Suddenly, Charlie’s attention focused on her like a searchlight. In the presence of food, he forgot about everything else. Oscar didn’t suppose he could blame him, either. “Let me have those, please,” Charlie said, an unusual restraint in his voice. He sounded like a man holding himself back from leaping on what he wanted.
“I was going to do something with the fish-” Susie said uncertainly.
He shook his head. His hair and scalp were full of scabs, too. “Don’t bother,” he told her. “I’ve eaten fish Jap-style plenty of times. And I don’t much want to wait, you know what I mean?”
Without a word, Susie gave him the mackerel and the alligator pears. Oscar didn’t think he’d ever seen her speechless before, but she was now. Charlie made the avocados and the fish disappear in nothing flat. He ate with a singleminded concentration like nothing Oscar had ever seen. Oscar didn’t try to talk with him till nothing was left but peel and seeds and bones. If he had spoken, he didn’t think Charlie would have answered, or even heard him.
“Oh, Lord, that was fine.” Charlie looked down at his rubbish. He’d even eaten the eyes out of the mackerel’s head. “I do that for days and days at a time, I start to be a man again.”
“Won’t be easy, not till the Americans get here,” Oscar said.
“Yeah.” Charlie Kaapu nodded. “I was hoping they’d be here already-all that shooting we heard down here from up in the valley. But I see it ain’t so. Some crazy Jap motherfucker almost shot me for the fun of it before I got here. ’Scuse me, Susie.”
“It’s okay,” Susie said. “I know about the crazy Jap motherfuckers. I know more than I ever wanted to.” She shuddered.
“What did they do to you, Charlie?” Oscar asked.
“Well, they taught me one thing-I ain’t never gonna screw around with no Jap officer’s special lady friend no more,” Charlie Kaapu said. In spite of himself, Oscar laughed. So did Susie. She clapped her hands, too. Charlie went on, “But you didn’t mean that. They tried to starve me to death. They tried to work me to death. When I didn’t start dying fast enough to suit ’em, they tried to beat me to death, too. The other guys there were POWs who were hard cases. Imagine what I’d look like if I was there three times as long. That’s them.”
“My God,” Susie said after trying to imagine that. “How come they aren’t all dead?”
“Lot of ’em are,” Charlie answered. “More dyin’ every day, too. But a hard case is a hard case, and some of ’em stayed alive just to spite the Japs. This guy named Peterson shoulda been dead months ago, but he was still breathin’ when I got away. One tough son of a bitch, you bet.”
“What the heck did they have you doing in the Kalihi Valley?” Oscar said. “I’ve been up there. It’s nothing but the river and trees, all the way back to the mountains.”
“Don’t I know it!” Charlie said. “What were we doin’? We were digging a tunnel through the mountains to the damn windward coast, that’s what. Digging with picks and shovels and crowbars and baskets, mind. The Japs didn’t give a shit if we ever got there. It was something to work us to death with, that’s all.”
“My God,” Oscar muttered. People had talked about ramming a tunnel through the mountains for years. He supposed they would have got around to it sooner or later. When they did, he supposed they would have used dynamite and jackhammers and all the others tools mankind had invented to make sure jobs like that didn’t take forever.
“Can I have a bath or a shower or something?” Charlie said. “I’m filthy, and I’m lousy, too. I hope you guys don’t get company on account of me.” Oscar hoped the same thing. He automatically started to scratch, then jerked his hand down. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Susie doing the same thing. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so grim. And Charlie was filthy; the rank smell that came off him filled the apartment.
“Go ahead,” Oscar told him. “I wish I had soap and hot water, that’s all. You can wear some of my clothes when you come out. Toss yours out and I’ll get rid of ’em.”
“Will do,” Charlie said. “We’re about the same size-well, we used to be, anyway. I can’t get over how fat people look.” Oscar and Susie were both skinnier than they had been when Japan took Oahu, and they were better off than most people because Oscar caught so many fish. To a skeleton, though, a skinny man had to look fat. Charlie went into the bathroom, then stuck his head out again. “What was all the shooting about a couple of nights ago? That’s why I thought the Army would be back here.”
“They cleaned out the prison camp in Kapiolani Park,” Oscar answered. They rescued a bunch of guys who looked just like you. He didn’t say that. Except by not screwing around with women he should have left alone, Charlie couldn’t help the way he looked. Oscar added, “I guess they were afraid the Japs would start killing people if they just left ’em there.”
“Jeez, I believe that,” Charlie said. “I was hoping I could take soldiers back to Kalihi Valley. God knows what’s gonna happen to my buddies now.”
He closed the door again. Water started to run. In a low voice, Oscar said, “He’s gotta stay here for a while, babe. I’m sorry, but I don’t know what else we can do.”
Susie waved the words aside. “It’s okay. You’re right. We can’t do anything else. My God! Did you see him? He looks like a photo in Life or National Geographic where they’re talking about famine in India or China or somewhere like that.” Now she did scratch her head. She smiled sheepishly, but said, “For heaven’s sake, throw his clothes somewhere far, far away. I’m going to imagine I’m itching for the next week, whether I really am or not.”
“Yeah, I know.” Oscar got a flowered shirt and a pair of pants out of the closet and tossed them into the bathroom. He didn’t have a belt that Charlie could use to hold up the pants; none of the ones he owned had enough holes. But a length of rope would keep his pal decent.
He glanced over at Susie. How… sympathetic would she feel if Charlie stayed here all the time? How would she show her sympathy? Like that ? Oscar shrugged a mental shrug. If she did, then she did, that was all. And if she did, didn’t that tell him she wasn’t the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with? When Charlie got out of the tub, he threw his old clothes out from behind the door. He emerged a couple of minutes later, much cleaner. Maybe because he was cleaner, maybe because of the way Oscar’s shirt and pants hung on him, he looked even scrawnier than he had before.
Oscar picked up Charlie’s reeking rags with thumb and forefinger, like a fussy maiden lady. He didn’t care how he looked. If he’d had tongs, he would have used those. He took the clothes out to the front door of the building, poked his head outside to make sure no Japs spotted him, and threw everything into the gutter. He frantically wiped his hand against his own trouser leg as he went back to his apartment.
Charlie was telling Susie what things were like in the Kalihi Valley. She hung on his every word. Well, Charlie could tell stories with anybody this side of Will Rogers. Oscar wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t in Charlie’s league. He shrugged to himself again. He’d see what happened, that was all. Whatever it was, he was glad Charlie had got out of the Kalihi Valley in one piece.
JANE ARMITAGE HAD MADE A LAIR OF SORTS for herself in the Wahiawa experimental planting station. A stream ran through it, so she had water. Some of the trees had fruit on them, and gave her a little something to eat. Zebra doves weren’t nearly so common as they had been before the Japs invaded, but the little blue-faced birds were still around. Jane didn’t dare make a fire. If you got hungry enough, you could eat them raw. Jane wouldn’t have believed it, but it was true. And she was hungry enough.