White Whale

by Rose Christo

  "Orca," Fox muttered.

  Milk's light clicked on. I slid my hand free. Fox jerked.

  "Whazzgoinon?" Milk mumbled.

  "Go to bed, you dumb Polack," I heard Irish say.

  Milk started coughing. His lamp flickered off. Fox jumped up and paced back to his bunk. He moved like water, too fast for me to catch.

  I'd spent my life on the water. I'd caught charr in the middle of snowstorms. I'd caught king salmon without downriggers.

  I lay on my bunk, my hand curled against my stomach. I could still feel Fox's heat on my palm. I could still feel his palmlines, his shaking fingers.

  * * * * *

  The next morning we had guard mounts. I've always hated those. All you're really doing is posing with a rifle. It looks stupid and braggart and it doesn't really help with your accuracy, no matter what they tell you in BCT.

  We had situps afterward. Milk kept coughing. The sergeant paired me with Irish and he was a jerk throughout the entire exercise. He pinched my ankles and pretended to lose count so I had to start all over again. The second time he tried this I gave him a Look and he went white under his flaky pink skin. I didn't understand how one person could be so miserable all the time. Irish folks were supposed to be sunny and bonny and bright. Too bad Irish wasn't actually Irish. We only called him that because of his impossibly red hair.

  We were lining up for road march when I felt Milk tugging on my arm. The squad gathered together and Milk said:

  "We're going home in November. The captain just said so."

  It was like someone had turned on a light inside of me. Only a month until I went home to my son. I'd be with him for the Give-Away Dance. I'd be with him for the polar night.

  "That's not right," Two-Ply said haltingly.

  Two-Ply was the last person I'd expected to object. I looked at him and saw his face was unusually sober.

  "Yeah, I know," Irish complained. "But what can you do? I might go into boxing."

  "Not that," Two-Ply said. "What about the Ustasha?"

  Fox was just ahead of us. He came to a sudden halt and Milk slammed into his back. A few guys from the rifle platoon started yelling at the both of them. Fox had more seniority, so he yelled right back.

  "What about 'em?" Irish asked.

  "They're still killing Gypsies," Two-Ply said. "Why aren't we going to Croatia? We're just going to let them do whatever?"

  "Who cares about Gypsies?" Irish said. "All they do is steal stuff."

  "Man, how would you know?" Two-Ply said. "You've never even met one."

  Fox's fingers twitched. They curled into a fist and his jaw tensed. His eyes looked bloodshot, like he was about to start bawling. He was a good leader, Fox, but he was soft-hearted. He let things bother him when he couldn't do anything about them.

  "We're not going to Croatia," I said.

  Fox turned around and looked at me.

  I looked at him. "Croatia doesn't have anything we want."

  I saw the dawning in his eyes. He was the one who'd told me about the McCollum Memo, about us dropping the atom bombs after Japan had already surrendered.

  "Move!" the sergeant yelled.

  We stumbled out onto the railroad tracks. We followed them across the island.

  * * * * *

  Fox got in line behind me in the mess hall that morning. The rusted pipes hummed on the walls around us. The fan blades on the ceiling made me think of guillotines.

  "I can't figure it out," he said, his voice low.

  Back in Minato he'd warned me that talking about this could get us killed. I didn't doubt it. I only wondered why he was willing to talk about it now.

  "Resources," I suggested. "Bet you anything we pull out of the Depression after this."

  His face twisted into a scowl of disgust. I would have found it intimidating if this wasn't the same guy who freaked out when you washed shirts and pants in the same tub.

  I wasn't in the mood for burned toast and rubber jello. "Do you want candy?" I asked him.

  He started. "What?"

  "Candy," I said.

  "Oh," he said. "Oh, alright--"

  We left the mess hall and walked back to the barracks. A couple of squids standing around the back of a supply truck eyed us distrustfully. I wondered if they were the same guys we'd run into on patrol the other night.

  "You going back to Alaska?" Fox asked.

  He wasn't good at small talk.

  "Where are you from?" I asked him.

  "Italy," he said.

  I gave him a dubious look. "I mean in America."

  "Right," he said. "Uh--Montana. For now."

  "That's where we're from," I said unthinkingly.

  "Sorry?" he said.

  It wouldn't have made much sense if I left it at that. "Cree Indians," I explained. "Our band lived on the Plains before the US sent us away."

  Fox opened his mouth. He closed it.

  "How can they do that?" he said. "Weren't you there first?"

  "You're new around here," I said.

  "Was that a joke?" Fox said, incredulous. "I don't think I've ever heard you joke before..."

  We went into the Quonset hut. I knelt and looked through my rucksack. I got out the marshmallow bars. I turned around to give one to Fox and he was sitting on the floor, praying. He prayed every time he ate. He prayed every time he woke up. I would have found it ridiculous if I didn't think it was admirable.

  When he was finished he unclasped his hands and I gave him a candy bar. He stayed on the floor and I sat on the bunk.

  "Do you live with your parents?" I asked him.

  His hands fumbled.

  "No," he said, without looking at me. He unwrapped the marshmallow bar. "I live alone."

  I was about to ask why; but then I remembered that I lived alone, too. Except when Rabbit stayed with me, or Inconnu came over to visit. Inconnu was my cousin. We'd gotten our draft letters at the same time. It didn't make much sense that I'd gone into the Third Army and he'd gone into the Sixth.

  "Orca," Fox said.

  His voice was unsteady. It sounded like fear and something else. I envied him, that he never thought to hide his feelings.

  "This isn't normal," Fox said.

  I peeled back the plastic on my candy bar. The marshmallow was melted, goppy. I didn't mind. It's not as if it tasted any different.

  We ate together in uninterrupted silence. I never answered him; because I knew he was right.

  * * * * *

  The captain shipped our company out to Ginza to demilitarize the Imperial Japanese Army at Tama Service Annex. I thought that took a lot of gall. We'd bombed these people into a sad submission and now we weren't even letting them keep their military. Milk told me we'd killed 250,000 civilians. It was the kind of number that drained the strength from my knees. I don't know how I remained standing.

  We docked at Ginza and got off on the sunny promenade. The flea markets were noisy and the fish markets were crowded. The women walked from vendor to vendor in their tiny shoes and parasols. The merchants had scraggly hair. No one spared our company so much as a second glance. I started to wonder whether we were invisible. I don't think I would have minded that.

  I shouldered my Browning and my M1 and my rucksack and we went off the promenade and into the city. It was dazzling in its intricacy. It put knots in my stomach. The giant Hattori Clock Tower loomed high over the granite sidewalks. The kabuki theater looked like a red and white palace. We followed the Ginza Line past bricktown buildings that looked like they belonged in the middle of Park Slope, never mind the Orient. Two-Ply sang She Ain't Got No Yo-Yo for the third time that morning.

  On the outskirts of town the Tama Service Annex looked more like a ranch than an army base. An American flag flew high over the communications center. The Japanese flag lay in a tattered heap at the bottom of the flagpole. The soldiers in their tan and orange uniforms came milling out of the low, level barracks. I tried not to look at their faces. I didn't want to see the despondence, th
e defeat.

  "Come on," Fox murmured.

  We rounded up the soldiers, stripped them of their weapons and led them up the runway. A Fairchild C-123 sat waiting on the tarmac. I couldn't see the captain but I could hear him yelling. I could hear the lieutenant yelling. I could hear the airplane propellers cutting the wind. The Japanese soldiers all got into a neat line. They'd been practicing for this for a long while now.

  "Where are we sending them?" Milk whispered at my elbow.

  "New Zealand," I said.

  The soldiers climbed slowly up the airstairs and onto the transport plane. It was our job to make sure they were weapon-free when they boarded. We gave them propaganda pamphlets stamped in shiny red lettering. "I Cease Resistance," the covers read. English on the top, Kanji on the bottom. Like this was some kind of vacation. Most of the soldiers took the leaflets from us without looking at them. But this one guy in particular ripped the leaflet from my hand and stared at me. He had hateful, blazing eyes. The worst part was that I understood. There was no way for me to tell him that. He knew as well as I did we were sending him to slavery, then death. He didn't know that I didn't want him to die. I didn't want anyone to die. I was not America. I was America's bastard child.

  The soldier climbed up the airstairs and tossed the pamphlet over the side. It fluttered to the ground in defiance. He disappeared inside the transport plane. I stood back and watched the rest of the soldiers climb up the airstairs. I watched the airstairs snap up into the doorway, the bullet-colored airplane lift into the sky.

  * * * * *

  We moved into the IJA barracks. The final joke was on us: The Japanese soldiers hadn't left bunks behind. I didn't mind sleeping on cloth canvas on the floor but Irish kept cursing about it. Milk tossed fitfully at night and kept us awake with his cough. That cough worried me.

  Now that Tama Service Annex was empty there was nothing for us to do but patrol Ginza every night. I wondered whether anyone realized how patently ridiculous it was to patrol a city that had no longer had a military presence. I didn't know it at the time, but America had taken it on itself to draft a new Japanese Constitution. We were probably left behind as a kind of insurance policy.

  Emperor Hirohito came to the base a few days after we'd stolen possession of it. I saw him from afar when he went to talk with the captain and the general. He was surprisingly young, with round eyeglasses and a tiny mustache. Irish elbowed Pogue and snickered. Pogue didn't take very well to the implication.

  "One month until we go home," Milk said in the barracks that night. We were trying to play Hearts, but someone had misplaced the Queen of Spades.

  "Don't be strangers," Fox said idly, staring intently at his hand.

  "We could meet up on Christmas," Two-Ply said. "We could go to Salt Lake City."

  "It's cold there," Pogue said stiffly. Pogue was from Nevada.

  The adjutant tapped on the door and stuck his head inside. "Rounds," he said. "Let's go."

  He strolled away. I put down my cards and Fox did the same.

  "Don't do anything I would do," Irish called after us, grinning, all teeth.

  We put on our bullet vests and our carbines. We left Tama Service Annex and took to the streets of Ginza. Crystalline lights spilled from the corporate buildings onto the dark sidewalks. Just walking underneath them I felt washed out and pale.

  "We really should keep in touch," Fox muttered.

  I tried to imagine Irish in the civilian world. I couldn't picture it very well.

  "What do you do for a living?" I asked Fox.

  "Butcher," he said.

  I wondered if he apologized to the meat before he minced it. I caught myself smiling. The smile froze on my face.

  On the promenade the paper lights were lit by the coastline, bogged down with bags of sand. The ocean breeze tasted chilly and sweet. The moonlight made the beach look like butterscotch. We checked the shacks, the market stalls, made sure they were empty. I thought it was degrading that we'd imposed a curfew on the entire town.

  "Orca, do you celebrate Christmas?" Fox asked.

  I checked the fishing boats tied to the bollards. They danced on the lapping tide. They were empty, a few of them with smashed oars. I hoped it wasn't our guys who had done that.

  "No," I said.

  "Oh," Fox said. If he were anyone else he might have pestered me about it. I've seen how adamant Catholics can be when you don't follow what they follow. "So what do you celebrate?" he asked instead. "Seems like everywhere you go they've got a winter holiday."

  "The Give-Away Dance," I said. He circled a tower of crates, his hand on his carbine. I watched the moon beat off the triangle of hair at the back of his neck. "Four days long."

  "Four days?" he asked. He spun around with a grin. It stopped my heart in my chest. "I think I'd pass out."

  I was trying to think of something to say when I heard a sudden grunt behind us. Fox heard it, too. We whirled around. Underneath a clothesline two squids stood kicking a man lying on the ground. Fox and I ran over and they stopped. The one squid snickered while the other looked nonplussed.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Fox demanded.

  "He broke curfew," said one of the squids.

  I helped the guy off the ground. His mouth was busted and bleeding and his eyes were glassy. His gray hair framed his temples and his fingers dug into my arms.

  "No hard feelings," one of the squids said.

  "Yeah, fine," Fox said. "I'll ask your LPO how he feels about it."

  The squid who had been laughing stopped abruptly. His brow darkened. The other looked spitting mad. I thought he was going to hit Fox.

  "Fucking Gypsy," he spat.

  The pair of them took off. The battered man wheezed against me and I put my arm around him; I rubbed his back. I looked at Fox. His eyes had gone oddly unreadable. They were affixed to the sailors' receding backs, but out of focus, like a window left to gather dust.

  Fox’s fingers twitched and he came to attention. He turned to the civilian and tried to talk to him in Japanese. "Uchi wa doko?" he kept saying. I wasn't sure it was grammatically correct. The man must have understood, though, because he coughed out a short set of instructions. We each put an arm around him, Fox's hand brushing against my elbow, and the man leaned into our grip. We helped him off the promenade.

  Out in the city the sidewalks were abandoned, the rickshaws parked along the curb. Fox was so quiet it was practically audible. I could feel his discomfort like it was my own. I wanted to say something to him; only I've never been any good with words.

  "Where are we going?" I finally managed.

  "Clock tower," Fox said.

  We walked the man between us to the Hattori Clock Tower. The clock face was lit up, magnificent, shining over the whole of Ginza. Loft apartments were tucked under the tower's granite facade. The man let go of Fox and me and shoved open one of the swollen doors. A tiny oil lamp flickered inside. I saw the exposed support beams, the dozens and dozens of sleeping bodies and the dirty, raggedy blankets. I felt mad. I can't even explain why.

  "Arigatou," the civilian whispered, just before he slipped inside.

  The door rolled shut. It resounded on the empty street.

  Fox walked. We were halfway down the block when I grabbed his wrist.

  "Stop," he said, his voice strangled.

  "You're not Italian," I said.

  His skin was pale gold and his hair was golden brown. He could have been anything. He could have been a Greek. He could have been a lion.

  "I am," he insisted.

  "Where in Italy?" I asked.

  "How is that any of your business?"

  He didn't scare me. This was the same guy who called his cologne toiletries. This was the same guy who thought they spoke Austrian in Austria.

  The adjutant was going to question us if we clocked in late. I didn't care.

  "Orca," Fox began.

  "Why are you hiding?" I asked him.

  His fingers were twitching. I was glad I
'd cut his nails. I was glad he couldn't tear his skin apart. I had the feeling he really wanted to.

  "I'm not a Gypsy," Fox said.

  He wouldn't look at me. That's something I've never understood. I've never been afraid to look anyone in the eye.

  I let go of Fox’s wrist. I took his chin and turned his head and his eyes snapped up with alarm. His mouth was bitten and red and his chest heaved under his bullet vest. He looked wild with fear. He looked beautiful. He looked so beautiful it hurt. I could feel it in my stomach, in my chest, a real and physical pain. I could feel it in my cold fingers, in my pounding temples, the raw ache in my heart, the raw want.

  I pushed him back against the door to the trust bank. Our carbines banged together when I kissed him. I felt him gasp against my mouth, heard the sound he made when his breath left him, when I tasted it for my own. If he'd pushed me away I would have understood. He didn't. His lips moved against my lips, trembling. I wanted to kiss the fear from them. I tried. His hands went to the hem of my shirt. I held his chin in my hand, stroked his jaw with my thumb. I felt his fingers on my stomach when his hands slid under my shirt. Heat tore through me, my skin, my thoughts.

  Fox mouthed my name against my lips and my hands went to the back of his head. I took his lip between my teeth. Our hips knocked together and his leg slid between mine. Stars burst inside my temples, behind my eyes. I felt like I was going insane. I felt like I didn't mind. His tongue touched my tongue and he kissed me so hard I wondered how he could breathe. I wondered if he was trying to suffocate me. I wouldn't have minded that, either. My hip dragged on his hip and he made a delicious, desperate keening sound. I did it again, just so he'd keep making that noise. I tucked my hands under the small of his back, lifted him higher on my thigh. His fingers dug into my shoulderblades and I was glad I'd cut his nails. His head banged back against the trust bank's door and I was glad for the curfew, glad that the building was empty.