by Dean Hughes
Alex looked around. Everyone was standing up, staring at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to lose my temper like that.” But the words were incongruous. Everyone was still looking astounded, and Alex saw in them a new kind of respect that was exactly the kind he didn’t want.
“Duncan, I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
Duncan got up—slowly. He didn’t answer, but he also showed no interest in continuing the battle.
So Alex walked to his bunk, pulled off his sweaty fatigues, grabbed a towel, and headed for the shower. And when he came back, with a towel wrapped around him, the room fell quiet again. Alex sat down, pulled on some clean underwear, and then lay down on his bunk. When he glanced toward Duncan’s bunk, he saw that the bed was empty.
It was then that Curtis Bentley, who bunked next to Alex, rolled over on his side. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “I wish I hadn’t done that.”
“I’m a Christian too,” Curtis said. “A Baptist. I understand what you’re saying. I don’t like to hurt people either.”
“Where did Duncan go?”
“To the infirmary. He thinks you broke his nose.”
“Really?”
“Look, Thomas,” Bentley whispered, “I don’t know what’s right. Duncan had it coming if you ask me—even if that’s not what the Bible teaches. The Bible also says not to kill, and here we are going off to war. If we don’t kill, I hate to think what kind of world we’re going to have.”
“I think we can hate evil without hating people.”
“How can a guy do that?”
“I don’t know. I sure didn’t do it tonight.”
Bentley chuckled. “Well, I don’t think anyone around here is worried anymore about fighting next to you.”
Alex rather liked that, whether he should have or not. But it wasn’t what his father had asked of him; wasn’t what he had asked of himself.
Chapter 8
Wally was in the middle of a jungle in Tayabas Province. He didn’t know exactly where that was, but he knew he and the men on his work detail were supposed to be cutting a road through the jungle and out to the ocean. In the beginning, the Japanese guards had promised that the detail would last a month and food would be plentiful. But he had been in this jungle six weeks now. The canned meat and other foodstuffs were gone. The prisoners were now living on a diet of nothing but rice. They cooked it themselves each night, boiling it in a wheelbarrow over a fire. The rice on the bottom burned, that in the middle turned pasty, and that on the top remained virtually raw. But that was the best they could do, and the prisoners, most of whom had come to this place already sick, were dying fast from starvation and from the new diseases they were catching. Half of the three hundred men were already dead.
It was early August and still the rainy season. It rained every day in the jungle, off and on, but the heat never let up. Wally and his friend George Robbins—an airman from his former squadron—had teamed up just as Wally and Warren and Jack had done before. They had rigged up Wally’s shelter-half to keep a little rain off, but they were never dry, day or night. And the truth was, George was going downhill fast. Back at O’Donnell he had survived dysentery, but only barely, and he had come to Tayabas still weak. He had done his best to work, and to eat, but the dysentery had returned, and he was being decimated by the diarrhea and lost nutrition.
George could no longer work, and the Japanese had given up on forcing him—as they had had to do with many of the men. That meant those who could stay on their feet—less than a hundred now—were receiving great pressure to keep the road project progressing. But the truth was, the road was going nowhere. The soft, moist dirt of the jungle was easy enough to shovel, but roots snaked through all the soil. Some of the roots were hard as stone, and the men had nothing more than little handsaws to cut with. Each day they worked as diligently as their strength and tools would allow, while the guards increased the abuse and pressure to push ahead, but significant progress was impossible. Some of the guards knew enough English to insult the men, to tell them they were weaklings, unable to hold up as Japanese soldiers would do, but each night the guards returned to their own camps, where they ate much better meals, and they rarely came near the prisoners’ camp—probably because they feared the diseases there.
When the men returned from their road work each day, another job was usually waiting. Often, a man had died that day and had to be buried. The sick were too weak to dig graves, and so those who could work in the day had to work in the evening. Again, the dirt was not hard to move, but the roots and vines made digging in the jungle a terrible chore. Most of the graves didn’t get very deep, and everyone knew that roaming dogs or wild animals often dug into the graves and devoured the bodies.
One morning when Wally heard the guards shouting for the men to get up, he pulled himself up from where he had been sleeping on the wet ground under the shelter-half. For Wally, getting up in the morning was a daily battle with pain and exhaustion, but today he saw that George was almost gone. Lately George had been able to get very little rice down, and yet he continued to vomit and suffer with diarrhea. Wally had seen the blood in his body fluids, the pus, and that was always the sign that the end was near.
Wally helped George from the little shelter and sat him down, leaning him against a tree. Then he brought him some water. “Are you comfortable like that?” he asked.
George stared at him for a time, as if he hadn’t understood, but then he said, “Wally, I’m not going to make it.”
“Of course you are. You’re going to beat this thing. You need to keep eating, and you’ll come through it again, like you did before.”
But Wally didn’t believe a word of that, and he knew George didn’t. “I need to talk to you about a few things,” George said.
The guards usually roused the men—from a distance—and then gave them time to cook their morning rice. Wally always helped with the cooking, but this morning he stepped over to one of the soldiers from his work crew, Alan West. “Alan,” he said, “can you help with the rice? I’ve got to help George.”
“Sure,” Alan said. He was one of the strongest men on the detail and, like Wally, had been able to keep working.
Wally knelt next to George again. The birds were making a racket in the trees, and it was actually a pretty morning, the rain having stopped for the moment, and the sunlight filtering down through the dense forest. But the humidity was so heavy that a person would never have felt dry even if the rain hadn’t pelted down so much of the time. The mosquitoes were bad in the morning, too, and the men knew how dangerous they were, but there was no way to fight them off all the time.
George was leaning back with his eyes closed, and Wally could hear his labored, sputtering breath. George had been a big man at one time, thick but solid—and handsome. He had had a shy, country-boy smile with bright white teeth. But now his face was gray, and his dirty beard and hair were tangled and matted. Wally saw nothing that reminded him of the man he had known. One of his sleeves was torn away, and the arm that was showing was nothing but bones. His face was all bones too, and his eyes were as dull as his skin.
“Wally, I know you’re a Mormon,” George said. His voice was weak and gravelly. He didn’t open his eyes. “My parents are Mormons. They joined your church quite a few years ago. My dad is a branch president up in Montana now. Or at least he was when I left.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
“I didn’t want you to know. I feel bad about some of the things I done during my life.” He stopped and took a breath. His eyes came open, and then he let them go shut again. Wally wanted to wipe the moisture off George’s forehead and clean up his face a little, but there was nothing dry to do it with. “My dad always wanted me to learn more about the Mormons. He thought I maybe ought to join. But I didn’t ever listen to him much. I just made fun of him.”
“I wasn’t so different. And I was a member. We do those things when
we’re young.”
“I know. But I’m not going to get another chance. I don’t know what I might have done—if all this hadn’t happened—but I’ve seen what kind of guy you are, and I think maybe I would have joined now, if I coulda made it home.”
“Come on, George. You’re going to be all right.”
“Don’t, Wally. Just don’t.”
Wally nodded, knowing full well what he meant.
George lay there and breathed for a while. Wally knew he was reaching for some strength. “I need you to do a couple of things for me, if you don’t mind,” he finally said.
“Hey, I’ll do anything. You know that.”
“Yeah, I guess I do.” He opened his eyes and looked intently at Wally. “When you get back to the States, will you look up my parents? Tell them that I’m sorry I wasn’t a better son to them. And tell them that I love them. I don’t think I told ‘em that since I was just a little kid.”
“Sure,” he said.
“My dad’s name is George, same as mine. They live just outside of Butte in a little town called Walkerville.”
“Okay.”
George took some time to breathe again. “Here’s the other thing, Wally. I don’t want dogs to eat me. Will you make sure I get buried deep enough so they can’t get to me?”
“Sure. Of course.” But this was a little too much for Wally. He had seen so much that he thought he was beyond emotion, but now he felt a shakiness in his chest, his hands.
“Okay.” George let his eyes go shut again, and Wally was afraid he would die at any moment now that he had said what he had to say.
“Look, George, you’ve got a canteen right here.” Wally put his hand on it. “Try to eat a little rice when it’s ready.”
“No. I can’t.”
Wally let his breath seep out. “Okay. I understand.” He remained there on his knees for a time. “Listen, George, there’s something Mormons believe that you ought to know. We believe a person goes to a waiting place when he dies. It’s not heaven; it’s where people wait until the judgment comes. But you’ll be able to accept the gospel there, and someone can perform your baptism for you, back on earth. We do it in the temples. If you don’t make it home, your parents can do that for you. I’m sure they will.”
“Okay. That’s good. That’ll mean a lot to Mom and Dad.”
“I’ll tell them what you said—that you were thinking you might like to join the Church.”
“Yes. Tell them that. That’ll help them too. But Wally, don’t tell them how bad it was here. Just tell them you buried me, and it was a pretty spot, or something like that. I don’t want them to have any of this in their heads.”
“Yeah. I understand. I’ll just tell them you got sick.”
“Okay.”
Wally stood up. “I’d better check on the rice,” he said. “Those guys burn it if I’m not there.”
“Sure. Go ahead.” Wally turned and took a couple of steps away. But George said, “Wally.”
Wally turned back.
“I hope you make it. I think you will.”
“Yeah, I think so. But . . . you know. All it takes is—”
“No. You’re going to make it. I feel sure about that. And then you can talk to my folks.”
“Thanks, George. I’m sorry things turned out this way.” Wally was surprised to feel tears on his face.
“Yeah, well, that place you talked about—that waiting place—sounds pretty good right now.”
“It is, George. I really believe that. And I believe we’ll see each other again—you know, on the other side—no matter what happens to us here.”
“Good. That makes it a little easier.” But George was exhausted now, his voice hardly audible.
“I’ll check back with you before I leave.”
So Wally helped with the rice, and then he tried to eat enough of the disgusting stuff to sustain him through the day. When he checked on George, he got very little response. Wally was sure the end couldn’t be far off.
So Wally marched out to the road with the six men in his work group, and he faced another day like all the others. But this day seemed more than he could take. His energy was gone already after what he had just experienced with his friend. Wally had developed a way of letting a certain numbness fill him, as though he were existing outside his weary body, but today George had forced reality on him. He admitted to himself that all the men in this detail might die. The Japanese were not backing off; in fact, they were adding pressure as the numbers diminished.
Wally wondered how much longer he could keep his strength. He felt sick all the time now, but at least he had been able to continue to work, and he felt sure that was best. He knew that when men finally lay down, they didn’t last much longer. Wally could feel the fever in his body at times, the chilling, and he felt the diminished power in his muscles. His ankles and legs were swollen so badly he could hardly stand the pain at night, and that probably meant pellagra, which could break men down if it got bad enough. Still, he was eating, and he was holding his food down. And he got up each morning and kept moving. He couldn’t let himself think about the end of the work detail, the length of the war, or anything else of that kind. He simply had to get himself through another day and then deal with the one after that when it came.
In the middle of the morning Wally was cutting away at a big root when his arms got so tired that he stopped to take a rest. He always had a sense of about how long he could do that before the guard would yell at him, but he pushed the time this morning, decided to hear the Japanese curses before he began to saw again. When the yelling finally started, it came with force. Without warning, the guard’s boot flashed at him, struck him in the ribs and knocked him over.
“Work! Work!” the guard was shouting. “I kick.”
Wally pulled himself up to his knees, took one long breath, and then began to saw. He could hardly breathe, but he knew better than to hold off any longer. He had seen far too many men beaten to death right before his eyes.
Wally was angry for only a moment. He hadn’t the mental energy even to cling to his wrath this morning. What he knew was that the guards were playing a game that seemed prescribed for them. The guard who had kicked him was a thin guy with a narrow face. The men called him “hatchet” behind his back. He wasn’t as brutal as some, but he was moody, and no one ever knew what to expect from him. The fact was, and Wally knew it, this detail was no party for the guards either, even if they ate better than the prisoners. They still had to live in this miserable jungle, and they must have been receiving pressure from their officers to finish the job.
Hatchet had calmed a little now. “Work. No kick,” he said, and strangely, Wally thought he heard a kind of apology in the tone. It was so hard to know what was in the minds of the guards. Wally wondered what kind of perverse ideas could have been battered so deeply into their brains that they could treat other humans this way.
But Wally didn’t expect answers. He simply kept working, and he hoped his ribs weren’t hurt too badly. One more pain actually didn’t make that much difference, but he didn’t want broken bones or internal injuries. No matter what else Wally felt, he wanted to live, and he believed he was going to do it.
So Wally used his favorite defense, almost his only one. He imagined himself at home. Sometimes he walked around his neighborhood, looked at every house, thought of the people who lived in each, remembered the kids he had grown up with. Sometimes he took himself up to Parley’s Ravine, near the mouth of the canyon, and splashed in the cold water of the creek, or he chased after horned toads. He even played at war—the running, shouting, “I got you” kind of war, where everyone went home at the end of the day.
Today he took refuge in his favorite thought. He pictured Lorraine, tried to remember her on certain special occasions—the night at Lagoon when they had danced in the parking lot to “I Get Along Without You Very Well.” He let some of the music filter through his mind, but he knew better than to think about the words.
He thought of the time the two of them had sneaked onto the Country Club golf course and he had waded into the pond to steal golf balls. Sometimes, without warning, he would hear that husky way that she laughed. But as always, he came back to the last time he had talked to her, when she was standing on the porch in a pretty blue polka-dot dress. She had told him that their relationship would never work. But Wally didn’t choose to hear those words. He saw her: her slim waist and the A-line shape of her skirt, her beautiful legs; and he saw her pretty hair, illuminated by the last of that day’s sun. He heard her say, “Wally.” Then, when he had turned around, she had whispered, “I love you, too.”
Lorraine was the most precious memory of his life, and in his mind she represented everything he had lost here in this jungle—the softness and goodness and rightness of people who didn’t hate, didn’t kill. Lorraine had become a symbol of Salt Lake, of the Church, of home and neighborhood, of love and warmth. He remembered the times when he had kissed her—moments almost too exquisite to recall.
He let his mind drift to his family. He pictured Gene, probably tall now, and about to start playing his senior year of football. Or did all of that still go on back home? What had changed because of the war? He hoped there were still football games, and cheerleaders. He needed to believe that those things were still happening. Someday he would sit in a stadium again and cheer for some team he cared about. He wanted to go back and find everything waiting for him, absolutely unchanged.
The day passed, slowly and tediously, as always, and at the end Wally felt some extra pain in his ribs, but not enough to worry about. Hatchet kept the crew going until everyone was exhausted beyond the point that they were producing any real work, and then he commanded them, “Go!” This was the word he always used to announce the end of a day’s work, but Wally thought he heard more frustration in it than usual. He knew as well as anyone that the men had accomplished so little that day that another year at the same pace would not get them beyond this jungle. And these men didn’t have another year.