Harry Turtledove: End of the Beginning

“Would you rather I slapped you silly?” Fletch inquired.

His sarcasm rolled right off her, because she nodded. “You bet I would,” she answered. “If you did, I’d know where I stood-right where I always stood. It would be over. But this ?” She stared at him again, blinking rapidly; her eye-lashes were wet. “Have you grown up? Did whatever the Japs did to you finally make you grow up?”

“I don’t know,” he said heavily. “All I know is, I didn’t die, and too many people did. No, I know one other thing-I never stopped loving you, for whatever you think that’s worth. I couldn’t do anything about it for weeks and months at a time, but I never stopped. Take it for what you think it’s worth.” He reached into his pocket. “I’d give you a drink if I had one, but all I’ve got are Luckies. Will a cigarette do?”

“Sweet Jesus, yes!” Jane exclaimed. “I’m getting the habit back, and I love it. There’ve been times when I thought about screwing a soldier for a pack. There really have. That’s the other side of the coin. After so many, what’s one more, especially when he’s on our side? After you do… what I had to do, it doesn’t mean what it used to.”

“No, I don’t suppose it would,” Fletch said. “Well, I’m not asking. Leave me a couple and keep the rest of the pack. I can get more.” When she took a Lucky between two fingers, he flipped a Zippo he’d got from a pharmacist’s mate and lit it for her. He fired one up for himself, too. He was also getting used to them again. The nicotine buzz hit harder than he remembered from the days before the war.

Jane’s cheeks hollowed as she sucked in smoke. “That’s so good,” she said, and then, cocking her head to one side, “What the dickens am I gonna do with you, Fletch?”

“It’s your call, honey,” he answered with a shrug that he hoped hid his own dreams. “I never wanted things to end. If you do… I guess I can’t stop you. Think about it, though. Don’t make up your mind right away. That’s all I ask. We’ve both been through-too much. There’s no rush. If you decide it’s over, it’s over. If you don’t, I’ll be here-till I get well enough to go back on active duty, anyhow.”

“That’s fair,” Jane said, her voice troubled. “That’s more than fair, I guess.”

“Okay, let’s leave it there, then.” Fletch looked around for an ashtray. Jane was doing the same thing. She went back to the kitchen and came out with a saucer. They both knocked off ash and then, before long, stubbed out their cigarettes. He climbed to his feet. “I better go. I’m glad you came through… however it happened.”

“Same to you.” Looking like a soldier advancing into machine-gun fire, she stepped forward and put her arms around him. He held her, not too tight. She put her chin up.

“You sure?” he asked. Jane nodded. He kissed her, not too hard. Even with a mild kiss like that, he rose-he leaped-to the occasion. He was starting to feel well enough to know how long he’d gone without. He didn’t try to do anything about it. Letting go of his not-quite-ex was hard. Holding on to her now would have been much worse. He clicked his tongue between his teeth and said, “Take care of yourself, kiddo.”

“Yeah, you, too,” Jane answered. “I’ll see you.”

“Uh-huh.” Fletch left the apartment, left the apartment building, and walked back to the jeep parked on Kamehameha Highway. “Take me back to the beach,” he told the driver.

Away went the Big Little Book. “Yes, sir,” the soldier said, and fired up the engine.

JUSTICE OF A SORT HAD COME TO WAHIAWA. It was a rough justice, but the times it was trying to deal with had been rough, too. Jane Armitage knew that even better than most of her neighbors. Like them, she scowled at Smiling Sammy Little, who stood before his fellow townsfolk and tried to say he hadn’t collaborated with the Japanese.

Smiling Sammy wasn’t smiling now. The used-car dealer had on a loud checked jacket that he might have worn on his lot back in the days when Oahu had autos that ran and gas to run them. “I never hurt anybody,” he insisted. “I never squealed on anybody. I never got anything special from the Japs, so help me God!”

A woman standing near Jane aimed a forefinger at him. “Look at you, you lying son of a bitch! That coat fits you!”

People muttered. It was a telling, maybe a deadly, point. Most people’s clothes hung on them like tents, even after they’d been eating U.S. military rations for a while. The woman accusing Smiling Sammy had arms and legs like sticks. She was far from the only one, too. Sammy Little wasn’t so chunky as he had been when he was selling cars, but he was a long way from emaciated. He’d gone through the occupation on more than rice and turnips and weeds.

“Where’d you get your chow, Sammy?” somebody called. Somebody else added, “Who’d you sell down the river for your belly?”

“I never did!” Little said. “I–I had a stash of canned goods the Japs never found. Yeah, that’s it!”

The chorus of, “Liar!” that rang out had a frightening baying quality to it. Hounds might have bayed like that after treeing a raccoon, especially if they were hungry. Another chorus began: “The gauntlet! The gauntlet!”

Sammy Little licked his lips. The color drained out of his face. “No,” he whispered. “I didn’t do anything.

I don’t deserve it.”

“We can hand you back to the Army,” said the woman who’d pointed at him. “They’ll give you a blindfold and a cigarette, or else they’ll give you twenty years for sucking up to the Japs. This way, it’s all over at once, and you’ll probably live.”

Jane didn’t think anybody’d died running the gauntlet in Wahiawa, not yet. Yosh Nakayama went through almost unscathed; only a few people had wanted to take a shot at him. Most figured he’d done the best he could in an impossible situation. Other men and women, though, got badly beaten. They too probably would have faced worse from the U.S. military.

Two lines formed, from Smiling Sammy Little on one end to getting it over with on the other. The used-car salesman licked his lips one more time, then lowered his head and ran like hell between the lines. People punched him and kicked at him as he dashed by. He’d got about a third of the way before somebody tripped him. He went down with a moan. After than, a lot more of the punches and kicks landed. Jane kicked him in the ribs as he crawled past her. But he made it to the far end. He was bloodied and battered, but he was alive.

Jane kicked him only once. She despised him, but on general principles. He hadn’t done anything to her personally. When two haole men led out a small, kind-looking Chinese woman, though… “Here’s Annabelle Chung,” one of them said. Something made a crunching noise near Jane. She realized she was grinding her teeth.

“She ran the Japs’ ‘comfort house’ for them,” the other man said. “She took their money. She brought them to the women. She made sure nobody got away, too.”

“They made me do it!” Annabelle Chung said shrilly. “They said they’d kill me if I didn’t!”

That might even have been true. Jane didn’t know one way or the other. She didn’t care, either. “So what?” she shouted. “So what, God damn you! You enjoyed seeing us in hell in there. You enjoyed it. How would you have liked it if the Japs did a quarter of what they did to us to you? I wish they would have.”

Other women forced into prostitution screamed at Annabelle Chung, too. She started to cry. One of Jane’s fellow sufferers said, “Yeah, look at those tears. What did you think we did every night after the Japs finally got through with us? I spent all that time wishing I was dead. And I spent a lot of it wishing you were dead, too.”