TEETH - The Epic Novel With Bite (The South Pacific Trilogy)

by Timothy James Dean

  “In that case, the Potsdam declaration promises, and I quote, ‘the prompt and utter destruction’ end-quote, of Japan.

  “The United States announces it has escalated the bombing of the Japanese homeland. In the last two weeks alone, tens of thousands of tons of bombs have been dropped on more than thirty cities. This is reported to have resulted in widespread destruction and presumed loss of life. Furthermore, the Americans claim that mines have been now been dropped in every port, sealing off the enemy Empire.

  “From Supreme Allied Commander General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines: the mop-up of Japanese troops on Mindanao is almost complete. General MacArthur’s authority has been expanded by the President to the Japanese ‘Ryukyu’ Islands, which include Okinawa.

  “From Burma: the rout of the enemy by the Allied forces continues. It is estimated that more than twenty thousand Japanese troops were killed in this last week alone.

  “From New Guinea: the remnants of the Japanese Eighteenth Army are surrounded at Numbogua, with the report of heavy casualties.”

  The broadcast continued as the audience in the Lighthouse Mission hung off every word. When the news concluded, and music once again warbled into the room, Johnny quit pedaling and Mula clicked off the radio. Footy turned to the Japanese.

  “See? You’re about to lose,” he gloated. The prisoner stared at him for a long minute and then shrugged.

  “It is impossible,” he said. Even though the others knew he could speak English, it was a shock to hear it.

  “What?” Johnny retorted. “You heard the news!”

  “That is one man. We know these tricks. It is impossible,” the Japanese repeated slowly. “The Empire of Nippon has never been defeated.”

  “Well, get ready for it,” Johnny said in a steely voice. “You’re going down—and I’m going to be there to see it happen!”

  “It will not happen,” the prisoner insisted. “My people will fight to the death. No foreigners will ever conquer us.”

  “Who’s this ‘we’ and ‘us’ you talk about?” Footy asked. “You don’t mean you, do you? You won’t be there,” he sneered. “You, mate, will be rotting in one of our prisons!”

  The Japanese stared at the other men, then looked down and went silent.

  “But I will be there—in Japan,” Johnny told him. He turned to Mula. “You heard what they said! My unit will soon be on its way for the invasion. We have to go, Mula!”

  “No worries,” the chief told him. “Anda will be back sometime t’night. We’ll have our singsing tomorra—and you’ll be off. If what you say is true,” he added.

  “Ok,” Johnny said. “It’s been a long couple of days. I’m beat. Where can we put him,” he nodded at the prisoner, “for the night?”

  “This way,” Mula said. He led them through the living room to a door in the back wall, opened it, and they went into what was clearly the building’s largest room.

  “This the Mission church and school,” Mula explained. His face fell again. “No church—no school—for long time now. Not since Masta Billy go to heaven, and Missis Sarah taken by them Japs.” Along the far wall were a series of tall, narrow windows, all with the glass broken out. To their right was the main entrance, two heavy doors standing open in the weeds. The floor of the room was hard-packed clay, and on it stood the pews—benches made of planks nailed to posts. Lounging on these were the Uhuli warriors, some they recognized from the trail. These were stripping off their fighting gear, while other groups sat plucking one another’s sparse facial and chest hair with bamboo tweezers.

  At the other end of the room was the modest pulpit—a pole with a square of wood nailed on. On the wall they had come through, sheets of black painted plywood were nailed up, a faded alphabet and English words scrawled on them in chalk.

  Through the windows, Johnny noticed a tall tree alive with the giant fruit bats they called “flying foxes.” These hung upside down, bickering noisily, and jostling one another as they came awake for the evening’s feed. They began to drop off and flap away, in search of bananas. They ate some of the local produce, and in turn, the natives ate them. Mula spoke to his men and turned to his guests.

  “Your Jap can sleep here,” he said. “I’ve told me one-talks not to hurt ‘im—unless, a course, he makes a run for it. Then they can have him. Awlright?”

  “You hear?” Johnny asked the prisoner and the man nodded.

  “Now,” Mula said. “Time for suppa. We got a special treat for you—come see!”

  His smile was back.

  CHAPTER 11

  It had been a week since her last frustrating visit to US Army HQ and Gwyn had kept herself busy. The Colonel was gone, and the word was, his replacement was here, but in spite of Chambers’ promise, Gwyn had received no news. She could bear it no longer. She searched out Doc Mac and told him everything.

  Soon it was the doctor’s car that pulled up at the US Garrison. Gwyn and the hospital administrator were ushered in to see the new Commander, a Colonel Waters. He invited them into what had been Chamber’s office and asked how he could be of service.

  “What has become of the rescue of the men of ‘Operation Teeth?’” Gwyn asked. Colonel Waters looked mystified.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You know I’m new here. I’ve just returned from a tour of our bases. ‘Operation Teeth?’ Please explain.” By the time it was all sorted out, it had been nearly three weeks since Johnny, Dingo and Footy had left Port Moresby.

  That night after the orphans were asleep, Gwyn lay in bed and wondered about all the responsibilities she had taken on. She mulled over the round about way she had wound up in New Guinea, and the vow she’d made in England never to get involved with a military man.

  Gwyn had graduated from nursing school in Vancouver, British Columbia, in the spring of 1942. With the coming of war, the Motherland’s dire need of medical personnel had been in all the news, and Gwyn had volunteered.

  It had been years since her mother had passed away, and her father had died the year before while she’d been at college. She’d gone inland for the funeral, held in the church in which she’d once attended Sunday School. She was surprised by how small and dowdy it looked. Of course, in Vancouver, she’d split her time between Christchurch Cathedral and the grand Baptist edifice downtown.

  She visited old friends and discovered to her dismay that she’d outgrown many of them. Most were married and some had babies. Gwyn instructed the family solicitor to put the house for sale, and returned to her studies in the city.

  She had her inheritance deposited in her account at the Royal Bank, and put much of it in Victory Bonds to assist the war effort. Now she met with the banker to arrange for funds to be transferred overseas, if and when she so instructed. She purchased a new wardrobe at the Timothy Eaton’s Store and bought a sturdy steamer trunk from the Hudson Bay Company.

  The day came when it was time for her to board the train at the False Creek terminal. From here, the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, it would take the better part of a week to cross the continent. She was soon grateful she’d treated herself to the luxury of a private sleeper, where she could retreat.

  They left in the evening, and the following day, after crossing the dry sagebrush interior, they made the stunning climb into the Rocky Mountains. Gywn marveled at the soaring peaks, but the plunging depths scared her. The train thundered across rickety looking wooden trestles and she drew back from the windows that hung over thousand foot drop-offs. Another night, and they descended to the prairies. There were endless farms and cattle ranches, and the towns where passengers came and went, many of them men in uniform.

  Gwyn enjoyed the dining car with its real linen and china, and decent meals, in spite of the war shortages. Other times, she wandered the aisles and conversed with fellow travelers, or sat in her berth and wrote in her new diary. This was a leather-bound book with a strap she could lock. She strung the tiny key on her necklace.

  In the vast Pro
vince of Ontario, the train rolled through forested hills inset with gorgeous lakes. They chuffed on, and at last arrived at the eastern Maritimes. The journey had taken her from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.

  In Halifax, she met the other nurses on the same journey. Together, the nine of them boarded the twenty thousand ton liner-cum-troopship, the SS Duchess of Bedford. There they found thousands of Canadian soldiers also bound for the UK.

  Smoke churned from the checkered stacks, the hawsers were thrown off, and the ship drifted from the quay. As the mournful horn shook the harbor, Gwyn stood in the crush at the back rail and waved madly to well-wishers she did not know on the dock. She remained there, bemused, as North America itself receded into the past, and they were on the blustery Atlantic.

  The nurses shared adjoining cabins and spent much of their time there. It was a rough crossing, and many were seasick, but not Gwyn. Sometimes she buttoned herself into her tweed coat against the biting wind and paced the deck. But the eager soldiers were more bother than a plague of Okanagan mosquitoes. No matter how many she swatted down, they just kept coming. No doubt, the odds were to blame. The men outnumbered the women, three hundred to one.

  Many of these Canucks were raw-faced prairie boys who’d never before been fifty miles off the farm. And so far their war had been no more than a romp across Canada, and a voyage on a one-time luxury liner. They were generally a good-hearted bunch, but Gwyn thought they could have hosed down the decks with testosterone. Their boisterous energy was quickly too much for her to bear.

  At the time, reveling in her own adventure, Gwyn had no interest in a romantic entanglement. When her countrymen’s overtures got to be too much, which they quickly did, she retreated to her cabin. There she passed the hours with her fellow nurses playing “hearts” and “euchre,” writing letters home, and making entries in her diary. (Months later, she wished she remembered more of the men when the news reported the slaughter. More than half of them were summarily captured or killed by the Germans at an obscure French port named ‘Dieppe’).

  Then she saw England for the first time, a landmass in a nimbus of dark clouds. “The Duchess” docked at industrial looking Liverpool. There the nurses and the soldiers went their separate ways. With a last round of shouts and waves for the women, the Canucks marched off.

  The women boarded a train to London. Staring at tall buildings through sooty windows, Gwyn could hardly believe she was truly in the homeland her parents had reminisced about all those years. In mere hours, she stepped down into the one-time capital of the British Empire, and still the hub of the United Kingdom. She felt like she was in a storybook. It hardly dampened her spirits that clouds hung low over the buildings, and a steady drizzle fell. After all, she had brought her umbrella. She was to discover she needed it as often as she had in Vancouver.

  At a government office, she and her fellow nurses were given their postings. They would be dispersed across the British Isles, to Europe and even Africa. Gwyn discovered she was to remain in London.

  Gwyn checked into a rooming house one of her nursing teachers had recommended, and reported to the hospital. The hulking edifice overwhelmed her. Gwyn was frightened, and suddenly felt that coming here might have been the biggest mistake of her life. Inside, she kept getting lost, and was forced to ask repeatedly for the office of the Matron of Nursing.

  There, in the waiting room, was another young nurse. Gwyn first noticed the curly red hair that the woman was attempting to wrestle under control with bobby pins. She soon discovered this was Ruthie, from Ireland, a newcomer like herself. The two chatted up a storm, relieved to find a friendly face.

  Shortly they were welcomed together by the no-nonsense Head of Nursing and given their duties.

  Over the next days, whenever they got a break, the young women sought each another out. They were kindred spirits, they decided, and while they put on a brave front, they felt like colonial hicks in the grand and gloomy city.

  A week or two later, they decided they would room together. They searched out a flat not far from the hospital, and felt very grown up negotiating the rent. It had only one bedroom, for which they flipped a shilling. Gwyn ended up in the sitting room. She would sleep on the sofa, her clothes split between her trunk and a box. The arrangement offered no privacy, but had the advantage of being close to the coal burner. But even when they found fuel to buy, or collected lumps along the railroad tracks, it was always frigid. Gwyn’s home might be in the far-off colonies, but at least Canada knew about central heating, an amenity the Mother Country had not embraced.

  When they both happened to be home, and awake at the same time, the girls bundled in blankets, put their feet to the brazier, and got to know each other. Gwyn described her hometown, Peachland, on a huge lake in the interior of British Columbia. Lake Okanagan, she told Ruthie, even had its own monster, like Loch Ness. It was no lie, she swore. “Ogopogo” was a gigantic but shy creature.

  “Get on with you! I think you’re having me on. And I suppose you’ve seen this ‘Ogopogo’ with your own eyes?”

  “Yes,” Gwyn said, “I saw it once, near evening, a huge thing moving below the surface.”

  Many had seen it much more clearly, she hastened to add. There were photos and films. Ogopogo had an enormous body, flippers, a long neck, and a smallish head. The creature’s existence had been confirmed by the big city newspaper, the Vancouver Sun.

  Gwyn talked about ice cream and sodas with girlfriends as they watched the boys romp on the beach. Those were the summer days that stayed light well past 9:00 at night. And in the winter, it was home with her parents in front of a snapping fire, while the deep snow piled up.

  Gywn had a lot of stories about fly-fishing with her father for trout in the mountain streams, but Ruthie had little interest in such “tomboy” things.

  “Your turn then,” Gwyn said, “where are you from?” The Irish lass flashed an impish grin, her hair a halo in the fire’s glow.

  “Me?” she said, “Well darlin’, I’m from nowheres—a wee farm with one milk cow, an hour’s walk from Pallas Grean.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Along the road from Limerick to Tipperary,” Ruthie smiled. “Blink, and you’ll miss it.”

  Ruthie’s stories revolved around boys. She’d met them in town, and at school, and crept off for trysts around the farm. Gwyn heard all about Paddy, Pete and Rolly. And then, Ruthie said with a wink, she’d really spread her wings when she’d gone to nursing school in Belfast.

  In spite of the ongoing bombing of London, Gwyn and Ruthie managed outings, dodging the ruins and cratered streets. Together they stared through the gates of Buckingham Palace, disappointed not to catch even a glimpse of the King. Gwyn did take pictures with the Brownie box camera that had been her father’s. Other trips took them to the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and Trafalgar Square.

  Afterwards, they searched out pubs where they might get a meat pie—or Ruthie’s favorite, steaming fish and chips in cones of newspaper, sprinkled with malt vinegar and eaten with the fingers.

  Wherever they went, as usual, they had to ward off the men, most in uniform. Gwyn was more diligent at this than was Ruthie, and they might let the eager lads treat them to a glass of beer. In this way, Gwyn learned the differences between lager, ale, bitter, porter and stout. The girls enjoyed a laugh and sank a pint or two. They never, however, brought boys back to the flat. This was a pact Gwyn had insisted on from the beginning. And so it was that sometimes she returned alone, while Ruthie disappeared for a day or two.

  But then, in spite of herself, Gwyn fell totally, hopelessly, dangerously in love.

  “Arse over teakettle,” as Ruthie put it.

  Anda, spear in hand, loped through the jungle, retracing the route the strangers had traveled earlier that day. Rapidly, he climbed into the high country. It grew too dark to see anything but the faintest outlines, and still he pressed on. When the moon rose, he was able to go faster again. He traveled silently, aler
t for enemy warriors, but saw no one.

  In the early hours of the morning, he slowed and searched the path for a particular rock. He found it, got down on all fours, and crawled through dense foliage. Soon he was able to stand again and jog along a thin trail for another hour. He came to the flank of a mountain and climbed straight up over a ridge, and dropped into a hidden canyon. At last he heard the trickle of a stream, and made out the silhouette of huts against the stars.

  Six armed men surrounded him. Anda spoke a greeting and they said his name. The men squatted together and passed a thin cigar, as long as an arm.

  These people were Mambu, but only distantly related to the inhabitants of the great valley. Even their language was a dialect. The intermarried clan that inhabited the five huts had small gardens scattered in the jungle. They maintained an uneasy truce with both the Mambu nation and Anda’s Uhuli, based on a complex set of favors done and debts owed.

  Anda met one of their teenage women by chance, while hunting wild boar in the hills. His courtship of her was at first tolerated, then encouraged, because it strengthened the clan’s ties to Mula’s Uhuli. At the same time, Anda was warned, the relationship must be kept secret from the Mambu of the valley, or the people would suffer deadly reprisals.

  Yesterday, two of their men had trekked to the big valley to barter Bird of Paradise feathers and buai for kaukau and other food. But they returned early, without making the trade. Instead, they carried a burden of frightening news. They related it all to Anda, while the galaxies wheeled across the heavens.

  When the men finished their story, they disappeared into the darkness. Anda waited alone. The girl emerged from a doorway. With quickening pulse, Anda saw the starlight outlining her shoulders and plump breasts. She carried a bilum of food she had cooked especially for him.

  Anda took her by the hand and led her to a place among the roots of a forest grandfather. In anticipation of his visit, she had swept away the insects, and lined it with dry moss. Anda laid her down, parted her skirt and mounted her. She thrust up to meet him, watching his head move against the leaves and stars.