His master plan would begin soon, with the invasion of Leyte. The island provided deep water anchorages and beaches for landing troops, tanks, and supplies.
He knew that the Japanese were not going to simply hand Leyte over to the invaders. Even now, they were reinforcing their troops there, or attempting to do so. His intelligence experts estimated that the Japanese had as many as 250,000 troops on Leyte, and they were sending more all the time.
It was going to be one hell of a fight.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stuck in his bunk aboard the destroyer, Deke slept fitfully between bouts of nausea and dizziness from seasickness. He didn’t think that he would ever get used to life aboard a ship. Give him dry land any day.
When sleep did come, he was usually tormented by strange dreams or, sometimes, just by things he had worked hard to forget. One of those awful memories concerned the bear that had given him the scars that ran deep down his face and flank.
The bear must have come down from deep mountains sometime during the late summer. As autumn approached, he started stalking the farm fields and pastures, keeping to the shadows at dusk and dawn, taking what he could. He was a sly old beast, only glimpsed at a distance, but the farmers — most of them were also hunters who had tracked a bear or two — agreed that they had never seen such a big bear.
His hind paw left misshapen tracks that earned him the nickname “Ol’ Slewfoot.” When they went about their chores at twilight or in the darkness before dawn, they did so a little uneasily, knowing that the old bear was around.
Normally, no one worried too much about a bear. Dogs would run them off, or a shot fired into the air, but this bear didn’t scare so easily. He looked old — gray and grizzled and badly scarred along one side of his face, as though maybe the fur had been burned off in a forest fire and had never grown back. The disfigurement made him that much more frightening.
“He’s got something wrong with his back foot,” said Deke, who had seen the tracks behind the barn, where the bear had come prowling around the night before, setting the dogs to barking.
“Maybe he got caught in a trap,” Sadie said. “Why would an old bear come around here?”
“Winter is coming on. He’s hungry. I reckon it’s easier to steal some chickens or a pig than it is to find food in the mountains.”
Sadie shook her head. “If he eats our pig, we’re the ones who are gonna be hungry.”
“I ain’t gonna let that happen.”
Sadie looked at him doubtfully. She knew that Deacon wasn’t one to brag or boast. Then again, her younger brother was just a thirteen-year-old boy wearing their older cousin Jasper’s hand-me-downs, which were too big on him. Since Pa had died, he had done his best to be the man of the family, but he had a long way to go. She smiled. “Just don’t let that bear eat you.”
There were other things to worry about, such as getting through the approaching winter, bear or no bear. The whole country was in the grip of the Depression, hard cash as scarce as hen’s teeth, and it was even worse in the mountain valleys, where times never were all that good to begin with.
The mountain people scratched out the best living that they could from the thin-soiled, rocky fields, harvested a few vegetables from their gardens, raised a pig or two. Some families learned how to live for a week off a turnip or two during the lean times in early spring, when the winter stores began to run out and the garden hadn’t produced anything yet. Folks would scour the woods for anything edible, like pokeweed shoots.
But even the mountain people needed money for things like kerosene for their lanterns, proper shoes, and shotgun shells.
Most of the people had lived on this land for one hundred and fifty years, and they knew how to make do. But the land they lived on was often mortgaged, and they still needed money to pay the banks. More than a few farms had been mortgaged in hopes that when times improved, there would be money to pay it all off. The Cole family farm was one of those places.
And now the bear had arrived. He was like a shadow, a plague, come out of the depths of the mountains to haunt them.
Two days before Deke had seen the tracks, Old Man McGlothlin drove up to the farm in his rust bucket of a truck. Deke was splitting wood, and he put down the ax to watch the Model A truck approach. The truck was largely held together with baler wire, and each rut in the lane sent it shaking and rattling so much that Deke thought for sure that the old truck would suddenly disintegrate into a pile of scrap metal and bolts right before his eyes.
The truck rolled to a stop, still in one piece, more or less. The motor wheezed before going quiet, and McGlothlin got out.
“Howdy, Deacon,” Old Man McGlothlin said. His voice was friendly enough, but his face looked like it might crack if he smiled.
“Howdy, Mr. McGlothlin.”
“How y’all gettin’ on?”
“All right, I reckon.”
McGlothlin nodded. He was a withered old farmer, with his sons grown, his wife dead, and nobody left to help him work the land. Not a bad sort — just past his prime and lonely. His face was so expressionless that it might have been carved from wood. “That’s about the best anyone can expect,” he said. “Hard times.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Listen, I came around to tell you I saw that bear around my place.”
“The one people are calling Ol’ Slewfoot?”
“One and the same. He was coming around the chickens, and I ran him off with my shotgun. I think I done winged him. Last I saw of him, he was runnin’ in this direction.”
“Why didn’t you track him?” Deke asked.
McGlothlin took off his hat and scratched his sparse hair. “He’s an awful big bear, son. Like I said, I think he’s wounded. You corner a wounded bear like that—” He shook his head. “I ain’t as young or as quick as I used to be.”
“I could track him.”
For the first time, something like a smile crossed McGlothlin’s face. “I know you could, boy. But let’s just say that I’m too old for a bear hunt and you’re too young, and leave it at that. Anyhow, maybe that bear has gone on back up the mountain.”
“What if he ain’t done that?”
“Best thing to do is to steer clear of that bear, which is why I’m here to let you know I seen him. I wanted to warn you that Ol’ Slewfoot might come around here next. Don’t none of you go out alone for a while — and take a dog along and your gun. I know you can shoot. Your pa said you could shoot the eye out of a crow flying. But believe me, the sight of that bear can make a grown man shaky. Makes it hard to shoot straight.”
Deke stood a little straighter, although it was hard to tell in the baggy clothes. He hadn’t known that his pa had said that about him. “I’ll put the pig in the barn.”
“That bear will get that pig if he wants him, one way or another. You just make sure that bear don’t get you, or your sister or ma.”
“I ain’t scared of that bear.”
“I reckon you’re full of piss and vinegar, just like my boys was at your age.” The old farmer made a noise that might have been a chuckle. “Just keep in mind that Ol’ Slewfoot ain’t scared of you neither, son. You might even look like an easy meal to him. It’s only an old bear that would come around here, or maybe he’s ailing. The last thing you want to do is corner a bear like that.”
His warning delivered, McGlothlin gave Deke a nod, climbed into the rattletrap truck, and drove away.
The next day, sure enough, Deke had seen the tracks out behind the barn. Ol’ Slewfoot had come sniffing around. He’d certainly been expecting it, thanks to the warning from their neighbor. It would have been a whole lot better for them if the bear had just kept on his way. Maybe he had figured the Cole farm would be easy pickings.