Soldiers in Hiding

by Richard Wiley

  Ike was in charge of Jimmy and me and we had a certain section to patrol. The store where I had first read my father’s letter became our headquarters. Stores of this kind were called sari-sari stores, and were everywhere. The woman who owned the store had grown a little used to us, and I tried to convince Jimmy that if we kept going there she would hear us speaking English and would get a message to the guerrillas not to try to kill us. The back wall of her store was against jungle so thick that nothing could penetrate it. Each time she looked over at us from the far wall where she leaned I smiled and tried to say something nice. “How are you tonight?” or “You should accept payment for the tea you give us.” One night I walked up close to her and said, “We won’t be here long, you know. The war is almost over and soon you’ll have your Americans back.” But she hardly ever answered.

  “Leave the poor woman alone,” Jimmy kept telling me. “She thinks you’re going to rape her or something. Stop smiling at her. This is war, man, act your age.”

  All through basic training no one had asked us about our backgrounds, so I guess I was getting a little complacent. The other soldiers accepted us, and even when we did interrogations it was generally believed that Jimmy and I had gone to school in America, that we’d learned the language so well as college students.

  During the first few weeks of the war we didn’t see any real action. We heard stories of large losses on other islands, we heard conflicting reports of Japanese victories and defeats at the same locations. But in the Philippines, for the moment, what we were faced with was a guerrilla war. I know that in the old American war movies Japanese soldiers always seemed adept at jungle fighting, but we were not. Whenever Major Nakamura decided we were to be aggressive, we lost men. When he sent us into the jungle, we knew our losses would be high and the reality of the war came home to us. But if we could stay at the sari-sari store, if we could win the hearts of the people and have them like us a little bit … In this way we were sure to survive.

  Jimmy was much more conservative than I was, much more pessimistic. He would never talk to the other soldiers, would never offer an opinion when we had a little time to ourselves, and would never drink sake. Because he kept to himself he became a figure of awe in the camp, for most of the soldiers were boys and what they liked best about the war was the camaraderie they could find with their fellows. Indeed, even with me, Jimmy’s inclination was to keep everything inside. He got more and more distant as time passed.

  One night, a week or so after Ike and Jimmy and I began patrolling the roads and pathways around the sari-sari store, something happened. There was still a little daylight left so we were at ease, standing near the entrance to the store and smoking. The woman had made some rice cakes and had them for sale on the counter when I walked in. She moved quickly toward the wall when she saw me. I remember my uniform was tight about the neck and the heat was terrible.

  “I have not yet made Japanese tea,” she told me. “Will you take the rice cakes instead?”

  The rice cakes were sticky and soft, but I was hungry, so I took out my knife and cut off a corner. They were sweet.

  “How much do I owe you?” I asked. “I insist upon paying. Taking tea is one thing, but cakes…”

  “No, no. I made them for you. Take them and go.”

  I held the sticky end of my knife up and looked about the counter for something to clean it with, a cloth or a piece of paper. There was a price marked on the top of the cakes, but since we’d made the sari-sari store our headquarters, most of the people who lived nearby would not come in and the woman wasn’t selling anything.

  “We’ve been a bother to you, haven’t we?” I said. “It’s just that we want to come in here to get away from the jungle. To get away from the prospect of war.”

  The woman still stood far away, but said slowly, “They think I am your collaborator. I have not lived here very long and now everyone is suspicious of me. When the war is over I will have to find another place to live because you want to come and stand in my store. Please take the cakes and go. You are not safe here. The guerrillas will kill me too.”

  The woman stiffened when I took a step toward her, to try to explain. My knife was sticky so I held it high. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Don’t they know we speak English when we come in here? Can’t they see that I and my friends are different? I ’ll tell you something,” I whispered. “I am really an American. So is one of my friends. This whole thing is a horrible mistake. We are victims too, just like you.”

  The woman’s mouth was open, her eyes on my knife.

  “Oh no,” I said. “I just want to clean it off. Do you have a rag or something? An old newspaper?”

  The woman was getting nervous and would not move, so I stuck the knife in its sheath, sticky as it was. “You see,” I said. “A sensible man would have cleaned it first. A real soldier would never have done that. Now do you believe me?”

  “What is it that you want?” she asked. “Why is it that you do not leave me alone? We are enemies, you and I. I do not want to be your friend!”

  I stood staring at the woman for a moment then took out my wallet and laid a few large Japanese bills on the counter.

  “I don’t want your money!” she shouted. “If they find that here they will kill me! I am not your friend! Go away!”

  I was surprised at the anger in the woman’s voice and wanted very much to explain. Always before she had simply stood there, answering only with a yes or a no. But now she was shouting. And suddenly, while I was trying to think of what I could say, what I could do to show her that I was telling the truth, the woman ran to the counter. She grabbed the money and ran out into the street with it. Jimmy and Ike were standing there, surprised when they saw her, frightened by the noise she made.

  “Hey!” said Ike. “What’s going on? Where are they? Did they come in the back of the store?”

  Ike unbelted his rifle and, before I could stop him, emptied its chamber into the woman’s store. He fired through the open door and the brittle bamboo side.

  “No!” I shouted, but it was too late. Jimmy too had begun to fire and the woman, completely hysterical now, threw the money into the air and began to scream. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Help me! Help me!”

  “Where are they?” Ike demanded, running up beside her.

  Jimmy was in a crouch. He turned, turret-style, keeping his eyes on the edge of the jungle, his finger fastened across the trigger.

  “Hold it! Hold it!” I shouted. “Nothing’s wrong!” But the woman moved toward Ike, scratching his face when he grabbed her. He held her down with one hand and raised his rifle.

  “Ike! No!” I yelled, but the woman screamed and twisted in his arms. Ike let the butt of his rifle bang hard, one time, against the side of the woman’s head.

  Jimmy and I shouted together but all of a sudden it was quiet again, our shouts stopping at the edge of the jungle, muffled there by the lack of movement all around us, by the still, quiet, humid night.

  “What have you done, Ike?” I asked, coming up carefully beside him. He was down beside the woman’s body, bobbing this way and that, trying to protect himself from whatever it was that was out there. Jimmy had gone inside the store and had come back holding his rifle low.

  “They’ve gone now,” he said. “Whoever it was is gone now.”

  Ike still held his rifle level with the floor of the jungle, but everything was so silent that he soon let it fall.

  “What was it, Teddy? Who was there?”

  Jimmy was asking me questions, but Ike was slumped over the woman’s body, staring. “There were no guerrillas,” he said.

  “I tried to tell you,” I told him. We were arguing about whether or not I should pay.”

  Ike put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, shaking gently, but she didn’t move. The blood in her hair mixed with the dry dust of the path, making me wish the rainy season would come. Then everyone could stay indoors.

  “She’s dead,” said Ike. “I’ve kill
ed somebody.”

  “No you haven’t, Ike,” I told him. “She was just mad about me paying for some cakes. She’ll be all right.”

  Jimmy shoved his rifle hard into my hands and knelt beside the woman’s still figure, trying to find a pulse. Ike had tears in his eyes and rubbed the dirty sleeve of his uniform across his face. The insignia on his shoulder folded and unfolded with the movement of his arm.

  In a moment Jimmy stood and said one of us should go back to tell the others. “She’s dead, but it was an accident,” he told Ike. “I was watching and I know you didn’t hit her very hard.”

  “Oh…” said Ike.

  When Jimmy said she was dead, I took a closer look at the woman but she looked all right to me. She didn’t look dead.

  “You go back, Ike,” Jimmy said. “Tell them there’s been some trouble but not to worry. It’s all over now.”

  Ike stood straight and walked away immediately so I sat with the woman myself, holding her thin wrist in my hand and waiting. Only a moment before she’d been begging me to leave her alone, to take what I wanted from her small store and get out. I should have listened. The large bills that I’d given her could easily buy much more than those cakes I wanted and the guerrillas would have been suspicious that she had so much money. She shouldn’t have shouted though, she shouldn’t have run. I saw some of the money lying nearby, so I picked it up and went back into the store. The bullets hadn’t done much damage. Probably most of them had passed through and were lodged in the leaves of the jungle behind. As I stood there I was struck by the general simplicity of tragedy. How it can seem so ordinary, how it can come so quickly and then be gone. When I heard the voices of the major and others outside, I put the bills back on the counter. The least I could do would be to help pay for the woman’s funeral. I looked around for something heavy to hold the bills down, to keep them from being lifted away by a light breeze if one came by.

  SINCE MEMORY IS SELECTIVE I HOPE THE FULLNESS OF mine will be appreciated. I make no excuses for myself, for my actions and lack of understanding. It is clear that I was a stupid boy, insensitive and dulled to the vividness of the world in which I lived. But I remember everything: the cast of the woman’s body as it altered the contours of the dust, the cooling cakes on her counter, the calmness of Jimmy, and the shaking shoulders of Ike. Perhaps if the woman had died more dramatically I would have been more moved than I was. Certainly the occasion was dramatic enough, but her actual death was so sober, so much within the realm of what soldiers usually saw. There was no noise when the rifle hit her head, and she sat down so gracefully, not like falling, but like sitting, like simply sitting down.

  I have often thought that opposites, in a man, are like the two tips of a perfect horseshoe. That is, though they may indeed be opposites, in the general curve of things they are very close together. It is the only explanation I have for the way I am, for the way I have been over the years. I was thoughtless as a boy but I do little else but think now. I am filled with love for my son yet cannot express it whenever he is near. I have loved only one woman in my life, but have often stayed with another. I think all men are like that. All mankind is. I remember Ike as our manager, how sweet he was and how he stumbled about. He always went on jobs with us. He’d sit at a table as close to the band as he could get and he’d keep the beat with his body, his involvement in our music sometimes reaching epileptic proportions. Yet after he clubbed the woman to death with the butt of his rifle, another angle of him began to appear. He stayed very close to Major Nakamura and became quite serious about infractions of the rules. Jimmy and I continued to keep watch, staying as much as possible to our silent selves, but Ike was transformed. He carried the major’s clipboard and stayed up late at night studying the terrain, coming up with all kinds of possible theories as to where the guerrillas might be. He became the major’s aide and lost his popularity with the troops. Though most of the rest of us wanted to stand our ground, with Ike’s help the major finally decided that into the jungles we must go, that we must meet the bandits on their own ground and destroy them.

  Jimmy, in his way, was madder at Ike than I was when we marched out to try to force our first encounter. In that part of the Philippines the jungle was thick, so an advanced troop of us would cut a patch of brush away, then the rest of us would move up and the work force would rotate. We forayed only one hundred meters into the jungle that day and when we returned we were exhausted and bitten all over by mosquitoes. Jimmy took Ike aside and tried to reason with him, but he could not. He learned only that after the woman’s death Ike had told the major that we were Americans, and that though we could be trusted, we might certainly be more useful to the war effort than we had been so far.

  Major Nakamura sent troops out in search of the guerrillas daily, and in a few days we found them. Cutting through the jungle, one of our fellows found a path, and so all quiet and with bayonets fixed, we began a real patrol. We walked single file, rifles high. On the tip of my bayonet I could see the dried cake that had cost the woman her life.

  The guerrillas waited until we were all within their range and then attacked us in a methodical manner, firing down upon us from the surrounding trees. For a moment we stood there shouting at one another, then each of us pushed himself through the thickening brush at the sides of the path and fell to the fertile earth. I dug my way in and remained still. For a moment I could hear the chatter of the guerrillas, talking high up in the trees, and then everything was quiet.

  Only Ike was with me on patrol that day, and I didn’t know if he’d been hit. He’d been leading the patrol and I’d heard his commands occasionally, but it had been days since I’d actually seen his face. Every time we’d tried to talk, the dying posture of the sari-sari store woman had come between us. Through Ike’s eyes I could see her limp body falling. In mine he could, no doubt, see that we had been in no danger.

  Though I sensed movement about me I did not look up or move. I was sure that the guerrillas must have seen us burrowing in, but they neither shot at us nor slid down out of the trees to push their blades through the backs of our thin summer uniforms. The quiet was so complete that I remember thinking that the forest animals, the snakes and various birds, must have been scandalized into silence. The only thing unaffected was the wind. It nudged at the quiet edges of my uniform.

  Even the darkness fell strangely that night. It fell upon the tops of the trees, then seeped in slowly, like a fog. And just before it finished drawing its black purse strings around us, there was fire from the trees and several shouts from the ground. Little lights the lengths of cigars shot out of the woods at angles. And with the resumption of the awful sound, I stood up. I imagined that the barrel of my rifle had mud in it and would not fire, so I kept it at my side. Most of the fighting was taking place toward the front of the patrol. At my end the velvet night seemed to have rolled in more thickly, giving me better cover than the others had.

  When the fighting was hottest I stepped darkly through the trees and back onto the path. No one would expect me to be there. I waited until the next volley and then took a few quick steps to my left, bumping into the forest wall, but generally staying on the path. The shouts were coming from behind me then, for I was leaving. A flare whistled treeward and lit the guerrillas like a lightning flash, letting the Japanese soldiers shoot at the solid shapes that they saw. I took the opportunity to empty my clip easily into the chorus of sound, then to notice the way the path wound and to run.

  I know that the popular cultures of both my countries would despise my actions. I could have saved myself, I suppose, in American eyes, by turning the barrel of my weapon on my fellow Japanese and having the Filipino patriots welcome me to their troop. Or I could have had honor in Japan by standing my ground and trying to kill as many of the enemy as I could. The truth is, had I been in the American army I might have done something like that, but as it was I simply slipped away. It wounded me to do what I did, but how could I have done otherwise? The eyes of the guerr
illas were deep and steady, so sure that they were right. And the Japanese boys had their honor to hold on to. The spirit of the Bushido, the way…

  I timed my steps to the sound of the gunfire and was able to get several hundred yards from the action in an hour. It was clear that at first light the small battle would be over. The guerrillas had the upper hand and only those who had managed to crawl away would survive. I thought of Ike, all unhappy about the woman whose life he’d taken, all military in his attempt to order his own life after that. If this had happened before he’d hurt the woman, he might be here with me now. But, of course, he could not want to survive if the others did not. The idea that we should be foraging around in these foreign woods was his, so he could not survive it.

  I found a wide spot in the path and slept until gray dawn came to the tops of the trees. The gunfire behind me had stopped during the night, but as I woke I did hear, once more, a dozen shots carefully aimed.

  When I reached the camp Major Nakamura was happy to see me but wondered how I had managed to get back. Surely, if I had returned, he said, we could count the whole thing a Japanese victory, if only by the margin of one. I hung my head and nodded, so the major patted my shoulders as if to relieve my fatigue. He knew how to praise as well as to punish. Now, he said, the guerrillas would think twice about stopping the Japanese army from carrying out its tasks.

  After the major went off silently to grieve, some of the others came around and asked me to recount the battle for them, to tell how it all took place. Even Jimmy was inching toward my side. I held my head up high and spoke as if refreshed. “It was simple,” I told them all. “We waited until morning and saw their silhouettes in the clearing sky. They were the solid shapes in the brittle branches of the trees.”

  MAJOR NAKAMURA MADE ME HIS AIDE. NEWS OF OUR encounter with the guerrillas reached the Manila headquarters, and soon we received instructions to desist, to worry about the open areas of the cities and towns where we were stationed, but to let the guerrillas stay in the woods, to give them that terrain as their own. We waited a week for Ike or any of the others to return and then we were ordered to move, transferred southwest to the province of Bataan. There were prisoners there and we were being called to guard them. The guards they had, it seemed, were in need of some time to themselves, a bit of open warfare for their psychological well-being.