Throw Down the Gauntlet

By Janet W. Breeze

(Previous chapter)

Chapter 8

The old Saipanese woman had told her son she had a big secret. But, like a child, she was anxious to share that secret with someone who could really appreciate its full impact. And now she had found that someone — Nancy.

“The old woman want to show you something,” the man said, “in the boonies. Come.”

Nancy obediently followed them onto a path which appeared from out of nowhere. Inadvertently, she crunched snail shells beneath her feet and ducked under giant spider webs as she was led deeper and deeper into the tangantangan. Then the foliage dropped suddenly from roof-top to knee-high, and the jungle became a quiet forest sprouting row upon row of white, weathered grave markers.

“Garapan City,” the man said, “come.”

Here and there, bright plastic flowers hung in wreaths from markers where each plot beneath was carefully sectioned off with stones and covered with white sand. Through the sand, small shoots of tangantangan defiantly poked their wispy heads. In once neat garden sectors, crowds of bowstring hemp stood cobwebbed and erect with tropical stature. Green bamboo the size of maple trunks quaked and creaked in the overhead breezes as Nancy’s eyes focused from Chamarro, to Spanish, to German, to Japanese markers and back again. And then it was obvious they were once more out of the cemetery — and here, beneath two ancient mango trees they stopped, as the old woman began to point to an unmarked plot surrounded by small stones and almost hidden by weeds.

“She say,” the son slowly translated, “many years ago small airplane fall from sky — in lagoon — Tanapag. Lady like you — short hair — come out of water. She wearing man’s pants. Americano lady see soldiers make secret. Get ready for war. Old woman see soldiers hide lady. Then lady die. Old woman see them put her in ground.”

“Amelia Earhartl” Nancy whispered, half to herself. “Here on Saipan?”

Nancy stood staring at the potter’s field grave, trying to remember what she had read in school about the woman who vanished while attempting to fly around the world in the late 1930’s.

“Maila,” the old woman said, pointing at the darkening clouds overhead.

“Come,” her son repeated. “We go now. Rain.”

The three of them turned and retraced their steps back through the cemetery. Now the lazy breezes were gaining momentum and the tall bamboo shoots made long, slow, cracking sounds as they leaned first to one side, and then to the other — each stalk now and again rubbing its neighbor with screeching vibrato.

Where was that? Nancy thought. She vanished east of here — way east. How could she have made it to Saipan?

As they stepped once more into the clearing of the little “boonie” farm a nervous sort of activity brought people running up to them and speaking in soft, urgent tones.

“You must hurry,” the man said to Nancy. “KJQR say typhoon coming.”

Nancy looked around at the group of frightened faces — and at the thrown together shack of patchwork plywood resting upon eight cement-block “feet.”

“But you’d better come with me,” she said. “We have a concrete home. There would be plenty of room. …”

The man grinned and shook his head.

“No, Missus.”

“But where will you go?”

“To cave.”

The old woman began waving her hands excitedly toward Nancy.

“Lagusi! Lagusi!”

“Hurry, Missus.”

Nancy quickly climbed into her small, Japanese-made car and turned on the radio, but the daily Armed Forces broadcast of pure “country” music from Nashville was not interrupted by any local news. Maybe there had been a misunderstanding. Well — it had been known to happen! It looked like any other rainy day in any other part of the world to her, but as she drove up to the side of their newly acquired “permanent” quarters, Grant was standing in the doorway waiting for her.

“Give me the keys,” he said, “so I can park it around the front of the house. They’re expecting a typhoon to hit here in forty-eight hours.”

Nancy still felt a bit stunned and confused.

“So then what’s the rush?” she asked, “if it’s not until day after tomorrow?”

“We’ve got plenty to keep us busy inside,” Grant said, “come on. Mortensens dropped by to make sure I had heard the broadcast, and they said we should get everything we can, put away and into the closets.”

Grant’s tone of immediacy distressed Nancy. In one year of living in the tropics, she had heard so much talk about typhoons — and false warnings — that she could not immediately comprehend that it could actually happen. And she wanted to talk about something else, about where she had been in the boonies.

“I’ve already checked our food supply,” Grant said. “There’s plenty of canned meat and fruit juice to see us through it.”

“Good,” Nancy said, still preoccupied and looking for the encyclopedia volume marked “E.”

“Honey!” Grant said, “we have to get the books put into the closet — not take them out!”

“Oh, Grant, sit down! Calm down! Just give me ten minutes to settle my mind on something and then I’ll panic! If KJQR can take time to play country music, I can take time to look something up.”

“Isn’t this kind of a switch from our first night on Truk when we caught the tail end of that tropical storm and you all but hid in the closet?”

“Please! Don’t remind me!” And she flipped through the pages of her books.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, “Howland Island. It isn’t anywhere near here.”

“Well, of course it’s not,”

Grant said. “But why does that matter right now?”

“Grant, that old woman took me to a grave she claims is the burial place of Amelia Earhart. But, according to this, weather observers made an emergency landing field for her on Howland Island, but she never reached it. Now how could she have come this far if she were in that much trouble?”

“Nancy — I think every island in the Pacific has a legend of Amelia Earhart. No one knows — and so everyone speculates.”

“But this old woman told the story in such detail! She is so positive! And she described her perfectly. Now how could she make a thing like that up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she saw it in the movies.”

“Well, maybe it’s true, and maybe it isn’t,” Nancy went on, “but as I stood looking at that grave, what had only been a story before suddenly came alive! And I couldn’t help but think what a brave woman she must have been in the first place to even attempt a flight like that — especially after going over the Pacific myself. I don’t think I’d ever want to cross any way but by jet — get it over with in a hurry.”

Nancy closed the book and returned it to the hot closet. “Anyway — I stood there in the boonies, and I just wanted to cry. She seemed so real. The people of Garapan who are no more seemed so real. I even thought about our pioneer ancestors. Oh, Grant. We’ve had our disappointments and times of sorrow — but nothing could ever compare with the trials some people are forced to live through — and die through. I’m so glad we came out here. It has given me such a greater compassion toward other people and their ways and their problems. I used to think I had a testimony of the gospel — but it was nothing compared to the feeling I have now. When I look at other people, I just can’t comprehend what I ever could have done to be so blessed!”

Grant smiled at her in his usual studious way.

“You’re right,” he said, “and I hate to dampen your mood — but let’s remember that the Lord helps those who help themselves, so let’s carry these couch cushions into the bedroom closet.”

“Do you suppose it will be a bad typhoon?” she asked.

“Who knows? I guess that depends on whether it’s a direct hit, or we just get the effects of its hitting someplace else. We shouldn’t have too much to worry about, though, in a concrete house. But we should get everything we can put away — not that it’s going to stay perfectly dry. I’ve heard people say the wind from a typhoon can send rain through four inches of concrete.”

“Don’t you think that sounds a little farfetched?” Nancy asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been in a typhoon — yet.”

When Nancy had first heard that the warning was for a storm forty-eight hours away, it seemed as if they would have time on their hands to do nothing but wait, but in making preparations for the storm and taking care of their four children, the hours seemed to slip by all too quickly. Now the sky was clouded in a frightening green as rain drizzled down the windowpanes.

“We’d better tie down the sunshades,” Grant said. “It’ll keep any broken glass from flying around the room.”

“Here, Amy,” Nancy said, “take this stack of picture books to the nursery. We’re going to stay in there for awhile, and you’ll want lots to do.”

Amy held out her arms for the books and started to cry at the same time.

“I’m scared.”

“Oh, come on now,” Nancy said, “what’s there to be afraid of?”

“It looks funny outside.”

“Well, we’re going to have a new experience, honey, but before we do, we’ll have our family prayer. And then everything will be all right!”

Now the increasing velocity of the wind began driving the rain with such force that it came through the lanai screens and then into the living room.

Nancy looked at the electric clock. “Power’s off.”

“Let’s get into the bedroom,” Grant said.

“Shouldn’t we make some kind of attempt to start mopping this water?” Nancy asked.

“Forget it. Just take your shoes off. You’d be fighting a losing battle.”

Skipper happily obeyed his father’s suggestion and began sloshing around on the floor, but Amy’s understanding was closer to being comprehensible and once more she started to cry — this time softly, while she clung to her mother’s dress as they walked down the hall to the bedroom.

Nancy remembered her own preschool fear of the wind and how her mother used to comfort her “little ballerina” by getting her to watch how the wind made the curtains and shadows “dance so beautifully.”

Such a long time ago, Nancy thought, so long ago.

Now she squared her shoulders as her mind played back the words of the prayer Grant had just offered and the testimony which had increased so powerfully during the time on Saipan.

Her family depended upon her for strength; and, for the first time in her life, she felt as if she could give it. She would not fail them.

Grant lighted a kerosene lamp and when he handed it to Nancy, his palms were cold and moist.

“Well, you know what?” Nancy made a point of saying cheerfully, “Amy only cries for one reason — she’s hungry!” Then Nancy looked across the room where Skipper and Grant were seated by the twin cribs. “So Daddy, you throw down the gauntlet — and I’ll prepare the food.”

(The End)