Fall Down Seven. C. E. Edmonson
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Название: Fall Down Seven
Автор: C. E. Edmonson
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Учебная литература
isbn: 9781456625269
isbn:
Mom bought a newspaper, too—the San Francisco Chronicle. Before Pearl Harbor, Charlie and I had paid no attention to the news. That was for grown-ups. I read the Sunday comic strips to my little brother and that was the end of it. Now, with Dad at sea, we followed the progress of the war as if knowing could somehow change the course of events—which needed changing because every day seemed to bring another Japanese victory. Hong Kong, Guam, Wake Island, Burma, the Dutch East Indies. We’d taken a stand in Singapore only to be brushed aside in a few days.
The headline across the top of the Chronicle’s front page on that day read: JAPS ADVANCE ON CORREGIDOR. A smaller article on the left side of the paper carried a familiar headline: “Japanese Atrocities in Bataan Verified!”
Mom glanced at the Chronicle and then turned it over to me. The Whizz, as usual, scooted across the seat to read over my shoulder. Only in second grade, he had to ask the meaning of every other word, and I sometimes became impatient. Not on that day, however. I wanted to keep my head down, to become so engrossed in the articles that I didn’t notice the four soldiers only a few rows away, or hear their comments about Japanese, or see them open a bottle that could only contain hard liquor and pass it around.
I started with the main article, the one I knew would affect our lives in Connecticut. Corregidor is a small island at the entrance to Manila Bay, on the southern end of the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Manila, the Philippine capital, had already been captured, and the American forces were making a last stand on Corregidor. Talk about a hopeless situation. The American commander, General Douglas MacArthur, had already been evacuated to Australia. But hopeless or not, Corregidor would play a central part in our immediate future.
Our final destination was the home of Ellen Hardy, Dad’s sister. Aunt Ellen didn’t have any children, but she did have a husband. Having graduated from West Point, Colonel Blake Hardy had been serving his country for twenty years. At the time he was in the Philippines, on the island of Luzon, fighting for his life.
Except for official messages transmitted in code, all communication with the American soldiers stationed on Luzon had been terminated a month earlier. Six weeks had passed without Aunt Ellen receiving a letter from her husband.
I knew all this because Mom had summoned me and the Whizz into our living room, which we rarely used, right before we had packed for the trip. She’d seated us on the couch, pulled a chair to within a few feet, sat, and folded her hands over her knees. We were accustomed to this ritual when Mom had something important to say. Our job was to listen attentively—even the Whizz, who couldn’t sit still for more than a few seconds.
“I want you to respect your aunt’s circumstances,” Mom had said after she’d explained the situation. “We must show her respect.”
As the Whizz and I understood Mom’s definition, respect meant keeping the noise down, no running through the house, picking up our clothes, and studying hard in school. This was a song we’d heard before, but then she had added, “We’re to be guests in someone else’s home.”
You couldn’t question Mom, and I didn’t. But I went to sleep that night thinking about the word “guest.” Guests were invited, right? And they could be asked to leave if they overstayed their welcome. Right? Suppose Aunt Ellen didn’t like us? Suppose she kicked us out? Where would we go? Back to Hawaii? We’d been authorized to travel from San Francisco to Connecticut, but there wasn’t a single word in the letter signed by Admiral Nimitz authorizing our return.
As the Whizz slowly read the article on Corregidor, I looked through the window at a landscape of fields that stretched to the horizon. The sky above was as blue as the skies in San Francisco were gray, the weather having cleared as we passed the steep hills east of the city. The fields were still brown this early in the spring, but the planting was underway. I watched a tractor move across a field. As it turned the earth, it threw up a great cloud of dust that hung motionless in the still air. A flock of crows trailed behind, fluttering down in twos and threes to feed on the suddenly exposed insects. This looked like a feast they enjoyed every spring.
The news from Corregidor hadn’t surprised me, simply because it was the same as the news on the previous day and the day before that. The fortifications were being continually bombed from the air and shelled by artillery. Food was in short supply. The garrison would not be—could not be—reinforced. The troops could surrender of course, but the allied soldiers who had surrendered at Bataan, according to the other story in the Chronicle, had either been massacred or were being worked to death as slave laborers. By the Japanese, of course.
The saddest part was that I had no reason to doubt the facts of the story. Japan had invaded China in 1931, a decade before Pearl Harbor, and advanced over time to occupy most of the country. The atrocities their armies heaped on defenseless Chinese citizens had been reported on for years.
The soldiers on the train grew rowdier as the bottle went around for the second time. Their tones sharpened, and the word “Jap” echoed through the narrow car. They laughed a lot too—hard laughter, the laughter of bullies who knew their victims couldn’t fight back.
Across from me, to my great relief, Mom began to straighten as though she’d made a decision—the only decision available. Her head came up, and she leaned toward us.
“These are bad men,” she told us. “You mustn’t listen to them.”
A good idea, but really hard to do because they were determined to disturb us. That was their goal. At one point they began to sing a popular tune, “It’s Taps for the Japs,” at the top of their lungs. A few minutes later, the conductor made his way up the aisle. He looked at the bottle, then from man to man.
“You need to calm down. You’re disturbing the other passengers.”
“The Japanese disturbed us pretty good at Pearl Harbor,” the loudest of the soldiers declared.
“You know where we’re going?” another soldier asked. “We’re headed to Fort Benning in Georgia for special training. Then it’s off to Germany.”
The conductor looked directly at us. An older man, his papery-white skin fell in soft folds along the sides of his neck. He didn’t seem any happier to be in our presence than the soldiers did, as if he’d been somehow soiled by our very existence. Nevertheless, he had a job to do.
“Fellas,” he finally said, “I don’t want no trouble on this train. If I get another complaint, the sheriff’s gonna be waiting at the station when we reach Sacramento.”
The soldiers did calm down a bit after that. Better still, they got off at Sacramento an hour later. I was hoping we’d seen the last of them, but they came back ten minutes later, and they had another bottle with them. Miraculously, they became more somber as they drank. Sooner or later they’d be off to fight, and they knew it.
Two hours later we stopped at a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Most of the passengers had left the train in Sacramento. The rest, including the soldiers, were asleep. I was trying my best to join them, only my eyes wouldn’t stay closed. I knew the soldiers would still be there when I woke up. I knew the next day would be a repeat of this one. Helpless is one of the worst feelings in the world, but that’s exactly how I felt. I couldn’t disguise myself, nor could I become invisible. СКАЧАТЬ