“So I’ll tell them Ricardo didn’t make it and we got a Red Cross package at Christmas and the Nips copped most of the Old Golds and the Chesterfields and stashed ‘em in that shed along with all our mail sacks and we’re going crazy out-of-our-minds to get our mail.”
“No can do. You can say thanks for the vitamins in the Red Cross boxes. Your beriberi almost went away—that’s personal. Maybe you should say you lost your brother Franque at the start of the Death March?”
“No question I should say that. And about my dad being tortured to death at Camp O’Donnell? How they pounded nails into his skull?”
“No, say he didn’t make it—but nada mas,” Senio insisted. If the useless interpreters suspected anything sneaky, the sorry bastard would be singled out, beaten, the cards burnt.
“Just didn’t make it? Who are they kidding anyway—these Gooks can’t even read English. They’d just as soon behead you for saying something fucking nice about the fucking rice.”
“Your mama knows about Franque and your dad—for sure everybody already knows,” Senio muttered matter-of-factly, too weak to stand the impact of grief. “Doc Matson said he turned over all their dog tags to General King since he’s in charge of everything American.”
“General King is a pile of squirrel turd like the rest of the idiot officers. They don’t do jack shit,” Melo said. “So I’m gonna tell her how you saved my ass on the Death March and when we get back to Santa Fe, LaBelle and me are gonna get married.”
“Tell your Mama I saved your sorry ass more times than even I can count.” Senio held his own note cards in his hand, debating when to stand in the long sun-stroke line for the typewriters. “She owes me a load of tamales.”
“I’ll tell her, if I ever get my turn at the typewriter.” However many typewriters there might be in the American central control shack there would never be a supply of good ribbons. Several thousand emaciated men continued to form a line outside and Melo looked up to see if they had moved forward even an inch. Hard to tell, by this time the men all looked alike—skin burnt, shaved heads, scrawny, bony, skinny, emaciated, lice-riddled stooped bodies with torn rags for clothes. Fundoshi, g-strings made from old sacks tied with string. Makeshift shoes. If Melo had a hard time telling one from the other, the Japs stopped trying. Mostly they treated the white prisoners all the same (viciously) with their eyes on a few badass standouts like Senio and Melo.
“And I’ll tell my Mama that you and me look great in the g-strings we made and we are now real prisoners of war, not captives.”
“Not that it makes any difference,” Senio said.
“Like hell. It means we can get the Red Cross boxes. The Geneva Convention says we have to be paid each month and we get to send letters home.”
“So Geneva says we have to type the letters?”
“The Nips say that it has to be typed and just nobody tell the truth.”
“So how can anybody tell the truth about what this war’s like, anyway?
“Just lie. Everybody lies,” Senio said. “The Gooks probably lie too.”
“Fucking right, it’s all lies and stealing food to stay alive.”
“There’s bags and bags of letters from home locked up and rotting in that store room and they won’t let us at ‘em. Hell, I’d give up chow for three days if I could just get my mail.”
“Yeah, I wonder what it’s like Stateside now. I don’t want to hear anything bad that happened in Santa Fe. I can only take so much.”
“Everybody’s real fine there. They’re safe and sound in the piñon trees. No bombs, no Nips, no war, no nothing. Nothing ever happens there. It’s like it’s hidden.”
“But it’s still dirt poor. Just Indians sitting on the Plaza trying to sell stuff and catching chickens for enchiladas and tamales, plenty of rice and beans though.”
“Don’t say rice.”
“Yeah, right. So, you think that LaBelle is still a virgin?”
“Was she a virgin when you and me left with the National Guard?” Senio asked.
“Technically?”
“Yeah, technically.”
“No, not even technically.”
“You got your own answer then. She’ll never be a virgin again. It’s all over for her.”
“She better not be making it with someone else. Maybe she went back home to Colorado.”
“All’s you need to do is get your letters from the store house. Your answer’s right there, Melo old buddy.”
“Shit.”
“Shit is right.”
“Shit”
Santa Fe, New Mexico, February, 1944
Anissa always knew what Nicasia, her next door neighbor, was wearing that day. In her black dresses, she was fixed and unchanging. Her hair was pinned in a bun—never let to stream down. She was a slight, modestly dressed mother of a fallen soldier as well as the wife of his missing-in-action father. And she was the mother of a Bataan Death March survivor, dressing exactly like the other bereft women in their aspects of mourning and she had, with them, grown sorrowfully prayerful. Their numbers were large in such a small town and they had a faceless similarity, one to the other.
Anissa, though, appreciated Nicasia’s great sparks of watchful kindness and her grace. Nicasia listened to everything she said with a sharp purpose, trying to comprehend new facts, always ready to step in to soften tragedy when it arose. Her eldest son, Franque Garcia, had been killed at the outset of the Bataan Death March, and the telegram assured her that he’d died a hero’s death. She’d been informed that Faustino was missing she had not received the black-starred telegram. That small detail opened a shaft of possibility, she dreamt that the Faustino Garcia rumored dead was another soldier with the same name. Nothing, no mail had been received from the American soldiers after their surrender to the Japanese in April of 1942. After that, dark and empty silence.
Nicasia prayed and fasted for the end of the war when her remaining son was shipped home alive. She cherished her youngest son Melicio Garcia’s life over her husband’s and more than her own. Two years before when the shattering news arrived of the surrender, LaBelle, his novia, the woman who he’d promised to marry, moved in with her to wait out the war. He was their last hope; only he could make the world reasonable and whole. LaBelle said Melo was her destiny; for his mother, Melo, gave her life purpose.
“I can’t stand this war any longer,” Anissa had shrieked the day before when Nicasia ritually appeared at her doorway, tamales in hand. She threw down the New Mexican, the only local newspaper. “Death, casualties and that damned Roosevelt again.”
Nicasia could but nod. Each day she came, hoping to hear that the War was almost over, the news to feed her beating heart. There never was a war that
