No Surrender Soldier (3 page)

At first he did not believe his beloved country could suffer defeat. Even though the leaflets showed Japan’s divine emperor meeting with General MacArthur, he thought,
it is a trick
.

Over and over he read the words:

Deception and trap, indeed
, Seto had thought at the time.
Ha!
Japan could not lose with its
kamikaze—
divine wind—Buddha’s blessings, and the divine emperor himself ordering the war.

Time dragged on. Shellfire ceased. Bullet sniping silenced. Seto became disheartened; Japan must have lost the war.

Still, he did not turn himself in. He was afraid.

His commanding officer had warned troops repeatedly that the enemy would execute all prisoners of war.

His father had warned Seto, “’Tis better to not come home at all and die a hero than to come home in shame.”

Thinking about it twenty-eight years later, Seto felt renewed shame for having hid on
Omiya Jima,
the emperor’s name for Guam. He felt shame for not having gone honorably by way of the cherry blossoms.

“Har. Har,”
Seto laughed.
“A tailor! Here I sit with not a stitch on. Har! Har! Oh, but, Rat…”
Seto wiggled the tip of his finger through bars to prod Rat. Rat lunged to bite his finger. Seto withdrew it in time.

“I wove cloth from pago bark that would have made Mama-san proud. I learned well as a child watching Mama-san, a weaver. I learned well from Papa-san, a fine tailor. Did you see my clothes I wove and sewed, Rat? Did you see my clothes I wore when I fetched you after sundown?”

Seto only wore his clothes when he sneaked up through the bamboo hatch after dark.
No sense wearing out my fine hand-woven clothes
.

Seto proudly showed Rat his suit of beaten hibiscus bark, as if Mister Rat were a potential customer in Seto’s tailor shop. He had long gotten over how rough the burlap-like fiber rubbed against his skin.

“See? My two pairs of trousers have belt loops and button-down fly. Notice how I have sewn adjustable hooks and buttons on pant legs so I may run swiftly through the jungle. Not that I run much these days, mind you. Yet do you see outside pockets on my shirts? Are not these button holes works of art? And, aiee, real plastic buttons I carved from a flashlight! I’m afraid you only saw me in everyday shorts and shirt when I came to fetch you. If you like, I could dress for dinner, just this once. You like?”

Rat gnawed at steel slats.

Seto sank back on his haunches and folded his clothes neatly. Noticing a rip in the sleeve of his everyday shirt, he removed a brass needle from its bamboo case. He stripped a strand of rope thicker than his hair. By the light of a coconut oil lamp, he threaded a pago strand into the eye of a needle and mended his torn sleeve.

Life had become routine. When Seto first hid in the jungle, he scavenged Japanese and
Amerikan
mess kits, bullets, tin cans, scissors, spoons, a tea kettle—anything metal he could take from dead soldiers, and later an
Amerikan
dump site, to make tools.

After settling, he sewed by day, foraged for food in the evening, and slept at night.

The only thing that changed was what he scrounged for dinner. Some nights it was fish, sometimes shrimp or crab. On less successful hunting trips, Seto brought home frogs and snails.

Once he snared a deer. He gutted it with his butcher knife, then stuffed venison up his chimney in a bamboo basket to smoke slowly so it would last a good while. The chimney sat at the opposite end of Seto’s cave from the hatch in which he emerged above ground. The chimney allowed him to cook.

Another time he trapped a wild boar. By the second day of eating it, Seto felt as if he had vomited his entrails out. That would have been no death of honor, to die in the jungle from eating pig. Seto vowed to the spirits of his dead ancestors not to eat swine again, even though he found a fat pig penned up beside a house built not far from the edge of the jungle.

Seto was grateful for plenty of breadfruit, coconuts, nuts, papayas, and mangoes, in season. If not for the fruit of the trees, he was sure he would have starved. Although, he never developed a liking for breadfruit, so bland when fresh and sour when fermented.

Most of all, having chosen his hiding place by a river saved him. The Talofofo tributary was the water of life to Seto.

Seto clipped with scissors the thread of his last stitch in his mending. Then he snipped his hair.

“You like, Mister Rat? Do I look handsome? Handsome enough for a wife?”
Rat stopped chewing the bars, cocked his head, and scrunched his ears forward. He returned to gnawing at rusted slats.
“Hai, I never marry. My intended is probably someone else’s wife, or dead. I am but an old man. An old, old man beyond my fifty-eight years. Too old to marry. I see myself in the river. I see how hunched my back has grown from stooping in this hovel. No woman would have me.”

Seto pulled his shocks of black hair and chopped it short. He clipped the ends of his scraggly gray mustache and beard. Seto scooped up stray hairs and put them in a coconut shell. He wasted nothing.

He ignored the rumblings of his stomach beneath his protruding ribs. Seto learned early if he ate when he was hungry, then he would never have enough food. He waited for nightfall.

Mended and groomed, Seto dressed, then climbed his ladder of bamboo tied together with rope. He removed a bamboo covering and burrowed like a rat out of his hole in the ground. That first whiff of night air smacked Seto in the face and reminded him that he was alive. He took a deeper breath. If only he could clear the rattle from his chest caused by soot from the underground chamber.

Tonight I shall treat myself to a bath.
Seto brushed off chunks of cut hair stuck to his oily neck and back.

Seto searched deep into the twilight, deep into the mango groves and tangantangan vines, deep into the thicket of reeds and pandanus trees. He listened. He dared not speak, not even to himself, once he stepped beyond his hidden home. Other than familiar mosquitoes buzzing, frogs croaking, and geckos chirping, he heard nothing alarming to send him scurrying back down his hole. He ventured to the river to bathe.

He usually checked shrimp traps first. Tonight he rested in knowing he had rat for dinner.

Besides, he itched.

Seto took off his clothes and laid them at the trunk of a tree, where they blended in. The water was a cool relief from the muggy air. He bathed like a crocodile dragging its belly near the bottom, eyes peering up cautiously, nostrils skimming above water. He rubbed his scaly hands roughly against his skin in place of washcloth and soap. He emerged from the water and dressed. His cave was so damp, drying off was a waste of time.

Seto checked his palm-woven shrimp traps. Nothing. He reached into a sack and pulled out grated coconut to refill the bait pouches that dangled below the traps.

Next he checked his snare.
If only I could catch me a dog. What a delicacy and reminder of home
.
Or, the unthinkable, to toss my snare over one of those well-fed cows in the pasture.
Seto shuddered.
Too dangerous.
Houses too close to my cave.
He reminded himself to stay focused.
About a yard in, just about here… aiee, as I thought, nothing…

A twig snapped. Seto squatted down amongst the roots and ferns. Dead leaves rustled. Seto could see no person or animal so he stared at the ground.

A brown tree snake slithered down the tree his snare was tied to and across the jungle floor. Brown tree snakes were the reason there were no birds for Seto to catch and eat. Seto and snakes competed for rats, too. He often thought it odd he saw no snakes on this island when first he made it his home.

The snake slithered over Seto’s net and advanced toward his leg.
Thwak
. With one swift stroke of his knife Seto chopped the snake in half. Seto took no chances on being poisoned. He didn’t take the snake to his den to eat.

Always the tailor, he noticed two holes in his net.

No wonder I do not catch anything.
He cut down his net, and stuffed it in his sack.

Concerned he was taking too long, and causing too much noise, Seto plucked snails off a tree trunk. He tossed into his sack a few coconuts that had fallen to the ground, and a breadfruit he pulled from a tree.

Like a hunched-over peddler with a knapsack on his back, Seto carried his treasures home. He lifted his bamboo trap door, and lowered himself rung by rung down his ladder. At the bottom he removed his shorts and shirt, then crawled through the tunnel to the slightly enlarged cooking chamber.

“Hai, Mister Rat, see what I brought home for dinner? And you, my friend, shall be the main course.”

Rat had gotten nowhere for all his gnawing at the steel trap. He scurried around with interest at the sound of Seto’s voice again.

Seto rubbed two sticks together to ignite a rope wick in coconut oil on the stove.
“Fire was much easier when I still had a flashlight lens,”
he said more to himself than to Rat. It had been so long ago since he owned the lens that he couldn’t remember when he lost it. All that lingered were memories of anger upon discovering it gone. Some days he wished to trade anger for this numbing fear.

He rubbed from top to bottom, top to bottom until the sticks finally ignited the wick. Content the oil would burn, Seto diced breadfruit to cook with snails in coconut milk.

He unlatched the trap door and pinched Rat behind its head with two fingers. He grabbed its tail with his other hand.

“Sorry, my friend. It is you or me.”

Seto cut off Mister Rat’s head, tail, and feet with a rusty butcher knife. He drained its warm blood into a coconut shell. He sliced its belly and peeled off its furry skin like shucking the shell of a crawfish. Seto gutted Rat’s belly to boil its innards in coconut milk. He fried the paltry meat in a skillet made by cutting his military canteen in half.

Then he sat on his pago-woven
tatami
, clicked his chopsticks whittled from branches, and ate.

“
Mmm. I like rat liver best.
”

Sitting at our kitchen table, I wolfed down an egg and chorizo tortilla and watched Nana scramble eggs with a fork. The air around her was hazy from sausage smoke. How come I never noticed the wild gray hairs in her wavy black hair? I patted down my own bushy hair. Otherwise, Nana didn’t look any different—same round face, same dimple in the left cheek when she smiled, same brown almond eyes.

Tatan must’ve been wrong. That’s my nana he was talking about. It had to have been the craziness in his head saying that bad thing happened to her. It couldn’t have.

Nana caught me looking at her and smiled. Yep, dimple’s still there. She smelled like sausage and plumeria. I shoved the last bit of breakfast in my mouth. Tata had already finished eating, but was still drinking black coffee and reading the newspaper.

“I need you do me a favor, eh?” Nana was wiping out the iron skillet with a paper towel.

I flicked my eyebrows.

“Stay home and keep an eye on Tatan.” Nana set the skillet on the back burner of the gas stove.

“Why do I have to stay home? I didn’t do anyt’ing.” I slid my feet in my zoris, determined to go to Tumon with my parents. I was hoping I’d see Daphne there. She’d told me Friday night after Catechism that her nana was taking her shopping in Agana for school clothes, and then they’d have lunch at the Chamorro Café in Tumon. I was planning to get our lunch that afternoon and maybe run into her.

“Kiko, please.” Nana twisted her wedding ring. It was a wonder after twenty-eight years being married she hadn’t rubbed it smooth. “We been over this already. Officer Perez said Tatan can’t go to Tumon beach no more. We’re lucky that tourist didn’t press charges.”

“I don’t know why he can’t go. Nobody got killed.”

“Kiko! Officer Perez said the man had to go to the hospital for stitches. It’s costing us plenty mullah for the hospital bill.”

“It was only a scratch.”

Tata crumpled his newspaper. “Enough!” he bellowed. “That man could have been seriously hurt.”

I shoved my hands into my jam pockets. “But it’s the last day of vacation.” The last day I’d get a chance to see Daphne alone. “We go to church tomorrow, then back to school Monday.” It was as if by telling me that she was going to the café, Daphne wanted me to come talk to her. I can’t do that at church or school. I get tongue-tied. If I don’t go, she’ll think I don’t like her. She’ll feel like a fool and not have anything to do with me.

“Kiko,” Nana spoke in barely a whisper. “Please. We need you stay here and watch Tatan.” I stared at her rubbing the rose on her ring. Tata had made the ring from a bent spoon he found in the rubble of the Governor’s Palace after it got bombed during World War II. When she worried, Nana rubbed her ring like old women fingered rosaries during novenas. “And try not to argue with him.”

Tata put his hand on my back. He didn’t hug me anymore, so his hand felt warm, yet heavy. “Son, we’re sorry. But we need you to be a man about this.”

I shifted my shoulders away from his hand. That sounded too much like what Sammy had said to me the summer before he left for the air force.
Toughen up. Be a man.
Then Sammy would wrestle me down and tease me about my puny biceps. Well, they weren’t puny any more. But the words sounded strange coming from my tata’s mouth. He usually gave in to me, being the baby in the family.

My parents picked up their metal lunch boxes and left. I stared into space, feeling bummed out about the whole thing, wondering what I could do to salvage the end of Christmas break. It was certain I wouldn’t be seeing Daphne until church.