The Hummingbird

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  Nonetheless, Soga punctured coastal complacency. He revealed weaknesses in American defenses. Eventually one of his bombs did inflict lethal damage.

  His initial salvo passed over Brookings, a coastal logging town, then inland toward Mount Emily. The area is now known as Siskiyou National Forest; to Soga, the abundance of trees was staggering.

  Understand the pilot’s perspective: An island nation is perpetually starving. It is an inevitable consequence of geography. Some commodities are unavailable.

  Thus do island nations possess few options. Those inhabited by peaceable ­peoples tend to suffer perpetual poverty. Think Haiti, think Zanzibar. Others entertain notions of empire. Think Great Britain in its imperial years.

  Into this second category of ambition one might fairly add Japan in the early twentieth century, its islands tucked southeast of the Chinese trove of natural resources. Notions of empire in the Land of the Rising Sun were prompted by the imperatives of isolation. For Soga, therefore, what lay below him was a target too large to miss.

  The first bomb fell and exploded. Both pilot and navigator saw it ignite.

  With one wing 170 pounds lighter than the other, the plane yawed to the opposite side. But Soga kept the nose forward, maintaining steady rudder pressure with his feet. He flew six miles in that fashion, until they passed over an area known as Bear Wallow Lookout. There Okuda released the second bomb. There was no visible flame that time. This failure may have been the result of a lapse in Japanese incendiary technology, but the previous week’s downpour might have been a likelier cause. The weather that kept Soga submerged had also drenched the region’s trees.

  Meanwhile, the first bomb’s fire caught and grew.

  If the U.S. coastal military forces proved insufficiently vigilant, the mainland was ready in other important ways. North of Soga’s flight path, a series of catastrophic forest fires known as the Tillamook Burn had torched 355,000 acres in 1933. The flames had proved beyond human power to extinguish and only went out when the rains of the Pacific Northwest poured down. The blazes cost the timber industry $442.4 million in 1933 dollars, deepened the Depression in that region, and produced a plume of hot ash that reached ships 500 miles out to sea.

  Since then, a system of fire towers known as the Advanced Warning System stood ready. The AWS was a civilian organization, loosely connected to the more militarized Civil Defense Corps. The AWS commander for southern Oregon down to the California line was one Donny Baker III, about whom more in a moment.

  Howard Gardner of the U.S. Forest Ser­vice was first to observe the plane. A prospector, hunter, and woodsman, he was deeply familiar with the landscape. The bomb went down in a large, unlogged stand of timber. Later Gardner became the toast of the state, attending celebratory dinners in Portland and beyond—­a tour that ceased only when he returned home upon the birth of his son.

  While firefighters raced to the scene, it is worth noting that Soga’s bomb revealed significant American weaknesses.

  Foremost, the land he flew over in 1942 was the longest stretch of U.S. coastline without a radar installation. From Cape Perpetua in northern Oregon to Fort Bragg in southern California, a span exceeding 450 miles, the only tools for enemy observation were human eyes, either in ground patrols or in timber towers.

  These facilities were rustic in more than construction. Most had communications systems so primitive, they verged on the comical. To reach the army command post in Brookings, for example, required calling the Driscoll Hotel. A person answering the phone would then run 500 yards to the command post, and the recipient would run 500 yards back to take the call. Also, the hotel closed daily from 8:30 P.M. till 8:00 A.M. During those hours, communication involved a thirty-­eight-­mile drive up the winding coast highway.

  Dysfunctions in the chain of command exacerbated the problem. In the early daylight hours of September 9, Private Harold Moyer was foot-­patrolling the Harris Park beach area when he heard a plane overhead. Limited visibility left him unable to identify the aircraft beyond noting that the tips of its wings were square. It beggars imagination how a soldier assigned shoreline duty would be unacquainted with makes and models of enemy aircraft. Moreover, under orders not to leave his position, Moyer obeyed. With no means of informing the command post, he therefore kept his observations to himself. Not until much later in the day, when an officer overheard him chatting in the barracks, did Moyer’s superiors learn that he had seen the aircraft. Any opportunity for pursuit had passed hours earlier.

  What explanation could there be for these lapses? Perhaps primarily, the officers in charge were woefully inexperienced. Responsibility for that portion of Oregon lay with the Army’s 44th Division, 174th Infantry, Company G. The company commander was First Lieutenant Claude Waldrop, who had begun that assignment on August 8, 1942—­thirty-­one days before Soga’s mission. Waldrop had the aid of Joseph Kane, who had become a second lieutenant in June and was assigned to Company G in late July. On this command, the paint had not yet dried.

  When Kane learned about his soldiers’ awareness of the bombing, inability to identify the aircraft, and failure to report their observations, he instructed them to remain silent in any interrogations by army investigators. That order shielded him from immediate repercussions. Later, it also earned him a court-martial.

  In all, Soga’s route flew him into the exact center of the least well-­guarded part of the American coastline. In coming weeks, among U.S. military leadership, legitimate questions of espionage arose. How did the Japanese know precisely the most vulnerable place to attack?

  MAINTAINING DISCIPLINED ADHERENCE to the mission plan, Soga flew back to sea on a heading the inverse of his inland approach. He spotted the I-­25, landed, and observed as the deck crane hoisted his plane aboard. Once he went below, Soga informed his captain that he had spotted two freighters nearby.

  Tagami ordered immediate pursuit. Simultaneously, a U.S. Army bomber on a routine patrol had spotted the Japanese vessel. The aircraft was captained by Jean Daugherty from the 390th Bomb Squadron, 42nd Bombardment Group, based at McChord Field in Washington. The I-­25 was in the process of submerging, but its decks were just awash and the conning tower was plainly visible.

  Immediately, Daugherty’s bomber changed direction, bearing down on the sub. By then only its periscope remained above the surface. The plane dropped two 300-­pound depth charges, set to explode at 50 feet under water.

  After the bombs detonated, air bubbles and oil came to the ocean’s surface. The bomber made another approach, dropping a third depth charge, but it did not elicit more bubbles or oil.

  The army dispatched three other planes to the area. They too dropped 300-­pound bombs, set to detonate either 45 seconds after release or when they reached the ocean floor. No evidence of the sub’s presence remained.

  Aboard the I-­25, Captain Tagami determined that the damage was not extensive. He ordered the diesel engines shut off, electric motors started, and repairs made. The sub sat in silence. Soga returned to his berth, listening to the depth charges’ detonations, then placing his sword back in a secure spot.

  U.S. Army air patrols continued over the area, monitoring calm seas until night fell.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE PROFESSOR SLEPT THE MORNING AWAY. I opened my laptop and sat in the kitchen trying to reduce the backlog of paperwork. Between them, Medicare and Central Office never met a form they didn’t like. Meanwhile, he dozed and murmured and barely moved.

  It has always struck me as unfair: Just as a person nears death and wants to make the absolute most of every moment, his capacity to stay awake dwindles. The span of consciousness shrinks to fewer hours each day, then one hour, then minutes, then individual breaths, and then it is over.

  And yet, that reduction also sharpens appreciation of each detail. I remember Horatio, a muscular Italian immigrant who worked most of his life in a coastal town marina pumping gas and sel
ling supplies in the chandlery. In fact, he was the person who taught me what a chandlery was. Horatio had end-­stage leukemia, beyond cure though he still went to the hospital once a week for platelet infusions. One bright October afternoon when the air smelled like nostalgia, I was helping him get settled at home after an infusion session. His wife pulled me aside to say the doctor had told them Horatio would not live till Christmas. But their daughter and only grandchild were flying up from San Diego for the holiday week. They had purchased nonrefundable tickets and were too broke to buy new ones.

  I went to work, emailing Horatio’s friends, contacting airlines, tapping the agency’s wish budget. In two days we had tickets for the daughter and granddaughter to fly up for Thanksgiving instead.

  Horatio thanked me with tears in his eyes. I told him I hadn’t done anything but let ­people take care of him, and they’d been happy to do it.

  “Don’t you understand?” he said, fists pressed to his chest. “I will get to hug my beautiful Maddie one more time. Do you know how fantastic the hug of a six-­year-­old girl is? I may never let her go.”

  Life, Horatio taught me, life is the hug of a six-­year-­old girl: precious and sweet and all too fleeting.

  WHEN I LIFTED MY HEAD from the online administrivia and saw that it was nearly noon, I went in to check on Barclay Reed once again.

  He was lying in stillness. He blinked at me and did not speak. I came to the bedside and stood a moment, respecting his silence.

  “Is there anything you need?” I asked him at last.

  “Ten more years?”

  “If I could, I would.”

  “Bah.” The Professor took a deep, noisy breath. “They would be too tiring anyway. Might there be any fruit in the house?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  In the fridge I found strawberries Melissa had left. They must have been the first of the season—large, unblemished, and, since it was June in Oregon, probably imported from the southern hemisphere. I washed and hulled them and left them in a colander. In the cabinet on a high shelf I spotted a stoneware bowl that I could tell was handmade. I reached up for it because sometimes bringing a household object out of obscurity is pleasing to a patient.

  But then, a wonderful coincidence. On the bottom, the bowl’s maker had painted a hummingbird. It was not detailed, like the carved one on my desk. This bird was an exercise in skillful restraint, a few deft brush strokes: wing, wing, body, beak.

  I poured the berries in, and the contrast of red fruit and gritty stoneware made me want to take a photograph. Instead I brought the berries to the Professor, who raised the head of his bed as I set the fruit in his lap.

  He recoiled, then lifted the bowl. “Where did you find this?”

  “Top shelf in the cabinet.”

  “I have not seen it in years.”

  “I like it. The roughness of the pottery, you know?”

  Barclay Reed scrutinized the bowl, turning it in a full circle before holding it back toward me. “Please use a different one.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “All right.” I hurried to the kitchen and returned with the berries in a plain white bowl. He took it without comment.

  “Care to explain?”

  The Professor picked up a berry and sighed. “The stoneware in this house was made by a member of my family who is no longer alive.”

  I left a pause for him to elaborate, but there was nothing more. “I have a plate in my kitchen,” I said. “Fine blue china, handed down from my great-­grandmother. I keep it on a high shelf where no one can bump it or break it. Is this bowl like that for you?”

  He did not reply. Barclay Reed wore a strange expression though, possibly wistful, but it was hard to know for sure. Instead, he examined the berry with considerable care and put it in his mouth.

  “Amazing,” he said, chewing with his eyes half-­closed. “Exquisite.”

  A little red juice ran out the corner of his mouth. He wiped it back with a finger, then reached down for another berry.

  I lowered myself into the bedside chair and watched him work his way through the bowl. We remained in silence except for his chewing, Barclay Reed immersed in a tide of taste and sensations, while in my head I gave myself the lecture I eventually have to administer every time, no matter what my relationship with the patient is, or what the person’s illness is, or what else is going on in my life. It happens with every patient, without fail.

  The lecture goes like this: Accept. Accept. Do not deny that this person is weakening. Accept.

  WHEN I RETURNED from putting the empty bowl in the sink, the Professor was rubbing his hands together.

  “Nurse Birch,” he harrumphed. “Are we still planning to plan? Or might we leap impetuously into the planning itself?”

  “Yes.” I reached into my briefcase. “I have some papers with me—­”

  “Let me guess.” He placed a straight finger against his lips. “Trip to Paris? Escape to Rio? Or no. Are you more the Niagara Falls type?”

  “This is called advance care planning.” I flattened the pages on my knee. “It’s a way of making sure—­”

  “I know what it does, Nurse Birch. It protects your agency from legal culpability if anything goes wrong in my dying.”

  “Of making sure that your wishes for your health care are memorialized—­”

  “An offensive choice of verb, I might interject.”

  “So your caregivers can obey those wishes, should you not be able to speak.”

  “But I—­” He caught himself. “‘Should I not be able to speak,’ you say?”

  I gave a small nod.

  He made a tent with his fingertips. “And why must we ‘memorialize’ these instructions, pray tell?”

  “To put you in charge, Professor.”

  He spoke in a voice dripping with condescension. “If there is one singular thing that I might clarify for you at this moment, Nurse Birch, so that we share a common understanding, it is that I am most decidedly not in charge. Indeed, having slept till nearly noon today, an achievement I last attained as an adolescent of seventeen, I submit that at present, cancer is driving this bus. Quite happily, you might say.”

  “I am not talking about today.”

  “You think I will have more control later? Are you that severely delusional?”

  I folded my hands in my lap.

  “What?” he said. “What could be upsetting our dear Florence Nightingale?”

  “I would like to request, please, permission to speak five consecutive sentences without being interrupted, and without my premise being challenged, so I can explain this exercise.”

  “Oh ho, ‘exercise’ is it?” He began pumping his arms up and down as though lifting imaginary barbells. “One two, hup hup.”

  “Professor Reed, please.”

  He paused, his arms still raised. “Nurse Birch, are you not amused?”

  “This is serious.”

  “I have known a lifetime of seriousness. Seventy-­eight years of it.”

  “But all this banter—­”

  “Banter keeps the brain pink and fluffy.” He lowered his hands. “Please don’t spoil my fun. My pleasures are few enough now.”

  “Imagine if, instead of cancer, you had heart disease. And for some reason, down the road, your heart was to stop beating.”

  “There is simply no turning you aside today, is there?”

  I held up an open hand. “Five sentences, Professor. Five.”

  He sighed, puffing his cheeks. “Fine.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Do your worst.”

  “If that happened, the standard of care is for me to call 9-­1-­1, and the EMTs come. They might inject you with adrenaline, or shock you, or perform CPR so intensely your ribs break. By the way, it’s not like on TV. Less than t
wo percent of ­people with cardiac arrest who receive CPR ever recover. But an ambulance would rush you to a hospital, where the process would continue, and could include opening your chest and cracking wide your ribs for direct manual stimulation of the heart.”

  “I know more about that process than you might expect.” He pulled his head back in revulsion. “Perfectly bestial. How many sentences was that?”

  “I lost count. But there is a less automatic alternative. You can execute a document—­”

  “Once again with a morbid verb.”

  “You can sign a document that says you don’t want that level of intervention, specifies what you do want, or puts someone in charge of making those decisions if you can’t.”

  “Let us put a fine point on it, Nurse Birch, shall we? In the interests of my not falling back to sleep from sheer boredom? If I prevented the entire sequence, the 9-­1-­1 call, et cetera, what would occur?”

  “Your heart would remain unbeating.”

  “I would die.”

  “If your heart has stopped, a person could reasonably argue that you are already dead.”

  “Touché.” He digested this information. “Proceed.”

  “Medical professionals are trained to prolong life, often without regard to its quality. An advance directive lets you be as specific as you want: yes to chemotherapy, no to advanced life support, yes to donating your organs, no to cracking your chest. Or you can take a simpler route, a power of attorney, where you designate someone to make medical decisions on your behalf.”

  The Professor frowned. He stirred his basket of remotes but did not choose one. He surveyed the room, seeming to linger on the upper corners. “Would you please read to me from The Sword now? We’ve left the bomb fire burning, and I want to know what happens.”

  “Can we at least complete the power of attorney? And revisit the rest of this another day?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “I have a blank form right here.” I raised the page in front of him. “Very simple. All it requires is for you to designate someone, and sign. Then I’ll be the primary witness, and when Melissa—­”