Found in Nature

by Jared Carlson

The two men sat facing each other in metal chairs with a simple table between them. Both wore uniforms. Both decorated. One took out a pen and set it by a legal pad at his side and pressed record on the machine next to him. His hair was black and neat despite a small bead of sweat from the heat. He sat up, took a deep breath and said, Captain, please state your name for the record.

Captain Michael Grace, U.S.S. Cherokee, Fletcher class, said the other. He had short, flaming red hair with tight curls.

And for the record, today is November 4th, 1945. Interview conducted by Lieutenant Commander Stephen Nadler, JAG Corps. Captain, if you wouldn’t mind beginning with your mission?

The captain said, Patrol the southeast Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean. The indigenous population is sparse. There’s very little industry along the eastern shores but the area serves as a shipping route, supplying raw materials from Europe and the Middle East moving between Africa and Asia. Most of the raw materials for the Japanese come through these routes. My orders were to intercept any supplies to the Japanese and particularly anything that might be used for munitions.

Nadler finished scribbling a note and leaned back. He asked, Your familiarity with the region?

Meaning?

Nadler sighed and said, Can you detail what you know about the Lenites Archipelago?

What I know now or what I knew then?

Then, Captain Grace.

I knew most of the islands were uninhabited, with a few that I understood were home to primitive tribes centered around fishing.

Were you aware of any research, either anthropological or botanical? Any expeditions you might recall in the past decade?

No sir, said Captain Grace.

I’m not your superior, Captain. This is a debriefing. There’s no formal charge and there’s no need for the ‘sir’, said Nadler. Would you mind discussing the events of June 3rd, 1945? Your statement is that you intercepted a cargo ship sixty miles south of Rangoon, fifteen miles east of the northernmost island of the Archipelago?

Yes, Commander. The cargo ship was moving at about eight knots, heading south by southeast. We knew that a Japanese aircraft carrier, the Yamato, was on the eastern edge of the Indian Ocean, presumably to protect their supply line. We caught up with the ship without too much trouble and we informed them to heave to for boarding. They attempted to stall, first trying to act as if they didn’t understand and then simply ignoring us. My first officer, Commander Davis, and I concluded that they were likely in communication with the Yamato and buying time for air support.

And for how long did you attempt to board?

Almost half an hour. Finally, I decided the risk to the Cherokee was too great and sinking the cargo ship was justified given the enemy proximity.

Alright. Now Captain, I want you to walk me through what happened. Take your time please.

The captain took a deep breath and looked away from Nadler, towards a small window in the corner of the room that framed the flaming sun.

* * *

Tom Volin, a twenty-year-old kid from Iowa, stood in front of the captain with his hands holding the helm. Commander Ben Davis stood beside him, wearing dark sunglasses and holding the latest intelligence report and reading the highlights aloud to the rest of the command crew. The local maps were spread out on the small desk behind them. Outside, taking up the entirety of the window, sat the cargo ship, a towering mass of old steel with smoke billowing up from three stacks running along the ship. The decks had boxes of wooden cargo but without a soul to mind them, or so it seemed.

Davis turned and said, “We probably can expect company soon. Thirty minutes at the most, Captain.”

“You figure we’ll need most of that to use the Archipelago to hide? The shallows will hide our wake, but we’ll need a little time.”

“Yes sir.”

“Ben,” said the Captain. “Prepare tubes two and four. I’ll give them one last chance and then we’re going to sink ’em and get going.” He turned to Volin and said, “Ensign, we’ll make sure we don’t need to throw a raft or two over the side and then we’ll head to that shore there.” He pointed off to the left side. “Forty-five degrees to port, got it?”

Volin called out, “Yes sir.”

Davis walked to his right and gave the order to prepare tubes two and four while he grabbed the com and ordered the ship to come to a full stop or be fired upon. He glanced at his watch and marked the time and then checked with Davis that the tubes were ready. Davis nodded. After a minute elapsed the captain sighed and gave the order. “Fire,” he said and Davis turned to ensure the seaman followed suit. The Cherokee shook, a whoosh sounding underneath them, and a moment later a spray of water erupted in the middle of the cargo ship and it rocked back and forth, with a small plume of smoke snaking around the near stack in the center of the deck.

“Alright, men,” said the captain. “Let’s go.”

Davis stopped at the window on his way back to stand beside the captain and pointed at the smoke undulating up from the cargo ship. Two crewmen appeared and jumped, ignoring the nearby lifeboat and throwing themselves off the edge of the boat and falling nearly thirty feet into the sea. Davis muttered, “God damn.”

The captain yelled, “Get us the hell out of here!”

Volin slammed the throttle to full and spun the wheel away from the cargo ship as the captain watched the ship rock again. A loud, low, boom shook them and he stared into a fireball rushing toward him.

* * *

Nadler leaned back in his chair. He asked, do you remember anything else Captain? Before or after the munitions exploded?

No. Nothing, said the captain. I don’t remember anything else.

Alright Captain, then let’s move on for now, said Nadler. Please describe what happened next. Where and how you came to, for instance?

I woke up with a boy tugging on some flotsam I was lying on. Somehow, I survived and washed up along the shore of one of those islands. It might have been the next day, might have been three days later. I have no idea. The boy looked ten, maybe eleven years old, with dark skin, short curly hair, wearing a thin cloth around his waist. He had a bow strapped across his back and red dye, or paint, running down his shoulder—must have been some sort of tattoo. It encircled a small scar the shape of a crescent moon just above his elbow and his arms were dotted with black spots every few inches. I remember he had small white earrings made of bone, maybe from a fish or some small animal. He tugged on my arm and said something, but I couldn’t hear. My ears rang and my forehead was encrusted with glass. I picked off a shard, held it up in front of me and blacked out.

When I came around again I was lying on the floor of a small hut in a bed of straw and vines. I closed my eyes and waited as my ears still rang but I could just make out the ocean, the dull roar of the waves off in the distance. After a minute I sat up and found two women staring at me. One was older, the other younger, and when I staggered to my feet the older woman said something in a series of grunts and clicks, ordering the younger outside. As she passed, I was surprised at how short she was. Maybe five feet? Less? She had the same crescent moon scar with a black tattoo running down her arm.

Nadler asked, Any hostility?

No.

Go on.

The captain shifted in his seat, glancing at the concrete floor underneath him. He said, I walked outside after her, finding myself on the edge of a small village overlooking the ocean, on a plateau, about a half mile back from the shore. Maybe a half dozen makeshift boats lay on the beach, just out of the water, similar to what I had seen in the Philippines, with one sail and a runner for balance so that one or two men could handle them easily enough.

The younger woman returned with a small crowd trailing her. The men carried spears or bows in their hands, with a quiver of arrows, carved from sticks, hanging on their backs. None of them looked friendly but I saw more women in the crowd, a few carrying babies in their arms. I remember one suckling at her mother’s breast, maybe six months old, but no tattoo and no scar.

An older man stepped forward with a weathered face, short beard streaked with gray and large earrings that pulled his ears down to his shoulders. Their chief. He was large compared to the other men but still quite a bit shorter than me. The gray stood out. Everyone else had black hair, dark as the abyss. No one else had any gray. I’m pretty sure.

Lieutenant Nadler stopped writing and said, That’s fine. I doubt it’s important. You say the chief was larger than the rest? Could you tell me about his health? Did he look in good physical condition?

Yes.

As healthy as the men younger than him? And yet, he was quite clearly the elder of the tribe?

Yeah, I’d say so.

Please, go on, said Nadler.

We went down to the beach, the sands were white, and that’s where I found some of the crew.

Nadler leaned forward and asked, You found the crew?

* * *

The captain stood on a beach with sand as white as freshly fallen snow in Vermont, feeling a little dizzy. His head ached a bit as two men on either side of him walked him toward two spears stuck in the ground, each with what looked like a small totem on the end, swaying gently in the ocean breeze. The sand was warm on his feet and salty air rushed past his face, but his stomach sank as he realized that they weren’t totems on top of the spears. They were heads. The eyes had been gouged out, mouths pried open, and as he got closer, he noticed they were missing tongues. He almost threw up as a rancid stench hit him but one of the men pulled him close and pointed at the eyes and the mouth. They must have been Japanese crewmen, although some seemed to have been there for a while. Poor bastards, he thought, feeling guilty for ever wishing their deaths as their countrymen flew overhead. They’d have been better off if they had just lay down on the deck and burned in the fire.

He stood, trying to jam his hands into his pants pockets, as the chief jerked him by the wrist and led him along the beach. The chief led him past two more heads, both Japanese, on top of spears until finally they came to one of his own. He didn’t remember the kid’s name. He’d been from Louisiana, maybe New Orleans or Baton Rouge, he thought. He had worked down in the engine room, always half covered in grease but flashing a toothy, white smile whenever the captain had descended into the bowels of the Cherokee. But now, with his eyes missing and his face sunken in, the captain could only think of his duty to write the kid’s parents and inform them of their child’s death.

They came across a crate filled with bags of rice, a second stuffed with dried fruit, and then a third with flour. The next two were filled with chemicals, nitric and sulfuric acid as well as sodium bicarbonate. Materials for explosives, he thought. None of these had come from the Cherokee.

Beyond the last crate, a white bird on spindly yellow legs waded along the shoreline with his head bobbing up and down, looking for fish. The bird pecked at the water and suddenly reared back, flapping his wings. A body floated in with the waves, the skin peeling, black and blistered. As it hit a rock the body turned and a pair of Navy issued boots emerged over the water.

* * *

Captain? Nadler asked. Are you alright?

Yes. Sorry, said the captain.

Did you identify the body?

No. There were more.

From the cargo ship?

All I could do was wake up early the next morning and sneak down, just as the sun was coming up, and look for tags. I found two. Ensigns Volin and Porter.

How many bodies in total?

The captain sighed and said, Maybe eight? The villagers ate a couple, piling up the rest to be burned later that night.

Nadler leaned forward and asked, Did they all wash up on shore or did the villagers kill them?

I don’t know, said the Captain. The chief stood on the shore, all proud, with his head up and shoulders squared and every so often he’d shake his spear, calling out to the ocean as if daring it to deliver him anyone else.

What did you do?

I just stood there but he came at me, grabbing my arm and pulling me along the shore until we came to a set of old trees. The villagers had carvings on each, like totem poles, with three heads carved at the top. The first we came to the chief pointed at and muttered something, then he pointed to the burned bodies in the bonfire. I think it was some kind of sacrifice to a volcano or fire god. The second tree had a woman’s face, a broad nose, and wide, kind eyes staring out at me. The chief held out his hands and slowly spun around. I took it to mean some sort of Earth mother. The next tree had a carving of me.

Excuse me, can you repeat that, Captain?

The carving looked like me, topped with red hair, using some sort of mineral.

Your likeness was carved on their totem?

Yes, sir. The chief pointed from the totem to me and then back to the totem.

Nadler sat up and leaned forward. He said, Suggesting the villagers thought you were some sort of deity?

I believe so.

Nadler waited, peering down his nose at the captain. After a moment of silence, he waved his hand and sighed. He said, Please continue.

At the dinner that night they made it fairly plain that the village was having a feast in my honor. It seems they took the crates, the bodies, everything from the battle as a message from their Gods. A few of the villagers pointed out to a spot in the sea. They must have seen the explosion from the island; bodies and crates washed up on the shore; and then one of their deities comes along in the flesh, in me, as if the wind had breathed life into the totem itself.

I dined in Hell that night. The men danced around the fire, chanting as we ate carcasses, fish, plants and insects from the jungle. I sat cross-legged beside the chief around a tall fire while filling up on fish and fruit as they offered me pieces from the carcasses. I tried to push it away.

The next few days they mostly left me alone as the men went out fishing or hunting in the jungle. I kept a lookout on the beach, hoping for more supplies, a passing ship, another crew member from the Cherokee, or even a damned star to wish on. Debris drifted up every so often and twice the fishermen came back with something, an oar once, another crate of chemicals the other, but nothing all that helpful. No radios. No rations. And no gear.

The fifth day the villagers found a Japanese man.

Nadler almost dropped his pencil. He asked, Alive?

The captain nodded slowly. He said, Yeah, he was alive.

* * *

The captain walked along the beach, swinging a stick in his hand, as he trailed two boys walking along the beach. They’d found something along the rocks at the edge of the shore. He ran over and found a small, pale and sickly Japanese man, lying against a rock with his eyes closed. The boys poked him with their spears, jabbing him in the soft part of the belly, and he came to. He coughed and threw up his hands in a pleading gesture. One of the boys shook his spear and said something in that peculiar set of clicks and grunts. The Japanese man crawled backwards, his body sliding along the rocks like a snake slithering its way toward the beach. The captain stood over him as he reached the sand and the Japanese man stopped, muttering, and pointed to his red hair. The captain stepped forward, ignoring the boys and holding out his hand. He said, “It’s okay.” One of the boys tried to step between them but the other whistled and then nodded to the other, who then ran back up the slope to the village. The captain dropped to his knees and started drawing in the sand. It was all he could think to do.

He outlined a ship, the Cherokee, as he might have drawn it as a child. The Japanese man crawled beside him and looked on, muttering and nodding, with the occasional cough in between, as he worked. A few minutes later and the boys came back with men, all armed and concerned as they watched the two of them, lying in the sand and drawing. The chief pushed his way to the front and yelled. The Japanese man shrank back and stared at the spears pointed at him. The captain kept working, talking softly about the Cherokee, the fire, and asking, repeatedly, if the Japanese man had been on the cargo ship.

“Were you on the cargo ship?” He asked again.

The chief shook his spear and pointed it at the captain, who pushed it away and asked again. “Were you on the ship?” He pointed from the Japanese man to the scene etched in the sand and then back to his new friend once more.

The Japanese man put his hand over his heart as he looked down at the scene and shook his head. He said something the captain didn’t understand, followed by another cough, and the captain could have sworn he saw a trickle of blood along the corner of his mouth.

The chief thrust his spear between them. The captain pushed it away and stood up, pointing to the totems in the trees behind them, invoking his God-like stature. He asked the Japanese man, “You weren’t there? Then how did you get here?”

The chief said something to the others and as he held his spear between them, keeping the captain away, two others picked up the Japanese man and threw him on their shoulders, carrying him up the sloping hill to the village.

* * *

Nadler asked, What happened?

They killed him, said the captain. I heard the shouting and then a gasping wheeze as they speared him through the chest. We ate him too, leaving nothing to waste.

I didn’t sleep that night and as I stared up at the stars an idea hit me. I wandered to the edge of the hill and grabbed a container of the sodium bicarbonate. I remembered a chemistry class before I got drafted where we made a gas that popped off a top, shot it up about a couple of feet using just a few teaspoons and here I had a gallon. I fetched some dried fruit and other stores and brought them down to the beach, storing them behind a tree. In the morning, just as the sun stretched out over the horizon and the tide started rushing in, I dug out a hole on the beach. I left the bottom as wide as I could and covered it with leaves. Then I poured half the sodium bicarbonate out and I stuck the mouth of the container into the hole, upside down, kicking up a little sand around the edges to keep it in place and covered it with some driftwood to make it a little less obvious.

When the men came down to take the boats out fishing, I walked out from the trees to meet them. I grabbed a boat, just as the water started to pour into the hole I’d made. A man grabbed his spear, pointing it at me as he grunted, waving me away. I stepped back and laughed for a moment and then shouted upward into the heavens, just as the beach shook and the container shot upwards with a towering explosion behind me. The villagers turned and saw water spraying twenty, thirty feet into the air. The men all dropped their boats and ran, leaving me alone on the beach. I ran to the trees and pulled out the food stores and put them on the boat. The men ran back onto the beach as I sailed away, tacking into the wind and sailing north by northwest, using the sun as my compass.

Nadler asked, Did the villagers try to catch you?

They did. Followed me for more than a half a day but the boats were close enough to some skiffs I’d sailed as a kid, so I did alright. They didn’t gain on me and in the afternoon, as the sun started heading down, they turned and left me to my fate.

Go on, said Nadler.

Two days out I came across a small fishing boat out of Phuket. They took me in, gave me food and water. My throat croaked it was so dry. I stayed with them until the USS Lightbridge picked me up a day later.

Nadler sat back in his chair and said, Anything you’d like to add to your story? Anything you’d like to clarify or correct?

No, said the captain.

Quite the story.

It is.

If you don’t mind me asking, Captain, what do you expect me to think of it?

It doesn’t matter, said the captain.

But you’d swear to it? Swear on the Bible?

Excuse me?

Nadler leaned forward and asked, You do attend Church, don’t you Captain?

I used to.

You stopped?

Yes.

May I ask why?

Because, I never felt more like a prisoner than living as a God on that island.

Lieutenant Nadler sat back in his chair and nodded. Thank you, Captain, he said, that’ll be all.

The captain nodded and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

* * *

Nadler stopped the recording and went through his notes, marking an entry here or there in his pages. The room was silent as he scribbled additional notes and shuffled the papers back into order. He went back to the recording several times and added a bit more until the door behind him interrupted his work.

“Good afternoon, Commander,” said the older man. He had flaming red hair and a square jaw.

“Admiral,” said Nadler.

The older man sat down across from Nadler and took out a pair of reading glasses. “So, Commander,” he said. “What did the good captain have to say?”

Nadler passed his notes across the table to the older man. “The villagers seemed to think he was you or, more likely, your family due to the red hair. He was treated as a form of deity. Given that, he still was shocked enough to make him desperate enough to escape.”

“I see,” said the admiral, nodding and glancing at Nadler’s notes. “Did he notice the scars?”

“He noticed them but didn’t realize they were from inoculations,” said Nadler.

The admiral looked up and smiled at Nadler, then continued to rifle through the notes. “He met the prisoner?”

“Yes, he encountered him on his fifth day. He thought he was from the cargo ship. I don’t think he suspects him being released to the island. Seems he simply thought he had been adrift and washed up on shore. The damaged clothing was lucky, and I believe he viewed him sympathetically, as a comrade in arms even.”

“And the chief? He’s still alive and healthy after the past two trials?”

“Yes.”

The admiral leaned forward. “Ah, and was there any reaction to the villagers from the virus the prisoner introduced? Did he notice any early symptoms?”

“He left the following morning. I doubt he was there long enough to see the onset of any symptoms,” said Nadler. “Nor did I think it was wise to push and arouse any suspicions.”

“No, quite right,” said the admiral. “Easy enough for us to arrange a visit and see if anyone has reacted.” The older man paused and looked up at Nadler with a concerned face. “He didn’t eat any of the prisoner, did he?”

Nadler felt a small drop of sweat trickle down the side of his face as he stared back at the admiral. He said, “No, sir. He didn’t.”

“Good. It would have been a shame to have to remove the Captain.”

Nadler asked, “What did you introduce this time?”

“A virus from west Africa. Quite virulent. Wiped out half the village there, apparently. Might be a potent weapon if we could keep our own insulated from its effects.”

Nadler forced himself to smile. “Is that all, Admiral?”

“Yes, thank you, Commander.”

Nadler got up from his chair. He reached across the table for the tape still in the recording machine, but the admiral glanced up and stopped him. “Ah,” said the admiral. “Better leave it with me. For safe keeping as it were.”

Nadler nodded and left the room. By morning he had gone, and neither he nor the captain ever spoke again.

About the author

Jared Carlson has been an engineer and hacker, but has now turned to writing in Lesley University’s MFA program. He's a new author, recently published in the Evening Street Review, and runner-up for Meridian's short-prose prize (now nominated for a Best of the Net). When he's not writing he takes turns analyzing, hacking, and being a father.

About the illustration

The illustration is USS Cherokee (AT-66): At anchor, black-and-white photograph, year unknown. Photograph taken by the United States Naval Institute. In the public domain, via Archives Branch, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, D.C., USA.