And Then We Heard the Thunder

by John Oliver Killens

  Jimmy said, “The damn fools’ll shoot down their own planes!” Which would not be the first time. Solly had seen the Anti-Aircraft crews get so scared and trigger-happy they shot down P-38’s and even big birds who dared to think the sky belonged to them.

  The planes came in lazily for a landing in spite of the Ack-Ack. The sky was a rainbow of tracer bullets and floods of searchlights. The phone rang sharply in the orderly room. Solly picked it up and the voice on the other end said excitedly, “Five American planes full of Kamikazes landed on the airstrip!”

  Solly said, “What!”

  “That’s what I said, soldier. The orders are to defend at all costs. This is the only strip we have on the island. The sneaky bastards used five of our planes they’d previously shot down and came in under the radar on the tail of our night reconnaissance. Defend at all cost! We have to—” The voice cut off abruptly. Solly jiggled the phone. “Hello! Hello!” But it was no use. The line was dead.

  He stood staring at the phone for a moment. He was inclined to laugh at first and would have laughed if it hadn’t been a matter of life and death. His own life and his own death, especially. He ran to the entrance and blew his whistle. He said to Jimmy, “Round them all up, Jimmy, every living! The Japanese are taking the strip. Don’t forget your rifle, Jimmy! Jimmy! Don’t forget your rifle!”

  He blew short quick blasts on the whistle as he dashed toward his tent to get his carbine. Where in the hell was he going and whom was he going to kill and why?

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  Already they were ripping up the airstrip.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! and

  POW POW POW POW POW—Ziiiiiiiiiiinnnnnng—Bop—

  Solly fell headlong on his face as the bullets zoomed past his head and he thought they had ripped his ears off. He scrambled on hands and knees bruised and bleeding till he reached his tent.

  POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! He fell into his tent and got his carbine and ran out again and fell on his face again as a bullet grazed the top of his skull, and he was hit this time. He felt his head and brought hot blood away on his hand. The baby would be born next month and he Solomon Saunders, Junior, would be lost in action ten thousand miles away from home. For what?

  POW! POW! POW! POW! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  They seemed to be everywhere, all over the place.

  Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—

  POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! Ziiiiiiiinnnnnnng—Bop—

  He lay there quiet for a moment. Through all the thunder and the lightning he heard his mother’s voice: “Don’t be a hero! Come back to us! Son, you’re all I got in the world.” You got Millie, Mama! And Millie’s got a baby live and kicking in her belly! And all I got is me—me—me! He crawled back inside the tent and lay there breathing loudly to himself. He would lie there till it was all over, and if his side won the skirmish they would think he was unconscious through it all. He had achieved a purple heart on top of his head already. There was no need to go to the airstrip looking for another one. And if the other side won, well, then he would be a Prisoner of War for the rest of the war’s duration. And he would be alive and go home to his family. And he would really be a hero when all this shit was over. POW Saunders. His heartbeat was the sound of Ack-Ack guns thumping way up in the top of his head. Why not, goddammit? Why not play dead till it was over? The war was phony. Always phony. Ipso facto phony phony. It meant not a damn thing to him. He heard footsteps running past his tent toward the orderly room. He hoped they would not see him lying there. He heard the gunfire from the strip, heard the crying deep inside of him. He wished he felt like dying for his country’s noble cause. He wished his country loved him like he could love his country. Like he even loved his country now. He was just scared, that’s all, and he was letting his buddies down. After you cut through all the phony streams-of-consciousness, break it all down, and you’re a coward and you’ll always be a coward, and you’re letting your buddies down. So blame it on Mama or Fannie Mae or the baby in Millie’s stomach, or the war’s morality, but you’re fooling nobody but yourself. My COUNTRY ‘TIS OF THEE . . . SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY . . . He got up and staggered out of the tent and started running through the night. LAND WHERE MY FATHERS DIED . . .

  He heard Lieutenant Samuels’s voice off in the distance. “All right, men, let’s spread out like a fan and move toward the northern end of the strip. That seems to be where most of them are concentrated.”

  He heard Topkick saying calmly, “Split up, fellers. Half of you spread out that way and half the other way.”

  And Samuels shouted, “For God’s sake, don’t shoot each other!”

  Solly ran into the area near the orderly room just as his buddies moved away. He thought, why not kill each other? It makes as much sense as the other. Killing is killing. A chicken ain’t nothing but a bird.

  He thought he saw the Bookworm moving about fifty feet ahead of him. He said, “Watch out for yourself, buddy. We got things to do in that other world when all this shit is over.”

  And he thought he heard Worm answer, “This shit ain’t never gon be over!”

  Solly ran cautiously forward through the darkness now toward the sound and fury on the strip. He heard someone moving on his right and cussing softly to himself and he felt a wetness on his neck, and another soldier stumbling and running somewhere up ahead of him, and he remembered that the top of his head was bleeding. His heart beat all the way up in his temple and the blood hot all around his face, and he had a premonition this was it for him. He should have stayed in the tent like he had some sense. The air was warm and thick in his throat. The only other soldiers camped near the strip were a squad of Air Force maintenance men and a few Air Force Engineers and Anti-Aircrafters. The Infantry was at the front, which was miles away by now. And half of the 913 were taking soldiers to the front. The Field Artillery was miles away, and it was mainly up to about fifty men in the 913, and he had a strange calm feeling that this was the end of the war for Solomon Saunders, Junior. An armored group had moved out just yesterday, goddammit. It was mainly up to the less-than-half-strength of the Special Men.

  BOOOOOOOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!

  Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—tat-tat-tat-tat—

  ZIIIINNNNNG-BOP—

  He hit the ground again and the bullets hummed over his head and kicked up dust around his body and he scrambled forward and still he heard bullets singing Nearer My God to Thee. And fear grabbed him by the throat and strangled him and chilled his body and bombs exploded in his head and erupted in his stomach, and yet he had this feeling that within the next hour his worries would be over. He would never be frightened like this again. He would never argue with himself again the war’s morality. He’d have his peace and freedom. Something said inside of him, “Come on, soldier, goddammit, get up off your ass and pay attention to what you’re doing. You got people to go back home to. You got an airstrip to defend. You got buddies up there. You got Japanese to kill!” He knew that some of his buddies had already engaged the hari-kari fellows, he could hear the carbines and the M-IS talking back to the repeating rifles and hand grenades and the submachine guns. He got up and started to run again. “Hey, Worm!” He didn’t hear footsteps anymore. “Worm! Scotty! Where in the hell is everybody?”

  Suddenly he sensed shadows to the left of him, almost imagined, and he turned quickly and saw them coming for him. He dropped to the ground and hesitated for a millionth of a second, thinking they might be men from the 913, but then they leaped for him and screamed and his heart leaped through his throat and still that last billionth of a second in which he hesitated to kill, but then the robust killer came alive and he squeezed the trigger and heard his own thunder and saw his lightning chop them down like bamboo grass. He was a killer! At long goddamn last his mother’s baby was a killer! He moved forward now with a warm chill in his shoulders. He had taken life. You could only die once. Only cats had more than one life. Only cats—only cats—on
ly cats. He moved hurriedly toward the shooting and the killing, toward Murder Unincorporated, and he would kill as many of them as possible, and if they killed him he would never know about it. Suddenly as if catapulted, he was out into the open strip where the entire world was going to hell with grandiose proportions.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  POW! POW! POW! POW! POW!—TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT!

  Wheeeeeeerrrreee—Ziiiiinnnnnggg—BOP!

  Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee—Ziiiiiinnnnnnnggggggg—BOP!

  He dropped quickly and flat on the ground and hugged it tightly and desperately like he was he making love for the last time. The Kamikaze were everywhere blazing away with repeater rifles and submachine guns and hurling hand grenades. Solly’s buddies were dropping like houseflies under spray gun attack, and bombs were going off in Solly’s head and exploding in his stomach and erupting where his head lived so precariously, and he was scared scared hard scared aching scared way down deep between the cheeks of his quivering buttocks. And yet he felt a certain calm in the knowledge that he could have his cake and eat it too. If he were killed this very moment he would inherit swiftly that sweet peace of infinity. Thank you, Father. Peace, it’s truly wonderful. Never again to feel the icy stabs of fear mixed with the heat of fear’s great fiery furnace, and hell was cold and hell was hot and hell was here and death was peace. But if he should come through the gaping jaws of hell and live, he would be happy to be alive. For Millie and the baby and Mama and for Solly too. Like betting against the team you were rooting for. You couldn’t lose. He laughed and ate the dirty dust.

  TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT TAT!

  Wheeeeerrrrr—Ziiiiiiinnnnnnggggg—BOP!

  The deadly dot game kicked up dust around him and he hugged the good earth from head to foot, he rooted with his nose, he kissed it with his bruised and tender lips and he loved it with his aching loins, and he fought desperately and valiantly to control his body functions. Since he was a little boy he had always been nice-nasty.

  Bop bop bop bop bop bop!

  Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

  The dot game left him alone for a moment and he was still alive. He was breathing and eating dirt and he thought he knew his heart was beating. Maybe they thought he was dead already. He lay there for God knows how long, digging into the dark earth cold and hot. And maybe if he lay still as death they would not bother him, they would fight all around him, and after it was all over he would be alive and the joke would be on them and he would be alive and breathing and smelling and working and talking and laughing and eating and screwing and he would be alive goddammit he would be alive. He thought the blood on the top of his throbbing head was caked up now. The world went to hell around him and the earth quaked underneath him. He thought about Millie and the baby who was already alive and kicking and getting ready to make his debut into the world next month, and about Mama and what was Fannie Mae doing this very moment? Where are you and what are you doing, my dearest darling, loving sweetheart deeply feeling baby-child? You were right. I am a conscientious objector. If I get through this one all in one piece, I’ll take one of the Ducks and stock up on gasoline and rations and put out to sea one night and head for somewhere like Tahiti and sweat the war out with Gauguin’s pretty people. Please! Great God Almighty, let this dying be something. Let My Country ‘Tis of Thee really be a sweet land of liberty for me—for me—for me! The greatest fear that choked his heart was that he would die for nothing. Just be killed and die and no Sweet Land of Liberty. He didn’t know whether he had fallen asleep or not, but suddenly he was aware again of the hell breaking loose around him. He pushed his body up a couple of inches and saw the belches of lightning all over the strip and volcanoes erupting everywhere and through the rainbows of tracer gunfire he saw Worm and Lanky, for one split second he saw the long and short of it, side by side, battling hand to hand with Kamikaze at the northern end of the strip with the forest as a backdrop. Solly got up on his haunches and turned around and scrambled back behind the Air Force Engineers building. The thing to do was to circle northward with the tents and buildings as protection and in a minute or two he could reach Worm and Lanky and the rest of his embattled buddies up near the tip of the strip, and they would kill as many of the other cats as possible, and if they were killed they would die together and would never disgrace their pants again, and Millie and the baby would have ten thousand dollars coming to them, and he would have peace forever more. That’s all he wanted—PEACE! Peace! Peace and Freedom! And maybe he would die to get them.

  He ran close to the earth like a fullback between the squatty Air Force Engineers building and the pyramidal tents on the other side. He had a feeling that the Japanese were everywhere all over the area, as if they were coming up out of the ground, he had a feeling he was being followed, but he was just about there now and all he had to do was to come around the next bend of tents and he’d be out on the strip and he would be with his battling buddies. And maybe he was wrong, he hoped with a maddening desperation. Maybe the world would be different, because they gave their lives this night. His country was the fairest land, the greatest potential of them all. His country would appreciate the life he was about to lay upon the altar.

  He ran head down and close to the tents and in a couple of shakes he would be dying with his buddies. He could not get that sweet song out of his heart, FROM EVERY MOUNTAINSIDE LET FREEDOM RING . . . He was breathing deeply and he didn’t want to die, he wanted to live, but c’est la guerre, and all the rest of the same horseshit in any language, and who in the hell was he to live when thousands of others were gasping their last on battlefields around the world this very second? I want to live—I want to live! Good Lord, I wouldn’t mind dying if dying was for something. His mother said don’t be a hero, Solly. He laughed, and he stumbled over ropes and tent pegs, and something or somebody sprang softly out of the shadows and landed on his back and they went down without a word. And Freedom’s cause was here and now, and this was time. These were his chickens come to roost. Every goddamn cackling one of them. He felt the strange arm around his neck and the weight lean up off of him for the murmur of a second and Solly tried to straighten up quickly judo-style and throw his body from beneath the Kamikaze fellow. It was the last way Solly would choose to die. And yet he felt the cold steel stab cleanly in a place next to his shoulder blade and too close to his heart for comfort and felt the gush of his own hot blood and felt a sharp white hot pain near his heart and spreading fast throughout his chest, sharp, fast, white, hot, spreading-burning, he could not feel his poor heart beating, he only knew the beat of the pain, short, fast, white, hot, spreading, burning. Yet he knew the man’s left hand had drawn back to stab again, and fright took priority over pain and he got strength from God or somewhere and struggled quickly to his feet, and he reached desperately over his shoulder and thank God for his Amphibious training and thank God Tojo wasn’t heavy, and he grabbed the arm again descending and felt the cold steel pierce his own arm. But he held on, God only knows how or why, and he twisted his body lightning fast and threw the lightweight Kamikaze over his shoulder and fell upon him. The man was shouting from somewhere in his frightened throat and still striking out at Solly and striking home into his chest a couple of times before Solly could seize his arm, and then it was strength against strength, brute against brute, and his entire body crying and pleading with his muscles, and his heart his soul his mind, and he no longer heard anything else, the rest of the war did not exist for him. Nothing else ever was or ever would be. Suddenly everything in all his life boiled down to him and this hari-kari Japanese man-child born of woman breathing death and thunder in his face.

  He held the man’s wrist now and twisted his arm and he listened hard to hear it snap, both of them grunting and groaning and breaking wind, and he could see the young frightened face clearer now, much much clearer than any face he’d ever seen in all his life’s brief span of time. And Solly seemed to be wallowing in blood, his own life’s blood
all over him and drenching the earth. Pow! The man’s arm finally snapped at the elbow and the dagger dropped, and now Solomon Saunders held the dagger, and it was the worst way in the world to kill or be killed, and he felt his stomach erupting and scalding lava spilling over and eating up his insides as he raised his arm and hesitated, and the other soldier grabbed at him, and then Solly came down with a vengeance, and he felt the steel tear ruthlessly into human flesh like it was a chicken, and back and down, and he didn’t hate this man beneath him. “I don’t hate you, goddamn your hari-kari soul!” And down and back, down and back, and hot tears flooding Solly’s cheeks and nausea in his nasty throat and down and back, the man’s chest was a dark bloody geyser gushing blood, his pleading eyes his desperate eyes. “I don’t hate you, Tojo, damn you. I don’t hate you! I don’t even know you—damn you!” The boyish soldier gave up the ghost just as Solly’s steam gave out and he fell forward on top of this very very dead young stranger from the islands of Japan, and all was peace and all was quiet, and brotherhood and all that crap, even as the battle raged around the lucky living bastards who were dying on the strip for freedom.

  PART IV—THE CROP

  CHAPTER I

  He was dead and he was in Heaven where all good little boys went when they died, and big men too, and tiny girls and women, his mama said when he was a little biddy boy way down South in Dixieland, and his mama used to lay him down to sleep and pray the Lord his soul to keep, and when he believed most men were good and women too and went to Heaven when they died. And laughing was good and frowning was bad, and when you laughed the world laughed with you. And your mama is the Santy and your papa is the Clause, and both of ‘em put together make a Santy Claus. And God made you and the stork brought you. But Solly was in Heaven now where the streets were paved with gold and flowed with milk and honey, he preferred syrup, personally, and hot biscuits oozing with butter, but he could not complain, he had crossed over Jordan and he had reached the Promised Land, where all was peace and the skies were not cloudy any day, and God was not a Great White Father. But why was he in Heaven? He was not good, he was a murderer and an adulterer, he had violated some of the Ten Commandments, maybe every one of them, but since they let him in the Gates, there must be a reason, there must be some goodness in him. Fannie Mae loved him, there must be goodness in him. Millie and Mama loved him too. His unborn baby loved him. He heard singing all around him. Singing to him.