by Brian Payton
In the shadows, they nearly collide with three men each made up as Carmen Miranda. They wear bright flower print dresses, turbans of fruit, hoop earrings. They won a talent contest and with it the honor of performing during the girls’ break. As the Mirandas make their way past and onto the stage, they shake false breasts and purse red lips. One of them is flat-out gorgeous.
Stephen discusses the set list with the show’s MC and the girls make a beeline for the dressing room. As the band cranks up a samba, Helen strays down behind the parachutes. She lifts back a fold of silk and sees the audience in profile. She scans for John. The men well back from the stage sit on folding chairs, tires, and tarps. Reactions to the drag routine are mixed. Some men grin and shake their head, others glare disapprovingly. Most cheer or shout lewd and encouraging things.
Helen spots Airman Perera, reclined on a folding chair. She pulls the silk a little farther aside. He turns in her direction but looks instead at the man seated beside him, doubled over with laughter. Perera slaps him on the back, then jumps to his feet and whistles piercingly.
AFTER THE SHOW, a bottle makes the rounds of the dressing room, lipstick wiped following each pull. The heat and postperformance euphoria mix with the drink and soon they’re losing their heads. There’s talk of meeting the boys from the band. Gladys and Sarah undress in front of Stephen, tease him with it, kiss him all over his face. Like a boy caught in his sisters’ room, he blushes, takes it good-naturedly—for a while—then slips out at the first opportunity. Helen isn’t far behind.
The hangar still resonates with energy, although only a scattering of men remain. Up near the giant doors, two men roll electrical cord on a drum, shoving each other like a couple of kids. When they see Helen, they turn to each other to sing a few lines of “The Nearness of You,” which makes her blush.
Now is the moment, the afterglow of shared experience. The men will want to help with any and all of her questions, compete with each other to find answers. She will put this to use for John. Helen pulls her coat around her shoulders and heads in their direction.
Airman Perera appears out of nowhere, unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. His face is freshly shaved, his hair neatly combed. Unlike their first meeting, he can’t take his eyes off her.
“Well,” she says. “Say something.”
“Good show.” He lights the cigarette and stares hard into her eyes, then at her mouth.
“But did you laugh? That was your only request.” She looks past his shoulder and returns the wave of men heading out the door.
He steps forward and puts his hand on her cheek. It’s warm and smells of tobacco. Caught unaware, she stumbles back a step.
They both turn at the sound of a metal chair toppling over onstage. Helen can hear the girls inside the dressing room, Gladys’s hysterical laugh. She glances around at the mostly vacant hangar. Then the door near the stage bangs open. Billowing parachutes whip and twist in the sudden onrush of wind.
“I have to be getting back . . .” Helen turns and walks away.
Perera quickly covers the space between them and grabs her hand. She yanks it away. Unperturbed, he stares directly into her eyes. “Where to?”
“I don’t know what makes you think . . .”
His shameless gaze contains ownership, a claim to inevitability. Again, he says, “Where to?”
She slaps his face, frightened at what she’s unleashed. “My husband . . .”
He fingers his jaw and stares at her mouth again, then down at her chest. He bends over and retrieves his cigarette. He takes one last drag before flicking it away.
Smoke trickles from his lips. “I don’t see no ring.”
She turns and marches to the dressing room.
Helen rushes inside and discovers that the girls have already left. She slams the door and sits down on the bench, trembling. What now? The air close and muggy. She switches off the heater and the grate clicks as it fades from purple to gray.
Helen waits for her pulse to settle, her breathing to return to her control. As she shoves her brush and scarf into her bag, her father’s words come back to her. Her anger spikes at the memory of having brushed off his warning. Stephen had told them more than once not to give the men too much individual attention. And still she’s shocked by the sudden, physical liberty. Like that man in the chapel at Fairbanks. And now Airman Perera. Did she somehow lead him on? What is she projecting? She tells herself it was simply gratitude. She refuses to treat these men as if they are in prison. But what entitles anyone . . . She’ll march directly out of here, then catch up with the girls. Someone must have noticed what was happening. He won’t risk approaching again.
How has she arrived at this moment? She was raised to believe that to look astray is to commit adultery in your heart. A mortal sin. Better to tear out your eye and throw it away than have your whole body cast into hell. From catechism up, we’ve been warned. So far, this logic has gone untested. There is no question of her love for John. But now she calls into question all she’s been taught. Is there really no difference between a careless thought and taking action? One stray thought? What rational adult could believe such a thing?
Perera pushes his way in and closes the door behind him.
“Get out!” she cries. “Who do you think you are?”
He stands directly in front of her. Where are the girls? Will anyone hear if she screams? She scrambles to get up, but he presses down on her shoulders, pinning her against the wall. He quickly shrugs off his jacket, pulls his undershirt over his head as she fights to get past. He grabs her by the back of the hair and pulls her in, pressing her face against his belly. Helen braces herself, then springs forward using all the power in her legs, back, and shoulders, shoving with upward momentum. He stumbles and falls back over the heater and against the opposite wall as she scrambles out of the room.
When she opens the outer door, the storm pushes in. All her strength is required to pull the door closed behind her. A sharp sheet of tin metal flies past, spinning into the night. She has never encountered such a storm. Will the planes snap their moorings? The tents and buildings roll into the sea? Helen clutches her coat to her neck and leans into the wind. Our Father, who art in heaven . . .
The water lashing her face and eyes is neither rain nor sleet—it stings with the salt of the sea. She has no idea where she is. Darkness presses in with only a few distant pinpricks of light. She attempts to unfold the map in her mind. The hospital, the mess hall, tents, and Quonset huts all the same. She stumbles on. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven . . .
The roar is disorienting. Why was there no hurricane warning? Fifty yards beyond the building and it’s now impossible to see where she’s going. Mud sucks at her shoes. Puddles up to her shins. A seam of flat earth feels as if it might be a road. She will follow it toward the cluster of light she hopes is the mess hall. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . . .
A new magnitude of gust rises up. All progress comes to a halt. She swings her arm up to protect against what sounds like more cartwheeling sheets of metal, a gesture that costs her balance and sends her to the ground. Helen pushes herself up. She must find her feet. Carry on.
From behind, a flashlight beam cuts into the darkness. A voice calls out, but it is impossible to distinguish words. There is no cover, no place to hide. The voice—urgent, persistent—struggles through the wind once again.
The flashlight bounces and swivels in pursuit, grows brighter on approach. She catches sight of her shadow against the ground, stretching out from her feet to infinity. The syllables, repeated, “Hel-len!” He is bearing down on her. She stops and turns to face the light straight on, buckling her knees, crouching to stay upright in the wind.
The figure is less than a dozen feet away before she sees that it is Stephen, wet hair pressed down over his forehead, soaked clothes clinging to his limbs. The shocking whiteness of his hand as he reaches for her shoulder. He shouts, “What in the world are you doing?”
She shakes her head.
“You’ll get yourself killed! You’re headed in the wrong direction.”
He draws her in under his shoulder, she wraps her arm around his back. Together, they carry on. The flashlight beam refracts off the larger puddles, illuminating countless streaks of spray. A man trudging past, a fleeing sheet of canvas, a terrified dog scampering under a truck. Eventually the light strikes the back of a covered jeep. Stephen flings open the passenger door. Helen scrambles in as he races round to the driver’s side. Once inside, he switches off the flashlight. The wind shakes the jeep like a toy.
“Where the hell were you? Everyone’s worried sick!”
“Lost,” she says, catching her breath. “Beyond lost.”
“What happened back there? You bolted outside like the place was on fire.”
She is unsure how to give it shape, definition. Where the story should begin. She is sure only of this: “He came at me, but I got away in time.”
In the moment it takes Stephen to sort this formation, Helen can feel him seething beside her.
“Believe me. I’ll find that piece of shit . . . Helen, are you okay?”
She nods her head, shivering with the wet and cold.
“That prick will rot in jail.”
They listen to the wind have its way.
“I should have been there to protect you. I can’t let you girls out of my sight for a single, goddamn minute . . .”
“Stephen, please. I said I’m all right.”
“Helen, listen . . . I’m sorry to bring this up right now, but I can’t hold it any longer. I came to tell you that I just met a guy who might have seen your husband.”
Her heart stumbles. Her mouth falls open. She turns to Stephen but can’t discern his face in the dark.
“The guy’s a mechanic. Part of the hangar crew. He knows what goes up and what comes back. He said a man rode along on a bombing run a couple of months ago. An advance man for the Royal Canadian Air Force. No mention of a reporter, but when I heard ‘Canadian’ I thought it might lead to something. He said the guy’s name was Warren Easley.”
Helen leans forward, covers her face with her hands.
“His brother.”
How could she have missed it? All along, she was looking in the right place, but for the wrong man.
“Must have faked the paperwork. Stole a uniform?”
Helen lifts her head and takes a deep breath. She fixes her gaze on the few, distant clusters of light. Between here and there, all is black.
She can see John rummaging through his brother’s papers and personal effects back at his parents’ house. He took the chance that the wheels of bureaucracy wouldn’t catch up to him in time. How would the U.S. Navy, on Adak Island, know about the death of a Canadian airman over the English Channel? Written orders from the RCAF requesting access? She smiles at the thought of John taking pleasure in choosing the precise military jargon. All along, she had been looking for signs of a journalist, a writer. Months of research, two thousand miles. Although she knew Adak held the key, it took Stephen to find it.
“Where’s John?” Her voice, flat, barely audible over the storm.
“Helen . . .”
“Damn it! Where is he?”
The wind mocks his hesitation. “The plane went down somewhere between here and Attu. He was with a crew of six. Helen, they never made it back.”
“They could have made an emergency landing someplace.” As the words leave her lips, she realizes the idea felt much more powerful held close and unspoken.
“They say life expectancy is five minutes in the open water. Give or take.”
“He could have been captured. On Kiska, or Attu.”
Stephen finds her hand in the dark. “Helen . . . I need you to listen to me. I’m told there’s no chance they survived.”
She hears the finality of the words but scrambles to find cracks in the logic, the missing details. There’s been some kind of mistake. John was not on that plane, Stephen’s source is confusing his facts. Again she finds herself outrunning pursuit. She’s scaling fences, kicking open doors that have been shut in her face. John is too smart to die.
Stephen leans over, kisses her hand, then cradles it in both of his.
“It takes time, months, years even. But eventually you find comfort in knowing that you’re not alone in having lost somebody,” he says. “Pearl Harbor. It’s like the Mayflower, the way everyone claims a connection. The truth is, I did lose someone at Pearl.”
Helen blinks, draws herself back to the here and now. Replays the words she’s just heard.
“Stephen. My God, I’m so sorry. You never said anything. Tell me—”
“Another time.”
And then she forces herself to imagine it, John’s plane falling from the sky—to feel it happening. The cry of wind through dead propellers. The impact of metal on concrete sea. Cold water folding in, pulling him down beyond the reach of light. Just like his brother. She cries out loud, surprising herself with the sound. Stephen puts his arm around her shoulder and gathers her in.
Here she would reach for the comfort of heaven, the knowledge that they will be together again, but is stopped by John himself. Because admission into heaven calls for faith in its existence. All along, he made it clear he won’t be going. This life is all they have together.
Unless, on occasion, forgiveness is granted to those who do not ask. Unless the faith of some is strong enough to carry others through.
Eventually Helen sits up and wipes her nose. “How many islands between here and there?”
“I don’t know. Half dozen?”
“Help me find a map.”
SEVENTEEN
THE INCREASED ACTIVITY AT THE JAPANESE CAMP has made it impossible to steal coal. The lack of coal makes it impossible to coax a flame from the last sodden sticks of driftwood. And now there is no way to light either coal or wood. While Easley knew the absence of fire would gnaw away at his nerves, he was wholly unprepared for the damage it would inflict on his feet.
He sits in the damp cave comparing the boots he has just removed with the boots he keeps in the nest. The first set is wet and warm, the second damp and cold. He’s long since removed the laces to allow his ballooning flesh room to escape. All the socks are wet, and there is no way to make them dry. The ones he wears are sticky with pus. He carefully peels them away.
The left foot has increased in size by half. The right is slightly smaller, but topped with a half dozen blisters, several as wide as Coke bottle caps. So far, only two have ruptured. The color of both feet is mottled burgundy and blue. The contrast with the dirty white skin of his shins makes them look as if they belong to another body altogether. He thinks of the stories of the Great War and the trenches. Of all the ways he imagined death overtaking him—starvation, cold, poisoning, a fall—he never dreamed it would crawl up from his toes.
Easley spends the day inside listening to the wind and planes. Yesterday’s steady drizzle has been replaced by fog and the pilots cannot see their targets below. He listens to them circle the island, looking for a hole through which to rain down their rage. Finding none, the planes eventually turn away from the island with their bellies full, leaving no fresh wounds behind.
HE AWAKENS in the middle of the night, surrounded by darkness and cold. His exposed feet are numb. He pulls them in and wraps them in silk. The surf sounds unusually distant, even accounting for the tide. The drip near the front of the cave calls his attention because it keeps time for a tune. He hears faint whistling and wonders if Karl has come back for a visit.
He suspects his imagination is taking advantage of his weakened condition. He has always been able to see these things for what they are—hallucinations—but now he runs toward the phantoms, chasing down what has become more important than his hold on reality. Easley finds himself humming along, then he calls out into the darkness.
The whistling grows louder and he can see a yellow light coming up the ravine from
the sea. When the light reaches the mouth of the cave, Easley sits up to greet his brother. Warren wears a clean undershirt and underpants, black socks with garters. The light shows his handsome face, his hair disheveled from sleep. The lantern he carries paints the cave with a warm and comforting glow. Warren whistles the notes, but Easley remembers the words.
So long, it’s been good to know you
So long, it’s been good to know you
There’s a mighty big war that’s got to be won
And we’ll get back together again.
The lantern is set atop the flat rock Easley uses as a table. Next to the lamp is what his brother has come to collect: his RCAF uniform, starched clean and folded to regulation. Atop the uniform are his hat and leather gloves. As he gets dressed, Warren whistles the tune in a continuous loop. First the shirt, then the trousers, jacket, and boots. He pulls the hat snug on his head. Easley becomes anxious when he sees his brother getting ready to leave.
“I only borrowed it,” Easley says, “because I figured you wouldn’t need it anymore.”
Not wanting to miss the chance, he tells his brother how much he’s missed him. That he always admired Warren’s way with family and friends, teachers and coaches, strangers on the street. His inborn confidence and ease. His faith in others, as well as his belief that everything will somehow turn out for the best. He never realized—or allowed himself to believe—that his older brother wanted all these things for himself. Wanted to shoulder him aside, out of the flow of attention and praise, out of the way altogether. Warren never seemed to suspect that the natural roles had reversed, the firstborn idolizing the second.
Warren whistles contentedly.
“Forgive me,” Easley says. “For not being a better brother and friend. For keeping everything wrapped up inside. I have lived my life as a professional stranger. What’s the use in that? Now I see it for the waste it is . . . I always knew I would never equal the man I saw in you.”