Sabina Murray - The Caprices

Jim held those last days in Bataan and the Death March in flashes, like postcards of places he’d gone on vacation. He saw small events and vistas and had to write himself in because he knew he had been there. Jim remembered the sky and earth being one in the darkness. Then a fissure of red split the sky into two purple halves and the tops of the palms flashed green, a whistle and a crash, and then vacuous silence. This was surrender. The Japanese had won. He was now a POW. There was a Jap barking orders and Jim moved with the other men. They were moving north. Everyone was walking. Ten thousand Americans and sixty thousand Filipinos, walking. Those who weren’t walking were dead. Jim stumbled along, keeping his eyes focused just ahead. There was a smell of shit. There was something dripping down his legs. The heat was intense, but this foul dripping was cold. He wondered if it had come out of him. He was only eighteen and thought that he was fresh, new. His mother had called his enlistment “a waste of sweet youth.” She had been slicing apples for a pie and in his mind his sweet youth had become one with the smell of apples. He kept his mother’s face before him as he walked. He remembered a Filipino throwing small green parcels into the path of the marching men. He could still see the GI next to him unwrapping the banana leaves and eating the rice. He could still see the Filipino man pleading for his life, the pistol shoved under his chin, his head exploding like a coconut hitting the pavement. Walking. Then the loss of a horizontal world. He must have fallen down. Vertical, everything was vertical, and he was surrounded by many pairs of boots. Then nothing.

He had been left for dead.

The moon shone a cold blue light and Jim could see a body lying in the road. A Filipino scout in bare feet but still uniformed. Jim could not see his face because the scout was lying on his side with his back to Jim. The scout was rocking back and forth. Jim wondered why a scout would do that, rock like a cradle, lie in the road. But wasn’t Jim lying in the road?

“Hey,” Jim called to the scout. “Where is everyone?”

The rocking stopped and from the far side of the scout’s body, a startled dog raised its thin, black head. In its mouth was — string? No. Intestines. In the dog’s mouth was the body of the scout, which was unraveling like a knit scarf. The branches rattled along the side of the road. Somewhere in the thick undergrowth were other black dogs with sharp heads perfect for digging around in the stomachs of fallen men. Jim was too weak to move. He watched the bushes. His heart beat against his ribs. Two figures emerged. Men. Two young men. Short and thin. Filipino. They came to Jim and squatted by him. One man reached into the pocket of Jim’s pants. There was a startled gasp. He whispered something to his companion. Then, a cool hand that smelled of tobacco on Jim’s shoulder. The face came close to his ear and whispered, “Boss, we take care of you now. Don’t stop living, because I get mad if I have to carry more dead.”

The Filipino men carried him to a house in a blanket for a stretcher, complaining all the way. Jim was over six feet tall.

“Man, you nothing but bones,” said one of the Filipinos. The other one rattled some rapid Tagalog back, and the two men laughed. Jim was surprised by the laughing. “He says you all bones, but you have the biggest bones he ever see. And they’re damn heavy.”

The men carrying him were small. He was startled at their strength. He swung in the blanket and felt himself being rocked to sleep, like a baby.

Then he remembered.

Here was where he had heard that pervasive sound that echoed the drip of the icicle.

Jim had thought he was awake but he was asleep. Almost dead. And he heard nothing but that sound over and over. A drip that was not a real drip, but somehow muted. That sound was in his dreams playing softly from outside, while Jim — a child — watched his mother’s marbled calves as she kneaded the bread. He sat on the floor. There was a draft and Jim coughed. His mother turned her great Flemish head to him. She was worried. Is this how Paul died? First a cough and then nothing? What was that rhythmic dripping sound?

And when he awoke it was April 1942. Jim was in the Philippines somewhere on the outskirts of San Fernando. A girl was standing across the room, a dark-skinned girl in a faded gingham shift. She was wearing straw slippers and had a weight of black hair that hung in a rope down her back. Jim was lying on a straw mat. The girl did not know that he was awake. She kept gazing out the window. She was eating dried watermelon seeds, cracking them in her teeth and spitting out the shells. When they hit the wooden bowl on the windowsill, they made a soft plip like water on paper. Jim had been listening to that sound in his sleep. He had never seen anyone eating watermelon seeds before. He didn’t know what they were.

He asked, “What are you eating?”

She was surprised to see him awake. She stepped back, then smiled nervously. She looked around, for a family member Jim supposed, and then she said, “Butong pakwan.”

Jim shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know any Tagalog.

The girl inhaled, nodded, trying to sort her words. She held out a handful of seeds to him. “Bones,” she said.

Jim hesitated.

“Bones of the watermelon,” she said.

He fell asleep.

When he came to, there was the girl, crunching watermelon bones, dropping her shells into the bowl. Jim was on the floor on a woven mat. The house had high ceilings. The sliding window panes were made of little squares of seashell. An old lady hustled in on bowed legs. She wiped her hands quickly on her dress and crouched over Jim. She sniffed him. The young man looked over at her and she nodded.

“Boss, she gonna make you something that taste like shit, but then you can eat. Make you better. Then I got some good news and I got some bad news.”

But Jim was too tired for any news. In his sleep he heard the crunch of seeds and the girl’s voice calling what sounded like “golly bear” over his head. Sometimes he cracked his eyes open. She poured the bitter tea into his mouth. In response to some yelling from the kitchen, she would say it again—“golly bear” and something else that he could not remember. He saw the girl poised over him. She had broad cheekbones and large, sad eyes. He would open his eyes and find her sitting there, keeping vigil.

“Sleep,” she said. “Sleep now.” And sometimes she picked up his hand that made hers seem like a child’s in comparison.

In these hours of sleep, there was a time he was carried by the same two men who had rescued him in a blanket down the stairs of the house. They put him on a couch in the corner of the living room and covered him with thin cushions. The young man was talking to a group of children, girls and boys, skinny with big teeth. They were giggling and staring at him, but the adults seemed grave and frightened.

The young man put his head close to Jim’s face. “Be quiet,” he whispered. “Japs in town tonight. The children are going to sit on you. Be patient and please don’t shit.” And then it all went dark and Jim felt safe in the dusty air, beneath an old rug and some empty sacks. He felt the narrow rumps of the children weighted across his body and was happy, as if he might cry. Later he heard the old woman talking to the Japanese. He couldn’t understand anything, but her tone was cavalier and she had a few Japanese words. The children wriggled along his spine.

The next morning, Jim was back upstairs. For the first time he found the young man’s face familiar.

“Do I know you?”

The young man was smoking a thin cigarette. He nodded a couple of times. “Bataan,” he said.