“In a manner of speaking.”
Kate gave a little snort. “If that’s all there is to it then she’ll be fine.” She swept a slender arm, “That’s all she did around here. Couldn’t find her half the time. But then she had to grow up and go to college and become a nurse and join the damned Army. I wish--say, are you all right?”
Ingram leaned against a post. “I’m fine. Just a little hot.”
“Look. Come in and cool off. Frank will be home soon. He’s out trapping gophers. You might as well stay for supper.” It was almost a command.
“Well, I don’t--”
“Don’t worry. The food’s good. We have enough. “Her voice was exactly like Helen's. And she had the same brown eyes. Amazing.
“You okay, Todd?”
“Never better.”
“Well then, get inside and run some cool water over your wrists. And you can tell me all about Helen.”
He clumped after her through a screen door. The house was small, utilitarian, but cool. The living room was arranged around a used brick fireplace, long since blackened to the ceiling by burning wood. To his right was a dining room with a large table where two places were set. But at one time, Ingram could tell, four or five had gathered. Kate pushed aside cafe doors and walked into the kitchen, “Back here, Todd. Make yourself useful.”
“Right away. And I do love mashed potatoes.”
“Good.”
They insisted he sit at the head of the table, Frank Durand to Ingram’s left, Kate on his right. Frank, a tall, lanky man, had clear blue eyes and a long lock of whitish-blond hair that swept over a surprisingly boyish face. That morning he had killed a chicken and that’s what they had for dinner. Mashed potatoes and peas, both grown by his brother Lamar, and a salad of mixed greens completed the meal. The talk had been light, forced in a way.
After they finished, Frank sighed and stood. “Let’s go outside.” He lead Ingram to the porch, where it was still eighty-two degrees. Overhead, a million-million stars shouted at them on a moonless night. Sitting in a rocker, Frank waved to another. But Ingram sensed the other rocker was Kate’s and choose the bench. And he was right, for she came out a moment later carrying a tray of cups and a pot of coffee and sat. While she poured, a cat, a grey tabby, jumped in Ingram’s lap, curled up and fell asleep.
Frank and Kate looked at one another.
Ingram stroked the cat’s head. “Anything wrong?”
Frank said, “That’s Fred.”
“Yes?”
“Well, he’s Helen’s. usually, he doesn’t jump in people’s laps.”
All Ingram could manage was a muted, “I’ll be damned.”
Nobody spoke as Kate passed the cups around. Even then, they waited patiently, while Ingram absorbed the sound of the crickets, the evening’s heat, and the same brilliant pinpoints of light overhead that had guided him through the Philippine archipelago to Darwin, Australia. And Fred. He purred when Ingram scratched his ears.
Finally, Ingram drew a deep breath. “A submarine took her from Corregidor a couple of weeks before it was captured.”
“It must have been hell,” said Kate.
“She’s very brave, your daughter.” Ingram tried to smile. “I almost socked her, once. “What?”
With a forefinger, he tapped a jagged, two-inch, red-orange scar on his right cheek. “Right here. Don’t know if you can see it. Shrapnel. The Japs sunk my ship off Caballo Island. They took me to the hospital in Malinta Tunnel. That’s on Corregidor. There was no doctor available, so Helen sewed it up.”
He waited. Then he realized they didn’t get it. “There was no anesthetic. Hurt like hell. Took three guys to hold me down. Even so, she did a great job. And I saw her handle far worse cases. She’s very brave.”
“You get a Purple Heart?” asked Frank.
Ingram shrugged. “I don’t need one of those things. Helen and the others who are stuck out there. They deserve the medals.”
“You don’t have any medals?”
“No,” Ingram lied. He didn’t want to talk about the Navy Cross.
“You should,” said Frank. “But then I was in the last one. I don’t think a medal would have helped one way or the other.”
“Where were you?”
“Verdun.”
He knows what it’s like. Corregidor, Verdun, Gallipoli. What a waste.
Kate and Frank sat back, and rocked, their chairs squeaking as looked up at the sky and waited.
Ingram continued, “She got out by sub but they landed her party on Marinduque so they could run right back and grab some more people off Corregidor. Everybody knew it was going to fall any day. In the meantime, we got out by motor launch, and four nights later ran into her on Marinduque.”
“Who's we?” prodded Frank.
“My crew mostly, off my minesweeper.”
“Oh.” The rockers squeaked.
Sing for your dinner, Ingram. “We picked her up there, on Marinduque...,” he droned on telling the story as if it were a travelogue. What he didn’t say was that Helen Durand has been captured by the Japanese on Marinduque and tortured by the Kempetai, the military thought police. When he’d found her, she was close to death, cigarette burns covered her body and she was totally dehydrated. In fact, her heart had stopped beating at one time, giving them all a terrible fright. Yardly, their pharmacist mate had saved her, brilliantly using the few primitive medical items in his kit.
“...then we landed at Nasipit in Northern Mindanao. We didn’t realize Japs were garrisoned there.”
“How many?” asked Frank.
“About a hundred.” He waited, glad he had been able to get through telling them about Marinduque.
They rocked and sighed and sipped, with Kate occasionally throwing her head back, looking at the stars. In the half-light, Ingram saw tears well in her eyes and glisten on her cheeks. He wondered if he should dab them with his handkerchief and pulled it out. But his own eyes were moist so he wiped at them.
“We...we were separated. We had to shove off before more Japs showed up. But,” he sat upright on the bench, “she got away. The War Department will probably send a telegram saying she’s ‘missing in action.’ But it’s not true. And you mustn’t tell anybody I told you. That’s why I came here in person.”
“You mean it’s a military secret?” said Frank.
“All I can say is that she’s fine. And she has my ring. I gave it to her.” My God, why did I say that?
“What ring, Todd?” asked Kate.
Ingram closed his eyes, luxuriating in the sound of Kate’s voice.
“Todd?”
“My Naval Academy ring. “ the time, I’d lost so much weight that it would just fall off my fingers. Had to wear it on my thumb. So I gave it to her for safekeeping.”
Frank asked, “Is she really living in the weeds?”
“She’s with Pablo Amador. He leads the resistance.”
In the darkness, he sensed they stared at him.
“Don Pablo Amador. He was Deputy Finance Minister under President Quezon. His family has owned Nasipit’ s lumber mill for nearly a hundred years. And I think he’s in the mountains now, setting up the resistance.”
Frank and Kate rocked for a while. Then she rose from her chair and went inside, a hand wiping at her cheek.
Frank watched her go. “Thanks for coming.”
“You should be very proud of her.”
“I am. But that’s not what I mean. Here.” Frank dug in his pocket, pulled out a crumpled envelope and handed it over. “This came three days ago.”
Even in the faint light, Ingram could see it was a telegram. “War Department?”
“Ummm.”
Ingram took it and read:
THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT YOUR DAUGHTER FIRST LIEUTENANT HELEN Z DURAND HAS BEEN REPORTED MISSING IN ACTION SINCE SIX MAY IN PACIFIC AREA IF FURTHER DETAILS OR OTHER INFORMATION ARE RECEIVED YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED PERIOD
T
L ROBERTS THE ADJUTANT GENERAL
“My God.”
“Yes.” Frank nodded toward the living room. His rasped, “I just didn’t know how to tell her. So like I said, ‘thanks for coming.’ “ Godsend. You saved Kate a lot of grief.”
Ingram could see it had been tearing up Frank as well. “Believe me. She’s okay. Just don’t say anything.”
“What are her chances of getting out?”
“Good. They’re looking at ways to get supplies to them, but nobody is supposed to talk about it. All very secret. They don’t want the Japs to find out.”
A dim light flicked on inside and Kate silently walked out, backlighted. Presently, she stood close and held out something. Ingram opened his palm and she placed a ring on it. Turning it in the living room’s pale light, he saw it was a class ring with a red stone, a garnet he supposed. The legend around the stone read Scripps College -- 1929. Inside the band, a neatly scrolled inscription read ‘HZD’. Kate closed Ingram’s fingers over it. Her voice was husky. “You keep this for her until she returns.”
The next thing he knew, his head rested against Kate’s hip and his chest was heaving and he was gasping and moaning and doing a terrible job of keeping it all in.
“It’s okay, Todd. It’s okay.” Kate stroked his hair.
“Forgot to close the garage doors.” Frank stood and sauntered into the evening, his boots crunching on gravel.
Ingram said a silent thank you to Frank for moving off. “I hardly know you,” he mumbled to Kate.
And then he sobbed. Damnit.
“Shhhhhh.”
“I can tell they want to send me back there,” he said softly. “And damnit...I don’t ...” He was tempted to tell her about the nightmares and cold sweats. But then he was afraid to say anything because memories would gush back in full clarity, of men with their arms and legs blown off, bloated headless corpses floating in Manila Bay. Some nights he would see young Brian Forester screaming when a soldier thrust a bayonet through his chest. He squeezed his eyelids tight trying to keep out the visage of the living who would have been better off dead, men with no hope, no future except servitude and privation and atrocity under their conquerors; the ones he had left behind on his trip to freedom.
She ran a palm down the back of his neck. “No, they won’t send you back. Not if you don’t want to.”
“I’m sorry.” His fingers found the cat’s fur. And the damned thing purred. He looked up. “Honest. We really tried to get her out.”
Kate patted his shoulder. “I’m sure she’s fine, Todd.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
21 August, 1942
Agusan Province
Mindanao, Philippines
Two soldiers gripped her wrists, twisting her skin. Helen froze in terror. The Japanese officer--he looked like an Army Captain--stood just three feet away. With the slightest of smiles, he drew his Nambu automatic pistol, chambered a round and pointed it directly at her chest, his elbow locked. He said conversationally, “Good bye.”
It seemed her heart had a life of its own. Knowing it was about to be ripped apart by an eight millimeter bullet, her heart pumped at an incredible rate while she drew quick lungfuls of air and looked up for a final, earth-bound glance at heaven . But that was impossible since they stood under a thick canopy of sixty-foot Narra trees. Helen tried to force an image of something beautiful, something like home. But with this ghoul about to end her life, she couldn’t remember anything about home; not even where it was or who was there.
The Army captain raised an eyebrow and hesitated.
The little bastard was enjoying this, she realized, and her terror turned to rage.
With a smirk, he eased his finger off the trigger, then snugged it again and slowly squeezed--
Three explosions cracked through the air followed by a guttural scream. Helen was on the ground and men twirled above her. Suddenly, they had her wrists again but this time they yanked and pulled her through brush as sharp branches snapped in her face. “What?”
Before her ran a man with a white flowing mane of hair, his planter’s hat bouncing on his back by a lanyard. He looked back and shouted, “Helen, get your feet under you!”
Amador! The man before her was Don Pablo Amador. And a glance to either side showed that the crazy Chinaman, Wong Lee, and Renaldo, the front of his shirt spattered with blood, were the ones dragging and cajoling and kicking at her. Amazing. Both were only an inch or two over five feet. Where did they get their strength?
Gunfire rattled behind them and bullets zipped through the underbrush, some thunking into trees, others kicking up three-foot columns of dirt around them. She heard shouts, then an explosion; it sounded like a grenade. Someone screamed horribly.
“Helen. Come on!” Urged Amador.
With a gasp, she did as Amador commanded, found her feet and ran.
They stumbled into a dark clearing after an hour of frantic scrambling through streams, down into deep gullies, over enormous fallen logs, through impossibly thick bushes and vines. Amador had lead them half-way up Mount Maiyapay’s mist-enshrouded 2,360-foot peak and into obscurity while frustrated Japanese float planes buzzed in the distance.
Wong Lee stopped, simply running out of breath and collapsing in a wheezing, gasping heap. The others gladly followed suit and flopped on their backs, splaying their arms and puffing and coughing and heaving their chests. Helen, her face bleeding and lacerated by branches and thorns, lay among them feeling light-headed, drawing lungfuls of cool, saturated air.
Finding his strength first, Renaldo rolled to his belly, and with a grunt, raised to all fours, then stood. Nodding to Amador, he picked up his ancient bolt-action Springfield rifle and shuffled down the trail: Rear-guard.
Amador gasped, “They nearly had you.”
Her breath rattled with, “Another second or two and he would have pulled the trigger.” Something popped into her mind. “I didn’t see God. I thought you were supposed to see God at the last moment.”
“That means He doesn’t want you, now.”
“I’m not so sure.” With a groan, Helen sat up. Wong Lee lay before her, still flat on his back, his arms straight out and his mouth open and his chest rising and falling. “Wong. Your tongue is hanging out.”
“Ghhhhhsh,” Wong moaned.
The man had just saved her life but she couldn’t resist. “Could I have a Chesterfield please?” Everybody gave Wong a bad time about his cigarettes. The man smoked whatever he could--sometimes making do with dry shredded weeds. A month ago, he’d found a carton of American cigarettes on a dead soldier and smoked his way to near oblivion. But those soon ran out and after ambushing the next convoy, he found more cigarettes--not the smooth Lucky Strikes but a lung-searing Egyptian brand. But even those, he smoked incessantly. “Ghhhhsh.”
Gradually, the twirling in Helen’s head slowed down. “What happened?” She asked Amador.
“Damned Hapons circled around and surprised us. While we were stalking them, they stalked us.” They had been attacking a three-truck convoy. She’d been further up the mountain, about two hundred meters, watching.
“Did you get anything?”
“There was nothing to grab. Just U.S. Navy crates shipped from Davao marked ‘torpedo parts.’ No guns, no ammo, no aspirin. Not even a damned carton of cigarettes,” wheezed Wong Lee. “Then the Japs showed up and we dropped everything and ran.”
“Where’s Emilio?”
Amador shrugged, but just then they heard a whistle. Emilio Legaspi, thin, half a foot taller than the others with a craggy face, emerged from shadows and trudged among them. Standing his Springfield against a tree, he unbuckled his cartridge belt, let it flop to the ground and sat heavily.
Amador crawled over and clomped him on the shoulder. “Thank God. I thought you were hit and rolled down the mountain.”
“Did damned right,” said Legaspi in a high-pitched pigeon English. He grinned, showing a wide expanse of missing front teeth and held up a crushed U.S. Army
belt buckle between his thumb and forefinger, its brass still gleaming.
“Was it you who tossed that grenade?” Asked Wong Lee.
Legaspi’s grin widened. “Smashed four, maybe five of the sonsabits.” Then he turned to Amador and spoke in rapid Tagalog.
As they talked, Helen leaned back on her hands and looked up at the trees hearing a monkey’s screech, a good sign. It had been quiet when they first arrived.
Wong Lee’s breathing seemed a bit smoother. “What time is it?”
“Nearly three o’clock.” Amador said.
How can he do that? Helen wondered. Here, in deep shadows under the Narra’s canopy, the old land don could gauge the time to within ten minutes.
Amador turned to her. “Good news, dear. Emilio says they’re not following. Not today anyway. There were only fifteen or so. Of that, they lost four to Emilio’s grenade plus the ones who...who...had you.”
Helen exhaled deeply, more from relief than from a need to breath. This was the second time she'd been close to death in this living hell. The irony was that today the Army captain just wanted to shoot her. Capture by the Kempetai was far worse. Thanks to them, the cigarette burns were still evident from her face to the bottoms of her feet.
She crawled over to Amador, finding his face smeared and caked with blood. Un-clipping her canteen, she poured water over a rag and started wiping.
“Later,” he growled.
She unbuttoned a small first aid kit and dabbed at the cuts on his face. He’d taken the brunt leading the way up the mountain. He tried to push her away but she held fast. “They’ll get infected. Then you’ll be on your back begging for mercy, begging for penicillin, begging for everything we don’t have. Beside, you look like Lon Chaney playing Genghis Khan.”
“Looked at yourself, lately?”
She shrugged, wiping dried ooze off Amador’s face.
Wong Lee jabbed a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a Zippo, grey-blue smoke swirling around his head. “Next time, drop me at Hollywood boulevard.” Wong, an American-born Chinese, owned two restaurants: One in downtown Los Angeles, the other near St. Mary’s Square in San Francisco. With his mother running the Los Angeles restaurant and his wife and daughter running the San Francisco place, he’d traveled to Malaybalay in North Central Mindanao trying to bring his uncle and two nephews back to the United States. With the war’s outbreak, they were stuck there and melded into the background posing as Filipino kitchen workers. Somehow, the Kempetai got on to them and kicked their way into their one-room apartment one night. Wong barely made it out a back window, the others shot where they lay. It was something he never spoke of. Months later, he was still on the run when Amador found him at Nasipit’s outskirts, skeletal thin, fishing and living off the sea.
A CODE FOR TOMORROW: A Ingram Novel (The Todd Ingram Series Book 2) Page 7
