CHAPTER 33
HE HAD ANOTHER drink and lay down again and this time fell into only a twilight sleep. It occurred to him that he might turn out to be the only survivor of the Y-18, and then he remembered Willis. Where the hell was Willis now, in some jail cell? He still had to try to help Willis, at least talk to him.
“I’ve got to find Willis,” he said.
“Willis?”
“A guy on my ship. They drove him off—”
“You can find him later. Rest now.”
“He went over the hill.” And he quickly told her the story.
“I don’t blame him,” she said.
“The MP’s do. God knows what they’ll do with him.”
He felt weak as he struggled into his clothes and downed another Scotch.
“You shouldn’t go to the MP’s now—”
“I’m all right. Will you drive me?”
Leaving Mary in the truck, he walked stiffly as he entered the shell-pocked office building that was the headquarters of the military police. A master sergeant at a desk just inside the door barked, “Sir?”
“I’m Sylvester G. Grant, commanding officer of the U.S. Army Y-18. I think you’re holding one of my men here.”
“You were notified?”
“Yes, more than a month ago. He’s a Negro, the name is Willis, I can’t remember his first name. The men drove him off the ship, wasn’t his fault …”
“Sir, you better see Major Harkness. First door on your right.”
The major listened patiently to Syl’s story. “I’ll check our records,” he said. “I’ll need the man’s full name and serial number.”
“I don’t have them.”
“Can’t you check your records?”
“My ship has sailed. She went to Okinawa without me. I’ve been in the hospital …”
“I see. Well, I’ll check the records. Willis isn’t too common a name.”
“He’s a Negro.”
“So I understand. Wait here and I’ll check our files.”
The major went into a back room. Syl sat on a hard chair, and damn near fell asleep. He was still weak. Partly from his recent illness, partly from Mary. He wasn’t complaining …
“I’m afraid I don’t have anything on Willis,” the major said when he returned. “Have you checked the navy shore patrol?”
“The notice I got was from you people. We’re an army ship.”
“But the Coast Guard is navy personnel. We could have transferred him, but we should have a record of it. Let me give the navy a call.”
He picked up a telephone and seemed to talk endlessly into it before he put it down. “The navy has no record of anyone named Willis except a white commander. Are you sure you have this thing straight?”
“I got notification. He’d been picked up …”
“Do you remember who signed it?”
“No.”
“How long had this man been AWOL when he was picked up?”
“I don’t remember.”
“More than a month?”
“Less …”
“In that case the charge wouldn’t be too serious. If they couldn’t get in touch with his ship they might have held him a few days and let him go. They probably told him to report back to the Coast Guard.”
“Wouldn’t they have a record of that?”
“Look, things get pretty complicated around here. We had a bad riot about a month ago. The cells get overcrowded. Sometimes they just let the minor offenders go. We should keep records on everyone, but sometimes the papers get lost in the shuffle.”
“Could you call the Coast Guard?”
Syl could have gone to the commander himself, but he was suddenly aware that he was quite drunk.
The major looked at him sharply. “I’ll give it a try,” he said, and picked up the telephone again.
There was another long wait. “The Coast Guard has no record of any enlisted man named Willis after a seaman named Samuel Willis was assigned to your ship in Tacloban.”
“That’s the one …”
“He never reported back there.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Maybe he got in trouble and we transferred him to some stockade and lost his papers. But it’s more likely we just turned him loose and he went over the hill again.”
“So he’s just missing?”
“That’s the way it looks. We’ll probably pick him up again before long. There aren’t many niggers in Manila.”
Syl wasn’t about to correct his usage. He was in no shape to give lectures on race relations … “But he’s missing now,” Syl said dully. “The ship has gone and now Willis is missing and I’m the only one left …”
“I think you better get some rest, lieutenant. Maybe you ought to check into the hospital again.”
Without answering, Syl turned and walked stiffly to the street. Mary leaned across the cab and swung the door open for him as he approached.
“He’s missing,” Syl said as he climbed in. “Everybody’s missing except me, but at least I know Willis is still alive somewhere …”
“I’m sure they all are,” she said.
“I need another drink,” he said. “Let’s go back to your room.”
He woke up the next morning in Mary’s cot with a pounding hangover and his sheets drenched in sweat. Mary was not in the room. He had a flash of panic … he couldn’t remember anything since finding out that Willis was missing.
“Mary?” he called out. “Mary, where are you?”
He heard footsteps running up the stairs. The door opened.
“Are you all right?” she said. “You must be feeling terrible!”
“Did I do anything to make you angry yesterday?”
“No … you just had a bad night.” She put her cool hand on his forehead. “Only the war makes me angry.”
“I should go see the commander. He said to check in every day.”
“And then Baguio?”
“Maybe …”
The commander’s news was no news about the Y-18.
“We can go to Baguio,” Syl said when he rejoined Mary in her dilapidated truck.
“Good! Now we have only one problem.”
“What?” He thought he was going to Baguio to get away from problems.
“Gas.”
“Gas?” He repeated the word with a hollow laugh.
“It is almost four hundred miles, there and back. It is almost impossible for me to get gas and the black market stuff is very expensive.”
“My God, gas does me in again.”
She didn’t immediately understand his sour voice.
“Army gas stations will not put it in a civilian car. Neither will the navy.”
“Maybe I could get a jeep from the motor pool,” he said.
When he got to the motor pool garage he realized he was only a transient officer now and had no right to ask for a jeep for ship’s business. Unless he stretched the truth a little. What the hell …
“I want a jeep with enough gas in jerry cans for about four hundred miles,” he said to the black master sergeant in charge.
“Official business, sir?”
“Yes.”
“What unit?”
“The U.S. Army Y-18.”
As he said that Syl had a picture of the ship lying on the ocean bottom, her tanks blown out. If it were true, this would be the last requisition ever written in her name.
“I’ll have the jerry cans filled,” the sergeant said. “We’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
“Sergeant, how many Negros are there in Manila?”
“Sir?”
“I had a Negro seaman who went over the hill. It wasn’t his fault, really …”
“I see …”
“Is there any special place … I mean, any place he’d be likely to go?”
“I don’t know, sir. I don’t truck with deserters. Not even Negro deserters.”
“All right, I’m sorry … but look, his name is Willis, Samuel Willis. If you ever hear of him, please try to get word that I want to help him. My name is Grant. You’ll see it on the requisition. He could get in touch with me through Coast Guard headquarters.”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant turned and walked toward the gas pumps. Syl suspected the sergeant didn’t believe he was trying to help Willis. Well, who could blame him …?
It was a bright sunny day, too hot, but the wind cooled them as they drove the jeep beyond the outskirts of Manila. Mary directed him to a macadam highway with dirt-filled shell holes. They passed burned-out tanks and trucks which had been tossed on their sides.
“There must have been one hell of a battle here,” he said.
“Many men died, many Americans, many Japanese …”
He wondered if she mourned them both and suspected that she did. Well, who could blame her? Boy, he was really one open-minded wonderful sad ass … His head still ached but his hangover had subsided and he was able to enjoy the beauty of Mary’s face silhouetted against the cobalt sky, her long black hair flying in the wind.
“I love you,” he said, surprising the hell out of himself with the words.
“Don’t say that. The soldiers and the sailors, they all say that just before they go away and never come back.”
“I’d like to come back, or maybe send for you—”
“You have a wife?” She touched his wedding band.
“I don’t think we want to lead the same kind of life.”
“So you will divorce her and send for me?”
“It would take time—”
Her laugh was hard. “You are talking to the wrong girl.”
“I thought you liked my dream about a boat—”
“I like dreams, but not when they turn into lies. Do you know that opera, ‘Madame Butterfly’?”
“Yes.”
“My grandmother was a Madame Butterfly for a Spaniard. My mother was a Madame Butterfly for an American. I was almost a Madame Butterfly for a Japanese. I want no more Madame Butterfly. You understand me?”
“I’m sorry …”
“Everybody’s sorry. I will not be sorry anymore. I have a good life here. I have a restaurant and family. If you fall in love with me, I will disappoint you. You will be my Mister Butterfly.”
“Then I’ll sing some damn sad songs,” he said with a smile.
“Syl, you are a nice man and I need your help, but no more butterflies. Okay?”
“Okay. I guess. If you insist … What kind of help do you want from me?”
“I hope you will help my aunt the way Paul helped me.”
And then she proceeded to tell him her story. Her large family, which contained few adult men, had for three generations run two small restaurants, the one in Manila and another in Baguio that they were now going to. When the Japs had come they had continued to operate them because they were afraid they’d be shot or starve to death if they didn’t, and also because they considered themselves Filipinos, not Americans, and had learned to survive by bowing before each of the three occupying forces over her grandmother’s lifetime. When the Americans came back, the patriots and “Huks” who had fought as guerrillas in the hills went looking for those who had collaborated with the Japs. They wrecked the restaurants that had served the enemy. That could not be helped, but the Americans were now denying permits to those restaurants which had been licensed by the Japs, and without permission to reopen her establishment her aunt and her relatives would starve.
“Paul got me my license,” she said. “He saw a colonel who wouldn’t even talk to me.”
“Do you know what he said to him?”
“He said I was too young to be held responsible. They could blame it all on my mother and grandmother. They are both dead.”
“But what can I say about your aunt?”
“I will take over her restaurant, put it in my name, but there will be much red tape. American officers can cut through it much faster than we can.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “But I have no influence.”
“That is also what Paul said. All American officers have influence.” She looked quickly at him. “Don’t misunderstand me. I also like you,” she said. “I am not a common girl, the way that big officer of yours thought.”
“Mr. Buller tended to be a little cynical,” he said, again picturing Buller’s big face burned to the skull. “In some ways, though, he was a good man.” He was already falling into the past tense. And eulogizing the dead, for God’s sake. Snap out of it …
“I could not be with you if I did not like you,” Mary said. “We can have a very good time without being butterflies.”
“Good. They say that butterflies live only a day.”
“That’s not true. My grandmother lived for seventy-nine years and my mother for fifty-one. She would be alive today if it wasn’t for the bombs.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Everybody is sorry, Syl.”
He wanted to ask her if she still loved the Japanese who had almost turned her into a butterfly. Had he been killed, was he still fighting in the hills, had he committed hara-kiri when the Americans arrived, or had he caught a plane back to Tokyo? Did she still hope to see him again? Glancing at her quiet face he knew such questions would only hurt her. And ruin what they had together.
“Life can still be good, Syl, if we just try to live it as it comes. It is not a time for big plans. I will give you a butterfly’s love, just one day. I hope it will be enough.”
They stopped by the side of the road and he leaned over and kissed her. For a moment she clung to him while the sun beat down hot on their heads, sending the sweat trickling down their necks.
“Let’s go on to Baguio,” she said. “It will be much cooler there.”