No Surrender Soldier Read Online Free Page A

dangerous.
Houses too close to my cave.
He reminded himself to stay focused.
About a yard in, just about here… aiee, as I thought, nothing…
    A twig snapped. Seto squatted down amongst the roots and ferns. Dead leaves rustled. Seto could see no person or animal so he stared at the ground.
    A brown tree snake slithered down the tree his snare was tied to and across the jungle floor. Brown tree snakes were the reason there were no birds for Seto to catch and eat. Seto and snakes competed for rats, too. He often thought it odd he saw no snakes on this island when first he made it his home.
    The snake slithered over Seto’s net and advanced toward his leg.
Thwak
. With one swift stroke of his knife Seto chopped the snake in half. Seto took no chances on being poisoned. He didn’t take the snake to his den to eat.
    Always the tailor, he noticed two holes in his net.
    No wonder I do not catch anything.
He cut down his net, and stuffed it in his sack.
    Concerned he was taking too long, and causing too much noise, Seto plucked snails off a tree trunk. He tossed into his sack a few coconuts that had fallen to the ground, and a breadfruit he pulled from a tree.
    Like a hunched-over peddler with a knapsack on his back, Seto carried his treasures home. He lifted his bamboo trap door, and lowered himself rung by rung down his ladder. At the bottom he removed his shorts and shirt, then crawled through the tunnel to the slightly enlarged cooking chamber.
    “Hai, Mister Rat, see what I brought home for dinner? And you, my friend, shall be the main course.”
    Rat had gotten nowhere for all his gnawing at the steel trap. He scurried around with interest at the sound of Seto’s voice again.
    Seto rubbed two sticks together to ignite a rope wick in coconut oil on the stove.
“Fire was much easier when I still had a flashlight lens,”
he said more to himself than to Rat. It had been so long ago since he owned the lens that he couldn’t remember when he lost it. All that lingered were memories of anger upon discovering it gone. Some days he wished to trade anger for this numbing fear.
    He rubbed from top to bottom, top to bottom until the sticks finally ignited the wick. Content the oil would burn, Seto diced breadfruit to cook with snails in coconut milk.
    He unlatched the trap door and pinched Rat behind its head with two fingers. He grabbed its tail with his other hand.
    “Sorry, my friend. It is you or me.”
    Seto cut off Mister Rat’s head, tail, and feet with a rusty butcher knife. He drained its warm blood into a coconut shell. He sliced its belly and peeled off its furry skin like shucking the shell of a crawfish. Seto gutted Rat’s belly to boil its innards in coconut milk. He fried the paltry meat in a skillet made by cutting his military canteen in half.
    Then he sat on his pago-woven
tatami
, clicked his chopsticks whittled from branches, and ate.
    “
Mmm. I like rat liver best.
”

CHAPTER 3

SAMMY’S BASEBALL
JANUARY 4, 1972
    Sitting at our kitchen table, I wolfed down an egg and chorizo tortilla and watched Nana scramble eggs with a fork. The air around her was hazy from sausage smoke. How come I never noticed the wild gray hairs in her wavy black hair? I patted down my own bushy hair. Otherwise, Nana didn’t look any different—same round face, same dimple in the left cheek when she smiled, same brown almond eyes.
    Tatan must’ve been wrong. That’s my nana he was talking about. It had to have been the craziness in his head saying that bad thing happened to her. It couldn’t have.
    Nana caught me looking at her and smiled. Yep, dimple’s still there. She smelled like sausage and plumeria. I shoved the last bit of breakfast in my mouth. Tata had already finished eating, but was still drinking black coffee and reading the newspaper.
    “I need you do me a favor, eh?” Nana was wiping out the iron skillet with a paper towel.
    I flicked my eyebrows.
    “Stay home and keep an eye on Tatan.” Nana set the