Ghosts of the Pacific (15 page)

THE CIRCUS SHIP
looked like a worn-out traveller. She sat
moored to the dock as if she had sailed in on her last breath
and gone into a deep sleep. But I was excited to see her, more
excited than I thought I would be. Across from the pier was
a park. People were clearing broken trees and branches from
the ground and setting up tents. The circus had come to
town.

Hollie and I wandered over. I saw people from the ship.
Then, I saw Cinnamon, and she saw me. She came running
and I was pretty sure she left the ground before she hit me.
Her arms were wide open and her hug knocked me off balance and we both landed on the ground.

“Alfred! You came! You really came!”

“Uhhh, yah. I said I would.”

“But you did! You really did! I can't believe it. I'm so
happy.”

She jumped up, grabbed my arm and yanked me up. I was
reminded how strong she was. Suddenly her face darkened.
“You left without saying goodbye.”

“You fell asleep! I asked Megara to say goodbye for me.
And I told you I would meet you here.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “You should have woken me.”

“Sorry.”

Her face brightened again. “It's okay. You're here now.”

I looked around. “So, you survived the typhoon?”

“That was just a little one. They say a bigger one is coming next week. We're setting up really fast. Do you want to
help?”

“Uhh, I suppose I could.”

Cinnamon looked down at Hollie, and Hollie looked up
at her, but she didn't bend down to pat him. “You'd better
keep a close eye on your dog though. There are lots of boonie
dogs in Saipan, and the locals eat dog.”

“Oh. What's a boonie dog?”

“Just a stray dog. They're the dogs that are left behind
when people move here for a few years then leave. They leave
their pets behind. And they form packs. They bark at you a
lot but they're actually really afraid of people. They know
that people eat them here. They're really unfriendly to new
dogs, especially little ones. Sometimes a boonie dog will wander onto the ship. Not a good idea. You know what happens
then.”

“Yup.”

I spent the rest of the day helping the circus set up, which
meant carrying poles, boxes, tables, tarps and staging across
the dock to the park. Everything was pulled from the ship
with a pulley system, swung around and lowered onto the
dock. Hollie spent most of the day sleeping in the tool bag.
Sometimes he was on my back and sometimes beside me on
the ground but never out of my sight. When it turned dark
we stopped to eat supper. Pierre had set up a barbecue and
had grilled a fresh tuna with rice and served it to everyone
who helped. It was the best thing I ever tasted. After we finished, Cinnamon said she was free to take a walk with me.

We strolled along the road and the beach. Hollie walked
close to my heels. He always sensed my caution and imitated
it. The road was littered with branches and the beach was
covered with rocks, shells and seaweed thrown up from the
typhoon. I asked Cinnamon if she had been frightened by it.

“Not at all. I've seen lots of typhoons. And bigger than
this one.”

“What will you do if a bigger one comes?”

“We'll stay here in the lagoon. That's the safest place for a
ship. What will you do, stay on the bottom of the sea? I want
to go in your submarine again.”

“Actually, I found a cave where I am keeping it.”

“Really? You found a cave for your submarine?”

“Yah. It's really hidden. Nobody would ever find it in a
million years. It has skeletons in it.”

She stopped. “Skeletons?”

I nodded. “From the war.”

“Weren't you afraid?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. You get used to that, I guess. I'm pretty used
to it now.”

She shook her head. “How do you get used to skeletons?”

“I don't know, you just do. Living things are scarier than
dead things when you think about it.”

“They are?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmm. I don't know about that.”

“They are. Trust me.”

We walked in silence. There were small concrete pavilions
on the beach. As we passed one, Cinnamon pointed to an old
man sitting there staring out at the sea. He was surrounded
by dogs. “He was in the war.”

“How do you know?”

“Everyone knows. He's crazy. They say he was here as a
young man during the fighting and that he never left. Now
he's an old man and he collects boonie dogs.”

“Does he eat them?”

“I don't think so.”

I counted thirteen dogs as we passed. They were big and
small, though none as small as Hollie. Hollie eyed them nervously but the dogs stayed with the old man. I tried to take a
closer look at him but he kept his head down. He was wearing very old, faded military fatigues and his hair was long,
grey and stringy. He looked like a hobo but the dogs seemed
to love him. I was curious. “Do you think we could talk to
him?”

“No way! He's crazy!”

“How do you know he's crazy?”

“Everyone says that. And look at him. He talks to himself
all the time. And who would stay around after a war for the
rest of his life? You'd have to be crazy.”

“I suppose.”

I thought of the soldiers in the cave. They never had a
choice.

After our walk, I said goodnight to Cinnamon at the ship.
She asked me where I was going to sleep.

“I don't know. Somewhere.”

“In a cave with skeletons?”

“Not tonight. Maybe on the beach.”

“You're coming back tomorrow, right?”

“I am.”

“Do you promise?”

I nodded. I didn't know why she liked me so much, but I
didn't mind.

Long after darkness had fallen and Cinnamon went inside
the ship, I was still wandering along the beach, slowly sifting my feet through the warm sand. It was still hot out, and
I loved that. Hollie still had lots of energy, which was amazing. He never wasted opportunities to run around on land.
He ran back and forth between the water and me, sniffing
everything. Seaweed dropped by for a while, then disappeared again. Eventually I sat down and stared at the moon.
The sand was soft and comfortable. I wondered how to tell
the Japanese man about the skeletons. Could one of them
have been his father? Imagine! I really had to do something.

I sat until I got sleepy, then spread my jacket beneath me,
lay down and went to sleep. Hollie curled up beside me. I
heard him snort sand out of his nose as I drifted off.

In the morning I raised my head and saw the old man. He
was down at the edge of the water, surrounded by his pack
of dogs. Maybe he had seen me, but he was ignoring me. I
was curious. Would it be so bad if I talked to him? So what
if he was crazy? I could just walk away.

Cinnamon was right, he was talking to himself. But he
stopped when I approached. He must have been surprised
to see someone coming towards him. He raised his head but
didn't look at me. I couldn't tell if he was crazy or not. “Good
morning.”

He looked uncertain. He was struggling to speak. “Mornin'.”

He had a deep voice and a heavy accent that was probably from the American south. I decided to come right out
and ask him what I wanted to know. Why not? “I was told
that you served in the war here.”

His eyebrows lifted up and he turned and looked at me
as if he were staring at a ghost. “Suppose.”

“And . . . I heard that you've never left the island since
then. Is that true?”

His eyes went into a stare and they went far away. He didn't
answer. Slowly, he came closer. His eyes focused on Hollie in
my arms. Then he looked at me as clear as day. “Would you
like some coffee?”

HIS NAME WAS
Paul Lafayette. He was from New Orleans. I
walked with him to his tiny concrete house across the road,
opposite the beach. It was almost hidden beneath coconut
trees, lemon trees and bushes. The back half of the house
was open, just a roof covering a table and an open kitchen.
There were hundreds of yellow butterflies in the bushes. I
smiled when I saw them.

The dogs came in and settled on the floor. I had put
Hollie inside the tool bag but Paul said not to worry; the
dogs would not hurt him. He was right. When I let Hollie
out, they treated him like a friend. There was a lot of butterfly flapping and dog-tail wagging in Paul's kitchen.

“We don't see too many visitors,” he said. “In fact, you're
the first one in about ten years.”

“Why do you have so many dogs?”

He filled the kettle and put it on the stove. “Most abandoned dogs join the packs. These are the ones that were
rejected. They usually end up on the beach. Sooner or later
they find their way to me.”

He toasted two whole loaves of bread on the grill, buttered them and shared them with the dogs and me. He
served me a cup of very strong coffee and sat down. He held
his cup in two hands, blew across the top and started to
talk. It sounded like a confession, as if he had been waiting
a long time to tell it. I listened in utter fascination as he told
me how he came to the Pacific as a young man on board a
navy ship. He was a marine. Climbing into the landing
barge to take Saipan was his first taste of combat.

“The fighting was so vicious. Nothing in training, nothing in the world prepared us for it. We outnumbered them
more than two to one. We had better weapons, more ammunition and better air-cover. For every American soldier who
died, ten Japanese soldiers were killed. But still, they wouldn't
quit. No matter what we did they wouldn't surrender. We
killed a thousand of them every day for a month. It just
didn't stop. And then . . .”

“And then?”

Paul went into a blank stare again. He didn't look sad
or anything, just very far away. “And then they started
jumping from the cliffs, the women and children.”

“I was up there, yesterday. I couldn't understand how anybody could jump.”

“Well, they did.” He paused. “And they hid in the caves.”

“I know. I found one.”

“There are caves all over this island. We linked arms, five
thousand of us, and walked every inch of the island, and
still we couldn't find them. They kept up a guerrilla campaign even after we had taken the island. Nothing,
nothing
would make them quit.”

“But eventually they did. They must have.”

He shook his head. “No. We sealed up some of the caves,
locking them inside. And . . . we brought out flame throwers.”

He stopped. I waited. He reached down and scratched
the head of an old dog. “There's a library here, Alfred. Have
you been to it?”

“No, I just got here.”

“You should go. They have real film footage of the battle.
You can see it. You can see everything.”

“I'd love to do that. I will.”

He looked at me strangely, almost suspiciously. “Well, you
can see it, yes. You can see it all.”

“Even people jumping from the cliffs?”

“Everything.”

He stopped, dropped his head low and ran his fingers
through his stringy grey hair. Suddenly he raised his head
and looked at me again. “I put myself under house arrest,
you understand?”

“What?”

“Nobody ordered me to. I just decided after what I had
done I would confine myself to house arrest for the rest of
my life.”

“So it's true? You never left?”

“It's true. Except for crossing the road to the beach for
the dogs and going to the store, I never leave this house.”

“You haven't left since the end of the war?”

“No. This is my third house on this spot. The first two were
destroyed by typhoons. The typhoons are getting worse, you
know. It's global warming. We don't deserve this planet.”

“But . . . what did you do that was so bad?”

He raised his thumb and bit the nail. “When you watch
those films . . .”

“Yes?”

“You'll see the flame-throwers.”

“Okay?”

“You'll see women coming out of the caves. You'll see
babies in their arms.”

“Oh.”

“We burnt them.”

I realized I had stopped breathing. “You were a flame-thrower?”

He dropped his head and nodded. I felt like I couldn't
breathe.

“Do you want some more coffee?”

“Uhh . . . I don't know.”

I couldn't think. I was feeling sick in my stomach. Paul
reached over and filled my cup with coffee. Then he sat
back and stared at a butterfly that landed on his shoulder. I
needed to see the films at the library. I had to.

“Will you come back and visit me again?”

“Sure.”

There was nothing about Paul that looked criminal, that
was for sure. He was probably the gentlest man I had ever
met. I felt sorry for him. I couldn't understand why he
couldn't forgive himself.

Two hours later I was sitting in a tiny projection room in
the Saipan Public Library, a long concrete bunker that could
have been any library in any town in North America. The
film I was watching was in black and white. It showed the
American ships arriving and shelling the island and soldiers
climbing into the landing barges and jumping onto the
beach. Jeeps landed, tanks landed, airplanes flew overhead
and dropped bombs. Everywhere there were explosions,
smoke and confusion. I couldn't believe it was the same
island, and yet I recognized it. Then I saw the cliffs. It looked
like things were falling off. But the camera went closer and I
saw people, big ones and small ones. They were dropping
down to the ground, though some were hitting the rocks on
the way. Some were waving their arms and screaming. Some
just fell silently. I was horrified.

Then I saw soldiers at the entrance to caves. Some of the
caves were just small holes in the ground. The soldiers were
smiling as they pointed to them. I tried to see the faces of
the soldiers. Sometimes they were smiling for the camera.
Sometimes they weren't. They had discovered Japanese soldiers hiding. Now they were leading them in a row with
their hands on top of their heads. The Japanese soldiers
were very small. They were in bare feet and their clothes
were just rags.

Then I saw soldiers with tanks on their backs. They shot
fire from them and I could not believe how far the flames
reached. They must have sprayed a hundred feet. And then
I saw soldiers standing by the entrance to a cave. I looked to
see if I could recognize Paul. He was just a young man then,
just a couple of years older than me. I didn't recognize him.
The soldiers must have suspected the enemy was hiding in
the cave. They shot flames inside. Women came running out,
and they were carrying babies and they were on fire. They
burned to death right there. I dropped my head. What was I
doing? What was I watching? Why was I here? Suddenly I
wished I hadn't seen it. I wanted to take it away. I wanted to
go back to where I was before I had watched that film.

But I couldn't.