Read Online The Bungalow by Sarah Jio - Free Book Online Page B

spin, or maybe I began to spin. Men were all around me. Hot, sweaty. The humid air was thick. I felt my voice rising up in my throat, but nothing came out. And then, there was scuffling and a loud thud. Someone fell to the ground. The music stopped, and a crowd formed around my original dancing partner. Blood trickled from his nose. He was out cold.
    I pushed my way through the crowd off the dance floor, self-consciously keeping my head down. I felt guilty, even though I’d done nothing wrong. I didn’t want to be followed. I darted for the path back to the barracks, quickening my pace to a light jog when I passed the men’s barracks. I felt tears welling up in my eyes as the wind whistled through the palms overhead. It was a lonely sound, so foreign, so strange. I missed the walnut tree. I missed Seattle.
    Spooked by a sound in the bushes, I instinctively turned to the infirmary instead of continuing on. The poorly lit path and the island night seemed impossibly dangerous without Kitty by my side. Kitty. I worried about leaving her there. She’d be fine, though; Lance looked decent enough. Or so I convinced myself.
    A light shone inside, and I expected to find Nurse Hildebrand at her desk. Seated there instead was a man, the very man I’d seen in the mess hall at dinner.
    He smiled, and I offered a startled smile in return.
    “Hello,” he said from across the room. “Don’t let me frighten you. I’m just looking for a bandage. I thought I could find one in here, but you all must have the place soldier-proofed.”
    I squinted, and could see that his hand was bleeding. I ran over to the box of bandages I’d rolled that afternoon. “Here,” I said, pulling one out, “let me help you.”
    I told myself not to be embarrassed. I was a nurse. He was a patient. There was no reason to feel odd about the interaction, no reason to feel awkward about being alone with this man after dark.
    “What happened?” I asked, dabbing his wound with gauze I’d soaked in rubbing alcohol.
    He winced, but continued smiling. “You didn’t see?”
    “See what?”
    “I couldn’t bear to watch Randy Connors have his way with you on the dance floor,” he said.
    “Randy Connors? Have his way with me? I beg your pardon—”
    “What? His hands were all over you.”
    He’d stated an obvious fact, but still I looked down at my feet, ashamed.
    The soldier lifted my chin with his hand. “It’s why I punched him.”
    I grinned. “Oh,” I said, trying my best to compose myself. Does he notice the tears in my eyes? “It was you. Well, then I owe you my gratitude.”
    “You’ll have to forgive the men,” he said. “They haven’t seen women like you all in months, some longer. We’ve been on this rock a long time.”
    I remembered the word the soldier had uttered, wahine . It had sounded dirty and harsh on his breath.
    “Do you happen to know what wahine means?”
    His eyes twinkled. “Why yes,” he said. “That’s Tahitian for woman .”
    I nodded. “Well, I don’t care if these men have been away from women for a century. It’s no excuse for barbarism.”
    “It’s not,” he said. “Which is why I avoid most of them. There are a few decent men here. You must learn to be direct with them. At home you can play coy; you can expect decorum and genteelness. Not here. The tropics bring out the savage in all of us. The island dulls your inhibitions. It changes you. You’ll see.”
    “Well,” I said dismissively, wrapping his knuckles with a linen bandage in just the way Nurse Hildebrand had instructed. “I, for one, don’t believe that something can change you unless you want to be changed. Haven’t you ever heard of free will?”
    “Sure,” he said, looking very amused. “I’m just saying that this place has a way of revealing the truth about people, uncovering the layers we carry and exposing our real selves.”
    I fastened the bandage with an aluminum bracket, and exhaled. “Well, I’m not sure about that,”