The Phoenix Tree

He stepped over the body into the car, started up the engine and drove down the alley and into Market Street. He drove east out through Encanto and soon was in the desert, keeping his speed steady so that he would not attract the attention of a cruising police car. There was more traffic on Route 8 than he had expected at this time of night; then he realized it was mostly military traffic. But he took no notice of it; he was finished with spying here in the United States.

It came as something of a shock that he was finished in the United States, period. He had been here six years, at liberty more than half that time, and there had been times when he had felt himself becoming Americanized, a disease he had tried to avoid. But he knew how infectious America was; one could come to believe that all its propaganda was the reality. There was no discipline to the country, of course, but even that had begun to have its appeal; its vaunted democracy was riddled with holes, a political Swiss cheese, but it meant that anyone could rise to the top, something that was not possible in the Japan he had left six years ago. America had much to offer; it was a pity it could not be conquered.

Well out in the desert he at last turned south after checking the map that had been left for him in the glove box. He drove the Pontiac along a dirt road that wound between bare hillocks that looked like white buttocks in the bright moonlight. He had switched off the headlights and drove carefully along the twisting track. He stopped for a moment, switched on the car’s interior light and looked again at the map; then he drove on, certain that he was on the right route to the weakest spot in the long surveillance by the Border Patrol. He drove for another ten minutes, then switched off the engine and let the car roll to a halt. He sat listening for a full minute; then he got quietly out of the car and listened again. He could hear a night bird of some sort; it had an unmusical cry, like a short cough of despair. He remembered from his time in the camp in Arizona how sound carried in the desert at night; the highway had to be at least five or six miles north of him, yet he could still hear the moan of trucks as they changed gears to climb a rise. But he heard no sound of motors close to him. Unless the Border Patrol was lying somewhere amongst the greasewood and cactus, he was safe.

He went to the boot of the car and took out the cheap suitcase he knew would be mere; he had come to have a great deal of faith in Commander Embury. The suitcase contained a blue work-shirt, a pair of coveralls, work-boots and a woollen lumber jacket, all of them faded and worn; just the sort of outfit a farm worker would wear. He changed out of the Navy tans, then looked at what remained in the suitcase. Five hundred dollars in US bills and Mexican pesos, more than enough to get him to Mexico City and the contact there. He had always thought that Americans were far too generous with the taxpayers’ money.

He headed south, leaving the track, which now swung east, and trudged along a dry watercourse. Occasionally he pulled up sharply as yucca trees or, once, a small Joshua tree took on the shape of a man in the moonlight; but no harsh voice hailed him, no light was flashed on him, and after a moment he would move on. Low cactus caught at his trouser-legs and once he jumped in the air as a jack-rabbit suddenly erupted almost beneath him. The watercourse began to drop, then he heard the trickle of water and soon he was walking through tule weeds besides a thin creek that reflected the moonlight like shards of polished shale.

Then the creek ran out, seeming to disappear into the ground. He came to a deep arroyo, slid down its bank and fell over the sleeping figure at the bottom.

He rolled aside, dropping his suitcase and grabbing at his pocket for the scout’s knife. But there was no call to use it. The man he had fallen over sat up, grumbling at being disturbed; even in the moonlight it was possible to see, or anyway smell, that he was drunk, or had been. Two bottles lay near him on the pale sand and he smelled as if he had just climbed out of a wine vat. He was no danger to anyone but himself.

Minato stood up, then dropped down again with a sharp cry. His ankle felt as if it had been hit with an axe. Gingerly he moved his foot, wincing against the pain; he decided the ankle wasn’t broken but sprained enough to make him a half-cripple. He looked at the man and wanted to kill him.

‘Howdy,’ said the man, and hiccupped. ‘Who’re you?’

‘What the hell are you doing out here, you bum?’ Minato tried to sound as American as he could.

‘I live here. You new around here?’ The man leaned forward, putting his breath on Minato like a dirty hand. ‘Goddam, a fucking Jap!’

Minato was ready to kill him if he raised some sort of alarm, but the man just shook his head, almost dislodging the tall-crowned black hat he wore. Then Minato said, ‘I’m Nisei, not Japanese. A Jap American, if you like.’

The man giggled, took off his hat and revealed the thick dark plaits hanging down by his ears. ‘Only one sort Americans, buddy. Us. You ask General fucking Custer.’

Minato stared at the Indian, then looked around him, half-expecting to be surrounded. The man hiccupped and reached for one of the bottles. But it was empty, as was the second bottle; he threw them away with a curse. He sat in the sand of the arroyo bed, his shoulders slumped, looking ready to weep. But he and his sort had given up weeping years before: the struggle was long lost.

At last he looked up. ‘You didn’t oughta be here. White guys ain’t allowed on the reservation. Yeller guys, neither. We’re the last of the Apaches, western division.’ He giggled again. ‘The gov’ment tried to educate me once. They wanted an Apache bur’crat.’

‘Reservation?’ Embury hadn’t mentioned any Indian reservation. Then Minato realized he must have taken the wrong turning off Route 8; he still had to go three-quarters of the way round the world and already he was lost. He cursed himself in Japanese, then reverted to English. ‘A bureaucrat? You help run the reservation?’

The Indian laughed, more than just a giggle this time; as if with no drink left, he had decided to sober up. ‘I lasted a week. They said I liked the fire-water too much. They was right, I do like it. Tequila, wine, whiskey, makes no difference. Where you heading?’ he said abruptly, sounding very sober.

‘Across the border.’ Minato had begun to recognize a fellow enemy of the American government.

‘What for?’

‘I’m tired of being pushed around. You look different in this country, they want to knock the shit out of you.’ He was trying to sound like some of the Nisei, the Japanese-American farm workers he had known in the camps.

‘Didn’t they intern all you guys?’ The Indian was sounding more sober by the minute; and more intelligent.

‘I spent two years in a camp over in Arizona. Then they let me out, guess they thought I could be trusted. I been working on a farm up in Utah.’

‘Where you going when you get across the border?’

‘I dunno. South America, maybe. They’re not so fussy down there – what you look like, I mean.’ It offended him to be talking like this, to have to act out this charade.

‘Yeah.’ The Indian nodded sympathetically. He was dressed in a dark shirt and coveralls and had an Indian blanket wrapped round his shoulders; but for the blanket and his plaits, he could have passed almost unnoticed in any American street crowd. But he was on the inside looking out of himself, the recognition of difference was in his own eyes. Then abruptly he sat up straight. ‘Truck’s coming!’

For a moment Minato heard nothing; then he caught the sound of a motor somewhere to the east. ‘What is it?’

‘The Patrol. They come along here every night. Dunno what they’re looking for. Japs or Indians going out or Mex’s coming in.’ He laughed softly; he was no longer giggling. ‘I’ll take you to the border. How much?’

‘Five dollars?’

‘Five bucks? You a fucking Jewish Jap?’ He had his prejudices; he didn’t lump all white Americans together. ‘Ten.’

‘Okay, ten.’ Minato stood up, listening to the truck getting closer. He put his injured foot to the ground and gasped with pain. ‘You’ll have to help me.’

‘Another five bucks.’ The Indian grinned in the moonlight. ‘We give up taking beads. It’s a cash economy.’

He offered his arm to Minato and the latter leaned on it. They set off along the arroyo, Minato hobbling painfully, the Indian slouching along; arm in arm they looked like old friends, or lovers, who had lost their way after a night out. To the east of them they could hear the grinding of the truck in low gear, as if it was ploughing its way towards them from the far end of the arroyo.

The Indian abruptly turned right, throwing Minato off-balance; the Japanese cried out with pain and the Indian gruffly muttered an apology. Minato clung to him as they stumbled up the bank of the arroyo. Like all Japanese he had always been meticulous in his bodily cleanliness and he was sickened by the smell of the Indian; but he had no other staff to lean on. They struggled up to the top of the bank and the Indian paused.

‘There they are.’ He spoke casually, as if he had been scouting for the enemy for over a century. Carleton, Sibley, Custer, the forces of the white man’s law and order, were marked on the horizons of his mind.

Minato saw the slowly bouncing beam of the headlights some distance away: maybe five hundred yards, maybe more. He was short-sighted, a handicap for a spy, and at night he had no idea of distance. He just knew that the Border Patrol truck, probably a pick-up, was too close for comfort.

‘Lay down,’ said the Indian. ‘You ain’t gonna be able to run with that ankle.’

He pushed Minato to the ground, then walked off without another word, straight towards the approaching truck. Minato lay flat to the ground and watched the Indian through a spiky hedge of low cactus. The Indian stopped about fifty yards away and stood waiting on the top of the bank. The truck continued to approach, its headlights beam moving from side to side like a blind giant’s white stick as it twisted its way along the arroyo. Then it pulled up immediately beneath the Indian.

The engine was switched off and a voice said, ‘That you, Jerry? You out here again, drunk again?’

The Indian was silhouetted against the glare of the headlights beneath him; in his tall hat and with his blanket wrapped round him he all at once had a dignity about him, a dark monument. ‘Just clearing my head, Mr Porter. I been celebrating Geronimo’s birthday.’

Minato could imagine the Indian chuckling to himself. But he lay waiting for the Indian to give him away: in a cash economy, the reward for capturing an escaped Japanese prisoner must be more than five or ten dollars. Then Minato remembered he was supposed to be a Nisei; maybe the Indian knew that a Nisei was worth nothing.

The man down in the arroyo laughed without humour. ‘You seen anyone around here while you been clearing your head?’

‘Ain’t no one here but us Indians, Mr Porter.’ Again Minato could imagine the quiet chuckle. He began to feel easier, safe.

The Border Patrol man said something that Minato didn’t catch; then the engine was started up again and the truck drove slowly on along the arroyo. The Indian watched it go, raising his hand in a mock salute of peace. Then he came unhurriedly back to Minato as the latter got awkwardly to his feet.

‘You gonna be okay now. We got about a mile to go.’

Minato looked steadily at him. ‘Why is a guy like you still here on the reservation? There are plenty of Indians like you in the army.’

‘The army don’t want no drunk. Anyhow, they know I’m still fighting with the Chiricahuas. They think I’m crazy, a crazy drunk.’ He laughed, not crazily but intelligently. ‘What army wants a crazy drunken brave?’

Minato didn’t know who the Chiricahuas were but he guessed they were warriors of long ago: maybe Indian samurai? He took the other man’s arm again and they moved on. It was another half-hour, with Minato hobbling painfully, now clinging to the stinking Indian as if he loved him, before the Indian abruptly said, ‘Okay, this is it. You’re in Mexico.’

Minato sank down in the dust and looked up at him. ‘Don’t joke, I’m not in the mood for it.’ He had forgotten that he was supposed to be a farm worker; the rough accent was gone. ‘We should have come through a wire fence or something.’

‘There’s no fence, not around here, anyway. We’ve just crossed into Mexico, you take my word for it. Fifteen bucks.’ He held out his hand.

Minato felt in the suitcase, took out the roll of notes and peeled off three fives. ‘You’re not going to leave me ’way out here? I’ll give you another five to take me to the nearest road.’