In the Shadows of the Sun by Alexander Parsons

Author:Alexander Parsons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780385515894
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

[ 2 ]

Jack listened, the remnants of a dream fading like the image of a light. The air was still, a heavy cast to the dark. Rats rustled in the rafters. He reached out and felt the familiar contours of his mess kit and canteen, each cool and damp to the touch. His bag, a trouser leg sewn shut at one end, served as his pillow; with a slight roll of his head he knew it was untouched, and with this he thought of what was to come, of his escape. His knees ached where the joints had pressed against each other in sleep.

He rose from the floor and slowly walked between the rows of the sleeping, the floor planks flexing spongily. He stood on the veranda. Clouds blacked the stars. The wet rumble of breaking waves came to him through the mist. He stared toward the coconut palms grouped in the square's center. His stomach felt like an empty balloon twisted tight to his spine.

Though he could not see them, four men were tied to the palms. He had watched the day before as they were beaten, and remembered his anger upon hearing that they'd stolen food. It had meant that the camp would go without for the day.

Lieutenant Sato had forced the prisoners to stand for hours in the sun after tenko. The mist burned off, and mosquitoes hazed the air. If the insects bothered Sato he gave no sign. He had a squared mustache, and his face was sharply planed and gleamed like a varnished teak mask. He drank tea from a wooden cup and studied them. Then he returned to his quarters. The cicadas' whine pulsed through the air. Three men stood tied to the closest coconut palms by ropes cinched tightly just beneath their ribs. Their hands were bound behind their backs, and their knobbed shoulders showed prominently. One was tattooed over his left breast. Jack could not make out the design—it was rectangular, perhaps a block of text. The palm fronds moved very slightly, and their serrated shadows were sharply edged where they moved over the pale ground and the bound men. Beyond the palms the square extended to a fenced cliff that dropped fifty feet to the coral beach of Puerto Princesa Bay, the precipice's edge crosshatched with barbed wire.

Eventually Sato returned. He explained that they were guests of the Emperor and that it was by his divine grace that they still lived. And yet these men—he pointed to the trio—these men had stolen from their host. They had brought dishonor on all Americans by stealing and by refusing to admit to this. He said that it should fall to the American officers to discipline their men, for the dishonor was equally theirs and it was their duty to right it. He asked for an officer to step forward. Then he strode to those positioned at the head of the ranks. “Do you not have authority over your men?”

He held a bamboo stick several feet in length and about two inches thick.

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