Lay Down My Sword and Shield (Hackberry Holland 1)

“You should move away from the stove,” Ding said. “It’s bad for you to become overheated.”

“Colonel, we ain’t trying to con you,” O.J. said. “We got on Dixon because he wouldn’t share nothing and he was eating vitamin pills, and he thought we was going to knock him around. He went off his nut and started beating on the door and screaming for Kwong. There wasn’t no more to it.”

“Would you like to say something, Private?”

“No, sir,” Bertie said. I had to turn and look at him. His voice was high with fear, but I didn’t believe the resolve that was there, also.

“Do you want to suffer with these other men?”

“They told you the truth, Colonel. There ain’t any break.”

“You haven’t spoken. Would you like a turn?” Ding said to me, and at that moment I hated him more than any other human being on earth, not merely for his cruelty but also for the mental degradation that he could continue indefinitely with his physical power over us.

“There’s nothing to say, sir. Dixon lied.” I wouldn’t let my eyes focus on his face, but he sensed my hatred toward him, anyway, and he smiled with that crooked harelip.

“So the corpsman believes me stupid, too. What are we going to do with you American fighting men? That’s how you’re called at home, isn’t it? What would you suggest if you had my position? Intelligent Western men like you must have suggestions. You’re a Texan, aren’t you, Corpsman? You must have learned many lines from cowboy movies.”

“They gave it to you straight, Colonel.”

“He was one of them last night,” Dixon said. “They were going to smother me in my sleep.”

(At the time I would have never guessed that the terrified man in the corner, sweating in the heat of the stove, would one day have his picture on the front page of newspapers all over the world as one of the twenty-two American turncoats who chose to remain in Red China after the peace was signed. However, the photograph would show him with full, clean-shaved cheeks, his cap pointed neatly over one eye, a red-blooded enlistee fresh out of the Chicago poolrooms.)

“Then maybe we should begin with you, Corpsman,” Ding said, and motioned Kwong with his hand.

The sergeant slammed me down in the wooden chair in front of the desk. Ding lit another cigarette and dropped the burnt match into a butt can. The room was now close with the smell of our bodies and the cigarette smoke. I could almost feel the cruel energy and expectation in Kwong’s body behind me.

“Do you want this to be prolonged, or do you want to talk in an intelligent manner?”

I stared into nothing, my shoulders hunched and my hands limp in my lap. I could hear the Turk breathing through his teeth in the silence. Kwong slapped me full across the face with his callused hand. My eyes watered and I could feel the blood burning in the skin.

“Do you think you’re in a movie now, Corpsman?” Ding said. “Are the Flying Tigers going to drop out of the sky and kill all the little yellow men around you?”

I stared through my wet eyes at the wall. The lines in the room looked warped, glittering with moisture, and the oil stove burned brightly red in one corner of my vision. Ding nodded to the sergeant, an indifferent and casual movement of maybe an inch, and Kwong brought my head down with both hands into his knee and smashed my nose. The blood burst across my face, my head exploded with light, and I was sure the bone had been knocked back into the brain. I was bent double in the chair, the blood pouring out through my hands, and each time I tried to clear my throat I gagged on a clot of phlegm and started the dry heaves.

“He don’t know nothing, Colonel,” Joe Bob said. “Sometimes the guys bullshit about escape, but he don’t even do that. He knows they’re bullshitting and he always walks away from it. He don’t have no names to give you.”

“Would you like to give me some names?”

“It ain’t nothing but guys setting around shitting each other about a break, Colonel. Anybody in a joint does the same thing, or you start beating your rod with sandpaper after a while. Dixon’s a goddamn fish and he couldn’t cut it, so he sold you a lot of jive.”

“Your corpsman hasn’t been hurt at all. The sergeant can do many other things to him.”

“I know that, sir,” Joe Bob said. “It just won’t do no good. He can’t tell you nothing.”

“Then I think you should take his chair,” Ding said.

My hands were covered with blood and saliva, and I was still choking on my breath, but I wanted to go over Ding’s desk and get my thumbs into his throat. However, I never got the chance to learn if I was that brave or desperate with pain and hatred, because the Turk suddenly stopped breathing a moment, his white face filling with dark areas of rage, and his hot, black eyes glared insanely. Then he shouted once, a bull’s roar that came out of some awful thing inside him, and he started for Ding with his huge hands raised in fists over his head.

Kwong stepped quickly in front of him and swung the stock of his burp gun upward into the Turk’s mouth. I could hear his teeth break against the wood. He reeled backward on the floor, his lips cut open in blue gashes, then Kwong raised his foot back, poised himself, and kicked him in the stomach. The Turk’s breath rushed out in a long, rattling gasp, he drew his knees up to his chin, and his face went perfectly white. His mouth worked silently, the veins rigid in his throat, and his eyes were glazed with pain like a dumb, strangling animal’s.

Ding was on his feet, shouting in Chinese at Kwong. His waxlike face was enraged, and he kept stabbing one finger in the air at some point outside the building.

“He’s crazy, Colonel,” Joe Bob said. “A stir freak. He probably don’t even know where he is.”

“You wouldn’t behave intelligently,” Ding yelled. “You stand there with your confident faces and think you’re dealing with comical peasants. You’re stupid men that have to be treated as such.”

Kwong pulled me out of the chair by my collar and pushed me toward the door, then he began kicking the Turk in the spine. The Turk’s breath came in spasms, and when he tried to suck air down into his lungs the blood bubbled on his lips.