Broken Jewel - [World War II 05]

by David L. Robbins

  “Master Tuck,” he said, “You know that no one’s allowed in here at night.”

  Tal held up the cigarette. “Yes, sir. But it’s kind of impossible to find a light anymore. You mind?”

  “Oh, sure. Go ahead. Your shoulders are looking a darn sight better, I’d say. Still smarting?”

  “Like the dickens. I’m managing.”

  “Good for you.”

  Tal reached into one of the pits. He selected a long, well-charred stake. He brought the glowing tip of it to the cigarette on his lips.

  “I might apply for this job.” Tal ambled along the row of hanging pots.

  “It’s quiet. Calls for a lot of discipline. Staying awake, I mean.”

  What Kolko meant to say was that being alone in the kitchen at night took discipline not to steal. Tal overlooked the slight, in light of his own reputation as a thief, though he’d never filch a thing from any internee.

  Tal carried the smoking stake with him. He used it to bang each hanging cauldron. Good-natured and laughing, Kolko chased him out of the kitchen still holding the burnt stick.

  Outside, Tal finished the cigarette. The loudspeaker announced the 10:00 p.m. blackout. He rolled the hot stake in the dirt to put out the last embers. Dodging attention, he hurried to the latrine beside No. 11. Beneath the toilets, in a dark recess, he stowed the blackened stick. He rummaged in a nearby garbage can for an empty tin. He washed this in the shower room, filled the container with water, and left it under the latrine next to the stake. Tal joined the last stragglers into the barracks.

  From his trunk, he donned khaki shorts and set out an olive undershirt. He lay awake while his roommates clambered into their racks one at a time. Donnelly, the barracks monitor, was the last in the building to settle after checking every cubicle. When the barracks had sunk into a hushed chorus of snores and mutters, Tal rolled from his bunk.

  Grabbing his sneakers and shirt, he crept outside to squat in the shadows at the foot of the latrine. The camp in blackout burned electric lights only in scattered buildings, the chapels, the infirmary, kitchen, and soldiers’ quarters. An early moon hung low over the jungle; stars winked. Fifty yards away, directly in front of Tal, a guard patrolled the fence, rifle strapped to his back. The next soldier would be eighty strides ahead, another the same distance behind. Tal waited in the shadow of the latrine, breath held, slotting himself into the rhythms and motions of the nocturnal camp. He cooled his nerves to surrender himself to the task, relaxing his hands. He had to piss, the same sudden need that had welled up when Nagata bound his hands before his beating. Again he forced the urge aside, thinking this a signal of fear. Tal could not see the girl’s third-floor window from where he hid. He imagined her resting, and resolved not to wake her tonight. He pulled on the drab shirt, then scooped up the stake from beneath the latrine.

  With fast hands, he broke off bits of charcoal, ground them between his palms. He rubbed the black dust up and down his bare arms and legs, across his face and ears, the back of his neck. When he was finished, he tested his newly ebon skin in the shadows. Tal was pleased. He’d become night.

  He drew a deep breath and hunched close to the earth, ready to go, gripping the black stake. The guard walked farther along the fence, off into the darkness. Tal counted to fifteen to mark the moment when he could move halfway between the patrolling guards.

  Carrying the stick, he left the cover of the latrine. Months ago, the grounds between barracks had been well maintained, weeds cropped close. With the waning strength of the internees, the trails and grasses grew neglected. Tal moved off the path to slide through the careless brush.

  Leapfrogging shadows, ducking and patient, he wound through the married barracks, past the commandant’s office. At the kitchen, he peered in a window to see Mr. Kolko snoozing on his firewood stack. A chin of moon had risen in the east. Sweat trickled down Tal’s brow. Worried that his cinder mask might be washing off, he smeared his face again with char. For the first time since leaving his bunk, Tal sprinted.

  He reached the barbed wire behind the infirmary without noise. Setting one sandal on the bottom strand, he pressed down with his full weight to gather as much slack as possible. The rusty wire stretched and sagged. Tal propped up the wire with the stake, then, flat on his back, shimmied under the barbs, scraping his scabs. He cleared the strand by less than an inch. On his knees on the other side, he yanked loose the stake. Five steps later, he used the same technique to slide under the second wire barrier.

  Tal stood, free in the world for the first time in three years.

  He tasted the air and found it heavy with scent and invitation. The earth ran farther than he could endure.

  He could disappear, join the resistance. He could find food.

  He was on her side of the wire.

  Tal stowed all this away, because he had given Mac his word. He would have these possibilities again. He headed into the bamboo grove and tall grass.

  Moving with cautious moonlit steps, Tal considered how easily he’d made it out of the camp. Los Baños wasn’t built as a prison for soldiers but was designed as a holding pen for civilians. Where would the internees go if they got loose? The Japanese controlled the entire island. No westerner could blend in with the Filipinos. Any escapee found outside the camp would be shot on sight. The only safety, uncertain as it was, existed inside the wire.

  Tal crept through the tall grass until he found the edge of the deep ravine. Palm trees growing out of the steep bank leaned their fronds over the creek bed. Rounded stones lined the bottom; stars shimmered in still pools between the rocks. Tal picked his way down the slope, clinging to scrub to keep from slipping.

  He selected a boulder to crouch behind. Tuning his ears up and down the channel, he keyed his ears for footfalls on the pebbles, or a splash in a puddle. He bored his eyes into the dark and stayed hidden. No longer afraid, he urinated quietly into the bank.

  Tal became aware of the creatures prowling the ravine. Bats fluttered low, hunting the bugs that pestered him behind his boulder. The old owl the camp listened to every night switched trees many times and hooted from different branches. Something—a village dog, a big rat, a porcupine—scrambled across the creek bed. A fruit bat with a wingspan longer than Tal’s arms swooped though the trees.

  “Password.”

  The voice made Tal jump. It came almost from beside his ear. He saw no one.

  “Superman,” he whispered.

  A brown Filipino, thick as a wrestler, leaned out of the bank, almost on the spot where Tal had relieved himself. The guerrilla seemed to have merged with the plants and rocks, then shed them for his own form.

  He put forth a hand, Tal shook it. The guerrilla wore no camouflage or face paint, just a shirt, shorts, boots. Standing right in front of Tal, he was hard to see.

  “Emilio,” he said. “Terry’s Hunters.”

  “Tal.” He hesitated, wanting some unit to put with his name, too. “Barracks Eleven.”

  “Where’s old McElway?”

  “He couldn’t come. Not feeling well.”

  “I like him. He has good pagkatao, spirit. Tell him Emilio said to feel better. Give him this.”

  The guerrilla handed over a folded envelope, taped shut. Tal rolled it between his fingers to feel the contents. Small, a cylinder, probably glass.

  The guerilla said, “Put it away.”

  Tal slid the envelope into his pocket.

  Emilio said, “Good luck.” He turned to go, donning blackness in his first step away.

  “That’s it?”

  Emilio halted. This was the first Filipino that Tal had spoken with in months. He wanted news of the war, perhaps to send a message to the girl, to say or hear something intrepid to take back inside the barbed wire. The guerrilla gazed back with silent eyes as if out of a cave. Tal took Emilio’s cue and turned away. He heard only his own passage across the ravines stones.

  Reaching the outer fence, Tal paused in the grass until the next guard strolled past. Agai
n, he used the stake to hoist the barbed wire, shimmying on his back inches below it. Scabs opened inside his shirt. He grunted, coming to his feet between the fences. Tal jammed the stake under the final wire, with only twenty seconds left until the next guard rounded the corner of the infirmary. To spare his shoulders, Tal lay on his belly squirming back into the camp.

  He hurried, without the same caution he’d used leaving the camp. He kicked his foot behind him in the dirt to crawl the last distance under the wire. His sandal nicked the stake, jarring it loose. The strand snapped down, rattling against the concrete pillars. A hissing twang shot in both directions.

  Voices rose from the main gate forty yards to his left, “Asoko da!” and the guard tower beside the infirmary, thirty yards to his right, “Nan daro?”

  The clatter of weapons and boots hastened his way.

  Tal jumped from the dirt, ignoring the stick. He didn’t know where to run. He could dash into the infirmary. But the place was well lit and he was covered in charcoal. What if a guard saw him? He had to make it back to his barracks.

  Shouts swelled around him. Tal had to move, somewhere. He hurtled away from the fence toward the nearest barracks. Maybe he could slip inside, find someone to hide him until he could clean up. Then if he were caught out after curfew, at least he could deny going anywhere near the fence and the charred log that would betray him. Tal reached the shadows of the building and caught his breath, got his bearings. He crept toward the doorway.

  Voices rose from behind the infirmary. The Japanese had seen the stick between the two fences, and they now knew someone had snuck under the wire. Would they figure out that someone had crawled back in? That might buy him a few minutes.

  Easing beneath a window, a child cried out over his head. Tal cursed himself. He’d gone under the wire to even the score with Nagata, prove he wasn’t broken by the bastard’s belt. He couldn’t ask the folks inside to join him in that. Anyone caught concealing him would risk the same punishment, and it would be severe. Tal searched, fighting a mounting dread. The Protestant chapel, the commandant’s office, the kitchen, all had lights glowing. The rest of the camp remained dark.

  He took Mac’s envelope from his pocket should he have to get rid of it on the run.

  No general alarm had been sounded yet. Tal tamped down his breathing to hear himself think. He had to come up with the next move. The guards were spreading around the camp, alerted out of their normal patrol routes. Some hunted outside the wire behind the infirmary while others scanned the grounds inside. With them wandering all over like this, there wasn’t a clear path back to No. 11. Tal crouched, undetected but stymied.

  Someone leaped down the back steps of the kitchen. The figure scampered to a neighboring barracks, where it skidded to hunker in the shadows like Tal. What was going on? Why was someone else out in the night? Had McElway sent two? This made no sense. Tal felt caught up in something larger than he’d bargained for, and this frightened him more. He tried to recognize the silhouette.

  A crash, like gunfire, erupted inside the kitchen. Then another, and a series of loud cracks sent the other runner bolting into the dark.

  Who was this? Did he cause the explosions? Tal had no time to unravel it, and no choice. The guards ran toward the clanging kitchen, rifles ready. Inside, Kolko careened back and forth, confused by the bangs popping on all sides of him. Tal shot to his feet, clutching the envelope. Relying on the sharp bursts for cover, with the guards flocking to the kitchen and dazed Kolko, Tal raced for No. 11.

  He darted past buildings with sleepy faces in the windows, roused by the commotion. Tal hoped that his charcoal disguise and speed would keep him anonymous in the dark to those who saw him. No one spoke. Many of the heads disappeared, with the internees’ instinct to avoid trouble. Behind him, the cracks from the kitchen stopped. Tal barreled the last distance. Huffing, he dived into the shadows of the latrine attached to his barracks.

  He rolled to his back, ignoring the pain across his shoulders, amazed at his luck, good and bad. Someone had saved him. Those detonations out of the kitchen had been set, timed, to distract the guards. Who’d done it? Not McElway. The runner was too spry. Mac had sent him, no question. Tal intended to take it up with the old man in the morning. It was going to be hard to complain that Mac hadn’t trusted Tal to pull it off. He almost blew it. Still, it stung having to be bailed out of trouble that his own clumsiness got him into.

  Tal could not lie here and savor being alive. A standing rule had cropped up in Los Baños: whenever something in the camp was amiss, the guards headed to No. 11.

  He scooted under the latrine for the water can he’d left there. Tugging off his dirty shirt, he scrubbed the charcoal from his skin, then rolled the tin far beneath the latrine. The shirt doubled as a towel.

  Bare-chested, Tal crept up the steps into the barracks.

  Donnelly met him in the doorway. “Out for a stroll?”

  “I wanted to see what all the noise was.”

  “Yeah,” Donnelly smiled. “A bloody lot of banging around this time of night. Any ideas?”

  “Nope.”

  Tal dodged around Donnelly to head for his bunk.

  “Hey, Tuck?”

  “What.”

  “Why do you smell like a campfire?”

  Tal froze without an answer, only for a moment.

  “I stopped by the kitchen tonight. Helped Mr. Kolko stoke the pits.”

  “Yeah, that must be it.”

  “Donnelly?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why’ve you got grass stains on your knees?”

  The Australian grinned, without looking down at himself. “Praying, mate. Praying for all of us. G’night.”

  Donnelly walked off to his rack, Tal to his. He tossed the shirt under his bunk and lay down his head.

  His roommates made no sound. They were obviously awake.

  In the bunk over his head, Santana whispered, “Hey, Jesse Owens is back.”

  His roommates tried to stifle their giggles. Tal listened, incredulous and scared at how little could be kept secret inside Los Baños.

  Five guards arrived with kerosene lanterns and bamboo sticks to roust the boys. They made only a cursory search, not sure what they were looking for. They found nothing, and heard only more fart noises.

  ~ * ~

  After the guards withdrew, Tal’s adrenaline ebbed. He lay awake for hours with jungle caws and hoots floating to his window. He built vivid images in his head, of great gliding wings, snuffling creatures, and Emilio.

  Once he closed his eyes, the clamp on his fear came off. Tal had not been as frightened running through the camp as he was now safe in his bed, reliving what might have happened. When he slept, it was fitful.

  He awoke in the early morning tired but with lifted spirits. In the half-light, he considered that he had, in fact, come through all right. The boys around him knew that he’d gone under the wire, certainly Donnelly had told them. They could be trusted. They’d know he’d pulled off some dangerous thing. Tal would not talk about it, and that would fan the story even more.

  He pushed aside the mosquito netting to go meet Mac. He tapped his pocket, checking for the envelope. Again he was tempted to probe it, but resisted as Mac had told him to.

  Outside, the old man waited by the latrine. Beside him stood Remy.

  Tal stopped. Mac waved him over. Only a few were up and about, all of them paying attention elsewhere.

  When Tal came close, Mac waggled a finger. “Before you jump down my throat, your daddy knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  “What’s in your pocket.”

  Remy kept quiet, hands behind his back.

  Tal said, “How come he can know and I can’t? I’m the one who went outside to get it.”

  Mac jerked a thumb at Remy. “And he’s the one who saw to it your ass got back in. You best thank him.”

  Tal asked Remy, “What did you do?”

  His father shrugged. “I asked Donnelly to w
atch out for you. He got your roommates to keep an eye on you, too. Donnelly followed you through the camp last night. When he saw the guards headed your way, he snuck into the kitchen and tossed some bamboo bombs into the fires.”

  Mac chuckled, cavalier, white of tooth and gums. “Everybody knows ol’ Kolko don’t stay awake. Anyways . . .” The old man held out a hand. “You made it and here you are. Thank you. Now, let’s have it.”