The Lonely War (32 page)

After a brief service, Andrew shuffled to Hut Twenty-nine to wait. Prison was waiting—for sunrise when you could not sleep, for chow when your stomach ached, for the hot part of the day to pass, for your hands to stop trembling from the horror of handling the dead, for a bath to wash away death’s stench, for Tottori’s sensuous caresses.

Andrew never thought beyond the next goal he waited for. The passing years had become an orderless jumble. The notion of time no longer existed. His only measure of time’s passing was the accumulation of whispering corpses in the black dirt.

The sky opened up with a late-morning shower. Water dripped from thatch roofs and gathered in storm ditches. Dust turned to slippery goop, but that didn’t stop Andrew from rushing to his bunk. He dropped his shoulder bag and removed his sarong before dashing out the doorway to have his nakedness enveloped by the rain’s fleeting coolness. His body welcomed the stinging drops as he performed the fastidious movements of tai chi.

The reek of death seeped away. His mind soared beyond the voices in his head, lifting, lifting, until he floated above the clouds as his earthbound body achieved one elegant position after another.

By the time the sun had brushed away the clouds, painting the sky blue, his mood had turned serene. The voices retreated. Returning to his bunk, he took up Jah-Jai and played a soulful tune.

Only a few men were in the hut. John Allard was giving Kelso a haircut. Nash and Banks sat at a wooden table playing acey-deucy. Cord and Smitty played the food game. It had become a popular pastime where prisoners tried to out-torture one another.

Cord closed his eyes and his voice carried a note of rapture. “Pastrami and Swiss cheese on toasted rye bread, with plenty of mustard and an icy beer to wash it down.”

Smitty groaned. “Mama’s ravioli with three kinds of cheese and a bottle of Chianti.” He smacked his lips while Cord twisted in agony.

“Cold, sliced peaches with gobs of whipped cream on top.”

Kelso shouted down the hut. “Shut the fuck up until after lunch, for God sakes.”

Hudson lay on his bunk. The woeful voice of Jah-Jai woke him and he sat up, grinning. His eyes sparkled with a mischievous quality as he trotted over to Andrew, extracting a length of pale yellow, embroidered silk from his shoulder bag. Hudson wore his pathetically patched pants, which were cut short, halfway to his knees. Andrew could count each rib bone through the pelt of hair that covered Hudson’s upper body, but the glow in Hudson’s eyes made him look like a pauper who had found a magic carpet.

Hudson unfolded the fabric. “Will Miss Clifford like this?”

Andrew lowered his flute, fingered the material. “He’ll love it, Hud. Where did you get it? Little Sister Wu doesn’t have anything this fine.”

“I went under the wire with ol’ Darby McGaven. He goes under all the time. I traded at the village for this and some food. I got a sack of dried shrimp, roasted pork, a bottle of native hooch, and five cigars.”

“You’ll get shot out there.”

“Naw, ol’ Darby has an understanding with the guards.” He slid his thumb back and forth over two fingers.

“You took that chance to get Clifford a sarong? That’s crazy.”

“Miss Clifford is the only thing that means a damn to me. I’ll do anything for her.”

“Him.”

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I love her… him. Tell you the truth, that fuckin’ Romeo, Ensign Fisher, has been buzzin’ around her like a moth to a flame. I thought if I gave her something pretty, she’d pay more attention to me.”

“Presents won’t make him love you. Have you told him how you feel?”

“Tell a man I love him? Naw, I couldn’t do that.”

“Well if you do love him… her, then tell her. Knowing how you feel will make the difference.”

“Thanks, rookie. I knew you’d understand, but do me a favor. Don’t mention this to anyone.”

“You think they don’t know?”

“Doesn’t matter what they know or don’t know. I don’t want them talking about us.”

“Mum’s the word.” Andrew chuckled as his mood lifted. “You’re certainly not the same wild man who chased women through alleys. Hard to believe a man could change so much.”

Hudson nodded. “Two and a half years in hell makes a powerful impression on a man. I’ve even found religion. No, I mean it. Ol’ Chaplain Moyer and I are like this.” He held up his hand and crossed two fingers.

“I’m happy for you, Hud. Really I am.”

“There’s only one thing. I’m embarrassed to give this to Miss Clifford. I mean, what if I give it to her and she doesn’t feel the same way for me?”

“Could be awkward. Say, tomorrow is Christmas. You could give it as a Christmas present. In fact, we could organize a holiday party with that pork and the hooch. We could give gifts to some of the others too. That would make it more natural.”

“That’s a great idea. We’ll go all out and have a Christmas feast. We’ll do it tomorrow around dinnertime. Let’s walk over to Little Sister Wu’s and see what we can get for the others. We’ll need string and wrapping paper too. And we can pick up some bottles of rice wine, fruit, eggs, beans, and whatever else she has.”

“Speaking of the others,” Andrew said, “where is everybody?”

Hudson explained that Stokes and Cocoa were working in the vegetable fields, Ogden and Baker were on wood detail, and Grady was in the chicken coop. But he also had war news.

“That’s why Darby keeps going to the village,” Hudson said. “They have a hidden radio. The English are winning in Burma. The Americans are in the Philippines and are fighting in Luzon. And they’re bombing Iwo Jima. In Europe, the allies have liberated Antwerp and Patton is kicking the hell out of the Jerries in someplace called the Saar Valley, but of course this time of year the snows are slowing down all progress. At home, FDR won a fourth term and Army beat Navy for the first time in five years, 23-7.”

“What does all that mean for us?”

“It means that we’re killing Japs by the thousands. Our troops are only a few hundred miles away. This war could be over in a few months. We’ll be going home.”

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes!” Hudson danced around in a circle.

“Hud, you can’t go blabbing this news. If the Japs find out they have a radio in the village, they’ll kill them all.”

“You’re right. Like you said, mum’s the word.”

“Speaking of Grady, that reminds me.” Andrew pulled his billycan from his worn shoulder bag. The can was filled with scraps of leaves and worms that he had gathered while on burial detail. He ambled down the hut to the trapdoor in the floor and knocked. Legions of flies swarmed up from the plank floorboards. A minute later the trapdoor lifted and Grady’s head appeared through the three-foot-square opening.

Grady had been watching the hut’s prize Bantam cock, Samson, mount one of the hens. After Samson had finished, the hen ruffled her feathers to shake off the dust and ran about clucking and scratching while Samson strutted about, looking for his next conquest. There were thirty hens altogether. That ensured that each man in the American hut received two eggs per week. The flock had been purchased one by one with money made from secretly producing
balachong
. Now Grady had Delilah nesting five fertile eggs while Bathsheba nested another five. The goal was to expand the flock until each man got one egg every other day and the hut could stew one hen per week. Tending and guarding the flock was Grady’s full-time job. He spent most of his day under the hut with them. They were his children, and he took great pride in them, as if he had nested each one himself.

The camp owned several chicken runs, which were maintained by the English officers. Altogether, the camp owned over five hundred and forty scraggy hens and two dozen cocks. They produced enough eggs to insure that each man in camp received one egg every two weeks. Some units were rich enough to have their own small flock, and their pens were in the same open area as the camp pens, along the north wall. The vitamins supplied from these eggs, the sweet potatoes and tapioca roots grown by the prisoners, and the protein from the
balachong
had eliminated blindness from beriberi and slowed the death rate by seventy percent.

Only the Americans chose to keep their chickens within the three-foot crawlspace under their hut. They simply ran chicken wire around the outside support posts. That was Cocoa’s idea, to disguise all their activity under the hut while burying and unburying the cans of
balachong
. It also kept the rest of the camp from counting how many hens the Americans had. The birds added a barnyard odor to the hut, but Grady kept the coop spotless, and that kept the smell within tolerable limits.

“I brought your babies some grub,” Andrew said.

“You know, Grady,” Hudson said, “you’re spending so much time down there, you’re beginning to molt. You’ll be sitting your black ass on a nest and hatchin’ chicks before long.”

“If that’s what it takes, then you can bet your sweet Aunt Sara’s titties that that’s what I’ll do.” Grady took the billycan and disappeared under the floorboards.

Andrew closed the trapdoor and Hudson suggested that they visit the camp store after lunch to stock up for the party. On the way to Andrew’s bunk, Hudson told him about his plan to increase the production of
balachong
. A year ago they had upped production from two cans a week to four. But the prisoners were desperate for more, so Hudson figured they could easily sell six cans per week. Maybe eight.

“Hud, there’s no way to double production and still keep it secret.”

“You should see what we can buy in the village: a whole pig, new clothes, fresh fish. We could eat like kings.”

“Too dangerous. We need to get Little Sister Wu to stock more stuff.”

“That swindler triples the price on everything.”

No one in the American hut noticed the first whistle from three huts away, but everybody heard the second, more urgent whistle that came from the next hut over.

Andrew and Hudson halted in their tracks as Fowler and Cox climbed the steps and blocked the doorway. Fowler wore a rattan coolie hat, wooden clogs, and a rag draped over his hips. An armband on his left arm flaunted his rank insignia. His eyes looked like open wounds but were keenly alert.

Cox wore half a burlap sack knotted at the waist like a kilt. He was bone-thin and his complexion had a greenish hue. His face was scrunched up, no doubt from a painful spasm in his bowels that broadcasted another bout of dysentery was looming.

“Stand at attention when an officer enters,” Fowler said, loud enough to be heard by everyone.

All the Americans paused for a moment before standing loosely at attention, enough of a pause to be insulting. Fowler, likewise, held the men at attention for a half minute longer than necessary in order to return the insult.

“Stand at ease,” Fowler finally said. “Nobody leaves this hut until we have completed a thorough inspection.”

Mitchell and Colonel Henman followed Fowler into the hut. Henman wore a patched uniform shirt, shorts, and clogs and carried a bamboo swagger stick. His handlebar mustache had grown long and extended several inches from each side of his face.

Mitchell said, “Alright men. I want everyone to fully cooperate with Lieutenant Fowler.”

Andrew stole an appraising look at Mitchell. Their eyes met and Andrew smiled. Mitchell was Changi-thin, but a steady stream of food from Tottori’s kitchen had managed to put a dozen pounds of restored muscle on his frame. His face had filled out and his warm, bronze coloring made him look as young and handsome as that first day Andrew had laid eyes on him. Mitchell carried a look of health, albeit no fat on him. He stood like a pillar of strength in comparison to his British counterparts, who showed no muscle at all. The contrast was startling.

Fowler sauntered the length of the hut and halted in front of Hudson and Andrew. He momentarily glanced at Henman, as if to reinforce his authority. “We’ve kept an eye on you. You’ve spent hoards of money on chickens, food, and tobacco. We also believe that you are in possession of a great deal of money, thousands. The only way you could possibly get that kind of money is by trading contraband with the guards or selling information to the enemy. Both, as you well know, are illegal.”

Hudson’s head leaned to one side. “What information would we be sellin’? All we know is today’s weather and how bad the food is. How much do you think them Japs would pay for that strategic information?”

“Keep that up and I’ll put you in the stockade for insubordination.”

Hudson scoffed. “There’s no law against trading with other prisoners, accepting gifts, or winning at gambling. We’ve done nothing illegal and you can’t prove we did.”

“I want to know exactly what you have and how you got it. Mind you, if you say you won it gambling, I’m going to investigate to see if that person corroborates your story.”

Cocoa hobbled through the doorway with a smile on his face and a coconut in his shoulder bag. He stopped cold, as if trying to decide whether or not he should sneak back out. He moved forward; his wooden leg and crutch creaked wood on wood against the floorboards.

Lately, Cocoa had begun to use both his hollow wooden leg and a crutch because the pain in his stump was increasing by the day. The doctors planned to restump the leg to somewhere above the knee, but after two and a half years, he swore the memory of the first amputation was still fresh in his mind and he’d die before going through that again. This time, however, would be different: Andrew had promised to get him anesthetics. Losing the knee would make him less mobile, but at least he’d be able to tolerate the operation.

Mitchell watched Cocoa limp to his bunk, staring at that wooden stump grating against the floorboards. He visibly shivered before glancing at Andrew with a tender look that radiated pure gratitude. 

Cocoa propped his crutch against the wall, pulled his shoulder bag strap over his head, and took out the coconut. “Today’s a lucky day, boys. Look what rolled my way.”

Fowler eyed the coconut as sweat beaded on his forehead. He turned to Hudson.

“How many chickens are under the floor?”

“Not my department. If you want to jump down there and crawl around in all that chicken shit counting them, be my guest. But whether there’s ten or a million proves nothing. Chickens can be hatched from eggs as easily as bought with contraband.”