Beside a Burning Sea

by John Shors

  Comforted by the knowledge that his pistol and radio were nearby, Roger moved even deeper into the jungle, looking for a break in the canopy that would provide him with a glimpse of the hills above. He’d need a high, secure, and secluded place to radio the Japanese. His contact, Edo, would be awaiting his call.

  As Roger quietly made his way through the underbrush, he pictured Annie and her patient. They’d spoken at length and, amazingly, had even seemed to smile at each other. Roger had been immediately jealous of their rapport. Though he’d sought out many women in many lands, he’d never cared to actually talk to them. In fact, he’d thought such talk beneath him. And yet the sight of Annie and the Japanese soldier chatting so contentedly had perturbed him. Perhaps this displeasure stemmed from memories—visions of being the son of a missionary, of living in humiliating conditions in Tokyo, of being tormented by a boy who’d vaguely resembled Annie’s patient.

  That boy had been the leader of the first group to follow Roger from school. Unbeknownst to him, they’d watched him enter the cinder block room that his parents rented a few feet from the train tracks. As trains rumbled past, Roger’s mother had soon ushered him outside to the cement steps rising to their room. She’d put a small cooking pot atop his head and proceeded to cut away any hair that emerged from beneath the pot. Her own prematurely gray tresses had twisted in the drafts of wind made by the passing trains. Her dress was not only dirty—for they could never keep dust from seeping into the room—but seemed to be held together by a variety of patches. The scene had greatly amused Roger’s classmates, who were rich and pampered and eager to ridicule someone of a different ilk. Over the next few weeks, the boy had led many groups to Roger’s home, and though the trains obscured much of their laughter, the tracks hadn’t rumbled nearly often enough.

  Continuing to move deeper into the jungle, Roger promised himself that he’d put Annie’s patient in his rightful place—just as he had the boy so long ago. He’d waited for that joyous day for more than a year, preparing for it in secret. When he’d finally been paired against his tormentor in a kendo match, he’d experienced his first taste of what it was like to see someone terrified of his presence. Roger had often since recalled the stunned silence among the students of the dojo. They’d watched, utterly transfixed, as he had wielded his wooden sword with such skill that within a matter of seconds his adversary was bloody and begging.

  Ever since that day thirteen years before, Roger had coveted the power that he’d first felt in the dojo. When his family had returned to America, he had to establish himself once more, and again he saw fear in the eyes of his enemies. He’d reveled in such moments, for when he was feared no one could question him, no one could laugh at his oddities. Japanese couldn’t snicker at the self-conscious foreigner, and Americans couldn’t mock his awkwardness on the football field or basketball court. More important, no one could deny him what he had wanted. And he had wanted so many things.

  Progressing stealthily through the jungle, sweat oozing from seemingly every pore, Roger reflected on the fact that only a few men had survived the sinking of Benevolence. The temptation to shoot them was quite powerful, for with the men gone, he could do as he wished. He could be the king of the island, the lord to whom all others would kneel and obey. He believed that such a lord could push painful memories aside, that the present could overwhelm and obscure the past.

  Roger envisioned killing the captain first—forever silencing his infuriating demands. He’d then take care of the burly engineer. And the rest could fall into whatever order the situation dictated.

  Ultimately, Roger decided not to use the gun—at least not for the time being. No, it would be better to call Edo and have the Japanese take the island. They would kill the others—everyone, that is, but Annie. Roger wanted Annie for himself and would claim her when the Japanese landed. The little nurse would be his and his alone.

  Wishing that he could return to his precious box and remove and enjoy a cigarette, Roger continued to advance deeper into the jungle—which was dark and thick and omnipotent and much to his liking.

  THE SWELLING SUN momentarily lingered above the sea, bleeding into the sky, infusing the clouds with its hues until they themselves glowed with a rich luminescence. The clouds were long and graceful and resembled rust-colored serpents that slept above the sea. As the sun dropped below the horizon, the serpents slowly darkened—as if they blended into the night to confuse predators above. For a few heartbeats the clouds continued to smolder with memories of the sun. Then the sky merged into the sea.

  Beneath the banyan tree that served as their shelter, the survivors gathered around a small fire. Palm fronds had been lashed to the branches above and to a makeshift wall toward the water. These fronds ensured that no eyes aboard passing planes or ships would see the fire. Though some debate had occurred on the subject, ultimately Joshua had said that more Japanese than American vessels patrolled these waters, and so the group would stay hidden for the time being.

  The banyan tree provided a seemingly infinite supply of branches, and it hadn’t been terribly difficult to weave palm fronds around these branches until a ceiling of sorts had been fashioned. If the banyan tree were an umbrella, and its haphazard branches the spines that supported this umbrella, the palm fronds had been woven around the spines until a second layer of foliage was created. This ten-foot-high layer was relatively square and parallel to the ground.

  The survivors had dragged the lifeboat to the rear of the shelter. Upside down, the craft now served to protect everything that they’d found inside it or on the beach. And they’d found plenty—life jackets, medicine, clothes, and canteens. Perhaps most important, the lifeboat had carried a machete. Ratu had thus been able to climb palm trees and cut down scores of the fronds that now served to protect them from the elements.

  Exhausted from a day of hard labor, the survivors encircled the fire, eating bananas but doing little else. Aside from the distant crashing of waves, the air was alive with the sounds of the jungle—hoots and screeches and buzzes and the occasional flutter of unseen wings. Logs had been positioned around the fire and, for the most part, people sat silently atop the logs, staring into the flames before them.

  Suddenly Scarlet slapped at her neck. “Will they ever leave me alone?” she said angrily, scratching herself.

  “You need smoke,” Ratu proclaimed, pointing downwind of the fire.

  “Smoke?”

  “No animal likes smoke. If you give an animal smoke he’ll run from you like he kissed your little sister. Bloody mosquitoes run the fastest. Stand in the smoke for a while and they won’t bother you again.”

  Scarlet rose from her log. “You’re sure?”

  “Am I getting bitten? Not once, I tell you. And it’s because I smell like smoke. You . . . you probably smell like flowers or something.”

  Still scratching, Scarlet moved into the smoke. As she did, Annie looked at Ratu and then nodded toward Akira, who was asleep nearby on a bed of fronds. “The bugs must be devouring him,” she said. “Could we do the same for him?”

  “A stick,” he replied. “A burning stick will do the trick. I’ll see to it.”

  As she thanked him, Ratu removed a branch from the fire and hurried over to Akira. Ratu held the branch upwind of Akira so that smoke drifted onto him. As he covered her patient in smoke, Annie wondered about him. “Do you have sisters?” she asked quietly, thinking of his earlier words.

  “Five!” he replied, trying to whisper, pleased to have stepped from the silence that seemed to oppressively surround the fire. “Can you believe such a thing? It’s bollix, I tell you. Five little sisters. And she thinks mosquitoes are bad!”

  “Oh, they can’t be that bad.”

  “Well, I tell you, Miss Annie, it’s a cracking good thing that I like talking so much. If I let them do all the talking, my head would spin faster than a . . . than something very, very fast.”

  “Why on earth would your head spin?” Annie asked, smiling faintly
.

  Ratu turned to look at her, his small face tightening in consternation. “All the talk of dresses? Of pretend weddings? Of cooking and sewing and boys? You don’t think such talk makes your head spin?”

  “Is that . . . is that why you snuck onto Benevolence? Too much talk?”

  Continuing to move the burning branch in small circles, he nodded. Her words reminded him of his search for his father, and the night abruptly seemed to darken. Was his father lonely? Ratu asked himself. Was he being careful? Had he been hurt? Such questions scared Ratu so much that he suddenly needed to speak. Turning to Annie, he said, “My father is a guide for you Yanks. He fights with them, island to island. He takes them through jungles and leads them to Japanese.”

  “And . . . you wanted to find him? That’s why you came aboard?”

  Ratu nodded slightly. “I wanted . . . to see him. And I thought that I . . . that I could find him. I left my mother a note . . . and . . . and I snuck onto your ship.”

  The pauses between his words made Annie think that she shouldn’t further pursue the topic. She wondered what it was like for a boy to have a father at war. Did Ratu want to be beside his father, leading soldiers into the jungle? Or would he rather have his father home, doing whatever it was that fathers and sons did?

  Annie pondered such questions until the fire on Ratu’s branch vanished. The branch smoked for another minute before he tossed it into the darkness. He was about to leave when she touched his arm. Wanting to make him feel important, and seeking his help, she pointed to Akira’s leg. “His wound needs to be restitched,” she said softly, “and I’ve nothing to restitch it with. All day I’ve tried to think of something. You found the medicine. And you probably saved him by finding that little bottle. But can you find something else? Something that I can stitch with?”

  Ratu looked at Akira, remembering how ugly the wound had looked. “Not bloody likely,” he replied. “Do you need a needle?”

  “Something like that. Something strong and sharp.”

  “A piece of wire? A splinter of bamboo?”

  “Maybe. Yes, maybe the bamboo would work.” Annie looked into the jungle, recalling that she’d seen groves of bamboo. “If you can get me a needle, I’ll think of the thread. Could you do that? Could you please do that?”

  Ratu nodded. “You’ll like my needle. It will be strong and sharp and you’ll wish you always had one.”

  “That would be wonderful. Just wonderful, Ratu.”

  She’d said his name for the first time, and he smiled at the sound of her saying it. He missed the way in which a female voice gave life to his name. And the mere sound of his name on Annie’s tongue made him feel warm. He was about to reply when Akira groaned in his sleep. Not wanting to wake the injured man, Ratu whispered good night and proceeded to move back to the fire. Looking into its restless flames, he was again reminded of his father, for he wondered if his father was also sharing a fire with strangers. Ratu hadn’t seen his father in almost six months. He missed the smell of him, the touch of his scratchy face. He longed for the stories his father told him—stories of great fish and great chiefs.

  His father had taught Ratu about the importance of bravery, and as he cast twigs into the fire, he hoped that his father wasn’t being too brave. Ratu didn’t want to be without the stories, without the man who carried him on his shoulders, whom he loved so much. The thought of not seeing his father again caused Ratu to tremble, to move nearer to the fire—as if it could somehow bring him closer to his father, as if sitting next to it would draw him into the memory of sharing his father’s warmth.

  DAY THREE

  In times of such woe,

  Dreams are friends and

  thoughts are fiends.

  Sleet obscures the sky.

  Fresh Wounds

  An hour after dawn, aside from the breaking of waves on its reefs and beaches, the island still slept. It slept as a child might—unmoving and untroubled and unknowing of the world around it. The jungle that had creaked and hooted all night was now strangely silent. Even the wind was somehow rendered motionless. The giant, pillow-sized leaves that had been ready to take flight throughout the previous day and night now hung limp in the thick, salt-laden air.

  Clad in men’s shorts and shirts, Annie and Isabelle walked along the beach, occasionally bumping into each other because of the slope toward the sea. Here at the far end of the harbor, where the sea had open access to the shore, waves reached high enough to snatch their footprints from the sand. Both women had worn men’s shoes for much of the previous day and now enjoyed being barefoot. The beach seemed to press between their toes and travel up their calves to massage their aching bodies. The warm waves embraced their ankles, tempting them to move deeper into the water.

  The two sisters had been walking for some time. Annie had spent much of the night contemplating how she could stitch up Akira’s wound. She’d wondered about thread from their clothing, plant fibers, and anything else the island might offer. When she could think of no substance that wouldn’t quickly rot, she’d asked Isabelle to join her on a walk. Perhaps the two of them could find some fishing line or additional medical supplies that she could put to use. Already they’d discovered a battered bottle of disinfectant and an assortment of crutches and splints.

  As Annie scanned the sea and the sand, she wondered what Ted was doing. Earlier that morning, she had watched Nathan as he lay on the beach and looked at a photo that he’d carefully withdrawn from his wallet. Nathan—who had a rather owlish appearance, with a rotund body and face, short brown hair, and a broad nose—had gazed at the photo as if it revealed all the treasures of the world. Her curiosity overpowering her, Annie had finally sat beside him and asked to see the photo, which he’d been eager to share. The colorless, water-stained image was a simple one—Nathan and his wife standing behind a teenage boy and girl. The children smiled and leaned against their parents, as if intent on toppling them backward.

  Annie had been happy for Nathan, happy for the obvious and powerful love he felt for his family. Of course, her pleasure had been tempered by the fact that they likely thought he was dead. And she could tell by the way that he looked at his loved ones that this fact was as hard on him as it surely was on them.

  Wishing she had a photo of Ted, Annie glanced at Isabelle. “Did you see Nathan this morning?”

  “I saw the photo, if that’s what you mean,” Isabelle replied, methodically scanning the sand before them.

  “It touched me. . . . How he looked at them.”

  Isabelle nodded, her mind so used to moving in a thousand different directions that she felt slightly disconcerted by the simple experience of walking down the beach. “He’s a good man,” she finally replied, her eyes continuing to relentlessly seek items that had washed ashore. “Joshua told me all about him. Not the most decorated officer, but as a husband and a father, well, that’s another story.”

  “Maybe he’s not decorated because he doesn’t want to be in the war. Maybe . . . maybe he’s really still with them.”

  “I don’t think any of us wants to be in the war, Annie.”

  “And yet we volunteered for it.”

  “Did we have a choice? How couldn’t we?”

  Annie shrugged, disagreeing. Certainly she’d faced a choice. In fact, the way she saw it, many of those aboard Benevolence could have remained civilians. Most had enlisted to help right the terrible wrong that was befalling the world. Annie had joined for that reason, but also because of Ted, who had once called her a coward and who wielded valid reasons for uttering that word. But still, it was easy to call someone a coward when you’d been a hero your whole life, easy to be strong when you were born strong—both in mind and body.

  After spying and pocketing a vial of morphine, Annie continued to look for something that might be useful to restitch Akira’s wound. “I’m sorry, Izzy,” she said quietly. “That I was so . . . so weak the other night.”

  Isabelle heard the tremble in Annie’s voice and
took her sister’s hand. “You weren’t weak. And there’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  “I almost killed him.”

  “Well, yes, he almost died. But it was his own awful country that almost killed him. Not you.”

  “But why . . . why is it always me?”

  Isabelle turned toward the sea. She remembered Annie’s early struggle with diphtheria—how fever had wracked her little frame, how terror consumed her as she struggled to breathe. Isabelle had overheard the doctor informing her parents that Annie would likely die, and later, her mother telling her father that if Annie died, she wanted to die with her so that Annie would never be alone. From that day forward, their mother had slept next to Annie, lying as close to her as possible. She’d cared for Annie with what Isabelle now recognized as an almost superhuman display of strength, compassion, and determination. When Annie had finally recovered, Isabelle and her mother had danced around her bed, and Isabelle had decided that she’d someday be a nurse.

  “I don’t know why it’s always you,” Isabelle finally replied. “But there must be a reason.”

  “A reason? People always say that. But only people who haven’t really suffered talk about reasons. Because that’s so much easier to say than to hear. What’s the reason that our patients die? That they’ll never walk again? That we’ve treated children whose limbs have been blown off? For that matter, what’s the reason for this hideous war?”

  Isabelle briefly closed her eyes at her sister’s mention of the children. “I wish I had those answers, Annie. That might . . . somehow make things easier. Maybe you’re right. Maybe there aren’t reasons. Maybe things . . . evil things just happen.”

  Annie didn’t reply, her own words about death reminding her of the terror that had consumed her when she dropped beneath the waves. In that blackness, she hadn’t thought about those she loved, or of all that she’d done. On the contrary, she’d been reminded of what she hadn’t done. And the fear of never doing such things had filled her with a longing she hadn’t known. Before Benevolence sunk, Annie wasn’t completely aware of this longing—this wish to see what had not been seen, to feel what had not been felt.