THIRTY-FOUR

There was a small crowd around the hut where Rooster lay when I got back to Lingoro. I hurried over, fearing the worst, but was intercepted by Tini’s grandmother. She took my hand and diverted me towards the big tree hide and Father Abriol. He looked about the same and the dressings around his stump were weeping some blood. There was still no hint of gangrene, however, and his eyes were a little bit brighter.

“I forgot to tell you,” he said, as I sat down on one of the ammo crates. “When your gunner came back wounded I sent a messenger north and asked if Mohammed al Raqui could come down and tend to him. He arrived by boat two hours ago. Word got around, and that’s why there’s a crowd over there. He’s a famous healer and they want him to tend to them, too.”

“What’s Rooster’s condition?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “he clings to life, but I’m very glad the emir is here. The women said the bullet went straight through, but the emir said they were wrong and that he would have to find it and take it out.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

“He brought two other healers with him, probably apprentices. I thanked him profusely for coming and then got out of his way. What happened in Orotai? The rumors are incredible and spreading like wildfire.”

I told him of what we’d achieved, including the massacre of the hostages and what Magron and his archers did about that. He grimaced, but nodded his reluctant acceptance. “I would expect nothing less,” he said. “So it’s true? All the Japs are dead?”

“Unless there’s a patrol skulking around out here, I’d say yes. Once Tachibana went down, the enlisted troops gave up. Their officers insisted on doing their duty and thus became good Japs. By luck we discovered one final ambush in place.”

He sighed. I knew that he was probably appalled at what had happened, and yet he’d been with these people for ten years. Surely he saw the justice of it. I certainly did.

There were sounds of people approaching outside so I went to open the door. The emir stepped in, stooping to clear the doorway, followed by two others who looked like full-blooded Arabs, not Filipinos. His robes were bloodstained, as were the shirtsleeves of his assistants. He bowed formally to Abriol, who tried to bow back and had to stifle a groan. Then he bowed to me. Surprised, I awkwardly returned the gesture. Then he began to speak to Abriol. I held my breath. When he’d finished Abriol nodded and turned to me.

“Your gunner will heal, God willing,” he began, translating literally. “The emir found the bullet just under the skin of your friend’s back. He removed it and did some other things, something involving needle and thread that I didn’t quite understand. He’s attended to Tomaldo’s hand and will now examine my leg. He was impressed that you two joined our cause and, because of that, he will send us some help to rebuild.”

“That’s good news, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” he said with a wry smile. “Although they will come to make some converts if they can.”

“You did call them ‘the competition’ as I recall,” I said. “I’m going to see Rooster. Please tell him the Americans appreciate his help very much. We are in his debt.”

Abriol translated my message and the old man replied. “He says there is word spreading from Luzon, Samar, and Leyte that the Americans are coming soon to drive out the Japanese. He asks that this time, once that has been accomplished, you go back to America. He insists that you tell your government that.”

“I will indeed tell my government that. Actually, after this war is over, the Americans will want nothing more than to go home. We now understand that the Philippines belongs to the Filipinos.”

The emir seemed pleased with that answer. Father Abriol shot me a knowing look. I wished it was true, but in my heart I knew it probably wasn’t and so did he. But I was getting better at telling people what they wanted to hear and thus preserving that all-important “face.”

Rooster looked a little worse for wear after the emir’s ministrations and the sight of one of the women carrying out an entire basket of blood-soaked cloths wasn’t reassuring. On the other hand he seemed to be sleeping peacefully and breathing regularly and without the liquid-lung sounds I’d heard before. Young Tini was by his bedside, holding his hand. Then I looked again: Rooster was holding Tini’s hand. Oh, my, I thought. I backed out, conscious of the women’s total awareness of what was happening there. Whatever it takes to pull him through, I thought; whatever it takes. Then I went to find Tomaldo and through him, Abriol’s radio if it still existed.

The weather was miserable for the next week as the northeast monsoon began to take hold, with rain, a vigorous, steady wind, thunderstorms, and high seas that made fishing almost impossible. I went into Orotai while waiting to see if they could find Abriol’s radio. The British prisoners of war, who had been dispersed throughout the forest after the big escape, were being brought back into Orotai, where they were housed in the remains of the Japanese compound. The godowns and the Japs’ perimeter wall were gone, but several smaller buildings were being disassembled to make one large one. The townspeople had returned to pick up the pieces after the Japs’ mortar barrage, and there was even a feverish community boat-building operation going on when I arrived.

The POWs were being cared for by women from the town. One had died out in the forest, but the rest were looking much better, which wasn’t saying much. They couldn’t have looked much worse. I was initially worried that if the Japs did dispatch a retribution force to Orotai, gathering them into the town might be a bad idea, but there really was no other alternative. They couldn’t stay hidden in the bush forever and Lingoro village had its own problems with rebuilding, not to mention scarce food. One place was off-limits in the compound: that shoddy corral where the hostages had been executed. There were already crude crucifixes, flowers, and crossed palms adorning the fence that surrounded a large dirt mound. Apparently Magron had ordered all the bodies burned and then buried right there. The Church would have disapproved, but, again, there wasn’t any other alternative. In the evenings family members were allowed to come in, pay their respects, and grieve.

The bad weather eased up the following week and the first of the newly built fishing boats were able to get out to sea. The town’s morale really improved when an interisland cargo sailboat arrived with rice and salted fish, courtesy of the Moros in the north, along with two “missionaries of the one true faith,” who set up shop near the compound. Father Abriol, getting used to bamboo crutches, had returned to his quarters in the church; he stopped to talk with “the competition” every morning. By then I was staying in the erstwhile Japanese O-club as life began to return to Orotai. The menu had been much depleted but at least we did eat once a day. Rooster remained in Lingoro after telling me he thought it was his duty to help Tini and the villagers rebuild. I solemnly agreed that he was probably right about that while trying mightily to keep a straight face.

Magron and his hunter-archers had gone proudly back to their part of the island to a hero’s welcome now that the Jap menace was gone. We never saw the Negritos again; they had simply disappeared, as was their wont. I was going to miss them, especially after that display of primeval defiance in the town square. I think that spectacle had been the final straw for the Jap soldiers.

The radio and its generator arrived in town a week later from wherever it had been hidden, smelling faintly of fish oil. By then Rooster was able to walk into the town with the help of his “nurse,” the redoubtable Tini, so I drafted a message that I hoped would bring someone to Talawan to pick both us and the POWs up. We sent it out in plain English to save time and effort. By then the American Army had landed near Leyte Gulf, and there was word of a general uprising in and around Manila. It had been a long time since we’d reported in, so, as I expected, there was no acknowledgment at first. I had Rooster send it out three times more at different times of the day, in hopes that somebody might hear it, but there was still no reply. Even more frustrating was the fact that the radio would only transmit on that one frequency, so there was no way we could come up on one of the US Navy freqs.

We kept trying for two more days until the radio’s generator suddenly smoked and all its dials dropped back to the zero position. So that was that, we told ourselves, until ten days later a US Navy destroyer showed up outside the harbor at Orotai. They sent a boat into the fishing pier while the ship, guns trained in our direction, remained out of small-arms range in the harbor. A young lieutenant wearing a steel helmet and a gray life jacket over his khakis stood up once the boat tied up. He wanted to know the whereabouts of the two American pilots and some British prisoners of war who were supposed to be on this island.

Rooster and I were standing on the rickety pier, along with Father Abriol, who was sitting in a homemade wheelchair they’d fashioned out of bamboo and bicycle tires. I spoke up and told him who we were. The expression on the lieutenant’s face as he looked the two of us over said we might have a lot of explaining to do. I asked Father Abriol to send someone to the compound to start bringing out the POWs who were most able to walk. Once they began limping out of the compound the lieutenant relaxed and spoke to one of the boat’s enlisted crew, who produced a portable flashing light and began signaling the destroyer. He told us the ship was an APD, which was a destroyer that had been turned into a high-speed transport ship.

Maybe, I thought, as I watched the embarkation begin, just maybe we were finally going home.