Dust Devil (51 page)

She took the precious water she had boiled to desalt it and another patch from her trouser bottoms and bathed his forehead. He shook with the chills. There was no blanket, and she could only lie next to him, holding him close and cursing
— him, Christina, Greg, the Japs, and everyone she could think of.

As soon as dawn came Deborah set out from the hut, leaving Chase in a restless, drenched-sweat sleep. She recalled that the bark of certain trees, particularly those with fragrant flowers like lilac blossoms, were used to make quinine. It was worth a try, she thought. She could not let Chase suffer even though she despised the bastard.

So many of the trees had fragrant flowers, but she settled on one old tree with a wrinkled bark. As she peeled away a section with the bolo, she heard distant voices — speaking in Japanese. They had come ashore during the night!

As quickly as she could run with the entrapping undergrowth, she returned to the hut. Donald hissed a welcome, but she ran past him without stopping to pat him. Chase was awake but looked much worse. Beneath the flush of the fever his usually swarthy skin was a pasty white. "We’ve visitors! The Japanese!”

He fell back on the mat. "Shit!” He opened his eyes and fixed her with a cold glare. "Get out! Now!”

She
planted her hands on her hips. "No. I’m not leaving without you.”

"I’m coming,”
He sighed. "But I’ll hold you up. And there’s things that need to be done here first.”

"Then I’ll do them,” she said stubbornly. "But before that I’m hiding you. Let’s go!”

"Get out of here, you dumb slut!” he roared.

She
did not flinch. "I’m not leaving unless you do. I don’t give a damn about your hide, Chase Strawhand, but I need you if I am to survive in this hellhole. So the Japanese might as well take me now.”

He
cursed her with every name he could think of as she half-dragged, half-pulled him down the steps and out of the clearing into the tangled web of leaves and vines. Leaving him in the concealment of a bamboo thicket that bordered on the channel of a mangrove swamp, she hurried back to the hut and collected everything that pointed to recent human habitation — the bolo, fresh fruit, sacks of rice and tea leaves, clothing. Panting, she made several trips. On her last trip she scooped up dirt and threw it in a fine spray over the floor.

In the clearing she used brush to erase the footprints. She took one last look at the place. She hoped it looked as if it had been in disuse. Her teeth tugged at her bottom lip. It had been a place, a space out of time, that she would remember until she was a very old woman who knew all of life’s secrets.

She turned to leave, and Donald, quacking, came from beneath the hut to follow her. "Oh, you silly duck!” she cried, gulping back the knot in her throat. She stooped and held it in her arms. "I can’t take you, you’ll give us away.” She buried her head against its soft feathers. "Did I tell you what delicious eggs you make, Donald?”

Relinquishing the fat duck, she began to run toward the spot she had hidden Chase. Creeping vines and sharp branches tangled about her, scratching her face and arms, and she welcomed the pain. It took her mind off Donald, and the dinner he was going to make for some Japanese soldier. Roasted duck. She thought she would throw up. That would be something she would never eat again
. . . if she ever had the chance to eat again. From behind her came the muffled crashing of leaves and grass underfoot. The patrol was making its rounds back toward the beach.

"Chase?
” she whispered.  “Chase!” She recognized the alcove beneath the bamboo thicket and heard his groaning. She pushed away the overhanging vines and knelt beside him. He was burning up with fever and delirious again. "Oh, Chase,” she despaired. "Not now. Not now.”

From the direction of the clearing she heard Donald’s sudden indignant squawk followed by laughing shouts. "Oh, God, no!” she whimpered.

The noise increased in volume, and Deborah knew the soldiers were coming toward the hideout. And Chase was still groaning, talking about a march now. She knelt beside him and covered his mouth with hers. She could taste the saltiness and the heat.

Her brain mocked her body. There they were, facing possible discovery and death, and already her insides were quivering with the excitement that only Chase could kindle in her.

At last Deborah raised her head, shaken and spent by the passion, a passion that Chase’s lips did not echo. Apparently the soldiers had passed by unaware for in the distance now she could hear their shouts and laughter. Still, she stayed with Chase in the cave of leaves, not daring to venture out.

With a stone she ground parts of the bark she had chipped from the tree and mixed the powder with a little of the
sake
in the bottle’s cap. The mixture seemed to quiet Chase, and toward evening she noticed that the fever was abating. He slept the entire night, though she did not, for fear of the soldiers’ return.

With daylight she left Chase and returned to the clearing. From behind the trunk of a large mahogany tree she watched the hut, listening, waiting. When she thought it was safe, she moved into the clearing.

Suddenly a loud noise disturbed the trees and leaves behind her. Deborah spun around. Her heart hammered against her rib cage. She saw nothing. Then the leaves rustled again, and Donald waddled out of the undergrowth. "Donald!” She gathered up the quacking duck. "You weren’t dinner for them!”

By the time she returned to the hideout with the news that all was safe, Chase was sitting up, drinking the sake. "That does it!” he said. He looked at her flushed face, her heaving breasts. "We’re getting out of here! If we have to, we’ll live with the Manobos.”

She raised a brow. "What about Herrera?”

Furrows ridged Chase’s brow. Weakly he rose to his feet. "We’ll wait for his next visit. Then we move out.” Reluctantly he accepted the support of
her shoulder.  Between his touch and her fear of the Japanese, she didn’t know which was harder for her to endure without giving way to silly woman-weakness.

* * * * *

Those next few days were agony for Chase. Deborah’s nearness was as bad as the malaria. She had only to bend over, exposing the shadow of her cleavage, and he would break out in a sweat. The fresh, delicate scent of her filled the room, as overpowering as the jungle flowers. It was worse now that he had had her and knew of the passionate responsive woman inside her.

She knelt to light the kerosene tin, and
he began to shake. One more second and he would take her like a tom panther stalks and mounts an unwilling feline.

Fortunately
she rose, stretching and holding her arms up, hip thrust to one side. "Next time Herrera comes, let’s see if he can’t get us a wireless radio,” she said with a yawn.

Diligently Chase turned his attention to the bolo he was sharpening. Sleeping was going to be hell.

But the next time Herrera showed his helmeted face was to be the last. It was shortly before dawn, and Chase had come awake instantly. He listened and though he heard nothing, he knew something was outside. When Donald began to screech like a siren, Deborah jerked upright. Chase covered her mouth with his hand. They sat in the darkness, straining to hear, tense.

From below came, "Where are you? We go. Now. Time to go. Damn fucking duck! Hey, where are you?”

Chase began to laugh so hard his lungs seemed on the verge of collapsing. Tears of laughter streamed down Deborah’s cheeks. They staggered to the veranda. Below Herrera was kicking at the duck, which flapped its wings viciously at the intruder. "Come,” Herrera called up to them. "Hurry. We leave. No come back.”

* * * * *

When Deborah learned that an American submarine was lying offshore in the high tide, waiting to take them on, she had a sudden moment of panic. Could she face civilization again, the pressures, and the questions . . . and giving up Chase, although she knew he had never really been hers?

But she had been able to be with him, to reach out and touch him, to share those magical and miserable moments of isolation. When they left Mindanao, her relationship with Chase would not be the same as when they had come to the island. He had come as her brother and would leave as her lover.

She looked at him to find his deep black eyes regarding her. Was he feeling the same . . . or was he anxious to return to battle with the Anglo, to battle for Christina Raffin? "Let’s go, Deborah,” he said gently. "We’ve nothing to take with us.”

"Wait,” she said and pulled away. She stooped beneath the hut where Donald had retreated. "Can we take Donald with us,
Herrera?” she asked, kneeling near the nesting duck.

"Him need to lay eggs for others that come, missy.”

"Of course,” she said. Until the war was over there would be other refugees that Filipino guerrillas would hide there. She gave Donald one last affectionate pat and rose. "I’m ready.”

Herrera’s motorboat was beached not too far from where they first came ashore nearly three months before.
She looked out, seeing nothing on the sea but the telltale light of a pink dawn about the horizon. "We hurry. We hurry.” Herrera called above the slap of the waves on the beach. "If miss this trip, must wait until tomorrow night.”

The three of them pushed the motorboat out into the water until the ocean bottom began its gentle slope with the coral reefs. Chase and Herrera held the boat steady while
she flip-flopped over its edge. After the other two climbed aboard, Herrera started up the noisy engine.

Slowly, slowly, as they left the island behind them, the submarine, the U.S.S. Narwahl, looking like the Loch Ness Monster, began to surface from the Mindanao Deep
— the greatest depth of water known to man. Only the periscope, antenna, and air induction pipe showed above the water. Deborah caught her breath, and saw that Chase was feeling the same emotion —something akin to patriotism as they stared at the symbol of their country’s might.

The motorboat rocked violently as it came alongside the submarine. The bridge’s hatch opened, and Commander Frank R. Latta emerged. Chase and Deborah blinked their eyes like owls as they looked at the red light of the sub’s electric bulb. They had come back to civilization.

CHAPTER
53

For Chase it was like the first year he had been taken from the reservation and been forced to learn a new language and new ideas. Now he was hearing words that had not been in the English language when he had left the States— words like carhop, amphibious invasion, and gremlins. There were new songs — "Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree” — and "You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To”— and new movie idols — Lauren Bacall and a young singer, Frank Sinatra.

It would have been easier, he thought, if he and Deborah had been able to discuss this tidal wave of new information and compare their ideas, but they had been separated to different areas of the submarine.

Chase reported to Commander Latta, who, after congratulating him on his escape, ordered a complete medical examination from the sub’s doctor. "If all’s in order with you, son, the sub’s galley is open to you night and day. Order whatever you want.”

At the sub’s hospital the doctor pronounced Chase in remarkable physical condition. Except for the malaria and three different kinds of intestinal parasite
s, it appeared he had suffered little deterioration.

"And what of the young woman, sir?” Chase asked. "Deborah
DeBaca — how is she?”

"Miss DeBaca survived the ordeal admirably. I imagine it’s been more of an emotional and mental shock, if anything.”

Chase thought about requesting to speak with her, but then what would he say? Obviously she hated him.

For twenty-two days the Narwahl zigzagged a course for Australia, crossing the equator several times in its effort to elude the enemy. And when it finally did put into port at Darwin, Chase found that American press, along with half the press representatives of the Allied countries, were there to greet them. The two of them were heroes, especially Chase, who had survived the infamous Death March and escaped to tell about it.

He was bored by the attention showered on him. Since the questions were, for the most part, repetitious, he succeeded in concealing the fact he and Deborah were together when they were rescued. What Deborah related, he did not know, for she was interviewed in a separate quarter and at another time. With only one reporter did he relate some of the true horror of the Death March — a famed fellow New Mexican, the skinny, gray-haired Ernie Pyle, who seemed to have an empathy for the common soldier.

After the Darwin stopover Chase was separated from Deborah, each of them being returned to the States by different routes. For Chase it was the same at each stop
— Honolulu, San Francisco, where the starlet Linda Darnell graciously bestowed a chaste kiss on his lips for the photographers, and all the layovers along the Southern Pacific and Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroads — the crowd of reporters, the exploding flash of the photographers’ cameras, the microphones pressed to his face.

At Santa Fe’s depot Chase stood beneath the bright, white July sun and looked out over the horde of photographers and reporters, anxious for a story on one of New Mexico’s sons. Cold ripples of self-doubt began to lap around his feet. What was he doing there? He no more belonged in a civilized place than his
Dine’e
ancestors had. At that moment he wanted only to hightail it to the emptiness of the hills.