The Year of Counting Souls

by Wallace, Michael

  Mori removed his muddy boots before passing the threshold. The two men sat cross-legged opposite each other on one of the mats and shared information. Mori’s was sketched only. His lieutenant didn’t need the boring details of the Manila operations, and Mori was anxious to hear what Fujiwara was up to.

  “The Sakdals weren’t cooperative at first,” Fujiwara said. “I threatened them, their livelihood, their families. Nothing seemed to work. But I thought of the old saying, ‘What brings profits, brings people.’ Instead of breaking thumbs, I decided to bribe them to be cooperative.”

  “You’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” Mori said, nodding.

  Fujiwara blinked. “That’s clever, did you just think of that, sir?”

  “I’m not sure, but anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Mori said with a wave of a hand. He was pretty sure he’d dredged it from English, now that he thought of it. “Go on.”

  “The bounty is a hundred pesos for an American, alive or dead. But what if I paid a few of them ten or twenty pesos first, in advance of any information? That brought the bandits out of the hills, let me tell you.”

  Mori couldn’t help but chuckle. “And how much money did you waste this way?”

  “Almost a thousand pesos, sir.”

  That much? He’d expected a hundred or two. A thousand meant Fujiwara had paid off somewhere between fifty and a hundred different men, by his own admission. Free money, and nothing in return. Fujiwara was lucky he hadn’t thrown it all away. Give it a few more weeks and no doubt he would.

  Yet there was a confidence in the lieutenant’s posture and voice that said he was pleased with the results. Mori bit back a sarcastic retort and nodded for the other man to go on.

  “Most of it was wasted, that’s true enough. Some of those Sakdals slipped away and haven’t been heard from since—doubtful they’ll be seen again in these parts. One of the men I paid off was later caught with American rifles and several hundred rounds of ammunition stuffed beneath a grass mattress. He was tied up in the sun for two days and then shot.”

  “Yes, yes. But what came of it? Anything at all?”

  “Hai. The Sakdals unearthed an American pilot who’d been hiding for the past two weeks in a nearby village. We sent the pilot to a camp and took care of the Pinoy who was hiding him. There were a pair of British nationals—a mining employee and his wife—who ran for the hills. We caught them. They’re off to Manila as well.”

  “So, one pilot and two civilians. That hardly justifies the expenditure of a thousand pesos.”

  Mori was already thinking gloomily about how Colonel Umeko would react when the report came his way. Too much money, not enough result. Time to abandon the effort.

  Fujiwara was not done, however. A slight upturn to his lips gave away his secret before he spoke it.

  “Oh, and I might know where your brother is, sir.”

  Mori stiffened. “Well?”

  “News flows through the rural areas, mouth to ear, mouth to ear. The village head calls it the bamboo telegraph. So keep in mind this has passed through four or five retellings.”

  “Quickly, Lieutenant. I’m growing impatient.”

  “Some Americans went into the mountains, all right—three different people told me as much. A white doctor and some female nurses, together with injured soldiers, both Americans and Pinoys. They’re in a village called Sanduga or Sanbuga—something like that—and they’re apparently still there. Not easy terrain to traverse, but if the Americans did, we can, too.”

  “This is good information,” Mori said. “Get the doctor, the nurse, and the wounded soldiers, and it will be worth the money, for sure. But what about my brother?”

  “Ah yes. Apparently there’s a Japanese man with them, sir. A soldier. He has a broken leg. I only found this out yesterday, when I was expecting you to be here. And get this: he speaks English.”

  “Yes, that would be my brother.” Mori’s voice came out flat, yet his emotion kept boiling beneath the surface.

  So Sammy was still alive. That was both welcome and unwelcome. Mori had been dreading the news that the hospital evacuees had been killed, or that he’d find the Americans only to discover that they knew nothing of his brother. Or that he’d died in surgery. And he was relieved to discover that Sammy wasn’t in the hands of the enemy army on the Bataan Peninsula, ready to broadcast his treasonous remarks over the radio.

  But if Sammy had been killed, even if he’d disappeared without a trace like so many others in this war, so many problems would have been resolved.

  “What have you done about it so far?” Mori asked.

  “Nothing yet, sir. I was waiting for you to arrive before acting. But I continued making my inquiries, and I have more information.”

  “Good. Tell me.”

  “You know the road we were trying to reach before the army turned us back?” Fujiwara shook his head. “That’s not it, sir. That continues up to the side of the Bataan, and we’d only run into the American army if we tried.”

  “No worries of that. We’d be stopped by General Homma’s troops long before we reached the front. So how do we get there? Colonel Umeko still won’t let us move forward from Santa Maria.”

  “We don’t have to go forward, sir. The road north out of town will take us to the mountain pass, and on we go. We could get there in a day’s march, but we’d need at least twenty armed men to do it. The mountains are infested with bandits and partisans.”

  “We don’t have twenty men,” Mori said. “And won’t until this business on Bataan is settled, and that might take weeks. We have eight law officers, counting the two of us. You say we need twenty?”

  “To be honest, sir, I’d suggest thirty. To be sure.”

  Mori gritted his teeth in frustration. The enemy was near. Not deep in the mountains, where they’d be hard to root out, but close enough that a strong enough force could finish them in a single blow.

  A plan began to form in Mori’s mind. With a few more seconds of thought, he knew what needed to be done.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After two straight days of rain, Louise was so relieved to see the sun that the heat almost didn’t bother her. She and her fellow nurses worked in the shade cast by a row of trees that grew along the dike between two rice paddies behind the hospital. The mountains loomed green and mist-shrouded against a brilliant blue sky. Birdsong filled the air like a hundred flutes and whistles all playing different tunes.

  The nurses were sharpening needles on stones, which had dulled again from constant use. The pressure cookers sat on wood fires in the open, far enough away to keep from passing along heat, but close enough to take advantage of the wood smoke, which kept away mosquitoes and other bugs. Louise was grateful for that; two more men had come down with malaria, and they were going through quinine at a rapid rate. But it wasn’t easy to maintain stove pressure burning wood, so the fire needed regular attention.

  Stumpy had followed them outside. His swollen testicle was gone, and he’d recovered quickly without losing his swagger. Now he was nudging around the women, hoping to be fed. Louise shooed him off, and he trotted away with his nose in the air before settling into the shade of a banana tree. He gave a loud and aggrieved sigh.

  “The silly thing probably smells our lunch,” Maria Elena said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m still hungry.”

  Louise tried to remind herself to be grateful against the gnawing, hollow ache in her belly. “It was nice having a little chicken in the rice for a change, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t mind some pork,” Clarice said. “There are a couple of pigs in the village—do you think Lieutenant Kozlowski could buy them?”

  “Chicken is good enough,” Louise said.

  Clarice sighed. “I suppose so.”

  “I don’t care about chicken, I refuse to eat any more rice,” Frankie said sourly. “When it’s grainy, it looks like insect eggs. When it’s sticky, it’s like glue. And it’s always tasteless. W
hy can’t we have bread?”

  Because there was no flour, of course. Anyway, there was no point in answering, as Frankie was just looking for an argument. But Louise was tired of the complaint, of all of Frankie’s complaining. It only made things worse.

  Anyway, it didn’t take a genius to inventory the supplies and see that it was only a matter of weeks before they were down to a diet of rice and mungo beans and whatever else the villagers happened to bring their way. For now, they may as well enjoy the good old staples: canned tuna, beef, pork and beans, and evaporated milk. They wouldn’t last long. At least the coffee would hold out for a while. And if a real chicken happened to find its way into the pot once a week, they should take it and not complain.

  “When are we going to Bataan?” Clarice asked.

  The youngest nurse among them complained less than Frankie, but she couldn’t leave this idea of Bataan alone. It was a miracle that Lieutenant Kozlowski and Dr. Claypool had kept their secret hidden so long. It was over two weeks now since Louise had figured it out, but both Frankie and Clarice were still in the dark. Surely Maria Elena knew—she spoke Tagalog, and one of the villagers must have said something—but if so, she hadn’t let on.

  “We’re not going to Bataan until we can move all of the patients,” Louise said. “That might be another week.”

  “We’ll never get there, if that’s what it takes,” Frankie said, “because they keep bringing us new wounded. They’re not even Americans anymore.”

  “Every soldier gets the same care,” Louise said.

  Frankie snorted. “You’re telling me we’re going to stay here because some Pinoy kid was stupid enough to take a shot at the Japs and that makes him a soldier?”

  “If the lieutenant says he’s a soldier, he’s a soldier. And once they arrive it doesn’t matter anyway. If a man needs medical care, we give it to him.”

  “Even a Jap?” Frankie said. “Yes, we know you love them all.”

  Louise ignored the barb. “Anyway, don’t get so anxious. We’re safer here than on Bataan. Those guns you hear at night aren’t fireworks, they’re killing people.”

  She put away the needle she’d been working on and helped Maria Elena unload one of the pressure cookers. The two women heaped the heavy, wet linens into a basket; then the Filipina nurse put the basket on her head and walked around the hospital to hang them to dry on the lines they’d strung between palm trees.

  “And we need to remember,” Louise said when she took her seat again and picked up the sharpening stone, “our job is to help all these men: Americans, Filipinos, and even Japanese soldiers. Every soul counts.”

  Frankie let out an exaggerated groan. “And you really believe that?”

  “And what do you propose? Kill the ones we don’t like? Put them out of their misery?”

  “I’m working as hard as you are in there, putting in the same hours. Don’t try to set yourself up as an angel of mercy.”

  “I’m not saying you’re not,” Louise said, frustrated she was being drawn into a pointless argument, yet unable to help herself. “But could you do it with less bellyaching?”

  “It’s time to face the obvious, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Really? And what’s that? Please tell us.”

  “It’s time to surrender,” Frankie said.

  “Surrender?” Louise gave her a sharp look. “Where did that come from?”

  Frankie’s voice rose in pitch. “No, I don’t want to do it, of course not.”

  “You’re the one who mentioned it.”

  “We’re going to get caught here, you know we are. And the Japs will be angry because we hid when we were ordered to surrender, and then you know what they’ll do!”

  Louise shook her head, disgusted. They were going to surrender because the enemy was “angry”? What kind of nonsense was that?

  “I don’t want to surrender,” Clarice said in a small voice.

  “Ignore her,” Louise told Clarice. “Frankie’s trying to get us riled up so we’ll go to Kozlowski. Maybe if we all complain, she can get her fantasy of going to Bataan and wait to be rescued.”

  “It’s better than your fantasy of living with the mountain people in peace and harmony,” Frankie said. “Louise loves it here, Clarice. She never wants to leave. She loves rice and mungo beans and filthy street dogs and Japs and Pinoys and naked kids peeing in the street. Miss Louise loves it all.”

  “That isn’t fair,” Clarice said. “She never asked to be here any more than you did.”

  Louise felt herself spiraling into a dumb argument with Frankie. She couldn’t take that path, or soon enough they’d all be divided, complaining, unhappy. She turned back to her work sharpening needles.

  “Fine, ignore me,” Frankie said. “See if I care.”

  “I’ll tell you what has me concerned,” Louise said a few minutes later. “It’s dysentery. Six patients have it already, and now Dr. Claypool is sick, too. Either our water supply isn’t clean, or there’s something wrong with the food preparation.”

  “Couldn’t it be something else?” Clarice asked.

  “Could be, I suppose, but those are the most likely causes. Anyway, we’ve been lucky that it hasn’t hit someone already down with malaria.” Louise had been giving the matter some thought. “We’ve been bathing upstream from the camp. You don’t suppose we’re contaminating the water supply, do you? How are they filling the cisterns, does anyone know?”

  “I’m not moving our bath,” Frankie said firmly. “That’s the only place we can get any privacy around here.”

  “We’ll have Corporal Fárez and Private Johnson rig us something below the hospital. If they put up a fence with burlap for privacy—”

  “No way,” Frankie said. “I’m not going to bathe down by the village. It’s not just the soldiers staring, or the village kids peering in through your so-called fence. The water is cool up above, and I can stop thinking about blood and surgery and death and the stupid Japs and all of it. Why would you take that away from me?”

  Louise sighed and was about to point out that they’d only consider moving the nurses’ bathing area after looking into everything else first, when movement from the road caught her eye.

  A Filipino came running up the road as it climbed into the village. He was a teenager, thin, wiry, and bare-chested, his lungs heaving, his feet stumbling with exhaustion. Louise recognized him as one of the cargadores who the alcalde—the village head—sent into the lowlands to buy goods to smuggle up to the Americans. Normally he went with his two older brothers, but there was no sign of the brothers, nor was the boy carrying goods.

  The boy stopped in front of the nurses and let out a stream of Tagalog between gasps. This brought Stumpy springing to his feet from where he’d been dozing in the shade of the banana tree. Louise shushed his excited barks and tried to make sense of what the boy was saying.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Frankie said. “What does the Pinoy want now?”

  The boy kept shouting, and Louise picked out one word. “Haponese! Haponese!”

  “Clarice,” Louise said. “Get Maria Elena. Quickly, now.”

  “Did he say Japanese?” Frankie said. She rose to her feet. “I think he did. What’s he going on about?”

  Maria Elena hurried back from around the building, her sleeves still rolled up from hanging linens. Clarice came after her, chewing her lip and making worried noises in the back of her throat.

  Maria Elena made calming sounds to the young man, who started in again, this time more slowly. Fear lit up the Filipina nurse’s face as she listened. Louise forced herself to stay quiet while the man finished, even though her heart was pounding.

  At last Maria Elena turned to her. “The Japs have found us. They’re coming.”

  Lieutenant Kozlowski and Dr. Claypool met with the nurses in front of the hospital a few minutes later. The village’s alcalde was there, too, as well as the young cargador, who was named Diego. Maria Elena translated.

  Die
go and his brothers had strolled into one of the lowland villages without realizing it was occupied by the enemy. The Japanese seized the two brothers, but Diego escaped into the woods with bullets zipping past his head. As soon as he was safe, he crept back to look for his brothers and see if they could be rescued.

  That was when he saw several Japanese and numerous Filipinos armed with machetes and rifles loading into a pair of army trucks. They rolled out of town toward the mountains where the Americans were hiding. Diego came running for home.

  “If they have trucks, they’ll be here any time!” Frankie said.

  “Calm down,” Lieutenant Kozlowski said. “The roads are impassible—they’ll have to abandon the trucks. Otherwise Diego wouldn’t have beat them on foot.” He nodded at the boy. “I went down with this one and his brothers a couple of weeks ago. We took out bridges and diverted streams across the road.”

  Frankie stared, eyes narrowing. The wheels were spinning in her head, Louise could see. Two weeks ago was not long after they’d arrived in Sanduga. The nurse would be wondering why Kozlowski had closed down the road before the Japanese had even arrived.

  “Go on,” Dr. Claypool urged Diego.

  The boy didn’t have much more, and they were left short on information. Most importantly, how long until the Japanese arrived? The alcalde thought they might arrive as soon as nightfall, but Kozlowski scoffed at this. You had to think like a military man venturing into unknown and hostile territory, he said. They’d move slowly and camp somewhere safe. There was another village between here and there, and the Japanese would need to secure it. That left the medical camp all day and night to evacuate.

  “Tell the alcalde we’ll hire every man in the village to haul our goods,” Kozlowski said to Maria Elena. “As many cargadores as we can get. And his own people should get ready, too. The villagers have been helping us—they won’t want to be caught here when the Japanese arrive.”

  Louise had been fighting down panic since Diego came running up the road, and now it returned like a stab to the gut. “Some of our patients can’t be moved, Lieutenant. What about them?”