The Lonely War
Page 1
By ALAN CHIN
NOVELS
Butterfly’s Child
Island Song
The Lonely War
Match Maker
NOVELLAS
Simple Treasures
Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Copyright
Published by
Dreamspinner Press
382 NE 191st Street #88329
Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Lonely War
Copyright © 2012 by Alan Chin
Cover Art by Catt Ford
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 382 NE 191st Street #88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
ISBN: 978-1-61372-458-3
Printed in the United States of America
Second Edition
April 2012
Previously published by Zumaya Publications.
eBook edition available
eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-459-0
Sincere thanks to Stephen Gregoire, Doug Slayton, Kyle Childress, and Casey Conroy for their valuable input and their attempt to keep me honest in the telling. I am also deeply indebted to my husband, Herman Chin, without whom I would still be floundering around page 67 and wondering how three years of my life had flittered by unnoticed.
Part I
The Pilgrim
It has been said that “Common souls pay with what they do, nobler souls with that which they are.” And why? Because a profound nature awakens in us by their actions and words, by their very looks and manners.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays
Chapter One
March 20, 1941—0800 hours
IN THE spring of 1941, the Japanese army surged across the border from China to extend their bloody campaign to all of Southeast Asia. As war crept south, the French, English, and American foreigners scattered throughout Indochina hastened to Saigon, where they boarded ocean liners bound for their homelands. Meanwhile, the Japanese army massed at the outskirts of Saigon, poised for another victorious assault. The city held its breath as the invaders prepared for the onslaught.
Andrew Waters pursued his father across a bustling wharf, still wearing his boarding-school uniform and clutching a bamboo flute.
The ship that loomed before him was a floating city, mammoth, with numerous passenger decks topped by two massive exhaust stacks muddying the sky. It had berthed at the port of Saigon—an inland port on a tributary of the Mekong—for a full week. Now, Andrew saw the crew scurrying to get underway.
The wharf trembled slightly. Andrew heard the rat-tat-tat of gunfire over the sirens blaring from the center of the city.
Andrew’s father sported a tussore silk suit of superlative cut and a Panama hat tilted so that the brim hid his right eye. His tall figure marched purposefully toward the black-and-white behemoth, and his normally long gait lengthened with a noticeable desperation.
Andrew, who was nearly eighteen, paused while panting from an acute nervy rush. He searched the sky for planes. They were still beyond his field of vision, but the drone of bombers echoed through the cloud cover. The rumble of explosions grew loud and the air carried the faint stench of sulfur.
He hurried on, jostling through a mélange of beings: Caucasians dressed in fine Western clothes (like his father), rich Chinese in their silks, merchants in long-sleeved jackets, coolies wearing only tattered shorts. Voices around him were shouting while the harsh twang of a military band playing “Auld Lang Syne” vaulted above that unbridled fusion of humanity.
Behind Andrew trotted an aged wisp of a monk who wore the traditional orange robes and held a string of wooden prayer beads. Each bead was the size of a marble and had the chalky gray coloring of Mekong silt. The monk’s thumb deliberately ticked past each bead, one after another, like a timer counting down the seconds. Behind the monk came the porters carrying four steamer trunks.
At the gangway, his father told Andrew to make his good-bye, and he sprinted up the ramp with the porters in tow.
Surrounded by a press of bodies, the youth reverently embraced the monk. The old man’s arms wrapped around Andrew and drew him nearer. The monk’s breath tickled his neck, which helped to dissolve his anxieties.
Using the native tongue of South China, he whispered, “Master, I’ll come home as soon as I can.”
The monk’s face contracted, as if Andrew had posed a difficult question. “Andrew, war and time will whisk away everything that you love. This is our farewell.”
The youth wiped away a tear that broke free from his almond-shaped eyes and slid down his amber-colored cheek. “Master, I will remember everything you have taught me.”
“You will forget my lessons, Andrew. Such is the nature of youth. But remember this: you are American by birth, so they will surely draft you. On the battlefield, resist the hate that is born from fear. Nurture only love in your heart. To love all beings is Buddha-like and transcends us from the world of pain, for love is the highest manifestation of life. To experience love’s full bounty is life’s only purpose, so tread the moral path before you and sacrifice yourself to love. All else is folly, a dream of the ego.”
“Master, I do not understand about sacrificing myself to love.”
The old monk’s eyes opened wide and his lips spread into a grin. “Meditate on what I have said. Understanding will come when you are ready.”
The monk methodically bundled his string of beads into a ball, roughly the size and shape of a monkey’s skull, and forced them into Andrew’s left pant pocket. “Keep these beads to remind yourself of our time together.”
The pressure against Andrew’s thigh felt awkward. As the monk pulled way, Andrew became distracted, thinking of how fortunate this man was to be wise and compassionate in the midst of the impending carnage. Andrew realized that it took impeccable courage to maintain one’s morality during perilous times, courage that he himself did not possess. He had always assumed that he would live a quiet, studious, and spiritual life under this old monk’s guardianship and eventually become the old man who stood before him. But that image, of course, had been shattered when war turned the world on its head. Now all Andrew could think about was getting on that ship and sailing to safety, if such a thing existed.
The ship’s whistle cut the air, long and terrible, and loud enough to be heard throughout the city. The monk pressed his hands together in front of his forehead and bowed, silently, with finality.
Another blast from the ship’s whistle sent the youth running up the gangway, leaving the earthy world of South China behind. He joined his father on the first-class deck. Entombed in steel—underfoot, heavy riveted plates of metal curved into walls—Andrew jammed together with the other passengers at the railing, peering down at the apprehensive faces. Their body heat added to the stifling temperature. Sweat dribbled down his neck. He had to gasp to get enough air.
Lines fell away; the gangway was hauled aboard. Tugs pushed the ship into the middle of the channel and withdrew, leaving the ship to the whim of the current.
Andrew stared straight down at the seemingly dense, opaque surface of th
e river. It reflected the cloudy sky, making the water seem gray rather than its usual brown, with yellowish streaks of oil running with the current. To Andrew, the flat, moving surface seemed strangely alive, carrying him along, muscling him downstream, as if it was some overwhelming force whose motives he could only guess at.
On the dock, Asian women held their infants over their heads for a last look. Handkerchiefs waved. The band played on.
Andrew saw the first planes against the darkening sky, droning above the city. Explosions grew even louder. From his perch on the first-class deck, he saw sections of the city erupting. He turned northeast, toward his boarding school. Flames. That entire section of the city was engulfed in fire, as if Hell had opened its mouth to swallow it whole.
“Clifford,” he whispered.
A searing stab of regret lodged in his chest. He had been forced to abandon the object of his adolescent love, and he imagined himself dashing through the chaotic streets to reach the boarding school. There was still time, he thought. They could disappear into the forest. They could live on, together. He wanted to perform that fatal act of love, but he wondered if he could muster the courage to defy his father.
Reluctantly (at least it felt that way to him), he climbed the railing to dive overboard, because he realized that the love he shared with Clifford wasn’t a trifling adolescent crush at all, but rather a deep and consuming love—a love that had somehow lost itself in the joys of youth, like water in dry sand, and was only now understood.
His father pulled him back, forcing him to stay and suffer what felt like an unquenchable loss. Locked in his father’s embrace, he entered a narrow canyon of desolation, knowing that the days and hours and minutes ahead would be heartbreaking and that he might not be strong enough to endure it.
The ship’s siren sounded three blasts for its farewell salute. The engines throbbed and propellers chewed the river. The noise swelled to a din like the ending of the world.
The passengers on deck could no longer hide their sorrow. Everyone wept, not only those people parting but the onlookers as well; even the dockhands and porters shed tears.
The ship launched itself downstream under its own power as the military band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
To Andrew, the orange-robed figure crushed within the throng on the dock seemed at odds with the fires raging across the city. He now fully understood the monk’s words—that war would steal everything he loved. A way of life, their way of life, had perished. Pain flooded his whole being, like a baby prematurely ripped from its protective womb.
He pulled away from his father and staggered further along the deck to cry without letting his father see. He positioned himself at the rail, one arm folded around a steel support beam and his face pressed against the hot metal.
People on the wharf seemed to hesitate, then regretfully turned and scurried away. He watched the smudge of orange, scarcely visible and standing at the edge of the pier, utterly still, quiescent, until the harbor faded from view and the land disappeared as well, slowly swallowed beneath the curve of the earth.
Chapter Two
April 18, 1942—0700 hours
FOUR sailors toiled under the deadweight of their seabags—marching two up, two back—with their heads bowed to avoid the equatorial sun’s glare. They trailed the executive officer of their newly assigned ship, who led them away from the orderly grid of gravel roads and Quonset huts that made up the Viti Levu Naval Repair Facility, toward the harbor where several warships rested at anchor. Each sailor had his seabag slung over his right shoulder and carried a folded cot under his left arm.
The full brunt of the sun hammered Seaman Andrew Waters. Sweat turned his dungaree uniform a dark shade of blue, and the muggy air made his breathing feel like ingesting lukewarm seawater.
To take his mind off the heat, Andrew studied the confident gait of Lieutenant Nathan Mitchell. The exec’s khaki uniform was freshly pressed; its only blemish was a small sweat stain under each armpit. A green canvas belt hugged his waist, and from it hung a canteen over his left hip and a holster over his right. The holster partially concealed a Browning .45 automatic.
Mitchell was lean for his six-foot-one height. Andrew thought his bronzed skin and fawn-colored hair made him appear too young for his rank of lieutenant. Andrew guessed the officer’s age to be about ten years older than himself—twenty-eight or nine—and at that moment, Mitchell whistled a happy tune on this excruciatingly hot morning.
By the time they passed the Port Director’s office, sweat streamed off Andrew’s forehead, and he felt his remaining strength drain from his legs, making it nearly impossible to carry his burden. I’ve failed again, he thought. Time after time he had struggled to pull his weight with his shipmates, but his slim frame was not built to endure physical hardship. At home he used his sharp intelligence to prove his worth, but the US Navy only valued brute strength and moronic obedience from its seamen. In this theater of fighting men, he was a failure.
He would have loved to drop his seabag and sail home to the boarding school to bury himself in literature, music, and mathematics. But that was not an option. So he swallowed hard, making a last-ditch effort to keep up with the others.
He managed a dozen more steps along the dock before he saw, through sweat-blurred vision, Seaman Grady Washington begin to stagger like a drunkard and stumble backward. Andrew dropped his gear and jumped to break Grady’s fall, grabbing the young Negro from behind. The deadweight of his unconscious shipmate drove them both to the dock.
Sprawled under Washington, crushed against the wooden planks, it seemed as though a strong man had pinned him, holding him prisoner. It felt like a personal affront.
Andrew yelled to Lieutenant Mitchell, who still held a tune on his lips.
Mitchell turned to stare at the fallen sailors. He pointed to one of the other men and said with an authoritative voice, “Hudson, help Waters carry that man to the shade.”
Petty Officer Third Class Joe Hudson, a swarthy sailor dressed in frayed dungarees, lowered his gear to the dock. He grabbed Grady under both armpits and muscled the sailor to the shade beside the Port Director’s office. The lieutenant followed as he unhooked the canteen from his webbed belt. He told Andrew to hold Grady’s head up while he knelt and poured water over the comatose sailor’s nappy head.
Grady coughed, his eyelids fluttered.
With the officer kneeling only two feet way, for the first time Andrew was able to furtively study the lieutenant’s face. His heartbeat quickened. The man’s cheeks were attractively sunburnt and supported a straight nose and powerful eyebrows. Andrew detected a keen intelligence simmering behind those eyes, which were clear and discerning and the color of pale jade. Their intensity startled Andrew. He inhaled sharply, catching a whiff of the officer’s scent. Beneath the pleasant odor of talcum powder, he discovered the aroma of sweat-moistened skin.
Andrew tried to look away, but he couldn’t help but follow the path of a bead of sweat sliding from under the officer’s hat, making its way along the reddish cheek and strong jaw, where it clung to that beautifully sun-kissed skin. Andrew felt himself drawn to the officer like the moon draws water.
Grady’s eyelids popped open and his eyes rolled around in their sockets like loose marbles. His lips trembled with unrealized words, as if he might possibly have a speech disorder.
Mitchell pressed the canteen to the black sailor’s lips, trickled water into the pink cavity, and poured more water over his head.
“You fainted from the heat, sailor,” Mitchell said. “Happens all the time.”
“You’d think a jungle bunny would be used to the heat,” Hudson quipped while mopping his shaved head with a purple handkerchief, “being from Africa and all.”
Andrew glanced up, scrutinizing Petty Officer Hudson and Seaman John Stokes, who stood in the shade, casually watching the scene. Stokes was a Nebraska farm boy with strawberry-colored hair and a Milky Way of freckles scattered across his face. He carried
himself with an ungainly youthfulness, as if he was still growing into his body. His pillbox hat was bleached an absolute white and tilted so far forward that it hid his eyebrows.
“Button that mouth, Hudson,” Mitchell barked. “We don’t tolerate racial slurs on the Pilgrim.”
“Sir,” Hudson replied, “does that include half Japs, too? I thought we was here to kill Japs.”
“One more insulting remark and you’re on report. Is that clear, sailor?”
“Aye, sir. Crystal.”
It’s starting already, Andrew thought. Okay, survival rule number one: never show fear. Rule number two: deflect opposing force by pulling your adversary off balance.
Andrew eased Grady’s head onto the dock and stood to face Hudson. He swallowed. Hudson was built like a heavyweight prizefighter. His face revealed the bent bulb of a nose that had been crushed and remolded, a dished cheekbone, and scars over both eyes. His body looked distorted and menacing, and his swagger was common among the “old salts” who had a hard need to prove they were the stud bulls of the herds.
Andrew held him with an unflinching stare. “It’s time you learned the difference between Japanese and Chinese,” he said with a slight French accent. “For the record, I’m half Chinese, half American.”
“Chinks and Japs is all the same,” Hudson snarled. “They all smell yellow to me.”
“The Chinese are our allies,” Andrew said. “They’ve fought the Japanese on and off for over eight hundred years. Japan has been kicking America’s butt for only, what, five months?”
Hudson sneered. “In the old Navy, we didn’t put up with smart-mouth chinks and namby-pamby niggers. In the old navy you could trust the man next to you with your life. But those days is gone, and for a buffalo-head nickel I’d get the hell out this new Navy.”
“That’s it, Hudson,” Mitchell said. “You’re on report.”