Eyes of the Emperor (14 page)

For another week, Smith had me dragging horsemeat through the jungles of Cat Island. I got to know my way around pretty well.

“Make it harder,” he said. “Hide like your life depends on it. Think of the dog as capable of ripping your throat out and causing you to bleed to death. Where would you hide then? Use your imagination.”

Man,
I thought. Ripping my throat out? Where am I, in somebody's nightmare?

I hid in swampy bayous. I climbed up into trees. I hid upwind, behind a bushy rise. I lay flat and covered myself with leaves and sand.

Kooch found me every time.

Smith made a change. “Take off your T-shirt and drag
that,” he said. “I want him on
your
scent, now. But he's still going to eat the meat off your throat, okay?”

“Sure.”

Kooch had such a good nose, it was impossible to fool him. Each time he found me I put the slimy meat on my throat, and as always, he'd savage it down, then lick my neck and face, almost like kissing me. And I'd whisper to him quick, before Smith ran up. “Hey, boy, you a good dog, yeah.”

But one time Smith heard me.

“Hey!” he shouted. “I told you not to make friends with him.”

“I'm not. I'm doing what you said. I can't help it if he likes me.”

“Oh yes you can.”

He poked around in his backpack and came up with a slingshot. He tested the rubber, then flung it at me.

“He's too friendly. That has to change. If it doesn't, then everything we're doing here won't be worth spit. Now, let's do this again. After he finds you and eats the meat, you put something in that slingshot and shoot it at him. Hurt him. Chase him away.”

I stared at Smith. “I…I can't do that.”

“What?”

“You want me to hurt Kooch?”

“That's what I just said, isn't it?”

I studied Smith's eyes, the slingshot dangling from my fingers.

Smith tossed me another jar of horsemeat. “Take off,” he said.

Fine.

At first, I hid in a tree. If I was up there, Kooch couldn't lick me, so I wouldn't have to shoot him with the slingshot. But that wasn't what Smith wanted.

I jumped down and squatted in a stand of thick marsh grass at the edge of a dark-water pond—after I'd poked a stick into it. In the mud I found five marble-sized stones. I jammed four of them into my pocket. The fifth went into the slingshot's leather webbing.

Kooch found me. Smith shot his air gun, and I fell back in the muddy grass. Kooch ran up and ate the meat off my throat. When he started to lick up the extra blood and water, I rolled away and drew the slingshot taut. I aimed at his hindquarters, where it would sting, but not hurt him.

My fingers trembled, the webbing wobbling in my hand.

I couldn't do it.

I could hear Smith running up behind me. “Shoot him!” he shouted. “What are you waiting for?”

Kooch yelped when the stone hit, and scurried off. He looked back, standing sideways, like saying, Hey, what'd you do that for?

“Hit him again,” Smith ordered.

Kooch yipped and jumped when my second shot hit his hip. But this time he growled and paced, his head low and the hair on his back prickled up. Keeping his distance.

I couldn't look him in the eye.

“Stand down,” Smith said.

I hid the slingshot from Kooch.

Smith called him back and leashed him. He ran his hand down Kooch's neck.

But the dog kept his eyes on me.

“Let's do this one more time, Kubo,” Smith said softly.

I hid.

Kooch found me.

I shot him with a stone.

And the whole thing made me sick.

Late one morning a few days later, we were on the boat heading over to Cat Island. Dark clouds were stacked up on the horizon in the southeast, smudging the line between sky and water.

“Don't like the look of that,” Leroy said.

Cobra sniffed the air. “Storm coming.”

“Maybe. But sometimes they veer off and go south.”

Cat Island came up off our port side, long and low. I'd come to like it, so rich with life.

“What're y'all doing over there in that jungle, anyway?” Leroy asked, swinging the boat in.

“You don't know?” I said.

Leroy humphed. “They don't tell me squat. Just when to pick y'alls up and to bring your mail when you got any.”

Was it okay to tell him? Probably not, or he'd already know.

“We teaching dogs to hate us,” Chik said, not even thinking about it.

Leroy gaped. “Say again?”

Chik started to say more, but Ricky Kondo stopped him with a slight shake of his head.

Chik shrugged and fell silent.

Leroy let us off with the cow rays. We waded ashore.

“Keep an eye on the weather,” Leroy called. “If it starts to get worse, y'all get back here quick as a wink so I can get you over to Ship and make it home my own self, you hear?”

“Right,” Ricky Kondo said.

The wind started to pick up some as we headed inland, enough to rattle the trees and rustle the long grasses. But the clouds were far to the east, and the sun still painted sharp shadows over the sandy trail.

The dogs were lying in the shade, each chained to a separate tree. Their handlers lounged around in a group a short distance behind them.

The dogs turned to look our way as we approached, but they didn't stand.

We stopped in the clearing.

The handlers stayed where they were, didn't come to greet us like usual.

Strange.

“What's going on?” PeeWee whispered.

I spat in the sand. Yeah, what?

Just past the handlers, two guys were working with a
monster Irish wolfhound and a wooden dummy dressed in a Japanese army uniform. The dummy had a gap in its neck, where one guy was securing a hunk of horsemeat. The other guy stood with the wolfhound at his side. When the guy by the dummy got out of the way, the handler turned the wolfhound loose, shouting,
“Kill! Kill!”
and that huge dog flew straight for the throat.
Bam!
Flattened the dummy, ripped the meat out of the throat, and ate it.

“Jeese,”
Chik said. “That's creepy.”

Something was changing—the mood, the way the handlers just stood there.

The two wolfhound guys started setting up the dummy again.

A few minutes later, the Swiss showed up carrying a bundle of empty burlap sacks. He dropped them at our feet. “Grab one, boys. Today, we agitate the dogs.”

Agitate?

I picked up a sack, rough and scratchy.

“Our purpose today is to start establishing you boys as the enemy,” the Swiss said.

He looked back at the two lines of dogs, all ten now standing ready. He nodded, and the handlers moved out to check the chains, test their strength.

The Swiss turned back to us. “Form a line.”

Shig was first. PeeWee, Cobra, me, and a line of guys behind me.

“Before we begin today's fieldwork, we're going to warm the dogs up, so to speak. I'm going to have you walk down the path between them, right down the middle, and
when you do you'll slap at them with those sacks until they raise their lips and bare their teeth.”

Got to be kidding, I thought.

“Don't hold back. You are the enemy from here on out. They must know that.”

I waited for him to grin and say, Nah, just joking.

He motioned to Shig. “Come on, let's go!”

Shig glanced back at the rest of us, then slowly walked toward the line of dogs, trailing the sack like a whip.

He raised his arm. Then dropped it and looked at the Swiss. I rubbed Herbie's blue stone in my pocket, worrying for Shig.

“Go ahead,” the Swiss said. “Hit them.”

Shig pressed his lips tight and started in on the first dog—King, Cobra's Labrador.

At first King thought it was a game and tried to grab the sack and tug on it. “Hit him harder,” the Swiss called. “But not near the eyes, don't hit the eyes.”

Shig whapped the dog with increasing force.

The reaction was quick and terrifying.

Shig staggered back at King's raised lips and ugly snarl, deep, from way down inside. Shig quickly moved on to the next dog, and the next, each one leaping at him violently when he struck with the sack, trying to bite him. Only the chains yanked them back.

“Make them
feel
it,” the Swiss shouted, motioning for the rest of us to get moving. “Let's go! Let's go!”

We followed Shig like we were going to a funeral. Reluctantly, I wrapped the burlap around my fist.

I hit King weakly, faking it. I went after the next dog, and
one more, slapping them lightly. To hit them any harder was impossible. How could I be doing such a thing?

Ahead, Kooch was snarling at Cobra, and Cobra was keeping his distance, whipping the sack at him, but barely close enough to hit.

Smith watched, his squinted face thin-lipped, his hands balled into fists. He hated this as much as I did.

“Move in! Get closer!” the Swiss shouted.

When I came to Kooch I whipped the burlap at his side. I hoped he'd recognize me and understand I was only doing this because I had to. But I knew dogs didn't think that way. A threat was a threat. Period. And Kooch was way too worked up by then; he had to defend himself.

Kooch lunged.

His yellowish teeth looked like sharpened bones. He snarled so hard he almost choked. This wasn't the dog I knew. Days earlier he'd been kissing my face. Now he wanted to kill.

Me.

“Hurt him!” the Swiss shouted.

I struck harder, trying to keep the burlap from his eyes. Kooch snagged the sack and pulled on it, shaking his head, the noise in him rising from some deep place a thousand years old.

I jerked until I got the sack back and quickly moved on to the next dog, a collie named Captain. My hands shook. My lip bled where I'd been biting on it.

Suddenly, my mind flipped off, replaced by a merciful blankness as I moved through the line of raging dogs. Don't think, don't think, don't think.

By the time the last of us had come through the line, the dogs were worked into a frenzy, all ten of them leaping, drooling, half insane. If a chain broke, someone would pay.

“Start over,” the Swiss ordered. “Let's go!”

The wind was starting to bend the treetops. A high layer of white clouds rolled west, blocking the sun.

Four times we beat the dogs with the sacks, and all the while the handlers watched unmoving from the shadows. Only when the dogs began to grow hoarse did the Swiss call us off.

I was cold with sweat, my hands raw from the sandpapery burlap.

“That was good work,” he said. “I know you didn't like it, but you did well.”

He glanced up at the swaying trees. “I think the weather is about to change for the worse. You'd better get back to your boat. Next time we do this it will be more dangerous. You'll have protection, of course, but it's never really safe. Remember always that the dog is made to fight and to kill. Mercy is not in him when he's in battle. To him it's win or lose. There's no middle ground.”

On the way back to the boat, the wind grew stronger. The sky darkened and the light began to fail. The
Sugar Babe
bobbed on the water where we'd left it, with whitecaps like shattered glass tossed over the gulf beyond.

Leroy stood with legs spread on the bow, motioning for us to hurry up. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, but the wind stole the words right out of his mouth.

Through the night the winds howled in the sea grass, rattling the windows of our creaky barrack. The few minutes I did manage to sleep were mangled by dreams of whips and snarling dogs. My sweaty sheets were twisted up like rope when dawn finally broke.

And still, the wind screamed and the windows rattled.

Amazingly, the supply boat showed up.

That skipper has a stomach of steel, I thought.

Seven of us ran out to meet him at the pier. We leaned into the wind, hands up to protect our faces against the fine grains of sand that hit like flying pins.

But the skipper refused to dock. He stood a ways out, appearing and disappearing in the rise and fall of the sea swells.

He waved, motioning for us to go around to the other side of the island, where the wind might be less fierce. He'd get the supplies to us there.

“But how?” Shig said. “No pier there.”

“I think he wants us to row out to him,” Ricky Kondo said. “Shig, Cobra, Eddy, grab a rowboat. Carry it low so the wind won't yank it out of your hands. James, dig up some oars.”

The sea was more manageable on the south side.

Barely.

The supply boat clawed its way around the point and hove to about fifty yards out. We carried the rowboat into the water and launched it. “I'll row it out,” James said, rolling over into it. We gave him a shove.

He took some slams when the waves hit, but he made it through without capsizing. When he reached the supply boat, he turned and raised his arms. We cheered, then watched the skipper lower box after box of supplies, while James secured them in the rowboat.

When the supplies were loaded, James started back to shore. But now the rowboat was heavy. He had muscle, for sure, and he was truly an able-bodied seaman—but the wind blew him back, farther and farther away from the supply boat, and away from shore.

“He not going make it,” Shig shouted over the wind.

“Hey!”
Cobra yelled, motioning to the skipper. “He needs help!”

But the skipper didn't respond.

“He's not going to do anything,” Ricky Kondo said.

We stood gawking. James hunched over the oars, going to Mexico…or to the bottom of the sea.

Slim ripped off his shirt and pants and ran into the cold water, ducking under the jagged waves and popping up on the back side.

He was the best swimmer of all of us, and reached the rowboat quickly, the wind at his back. James helped him aboard, the rowboat rising and falling, rising and falling.

They took turns rowing.

When the supply boat skipper saw that they were making headway back to the island, he throttled up and got out of there.

Waves battered the rowboat, nearly tipping it over a time or two. But Slim and James fought back.

We waded out as far as we could to help.

When we finally got our hands on the skiff, Slim slumped over the oars, unable to lift his weakened arms. James could barely dig out the bow line.

“We got it from here,” Cobra said. “You okay?”

“Fine,” James said, “but Slim needs a blanket, fast. He's turning blue.”

Slim stumbled out of the boat, shivering. Cobra helped him back to the barrack and got some hot water going. The rest of us took care of the supplies and the rowboat.

An hour later, we all fell onto our cots, blanketed in warmth, the woodstove snapping.

Slim slept the rest of that afternoon. What he'd done was the bravest thing I'd seen in the army so far. He could have drowned. He could've gone down with hypothermia.

Later that evening, with the wind still howling outside, I said, “What made you do it?”

Slim shrugged. “It was nothing. Any one of us would have done it. Anyway, we couldn't let James drift to Mexico and have all the fun, ah?”

James grinned. “Ay, chihuahua.”

A great gust whoomped against the barrack and rattled the windows. Cobra glanced at the exposed rafters. “We going lose this roof if this don't let up soon.”

“Man, I sure hope this don't turn into a hurricane,” Chik said.

Shig waved him off. “No worry, Chickaboom. If that happens, we just go inside that fort.”

We all nodded. Yeah, the fort's been here since old times, it will be here when the storm is over.

It was hard to sleep that night, thinking about hurricanes and waves washing over the island, the kind of thoughts that loom like red-eyed demons in the blackness of night.

Morning came with a heavy, steel gray sky. The ocean was rough, but the storm had definitely moved on.

Leroy didn't show.

Not for four more days.

So we went fishing and wrote letters. It was peaceful. And boring. Chik's nervous leg was bouncing all over the place. You could hear music inside him again, like the old days in Kaka'ako.

But all during that time I kept thinking about Slim, and how he hadn't even thought twice about helping James. We were supposed to be fighting for our country in this army, in this war. But here on this island we had to look out for ourselves, because for sure nobody else was.