by Alex George
“We were still pretty far from Tokyo when the attacks began. Enemy fighter planes buzzed around us like wasps at a picnic, but of course our gun turrets were unmanned, so we couldn’t defend ourselves. But there was a reason they called those planes Superfortresses. Unless they got lucky, Jap bullets couldn’t down such a large aircraft. I watched the flash of gunfire from a Mitsubishi Raiden as it peppered the B-29 immediately in front of us. Sure enough, the bomber kept right on going. When the Raiden’s cannons stopped blazing, its ammunition spent, I expected it to head back to base. But the pilot had other orders. He rammed his plane straight into the body of the B-29. It exploded in a massive fireball. Not even a Superfortress could survive a suicide attack like that. There wasn’t enough time for the crew to bail out before the plane crashed into the water.”
“What was going through your head?” I asked.
“I didn’t have time to think. We were approaching the target. I could already see an orange glow on the horizon. I remember thinking that it was too early for sunrise. I was right. It wasn’t the sun. It was Tokyo, burning so hard that it lit up the sky.
“Our mission was to incinerate the city, but by the time we arrived, it looked like the job was already done. The place looked like hell on earth. There were pillars of flame leaping hundreds of feet into the air. The fires started by the napalm had spread across the city, and the bombs that followed destroyed everything. There was a ribbon of darkness that ran through the city from north to south—the Sumida River. Everywhere east of its banks was a carpet of fire.”
Nathan was still keeping his eyes fixed on the floor. He had begun to gnaw on his thumbnail.
“We were flying at low altitude, so the airplane was unpressurized. That meant we weren’t wearing oxygen masks. We’d been able to smell the smoke for a while, but as we neared the drop zone, there was a different stench in the cabin. It was terrible. Within seconds I’d puked up my guts. I had to grab my oxygen mask and clamp it over my mouth.” Lewis’s eyes were empty. “It was the smell of burning human flesh.”
A strange sound emerged from the back of Nathan’s throat.
“I didn’t think there could be anything left to destroy, but we had our orders.” Lewis paused. “Just then I saw that one of the needles on my bombsight was stuck. I tapped the dial, but it didn’t move. I took the knife off my combat belt and tried to pry the glass off the dial. We were just moments away from the target. The heat from the fires beneath us was terrible, and I was sweating like a pig in my flak suit. I pulled off my gloves and began to work the blade of my knife behind the bombsight’s dial. I could hear the navigator counting down the distance to the target in my headset. I was starting to panic.
“Then there was a terrible lurch, and suddenly the floor of the aircraft was rushing up toward me. My knife slipped, and the blade sliced clean through my thumb.”
I closed my eyes.
“The plane was shuddering like crazy. We had been hit. I could hear the rest of the crew yelling. Then I realized that we were going up.”
“Up?” said Nathan.
“It didn’t make any sense,” said Lewis. “Damaged aircraft crash to the ground, they don’t go higher. Just then the shaking stopped, and I heard the pilot’s shout. No damage! he yelled. No hit!”
“What had happened?” I asked.
“Aerodynamics. The heat from the fires had nowhere to go except for straight up,” explained Lewis. “We’d been caught by a giant thermal gust coming from the ruins beneath us. Our bomber was tossed around like a kite in a tornado. By the time we had leveled out, we were thirteen thousand feet above the fly zone and out of position. We circled back around until we were over the target again. The dial on the bombsight still wasn’t working, but I didn’t care anymore. I stared out over the flames, crazy with pain. My thumb was lying on the floor between my boots. With my good hand, I released the bombs. As soon as the doors of the bomb bays had closed again, the plane banked to the right. I didn’t open my eyes for a long time.
“The flight back to Saipan was a blur. The crew’s engineer stitched the skin on my hand back together, making a stump where my thumb had been. Then he wrapped my hand as tightly as he could in a bandage. It was good enough for the journey back. I didn’t lose too much blood, but by God it hurt. Back at base the medics cleaned the wound and stitched it up properly. When I returned to the barracks, the bed next to mine was empty.” Lewis looked sadly at us. “Bolt hadn’t made it back. His prayers weren’t enough to save him, in the end.” He sighed. “But they didn’t save the ones who got back alive, either. None of us escaped.”
THIRTY-TWO
We sat for a long time without saying a word. Lewis closed his eyes. The effort of telling his story had exhausted him.
“So that’s how you lost your thumb,” I said.
Lewis grimaced. “That’s how. But you know what? Every time I look at my hand, I think about Bolt, and all the Japanese men and women and children who died that night.” He paused. “That’s a pretty good way of making sure I don’t feel too sorry for myself.”
“Did you fly more missions after the raid on Tokyo?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. They fixed my thumb and sent me back to work. Tokyo was just the start. After that we attacked Osaka, then Kobe. On and on it went. And after we’d hit every city, we started on smaller towns. There were no strategic targets anymore, no military bases or factories. Our job was simple. We were to keep killing civilians until the government surrendered. But what the American high command never understood was that surrender is dishonorable to the Japanese. They refused to concede defeat, and so on we went, bombing them all to hell.” Lewis paused. “It was an unfair fight. They had no way to defend themselves. Talk about dishonor. It was only when President Truman dropped the atom bombs that they finally gave in, and we got sent home.”
“What happened then?” I asked.
Lewis looked down at his hands. “It turned out that I didn’t want a hero’s homecoming, after all. I needed a fresh start somewhere new. So I came to Haverford. Met your grandfather, bless his soul. He gave me a job, and I began again, as best I could.”
I glanced at Nathan. He was sitting upright in his chair. I couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken.
“Nathan?” I said. “Are you all right?”
“What is it like,” asked Nathan, “to fly?”
Lewis looked at him. “Did you hear a word of the story I just told you?”
“Yes, but—”
“That’s all the answer you need, then.”
“But what happened wasn’t your fault!” cried Nathan.
“I was the one who pulled the lever, Nathan. Nobody else.”
“You were only following orders!”
“That argument didn’t work for the Nazis, so why should it work for me?”
“You did your duty,” insisted Nathan.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Lewis, not unkindly.
“But what about when you took off on those training exercises in the desert?” said Nathan. “Don’t you ever think about that?”
Lewis sighed. “Nathan—”
“That’s what flying should be about! Escape and freedom!”
“Listen, Nathan,” said Lewis, “if you want to think flying is all about swooping through the sky without a care in the world, you go right ahead.”
Just then the door opened and a nurse appeared. “Visiting hours are over, boys,” she told us. “Mr. Jenks needs his rest.”
When Lewis did not protest, I knew it was time to go.
I stood up. “We’ll come back,” I promised him.
“You do that,” he said softly.
I wanted to hug Lewis then but didn’t know how. It was too complicated a transaction, on every level. I did not know which was the greater obstacle, the tubes that snaked in and out of his wrists or
my own awkwardness. In the end I patted the bottom corner of his bed and slipped out of the room.
“Do you think all that stuff he told us was true?” said Nathan as we walked down the hospital corridor.
I stared at him. “Are you serious?”
“Well, all that bombing. All those deaths.”
“It was a war, Nathan,” I said.
“So how come I’ve never heard about it?” he said. “I mean, we all know about the atom bombs, but nobody has ever mentioned this.”
I understood why Nathan was reluctant to believe Lewis’s story. He didn’t want his own romantic ideas about flight sullied by what had happened over Japan more than thirty years ago.
We unlocked our bikes and cycled to the park in silence.
The parking lot was already filling up when we arrived. Long lines had begun to form at the ticket booths. It was going to be a busy day. “Poor Dizzy,” I said as we dismounted. “He’s going to have to wait until tonight for another walk.”
“My shift ends early today,” said Nathan. “I can do it, if you like.”
“That would be great.” I handed him Lewis’s house key. “Dog food is in the basement.”
“I remember,” said Nathan.
It was only as we set off in different directions that I realized we hadn’t talked any more about what had happened with Faye.
It was a beautiful summer’s day. The warm sun made me sleepy and I struggled to stay awake as I shuttled back and forth between the Ferris wheel and the control booth. My monk’s tunic felt heavier than ever. I thought about Lewis, lying in that too-small hospital bed. I wondered what it must have been like to carry those memories around for so many years, never telling a soul, terrorized by memories that would not fade.
—
WHEN I GOT HOME that evening, my mother was in the kitchen, unpacking groceries. There had hardly been any food in the house for weeks. Now the fruit bowl was filled with apples. I picked one up and bit into it. It was delicious.
“How’s Lewis?” she asked.
“Better, I think,” I said. “But he has a lot on his mind.”
“I imagine a heart attack will give you a few things to think about.”
“He told Nathan and me a story this morning,” I began.
“Oh, that reminds me. Nathan called. He said to meet him at the mill at seven o’clock tonight.”
“Tonight?” I groaned. “Did he say why?”
“He wanted to give you Lewis’s key back.” My mother crossed her arms and looked at me. “Why the mill?” she asked. “That place is still locked up, isn’t it?”
I hedged. “As far as I know.”
“Only so much mischief the two of you can get up to, then.”
I said nothing and took another bite of my apple. I looked up at the kitchen clock. It was already half past six. I had never felt so tired in my life. The last thing I wanted to do was to climb back onto my bicycle, but I realized I didn’t have much choice. I needed Lewis’s key back. At least Nathan hadn’t asked to meet at the beach, I told myself. Maybe he’d finally accepted that he didn’t stand a chance with Faye, and he wanted to start hanging out at the mill again, just the two of us.
I got back on my bike, daring to hope.
It was just after seven o’clock when I turned off Bridge Lane and into the mill’s parking lot. As I dismounted I heard Nathan call my name. I looked around, not seeing him.
“Robert! Up here!”
I looked up. Nathan was standing on the top of the mill’s chimney.
He waved at me and then pointed at the iron rungs that had been hammered into the chimney’s brickwork. It was part of the same ladder that he used to climb in and out of the mill’s broken window. “Look! It goes all the way up!”
“Nathan, what are you doing?” I shouted. “Come down!”
He looked impossibly tiny, perched on top of that tower of dark red brick. He must have been balancing on the chimney’s rim. “Dad always said the world looked more beautiful from a distance,” shouted Nathan. “That’s why he spent so much time on the roof.”
“You have to come down!” I yelled.
“Don’t worry,” he called. “I’m coming down. Just taking in the view first. You can see the ocean from up here.” He turned to the east and my world slowed to a petrified crawl.
Lewis’s parachute was strapped to Nathan’s back.
“Nathan!” I shouted. “Whatever you’re thinking—”
“Relax, Robert.” Nathan pointed to the pack between his shoulders. “I borrowed this when I went to feed Dizzy this afternoon.”
“You’re not going to jump!”
“Of course I am!” cried Nathan cheerfully. His silhouette was almost black against the early-evening sky behind him.
“But how do you even know that thing still works? It’s been sitting in Lewis’s basement for thirty years! It could be rotted away!”
“It’s US military issue!” said Nathan. “Best in the world!”
“It’s too dangerous!”
Nathan laughed. “You think anyone would remember Philippe Petit if his stunt had been safe?”
I was frantic by then, desperately trying to think of anything that would make him climb back down the ladder to safety. “What about Faye?” I shouted.
He looked down at me. “What about her?”
“If it wasn’t you in the dragon suit, you need to tell her that!”
He peered down at me. “You still don’t believe me, do you?” he shouted.
“I can’t talk to you like this,” I yelled. “Come back down and let’s talk about it.”
Nathan looked around him for a moment. “It was easier for Dad up on the roof, you know. Sometimes he liked to keep the world at a distance.”
“Please come down!” My voice was becoming hoarse with shouting.
“I used to feel that way, too, but not anymore. Now I always want to come back down to earth, Robert.” He looked at me. “You remember what Betsy Cribbins said, don’t you? There’s just so much to live for.”
And with that Nathan Tilly flung himself into the clear, pale sky.
THIRTY-THREE
What happened next has been splashing on an endless loop inside my head for the past forty years. Nathan leaping joyfully into the sky. His single tug on the parachute. The useless cord, limp between his fingers. His limbs flailing. The soundless fall to earth, so quick, so quick. The crumple of his body against the concrete.
—
WORDS FOLLOWED.
Words followed, and once they began, they wouldn’t stop. There were sentences, then paragraphs, then whole pages. A forest of paper sprung up around Nathan’s fall, trying to make sense of what happened. There were sworn statements and police reports. There were hospital records, a coroner’s verdict. There were newspaper reports, editorial pieces, and letters to the editor. Words tumbled out, thickening the air until there was no room left to breathe. There were dry recitations of terrible facts, impenetrable thickets of medical jargon, hectoring diatribes about the fecklessness of youth. There were hand-wringing regrets at the terrible waste of it all. There were lazy assumptions and ignorant accusations. There were flat-out lies.
These words rose up like a black swarm of insects, dizzyingly violent, obscuring the view. None of them made any sense. And none of them would ever bring Nathan back.
—
CERTAIN FACTS BECAME CLEAR. The release mechanism on the parachute had rusted shut after all those years in Lewis’s damp basement. But even if the parachute had been working perfectly, Nathan would not have survived. The chimney was not tall enough. There would not have been enough time for the chute to open and slow his fall. And he would never have been able to jump far enough away from the chimney. The fabric of the parachute would have caught on the bricks, and Nathan would have slammed into
the side of the building.
None of this helped.
The Haverford police carefully reconstructed a timeline of the day’s events. I sat with my parents in an interview room and told two detectives everything I knew about Nathan. The detectives seemed very interested in the fact that Mr. Tilly had also fallen to his death. When I told them about Nathan’s infatuation with Faye, I saw them exchange a meaningful look. I realized then that they assumed that he had committed suicide; they were just trying to find out why.
That was when I really began to talk.
Nathan did not want to kill himself, I told them. He wanted to fly, not fall. I told them about how we had set free Mr. Tilly’s kites, how Nathan had watched happily as they were swept into the sky by the ocean winds. I told them how he had climbed up the roller coaster and sat alone at its highest point. I told them how he had spent an evening leaping out of my bedroom window into the snow. I told them about the nights he had spent on the Ferris wheel. Nathan Tilly was always climbing, I told them. He wanted to escape gravity, not give in to it. All Nathan wanted to do was to fly. He thought the parachute was going to work. Again and again, I repeated the last words he had shouted to me. There’s just so much to live for.
I talked and I talked until the detectives had no choice but to listen. They went away, they came back. They asked more questions. In the end, they believed me. This was an accident, not a suicide. Death by misadventure, pronounced the final police report.
None of this helped.
THIRTY-FOUR
An eruption of green fur spilled out toward me when I opened the door of Nathan’s locker. I hauled the dragon suit onto the floor and looked at it for a long time. The costume was in three parts—legs and tail, torso and wings, and head—all connected with heavy Velcro straps. The dragon’s cartoon eyes gazed sightlessly up at me.