Bridge of Scarlet Leaves (34 page)

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Authors: Kristina McMorris

BOOK: Bridge of Scarlet Leaves
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55
B
y the light of the moon, Lane traced the image of her face. His fingers glided down the photo, over Maddie’s shoulder and down her beautiful, rounded figure. In just a few months he would be a father. A father! The idea was overwhelming and frightening and amazing all at once.
What would the child look like? Would he be an athlete? Maybe a lawyer ... a judge. Or would it be a girl? One smile from her and Lane would be nothing but putty.
Doggone it all. What was he doing? Hiding out in a jungle infested with as many Japanese soldiers as disease-carrying bugs wasn’t the place to be thinking about the future.
He tucked Maddie’s picture back into the dome of his helmet, next to Emma’s crane. He needed to concentrate on why he was here, what he came to do. Not stoke fears over what he stood to lose.
“Moritomo,” Sergeant Schober said quietly, approaching the Banyan tree. Lane sat amidst the protruding, interwoven roots, waiting for recon orders. “Cap’n wants you to sneak into the field. See if you can hear anything.”
Lane strapped on his helmet. He followed without pause, in spite of knowing what he was in for. The prior night, he’d volunteered to crawl into the same meadow. Not surprisingly, Captain Berlow hadn’t objected. For an hour, Lane had eavesdropped on Imperial soldiers discussing their unit’s positions. From either ignorance or arrogance—perhaps from both—the Japanese tended to speak carelessly about such things, secure in the belief that no outsider would understand their language.
The details Lane had related helped the Marines wipe out an entire machine-gun nest. Still, the captain remained unimpressed. Translated maps, insightful interrogations. Nothing could win the guy over. All Lane received were snide remarks about being too chummy with the POWs. Berlow didn’t realize that screaming to make them talk was pointless. Intimidation only clammed them up. Show them compassion and they answered every question.
The reason was simple. Japanese weren’t trained to be prisoners of war; they were never supposed to be taken alive. And few of them were, in fact, until Schober had offered a reward of three Cokes for the delivery of each POW. The prisoner count had substantially risen.
Now near the edge of the field, Lane admittedly felt more fear than compassion.
Sergeant Schober gave a hand signal, directing him northeast. Lane waited for acknowledging nods from the Marines positioned close by. Being mistaken for the enemy was a major reason most MIS guys weren’t stationed at the front.
On his stomach, he inched his way through the tall swaying weeds. A decent breeze helped camouflage his movement. Island noises rode the salty air, reminding him of nights spent on the California coast. Tipping back beers with TJ, cracking jokes around a bonfire.
Finally he heard a murmur of voices. He moved in on them to discern the words. Idle chatter filled most of the exchange, hunger and pitiful rations the looping topic. Nothing Lane wasn’t experiencing himself. Even with his jittery nerves, he could eat a feast for ten. His belly let out a grumble at the thought. He grabbed his middle to mute the gurgle, flattening his face in the dirt.
The men continued without a break, thank God. Time to get out of here before it happened again.
Lane started to crawl backward, but then caught the word
“sh
geki.”
Assault.
He stopped and leaned forward, listened intently. Once he’d gathered ample information, he suppressed his alarm and returned to find Schober. Lane passed along what he’d heard, about the enemy forces closing in on the area. They were using tunnels for strategic movement to get a drop on the Marines. He relayed the quantity of their soldiers, far outnumbering the American outfit, and their plans to attack at dawn.
A mere flitter of concern appeared in the captain’s eyes, but the urgency of his orders conveyed the weight he afforded the report.
“Captain, I have an idea,” Lane interrupted. Before Berlow could dismiss his input, Lane tossed out his proposal.
The man chewed on his cigar for several seconds, then grumbled. “This don’t work, you’ll be the first one they shoot.” A statement of the obvious.
“It’ll work,” Lane insisted.
If it didn’t, they could be overrun by morning.
“Well then,” Berlow replied, “what are we waiting for.”
 
As the plan spread through the company of Marines, Lane took up position in the field, no more than five yards from the captain. Berlow wanted a front row seat, where he could immediately adjust if the scheme failed. Clearly he was already banking on the need for plan B.
Lane hugged his rifle, keeping low to the ground. He eyed his wristwatch. Thoughts of his wife, his family, his unborn child, crammed themselves into every trudging minute.
Finally, the anticipated hour arrived. At 0300, Berlow gave him the cue, along with a look that said,
Don’t you dare screw this up.
So much for camaraderie.
Following a quick silent prayer, Lane inhaled a lungful of air. And in a sharp commander’s voice, he shouted,
“Totsugeki! Totsugeki!”
A drove of Japanese soldiers, fooled by the order to charge, rose in the meadow. They let out hollers as they ran straight into an instant shower of ammo. Lane took a chance and repeated his yell, his prime contribution. He wasn’t expected to fire unless necessary. More men appeared and fell into the weeds. It was an all-out turkey shoot.
Off to the right, Berlow fired away, cutting down the opposition. But then a dark form materialized out of his sight line. A Japanese soldier leapt straight at the captain with bayonet raised. The scene rolled out in slow motion, each frame a still life of impending death. Just in time, bullets halted the enemy, jerking his chest in rapid hits, and slammed him to the ground.
Berlow threw Lane a glance. It was only then Lane realized that he himself had pulled the trigger. A banzai shout from another soldier yanked the captain back to his duties, and before long, Lane too was firing against the other side.
 
Come morning, the counterattack a success—including the surrender of several dozen Japanese—Lane joined others in scouring the field. He focused on finding documents, averting his conscience from the faces of those, in one way or another, he had murdered. With purposeful steps, he hurtled the obstacle course of pockmarked bodies, and wondered how many more sacrifices it would take to bring this blessed thing to an end.
56
A
mazing how a single night can entirely change how you view a person. TJ had learned this from both his father and Lane. What he hadn’t expected was a Japanese guard to reinforce the theory. But back in June, that’s what had happened when flawless English slipped out while the guy talked in his sleep. It took TJ threatening to report Dopey, about his snoozing on post, to uncover the shocking truth.
 
“I’m an American,” Dopey confessed, seated on the ground against the rock where he’d nodded off. “I was born and raised in Claremont. Graduated from Berkeley in ’41.”
“An American?” TJ found himself stuck on the lone admission.
“After my dad died, my mom moved back to Nagoya to be with her sisters. Took my little brother with her. She understood why I wanted to stay. California was my home. But then she had a stroke.” He layered his arms over his bent knees, shook his head. “I was only planning to be there a couple weeks. Once I got there, though, it was hard to leave until I knew my mom would be okay. And my boss at the ad firm said he’d hold my job for a month. So I stayed. I mean, how was I supposed to know what was about to happen... .”
“Pearl Harbor,” TJ murmured.
Dopey worked his heel into the ground as he continued. “I tried everything I could. Went to the embassy, wrote officials in the States. Nothing worked. They weren’t letting anyone with Japanese blood back into the country.”
In the pause that followed, TJ’s grip remained on the bars of his open-aired cell. His initial shock was dissipating, though not his wariness. Regardless of citizenship, the guy was a Jap soldier. “If you were such a patriot, then why the hell are you here? How can you stand to wear that uniform?”
“I was conscripted,” he said gruffly. “You think I want to fight for the Imperial Army? Watch Americans being murdered every day?” He jerked his face away, yet even in the dark, with only the moon lighting their corner of camp, TJ could see emotion cross his features, his shoulders dip. He could feel the guy’s guilt as distinct and binding as the seams of a ball.
“Eventually I found a way to escape,” he went on. “Got papers and a travel pass through the black market. I was all set to go. But then ... in the end, I couldn’t do it.”
“So you stayed by choice?” The question wasn’t a challenge. TJ was sincerely perplexed.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Dopey muttered.
“Try me.”
Though looking hesitant, he replied, “Because of my family. If I’d fled like that, abandoned my duty, I would’ve disgraced them. All just to serve myself.”
“But—that doesn’t make sense. Who would’ve looked down on them for that? A couple of pencil pushers in Tokyo?”
“No,” he said, a statement of fact. “The whole country.”
 
For six weeks following that exchange, TJ and Eddie—that was Dopey’s real name—had spent their nights gabbing in secret.
It had been nice for TJ, having someone actually respond when he talked during his stint in the cage. And clearly Eddie had missed speaking, not just in English but in any language. At military training, his subtle but telling American accent had spurred distrust. So he’d learned to open his mouth only when needed. This was also, TJ guessed, the reason Eddie had been assigned guard duty at their prison camp. Really, how much damage could a potential spy do while entrapped by barbed wire on a remote island?
In some ways, Eddie Sato was imprisoned as much as any POW here.
“I’m sorry it’s over.” This served as TJ’s standard reply when prisoners asked how he’d managed in solitary. Viewed as a hero for his offense, he’d received the question a whole lot. “I’m sorry it’s over,” he’d tell them, and they presumed he was being sarcastic, or arrogantly brave.
Truth was, he meant it.
Five months had passed since he’d been returned to his thatched barrack. He’d enjoyed reuniting with fellas like Tack and Ranieri—Ranieri had mostly regained his health by then, plus a permanent case of gratitude. The space to stroll and stretch was also a welcome change, not to mention a bath and shave. But while lying in his sleeping bay at night, he’d think of Eddie and their talks, from starlets and radio shows to meals from home. They’d traded jokes and stories, and created a game of tossing pebbles onto circles drawn in the dirt.
It wasn’t until discussing the great hitter Ted Williams, though, that TJ had realized what he relished most about their chats: With features sculpted by the shadows, Eddie could have so easily been Lane. Like it or not, TJ missed his old friend. The person he could go to with family frustrations or for help with school projects, to swap advice on dating and girls. To share whoops and boos over every broadcast from the World Series, a buddy to celebrate with whenever the occasion arose.
He wished he could tell that to Lane, but the guy was about as far from reach as Bovard Field. TJ stewed on this thought for several nights. Only when it brewed into a feast of an idea—one that could deliver him to freedom—did he risk conferring with Eddie in private.
 
In the inky blackness, hidden behind the latrine, TJ tried not to inhale the fumes. The facility was nothing more than a walled-off slit trench. His past “honey details” had required him to scoop up bucketfuls to be used as fertilizer for Looney’s garden, which was how TJ knew this was the perfect spot to meet. Aside from a few emergency runs by POWs with dysentery, the stench would deter anyone from coming out here by choice.
TJ angled toward a sound. Boot steps, coming closer. He held his breath and prayed those boots belonged to Eddie.
The footfalls stopped, then slowly rounded the corner.
“Eddie,” TJ whispered, overcome with relief.
“What’d you want?” he whispered back.
TJ cringed at the cool greeting. He had to remind himself that they weren’t truly friends. In daylight, they stood on opposite sides of the war. Eddie was a means to complete a mission, and that’s all.
“Look, I just need to ask you something.”
“Shh.” Eddie threw up a palm to silence him and froze. They listened to movement in the latrine. A man grunted as he relieved himself. When he departed, Eddie shot TJ a glare. “You have ten seconds.”
Refocusing, TJ answered, “I need a favor.”
Eddie let out a frustrated breath. “I can’t get any more quinine until supplies come in. When I get some, I’ll give it to you the same way as before.”
The first note TJ had passed to him had been a request for the anti-malaria pills. Two days later, a small handful of the tablets had magically appeared beneath the Air Corps jacket TJ used as a pillow and, as a result, saved Tack’s life.
“That’s not why I’m here.”
Eddie enunciated each word. “What do you want?”
“Baseball.” Eddie’s expression crinkled as TJ continued. “We want to play against the guards. Sort of like an exhibition game. The commander’s a sports fanatic, you said so yourself.”
That, as it turned out, was the reason TJ hadn’t been executed. Looney had raised his sword to hack away when Eddie intervened, claiming he’d overheard that TJ was a famous pitcher, the kind Japan—a country wild about baseball—would need after winning the war. Truthfully, Eddie had been in the stands when TJ sealed a Trojan victory against Berkeley in ’39, and for some reason that even Eddie couldn’t fathom, he’d recognized TJ at the prison, later confirmed by his name.
Apparently staying mute had been easier when the victim was an unknown. Now, TJ hoped the guard’s compassion would come through one final time.
“In the next shipment from Japan,” TJ went on, “I was thinking, maybe we could get a little equipment. Like a bat and a few balls. Heck, we could use coconuts if need be—”
“I know what this is about,” Eddie broke in, his face hardening. “It’s suicide for nothing.”
TJ paused, briefly thrown off. “What do you mean?”
“So, what—you’re gonna try to show up the guards? Put them in their place? You do that, they’ll beat the shit out of all of you for disgracing them.”
Actually, in this case, winning would just be a bonus. As much as TJ wanted to explain that, it was safer for them both if Eddie didn’t know. “We just want to play.”
“The commander isn’t going to permit it.”
“Why wouldn’t he? He lets us have talent shows and dinnertime songs. Hell, the other night, he even allowed a Christmas Eve program.”
It was while listening to the raggedy choir sing “Greensleeves” that TJ’s mind hopped from “Green” to grass to a manicured baseball field, and ultimately landed on escape.
“Just hear me out,” he insisted when Eddie angled to leave. “You told me you’d help if you could. Here’s your chance.”
Eddie didn’t turn back around, but he stayed, listening.
“One lousy game could raise morale enough to pull a lot of these guys through. Once our spirit loses all hope—once that’s been crushed—we’re done for. I
know
you understand that.”
TJ had one last argument, which could either win the guy over or push him further away. Thinking of Ranieri, who would take the gamble, he stepped closer and said, “You’re not one of ’em, Eddie. No matter what uniform they make you wear.”
Slowly, Eddie glanced over his shoulder. Something simmered in his eyes. Not anger or disapproval. More like ... suspicion. “I’ll talk to him,” he replied flatly.
Before TJ could thank him, he marched away, leaving in question what precisely that discussion would entail.

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