I let go of him and went to bed, cold, numb. I stuck my hands under the rubbery pillow to quell the tingling in my fingers. Fox didn't scratch for the rest of the night.
4
I Cease Resistance
In September MacArthur shipped us out to Kyushu and we got to work rebuilding Nagasaki. It was a lot less leveled than Hiroshima had been, which made me think--or hope--that more people had survived. We rode the convoy across the island and I saw the children peeking out from their ramshackle huts, the white hydrangea trees standing firm between the cracks in the burned ground. There was life where there should have been death. If those little trees could hold on while the earth shook, while the smoke swallowed the sun and the world around them came crashing down, there was no excuse for the rest of us not to do the same.
We got out of the truck on Lake Kawahara. The bay was a summery blue-green and it fed out into the endless ocean. Humid heat rose from the water. The splintered remnants of old red temple gates stood underneath a tangle of reeds and cedar trees. A priest in a stole paced around them impatiently. We walked up to him and Fox introduced our squad. The priest stared at each of us in turn. I felt he stared at me the longest.
He said:
"Are you building my church or not?"
"Aren't these people Shintos?" Milk asked.
"What's that matter to me?" the priest said.
Two and three platoons came down to the lake to help us. We got the offset stakes in the ground and dug the hole for the foundation. We mixed concrete for the footing. It was a hot day outside. We were covered in sweat long before we even laid the first stones down in the perimeter trench.
"They really do think we're construction workers," Irish said bitterly.
"At least we don't have to kill anyone," Milk said.
Around noon we went to Sasebo, a nearby fishing village. The metallic scent of the sea bream brought me home. A defunct railway ran behind the live-in shacks with their clay roof tiles and narrow, cobbled walkways. Our company was sharing the USFA with the 12th Naval District. We went down to the barracks on the rocky coastline, red and white stripes hanging high over the captain's tent. The USS Surfbird was anchored on the slate-colored ocean and the squids ran up and down the gangplank in their white caps and blue ties, unloading cargo. A couple of them caught sight of us and stared blankly, like we were intrudi
ng. You'd think there'd be a camaraderie between the Armed Forces, but I've never met a soldier who likes a sailor. Don't get me started on the marines.
"Where's the mess hall?" Milk asked.
Fox led us. The building was low and rusted and it had no windows. The squad went inside for lunch but I didn't feel like eating. I went down to the coastline and sat on the rocks, smooth and wet and weathered with centuries of salted breeze. The soil smelled rich and it was muddy with silt. It made for a strange but beautiful contrast when the gray waves lapped over the shore.
I didn't know when we were going home. The sergeant had asked the lieutenant, the lieutenant had asked the captain and the captain had asked the major but the major didn't know. I didn't like the permanence. I never signed up for this. I never signed up to kill another human being and I'd killed six already, maybe more. It made me sick, it made me angry, that a country I wasn't even a citizen of could rip me out of my home and force me to kill people who had done nothing to harm me. America might as well have killed me, too. I wondered if it had. I wondered if I was partway dead already, walking around half dead and not knowing it, no one seeing it because the guys I walked around with were half dead, too.
Fox came and sat with me on the boulder. His long, skinny legs hung over the side, his hands folded on his lap.
"You should eat something," he said.
He was always fussing over us. I didn't think it had anything to do with him being squad leader; it was just his nature.
"No thanks," I said.
He sat hunched over, his back sloped. He must have taken his bullet vest off because I could see the curve of his spine. He smelled like Tussy, pungent and stale in that way that all colognes smell. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, his arms bandaged.
He was looking at me. I've never been afraid to look someone in the eye. I met his eyes and he glanced quickly away, out to sea. The nearness of his body threw off a definitive heat, a different kind of heat from the summer haze. His throat bobbed when he swallowed. I had the strange thought that I should reach out and touch it, that I should touch the sharp bones that framed his neck, the sharper bones that formed his clavicle. It was so unlike anything I'd ever thought about him before that I felt frightened. I mean the real kind of frightened, the kind where the skin on your back crawls and your veins run cold and your heart steals all the breath out of your lungs.
"I need someone for patrols tonight," Fox told the ocean.
I didn't answer him; but I guess he knew anyway that I'd go with him.
"You don't talk to anyone," Fox said. "You know?"
"Sure I do," I said.
"You don't," he said. "You just listen."
"I don't have anything to say."
"Are you sure?"
I looked sideways at him. He didn't glance away this time, but his face went skittish in the tightening of his mouth, the uncertainty of his crinkling eyes. He was due for a haircut. His fringe was starting to fall across his brow. The CO wouldn't stand for that.
"Where's that grease you wear in your hair?" I realized.
"Irish threw it away," he said. "Burned Pogue's magazines, too. You know how he gets."
Irish was the kind of guy who needed to shoot people. If he didn't get to shoot people, he took it out on the rest of us.
"You miss your family any?" Fox asked. "Your old man?"
"He took off long ago."
I still don't know why I said that. Usually I was pretty private. It wasn't that I didn't want people in my business. It was more like I didn't think my business was relevant.
"Hate that," Fox sympathized, with a fleeting smile.
It was warm, that smile. It occurred to me that I'd never seen him smile before. I thought of the day when I was six years old, maybe seven, and I tasted honey for the first time. I remembered being shocked that something could taste so good. I remembered wanting more and more of it until I couldn't even think of eating anything else. Bannock, chocolate lilies, they all lost their novelty. They weren't honey. Nothing else could ever be honey.
Something was wrong with me.
* * * * *
At night I went with Fox to patrol the town. Our route went from the USFA to Nagayo to Kawaguchi, then back through Eisho District. Eisho had seen the least damage from the atom bomb. Trust banks lit with electric lamps stood side-by-side with apartments missing windows, schoolhouses missing doors. Rickshaws were parked along the sleek sidewalks, the drivers sleeping in the carts. A gaggle of sailors stood on a street corner chatting up a girl in a blue cotton robe. She couldn't have been any older than thirteen. I waited until we drew near and the sailors glanced up at us and I gave them a Look. They scattered.
"Christ," Fox said, laughing nervously.
We passed by the hot-pot restaurant a lot of sumo wrestlers liked to frequent. Fox's sleeves were rolled back but he kept pulling the one sleeve down over his right elbow. His hair looked tussed in the back. Maybe he'd run his hands through it in one of his regular bouts of anxiety. His lips were red and wet like he'd bitten them to the point of irritation. I wanted to tell him not to do that, same as the scratching. He'd probably listen, too. Or maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he couldn't help it. I wondered if Fox had been born nervous. I wondered if they'd cut the cord and handed him to his mom and he'd immediately started fussing over whether she was getting enough sleep at night.
"You have a son," Fox said. "Don't you?"
My heart swelled with yearning. "He's six."
"Is your wife an Indian, too?"
"Don't have one."
Fox's footsteps slowed. I don't think he was aware of it. I was aware of it. If he broke one of his wristwatches I saw it. If he ran out of cologne I saw that, too. I saw it when he rummaged through dictionaries, frantically trying to learn the language of whatever country we were occupying. I saw it when he went to the field hospital to talk to the patients in stammering Japanese. I saw it when he squeezed his eyes shut on the transport plane, his knuckles tight when he seized the arm rests. I heard the slight trill of his accent when he said words like, "Dear God," or "Where's the meat?"
I like paying attention to people. You learn a lot if you shut up and listen.
The last time I'd paid this much attention to anyone I'd wound up with a son.
Across the street a trio of girls traipsed down the cobbled sidewalk, holding their sandals in their hands. Their hair was done up American, pin curls and side parts. One of them laughed at something another had said. They rounded the corner and disappeared.
Fox's eyes looked yellow when the paper-covered street lights caught them. His skin looked bronze and his hair looked gold. His fingers twitched at his side. They did that, sometimes, when he was anxious. Maybe he was itching to scratch himself, to bleed. I think it was more likely that he knew I was watching him. I didn't know that I could have stopped. I would have tried if he'd told me to. I wanted to try. I wanted it badly. It was my eyes that didn't.
"Do you still have that Swiss Army knife?"
I started. "What?"
We were nearing Sasebo. I could hear the ocean. Fox pulled his sleeve farther down his elbow. It made me think he was hiding something on his upper arm. More scratch marks, probably.
"I'm gonna cut my nails," he said.
Back in Langenstein I'd bought a Swiss Army knife off a local boy. It had a screwdriver, nail clippers, a bunch of mechanisms no one in their right mind would ever need. I never would have bought it, except this kid kept begging me to. War's hardest on the kids. I hate that. I hate when boys lose their fathers and grow up too quickly.
In Sasebo Fox checked in with the sergeant and we went back to the barracks. I turned the lamp on over my bed and Milk stirred, coughing in his sleep. He didn't wake up. I looked under the thin mattress and found the giant red knife. Fox stood hovering at the foot of the bed. He reached for the knife; only he didn't take it. His hand fell at his side.
I watched him in the shadows, the way his eyes wavered like liquid, the way
he eyed me like he'd never seen me before. The sharp, steep curves of his jawline wanted to be touched. I didn't know if he had anyone to touch them. I'd never seen him with a Dear John letter. The only mail he ever got was candy packages. He always gave them to me.
I took his wrist and he stumbled. I sat him down on my mattress. I pushed open the slide lock on the Swiss Army knife and the nail clippers swung out. It looked ridiculous. Maybe that's why Fox's mouth flickered at the corners. Lamp light spilled down the side of his sandy brown head. I took his hand and I felt him stiffen, I felt him jolt like he'd been shot. I felt the same, my skin unbearably hot, my veins painfully tight.
I cut his fingernails in short, neat squares. I couldn't get over how soft his skin felt. His fingers were slim and tan and I pretended I couldn't see them shaking. A long, sore scratch ran over his wrist. I fought to stop myself from smoothing it over with my thumb. I put his hand down and took his other hand and cut the rest of his fingernails just the same. I didn't care if they fell on the bed. The bunks were already uncomfortable to sleep in.
Fox started to say my name. I could tell by the way his mouth moved. Only the sound never came out. I put the knife down and grabbed the back of his hand. His hand went slack. I felt the edges of his fingernails with the pad of my thumb, made sure they weren't long enough to break his skin.
"Thanks," he murmured.
I opened my hand so he could let go. He could have gotten up and gone to bed and that would have been the end of it. I opened my hand but I didn't let go. He didn't let go. The back of his hand fit into my palm like it was small but it wasn't; it's just that I was big. I could feel it when he breathed, a cool mist that brushed against my arm.
He turned his hand over. His palm slid against mine. It was hot and smooth and it burned me. My stomach burned and coiled. My head felt empty on my shoulders. Fox's fingers rested against the heel of my hand. This wasn't something friends did with one another. I didn't have many friends but I knew that intuitively. I knew it the same way I knew that I was in trouble right now, more trouble than I'd ever been in before. Because his heat was dizzying; his mouth looked perfect; and his palm touching my palm was more intimate than an open-mouthed kiss.