A DISTANT VICTORY
from
his
scrawny shoulders about his slight chest. His lips, the color
of his face, were stretched upward, forcing his mouth open to display
his
upper teeth as if he were having a dental inspection. It was not
anything like a smile. His eyes were directed over and beyond the
night corpsman's head. His Jap army pants were ragged and nearly
bleached from too much dirty water and sun. He was barefoot.
"Don't understand a word o' English," repeated the S.P., "but
he could use a little of your medical attention right now, I guess. Been
runnin', ain'tcha son, for a couple days and nights through them
jungles in the pass. His legs all tore up like he'd been a wild cow
loose in a cocklebur or a blackberry patch. He sure had figured the
war was over for him, though, 'cause he had taken to the mountains,
not to fight, you hear me, but to find him a Flip woman with a shack
and a acre o' land and dammit if sonny boy here ain't shacked up
with the woman and already plowing his nice little rice field. Whatta
you know!"
The corpsman echoed, "Well, what do you know about that
now?"
"He'd been up there yet," the S.P. said, "if some Flip hadn't
found him out and come down to tell us."
I said, "He must be one of the last ones hiding in the mountains."
"Yep," said the S.P., "he oughta be the one."
The J ap soldier was led to one of the benches ntar a table
covered with bandages, drugs, and a few sterilized minor-surgery
instruments.
"Undress," the corpsman ordered. "Tell him, or do something,
will you, to get them leggings off so I can treat him."
The S.P. pantomimed and gestured until the Jap soldier under–
stood what he was to do. His leggings, puttees like the ones I knew
from the dark and fading snapshots of my cousins in the last war,
made
him
seem grotesquely out of date and place. He removed the
puttees carefully, slowly until the S.P.'s "Hurry up, goddammit,
chop chop!" stirred him along.
We formed a disinterested ring around the three: the S.P.,
who self-consciously rested his hands upon his hips just above the
sagging cartridge belt, the corpsman kneeling coldly to examine the
J ap's legs, and the J ap soldier standing as
if
he were alone.
"Looks as though," one of the men in the circle commented,
803
