Tal said, “Please.” He felt dishonored for begging, and pivoted away before the guard could refuse him a third time.
Tal traced the fence to the facade of the building. A soldier patrolled the road beneath Carmen’s window. Tal presented him with one of the breakfasts. The little man surveyed left and right to see if anyone might catch him, then snatched the food. He walked away, gobbling the food.
Tal shouted up to Carmen. She did not appear. He jogged to the building’s south wing to call beneath Yumi’s window. Both girls leaned over the sill, green and red robes side by side.
Yumi hollered down something unintelligible, waving. Carmen elbowed the tiny girl out of the opening.
“Good morning, Tal!”
“I tried to bring you both some breakfast. I got stopped at the gate. Something’s changed. They’re walking the wire again.”
Carmen paused to look over the camp. “What happened?”
“I’m gonna find out. I’ll set the food over here on your side of the fence. Come down and get it.”
Tal reached the plate far under the barbs to leave it on a clump of weeds. With a wave to Carmen—and Yumi beside her again—he hurried to his barracks.
The word buzzing in the dining hall was of a new troop of soldiers that had arrived in the night from Mindoro. They were the ragged remains of a company hit hard by fighting, sent to Los Baños to recover. While they wouldn’t interfere with the camp’s self-management, they’d been ordered to put a stop to Filipinos visiting inside the wire except for food and supplies and to clamp down on anyone leaving the camp. Apparently the first round of replacement guards had been too few and too lax.
Donnelly ambled up to Tal. “You heard?”
“Yeah. I don’t like it.”
“Can’t go see your sally, eh?”
“No.”
“I don’t think these new Japs are going to fancy us strolling into town, either.” The Australian lapped an arm across Tal’s shoulder. He said clandestinely, “Not in the middle of the day, at least, eh?’”
Tal returned to beneath Carmen’s window. Through the wire, behind the weeds, the plate was still there. From thirty yards off, the guard he’d fed earlier held up one finger. Tal was to be given one minute. Carmen waited above.
“I couldn’t come down,” she said. “Mama stopped me.”
“Why?”
“She said Yumi and I have to stay in our rooms now that there’s guards back in the camp.”
“She can’t do that.”
“Yes, she can.”
The guard came his way, tapping his wristwatch to signal time running out. Tal took no steps back from the wire.
“Go,” Carmen said.
Tal held his ground, craning his neck back to gaze up at her. The guard grunted a warning.
Carmen leaned far over her sill. Her robe parted enough to see the divide of her breasts. The guard, only strides from Tal, looked up as well. When the man brought down his eyes, he lacked malice, wanting no fight. He, too, was marked by other battles, he’d likely had enough. The soldier needed Tal to walk off.
Carmen shouted, “Go to the tree. Wait for me!”
How could she get out? Before Tal could speak, Carmen vanished from the window. The guard stopped at arm’s length away. He tugged the rifle off his shoulder, rotating it butt first.
Tal flattened a palm to stop him. He indicated the full plate of food hidden in the bushes. The guard bowed his head at Tal retreating.
~ * ~
He sat in the shade with others. He knew them all. A young couple with a two-year-old born in Santo Tomas had both gone bony over the past months trading food to get powdered milk for the child. The widow of a man who’d had a heart attack ten months ago wrestled with depression. A preacher, a salesman with a sunny disposition, a lawyer. The dog killer, Dr. Lockett, and an army nurse; gossip in the camp linked the two of them.
High above in the morning, formations of American bombers and fighters shuttled back and forth, pounding Manila and targets just miles west of Los Baños. The internees were not forced indoors by these guards; they relished every detonation and rumble.
The talk under the tree was about the fifty new guards, how the camp was in charge of feeding them, too. That was surely why the soldiers allowed food to flow in from the locals, and did nothing to prevent the continued slaughter of the livestock. These latest Japanese looked like a pretty beat-up bunch. They could still be dangerous.
After an hour, Carmen showed. She emerged from the jungle on the opposite side of the barbed wire wearing the sky blue blouse Remy had bought. To Tal she seemed like an opal against the lush green, containing her own light. They could not touch; the fence ran doubled here. Across rusty barbs, they stood five strides apart.
“How’d you get out?”
“Yumi.”
Up close, the girl seemed frantic. She’d walked a mile around the fence, much of it along the dense bank of the creek.
“Sit down. Tell me.”
She composed herself, cross-legged on the grass. Tal did the same.
“I was so afraid you were going to get into a fight with that guard. You can’t do that.”
“I know. I just get ticked off.”
“You have to hide it.”
“Toshiwara told me the same thing. I’ll do better. So what happened after I left?”
“I got dressed and walked right past Mama. She screamed for me to get back in my room. I told her I wouldn’t go. When the new soldiers come for the shuho she’ll tell them where I’ve gone. ‘They’ll find you,’ she said. ‘I won’t have to.’ Then Yumi came out on the landing. She did this.”
Carmen imitated the tiny girl’s gesture, thumping her own breast.
“Yumi was saying to Mama, £I’ll take all the soldiers. Let her go.’ I ran down the steps. I don’t know if I did the right thing.”
Tal wrapped fists around the barbed wire. The fence remained more powerful than him, but he could hate it. He could adore what was on the other side.
“There’s no right thing. There’s just bad and worse. That’s gonna change. And soon.”
She dug into a pocket of her slacks. “This is for you.”
Carmen held up a wooden tag. She sailed it through the strands of wire into Tal’s hands. The tag bore a symbol,.
“It means Songu,” she said. “It’s what the Japanese call me. You keep it, until you can give it back to me in person. Yes?”
Tal ran his thumb over the symbol. He wanted to snap it, throw the pieces into the creek behind her. He tucked the tag into his shirt.
The two sat across from each other, talking through the wires. They spoke about the past in their lives, and the futures they hoped for, but nothing of the camp or today. This was how they made the barrier between them vanish. They talked of where they would live together, imagined having children, argued over names. Tal had never seen America and wasn’t sure he’d fit there. Carmen wanted to go. She described her father, brothers, and uncles in Manila, how hard they worked as street vendors, her mother’s stoic heart, as if she would see them tonight at sundown when they wheeled in from the city. Tal told of his own mother. He colored his recollections to match Carmen’s, making Sarah more vivid than she was in his memory, and let himself believe he knew her as well as he claimed. He spoke more fondly of Remy than he’d expected.
In the afternoon, Tal left to fetch food. He hurried back with bowls of rice and beans mixed with bacon. He’d tied one up in cloth. “Catch.” He tossed the covered bowl through the two fences so it would not spill.
The meal slowed their conversation. When they had eaten, Carmen lay on her side, folding one arm as a pillow. The other arm she stretched beneath the bottom strand of wire, to Tal. Inside the camp, he took the same posture, extending his open hand into the dead space between them. They slept, Tal in the shade of the dao tree, she in the cool rising from the creek, reaching to each other.
When he awoke, Carmen was gone. The bowl had been lobbed back through the fence
. The sun shone behind the jungle. Tal, creaky from the long nap, turned his back to the fence. He looked across the tops of the many barracks of his prison to her empty window. He took from his pocket the wooden tag with the symbol for “Songu.”
He plotted to return it.
~ * ~
After dinner, Tal walked the fence. He counted the Japanese, noting the spaces between them, their level of attention. These tired boys, fresh off the front line, made sloppy guards. They bunched up to chat and smoke, they leaned or sat. The camp posed no threat, and these soldiers presented little in return.
The internees possessed a renewed vigor after years of being wary, starved, and scared. With two days of full rations in their bellies, they found themselves with unaccustomed energy and nothing to expend it on. Most were convinced liberation would arrive any day; much of the routine work in the camp slowed, or was not done. The committee had not replaced Toshiwara’s bull, the firewood supply dwindled. Folks milled, restless even after dark. When the loudspeaker announced that the Japanese radio needed more repair and there would be no broadcast tonight, a cry went across the grounds. No one knew what to do with themselves now that they were no longer weak. To replace the news and placate the camp, the committee played music over the loudspeakers. Curfew would be pushed back ninety minutes.
With everyone outdoors and no current events coming from the camp radio, Tal found Remy lying alone on a blanket in front of No. 12, listening to the music. Tal asked if they might go inside, break out their radio, and dial up KROJ, get the latest news, spread the word. Remy said sure.
Inside, the two uncovered Macs crystal set and listened for an hour. Outside, Count Basie and Chick Webb tunes occupied the camp. On the crystal set, Tal heard that Radio Tokyo had reported a large American convoy near Lingayen, another off Mindoro, a third approaching from Saipan. American forces would soon land on Luzon and intensive bombings were taking place against all coastal gun emplacements and airfields. Once the news cycled back on itself, Remy put the radio back into its hole. They shoved the bunk into place.
“Why do we have to keep hiding it?” Tal asked. “What’s the big deal? The Japs’re gone.”
Remy sat on the bunk, pondering his own answer. “Maybe its three years of habit, knowing the Japs’d string me and Mac up if we got caught with it. Maybe it’s just a gambler’s instinct. That little radio is something you and I know about that no one else does. It’s an ace in the hole, and I don’t feel like showin’ it off just yet. I figure let’s rely on the camp radio for now, and wait a little longer to see how the cards are fallin’. Besides, I ain’t in a hurry to be anybody’s hero.”
Tal rested hands on his hips, alert to an insult. “Meaning what? That I am?”
“You’re in a hurry for somethin’. That I do know. Sit down, Talbot.”
“I’ll stand.”
Remy pointed. “You’ll sit.”
Tal plopped onto the mattress of the lower bunk across from Remy. He met his father’s gaze. Remy looked away. He pulled off his fedora.
“I’m sorry the gals can’t join us. But it’s gonna be soon, boy. You understand?”
“Sounds like it.”
“I don’t know what it’s gonna look like when the shit hits the fan. You heard the same stuff I did. Three big convoys. MacArthur’s comin’. That’s great news, but it scares me at the same time. All I can figure is it’s gonna get crazy. When it does, we’re gonna have to stick close to each other.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Not if you get reckless. You won t be there for me, or for her. I’ll say again: its gonna be soon. You can wait, cant you?”
“You want me to lie?”
Remy rapped his fedora against his leg. “Goddamit.” He turned the hat in circles by the brim, prickly and uncomfortable. “Why you gotta go now?”
Tal paused to consider. “Mostly because the Japs say I can’t.”
“I wish that didn’t make sense. Damn it.”
Tal said, “I’ll be fine. I’ve done this before.”
The fedora stopped.
“With a girl?”
“No, I mean ... I mean sneaking out of the camp.”
Remy spoke to his anxious fingers and the spinning hat. “All right. Look, this puts me in a hell of a position. Being your old man.”
“I know.”
“Do you? I could forbid it, but that’ll get me nowhere.”
“Pretty much.”
“So, now I gotta ask.”
Tal watched the hat spin faster. “Okay.”
“What do you know?”
“Not much.”
Remy blew out a long exhale. “Oh, man.”
Tal added, “I figure she does.”
Remy shifted the fedora to one hand, to wave it about the small room. “This ain’t the way it was supposed to be, Talbot. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what? I love her. I don’t know what else you could’ve wished for me.”
Remy lifted his face. The etches beside his eyes crinkled. “Me neither, I guess.”
Remy gazed for moments, as though he saw more than just Tal there.
“All right. Don’t run and don’t sneak. Just walk. You can duck these new guards, they’re half dead by the looks of ‘em. They don’t care what you do, and don’t make ‘em care. I’ll cover for you at roll call. Be in your bunk before midnight or I come looking for you. Understood?”
“Got it.”
“Okay. Anything you want to ask me?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I’m sorry Mac’s not here. He could’ve stood in for me. Now listen. I got only one bit of advice for you.”
“Do you have to?”
“Yes. You’re right about the girl.”
Remy stood from the bunk. Tal followed.
“How so?” he asked.
His father clapped him hard in the middle of the back.
“Let her run the show.”
~ * ~
Tal donned a black T-shirt.
He strolled through the camp. People ignored him, busy visiting or listening to big bands over the loudspeakers from chairs and blankets. They burned smudge pots to keep the bugs at bay, children kicked empty tins. A festive atmosphere hovered. Above it all, Carmen stood in silhouette.
At the woodpile behind the kitchen, Tal grabbed a stick the proper length. Casually, he made his way to the infirmary. With no guards in sight, he slipped along the wall to the rear of the building and the double fence there.
“I wasn’t gonna wait much longer, mate.”
Tal jumped.
Donnelly stepped out of a shadow. “Don’t piss yourself.”
Tal moved alongside him. “What’re you doing here?”
“I figured this was as good a time as any for a walkabout.”
“How’d you know I was coming?”
Donnelly chuckled. “Because I’m not a stupid git. Everyone in camp can see your gal up in her window and you making your clever little way here in your black T-shirt. I got here first. Thought we’d go out together, more fun that way. After you.”
The Australian lifted the bottom strand. Tal put aside his amazement to lie on his back. He shimmied under, then held the wire for Donnelly. In moments, they stood outside both fences. Tal stashed the stick in the weeds.
The two pushed through high grass and the bamboo grove, careful not to cause the tall stalks to waver.
“Where you going?” Tal asked. “Town?”
“Just taking the air. It’s smells better outside the wire. You know, down under, we got seven million people and room for ten times more. You get used to open spaces. This Los Baños has been a bit of hell.”
Tal said, “I was born in Australia. Near Coffs Harbour.”
“What a constant surprise you are, Tuck.”
The boys reached the edge of the ravine. Both scrambled down the dark bank, shaking hands at the bottom. Donnelly disappeared on the stones of the trickling creek. Tal crossed to the other side.
At the far edge of the orchard, the main road into the camp lay unlit and without traffic. Tal squatted in the weeds, watching the guards at the gate until he had his best chance to cross unseen. He walked across the tarmac like a boy doing nothing wrong. In another hundred yards, he stood at the back door of the animal husbandry building.
Broken Jewel - [World War II 05] Page 18
