Tengu (11 page)
Late in the day, a runner toiled up from the river valley, his face streaked with sweat and his secondhand sneakers covered in mud. He spoke quietly with one of the guards, who nodded him along the trail toward the village. Then the
alimaong
checked the action on his old M-1 carbine and ushered the women and children out of the fields.
There were strangers on the slopes.
Hatsue had been through these types of alerts before. The Higuanon prized their isolation and any outsider was viewed with deep suspicion. Sometimes it was nothing to fear. The blonde-haired evangelist from a Chicago mission society would sometimes make the long trek by horseback up to see them. He was greeted politely and was respected for the rudimentary medical care he could give people. The
datu
listened to the missionary’s stories of Jesus with pleasant tolerance. There was also a team of scientists stumbling around down in the valley, occasionally lugging boxes of instruments upslope to measure volcanic action in some of the older craters.
But this time the runner spoke of men with guns.
The women shouldered their loads and slipped down the trail quickly and efficiently. They cast an occasional glance back along the trail where the sentry stood watch, but their feet moved quickly toward the village. The children, whose energy level seemed to spike shortly before the evening meal, hooted in excitement. The elders hushed them with a severity that was unusual and squatted in a circle to debate a proper response to the mysterious intruders. Hatsue edged closer to learn what she could.
The sky was still bright, although when you lowered your eyes to the ground it was amazing how dim the forest looked. The yellow of small cooking fires seemed more vivid and the tips of cheroots glowed red in the glowing gloom. The men of the village smoked and squatted, speaking softly and quickly to one another. It made it difficult to hear. The women busied themselves with cooking and distracting the children, but Hatsue was drawn to the circle of men. She drifted closer and they stopped suddenly, all eyes rising to look at her. The wise brown eyes of the
datu
were cold and remote. A woman came and gently tugged Hatsue away from the council.
The air began to blue with the approach of evening. Fires were stoked into life and the evening rice prepared. Young men continued to filter in and out of the village, conferring with the headman. From their expressions, it was obvious that the search for intruders had yielded nothing. What was more disturbing, Hatsue wondered, the idea that a stranger was present, or that he could not be found?
She did not ask the question, knowing that in the quiet time after the evening meal, there would be more talk. And the women would tell her what they had learned. Part of Hatsue bridled at this. She was a product of a different place, and had been encouraged to find things out for herself. It was one of the freedoms that she treasured about her life at Harvard, and one of the things she feared losing on her return to Japan. So she slipped out of her hut and into the forest, drifting quietly through the brush, alive to the possibility that she could succeed where the men could not.
Hatsue had learned to move along the wooded slopes, having been taught with eager glee by the children. She could recognize the worn pathways of wild pigs and avoid them for safer trails. She no longer froze in fear as a snake coiled its way down a nearby tree. She could weave through the trees, the noise of her passing nothing but a part of the general rustling and snapping of the forest.
At first, the mountain forest had been a disorienting place. But it offered a type of privacy she never had in the paper wall culture of Japan and she found that she liked the isolation. The pressure of constantly being on display, of being observed by the villagers was wearing. It never occurred to her that they might feel the same way. But over time, Hatsue had made it a habit to walk alone in the forest as the sunlight waned and the space under the leafy canopy grew darker and the air grew cool. It was her time alone, and something she came to treasure. It was one more odd habit that marked her as different from the people she studied. For them, the coming night awoke the malevolent spirits of the forest. They clung to the safe circle of firelight with a deep and feral appreciation of nature’s peril. Hatsue, whose world was both more sophisticated and less perceptive, was immune to that wisdom.
Now, she moved quietly, eyes roaming across the foliage, listening for the telltale noise of an intruder. She inched slowly toward a spot where a rockfall had carved a scar in the mountainside: it would provide an excellent vantage point.
The small hand grabbed at her and the surprised rush of Hatsue’s breath was smothered in the humid air. One of the village children squatted under a bush, face taut with tension. The boy pulled Hatsue down next to him. She sank to his level and looked at him questioningly. The boy held up a hand in warning.
“Moros,” he whispered, and turned his head to face up the rock slope.
High above, their faces streaked with camouflage paint, small wiry men with automatic weapons were quietly watching the trail that led to the village. Hatsue could feel her heart thudding in her throat as she crouched down in the brush. The child next to her unconsciously moved closer, seeking comfort. With a nightmare inevitability, the men with guns began to pick their way downslope toward the trail to the village. She felt a jet of alarm. Most contact with outsiders like this was accidental. Chance collisions as groups of armed men traversed Higuanon territory. But these men were heading toward the village. She could not imagine what they wanted, but she feared these men and what they would do to her village.
Her village
. Hatsue would have smiled at the thought in any other situation, but now she realized in alarm that the line of armed men was heading toward her hiding place. Her hands were cold as she gripped the child and whispered urgently in his ear.
“Run,” she told him. “Warn the datu.”
The child slipped off into the darkness under the trees. Hatsue held her breath as the child disappeared into the forest. Then she slowly began to move in the opposite direction, hoping to shield herself from view in the underbrush. But she was not as skilled as she imagined. With a shout, the men spotted her. Hatsue sprang up and raced downslope, mouth open in fear.
Her flight had no rational direction. She ran downhill, pulled by gravity. Her ears burned and her shoulder muscles were tense with fear. Would they shoot? Hatsue slapped her way through an obstacle course of branches. Roots and creepers snatched at her feet. She stumbled, but continued on, willing herself not to look back.
It was just as well. The watchers poured after her, cascading downward with the darkness like animals seeking prey.
The urge for order is strong; it fights for dominance in the most unlikely places. You see it in
reigi
, the etiquette of the
dojo
, where precisely scripted courtesies exist side by side with barely restrained fury. So Fort Bragg was both familiar and strange at the same time. It was neat and orderly. All that marching and uniforms and saluting. But underneath, something dangerous lurked. I got the feeling of a tremendous psychic tension, the faint creaking of chains stressed to the breaking point with the effort of keeping something elemental under control.
A uniformed driver had picked me up at the Fayetteville airport late in the afternoon of the evening before. The corporal from the 82
nd
Airborne was lean. His uniform was creased. He had large ears that stuck out from his shaved head like radar dishes. He looked like a twelve year old—an extremely lethal twelve year old with a familiarity with automatic weapons.
The corporal was polite and efficient, but not a very gifted conversationalist. He had a checklist on a gunmetal clipboard with extremely precise instructions about me and it seemed to occupy the greater part of his attention. We pulled in off Rte. 24, had our IDs checked at the base gate, and were logged in. I was ushered into a building identified as the Soldier Support Center and taken upstairs. A succession of bored looking clerks, beefy non-commissioned officers, eyed me skeptically. My escort gave them a sheet of paper, and then the fun began.
This was obviously not your run-of-the mill processing job. They read the corporal’s instructions. The senior man present, a master sergeant with jowls, took the sheet and left to make a phone call. The others conferred and talked about a variety of forms, many of them with cryptic titles comprised of letters and numbers strung together. Critical thinking in today’s armed forces.
The master sergeant came back scowling, but he had an idea what to do, and that seemed to make everyone feel better. Computer keyboards were tapped. Files accessed. Laser printers whirred. I was given a pen with black ink and ordered to sign and initial a flurry of pages by the dour non-com. They raced through the process with a smooth yet self-conscious efficiency, trying to make up for their earlier confusion by now getting me in and out as quickly as possible. I entered a civilian and left a temporary employee of the Department of the Army. I was photographed with a digital camera and issued a shiny new identity card on a lanyard. It was, my escort informed me solemnly, to be worn at all times. The card was still warm from the laminator as I slipped it on.
The boy corporal handed me off to a sergeant who stuck me in a room in the Transient Bachelor Officers Quarters. The corporal gave me some material on the base, instructions from Baker, and my schedule for the coming days (I had to sign for them). He straightened up and almost looked like he was going to salute. Then he got hold of himself, spun around on his polished shoes, and left with barely suppressed relief. I dumped my bag onto the bed and listened to the springs squeak.
There was a beat-up desk facing a window and a stack of binders waiting for me. Homework. The three-ring binders looked like something from high school, but the contents were like nothing I could ever have imagined then. Laid out with the mind-numbing organization and precision I was beginning to associate with military paperwork, was the curriculum for unarmed training in the Special Operations Command.
I shuffled through it in the course of a boring evening, letting my eye scan over the pages but not really registering much. Or so I thought. I slept fitfully and woke while it was still dark. My eyes shot open and, for a moment I couldn’t be sure whether a sound had roused me or whether it was just something in my head. Then I heard the beast.
It was dark out, with that damp coolness you get just before the night begins to slip away. Somewhere out there, I could hear the throaty sound, faint yet fierce, of large numbers of people shouting in unison. I looked at my watch and sighed. Morning with the XVIII Airborne Corps.
I have my own routine. At dawn, my old injuries prod me into remembrance. The muscles are tight and bones moan faintly. Yamashita says it’s a function of approaching middle age: he’s a font of good news. I rolled off the bed and began the sequence of stretches he’d taught me. There’s a sequence to them that he insists on, including an almost yogic series of work with the back and stomach muscles. Afterward, I run.
I shambled outside and, off to the east, the horizon was clearly visible. I had looked at a map of the base and mentally laid out a route for running last night. I got to it.
I don’t enjoy running. But I don’t not enjoy it anymore, either. Yamashita insists on the need for endurance and strength training from his students. And his demands have only increased over the years. “As skill grows,” he admonishes me, “effort diminishes.”
“This is a bad thing?” I ask. But I grin to let him know I’m kidding. He looks at me with that flat expression, but he pulls his chin down so his jowls appear. I don’t know whether he gets my humor completely, but at least I get this reaction from him. It’s taken years.
So that morning I ran, taking the spectacle in. A military base at dawn is bustling with activity. Bodies in large clumps move at varying speeds, tied together with invisible thread and controlled by sung cadence. They wind along the roads, serious-looking blocks of identically dressed young people with shaven heads, moving in unison like a machine. Sergeants confer at doorways, creased and impeccable and looking deeply annoyed. Cars and trucks cruise by, a mobile sampler of camouflage styles ranging from woodland green to desert brown.
I trotted along, untethered and unnoticed. Or so I thought. I was on the last leg of my four miles when a sedan with flashing lights shot past me and pulled across my path. Two very serious young men with sidearms got out.
“Good morning, sir, may I see some identification, please?” one said. Or that’s what I eventually figured out. In the military, everyone seems to speak quickly, with little or no pauses. The usual verbal cues like inflection are missing. So it really sounded more like, “guhmornsuhmayseeIsuhidenticationplease.” He held his hand out and his partner watched me warily, gunhand free.
Their uniforms were different from the civilian world, but I’ve been rousted enough times by the authorities to recognize the general drift of things. I had wisely slipped my ID card over my neck before setting out. Didn’t want to disappoint the corporal with the big ears. For all I knew, he could have dropped a dime on me this morning just to make sure. The two security men eyed the card, then radioed in for directions. Eventually, they bundled me into the back of the car and delivered me to my quarters.
A captain was waiting there for me. He watched the car approach with his hands on his hips and a lopsided grin on his face. He was wearing the new-style camo fatigues that are made up of tiny pixel-like squares of color. He seemed friendly enough.
“Dr. Burke?” he asked, hand extended to shake mine. “I’m Dave Ashby. Training cadre asked me to escort you down to the training site this morning.” Ashby had a big face and a thick neck that made his fatigue hat look small sitting up there on the top of his head. His eyes glittered and he seemed quietly amused.