White Whale

by Rose Christo

  "I'll always come back for you," I told him.

  I didn't know what was going through his mind. If you've ever looked at a rabbit's eyes you probably know what I mean. They're mysterious, those eyes. The Rabbit was the first troublemaker. The giant flood that started the planet--that was his doing.

  "Eat your soup," I told Rabbit. "The polar sun starts tonight. I won't take you if you don't eat."

  I let go of him. He took his bowl to the table and sat down. He blew on the broth's steaming surface. I thought suddenly of the prisoners at the field hospital in Langenstein, the man who couldn't finish a whole candy bar.

  * * * * *

  At evening I gave Rabbit his supper and I tied a medicine wheel in his hair. I made sure he wore his nice capote, the one with our clan symbol sewn onto the back. He snacked on a chocolate lily and I took his hand and we went to the west of the island, where the mountainous glaciers stood like ladders to the curved heavens.

  Sugow River was thin and runny. It twisted in a sort of loop and snaked south were it ran into the ocean. The riverbank was glazed with cracked permafrost and startling cyan lichens and a large crowd had gathered there. I sat on the dried mud and Rabbit sat on my knees. I caught sight of his schoolteacher and she returned my glance and smiled at me. She was round, Miss Theresa, with light brown skin and light brown hair. She'd made me think of honey candies when I was growing up. But then everything made me think of candy.

  "Watch," I said to Rabbit, my arms around him, my mouth next to his ear.

  The sun careened through the sky on a slant. It was bloated and red and it singed the clouds crimson. It took six minutes for the sun to touch the horizon, and when it did it cooled to a shadowy bronze, its afterimage smudged and yellow. The sun froze suddenly in its descent. It held perfectly still for the rest of the night.

  The night never came. The clouds were egg-white and honeysuckle and they cast low shadows over the earth. The sunlight sparkled on the skinny river and the sun stood on the western horizon, proud and stoic and comely. Men and women got up and danced the Thirst Dance, reaching for the sun, swaying like the gentle wind. The Thirst Dance wasn't legal these days. Some years ago the US had outlawed Indian dances, Indian music, Indian religion in a kind of livid frenzy. It didn't make much sense to me. We weren't citizens--we weren't good enough--but this government that wanted nothing to do with us kept making up laws about us.

  "The sun is your sister," I told Rabbit. "She's your big sister. She'll always protect you, even when I'm not here."

  "But I like you better," Rabbit told me.

  I put my head over his shoulder. I rubbed my cheek against his cheek. "I like you the most."

  * * * * *

  July came much too soon. On the morning I took Rabbit back to his mother's house I felt physically sick. He wore his medicine wheel in his hair and he clung to my arm and wouldn't let go.

  "Why won't you stay with me?" he wanted to know.

  I palmed his head and swallowed. "When the war's over," I promised.

  "Why can't it be over now?"

  "Just get inside," Fawn said.

  Rabbit knew better than to argue with his mother. He trudged inside the house. His slumped shoulders hurt my heart. I wanted to grab them; I wanted to pull him in my arms.

  Fawn slapped the door shut in my face. The hollow clap of wood on wood made for the worst sound I'd ever heard.

  I went home and packed my rucksack with numb fingers. I changed into fatigues. My stomach turned and my head spun and my eyes felt tight. I didn't want to fight for a country that hated me. I didn't want to leave my boy. If we couldn't get Japan to surrender there was no telling how long the war would go on for. Months had a tendency to turn into years. Months without Rabbit were agonizing. Years were unthinkable. Even trying to think about them made my throat close. And then there was the alternative: that I died at war and my son grew up without a father. I knew what it was like to have a father who walked out one day and never came home again. I didn't want that for my boy.

  My mother's father had passed away when I was very young, maybe eight years old. I don't remember much about my grandfather. I remember that he only spoke Cree, that he always sang peyote songs. Peyote used to grow on the Plains; and now that I think about it, Grandpa was probably old enough to remember the days when we lived out there, the days when we were free.

  There was this one peyote song that went, "I know that you have done this to me. I know that you can undo this." The desperation of that song had haunted me as a boy. I don't know who it was who wrote that song, or what they had in mind when they first sang it; but I know that on the day that I had to leave my son all over again I could feel that desperation for my own. If I'd allowed myself, I could have cried like a baby.

  So I didn't allow myself. I hoisted my bag over my shoulder and I walked out the door. The polar sun was still in the sky; it wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. I tried to take comfort in that. Sister Sun, she looks out for us. She had to look out for my boy. It was a Rabbit, after all, that had started the planet she governed these days.

  3

  The McCollum Memo

  "What the hell are you wearing?" Fox sputtered.

  We were at the Fort Lewis commons when Two-Ply came sauntering in off the road. We weren't officially soldiers for another hour, but that sure didn't explain why Two-Ply was wearing the droopiest waistcoat known to mankind and a pair of trousers that went as high as his chest.

  "It's a zoot suit!" Two-Ply said. "Everybody's wearing them."

  "I'm not!" Fox cried.

  Two minutes back on base and Fox was already a ball of nerves and hair gel. It was so reliable, it came as a comfort. The others weren't all that improved. Irish was sporting a suspicious bruise on the side of his neck. Milk seemed to have gained back all the weight he'd lost in BCT. Pogue's lips kept curling with disgust. Nobody liked five-and-divers, but that didn't mean he was keen on winning any favors.

  We went to the armory and picked up our weapons. The hammerless and the Browning and the M1 felt like my second set of fingers. I hated that. We geared up, and an hour later the C-47 Skytrain landed on the red tarmac and the whole company got on board the plane. Fox's nerves were a thousand times worse once we took off. He hated being in the air, had a deathly fear of it. He'd told me so back in AIT. I couldn't remember how it had come up in conversation.

  Normally a flight from Washington to Tokyo would have been eleven hours minimum. By rapid transit we were there in five. We landed at the Hardy Barracks in Minato and got off the plane and Milk nearly stumbled to the ground. Fox knelt and kissed it. The platoon behind us got agitated when we held them up. I grabbed Milk and Fox by the backs of their shirts and dragged them off the runway and out to the hub.

  It felt weird. For one, it was noon Washington time, but Japan hadn't gotten the memo. The sky was coal black and stamped with dizzying stars. The air smelled like hot metal and dust. We followed the lieutenant, a tall, weedy man with watery eyes, and he led us past a heliport with blinking red lights. I started to worry. And then we came up on the communications center, and I saw the latticed radio tower and the supply trucks parked outside, and my stomach went cold. This was a permanent arrangement. I didn't know how permanent my part in it was, but it was obvious America wasn't leaving Japan anytime soon.

  The lieutenant brought us out to the drill pitch where the captain debriefed us. We were here to assist the B29s, to evacuate the civilians so they didn't get hurt in the air raids. It was one of those painful moments when I realized just how much I loved my country. I didn't want to love my country; my country hated me.

  The captain dismissed us. The sergeant came along and my squad followed him to the barracks. They were awfully nice, those barracks, little white bungalows like the kind that belonged in South Carolina, not Tokyo. My squad had a barracks to itself and the freedom was disorienting. We fought over the beds and Two-Ply won the one by the window, but Milk said that was okay, because he didn't want to
be lying next to a window during bugle call at six in the morning. My bed was closest to the door because--as Irish put it--"Those Japs come in here, they'll take one look at you and run the other way."

  "Don't call them Japs," Fox muttered. "Call them Nips."

  I stashed my rucksack under the bed, the mattress thin and rubbery. I rummaged through the bag for a set of wampum beads I'd brought with me. The sergeant had tried to take them but I'd given him a Look and he'd decided they were harmless.

  "What's that, Chief?" Two-Ply asked, bounding over like a puppy.

  "Your testicles," Irish announced, sitting on the bunk above Fox's.

  "Aw, look who's talking," Two-Ply said. "Five-foot-one midget."

  "Hey!"

  "Wampum," I said.

  "Whomp 'Em?" Two-Ply said.

  "We're gonna whomp those Nips," Milk put in.

  Pogue eyed Milk disdainfully.

  For the next several hours we had drills, guard mounts and marches and KP duty and then--bizarre as it was--breakfast. The mess hall was too nice for my liking, long tables and big windows and smooth, tiled floors. Adjusting to the huge time difference was the hardest part. By the time I felt tired it was ten AM Tokyo time and the sergeant wouldn't let us sleep. The adjutant called us with the bugle and we trudged out to the pitch again. The major told us it was time to move.

  The company broke into platoons. The platoons broke into squads and the squads broke into fireteams. Fox motioned to our squad and we gathered around for a quick last word.

  "Don't get sidetracked," Fox said. "Leave the POWs to the marines. Get the civilians, bring them back here. You hear the sirens, you run, with or without them."

  Milk's face was worried. Irish's face was excited. None of us but Pogue had signed up for this. It didn't matter whether we'd signed up or not. We were in it for the long haul. There's a word in Cree--neestow. It means brotherhood by circumstance. These guys, we didn't always get along. But the one thing I felt sure of was that we were protected five different ways.

  The major shouted. I pulled my M1 over my shoulder and we marched neatly, quickly out of the base. We marched through the dark Roppongi Tunnel and the omnipresent scent of burned metal intensified a thousandfold. We emerged in Minato and the scent of burned rubber joined it. Overhead was one of the bluest skies I'd ever seen; which made it all the more jarring that it hung over a wasteland. The sidewalks were caked in gray rubble and black cinders. Broken girders and dirty scrap metal stood where important buildings used to stand. Every few blocks there were residential buildings--the squashed kind, real oriental looking, with red tiled roofs--and meat shops, boarded up, abandoned. Between them the huge stretches of artificial emptiness unnerved me. I thought of a time when Rabbit was five, when he sat coloring with sharpies on a sheet of paper. Everything he drew looked loopy and surreal; and when he didn't like what he drew he crossed off the offending image with a big fat X. It was cruel and childish and I realized, suddenly, that America was a little boy with a marker.

  Fox led the squad to a stooped residential building shaped like a clothing iron. We kicked down the door and went in.

  The very moment we crossed the threshold four Nips came running out of the side doorways. I focused on their tan uniforms, their orange sashes, instead of their human faces. I fired with the carbine. It was a semi, easier to control than the Browning. The Nip nearest me jerked when I caught him in the stomach and he sprawled to the bamboo rug.

  The air filled with the loud sounds of crossfire, gunsmoke, a woman shrieking in the next room over. Milk coughed. Three of the Nips lay dead on the floor. The fourth clutched his stomach, blood welling between his fingers. He breathed harshly and stared at me. I wouldn't look at his face. He'd be alright until the marines got here. Stomach wounds are slow kills.

  Fox rolled open the paper door at the back of the room. Families were packed inside, huddled together. Fox doled out short instructions in Japanese. I wondered whether he'd taken it on himself to learn those words, to try and help. It was the type of thing he'd do. We rounded up the families--a mom with her two girls, a daughter with her elderly mother--and we led them out to the threshold. Fox shouted and more families came pouring out of the side doorways. A little girl was crying. A little boy climbed over one of the bodies. He stared at the blood, his eyes wide, unblinking.

  We led the families out onto the ruined gray street. We formed an enclosure around them. We started the walk back to the Hardy Barracks when the high wailing of an air raid siren pierced the air.

  "Shit," Irish said, and broke into a grin.

  Everyone ran; but not in the same direction. A little girl clapped her hands over her ears and ran across the street. I darted after her, caught up with her and grabbed her around the waist. She kicked at me and I slung her over my shoulder. Milk fought with a little old lady who didn't want to follow him. Fox yelled: "Just leave her!"

  I couldn't bear to watch. I turned off everything except the kid in my arms. Her arms went around my neck in resignation. I carried her and ran. A shrieking whistle sounded overhead, the rumbling of engines, the whirring of propeller blades. Cold shadows covered us and the bombers flew over us. The whistling grew louder, and then a deafening blast shook the earth and the bones in my body and the teeth in my mouth. Heat grazed my back. I chanced a look over my shoulder. The apartment building we'd raided minutes earlier was completely gone, a black scorch mark in its place.

  The girl on my shoulder burst out crying.

  "I know," I told her. "I know."

  I didn't know if she could hear me. Ears ringing, I could barely hear myself. I carried her back to the Hardy Barracks and hoped her mom had made it out okay.

  * * * * *

  For the next two weeks we assisted the bombers with air raids. It got to the point I wondered whether we were trying to make a literal parking lot out of Japan. Unwinding in the barracks at night was next to impossible. The air raid sirens echoed in my head long after they'd died down. The summer heat was sweltering and Two-Ply kept the window open, but it didn't do much good.

  "Poker?" Pogue asked, looking from face to face.

  "Nah," Irish said, reclining on the bunk above Fox's.

  Fox stood in front of the noisy metal fan. He was sweating something awful and his cologne reeked like carrion. Milk toyed with the radio we'd bribed out of one of the rifle platoon guys. The fizzing static sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Irish hissed in annoyance. Milk murmured an apology and messed with the antennas and the radio settled down.

  "Hello, Pacific boneheads," said a woman's cheerful voice. "Here's the gal whose throat you'd like to cut."

  "Who the hell is that?" Fox asked, turning.

  "She sounds swanky," Two-Ply said, dreamy-eyed.

  "It's kill o'clock, and you know what that means," the woman's voice went on. "Here's today's body count."

  "Shut that off," Fox said quickly.

  Milk shut the radio off.

  "I don't think I like her anymore," Two-Ply murmured, affronted.

  "Was that Tokyo Rose?" Irish asked.

  "Rose ain't a Jap name," Pogue said, rolling his eyes.

  "The hell would you know?" Irish said. "Tonio says she knows the company by name. Real spooky stuff."

  "Couldn't just be because our name's stamped all over our trucks," I said.

  "You really think Japs can read?" Irish changed his tune. "Can you read?"

  My eyebrows came together and my eyes cooled. He shut up awfully fast.

  At night when the others were asleep I took out my wampum beads, started stringing them together in a medicine wheel. I used the moon as a guide, because Two-Ply had left the window open, and if I'd tried to turn the lamp on Milk would have jumped awake. They were white, the beads, and a dark, midnight purple. I strung them tightly together, made a kind of cross out of them. I like medicine wheels; they calm me down. Everyone's a spoke on the same wheel. If those spokes don't work together, the wheel doesn't turn.

  "Chief?" Milk
whispered.

  I guessed I hadn't been quiet enough. Milk was a light sleeper.

  "Go back to sleep," I said. I stashed the beadwork under my pillow.

  Milk's bed was the next over from mine. I heard him shifting around. I could hear Two-Ply's tinny snoring over by the window, Fox's nails raking across his arms. He had this nervous habit, Fox. He scratched himself like crazy, especially while he slept. His first night in BCT he'd woken up drenched in blood.

  "I'm sixteen," Milk whispered. "Don't tell anyone."

  I stared at the gray stucco ceiling over my head. I think I felt angry. It wasn't enough that the army took fathers from their sons. It had to go and take sons from their mothers, too.

  * * * * *

  The next morning the lieutenant took us out on the drill pitch. After situps we ran two miles, not all that easy when the ground was covered in sand. Fox caught up with me on the third lap around the flagpole.

  "We're going to Hiroshima," he said.

  I didn't answer him. It's not that I was trying to be rude. It's just that I didn't have his superhuman ability to sprint and carry on a conversation at the same time. Only Irish matched him in that department. I turned my head and saw a bright red blur streak past us. Irish was on his fourth lap already.

  We went to mess and Two-Ply and Milk grabbed a table by the window. The pair of them sat arguing over their Anzac crackers. I caught up with Fox on the breakfast line and asked him what he'd meant earlier.

  "The sergeant told me," he said. "We're done bombing Tokyo. Sometime in the next two weeks we're leaving Minato. MacArthur wants to move us to Hiroshima."

  "What are we going to Hiroshima for? There's nothing out there."

  The line moved slowly. He was a lean guy, Fox. His chin tapered in a way that made me think of a knife. Only his jaw was taut with nerves, his hand twitching at his side.

  "Japan surrendered," Fox told me.