No Surrender Soldier (6 page)

“No!” Tomas shouted. Tatan stopped dead. Tomas tried the low, calm voice of authority again. “I want… no, I command you dig a different hole, San Nicolas-san. Now. Then I will give you more food for your family.” Tomas added in his own voice, “Lots more food.”

Tatan climbed out of the hole with his shovel. I breathed deep, then scrambled up after him, still clutching the skin on Bobo’s neck. My dog yanked against me, trying to get back down in the hole to dig up the mine.

As soon as Tomas marched Tatan behind the house, I ran into the house and called Big Navy, and said to send a bomb squad. The wall clock tick-tocked, tick-tocked as I tried to convince the operator I wasn’t some teenage prankster. After I hung up I thought about how long it would take the navy guys to drive from Apra Harbor to Talofofo.
Tick-tock, tick-tock
… any time was too long with a land mine in our yard.

Man, would my parents be furious with me if they came home and found the yard blown to smithereens the first day they left me home to babysit Tatan. I looked out the kitchen window. Yard? On second thought, I wondered how far that bomb would blow. I would never see my parents or Sammy or Daphne again. My insides raced as if on jet fuel.

I reached for the phone again and dialed the Talofofo mayor’s office. “Send a fire truck to Ferdinand Chargalauf’s house right away. Hurry!”

After I couldn’t think of anyone else to call, I locked Bobo in the bathroom with the toilet seat up in case he was thirsty from digging. I shook so bad I bent over and tried to slow down my breathing. I felt as if I’d just finished a marathon around the entire island. One more deep breath, then I dashed back out to check on Tatan and Tomas.

Tatan was digging a new hole.

“What’s he doing?” I asked Tomas. “And don’t get smart and say ‘digging a hole.’”

Tomas pursed his lips together, unpuckered them, and said, “Not any old hole, he’s digging us a foxhole.”

I stared at the hole with the bomb, too scared to go near it. If I could get Tatan out of his foxhole, we’d run for it. Anywhere, even the boonies, seemed safer than our own home.

Drenched in sweat, Seto shivered at the bottom of his ladder.
Whose shoeprint was that?
Had he seen the snake?

Seto could tell it was dusk. Faint streaks of light filtering through the hatch had disappeared. His cave was not pitch-black yet—this was the time of day he arose to hunt food. But he was afraid. Even to check if he snared the doe.

Earlier he heard boys yelling in the distance. He couldn’t make out all of the
Amerikan
words, although he understood some, like “water,” from when he supervised the natives during the war. He didn’t like when the natives pretended not to understand Japanese.

How could they not understand? We taught their children Japanese. We required they speak it. We made them subjects of Japan.

Seto quit shivering from fear, and instead shook with sadness as he thought about how Japan lost the war to the
Amerikans
.
Did Amerika rule Japan now? Did Japanese speak English instead?
He shuddered. He did not wish to think anymore.

The other word Seto understood was “baseball.” Ah, yes, he too used to play baseball. It was a very enjoyable game to listen to on the radio and watch. Baseball, one good thing that came out of
Amerika
.

To play baseball, though, was not always such a pleasant experience. Seto rubbed his shoulder at the thought of his lost childhood dream. He had wanted to be a pitcher, like his hero Eiji Sawamura of the Yomiuri Giants in the Nippon Professional Baseball League. Sawamura was a pitcher who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig when they played against the Tokyo Giants.

Seto flexed his shoulder back then relaxed it. Pitching was a distant dream. One lost in the years when he played outfield for his school team. At home, Seto pitched against the tool shed. At school, coach sent him to left field to run after grounders, or balls hit too high and far for him to catch. Maybe if his father would have worked with him. But his father let it be known baseball was a silly game, and hope of playing professional ball a foolish dream. Seto would become a tailor, like his father. And that was that, his father said.

The last letter he received from his father, before Seto transferred to Guam, said Eiji had enlisted into the Imperial Navy. His father had held Eiji up as a national hero. His father wrote in his chicken-scrawled script from too many years of gripping a needle, “I am confident Eiji will never shame his country. A true hero would rather die for his emperor than return unvictorious, shaming his family name forever.”

Seto touched his dead comrade’s talisman, made with a thousand stitches, and whispered, “May the gods grant Eiji long life.” Yet, he wondered, did Eiji make it home?

Seto stretched both arms in front of him, cupping his hands around an imaginary ball. There was no room in his cave to pull back his arms into a proper pitch. There was no freedom of movement for play. His arms dropped to his sides. Yearning burned in his chest to join the boys who played at the edge of the jungle by the cow pasture. Many a day he listened for their laughter and shouting as they played baseball.

But the boys had stopped shouting what must have been hours ago. And there he sat sweating in the dark, waiting for nightfall so he could see if he snared a doe.
My stomach will not let me sleep tonight.

He pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around himself.
“Shh, shh, be still my body,”
he whispered
. “A little while and I can rise from this grave, then eat.”
He breathed deep—as deep as he could stand to inhale the stench of his latrine and burnt coconut oil—and shuddered one last time, then stilled.

“I wait. It is all I can do. Wait.”

Silence filled his cave.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Sirens! Loud, screaming sirens. One, two, three, all cacophonies at different pitches. Wailing, wailing, louder, closer, wailing like air raid sirens warning of bombs dropping.

Seto flattened his body to the ground and covered his head with his arms. His body shook and shook, until it convulsed uncontrollably.

But no bombs fell.

Have they come for me? Is this the end?

“Tata! Nana!” I’d never been so glad to see my parents. I ran toward them but a fireman grabbed me and held me back. A bunch of neighbors had already come over to our house to see what was going on. I stood between Tomas and Tihu Gabe, my tata’s brother.

“Stand back!” the fire chief ordered my parents through a bullhorn.

A navy demolition team lifted a dull metal object from a huge hole in our yard. One navy man in a heavy space-looking suit yelled to the crowd, “We got it! She’s unarmed now!”

The fire chief raised his bullhorn again. “Stay put! We need to sweep the area.”

Two men hauled the land mine away in a lead bucket to a dark blue van with white lettering that read, “US Naval Magazine Bomb Disposal Team.”

My tata paced back and forth. Nana wrung her hands and twisted her ring. I wished I could be over there with her. Not sure if it’d have made her worry any less, but I would have felt a whole lot better hanging with my parents. My nana was saying, “What’s with all the holes in our yard? Are mines in all of them? What’s he mean ‘unarmed now’? We’ve got live World War II land mines in our yard?” Her voice rose higher and shriller with each question.

“Lord, I hope not,” Tata put his arm around her shoulders. “Or we’re moving.”

Several navy men swept the entire yard with metal detectors.

“All clear,” one finally yelled.

“All clear!” the fire chief bellowed through the bullhorn.

The chief nodded at me so I ran to my parents and called, “Tata! Nana!”

My nana hugged me and I wasn’t even embarrassed. She felt warm and safe. Both my parents’ questions spilled out, one on top of the other. “Are you all right?” “Where’s Tatan?” “What happened?” “What’s with all the holes?”

By this time Tomas and the neighbor men had joined us. Word had spread there was trouble at the Chargalauf’s house. Neighbor women came over and set up makeshift tables to spread out their dinners for potluck.

My answers tumbled out, and Tomas filled in the gaps, “Tatan dug all these holes, see.”

“Bobo helped,” Tomas said.

“Tatan wouldn’t stop,” I said. “Even though I told him to.”

“But he listened to me,” Tomas said, “when I spoke Japanese.”

Tomas’s tata, Rudy Tanaka, asked, “What you say?”

“I don’t remember. Just simple stuff,” Tomas said. “But he paid attention. Whatever I said.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Like Tomas was a soldier.”

Tomas stood at attention and saluted. Any other time I might have laughed. But I was still scared. What if that mine had gone off while Tatan was digging? What if there were more mines in our yard?

Tihu Gabe said, “Hey, Tatan San Nicolas thinks the Japanese are still occupying Guam like during the war.”

“Yeah.” Juan Cruz chugged his beer, then raised the bottle. “Yeah, that’s it. The
lytico-bodig
’s put him back thirty years in forced labor. Remember? The men had to dig those holes for the Japanese, and build the airstrip.”

“I remember. We all did it,” my tihu said. “Even though we were just young bucks barely out of high school. How could we ever forget… all that bowing to the Japanese. Me? I never bow again.”

Juan Cruz interrupted. “Young bucks is right, that’s why we dug the tunnels, hauled the rocks…” Cruz kept pointing his beer bottle at the holes Tatan dug in our yard. “Hell, we dug a whole canyon for those Japs… Sorry, Tanaka, I didn’t mean you.”

Tomas scowled until his tata patted Cruz’s shoulder. “No offense taken. My tata was one of the first beaten and locked up. Japanese t’ought he was a traitor to their Motherland the way he helped American G.I.s who hid.”

“Stop!” Nana shouted. “Stop talking about when we were prisoners! Some of us don’t want to remember!… Kiko, where’s Tatan? I told you watch him!”

I’d forgotten about Tatan. And I’d forgotten my nana stood there listening. Was it true? Did something awful happen to Nana during the war? Could what Tatan told Officer Perez about Nana being raped be true? I’d never heard her and Tata talk about being prisoners before. I looked down at my feet so I didn’t have to look her in the eye.

“In the house, Nana.” Warmth crept up my neck and head. I was just glad it’d gotten too dark for the men to see my shamed face. “I locked Tatan in with Bobo.”

“With Bobo,” she muttered. “I told you not to let that flea-bitten boonie dog in the house.” She ran to the house, not even stopping when some of the women called to her as she passed them.

Tata eyeballed the other men. “Best let sleeping dogs lie. No more talking about war, you hear? It’s hard enough Sammy being away at war. It’s giving her nightmares again.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” all the men agreed. Then someone said, “Let’s eat!” so they headed over toward the tables. Cruz grabbed another beer. He offered it to Tata, but my father shook his head and went inside with Nana instead.

Neighbor women brought lots of food—fish, rice, beans,
pancit
, tortillas, and for dessert baked plantains, papayas, mangoes, and coconuts. That’s what I like about Guam; people party for no reason.

Tomas nudged me with his elbow, pointed at Daphne shaking out a tablecloth, and giggled like a schoolgirl. “Remember when Daphne played Mother Mary? Bet she got an eyeful, especially being the
Virgin
Mary.”

I flushed even deeper thinking about how at Christmas when the
Las Posadas
procession visited my house in search of shelter for Mary and Joseph—Tatan had stripped naked, crawled out of the bathroom window, and ran past Daphne. How much had she seen?

“Get it?” he persisted. “
Virgin
Mary?” Tomas giggled again.

Daphne smoothed the tablecloth over an old door lying across two wooden saw-horses. She looked up, caught me watching her, and smiled. “You okay?” she called over to me.

I didn’t know I could get any redder. Pretty soon I’d be a blinking Christmas light. I had it bad for her. But I didn’t want anyone to know. Should I go over and talk to her?

Before I moved or said anything, Tomas was already hustling over to talk to Daphne. “Yeah, we’re okay. You should have seen it…”

By the time I joined them Tomas was talking a mile a minute to Daphne about what happened, as if she hadn’t already heard. I just stood there, trying not to stare at how beautiful Daphne was. She’s like watching a doe at dusk. Her tan skin looks so smooth, and her lips are like pink hibiscus flowers in full blossom. If I forget myself and stare at her too long, she gets shy and her lashes brush her cheeks like moth wings.

“Won’t be long until Confirmation, eh, Kiko?”

Startled at hearing her say my name, I said something pretty lame, “Yeah, not long at all. April be here plenty soon.”

I jumped when a wet tongue slurped my leg. Daphne laughed. It was Bobo. “Good boy.” I rubbed Bobo’s head and scratched his ears. “Nana let you out, eh?” Bobo nuzzled my arm.

Tomas rubbed his hands together. “Let’s eat. Defusing bombs makes me hungry,” Tomas said as if he disarmed and removed the mine himself, and not the navy bomb squad. Yeah, right. Tomas tried to make himself look like the hero, and then he led Daphne to a picnic table to sit down beside him. Bobo crawled under the table.

Daphne looked as if she was about to ask me to sit down on the other side of her, but her nana sat beside her instead. I wasn’t about to sit with the cross-eyed lion. I can imagine that conversation.
Aren’t you the heavy-breather who called? Stay away from my Daphne, you pervert!
Then Missus DeLeon might kick me under the table for good measure.

While I stood there trying to decide what to do, someone handed me a plate heaped with food. But my stomach was still jittery. I picked at it, then took the leftovers down to Simon in the pig pen.