The Grey Pilgrim (3 page)

Worthy of His Passing

The village at the foot of the hill still smoldered. Sasaki had ordered this insignificant piece of North China burned during the night of October 19. By midmorning, little remained beyond a few piles of glowing cinders and smoking rubble. A cutting wind with the taste of Arctic climes teased the remaining flames and carried smoke and ash and sparks across the rutted road and abandoned fields.

It had rained lightly in the hour before dawn. The resulting puddles were skinning with sheet ice. Sunrise had brought light but not heat. Scudding low clouds maintained a sort of pulsing twilight. Sasaki considered the clouds and wondered if they would provide snow as a backdrop for the drama that would be acted out here.

For a change, it seemed, the Chinese offered him a worthy opponent. From the head of the valley, the hill appeared well fortified. Strands of barbed wire and sharpened stakes blocked the approaches. A pair of machine guns had been placed where they could guard the flanks and still overlap at the center. The defenders seemed securely dug in, occupying a series of trenches that crisscrossed the hilltop.

It was Sergeant Itho’s squad that had burned the village. Since dawn they had maintained their position in a convenient ditch at the base of the hill. From there, they kept up a steady fire at the enemy above. Sasaki had expected the assault on the village, and this probe, to draw an angry response. It had not. These troops held their place and their fire, waiting on some greater threat or, as the bodies of several men of Itho’s squad attested, good targets.

It was satisfying to be offered the resistance of an opponent with some knowledge of the art of war instead of the confused mob hysterics Sasaki had come to associate with resistance to Japan’s conquest of China. It was also depressing to realize how easily he could brush aside even this almost competent defense. He could call in artillery, shell this position until there was no longer a high ground for them to hold. He could go around them, for they had no support on either side, then see if the back of this hill was as well fortified and if they had enough men to defend it from two directions at once. He could call in tanks and let them walk across the stakes and wires and level the earthworks. All these things, Sasaki could do, but simple slaughter was without beauty. It lacked honor and glory.

Captain Kozo Sasaki was a warrior by birth and by choice, not by proclamation. He expected to fulfill his destiny on the battlefield. He considered himself an artist. Conquest was his canvas. War was the text he must shape into poetry, the clay he would mold from confused struggle into magnificent contest. Perhaps, he hoped, fate had delivered this insignificant hill into his hands so that he might make of it a place worthy of his passing.

There was no honor in exploiting the weakness of a weakling. Sasaki determined to avoid the militarily sound approach. He would take on his enemy’s strength, and crush it.

His officers had their instructions. He gestured for his orderly and the man ran to his side and bowed. “Now,” Sasaki told him. The man bowed again, then fired a single flare across the valley toward the hill. Legs spread, hands folded behind his back, Sasaki stood and watched the battle unfold.

The result was disappointing. Their machine guns chattered only briefly, then lay still. They stood at their posts for a single volley and a few scattered shots before throwing down their weapons and breaking before his charge. After that, only Japanese guns spoke above the wind and blended with the cheers of the victorious and the cries of the dying.

After, as his troops formed in the valley, preparing to load into the trucks that would carry them to the next village, Sasaki walked through the ruins of his enemy’s fortifications. From the fabric of desire his mind had woven a more formidable opponent than fact revealed. They had dug in here because they were too cold and tired and hungry to run any further. Like a whipped mongrel they had found a dark corner from which to growl and nip, briefly, before cringing and accepting the inevitable. They had not shown discipline. They held their fire because they had no ammunition to waste. They broke because even their despair could not match their terror. Sasaki felt diminished, and for the first time that day, he felt the cold.

The Chinese dead lay where they had fallen, pitiful rags barely covering gaunt bodies that would feel cold and fatigue and hunger no more. Their officer’s beheaded corpse lay among his followers and Sasaki cleaned the man’s blood from his sword on a convenient shirt tail. Sasaki would have fought to the end, using hands and teeth if he could find no other weapons. But this man, seeing his troops break, surrendered. The same exposure to European or American tactics that had allowed him to offer the pretense of a fight had led him to see war as a contest where, win or lose, the strategists would later share a snifter of brandy and discuss the battle’s highlights. Sasaki could not respect a man who was not prepared to act as an example, and, if need be, die gloriously for the sake of glory. This Chinese officer was not without some shallow worth, or he would have been far from the fighting with his generals, but it was insufficient. This place could have been an homage to the artistry of carnage. It had delivered only shame. The officer had paid the price of Sasaki’s disappointment.

Grant me just one worthy enemy, Sasaki begged the souls of his ancestors. If they heard his prayer they gave no answer. There was only the wind tearing at the ragged uniforms of the dead and numbing his mind and body.

Where within this endless nation were its military leaders? Sasaki had not found them, nor encountered evidence of their existence. Could it be that by 1940, China held only peasants and bandits and no warriors? Perhaps the might of Imperial Japan was unstoppable, but other peoples had faced similar odds and fought beautifully. The American Indians never had a chance against the invading European hordes. Those outnumbered and virtually unarmed savages produced countless military geniuses, men who held at bay the irresistible might of their enemy for impossible periods of time. Where were China’s Chief Joseph and Red Cloud and Geronimo? Oh, those were men who understood the honor, the glory, of war.

For a brief moment, Sasaki wished he had been born Chinese. It was impossible to demonstrate his genius at his chosen trade against incompetent opponents and inferior troops. A challenge worthy of him would be to organize this infinity of peasants into a guerilla force that struck and ran and fought where it was not expected. To force the ponderous Japanese advance to pause and turn its full attention upon him, then to defeat it anyway. Such an effort would earn him the adoration that was his due, the recognition for which he was born.

Sasaki sheathed his sword and pulled his collar up against the wind. He stalked down the hill and through the smoldering remains of the village to where his orderly rushed to open the door of his staff car. It was time for them to move forward again. Time to find themselves another village. This was China. There would always be another village.

The Grace of a Harlot

The multicolored mosaic dome of the Pima County Courthouse was out of place, even in the heart of Tucson’s unusual potpourri, where bland modern structures of brick and stone haphazardly sprouted among more ancient, flat-roofed, squat adobes. The dome fit in with all the grace of a harlot attending a church social, J.D. Fitzpatrick thought. It belonged in North Africa instead of Southern Arizona, though it was impossible to blame even a dome for preferring the latter on this white-hot fall Monday.

Fitzpatrick lurked in the doorway of a restaurant south of the courthouse on Church Street, considering lunch and the inappropriateness of the domed building’s presence in the middle of the Upper-Sonoran Desert. No more so, he decided, than the twelve story Pioneer Hotel or the Ionic columned city hall, or, for that matter, J.D. Fitzpatrick.

The restaurant was a middle-aged brick structure. Its deteriorating charm made it a certain target of future urban renewal. Too much deterioration, not enough charm. Again, he decided, not unlike himself.

Fitzpatrick’s collar was loose and his tie comfortably askew. The brim of his fedora was pulled low over his eyes. He looked weary, bored, but he was carefully surveying every figure who exited the courthouse onto Church Street.

He was tired and a little hung over. Neither state was unusual so he hardly noticed them. He felt the urge for a cigarette. It was amazing how often that craving still tickled his subconscious, even three years after the doctors convinced him to quit. He was also getting uncomfortably hot. October’s sun seared its way across the cloudless sky. He stepped back into the shade of the doorway a little. The howl of an evaporative cooler within nearly drowned out the street sounds. It even wafted an occasional cool breeze through the cafe’s screen door which seemed there primarily to keep the flies, buzzing and bumping against its rusty surface, from escaping.

In spite of his mild discomforts he continued to monitor the parade of figures leaving the courthouse until he saw the one he’d been watching for. A dark-skinned man, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, walked purposefully out of the building and turned south. From a distance he looked like a Negro. There weren’t many Negroes in Tucson, fewer still who walked around downtown in a suit with a briefcase. He drew stares from those he passed as he strode in Fitzpatrick’s direction, but he either ignored or was oblivious to them.

As the man drew nearer it became clear he wasn’t a Negro. His facial features were all wrong and his black hair was fine and straight, an ebony mane neatly trimmed and parted with tonsorial skill. He wasn’t a Mexican either. His face didn’t quite match any of the more familiar ethnic categories.

Fitzpatrick waited until he was just in front of the restaurant to step out and intercept him. The dark man tried to both dodge and ignore the tall figure who suddenly blocked his way until J.D. put out a hand and touched him on the shoulder.

“Mr. Parker,” J.D. said. “We need to talk.”

“I haven’t the time,” the dark man replied. “I’m really quite busy.” He glanced up at Fitzpatrick as if to force this obstacle from his path by sheer will power. Fitzpatrick was accustomed to dealing with people who preferred to avoid him. He used his other hand to pull back his suit coat and reveal the badge pinned just inside the lapel.

“Perhaps you could slip me into your schedule for just a few minutes,” Fitzpatrick suggested.

“Well, OK,” Parker reluctantly agreed, “a
very
few minutes.”

Fitzpatrick gestured toward the restaurant and the two men stepped inside, dodging the rush of flies that took advantage of the open screen to make a dash for freedom. They found an empty table and ordered two coffees. While they waited to be served, the dark man lit up a cigarette. J.D. looked at it longingly.

The coffee arrived and both men sipped it, then wisely used cream and sugar to kill the taste.

“What can I do for you, Marshal?” the dark man asked.

“Well, you could tell me where to find Jujul.” J.D. pronounced it right.

A newspaperman from San Francisco, in town to satisfy his wife’s annual urge to remind herself why she’d left home in the first place, occupied an adjacent table. He preferred to avoid the gradually building tension at his in-laws’ so he had walked downtown to find a place where he could sit quietly and read. He was always curious about the competition. Even competition that really wasn’t, like Tucson’s two small dailies. That was why he’d been browsing through the morning edition of the
Arizona Daily Star
as he nursed a cup of coffee and a piece of pie with a filling unidentifiable by taste, texture, or color. The lead stories debated England’s chances of surviving the Nazi blitz and Willkie’s chances of unseating Roosevelt (neither considered likely). There was a more interesting item that began at the bottom of the front page before being passed deep within to compete for attention with ads for console radios and phonographs and a sale on women’s nylons. “Papagos Attack Federal Agents!” The story indicated there had been armed resistance to the Selective Service Act on the nearby Papago Indian Reservation. It caught his notice.

So had the tall man waiting in the doorway. His curiosity ratcheted up another notch when he saw the man step out and intercept the dark one. He’d seen the flash of badge. Still, their conversation hadn’t meant much to him until he heard the name “Jujul.” His mind translated those softened consonants and rolling vowels into the name of the Papago draft resister mentioned in the Star’s story. That was when he began to pay close attention. They hadn’t noticed him. He liked it that way. He raised the newspaper ever so slightly until his eyes just peered over its top and he could watch the expressions on their faces. Otherwise, he didn’t move. Like some urban chameleon, he faded into his surroundings and became invisible.

“Surely you’ve heard of the attorney-client relationship, Marshal. Its confidentiality is nearly as sacred as the confessional’s.”

“I assume you have some proof you’ve been retained as his counsel, then,” J.D. countered.

The dark man looked uncomfortable.

“Look, Mr. Parker,” J.D. continued. “I’m not interested in playing games here. You want to gain sympathy for yourself, pick up a few more anti-BIA votes in the next tribal election, fine. You did a real nice job of that in the courtroom, all those motions to quash warrants and change venue and what not. But, bottom line, what kept them from being charged with anything more than assault is what I did behind the scenes. Now I don’t give a damn who gets credit. All I want is to see that nobody gets killed over something this trivial. Is there one man in Jujul’s village who can meet the Selective Service literacy requirement? Ask your client that, Mr. Parker, then tell him what the answer means. Tell him, so far, nobody wants to make a big deal out of this. Nobody’s been seriously hurt and if we clear this up quickly, we can make sure no charges get filed by the federal government. But it has to be quick. The longer this goes on, the more likely it is somebody’s going to get in the way of some of the lead that’s been flying around out there. When that happens this turns into a different ball game. So how about it? Do you know where he is?”

The dark man didn’t like being lectured. His backbone straightened against the whiplash of J.D.’s words.

“I have absolutely no intention of answering that. There are other issues here, sir. None of those people are allowed to vote, except in those tribal elections you mentioned. When they have equal representation, then, maybe, Selective Service registration might be appropriate. In the meantime….Well, I will, of course, relay your message to my client, and, if he so chooses, his reply to you.”

The reporter’s mind was racing. So, there was a militant wing to the Papago tribe, one that supported violence in pursuit of its rights. The noble savage came alive in his mind as he began creating the article he would telegraph back to his paper. He missed the tall man’s disappointed grumble.

“That’s what I thought. You don’t know where he is either.”

“Good day, Marshal,” the dark man said angrily. He got up and stalked out the screen door, leaving his coffee almost untouched and J.D. with the bill.

The reporter was a master of the provocative half-truth. The article he telegraphed to his newspaper was one of his best. Even so, it didn’t cause much of a stir, buried among the avalanche of stories which daily documented a world going mad.

One of those who read the article was the Third Assistant Secretary to the Attaché for Cultural Affairs in the Japanese Consulate in San Francisco. It was his job to look for such items, translate and then forward them in a special diplomatic pouch to an office in Tokyo. The reporter would have been amazed to discover where his story made its biggest impact.