Comes Up Like Thunder

By William R. Luse

Leonard has suddenly found the oil business dicey in the midst of a Japanese invasion of China. A simple thing to scamper off ahead of the onslaught, afoot, across endless mountains, straight into enemy territory with a Chinese-American orphan in tow. And remember - don't get killed! This work was written by an author who served previously in the United States Navy and who has visited China.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William R. Luse
• Release date: Feb 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310898174

William R. Luse

William R. Luse was born in 1946 and raised in Kansas City, a self-taught, mixed-media illustrator and muralist. He has published and illustrated two books concerning railroads in Kansas City and written and illustrated six novels.His most admired artists are Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton, Chas. Dana Gibson (inventor of the Gibson Girl) and James Montgomery Flagg.Mr. Luse has traveled much of the world through his service in the United States Navy, and thereafter for his own pleasure.

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COMES UP LIKE THUNDER

By William R. Luse

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2003 William R. Luse

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CHAPTERS

I. THE SKY ABOVE US

II. OLD DARK SHIP

III. FRIENDS WHO COME TO CALL

IV. IN A HURRY – MOVING SLOW

V. YANGTZE! YANGTZE!

VI. GORGE OF THE WITCH

VII. THE BOMBS OF SPRING

VIII. FIRE DANCE OF THE MOTHS

IX. AND A SMALL CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM

X. THE TREK OF HSI HUANG-MU

XI OPIUM ROADS

XII. THE BRAWL AT MICANG SHAN

XIII. ENCHANTMENT

XIV. CAT WALK

XV. MONKEY KING THE THIEF

XVI. LIKE A TIGER COME DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN

XVII. SOLACE

XVIII. ENEMIES, SOME. FRIENDS, A FEW

I

THE SKY ABOVE US

They were Navy Mitsubishis – about ten, I think. Twin engine with two fins, very skinny and still carrying their bombs. But they were not dropping. Just flying over low. Lower than I’d ever seen them.

My old Philco had been trying to pick up English Language Radio from Shanghai but instead sounded like somebody sawing boiler plate. I sat on the bed stitching up my second pair of pants which had split open yesterday afternoon. Why didn’t I just pay the Chinese to sew things up and do my laundry? Stubborn and stupid, I guess.

I let my mind drift and I began to think about that place where I came from. America. Well America, and Oak Hill most particular, was a good place to starve. That was because of something Roosevelt called a depression - another name for a hole that’s hard to climb out of. But in those days, that wasn’t apparent to me until near too late.

I remember standing on the curb in front of the Egyptian theatre hungry with just a dime in my pocket. I could go eat or I could go to the movies - so I went to the movies. Hell Divers it was called. Wallace Beery and that new kid, Gable. There was a flock of airplanes in it too,

which I liked a lot, myself being too young to know better. Then the picture-show was over and I was standing out on the same curb as before, except hungrier and with no dime in my pocket.

That was the first time airplanes had come close to killing me - later airplanes would near kill me and some of my friends thrown in. But I didn’t know that then.

Altogether, where I come from - the less said about that place, the better. I didn’t remember much about it because I didn’t want to, was the plain truth of it. I had traded all that for greasy days and leaden nights full of Chinese noise. I went off to China.

I nested along the Yangtze steam routes at South River Winch; me, a window, a brass bed, a clay stove and a dresser once belonging to Cleopatra – anyway, no one could convince me otherwise.

Easy work -- selling kerosene to friends of mine. I had my sign and cards made up:

Leonard Phillip Sweet

Business Agent

East China Oil Reserve

South River Winch - Kiukiang

The thing was to be on call in town to handle arrangements. Coal oil mostly, kerosene for the Mei-foo lamps. I lived better than Chinese I’d seen in China and better than an American in America, leastwise, a lot of ‘em.

Then back in December gunboat Panay got bombed trying to mother-hen Standard Vacuum tankers in convoy. After that, ships stopped coming up from Shanghai to South River Winch where I was. Those damn Japs! But I’ll come to that. I should begin in Shanghai.

American businessmen holidayed in Shanghai. War with Japan which had begun in July caught up with Shanghai in August while I was there. The cruiser Idzumo and twenty two Japanese warships lay at anchor in the Whangpoo, less than a quarter mile from the hotels on the bund. My little steamer going down river had paddled into a war blazing along Soochow Creek.

Flagship Augusta of the American Asiatic Fleet had rushed back from Tsingtao to tie-up alongside the Shanghai Club, but all-in-all pretty helpless to do anything. The Japanese Navy began to affect barrages with ship’s artillery from the river. Things had gotten scary in Shanghai.

Shanghai -- all filled with wharf coolies, rickshaw pullers and porters with pole totes from the jetties all mixed in amongst the streetcars that could barely move and, any spots left over, filled in with beggars and people hollering.

I ran around with other oilmen – British many of them – all college boys, not like me. Small, Gilley, Dutch and a few others. Men from Standard and Shell Asiatic.

We’d visit the Shanghai Race Club or the Chinese track and end the evening with dinner at the Tower Restaurant on the roof of Hotel Cathay. But most of the afternoon, it was the Shanghai Club at the long bar. My bunch would be there at the Shanghai Club - and then there was McCleod and that crowd, too. They come from whatever country to start off with and some of them came from several. None of ‘em could do much but roll awash in gin and live in the shade, from what I saw of them.

One afternoon Astin McCleod stepped out of the Shanghai Club as the long bar was beginning to fill up and staggers into a barge coolie toting seven jute bags. So over McCleod goes into the rough crates at the pavements, still natty but a little beery - whilst the Chinese longshoreman is still standing there ballast fast. It was comical. We laughed in spite of ourselves.

But all that must’ve made him mad. He springs up shouting Yellow bastard! Stand aside! I’ll clear you. So hanged if he doesn’t clout the Chinaman across the snout with that cane he carried. That seemed to be too much even for the likes of me.

I dashed into the barroom and fetched a wet towel from the rail for the porter to wipe blood off his yawp. I was in bad graces straight away, as we were to have no association with ordinary Chinese at all, unless they were hired onboard. McCleod takes away the towel and tosses it at my feet before I could turn about. It was bloody anyhow.

There was no opportunity to smite blows, particularly, it’s just that things took a cold turn. I didn’t care. It was a party that had no end with no such thing as allowing dead bodies along the pavement to stifle the merriment – we wouldn’t allow that.

A few of the British who ran the works at the International Settlement took me aside and whispered, Good show, which cheered me considerable. Of all those amongst us inclined to be gentlemen, the Britishers were the first - I’ll give ‘em that.

But of course, I lost all visitors’ privileges to the Shanghai Club.

Me and friends of mine took water by ourselves after that and never mingled with those others. We were what we were - and those others were what they were. Pity, says I.

But like I said - things got scary that last time at Shanghai. You could hear the artillery and see flames at night all along the north bank. The Standard gang and I were on the roof of the Cathay Hotel watching across Garden Bridge into muzzle flashes and shell bursts tearing apart the night sky.

And then on Saturday, mid-August, the bombs fell. Those that watched it seen the Chinese Northrops turn from the Hongkew wharves over across and drop four bombs, hitting the roof of the Palace Hotel, gutting her, and landing in Nanking Road in front of Hotel Cathay’s canopy directly across the street. All broken glass and blood by the time I seen it. And yet, Idzumo, the target, remained unharmed. Fifteen minutes later, bombs hit the Great World Amusement Centre by the French Concession which had been turned into a refugee camp. I didn’t see that either - but I didn’t want to. Couple of weeks later, the Chinese dropped bombs on Nanking Road, again, between the Wing On and Sincere department stores. We all started thinkin’ the Chinese Air force had declared war on the International Settlement. We were becoming lonesome and forsaken. Nervous even. Had I mentioned things were becoming scary?

The next thing that happened was the fight at Four Banks’ Warehouse across Soochow Creek in Chapei, where a Chinese Girl Scout swam across with a Nationalist flag for the trapped garrison. Her name was Yang Hui-min and I could never decide if she was braver facing machine gun fire or jumping in that sewer called a creek. The garrison finally came into the Settlement where they were saved, which made the Japs mad as hornets, but who gave a damn?

Then the fight was taken to the old Chinese city of Nantao, south of the International Settlement and the French Concession. Those nights on the roof of the Cathay, we could hear the artillery rattling straight across the sky above us from Hongkew and Chapei to the north. The Cathay had fared much better than the Palace across the street, although it was hard to make claims when that bloody Idzumo put up a broadside with her eight-inch rifles. I really couldn’t wait to get back out of Shanghai at that point, except for one small item concerning the French Concession.

Now one of the other things I did that last time down to Shanghai, was take a rickshaw into the French Concession of an evening. Frenchtown was filling up with barbed wire and men with rifles. Chinese soldiers were surrendering to the French Concession, which was a very odd thing. They would rather put their trust in the white foreigner than give up to the Japanese now battling in Nantao. There were hordes of them being herded by the gendarmes, all mighty wild-eyed with bloody uniforms and with those German helmets that fit on their heads like coal scuttles with the white sun emblem at the temples. Gearwheels, we called them. They were the remains of the Chinese 88th division. It was a sight most pitiful as I was rooting for them anyway, so that made it double hard to take.

I walked up an alley off Rue Cardinal Mercier to Les Trois Dauphins - formerly L’Orient a few years before - empty and without a sailor at all. Time was the joint had been filled up with everybody’s navy - except the Japanese who were never a party choice anyhow. Eyetyes off gunboat Ermano Carlotto, Frenchies from gunboat Doudart de Lagree, the Limeys, a few Belgians, Dutch and Norwegian seamen, too. Entering the empty room, I could still hear the Jap artillery being lobbed overhead - sounded like the elevated back in Chicago.

A tango drifted in and out through the blue smoke. Jealousy. The strains of the tango Jealousy drifted over the artillery sound. The ceiling fan had stopped, assuming there was ever a time it had worked. It seemed joyless now - like a made up bride jilted at the alter. A bunch of lost White Russians playing out of place tangos, with a piano, violin, accordion, a foggy out-of-tune saxophone, and some guy banging sticks. Straight from Argentina, if you cared to believe it. Things had changed alright.

Then Pola came out and I danced with her. Pola - now that was a like a diamond in a coal pile. Pretty, and not much on conversation. She never talked much - she spoke with her eyes. Tall and thin with curled dark hair that fell along her cheek.

Now for myself - I couldn’t dance to beat out a three legged horse. On that account it was impossible to tell if the lady could dance or not. It didn’t seem to matter to her much, for which I was grateful. We swayed across the empty room into the dust the artillery was knocking down, holding each other close. There were a few people off in the corners as I could see the flare of their cigarettes. But for me - there was only the two of us.

Pola was warm and smelled like ginger and her eyes looked like ocean off Java. So the dancing didn’t matter. It was her eyes that spoke. She smiled with those eyes. They laughed the way old folks eyes would laugh at the antics of infants. Those eyes had seen old Shanghai from high to low. For those eyes, there was nothing new - including me, I suppose. But that didn’t matter, I was thinking. I wasn’t any babe in the cactus either. Why maybe we were just alike - me and her.

Alright. So I was last week’s news. Well tomorrow’s another day -- ain’t that right? No telling how this thing was going to turn out.

I danced with Pola three nights and on that last night I tried to kiss her. I was clumsy and she backed away, gently, her eyes smiling. It was time to go.

Bombs! On the big hotels along the bund – on the big department stores along Nanking Road – bombs from airplanes. And the airplanes – Chinese! The place was no longer fit for man nor beast.

Well, to hell with that stuff. I had decided we were all refugees, me the main one of those, so I was going to rescue me – me, the biggest refugee of all.

Now Hongkew was quiet. There was nothing left but smoke and bits of flame like trash fires in a dump. The ship home was struck by bullets entering the Yangtze channel, but that could be expected, even without a damn war.

Back home again at South River Winch, I heard about the Japanese taking Nantao and staging a victory parade through the International Settlement - angering the Council, naturally. At the French Concession they were stopped at the barbed wire by Admiral Bigot, seated in a folding chair between the trolley tracks with some tanks all set to rain on their parade. The Japanese were disarmed, their flags taken, and they were marched under guard over to Nantao. Too bad I wasn’t there to a spy that grand occasion.

The surrendered Chinese who managed to get into the French Concession had all been packed away in a section of Nantao between the Boulevard des Dieux Republiques and Fong Dang Road - a sanctuary named after and established by a tough old Jesuit, Father Jacquinot, tall, bearded, one-armed - the Jacquinot Zone. Then in December, like I said, Panay and a couple of British gunboats got bombed by Japanese Naval aircraft when Nanking was taken. The gizmo, Chiang Kai-shek, ran for Hankow.

I had remained a single man. It was better that way for the short haul. I had dreamt of Pola most every night since returning. Never got her out of my mind.

Well… that was sweet Pola. And there had been many others I’d met up with. Missionaries and Yangtze sailors. Highbinders, bandits, and Yangtze pirates - some of them whom numbered amongst my friends. But I’ll be telling of them my own way and at