No Surrender Soldier by Christine Kohler

Author:Christine Kohler [Kohler, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-6562-5
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2014-09-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

REGRETS

JANUARY 14–15, 1972

Seto had hid in his cave long after he’d heard gunfire. He cowered in silence. He did not go above ground that night. He stayed burrowed below the next day, contemplating whether to go out at nightfall. He thought he would starve to death if he did not go hunting one more night. But if he did die, who would know? He was already buried.

Finally, he sat up upon his mat. What did he have to fear? Death? Was he not already dead in many ways? He was dead to his family. He was dead to the world. He had more contact with spirits and ghosts and crawling things beneath the earth than he did with man or beast above his grave.

Seto wished he had sake to dull his senses and warm his belly. Root tea would have to suffice. The root tea tasted like mud, but he needed something warm to flow down his throat and through his body, and even out in piss, just to prove he still lived.

He crawled to the compartment of hell where it was hottest—his stove. He rubbed two sticks together until his hands hurt. A spark caught dried leaves on fire. Seto blew his breath of life onto the fire until it danced yellow and blue beyond the smoke. Seto touched his finger to the flame until it seared. He jerked his finger back. Hot pain let him know he could still feel, therefore he must be alive.

He inhaled the musty smoke and coughed, further proof he breathed. Could a ghost cough, or start a fire, or feel heat?

“Ha! Aiee, hee, ha!” Seto made belly sounds that forced his breath out in spurts. It was his way of saying, I live! I live!

After drinking root tea and blowing out the fire, Seto pulled on his clothes, climbed out of his pit, and pushed through the hatch. Once in the jungle with his feet planted on a mossy floor, Seto breathed deeply, as deeply as the first god who sprang from a reed, to smell damp leaves and earthy scents.

He patted his suit. “I am a man, not a worm that crawls up naked from underground.”

His voice creaked like branches bent by wind. The sound was not muffled as when he spoke underground. Seto opened his rusty jaw and made “ooOOoo” sounds. He howled like a dog.

“Let them find me,” he whispered, and walked toward the river. For what would they do to him that he had not already done to himself?

What could his father do to him even if Isamu came home disgraced?

Long ago he hid like a coward. Tomorrow he may hide again. But for tonight he needed to feel alive.

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