by Ward Parker
“Why the hell would you want to treat any nigger children?” Weaver said while he shaved in a basin placed on his desk.
“These children are casualties from our shelling. I don’t see the military benefit of killing children. Besides, Polo is a friendly town now. We need to win over more of the populace if we’re going to subdue them.”
“Oh, the old ‘hearts and minds’ nonsense? I would wager that General MacArthur doesn’t give a water buffalo’s shit about hearts and minds.”
“Captain, you and I are physicians. And we’re talking about babies. Babies.”
“All right, all right. Go up there and do some basic first aid, but you’re not bringing any of them back to the hospital. We’re here to keep our men alive, not to be a charity hospital.”
Follett saluted and left to get Simms and gather first aid supplies. There was a surplus of wagons and carriages available that had been commandeered from the more prosperous Filipino homes during the advance. They selected one that looked like it could handle rough roads and had a chestnut mare still hitched to it. After signing out a modest amount of supplies, they looked for the woman and boy.
The woman was gone. The boy was still waiting.
“I ride with you,” he said. “I show you the way.”
Simms found the main road and took it south, away from the fighting and toward Polo. Soon, the firing by the gunboat faded beneath the songs of birds and buzzing of insects. A few miles later, the boy insisted they take a turn left on a narrow path headed west.
“This isn’t the right way,” Simms said.
“Insurrectos up there. We go around.”
“Do what he says,” Follett ordered. “A courier was ambushed on the main road only yesterday.”
“These damn savages have no honor at all, I tell you,” Simms said, paying no heed that the boy could hear him. “Not a single soul on these hell-blasted islands has any sense of honesty or morals. They’re just heathens, all of ‘em. And I don’t know about you, but I signed up to fight Spaniards, not heathens.”
“We didn’t know the Spanish would give up so quickly,” Follett said. “And we didn’t know that we’re fighting to conquer the territory instead of give it back to its people like we did in Cuba.”
“Well if you ask me, these monkeys would be better off under Uncle Sam’s boot. Problem is, the only way to beat ‘em is to kill all of ‘em and that’s gonna take years. I’ve only got fourteen months left, myself. Can’t wait to get out of this hellhole.”
Follett glanced at the boy to see if he was offended. The boy simply stared ahead with a grim expression. But when Follett glanced back at him, the boy darted into a bamboo thicket and disappeared.
“The boy’s gone! You knew he spoke English—you didn’t have to say all that about his people right in front of him.”
“Good riddance to the little bugger. Let’s go back to camp.”
“But we can’t allow those children…”
The words died in his throat as the insurrectos slipped out of the bamboo and blocked the trail.
“That boy betrayed us!” Simms said. “I knew it! Goddamn goo-goos—can’t trust a single one of ‘em.”
There were about a dozen men. Two aimed ancient-looking rifles while the others were armed only with bolos. They wore loose-fitting white clothing and straw hats with wide brims, except for one who had on a Filipino Army officer’s khaki uniform, torn and stained. This one, obviously their leader, stepped forward. He had lighter skin and more European-like features than the others. He wore spectacles and had the bearing of the well-educated.
“Doctor, thank you for coming,” he spoke in cultured, Spanish-accented English. “We will escort you for your safety.”
Simms moved his hand slowly toward the Springfield rifle behind the seat. Follett didn’t carry a firearm.
“I was asked to help orphans in Polo,” Follett said. “That’s American-controlled territory.”
“You’re going to help a child in Ligga. A child your army shot.”
“What’s so important about a single kid?” Simms said.
“He’s my only son,” the officer said. “There are no trained Filipino doctors left in this province, so I am forced to take this more unusual course.”
“We’re prisoners-of-war now, Doc,” Simms muttered.
The officer nodded to his men and they advanced on the two Americans, surrounding them.
“Get down and follow me,” the officer said. “Our route can only be traveled on foot.” He turned to his men. “Get their weapons.”
Simms hesitated, but wisely decided not to grab the rifle. They climbed down from the wagon and were roughly searched by two of the bolo men while the riflemen kept them in their sights. The rest of the men unhitched the horse from the wagon and tied the supplies to the saddle or piled them on the horse’s back. The packages that didn’t fit were carried by some of the men. One lucky man took possession of Simms’ rifle. Follett and Simms were then pushed and prodded into a single-file column with bolo men in front and behind them, the horse being led at the rear. The column slipped through a bamboo thicket and then along a trail that wound through a tropical forest.
“I spent my childhood in this part of Luzon,” the officer said. “I know all the villages and towns around here. Every single one the Americans have advanced through has been destroyed. Houses burned. Livestock slaughtered.”
Follett remembered passing through a village and seeing the destruction the officer described. The stacked rows of dead insurgents and villagers haunted him, but also the sight of an entire pen of hogs with their throats cut. It bothered him not just for the cruelty but the utter wastefulness of it and the starvation it would create for the surviving villagers.
“Your troops have been ordered to not take prisoners, killing all of our soldiers who lay down their arms, killing the wounded, killing civilians who are in the army’s path. I have heard you are ordered to shoot every male older than ten years of age. My son is nine years old. He was shot while feeding the chickens for his mother.”
Follett remained silent. He hoped Simms would do the same.
“I am happy to die for freedom,” the officer continued, “but my Manuel is an innocent child who does not deserve to die.”
No child deserves to die, thought Follett.
The insurgents and their prisoners climbed a long, gradual hill where the land was rockier and the underbrush more sparse. It was somewhat cooler beneath the forest canopy. At the hill’s crest, Follett got a brief glimpse through the trees of a lush valley below them where a river wound, nestled by undulating forested hills. They came upon a small stream and followed it down the other side of the hill, toward the river. At times the stream formed mini-cascades among mossy boulders. Once, Follett just missed stepping on a green snake that sped across the trail and disappeared beneath thick leaves.
Follett tried to focus his thoughts on the task at hand; he mentally rehearsed care for gunshot wounds, the variations based on the location of the wound and the endless possible complications. He didn’t want to think about being a prisoner and the fact that it might mean his death. He was a doctor on a mission of mercy, transcending military sides. He would comport himself with dignity and professionalism and expect the same treatment in return. Not that he had any reason to believe he’d receive it.
A whistle up ahead at the front of the column and suddenly everyone dropped to their stomachs on the ground. The officer turned around to catch his prisoners’ eyes and made hand gestures for them to stay down and be quiet. The soldier leading the horse took it off the trail and cradled its head, stroking it and trying to keep it calm.
Was it an American patrol? Follett feared that Simms would recklessly shout to it putting them both in mortal danger from their captors.
Instead, the air grew colder and Follett saw fear in Simms’ eyes. One of the bolo men turned to check on them and fear shone in his eyes, too. The cold came from a north wind that began suddenly, makin
g leaves quiver and palm fronds shake. With over five months in this country, Follett had never experienced a wind this cold and penetrating. He realized that the forest was silent, except for the rustling of the wind. Not a single bird, frog, or insect made a sound.
Obscured at first by the sound of the wind but growing louder came the sounds of footfalls. A large creature drawing closer.
Movement in the corner of Follett’s eyes made him look to the left. Something walked behind a screen of bamboo. It was large and dark and it slowed as it got near, sensing their presence. Follett couldn’t see it clearly enough to identify what it was.
The horse snorted and whinnied, despite the soldier hugging its neck and whispering in its ear.
The creature stopped and sniffed loudly. Branches snapped as it began to move toward them.
Follett glanced at the horse. Its eyes bulged and nostrils quivered, but it didn’t make a sound. The soldier who held it was frozen in fright.
Then the creature turned and resumed its original course, moving along parallel to and finally ahead of them, not stopping again, striding forward without a trace of concern about the soldiers lying on their stomachs in the undergrowth.
The wind died down and stopped as abruptly as it had begun and the buzzing of insects and piping of birds resumed.
The Filipinos spoke with low voices in Tagalog, still remaining on the ground, until the officer barked at them and they rose hesitantly to their feet. Follett brushed ants from the front of his trousers.
“My God, what was that creature?” Follett asked.
“It was nothing. Come, we have lost valuable time.”
When they finally reached the river, it was hot and humid again. Mosquitoes buzzed Follett’s ears until the party left the shade of the forest and stepped into the sunny ground beside the river and the mosquitoes thinned out. The river was wide and the water was dark with tannin, but ripples caused by numerous shoals indicated it was shallow.
The officer led them across. The water was knee-deep and the current wasn’t strong, but two thirds of the way across the bottom dropped and they were up to their chests. The horse swam, its neck extended, the packages tied to its saddle pulled through the water.
“Tell the men to hold the medical supplies above the water,” Follett said.
The officer shouted the translation, but one of the shorter men had already dunked a package of gauze. The bottom rose steeply and soon they were in shallows and then on the opposite bank. They walked alongside the river for a couple of miles and then, as it took a sharp bend to the right, they came upon a village.
It was a small settlement of a few dozen shacks and small homes surrounded by fields. A low wall of forest stood about three hundred yards away. Most of the homes were made of wood in the common rural architecture, having tall hip roofs made of palm thatch with steeply sloping fronts and backs and narrower sloping sides. A few carabao, the long-horned water buffalo that served as the Filipino beast of burden, grazed in a grassy area by the river, their haunches quivering to dislodge the flies that blanketed them. As the party neared the village, Follett saw chickens pecking and scratching around the huts. No people were visible.
“This is my cousin’s village,” the officer said.
“Where is everyone?” Follett asked.
“Aside from a small detachment of my men, there are only women and children here. All the village men are gone—dead, fighting, or hiding in the mountains. Even the old men. It’s not safe even for them.”
They followed a dirt road past the homes and smaller huts, stopping at a house with a thatched-palm roof like the rest. The men brought the supplies inside. One of the riflemen climbed a bamboo ladder behind the house onto the roof where he lay below the peak in a sniper’s position.
Follett and Simms followed the officer up a few stairs and inside. A wooden floor, built a few feet aboveground for flood protection, was furnished with a combination of roughly hewn handmade furniture and a few finer Spanish pieces—tables and chairs, cupboards and oil lamps. A curtain separated the main room from a bedroom. The officer pushed the curtain aside.
When Follett saw the boy’s condition, his confidence plummeted and he wished he could be anywhere other than here.
* * *
It wasn’t exactly a dream; it was a dream of a dream, the prophetic one Clemens had in his early twenties when he was training to be a riverboat pilot. Like the original dream, he was in his sister’s house, lying in the guest bedroom, when a great wave of sorrow woke him and prodded him out of bed. He walked barefoot across the smooth pine floor and opened the door without bothering to put on a robe. The room next door was the second-floor sitting room and through its open door he saw sunlight bathing the Oriental rug.
Something was drawing him into the sitting room but he didn’t want to go. No, there was something tragic in there and he did not want to see it. But, still, his feet slid in small steps into the hallway and closer to the room. A grandfather clock ticked austerely from within. There was someone, or something, in the room that he was required to confront.
He arrived at the doorway and looked inside. There, on the far side of the room, a coffin lay supported by two chairs, one on each end. It was an ornate metallic casket, its lid open, and it was backlit by sunlight streaming in the windows behind it so Clemens could not see clearly the face of the man who lay inside, wearing one of Clemens’ suits, a large bouquet of white roses with a red one at its center lying upon his breast.
Clemens knew who it was, of course. It was his younger brother, Henry, who had died in the boiler explosion that destroyed the Pennsylvania, the riverboat on which Clemens had found a position as a mud clerk for Henry. The first time he had had this dream was weeks before his brother died. And later, when he visited his brother’s body in the Cotton Exchange in Memphis, it had been a scene exactly like his dream, including the metal coffin and an identical bouquet of roses.
Why was he having this dream again?
As he approached the coffin, though he was practically blinded by the sunlight in the windows, he finally recognized the person in the coffin. And his heart sank as he realized this might be another prophetic dream, but one that foretold a different death.
For the person lying in the coffin was Frank Follett.
Clemens wrestled himself out of the dream until he woke, drenched in sweat, in his bed in the Royal Poinciana. His heart raced.
He ought to warn Follett. But warn him of what?
Chapter Eighteen
HEIR OF SHIPPING MAGNATE KILLED IN FLORIDA
PALM BEACH, Fla. March 24th. Walter Spence, son of cargo fleet owner F.W. Spence, was killed yesterday in Palm Beach, Florida, the victim of an accidental fall, according to authorities. He was a guest at the Royal Poinciana Hotel. There were no witnesses, but hotel authorities said Mr. Spence was found at the bottom of a staircase with a broken neck. His body has been shipped by rail to the family estate in Long Island.
—New York Times
* * *
Thinking of Isabel, Follett headed home to the city where memories of her were sprinkled upon every familiar place like pollen spread by the wind. Florida East Coast Railroad to Jacksonville, changed there to the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad; waited an extra twenty minutes while the private railcars of some people returning from Palm Beach were shunted onto the rear of the second train. Changed again in Richmond. Tried unsuccessfully to sleep, a coal ember from the locomotive drifted in the open window and left a burn mark on his coat. He must have fallen asleep after all, torn from dreams of kissing her and holding her beneath a horsehide blanket during a carriage ride. Waking up as the train raced through the Meadowlands of New Jersey at dawn: tall brick smokestacks from factories appeared on the distant horizon and a glimpse of the gray buildings of lower Manhattan.
They passed through the tunnel beneath the Hudson River and soon, amid a metallic screeching of tight turns and clicking over switch points, they emerged into the daylight in the rows upon
rows of tracks leading into Pennsylvania Station. Leaving the cavernous station, stepping out onto Eighth Avenue, the cacophony struck him like a wave: shouting newsboys, clattering horse hoofs, hack drivers for hire emitting sharp whistles to grab your attention, the drivers of drays shouting as they nearly collided in the frantic horse-drawn vehicle traffic, and the occasional sputtering of a motor car mixed in. It was a rude contrast to the quiet of Palm Beach.
It was still cold up here; ladies wearing coats trimmed in ermine and long woolen skirts that swept along the sidewalks, men in overcoats with fur collars wreathed in frosty breath. Follett saw more homburg hats than he had last season. The cold air was fresh to his lungs used to humid Florida air, but the effect was made less pleasant by the sharp odor of coal smoke and fresh horse manure and from somewhere the smell of frying potatoes.
Cutting through the constant flow of pedestrians, he caught the eye of a driver who grabbed his valise as he climbed into the hansom cab. Follett gave the address of Mrs. William Stockhurst to the driver. Folded in his pocket was the only true hope he had of getting in to see her: a personal letter of introduction from Sam Clemens signing it as Mark Twain, and a telegram from Henry H. Rogers, Clemens’ industrialist friend who personally knew the Stockhursts.
At the intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and Twenty-Third Street, they passed the fantastical, triangle-shaped skyscraper known as the Flatiron Building, nearing completion. A lot of progress had occurred since he left, with only a few floors of exposed steel skeleton poling up above its terra-cotta face. Turning left on Twenty-Third, they went east to Lexington Avenue and then south to Gramercy Park.
Gloria Stockhurst lived in a brownstone townhouse directly facing the small, leafy park and the wrought-iron fence surrounding it. The story went that her father-in-law purchased the house once she made it clear she refused to live in the mansion her husband had built for her on Fifth Avenue.
Follett climbed the stairs to the front door, pressed the electric doorbell and a woman shouted from inside. He waited but no one answered. He tried the heavy brass knocker. More shouting erupted. Finally the door opened. A large but exhausted older woman answered. She was not in a good mood.