The Wind Is Not a River

by Brian Payton

  Few hours pass in which Easley is not visited by a glimpse of Karl’s hungry eyes, or the weight of the Greek pinning him down. Some memories do not wait to be called up from the past, they reside in the here and now. Could it be that the future reveals itself in a similar fashion?

  Strangely, Tatiana leaves him be.

  As the rows of tulips take shape, Easley turns his mind to the image that’s been occupying him ever since Attu.

  “I’ve got it,” he says, looking up from the table.

  “What?”

  “Yesterday, you asked if I had any plans. Well, I do. Not a plan really, just a picture.”

  Helen sits back and folds her arms.

  “You, dressed in overalls, standing in a field, a couple of kids running wild in the distance.”

  In Easley’s vision, the war is long since decided. Perhaps by then enough time will have passed and he will finally be able to excise his fragment of the story. It too seems like a shard of himself, misplaced, a danger to the healthy tissue that surrounds.

  “Do you have the money I gave you?”

  She smiles.

  “While I’m in there, I want you to go out like we said.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They manage to assemble a few more rows of tulips before the orderlies arrive. Two men enter the room and roll a gurney alongside the bed. When they move to help Easley aboard, he waves them off and swiftly accomplishes it on his own. Helen carefully sets the puzzle aside for completion later tonight, tomorrow, or the following day while she waits for him to awaken from the haze. They push him toward the door. Helen touches the shoulder of one of the orderlies, then reaches for her husband’s hand.

  “Something bright,” he says. “See you this afternoon.”

  She kisses his cheek, stands anchored to the floor as the men roll her husband away.

  Helen scans the empty room, recalls her father’s vigil for her dying mother. She feels the sudden urge to run. But she calms herself, gathers her bag and shawl. Then she steps out into the hall and walks in the opposite direction.

  Stark midday sun reflects off freshly waxed floors. She passes a series of windows, through succeeding columns of light, composing a new prayer. She is careful not to ask the Lord for further favors, but to thank him again for all that he has already done. She has been the recipient of so much grace she asks only for the wisdom to remain aware of her blessings. Out front, she boards a bus bound for the shops downtown where, despite rationing and shortages, despite the war, she will discover the perfect summer dress.

  Easley lies in wait, picturing how Helen will look when she returns. Covered in a thin sheet, he is thankful for the warmth of the operating room, the sound of someone whistling just beyond the door. He becomes lost amid the voices now surrounding him, discussing the number and angle of lights, the height and availability of tables and trays. Then the lights begin to fade as the wind whips up against the canvas of the medical tent. There is the hard sag of his litter, the dank moisture in the air. Someone hums a few bars of a tune. Jazz? He tries to imagine one of Helen’s musical routines. He will have to request a private performance. Snow falls past the mouth of the cave, the laden apple tree. How will she look when she returns? Then all these things seem to loosen their grip and float away until he is wholly unencumbered. He has never felt so clean.

  TWENTY-SIX

  NOVEMBER 9, 1945

  THE BACKYARD FENCE IS LOST TO HER, ALONG WITH the trees and telephone poles beyond. This is one of those rare, autumnal fogs that settle in a hush over the city, drowning both sound and light. The radio advises anyone expecting to cross town today to think twice. In addition to the fog, an unscheduled parade is reportedly moving through the streets. Traffic is at a standstill. Helen realizes that if she has any hope of arriving at her destination on time, she must grab her coat and walk. She slips the parcel into her bag, makes her way through the silent living room, then out into the cloud.

  Beyond the reach of the stove, the house has been cool for weeks. It’s not nearly cold enough for the pipes to freeze, so it makes little sense lavishing heat on empty rooms. Soon enough, the place will fill with life again. Helen recently signed a lease with the parents of four young children to rent it for a year. With both Joe and Helen gone for the foreseeable future, the house would have moldered in neglect. This way, someone will be here to look after things, keep the old place alive and breathing.

  After fourteen months of serving with the local Red Cross, Helen has set her sights on Europe, where millions of people are still displaced in the aftermath of war. She has signed on with the relief effort in France. She leaves in eleven days. There, she will distribute clothing and food, fill out untold scores of immigration applications, teach English in refugee camps. She will help those seeking the lost. She will find her own mother’s sisters and brother, if they have survived. Introduce herself, and offer whatever help she can give. She will remind them that they have family on the far, safe side of the world. Helen will do these things to keep herself in motion, to be of use, to try and fill the hole left behind.

  The doctors gently reminded her that there are never any guarantees with surgery. Despite advances, the science is far from exact. What we don’t know easily tips the scales. Clotting blood and embolisms, circulatory and respiratory systems weakened by malnutrition, the risks of anesthesia. When she thinks of it now, it is clear that John met his end in the Aleutian Islands, but somehow made it home to finally take his rest. His return, his brief visitation, was enough to confirm and then sorely test her faith.

  John was restored to her for three days only to be lost again. Now two years, four months, and twenty-seven days have passed. His absence made her question whether there is a life beyond this one. It robbed her certainty. In that time, she has pulled down much of what she previously held to be true. She has only recently begun to rebuild, to pray once again. The one thing never in question was the necessity of hope—not some airy wish for better times, but a belief that calls for action, demands she make her own way there. Hope: not for its own sake, but for all that it reveals.

  The city has seen its share of celebrations for the men who fought overseas, homecomings both spontaneous and planned. And then this morning, after the simultaneous arrival of two troopships at the Port of Seattle, soldiers poured off gangways, along sidewalks, then onto the streets as passersby cheer them on. Nearly three months past V-J Day and the appetite for jubilation seems undiminished. But Helen stands on the corner in the disbanding fog as thousands of uniformed soldiers stream through the disembodied cheers, hugging herself, wishing the men would hurry past. Only when they are close enough to touch can their deep tans and sun-bleached hair be seen. Family sedans, taxis, and military jeeps sail past with men hanging out the windows, honking horns and singing. Those on foot swagger in casual formation, eight or ten abreast, waving at the crowd. A band on a flat-deck truck plays “When the Saints Come Marching In.” Civilians grab their chance to mix with some of the last men home from the newly liberated islands and atolls of the South Pacific. Helen wonders if there are any veterans of Attu among them. She skirts the crowd, unable to cross, forced to take the long way round. But the sky is brightening, the mist is in retreat—the heroes have the fog on the run.

  WHEN AT LAST HELEN ARRIVES in the tattered lobby of the Cascade Hotel, she immediately sees him seated in a soft, high-back chair. He wears an old trench coat over white undershirt, suspenders tugging at the waist of faded dungarees. All of it second or third hand. His eyes are black and almond shaped, his skin the color of walnut shells. He appears to be native but could just as easily be mistaken as Asian, or even Japanese. It is difficult to tell, but Helen guesses he’s partway through his sixties. She does not wonder whether this is her man.

  Helen introduces herself as the woman he spoke to on the telephone yesterday. Alexander Seminoff shifts forward in his seat, pulls wire-framed glasses around his ears. He wants to rise and greet her, but she can see the effort th
is will cost and quickly grabs an adjacent chair. She sets her bag on the floor and asks how he’s getting on.

  “We’ve been in good shape ever since we got to Frisco. And everyone here is treating us very, very nicely.”

  She wants to sail through the small talk, the how-do-you-dos, and ask how they managed to survive. From the Bureau of Indian Affairs, she has gleaned this much: forty-five people went missing from Attu, only twenty-five survive. Listed among the living is a woman with the name Tatiana.

  Helen now learns that after the Japanese invasion, the people of Attu were held captive on their island for three months, then shipped to the island of Hokkaido. There they endured three years of forced labor. Seventeen died of starvation and disease. They have been wending their way home ever since the Instrument of Surrender was signed.

  “It’s been a long journey,” he says. “Before we left Japan, we had our first airplane ride. Some of us were scared, but to me it was kind of a thrill. Then, all of a sudden, the pilot tells us to look out the windows. ‘Take a good, long look,’ he says. ‘You may be the first U.S. civilians to see the ruins of Nagasaki.’ ”

  Helen nods. She can guess, but cannot know, what this point of view brings.

  “On Hokkaido, we were left to wonder how bad things were back home. Over here, at least, it hardly looks like there’s been a war at all.”

  “Mr. Seminoff, I’m sorry to say that few people know what happened in the Aleutian Islands.” She considers her timing, holds back her opening lines. “If you don’t mind my asking—”

  “What happened to me is all upstairs in my room. I’ve got three boxes up there. The ashes of my wife, my brother, and his son. Now I’m bringing ’em home.”

  Part of her wonders what’s left to say. The other part, the part she shared with John, wants it all out in the open, in the full light of day. She could put him in touch with Sorenson, any number of reporters and editors who could help make his story known.

  “Don’t you think people should know?”

  The resulting pause makes it appear as if he’s been put on the spot, asked to speak on behalf of others, speak with authority about things she cannot possibly comprehend. His gaze drifts to the steady flow of departures and arrivals.

  “Ma’am? I thank you for your interest, but all we want is to get back home. We thought we had it pretty tough until we saw what we saw, and heard what happened most everywhere else. What’s the use in dragging all that out now? Maybe one day I’ll tell the grandkids, if they ask. When it seems they’re ready to know.”

  Helen wonders whether he’s been told that his village was destroyed, but she cannot bring herself to ask. She has not come to lay this new loss beside the others.

  “You say you’ve got something for my daughter?”

  Something Helen did not touch for almost a year. Something believed to be hidden safe.

  “I do,” she says, quietly.

  “She’s supposed to be here by now. Guess she got held up like everybody else. We can wait a spell, if you’d like.”

  “I’d be happy to.”

  He seems content to wait in silence. He is polite but seems incurious about who she is, or how she tracked him down. He does not ask how she came to be in possession of something belonging to a member of his family, or what that something could be. He does not ask about her war. Perhaps he has the wisdom to suspect she too has paid a price.

  Together, they watch patrons come and go. So many men, recently discharged, ill at ease in jackets and ties.

  Finally he asks if there’s anything left in the way of waterfowl in and around these parts, what kind they might be and whether, like so much else, they were all used up in the war. She explains what little she knows of mallards and Canada geese, then smiles at the thought of John hearing this, jumping at the chance to fill in the details of at least a dozen other species beside.

  A young woman enters the lobby. Shadows encircling tired eyes. Sunken cheeks. Hair black as ravens’ wings. The woman who was once the girl in the photograph tucked inside the parcel at Helen’s feet. She has been and will be beautiful again.

  At the sight of her, Alexander Seminoff brightens. He leans forward in his chair. “That’s her there with her husband. And those are her cousins.”

  By her side is a native man with a suitcase in his hand. He rests it on the floor, reaches his arm over the woman’s shoulders, draws her in. Helen catches her breath. It has been over two years and eight hundred miles since she saw him on the road from Sitka’s Orthodox cathedral, since their shared fifth of brandy out behind the store. He has grown in both weight and stature. He is transformed. Only now does she realize how terribly close she had come.

  The couple greet the cousins, then launch into what appears to be a reunion long overdue. On the young man’s face, Helen recognizes what she has come to know as resurrected joy—the rarefied happiness that was rumored to have died, but has sprung to life again.

  Helen has lived in doubt this day would ever come. She has thought of it often over the course of the war, rejecting it as improbable in the extreme. John would have never expected her to do this, and yet she has wanted it ever since she learned of Tatiana’s survival. She recognizes this as the moment to finally deliver her well-considered speech, the story of how these things came to be in her possession. What they meant to John Easley. How Helen has Tatiana to thank for bringing him—briefly—home.

  Seeing them now, Helen considers the effect such knowledge might have on this young woman both now and in the future. The way this story might take root in the mind of the young man at her side. She imagines how she herself will feel trying to convey the unlikely devotion of her deceased husband. In an instant she weighs all these things, then hands over the parcel.

  “I’m sorry,” Helen says, “But I’m already late.”

  Late for what, she can’t imagine. She has only just arrived where she felt destined to go. And yet the burden she thought she carried is suddenly gone. In its place is the urge to protect.

  Helen rises to her feet. “Could you please make sure she gets this?”

  “Don’t you want to say hello?”

  “Mr. Seminoff . . .”

  He looks up, searches her eyes.

  “God bless you,” she says, finally. “Good luck to you and your family.”

  “And to you.”

  He shifts the parcel and offers his right hand. Helen reaches out to shake it, but he kisses her hand instead. In that moment, she closes her eyes, and opens them again on a world both changed and the same. Then she turns and walks through the lobby, out into the crowd and light.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am deeply grateful to my first reader and beloved wife, Lily Harned. She always believed.

  With this book, I am supremely fortunate to have had the kind of editor who reads and rereads between the lines. Thank you, Lee Boudreaux. I am grateful to Daniel Halpern, for giving this book such an enthusiastic reception and supportive home at Ecco. Patrick Crean at HarperCollins Canada was first on the scene. He provided invaluable advice and staunch support. Iris Tupholme stood firmly behind this book from the start. Sophie Orme at Mantle/Pan Macmillan offered sensitive and welcome insight. Rachel Meyers delivered the copyedited manuscript before the baby arrived, and Allison Saltzman designed the gorgeous cover. Ryan Willard and Karen Maine kept everything on track. Thank you to Michael McKenzie, Ashley Garland, and everyone at Ecco/HarperCollins, HarperCollins Canada, and Mantle.

  I am grateful to my extraordinary agent, Victoria Sanders, and her team: Bernadette Baker-Baughman, Chris Kepner, and Chandler Crawford. Their overwhelming support helped ensure this book would find its way into your hands. Special thanks are due to Mary Anne Thompson, whose early and passionate endorsement opened so many doors.

  Over the course of this book’s long gestation, I have been the recipient of tremendous generosity, encouragement, and support for which I’m deeply grateful. Early readers—including Edna Alford, Georges Borchardt,
Joan Clark, and Michael Winter—offered sound critique. The MacDowell Colony, Banff Centre for the Arts, and Our Town Café offered welcoming places to write. Grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and Access Copyright Foundation allowed me to travel to the Aleutian Islands and afforded me the time in which to create.

  I am indebted to the writers who came to the subject of the Aleutian Islands before me. Numerous books, journals, natural histories, government reports, articles, and essays were instrumental in my research. Foremost among those are Brian Garfield’s excellent military history, The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians; Dean Kohlhoff’s heartbreaking account of the internment of the Aleut people, When the Wind Was a River: Aleut Evacuation in World War II; Corey Ford’s extraordinary account of early exploration of the Aleutian Islands, Where the Sea Breaks Its Back: The Epic Story of Early Naturalist Georg Steller and the Russian Exploration of Alaska; and Ray Hudson’s sensitive and insightful Moments Rightly Placed: An Aleutian Memoir.

  Thank you, one and all.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  On June 3, 1942, war arrived in the North Pacific. The Japanese Imperial Navy bombed Dutch Harbor in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Four days later, an invasion force of nearly 2,500 Japanese combat troops seized and held the islands of Attu and Kiska.

  The inhabitants of Attu—44 Aleuts and 2 nonnative U.S. citizens—were taken prisoner. One man was killed; the rest were sent to Japan. The remaining 881 Aleut people scattered throughout the Aleutian and Pribilof islands were evacuated by the U.S. military and interned in southeast Alaska for the duration of the war.

  For the next eleven months, U.S. forces sustained an aerial campaign against the Japanese-held positions. From May 11–29, 1943, one of the toughest battles of the war took place to recapture Attu. In proportion to the number of men engaged, it was surpassed only by Iwo Jima as the most costly American battle in the Pacific Theater. It was the only battle fought on American soil.