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Corean Dawn excerpt (Page 8)
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other ships are past their prime. You’ll be seeing the Palos and the Monocacy again.”
“The Monocacy? You mean that damned old condemned river steamer is still with the fleet?” Laughed Tubert, his stomach hurting.
“It is. Now we’ve added the small, obsolete Omaha, a converted tugboat. Timothy, Ja¬pan’s fleet could blow us out of the water,” Jewell said, gravely, relieved to see some spark of interest in the man. “McNamara and Hayden and a few of the other old hands are still out here, but most of the Kangwha troops you knew have gone home. We still have a rear admiral. Patrolling an area stretching from Ceylon to the Bering Sea, with consuls and missionaries everywhere crying for ships, tends to keep our admiral miserable. You know, Low and Admiral Rogers wouldn’t allow a party to fight its way back into Kangwha Island to find you, and that has haunted me until now. I’m so sorry, Timothy.”
“Don’t be,” said Tubert, sorting his feelings, thinking hard. “You and McKee were the only one’s who ever tried to befriend me. You know, I had no future in the fleet, but neither on the streets of Shanghai. I’ve found my place here. Jes-u. Destiny.”
“What destiny, man?” Said Jewell quickly, appalled that the grown Tubert had gone even more bamboo than as a boy. “This will be no different from China, after the opening. There’ll be a few years of them tolerating the presence of Westerners, then they’ll try to drive us out and our canon will grind them into submission for another handful of years until the cycle erupts again. Flogging us with the right hand, embracing us with the left. It’ll be a life of straddling guns and upheavals and hypocrisy in a no-man’s land be¬tween East and West. You’ve got the blood of a white man, Timothy. You never can truly fit with these people.”
“Funny thing about blood, Mister Jewell. It is indistinguishable among races,” said Tubert, quietly. “I’ve shed enough, both my own and that of others, to know. And belonging is an internal thing, lives inside each of us. Has to do with the heart, with a man’s soul, and it comes from challenges met, experiences shared, life lived. The crossing of thought and spirit. You used to call it culture. Works for me.”
“Perhaps. What do you got in that damned pouch? You wear it even when you dress in Western clothing.”
“Oh, this? I got it some years ago, from a Japanese,” said Tubert, opening the flap. “It has money, and dried squid, my spoon, and twenty rounds of ammunition, should I get attacked.”
“Attacked by whom, Timothy?”
“Japanese,” said Tubert, breathing deeply, easily, the nausea gone. “They’ve been less than pleased about my presence here. Or hungtse, Manchurian bandits. I’d like to go ashore now. They're drunk and I’m not needed downstairs, and I don’t feel easy about being on a ship of the line. Tell you what, commander; tomorrow night is the reception ashorea by the Corean side. The next night, before you sail from Pusan, I want you to be my guest ashore.”
“We’re quarantined to the ship when we’re not in talks ashore, Timothy.”
“You’re in Chaoshien, Mister Jewell. What’s said and what’s done are anywhere from two to ten different things.”
“Be my pleasure,” said Jewell, rising, waving at a crew of American sailors standing by. “Take this man ashore.”
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