A Boy at War Read online

  It was close to the middle of the day, and the sky was like a hot blue plate. Birds darting through the trees set his heart pumping. One minute he was leaning against the top of the cab, watching birds, and the next a Japanese fighter plane, a Zero that seemed bigger than the whole sky, was on top of them.

  Adam banged on the cab. People tumbled off the truck. Then he had the gun to his shoulder. How that happened, how he got to the top of the cab, he didn’t remember, but he was up there, shooting as fast as he could, one clip after another.

  The empty shells bounced off the cab. He was excited, so excited that he was trembling. It was the smell of gunpowder and the way the rifle recoiled into his shoulder. He kept shooting, even after the plane had disappeared.

  “Hey!” The driver was looking up at him. “What are you doing up there?” People were coming out of the ditches. “It’s gone,” the driver said. “Get down.”

  Adam slid off the cab and jumped down into the road. His head was on fire, and his heart, too. He walked along the side of the road with the gun raised, at the ready. They passed a car with all the windows shot out, and, once, there was gunfire ahead. He put the gun to his shoulder several times, but there were no more planes.

  For a while he and the truck kept pace, but then the truck got ahead of him. “Come on,” the driver called, sticking his head out the window. “Come on, hop on.”

  Adam waved and kept walking. He was still too keyed up to get back on the truck.

  Adam walked. Sun high, almost no shade anywhere, the sky as blank as a sheet of paper, as if smoke and planes—the attack itself—had been erased. Here and there cars had been abandoned. He heard more firing, sometimes a distant explosion like thunder. Once, he saw a plane falling, spinning out of control. Maybe it was the plane he’d fired at. A thin spiral of smoke appeared over the trees. It reminded him of summers camping in the mountains and the way smoke from their campfire drifted up through the branches.

  Looking for a place to relieve himself, Adam turned off on a dirt road where a hubcap was nailed to a tree. That was when he saw the jeep sitting in a bamboo grove with the key in the ignition.

  “Hello?” he called, hoping to get a ride. “Anyone home?” When nobody appeared, he began to think something had happened to the driver. He poked around in the bushes, calling, making a lot of noise.

  “Hello, hello?” He looked the jeep over. No blood. No bullet holes. He got in the driver’s seat, put the gun down next to him, and worked the shift through the gears. He could drive this jeep. He pulled the choke out, pushed it in, then turned on the key. The engine light came on. He found the starter on the floor. The engine coughed a couple of times, then caught.

  He drove the jeep forward a few feet, then back. He blew the horn. “Last chance,” he said, and blew the horn some more. Then he drove the jeep down the dirt road. Not a car or another person around. Nothing but sugarcane fields on both sides.

  He passed low buildings and warehouses. He kept both hands on the wheel, not rushing, looking around, imagining the jeep was his. Then, ahead, in the middle of the road, he saw a man wearing bright blue coveralls and what looked like a white parachute harness. The man came running toward the jeep. Adam’s mouth dried. Jap paratrooper, he thought. He meant to put the car in reverse, but he forgot everything and pressed hard on the accelerator.

  The car leaped forward. It was running away with him. He was going straight for the man, who jumped aside, shouting. “Are you drunk? You almost killed me.”

  Adam hit the brake and the jeep skidded off the road. He sat there, trembling. He couldn’t move. He could hardly speak.

  The man came up to the jeep and stared menacingly at Adam. “Who are you?”

  “Adam . . .” he stammered. “Adam Pelko.”

  “Pelko?” The man looked at the gun and then at Adam. “Kind of an exciting day today, right, Pelko?”

  Adam nodded. “I thought . . . you know . . . you were in the middle of the road, and—”

  “You got a cigarette, Pelko?”

  Adam shook his head.

  “I smoked every one of mine. You sure you haven’t got one? I’m dying for a smoke.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You don’t have to ‘sir’ me. I’m the same as you. I’m Brown and you’re Pelko. Where you going, Pelko?”

  “Honolulu.”

  “Okay, you got company.”

  They pushed the jeep back onto the road. Adam was still shaken up, and he asked Brown if he wanted to drive.

  “No sweat. But how about you put that gun in back?”

  Adam put the rifle and the bandolier in the backseat, then got in on the passenger side. As Brown drove he got more and more talkative. He was based at Hickman Field, ground crew, and this morning—“of all mornings,” he said—he’d gone up for a ride with a pilot friend.

  “Joy ride. Some joy. The next thing we know, there’re planes flying with us, and this Jap pilot is looking at me and I’m looking at him, and the next thing I know, we get hit. I wasn’t even going to put the parachute on. ‘What do I need that for,’ I said to my friend. All the jumping I do, I do on the ground. And he says, ‘Put it on, Brown, or stay on the ground.’ He saved my life.” Brown fell silent. “I don’t think he got out.”

  In the middle of the afternoon they drove into Honolulu. For some time the engine had been misfiring, but Brown kept it going, playing with the choke and the gas pedal. He didn’t want to stop, and neither did Adam.

  Honolulu was like a battlefield. Military everywhere. Marines on the roof of the telephone building, army trucks in the streets, even a tank.

  On Hotel Street the jeep died. They pushed it to the curb. Brown put his head under the hood and began to fiddle with the engine. This was the street with all the honky-tonks and bars, the street Adam’s parents had warned him against. Now it swarmed with military vehicles and military police. Adam kept an eye on the MPs, afraid they’d notice him. What’s your unit, sailor? Where’d you get the jeep? And that gun?

  For a while he stood looking into the window of an army-navy store, where sailors and soldiers came to buy their insignias and get them sewn onto their uniforms. He felt trapped, impatient to keep going, to get home. “Any luck?”

  “I’m giving up,” Brown said, slamming down the hood and kicking the jeep a couple of times. “Let’s go over to the Y. We’ll catch a ride back to the base.”

  “I’m going that way,” Adam said, pointing in the opposite direction.

  Brown shrugged. “Suit yourself. See you around sometime.” And he walked off.

  Adam took the gun. He wanted it, but he was afraid that he’d be noticed. In the doorway of an empty store he took off his shirt and wrapped the gun and bandolier in it and put them under his arm.

  Once he left the downtown, everything changed. He passed from one tree-lined street to another. It was another world, a world without bombs. It was too peaceful, too quiet, too ordinary. He kept waiting for an explosion, for gunfire. He stayed close to buildings, looking up, ready to take cover. A car honked and his heart jumped. A door slamming sent him crouching under a hedge.

  On every street and on every corner people were gathered, talking. Cars on lawns were being loaded with boxes and bedding. A boy on a bicycle sped by, yelling, “Don’t drink the water. I heard it on the radio. It’s poisoned.”

  Adam heard people talking about curfews and blackouts. “Sailor,” a man called out. Adam checked to see if his cap was on right. “Sailor, are the roads open?”

  “Jammed.”

  Trees were casting long shadows when he turned up Punchbowl Street. He was close to home now, and he started running. Darkness closed in. Near the house he hid the gun in the bushes, then shook out the shirt and put it on.

  The house was dark. The front door was locked. Adam went to the back. The kitchen door was locked too. He tried the windows. Locked and curtained. Where were they? Had they left without him? Had something happened? He went around to the front again, yelling n
ow and banging on the door. “Mom! Bea! Mom!”

  The door opened a crack. “Who are you?” a voice whispered.

  “Where’s my mother?” He tried to push into the house. It was his house! “Where’s my sister? Who are you!”

  “Shhh!” A light flickered. He saw the shadow of a face.

  “Who are you?” he said again.

  Then another voice—a voice he recognized—said, “It’s Adam. Let him in, Janet.”

  It was Mrs. Parker, their neighbor, and the woman holding the door against him was another neighbor, Mrs. Collins.

  “Oh, it’s Adam,” she said. She was holding a golf club like a weapon. “All that shouting, it sounded like Japanese to us, Adam.” She was still whispering. “We’ve been hearing so many things on the radio—”

  Mrs. Parker pushed her aside. “Janet,” she hissed, “will you stop telling him stories and let him in? Go tell Marilyn her son is home. Our little hero is back.”

  “Is something wrong?” he said. “Is Mom okay?”

  “She’s putting Bea in her pajamas.” Mrs. Parker tugged his arm. “She’s been worried sick about you, Adam.”

  He stumbled going into the living room. It was crowded with women and children, some of them holding shovels and sticks. It was so spooky. A flashlight played over the ceiling. Everything suddenly seemed unfamiliar, as if he’d been away for so long he’d forgotten where he lived and had walked into the wrong house.

  Then Bea came flying at him, and his mother was there, too, grabbing him and holding him so tight it hurt.

  “Where were you?” she said. “All day, this whole terrible day, I’ve been waiting. I’ve been waiting to hear from you. Bombs falling, your father out there, and you, God only knows where.” She pushed him away. “Do you know what kind of day this has been for me?” She sank down in a chair.

  “Mom.” He didn’t know how to explain, even how to begin to explain. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “Sorry . . . ,” she said.

  He picked up Bea and held on to her. “Did you eat your candy?” A dumb thing to say, but it was all he could think of.

  “I saved you a bite. You’re a sailor?” She took his cap off and put it on her head.

  His mother was sitting there, her hand over her mouth. “Mom . . . I’m sorry.” He looked around helplessly. He wanted to tell her everything, that he’d been shot and about his father’s ship, but he couldn’t. Not now. “What are all these people doing here, Mom?”

  “We’re defending ourselves.” She picked up a hammer from the floor. “Ridiculous, isn’t it? Adam, you smell! What is that?”

  “Probably oil,” he said.

  “Oil? Where were you?”

  “I’ll tell you . . .” He was so tired now, he couldn’t speak. He just managed to scrub up and change clothes, and then he fell on his bed.

  * * *

  He didn’t think he’d slept at all, but when he woke up, all the other people had left. Bea was asleep, and his mother was sitting in the dark on one of Bea’s little chairs by the front door.

  He sat down on the floor next to her. The door was open, and they watched the flashes of gunfire and tracers, like shooting stars in the sky. After a while she said, “Now, tell me where you were all day.”

  “I started out fishing,” he said.

  “Fishing! You didn’t say that in your note.”

  “I went with Davi—you know, that boy from my class?”

  “The Japanese boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Then what? Were you fishing the whole day?”

  “We went to Pearl Harbor.”

  “Pearl Harbor?” It took her only a moment to absorb it. “Pearl Harbor! You were there?”

  All day he’d been pretty steady. Well, he’d vomited once. Now, though, with his mother’s hand on his shoulder, his voice trembled, and it made him angry. He didn’t want to break down. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, we were at Pearl. We were on the water when it began.”

  He wanted to tell her everything, wanted her to admire him, how he’d seen so much, so many terrible things. But he kept hearing his father saying, Not in front of your mother. There were things in the world, things that happened, that you didn’t talk about in front of women.

  He tried to sort out what he could say and what he shouldn’t say. “We found a rowboat,” he began. Then he couldn’t stop. It all came out—almost all—how they were in the water when the attack began, and the torpedo bombers and Martin’s wound, and how Davi got beaten. He stopped, thinking about how he’d tried to push Davi out of the boat. How could he tell his mother that?

  His mother was smoking, something she rarely did. “Go on,” she said. “I know anyway. I’m not going to fall apart.”

  So he told her about the ships on fire, the Oklahoma tipped over, and how he was on the West Virginia when the bombing started again, and about the launch and the men they’d fished out of the harbor. He didn’t speak about the Arizona. He knew what he’d seen, but by not saying the words, he could almost believe—he could hope—that it might still not be true.

  “And what about your father’s ship?” she said. “Did you see it?” And again she said, “I know. I saw the planes. Everybody in Honolulu knows what happened. The whole fleet is gone.”

  “Not the whole fleet.”

  “Your father—his ship is gone.”

  “Mom, we don’t know anything for sure. There were a lot of survivors. Dad could have been on another ship—he could be all right.”

  “All right?” she said and closed her eyes for a moment. “You’re right. I won’t know anything for sure until I hear it from the navy.”

  It was only later, when he asked her to look at his back, that she broke down. “What is this?” she cried.

  “It’s only a scratch, Mom.”

  “No, your back is really bruised.” The peroxide she dabbed on his wound stung and he winced. “Sorry,” she said. “How did this happen, Adam? I want to know.”

  “Mom, don’t get upset. It was a bullet. They strafed the rowboat and—”

  “A bullet. They shot you?” She started crying. “I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it.”

  It was a long night. Pink tracers arced across the sky. The gunfire never stopped. What was frightening was not knowing who was shooting, and where. The least sound, just the rustling of the palms, and Adam could almost see the enemy creeping toward them. He went outside to retrieve his gun. The moon lit his way. There were no lights anywhere. The city was blacked out. It was as if Honolulu had vanished.

  When he came back, he sat down next to his mother by the open door and showed her the gun and the clip. “Be careful,” she said as he loaded it. “Set the safety.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you know.” She sighed. “Your father taught you right. But I’m nervous. I don’t want the gun sitting around out in the open.”

  “Okay, Mom.” He went to his room and put the gun on the high shelf in the closet, then told his mother where it was. She was smoking again. “Give me a puff.” He reached for her cigarette.

  “Since when do you smoke?” she said, but she let him take it. “Don’t let the lit end show, or we’ll have the air-raid warden.” They sat there passing the cigarette back and forth.

  “Adam, you should go lie down again,” she said. “You don’t even realize how tired you are.”

  He lay down near the open doorway on the floor, next to her. Outside the long leathery leaves of the banana tree chattered in the wind. Adam couldn’t get comfortable, but his mother was here, and he didn’t want to leave her. Images flickered through his mind with the rapidity of a movie projector. Water . . . ships . . . a boat rocking . . . men like fish beneath the water . . .

  He awoke abruptly, sat up, his whole body tense. His mother had thrown a blanket over him. The moon was down, the clouds had disappeared, and high up he saw the cold, distant stars.

  “Awake?” his mother said. She had made tea and brought it o
ut on a tray with soda crackers and jam. “It’s Monday morning,” she said. “It’s tomorrow. We may know something in a few hours. I think your father will get a message to us. I think he’s alive. I feel it.”

  “Yes,” he said. He knew it was true. He believed it. He could already hear the phone ringing and his father’s voice. Adam, I’m not hurt bad. How are you kids? Let me talk to your mother.

  In the distance a dog barked, and then birds began to sing as if it were just another day. Bea was singing to herself in her room. “A tisket, a tasket, a little yellow basket . . .”

  His mother began making breakfast. “Turn on the radio,” she said. “It’s almost time for the mainland broadcast.”

  Adam went into the living room, where the radio, a floor model, sat next to his father’s chair. He turned the sound up loud enough for his mother to hear in the kitchen, then went back.

  “Want me to do something?” he said.

  “You can make the orange juice.”

  He took the glass juice squeezer from the cupboard, cut six oranges in half, and lined them up, then began squeezing them, one at a time. He was only half listening to the radio. Then his mother exclaimed, “Adam, listen! It’s President Roosevelt.”

  “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 . . .” The president’s voice, slow and measured, filled the house. To Adam, it seemed to come from somewhere higher, as if God himself were speaking to them. “—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

  His mother sat down, and Adam stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders. Adam listened intently. He would never forget this, not a word, not a breath. He imagined the president—his metal-rimmed glasses, that long, kind face—sitting, his legs covered by a blanket, his little dog Fala next to him. He seemed to speak directly to Adam.

  “The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost.”