Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  “I’ve got two daughters at home,” Lieutenant Cluff said.

  Wally had known that Cluff was from Indiana, or maybe it was Illinois, but he had never heard him mention his children.

  “I don’t fear my own death all that much,” the Lieutenant said. “But I don’t know how my wife would handle it—and my little girls.”

  “I guess it’s good I don’t have to think much about things like that,” Wally said. “My parents would feel bad, I’m sure, but I have a big brother who’s their pride and joy. It’d be a lot harder for them to lose him.”

  “Come on, Wally. Parents don’t think that way.”

  Wally tried to think about that. He knew that everyone would miss him. Still, if his parents had to lose one of their children, they could let go of him more easily than the others. But until this moment, he had never thought about it that way, and the truth of it hurt him. “Well, Lieutenant, I’m not—”

  “You can call me Don.”

  “Okay.” But Wally didn’t do it. “I’m not saying that my parents wouldn’t feel bad. But they would get over it. They have five other kids who never trouble them as much as I do.” Wally had reached a clearing. He could see the sky, the stars. A memory of summer camp in the mountains, back when he was a boy, struck him. In those days it had never occurred to him that he might be any less valued than the other kids.

  “It doesn’t work that way, Wally. Your child is your child.”

  Wally wasn’t sure. He knew what a disappointment he had been to his father. Before, however, that thought had always come to mind as a reproach against Dad; now everything seemed changed. Men had died that morning, suddenly and easily, and he could have died the same way. It occurred to him how little he had to show for his life, how little effort he had given.

  “One of my girls is four, and one is two,” Lieutenant Cluff said. “I haven’t seen the baby since she was six months old.”

  He didn’t add to that. But the point was there. Wally felt the man’s agony, and he found himself wishing he had something to care that much about. He wondered what Lorraine was doing now. He had never written to her, but his parents mentioned her in their letters now and then. She had asked about him, they said—and she wasn’t married. But that’s all he knew.

  Suddenly Wally wanted to stay alive, and for the first time, fear struck him. He wanted—needed—more time so he could do things right. All that talk about making money, starting a business, being out on his own—what was that? He had spent a year and a half away from home, and he hadn’t kept a single commitment to his mother and father, or to himself. He wasn’t one step closer to knowing what he believed or what he wanted to do with his life. And now the Japanese would be coming back, attacking the base again. What if he never made it home?

  And then Wally was struck with a thought so surprising and yet so obvious that it was stunning. All this time his dad had been right—annoying and sometimes overpowering, but still right. Why hadn’t he had the sense to stay home, learn his dad’s business, grab the opportunity to go to college? What had he been thinking? Suddenly he wanted to sit down with his dad and talk everything out, to say to him, “Dad, let’s start over. I was just a kid and I did and said a lot of stupid things.”

  Behind him, in the dark, he heard Lieutenant Cluff, still thinking out loud. “My older daughter—Patty—could only talk a little when I left. Now she’s saying everything. My wife writes two or three times a week, and she tells me all the things she says. She’s a smart little girl.”

  “How long have you been married?” Wally asked, mostly just to show he was listening.

  “Five years. A little more. My wife got pregnant the first month. But that was fine with us. We wanted kids.”

  And then he kept talking. He told about meeting his wife in high school, getting married when he was nineteen, and then deciding to join the army when times were still pretty tough. He had applied for officer’s training and gotten it, and then had received the chance to shift from the regular army to the air corps. Everything had worked out well, and he liked the service. But he had only seen it as a good job during the depression. He had never really expected to end up in a war.

  Wally listened without fully concentrating on the story. He was thinking more about his family. They would hear, soon now, that the Philippines had been attacked. They would worry. Bobbi and Mom would show it the most, but everyone would worry. He wondered how Beverly and LaRue would react. And Gene. He wished he could see them at least one more time.

  “You’re a Mormon, aren’t you?” Cluff asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t seem all that religious to me. Are you?”

  “I guess not—not the way you mean it. But I was raised to be a good Mormon. My dad’s a leader in our church and everything. What about you? Are you religious?”

  “I guess so. In a way. I’m about like you. My parents took me to church every Sunday my whole life, and the first time I got away from home, I stopped going. It wasn’t anything I even thought very much about. I just didn’t find much interest in listening to sermons.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “She’s the same way about church. But she thinks about things like that a lot more than I do.”

  “She’ll be praying for you,” Wally said.

  “I know. She will. I’ve said a few prayers myself today. I guess you have too.”

  “Not yet,” Wally said, actually embarrassed, but not willing to lie about something like that.

  “Do you want to stop here, maybe, and . . . you know . . . say a prayer with me?”

  Wally kept walking. “I don’t know, Lieutenant. I haven’t prayed for a while, so it seems a little wrong to start asking the Lord to bother with me now.”

  “I’m no authority, but I do believe in God. And I don’t think for a minute that he thinks that way. Let’s stop here, before we get back to Clark.”

  It wasn’t exactly an order, not in the military sense, but Wally didn’t have the nerve to say no. And so he stopped.

  “Do you know a prayer?”

  “We just . . . say what we think needs to be said.”

  “Why don’t you say it then. I’ve never really done that.”

  Wally hesitated. He wasn’t ready. But he couldn’t think what to tell Lieutenant Cluff. “Okay,” he finally said. He ducked his head and folded his arms, the way he had done in Primary, long ago. “Our Father in Heaven,” he said, but the words almost stuck in his throat he was so ashamed. “We ask thee to bless Lieutenant Cluff. If I were to die here, it wouldn’t matter so much, but Lieutenant Cluff has a family, and he needs to get back. Protect him, Lord. Put a shield around him to stop the bullets. Give him strength to withstand whatever comes. And bless his wife and children with comfort.”

  Wally closed the prayer, unable to ask anything on his own behalf.

  “You didn’t need to do that,” Cluff said. “I meant to pray for both of us—or all of us.”

  “I know. But you’re the one who needs to get back.”

  “You sounded like a priest or a minister or something. I’ve never heard a prayer like that.”

  “I do have the priesthood. Young guys in our church start out with the priesthood at twelve.” Wally wasn’t quite sure how to explain all that.

  “I feel better,” Lieutenant Cluff said. “I really do.”

  “When I said it, I felt like you would get through. I think you will.”

  Wally wasn’t sure what he was doing—imitating his father, he supposed. But he really had gotten a feeling that his friend would live through this. That was strange, but it was also comforting. Dad—and Alex—would have handled it better, expressed themselves more eloquently. But something in helping this man—or at least asking for help—felt good.

  Wally thought of adding his own prayer—for himself—as he began to walk again. But he couldn’t do it. He just didn’t feel that he had a right to ask.

  Chapter 33

  By the time
Wally walked all the way back to the campsite on the river, it was three in the morning, and he was so tired he could hardly keep moving. He found his blanket, lay down on the ground, and fell instantly asleep. He didn’t wake up until the sun was high in the sky.

  By then, some of the men had gone back to the airfield. Bulldozers were repairing the runway. With all the hangars destroyed, the new airplanes had to be hidden under the cover of brush and trees. It was going to be a tough job, and it had to be done fast. Around noon, trucks finally showed up to haul the rest of the men back to Clark Field from their bivouac site.

  Most of the men had still not eaten, and they were tired and bedraggled, so they had little to say as the truck lurched and bounced over the rough road. Wally could see that the men were experiencing the same thing he was: disbelief. How could this have happened? From one day to the next everything had changed. And beyond all of them lay a future that was as troublesome for its unclarity as it was for its threat.

  Wally had a picture in his mind that kept coming back. It had happened so quickly at the time that he hadn’t thought much about it, but in the night on the trail, and again now, he saw it all over again. When he had been hiding behind the pile of sand, and the Zeros had kept diving and strafing, he had looked up once to see one of those planes, very low, coming in just above the trees. The airplane had angled toward the hangars, not toward Wally and Len, and Wally had watched as it passed on by. For just one instant, Wally had been able to see the pilot himself, and Wally was sure the man had been smiling.

  It had all been a blur, and yet the thought that the pilot had enjoyed what he was doing was infuriating. Wally couldn’t imagine himself feeling that way. He knew all the men who were dead. He knew that their families would soon be getting word about these deaths that had occurred on the first day, in the first hours, of the war. He could imagine how much pain would come just from this one attack.

  Wally thought he could kill that pilot and feel good about it. He had never known such hatred in his life. He thought of Mat Nakashima and all the things they had talked about, but this seemed to have nothing to do with any of that. All he knew was that men in airplanes, men with machine guns, were trying to kill him. He didn’t care what country they were fighting for—or even who they were. They wanted to kill him, and he wished he could kill them first.

  Wally was still lost in his own thoughts as the truck bounced over the road. And then he heard the noise. Airplanes. “Japs!” someone yelled, and the men began to bail out. Wally jumped to his feet and then swung over the side of the truck. As he landed on the ground, he glanced at the sky and saw two Zeros slicing diagonally across the road, guns firing. He dove into the underbrush and rolled.

  The pilots had apparently not seen the trucks until they were almost past. They had fired quick bursts of gunfire that had slashed harmlessly through the trees beyond the road. But someone shouted, “They’ll be back. Get good cover.”

  Wally jumped up and struggled through the bracken to get deeper into the jungle, and he tucked himself under some ferns and thick bushes. Then he waited. The pilots had to know that the men were close to the road. If they happened to strafe along his side, the greenery over him was certainly not going to stop any bullets. He thought of jumping up to scramble deeper into the woods, but the movement might bring attention to himself should the fighters return at that moment. And so he lay on the ground, rolled up like a potato bug, and he waited.

  He could hear nothing, only his own hard breathing and the sounds in the jungle—birds singing as though it were a lovely day. It was all so strange and infuriating. What did those pilots think they were doing up there? Were they just flying around trying to find someone to shoot at—just for the pleasure? He wished with all his heart that he were a pilot, that he could get up in the air and take those guys on.

  The fighters didn’t return. All the same, the airmen waited for a long time before they finally came out of the brush. And when they did, Wally noticed a change in them. They had been frightened as they had jumped off the truck, and maybe they still were, but they were also angry. They climbed back onto the trucks, and they cursed and swore, called the pilots every disgusting name they could think of. Wally felt the same rage, but he didn’t curse. He didn’t want to do that now.

  Anger was a much better emotion than fear, and the men seized it with relish. They bragged about all that the Americans were going to do once reinforcements and more airplanes reached the islands. “We’re going to wipe out every one of those little slant-eyes,” one of the men vowed. He was a mechanic who had been drunk almost every night for as long as Wally had known him. He was sober now, though, and he was dirty and unshaven. He looked fierce enough to fight, but Wally knew he wasn’t really ready. None of these men were.

  The tough talk continued all the way back to Clark, but the airfield was a frightening reminder of the reality the men were facing. The place was like a ghost town, and the skeletons of the former hangars, the wreckage of the airplanes, now bulldozed into a heap, only made it clear how completely the Japanese were in control. The squadron did have a few P-40s again now, but the word was that they would be used mainly to watch the movements of the enemy. There were not enough of them to take on the Japanese in any sort of air battle.

  The other talk was even more grim. Those who knew said the American planes were a joke compared to the Japanese fighters. The American pilots were probably equal in their flying skills, but the P-40s were too slow and awkward to hold their own with the Zeros they would have to fight.

  “How could Uncle Sam let something like this happen?” the men kept asking each other. What were they doing out here without better equipment, better preparation? Why hadn’t anyone known what the Japanese were up to? And men speculated quietly that maybe reinforcements would not be quick to come. If the Japanese had attacked Hawaii and the Philippines, where else had they attacked? Who else needed to be defended? Did the army even have enough troops and airplanes to deal with so many fronts? And what was left of the navy after Pearl Harbor?

  That evening the men were instructed to set up camp in a nearby canyon, just beyond Fort Stotsenberg, and to dig in. Most of them did little that night but get a decent night’s sleep. But the next morning they went to work. The hard labor was actually welcome after two days of inaction and too much time to think. Most men were especially committed to digging themselves deep foxholes, but they also worked at trenches near the field and near the cooking area at their camp. And they worked hard to get the airplanes protected. These planes were their last offensive firepower, even if they weren’t taking on the Zeros that were still flying about, unmolested.

  Wally’s C.O. told him that each man would have to look after his own supplies—a blanket and a few personal items—so the position of supply sergeant, for the present, had little meaning. Wally spent his time digging with all the rest. Each day, Japanese bombers returned. They bombed the airstrip and the already ruined hangars. Men had to stay on watch at all times, and workers had to scramble for the trenches each time another raid began. Fighters would also show up at odd times, coming in low and fast, sending sudden terror through the camp.

  After three days the work was mostly finished. Men spent their time digging their own holes deeper or just sitting around talking. And Wally felt the fear deepening. The truth was, these men were trapped on the island with few resources, and no one knew when help would come. Most seemed to feel they would hold out all right against any land invasion, so long as help would come eventually. But the talk about blasting the Japanese away had stopped, and a clear reality had taken shape: Things were likely to get a lot worse before they got better.

  Some of the men turned inside themselves and seemed consumed by fear. One sergeant spent almost all his time in his own foxhole and would come out only when hunger drove him to it. Another man, a big cook who had always been a sour cuss and a bully, now became almost paralyzed with fear. The men, recognizing this, loved to shout, “Here they c
ome!” just to see him dive into his foxhole and lie there trembling.

  Wally wasn’t going to act like a coward, and yet, he did understand the impulse. The bombers continued to blow up the airstrip, and everyone had to wonder: How long before the pilots realized where the airplanes were? The area under the trees, near the field, had to be a rather obvious site for the planes to be sheltered. So when would the bombers and the fighters start working over the nearby jungle instead of the airfield and the bombed out hangars?

  Daylight hours were constantly frightening. Only at night, when the Japanese didn’t attack, could Wally relax. Sleep was a welcome escape, and even in a dirty foxhole, in the humid night air and among the bugs and mosquitoes, he slept well.

  A few days after the first raid, Wally was working in the area near the hidden airplanes. Some pilots were about to taxi from the revetments and take off, so the fighters’ engines were already roaring. Over the noise of the P-40s, Wally heard a vehicle approach. He turned around to see a guy he knew, Sandy Hodges, driving up in a cut-down pickup truck. He had a big grin on his face, and Wally wondered what he was up to.

  He braked and then bounced out of the truck. He had a box in his hand, which he slapped onto the hood of the truck. Then he reached in and pulled out a double handful of cigars. “Cigars! Cigars!” he yelled above the drone of the engines.

  Wally wondered where Sandy had managed to scrounge a box of cigars, and he looked around to see who wanted one—but saw no one at all. Instantly, Wally guessed what was happening. He spun to look at the lookout tower the men had built. A red flag was waving in the breeze—the sign for an air attack. At the same moment, Wally heard the whistle of dropping bombs. The noise from the engines had apparently drowned out the sound of the approaching bombers, and he hadn’t noticed the flag go up.