“They cleaned out the prison camp in Kapiolani Park,” Oscar answered. They rescued a bunch of guys who looked just like you. He didn’t say that. Except by not screwing around with women he should have left alone, Charlie couldn’t help the way he looked. Oscar added, “I guess they were afraid the Japs would start killing people if they just left ’em there.”

“Jeez, I believe that,” Charlie said. “I was hoping I could take soldiers back to Kalihi Valley. God knows what’s gonna happen to my buddies now.”

He closed the door again. Water started to run. In a low voice, Oscar said, “He’s gotta stay here for a while, babe. I’m sorry, but I don’t know what else we can do.”

Susie waved the words aside. “It’s okay. You’re right. We can’t do anything else. My God! Did you see him? He looks like a photo in Life or National Geographic where they’re talking about famine in India or China or somewhere like that.” Now she did scratch her head. She smiled sheepishly, but said, “For heaven’s sake, throw his clothes somewhere far, far away. I’m going to imagine I’m itching for the next week, whether I really am or not.”

“Yeah, I know.” Oscar got a flowered shirt and a pair of pants out of the closet and tossed them into the bathroom. He didn’t have a belt that Charlie could use to hold up the pants; none of the ones he owned had enough holes. But a length of rope would keep his pal decent.

He glanced over at Susie. How… sympathetic would she feel if Charlie stayed here all the time? How would she show her sympathy? Like that ? Oscar shrugged a mental shrug. If she did, then she did, that was all. And if she did, didn’t that tell him she wasn’t the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with? When Charlie got out of the tub, he threw his old clothes out from behind the door. He emerged a couple of minutes later, much cleaner. Maybe because he was cleaner, maybe because of the way Oscar’s shirt and pants hung on him, he looked even scrawnier than he had before.

Oscar picked up Charlie’s reeking rags with thumb and forefinger, like a fussy maiden lady. He didn’t care how he looked. If he’d had tongs, he would have used those. He took the clothes out to the front door of the building, poked his head outside to make sure no Japs spotted him, and threw everything into the gutter. He frantically wiped his hand against his own trouser leg as he went back to his apartment.

Charlie was telling Susie what things were like in the Kalihi Valley. She hung on his every word. Well, Charlie could tell stories with anybody this side of Will Rogers. Oscar wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t in Charlie’s league. He shrugged to himself again. He’d see what happened, that was all. Whatever it was, he was glad Charlie had got out of the Kalihi Valley in one piece.

JANE ARMITAGE HAD MADE A LAIR OF SORTS for herself in the Wahiawa experimental planting station. A stream ran through it, so she had water. Some of the trees had fruit on them, and gave her a little something to eat. Zebra doves weren’t nearly so common as they had been before the Japs invaded, but the little blue-faced birds were still around. Jane didn’t dare make a fire. If you got hungry enough, you could eat them raw. Jane wouldn’t have believed it, but it was true. And she was hungry enough.

She couldn’t have had a simpler plan: stay out of sight and try not to die till the Americans took Wahiawa. No one seemed to have come after her or the other comfort women who’d escaped from the blasted brothel. Jane knew exactly what that meant: the Japs had more important things to worry about. They were getting screwed now instead of doing the screwing. And they had it coming to them, too.

Every so often, other people came into the station to gather fruit. Jane hid from them like an animal, cowering in the thick bushes by the stream. That was partly because she feared they might betray her to the occupiers. And it was partly because, after what the Japanese had made her do, she felt unclean. Surely anyone who knew her, anyone who knew what she’d had to do, would think she was unclean, too. From third-grade teacher to whore in one easy step…

The front was getting close to Wahiawa, but not fast enough to suit her. The Japs made a stand in front of the town. They would, the bastards, Jane thought as she got hungrier. Even though they didn’t know she was here, they kept on trying to ruin her life.

They’d done it, all right. Here she was, not quite thirty, and she hoped to heaven she never saw, never touched, and most especially never tasted another cock as long as she lived. Maybe one day she’d change her mind. She laughed at that. Yeah-when I get to be ninety. Or maybe ninety-five.

There were times when she wouldn’t have bet she could make it to her thirtieth birthday, let alone to ninety-five. Except by standing and fighting, the Japs didn’t have anything to do with that. American shells had been falling on Wahiawa ever since the brothel got hit. Sometimes they fell in or near the planting station. Those fearsome crashes uprooted trees and sent shrapnel snarling through the leaves and the undergrowth. None of it hit Jane, but some came scarily close.

She’d been at the station four or five days when machine-gun bullets began snapping past overhead-because the gardens followed the course of the stream, most of the land here was lower than the surrounding countryside. Fletch had told her that when you could hear a bullet snap, it came closer than you wanted it to. She thought these bullets were wonderful. They meant the Americans were almost as close as she wanted them to be.

Then Japanese soldiers started falling back through the station. Jane hid herself as deep among the bushes as she could. She feared they would fight from the cover the exotic plants offered. The low ground, though, evidently counted for more than that. Some of the Japs paused to fill their water bottles in the stream. Then they trotted south to make a stand somewhere else.

Before long, their bullets cracked by above her head as they harassed the oncoming Americans. She lay down behind a fallen log and hoped it would protect her. Somebody set up a machine gun on the northern lip of the little valley. Its insane hammering made her fillings ache. She heard shouts that didn’t sound as if they were in Japanese, and then boots padding along the trails tourists had taken to see the elephant apple and the candle tree.

Ever so cautiously, she raised her head. For a moment, fresh fear shook her. Were these men Americans? They were white men, and they spoke English, but she’d never seen those green uniforms before. The helmets didn’t look anything like what Fletch had laughingly called his tin hat, either.

She had to nerve herself to speak. “Hello?” she said, her voice not much more than a whisper.

With frightening speed, two rifles swung to cover her. “The fuck?” one of the apparitions in green said.

“Son of a bitch! It’s a broad,” the other one said. “Come on out of there, lady. We goddamn near drilled you.”

“Goddamn near,” the first one agreed. “What the hell you doin’ here, anyways?”

“Hiding,” she answered. To her, it was the most obvious thing in the world. These-warriors-grinned as if she’d made a joke. “Who are you people, anyway?” she asked.

“Corporal Petrocelli, ma’am,” one of them said, at the same time as the other answered, “Private Schumacher, ma’am.” Together, they added, “United States Army.”

The Army didn’t wear uniforms like theirs. No-it hadn’t worn uniforms like theirs. There’d been some changes made. Schumacher (who was shorter and darker than Petrocelli, which only went to show you) asked, “Any Japs around?”

Jane pointed south. “They went thataway,” she said, as if she had a bit part in a B Western. “I hope you kill ’em all.”