by Rain, David
He lay on the floor, face down.
Time stopped. A sob escaped my throat.
As he fell, he had struck the side of the sink. Blood pooled in his hair, while the captain rattled at the door (‘Sir, sir!’) and would have burst in, had I not shouted savagely that it was all right, everything was all right. I lowered myself to the floor. There was no way to sit that was easy for me, so I stretched beside Trouble as if he were my lover.
I touched his hair. I felt the blood and winced. Carefully, I turned his face towards mine.
His eyelids flickered. ‘They’ll be waiting for me, you know.’
‘Waiting?’ I said.
‘I was almost there. The message had come and I was on my way. But you don’t think they’d leave without me, do you? Isamu would kill them if they left without me.’
I thought I understood. ‘A plane? A boat?’
‘I’ve stayed too long here. I miss Nagasaki.’
‘And they’re over the border, these friends of yours?’
He smiled dreamily. ‘Now you’re just trying to get information out of me.’ From the window, thick rectangles of light fell over us, honeyed and warm, patterned like the bars. ‘Got your number, don’t I? Kiss and tell.’
‘Me, tell?’ I kissed him, and his lips returned the pressure of mine. The moment seemed at once unreal and more real than any other I had experienced before. I felt myself sinking into a warm darkness, and all I wanted to do was sink and sink, never rising again.
What did I care if he was a traitor?
‘But am I really a traitor?’ he said, as if he had read my thoughts. ‘What does that mean, anyway? I’ve been two things all my life. Be this, be that – always these voices in my head, pushing me this way, pulling me that. Believe me, if I could make everything all right, I would. But I never will, will I? I never will.’
‘I love you,’ I said.
‘And I love you. Don’t think I don’t.’
‘But there was always something else. Or someone. Isamu. Do you think you can stand?’ I added after a moment. ‘Senator’s orders – I have a van outside and two guards, ready to take you.’
‘They’re going to kill me, I suppose. Oh, I don’t mean right away. This is America. There’ll be a trial, and witnesses, even a few caring liberal types – maybe you, Sharpless – who’ll do all they can. But it’ll be no good. I’m a dead man. You know what they say about golden lads.’
‘Oh, Trouble!’ There were tears in my eyes: ‘Golden lads and girls all must...’
He finished it for me: ‘... As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.’
We helped each other stand. I crossed to the door, thumped on it, and we heard the captain clatter with his keys. Trouble leaned towards the mirror over the sink. He dabbed his hair with a handkerchief. He splashed his face. As the door opened he took more movie magazines from the bookcase and cried, ‘Did I ever tell you I adore Jane Russell?’
The captain advanced with a set of handcuffs.
‘I don’t think that’s necessary, do you?’ I said, but regulations were regulations.
I tucked Trouble’s magazines under my arm and we made our way out to the van, where my guards, squashing out their cigarettes, assumed a military demeanour. Both were large, thickset fellows, but one, called McPherson, was freckled and fair, while the other, Mendoza, was Latin-dark. Trouble eyed them appraisingly as we approached.
‘Not a particularly armoured van,’ he complained, climbing into the back. ‘Aren’t I more dangerous than this? Where are we going, anyway – Alcatraz, like the Birdman? If only this thing had windows, I could look out at the coast of Big Sur on the way. De-lovely.’
‘Look at Jane.’ I handed him his magazines.
McPherson, revolver at the ready, climbed in beside Trouble; Mendoza gestured to me to sit in front with him. I was not pleased; he was surly, and my efforts at conversation met with little success.
San Diego, I observed as we moved off, was surprisingly pretty. His face remained stony. Lovely day, I tried again – de-lovely, even. You’re from Mendoza, Mexico – I mean Mexico, Mendoza? Ha-ha. Silly me. Funny, to think it’s just a few miles away.
Only when I offered Mendoza a cigarette did I get more than a grunt out of him. Smoothly, we swung around the curving coast; the wheel spun through his dextrous, dark hands and I grew sleepy. The cabin was stifling. My shirt stuck to the seat. A fly buzzed between dashboard and windshield, stopped for a while, crawled, and buzzed again. Through the panel behind us, Trouble and McPherson murmured, sometimes exclaimed. I think they were playing cards.
I woke suddenly, as if someone had jolted me. No one had. The sun glared blindingly through the windshield. We had stopped. Still the fly buzzed, but the driver’s seat was empty and the door was ajar.
‘Mendoza?’ I said.
He stood by the roadside, pissing; the thick stream gurgled into the sand. Casually, he buttoned his fly, then mooched around the hood to the passenger side, yanked open my door, and jerked his head for me to get out.
The revolver flashed as he jabbed it towards me. ‘Mendoza, what is this?’
‘Hands up.’ He waved me away from the van. ‘Further; that’s right.’
I had failed to retrieve my ashplant and lurched, stumbled. Sand, rocks, and scrubby desert plants stretched in all directions. Mendoza must have veered some way from our route. Buzzards hovered in the cloudless sky.
‘Are we over the border, Mendoza? What do you want?’
He thumped the side of the van. ‘McPherson!’
A lazy bellowing came from within.
‘Radiator’s blown!’ Mendoza called. ‘Wake up!’
Perhaps I should have warned McPherson, but I did not understand what was happening until it was too late. I assumed that the pair of them were in on this. I was wrong. Curses sounded from within; the van rocked on its springs; McPherson stepped out, scratching his head—
The shot cracked against the bright day. Buzzards scattered.
‘Sorry, friend. Had to be done.’ Mendoza tucked the revolver into his belt, crossed himself, then dragged McPherson from the road. Nearby rose a shelf of rock with green-blue scrubby vegetation sprouting up behind: a convenient place to conceal a corpse. I eyed the buzzards. After taking McPherson’s gun and the money from his wallet, Mendoza returned to the van and ushered a bewildered Trouble, blinking, into the sun.
‘Mendoza, why?’ I said.
He gave no answer, only digging into his pocket, producing a key and releasing Trouble’s cuffs. Blankly, I watched as he told the astonished Trouble that the van was now his. ‘The keys are in the ignition. And those friends of yours must be getting impatient.’
‘Sharpless, did you plan this?’ Trouble said.
I shook my head. ‘Who are you, Mendoza? Tell us!’
He spat in the dust. ‘You don’t know me,’ he said, ‘but I’ve seen you both before. I’ve done a bit of work for Senator Pinkerton over the years.’ He mimed the action of a man with a rifle, lining up a target in his sights. ‘Damned uncomfortable, crouching among those rocks.’
‘You’re the sniper?’ said Trouble. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t need to, my friend.’ He clapped Trouble on the back. ‘Go. You’re free.’
‘What? We’re way out in the desert! I’m just supposed to drive off? Which way?’
Mendoza waved a hand along the road. ‘The border. Quickly. Don’t worry about us. This gentleman and I will be quite safe.’
I swallowed hard. ‘Do as he says, Trouble – senator’s orders.’
Senator’s orders. The thought was startling: Mendoza, the murderer, was only obeying orders. Trouble would have his freedom. And suddenly I realized how much his father loved him: loved him, with a love that humbled me. I tried to tell Trouble this, but my voice cracked.
He squinted into the sun. ‘Sharpless, I—’
‘Go!’ I shouted.
The words shook my frame; I thought I would collapse, but Trouble
, stepping forward, gripped me tightly. I clutched him, balled my hands into fists, and dug my knuckles into his back, hard enough to hurt. We had been through so much together. Now everything was over.
‘Nagasaki,’ I said. ‘Think of Nagasaki.’
‘I’m sorry, Sharpless.’
He climbed into the cabin, turned the key, and I stood with Mendoza, watching as Trouble disappeared in clouds of dust. Only when it was too late did I realize I had left my ashplant in the van. It would go where Trouble was going, and I could not call it back.
Just off the roadside the buzzards had descended, shrieking and scrabbling around the shelf of rock.
‘Now what?’ I looked at Mendoza.
He stuck out a thumb. ‘What do you think?’
Hours passed before a shabby truck rattled to a halt beside us. In the back were chickens, squawking and flurrying in teetering crates. The driver blinked down at us: a chubby, incurious Mexican with an unruly grey moustache. Mendoza spoke to him in Spanish, and the fellow grinned and nodded, holding up a bottle of tequila. The chickens stank abominably.
As I limped after Mendoza to the passenger door, I half feared he would push me away and drive off, laughing, with his new friend. But Mendoza was honourable; his behaviour to me, indeed, was remarkably solicitous all the way back to San Diego, where he slipped away near the market where the Mexican left us. One minute Mendoza was there, then he was gone.
A cab crawled by and I hailed it. I had drunk too much tequila. By the time I made it downtown, the sun was setting. I checked in to the first hotel I could find and flopped on to the bed.
I slept. I had no dreams.
What time could it be? Pain, worse than I had felt for years, throbbed in my damaged leg. How long had I stood, how far had I walked, without my ashplant? I looked at my watch. It had stopped. I had not drawn the blind, but the light was dim, seeping down a well between window and wall. I heaved myself from the bed. The room was dirty: cracked linoleum, cracked plaster, cracked glass in the window. I pissed in the sink.
Downstairs, I asked the desk clerk the way to the railroad station. I’d go back to Aunt Toolie’s: that was it, go home and wait. Should I consider myself a wanted man? Had I aided and abetted Trouble’s escape? Perhaps this was part of the senator’s plan: Woodley Sharpless, scapegoat. My head ached, and sadness clenched in my chest like a newspaper crumpled tightly, all its words in zigzag disarray. I would accept my fate.
The station lobby was crowded. Heat rose like marsh gas, and there was noise all around: automobile horns, dogs barking, a train whistle, a newsboy’s reedy cry. What was he saying? Japan: something about Japan. I snatched a paper from him as I passed, but not until I was on the eight-fifteen to Los Angeles, sinking into my upholstered seat, did I dare unfold it.
They had dropped the bomb the day before: eight-fifteen in the morning, Hiroshima time. Later, every detail would be branded on my brain: the predawn takeoff from Tinian Island, just north of Guam, sixteen hundred miles from Hiroshima; the crew of twelve men; the B-29 called Enola Gay, after the pilot’s mother. Over Iwo Jima, two other B-29s joined the first, their tasks to take photographs and make scientific records. On and on they flew through the gathering dawn. When they reached Hiroshima, no sirens sounded, no anti-aircraft fire boomed out, no Japanese fighter planes took to the air. The bomb, code-named Little Boy, had been scrawled on by playful crew-members, with messages for the enemy that the enemy would never read: obscenities, taunts, curses.
Gravity had done its work. Down dropped Little Boy through the placid morning. Seconds passed: forty-three seconds before the explosion, 1,900 feet in the air above Hiroshima. How precisely the scientists measured it all! It was a matter of mathematics: the 350,000 people in the city; the 4.4 square miles around ground zero devastated almost completely; the thousands or tens of thousands killed at once, blitzed out of existence like insects in a flame – and this was to reckon without the thousands more blinded, burned, or slashed by flying glass, stumbling through field after field of blackened corpses for hours, even days, after the explosion. Many had skin hanging from their faces in strips. Many would die later in agonies of the damned, eaten from within by atomic radiation.
President Truman heard about the bombing as he sailed home from the Potsdam Conference. He was elated – this, he declared to a group of sailors, was the greatest thing in history.
The official statement from the White House was simple and direct. The Japanese, said Truman, had been repaid for their attack on Pearl Harbor. Now they must surrender or the bombing would be ceaseless, blasting their islands into oblivion: a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on the earth.
The story continued on the inside pages. Senator B. F. Pinkerton (Democrat, New York) was to address both houses on the President’s behalf on the morning of Thursday, August 9.
A pulse leaped in my neck. Could I talk to the senator – make him see reason? Might he not speak out against further attacks? For years his rhetorical gifts had been the envy of the Senate.
I could stop nothing. I knew that. But I had to try.
That afternoon I bought a plane ticket to Washington, DC. Flights across the continent were a long business in those days. We would put down in Salt Lake City and Des Moines, then change planes in Chicago.
In the air I drank whisky, ate nothing, and did my best to sleep. On the Chicago plane I sat next to a businessman from Baltimore. He wanted to talk about the bomb. ‘Can you believe it?’ he kept saying. ‘Can you believe it?’ – overjoyed, it seemed, at this latest revelation of American know-how, as if Oppenheimer were Thomas Edison and had just invented the light bulb. When the fellow asked me what I did in the army, I slapped my bad leg and told him I had been at Iwo Jima. He demanded to shake my hand. Later, at Washington National Airport, I saw him in the distance, staring across the concourse, amazed, as three military policemen approached me with rifles trained, arrested me, handcuffed me, and led me away.
I said to them, ‘You’re going to explain this?’
The oldest one looked at me warily. The youngest twitched his mouth. The one in the middle seemed about to say something, but glances from the others made him hold off – for a time, at least.
‘Traitor,’ he whispered to me, as our armoured car drew up outside the lock-up, a grim, red-brick building on a base outside Washington.
Blankly, I let them lead me to my cell. ‘Do I get to call my lawyer?’ I asked as the door slammed behind me.
I slumped on my cot. The cell was like Trouble’s a continent away, give or take a touch or two. No toilet bowl, only a chamber pot. No movie magazines, only a Bible. I curled on the cot, face towards the wall, and did not much care what happened to me next.
It was morning. Breakfast came on a tray: toast, sausages, eggs over easy.
It was afternoon. Lunch came: lamb, potatoes, minted peas.
It was night. Dinner: chicken, potatoes, minted peas.
Morning again. I stood by the window. Swampily, greenly, the Potomac crawled by, and I thought of other rivers, harbours, seas. My spirit was a paper boat, buffeted on the tide.
Questions now: ‘Major, could you confirm... ?’ and ‘Major, could you clarify... ?’ and, ominously, ‘Major, you’re sure there isn’t more... ?’ The military policemen were not the ones who had arrested me, but might as well have been: disguised a little, that was all. The middle one, the one who had called me traitor, had turned into an earnest, bespectacled type, taking down my answers like a clerk of the court; the older one, heavier of frame now, led the questioning in a Voice of America voice, while his young assistant, flush-faced, made stammering, supplementary offerings when prompted by his superior.
I told them everything. But everything was not enough.
When they came again, I could not think what to say. I was tired of minted peas, and said so; I wanted something to read other than the Bible, and said so; I wished the window in my cell were lower: such a pleasant view, I said.
‘But tell me, Major...’ Questions again – and again, I told them about Mendoza. No, I had not known Mendoza before. Yes, I had been startled by what Mendoza had done.
Voice of America took another tack.
‘In San Diego, you were alone with Colonel Pinkerton in his cell for some time – and keen not to be interrupted, I gather. Would you like to tell me why? What did you do with Colonel Pinkerton?’
‘Do?’ I said. ‘Talked to him. What else?’
Voice of America arched an eyebrow. ‘Just talked?’
‘Of course. He’s an old friend.’
‘Or lover?’ said the young man, more flushed than ever.
The question hung in the air like incense.
Had Trouble been my lover? I smiled. I laughed.
‘Shut up!’ cried Voice of America.
Still I laughed. And laughed and laughed, even as he struck my face and I jerked back, almost falling from my chair. Perhaps there would be another blow, and another; blood, tasting like rust, pooled beneath my tongue and I laughed again, splattering droplets down the front of my uniform. Oh, let him hit me again: I wanted him to hit me. Yes, I should have denied the ruinous charge, denied it vehemently. But I could not: I would not. I wanted it to be true.
Fearing nothing, I looked up into the glowering, disgusted face.
Afternoons in August never end. When days are long and heat coils around us, sticky as molasses, we enter an eternal realm where it seems that nothing will happen, yet everything could happen. Like phantoms, we pass through a dreamy haze, and I thought Voice of America was a phantom too, when he stood over my cot as that afternoon declined at last. His fingers touched my forehead. Ruefully, he smiled. I should have been puzzled, but in the fog that consumed me I registered no surprise as he crossed to the sink, wet a washcloth, bathed my lips, and helped me stand. I thought there would be handcuffs, but there were none. Calmly, he led me along grey corridors, down grey steps out to a waiting jeep.