“They didn’t see us, sir,” said Ben. He felt to blame for this. He should have waved harder. Longer. Higher.
Cooper shrugged.
“We’re near Jap territory. Nobody is going to risk losing a ship for two men.”
24
The News (in Six Reels)
MISSING IN ACTION
EVERYTHING IN THE HOUSE reminded Helen of Hal. As she went about her tasks, she reconstructed his day for Clare.
“If Hal were here, he’d be listening to the news now” (and they knew what he would be hearing at eight o’clock in the morning without even turning on the radio: the ad for Serutan, Natures spelled backwards).
When Helen brought up the breakfast trays—one for Clare, one for Grandpa—they thought of Hal driving to the chemistry building. He’d be there by this time.
At noon: he’d be coming home for lunch.
At one o’clock: he’d be going back to the lab.
At three o’clock, on another day a long time ago, school would be out and Clare would be walking to his office. She was just starting eighth grade. She would open the heavy door of the chemistry building and slip into the grey twilight. The stone stairs to the second floor had the soft dents of steps in old churches, worn down in the center by the feet of the faithful.
She hurried past the exhibit cases of molecules, past the closed doors of offices with names printed on the frosted glass. Her father had two rooms, his office and his lab. Today she did not find him in his office, but his desk lamp shone on unanswered letters and a shuffle of bluebooks.
In the lab she dropped her books on the black counter between the sink and the microscope, and she drew up a stool. The smell of the chemicals, the rows of fat beakers, the scales and balances weighing silence under glass, the shelves of brown bottles sealed with old corks or glass stoppers, and none of this subject to fear, heartbreak, or confusion—the mystery and patience of the nonhuman rolled over her.
She sat down and opened her social studies book and was startled by a soft whir from the high darkness over the bookcase in the office. From the lab she could see, through the connecting door, a great horned owl perched on the topmost case. Her father had told her not to be afraid; it lived in the forestry building across the way and belonged to a graduate student who had raised it from an egg.
If I had to be any other thing than what I am, thought Clare, I would be that owl.
After supper, Helen said, “He’d be taking his walk now.” Hal would walk as far as the Blue Door magazine store (which he never entered) and turn around and walk back. Helen and Clare knew at what time he reached the store; he was so regular in his habits you could set your watch by him. At any hour of the day, they could look at each other and say, “Well, he’s getting ready to leave the office,” or “He’s reached the magazine store, he’ll be on his way back now,” and sometimes it seemed that Hal had never left, only that they came and went at different times, and they kept missing him but would run into him very soon.
When loneliness washed over Helen like a huge wave, she straightened their closet and arranged on the top shelf the effects of their life together. Her hats, his cameras, her pocketbooks, his sock mender, which always made her smile. Hal knew she was only too glad to darn his socks, but he had been a bachelor for so long that he did not expect her to do the things he had always done for himself, and he loved gadgets that performed small services. In the time it took him to plug in the sock mender, wait for it to warm up (about fifteen minutes), put his sock on the mending platform with the hole exposed, arrange the patch (fifty cents for a package of five), and press it into place with the heating arm, Helen could have mended a dozen socks. And likely as not, the patch would fall off minutes after he’d pressed it on, and he’d sit on the edge of the bed with the sock mender in his lap and repeat the process, swearing quietly. He never said anything stronger than “Hell” or “Hell’s bells.”
At lunch and dinner, for which Clare and Grandpa came to the table, Helen read Hal’s letters aloud. He wrote about sunsets, flowers, and fogs; you’d think he was living alone in nature. But of course the censor read everything first. The simplest statements were suspect. The censor had even paused over “I hope Clare is better” and had underlined it.
WAR EFFORT GOES UP IN SMOKE
“I can’t believe it’s finished,” said Nell.
Nell had volunteered to sew everybody else’s squares together if she didn’t have to knit one herself. She wasn’t unpatriotic, she explained, but counting stitches drove her crazy. Helen had finished Nell’s square but then Clare had sewn them together because Nell found she broke into a rash whenever she got near wool.
But now she shook out the afghan with as much pride as if she’d knitted the whole thing.
“Debbie, you take the other corner,” she said.
Mrs. Lieberman took the other corner.
The lady from the Red Cross said, “It’s wonderful, just wonderful.”
But Debbie said, “Girls, I can’t understand why you all did the smoking cigarette. I thought you were doing a dog, Marie.”
“I changed,” said Mrs. Clackett.
Helen searched for her own square among the multitude, as one hunts for a familiar face in the newsreel. Mine has more smoke than any of them, she thought. Billows and billows. All the others showed a thin line of smoke straying from the glowing tip. She wondered if she’d made the smoke wrong.
KEEP AWAKE! THE ENEMY NEVER SLEEPS
When the air-raid whistle blew, Vicky had just finished putting Grandma to bed for the sixth time, and now she stumbled toward her own room, turning off lights as she went.
“Fred, are you going to bed in your shoes?”
“It’s only eight o’clock,” came Fred’s voice from the dark space that was his half of the bed. “When I hear the all-clear, I’m going to get up.”
“I’m so tired I could fall asleep right now,” said Vicky and flopped down beside him. “Six more weeks to go. I just can’t believe she cut up the ration books. I feel like I signed up for the duration.”
They lay side by side, listening anxiously.
“She’s still moving the furniture,” whispered Fred. “What if she turns on the light?”
“I unscrewed the bulb,” said Vicky.
Footsteps fleeing down the stairs unsettled them both.
“Fred, you go after her this time.”
He found her playing with the dead bolt on the front door: an angry ghost looking for the way home. White nightgown, white braids springing from either side of her head like handles on a jug, mottled and milky by the light of the full moon which poured through the glass on both sides of the door.
“I just want to see if Vicky locked up.”
“She locked the door,” said Fred.
“It doesn’t feel locked.”
“Oh, it’s locked all right.” He rattled the knob.
“And the lights don’t work.”
“Grandma, it’s a blackout. Because of the war.”
“War?” she repeated, genuinely surprised. “Who are we fighting?”
“Germany, Italy, Japan.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”
She followed him meekly up the stairs.
HEAVY LOSSES
Charley LaMont to Sol Lieberman [censored]
Western Desert
Dear Sol,
Nothing new to write about, but I’ll write anyway. Every day we bomb them. Every night they bomb us. Yesterday we bombed some German airfields. One of the ME 109’s put holes in a couple of planes, including mine. For every enemy plane we knock out we get to paint a swastika on ours. I have six swastikas on mine. I also have the arming pin from the first bomb (500 lbs.) I dropped on the enemy.
I hear that Tony and Louis are on a sub somewhere in XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.
If you get a chance, send me the yearbook.
Your friend,
Charley
SIX HUNDRED DEAD
Tom Bacco to His Mo
ther and Father [censored]
Dear Mom and Dad,
At last I have the time to sit down and write you about what I’ve been up to. We just finished cleaning out a nest of Japs in XXXXXXXXXX. I’d rather fight the Germans any day. Japs are like those deadly snakes you never see till after they’ve bitten you or you happen to find one dead. They hide in the trees. It’s a funny feeling to walk through the jungle waiting for the trees to open fire on you. The noise is deafening. There’s sniper fire and machine guns (the Jap guns are higher pitched than ours) and strafing and mortars. The mortars are the worst. They go high and you can’t tell just where they’ll land. I feel like an outfielder judging a high fly.
After the big push there were about six hundred Japs lying around. You can tell them from a distance because they wear wrapped leggings. I sure admire our medical boys. They go unarmed right into the fighting and find the wounded. If they can’t carry them to the dressing station, they tag them: name, wound, what’s been done to relieve the pain.
Say hello to all your faithful customers at the shop. We could use a little of your Fix-It oil out in the field.
Love,
Tom
TROOPS ON THE MOVE!
Lying in bed, Clare listened to the band practicing at the high school half a mile away. Twinkles of sound, she used to call what was not really a tune but the voice of a far-off brightness.
Then, the whistle of the train and Helen calling her for supper. That would be the Wolverine, coming from Chicago, headed for points east. When she was a little girl, Hal would take her to watch the train come in, her mittened hand safe in his gloved one. She loved the bustle of baggage carts, the shining blocks of ice hauled on the ice cart, the golden glow of the varnished benches in the station, the fireplace big enough for her to walk right into without lowering her head. And the fortune machine that gave you your weight and fortune on a little ticket—that was almost the best of all.
But not the best of all. No, not as wonderful as the train rushing toward them, setting everything into motion. Boys who put their pennies on the track for the wheels to flatten had left them by now, and the message man was standing on the platform with his mysterious rune, a fork pronged like a huge Y, on which he impaled telegrams, and the train roared toward him, and he held it high—O brave message man!—and the engineer reached out of his high window and plucked it like a flower and was gone.
That was the best of all.
Sometimes the engineer waved at the people on the platform. Hal and Clare waved back, always. And when the train pulled out of the station, they went on waving at the faces behind the windows, and sometimes a white hand waved back, or a black one.
25
Birdlight
AT NOON COOPER LAY curled up in the bottom of the raft, and Ben, sitting on what Cooper insisted on calling the forward thwart (which was identical to the backward thwart) watched the tiny speck grow larger and larger. It did not appear to be a plane. It glided down and came to roost on the flat, dark sea.
Albatross.
Cooper had not told him about their wingspan, had not told him enough. This was no bird but a floating giant from heaven, majestic, though streaked with traces of its first mottled plumage. It did not stoop to the gull’s tricks—coasting on the currents, spiraling and climbing, then the quick drop into the waves, all show and appetite. The albatross rested on the water, close to the raft, and watched Ben.
Ben! Ben!
He heard but did not stir. All day the calms had held him in a slow dream, and the bird was a dream as well, and the smell of leeks and clover and new-mown grass.
Ben, it’s me. It’s Clare.
He started; he was wide awake now.
Harvey’s Bristol Cream, said the albatross.
“My God, you did it!” shouted Ben. “You found me! You’re going to save us!”
I can’t save you, said the bird. I can only feed you.
“I’d like a gallon of fresh water and a steak, medium rare,” said Ben. “Make that two steaks,” he added, remembering Cooper asleep nearby.
The bird made a whirring sound deep in her throat. You can’t give the Ancestress orders. She has to do things in her own way. I told you about her.
Of course. He should have known. Clare never traveled without her guardian spirit.
“Is she a bird or a woman?”
I don’t know what she is. I don’t think she’s a woman except in the way I am a bird—
“But you’re not a bird. You’re Clare. Don’t leave me.”
I love you, said the bird. Remember that.
She was flying away from him very slowly.
“Wait! Come back!” called Ben. “I love you, Clare! I love you!”
He heard a dry cough and turned around. Cooper was staring at him.
“Get off the watch,” said Cooper. “You’re out of your head.”
Close to the raft, the water broke and a fish leapt into the boat, and Cooper lunged forward and rolled over on it. The fish put up no struggle.
The Ancestress had sent them a small shark, about two feet long. Hell, thought Ben, she might have sent us something better. Immediately he felt ashamed. Cooper hacked at the skin and cursed till the knife slit the soft flesh of the underbelly, which opened as easily as a zipper, and his hand slid into that awful pocket and brought out the liver, slippery, dense, and bright with blood.
A second time he reached in and fetched out the heart.
A third time he reached in and found two small fish.
All these gifts he divided with great care and handed Ben his portion. Without a word they tore into the liver. Ben shuddered.
“Tastes just like chicken, sir.” He fought back the urge to gag. “Chicken cooked in ammonia.”
They ate the heart and each peered into the blood-smeared face of the other.
“I believe the blood is nutritious,” said Cooper.
As if he had trained all his life for this office, he held up the head and the tail and drank the blood from the cup of the shark’s body and passed the cup to Ben. The blood was thin, watery, and had a strong bitter taste.
Not the storms but the calms. That’s what will kill us, Cooper told himself. He could hardly keep his eyes open, and what was there to see? Sea and sky, days and nights, all stretched into a flat, endless calm. His watch had long since rusted. You couldn’t keep out the salt water forever. One day the pistol wouldn’t work. He still kept the log. The stars would not rust. The moon would not rust. Not in his lifetime.
He put his hand into the water to feel the drift and felt his flesh ripped away; a shark dropped off, smacked the side of the raft, and plunged out of sight.
“Jesus!” said Ben. “Jesus! Right through the nail. Right to the bone, sir.”
As Ben wrapped the hand in rags to stop the bleeding, neither said what each feared, that one quick thrust of a fin could put a hole in the raft.
“Good thing I did the log this morning,” Cooper said. “I’m right-handed.”
His voice sounded firm, but his face was bloated, and under the peeling sunburn his skin showed thin and waxen.
“A good thing, sir,” said Ben.
The next evening Clare came again. Ben knew she was near by the scent of leeks and grass (tall grass, tall in the morning, cut down in the evening), and his thirst and weariness fell away as he scanned the horizon, fearing he might be wrong, that she was not coming, she had never come.
No, she was here! He gave a joyful shout. The albatross was resting in the trough of a wave.
She’s sending rain, said Clare, and a different kind of fish.
“Turn me into a bird,” pleaded Ben. “Turn me into a bird. I want to fly home.”
And what would you do when you got there, with no body to keep you? The bird is what I travel in, my love, not where I live.
A shot exploded so close to him that the bullet grazed his ear and seemed to jar his hearing loose; waves, wind, the cry of the bird went on without him. Ben spun around, t
errified. Cooper was lowering the pistol he’d fired with his left hand.
The violent break from the bird’s body stunned Clare, left her scattered and confused, like water shaken from a bowl. She beat her spirit-arms, her spirit-legs, as the Ancestress had taught her. But she could scarcely move.
Stay in the shadow of my wing, said the Ancestress and raised her giant wings over her.
Why can’t I fly? whispered Clare. She could not even hear herself speak, though she tried to put the broken pieces of her voice together.
The spirit set free by a death is not the same as the spirit set free by choice. It does not move as easily as we do.
I’m not dead, I’m Clare.
But the body you traveled in is dead, said the Ancestress. After you have entered your own body, it will be a long time before you are strong enough to travel again.
Behind them, below them, darkness had fallen, but the raft glowed with a silvery blue light which held the shadows of the two men and the body of the albatross, shining like a star.
There was phosphorus in its food, remarked the Ancestress.
By birdlight, Clare could see Ben crouching with his head on his knees so that he wouldn’t have to watch Cooper tearing the bird with his teeth.
26
By Land and Sea
AT FIRST IT LOOKED like an island, and then he saw it moving toward them.
“A boat, sir! A boat!” exclaimed Ben.
Cooper, huddled in the bottom of the raft, squinted toward the horizon. For two days he had not been able to focus his eyes, but he did not tell this to Ben.
“I can’t see it,” he said.
As if the boat itself heard him, it suddenly loomed much closer, and now Ben clearly saw it was a lifeboat, manned by a single rower whose back was turned to them.
“Shall I raise the flag, sir?”
“Save your strength. He’s seen us.”
The rower was a civilian, dressed—Am I dreaming? thought Ben—in a three-piece suit and fedora, and though he made all the motions of rowing, the boat appeared to be moving under some silent power of its own, for when he lifted the oars it moved quietly on at the same pace and drew up beside the raft.
Things Invisible to See Page 18