Jo picked up the nearest bowl, and it felt weightless in her hand; she checked it twice to make sure something was in it, that it wasn’t empty. She sat by David’s bedside for a full five minutes, but try as she might, he wouldn’t cooperate, he wouldn’t eat. The delirium was coming back, he was angry at her, he called her something vile in Scottish that didn’t even need a translation. She could hear her voice—it was hers, yet it wasn’t, it was too calm and too quiet. Jo wanted to scream, but she just whispered answers to James as she put the bowl into his hands—yes, the man was gone; no, she hadn’t been hurt, he’d just been someone cut off from his unit. The second bowl went to the priest, his face dark and scowling; maybe he had been insulted by the liberty the German had taken, or maybe he was in physical pain, Jo couldn’t tell. Major Donahue ate, and Billy ate, and after she had convinced him to stop yelling, to stop banging metal against metal—Do you want to bring the whole German army down on us?—Jonesy had eaten too. Jo was still whispering, she was hushing the men if they talked. She didn’t know what she was listening for, but she was. She collected the bowls and washed them out in the far corner of the tent, by the back flap that led to the mine fields; then she dried them, and the whole time she was taking little half-breaths, breathing shallowly, straining her ears in the silence. She nested the bowls into each other—one after another after another—and she felt she was going mad, everything hinged on this, on stacking the bowls perfectly, geometrically. She put them down and picked them up again, and then she heard it.
It was laughter. She didn’t know whose at first—she had never heard him laugh before—but it was an ugly sound, sinister and knowing. There was a low mumble, another quiet laugh, and then, “She’s got a light on inside, we can search him in there,” and then Clark came in, smiling—God, he was beautiful, she hated him, she wished he was dead. Then some of his men came in, carrying something heavy and long between them, dark against the darkness outside the tent. One of the men lost his grip for a moment, and the thing they were carrying shifted—it was a body. An arm fell down by its side, and she could see the wristwatch on it, hear it ticking across the tent, across the universe that separated them, and she dropped the bowls, all of them clanging discordantly against each other as they fell, shattering the silence, and she screamed.
“Don’t you touch him!” She had never screamed so loud, it rose up out of her, uncontrollably, the hatred burning her throat like acid. “Get away from him, you get fucking away from him.”
She could see Clark’s dead eyes spring to life for a second, grow large and startled, then confused; she even saw him take a step back.
“No, God, no.” She was sobbing, worse than when Gianni had died, tears were running down her cheeks, tears of searing agony. She rushed forward, bearing down on the confused men, scratching at them like an avenging fury, tearing the burden out of their hands, holding on to him, on to the black coat, on to the red collar.
Clark recovered. “Get him the fuck out of here, get him out,” he was yelling, and he tackled Jo from behind, pinning her arms back. She threw her head back against his chin, and he cursed as his lip split open and he fell to the ground with her, trying to get his weight on top of her, spitting out blood and yelling, “Get him out!” again. Jo fought and fought as the men quickly reversed, dropping the body and dragging it back outside by the heels. She struggled until her strength failed her completely, until she went limp in Clark’s hands, weeping and crying out and then just whining, pitiably, like a whipped dog. He let go, pushing her away from him with his boot, a look of horror and disgust on his face, an impassable gulf separating them. Then she curled up and just lay there, shivering, a white skull pin clutched in her bloodied hand.
10
Kay Elliott
February 1945, Santo Tomas Internment Camp,
Manila, Philippines
Planes today. American. Could tell from the sound. Please, God, let them come in time.
KAY AND THE other nurses jumped off the back of the truck and stood outside the impressive-looking building. “That’s Santo Tomas,” Sandy said brightly, tucking in a stray curl with a bent hairpin. “The big university here. I read about it in a travel brochure once. Imagine actually wanting to come here, Kay.” Sandy looked worriedly at her friend, who was gazing up blankly at the balconies, the clock tower, the cross rising high above it all.
“Why is the cross still there? Why haven’t the Japanese taken down the cross?” Kay asked, squinting now in the sun. Maybe it’s too high. Maybe they can’t get to it yet.
The girls stepped toward the main entrance, but the Japanese motioned with their bayonets for them to turn around, to go to another building across the street. SANTA CATALINA, the sign read. GIRLS’ DORMITORY. The nurses entered the main floor. Before being rushed upstairs, Kay caught a glimpse of figures in long linen gowns, smooth-looking and cool, worn by some native women perhaps, but for what purpose? What was there to celebrate in wartime? Who would dress up like that to go to hell? A moment later, it registered: of course, they were nuns, sequestered and imprisoned, just like everyone. Nuns never have anything else to wear.
The officers confiscated their musette bags, their belongings—they searched them and returned them, then questioned the women one by one.
“I need to come with this one,” Sandy said, helping Kay to her feet.
“Why? What is wrong with this one?” the guard asked, motioning, pointing at Kay’s belly, at her head.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” Sandy replied, her red lips smiling sweetly. “I’m her best friend, I can answer any questions you have for her. She was born in Mount Carmel—”
“What wrong with her? Why she not talk for herself?”
Sandy bit her painted lip to keep from saying, Because you bastards killed her husband, killed her baby’s father, you probably ran him through the middle and left him to bleed to death in the jungle, you sons of bitches.
All that came out was, “She’s a little tired out from the trip, that’s all.”
They stayed in the dormitory six weeks. They were allowed downstairs to eat twice a day—never with the nuns, they never saw the nuns again—usually rice and carabao and papaya, the first fresh fruit they had had since before the tunnel. No one came in and no one went out—the thatched sawali surrounding their building made them an isolated island, cut off from the rest of Manila, from the rest of the world.
“Why do you think they’re keeping us here like this?” one of the nurses asked, worriedly. “Do you think they’re saving us for concubines?”
“I don’t think so,” Sandy said practically, rearranging her victory rolls, which were limp from the humidity. “More like a ‘silent debriefing,’ I’d say. I don’t think they want us going into the big camp right away, telling everyone what we saw out there.” The girls shuddered. “As if we could ever forget.”
Kay started bleeding their third week into isolation. It was only spotting at first. She kept telling herself it would stop, it was nothing. She would lie down and rest some more. Sometimes you bleed a little when the baby burrows in, when it gets settled in for good. She couldn’t lose the baby now, not now—in the jungle, in the tunnel being bombed, bumping along in the back of trucks, in jeeps—but not now, she couldn’t lose her son now. But there came a day when it was unmistakable—she was bleeding out. The other nurses heard her crying behind the thin, rattan screen, crying and wailing and bleeding her baby away. Then Sandy was there, saying, “There, there now, honey, it’ll be okay, you’ll be okay,” but she wasn’t, she wasn’t okay, she never would be. Kay’s heart was splitting open. The baby had been the only thing left to hold on to, to keep her together; now she was losing that, she was losing herself.
“Baby, baby,” Sandy soothed, oblivious to how the word stung, changing the gauze pads, gauging the blood loss, eyeing the insects in the corner of the filthy washroom. “Who knows what we’re going into out there,” Sandy said, lifting her eyes in the direction of the prison camp.
“You couldn’t have had this baby, it might have killed you. I bet there’ll be precious little to eat for one out there, let alone for two. Don’t cry, baby, it’s for the best, it’s for the best, really.”
But Kay was gone—she was lost herself, there was nothing left for her now. “That’s all I had,” she stammered as the nurses quickly changed the sheets, washing her dirty feet before getting her into bed, trying to save their hemorrhaging friend in a cesspool of filth and infection and tropical heat.
“That’s all I had,” Kay repeated, starting to shake uncontrollably. “Now I’ve lost Aaron. Now I’ve lost him for good.”
ONE OF THE planes flew low, buzzing the camp. The Japanese were yelling for everyone to get up, to get out of the courtyard, but Kay lay where she had fallen, mistaken for just another dead body. With her sunken eyes and protruding bones, it was hard to tell.
Ten planes flew over. Kay counted them carefully on her fingers as she looked up through the palm branches. Thank God, thank God, she thought over and over—not that they’d made it in time to save her or her baby, or any of them, really. They were dying too fast in the camp for that. Just, thank God they existed, they were real, they were finally here. They were from another world. A free world. A world the internees had all but forgotten.
Something fell from the sky, and one of the kids ran out and got it. He had it in his hands a whole ten seconds before the Japs got there, grabbed him by the back of his hair, and lifted him off the ground before tossing him aside, confiscating the thing, hurrying inside with it. But the boy was all right when he got up—he was a little scrapper, Kay had set his broken arm twice herself—and he’d had time to read the note wrapped around the pair of goggles the Americans had dropped. The news spread like wildfire throughout the camp. They were threatened with death if they were caught talking about it, but who could talk about anything else? It was only February, but the note had said, “Christmas is here. We’ll be in today or tomorrow.”
11
Jo McMahon
Spring 1945, The Western Front
My uncle’s a colonel,” Jonesy said, holding out a roll of bandages. Jo was changing Father Hook’s dressing. The inflammation was coming down; the wounds were pink around the edges, but not purple, not black. He could eat, he could drink—he was going to make it.
“Is that so?” Jo concentrated on his words with difficulty. Her skin hurt; she wondered if she was getting a fever. Everyone else had rolled down blankets and unbuttoned collars, but Jo felt colder than ever.
“In the catering corps.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re making that up.”
Jonesy smiled his ugly bucktoothed grin. “No, miss, it’s the honest truth. Worked his way up to the top. You should see his uniform too. Struts around like a peacock—I mean, it’s really something. Just like those big men in the newsreels. He just omits saying what branch he’s in. Anyway, everyone’s so intimidated by all that shiny metal they daren’t ask.”
Jo smiled, but then her skin crawled. She rolled her shoulders, and every goose pimple rubbed painfully against the inside of her shirt. This felt like fever coming on.
“Thanks for helping here, Jonesy. I think I’ve got the rest.”
“Miss.” Jonesy rolled his chair back toward his bunk.
Jo’s knees ached as she crossed the tent.
“How are you feeling this evening, Major?”
“Tired, miss.”
“Yes,” Jo sighed, checking his wound, taking too long, staring at it, through it, drifting for a moment.
“Will I be all right, miss? Is anything wrong?” he asked anxiously, half sitting up.
Jo came back. “No, you’re fine, Major. The wound’s healing nicely. You’ve got a mild infection, that’s why you’re so tired. But you don’t have any fever to speak of, and you can eat, so that means we put you back together okay. As soon as reinforcements arrive, they’ll hit you with so much penicillin you’ll be up doing a jig before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’”
The major looked relieved, sighing heavily.
“I won’t forget this, miss. You saved my life. I am not an unimportant man,” he boasted, smiling broadly. “Any promotion you like, any assignment, I’ll pull the strings, you just say the word.”
Jo looked down at the man absently scratching at his potbelly. He was serious, she knew; he really meant it. To him, the world of bureaucracy still existed, still mattered. He thought she would be impressed, would care how many gold stripes or bars or leaves adorned her dress uniform. Hell, he probably thought she still had a dress uniform—something other than the blood-soaked, washed-out, olive-green jumpsuit she was wearing now, the one she had swiped from the mechanics’ supply shed back in Tunisia so she could straddle the stretchers without worrying about her skirt.
“Billy,” she began, turning to the major’s bunkmate and sitting down on his cot.
“You remembered, miss. Billy.”
“Yes, finally. Anything you need before turning in?”
“No, ma’am—I mean, no, miss. Breathing was a lot better today, I think the worst is about over. I mean, this was a bad spell, miss, coming after that bronchitis and all, but I’ll be out there fighting again before you know it.”
“You’ll be going back home to your girl and your air warden job, if I have anything to do with it,” Jo corrected.
Billy looked crestfallen. Jo wanted to move on, to check on James and David and go to bed. She was exhausted, she was getting sick, they had eaten the last of the food. Goddamn it, do I have to hold their hands every step of the way? Her eyes started to ache from behind.
“Listen, Billy.” She focused on him, on his big, hurt eyes. “They can take care of you better back home. You won’t get so sick, so you won’t have these attacks, so you can get out there and do important work that needs to be done, stateside.” He still looked devastated. Then, stretching, reaching for snippets of something she’d heard somewhere—a movie? a poster?—“We’re all in this together, Billy. Fighting back home is just as important as fighting out here. More so in your case, ’cause you’ll be one hundred percent back home and really able to do some good.”
He looked thoughtful at that, and she jumped at the chance.
“C’mon, you’re ready to get off your back, aren’t you?”
“Y—yes, miss.”
“You’re ready to get back to helping our side win, right?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am—I mean, yes, miss.” Now his face was lit up again, shining.
“Well, then,” and she patted his foot reassuringly as she stood up. She crossed the tent, mumbling under her breath, Goddamn.
James turned his face away from her as he heard her approaching.
“I don’t need anything, miss,” he said quickly, dismissing her.
Jo was tempted to take him up on it—take the easy way out, get five more minutes of sleep. Then she walked up to the side of his bed and asked, “Mind if I sit with you for a minute?”
His face was averted at a sharp angle, his body tense and taut. He didn’t want her there.
“If you want,” he grumbled.
She sat down.
He pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them so she wouldn’t touch him, so she couldn’t even brush up against him by accident.
She looked at him, and she didn’t know what to say to all that brokenness and rage and fury. And then it just popped out.
“You’re beautiful, James.”
“What?”
In his shock and disbelief, he forgot and turned his disfigured face full toward the sound of her voice, toward the sound of those ridiculous, incredible words.
“You are—really.”
“I’m—I’m a monster.” The pain was so palpable when he said it that it was like a living thing, a serpent lashing out, biting and hating and biting again.
Jo laughed.
“You’re laughing at me?”
“No, I’m sorry, I’m just laughing at
how wrong you are. Right now, you can only see—well, not see, really, more like feel—that you’re ugly. But you’re not. A four-by-four patch of your skin is badly burned, I’ll give you that, and you might never see again, that much is true. But you’re just focusing on that. On that tiny little part of you. It’s a part of you, James, not all of you. The rest of you is perfect, beautiful—and even if it wasn’t, I bet there is stuff inside of you that’s beautiful too.”
His face looked a little less dark.
“It’s kind of like . . . remember the morning you woke up all over chicken pox? It happens to all of us—one morning you’re fine, the next you’re blisters all over. Big, wet, glassy ones too—remember?”
James nodded. “Sure.”
“Were you a monster then? Were you any different inside?”
“But that was different! That was kid stuff. You were better in a few weeks, good as new.”
“Yes, it was a little different, James, but listen to me.” Jo was hot, then cold, then hot again, her ears starting to ring; she’d take her temperature when she was through with this, but she had caught on to something and didn’t want to let it go. “It wasn’t as different as you think. You looked in the mirror that morning and saw something that looked scary, but you knew it wasn’t you, not the real you, inside. Well, if you could see yourself right now, yes, you were burned pretty badly around one eye, but the rest of you, the real you, is still the same.”
The Fire by Night Page 16
