Read Online The Far Reaches by Homer Hickam - Free Book Online

The Japanese marine crawled after his helmet and, after retrieving it, hastily departed the fortress. Sister Mary Kathleen mumbled her thanks to Sakuri in English, but the officer, in response, burned his eyes into hers, then slowly drew his finger across his throat, saying in Japanese, “Woman, you will not live through this day.” Then he stalked outside.
    Sister Mary Kathleen decided to take Lieutenant Soichi’s advice and shepherded her fella boys behind the table that held Captain Sakuri’s plans and maps and made them sit. “Be like the sea after a storm, me boys,” she directed them. “Be strong but quiet. Heads down, that’s it. Do not look at them.”
    Tomoru objected. “If a Japonee comes near us again, I will break his back.”
    â€œNay, Tomoru,” the nun counseled in his dialect. “We did not come here to fight the Japanese but to find the Americans. I think they are coming. You must be patient.”
    â€œTomoru, you will heed Sister,” Nango advised the young man, and Tomoru, though he frowned, nodded assent. Nango was, after all, the next great chief of their island.
    The
rikusentai
kept rotating in and out of the sand fortress, coming in-side to rest and eat and drink and resupply themselves with ammunition. The battle outside had only been noise to the nun. She had no idea what was happening, only that it must be a furious fight. She was surprised that no wounded Japanese were ever carried inside. Did that mean the Japanese were winning? Or were they leaving their wounded on the battlefield?
    As the hours went by, the Japanese seemed to be losing control of themselves, becoming ever more hysterical as the battle got louder and apparently closed in on the fortress. Once, three of them came running inside and collapsed, breathing heavily and groaning. Then they rose to their knees and held one another and began to chant something that Sister Mary Kathleen could not understand. She concluded it was in an obscure Japanese dialect. Perhaps the men were all from the same remote village. Captain Sakuri came inside, saw the trio, and spoke to them. Immediately, they all nodded assent and, with shamed expressions on their faces, quietly gathered up ammunition and went back outside into the riotous tumult. Sister Mary Kathleen heard very clearly what the captain had said to them. “Do you expect to live? For shame! Your life is over! Today or tomorrow, you will die, either by the Americans or by suicide. These are my final orders.”
    She could not help but feel admiration for Sakuri and the
rikusentai
and marveled at the faith that allowed them to so willingly sacrifice themselves for their cause—but could they not see how foolish, and ultimately worthless, their deaths would be? Fight for your beliefs and your country, yes, but when the enemy is overwhelming, why deliberately die? To her, by everything her church had taught her, this was a mortal, unforgivable sin. Yet here were all these men, made by the same God as she, accepting death as long as it was glorious, and it didn’t matter much if it was by the hand of the enemyor their own. She reflected that if she had stayed in Ireland, she would have never observed such strange beliefs. Giving it some thought, though, she wondered if that was really true. Her father, during his protracted war with the English, had adopted much the same philosophy, had he not? And if she allowed herself to look back, to trace the line of fate that had brought her to this terrible atoll, it was what her father had believed that had caused his death and therefore changed her life, ultimately bringing her into the sisterhood. And was that not good? Could mortal sin be the direct cause of goodness? She did not know. There was so
much
she did not know.
    A sudden crash at one of the portals startled her from her contemplation. A gout of smoke blew inside, a choking sulfurous fog. As it condensed, she saw a Japanese