Chapter 2: "Shelter"
[AN: Hello all! Thanks for reading! Our Chinese characters have been given Chinese names that are hopefully easy to remember: Katniss=Cai (first sound is the same same); Gale=Gao (first letter is the same); Min=Prim (sounds similar). To be authentic I just couldn't make Katniss' "real" name as a Chinese person "Katniss" - you'll see that "Katniss" as a name comes into the story later, though.]
The girls who found me want to survive, just as I do, I tell myself.
I respect their decision in my stronger moments. In my weaker ones I fight feeling frustrated with them for not at least trying to reduce my misery. They could have gotten me out of this water, away from the sun, and safe from predators that might attack me. Would that really have been so much to ask? Then I remind myself of how afraid they must be. This is war. Civilians can suffer as much as soldiers, occasionally even more.
Earlier in the war the US bombed Tokyo. The airmen who executed the small raid could only fly so far from Japan before depleting their fuel supplies, leaving many of them trapped in occupied China. Chinese civilians helped most of the airmen escape into allied territory. Outraged by the attack on their homeland and the Chinese civilians' attempts to protect the Americans responsible, the Japanese military punished several provinces of China. Hundreds of Thousands of Chinese people were killed, and whole villages were burned over the escape of around 60 US airmen. Tragically, many of the people punished probably didn't even know what made the Japanese so angry. That's the kind of utter brutality happening during this war. These girls have every reason to be afraid.
Perhaps it doesn't matter what these girls do or don't do, I tell myself. I'm slowly bleeding to death anyway.
My eyes start to close. I stare at the sky, willing myself to stay awake and opening my eyes as widely as I can. They sting when the dust in the air hits them, but no tears form. My body doesn't have enough fluid left to spare for tears. A wave of panic slowly rises. I'm afraid if my eyes close then they'll never open again, but I know that people can die with their eyes open, too. Trying to cope with the onslaught of my fears exhausts me. My eyelids flutter closed. Darkness. The panic rises again, slower this time. My heart still speeds up, but the beating feels weaker in my chest.
I find myself jealous of wounded soldiers who make it to hospitals and die in the fog of pain medications, men I once pitied. A few might even have their hands held by caring nurses to ease them on their way. Not me. This water will be all that holds me while I pass out of this world. I do eventually sleep a little, but I'm plagued by nightmares of the fire on the plane. Fortunately, not all of my dreams are terrible. Some are nostalgic and bittersweet. I miss home so much. I wish I could see it once more.
I always knew this could happen to me, of course. From the moment I knew for certain that my country would be drawn into the war, I knew.
/
December 7th, 1941 (age 18)
The letters on the page start to blur together as my eyes close. Two more exams and I get to go home for Christmas. I force my eyes open and shake my head. Two more exams.
"Hey, Pete!" my roommate says as he nudges my shoulder with his hand. "Didn't that preacher father of yours ever teach you that Sunday is the day of rest?"
"Sunday was definitely the day of work for him, trust me," I joke sleepily. "Besides I was resting, sort of."
"Come downstairs and listen to the game," he suggests. "I want to see how the Dodgers are doing, and you need to get out of this stuffy room. That radiator's way too hot."
I'm about to tell him I'd rather take a nap, a nap that's probably only being encouraged by the overly hot radiator, when I hear running in the hall outside our room. One of our dorm mates comes to a sudden halt right outside our room, his shoes actually squeaking from the fast turn he makes to face us.
"Peter, what's Pearl Harbor?" he asks.
"A naval base," I tell him. "Why?"
"It's our naval base?" he asks.
"Yeah, it's in Hawaii. Why?"
There's yelling in the hallway, and our nervous looking dorm mate looks away toward the source of the noise.
"The Japanese just attacked it," he says quietly and urgently. "They just said so on the radio." He pauses for a moment before asking me to clarify again, "So it's definitely one of our naval bases?"
"Yes, yes," I stammer, still hoping he's joking about the whole thing. Practical jokes are pretty common around here, and they know I've been keeping up with the news closely and am into geography. It's just the kind of trick someone would pull on me.
"Where's Manila?" he asks his voice uneven.
"The Philippines," I answer.
"They said something about Manila, too," he continues. He looks white as a sheet, and I realize he can't be joking. His reactions are much too real.
"Come on," I say, waving them out of the room. "I wanna' hear this myself."
Even before we get to the common room I know there's no joke. I feel a strange sense of doom. The common room's full of boys. Somebody's already pushed a window up so a couple of boys standing outside in the cold can listen to the radio broadcast along with the rest of us. There's a man on the radio saying that he's in Honolulu. He says there are Japanese planes flying around everywhere.
"What do you think is going to happen now?" my roommate asks.
Why people ask me these things, I don't know. I answer him, though. Maybe that's why they ask.
"I think we won't be able to avoid the war anymore," I tell him sadly. "The waiting's over. Now we know."
/
Christmas Eve 1941
The whole house smells like Mother's cooking, and I don't see how anybody could be so argumentative when we're about to eat all that good food. Besides, we might not be spending Christmas together again for a while. My brother finds a way to ruin it, though.
"So you get through three and a half years at this damn prep school and you're going to drop out a semester before graduation? Why?" My brother demands an explanation, a good one.
"I'm not the only one, and you know why," I tell him. "What I've already done will still matter, and after the war I'll be given credit somehow. I'm sure of it. My school's not going to punish me for serving my country," I tell him.
"Oh, they might. I wouldn't put it past them. Snobs."
"Stop it," I tell him.
"So you're just going to volunteer?" he asks. "Why don't you just wait a little longer? See what happens."
"Is that what you're going to do?" I ask him.
"Maybe," he tells me.
I shift my weight from one foot to the other nervously.
"Look, you have to let me do what I know is right. For me. I'm not saying that what I do is right for you. This is one of those things that is each person's individual decision to make."
"Really? What about Delly? Have you thought about her?"
I hesitate. Dad steps in the room and frowns at me and then my brother.
"Change the subject," he orders.
My brother crosses his arms defiantly. "There's not much else anybody is talking about, Dad."
"I mean it. You're upsetting your mother. Either change the subject or take it outside," my father insists.
/
I'm still among the living and struggling to stay that way when the sun rises. At first I'm sure I'm hallucinating when I see the younger of the girls who found me yesterday approach me. She's carrying some kind of farm tool that looks remarkably like a shovel.
They really are going to kill me.
For the first time I have no reaction at all to the thought of dying. I only wonder how they will hasten the end of my life.
They don't hate me. They'll be merciful about it, won't they?
The girl drops the shovel near my parachute and kneels down beside me. She reaches her small hand out toward my thigh, and I tense immediately.
Please don't touch me. Just don't.
She must sense my silent hopes because she stops and simply looks at my leg for a long moment rather than touching it.
"It doesn't look worse," she says slowly.
Resigned, I close my eyes. Who cares if my leg looks worse or not?
"What's your name?" the girl asks.
I look up at her, surprised. Why would she want to know my name?
"Peter," I whisper through my chapped lips.
"Pee-ta," she repeats.
Close enough. I'm probably mispronouncing half of the Chinese words I say. I'm not going to correct how this girl says my name.
"We are going to hide you, Pee-ta," she tells me.
A warm feeling slowly rises in my chest and into my throat as relief floods me.
"Thank you," I manage to whisper. "Thank you so much," I say again as I close my eyes for just a moment.
"Where?" I ask.
She gestures toward a rocky ridge at the other end of the field.
"I can't walk," I tell her honestly.
"More are coming," she tells me.
I sigh worriedly. Every person who knows I survived the plane crash increases the chances that I'll be killed or captured, but the possibility of shelter is worth the risk.
"What's your name?" I ask her. She smiles shyly and looks down at the water.
"Min," she answers.
/
The idea of getting out of this water sounds like heaven to me, but I wonder what kind of damage the water might have done to my skin. I'm worried about my injured leg too. I can wiggle my toes and feel the water against my skin, but the water feels different than it does against my other leg. There's a strange numb sensation in my injured leg even though there is pain.
The sun is rising higher into the sky, and I suspect an hour or so has passed when I ask Min, "Who is coming?"
"My sister and Gao," she answers.
Will they want to kill me or give me to the enemy? I wonder.
"Gao is a friend. You met my sister, Cai, yesterday. She doesn't think letting you die is the best anymore. I have the good fortune of being like my mother. You have the good fortune that my mother is a healer. She will tell us what to do for your leg," Min says with what sounds like an edge of hope.
Min stands up and motions in the direction of two approaching figures. A fog has moved in, but I can see that one is her sister, Cai. The other is a man as tall as me, perhaps taller. They whisper to each other quietly, and I can only catch a few phrases.
"It's happened before…don't trust…remember what happened to my father."
The man is doing most of the talking. Cai is carrying several fairly straight sticks. She holds two of them out to the man. He measures them against each other and then breaks off the end of one stick so that it is the same length as the other. Then the man gives the two sticks to Min before staring at me ominously. I find myself leaning away from him.
Min places one of her hands on my upper thigh and the other one at the knee of my injured leg. I manage to prop myself on my elbows, which sink into the mud. The man shakes his head and turns away. I don't understand all of what Min says, probably because I'm focusing on the fact that she's probably about to move my leg.
"Keep it still…walk with us…"
For the first time I notice that Min is holding a few pieces of ragged cloth. They look gray and dirty. Min motions to Cai who promptly kneels down with her. Then Min puts a hand on either side of my thigh, moving the skin just slightly. She presses her hands into the swollen skin, and I gasp as pain shoots through me, taking my breath away. So much for my leg feeling numb. She presses harder, and my teeth bite hard into the inside of my lower lip until I taste blood and my vision blurs into a white haze. Ashamed, I look up at the clouds in the sky. Looking weak in front of this other man who doesn't appear to like the girls helping me can't be good.
"Broken," Min declares unceremoniously. I glance at my leg. Yes, that makes sense. I remember a cracking sound. Cai moves my uninjured leg away from the other one by pulling against the knee, and I finally see where the blood has been coming from. There's a deep gash on the broken leg just above the knee. My uniform is ripped over the cut. Suddenly I recall a sharp piece of metal from the plane cutting into my leg.
I consider how dirty the cut looks. Back home my grandfather would first be horrified by the cut, then adjust his glasses, and finally proceed to clean the cut thoroughly before stitching it closed. But I'm not at home. I have no idea what we can do for this cut. It looks terrible. The skin surrounding the cut is puffy and red. Cai puts her hand just below my knee and lifts my leg up a little. The pain is still awful, but the look on her face distracts me. She grimaces and has to turn away. I narrow my eyes. She seems so strong yet…not strong. I wonder if she could have killed me even if she had decided that was her best option. Cai takes some of the strips of fabric from Min and gently ties them around the gash on my leg. Her hands have to touch my leg in the process. The movements are hesitant, gentle, warm, and completely different from Min's confident ones. Our eyes meet as she finishes tying the fabric together. Her lower lip quivers, and I don't know what to make of that. This time I'm the one who looks away.
Min proceeds to lay one of the sticks against the outside of my injured leg and the other against the inside. Then Cai holds the sticks in place while Min tightly ties the sticks together so that they splint my leg. Min leans back, looking satisfied with their work.
The man turns around and says something I don't understand. Then he reaches for my arm and pulls it up while staring fiercely into my eyes. I get the distinct impression that he doesn't think much of me, so I glance nervously from Cai to Min and back to Cai.
Min waves her arms and tells him to stop. "He can't walk," she tells the man.
The man lets go of my arm abruptly, and my shoulders drop back down. A frustrated look crosses his face. He clenches his jaw, grabs my arm again, and abruptly pulls upward. This time I know he's not going to stop no matter what Min or Cai have to say. Apparently reaching the same conclusion, Min quickly grasps my other arm and shoulder, pushing me up with her small body's weight. Cai's feet slosh through the water of the rice paddy as she rushes to get behind me. She pushes her hands against my back to help me get upright. Water and mud slip down my uniform and into the water at my feet. The splint helps with the pain tremendously. I'm surprised to be tolerating movement better, but I can barely balance on one leg even with help. We take uncoordinated steps forward, with Gao moving much too fast. But at least I'm moving.
I stumble along between Min and the man they call Gao until we finally reach the edge of the rocky ridge. With my head tucked down I'm increasingly struggling, and Min notices.
"Stop now, Gao. Let him rest."
Gao ignores her, and tries to continue on until Min stops moving completely, protesting his lack of capitulation. Min appears to be the expert on my physical condition and what's best for me at present. At least Min thinks she is. Gao apparently disagrees. My shoulder blades are pulled apart briefly as Gao moves forward and Min refuses to follow. Then Gao sighs and starts to let go of my shoulder. Min slows his departure, by scolding him a little. It's clear they are close.
Cai lags behind, carrying the shovel. I look back at her. Her skin tone is darker and she is taller than Min. She looks more like Gao. Min said he was a friend, but they could be brother and sister. Maybe they are cousins. The way she listens and watches reminds me of that rare quality of quiet intelligence that I find so intriguing in certain people. I hope she'll talk more because I bet she's interesting, and she distracts me from my dire predicament. Being fascinated by someone who considered letting me die less than twenty-four hours ago strikes me as odd, but that's exactly what's happening.
Gao takes several steps forward and turns his head from side to side, surveying the rice paddy. I follow his gaze as he does. Smoke still rises from the smoldering remains of the B-29 and the fuel it carried. Cai walks up beside him, leaving me alone with Min sitting on the ground.
"Who is Gao?" I ask. "Your brother?"
An amused expression crosses Min's face.
I start to feel dizzy again and decide to lean back on my elbows.
"Oh, no," Min says, "he was to be my brother-in-law, but there have been some problems."
[Please review: I'm wondering what you all think!]