No Surrender Soldier (5 page)

I tore through tangled vines with my bare hands. I stepped up on a fallen trunk to look around. Not far into the boonies ran a tributary of the Talofofo River. Upstream and uphill from there flowed a high waterfall. From the log I spied the river, and something white gleaming from the bulrushes. “Kay-o, now we’re talking.” Tall grasses whipped my calves as I ran toward the bank. I bent down and picked up Sammy’s baseball.

Wait.

“What the… ?” I lifted the soggy ball from the water’s edge and backed up two steps to study what had kept the ball from rolling all the way in and sinking to the bottom of the river.

A footprint? A small, narrow footprint sunken in the red clay had cradled Sammy’s ball. “Strange, wonder who would be fool enough to be back here in his bare feet?”

I turned around and ran, jumping best I could over the underbrush I’d just mashed down. I didn’t want to meet whoever made that footprint. After one leap my heel crunched down on something slippery and the rubber sole of my worn gym shoe slid forward, as if I’d twisted my legs in a bad slide onto home base. I dropped the ball.

When I picked myself up I realized by the shell and goo on the bottom of my shoe I must have crunched down on one of those giant African snails, or whatever the slime balls are called. I leaned over to pick up Sammy’s ball, but recoiled my hand. A brown tree snake lay by a bamboo thicket. It was dead—whacked in half. I let out a whistle, then slapped my hand across my mouth. Oh, not smart. What if the man was still around? Chicken skin rose on my arms until the hair stood on end. I looked around in all directions.

A footprint? A snake cut in two? No
taotaomona
did that.

I picked up my soggy baseball and ran the hell out of there.

The muffled drone of bomber planes overhead startled Seto. For many years airplanes that looked like gray whales breaching the waves had been flying over his hiding place. He never grew used to the flying leviathans. They brought back memories of dogfights in the air, and Japanese kamikaze pilots crashing to fiery deaths. He never shook the nightmares.

Seto reached for the metal handle of his oil lamp. Coiled like a cobra about to strike sat a wick from rolled coconut fibers. He popped the wood stopper from a coconut shell container he made and poured coconut oil for fuel to cook his food.

“Careful, no spill.”
His finger touched the lamp well so he could feel not to overfill.

He rubbed a stick up and down, up and down, until friction ignited a spark and lit the wick.

Seto inched the oil lamp ahead of him as he crawled on hands and knees toward the other end of his tunnel to go to the latrine. He held his breath and pinched his nose before lifting the square wooden lid. He squatted over a hole in the ground he had dug to drain into the river. He wiped with leaves, closed the lid, then wondered what time of day it was.

“My stomach says it is time to eat
.
But then, it always says ‘time to eat.’”

He inched to the bamboo ladder and looked up the shaft. Light filtered down through a bamboo mat concealing his underground cave. Seto blew out the oil light and duck-walked back toward the middle of the tunnel to retrieve his pants.

“I sneak a peek, just this once.”
Seto pulled on his pants and climbed the ladder. He pressed his face against bamboo slats like prison bars. The thin shafts of light blinded him. He squinted his eyes and turned his head back toward the bottom of the tunnel.
Light too bright
, he thought, but was afraid to speak near the top by the land where free men roamed.

Seto put his ear against the bamboo.
Chirp, chirp.

Only transparent lizards with funny flat feet, too small to eat.

He closed his eyes, bracing them against the light, then lifted the bamboo hatch a tad. He opened his eyes to a flicker of brown. He peered around as far as his neck would bend, scoping for men like a periscope on a submarine.
I spy a doe!

He scrambled down the bamboo ladder so fast he slipped on the bottom rungs and fell smack on his bony butt. “
Ooh,
” he cried, and rolled over and rubbed it. He crawled to the netted snare he had been mending.

Seto wound the net around his arm, pausing to examine the one hole he had not mended yet. “
Not big enough for a doe to slip through. It will do.
” He grabbed the tail end of the snare and climbed back up the ladder.

At the top, Seto stopped. He slowly opened the hatch and peered around again.
No one.
He poked his wild shock of black hair through the opening. Sweat broke out on his brow and ran down his nose. He stepped down a rung.
I cannot do this. Not during day. What if I am seen?

His stomach rumbled louder than a storm cloud rolling in from sea.

Just this once. For a doe, it is worth risking.

Seto mustered his courage, stepped up two rungs, and stuck not just his hair, but his head, neck, and shoulders through the hole. The bamboo mat draped his head like a helmet. He twisted his upper body around and scoped out the entire region. No one.

Just this once.
Seto slithered out of his hole.
I will be quick.
He crept out of the bamboo patch in the direction of the river.

He reached the tree where he had cut down his snare. He hitched his net over his shoulder, hiked his feet up the trunk, and climbed.

Seto shimmied out onto a solid branch, tied the vine-rope around the limb, and began to drop the net to the ground.

Aiee, what is that down there? Ah, the snake I hacked in two. How could I have been so careless not to bury it?

Before climbing down he checked all ways. No sight of the doe. When he looked at the river he saw two prints in the red clay mud on the bank. One footprint, one shoeprint. He heard his father’s voice in his head say
Stupid! You have been careless and stupid!
whenever Seto made a mistake on a customer’s order.

He placed his bare feet on both sides of the tree and worked his way down—right, left, right, left—like a salamander. He dropped to the ground, hunched down on all fours, and looked around again.
I cannot be too cautious. I have already made two mistakes I must correct.

Seto duck-walked through the brush until he reached the decaying snake. He dug a hole with his hands and a rock and buried the snake. He filled in the hole, smoothed it with his hand, and set the rock, like a monument, on top of the grave.

He half-crawled, half-slithered to the bank of the river. He couldn’t afford to make another mistake by standing erect and risk being seen.
Good thing I am used to moving this way in my cave. Slowly, then quickly. Like karate. I will be as a frog who waits patiently for fly, then zaps it with his tongue.

Seto reached the edge of a clearing. He was within meters of the bulrushes by the bank. He froze.
Too exposed. I will be too exposed. Aiee, how could I be so careless?

He looked both ways, then in front and behind him.
No one.
He duck-walked to the bank, bent over, and patty-caked the cool mud with his hands until the prints were gone. He snapped off a cattail, brushed and rolled it over the clay, then dropped it into the river. He didn’t wait to watch it drift downstream. Seto scurried like a shrew, back to his underground burrow.

I burst out of the boonies, holding Sammy’s drenched baseball in the air.

Tomas was waiting for me at the clearing. “It’s over, folks!” Tomas called. “The game’s called off on account of… waterlog!”

“Waterlog! More like,” I tried to imitate Tomas’s sportscaster voice, “Kiko Chargalauf won the game!”

“Have it your way. I’ll give it to you,” Tomas said. “Can we eat now, eh?”

“
Give
it to me? I earned that one fair and square. But, hey, did you do this on purpose to go eat?”

“Yeah, sure. I easy-tossed that ball, knowing you were a power hitter today and would knock it into tomorrow just so I can eat your nana’s leftovers. ’Specially knowing she probably don’t have none in the fridge on account of your tatan burning up the kitchen and nearly getting arrested. Uh-huh,” Tomas said. “Hey, maybe we should eat at my house instead, bro.”

At the mention of Tatan, I knew I better get home. “Nah, it’s my fridge or not’ing. I promised I’d watch Tatan, remember? Besides, they say I have to make sure he eats. They say plenty soon he may stop eating good.”

“The
lytico-bodig
Tatan has, like, what is that, bro?” Tomas said. “I mean, I know
lytico-bodig
means ‘fat and lazy,’ but your tatan, well, he’s not any fatter than most old Chamorro guys, and he don’t seem lazy to me.”

“Fat and lazy, that’s dumb. I don’t know why they call it that. Maybe he’ll get fat and lazy later, like Bobo. Eh?”

“Not if he don’t eat good,” Tomas said.

“I guess it’s like ‘old timer’s’ disease.”

“You mean Alzheimer’s?” Tomas said.

“That’s what I said, ‘old timer’s.’”

“Sure, whatever,” Tomas said. “Let’s go check on your tatan and eat.”

While Tomas and I walked back to my house, we tossed the ball back and forth, lobbing it up to see who could toss it higher.

“See those B-52s flying overhead?” Tomas said. “I’m going to throw this ball so high it bounces off the wing of that middle plane.”

“Yeah, right.” I chucked my chin toward the plane.

Tomas snapped back his wrist and heaved the ball above his head. Following the ball as it descended, Tomas turned a half circle, backed up, and fell into a hole.
Thud!
The ball just missed his head.

“Ouch! I twisted my ankle,” Tomas yelled.

“You all right, man?” I offered him a hand. “Hey, what’s with the hole, eh?” I looked around our side yard. “And that hole. And there’s another hole. What the… ?” I pointed the bat to at least a half dozen large pits of different depths. Some were ankle deep, others at least knee deep.

Tomas picked up the baseball and glove and hobbled out of the hole he had fallen into.

“Hey, bro, you’re right. This is weird.”

“Tatan!” I yelled.

Instead of answering me, he was singing:

“Oh Mr. Sam, Sam

My dear Uncle Sam

Won’t you please come

Back to Guam?”

“Tatan!” I yelled again, this time looking down at my tatan bihu digging a deep hole.

“What are you doing?” Only Bobo stopped digging, looked up, and wagged his tail.

Tomas peered into the hole as he stood like a crane on one foot and babied the other ankle.

“You talk to him,” I told Tomas. I didn’t know if Tatan was ignoring me or what.

“Tatan?” Tomas said.

“Say somet’ing in Chamorro,” I said to Tomas.

“What should I say? You know about as much Chamorro as I do,” Tomas said.

“I don’t know. I just know his brain’s more in the past lately than the present.” I hollered down to Tatan, “Hey, Tatan San Nicolas,
hafa adai
, hello.”

He kept digging and singing,

“… lives in danger

. . . better come

kill… Japanese

Right here on Guam.”

Tomas joined me in speaking Chamorro, “Tatan,
si yu’us ma’ase
.”

“What did you thank him for? He’s digging up our yard. How am I going to explain this to my parents?”

“You said talk to him in Chamorro,” Tomas said.

Dirt flew out of the hole. I’d never heard the song Tatan was singing: “Oh, Mr. Sam…

. . . please come back…”

Tomas tried to get Tatan’s attention by saying a few Japanese greetings he probably remembered from his grandfather. “San Nicolas-san,
ohayo gozaimasu.
Good morning.
Konnichi wa?
Good afternoon?”

Tatan stopped singing. He stood at attention, then bowed deeply at the waist. “
Arigato.
I did good, no? I dug holes like you said. Very good holes, no?” Tatan asked Tomas.

“Very good holes,” Tomas said.

I ordered, “Now get up here, Tatan.”

“Yeah, come on up here,” Tomas said. “Excellent holes.”

Tatan began to climb out of the pit, then changed his mind and scooped his shovel back into the dirt. “Wait, I find somet’ing. I give it to you and you give my family food, no?” Tatan bent down and rapped his knuckles on a metal object. “You like what I find?” Bobo started digging faster around the object, as if it were a bone. But no bone sounded like metal.

I dropped like a cat into the hole to see what Tatan found.

“Holy sh…
Madre Maria
! It’s a land mine!” My heart raced and pricklies jolted up the back of my neck.

“A mine!” Tomas’s voice cracked. “Don’t move! Don’t anybody move!”

Tatan struck the metal with his shovel and it made a
ping
sound. Bobo dug furiously at the other side, kicking out dirt with his front paws.

“Bobo, stop it! Tatan, don’t touch it!” No one would listen to me. Frantically, I jerked Bobo by the scruff of his neck. I felt bad when he yelped, but I had to get him out of there. Tatan took up where Bobo left off by digging around the mine with his bare hands.

“Tatan, stop!”

Tatan kept digging. I’d have pulled him up out of there, too, if I thought I could. But Tatan was too big for me to wrestle, and certainly not over a land mine. I wished Sammy were here, he’d know what to do. I shouted at Tomas. “Make him stop! He’s going to blow us all sky high!”

“Tatan,” Tomas said in a screechy voice. He cleared his throat and tried again, deeper, “San Nicolas-san. Good hole.”

Tatan stopped digging around the mine and looked up at Tomas. Bobo stopped thrashing and watched Tatan, as if for directions. I stood very, very still—on the outside. My insides felt like a motor racing in high gear.

“San Nicolas-san, I want you to dig another hole,” Tomas said.

“Another hole? Didn’t I do good finding this for you? I get it out and trade it for food for my family. Please, more rice for my Pilar and Rosie.” Tatan bent down to dig some more.