Michael Lister - Soldier 02 - The Big Beyond (6 page)

Chapter 14

I
was blindfolded in the backseat of a Buick bouncing down a highway in the dark, the guy next to me jamming the gun into my side reeking of the briny smell of the sea and fish and the oaky odor of a wood fire.

It was the middle of a moon-bright night, and I was exhausted and in pain, raw from reading Lauren’s letter, spent in every single way.

When I had showed up at the appointed time to the parking lot behind our old office, the two Japanese men waiting for me withdrew their weapons and insisted that I wear a blindfold for the protection of Bunko Matsumoto—the woman whose daughter was missing—and the group hiding from the authorities she was a part of.

I had no idea where we were, but based on the sounds and the speed of our unimpeded progress, I could tell we were out of town on one of North Florida’s desolate lost highways.

When we eventually arrived and I was led out of the car, I could hear the surf and feel the Gulf breeze, and I knew we were somewhere along the coast.

I walked slowly, hesitantly, fearful of falling, finding it difficult to get traction in the sand. The guy behind me shoved me often and I stumbled forward, nearly but never quite tripping and falling.

As the blindfold was removed and my eyes adjusted, I could see we were standing inside the natural barrier formed by a group of sand dunes, the sea oats atop them waving in the wind.

The full moon shimmered across the surface of the black sea and cast shadows on the sand.

At first it was just me and the two Japanese men who brought me here, as we waited for Bunko Matsumoto’s arrival.

For a while neither of them said anything, the incoming tide and billowing breeze the only sounds swirling around us, but then one turned suddenly toward the Gulf.

“Look … there …” he said, pointing out past the beach toward the water slightly down from us. “There’s another one.”

The second man, the one with the gun, turned to look, and I followed the gazes of both men.

It took a few moments, but eventually I saw it too.

There, bathed in moonlight, like a black monster cresting the dark waters of the Gulf, a German submarine could just barely be seen.

It was interesting the visceral response seeing the U-boat had on me. Instantly, I felt exposed, vulnerable, and was overwhelmed with the feeling that I needed to report it, to find one of the lookout towers that had been erected every twelve miles along the coastline and make sure they too had spotted it.

By contrast, the two men with me were nonchalant, finding the sighting only mildly interesting.

Of course I knew the German sea wolves were trolling American shipping lanes—and finding what they were looking for, taking out vessels at a rate of two per day—and I had heard many fishermen claim to have seen them in our area, not far from shore. But to see one this close to land, to my hometown was a surreal experience.

Eventually, Bunko Matsumoto arrived and the sub submerged and wartime life went on.

“I’m sorry for the way you have been treated,” she said with only the slightest hint of an accent, “but we can’t take any chances. Your government is at war against us.”

“Y’all started it.”

“Not Japan. American citizens. I’m an American citizen. So are all those imprisoned in the internment camps. You saw the German sub out there a few minutes ago? You have far more to fear from it than all the Japanese-Americans combined. Where are the German relocation camps?”

I had nothing for that so I let it go.

From her sharp monotone voice and appearance, and the rigidity of her pinched expression, it was obvious that Bunko Matsumoto was not a woman to be messed with. Her no-nonsense glasses and haircut and clothes were all utilitarian and unattractive. There was no question she was imposing and strong-willed, but there was also something overly earnest and humorless about her, and I wondered was it a result of the circumstances under which we were meeting or her natural state.

“We blindfolded you so you wouldn’t see the way to our hideout, but at the last minute we decided to bring you here to the beach. We are all wanted by the police, by the government. For what? For being of Japanese descent. That is our only crime.”

She carefully withdrew a worn and wrinkled Western Union telegram from the inside of her coat pocket. She started to hand it to me then remembered my one arm was tied down to my waist.

She then said something in Japanese and the guy behind me removed the rope holding my arm down.

“Do you know where I was when I receive this telegram from our government that my husband had been killed fighting with the United States Army for his country? I was in prison. My country, the one my husband died for, had taken everything from us except what I could carry in two small suitcases, had me locked up like a common criminal in Manzanar, an internment camp, as if I were some sort of a prisoner of war.”

After hearing the Japanese man from the night before reference Manzanar, I had researched it a bit and found that it was a relocation camp for citizens of Japanese descent. Situated on the edge of the desert along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, Manzanar, California, was a beautiful, harsh, haunting place where something horrible was happening.

“We got the so-called Civilian Exclusion Order,” she continued, “telling us we were going to have to move out of our homes. And our lives were changed forever. You are missing an arm and I know the story behind it. I also know about your great love and loss, Lauren, so perhaps you know a bit of how random, arbitrary, and capricious life can be, Mr. Riley. But you’ve never experienced true powerlessness. You’ve never been as helpless and hopeless as having your own country turn on you and tell you your life as you have known it was over.”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t.”

Lightning flashed in the distance out over the Gulf and there was a slight but perceptible shift in the atmosphere.

“We became numbers. No longer names. No longer people. We were given one week to liquidate all our possessions. One week. I didn’t have much, but what I did I lost. Lost forever, do you get that? I was forced to leave it behind as spoils for those who happen to be of different descent.”

When the lighting flashed again, I scanned the undulating waters for signs of the sub, but was unable to see anything in the brilliant but brief illumination.

“You cannot imagine the fear and frustration, the confusion and acute uncertainty. What could we do? We could get next to nothing for the things we had worked so hard for or we could get nothing. I know a man who sold a thirty-room hotel for three-hundred dollars. His brother sold his new 1941 Ford truck for twenty-five. Family heirlooms from generations and generations ago for a fraction of what they would be worth if they had no sentimental value. But, of course, as familial treasures they were priceless.”

As the lightning flashed again, it was obvious a storm was moving rapidly toward us.

“When we saw our chance a small group of us escaped. We’ve come across the continent to hide in huts like savages. I lost my home, my freedom, my heritage, my life, and then my husband. I cannot take losing my Miki too.”

From another coat pocket she withdrew a picture and handed it to me.

The photograph was of a beautiful young woman with enormous, dark almond-shaped eyes and long, thick, shiny black hair.

“Find her for me, Mr. Riley.”

“Why me? Surely there’s someone else you can—”

“There is no one else. I told you, we’ve checked you out thoroughly. I know you, the sort of man you are. I know what you have done for love. I also know you cannot go to the authorities, can’t turn us in.”

And there was the real reason.

The outer bands of the storm reached us and it began to rain—not hard or heavy, but constant and cold.

If Bunko Matsumoto felt it at all, she gave no indication, and I wondered if she could feel anything at all anymore.

I slipped the picture in my coat pocket and we stood there in silence in the rain for a long moment, no one moving, no one saying anything.

“I’m waiting for an answer, Mr. Riley,” she said eventually. “Do I have your word?”

I opened my mouth to give it to her, but before anything came out an enormous explosion rocked us all back and lit up the night sky with what looked like red and orange lightning made of liquid fire striking the earth beneath the silent, seemingly indifferent moon.

Chapter 15

I
t looked like the Gulf was on fire.

Red and orange flames in the rain.

Black smoke billowing up toward the milk-pale moon.

A cargo ship ablaze, floating in a sea of fire.

What I didn’t know then, what I found out later, was that the four-hundred-foot cargo ship was filled with ten thousand tons of fuel oil. Too heavy to anchor in St. Andrew Bay, the weight of the ship also forced it to venture beyond the ten-fathom curve considered safe from the unseen U-boats under the surface of the Gulf waters.

Because German U-boats had put some five hundred million tons of Allied shipping on the bottom of the ocean floor, leading to a critical shortage of cargo ships needed to keep the Allied war effort going, the U.S. Maritime Commission chose sixteen sites, including Brunswick, Georgia, where this one was built, to quickly construct the Liberty ships.

Using sixteen thousand workers, the JA Jones Construction Company quickly and steadily built Liberty ships that were 441 1/2 feet long and 57 feet wide, with a draft of nearly 28 feet, and capable of hauling ten thousand tons across vast ocean distances. Having had two full decks running the length of the vessel and seven watertight bulkheads rising to the upper deck, the Liberty allowed for five cargo holds located forward and aft of the central engine room. In these immense holds, it carried weapons, ammunition, food, tools, hardware, vehicles, even at times troops— anything and everything that might be needed for the war effort all around the world. This particular one had been fitted to carry fuel. Two one-and-a-half-ton torpedoes struck the port side—one about midship, the other near the stern—and suddenly most of the thirty-five sailors awoke in hell.

“Do you have a boat?” I yelled.

No one answered.

“Do you have a boat?” I said again.

I looked around, scanning the area. In the distance, I could see a small marina and a forty-foot cruiser.

“Whose is that?” I asked. “The cruiser. Whose is it?”

“Not ours,” Bunko said.

“We’re gonna borrow it,” I said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Neither man moved.

“We’ve got to get out there as soon as possible,” I said. “Let’s go. Now.”

The two men looked at Bunko. She nodded.

“You turn them in and I’ll have you killed,” she said to me.

“Find a phone,” I yelled as I ran toward the car. “Call and report it.”

T
en minutes later, we were in a rickety wooden cruiser heading as fast as it would go into a lake of fire.

This brought to mind a poetic phrase I’d heard somewhere, though I couldn’t remember where or what it was from: Their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

The rain continued to fall, but it had no visible impact on the fire.

The Liberty ship, adrift now in ever-expanding concentric circles of flame, blazed before us, spreading its fuel and fire across the surface of the Gulf.

The inferno we were entering was so intense, so unimaginably hot, we could only navigate the edges.

The falling rain, the whining wind, the undulating sea, even the rolling, echoing thunder would not drown out the screams of the men shrieking in pain as their flesh melted from their bodies.

From within the ship came the horrific cries of the damned—tortured souls whose last moments were spent in unmitigated agony of apocalyptic proportions.

On deck, sailors caught fire as they ran toward lifeboats, leaping into the lake of fire below before realizing what they were doing.

One man was stuck in a porthole, his bottom half on fire, yelling for his mama with the unadorned abandon of a small, scared, suffering child.

We watched helplessly as the ropes holding a lifeboat burned in two, plunging sailors into the searing sea below.

“Circle around the perimeter,” I yelled at the small Japanese man piloting the cruiser. “Get as close as you can.”

We slowly trolled the waters, wiping rain from our eyes as we searched the burning, boiling Gulf for bodies.

The night was cold, the wind and rain adding to the low, miserable temperature, but nothing was a match for the intensity of the heat radiating from the hellish holocaust in front of us. I went from shivering on one side of the boat to sweating on the other.

We circled the site for nearly an hour, fishing seven men from the sea, most in their underwear having been in their bunk when the attack occurred, all wounded, all injured, all burned.

When we neared the marina, the two Japanese men who had earlier tonight been my captors jumped out of the boat and swam ashore and disappeared into the darkness.

Though she wasn’t there, Bunko Matsumoto had help awaiting our arrival at the dock and the wounded sailors were quickly loaded into ambulances and taken to the hospital.

From a pay phone on the far side of the marina I called Ruth Ann for a ride. When she pulled in to pick me up half an hour later I would have sworn it was Lauren behind the wheel.

As I got into the car I had a better view of the stunning transformation.

The clothes, the hair, the makeup, even the Paris perfume. Except for the blue eyes and lack of burns, I was sitting next to Lauren Lewis.

“Hey, soldier,” she said. “You okay?”

I tried to speak but nothing came out.

“What is it, fella? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Chapter 16

I
woke up late the next morning feeling hung over, though I had had no liquor the night before.

I was sore and my head hurt—but neither were a match for the pain coming from beneath my seeping bandage.

Ruth Ann appeared at the doorway with a breakfast tray, looking even more like Lauren than the night before, her housecoat and matching slippers elegant and sexy in an understated way. Her hair and makeup were so perfect they could have been done by Lauren herself.

What did it mean? Should I say something? Wait for her to? Was she trying to comfort me, lessen my grief, or did she want to take Lauren’s place somehow?

Without realizing what I was doing, I turned and looked at the photograph of Lauren to my right. This caused Ruth Ann to rush in and place the tray in front of me.

“How’d ya sleep, soldier?” she asked.

For now, I wouldn’t say anything about her transformation.

“Huh? Ah … good. Thanks. But that was my last night in your bed. I’m better now. You gotta take it back.”

“You’re not moving like you’re much better,” she said. “You gotta stop making with all the nocturnal activities for a while, fella. What happened out there?”

I told her.

“Those poor boys.”

I nodded, but didn’t say anything, and we were silent for a few moments.

“How bad did you reopen your wound pulling those boys in the boat?” she asked.

“Not bad. I’m fine.”

“I’ll see for myself about that once you finish your breakfast. Eat up.”

I pretended to, glancing at the paper on the tray as I did.

With the approach of Thanksgiving, the paper carried recipes and an article on how to prepare a wartime meal for the day, suggesting readers be flexible in making substitutions because many of the traditional items were scarce or unavailable. Turkeys were smaller because feed supplies were low. Many of the birds were being sent to soldiers overseas, so those of us on the home front were being asked to make due with chicken, which wasn’t rationed, unlike red meat. If a chicken couldn’t be found, we should try a pork shoulder. Instead of butter, we should use margarine or chicken or bacon fat. Sage, most of which came from Dalmatia, was unobtainable, so try using oregano in the dressing.

“What were you doing out there in the first place?”

I told her.

“I saw the picture in your coat. It got a little wet, but it’s okay. Can’t say the same for the ration stamps in your trouser pocket. They’re ruined, but I got you some others.”

She turned and took the picture of Miki Matsumoto off the dresser and studied it before handing it to me.

“She’s a real looker,” she said. “For a Jap.”

“What do you know about the internment camps?” I asked.

“The what?”

I explained what I was talking about.

“I heard the Nazis had them. Didn’t know we did. Oh, these were in your right-side coat pocket.”

She grabbed several other items from the dresser and handed them to me.

The first was a flyer dated April 22, 1942 that read WESTERN DEFENSE COMMAND AND FOURTH ARMY WARTIME CIVIL CONTROL ADMINISTRATION, Presidio of San Francisco, California: INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY Living in the following area…

It detailed the procedures Bunko Matsumoto had mentioned to me.

The next was a book of matches with bombs falling on the front, with the caption Tokens for Tokyo like the one I had seen in the car Clip had stolen.

The final item was a button with a lapel pin that pictured two crossed rifles and said JAP HUNTING LICENSE. OPEN SEASON. NO LIMIT.

I shook my head.

“Come on, soldier, think about what they did,” she said. “You’re not gonna let some Jap skirt make you go all soft, are you?”

I didn’t say anything, just handed her the tray.

“Sorry, fella. It’s just … think about how many of our boys at Pearl Harbor died just like the ones last night. Bombed to death. Burned alive. You saw hell firsthand. You know what I’m talking about.”

I did.

I recalled thinking that very thing last night—that no wonder people conceived the worst possible punishment as burning alive for eternity. I hoped Lauren was right, that God was love and there was no such place as hell. Thinking of her in that kind of torment because of anything we had done made me want to set fire to the whole world. No, she had to be right. Humans created hell, not God. Hell is here and now, in inhumanity, in war and death, in loss, in the loss of Lauren. I was in hell. It was not awaiting me in the big beyond. It was my current condition. Here. Now. My ever present reality.

“I need to see the recent murder victims,” I said. “Will your friend at the morgue show them to me?”

“Sure, soldier, he’ll show ’em to you,” she said. “As long as I tag along. We’ll go right after I take a look at your wound and help you get dressed.”