No Surrender Soldier (21 page)

*

I was getting ready for school Monday morning and found Nana crying while reading the newspaper. Eggs hissed and sizzled and spurted until smoke filled the kitchen. At first I thought it was because Tatan had been acting crazy again so Nana had to take him back to the doctor. But then she crumpled the front page and let the paper drop to the floor.

I waited until my nana was preoccupied scraping burnt eggs into the sink. I picked up the front page, smoothed it out, and scanned headlines to see what upset her.

It couldn’t have been the news headline about someone I never heard of defying President Richard Nixon. Couldn’t have been about an embargo in British Columbia, wherever that was. Could it possibly have been the smaller right-hand headline?

I browsed farther down the page to a small box where I noticed what looked like fingernails had pierced the print:

The article said four boys from a Japanese elementary school were buried alive. They dug a play cave with a steel pole as they tried to emulate their new hero Isamu Seto.

I looked up at Nana. She stood at the stove crying and fingering her rosary beads.

“Nana?” I wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how. “You all right?”

“God help us mothers,” she sobbed.

I got up and hugged her until she wiped her eyes, kissed my cheek, then took out more eggs from the refrigerator.

*

Tatan took a turn for the worse Monday night. His speech slurred, his eyes glazed over, and he drooled like a baby cutting teeth.

“Might be the medicine,” Nana said. “We saw a different doctor last time, and I heard about drug-drug interaction.”

Either that or betel nut, bats, and “purple mushrooms” don’t go good together, I thought, but kept my mouth shut.

So, Tuesday morning I skipped school and went to Tumon with my parents to help with Tatan and Sammy’s Quonset Hut.

At first I didn’t plan to sneak in and see Seto. But once I realized I would be at Guam Memorial Hospital with Nana to take Tatan to the emergency room, I found myself gathering gifts. I scooped sticky rice and tuna Nana brought for lunch into a plastic container. I asked Tata if I could buy some plain wooden chopsticks and dried seaweed from our shop.

“I’ll work in exchange.”

“Sounds fair,” Tata said. “What you need them for?”

“A gift, maybe.”

It wasn’t until I got to the hospital I realized that seeing Seto wasn’t going to be as easy as strolling up to just anybody’s room, walking through a door, and saying, “Howzit.” There were guards, not to mention reporters and cameramen, and nurses to sneak past.

First I checked out the cafeteria. I’d heard that’s where press conferences were held. No one there but people cooking, cleaning, and eating.

Next I went up to the floor where I’d heard rumors Seto was being held. Sure enough, a guard stood at a door by the nurses’ station. I decided to hide in the lounge at the end of the hall and think about how to get in to see the old soldier.

When the dietitian delivered lunch, she brought an extra tray for the guard. While he was distracted, I double-timed it down the hall and slipped into Seto’s room unnoticed.

Where was Seto? His bed was empty.

The door bumped into me when the dietitian carried in a tray, so I ducked through the open bathroom door and shut it behind me.

“Mister See-toe,” the dietitian sang. “Lunch is here.”

Silverware rattled on the fiberglass tray as the dietitian set it on the lap table by the bed, then I heard the
swoosh
of the room door shut.

I peeked out from the bathroom. The coast was clear so I walked over to the bed.

Clear broth, Jell-O, milk, and something green and gooey-looking. Maybe Seto was out searching for something better to eat if this was all they were feeding him.

I looked around the room. “Auhh,” I caught my breath, startled. In the corner of the room on wadded up sheets lay a skinny, sunken-faced Japanese man with a too-big blue hospital gown wrapped around him. The man grinned, showing several teeth missing.

“I no can sleep in bed,” Seto said in English.

“Howzit,” I blurted out, then felt like a fool. What should I say? I shifted the container, seaweed, and chopsticks into one hand and extended the other to shake.

Seto pointed to his lunch instead of taking my hand. “You like? You eat. I no like.”

I chuckled a little, but not too loud so the guard wouldn’t hear. “I brought you lunch.” I handed Seto chopsticks and seaweed, and popped the top of the rice and fish containers. The tuna smelled good as it overwhelmed the hospital antiseptic scent.

“Ah! Japanese!” Seto rubbed his stomach, then rose to his knees and bowed at the waist.
“Domo arigato!”
He took the container and shoveled rice in his mouth, then ripped open cellophane and savored every morsel of seaweed.

I gathered my nana’s container and walked toward the door. I turned one last time to see the straggler who hid in the boonies for twenty-eight long years—almost twice as long as I’d been alive and for as long as Sammy was old.

“Do you remember me?” I asked Seto.

Seto squinted and cocked his head to the side. “Aaaahh!” Seto said something in Japanese I didn’t understand. The soldier held up his forefinger. He got up off the floor and fumbled for a box beneath a steel cart.

He held up a dirty white ball. “Baseball boy.” Seto seemed pleased with himself.

I sucked in my breath and took a step forward.
Sammy’s baseball!

Seto stretched his arms and shoulders back as if he was going to hurl the ball across the room. His eyes looked dazed, as if he was seeing something far off. Then he straightened up, relaxed his arms, and extended the ball toward me. “For you.”

I took the ball and held it close to my chest. “T’anks.” I bowed my head.

“Domo arigato.”
Seto grinned like a jack-o’-lantern.

*

I begged my parents Wednesday to let me skip school again and to take me to the airport to see Seto off.

“Two days in a row?” Tata teased. “Oh, and I suppose you want I get you an invitation to Governor Camacho’s send-off party, eh?”

This brought a laugh from even Tatan, who had acted much more alert since Doctor Blas took away some of his pills.

I grabbed my books and transistor and ran to the bus, not even bothering to feed Bobo or say ’bye.

Second period had barely begun when I looked up and saw my tata standing in the classroom doorway.

“Kiko,” my math teacher said. “Looks like your dad needs to see you.”

“Get your books, Son,” Tata said. “We going to the airport.”

On the way to the airport, I said, “Tata, I’m glad you gave Sammy the Swiss Army knife. It’s a whole lot more useful than that thousand-stitch cloth Seto had. Never know, that knife may save Sammy’s life.”

Tata grunted. “Yeah, that’s why I gave it to him. I was afraid somet’ing bad might happen over there Sammy wasn’t prepared for. You never know. A father worries about his son.”

The word “son” lingered in the air between us, Tata behind the wheel, and me hugging the door.

“Kiko, sorry I slapped you.”

It was as if Tata’s apology took the sting out of my cheek. “Kay-o. T’ings been crazy lately, eh?”

“Crazy. For sure.”

“I know it won’t happen again.” I reached over and patted my tata’s hand on the steering wheel. “I forgive you. Forgive me?”

Tata flicked his eyebrows twice, then grinned big. “I have somet’ing for you. Thought I’d give it to you for Confirmation, but you’re ready for it now.” He reached into his left hip pocket and pulled out an object. Tata kept his hand cupped around it so I couldn’t see what it was.

Tata opened his warm hand against my hand. When Tata took his hand away, there lay a bone-handled Swiss Army knife.

“Wow! T’anks, Tata.” I dug my thumbnail into the silver notch and pulled out a blade. I switched out another two smaller blades, then a spoon, fork, nail clippers, file, and metal toothpick. “It’s a deluxe one all right, like your tatan’s.” I turned it over in my hand, then handed it back to Tata. “I can’t accept it.”

“Why not?” Tata didn’t take his hands off the steering wheel to take the knife.

Have I committed the unpardonable sin?
I asked God in my mind.
I tell you, I wanted to murder that soldier to get even for the man who hurt my nana!

I laid the knife on the dashboard. “Because I don’t deserve it.”

Silence hung like a Confessional curtain between us. I turned on the car radio.

Two songs later, Tata turned down the volume. “If we got what we deserved we might not get anyt’ing good in life. I certainly didn’t deserve a woman as good as your nana. But she married me anyway.”

Tata smiled and I couldn’t help but smile back.

Tata picked up the knife off the dashboard and held it out to me. “You earned this more honorably than my tatan did. Have I ever told you how Tatan Bihu Chargalauf got his Swiss Army knife?” Tata shook the knife with each syllable.

“No.”

He laughed. “By swapping
tuba
with an American sailor during prohibition in 1899.” Tata thrust the knife in front of me. “Take it. It’s a gift. You don’t have to earn gifts.”

For once, I didn’t know what to say. I took the knife, ran my thumb over the handle, and stuck it in my pocket. “T’anks.” But I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I might not go through with Confirmation.

“Now both you and Sammy have knives to pass down to your sons.” Tata turned the volume back up and hummed along with the music.

At the airport, Tata and I were like two little fish swimming against the tide in an ocean of people who showed up to see Seto off.

The Japanese man who was escorted up the stairs of a Japan Airlines DC8 barely resembled the straggler I discovered in the boonies. This stooped man was clean-shaven with a fresh, closely cropped haircut, and wore a drab suit.

Did he see me?
I wondered.
Nah. Too many people. Too much excitement.

Seto stepped cautiously up the steel staircase. When he reached the top step, he turned and faced the crowd.

On a whim, I raised two fingers in a victory sign.

Seto raised one hand as if to wave, then halted.

I thought for an instant our eyes met. I bowed my shoulders and head forward, keeping my eyes on the ground.

When I straightened up, Seto bowed a deep bow from the waist forward, then turned and disappeared into the airplane.

The last I heard or read of Seto was that when Japan Airlines touched its Mother soil, Seto stepped out on the gangway, leaned forward, and said in a voice choked with tears,
“Though I am ashamed, I am alive, and have come home again.”

“Are you ready?”

I knew Daphne was asking me if I was done setting up chairs so she could finish decorating. Sunday would be the Confirmation ceremony at San Miguel Catholic Church. Our class had spent the entire day preparing the sanctuary and grounds for the fiesta afterward.

But as I looked at her, holding a white satin bow in her hand, waiting to stick it on a chair or table or something, the question haunted me.
Are you ready?

Am I? Am I ready to go through with Confirmation?

All this time I’d been avoiding talking to our priest about my doubts. I still felt unworthy. Being confirmed into the Church was a big responsibility.

“Go ahead,” I told her, opening up the folding chair in my hand. “I’m going to look for the Father.” I stepped out from under the shadow of the canopy and into the blinding sunshine. I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked around. Tomas and our buddies were staking tiki torches into the ground. Some girls were filling the torch wells with oil. I didn’t see our priest anywhere.

I went into San Miguel. Our church is small compared to most on the island. I poked my head into our classroom. “Father?” No one there. I peeked into his office. “Father?” Not there either.

I walked into the sanctuary, decorated in white satin bows and flowers like a bride waiting for her wedding day. The place was empty.

Toward the front of the church, off to the side in an alcove, is a statue of
Madre Maria
. Someone had lit a votive candle in front of her. I went over and stood above it, watching the light flickering, threatening to go out in the pool of hot wax. I knelt. The candle smelled like a rain-soaked mango. I’d seen my nana light candles many times. I think lately she was lighting them for Sammy.

Thinking of Sammy, I crossed myself and folded my hands. I figured praying was the best way I could mourn my nana’s losses—all of her losses, which seemed many on account of the war that stole her innocence, but blessed her with Sammy. And now this other war, the one in Vietnam, that stole her blessing. She certainly had reason to mourn like
Madre Maria
must have done for her own son. No wonder she was known as
Our Lady of Sorrows
.

I prayed a prayer I’d heard my nana pray many times, but never thought about it much before: “O Virgin Mary, no one who ever fled to your protection, asked you for help, or sought your intercession was left unaided. So I come to you,
O Madre Maria
. Before you I kneel, sinful and sorrowful…”

A draft, cool on my neck, breathed through the chapel. Darkness covered my closed eyes. I inhaled smoke and heat flushed my forehead. I opened my eyes to dying embers. Quickly I fumbled with the matches. My heart raced, as if this were a bad omen for Sammy. It felt as if Sammy was lost in the dark and scared. He needed his way lit home.

The wick flickered, and stayed lit. My heart quit thumping as I slowed my breath. I continued the prayer with my eyes fixed on the light: “O
Madre
of the Word Incarnate, don’t hate my plea. But in your mercy, hear and answer me.”

Then I added my plea, which wasn’t part of the memorized prayer, but what I really came to beg God for, “Please bring Sammy home alive…”