The Caprices

by Sabina Murray

Jim had shipped out to the Philippines from San Francisco in November of 1941. He’d watched the other guys hugging their girlfriends after some wild nights—guys who had made the most of an opportunity where no girl would say no. He’d said his one goodbye, to his mother, weeks earlier, in New Hampshire. The leaves had turned red only in places. Everywhere Jim looked was lush and green. This last moment of summer seemed unreal, made him want to hold his breath. His hair was buzzed short and the sun felt good on his scalp. He was now Pfc. James T. Darcy of the 17th Pursuit Squadron, USAAF. The air force had a romantic pull.

  “I don’t like this flying around,” his mother had said. “Stay on the ground where you belong.” But Jim wasn’t going to fly any planes, only fix them, and this had calmed her down.

  The 17th Pursuit was stationed at Nichols Field, just south of Manila. Jim, like everyone else, had been stunned when the Japanese started bombing. No one did anything at first, just looked at the sky waiting for something more believable to come along. Jim watched a Japanese Zero cruise low, the bombs walk the length of the runway—BOOM, BOOM, BOOM—just like a giant stepping down the line. Pilots sprinted to their planes, only to see them burst into beautiful fireballs. Bombers taxied desperately, trying to get off the ground. The Japanese bombed with supreme precision. Their pursuits strafed across the wings of the American P-40s. No Japanese cartridge was wasted. An American pilot pounded his fists on the window of his cockpit, his figure slowly being erased by the smoke. There was too much to look at for Jim to make any conclusions; besides, he was in charge of a .50-caliber antiaircraft machine gun. Not that he was doing a very good job. Jim didn’t know the lead time for shooting planes—the Zeros were speedy—so he sent shot after shot into the smoke of their tails, his bullets exploding as harmlessly as popcorn.

  And then they had abandoned Manila. At the time, Jim felt an awful nostalgia for the place, even though he’d only been there a month. Even when the bombs had been blasting all around, in the brief spaces of reprieve Jim had heard music—guitar and happy Tagalog—just people singing and singing, crackly radio, clinking beer caps on the counter, women’s hands clapping, and the kids yelling at the GIs to give them money, to meet their sister. And then the BOOM BOOM. On Christmas Day, the USAFFE forces had begun their retreat. There were not enough planes to justify an air force, so now Jim was in the infantry, in what was called Naval Battalion. The truck moved at an unsteady twenty miles an hour. The one road—Route 7—was clogged with the traffic of the retreating Americans. Jim had a rifle, an Enfield from 1922, and he cradled it in his hands. He was falling asleep. He was seated in the back of the truck with a bunch of other guys from the 17th Pursuit and a couple from the 14th Bombardment. Most of the guys were kind of quiet, passing around a bottle of lambonog, coconut moonshine, that a sympathetic local had felt the need to give them. Jim’s head rested on the wall of the cab. He could hear the driver’s buddy telling him a story.

  “First guy dead in the Philippines, a nigger, no shit.”

  “What was he doing here?” said the driver.

  “Passed himself off as white. I always made fun of him, called him ‘Nig’ because he was kind of yellow complected, always cracking up like a black boy. But I had no idea.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Robert Brooks. I kid you not.”

  “And he was a Negro?”

  “That’s the honest truth.” There was a pause, as if the buddy was taking a drink. “Hell, I don’t care. That’s one Jap bullet that didn’t get me.”

  “That’s what the war needs,” said the driver.

  “What?”

  “More niggers. I wish one was driving this truck.”

  The Naval Battalion was in charge of protecting the beaches of Bataan from Japanese landing parties. Bataan was a peninsula that hung down from the mainland like a fat thumb. Sergeant Vinci set up a crude map and the men crowded around. He spoke loudly to be heard over the explosions, the constant waves of shrapnel that sounded like a bunch of quail going overhead. Sergeant Vinci had a creased, honest face. His delivery made him sound like a football coach, full of bravado and false encouragement. He drew arrows curving down from the mainland, showing the places where he thought the Jap boats would try to unload, places where the beach flattened out. Jim didn’t think much of the strategy. If you saw a Jap, you shot him.

  Jim thought Vinci must have kids because of the fatherly way Vinci treated him, but didn’t want to ask him. Vinci really seemed to love his soldiers. It was an awful love. Vinci acted as if the fall of Manila was his fault, as if the hunger of his men was something he was directly responsible for. He would give the boys these emphatic claps on their shoulders, ask how Jim was doing, even though Vinci knew he was hungry and scared. Jim thought that Vinci wanted to touch all the guys to give them some kind of protection—the back slap that would render you bullet-proof.

  But the men were dying all the same. When Bill Cruz of the 14th Bombardment took a bullet to the head, Jim found himself asking his brother, Paul, who had been dead for twelve years, to welcome his friend and show him the ropes. It was as close to praying as Jim had ever come. Off the tip of Bataan was the tiny island of Corregidor, a fortified rock connected to Bataan by tunnels. MacArthur and the other generals had been managing the death of their men, American and Filipino, from this point. And then they gave up. MacArthur left. Jim knew that they would not be evacuated now. The United States had written them off. They could all starve. They were battling away no longer for God and country, but for themselves, each man on his own trying to stay alive.

  Jim pulled his eyes open. He saw again the bare sky and the empty bay. Across the water a lighthouse blinked—light then beam, light then beam—in time with the drip of water. He knew that sound. Was it the rain falling on the dense leaves of the jungle? A delicate drip into a pool, the ripples echoing in perfect circles? It had never been quiet enough to hear anything like that. Besides, he had not had time to listen. First he was fighting, then dying, then surrendering. They had lost the war, the Americans and Filipino Patriots, waiting for relief that never came. When had the battle ended? Jim had been sick and delirious when they surrendered. The paregoric was all gone. He had stayed out of the way of bullets, but the lack of food and foul water had conspired to finish him off.

  Jim held those last days in Bataan and the Death March in flashes, like postcards of places he’d gone on vacation. He saw small events and vistas and had to write himself in because he knew he had been there. Jim remembered the sky and earth being one in the darkness. Then a fissure of red split the sky into two purple halves and the tops of the palms flashed green, a whistle and a crash, and then vacuous silence. This was surrender. The Japanese had won. He was now a POW. There was a Jap barking orders and Jim moved with the other men. They were moving north. Everyone was walking. Ten thousand Americans and sixty thousand Filipinos, walking. Those who weren’t walking were dead. Jim stumbled along, keeping his eyes focused just ahead. There was a smell of shit. There was something dripping down his legs. The heat was intense, but this foul dripping was cold. He wondered if it had come out of him. He was only eighteen and thought that he was fresh, new. His mother had called his enlistment “a waste of sweet youth.” She had been slicing apples for a pie and in his mind his sweet youth had become one with the smell of apples. He kept his mother’s face before him as he walked. He remembered a Filipino throwing small green parcels into the path of the marching men. He could still see the GI next to him unwrapping the banana leaves and eating the rice. He could still see the Filipino man pleading for his life, the pistol shoved under his chin, his head exploding like a coconut hitting the pavement. Walking. Then the loss of a horizontal world. He must have fallen down. Vertical, everything was vertical, and he was surrounded by many pairs of boots. Then nothing.

  He had been left for dead.

  The moon shone a cold blue light and Jim could see a body lying in the road. A Filipino scout in bare feet but still uniformed. Jim could
not see his face because the scout was lying on his side with his back to Jim. The scout was rocking back and forth. Jim wondered why a scout would do that, rock like a cradle, lie in the road. But wasn’t Jim lying in the road?

  “Hey,” Jim called to the scout. “Where is everyone?”

  The rocking stopped and from the far side of the scout’s body, a startled dog raised its thin, black head. In its mouth was—string? No. Intestines. In the dog’s mouth was the body of the scout, which was unraveling like a knit scarf. The branches rattled along the side of the road. Somewhere in the thick undergrowth were other black dogs with sharp heads perfect for digging around in the stomachs of fallen men. Jim was too weak to move. He watched the bushes. His heart beat against his ribs. Two figures emerged. Men. Two young men. Short and thin. Filipino. They came to Jim and squatted by him. One man reached into the pocket of Jim’s pants. There was a startled gasp. He whispered something to his companion. Then, a cool hand that smelled of tobacco on Jim’s shoulder. The face came close to his ear and whispered, “Boss, we take care of you now. Don’t stop living, because I get mad if I have to carry more dead.”

  The Filipino men carried him to a house in a blanket for a stretcher, complaining all the way. Jim was over six feet tall.

  “Man, you nothing but bones,” said one of the Filipinos. The other one rattled some rapid Tagalog back, and the two men laughed. Jim was surprised by the laughing. “He says you all bones, but you have the biggest bones he ever see. And they’re damn heavy.”

  The men carrying him were small. He was startled at their strength. He swung in the blanket and felt himself being rocked to sleep, like a baby.

  Then he remembered.

  Here was where he had heard that pervasive sound that echoed the drip of the icicle.

  Jim had thought he was awake but he was asleep. Almost dead. And he heard nothing but that sound over and over. A drip that was not a real drip, but somehow muted. That sound was in his dreams playing softly from outside, while Jim—a child—watched his mother’s marbled calves as she kneaded the bread. He sat on the floor. There was a draft and Jim coughed. His mother turned her great Flemish head to him. She was worried. Is this how Paul died? First a cough and then nothing? What was that rhythmic dripping sound?

  And when he awoke it was April 1942. Jim was in the Philippines somewhere on the outskirts of San Fernando. A girl was standing across the room, a dark-skinned girl in a faded gingham shift. She was wearing straw slippers and had a weight of black hair that hung in a rope down her back. Jim was lying on a straw mat. The girl did not know that he was awake. She kept gazing out the window. She was eating dried watermelon seeds, cracking them in her teeth and spitting out the shells. When they hit the wooden bowl on the windowsill, they made a soft plip like water on paper. Jim had been listening to that sound in his sleep. He had never seen anyone eating watermelon seeds before. He didn’t know what they were.

  He asked, “What are you eating?”

  She was surprised to see him awake. She stepped back, then smiled nervously. She looked around, for a family member Jim supposed, and then she said, “Butong pakwan.”

  Jim shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know any Tagalog.

  The girl inhaled, nodded, trying to sort her words. She held out a handful of seeds to him. “Bones,” she said.

  Jim hesitated.

  “Bones of the watermelon,” she said.

  He fell asleep.

  When he came to, there was the girl, crunching watermelon bones, dropping her shells into the bowl. Jim was on the floor on a woven mat. The house had high ceilings. The sliding window panes were made of little squares of seashell. An old lady hustled in on bowed legs. She wiped her hands quickly on her dress and crouched over Jim. She sniffed him. The young man looked over at her and she nodded.

  “Boss, she gonna make you something that taste like shit, but then you can eat. Make you better. Then I got some good news and I got some bad news.”

  But Jim was too tired for any news. In his sleep he heard the crunch of seeds and the girl’s voice calling what sounded like “golly bear” over his head. Sometimes he cracked his eyes open. She poured the bitter tea into his mouth. In response to some yelling from the kitchen, she would say it again—“golly bear” and something else that he could not remember. He saw the girl poised over him. She had broad cheekbones and large, sad eyes. He would open his eyes and find her sitting there, keeping vigil.

  “Sleep,” she said. “Sleep now.” And sometimes she picked up his hand that made hers seem like a child’s in comparison.

  In these hours of sleep, there was a time he was carried by the same two men who had rescued him in a blanket down the stairs of the house. They put him on a couch in the corner of the living room and covered him with thin cushions. The young man was talking to a group of children, girls and boys, skinny with big teeth. They were giggling and staring at him, but the adults seemed grave and frightened.

  The young man put his head close to Jim’s face. “Be quiet,” he whispered. “Japs in town tonight. The children are going to sit on you. Be patient and please don’t shit.” And then it all went dark and Jim felt safe in the dusty air, beneath an old rug and some empty sacks. He felt the narrow rumps of the children weighted across his body and was happy, as if he might cry. Later he heard the old woman talking to the Japanese. He couldn’t understand anything, but her tone was cavalier and she had a few Japanese words. The children wriggled along his spine.

  The next morning, Jim was back upstairs. For the first time he found the young man’s face familiar.

  “Do I know you?”

  The young man was smoking a thin cigarette. He nodded a couple of times. “Bataan,” he said.

  And then Jim remembered. He had accompanied Sergeant Vinci to the front lines. A thick rot wafted in with the evening breeze. While Sergeant Vinci was conferring with the officers, Jim had gone to find the source of the smell. Jim watched men passing him, to the right and close by, but no one seemed bothered like he was. He walked to the beach where the majority of the foxholes were. In the waves he could see dark clouds in the water, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the dying light, he saw that they were bodies. The arms moved with the waves, animated like a child face down in the shallows who circles with his hands so as not to scare the fish. The waves washed on the shore and the bodies bobbed. Jim backed away from the water. He could not be horrified. He did not have the time.

  There was the scraping of a shovel in the dirt and with it the low muttering of Tagalog. He surprised the digging man by pushing through the bushes. A Filipino soldier was digging a grave. Beside the grave was the still body of a boy, maybe thirteen. The soldier leaned on his shovel. He was not crying but his eyes were full of grief. Another shovel leaned against the tree. Jim thought, Whose shovel is that? Was it the boy’s? Was he supposed to assist in the digging of his grave? Then Jim thought that he should help. Jim began digging and soon the hole was deep.

  “Your friend?” asked Jim.

  “My brother,” replied the soldier.

  Jim thought he had been in the house with them for weeks, but it had only been two days. He felt better now. He said to his friend, whose name was Totoy, “I’m ready for the good news.”

  “You won’t die. We stopped the diarrhea. We give you leaf from the guava tree.”

  “And now I am ready for the bad news.”

  Totoy shook his head. “I am sorry. You cannot stay here. They will find and kill you anyway here. And they will kill us.”

  Totoy’s sister, whose name was Clara, was standing by the window. She was crying. She said something to Totoy, and brushed her face with the back of her hand, bothered by the tears. She was more angry than sad.

  “What did she say?” said Jim.

  Totoy took a deep breath. “She called me something. She says the Japs will kill you. She says we should keep you here.”

  Clara said something else.

  Totoy sighed. “She says we might a
s well hit you over the head with a big rock. That would be better.” Totoy shook his head. “Boss, you can’t stay here. Look at her, look at my mother . . .”

  “I understand.”

  “You are too sick to join the guerrillas.”

  “What will you do with me?”

  Four days had passed since Totoy had rescued Jim and now it was time for Jim to leave. Totoy and two of his friends loaded Jim into a water buffalo cart and covered him with old clothes. It was the only cargo Totoy could think of that would not interest the Japanese. Old clothes were thought to be crawling with disease. The cart rolled behind where the Americans and Filipino soldiers had marched, and there were bodies everywhere. Jim thought maybe one would get up and live again, as he had lived after dying. Totoy’s plan was to slip Jim into the camp, where he would at least be fed. It was only a matter of months before this war got cleared up, before MacArthur returned. Then they would have a big party. Totoy and Clara would come to pick Jim up, like parents going to get their kid at the end of summer camp. Jim went along with the plan and pretended everything was going to be all right. He had to believe it. He didn’t have a choice.

  To get to Camp O’Donnell took a day and a half. They caught up with some of the stragglers from The March a half mile from O’Donnell and waited behind a clump of stripped papaya trees. Soon afterward, a GI began screaming for water. He was dead then, although he didn’t know it. His friends tried to calm him down, but the guards rushed at him and while the GI was beaten, Jim slipped into the crowd. He was half dead but standing, and in that was unremarkable. The water buffalo lapped its nose with its tongue and with a flick of its tail wished Jim good luck and goodbye. Totoy would not meet Jim’s stare. He feels guilty, thought Jim, but he should not. Jim’s pockets were full of guava leaves.

  Jim thought of Clara in the camp, although they had not really talked. Her English was not bad, but she didn’t like her accent, so she didn’t use it. He had asked her, “What is golly bear?”