Dark Wilderness

Based on true historical events

"Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide of its island mark,

Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark." 

William Vaughn Moody, "On A Soldier Fallen in the Philippines" 1901

Philippines - November 16, 1899. 

Our torches bounced in the jungle's indigo dusk among coconut trees and cricket cries. Amidst the jungle our motions had purpose, direction. We never paused. Our torches only shed light to the invisible pathway we followed. I strode behind David, as usual when we patrolled together. But this wasn't patrol. 

He swayed around trees and bushes with agility and determination. In four months, he'd come to know this jungle as though he were born here. We had been silent for some time. I couldn't see his face, but I knew he held the same firm and committed gaze, locked on some indefinite point. They always were those days. He'd said he would go across the river to the lagoon, there were mangroves there. He would dispose of the pamphlet we found in my tent, and I could follow if I wanted. I'd never been to the mangroves, but I knew David had mapped out the landscape beyond any area we were told or allowed to venture. In fact, everybody knew. 

"Why not just show it to the General?" I asked "He didn't do anythin' bout it before." 

"I thought you'd never ask," he said, but offered no further explanation. This was not new to me. As we walked further away from camp, its glow shrinking into a dot like a star buried in foliage, the blanket of night noises transported us to a new realm. Dark wilderness. Awakened unknown creatures. 

"Besides," I said, a little out of breath, "I think it's trouble. Can't we just do it here? We'll be gone too long. They'll notice." 

"They won't." David was quick to answer. 

"They won't?" I said and stopped to catch my breath. David marched on at the same steady speed. 

"Palm wine," he said. He didn't look back. "Keep up, it ain't that far if you keep your breath from speak." 

I bounced, hurried after him and said "where'd you get palm wine?" 

My question got swallowed by the night purr, and I'm starting to wonder if I'd actually asked it. Strange things sometimes happened. I was trying to forget the villager's stories about the spirits, but it was hard, and surely they won't ever leave my mind. I swore under my breath. "Shit, why'd I come..."

I hadn't intended for David to hear, but he did and seemed unaffected. 

"You can always go back," he said. But I couldn't and we both knew it. We sneaked out and only he knew where we were going. My curiosity had compelled me to follow, and it didn't take long to be too deep in the woods.

David often disappeared, and we didn't know why. What had he been doing all this time when he was gone without a warning? Mere exploration? We speculated. Was he meeting up with someone? David took off rarely at first, but now, it was almost everyday. In fact, every night. 

The river's stream made its way into our route. We would walk downstream for a while, take the bamboo crossing we'd asked a group of young boys to build a few weeks after we arrived last June, and turn into a path that had been so far unknown to me. 

"Why do we have to go so far, Dave, just tell me," I said. 

He came to a halt and turned. His eyes, his older eyes, glowed as they widened. Two pale dots, in vivid contrast with his dark skin, that urged me to listen, to obey. 

 "I'll tell you, just keep quiet," he said and gave me a smack on the head. 

The last dim streaks of a fallen sun had completely given the stage to the billions of stars by the time we reached the mangroves. Fireflies buzzed around forming their own starscape, while we sat in silence in the mud by the lagoon. 

"Alfredo gave me the palm wine," David finally said, his voice just a pitch above a whisper but that seemed to rise above every other sound. Alfredo was a boy whose voice had yet to molt. He'd been hanging around with us and a few other boys from the village when the Colonels were away. "He got it from another village... His older brother stole it." 

"They won't care if we're gone then," I said, which stirred up a small smile in David. It quickly dropped and he looked deadpan beyond the water. 

"Even if they care, I won't." He paused and took out the rolled up parchment from his pocket. "And you shouldn't either." 

At the time, I didn't want to hear it. I was an officer who followed orders. I didn't want to question the care or morality of my superior's command. I didn't want to question, because my profession required me not to. I tried to change the subject. 

"You've been doing a lot of talk with Alfredo," I said. 

"Yeah, I have," David said distracted as he unfolded the paper. "Have you seen this?" he asked

"I was there, Dave --" 

"I know you was there, but have you properly looked at it?" He held his arm toward me, holding the paper. 

"It's just propaganda, I don't need to--"

"Have you read it Will?" He said, insistent. 

I understood he wanted me to read it right there in front of him. I didn't think it was necessary. But I snatched the paper and I did while he lit me with his torch.

"To the colored American soldier. It is without honor that you are spilling your costly blood. Your masters have thrown you in the most iniquitous fight with double purposes, in order to make you the instrument of their ambition; and also your hard work will soon make the extinction of your race. Your friends, the Filipinos, give you this good warning. You must consider your situation and your history, and remember that the blood of your brothers, Sam Hose and Gray proclaims vengeance."

"Yeah," I sighed. But David was serious and looking at me, expectant. I suddenly remembered what had happened. I had to give him more, but I didn't know what to say. He kept waiting, and looked out, this time at the sky. 

"D'you know Sam Hose?" I asked. He frowned.

"No." 

I swallowed slowly. I knew it was not what he wanted to hear, but I couldn't give it to him. 

"We don't give this to the colonel, William, cause it's not for him," he finally answered the question I asked at the beginning of our journey. "We're told to civilize them  but these words they use, they sound civilized enough to me. There's no more civilizing we can do. They've taught me more than I can ever teach them, unless I can teach them the art of ruse."

I didn't say anything because he had a point. It had never occurred to me to think about motives, 'ambition', or 'double purposes' or 'vengeance'. These were thoughts I couldn’t afford.

Some time passed. We had both been thinking under the dancing dots of light. 

"Why come all the way here?" I finally asked. 

"You don't like it?"

"I do."

"What's the matter then?" David said as he took the parchment back from me in a swift pull. 

"You’re taking their warning seriously..," I said. He thought about this.

"I just wanna fight on the right side." 

"The right side is the side of our country." I said, and believed. 

David laughed and shook his head, then looked at me with tears in his eyes. "You know what I like most about what's written there? Have you noticed how they say it? Instrument of their ambition. You okay with being an instrument Will?"

 At that moment, I felt like we were being watched by every living thing around us,  even by the sky itself. It was suddenly hot, very hot. I thought about my mother back in Florida, about another boy that had come to me a few days before and said similar things I had tried hard to forget. 

"Why does the American Negro come from America to fight us when we are much friend to him, and me the same as you. Why don't you fight those people in America that burn Negroes, that made a beast of you, that took the child from its mother's side and sold it?" The boy asked. How did he think of this? How did a small boy from an island in the Pacific, far, far away, know of this? 

"I'm no instrument Dave," I said after a moment of reflection.

"No you ain't Will but they'll use you like one. They make instruments out of all of us. And now they want us to help them make instruments of these people." 

Heat was boiling under my skin.

"Ma's back home and she's alone, if they gotta play me like an instrument so she can have a better life, so our brothers and sisters can be proud, and be thought of good by white folk there, home, then let em, let em tune me however they want. That's what I think if you wanna know. If you become a traitor you're gonna die Dave. I ain't going to kill you. But you gonna die. They gonna hunt you down. You know how they are. I don't wanna spill no costly blood, not mine, not my ma's, Dave you understand? There's nothin we can do. You wanna fight the side of spears and bolos, then fight, but you're gonna die!" 

David's tears remained in place, but he turned his head and I couldn't see them anymore. I had broken the scenery's peace.

"I see now," he said, a low and slow mutter, "How easy it is to die that way for someone who's got nothing to lose."