The Bomb

by Theodore Taylor

  Soon a stocky man appeared, yellow hair poking from under his hat and from the V of his short-sleeved khaki shirt, tattoos on his arms. With a frown, he asked, "Who wants me?"

  The gangway-watch sailor indicated Abram, standing barefooted and bare chested on the pontoon in his rolled-up dungarees, displaying a warm smile.

  Puzzled, the chief bo'sun looked from Abram to Sorry in the canoe. He muttered, "Yeah?"

  Abram repeated what he'd told the gangway sailor: The paint was needed for marking.

  "How much?"

  "Ten gallons and two brushes, please."

  "Give you five." Then the chunky yellow-haired man paused and scratched his head. "Oh, what the hell, I'll give you ten. This old tub's gonna go out of duty once we hit Norfolk. Then to a scrap yard. Why should I care?"

  He started to turn away, and Abram, ever polite, called up, "Sir, these are for you."

  Behind his back, he'd been holding two dyedecorated pandanus mats, the work of Sorry's mother.

  "Hey, thank you," said the chief bo'sun as Abram passed them up.

  Abram said, "If you come ashore, I'll treat you to some palm wine."

  ***

  A seaman appeared carrying two five-gallon cans of red lead, a primer used on all navy ships, eased down the steep gangway, and handed them to Abram, along with two brushes.

  "What are you going to paint?" Sorry asked. To put a mark on supports didn't require ten gallons. It required a brushful.

  "You'll find out in time."

  A moment later, the outrigger was heading back for the beach. "I think we're in business with the U.S. Navy," Abram said.

  "What does that mean?" Sorry asked.

  "That means we may find out more about the bomb. That lieutenant isn't going to tell us. No officer is. But the enlisted men may talk. They're great, like the crewmen were on my ships."

  The canoe slid on toward the island.

  "But why do we need that much red paint?"

  "I said I'll tell you later."

  Annoyed, Sorry finally said, "Uncle Abram, I really thought you were going to make the navy find a new lagoon so we could stay here. I thought that's why we were going to the ship this morning."

  "We need newspapermen. None have arrived. The radio said that many will arrive. Be patient. You can be sure that some will visit us on Rongerik. Then we can tell our story and come back here after they help us stop the tests."

  Was that possible? Could Abram do that? He seemed to be serious. Sorry knew he'd read newspapers in the ports his ships had visited. He understood the white men's ways. Could he make them choose another atoll?

  "Will there be time?" Sorry asked.

  "I think so. The radio said the first test will be in late May or early June. It's only February. We have time."

  Abram's words were barely out of his mouth when there was an explosion behind them. They looked toward the center of the lagoon at the misty remains of a huge spout of falling water. Another big coral cropping had been blown to clear the nine-square-mile anchorage.

  Sorry said, "They're not waiting, are they?"

  "No, they're not," Abram replied, staring at the drifting mist.

  One of the island's outriggers was already moving toward the explosion to pick up dead fish.

  Abram suddenly grimaced and grabbed at his chest, gritting his teeth. His face was contorted with pain and gray in color.

  Alarmed, Sorry said, "Are you all right?"

  Abram reached into his pocket for the pill case and took out two.

  Sorry repeated, "Are you all right, Uncle Abram?"

  Abram nodded, breathing heavily.

  Eyes closed, fists clenched, he sat motionless waiting for the pain spasms to stop.

  Sorry had seen this same illness once before, he remembered. Jorkan Rinamu, of the family next door, was hauling in a big fish when it happened. Jorkan, an older man, later died of heart seizure.

  Abram began taking some deep breaths as the pain subsided. Finally he seemed all right again, and his skin color began to return to normal.

  Sorry said, "Does that happen often?"

  "More lately. But it goes away after I take the pills."

  Abram studied Sorry for a moment or two, then said, "So you want to know how paint will bring newspapermen?"

  Sorry nodded.

  "I plan to paint this canoe and its sail red, then take it into Bikini lagoon just before the bomb is ready to drop. I hope they'll see me and decide not to drop it. Then I hope the newspaper and radio people will make something big of it. 'One Man Stops the Bomb.' I hope they'll tell the world..."

  Sorry wondered if he was dreaming. Had he heard what he thought he'd heard? His uncle was going to sail against the atom bomb? Maybe Abram was crazy.

  Abram continued, "I'll find out from the radio when the bomber will come over, the day and time. I won't get too near the main target, a battleship, but I'll be close enough for the flight crew to see me."

  Sorry's head was swimming. Scary, crazy words. Was he serious? One man in a canoe against the atom bomb?

  "It's the only way for us to try and stop it," Abram said. "The only way."

  "But, Uncle Abram—"

  Abram waved a hand; he'd talk no more of it. "I'll tell everyone when we get to Rongerik and paint the canoe. Meanwhile, the navy must not find out."

  ***

  As the canoe, carrying the ten gallons of red paint and two brushes, slid up on the beach, Abram Makaoliej stepped out and collapsed without a word.

  Sorry yelled for help, turning his uncle faceup.

  He was dead.

  ***

  Abram was buried the next morning in the village cemetery, with Grandfather Jonjen conducting the service. It was another pretty morning on the atoll, breeze rustling the palms, sun shining, sky blue.

  In the tradition, village men had made the coffin overnight, and Abram was dressed in his best white shirt and pants. The village women wailed at graveside, and Sorry wept openly. A death in the small community was always a terrible loss, and everyone grieved.

  Tara Malolo talked of her admiration for Abram, and Jonjen talked of his intelligence and courage. Abram had died where he wanted to die—at home.

  The villagers sang, "Bound to the promised land..."

  As Jonjen talked, Sorry made a decision. He would take Abram's place in the canoe and return to Bikini on the day of the atom bomb. If no one else would volunteer, he'd go alone.

  Handfuls of sand were thrown into the grave by the villagers, and Sorry joined in. Then the coffin was nailed shut as the women's wailing reached a crescendo. After the coffin was lowered, flowers were tossed upon it, and Jonjen said the final prayer.

  ***

  In the afternoon, Sorry and the other men went about stripping the pandanus trees of all mature leaves. They worked quietly. Normally they would have been chattering. Sorry's mind was occupied with the death of his uncle and what Abram had told him about stopping the bomb.

  Lokileni, Tara, Yolo, and Mother Rinamu joined the women to help make the thatch panels. They sat in the council building on their mats. Usually there was much talk and laughter as fingers danced over the leaves. But like the men, the women were subdued this day.

  A deeper pall of doubt and anxiety had settled over the village. Abram would be missed.

  Five hundred scientists of all types were preparing to participate in Operation Crossroads. Never before had people known so little about the destructive forces they were about to unleash, or about the long-range consequences. Observers would include biophysicists and nuclear physicists, biologists, zoologists, geologists, seismologists, meteorologists, hematologists for blood study, roentgenologists—experts in radiation—and dozens more. Bikini Atoll, before and after the bombs, would be the most scientifically studied 245.32 square miles on earth, and the center of it all would be the blue-green lagoon.

  5

  After breakfast the next day, Sorry sought out Tara and said, "Come walk with me. I couldn't sleep l
ast night."

  "Neither could I," said Tara.

  The usual snores in Chief Juda's house had chased her out. She was staying with his family this week. She said she'd slept most of the night in the grove.

  That happened now and then to everyone. You took your mat and went two hundred feet away, hoping the palm rats wouldn't nose around. Sorry had slept in the groves sometimes because of Yolo's and Jonjen's snores.

  Tara and Sorry walked north along the beach, just above the tideline, then he stopped and looked into her dark eyes. "Abram was going to paint the Eniwetok canoe red and sail it back to Bikini, hope they'd see him and not drop the bomb."

  Her mouth opened, but no words came out. From what Abram had told everyone, the atom bomb was the most destructive thing on earth. You'd want to be a thousand miles away from it. Finally, she said, "Had he lost his mind?"

  "He'd been thinking about how to stop the navy ever since the military governor came here. Remember he told us about white men protesting. How and what they do. Strikes and marches that make newspaper front pages. Later he told me men have even stopped roads from being built. I had no idea he'd been thinking about painting the canoe and—" Sorry choked up.

  "Why did he tell you and not me?" Tara said, frowning.

  "I don't know. I don't think he planned to tell anyone until we got to Rongerik. He told me after he had the first attack in the canoe, on our way back from getting the paint from the Sumner."

  Tara shook her head. "Why didn't he tell me?" she asked again.

  "After you, I was his best friend," Sorry said.

  Some villagers, of course, like Leje, didn't approve of Abram at all. They were jealous, Sorry believed.

  "You know we were in love, don't you?"

  "I thought so."

  "Many nights, after everyone was asleep, we took long walks and talked."

  "You didn't know he had heart trouble?"

  "He never told me that either. That's why it was such a shock..."

  Sorry said, "I thought about the red paint and the bomb all last night. Since he isn't here to try and stop it, I will."

  "What did you say?"

  "After we get to Rongerik, I'm going to paint the canoe red and sail it back here and do exactly what Abram had planned to do."

  "Oh, no! No, no, no! We won't let you."

  "Who is 'we'?"

  "All of us, Sorry. Abram is dead and that's enough death."

  "I'm going to do it, Tara," said Sorry quietly but firmly. "I am."

  Nuclear scientists estimated that the heat generated at the center of the aerial blast, "Able," would measure several million degrees Fahrenheit. The outside surface of the burst was expected to be 22,000 degrees.

  6

  Whatever was happening with the Americans, food was still the village priority. It always had been and always would be, no matter where they moved.

  Lokileni and Sorry trolled in midmorning with a bone jig, a steel hook suspended beneath a short length of bone, wired securely. Sometimes they used several strips of plain burlap to cover the hook, streaming it behind the canoe. A steady breeze pushed the outrigger at eight or nine knots, a good speed to lure a wahoo or tuna.

  Game fish often attacked anything small that moved on the surface of the water. There'd be a flash of color behind the boat and the line would spill out, then jerk tight if the hook was firmly set. Glistening, the fish might leap totally out of the water in a fountain of spray.

  Waiting for a strike, Sorry looked toward the village, now without the church and community buildings. They'd been taken down the day before. Even the uprights had come down. Tara was holding school in the sand, at the edge of the main palm grove. Since he had turned fourteen two years ago and become an adult, Sorry no longer attended regularly. He felt an emptiness, looking over there, and sudden, new anger at the navy for forcing them to leave. Chief Juda had been told by Lieutenant Hastings that the move to Rongerik would take place at the end of the first week in March, about two weeks away.

  Maybe they should sail all the canoes back into Bikini lagoon just before the bomb was to drop? They could say, "Stop the bomb or kill us all—men, women, and children. You've taken our homeland, now kill us." Let the newsmen print that!

  Sorry sat there thinking how he could carry Abram's plan further: they could decorate the war canoes with flowers, always the symbols of peace, put leis around their necks and wear warriors' flower headbands, and sail back into the lagoon. The entire village could do it!

  "When will we take our house down?" Lokileni asked, looking at the shore.

  "The morning we go," he said absently.

  It would take less than an hour to remove the walls and bundle them up. They'd leave the older roof thatch behind. While it might seem to the white men that the villagers' dwellings were laughable, one-room pieces of vegetation, they were perfect for tropical living.

  "What about the frames?" she asked.

  The frames were the only permanent parts of their house.

  "The navy lieutenant said they'll provide all the new wood we need. They'll make wooden floors and tent the sides, put canvas up for the roofs. I don't think we'll want their roofs. We've slept under thatch too long. Canvas holds the heat. Our houses will be like ovens." But his mind wasn't on their new house.

  Lokileni said with a laugh, "We'll use their canvas for sails."

  Sorry said, "Yes, that's a good idea. Use anything they give us."

  Lokileni said, "And I'm not sure I want to sleep on wood, either." The mats on coral pebbles with sand beneath were just fine. "Why change for the white men?"

  Yes, why change for the white men? Sorry silently agreed. Why do anything for them that we don't have to do?

  Everyone should be back at Bikini the day they planned to drop the bomb, he thought. They might not see one canoe. Surely they'd see eight. They'd see the women and children. That would give the radio and newspaper people something to talk about.

  A few minutes later, the pile of sennit fishing line that was curled on the stern of the canoe zinged, then became taut and shivered as the slender body of a wahoo shot up into the air thirty yards behind them. It plunged back into the lagoon again. The fish temporarily took their minds off Rongerik.

  ***

  With the navy busy everywhere and other ships beginning to arrive, there were changes around the atoll every day, if not every hour. The death of Abram brought about still another change; Tara became the interpreter for Chief Juda.

  Her English was not as good as Abram's, though they'd talked together in that language to practice it. But she spoke and understood enough to aid Juda in dealing with Lieutenant Hastings and some of the sailors who came ashore for one reason or another.

  She also became the village nightly news reporter after listening to Armed Forces Network and taking notes. And she still taught classes in the morning.

  Six thousand pairs of goggles were ordered for personnel who would be nearest the Able blast. Those personnel not fitted with goggles were told to turn away from Bikini a few seconds before the bomb drop, shut their eyes, and cover their faces with an arm. Failure to obey the instructions would result in temporary blindness.

  7

  A civilian, Dr. John Garrison, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, feet encased in marine field shoes, jumped off a landing craft at the tideline. Three brown canvas knapsacks were draped over his right shoulder; in his right hand was a strange, long-barreled pistol. A canteen was strapped to his hip. His thick hair was gray. He wore sunglasses.

  "I'm looking for a lady named Tara Malolo," he said in Marshallese to the small children who'd run out to meet the boat, hoping for candy or cookies.

  Lokileni and Sorry had seen the boat approaching and walked down to join the children. They eyed the pistol.

  "I'm looking for Tara Malolo," the white man repeated.

  "You speak our language," Sorry said.

  The man smiled. He had a nice, warm, fatherly face. "I try. I studied night and day on the tr
ain from Washington to San Francisco, then on a ship to Hawaii, and on two more ships, until I arrived here yesterday. I was told on the Sumner to contact Tara Malolo."

  Sorry had seen a Coast Guard buoy tender tie up to the Sumner yesterday.

  "Do you speak any English?" the white man asked.

  "Some. I'm learning," Sorry said.

  "Then we'll talk in your language. I'm John Garrison."

  "My name is Sorry. This is my sister, Lokileni. We'll take you to Tara."

  Dr. Garrison followed them and the jabbering small children up the beach toward Chief Juda's house. There were so many daily visitors now that adults seldom paid attention to new arrivals. The Dr. Garrison parade, children trailing, reached Juda's in the middle of an argument between Tara, Lieutenant Hastings, and the chief.

  "Make him sign a piece of paper saying we can return here in two years, make him do it," Tara said. "They promised."

  The lieutenant did not understand a word of Marshallese and was becoming exasperated. Also, he was not accustomed to dealing with a woman. His khaki shirt showed sweat stains.

  With Lokileni and Sorry, Dr. Garrison stood a few feet away, listening, head cocked to the side.

  Later Sorry learned that Hastings had come to Juda to say that an LST, a landing ship tank, which could carry a lot of cargo, would take a group of their men, building materials, and equipment to Rongerik in a few days to begin work on the replacement village.

  Juda said, "It is too late to ask them anything."

  "It's never too late," Tara insisted, carrying on for Abram.

  Hastings interrupted, "I don't know what you two are talking about, but I'm telling you to pick as many men as you want to help with the construction."

  Tara translated.

  The Seabees, the navy construction corps, had already designed the new village.

  "You have to help make your own homes," he said.

  Tara said bluntly in English and then in Marshallese, "We're talking about you signing a piece of paper saying we can return here in two years."

  "I'm not signing any paper," Hastings said. "We own this island now. It's a U.S. possession. We took it from the Japanese. You'll do what we say."