In War Times (4 page)

A bell jingled when he opened the door. Several men slouched at the lunch counter, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. Cigarette smoke curled above them, mingling with the smell of newsprint, magazines, stale coffee, and the grilled cheese sandwich Frank flipped on the grill. An account of a football game issued from a radio—
nice block
! Sam heard—nestled between haphazardly stacked pots on a shelf above the grill.

Sam gathered a dismembered
Washington Post
from between salt and pepper shakers and napkins, and took a stool, going first to the funnies. Krazy Kat. The Katzenjammer Kids.

Frank, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, said, “Can I get ya, Sam?”

“Pancakes and two eggs over easy. Got any of that sausage from the market?”

With a nod, Frank started a fresh pot of coffee. “Not much news today. Somethin’ about the Germans at a place called Tobruk. Somethin’ about Libya.”

“Who’s playing?”

“Dodgers and Giants. Station WOL.”

The Brooklyn Dodgers, a New York football team, were in the National League. They had been around since 1930. “Who you rootin’ for?”

“Got a little money on the Giants.”

Sam’s breakfast restored his feeling of normality. Time returned to its obvious linearity.
Fumbled the pass
…the radio said. He grabbed a pack of Chesterfields and an
Evening Star
, which had a morning edition on Sundays, and headed out the door. A brisk walk might clear his head, but otherwise did not seem palatable. He had a vague impulse to talk to someone, but didn’t know who. No one, he supposed, except Hadntz; he couldn’t discuss this with anyone. He had been charged, for some reason, with this great, weirdly ephemeral responsibility.

Back in his room, he tuned his radio to WOL. What could be more normal than listening to a football game on a chilly December afternoon? Against this backdrop, while the sun made a perfectly normal two-o’clock transit across the sky, he lifted up his mattress and retrieved Dr. Hadntz’s papers.

It was not remotely possible for him to figure out where her notes would lead, what the device she had proposed might actually do, much less look like. He’d passed over the sparse sketches quickly, trying to suck out the theory, thinking that if this really was a machine, he might be able to design a better one than she had if his mind was not pre-set. He turned a page. “On the Relationship Between Quanta and Consciousness.” Could either be truly fathomed, as forces, as objects, or either? Mathematically described? Used for the purposes of world peace—used for anything at all? He began to try to follow her reasoning, wishing for another cup of coffee, and in its place, he lighted a cigarette.
Three yard line…nice block!…twenty-seventh-yard line
...

A new, urgent voice cut in.
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press. Flash. Washington: The White House announces a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
. Immediately after this terse announcement, which might have come from one of Hadntz’s other versions of the present—which she claimed flocked around the one he was experiencing, geometrically expanding with each instant, filled with other selves birthed from this one—the broadcast of the game continued.
He’s down on the tenth-yard line…it’s a long pass
—
he dropped it!

The crowd roared.

Had he just imagined it?

He looked out the window. Everything was the same. No one rushing onto the streets, no sirens.
They’re going for a field goal
…

Keenan, his oldest brother, twenty-six and married, was stationed at Pearl Harbor.

He opened the window and stuck his head outside, into the cold air, elbows locked as he leaned on the window sill.

You would love Honolulu, Sam. It’s a little old seaport, great bars, the most magnificent weather in the world. Maybe someday I’ll be able to bring Sarah and the boys here. Last week Heck and I drove out to a place called Kaena Point. You’ve never seen a road like this. Just a narrow track sketched on the side of a cliff. Life on a battleship isn’t half bad
…

There had to be something on the radio. He turned the dial. There. Passed it. Go back.
By shortwave radio, brought to you by Golden Eagle Gasoline. Go ahead, New York
.

An ominous silence. Had New York been attacked as well? Were German bombers on the way to Washington, having taken off from some hidden base in the Caribbean, or an undetected carrier in the mid-Atlantic? As he reached to turn the dial, the CBS broadcast resumed.

The details are not available. They will be in a few minutes. The attack apparently was made upon naval and military activities on the principal island of Oahu…

The broadcast, in which “Oahu” was badly mispronounced by announcer John Daly—Sam had heard Keenan say it—lasted twenty-three minutes. Reporting moved from the Pearl Harbor attack to the certainty of war with the Japanese, to Manila, and to Thailand. He hoped to hear more about the attack but searched through static in vain. Symphonies, a radio drama, Sammy Kaye’s program
Sunday Serenade
, football.

Throwing on his overcoat, he raced down the stairway and out the door to the nearest phone booth, on the corner of 14th Street, and put through a collect call to home. “You’re lucky to get this connection,” said the operator. “For some reason we’re starting to get jammed. Ma’am? Will you accept a collect call from Sam Dance?”

“Of course.”

“Ma?”

“Sam! Oh, it’s wonderful to hear your voice. Are you all right?” She sounded puzzled; he had never called home before. It was too expensive.

His mother’s voice was familiar, comforting. He didn’t want to tell her anything at all that might disturb her, that might jar that comfort from her world.

But he had to. “I’m fine, fine.” Somewhat disoriented by Hadntz’s assertions, but this was nothing compared to his sudden fear for Keenan.

“Where are you?”

“Still in Washington.”

“We’ve had a little excitement around here—Peg and Jonathan announced their engagement last night.”

“She’s so young!”

“Yes, Pa and I told her, but she
is
eighteen, and they do seem to love each other. You know that she was accepted at State, though.”

“I didn’t know. I’ll have to congratulate her. Listen, Ma”—he took a deep breath—“Pearl Harbor has been attacked.”

“No! Oh, no! When?”

“Apparently the attack is going on right now. I just heard it on the radio. But that’s all. They didn’t say anything else except that the Japanese have attacked.”

“Keenan said that Pearl Harbor was too far for them. We’re not even at war, Sam! How could they just…attack? I didn’t raise my boys to go to war! I don’t…Here. Talk to your father.”

“Sam? Is that you? What’s your ma all stirred up about?”

“Pearl Harbor’s been attacked by the Japanese.”

“You’re sure?”

“I think it’s true.”

His father was quiet for a moment. “Let’s hope we hear from Keenan…soon.”

“Let’s hope.” Sam didn’t know what else to say. “Listen, I should go; this is costing you a fortune.”

“That’s all right, son.” His voice was heavy, his words slow and deliberate. “Thanks for calling. We love you.”

“Turn on the radio and see what you can find.”

Shadows were long now; the temperature was dropping. People were coming out onto the street. An elderly woman wearing a housedress and flowered apron rushed down from her stoop, wiping her hands on the apron as he approached, and grabbed his shoulders. “Young man! You’re a soldier. I’ve seen you in uniform. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know anything more than you,” Sam told her gently. “Go inside and turn on the radio.”

“We can’t find a thing!” She was as frantic as he had been a few moments ago. Somehow, sharing the news with his parents had distributed the worry, transferred his terrible knowledge to a network of concern and support. She took his arm. “You come in and find us a report.”

Sam and the woman’s husband, Jack Medson, pulled easy chairs next to a beautiful shoulder-high radio in the comfortable living room and bent their heads toward it. Mrs. Medson brought in a plate of the hot doughnuts she’d been making, and coffee in delicate china cups on saucers. Sam thought the couple was probably in their mid-sixties.

“Thank you, ma’am. If I remember right, there’s a BBC news show on this shortwave band about now.” From the speakers issued a symphony of frequencies as he tuned it. “Here we go.”

I’m broadcasting from the roof of the
Honolulu Advertiser,
which just narrowly missed a direct hit. Thirteen miles away, Pearl Harbor is taking a beating. Heavy clouds of smoke are billowing from the munitions dump. There are fifty casualties
—

“Only fifty!” said Mrs. Medson, standing between them, her clasped hands together. “Thank God.”

Sam was silent. He didn’t believe it.

“Hitler’s involved in this, you can bet your bottom dollar,” said Jack. “We’ll be at war with the Germans too by tomorrow. Damned good thing. It’s about time.”

“I’d better get back,” Sam told them. “The Army will be issuing orders.” He felt distanced from everything. It couldn’t be happening.

“Thank you so much, child. Here, let me get you a bag of doughnuts.” Mrs. Medson patted his shoulder as she handed them to him. “Careful—I put a jar of cold milk in with them. You stop in anytime, you hear?” Jack stood, and they shook hands.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Dance,” he said quietly. “I wish you luck, son.”

Back in his room, Sam put the grease-darkened bag on his desk next to the radio, which had finally succumbed to broadcasting news of the attack. It was getting dark, but he didn’t turn on the light.

He opened the bag, took out the jar of milk. The cleaned jelly jar reminded him of home. His mother sterilized every jar she got to reuse for canning, and they resided in a bin in the basement, a shining, fragile heap that caught the afternoon sun.

Mrs. Medson’s doughnuts were much like his mother’s, although his mother used more nutmeg. He consumed them as if they were holy, as if he were in a state of prayer, or in the only communion in which he believed, that of family and friends. A community of shared memories, warm tableaus he could see and almost touch, almost live again.

He finished them off. The room was completely dark, and the streetlights had not come on. They were apparently in blackout.

The situation was grim. A second wave of Japanese bombers targeted Barber’s point, Schofield Barracks, Hickam Air Field. As he listened helplessly, the Pacific Fleet was brutally destroyed, without warning. It was the work of renegades who did not respect international law. One did not attack without declaring war. Even Hitler, presently bombing civilians in London without mercy, had formally declared war on Poland, England, France, and Russia.

Sam twisted the empty bag between his hands, set it on the desk, and did not turn on the light.

Keenan had always been the person closest to him in the world. Older, so always more accomplished. But his buddy, his protector, his friend, the one he shared everything with. Keenan had taught him to fish, to play baseball, to climb trees. To take chances that he was not by personality inclined to take.

Of course, that had changed somewhat over the years. Keenan was married now, with children; it had been more than a year since they had seen one another. But they wrote frequently.

Sam’s own hometown girlfriend had up and married someone more available, just a year ago, but she had never responded to his voluminous letters with anything more than a postcard—something he could now view as having been a large clue to their incompatibility. Keenan had helped him through that, as he had always helped him with everything, reading Sam’s long letters patiently, responding in kind, throwing in and eliciting all those daily details that made life one’s own—funny, tragic, but something to be shared.

Sam opened his desk drawer and took out the sheaf of Keenan’s letters, and set the pile in the center of the desk. But he did not, could not, read them.

The window shade was still up, reminding him that Hadntz had been in this very room only twenty-four hours ago. Such a short time, but so much had changed. He held to the plain, physical facts for a moment: the flat hardness of his desk, the soft circle of light shed by the desk lamp, the bare winter street outside, where a woman sat on a stoop across the street, dressed warmly, smoking a cigarette.

What was Hadntz’s game? Was she a German spy? Had she given him these improbable plans as an act of sabotage? And if they were workable, why had she chosen him? If her story was true, he had to consider the fact that he had probably simply been chosen in haste.

Suddenly he realized why she had stood in front of the window. She had even said why. She wanted this hand-off of information to look like something else.

And though he never thought about it, he was considered to be intelligent. He loafed through school, and his history teacher in particular was outraged when he was taken out of class to be tested and his scores were exceedingly high. He was here, in Washington, absorbing the latest in scientific advances, theoretical and applied.

Hillbilly music, which Sam loathed, blared from behind the wall. He stood and pounded on the wall, something he’d never done before. “Hey! Turn that crap down! Don’t you know we’ve been attacked?” The answer was an increase in the volume. Sam turned up his own radio so that he could hear the ongoing reports.

The announcer’s crisp voice, ranging through international news of battles in China and Russia as well as the Pearl Harbor attack was strangely soothing, affording him a space to think.

If Hadntz’s theories turned out to be true and usable, if he could possibly build a device such as the one he had glimpsed in her briefcase, like the one in the plans she’d left him, what might the device do? How could it facilitate the peace of which she had so fervently spoken, now that Pearl Harbor had been attacked? There was no going back. A quick Japanese defeat, perhaps? Since the Japanese had been laying waste to China, Burma, and wherever else they could wage their self-proclaimed war against white colonialism with great success, that didn’t seem very possible. They were a formidable enemy.