Letters Across the Sea

by Genevieve Graham

  I could hardly breathe. Bracing myself against the arms of my chair, I got to my feet, feeling off-balance.

  “The brick?” I glared at Dad. “Let’s finally be honest about this. Nobody knows who threw the stupid brick. Even if it was Mr. Dreyfus, can you blame him? You attacked Max. You were in a rage. You even scared me. If Mr. Dreyfus did throw it, he did it to protect his son. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing to protect Richie, or any of us?”

  They were watching me with a sort of horror, like children who’d been caught out on something. I wanted to feel bad for them, but all I felt was rage. How could they?

  I took a shaky breath. “Dad, I’m sorry you were hurt that night. I’m sorry any of it happened. For so long I blamed myself. I kept thinking that if you hadn’t felt you needed to rescue me, if I’d listened and never gone to that game, none of this would have happened.”

  I wished I had a thousand more things to say, to get my anguish out in the open and let my parents experience every tormented heartbeat I felt whenever I’d thought of Max over the last eight years. I shook his letter in the air.

  “But now this. For years, he thought that I— Oh, God. Do you know what you did to him? To me? You broke our hearts.” Bile burned in my throat as I tried to understand. How could they have done this, then kept it from me for so many years? “You, with your ‘knowing better’! I don’t care ‘what’ he was. He was Max.”

  “Molly,” Dad said quietly. “It could never have worked out, and you know it. He’s Jewish. You’re not. It isn’t allowed on either side.”

  “No, Dad. You don’t understand. You never did. It was never about sides.” I hugged Max’s letter to my chest and looked into their eyes. “It was never about a Jew and a Protestant. It was about Max and me.”

  fifteen MAX

  Max! Get over here! You gotta hear this!” Arnie shouted, a note of panic in his voice.

  Max was just walking into the barracks when he heard Arnie shouting at him. He, David, and others were gathered around the radio by their bunks, and Max heard the announcer’s voice chopping urgently through the static.

  “What’s going on?” Max asked, ducking through the bunks toward them.

  David waved him over. “Japan just attacked Pearl Harbour. They’re blowing up all those beautiful battleships we saw. They bombed Honolulu, too.”

  “What are the Japanese doing in America?” Max asked, stunned.

  “Shhh! It’s still going on,” David said, leaning in to the radio.

  “Hello NBC. Hello NBC. This is KGU in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am speaking from the roof of the Advertiser Publishing Company building. We have witnessed this morning the distant view of a brief, full battle of Pearl Harbour and the severe bombing of Pearl Harbour by enemy planes, undoubtedly Japanese.”

  “Listen to that,” Arnie said, his face pale. “It sounds like total ruin.”

  Word of the attack spread through the barracks, and the crowd jostled behind Max, trying to hear. He and the others stayed by the radio all morning, listening to updates.

  “The city of Honolulu has also been attacked and considerable damage done. This battle has been going on for nearly three hours.”

  “Why would they do that?” Arnie asked. “America wasn’t even in the war.”

  “It was only a matter of time,” Richie said, his hands tucked tight under his armpits.

  Max nodded, thinking it through. “They would have probably joined the war soon, and the only way anyone could get ahead of them would be with a surprise attack. They’re in it now. They have no choice.”

  “But what does this mean to us?” Richie asked.

  “Means the Japs are busy over there,” someone replied. “Means we’re safe.”

  But over the next few hours, the radio crackled with updates, and Max felt tension snapping through the room like a live wire. Japan had gone on to attack the Philippines, then they’d invaded Malaysia. Six hours after Pearl Harbour, the Japanese bombed Hong Kong’s airfield, which was being defended by the British forces.

  “They’ve destroyed five RAF planes,” one of the men reported, returning to the barracks with updates.

  “The Brits will fight them off,” Richie said. “Right? They told us it would never come to anything.”

  Max wished he could reassure him. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t say that,” Richie said, holding his gaze. “You never say that.”

  Arnie let out a slow breath. “I used to think my brother was the one in a scary position, whenever he heads to Europe. Now I wish I was Samuel. This place is in trouble.”

  * * *

  Max was positive he wasn’t the only one who didn’t sleep that night. Try as he might to calm his mind, he could sense the danger drawing closer by the hour. The next day, word got out that the Japanese were in sight of the main British defences and had set up artillery. Max went to Sergeant Cox and asked what was going to happen, but the sergeant said the Canadians hadn’t been issued any orders. While the Brits battled the invaders, Max and the rest of C Force paced the barracks, and thousands of Chinese refugees loaded what they had onto wagons. When he asked one of them where they’d go, they waved their busy hands and vaguely said north, then west, toward the New Territories. They’d fled the Japanese before. They’d witnessed what the enemy was capable of doing, and they weren’t sticking around to see it again.

  On December 10, three days after the Japanese sank most of the American battleships, they torpedoed the British Royal Navy’s HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in the South China Sea.

  “We have to get moving,” Max muttered, bracing himself against Arnie’s bunk. He felt like a trapped animal. “We have to either fight or retreat. They’ve sunk all the ships. No one’s coming to help us.”

  But the sense of urgency Max and most of the others felt appeared to be lost on the men in charge. Sergeant Cox maintained a stony expression, though Max could tell from the way his eyes constantly scanned the area around him that he was as confused as the rest of them. Everyone kept repeating what they’d been told, that the Brits would beat the Japs back, and they’d never make it to Kowloon. All they could do was sit tight and hope the people in charge were right.

  “Richie,” Max said, watching his friend pace. Richie’s hands opened and closed, opened and closed, and Max recognized the need to use them. “Let’s toss a ball.”

  Without a word, Richie ducked under his cot and pulled out his glove, and they headed behind the barracks.

  “We haven’t done this in a while,” Max said, pitching.

  The ball slapped into Richie’s glove. “Feels good,” he said.

  After they’d thrown the ball back and forth a few times, Richie spoke up. “You remember that incredible game against the Sons? When we were sixteen? You were the best.”

  “We were,” Max said. “The two of us. Those were the days, weren’t they?”

  Richie didn’t speak for a couple of pitches, then he paused, holding the ball. “I think we’re in trouble here, Max. This feels like the night of the riot, you know? When everybody knew it was gonna be a brawl to remember, but none of the cops showed up. That’s how I feel right now. Like, why isn’t anybody doing anything?”

  Max punched his glove, nodding. He knew the feeling exactly. “We’re supposed to pretend it isn’t happening.”

  Richie’s eyes went to the sky. “What’s that?”

  Max turned, startled by the sight of airplanes coasting in on the horizon, traveling swiftly in a wide V. “Think they’re ours, coming from Singapore?”

  “Sure hope so.”

  Something dropped from one of the approaching planes, and Max frowned, squinting to see. Then he made out more of the small dark objects tumbling from the sky, and he saw smoke plume up. From somewhere inside the barracks, Gander began to bark hysterically. All at once Max understood, and he and Richie exchanged a look of horror.

  “Get inside!” Max shouted.

  The first explosion hit the street a
block away, and they ran for all they were worth. The rat-tat-tat! of machine-gun fire came from the planes closing in behind them, drawing ever closer. At the entrance to the barracks, they threw themselves inside just as the bullets strafed the walls of the building.

  “Under the bunks!” Sergeant Cox ordered, and Max and Richie dove under the iron beds as the others had, flinching when something crashed outside. Max turned his head to look at Richie beneath the next bunk, and saw his eyes were closed, his lips moving in prayer.

  Half an hour later, when the bombing had ended, they peeled themselves off the floor, stiff from tension and fear.

  “That’s it,” Cox said. “We’re out of here tonight.”

  They got the evacuation orders at last, and C Force set out under cover of darkness. Relieved to finally be in motion, Max slung his pack and rifle over his back and set out into the night, quietly marching behind the others as they evacuated the mainland. They boarded the ferry to cross the narrow Lye Mun Passage to Hong Kong Island, and Max looked back in shocked silence as they set off. Behind them, nothing could be seen of the British-Indian company of courageous Rajput soldiers, left to guard the hill called Devil’s Peak, the Brits’ final hope of holding the mainland. Ahead of them loomed the forbidding island of Hong Kong, made almost entirely of steep, granite mountains. He could see no escape either way.

  Arnie’s eyes were wide with panic. “What are we supposed to do once we land there? We have no big guns, no ammo.” He patted his belt, touching a grenade buckled there. “I don’t even know how to use one of these.”

  At Hong Kong Island, C Force was split into two groups. The Winnipeg Grenadiers were sent west, while the Royal Rifles covered the east side of the island. As soon as they were organized, Max and the rest of D Company positioned themselves along the water’s edge and waited. For five days, they watched explosions rock the mainland. On the fifth day, it fell under Japanese control. Max didn’t need Cox to tell him the Japanese’s next target was Hong Kong Island. The enemy was on its way.

  As night deepened, Max, Arnie, and David shivered in the muggy night, partly hidden in a ditch. Cox and some of the other senior soldiers were holed up behind them, inside a cement bunker that had been built decades before for the last war. There were tunnels, too, but most were too old and cracked to offer any sort of passage. Max knew, because they had explored them during an earlier exercise on the island. About ten feet away, Max made out Richie’s profile, then his pale red hair, just as grey as everyone else’s in the moonlight. Richie gave him a nod of encouragement, and Max did his best to appear just as confident, but nothing could reassure him about tonight. He slid his eyes away from his old friend and studied the dark water stretching before them, indistinguishable from the sky.

  Waiting, he thought. Waiting was the worst part.

  But he had a feeling that was almost over.

  David slid closer. “With all this going on, did you guys remember it’s Chanukah? Hannah and the kids will be gathered around your mama’s table, eating latkes and playing dreidel.”

  “Pretty dark out here,” Arnie said quietly. “Sure could use a menorah right about now.”

  Max closed his eyes, picturing his family around the candles. He could almost hear the warm voices of years past, filled with laughter and love. If I don’t come home, he thought, know that I love you all.

  David patted Max’s back. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen tonight. One of the Brits told me the Japanese never attack at night. He said they have real bad night vision and they get seasick in the dark. Something to do with the shape of their eyes.”

  Max shot him a look. “That’s bologna. Arnie and I studied ophthalmology in our classes,” he said quietly. “Everybody’s eyes work the same.”

  David’s expression fell.

  Max slowed his breathing and focused on the air around him, searching for a sign the enemy was near. A sound. A flicker of metal. A whisper bouncing off the surface of the water. His senses were so heightened his body was alight with nerves, and he had to force himself to stay calm. Breathe in, breathe out. It was getting harder by the second. He could sense the enemy coming. He could feel their approach in his bones.

  “Ever have that nightmare where you’re onstage and everyone’s watching, but you have no idea what you’re supposed to do?” Arnie muttered. “That’s where I am right now.”

  Hours passed, and dawn peered over the horizon in a glimmer of orange. Max’s eyes were gritty from lack of sleep. He sniffed the air and his stomach rolled with near panic.

  “They’re almost here.”

  The whites of David’s eyes glowed in the morning darkness. “How do you know?”

  He couldn’t place exactly how, but he was certain. “You remember playing ball, Arnie?” Down the way, he saw the flash of Richie’s smile. He was listening. Max had a feeling Richie sensed exactly what was vibrating through Max’s veins right now. “You know when you’re in the field and you don’t know if a runner’s gonna go or stick between bases, but you only have a second to decide? You gotta kind of open your mind, listen with all your senses. That’s what this feels like.”

  He took a long, slow breath, and a tingle raced over his body. He sank a little lower into the ditch.

  “They’re here.”

  Suddenly there was a deafening boom! and a geyser of water shot into the air as shelling started up from the mainland. The next moment the ground shook beneath Max with the impact of an explosion, and they ducked under a shower of rocks, dirt, and shattered trees. All at once, orange bullet trails streaked through the air, and Max peeked briefly over the edge of the ditch. That’s when he caught a glimpse of men in boats.

  Max fired straight ahead. “Aim for wherever those shots are coming from, Arnie!”

  “I can’t see anything!” Arnie cried.

  Max grabbed the cold barrel of Arnie’s rifle and pointed it. “Just shoot that way!” he yelled. “Watch for flashes of gunfire. Maybe we’ll hit someone.”

  All at once Max could see the enemy, moving smoothly and confidently through the dark, climbing from their boats and closing the distance between them like fog on a warm winter night. Max fired back, visibility better now that the enemy was close enough to see, but it was obvious right away that he and the others were vastly outnumbered. Max felt something hard being shoved into his hand, and he looked down.

  “Throw it,” Arnie said, gesturing at the grenade. “I don’t know how.”

  “Me neither,” Max said.

  “Maybe not, but you can throw like nobody else.”

  Max knew the mechanics, but they’d never been trained on how to use a grenade. Praying he had it right, Max yanked out the pin, launched it, then crouched beside Arnie. The waiting seemed to go on far too long, then there was an explosion that shook the earth. When Max peeked out, he saw nothing but smoke.

  “Retreat!” Sergeant Cox yelled. “Retreat! Head to the rendezvous in the mountains.”

  In the days leading up to this, they’d committed the rendezvous location to heart, and Max knew it was a mile on, in a small cleft between two mountains. He braced then leapt out of the ditch, ducking and swerving in a zigzag pattern, firing backwards as he went, with bullets slicing zip! zip! zip! through the grass all around. David and Arnie ran beside him; he could hear their panicked breathing. As they raced past the concrete bunker, he heard one of the senior officers inside shouting into the telephone.

  “We need artillery now, dammit! They’re here on the island! The Japs are here! We need assistance!” A pause. Then, “No, sir, I ain’t dreaming, for Christ’s sake. Don’t tell me they aren’t here. They’re shooting down my men while I stand here arguing with you. Get troops down here right away!”

  Max kept running, David at his right, and through the darkness he spotted familiar uniforms ahead. He lost sight of them through the trees, then found them again and shifted direction to meet up with the others. Maybe I’ll make it after all, he thought.

  White pain s
uddenly shot through his thigh, driving him to the ground. His cheek pressed against the sticky wet mud, and through the searing pain, his mind returned to medical school: Had the bullet gone through? Was it still in there? How close to the femoral artery was it? Could he stop the bleeding?

  David dove flat beside him, took a look at Max’s leg, then glanced nervously around. They were in the open, right where they shouldn’t be, and Japanese bullets were tearing through the space, grazing leaves and pinging off rocks. David lunged for Max, grabbing him under his arms and dragging him behind a boulder. Temporarily hidden, they made themselves as small as they could and watched the enemy hustle past.

  “You’re the medic,” David panted once they were alone. “What do I do?”

  Max peered at his leg in the shadow of the jungle. From what he could see, it was bleeding freely, but it looked like the bullet had only winged him. As long as he didn’t bleed to death or develop an infection, it wasn’t going to kill him.

  He reached for the first aid pack. “You need to make a tourniquet,” he said.

  David followed his instructions, drawing a strap tight while Max gritted his teeth against the pain. When that was done, Max looked around, shocked by what he saw. He wasn’t the only one who had been hit. All around him, the wounded writhed on the ground, tangled among many who lay perfectly still. As their medic, Max knew he had to help them, but he was injured as well, and the enemy still lurked. A bullet chipped into the rocks nearby, and David dropped lower beside him.

  Max made a decision. “Go, David. I’m okay.”

  “Leave you? How can I do that?”

  “It’s all right.” He looked out at the wounded. “I have to try to help the others.”

  “I can stay.”

  “For what? You know how to do what I have to do?”

  David said nothing.

  “Go on. I’ll see you at the rendezvous.” When David stayed in place, obviously torn, Max shoved him. “Go! Get outta here! I need you to stay alive or else Hannah will kill me. And then where will we be? Go on.”