No Surrender Soldier (16 page)

I carried Bobo and Tomas took rags and old towels I didn’t think Nana would miss. There was another reason I wanted Bobo in the shed. I didn’t want Tata and Nana to ask questions. Not tonight. I had to think this through. I was so angry I couldn’t stop shaking. My heart was still thumping, as if I had run a marathon around the island.

While Tomas helped me fix a bed of towels and rags for Bobo, headlights shone through the tool shed window. I grabbed Tomas’s arm. “Don’t tell anyone what happened!”

Tomas looked like a deer stunned by car lights.

I relaxed my grip. “I’ll tell them later.”

Tomas nodded.

“I better get home before I’m grounded for being out too late.” Tomas jumped up and opened the shed door.

“No!” I practically shouted. “Wait for my tata to drive you home.”

He cocked one shoulder and gave me a
what’s-the-big-deal?
look, then started out the door.

I bolted toward our car, waved my arms, and shouted, “Tata! Tata! Take Tomas home. He shouldn’t be out after dark.”

Tomas gave me a strange look, as if I’d lost more than a baseball in the boonies. “Eh? I’m no baby. I see myself home after dark lots.”

“No! Tata, drive him home. Please! I’ll go with you.”

Nana climbed out of the passenger seat. She looked tired. Tata stuck his head out of the car window. “No problem. Come on, Tomas. I’ll drive you.”

Nana patted Tomas’s cheek. “Tell your nana
si yu’us ma’ase
for me.”

“Will do, ma’am. I’ll t’ank her for you,” he said, then headed for the car.

I was halfway in the car when I hollered to Nana, “Lock the doors. We’ll be back shortly.”

Tata and Tomas looked at each other and scrunched their eyebrows. No one on Guam locked doors. How could I explain this?

On the way home from Tomas’s house, Tata asked me, “Son, is there somet’ing you want to tell me?”

I wanted to talk to my tata about so many things. Words had dammed up inside of me for too long and I was angry and scared and confused. But instead of spilling about the straggler in the boonies who stabbed Bobo, I blurted out, “I know I look like Tihu Tony, but who does Sammy take after?”

Tata’s head jerked toward me and he glared. “Who you t’ink he takes after?” Tata exploded like a volcano. “Me! Me!” He thumped his chest like a drum. “I’m his tata!”

My heartbeat speeded up so fast I thought it was going to explode like a grenade, if my head didn’t first. I wished I could take back my words.

“Don’t you ever question again who Sammy’s father is. Not to me, not to Sammy, and especially…” Spit flew. “… don’t you dare ever say anyt’ing to your nana. She’s been through enough hell without you giving her more grief.”

Grief. That’s what I was giving them. That’s why I couldn’t tell them anything. I buried my big mouth into my fist and leaned my splitting headache against the cool side window.

Tata drove up the dirt roadway and parked. I waited until Tata stomped into the house before I peeked through the shed door at Bobo. He was asleep. Once in the house I locked the outside doors and went straight to bed. But instead of stripping down to my underwear I laid still beneath my sheet, fully dressed in shorts and T-shirt.

What if I had to get up in a hurry?

Thoughts ran through my brain faster than a school of
manahac
in spawning season.

How long had the straggler been there?

What was under that bamboo mat staked to the ground?

What would the man do now that he knew I knew about his location?

Did he know where I lived?

Those were the questions that bothered me first. Curiosity questions. Fear questions. Self-preservation questions.

Then came the “what if” questions. Questions of conscience.

What if I told?

Who could I tell?
Humph.
See if I’d ever talk to Tata again.

What if Tatan found out?… He’d kill that Japanese soldier.

. . . What if I killed the soldier first?

Who would know? I could get Tatan’s machete and gun, and sneak into the boonies without anyone looking. I knew where he was hiding. It would be easy. I’d find the Japanese soldier, surprise him, kill him, and drag his body deeper into the jungle. No one would know.

If someone found the body later, no one would know it was me who killed him.

No one would know who the man was. Probably not even in Japan. If his family wasn’t dead already, surely they’d given up hope. He’d been missing forever. There was probably a clipboard somewhere in Japan, maybe at the emperor’s palace, or in some dusty filing cabinet. But there it was, an old brown clipboard with a rusted clasp holding together a yellowed paper that had this soldier’s name under M.I.A.—Missing In Action—or whatever they called it in Japanese.

No one would care. Surely his family had all given up on him ever being alive or coming home.

Seto cowered in his cave. His hands clutched a hard mud-covered object.

Seto had been delighted earlier to catch a coconut crab. A crab big enough for a feast! Big enough to stop the nip, nip, nipping of hunger in his belly.
Hai,
Seto was truly delighted. Carefully holding his knife and crab away from his bare flesh, Seto practically skipped like a school-boy back to the bamboo thicket that concealed his tunnel.

Something whizzed past him. Seto threw his arms over his head and ducked to the ground. He listened for gunfire. Instead he heard scratching on the jungle floor. His crab! It’d scurried away.

Seto retrieved his knife and searched beneath leaves, branches, brambles for the coconut crab. A round object, much smaller than the crab that got away, caught his eye. He squinted closer.
Ah, could it be? This far into the jungle?
Seto bent and picked up the muddy thing. A different type of delight quickened within his chest. A warm feeling covered his heart and spread to his face. His eyes rained tears. A piece of home nestled in his hands. He clutched a baseball.

He took a step toward the river to wash off mud. Tonight luck smiled upon him. Maybe she would give him another crab. He would look among trees and leaves.

Something much bigger than a crab rustled behind him. A distant voice called, “Bobo!”

No time to waste. Seto rushed toward his cave.

Too late. A wild animal growled. A boy yelled, “Bobo, no!”

A golden dog lunged through brush. His teeth threatened to rip Seto’s throat. Or at least he thought the dog might do so. He’d seen rabid dogs in China attack and tear a man apart.

Seto stabbed the dog and ripped his knife downward like gutting a deer. But he had not pushed the knife in deep enough. Only enough to wound the animal.

Quick. Quick. Boy is coming,
his thoughts screamed.

Seto ran. He’d circled back to his cave once he was sure the boy had left.

As he cowered in his cave his heart beat loud against his chest, and muscles in his arm strained against his hand squeezing the baseball. He was afraid to let go. He had already lost his dinner. He did not want to lose his memory of childhood.

Aiee.
The boy had seen him. It was the native boy Seto did not kill before. If only the dog had not barked.

Why did Seto not kill the dog and drag it back to his lair before the boy came for it?

I am as slow and weak as the snails I eat,
Seto lamented, hammering the baseball against his mouth. Dog would have filled his belly plenty.

Would the native boy and old man and golden dog with big teeth be waiting to kill or capture me?
Seto wondered as he rubbed mud off the baseball.
I should have finished them off, then they would not be a threat.

Seto tried to spit on the ball where the mud had dried. His mouth was too dry, and his tongue like sand.

Should I leave my home?

He rubbed his thumb over red threads. Such nice, tight stitches. Seto thought of his father laboring over his sewing machine. Had his father ever admired stitches on a baseball? Seto wished he could ask his father. But knew his father must be dead. Seto sighed.

I am too old to move.

He rolled the ball between his hands.

Will men come hunt me now? Or can I chance going up to hunt my supper? I will starve if I gather no food tonight.

Seto slammed the baseball to the ground.

I am starving already.

He buried his head beneath his arms. The dirty white ball mocked him. He was no longer imprisoned in his father’s tailor shop. Yet Seto still could not go outdoors and play baseball.

He tucked the ball into a box with his sewing kit. He wiped his eyes, then crept to a broken coconut shell and examined the empty brown husk. Alas, he had scraped out the last white meat for bait and did not fetch another coconut in his haste to escape watching eyes.

Seto crawled to his stove to sip final drops of river water he had boiled. He found the pan empty.
Evaporated, every drop.

He had no choice but to go up and search for food and bring back water.

Later. When Sun sleeps behind horizon and Moon shines her face above trees. At twilight I go up… for a moment… these tired bones will try once more to quench my thirst and feed this hungry flesh.

Seto picked at shredded pago bark to weave more cloth.

If I think too much, I go mad.

In the dead of night, I slipped out of bed. I pulled on blue jeans and a black long-sleeved knit shirt with an aqua surfboard on back, and “Hang Loose” printed on the front. Only “Hang Loose” was the last thing I planned to do. I dug out black socks and black leather church shoes from my closet, but didn’t put them on until I reached the tool shed.

I unlocked the front door and creaked opened the screen, pausing only long enough to hear if anyone woke up. All clear, I tiptoed to the shed, shushing Bobo as I opened the door.

Blood had seeped through the T-shirt around Bobo. I carefully unwrapped it, and winced when I tore it away from my dog’s fur that was matted with brown dried blood. I dabbed more salve onto the wound, ripped the T-shirt into strips, and tied the three cleanest cloths around him.

I stroked Bobo’s back, hugged his neck, then got up and searched for a weapon. I stretched to reach behind the oil can perched on the shelf above my head. I fingered the cold metal of the gun Tatan used to shoot Simon.

No, not the gun. Someone might hear.

I lifted Tatan’s machete from two pegs, slicing air as if sharpening a barber’s razor on a leather strap.

I couldn’t imagine hacking a man to death. Too messy.

My eyes raced over tools mounted on the wall—claw hammer, plumber’s wrench, screwdrivers…

Nothing… not there… Ah! I knew what to use.

I checked out the wheelbarrow where I’d laid the tools to dry after washing blood off them.

Seemed right. I picked up the knife I slit Simon’s throat with.

I fetched a rope and wound the cord, thumb to elbow, then hung it over my shoulder.

I rubbed Bobo behind the ears and led him back to his bed of rags. “Stay here boy,” I whispered hoarsely. “I’ve got business to take care of. No one’s going to hurt you, or Nana, again.” Bobo clapped his tail against the dirt floor as if he approved of what I was about to do.

I slipped out the door, latched it to shut Bobo in, and headed for the boonies.

At the baseball diamond I paused and stared into dense dark foliage. I listened into the darkness, trying to gain courage to press on. All I heard was the lowing of cows.
Moooo, moo.

I tried to think of Sammy and his baseball in the boonies. It would be no different than running in to find my ball. Or racing into the jungle to rescue Sammy from the enemy. I closed my eyes. Behind closed lids, I conjured up a vision of my nana crying. The tears turned into rain in a jungle where I saw Sammy cowering, scared, crying for help.

I lunged from home plate to thick underbrush without looking back. I walked past mango groves and tangantangan vines to the banyan tree. I listened for
taotaomona
spirits whistling through the leaves, but heard nothing but a mosquito
buzz, buzz
in my ear. I stepped over roots and pressed on past pandanus trees to the thicket of bamboo where Bobo had scratched something manmade.

I crouched behind a palm and cluster of tall ferns and peered into the eerie dark, searching for the Japanese straggler.

Just so the soldier didn’t spy me first.

I swatted a mosquito from my ear and listened. Crickets and bullfrogs sang,
Chirp, chirp. Croak. Ribbet. Ribbet. Chirp, chirp. Croak. Riiibbet.

Cautious… curious… I struggled with whether or not to lift the bamboo mat and see what lay beneath.

Later. After I’d taken care of him.

With no sign of the straggler near the bamboo grove, I stalked to the marshy reeds. I crouched in weeds and peered up and down the banks of Talofofo, looking for the Japanese soldier.

Everything was still as death; not a soul to be seen, beast or man.

My stomach churned. With anxiety? Relief? I wasn’t sure which.

Maybe he moved elsewhere.

I thought about giving up the hunt and going back home to my safe, comfortable bed when I heard taunting in my head.
Chicken. Buullk, bulk, bulk, bulk. Chicken. The soldiers murdered. They raped. Don’t you care? No one will know… no one…

I stood, shifted the rope back onto my shoulder, fingered the knife, and walked upstream. I thrashed through underbrush rather than risk being seen on the open banks. I searched in all directions for signs of the soldier.

Slant-eyed devil? Where are you?

Swish, swish, splash.

I halted. I squatted back down in weeds and looked at the river. Ripples circled out on the water.

Probably a dumb old fish.

I started to get up again and head back when just feet ahead of me reeds parted. I sat on my haunches, keeping my gaze on the reeds.