Tom's Treasure

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Now that Arthur’s bedtime was settled for the moment he sat back on the couch and breathed a sigh. It wasn’t a ‘sigh of relief’ like you read about in some stories. It was a sigh of having to wrestle with strange ideas and thoughts that seemed to be bombarding his mind. He wanted to ask a couple of questions. But, he didn’t know how.

  Tom had seen that look on dozens of youthful faces before. So, before going on with his story, he knew it was best to get this little hiccough out in the open. “What’s on your mind, son?” he asked. “And don’t say ‘Nothing’ because I’ve seen that look before. Something important is bothering you. What is it?”

  Arthur searched for a correct way of asking his question. A lot of information had been thrown at him that he had never thought about before. He didn’t want his question to seem all wrong. “Grandpa,” he started, “how could God let wars happen and why were the Japanese so………..mean?”

  “Those are very good questions, my boy,” Tom agreed. “First of all, man has a right to do anything he wants to do whether God likes it or not. If people want to fight, God can’t necessarily stop them. He gives everyone a free choice. And right along with that, the Japanese aren’t mean people. They are a very compassionate people. I have very good friends who are Japanese. You’ve got good ones and you’ve got bad ones. Just like Americans, Russians, Germans and so forth. People have a choice. Some make good choices, others make bad ones.

  “The ones that fought against us were just doing what their emperor told them to do. They honored their emperor greatly and loved him very much. And, after they got into the war, many of them wished they hadn’t. They really did not have to desire to kill their fellow man. As a matter of fact, the pastor told me later that the Japanese that were following us were trying to escape the war. They did not want to kill any more and they were afraid to turn themselves in to the Americans. They were told by their officers that Americans never took prisoners and that they always kill the ones they captured.”

  “That wasn’t true, was it?”

  “No, sir. On the contrary, once we took someone as a prisoner, they were treated with respect. We always made sure they were sheltered, fed and clothed,” the old soldier replied.

  Fred wanted to know, “Where did they wind up taking you, Tom?”

  “They took me close to where the Aurora Memorial National Park is. It was all mountains and jungle,” he answered.

  “How long did it take to get there from the prison compound?” Ryan asked.

  “One day I sat down with a map and figured it out as close as I could. They carried me on that stretcher for a good 35 miles. Half of it was flat land but it eventually got to be thick jungle and tough mountains. It probably took them 15 or more hours at a steady pace to get up to the village. The villagers that helped carry me said that there were clear places where they could trot and then there were places that they had to hand carry me.”

  “But, your wounds must have been pretty drastic. It’s a wonder you didn’t bleed to death,” Olivia pointed out.

  Tom admitted, “Yes, the scars will tell you that. The pastor told me later, that when we met up with them that blood could be seen in several places of the blankets. Among the provisions he gave us to take with us to eat as we traveled, he made sure we had a bag of an herb the Filipino call ‘sili.’ It is their version of cayenne pepper. He knew the trail to the village well. He told them to stop at a certain place, open the blankets and spread the sili over my wounds. It not only stopped the bleeding but it also helped kill any bacteria. Then he gave directions as to how to get me ready for the rest of the arduous journey. It seemed that in his preparation to become a missionary, he was required to take several medical courses. Wasn’t that a wild coincidence?”

  Here come the water works again. Olivia once again held her cheek next to his as she declared, “No. It was no coincidence. It was just……..my Jesus……….keeping my Grandpa together….so…..I…..I.” She got up quickly, grabbed her coffee cup and headed to the kitchen as she finished, “could drink coffee and cry my eyes out, I reckon.” (Sniff) “Anybody else was some while I got it in my hands?”

  “Sure, but just black, Honey,” Tom answered.

  Ryan said, “None for me, Sweetheart.”

  Not to be outdone, Fred added his two cents, “Me neither…….Darling.”

  Everyone chuckled except Olivia. She just beamed as she brought the coffee pot in and poured some for her grandfather. This was a great day for her. Little did they know it, but, the happiness was just beginning for all of them.

  “The only thing I remember of the trip,” Tom continued as he took a sip of his coffee, “was waking up in pain every now and then. I remember being groggy and not being able to pull myself out of it. It must have been whatever it was that made me sleep. They stopped when they heard me groaning and would open up the blankets enough to give me another shot. I could feel the night air hitting my wet skin and remember the smell of blood. Then I was out almost immediately.

  “That went on for several days. I only remember seeing the pastor for the first few days. He must have known when I would come around because he always had some warm soup waiting for me. I knew that somebody had been taking care of me because the wrappings around my body had been changed. I remember coming around and the pain would get intense. When they got to be too much, he would give me another shot and out I‘d go.

  “He told me later that it was the third day after my arrival that I was able to do without much pain medicine. I still hurt a lot. He had made poultices out of a native plant called suganda. The natives used it on wounds. It was good stuff and it made the pain bearable.

  “As the grogginess wore off, it began to dawn on me that I had lost my memory. I had no idea who I was or how I got hurt. All of my identification was gone. Of course, the explosion pretty much took care of my uniform and such. Still, try as I could, I could NOT remember a thing. I didn’t know who I was, where I had been or how I had gotten cut to ribbons, so to speak.

  “The pastor spoke English, French and the Tagalog language very well, as well as his native Japanese. He had been trained in a university in America. He had begun his missionary work among the Aeta tribes about five years before the war. He tried his best to get me to remember but, it was no use. To use an up-to-date phrase, my computer had locked up.”

  That brought a few smiles especially to the ones who had used computers enough to have that happen to them. Olivia asked, “When did you finally get your memory back?”

  “About eight years later. The doctors said that a traumatic effect locked it up and another traumatic effect unlocked it.”

  “What unlocked it?” she asked.

  Tom stared at his coffee cup for a minute as a somber look came over his face, “Outside of Jesus Christ, the greatest friend I have ever had died. The pastor, Daiki Yamaguchi, passed away from a massive heart attack. It stunned the whole village. As I wept and wept at the loss of this great man, every bit of my memory came back. I remembered who I was. I remembered how I got there.” After a sip of coffee he continued in a softer tone, “I remembered Ellen and I remembered a sandy-haired, blue-eyed bundle of joy that I had last seen waving to me as a Greyhound bus pulled away from Elmhurst nine years before.”

  After a moment of silence, it was Arthur who busted into tears first. He got up and stepped into his daddy‘s waiting arms. Ryan pulled him up onto his lap but had no answers for his tearful questions, “Daddy, why? Why? Grandpa didn’t do anything wrong. Why did have to lose his memory? Why was God mad at him?”

  As he buried his head deep into Ryan’s shoulder, all his dad could do at the moment was hold him close and try to calm him. “I don’t know, son. I know that God is a good God and He doesn’t go around punishing good people. But…..” Ryan was unprepared and didn’t have a good answer.

  Tom calmed Arthur’s anguish, “Arthur, Pastor Daiki answered those questions for me the first day I was able to talk to him. And, there hav
e been many, many times that I have had to refresh my memory of our conversation that day. He asked me did I know Jesus as my personal Savior. At the mention of the name of Jesus, I remembered just about everything I was ever taught about him. I asked Pastor how I could remember Jesus when I couldn’t remember anything else. His answer was that Jesus and His Words were the only things that were guaranteed NOT to pass away. He said that Jesus and His Word were eternally Spirit and therefore dwelt in our spirit whether our minds were out of whack or not. It made perfect sense to me.

  “I basically posed the same question to him and he gave me an answer that made more sense to me than anything else I could come up with. As I meditated on it, I calmed down quite a bit and made the decision to make the best of the situation that I was in. Are you ready for me to tell you what he said?”

  With his head still buried deep in his father’s shoulders, Arthur answered, “Yes, sir. I think so.”

  Tom’s voice took a more authoritative tone as he bent over, and put his elbows on his knees and replied, “Then sit up like a man and look at me eye to eye. What I’ve got to relate to you will help you through the rest of your life no matter what happens to you.”

  His grandfather didn’t say it in a mean tone at all. But, there was something in the tone of his voice. Something that indicated that what he had to say was going to be coming from his heart. No, make that, it sounded like it was coming from God’s heart.

  As Ryan handed his handkerchief to his son to clean up with, everyone in the room resettled themselves in anticipation of what Tom was about to say.

  Arthur went a step further. He got up out of his father’s lap and sat back down beside Tom. He didn’t lean on him or try to hold on to him like he did before. Instead, he sat up straight on the edge of the sofa and looked his great-grandfather in the eye. Something deep inside of Arthur told him that he was about to learn a great lesson.

  Tom looked at everyone around the room before he settled his gaze on his great-grandson. “I asked the same question to Pastor Daiki that you asked me. His answers were in the form of questions. First of all, he asked me, ‘Are you still alive?’ I answered, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Then God must have had a reason for you to live. Otherwise, you will have to admit that you had a real good chance to die. Your main concern is to walk with Him through life every day. Life, itself, will bring you to God’s reason for being here. You must NEVER fight with the problem. Always walk with The Answer. Then life will make sense.’ The wisdom of his answer was so amazing that all I could do was agree with him. What do you think?”

  Everyone was stunned. They sat in silence. Arthur looked at his mother. Olivia sat back and spoke first, “That IS the most amazing answer. It....it almost stops every other question before we even dare to ask.” She hesitated for a moment and looked at Ryan before continuing with a shy smile, “Why, I can’t think of another question.”

  “Exactly,” Tom agreed, “I was just as stunned as you were. Of course, I was still a little groggy from the whole thing. But, he answered any other question by his next statements. He said that when we don’t have anything else to hold on to, we should hold on to Romans 8:28. God was able to MAKE all things work together for our good if we would continue to love Him in spite of what we are going through. If we wanted things to come full circle for us like His Word said, we had to do two things.” Tom made sure that he had full eye contact with Arthur before he went on, “First of all, we have to draw our half of the circle by faith. THEN, we have to be patient and trust God as He MAKES all things come full circle for us.”

  Tom sat back against the sofa and held his hands out as if pointing to everything around him before he continued, “And, did it come full circle?”

  The evident truth caused Arthur’s eyes to widen, “Yeah, it did.” A smile enveloped his face as he looked around the room to find a group agreement. “It did. It really, really did. Wow! What a treat.”

  Tom admitted, “I had just about given up hope that I would ever see my children again. And, then I worried whether or not I would be accepted.”

  “Accepted? Why would we not accept you?” Olivia asked.

  “For one thing, I’ve been alive for fifty years and never dared show my face around here until now,” he opened.

  Arthur started to say something but his mother interrupted him. “We-e-e-e..can talk about that some other day, Master Arthur. Right now, I want to find out about your travels in that mountain village.”

  Just where had Arthur been all this time? I don’t know. It finally, finally dawned on him that his great-grandfather had been on an adventure of some kind. “Yeah, Grandpa. So, you were up in the mountains way up in the jungle and…what did you see? Lions, tigers? Hey did you see any giants? Did you see anybody get eaten…….”

  Mommy’s hand went up and Arthur’s mouth went shut. Mommy smiled at Arthur and Arthur smiled back and leaned against the sofa and said softly, “So, Grandpa. How did everything go in the Philippines?”

  Fred and Ryan almost fell out of their chairs. It was amazing what a major part of Arthur’s life that Olivia’s hand played. So the guys did the only thing guys could do at this point in time. They applauded Olivia and said, “Bravo. Bravo.”

  Arthur just looked at them with a tight-lipped smile and accepted it with grace and dignity.

  “Guess what, Arthur?” Tom leaned over and whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, “These grownups won’t always be around us. We’ll go somewhere where they can’t find us OR hear us.”

  Without talking, Arthur gave him the ‘thumbs up’ sign.

  Olivia asked, “Am I going to have to chaperone you two?”

  Before either one could answer, Fred spoke up, “Oh, don’t worry, Olivia. If Tom starts telling him about his youth, he will have to have me around to corroborate his story. Arthur will never believe the stuff that we used to get into.”

  That hit home with Arthur. He couldn’t help but blurt out, “What are you going to be doing after I get out of school tomorrow?”

  “Y'all going to have more football practice at the same place?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll be there. I want to talk to the coach about a few stretching exercises that I have had to do to stay in shape. Might help the guys to run and dodge a little better.”

  Arthur had one on the adults. He rubbed his hands together and looked at his mom and dad and said, “Ho, ho, ho.”

  Olivia pleaded, “Now, Grandpa, don’t go spoiling him. I’ve just got him……”

  Tom held up his hand and Olivia stopped talking. What was that sound I heard? Was that our Arthur falling off the couch with laughter? You’d better believe it was. Everybody started laughing. Olivia had to calm down enough to “shush” everybody before they woke Wendy up.

  “As I was going to say,” Tom began as he slowly brought himself to a serious moment. “Today, in the park, I already knew why God had brought me back to my home town. He began to deal with me about Arthur. I have been through it with several boys and one girl in my life time until I know what His leading is like. There is something that God wants me to impart to my great-grandson.”

  Arthur was very pleasantly surprised, “What does He want you to teach me, Grandpa?”

  Tom looked at him with raised eyebrows and answered, “I don’t know, my boy. We have to draw our part of God’s circle by faith and trust Him to bring it to full circle. From what I have been through before, we’ll just start going through life and God will present the lessons as we enjoy being together as well as enjoy being His. That’s all I know. Take it one day at a time and enjoy it.”

  “Ok, I’m all into this enjoying being with you and can’t wait to start. But, you’ll have to let me know when to stop having fun and when you need to give me one of God’s lessons,” Arthur declared.

  Tom raised his hand again and this time towards Arthur as he said, “Don’t you worry about that. I think I’ve got that part down pat, too.”

  “I can see that yo
u do,” Arthur giggled as he sat back against the sofa.

  Fred chuckled as he said to Ryan, “Your son thought he had found a new friend. He might just have gotten a second momma.”

  “Could be,” Ryan answered.

  Tom started back on his story, “To answer some of your questions, Arthur, the tribe that I lived with are called the Aeta. They were smaller than the average person. And, yes, there were wild animals around. The one we had to look out for the most was the python. Some would grow to be about twenty feet long and were known to eat little children. There were stories of grown men being found inside a python. Just about everybody carried a machete or a big stick with them."

  Tom sighed as he continued his story, “When I was able to get out of bed, I found that I couldn’t walk very well. A couple of my ankle bones looked like they had slipped out of place. As my leg began to heal, it healed crooked. It was beyond the Pastor’s training to do anything with it.

  "One of the older village men made me a walking cane. He was proud of the fact that he could do something for me. Believe you me he kept me supplied with several walking sticks. Every one of them was of a different shape and a different size. It was like his hobby to make them for me.

  “We were afraid to take me through the jungle to find any Americans. The band of Japanese that the pastor had taken to the other mountain was not the only ones that escaped. We learned to make sure that someone was watching the two trails leading up to the village. When Japanese were spotted on the trail, everyone would almost carry me to the safety of my hidden room in the little church.

  “When the war was over, Army helicopters dropped leaflets all over the island. They attempted to let the villagers know that they had been liberated. This brought great joy to the people. However, the Japanese that had made their homes in the caves thought it was a trick and vowed to keep fighting the Americans because of the promise they had made to their emperor. Pastor and some of the men offered to try to sneak me by them but I turned them down.”

  “Why?” Arthur asked.

  “Number one, it would endanger the villagers. Number two, after six months of living with these people, I had no desire to leave."

  He stopped their next question by saying quickly, "I know that sounds funny but give me a minute to explain. About a year before I got there, the Japanese came through the village looking for able-bodied men they could force to come fight for them or just become slave labor. The wife of one of those men fiercely resisted their efforts. In retaliation, a couple of soldiers stayed behind after all the men were taken away and beat her to death in front of her two children. They threatened to do the same to anyone else who tried to stop them. Those two children were Pedro and Tala, a boy and a girl, aged 7 and 2 respectively. It not only devastated everyone in the village but it left the two children in a state of shock that they could not get over.

  “Of course, everyone helped look after the two of them. They gave them food and shelter just like they always would. But, they had no will to live. It was not uncommon to see Pedro and his sister walking hand in hand into the woods. No matter how many times they were told not to, they would just grab hands and walk away while no one was looking. The villagers would find them missing and then have to go and find them. Sometimes, when the villagers would wake up, they would find that they had gotten out in the middle of the night to go and sleep in the jungle. When they were asked why, Pedro would answer for them that they wanted to be killed and eaten by the animals. Poor Tala was so traumatized that she wouldn’t talk anymore.”

  Olivia was about in tears, “Oh, Grandpa, that is so sad. Couldn’t anyone do anything for them?”

  “They all tried. Their grandparents tried, aunts tried and the pastor tried. But, Pedro had it in his head that he didn’t want to live anymore and Tala didn’t know better than to do anything but follow Pedro.”

  “So, what happened to them?” Arthur asked.