Brave Hearts Page 14

  As the sounds and smells of the burning city faded behind him, Jack sprawled on the seat, his hand steady on the tiller. He fished a cigarette and lighter from his jacket pocket. The cigarette tasted sharp and fresh. This was his last pack of Lucky Strikes. As he smoked, his eyes skimmed the dark water. Occasionally, he looked up at the night sky, with its incredibly bright, shimmering stars. The dark and soft night reminded him of the lovely sweep of Catharine’s hair. The first night he ever saw her in London he’d seen her face reflected in the bright sheen of a pillar, and nothing was ever the same again.

  Catharine. Her eyes were the deepest violet, richer and deeper than amethyst, eyes fringed magically by long, soft, dark lashes.

  He’d wanted to know what she was truly like. She was so aloof that night in the River Room, so far from him and his world. Was that what drew him? Perhaps, but it wasn’t what held him now. He knew her now; he knew how she loved and how she cared. He knew the feel of her lips, how her hands touched him, how her dark hair felt against his face. He knew her touch, her body, soft and rounded, straining to him, but he knew so much more. He knew the gentleness of her spirit. He knew the darkness in her heart, the pain and anguish she’d suffered. He knew that she’d lost hope, that she didn’t believe in happiness. More than anything in his life, he wanted to be the man who gave Catharine the faith that life could be good.

  He lit another cigarette, drew deeply on it, and smiled. Love was wonderful, wasn’t it? Here he was, on his own, somewhere in Manila Bay, aiming for Bataan. He raced against the night to make landfall before daylight exposed him to attack from Japanese planes. Yet, he felt a great sense of peace and contentment, and it was all because of Catharine, because of his memory of her, because she loved him and he loved her. All his life, he’d struggled and fought, never really knowing why. He’d battled through loneliness, despair, and discouragement, keeping on in a world filled with cruelty and horror. He’d done it all on his own, no one to look deep into his eyes and smile for no other reason than his existence. None of that was true now. It didn’t matter that Catharine was isolated on a volcanic island he couldn’t reach. It wouldn’t even matter if she were still in London or he were in Chicago, because their love was independent of time or place. It existed so long as they both lived, and it was strong enough to carry them through anything.

  Jack lounged against the seat, steered the little boat to the west, and remembered their happy hours. The contentment stayed with him through the night. About three hours out of Manila, hard, choppy waves slapped into the boat. He shook his head wearily and peered into the darkness. He turned into the wind and headed for the tip of Bataan to avoid the minefields around Corregidor. The first streaks of dawn appeared ahead of him. Directly ahead, looming high against the sky, was the purple peak of Mount Mariveles.

  Bataan lay dead ahead.

  Catharine sat near a gardenia bush on Malinta Hill and watched Manila burn.

  Where was Jack?

  Had he been captured by the Japanese moving up Luzon from the south? Could he possibly have caught up with escaping American and Filipino troops and reached Bataan? Or was he still in Manila among the marooned Americans waiting for the Japanese troops to arrive?

  As she huddled there, her eyes straining to see through the luminous tropical night, she clung to one certainty. Jack was alive. She knew it because her heart would know if Jack were dead.

  She began to smile, a soft smile. He was such an outrageous man. He was wild, crazy, and wonderful. But he was also gentle and vulnerable. He was a patchwork of many conflicting qualities. Knowing him had added a depth and color to her life that she had never imagined possible. He made her realize that there was more to her than she’d ever understood.

  A vivid pulse of light rose in the east. She knew some cataclysmic explosion had rocked Manila. She buried her face in her hands, but she knew he was all right.

  Oh, God, please, let Jack be all right.

  His name was printed in block letters on the chart at the foot of the bunk: DENNIS RALPH WILSON. Catharine squeezed into the narrow space between two rows of bunk beds and looked down at the boy in the bottom bunk. Most of his face was in shadow.

  “Are you Dennis?”

  She could barely make out his features: a thin, pale face, a strand of blond hair drooping down on his forehead. His eyes stared straight ahead and didn’t move when she spoke. She waited a moment, then said briskly, “Are you called Ralph?”

  No answer.

  Catharine bent down. “Could I write a letter home for you?”

  “Leave me alone.” His voice was dull and empty.

  Catharine didn’t want to stay. It was so alien to her to force herself upon anyone. She’d never been officious, never taken it upon herself to decide what was good for others. She valued freedom, but that morning a nurse had talked about Dennis Ralph Wilson at the outlet, the gathering spot where the hospital tunnel opened into the road. “He’s going to lie there and die,” the tired young nurse told Catharine, “and I don’t have time to help him. It breaks my heart. He’s just a kid, and he’s going to lie there and die.” So Catharine agreed to try to befriend him. God knew that Catharine had time, too much time. She crouched beside the boy’s bunk and tried to find the right words to break into his cocoon of despair.

  “Dennis. It is Dennis, isn’t it?”

  He nodded slightly, a nod that said yeah, so what.

  “Dennis.” She repeated his name gently. “That’s such a nice name. I’ll bet you have a girlfriend who’s told you that.”

  The garish blue glow of the neon lights allowed Catharine to see the way his mouth quivered.

  “Do you have a girlfriend, Dennis?”

  His face turned toward her. Light blue eyes looked up at her with enormous pain.

  He said suddenly, violently, “Why didn’t they let me die? Why didn’t they?”

  She had many answers, but Catharine didn’t offer one. Instead, she said simply, “You weren’t supposed to die.”

  His mouth quivered again. “They should’ve let me die.” Tears brimmed in his eyes. He jerked his head, trying to flick the tears away, trying to pretend they weren’t there.

  “You can get well,” Catharine said. “That’s what the nurse says.”

  His mouth twisted. “What for?”

  Catharine felt the hard ache of unshed tears, but she knew she mustn’t cry.

  “Because people love you, Dennis.”

  Those despairing eyes blinked. “Not like this.” His voice was weaker now. He was tiring.

  “That’s not true,” Catharine said steadily. “If you love someone, no matter what happens, you still love them.”

  His eyes looked old in his young, white face. “Sure, lady. Tell me how you’d love a man who didn’t have any arms or legs,” he said sarcastically.

  Catharine struggled to breathe. What would she do, how would she feel if a bomb did this to Jack? How could she bear for him to be hurt like this, to be made helpless? It would be dreadful beyond belief. She would grieve for his pain, his loss, his helplessness, but if he could be alive . . .

  She bent forward and touched Dennis’s cheek. Tears slipped down her face. “I would cry, and I would love him just as I do now.”

  The boy lay very still. Something moved in his light blue eyes. He looked at her intently. “You love somebody?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you wouldn’t care if he was just a body? No arms. No legs. No hands. No feet.”

  “I would care terribly, and I would work hard to help him learn how to walk again with artificial legs and learn how to use artificial arms.” She paused; then she said softly, and there was no mistaking her meaning, “And I would love him every day in every way I could.”

  A touch of color stained Dennis’s cheeks. “You love him that much?”

  “I love him more than anyone or anything in the world. Thinking of him makes me feel that the ugliness and the horror can’t touch me, because deep inside I have som
ething that nothing ever can destroy.”

  Dennis licked his lips. “Do you think . . . do you think Cindy could feel that way about me?”

  He had no hands for Catharine to reach out and hold. Instead, gently, lightly, she put her hand on his thin shoulder. “Of course she could.”

  He began to talk, jerkily, in broken phrases; a girl’s face and charming spirit took shape in Catharine’s mind. But Dennis’s pride and eagerness told her more. Catharine saw beyond Cindy’s charm; she saw vanity, selfishness, and heartbreak for Dennis.

  “You see, she liked me best because we won all the dance contests. Every time. We can . . . we could jitterbug better than anybody in town.” The light died out of his eyes. “She likes to dance better than anything in the world.”

  Once again, Catharine fought back tears.

  “I’ve got some of Cindy’s letters.” He moved his head toward the end of the bed.

  “Would you like for me to read them to you?”

  He nodded shyly.

  Catharine found the pitifully thin pile. The letters were worn and creased from repeated handling. She read them to him, and the vacuous phrases rasped in her mind. Cindy didn’t care about anyone but herself; what would she do or say when she learned about Dennis? It didn’t bear thinking about. When she’d finished, Catharine forced herself to say brightly, “Would you like to write her, Dennis?”

  His head slumped back against the pillow. Slowly, he shook his head. “No. Not today. I’m tired now.”

  Again, Catharine touched his shoulder gently. “You rest now, but I’ll come back and see you again. Is that all right?”

  “Yes. That would be nice.” He closed his eyes and turned his face away.

  Catharine steeled her face until she was out of the ward, but tears burned the back of her eyes and her throat ached. Threading her way through the clutter of desks and supplies, she welcomed the bustling activity at the outlet. As always, groups of convalescent patients clustered around the radio or sat in the wooden chairs ranged on either side of the road that wound sharply down the steep hill. The outlet, which was at the end of the hospital tunnel, opened out about midway down Malinta Hill; the road was a bit wider there. All day long, despite air raids, trucks ground in low gear down the hill.

  Despite the racket of the trucks and the constant smell of diesel oil, Catharine loved the outlet, loved being outside in the sun, away from the dim bluish light in the tunnels.

  The early morning heat pulsed down from the bright, hard orange disk of the sun. Shading her eyes, Catharine gazed out at the North Channel, at the incredibly blue water, a blue so brilliant it made her eyes hurt. Across the channel, the huge peak of Mount Mariveles dominated the end of the Bataan peninsula. The rugged, upthrust land was dense with vegetation.

  Catharine turned and looked back up Malinta Hill. When they’d arrived on Christmas Eve, Corregidor was glistening green, dark and verdant with the luxuriant growth from the rainy season, but now . . . The bombing had started a few days after Christmas. As the weather dried, the bombs ripped and cratered the island. Sharp ravines separated the hills. Now the dusty ground, burned-out hulks of buildings, and shredded trees baked beneath the blazing tropical sun of the dry season; the island shimmered in a haze of heat. Every bomb that crashed into Corregidor threw up swirls of choking dust. The dust permeated everything, sifting down into Malinta Tunnel and all its laterals, pulled down in hot, brown clouds by the machines that pumped air through the tunnel’s depths.

  The sun beamed overhead. Catharine lifted her hand to shade her face. The Japanese bombed at noon. She wondered if they ate their balls of rice in their airplanes or waited to get back to their mess hall. At least they probably had lunch, which was more than anyone on Corregidor could say. Rations had been cut to breakfast and a slim dinner at four.

  Catharine smelled the heavy, unappetizing odor from the steaming kettles. Her stomach knotted—she was so damned hungry. She turned away and walked toward the edge of the road, where a canvas bag of drinking water hung from a low branch of a tree. She picked up a cup and turned the spigot. She drank the faintly warm water very slowly, but her stomach still wanted food. Breakfast at seven was stewed raisins, rice, and a cup of weak coffee. Dinner would be at four in the afternoon. Then there were the long hours to pass until she could sleep. Sometimes she played bridge. Sometimes she helped roll bandages. Sometimes she came to the outlet, sat with her back to the hill, and listened to a soldier play the harmonica and people sing. Someone was always ready to sing. The songs were the same, “Harbor Lights” and “Stardust” and “Deep Purple.” Why were they always songs from a life so far away it seemed impossible that it could still exist? But maybe that’s what the singers liked—to remember when life hadn’t been sitting and waiting to die.

  Catharine lit a cigarette and noted that her hands shook. Hunger again. She moved them slowly through the air as if they were foreign matter. The minute she relaxed, her hands began to tremble again, but at least the cigarette helped dull the hunger.

  Catharine crossed the road again and walked up to a table beneath an awning where State Department wives sat and rolled bandages. Amea Willoughby looked up with a welcoming smile, and Catharine marveled at Amea’s unfailing good humor. She was so small, slightly built with a delicate face. When they’d first met, Catharine had noted Amea’s consistent pleasantness and thought little of it. It was expected of State Department wives, but Amea’s cheerful demeanor never wavered, not even among the dirt, flies, and fear that existed on Corregidor.

  Amea beckoned to Catharine. Over the noise of a nearby radio turned up full volume, Amea called out, “Come help with the bandages.” Then she pointed at the radio, “And listen to our daily ration of buck-you-uppo.”

  Catharine grinned. MacArthur dubbed the island’s local radio the Voice of Freedom, but the broadcasts lacked subtlety. They seized on the very occasional successes of the few remaining PT boats and repeated them in glowing terms ad nauseam.

  As Catharine joined the group, the radio announcer intoned, “Spirits were never higher on Corregidor than after successful survival of yesterday’s raids. Quick responses minimized damages, and the island population continues to look forward to the arrival of reinforcements . . .”

  A young soldier sitting nearby turned to a friend. “Hey, Pat, did you hear that?”

  The State Department wives were suddenly very quiet. Not one of them looked at her neighbor. They all stared at the bandages on the table, because these wives knew the truth. No help was coming. They were here and here they were going to stay until they were killed or captured.

  Jenny Bishop said bitterly, “Snake oil.”

  The woman beside her shot a warning glance.

  Jenny flushed, then said defiantly, “I understand that announcer’s been nominated for a DTC.”

  Everyone laughed, and the laughter helped ease the somber knowledge they shared.

  “That’s right,” Jenny continued. “A Distinguished Tunnel Citation. He hasn’t poked a nose out for three weeks.”

  Amea was too softhearted to be rough on anyone. “Oh, well, he’s just doing his job, and I’d rather listen to him than to Manila.”

  Station KZRH in Manila played soft, seductive music. A woman announcer who spoke English very well asked her listeners, “Don’t you miss your homes? Why are you here so far away from home in a war that doesn’t concern you? Asia is for Asians. If you put down your arms, you can go home again.”

  Home.

  Catharine finished one cigarette, lit another. Every time she heard the word home, she thought of Jack. Yet, neither of them had a home anywhere in the world. Not anymore. But to be with Jack, that was going home.

  She drew deeply on the cigarette; tears burned again behind her eyes. Dear God, she mustn’t cry again. She seemed to want to cry all the time now, about the boy in the hospital, about Jack, about the numbing horror of the hot, dusty, frightening days and nights. Part of it was hunger, part fatigue, and part was conte
nding with the never-ending pocket of fear that festered deep inside her. It was almost noon. The bombers would come at noon. Everyone would dash into the tunnel; then the concussions would rock them, no matter how far or how deep they went. The dust would sift through the tunnel, carrying the smell of blood, unwashed people, stale food, and fear. Worst of all, every racketing, faraway boom meant death or suffering. They would see the mangled bodies of the gun crews after each raid when the wounded and dead were brought into the tunnel.

  “Catharine, let’s go see how Woody and Spencer are doing.” Amea’s voice was light and cheerful.

  Catharine looked at her numbly. Catharine had seen very little of Spencer since they’d arrived on the Rock. He was billeted with the other State Department men in a different lateral with Woody and Peggy. They worked, of course, on the lists of gold.

  Catharine felt laughter rising inside her like the uncontrolled bubbles in a newly opened bottle of champagne. “The king is in his counting house counting out the money,” she said jerkily.

  For the first time in their acquaintance, Catharine felt Amea draw away. “It’s their job,” she said quietly.

  “And so important.” Then Catharine felt a rush of dismay. She didn’t want to offend Amea. She drew strength from Amea’s unwavering good humor, her quiet bravery. “I’m sorry. Please . . .”

  Amea smiled. “It’s all right. None of us are on an even keel these days.”

  “I’d like to go see them,” Catharine said quickly.

  They went single file through the narrow entrance to the outlet, squeezing by the pile of sandbags. They turned sharply to get in, then passed the reserve generator with its huge warning letters in bright red: KEEP OFF—DANGER—2,000 VOLTS.

  As always, the hospital tunnel hummed with activity. Filipino enlisted men swabbed the gritty concrete floors with disinfectant. The thick, cloying smell of bug spray hung in the air, part of the unrelenting and unsuccessful effort to kill bedbugs and ants.

  Outside the men’s sleeping lateral, Spencer and Woody hunched over battered desks. They looked up as Catharine and Amea approached. Woody smiled and waved a welcome. When Spencer looked up, Catharine was shocked at his physical change since their arrival. Red-rimmed eyes looked at her blankly out of a thin, white face.