"Where the hell d'ya run off to last night, Lenny?" Charles asks as he chews on his breakfast sloppily. I shrug in response.
"It's Leonard. And I was just checking out something," I say. "A woman was crying. Rough night." Before I even finish answering the men I was eating with busted out into laughter, nearly spilling their breakfast in the process. What fell on the ground, the dogs ate, snarling at each other and fighting for the scraps of fallen sausage.
"You got a lot to learn man," they cackle, slapping me on the back a little too roughly. "Bitches are up crying all night, every night. You'll learn to ignore them."
A man named Edgar pipes in, "Just don't go running off every time you hear someone drop a paperclip and you'll do fine here, sonny boy." Charles stabs his eggs with a fork, failing to make it stick on. He gets angry and eventually gives up on the whole meal, tossing it to the dogs.
I was disgusted with their attitudes, with their blatant disregard for human life. Then again, what I'm doing here goes against any moral code I have. It's my military obligation and I have no choice but to be here. That doesn't mean I'm going to treat the people like animals, like these fools do.
To protect myself I say, "It was my first night here. I won't make the same mistake twice," which was a lie. I was going to be discreet about it next time.
"I got somethin' to shove in your ears if it gets too annoying. Most the guys here use some," a man named Roy explains. "Earplugs are best thing that's happened to this place come night time." He laughs, his voice raspy and unhealthy sounding, making it obvious he must have been smoking since the age of eleven.
"Thanks," I mutter, trying to hide my disgust. My appetite is lost, so I set my plate on the ground and let the dogs clean it before standing and heading off to my next destination. My duties for the duration of my stay here would include food distribution and security. By day I'm handing out bowls of soup, and starting tonight I patrol the grounds and keep in check any escape attempts or fights; things of that sort.
But honestly, I wouldn't trust myself with either of my jobs. Even after my first day, I have been chastised for giving too large of portions to people. There is so much food left over that we just throw away, and these people are starving. As for the security...I don't support keeping people trapped in these camps, so enforcing that law myself is going to be very hard. I'm already morally corrupt for just being here.
For the rest of the morning I'm doing basic chores until my shift is scheduled to start. I take inventory of the food rations mid-morning, in between breakfast and lunch. Then I serve, and after that I patrol the perimeter until nightfall. I try to focus on my duties, but I find her face wrapped around my mind like a sloth to a branch.
She couldn't be any older than I, yet still seems so burdened.
This is one of my worse qualities; I become too easily attached to people. Joining the army was not exactly an ideal situation for me, nor was coming to this camp. But, I didn't have a choice in the matter, because when it came down to supporting my mother, this was the only financial option I could afford to accept.
Ma was injured a few years back while working at her factory job, but she's the kind of lady who just doesn't go down without a fight, so she worked for a solid year with a bad wrist. That ended up making things worse for her in the long run.
My father died when I was young, right after my brothers were born. Twins, Avery and Joseph, are ten years younger than me. They're back home taking care of Ma while I'm away, both now fifteen years old. A sturdy pair of twins. They were a beautiful gift to our family after my mothers miscarriage only a year earlier. Despite the blessing of their lives, she has never fully recovered from her earlier loss. My brothers' name would have been Thomas. Avery and Joseph were raised to know him, know the brother they almost had. We don't think about it much anymore; we just take care of Ma.
That's what we've done our whole lives...well, until recently it was me taking care of them while Ma worked. She worked hard, nothing was ever too good for her babies. We lived a hard life, but we were raised right, I always thought. We knew what mattered more than other things, and as long as we had each other and our good health, we were just fine.
And then Pearl Harbor happened, and the war, and Ma's accident...and it just became too much... The next thing I knew I was on a train to California, leaving my family behind and telling myself it was all going to be okay. I wish I'd know what I was getting myself into.
"Toss me an apple, will ya?" says a voice. I turn, and see Edgar standing in the entryway to the pantry where I was taking inventory. I toss him an apple and turn back to my work, expecting him to go away. Instead, he crunches into the fruit and stands by my side, one hand holding the apple up to his mouth and the other fiddling with his dogtag. I'd noticed he does that a lot, he made a habit of messing with that thing. "So how's your first week?" he questions, southern accent thick. I think he's from Georgia or something.
I shrug, "fine, I guess."
"Don't shrug like that, it makes you look like you don't give a shit, and I know you give a shit," he points a finger at me and sits on the stool a few feet away. "I see the way you react to the other guys, you hate it here don't ya?"
The other guys? What, like he's excluded? He's equally annoying, and I just want him to go away. I find myself shrugging, not knowing what to say. I didn't want to admit to him that he's right.
"I hate it too," he says. "It ain't right."
This surprises me.
"Then why would you agree with the other guys?" I ask him, curious as to what would make him want to abandon his morals this early in the game. He looks down, almost shamefully.
"I don't mean it, really. They find out you're a softie and they'll kick your sorry ass. Learned the hard way. Thought I'd best let you know. So, get with the program or get a punch in the gut," he tosses me his apple core and nods before heading off, seeming far less cheery than he did when he first came in.
After he leaves I take a seat at the stool he just had. I hadn't even stopped to think about something like that. I never considered that some of the other soldiers here have layers, it's interesting to think about.
I sigh and run my hands over my face, realizing how long my beard had gotten. I should shave, if not to seem clean than to impress Seiko.
What was I doing? I haven't felt this way since grade school. The familiar twist in my gut was unwelcome and uninviting. I shouldn't see her again, absolutely not. I'm here to do my job. I'll not shave my beard.
Later in the day, after doing a few runs through inventory (which wasn't really needed or taken seriously), I returned to my station, handing out todays' lunch.
I tried my hardest to ignore the tugging in my gut at the thought of seeing her again. I was in her section of the camp, I was going to see her, there is no doubt about that. Unless she doesn't come up to collect any food...but why wouldn't she? She doesn't know I'm a soldier. Well, she has to know! She must've seen that I'm not Japanese. What other caucasion person would be here, aside from someone in charge? God, that sounds horrible, even in my head.
Only once have I ever been so anxious about a girl. In the tenth grade, nine years ago, every time Besty Miller would walk by me in the hallway at school I would forget whatever it was that I thinking or saying. I would forget how to breathe just for a moment. She was simply lovely, but someone of her standards and popularity had never noticed me, a lonely honors student. She graduated high school not knowing that a boy in her class would do anything she asked. Years passed, and I heard she married a wealthy man; heir to an oil mining company I guess.
The motion of handing plates to people has become so natural, and I've lost myself in my thoughts for so long, that I barely notice Seiko standing before me, waiting for my attention. My muscles jump and I freeze momentarily as our eyes meet, and I forget where I am, what I'm doing, and who I am. All I see is a big pair of beautiful icy blue eyes looking back at me with curiosity, wondering what my next move will be.
"I-uh-you," I can't find the words for the life of me. She looks down for a second and I swear I saw her cheeks flush. I can't clear my head, my mind is so cloudy. All I see is her looking at me. It hits me, "apple?" I offer. It was the freshest of the fruit that we have, and I'd saved one for her. The last one in fact.
"Thank you," she takes the apple from me and leaves with her food. I'm suddenly serving the woman behind her and my world is much dimmer as her radiance moves on. I look towards her one more, hoping that maybe she will do something, anything, to speak with me. She doesn't look back, she just heads back to where she came without a second thought. Does she not remember the night before? She looks as though she never went through such grief!
The rest of the afternoon I sit alone in my quarters, trying to remember the name of the girl I was once infatuated with. I look down at the letter in my hands that I recieved from Ma a week ago, asking me how my transfer was going for me. I hadn't had the courage to write her back and tell her that I never made it to Hawaii, that I'd been picked out and sent here to "maintain order".
The paper falls to the ground and I lean back against the cot. I want to see her again. I can't get her face out of my mind. My thoughts are all cloudy again...
"Leonard, you're wanted," Edgar says, shaking me from my peace. I must have dozed off. Who knows how long I've been asleep, it could be five minutes or an hour.
"What?" I question groggily. "Who?"
"Your supervisor," he shrugs, sitting next to me as I rub my face, slowly waking up. "Was that her? The woman you were staring at earlier, was she the lady who was cryin' last night?" he wonders bluntly. This man has a natural curiosity for things, and not much restriction when it comes to gaining information.
"You're awfully nosey," I comment, avoiding answering him.
"I told 'ya sonny boy, it ain't right what we're doing here. If a lady needs help I ain't gonna snitch 'bout it." He looks down at his boots, fiddling with his dogtag. We're silent for a few moments before she heaves a big breath and stands up. "Your business, not mine." He holds up his hands in defense before leaving.
Edgar was around the same age as me, at least he looked to be. I wasn't too keen on speaking to other soldiers, but this may be one man I could learn to tolerate. He's the only other soldier here who knows that what we're doing is wrong. Yeah...I could learn to live with him.