No Surrender Soldier (9 page)

I guessed it depended on whether Tatan’s mind was in the present or the past when he left. If Tatan and Bobo followed the road then I would have seen them from the bus window. If Tatan went toward the Pacific Ocean, he couldn’t get into too much trouble that way. Besides, it was quite a hike down to the bay. If Tatan took his machete, and if he was in his right mind, chances are he’d take it to whack through boonies. I decided to search through the boonies first.

While it was still daylight…

I took a sickle from the shed to slice through the underbrush. I ran to the river opening past where Tomas and I play ball.

I followed the river.

“Tatan!” I stopped and whistled again. “Bobo. Here boy. Come!”

Frogs croaked, trees creaked, lizards chirped, and water gurgled downstream. But no sound of Tatan or Bobo. Where were they? I whacked at the weeds and smacked swarms of mosquitoes that felt as if they were eating me alive.

Twigs and bramble thorns poked and tore at my feet and ankles. When I walked by the marshy bank, red mud oozed around my zoris and rocks jabbed through to the soles of my feet. Should I go back to the house and put on jeans and gym shoes?

Fading sunrays sunk behind the trees. “No time.” I pressed on, calling Tatan and Bobo’s names until my throat grew sore.

I had to try a new tactic. I sickled through the underbrush toward a banyan tree. I finally reached the vine-like roots growing above ground around its mother tree. I gingerly latched onto roots, not wanting to disturb spirits that haunted the banyan. “Steady now, I just want to climb you. I promise not to break one branch.”

I climbed the giant to peer out from beneath its leafy head. When I was fairly high up I cupped my hands around my mouth like a megaphone and hollered, “Tatan! Bobo! Tatan!”

I listened. No voice nor bark.

I shifted my body and climbed around the tree, spiraling downward, pausing every few steps to stop, search, and call again, “Tatan! Bobo! It’s me, Kiko! Where are you?”

“What’s the use? I’m going hoarse.” I climbed down and dropped to the ground. Still no answer echoed back.

I pressed on toward the falls. I kept trying to push horrible thoughts out of my head.
Is Tatan so far gone he’d stumble over the falls? What if he went toward the ocean instead and plunged down the cliff? Nana will die if anything happens to Tatan! It will drive her over the edge with Sammy gone, too.

Sunlight slanted lower, and dimmer. I stepped in deer droppings and pig manure. Any other day I would have stopped and scrapped the crap off my zoris. “No time.” I whacked the daylights out of the weeds, not caring that a thorn vine snapped back and ripped my leg. “That’s the penance I pay for not taking seriously Tatan’s dementia.” Lizards scurried past my feet. Coconut crabs shuffled through leaves on the jungle floor. Roaches and beetles dove under rocks. “That’s it. Get out of my way you! Get out of my way!” I screamed. “Where
are
they?” Now I was the one crazy out of my mind.

No sign of human life… until I reached a bamboo thicket. The forest floor seemed mashed down. I don’t know why, but I looked to see if the whacked-up snake was still there.
Nada.

I raised my sickle and swung it down and back up, making half-moon slices. I tromped through the underbrush to move back toward the river. One cut close to the ground hacked up a chunk of coconut fibers woven like a monstrous spider web. I jumped back and fell on my butt. “Whoa! I could’ve been strung up like a boonie deer.” I marveled at the trap. “Who put that there?”

Chicken skin raised on my arms. An eerie feeling settled over me like mist in the morning. I felt clammy and… watched.

Those were no
taotaomona
spirits. Someone had been there. I felt it in my gut.

I didn’t wait to find out who it was. I dashed into the boonies, not slowing to sickle the brush, sword grass cutting my legs. I ran so fast mosquitoes couldn’t land on me.

In the distance, I heard water rushing over a cliff.

I raced until my side cramped and I doubled over, gasping for breath.

Ha, ha, ha, ha,
something panted beside me.

I jumped so hard I felt akin to a molting snake shedding its skin.

“Bobo! Don’t scare me like that!” I bent to hug my dog’s neck. Bobo, slobbering, licked sweat off my face.

“Where’s Tatan, boy? Where’s Tatan? Go get him, boy!” My throat scratched just saying it.

Bobo loped through the brush. When Bobo barked I followed him, all the while calling, “Tatan! Tatan!” Finally I spotted Tatan, dressed in khakis, barely visible in the haze of dying daylight.

“Antonio?” Tatan peered at me from under his hand hooding his eyes.

Tihu Tony?
Nana’d told me that I looked like her brother in California.
Does he t’ink I’m Tihu Tony?
“It’s me, Kiko.”

“Of course. What do you t’ink I am? Stupid, eh?” Tatan dropped his hand from over his brow and straightened his spine. “What’s the fuss?”

“I couldn’t find you, Tatan. You or Bobo. I was worried somet’ing happened to you.”

“What makes you t’ink I’m not okay? I been looking for boonie peppers, Bobo and me.” Tatan patted bulging pockets. “And look!” Tatan held up three fruit bats. “Good eating tonight, eh?”

“Tatan! Have you been in the caves? The ones with the ancient Chamorro drawings? Is that why I couldn’t find you? How could you do this to me? Scare me half to death?” It didn’t matter that fruit bats boiled in milk are a delicacy, I felt like pounding something. Tatan couldn’t go off like that on his own anymore. “Come on, let’s go home. Now.” I sliced the sickle through underbrush.

Tatan carried his fruit bats and stomped on ahead of me, mumbling, “Who do you think you are? Disrespecting
manamko
. I should check in with you where I go, eh? And smart-mouthing me like that. Young ’uns got no respect for elders these days.”

I did a lot of mumbling, too, but not loud enough for Tatan to hear. My nana would have washed my mouth out with soap if she heard what I said. But I was mad, really mad. He scared me more than I’d ever been scared before.

Still as a Buddha statue, Seto crouched in reeds by the river. Waiting… watching… knife poised. His heart raced like that of a hunted deer.

Aiee, close. Too close.
Seto clasped his hand over his chest.
I must be careless in old age. I should have waited until nightfall. They could have seen me.
His father’s voice repeated in his head,
Stupid. Careless.

He parted reeds and peered out.
No one.
He looked again.

If I was not so hungry, I would go below.

Seto pulled a trap up, careful not to splash the water.

He planned to take a bath, but decided against it since men were trampling near his hiding place. He was missing traps. His net destroyed.

No shrimp, no fish, no eel. Not even a bit of algae floated into the few traps left.

Oh, to be free to go to the ocean. I long for salt, and kelp, and Ono—fish—and eel. Instead I am prisoner here. Afraid of beasts on two feet. Scared of my shadow that it might give me away. Frightened of spirits who visit by night. I hide underground by day like a rat. And scurry at twilight scrounging for food. My life has rotted here. What waste.

Seto lifted his other trap from the river.

Nothing.

His knife scraped white coconut meat into traps for bait.

To think I almost used this knife on that boy.

He lowered one trap back into water.

Would I break my vow to native ghosts not to murder again?

He put the second trap into water, then duck-walked through reeds, afraid to stand up after so close an encounter.

Would I have killed him like we did those other two unsuspecting natives who came upon our secret lair? The one I shot in haste, and my comrades carved with their knives?

Would I?
Seto looked at his knife, his hands. He had hidden entangled in the roots of the spirit tree. He thought the boy saw him at first. As the boy climbed the tree Seto was tempted to reach his hand up and grab the boy by the ankle and rip him to the ground. Instead, he stood rooted, as if one with the tree. Listening to his calls like wind through the jungle. When the boy came down the tree, Seto stalked him.

Had not the old man come along with his dog, and bats, and pockets bulging with peppers?

Surely I could not have killed them both. My gun corroded. One of me. Two of them. And a dog.

His insides gnawed together, stomach rumbling like storm cloud warnings.

He passed up toadstools, for not being reared a country boy he knew not which mushrooms were edible and which poisonous.

There is a reason I have survived these twenty-eight years, fifteen underground.

He plucked a snail, then two, and three off a tree trunk. They clung to the bark, leaving iridescent slime trails where they resisted being pulled from safety. But once the stranger’s hand held them air bound, each slug retreated into its shell and sealed its hatch.

He cupped his hand around a tan tree frog, being careful not to squash it.

Is this all? All I catch tonight? It is barely enough to stop nip, nip, nipping of sharks’ teeth at my stomach walls. It is barely enough to fuel my body. No wonder my flesh has shrunken and I look like a walking skeleton.

Still…
Seto squatted and spied beyond the bamboo shoots.
Dare I chance venturing to breadfruit trees? Aiee… Boy too close.

His stomach grumbled.

His heart thumped, thu-thumped, thumped.

He opened the bamboo trap door. And lowered himself, with his meager three snails and one tiny tree frog, into his hovel to dine.

Aiee. What I wouldn’t give to have caught dog alone. For dog, I made no vow.

“Don’t slop your hog today,” Tatan ordered the second I stepped foot in the door after school. “Just give him plenty water.”

“What? You not going to slaughter Simon tomorrow. You can’t!” My parents had warned me not to name the pig. But how could I not? Simon had been the runt of the litter. I thought of him as my pet.

“Can and will.” Tatan waved his hand as if saying,
End of argument
. He got up and left the kitchen. His bedroom door slammed shut. End of argument.

When it came to slaughtering livestock, such as chickens, pigs, and cows, I found a way to make myself scarce. Before Tata started Sammy’s Quonset Hut, our family farmed. Sammy wasn’t much of the farming type, but he helped out better than me. When it came to killing a chicken even, I hid until the poor thing was cooked and on the dinner table. Usually Tatan or Tata killed the chicken. But for as long as I remember, which wasn’t all that long since Sammy’s thirteen years older than me, my brother helped with the big jobs, like once a year when our tata butchered a cow in the late fall.

Last year, when Sammy was stationed on Guam, he slaughtered a pig with Tatan and Tata. I stayed at Tomas’s house for two days. We camped out in his backyard. I was afraid I’d come home and find Simon gone. Boy was I relieved to find out that Sammy’s pig, Chester, was slaughtered instead. (Although, I’m the only one who named the animals.) Chester had been a mean hog that charged me when I slopped the pigs. But now, with Tata working in Tumon and Sammy off to war, evidently Tatan had made his mind up I would learn something about butchering.

I sat on the front steps with Bobo, waiting for my parents to come home. Before Nana could ask if any mail from Sammy had arrived, I jumped up and pleaded with her, “Tatan’s going to murder Simon tomorrow! Tell him ‘Don’t do it!’”

“Oh, don’t be melodramatic.” Nana petted Bobo’s head. “I told you not to get attached. Tatan’s butchering the pig for the fiesta in Tumon. We offered. Now, excuse me, Tatan called and said somet’ing about needing me to cook some bats?”

“But what about school?” I called after her.

“Missing one day won’t hurt,” Nana’s muffled voice called back. I glanced through the screen and could see her shuffling through the mail, hoping for a letter from Sammy.

I scooted up to the stoop and leaned my back against the house to wait for Tata to finish whatever he was doing in the shed. Finally Tata walked up the two steps and opened the screen door. I sprung up between Tata and the door, and gripped his arm. “Do you really trust Tatan with knives? You know how he’s been lately.”

Tata glared at me. “I t’ink it’s you who don’t want to touch the knives, eh, Son? I’m not worried. Look around you.” Tata spread his other hand toward the land, as if he were a priest blessing it. “Used to all be farmland. Your ancestors were farmers. Remember before we bought the shop, eh? We raised cows, hogs, and chickens. Tatan’s been butchering since he was half your age. That’s a long time ago. I’m not worried. He could slaughter in his sleep.”

Bobo edged between my legs and tried to wiggle his way through the door. I let go of my tata’s arm, bent down and wrapped my arms around Bobo’s neck. Fine, if they wanted to be that way about it, I’d go out to the pig pen and not eat dinner either.

That night I lay in bed listening to rain falling on our tin roof. First, in tinkles. Then, like rocks pelting a window pane. I worried about where Bobo slept since he couldn’t curl up under the porch like at our old house. I should’ve left the shed door open like I did before Tatan went crazy in the head.

Thunder rolled. Lightning cracked. I sat up, and looked out the window at a lightning bolt creasing the sky like a blue-white scar. I hated to admit it, but on nights like that I missed being a little boy again who curled up next to Sammy in bed. I slept with my big brother from the time I outgrew my crib until I was five. When Sammy graduated from high school our parents bought us two single beds. He wouldn’t let me sleep with him anymore. He said we both needed to grow up since I was going to school and him to college. I started wetting the bed. I never told my parents it was because I missed sleeping beside Sammy. It was as if my security blanket had been ripped away from me.