Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  “I’m getting dizzy. I don’t have any strength.”

  Hatchet, the guard, shouted a phrase in Japanese. The men had heard it often enough to know that it was an instruction not to talk.

  Wally continued to work for a time, but he was feeling more and more that he might pass out. He finally leaned on his shovel and said, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “You need to rest. Tell the guard.”

  “I don’t want to go down. That might be the end of me.”

  “You’ll be all right. You have some quinine, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  But now Hatchet was coming. He yelled at them, and then he struck Alan across the back with his forearm. Alan stumbled forward but caught his balance and turned around. He pointed at Wally. “Sick,” he said.

  “Work,” the guard said. “No sick.”

  Wally looked over at Alan. “It’s all right. I’ll work. I’ll start the quinine tonight.”

  A man named Norm Staker stepped up next to Wally. He had once been a big-bellied little man, but he was shriveled now. He couldn’t weigh more than eighty pounds. “Don’t kill yourself, Wally,” he said. “Take some rest, no matter what Hatchet says.”

  Hatchet was shouting again, but Staker turned on him. “He’s sick,” he said.

  Wally put his hand on Staker’s shoulder and said, “It’s okay. I’ll try to keep going. I’ll be better off.”

  “I don’t know, Wally. If you—”

  “I’m not going to die, Norm. Hatchet can’t make me do that.”

  Staker nodded. “We’ll help you get through this, Wally—like you’ve done for a lot of guys.”

  Wally knew what Staker meant, but he also knew the truth. In the past few weeks, Wally had made an all-out effort to save some of his friends’ lives. He had fed men who were too weak to feed themselves. But virtually all of them had died. The only ones who survived were the ones who kept up their own will, who simply refused to die.

  “Don’t push yourself too hard,” Norm said. “Alan and I will stay close to you.”

  “All right,” Wally said.

  Hatchet had had enough. He kicked at Norm, caught him in the knee. Norm went down on all fours. He grunted, hesitated, and then got up. For a moment he stared into Hatchet’s face. Then he picked up his shovel and went back to work.

  Wally tried to do the same thing, but the effort was overwhelming. He watched the shadows, but the sun seemed stuck in the sky. He heard the whirring of insects, the scraping of shovels, but he felt as though he were hidden deep within his body, hardly part of himself. He was wet from the moisture in the air, the rain that had come and gone that morning, but he wasn’t sweating. His body was raging hot.

  He kept trying to push his shovel into the ground, but then, suddenly, the earth swerved upward at him. He never felt himself strike the ground, only knew that time had passed when he awakened—back in his tent. Alan was there, and he was wiping Wally’s face with a torn piece of an old shirt.

  “Wally, while you’re awake, you need to take your quinine.”

  Wally nodded, and he tried to sit up, but the tent began to spin, and he dropped his head back.

  “Where are your pills?”

  Wally had buried them at the head of his little sleeping area, near the wall of the tent. He rolled on his side, reached, and began to scratch at the earth.

  “I’ll do it,” Alan said, and Wally heard the words, but the next time he knew what was happening, the angle of the sun had changed. It was getting dark inside the tent.

  “Wally, listen to me. You need to take a pill now, while you can sit up.”

  “Okay,” Wally managed to say, and he did understand, but he still felt lost inside his body.

  Alan hoisted him to a sitting position. “Here’s your canteen. Can you take a drink?”

  Wally nodded. Then he reached for the tin of quinine pills that he saw on the ground next to him.

  “Let me get one out for you,” Alan said.

  But Wally fumbled to open the tin and then dropped all the pills in the palm of one hand—about fifteen of them.

  “No, Wally. Here, give me those.”

  But suddenly Wally’s hand came up, and he tossed all the pills in his mouth at once.

  “Wally! Don’t!”

  But it was too late. Wally had brought the canteen to his lips in the same motion, and now he had swallowed them all.

  Alan cursed. “What do you think you’re doing? Are you trying to kill yourself?”

  Wally didn’t understand the question. The doctor had told him that he should save those pills, and if he ever came down with malaria, he should take them. And that’s what he had done.

  “You were supposed to take one, Wally.” Alan sounded angry, even desperate, but Wally was slipping back into himself.

  Wally slept through mealtime and all night, but he awakened early. When he did, he was not sure what had happened the night before. He lay on his back in the dirt, and he waited to feel the fever and the dizziness. It all seemed gone.

  Alan’s eyes came open. “Wally, are you all right?”

  “I feel okay.” He laughed a little. “I mean, I feel terrible. Like always. But the fever is gone.”

  “It’ll be back. Malaria doesn’t go away that easy. At least the quinine didn’t kill you.”

  It all came back to Wally. “I took all my pills, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. What were you thinking?” Alan sat up.

  “I don’t know. My mind wasn’t clear.” He thought about it for a moment. “But it seemed like what I was supposed to do. And I feel better.”

  “Don’t try to work today. Just rest. You’ll—”

  “No. I have to get up. I have to keep moving.”

  “Okay. Maybe that’s right.” And then, after a moment, Alan added, “Man, I’m glad you didn’t die. I thought . . .” But he stopped, and Wally could see he was struggling with his emotions.

  Wally got up. His joints and muscles ached; his feet hurt. The sores on his hands and legs stung with pain. But he felt no fever, so he joined the other men, and he helped cook the rice, and then he ate all he could.

  Norm helped with the cooking, and he looked brighter than he had in some time. “Boy, I’m glad to see you,” he told Wally, and Wally understood. The men tried not to let the deaths scare them, but a clock seemed to be ticking on everyone, and when someone fought off death, the others had more reason to hope.

  Wally went to work. He looked Hatchet in the eye, even gave him a defiant little smile, but Hatchet merely made a gesture for him to pick up his shovel. Wally didn’t feel strong, but he worked all day. The whole time he monitored himself, prepared for the fever to return, but he didn’t feel any sign of it.

  A few days later Alan told Wally, “That dose of quinine must have done something to your system. Maybe that’s what everyone should do when they get it.”

  “I don’t think so,” Wally said. He and Alan were off the road, in the jungle, and they were digging a grave. Only one man had died that day, but there were several more who wouldn’t last much longer. “I think God answered my prayers. He made the quinine work.”

  “Wally, you’ll be one of the guys who makes it through.”

  “You too, Alan.”

  “I hope so. But you’ve got more inside you. Everyone knows you’re the man to follow.”

  Wally was amazed. He thought of his father, and he thought how much he would like to talk to him now, to tell him he was not giving up.

  Another week went by and more men died. Rumor had it that a Japanese crew with trucks and equipment had been working on the same road, and that it was catching up. Men had heard the big rigs behind them, across the river. The speculation was that once the Japanese workers overtook them, this decimated crew would be of no help. The nightmare could finally end.

  Wally didn’t want to think that way. What if the crew did come but then only pushed faster and asked more of the men? Wally told Alan, “Just plan t
o keep working. Keep thinking of one day at a time.” But Wally had heard the bulldozers himself now, and he couldn’t help thinking that any sort of change would be better than continuing this daily, pointless drudgery.

  Then one morning two big trucks, shifting and racing their engines as they staggered over the rough road, drove up to the work crew and stopped. Two soldiers, better dressed than the ones the prisoners had grown used to seeing, got down from the trucks. They spoke at some length to the guards, and then one of them spoke to the prisoners. “Truck. You go.”

  Alan whispered, “Thank God,” but Wally was still unsure. Maybe the prisoners would only move to another part of the road. He didn’t want to make too much of this and then be disappointed. He began to walk toward the trucks with his shovel in his hand.

  But Hatchet took hold of his shoulder. “No,” he said. And he pointed to the shovel. Then he pointed to the ground.

  Wally dropped the shovel, and he looked into Hatchet’s eyes, tried to see something there. Hatchet stood for a moment, looked back at Wally, his narrow face as stern as ever, but he made a slight, barely discernible bow. Wally hesitated, and then, without knowing exactly why, he returned the gesture. Then he turned and walked to the camp. He wanted to get his meager possessions, and he knew he would have to help some of the men onto the truck.

  He called out, “Okay, guys. They’re moving us out. Hatchet told me not to take my shovel, so I think it’s over.”

  No one cheered. But some of the sick men got up, and he saw the looks on their faces. They were too weak to show much joy, but some cried, and he could see the sense of relief, of awe, in all their faces. He knew that at least some of them were saying prayers of thanks, no matter how bitter and obscene they had been throughout this ordeal. Wally never thought to count how many of them were still alive, but he knew it was fewer than fifty.

  He and Alan climbed into one of the trucks. They sat down together and leaned against the wall of the truck bed. Hatchet walked around to the back and looked in through the slats. “Where are we going?” Wally asked. “Where go?”

  Hatchet understood. “Bilibid,” he said.

  Wally looked around. “Does anyone know what Bilibid is?” he called out.

  “It’s a jail in Manila,” one of the men said. “There’s supposed to be a hospital there.”

  It sounded too good to be true, but Wally took a deep breath and tried to relax. Just the thought of riding in a truck and not working for a day was almost too wonderful to imagine. “Hey, Hatchet,” Wally said. “Thanks for the memories,” and he laughed.

  Hatchet smiled a little, and no one had ever seen him do that before. Wally was in a great mood, but he wasn’t ready to forgive. Hatchet and his buddies were responsible for all those deaths, and Wally wasn’t about to forget that.

  The truck backed up and turned around, and as it bumped over the road the men had built, Wally looked around at the other prisoners. They had survived the Tayabas work detail, and somehow, wherever they were going, conditions had to be better. At the same time, what he saw was as sad as anything he had ever looked at. These men who had once been well-conditioned soldiers were dressed in the shreds of their uniforms or in “G-strings”—mere strips of cotton cloth held between their legs and over their loins by a strand of string. The men looked wild with their long beards and hair, their skin covered with filth and open sores. And worst of all were their emaciated frames, every rib showing, their legs and arms thin as sticks. Some of the men, clearly, would not last much longer, even with medical help.

  It was a long ride, and uncomfortable, but it was a joy ride. In Manila Wally had a chance to see that people still lived in homes, were still civilized. Even Bilibid prison didn’t look bad. It was a dreary place, with buildings circled like the spokes of a wheel, and the compound surrounded by a high wall, but the men were taken immediately to a makeshift hospital. They got a chance to wash and rid themselves of their old clothes. The water was cold, but there was soap. Wally received an old pair of shorts that were much too big for him. He used a piece of string to cinch them up, and even though he had no shirt, he liked the shorts better than a G-string. Medicine was in short supply, and conditions were crude, but navy doctors, prisoners themselves, examined all the men.

  Wally learned that he had the diseases he suspected: pellagra, beriberi and hepatitis, and he tested positive for tuberculosis. He weighed just over one hundred pounds, down from one-seventy. When a doctor—Doctor Ahern—asked him about symptoms of malaria, Wally told him about taking the quinine.

  “Well,” Doctor Ahern said, “the symptoms sound like malaria, but a big dose of quinine wouldn’t cure it overnight.”

  “It went away, and it hasn’t come back,” Wally said.

  Dr. Ahern was a thin man who had probably lost a good deal of weight himself, but he looked robust compared to most. Wally hoped that meant prisoners in Bilibid ate fairly well. The doctor put his hand on Wally’s shoulder and said, “Just count yourself lucky that the malaria—if that’s what you had—didn’t get any worse. With everything else you have, I doubt you would have lasted long.”

  “I think God made that big dose of quinine work,” Wally said. “That’s my explanation.”

  Doctor Ahern looked into Wally’s eyes. His own eyes were red and tired. “I don’t know, son. Maybe so. But I’ve seen a lot of kids die. Sometimes I wonder where God has run off to.”

  “I know what you mean, sir,” Wally said. “But I feel like I know some things now I probably wouldn’t have learned any other way. So maybe, in a way, it’s worth it.”

  “Well . . . there ought to be a better way, if you ask me.” He shoved his hands into his pants pockets, and then he added, “I will say this. In most cases, it’s the boys who believe something—have some commitment—who are surviving. Even if it’s hatred a guy feels, it’s something to cling to.”

  Wally understood the hatred, but he knew it wouldn’t have been enough to have gotten him through.

  ***

  Gene and his friends were celebrating. They had beaten West High 26 to 6 that afternoon and clinched the city “Big-Three” football championship. Gene had scored two of the four touchdowns for East, and he had also been the main force on defense. The challenge now was to create adequate refreshments for the celebration. Sister Thomas had bought some root beer, but Gene wanted to have root-beer floats. Most of the kids had managed to bring a little sugar—a half a cup or so—and cream was no problem. So now the boys had gathered on the front porch, and they were taking turns cranking an old ice-cream freezer. It was a cool October evening, but Gene was rather glad of that. It was an excuse to wear his letter sweater—which he wore proudly.

  Ralph Nielson, Gene’s big, red-headed friend who played center, had twisted his knee, but he had stayed in the game until the bitter end. Now, however, he was lying on the porch with his knee propped up on the love seat. Del Marshall, the fullback, was turning the handle on the freezer. He told the others, “You can always trust old Ralph to claim an injury just when the work has to be done.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Ralph told him. “You give me a hard time and I’ll hike the ball to Gene all the time.”

  East High used a single-wing offense. The center hiked the ball through the air, either to the tailback or the fullback. At tailback, Gene not only carried the ball, but he threw passes and was the punter besides.

  Max Rasmussen, who was sitting on the front steps, turned toward Arden Schwendiman. “I think the guys who get all the glory should have to do the work.”

  “That’s right,” Arden said. “We open up holes that my grandma could run through, and then Gene gets his name in the paper for scoring the touchdowns.”

  “Hey, I’ve got ‘swivel hips,’” Gene said, chuckling. “Don’t you guys read the paper?”

  The week before, after a game with South High, the sports writer for the Trib had described Gene as “a swivel-hipped lad who can slip through the smallest of openings.”


  “That’s true,” Ralph said. “You do walk like a girl.”

  This set off a round of laughter and then another series of insults. Finally the boys were interrupted by Millie Ellertson, who stepped out the front door. “What’s going on out here?” she asked. “Where’s the ice cream?”

  “Hold your horses,” Del said. “Anything good is worth waiting for.”

  “Yeah. Like Gene,” Ralph said from his prone position.

  Millie laughed. “I’ll wait for Gene as long as it takes. But I’d like my ice cream tonight.”

  When Millie shut the door, Arden said, “Oh, Genie boy, that girl has it bad for you.”

  “Naw. She’s got it bad for ice cream.”

  The boys kept taking turns and kept sprinkling rock salt on the ice. Gradually the crank began to require more power. “Let me try it now,” Gene said. “I know exactly when it’s done.” He turned the handle a few times. “Okay. Three more turns and it will be perfect,” he said, and he gave it three more cranks. Then he released the cross bar, pushed the ice aside, and pulled out the canister. The boys all followed him inside, Ralph limping slowly behind the others.

  The girls were in the kitchen chatting with Sister Thomas. President Thomas was in the living room near the console radio. He was listening to the late evening news.

  “Okay,” Gene said as he walked into the kitchen. “I haven’t looked inside yet, but I have the touch—and I know this ice cream is perfect.”

  “Oh, pooh! I’ll bet it’s still too soft,” Thora Bradford said. “You boys aren’t strong enough to finish it off.”

  But just then President Thomas said, from the next room, “Listen to this, kids.” He had turned up the radio.

  Gene walked to the door and held it open. He heard something about Northern Africa and knew that the expected invasion had begun. “In Algiers,” the announcer said, “American troops landed with little resistance, but in Casablanca the French joined with Nazi forces to resist the Allies.”

  “What’s wrong with those stupid French?” Gene said, glancing at his friends. “How can they fight against us?”

  “Be quiet a minute,” Dad said.