The Great Perhaps: A Novel

by Joe Meno

  “Wow. Sorry about that, kid,” the soldier said. “The safety wasn’t on.”

  Henry nodded, still in hiding behind the tools.

  “Are you okay?”

  Henry muttered something, his body still trembling.

  “Well, what are you doing in here, kid, in the first place?” the soldier asked.

  Once again Henry could not speak. His mouth moved but the sounds that came out were only faint whispers, the ghostly outlines of words.

  “Well, come on out of there, kid.”

  Henry nodded and hurried past the young soldier, whose eyes were bright and whose face was flushed with sweat.

  “You shouldn’t be back there. Someone might get jumpy and shoot you or something.”

  Henry nodded again.

  “Yes…,” he muttered.

  “What’s a matter? You don’t understand English?”

  Henry shook his head and then pointed to his mouth.

  “You don’t speak English or something?”

  Henry nodded again. The soldier smiled a little with comprehension.

  “You go to the school? The German school here? You talk German?”

  Henry shook his head no, then whispered:

  “I was…just scared. I’m…I’m…okay.”

  The soldier smiled a little wider and then looked down, embarrassed for poor Henry. “Well, you shouldn’t be back in there all by yourself, kid. Someone might get the wrong idea and think you’re up to no good. Now, what was it you were doing in there all by yourself?”

  “Nothing. I was just…I was just…nothing,” Henry muttered, unable to catch his breath. He looked down and saw that his knees were still shaking.

  “Well, you better go on home now before my lieutenant comes along. He’s not likely to believe you weren’t up to some kind of mischief.”

  “Thank you,” Henry whispered, nodding once, then again, then a third time. “Thank you,” his voice unfamiliar in his throat.

  The young soldier laughed as Henry hurried away, still in a panic. As the boy turned, he looked at the name on the soldier’s green uniform, seeing it stitched in block letters: FAULK. Lying in his unfamiliar bed that evening, whispering to himself, Henry remembered the soldier’s kind, surprised face and dreamt that the two of them were best friends already.

  HENRY BEGAN TO FOLLOW PFC Faulk after that, shadowing him in secret at first, as the young soldier hurried from his position on guard duty to escorting new internees to their quarters, then, in the dark, hurrying back to the rectangular gray-brick barracks for a few hours of sleep. Not long after their first meeting, Private Faulk would catch sight of the strange, silent, bright-eyed boy skulking behind him, trying to be sneaky, but always stumbling or tripping or staring blankly for too long. One afternoon, while Private Faulk stood guard near the rear entrance of the camp, he glanced over and saw Henry hiding a few yards away, around the corner of the dispensary building. The boy seemed to convince himself of something, before he hurried over to where Private Faulk was positioned and handed the young soldier a small piece of paper. Just as quickly, Henry hurried off again, hiding in the shadows of the dispensary once more, watching as Private Faulk unfolded the note. Thank you for not ratting me out. Private Faulk read the note once more and looked up and saw the boy grinning behind his hand. Private Faulk, only a young man of nineteen himself, folded the note back up, glancing around to be sure his lieutenant was nowhere in sight. A few moments later, the boy hurried toward him again, handed him a second note, and then quickly disappeared, running awkwardly back toward his family’s bungalow. Private Faulk pulled at the corners of the note and looked down and saw what the other young man had written. It said, You are a true friend.

  WHEN HENRY WAS NOT hiding in the shadows, following Private Faulk around the compound, he usually lurked near the Japanese side of camp, staring through the wire at the boys and girls running up and down the dusty street, giggling, playing tag, their voices high and unfamiliar, their laughter something distant and dazzling, and still only a few yards on the other side of the fence. He would stand there for an hour or two, looking for the twin Japanese girls. They usually sat in the shade near their mother, resting in front of their tiny bungalow, sometimes gently brushing each other’s hair. Other times, walking along the fence—the fence which did not limit movement between the Japanese and German sides of camps, but discouraged it by offering only a narrow open gate—Henry would see other drawings the twin girls had etched in the dirt: two butterflies, two elephants, two horses, each decorated with the strange Japanese characters. Henry, dreaming himself into a comic book story, imagined they were asking for his help, asking to be rescued. Once, he saw them drawing in the dust only a few feet from him, kneeling together on the other side of the fence. He waved to them, and slowly, in unison, they returned the gesture, moving their small hands with graceful apprehension. The next day, he left a note for them as well, a drawing of two girls with bird wings for arms, placing the folded paper in the crook of the wire fence. When he returned later that afternoon, he was elated to see the note was gone, and a drawing of an enormous apple had been scratched in the dirt. Soon, almost every day after that, Henry was leaving them drawings; strange monsters, underwater cities, maps of other worlds. If he happened to see the two twin girls kneeling beside the fence and if he called out to them, they would ignore the sound of his voice, afraid of approaching the wire perhaps, or possibly preferring the silence of the secret game they had all invented. Once he found a miniature paper crane, another time a paper butterfly, and still another time a tiny white paper flower, all left in between the crooks of the wire fence. Henry guarded this collection of paper objects, hiding them beneath his narrow bed, taking them out late at night to ponder their intricate, unknowable meanings.

  ONLY A FEW WEEKS later, Henry was hiding in the equipment shed pretending he was piloting a test rocket deep into the heart of a volcano when Private Faulk slowly opened the shiny silver door. The light from the late Texas afternoon cut through the shadows of the shed, revealing the shape of Henry hiding beside a stack of concrete mix. Private Faulk marched inside the equipment shed carrying a worn-out-looking portable radio beneath his arm. He slipped off his helmet and struggled to find a cigarette inside his depressed-looking dungarees. He lit it, exhaled, and gave young Henry a worn-looking smile. “Hinkley and me found it last night. There’s a whole pile of junk kept in this building on the other side of camp, near the Japs. Movie projectors, radios, all kinds of stuff. We figured if no one was using it, we might as well, you know, get some fun out of it ourselves. We’ll see if the battery’s any good.” The private gave the dial a turn and listened as a Gene Autry song quietly rose to life. Private Faulk took a long drag, then, remembering himself, offered the boy a cigarette of his own, but Henry, unsure what to say or do, just shook his head, staring down at his worn-out shoes.

  “Well, sure, I’m Doug, by the way.” He extended his hand and gave Henry’s a quick, lively shake. “What’s your name there?”

  “Henry,” he murmured. “Henry Casper.”

  “Well, Henry Casper, pleased to meet you. You ain’t from Texas originally, I’m guessing.”

  Henry shook his head.

  “Where you from, then?”

  “Chicago.”

  “Chicago? Well, hey, that’s something. You’re an awful long way from Chicago, aren’t you?”

  Henry nodded.

  “Well, sure. What grade are you in at school?”

  Henry shrugged his shoulders.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’m supposed to be in eighth but they put me in the seventh because I missed so much school back in Chicago.”

  “Oh, well, how are the teachers here? They treat you okay?”

  “There’s a marching band,” Henry whispered. “We didn’t have a marching band at our old school.”

  “Well, that sounds all right. What about your family? You got any brothers or sisters?”

  Henry nodde
d. “Two brothers. One’s in the army. The other’s sick. He doesn’t go to school all that often.”

  “Well, you make sure you do. When the war’s over they’re going to need all kinds of engineers and scientists and architects to rebuild everything. You pay attention in school now and you’ll be able to do what you please. Let the rest of these slobs worry about having to go off and shoot each other.”

  Private Faulk stubbed out the remains of his cigarette, then turned and gave the radio’s dial another slow turn. Static hissed from the speaker, through the tinny notes of a trumpet solo, past a report from the Armed Forces Network, and then, almost magically, came an excited voice:

  ANNOUNCER: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and youngsters alike. WGN Chicago and the Pennsylvania Coal Company are proud to bring you the continuing Adventures of the Airship Brigade. Pennsylvania Coal Company, the one with the blue flame. Episode Twelve: The Secret Origins of the Airship Brigade, Part Two. Young Alexander Lightning, teenage boy, raised by his widowed mother, Margaret, in the prairie town of Fairfield, Oklahoma, makes an amazing discovery in the family’s abandoned barn with the help of his boyhood friend, Hugo. There, the two chums find a mysterious radio-ring hidden in the hayloft, which young Alexander soon realizes has been left there by his missing father, Doctor Lightning. Alexander accidentally switches the ring on, transmitting a secret signal across the boundaries of the universe, and within moments, a sinister silver rocket ship lands in the Lightnings’ vacant cornfield. The rocket ship has been sent from the dastardly Planet X, and soon a platoon of robot soldiers march from the rocket to invade the quiet Oklahoma town, in search of the powerful and mysterious radio-ring. Alexander and Hugo hide in the barn, unsure how to save their lonely little burg. Alexander cries out for help, holding the ring in his hands, desperate for sudden bravery. And just then…

  ALEXANDER: Look, the secret ring is beginning to blink. It’s…flashing. It’s maybe a message of some kind.

  HUGO: I don’t know, Alexander, maybe you shouldn’t fool with that again.

  ALEXANDER: Gee whiz, if only I knew Morse Code. Oh, no, what’s that?

  ANNOUNCER: From out of the blue, a splendid golden zeppelin has appeared just over the cloudy midwestern horizon, drawing nearer and nearer, hovering just above the roof of the small red barn.

  ALEXANDER: Oh, gee, what awful planet has this ship come from?

  ANNOUNCER: The golden zeppelin issues forth a strange sound and begins to land. Three odd forms slowly climb out: the first, Doctor Jupiter, a dashing-looking gentleman with a gray Van-dyke beard and monocle. The second, Doctor Jupiter’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Darla, a gorgeous brunette with big brown eyes and a winning smile, follows, lifting off her glass space helmet. The third, Tor the Man-Ape, an enormous brute, hulking, hairy, mysterious, appears with a dangerous-looking ray gun. They see the terrified young men, Alexander Lightning and his best friend Hugo, and decide to approach, the doctor raising his hand in an offering of peace. Alexander, still frightened, finds a pitchfork and points it at the trio nervously, while Hugo, always afraid to fight, hides in a heavy stack of hay.

  ALEXANDER: Who are you? What do you want with us?

  DOCTOR JUPITER: We come with amity in our hearts. And a grave sense of hope. You must be Doctor Lightning’s young son, Alexander.

  ALEXANDER: How do you know my father?

  DOCTOR JUPITER: I’m afraid there’s no time to explain everything, young man. All that you wonder will soon be revealed. You must trust that we’ve been summoned here, by the magical radio-ring, to do whatever we can to assist you. It seems the Robot Legion of Planet X is determined to make short work of your charming little town.

  ALEXANDER: They look unstoppable.

  DOCTOR JUPITER: Unstoppable by normal means, yes. But as you’ll soon discover, we are anything but normal. Darla, my dear, prepare the X-1 for flight.

  DARLA: Yes, Father. Will the young earthlings be joining us?

  DOCTOR JUPITER: But of course.

  HENRY CASPER HAD NOT moved since the radio broadcast had begun. He sat staring at the glowing green transmitter, sweat and joy spread across his face. Private Faulk, smoking silently, also listened with a most serious attention. And yet, at that moment, the radio, rickety, warped with age, failed, ending the episode some three full minutes before the writers and actors and the Pennsylvania Coal Company had intended. Private Faulk, frustrated, pounded on the receiver once, then again, but it was no good. Annoyed, Private Faulk switched the radio off and lit up another cigarette, the lighter flickering like a meteor in the blossoming night.

  “Well, you know they all got out of it somehow,” Private Faulk muttered. “They always do. That Doctor Jupiter always got some sort of plan. But damn, wasn’t that a good episode? I never heard that one before, did you?”

  Henry shook his head excitedly. “They’re my favorite. The Airship Brigade, I mean,” Henry stammered.

  “Mine, too. Well, I’m going to see if Hinkley can fix this thing. If it works, we can listen to it tomorrow night, how’s that?”

  Henry nodded, beaming, his feet nearly floating above the ground, an endless, speculative joy rising from his heart. He followed Private Faulk out of the dingy equipment shed, down past the rations building, where the young soldier began to whistle the familiar Glenn Miller ditty “Moonlight Cocktail.” There, in the dusty divide between the soldiers’ barracks and the rows and rows of small, shadeless bungalows, the stars now appearing in the open Texas sky, Henry knew he had found more than a friend: in those spectral stories of cloud-pirates and spacecraft, the boy had seen a brief, unavoidable glimpse of his greatest dream. Somehow, he knew he had to fly.

  SOME NIGHTS LATER, walking back from the equipment shed, lost in a dream world of make-believe cosmic flight, Henry failed to notice his own father leaning against the wire boundary fence, sharing a cigarette with Ernst Horner, a man Henry had feared at first sight. With his dark eyes, narrow chin, and jagged, unhealthy teeth, Ernst Horner had the crude features of a comic book villain. And yet, he always had some small token, a dull-looking plastic toy or piece of hard candy, which he would offer Henry, his bony face gently parting in an ugly-looking smile. Mr. Horner was known around the German side of camp as a criminal and thief, a smuggler and liar, a Verbrecher who ran a kind of black market for luxury items—extra rations of milk, meat, nylons, razors, even glossy movie magazines. Henry’s father, with his cunning and quick, deft hands, had gotten involved with this man, assisting him in his schemes. Together, Henry’s father and Mr. Horner had already broken into several equipment sheds, plundering what they could from the various camp stores. Len, with his agile fingers, made short work of the clumsy locks they encountered, and soon he discovered theft to be a much more lucrative pursuit than the dull, repetitive stitching and steaming of the tailor shop. As proof of his guilt, Len had hidden a stockload of stolen kitchen utensils beneath both of his sons’ beds. Len’s swift hands were also of use in slipping the wary-looking camp guards a small but necessary percentage of their profits—passing a sentry near the gate’s opening, Len’s hand would dart out and quickly return, a sudden contented smile appearing on the young soldier’s face as he stared down at his palm, counting out the loose bills gathered within.

  Standing in the dark of that early evening, leaning near the taut wire fence, Henry’s father motioned lazily for his son to approach. Henry stopped dead in his tracks. He slowly walked toward his father, staring down at his own dusty shoes. Len grabbed his son firmly by the shoulder.

  “Here he is, my son, the quiet one. Mr. Horner here says he has seen you talking to the Japanisch, is that true?” his father asked with a sharp smile.

  Henry shrugged his shoulders and hoped his silence would end the awkward interrogation.

  “They are a vile, vile bunch,” Henry’s father whispered. “They’re trying to rob the food from our mouths, do you know that, Henry?”

  Henry slowly shook his head.

  “They’ve been t
rying to sell things to our own people. They have been coming through the fence, selling things on our side without Mr. Horner’s permission.”

  “Well, if I were you, a young man, I’d stay as far away from them as I could,” Mr. Horner said with a grin. His grin was like a bad odor, something unfamiliar, unwanted, and greasy.

  “So you stay away from them, do you understand, Henry?” Len whispered. “Sometime soon, very soon, there’s going to be trouble. You keep away from them and that side of the fence.”

  Henry nodded and then hurried off, holding the corner of his shoulder where his father’s unkind grip had been. A few moments later, mumbling to himself, he bumped into Private Faulk. He stared up into his friend’s eyes too upset to say anything, and stumbled away in a cloud of confusion.

  ON THE LAST NIGHT of April, the two young men—the youthful soldier and Henry Casper—were both huddled in the shadows of the equipment shed, both of their hands placed on the radio—Private Faulk’s fingers adjusting the tuning knob, moment by moment, like a scientist, compensating for each flicker or twitch of sound. Henry turned the antenna slowly, both of them captivated by the latest Airship Brigade story. Henry was silent, afraid, worried, wondering if he ought to mention to Private Faulk his father’s and Horner’s threat. But the quick fear in his heart made thinking and speaking difficult. Inside the metal hull, the temperature was almost unbearable. Outside, the early evening heat had sent the citizens of the makeshift city in search of shade. Henry’s younger brother, Timothy, refused to leave his metal-frame bed. As the sun began to sink, Henry and Private Faulk listened to the static-filled broadcast of the latest Airship Brigade episode, tweaking and turning the antenna and worn knobs, shaking the old radio when nothing else seemed to work: