The Typist

by Michael Knight

  Ten days after the Atom Bowl, I received another letter from my wife.

  Well, he’s here. Francis Michael Beck. Named for you and for my father. Born December 15, a few minutes after midnight. Every mother believes that her child is the most beautiful in the world, but I’m the only mother who is right. I’ve enclosed a picture for proof. I was still loopy from the ether when they took him to the nursery, and for the rest of the night I couldn’t stop worrying that they would never give him back. I didn’t sleep. I kept getting up to watch him through the window in his bassinette. I was afraid someone would spirit him away to punish me for the circumstances of his birth. But in the morning the nurse brought him to my room and laid him in my arms and I knew that, whether I deserved it or not, I was forgiven. This child is mine forever and I am the most grateful girl in the world. Because my son is healthy. Because you have been so kind. Because my own father is holding him as I write and I can see that he’s in love. Somehow the world has let me off the hook. I know you can’t share my joy in this moment. That would be too much to ask. But please, Van, no matter what happens next, know that I am happy.

  It was hard to tell anything about the baby from the picture. He was wrapped in a blanket in my wife’s arms and all I could make out was his face, pinched with frown. My wife was propped up in bed. Her eyes looked tired but her hair was brushed and I thought she’d put on some lipstick. She was smiling around a cigar between her teeth, and I remembered that part of what had drawn me to her in the first place, what had made dancing with her at the USO something to look forward to, was her willingness to kid around. It struck me that she was a girl you’d be lucky to fall in love with and I thought, without really thinking it, without being able to put the thought into words, that maybe what had happened with Fumiko had evened things out between us and, whatever awaited in the future, we could proceed as equals now. Of course, this was just a feeling. I wasn’t looking down the road. At the time, I was just a soldier sitting on a bench in Hibiya Park admiring a picture of a pretty girl and her child.

  My discharge papers came through in February. I suppose I should have been expecting them—most men counted down the days like kids waiting for Christmas—but somehow the news caught me off guard. Captain Embry called me into his office to deliver the standard speech. The army appreciated my service et cetera but there was still work to be done, plenty of opportunities for a cocksucker like me if I would consider sticking around. Not long before, I would have reenlisted in a flash.

  Two more weeks would pass before I boarded the troopship to Hawaii, then the plane to San Francisco, and finally the train back to Mobile. I spent my last days in Tokyo like a tourist. Bought a pair of blood-red vases on the Ginza for my mother. Watched Kabuki shows. Visited the shrine of the Amida Buddha, the famous statue there. This Buddha was not fat and jolly like the souvenirs for sale at the PX but young and slim and thoughtful-looking. One night, I attended a performance of The Mikado at a theater renamed for Ernie Pyle. A traveling company was in town from the States. I’d never seen operetta before. Operetta wasn’t too popular in Alabama. The show was set in Japan, but all the Japanese characters were played by Americans. They did songs about lost love and secret identity. There was a song about beheading. The officers and their wives were howling, but the locals in the audience just blinked and frowned. I didn’t get it either. Throughout the show, the box closest to the stage kept its curtains pulled except for a turret-narrow slit. During intermission, I heard a rumor that Emperor Hirohito himself was up there watching, and I felt at once thrilled to be in the presence of real royalty and embarrassed for the man. All that silliness and singing and him a direct descendant of the gods. I bummed a cigarette, though I hardly ever smoked, and walked outside. A rickshaw rolled by on the street, two GIs in back, two old men at the rails. One of the GIs shouted, “Which way to New Orleans?” and I pointed with my cigarette. When the lights flickered, calling everybody to their seats, I returned to the barracks instead.

  I tried, during those weeks, not to think about Arthur MacArthur, or I told myself that he was better off left alone, and while that might have been true, I couldn’t make myself believe it and I wanted to see him, if not for his sake then for mine. So I steeled myself and rode the elevator up to Bunny’s office to request permission to visit Arthur one last time. He kept me waiting for hours but didn’t send me away. I watched his aide lead a procession of well-dressed local men in and out, mid-level dignitaries, I guessed, the stream of them broken now and then by some officer on business who was allowed to cut in line. Finally, Bunny’s aide informed me that the General could spare a minute, and I found him at his desk massaging the bridge of his nose like his eyes were tired.

  “So you’re going home?” he said.

  “Yessir.”

  “I envy you. Days like today, I believe I’ll be in this office til I die. The Japanese are used to being led. It was the Imperial family for however many thousand years, and then it was the generals, and now it’s us. If we pack up, it’ll be the Reds, and I won’t stand for that.”

  His office was small and windowless but still imposing. Dark wood and leather. A framed quote from someone named Lucius Aemilius Paulus on the wall:

  If anyone thinks himself qualified to offer advice respecting the war which I am to conduct, he will be furnished with a ship and a tent; even his traveling costs shall be defrayed. But if he thinks this is too much trouble and prefers the repose of the city to the toils of war, let him not, on land, assume the role of pilot.

  The chair behind Bunny’s desk was the only one in the room, so visitors were forced to remain standing before him.

  “I assume,” he said, “that you’re here because you want to see my son before you go. Bid him a fond farewell and such?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s good. I was beginning to worry I’d misjudged your character.”

  I was prepared to make a case, but that was that. He instructed me to present myself at the residence at 0900 then dismissed me with a wave.

  Fog was riding low over the ground when I set out, but it was starting to lift by the time I arrived. Mrs. Bunny had sent Ridges to meet me at the gate. I could see the Packard idling in the drive, exhaust mingling with the last remnants of the fog. We conducted our business through the bars.

  “Is Arthur with you?”

  Ridges shook his head. “I’ll go get him in a minute. But the missus wants to be sure you understand. I’ll fetch Arthur and we’ll run you to the barracks, but that’s it. No stops, no detours. The shortest way there and back.”

  “That’s barely fifteen minutes.”

  “Take it or leave it,” Ridges said. Then he sighed and his voice softened a little. “Look, I don’t know what all you done or what’s going on and I don’t want to know, but I can tell you this is the best you’re gonna get. The missus is pretty hot.”

  “This is strange, isn’t it?”

  “Well,” Ridges said, and he stood there looking at me.

  “I’ll wait,” I said.

  I watched him back the car around and roll off toward the residence, my breath coalescing in the cold. The driveway was lined with evergreens, so after a second the Packard disappeared around a bend. I heard the faraway sound of car doors opening and closing, and then the Packard reappeared a minute later and a guard emerged from the guardhouse and Ridges stopped, leaving room for the swinging gate. Ridges nosed the Packard through and the guard shut the gate behind him and I climbed in back. Arthur had one of his cast-iron soldiers in his hands.

  “This a one-way trip,” Ridges reminded me. “Express.”

  He shot me a glance in the rearview but I ignored him.

  “Who’s that you got there?” I said to Arthur.

  He held the figure up so I could see him, but didn’t speak or look at me. The figure in his hand was Robert E. Lee.

  “The greatest military mind in history,” I said.

  I knew Arthur preferred Ha
nnibal and I hoped to get him caught up in the debate, hoped maybe that would start him talking, but it was clear he’d made up his mind to pout.

  “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you in so long. A lot has happened. I can’t really explain it all. But I wanted to be here. I really did.”

  Nothing.

  “Talk to me, Arthur. Please. We’ll be at the barracks in a minute.”

  Still no reply. We were coming up on the bombed-out buildings and the baseball diamond. As usual, there was a game in progress, a dozen or so boys in school uniforms knocking the ball around.

  “Stop the car,” I said and Ridges said, “You must be outta your damn mind.”

  “I mean it,” I said. “You and Arthur can do whatever you want, but I feel like playing ball.”

  Ridges eyed me in the mirror. To my surprise, he eased the Packard over to the shoulder. I turned to Arthur.

  “Bye, buddy. It’s been nice knowing you.”

  I offered my hand but he refused to take it, so I stepped out of the car and headed for the diamond without looking back. I hailed the boys in Japanese. They watched me coming like I was a figment of the imagination, scary but decidedly unreal. I chanced a look over my shoulder. Ridges was in the process of turning the car around but I could see Arthur in the back seat, the shape of him, waving his hands and pointing. I beelined for the pitcher’s mound, explained as best I could that the son of General MacArthur was in that car and he would like to join their game—not for long, just a single turn at bat. The pitcher was perfectly still as I spoke, his eyes never leaving my face. I explained that Arthur MacArthur was a few years younger than he was and should be pitched to accordingly and did he, the pitcher, understand? He shifted his gaze to the Packard. They were stopped in the middle of the road but nobody was getting out and I was beginning to worry that my ploy would fail, that Ridges would convince Arthur to obey his mother or, worse, that I didn’t mean enough to Arthur to be worth the consequences of disobedience. But after a second, the back door swung open and Arthur made his way sheepishly over the grass, eyes on his shoes, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his corduroys.

  “You’re up,” I said.

  It speaks volumes about the nature of Arthur’s life that he recognized nothing unusual in the fact that the game was being put on hold for him, the batting order interrupted so he could have a turn. He just shuffled over to the plate, took the bat from the boy who’d been waiting there, and rested it listlessly on his shoulder.

  “All right,” I said. “Play ball.”

  Arthur let the first pitch go by despite the fact that it was a perfect strike. The pitcher was doing his best to keep everything slow and easy, but Arthur whiffed the next ball even so. The third, he shanked foul behind the plate. I gave the pitcher a look, patted the air with my hands. Bunny would have been furious but I didn’t care. I was more worried that Arthur would strike out. To my great relief, the next pitch came in fat and sluggish and Arthur got around on it, sent the ball looping high and deep and straight into the glove of the kid playing center field. But Arthur didn’t notice that he was out. He was already sprinting past first base and closing on second at top speed, arms pumping at his sides, little tufts of dust rising from his heels. The center fielder held the ball and we all watched Arthur take third on the fly and make the triumphant turn toward home.

  Back in the car, once again rolling toward the barracks, Arthur fished Robert E. Lee out of his pocket and thrust him into my hands.

  “Here,” he said.

  The figure was barely two inches tall but had more heft than you’d expect. Right hand over his heart, left holding his hat off to the side, below his waist, like he’d removed it in supplication. The detail on his paint job was amazing. Gray uniform with brass buttons. Black leather riding boots. The white of his hair and beard. The kind blue of his eyes. His expression seemed equal parts sadness and surprise and, though Arthur had never specified one way or the other, I’d always imagined that this was Lee at Appomattox or at Gettysburg just after the horror of Pickett’s charge.

  “I can’t keep this,” I said.

  “But you gave me those samurais,” he said. “Plus I have another Lee. The one on horseback.”

  “What’s his horse’s name again?”

  He answered, “Traveler,” without missing a beat, and his certainty made me smile.

  “All right. Thank you. I’ll take good care of him.”

  “You were just kidding before, right?” he said. “You know Hannibal is the greatest general of all times?”

  “No way,” I said. “Lee.”

  “Hannibal.”

  “Lee.”

  Arthur huffed and grimaced. “Hannibal conducted a successful campaign on enemy soil without reinforcements. This is not to mention the Alps. He won every battle with half the army. He would have won the war if the Romans hadn’t been afraid to fight fair.”

  “What about Chancellorsville?” I said.

  “Oh, come on,” he said, and he would have gone on arguing if I hadn’t pulled him up close and knuckled his head.

  After they dropped me at the barracks, on the way up to my room, I heard the drizzle and slap of a mop being drawn out of a bucket, the swish of it across the floor, and I knew Fumiko was swabbing the john. She was humming as she worked. I leaned against the wall to eavesdrop and after a few bars, I recognized the song. I don’t remember all the Japanese, but in English the lyrics went something like this: Red apple to my lips/The blue sky is watching/The apple doesn’t say a word but the way it feels is clear. The song didn’t make much sense to me, but it had been a hit on local radio the year before. For a couple of months, you heard it everywhere you went. I listened for a minute, Fumiko’s humming echoed and amplified by the tile, then ducked past the door and down the hall to start packing my bags.

  X

  I’m typing all this on a 1955 Royal Quiet Deluxe. I still have the Super Speed, but I keep it in its case on a shelf in the hall closet. My souvenirs from the war: a military issue typewriter and Arthur MacArthur’s cast-iron soldier. I presented Clifford’s seppuku sword to my father when I got home. He held it in both hands, gave it a good look, thanked me, and then turned on the radio to listen to the news while my mother oohed and ahhed over her vases. I rattled around the house for a week before anybody inquired about my plans. I’m sure they suspected something wasn’t right. Would I bring my wife back here, they wanted to know, or would I go to her? I told the truth. I told them everything. We were eating dinner at the time. My mother dropped her fork and covered her mouth with both hands. My father stared into his mashed potatoes while he considered his reply.

  “I could probably get you on as bargeman.”

  I didn’t want to be a bargeman and I told him so, but it turned out they were hiring typists, too. The war had pulled everybody out of the Depression. They didn’t need more typists, not really, but my uniform plus my father’s years of loyal service sealed the deal. For the rest of the spring and through the summer, I typed invoices and shipping orders and memorandums, all of it passing before my eyes and leaving not a trace. The difference, in this case, was that the haze never quite lifted from my mind. My father was off on his tugboat most of the time, and my mother and I had the house to ourselves, but when he was home, we listened to Alabama play football on the radio together. Alabama had a new coach that fall, Harold “Red” Drew, and though his team did one game better than the previous season, they lost three, including the Cotton Bowl, and we agreed that, all in all, the season was a disappointment. I’m not sure if these two things are related, but at the beginning of the new year, with the taste of disappointment still in my mouth, I decided that the life I had been living since the army was no life at all. The last of my service pay was still earning interest in the bank, and because I had no rent to worry about I’d managed to save a fair portion of my salary as a typist. I bought a ticket on the Crescent Line, which runs from New Orleans, through Mobile, all the way to Washington
, D.C. There I could switch trains and keep going until I reached New York. If I liked what I found, I’d look for work. A skilled typist can always make ends meet. If New York didn’t suit me, I’d buy another ticket on another train and ride west on the heels of countless Americans before me. Such was the extent of my plan.

  To pass the time on the train, I read half a dozen different newspapers and, to my surprise, in all of them I found rumblings about Bunny running for President. He hadn’t officially declared his candidacy, but a nominating committee had been formed, whatever that means, and the editorialists seemed en-flamed by the idea. In Atlanta, the paper was for a return to isolation, while Bunny represented American meddling in world affairs. In Richmond, he was criticized for not coming down hard enough on the Reds, for allowing the Communist Party to exist in Japan at all. Anyone reading these pages will be aware that he failed to win the Republican Party nomination in 1948 and that, in a few more years, he would be called away from Tokyo to fight the communists in Korea. I did not, of course, know any of that at the time. I exited the train in D.C., intending to see the sights, and as I gazed at the White House through the iron gates, I couldn’t help thinking that not only Bunny but Arthur would enjoy life in such a place just fine.

  Before I left D.C., I took the street car to Arlington National Cemetery and walked the rows of crosses. Despite the cold, there were plenty of other soldiers out, lots of wives and mothers, too. I had no particular grave to visit, so I drifted among the long interred, trying to keep as far as I could from the real mourners. This wasn’t difficult, as the dead were grouped according to the war in which they died, and I spent most of my time among men who gave their lives to preserve the Union. I wondered, as I suppose all men wonder in such a place, if I possessed the courage to march in neat formation into the barrage that awaited those old soldiers. And I wondered if courage or some less respectable synonym was required to order men into that barrage. In the distance, I could see a dark blue canopy casting a shadow over a particular patch of ground. At first I thought it must have been left over from a ceremony the day before, but then I thought the army was too efficient to leave such a thing standing overnight and it must be waiting for a service still to come. I didn’t want to hang around for that.