by P. F. Kluge
“Okay, boys,” Camper said, shoving some pesos out the window into Serafin’s hands. Serafin thanked him. Flash remained silent. When Harding glanced his way, their eyes met. Harding waved as they drove away and Flash smiled back. Then they disappeared into the crowd. Day laborers.
“Don’t we need them to help us unload?” asked Harding.
“Security,” Camper replied. “The fewer people who know where we leave this stuff, the better.”
“Who knows?”
“Uncle Harrison. Me. You. My three men. All Americans. One of us better live, that’s all I can say . . .”
They stashed the treasure in an abandoned mine shaft outside of town and returned to Camp John Hay at dusk. Harding had known John Hay since childhood. The green and white bungalows, the tennis courts, dining halls and gardens all reminded him of summer camps he’d seen in Georgia, resorts from which deer and duck and trout, not armies, were meant to be attacked. John Hay was a relaxed and playful place he’d roamed through freely, scooting past sentries who were no more menacing than school crossing guards. And now, with the army down on Bataan, with windows nailed shut, chairs folded and piled on verandahs, it felt as if the place had shut down for the season. The sadness of autumn, campfire counselors, storytellers, lifeguards all gone back to school, not to war.
Camper drove down a path that went past some cottages, through the golf course, to a barn and a corral full of horses.
“We’ve got everything we need. Guns, ammunition, medicine, food, a portable radio, though I don’t know who there’ll be to talk to.”
“Where do you figure on riding to?” Harding asked.
“You know. The mountains. Uncle Harrison says you know your way around. You want to ride with us?”
“Is Uncle Harrison coming along too?”
“I don’t know. It was you he wondered about. What do you say?”
“Okay.”
Harding remembered that moment by the corral. It was one of those clarifying moments when the future opened and revealed itself, like when you came around a curve in the road and saw the land in front of you and you knew that this is where you were headed, this was where you were starting from, and these were the men who’d be going with you. And you looked at a man like Charley Camper and said to yourself, the same way you’d say it if you were introduced to the woman you were going to marry or the man who was going to kill you: so here you are. At last. And Charley Camper, looking at Harding, must have felt the same way too.
“We’re going to go through a hell of a lot together, aren’t we?” Charley asked.
“Yes.”
Empty chairs and sheet music lingered on the bandstand, but the musicians were gone, and bartenders, cooks, and waitresses, and all the people whose dance contests, amateur theatricals, steak nights, raffles had turned the Baguio Officers Club into an American place.
“There they are!” Polshanski cried, hopping off a barstool when Camper and Harding arrived. “Now we can get started. What’ll it be?”
“Your best scotch,” Charley responded. “And, Polshanski?”
“Yeah?”
“The older it is, the better it gets. It’s not like milk.”
“Pick yourself,” Polshanski answered, placing three bottles on the bar, and then a bucket of ice. “When you get done with these, we’ll see about a refill.”
Meade was at the piano, playing a barely acceptable “Now Is the Hour.” He gave up as soon as he heard a truck pulling up in front. “Damn, it’s Sudul!”
Three girls on each arm, Sudul entered the room where MacArthur, Pershing, and Quezon once had waltzed. He led the women into the middle of the dance floor, pivoted at the center of the line, and the six bewildered bar girls made a slow, debutante-ish circle.
“Party time,” he announced. “It’s Christmas, New Year’s, and God Bless America. Thanks to my brains and your money, this party’s been paid for in advance. Any questions?”
“Well, that’s damn nice of you,” Meade said, staring hungrily, A horny, healthy, single-minded farm boy. Where’d he learn to play the piano?
“I’ll take the pretty ones,” Polshanski said. “Drinks are over here.”
“Hold it!” Camper shouted. “Damn it, Sudul, make some introductions.”
“I thought everybody was pretty well acquainted,” Sudul said.
“Well, you forgot yourself, Mr. Smooth Guy,” Charley said. “Ladies, this is Harry Harding. A missionary boy. Harry gets first choice.”
It was a joke, Harding thought, a bad joke. He waited for the others to laugh, but when no one laughed, when they all stood there, even the girls, waiting for him to make his selection, he faltered and blushed.
“Harry . . .”
“First choice for the dance?”
“Sure, that’s what I mean,” Camper said, winking broadly. “Where’s that record player?”
Al Jolson singing “Avalon.” A tune across the world, a relic of the past, a song that could be inexpressibly sad, when played in a colony about to be overrun. Harding had chosen the first girl he came to. The others were dancing too. Harding danced awkwardly, a mechanical box step, holding the puzzled Anita at arm’s length, talking about Sagada.
“Listen, Harry,” Camper whispered. “This is a dance, not a drill. And I could fire a howitzer between your cock and her crotch, and all I’d hit is air.”
It took time for the party to start, but in an hour the fundamental sadness of the occasion was almost overcome. If people can celebrate at wakes, drink and brawl, there’s no reason they can’t dance at the funeral of a nation. And when they tired of dancing, the girls plopped themselves in easy chairs and clamored for a movie. Polshanski dug out the projector, which had been the heart of the club’s imaginary life. They chose The Westerner, with Walter Brennan, but the problem was that whoever ran the projector was separated from the girl he’d paired off with. Harding volunteered. He’d remember that scene forever: the cavernous officers club, the small stream of light from the projector, like a flashlight or a searchlight, and the western stuff onscreen, racing horses and raw towns, a movie fantasy that flickered while Japanese moved through the night, and during the movies one couple or another crept off, a rustle, a moan and a giggle, the girls with their eyes on the screen while the soldiers mounted and moved. Harding leaned over to Anita, the puzzled, dutiful Anita.
“Watch the projector carefully,” Harding whispered, and the smell of her hair almost made him change his mind. “I’ll be back,” he said.
CHAPTER 13
Harrison Wingfield’s house was lit up, a light in every window, lights on the verandah, lights shining out across the grass, so that the place resembled an ocean liner in night seas, the foundering Titanic, maybe, settling into the depths with staterooms aglow. And as Harding came closer that last night, it seemed there might be lifeboats huddling alongside, for he saw groups of Filipinos on the lawn, talking quietly, singing, spitting, peeing against trees, all the things that Filipinos seemed to do at night.
It was touching to see how the Filipinos rallied around a man like Uncle Harrison in his hour of need. He was sitting on a wicker chair that was like a throne, a half dozen Filipinos around him, like faithful servants who would carry the deposed king to safety someplace.
“Hello, Harry,” Uncle Harrison greeted him. “I wasn’t expecting you till later.”
“I came back early,” Harding replied. He nodded and smiled at the Filipinos. For the first time, he noticed they were armed, every one of them, not only with machetes but with pistols and rifles too, and he guessed these loyalists must be a part of some campaign Uncle Harrison had devised.
“Hello, everybody,” Harding said. Flash, his partner in the morning, was on the verandah. “What’s cooking? This is very impressive.”
“Very impressive,” Uncle Harrison repeated with a startling bitterness. Harding looked around, wondering what he’d missed. There was anger all through Uncle Harrison. You could see it in his eyes, the set of
his mouth, the way he smoked, rather than savored, his cigar.
“These gentlemen,” Uncle Harrison said, “are workers off my plantation in Pampangas. All members of a farmers union that has been after me for years to give them forty, fifty, sixty percent of the rice harvest. The numbers keep changing, of course, because whatever they get, they want more and in the final analysis, the numbers don’t matter, because the goal is one hundred percent for them and zero for me. I know it and so do they.”
Uncle Harrison poured and drank some brandy. No smell, no sip this time—he drank it. Harding sensed how wrong he had been. The people who had rushed to be with Uncle Harrison were his attackers, not defenders. Even the lights that shone through the house had been turned on to discourage pilfering, he later learned.
“Harry, you may wonder why anyone would want to negotiate a labor contract when there’s a war. I wonder about it myself. Why they come on this last night to press their case against me . . .”
“Sir!” It was one of the Filipinos, darker than average, taller too. He had been leaning against the verandah. Now he stood up and prepared to speak and the speech was aimed at Harding.
“In war and peace. We grow rice. Americans or Japanese. We grow rice. And—”
The man broke off. Was his lack of English stopping him? Or his anger?
“Well, I won’t negotiate,” Harrison Wingfield said. “You can all go home, as far as I’m concerned. Negotiate with the Japs.”
“Sir.” It was Flash.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Felipe Olmos,” Flash replied. He pointed to the previous speaker. “My brother, Juan.”
“Well?”
“When the war is over, will you return?”
“Who said I was leaving?”
“I see,” Flash nodded. “Sir, we are not leaving either. And someday, sir, we’ll talk.”
Flash glanced at his brother, nodded, and the men on the porch got up to leave, filing quietly down the steps, polite as so many dismissed servants, except that Flash stopped and smiled at Harding. Then he glanced at Uncle Harrison, heavy and brooding. “Good-bye, sir,” he said. “But not forever.”
As the peasants were leaving, the servants moved through the house, turning off lights. The mansion went dark, room by room, and Uncle Harrison stayed in his chair. When he spoke it was some lines of poetry that sounded like a valediction, or a curse. Years later, Harry Roberts Harding committed the lines to memory.
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue waves roll nightly on deep Galilee,
Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen,
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown
For the angel of Death spread his wings on the blast
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed . . .
“What’s that?” Harding asked.
“A poem. Part of one, anyway. ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib.’ It’s by Lord Byron. I forget the rest. Did you see their guns?”
“Yes.”
“They stormed the police station before they came here. Well, stormed might be a little strong, I admit. They walked in and took what they wanted. Let’s put it that way. They say they want to be able to defend themselves against the Japanese. That’s what they say.”
“Why don’t you talk to them?”
“Oh, Harry. Sometimes I hear your father’s voice . . .” Relaxing, Uncle Harrison poured himself another brandy. “The last drop of the last bottle. Too bad we can’t drink up our houses, our fields, our stocks. Our libraries. So at the end, you could pour it into a glass, all of it, and swallow. Why don’t I negotiate? Someday you’ll see. I hope you will. See that when you come to a place and spend your life in it and build something you’re proud of you don’t just give it away, you don’t give it up, you don’t give it back. To the Indians.”
“The Indians?”
“To anybody. They didn’t come to negotiate. Maybe some of them thought they did. But that Olmos, the brothers, they came because they wanted to see the last of me. Well, I disappointed them. They’ll remember me like this, sitting right here, sitting while they stood, and staying when they left, when I told them to leave, guns and all. That’s what they’ll remember. Am I right?”
“Yes, Uncle Harrison,” Harding said. “I suppose you are.”
An hour later, the Americans rode slowly up the driveway, like a funeral procession, hooves crunching on gravel. Harding looked hard for traces of the orgy at the Officers Club, red eyes or shaking hands. But Meade was stolid as ever. You’d think he was headed out to plow a field. Camper was red, robust, ready for action: first day of hunting season. Polshanski and Sudul were the same.
“The Japanese are here,” Uncle Harrison said. “A group of local citizens met them on the road, to arrange the surrender of the city. It’s all over here.”
“We brought you a horse. And a rifle.”
“That’s changed. A letter came last week, and a radio code last night. From President Quezon, through General MacArthur. They consider me an important person. I don’t think I am. But maybe I stand for some important things. Anyway, they don’t want our visitors to capture me. They’re sending a plane.”
“A plane? Where to?”
“I’ll show you . . .”
CHAPTER 14
It was good-bye to everything, that last morning. Good-bye mansions, good-bye John Hay, good-bye golf course, divots of greensward bursting off their trail, good-bye to the polo field—did horses remember?—and then, down into the valley in back of Baguio, along well-marked equestrian trails that led to waterfalls and picnic grounds that attracted Sunday expeditions and then, finally, into the cordillera. As the trail twisted, Baguio would sometimes be in front of them, sometimes in back, high and low, so that it felt like the city was revolving around them, a sprinkling of lights just a little lower than the stars. And then, a little later, while they stepped downhill, farther into darkness, the first sun hit the city and they knew that, in Baguio, it was just another morning. It was like betrayal, such fine weather for the Japanese.
“Stop looking back, Harry,” Wingfield whispered. “It’s a bad habit, looking back.”
“I just wanted to see how it looks.”
“It looks like every other morning,” Wingfield said. “Just as fine. Places don’t acknowledge us. Neither do people. Unless we make them.”
Uncle Harrison had a way of saying things that made Harding uncomfortable. With the soldiers, he bantered easily, but when he spoke to Harding his voice had an edge and his words had added weight.
“Why is it,” Harding asked, “That there’s a lesson for me in everything you say?”
“It’s simple,” Uncle Harrison snapped. “You’ve got a lot to learn.”
“Unlearn, too, I’ll bet.”
“That could be,” Wingfield acknowledged. “Listen, son, there are men you talk to and it’s just talk. These men are like that. Food and fornication, whatever, ‘Getting laid and getting paid.’ You’re different . . .”
“What have I done?”
“It’s nothing you’ve done. I can assure you of that. It’s what you’ll do.”
The road they came to began somewhere in the flat lands, the rice provinces that had already fallen. It wound upward, through hills and rain forests, it spanned bridges, clung to mountainsides and ended here, among Uncle Harrison’s mines, with a river on one side and a chalky cliff on the other. Where it ended, it widened. That was the airstrip, which was called an airstrip because a plane had landed there once. It could also have been called a parking lot for mining equipment, or a dump. Or the end of the road. It most certainly was that.
“When’s this bird due?” Mead
e asked.
“They didn’t say, exactly,” Uncle Harrison told him. The ride had been rough on the old man. He’d been slapped by branches, clawed by vines and creepers, tripped by roots: it seemed the land itself wanted to deny his bulky form escape.
“What do you care about the plane?” Sudul asked Meade. “They didn’t request the honor of your presence on Corregidor.”
“I noticed.”
“So are we staying behind, or are we getting left behind?” Polshanski wondered. “You tell me.”
“They’re in my house now,” Uncle Harrison said to Harding. “I can feel it.”
“It’ll probably go to someone who’s important,” Harding commiserated, though it seemed odd, worrying about a house. After all, this was war, and war was a time when everything was at stake. So why was a house above the battle? Was the house a prize that got passed intact from the powerful people on one side to the powerful people on the other?
“I’m not worried about the Japanese,” Uncle Harrison said. “It’s the Filipinos.”
“It’ll all be theirs someday anyway, won’t it?” Harding said. “They become independent in 1946. That’s the plan. So they get to run the country and . . . it’s their country then.”
“Is that so?” Uncle Harrison asked. There it was—that smile, that chuckle. Shall I tell you about Santa Claus? The Easter bunny? How babies are made? How countries become independent? “Well, we’ll see. Come 1946, you look at the flagpole. See what’s flying. You might feel wonderful. Then stop by my house. See who’s living there . . .”
“Quiet!” Camper hissed.
