by Sean Wallace
“Tell me what you know of Pearl Harbor.”
“Pearl . . .” She clasped her hands together, palm to palm, shoulders beginning to ache now given the range of motion the cuffs allowed. She shook her head a little, trying to make sense of what he was asking. “Can you . . . Can you tell me what the date is?” Her eyes were drawn to the Christmas décor once more.
Her question seemed to stir the first bit of unease she saw in his eyes, a stone thrown into water. “Fifth of January.”
“It’s May,” she whispered, unable to stop the words. “We left Tonopah and it was May.” Had no one missed her? Had no one wondered when the Black Dragon hadn’t been delivered? She met his eyes and swallowed hard, forcing herself to remember what he had asked of her. “There is a naval station at Pearl Harbor, but I’ve never been there. Our routes are all mainland, usually solo and I’m out of Alamogordo, but this plane . . . She’s . . .” She wanted to tell him how well the Black Dragon flew, but fell to silence. January!
“You failed to deliver your plane, Miss Sakata. They believed you and your crew stole it, sold it, possibly to the Germans, yeah?” Minsky chewed his pen as he regarded her.
Fuming, Dorothy clasped her hands together and thumped their combined weight against her thigh. The Germans. She wasn’t buying that, but the idea that a pilot might take the plane they meant to deliver was one she and other pilots always speculated over; how easy, to just fly into the wide sky and not look back.
She told him then, about the cloud, about the way it had pulled the Black Dragon inside. Told him about the vessel and how she had woken, alone; said someone needed to send a plane back up there for Ina and Ruth. The more she talked, the more the disquiet in his eyes grew, his jaw tightening.
“Mines Field lost a plane to this thing in April, didn’t they?” she asked. She realized she had slid to the edge of the cot and was leaning toward Minsky, daring him to admit something had gone wrong and had been going wrong for a long while now. “There have been all kinds of reports of strange clouds in the sky – huge storms. They’re not storms, Master Sergeant, least not as we know them.”
And then he told her, about the war, about the Imperial Japanese Navy and their attack on Pearl Harbor. One hundred and eighty-three planes in the skies, Minsky said, and twenty-four hundred dead. The navy destroyed, the world on fire, and Dorothy could say nothing for the shock that paralyzed her. The way they’d trained the guns on her, the slur in the officer’s mouth, came into slow focus. She stared at Minsky, her mouth gaping open, but she couldn’t find the words for a long while.
“This . . . this thing,” Dorothy eventually managed. “It’s not Japanese. It’s not even German if I had to guess. There were these . . .” A shudder rolled through her; she couldn’t say gremlins to him, couldn’t. “Beings . . . and they are . . . It’s not—”
“It won’t matter,” Minsky said. He drew the pen from his mouth and closed it into her file as he stood from the cot. “As a Japanese-American, you have been designated an enemy alien, your flight status revoked. They’ll be sending you to a camp, Sakata, where they’ve herded up the rest of your kind for . . . safe keeping.”
The venom in his voice couldn’t be concealed. As much as he might have wanted to listen to her, he wouldn’t – couldn’t – because orders were orders. Dorothy stood from the cot, her gaze not wavering on Minsky.
“With all due respect, that thing is probably still out there! Swallowing planes, keeping them, studying them – who knows what, but it’s – I lost eight months inside that thing and two of my crew and you—”
“Enough.” Minsky cut her protest short with a single word.
Dorothy sank back to the cot, staring at the floor beyond her cuffed wrists. Seven months lost, the world entirely changed, and what of her family? At the idea of what had become of her mother, father and grandparents, it seemed those gremlin hands moved inside her again, but now they squeezed her heart until it might burst.
She always watched the skies.
Fair weather or foul, Dorothy assessed the skies morning, noon, and night, but in the fourteen months that followed her transfer to the internment camp on the eastern plains of Colorado, she saw nothing resembling what she had encountered in the skies above Nevada and began to wonder if it wouldn’t be making a repeat performance. Reliable news of the outside world was infrequent within the camp, not that the military would have told its prisoners anything, be it regarding strange storms in the sky or otherwise, Dorothy supposed. The ghosts of Ina and Ruth haunted her dreams, but there was nothing she could do for them behind these walls.
They were kept inside a mile-square enclosure, on land formerly populated by the Cheyenne. It wasn’t uncommon to find arrowheads in the clay dirt as they dug new gardens; Dorothy had a small collection of them now, surprised that no one had been by to collect them, labeling them forbidden goods. The walls that enclosed the city – if it could be called such – were patrolled by hulking automatons, and at regular intervals, towers sporting machine guns that discouraged anyone from taking a stroll beyond the stone. The camp had barracks, a cemetery, a dump, and even a hospital, where the morning found Dorothy studying the skies, while the Dragon Yamamoto decided if he’d trade medicine for a nugget of gold.
Yamamoto, possibly the oldest person Dorothy had ever seen, pressed the nugget between his teeth, eyes narrowed to slits as if the process were the most difficult he had ever experienced. Dorothy waited, having learned how to swallow impatience. Yamamoto knew her mother was not well, never having adjusted to Colorado’s altitude, and that the doctors could prescribe nothing to help, save for the advice she live closer to the sea. Transferring her to another camp was impossible, so the doctors wrote her off as a lost cause, surprised she hadn’t already died. Dorothy refused to give up so easily, seeking out the wisest within the camp to procure something, anything, to help her mother breathe. But even the wisest was not without his own rituals and antics. Yamamoto liked to perform for those who sought him out. Dorothy could not help but look at the sky, though; today, the blue vault was absolutely flawless, as if the sky had never had the idea of clouds.
“Take this.”
The old man pressed a linen pouch into Dorothy’s hands, drawing her attention from the cloudless day. The pouch was light as though empty, and the color of Mrs Watanabe’s best eggs. Yamamoto nodded, the gold nugget resting as a lump in his cheek.
“Will ease her breathing, that. Manticore scales, you tell her. Brew the tea.” Yamamoto shuffled across the small courtyard and settled into the lounge chair he usually occupied. “Tell Jun his presents are coming, probably here by Friday.” His mouth split in a bright grin. “I never get to the other side of the city these days – Jun keeps the rickshaw?”
Dorothy wanted to laugh at the question of the rickshaw, but mention of Jun’s “presents” tempered her mood. Had Yamamoto actually acquired the weapons Jun sought? “Painted it orange and white, calls it the Tank,” she answered of the rickshaw. She glanced up at the camp’s water tower, also painted orange and white. It towered over everything, gleaming in the day’s sun.
“Domo arigatou gozaimasu,” Dorothy said and made a bow to Yamamoto. His mouth lifted in a smile and he waved her off.
“Go, onēsan. Go.”
Dorothy went. Some days, Yamamoto was prone to stories, but too often liked to dwell on how the military had roused he and his family from their homes, when they had done nothing suspicious. None of them had, Dorothy knew, but given the tensions with Japan . . .
No, that didn’t excuse it. She had tried to understand, but could not. She cast a glance at the sky as she walked toward their family dwelling; the entire complex was built well enough and if one didn’t look beyond the innermost structures, one might not see the walls, the guns, the hulking automatons that moved against anyone who came near or stepped out of line. But Dorothy had not been able to live that way, not with the wide open sky above them and the ache of flying in her bones.
She was grateful to have been assigned to the same camp as her own family, her father and mother and grandmother. Many families had not been so lucky, separated at the time of the transfers. Dorothy was certain she would not forget the look on her mother’s face when Minsky brought her to the camp – that mixture of sorrow and relief flooding her eyes.
That Minsky had brought her told Dorothy something, too. He hadn’t been able to act on the information she had given him regarding the strange storm and its vessel, but he believed her. Seeing her placed with her family was – well, it wasn’t an apology, but it was something.
Belief was something, too, and one reason Dorothy kept watching the skies. Every time planes passed overhead, she looked, and every time thunderstorms gathered, she looked. When the moon was new and hidden, she looked, fearing that such a storm could creep up upon them in the dark of night and swallow them whole. It was a child’s fear, but she could not shake it. There were still nights she woke from dreams wherein she felt her ribs being spread apart, her bones flooded by the viscous fluids that had splattered the hangar walls.
Dorothy found her mother on her knees in the garden at the end of the barracks. Her small body was bent over the soil, working to break up the thick clay that made most of the ground here. It was a wonder the vegetables grew as well as they did, but despite all conditions, the gardens of the city flourished. It was early in the growing season yet, but small hints of green had begun to shade the plots, lattices being hammered into place to support eventual vines.
“Okaasan, come rest, I have your tea.”
Keiko came as bid, dirt cascading from her worn trousers. Her fingers were clotted with clay, which she rolled off and tossed back into the garden plot. A small patio of their own making edged against the barracks, a space of shade, stone, and a variety of padded chairs that had been acquired from neighbors. All were welcome to come, but few did, still not entirely trusting Dorothy. Hadn’t she flown for the Americans? Perhaps she was a spy, sent to watch over them and report to the white men. Denying the suspicions only gained her more.
“Have you ever seen such a clear sky?” Keiko murmured as she sat in her favorite chair, the metal frame padded with fabric decorated with yellow birds and blue morning glories. Dorothy liked to imagine it was a scene her mother remembered from her childhood in Japan, just as the wind chime her mother had made and her grandmother’s paintings within their rooms touched back on the quiet life she had led there.
Dorothy looked up at the familiar blue. “No,” she said, and it was true. Perhaps the afternoon would bring storms to study, but this sky was strangely clear and calm, endless. She turned her attention to the tea she was preparing for her mother, trying to keep her hands steady. What she withdrew from the pouch was not manticore scales, but leaves. They possessed a sheen to them that made them look like small dragon scales, recently plucked from a snoozing beast.
“Okaasan, have you seen Jun today?” The idea of the “presents” Yamamoto was bringing still made Dorothy twitch. Jun couldn’t be serious about blowing a hole in the camp’s outer wall, he just couldn’t. The landscape beyond the walls was flat, endless. He would never get out and if he did get out, he’d never get away.
“No,” Keiko said. She rolled the last of the clay from her fingers then dunked her hands into the bucket of water nearby; she washed her hands the way she often washed her paintbrushes, eyes on Dorothy. “You don’t think he means—”
Whatever else Keiko meant to say was lost in the sudden rumble of an aircraft passing over; nothing so strange as the storm Dorothy kept an eye out for, but unusual nonetheless. Carrying high-level personnel, Dorothy thought, and that coupled with Jun’s “presents” made her meet her mother’s gaze.
“Oh, I think he means it.” She settled a few leaves into her mother’s favorite cup, then went inside to put the kettle on. She prayed for the ritual of tea to take her mind to a calmer place, but it never did; she stared out the small kitchen window at the sky, wondering what else it would bring.
It brought nothing until nightfall, when the camp began to settle for sleep. Dorothy finished the last of their dishes and prepared to brew her mother another cup of tea that might help ease her breathing. She was listening to her parents soft murmur of Japanese from the sitting room when she saw from the kitchen window the spark of light against the dark sky. Her stomach knotted and she couldn’t breathe, watching a long trail of light draw itself upon the night’s otherwise blank canvas. It was perfectly white, like a flare gun, and when Dorothy stepped outside, she could smell the faint tang of gunpowder on the air.
“Jun,” she whispered.
She looked back once, considering that she should tell her parents where she meant to go, but they would only worry if she did. If anything happened, she knew they were smart enough to not run into the middle of it, and so without a word she left the building. Her boots moved silent over the dry, fallow ground between barracks, as she made her way to the farthest edge of the gardens, where Jun had said he meant to stage his attack.
In this space, no light from the barracks fell and Jun was a shadow that resembled an overgrown pumpkin, hunched with arms sprawling as he worked to assemble the last of his weapons, bundles of dynamite. His hands were gentle in the work, steady, as if carrying his young niece and nephew had prepared him for such a delicate work. Children or explosives – Dorothy saw the similarities between them as she cleared her throat. Clearly the presents Yamamoto had promised were already here. Had Friday been code for something else?
“Heard you two plots back,” Jun said without looking up. “Guess pilots don’t need soft footfalls, eh Sakura?”
Dorothy was glad of the darkness, so Jun wouldn’t see the way she flinched when he used her call sign. The comment was nearly an insult, touching on a beloved profession she could no longer pursue but still longed for. She swallowed every insult that rose to mind and looked at the nearby stone wall Jun thought he could take down. It rose like a sheet of black iron against the night sky, higher than she could estimate. It was two feet thick, they said, like a castle wall. Atop the battlements, the automatons patrolled. If Jun did manage to blast the wall open, he’d bring those things down on their heads, into the camps where they would hunt freely.
The automatons were metal giants, the latest in a line of constructed beings; their predecessors had been made of leather and glue, lacquer and wood, things easier to blow apart. These automatons were an upgrade, designed to quell further camp disruptions, and so far, they’d been worth whatever the military had paid for them; in twelve months, the camp had lain quiet, its citizens compliant. Metal, Jun insisted, would prove just as subservient to the whims of well-placed dynamite.
“In five minutes,” Jun said, “the first will go.” He lifted his head, to study Dorothy in the dark, the bundle of dynamite held carefully in his hands. “Have you come to help?”
There was no good answer to this question and Dorothy only looked into his eyes for a long while, remembering when she had met him on her first day in the camp. He had been brewing her mother’s tea that day, having cared for her parents from the time they had arrived, bruised in spirit and flesh both. She felt that debt upon her shoulders even now, for Jun had no family of his own here, only that which he had made.
“There is no shame in saying no, Dorothy,” Jun said. He cradled the dynamite in one arm, and reached for her with the other. His fingers were cool against her cheek. “I know you have your family to think of.”
But Dorothy found herself shaking her head. “This is no way for them to live, but if the wall comes down, and those . . . things are let loose in here . . . I don’t know which is worse, Jun. Waiting for them or having them come.” She could have said the same of the strange storm cloud, feeling its lingering threat much as she did that of the automatons. “I have come to help.”
Jun’s smile was bright even in the night. “Thunderous Raijin comes to us in many forms and tonight, possesses yours.” Jun handed Dorothy the bun
dle of dynamite then plucked another from the ground nearby. “Place that at the tower behind you and look for the double flare before the wall goes. After the wall, the automatons. Hiroshi saw them wired.”
“Wired—”
Jun sprinted off and Dorothy looked up as an automaton passed on its regular patrol. It moved with a low sound of thunder. Jun’s brother, Hiroshi, was part of the small crew allowed upon the wall to help service the great machines; they were often in need of oil and wrenching, subject to decay as everything in the world seemed to be. What had they done under the guise of normal repairs? Dorothy pictured their metallic bellies filled with explosives and as the world began to ignite around them, figured she was not far from wrong.
She placed her bundle of dynamite at the base of the tower, finding the end of the fuse Jun had been running. She tied the bundle in and ran for cover, through the gardens, aware of her shoes sticking in the damp clay, of the plants she trampled when the white double flare illuminated the night and the first explosions rocked the camp. The night turned to day as the dynamite ignited, shards of wall and tower and automaton blown throughout the camp. Dorothy was thrown to the ground under the force of one blast, knees hitting before the rest of her came down. Clouds of smoke and dust concealed the camp, but beyond that veil, she watched in amazement as the wall shattered, as each and every automaton atop the wall erupted in violent fireballs. She thought she saw human faces within the flames, kechibi come to swallow the wicked who remained upon the earth. Dorothy hoped they took each and every guard, each and every soldier, so that her people might live beyond walls once more, that she might fly the sky again.
She felt not so much possessed by the thunder god Raijin as she did a frightened child. The camp wall continued to fall, automatons exploding and dropping like shooting stars from its great height, and everywhere people emerged from the barracks, shrieking in delight and terror both. The delight was short-lived as Dorothy began to hear the weapons fire within the camp – not dynamite, but guns, pistols and, quick on their heels, machine guns. Dorothy’s stomach sank.