Never one for deep thoughts, Deke turned his attention to his rifle. It was dusty and battered with fresh scars on the wood and new scratches on the barrel. Still, he had managed to keep the precious scope from being broken. Beat up as it was, the rifle looked pretty much like he felt.
He dug his cleaning kit out of his haversack, broke down the rifle, and set to work. When he had finished, he felt better, as if he had also somehow managed to clean out the grimy parts of his mind. Though the wooden stock was battered and the barrel was scratched, the rifle still managed to gleam with deadly intent.
Deke spread his blanket on the stone floor, and Juana did the same beside him. The rest of the squad was nearby, either having something to eat or focusing on cleaning their weapons.
Nobody said much, and even Philly was quiet for a change. They were all exhausted from a hard day of fighting and from the losses that they had taken at the hands of the Japanese. The final fight in the alley had been short and vicious before they had been forced to beat a hasty retreat. The boy curled up near Honcho and was asleep in minutes. There was no electricity, but Deke had found a candle in the ruins and dancing shadows soon lit the interior walls.
“Déjame eso,” Juana said, nodding at the bloody bandage on Deke’s arm. He had learned that Juana, like many Filipinos, could switch easily between languages. Spanish had been the language of the land for three centuries. Then English was taught in schools during the American era, which explained Juana’s fluency. She also spoke Tagalog with her fellow guerrillas. Hardly any Filipinos had bothered to learn Japanese, in part because the occupiers were so hated.
“Leave it be,” he said, starting to pull away. “It’s just a scratch.”
Juana just shook her head and reached for his arm to unwrap the bandage, which was stiff with dried blood. Tipping water from her canteen, she wet the end of a rag and dabbed at the wound. The injury was just an annoyance; come to think of it, Deke realized that he had gotten banged up much worse than that doing chores on the farm or hurrying to get the hay in before a rain, ignoring the rough twine from the heavy bales cutting into his hands until they bled or the deep scratches on his arms. And, of course, the claws and teeth of that enormous bear had done a lot more damage than the Japanese, nearly killing him as a boy.
The wound began to bleed again, which wasn’t a bad thing, the fresh flow of blood carrying away the dirt and dust so that a clean scab would form. Juana put a fresh bandage on the wound and bound it tightly. It hurt like fire, but Deke was so captivated watching her work that he didn’t so much as make a sound.
“You are a good man,” she said.
“If you say so.”
But was he? Deke had often wondered about that. The last few months had forced him to question everything he knew about himself, and humanity in general. He had proved himself to be a very capable soldier, even a skilled killer, but neither of those things meant that he was a good person. He missed seeing the good in people, including the good in himself.
Normally, he might have disagreed with Juana, but tonight he didn’t mind hearing her words. Just five kind words spoken in truth the way she saw it. They were like a salve to all his wounds, physical and mental.
“I do say so,” Juana said. “And when I say something, I mean something.”
All he said in return was, “Thank you. You’re not so bad yourself. A lot of girls wouldn’t pick up a gun to fight, but you did.”
“Of course I want to fight,” she said, her voice going hard, sounding indignant. “Life has been very hard for the people of the Philippines. My people. First, the Spanish came centuries ago. Then the Americans came in my grandparents’ time. The Americans have been good friends to the Philippines, teaching us what freedom meant. We lived under your Constitution. But then came the Japanese. There were no more rights. Never has there been such cruelty.”
“We’ll help you beat the Japanese,” Deke said. “But after the war, it sounds as if the Philippines should be run by Filipinos.”
“I could not agree more.”
She surprised him then by reaching out to take his hand. They had never touched before, at least not in this way. Her skin was rough, like a farmer’s hand. He was reminded of his sister Sadie’s touch, rough but gentle at the same time. It was a touch with heft and strength behind it. He squeezed her hand.
Later, he couldn’t have said how they both knew what to do next. Something unspoken passed between them.
Picking up their blankets, they moved deeper into the house, away from the others, giving themselves some privacy. If any of the others saw them leaving, they pretended not to notice.
The candle provided a soft light. In a corner of an unoccupied room, they once again spread their blankets on the stone floor. For a while they simply sat studying one another, their shoulders touching, a kind of electricity building between them. The very air seemed to crackle. Deke found his head spinning as if he’d just had a drink of Old Man McGlothlin’s moonshine back home. Being this close to Juana felt intoxicating.
There was enough light that he could see her upturned face, her closed eyes and slightly parted lips. Deke didn’t have much experience with the opposite sex, but he knew one thing for sure. Here was a girl waiting to be kissed.
“Deke,” she whispered.
“Juana.” He exhaled her name like he was breathing out to take the longest shot he had ever taken. In a sense, it was. They kissed again, and he felt himself melting into her. Their hands wandered over each other, slowly at first and then more desperately.
“Mi soldado,” she murmured. “Mi guerrero.”
Like any inexperienced young man, Deke had always worried about what to do that first time he made love, but everything happened naturally and urgently. Afterward, they lay sticky and spent under a blanket despite the warmth of the tropical night. It was the part that came after that was harder, at least at first. Deke ran through several emotions ranging from embarrassment about giving in to his urges, to wanting to go off by himself to process what had just happened, to the desire to do it all over again — but that wasn’t going to happen because he felt pleasantly limp as a shoestring and empty as a sack turned inside out.
Deke had often imagined what it would be like to be with a woman, and now that the veil of mystery had been lifted tonight, he decided that it was everything he had imagined — and then some. He was glad that he had waited to find someone whom he cared about rather than running off to the whorehouses like some of the boys had done back in Hawaii. With his scarred face and body, he had doubted that he would ever experience a night such as this without having to pay for it. Juana had given him a great gift tonight.
She murmured something and wrapped herself around him, soothing his restless mind. They heard the occasional thump of artillery or the rattle of a machine gun beyond the walls, but that all sounded far away and they felt safe enough in this house, with their armed companions on watch in the next room, isolated for a few hours from the war. Juana’s steady breathing soon indicated that she was asleep. Deke closed his own eyes, then slept deeply.
But the Japanese wouldn’t leave him alone, even on this night of all nights, haunting his dreams. He kept seeing the enemy snipers shooting at them, hearing screams as men went down around him. Deke tried to shoot back, but in his dream there was always something that wasn’t working right. Sometimes his rifle wouldn’t fire. Other times his finger couldn’t even pull the trigger, as if locked in rigor mortis.
All the while the grinning face of an enemy sniper taunted him through the rifle scope. Again and again he felt the terror of imagining enemy crosshairs on him, helpless to get out of the way, his heart hammering in his dreams. Even as the noose closed around the enemy, the Japanese seemed to grow more powerful.
He woke in the morning because he felt Juana’s eyes on him. Her face lay inches away, the two of them breathing the same air. He stroked her warm body under the blanket, pleased that his fingers worked just fine despite the unsettling dreams.
It was already light, dawn filtering in through the shattered windows. In a few minutes Honcho would be rousting everyone for another day of war. They still had those hostages to rescue. Time was running short for these prisoners. But for now it was just the two of them. Just as with Honcho the night before, he realized how little he really knew about Juana. Did she have any family? What had her life been like before the war?
Finally, he wondered if what they had done together now joined them in some way. At the same time, he knew that this one night might be all that there would be for them. It had been a sojourn for them both, a renewal, a reminder that they were young and alive. It was all so distracting, given the business at hand.
“Juana, I—” he began.
But Juana was having none of that. She touched his lips to silence him. “Do not think of me today,” she said, as if she had read his mind. “That will get you killed. Muerto. Think only of how true your bullets will fly. I know your heart, mi guerrero.”
“We’re still chasing those damn Japs—”
“No mas,” she said. “That ends hoy dia. Today you will know victory, mi soldado. Today you will kill our enemies.”
Reluctantly, Deke disentangled himself from Juana’s arms and slipped out from under the blanket. Juana did the same, and he got a quick, glorious glimpse of her naked body. They dressed in the dim light, the candle having melted down until the wick lay sputtering in a puddle of wax, signaling the end of the dark night, and he felt his old resolve returning like the rising sun itself.