“I can feel my heart pushing the blood I have left. The bullet hole hurts. I’m afraid. I’m dizzy. I feel many things, Carmen. But I don’t feel that.”
She scooped up the cloth doll and knelt at the window to peek over the sill. At dusk, she would forage again in the wreckage of the camp for food and lantern oil. Tomorrow, she’d sneak back to the ravine for more water and to soak the smell of smoke out of the doll.
Beyond tomorrow, the path petered out. Could she abandon Kenji and head into the jungle as she’d promised Tal? Even if Kenji were able to stagger away from this building, where could he go? The first guerrilla to spot him alone would cut his throat. Could she stay with Kenji, somehow escort him back to the Japanese? Even if the guerrillas let them pass, what about Nagata? Now that he was alive and close by, could she risk it? Nagata had seen the Tuck boy racing into the camp alongside the American soldiers. Nagata had been in Toshiwara’s office with Kenji when the Songu tag came out of the boy’s pocket. He knew to link Carmen and Tal, and if Nagata was watching the camp at sundown yesterday, he knew she was alive, too. How long until he sorted out that she’d been the one funneling secrets to the Americans?
Carmen could not leave Kenji, that would mean his death. He would starve, bleed out, or be murdered. If she stayed, there remained a chance. Someone would find them, the Japanese, the guerrillas, or the Americans. Who would climb the stairs first? Each walking through her door would bring a very different fate.
Kenji rested his hand on her knee.
“I want to tell you something. It should be said.”
“Yes, Kenji.”
“Every Japanese should say this to you. But you may never hear it again.”
“What.”
“I am sorry.”
Carmen stood in her window, framed herself there, and beckoned whoever would come, to come.
~ * ~
Gunfire jolted her awake.
She scrambled to her feet. A high, bright moon shone over Makiling. The camp remained skeletal and quiet. The ravine and jungle held its million breaths.
Another burst split the night, then single shots. The gunplay came from a little village at the foot of a hill, west of the camp.
“Help me stand,” Kenji said.
He struggled up beside her. Kenji gripped the sill to steady himself.
She asked, “Is it the Americans?”
“No. Those are Japanese guns.”
The firing swelled, automatic weapons brayed nonstop. The sounds didn’t seem to be answered. This was not a pitched battle on the hillside, but some one-sided affair. No battle shouts of soldiers or the yelps of wounded rose from the village.
“What are they doing?” Carmen asked. “Why are they shooting?”
“I don’t know.”
Slowly, in fits and starts, the firing ceased. Carmen’s heart thumped, dreading what would come next. She considered fetching the pistol, but it would be useless if those guns turned on her. Should she run and hide? Only Kenji stood any chance of protecting her from the Japanese. Only she could save him from the Filipinos. The two of them could not be separated, not right now.
By the wan light of the lantern, she checked the strips she’d wrapped around Kenji before midnight. The bandage was clean. Kenji wavered, but his gaze held firm.
An owl’s hoot flew from the jungle, an inquisitive call.
A glimmer shivered out of the moon shadows on the hill. A firebrand had been struck. Quickly, one roof in the village became a torch. For the second time in two days, Carmen in her high window watched flames spread. The Japanese carried the fire from door to door, until most of the homes became engulfed.
The flames grew bright enough to light the disgust on Kenji’s face. Carmen draped the dead soldier’s tunic around his bare shoulders. His legs wobbled but he would not turn from the fire until Carmen, to save his stamina, pulled him down to the tatami.
They leaned together against the wall. She turned down the wick to save the small store of oil. Orange flickers tinted the moonlight in her room. From the forested slopes of the hill and out of the creek below, animals and birds shrieked their fear at another blaze near their homes.
Kenji slumped to the mattress. Carmen stayed upright and sleepless, sensing that the night held more.
Before dawn, the smell of smoke drew her down the hall and stairs, outside to the open field. She stood on the grass where she and Yumi had played, where Hua was buried. Smoke fled through the orchard, across the cogon grass and ravine, blew like fog against her building. From behind the trees came the screams the Japanese had sought in the hillside village but did not find, and the gleam of a fire that burned more than wood.
~ * ~
Carmen’s dream contained nothing of her horror. The vision was the opposite of what she’d brought back to her room. She found her family alive and well, Manila the bustling city it had been, nothing out of order. She looked for hints or symbols of the villages slaughter and found none. She felt fooled by the dream, did not trust the sense of peace and safety. Carmen woke herself.
Beside her, Kenji was warm. Morning had come. Carmen lifted her head.
She scrabbled backward, banging the wall.
The guerrilla boy Benito squatted at the foot of the tatami. At his back, his bolo hung to the floor like the third leg of a stool. He held Kenji’s pistol. She’d left it close to her hand when she lay down terrified hours ago.
Kenji awoke and did not startle. He propped himself on his good elbow.
“Hello,” he said to Benito.
The boy reached behind him. With a slow hiss, he drew his bolo.
Aiming the point at Kenji, he asked in Tagalog, “What’s he doing here?”
She answered in the same tongue. “Please don’t hurt him.”
“Are you a makipili now?”
“No. His name is Kenji. He’s been kind to me. He gave me many of the secrets I brought to you.”
“And what did you give him in return?”
Carmen was older than this boy. She didn’t know what he had done with his youth besides mop her floor and wave his bolo at a few soldiers. She knew what had happened to hers.
“Do not speak to me that way.”
Benito dropped his eyes, only for a moment. “When was he shot?”
“In the raid. The Tuck boy did it.”
Kenji set his shoulders against the wall next to Carmen. The guerrilla boy glanced at spent tins, the water bucket, the cloth doll, and the pile of bloody bandages.
“You stayed behind to save this guard.”
“He wasn’t a guard. He was an interpreter.”
Benito laid the knife across his knees. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What are you doing here?”
“You were seen in the camp. Colonel Romeo sent me to bring you out.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“You have to.” Benito raised Kenji’s pistol. “I’m going to kill him.”
Though he was a boy, she believed him.
Kenji showed no sign that he knew Benito was as dangerous as the holes in his shoulder. Or was he too weak, too accepting of his own death to care how it was delivered?
“Do you know what happened last night?” Benito asked.
“I saw flames. I heard . . .” She could not describe the sounds. “Tell it in English. He should hear.”
“All right,” the guerrilla replied in English. “Listen to me, Japanese.”
Blood had begun to blot through Kenji’s wrap, a red eye widening at Benito.
“Yes.”
“After midnight, eighty soldiers came down from the slope of Makiling. They went to the college gate. The barrio there is empty. We’d already moved the people to Faculty Hill to protect them. The Japanese shot up empty houses, then burned them.”
“We saw that,” Kenji said.
“Did you see what they did next?”
“No.”
“Villagers in the town heard the shooting at the gate. A hundred of them got sca
red and ran to the Catholic chapel. Mostly women and children. The Japanese found them. Some ran out the back door. The others barricaded themselves inside the church.”
The fire behind the orchard, the smoke gusting past Carmen.
“The soldiers bayoneted the ones who tried to get away. The rest they burned alive inside the church.” Benito gazed at the pistol in his hand. He seemed to weigh it against the bolo across his lap. “We found the bodies at dawn.”
Kenji’s face was white. He pursed his lips against the sickening tale and the steady loss of his own blood.
“It was a reprisal raid,” Kenji said. “It was Nagata.”
“We know. That’s why Romeo sent me to come get her.”
The guerrilla lifted the long knife from across his legs. In his other hand he held the pistol, as if granting Kenji the choice from which to die.
Carmen pushed herself from the wall, folding to her knees between Kenji and Benito.
“He had no part in it.”
“I told you.” The guerrilla shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
From behind, Kenji touched her. “Go with him.”
She pushed Kenji’s arm down. “No. Benito, tell me what you want.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you want from me? To let him live.”
Kenji tried to turn her again to make her face him. Carmen shirked him off.
She said to Benito, “Anything.”
The guerrilla lowered both weapons. “Don’t do that, Carmen. Let the war end.” He stood, not a tall boy, in tattered sneakers.
“Benito,” Kenji said.
“What.”
“You’re young. Have you killed before?”
“No.”
“I have. It’s best to avoid it. But I understand.”
Carmen rose from her knees. She returned to Tagalog, close to the boys face.
“I know you’re angry. I know you’ve seen the dead. But I . . .” She pressed a hand to her own breast. “I am among the dead. For the life I have lost, please.”
Benito glanced at wounded, weary Kenji.
“If I leave, another will come for you. Maybe Romeo himself. You’ll never talk him out of it if that soldier’s found here. And what will you do if Nagata comes? You think this one can save you?”
“That’s why you have to help.”
“I won’t kill him. But I will not help him.”
“Then do this only for me. And tell no one.”
“What.”
“Go to the Americans.”
“Why?”
“Bring back the Tuck boy.”
~ * ~
Chapter Fifty-four
T
HE LITTLE Korean girl shuffled. The Tuck kid’s father, with one arm in a sling, could only deal and play.
Remy Tuck called the game while spinning cards to Bolick and the four other soldiers around the table. “Let’s go deuces wild this time. Live dangerously.”
Remy was in an expansive mood. His stack of candies, cookies, Life Saver packs, and Hershey bars rose higher than anyone’s in the little prison cell. Tal watched from his bunk.
A stocky corporal opened the betting with a mint.
Bolick, with mock disgust, folded his hand first. He said to Tal, “Good thing I didn’t meet your old man ‘til this afternoon. I’d be skinny as you. Come on, kid.” Bolick pushed his few remaining sweets over to the corporal.
Tal left the bunk to move beside Remy. “You okay?” The Korean girl answered, “He okay.”
“Go on,” Remy told him. “Yumi’ll help me carry all this.”
Bolick pointed at Remy. “You take care, sir. Heal up.”
“Watch yourself out there, Sergeant. Thanks for keepin’ an eye on my boy.”
Bolick hefted his radio and rifle off the cell floor. Tal gabbed two Hershey bars from his father’s pile. The girl, Yumi, gave them both hugs; her arms did not link around Bolick’s waist.
Walking out, Tal handed Bolick one of the candy bars. Bolick crammed half in his mouth at once. An internee girl walked past and grinned. Bolick couldn’t return the smile without drooling milk chocolate down his tunic. The girl giggled and moved on.
When Bolick could speak, he said, “These are the first American girls I’ve seen in two years.”
“You can have ‘em.”
“Yeah, I guess there’ll be plenty of gals waitin’ for you back in the States.”
Tal unwrapped his own candy bar and nibbled.
Bolick said, “When I dropped in to say goodbye, I didn’t figure on gettin’ in a poker game. Your dad, he’s some guy.”
“That’s Remy. I have no idea where that table or the cards came from. They just showed up. It’s his gift. He draws people in.”
The kid seemed bothered. All the other internees celebrated, ate until they got sick, grew giddy at the mention of going home. The army gave them movies and newsreels to watch, music on the loudspeakers, shelter, safety, medicine, soap, food, mail. Tal appeared cool to it all. No matter what the army provided, or what tomorrow promised, the boy was missing something. It seemed his nature, from the moment Bolick met him, to swim against the current. Small wonder the kid chafed against his more amiable father, who played poker with a bullet hole in his back and a Korean cutie watching over him.
Tal was the same age as a lot of the guys in Bolick’s squad. He could’ve been a soldier. He and Bolick might have served together. Yesterday they’d both run into battle and had shot men. Today their paths split. Bolick was headed back into the war. A civilian’s fate waited for brave, contrary Tal Tuck.
Bolick led him outside. The road running past New Bilibid Prison was choked with soldiers on foot, vehicles pulling out, towed artillery, deuce trucks, tanks, half-tracks. All this and more, Bolick himself, had been mustered to whisk Tuck out of Los Baños before the Japanese could gun him and two thousand others down. The power of America rolled past, kicking up a ton of dust and fumes. Bolick was proud even if the kid was moony.
“Well, pal. I gotta go.”
Tal extended his hand. “Where to?”
Bolick jerked his chin in the direction of the convoy. His battalion was assigned to take positions along the San Juan River five miles west of Los Baños, at the spot where Shorty Soule’s task force stalled yesterday when the Japanese blew a bridge. The Japanese had expected American tanks to motor down Highway 1, not sail around them on the bay.
By tonight at sundown, after one rare night in a bed, the smiles of some American girls, then a fifteen mile hike, Bolick would be shoveling a foxhole a few thousand yards from the Tiger Division.
He took Tal’s hand. Bolick gave it a firm shake, as the boy deserved. “Stay outta trouble.” He hooked a ride on a jeep.
~ * ~
Chapter Fifty-five
T
AL COULDN’T bear more of prison, even one he could walk away from. He sat on a hillock outside New Bilibid, watching soldiers rolling or marching past. Many waved, some tossed him food as though he were a waif. When he’d collected a dozen packets of crackers and candy bars, he flagged down a chaplain’s jeep to hand them over.
He turned to go back to his shady spot near the road. A Filipino boy stood there, dressed like Tal, in shorts and sneakers. A rifle strapped across his chest and the dangling bolo marked him as a guerrilla.
Beside the exhaust and grinding whine of the road, Tal held his ground. The boy stayed in the afternoon shade. They stared for long moments, keeping their distance. Compared with the modern army thundering at Tal’s back, the guerrilla looked solitary, small, almost primitive. He was the barrio and jungle.
Tal shouted, “What do you want?”
The guerrilla motioned him to come away from the road. Tal did not. If this boy had a purpose with Tal, let him say so. If not, he should walk on. Tal was not an internee anymore. He didn’t come, bow, eat, or sleep when told to.
The guerrilla did not step out of the shade, as if he’d traveled far enough. He cupped hi
s hands around his mouth, and called. “The Japanese you shot...”
Tal bolted up the short slope. The Filipino finished his statement with Tal in his face.
“He did not die.”
Broken Jewel - [World War II 05] Page 41
