Fat Man and Little Boy (18 page)

HE HAS A GUN

The
skritch skritch
of busy hands making notes. The jaw-clenching squeaks of new tin chairs on hardwood floors with too little varnish. The sun-bleached stripes that spill from windows across the aisles students crowd. Someone somewhere eating grapes on the sly. Claire chewing her pencil. The teacher's drone. The white chalk streaks on the thighs of his pants, the ass of his jacket. The white puffs accompanying any sudden movement.

A fly destined to live forever crawling on the ceiling, tasting things no one can see. They must be body oils, body salts, skin cells. Little Boy knows he's losing something every second of the day. He resents degrading here, in this too-small room, sloughing himself for the flies and mites and other creeping things. The children. It's their snot feeds the flies. That's why they creep under the desks, tickling young knees.

Little Boy's teacher calls him to the front of the class, one hand pressed to his tummy as if he were taking a pledge. He's written Matthew's name on the chalkboard.

“What? What do you want, exactly?” All English. He suspects the teacher understands him. The teacher is an educated man. He wears glasses. He has a fussy center part in his graying hair. He ought to know how to talk the way Little Boy talks.

“Matthew,” says the teacher. “Matthew, please come to the front of the class and deliver your recitation.”

Little Boy raises his hand. The teacher sighs.

“Yes Matthew?”

“Whadda you want?” says Little Boy, in English.

“Could you please come to the front of the class and deliver your recitation?”

Little Boy looks to Claire for help. She's mortified, nearly to the point of tears on his behalf. It must be pretty bad. Peter motions toward the front, walks his fingers down the aisle, mimes loud, obnoxious speech in what seems to be an imitation of their teacher: hand on gut, eyes half-squinted/quarter-crossed, finger twirling in the air.

Sometimes Little Boy can make the teacher forget him by force of will. He stares into the back of the next student's neck, seeing the strawberry beginnings of a pimple where it meets the shoulders, and a long, stray black hair. He imagines scratching off the cap of the zit—squeezing out the pus.

The teacher says, “Matthew?”

He goes to the front of the class. A room full of children, most taller than him, all more developed, gaze back perfectly blank. They scratch, boys and girls alike, at the hair that prickles from their arms. There's a boy in the back who's clearly touching himself with the sort of care and tenderness most commonly found between little old ladies and large, stupid dogs.

“What am I supposed to do up here?”

“Please share your work with the class. You may read from notes if you need to.”

Little Boy looks to Claire. Looks to Peter. His friends, such as they are, have averted their eyes. Claire taps her foot on the floor, a metronome in skirts.

“Ah,” says Little Boy. “I know. You'll like this!”

“In French, please.”

Little Boy brushes past the bumbling teacher, goes to his desk, and slides out the wide middle drawer, where confiscated items are kept, as well as several candles the teacher uses to light his work after dark. The school building has not been furnished with electric lights, and the oil is expensive. Little Boy takes one of the fresh, unused candles. He walks to center stage, candle cupped in both hands. He turns the candle upside-down. He passes his hand under it, passes it over, as if to draw aside many small, silken curtains.

“What are you doing?”

Little Boy puts his fingers to his lips. “What I do next will astound you.”

“Please sit down, Matthew.”

“An American magic trick,” says Little Boy. “Fire from the hands.”

He presses his fingers to the wick, snaps them, lets go. The wick is cold and still. He does it again. Nothing. No flame. It ought to burn with a Japanese spirit. He tries again. His teacher tells him to sit down, he thinks. But he doesn't want to sit down. He wants to make a fire for his classmates.

“Wait,” he says. He tries again.

The candle is a candle. It is a little yellow, only a little, the color of mucus. Cold and inert as a stone.

The teacher puts his hands on Little Boy's shoulders. The pressure of his chalky hands. White prints on Little Boy's shoulders. “Matthew,” he says, and then some other words that probably mean Little Boy's in trouble.

“I've got it.” Little Boy lifts the candle to his mouth, both-handed, like a goblet. He puts the wick in his mouth, suckles, and slowly pulls it free from his suck. His hands go orange. A small flame on the little candle. Several students clap with half their hearts. “There it is. See how pretty.”

It warms his face from underneath. He imagines the light crawling up his neck, his chin, the sides of his face, highlighting everything sunken and all that protrudes.

The teacher snuffs it with his fingers. Little Boy's no longer lit up. His hands and face are cold. He sits down, taking the candle with him. The teacher may tell him to bring it back. If so, he doesn't listen, and the teacher doesn't press the issue.

Later, Claire passes him a note. “Learn the language,” it says, though in French. He has an inkling what it means. He tries to lose the inkling.

Little Boy knocks on the door of Mr. Wakahisa Masumi's cabin. He has a bundle of cleaning supplies under his arm. A broom, a mop, a feather-duster, a small folding stepladder, all bound together with a thin white rope tied by Fat Man in a tight bow. Hanging from the other hand, a bucket with a garbage bag inside, several rags, sponges, soap, a water jug. It's heavy.

He sets down the bucket and leans the bundle against the cabin. Having waited what seems a reasonable length of time, he knocks again. He scratches at his shin with the heel of his shoe, careful not to open the scab from his fall, which has mostly healed, leaving an angry patch of skin. Mr. Wakahisa does not come to the door.

“Sir. Sir.” He looks over his shoulder. “I've come to clean your room.”

Nothing. But he saw the Japanese gentleman walk in. He had been waiting outside the cabin twenty minutes, saw Masumi come from the library—where he gave language lessons, no doubt—and watched in hiding as Masumi went inside. Little Boy had waited another ten minutes to let him settle in, and so he did not realize he had been waited for.

Masumi couldn't have fallen asleep in ten minutes. He must be sitting somewhere inside. There's a lot of room in there for one person. Several chairs, the bed, a couch. He could be standing. He is not pacing, or if he is it's in a pair of slippers; Little Boy can't hear him. He could be in bed reading. He could be feeding the fire. The sun is going down. Little Boy's shadow stretches sideways, long, like a banner. It seems awfully tall.

Little Boy knocks hard.

“Mr. Wakahisa?” says Little Boy. “Can I please come in? I need to finish this and do my school work.”

As Little Boy attempts to gather his cleaning gear Masumi comes out of his cabin, locking the door behind him.

“John?” he says.

“No, it's Matthew.”

Masumi speaks now in French. “John, how are you this evening?”

“Matthew,” says Little Boy. “John's the big one.”

“How are you this evening?”

Matthew shrugs. “Don't know French. Can I clean your cabin now?”

Masumi tries Japanese. “How are you this evening?”

“Don't know that either. Are you going to let me in or not? I can come back later.”

And still in Japanese: “Why don't you learn the language?”

Little Boy lays down his burdens. He looks up at Masumi, arms hanging limp at his sides but hands curled to fists; his lips are sneered. After a long while he says, “They told me you spoke English.”

“I'm trying to teach you. I'm trying to know you.”

“Still don't know French, sir.”

“English then. You may come into my cabin only so long as you don't try to clean it. Leave your things there, in the grass.”

“Can I bring them in, so no one sees them there? So I can say I did it? I wouldn't have to bother you again for days.”

“Yes John,” says Masumi. He takes the bucket himself. “That will be fine.”

“It's Matthew,” says Little Boy.

“Do you ever drink?” says Masumi. They sit on opposite sides of the table, a gallery of weird liquors between them. Every fruit is represented: cherry brandy, pineapple rum, lemon-lime martini, a globular bottle with clear brownish liquor, oranges floating inside. And other unexpected flavors: chocolate whiskey, toffee something, pine.

“I think I'm not allowed to,” says Little Boy.

The room is very clean. There is a brown screen in the corner with cherry tree shadows painted in black on two of three panels; the center panel has a black sun in its high middle. The dresser has a white powder on its top but otherwise it's clean. The full-length mirror has several fingerprints across its middle point, oil streaks. The bed is neatly made. There are many trunks beneath the bed. The floor around the stove shows no charcoal specks or smudges. There are several variously sized glasses and flasks littering the various surfaces of the room, but the flasks are all closed and the glasses are dry.

“Why can't you drink? Perhaps in America such outdated mores still stand, but in France, child, we all drink wine. If wine, then why not vodka? You see where I'm going with this.” He pours Little Boy a glass of the chocolate whiskey. “I think you'll really like this.”

“I thought Japanese liked sake.”

“Drink up.” Masumi pushes the chocolate drink across the table. Little Boy lets it touch his tongue enough to burn. Knowing now the flavor and the scorch he drinks of it deeply, holding the glass as before he held the candle. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

Masumi says, “You can tell me anything.”

Little Boy shakes his head.

“You don't like to talk?”

“Why don't you take off your hat?” says Little Boy. He gulps down more chocolate. “You're being rude.”

“John, you're right. I'm sorry.” He leaves the hat on. “Why don't you like to talk?”

Little Boy shrugs.

“Are you afraid of what you might say?”

Little Boy shakes his head.

“What might you say, John?”

“Matthew.”

“What might you say, if you let yourself open your mouth? Would you scream? Would you weep? Would you confess?”

Little Boy finishes his drink and belches loudly. His eyes are bleary, swimming, he can feel them strain. He shakes his head. This looses the tears, makes them into several streams.

“You're not supposed to drink it so quickly,” says Masumi.

A corner of blue shimmer fabric embroidered with needlepoint stars hangs out of the dresser's top drawer. Little Boy stumbles across the room to touch it. So soft.

“Does the mold still follow you?” says Masumi. “Do the spores reach for your mouth? Do candles still spark when you touch them?”

Little Boy turns to glare at the Japanese gentleman. He says, “I've changed my mind. I want to clean your cabin.”

“You think you've calmed but if you were calm then you could speak to me. You think you've changed but you haven't.” He opens his jacket. The holstered revolver is polished and it glints and shines. “I've got a gun.”

Little Boy pours himself another drink so later he can throw up. He says, “Who are you?”

“John, I will be your judge.”

“Then I won't say any more. I'm going to take this glass. Leave my cleaning things outside your cabin for tomorrow. I'll come back.”

“I'll shoot you if you go without defending yourself.”

Little Boy tosses back half his second chocolate whiskey. “There's nothing to say, and nothing to defend. What do you think I did? I didn't do it. There's my defense.”

Masumi draws his gun. He spins it on his finger like a fancy cowboy. Stops it aimed on Little Boy, grip tight, trigger half-squeezed. Lets it go and spins it more. His eyes climb and fall like a slot machine spinning as the butt of the gun replaces the nozzle replaces the ass replaces the muzzle.

“Goodnight,” says Little Boy. He leaves the door open behind him.

The ground shifts under his feet like an ocean, or the flesh of some heaving beast. He wants to see the tree. He needs to touch her.

He pauses behind an empty cabin to pee. Some dots his bare shins and short pants. It strikes him that most of the cabins are empty. In the night they are like headstones, faceless as a movie screen without the projector. He hurls his glass against one.

He will wake up on the grass beneath the tree, in her gentle shadow, the branches reaching for him, swaying above him, reaching across each other in a tangle, like many schools of bait fish.

He will miss a day of school.

THE ACE

Little Boy tells Fat Man how Mr. Wakahisa Masumi asked Matthew into his room. He tells his brother all about the liquor, though he does not mention the second glass or how he broke it. When Fat Man repeats the story to Rosie, he does not mention the gun, though he knows it would surely lead to Masumi's ejection from the hotel. Fat Man can't explain to Little Boy why he did not tell about the gun; there was guilt in being on the wrong end of a weapon. Rosie, outraged, informs Masumi that he will be required to maintain his quarters on his own from now on, and that he cannot be alone with Little Boy, or any other children for that matter, until he proves himself trustworthy. He is welcome to provide and receive continuing daily language instruction. Masumi does so with apparent good will and earnest desire to teach and to learn. He behaves himself very well. He is even charming. Rosie comes to see the episode as an issue of cultural differences—if the French, a relatively civilized society, are fool enough to give children wine, she can only imagine what might be considered normal in a place like Japan.

The image of Masumi's table, legally Rosie's, laid out with such a wide array of liquors, stays with her. While she sacrifices everything for world peace and rebuilding, a person at least a little crazy is living it up in her hotel with decadence and style. It makes her ill. Makes her jealous. Makes her reckless. The next week she buys too much food. She bends her budget and then the next week breaks it, taking several dozen pounds of salmon. She teaches Fat Man how best to prepare fish, using lemons and butter and other things the hotel can't afford. The guests rave about the food. The newlyweds say they'll stay an extra month. They must be rich.

It feels inevitable when she finds herself taking John and Matthew to the movies. Call it the logical endpoint of a long, slow decline. She fends off fits of guilt by rubbing her temples with her thumbs and forefingers for ten seconds. It has to be ten seconds; it has to be those fingers; it has to be her temples; it only works on guilt. Not stress, not anger, not shame, only guilt. She has rebuffed three such attacks since deciding to come to the cinema. Once when she asked John and Matthew to come along, leaving the hotel in care of no one but the guests, who were not informed of their absence. Once in the car on the way over—the car that she rented at some moderate expense. She settled, during the ride, on buying a car for the hotel so as to pick up guests and bring them home when they were done (for a surcharge exceeding the gas and the price of her time, of course: another margin). This made the guilt acute. She rubbed her temples. Now, in the back of the cinema, she feels it again. A pressure in her sinuses combined with a heat in her lungs that makes it hurt to breathe. She rubs her temples for ten seconds, meanwhile surveying the audience, mostly the backs of their heads. John sits on her left, and Matthew on her right. They gape at the blank screen, waiting for something to happen.

They're dressed in their finest. A suit with a jacket a little too small on John, unbuttoned because he can't button it. It used to fit him well; he's growing. Matthew wears his best pants, his old jacket with the elbows worn thin. The little boy has not grown at all. Rosie's father would have called Matthew a runt. She prefers the word “coltish.” Still, she could lift him with one arm.

The boys are still gape-mouthed like tired mules.

Rosie says, “Is this your first film?”

“Yes,” says Matthew.

“Yes,” says John.

“Really?” she says, looking at John with disbelief. “You seem the type to love a picture.”

“I guess I haven't had much chance.”

“You'll like it. It's a lot of fun. Matthew, it's okay if you get scared. You can cover your eyes like this.” Rosie veils hers with her hands, then parts her fingers to peek through. “It helps me sometimes during the battles. You know how I hate shooting.”

“I don't like it either,” says Matthew. “Will there be a lot of shooting?”

“Well,” says Rosie, “it's called
The Ace
.”

Matthew looks glum. “Will it be in French?”

“All English. You need to practice your French, though, so I wish it were otherwise. You've really hit a rut.”

Matthew nods. “It's hard.”

The lights come down. The audience quiets. Purses snap closed. Someone somewhere is chewing peanuts. The screen lights, gray sky and charcoal clouds, the dark underbelly of a bomber, like a whale, scratched and pockmarked by flak or bird bones. The hatch comes into view, through which the flyboys drop the bombs. The hatch is closing. A young boy leans over the edge, looking down on the audience with a mirror of John's stupid hanging jaw. The hatch is closed. The plane's tail floats past. Empty sky. Now three fighter planes in profile—one very close, only a nose and the rise of a cockpit, pilot a shadow; one further back, center-screen, partly obscured by the first, pilot a smudge; one still farther back, above the others on the flat plane of the screen though in fact it is level with them, very far, small, visible in its entirety. The title comes up on the screen. THE ACE: Roman letters cut from granite. The farthest plane begins to smoke, and falls, leaving a black trail. The nearest plane explodes without sound. All its little pieces. The camera jitters and calms like an animal. The title fades.

The opening credits introduce the cast. There's only one real star, an older man playing a colonel with a neck of steel. The rest are newcomers. The Ace comes last. There are two names by his credit. He was played by Able and Baker Hanway. The Ace smiles at the camera, his eyes lowered, and then they click into place. Even on black-and-white film you can tell that they're blue. So blue.

“Why are there two names?” whispers John.

“They're twin brothers playing the same role,” says Rosie. “They're supposed to be very good.”

“Which one are we seeing now?”

“Can't tell,” says Rosie. “They're identical.”

“Completely identical?”

“Shh.” She touches his wrist.

The Hanway brothers look nothing like her dead husband. They are, or he is, whichever one now in this scene, like a corn-fed Gregory Peck fifteen years younger, the same painful-pretty face, cheekbones, but hidden underneath a thin layer of sugar fat, bunching up just slightly underneath the chin, like a fold of margarine; his skin (their skin) white like the light of the moon but not the moon itself, thick curly thatch of hair held this side of reason by a styling grease. They have wide, sloping shoulders, muscle-fatted thighs. She read they were from Indiana.

John says, “He's very handsome.”

Rosie says, “They are. But we're not to talk during the film. It's rude.”

She touches his hand. He turns it belly-up to welcome hers. His hand says, You can stay. Her hand says, It's a kind offer. She touches the middle of his palm and withdraws, slips her hand in her pocket. Seems that's where it belongs. She can feel her own pulse in her fingertips.

The movie proper begins with a mother receiving a letter. A soldier has brought it to her, his rank uncertain. She thanks him—the audience cannot hear this, but sees it by the inclination of her head—and takes the letter inside to read alone at the table. Where is her husband? Where are her sons? The house is empty. There's a clock shaped like Felix the Cat on the wall, smiling, wagging its tail. The hour chimes. She opens the letter.

The plot is easy to lose. Half an hour in Rosie comes to understand the mother has received notice her son, Danny Ericson, is a hero. This is news to the mother because—although she never quite comes out with it—she's always thought he was basically a loser. At home, word spreads about his heroism while his exploits continue in various theaters. Girls who never had an eye for him before suddenly take an interest; they follow him closely in the papers, which feature regular front-page articles on his many kills and daring maneuvers. They dub him The Ace. Some people speculate about the number of medals he'll get when he returns. Others speculate about his potential for politics, for film. In one seemingly endless scene, a Hollywood director invites himself to dinner with Danny's parents, squirming visibly as he forces himself to choke down a full plate of green bean casserole.

Incredibly, all this takes place without dialogue. The scenes at home feature few sounds, usually drones or chimes of one sort or another, but no human speech at all. There is, however, a rising mechanical sound, at first a distant buzz that gradually grows louder, closer, more oppressive, becoming a chug and then a roar: the sound of a fighter plane's engines.

At war people can speak, though.

The Ace begins the movie with a number of friends of various ages and origins. There's the Texan pilot with the big chin, the half-Indian pilot who brings along on every flight a sharp little knife with an eagle feather hanging from the handle. There's the runty freckled kid whose engines keep stalling—the first to die, inevitably. There's the tall one with the dark hair and the soulful eyes, whose American name, Ed, does nothing to temper the impression that he is probably a Jew. Gradually The Ace's friends all die, shot down over the Pacific, exploded.

He takes it hard at first. Those Hanway twins can cry. When the first friend goes down The Ace threatens not to fly anymore. His handsome, no-nonsense commanding officer tells him it doesn't work that way. “You don't quit war,” says the commanding officer. “It's not like working at the drugstore slinging milkshakes.”

So The Ace goes back up and shoots down a few more Japanese. Then the Texan dies. The Ace weeps openly in the mess. His tears fall on his mashed potatoes and cornbread. Again, he threatens to quit. His commanding officer says, “You'll quit when you've killed every blasted Japanese in the rim, and not one second before, airman.”

So The Ace goes back up and shoots down a few more Japanese. This time the maybe-Jew buys it. When they land The Ace can barely work up any tears at all. He eats his whole tray in the mess. The commanding officer comes by to touch his shoulder. He says, “Stay strong. We need you.”

Finally it's just The Ace and the half-Indian with his knife up there. They don't ever talk to each other in the entire movie, but exchange stoic nods and one very intimate instance of eye contact, on leave, in a bar, where they both drink too much.

The strange thing about the movie is that though new pilots do seem to replace the ones who go down, they never show up in the lengthy, exhausting air combat sequences. The Ace is more and more alone. There are five American planes in the beginning, and in the end, after the half-Indian dies, it's just The Ace, fighting what seem to be dozens of Japanese planes, shooting down one after another. In the plane his eyes are steely blue. He is determined not only to live, but to kill.

Did Frank ever look like that? Did he knowingly decide to extend his life at the cost of another, or did it come as a surprise every time, right up to the end? Rosie can't stand to picture her husband wearing that expression. It might be—she hopes it is—that no one can wear that face except inside a plane, or some other military machine, which her husband never piloted, never drove.

The expressions and personalities of ace-pilot-Danny and mourning-grounded-Danny converge over the course of the film, until the hard expression is with him always, even while he eats and drinks. Now he flies missions alone. Soon he'll win the war, and then he can go home, and then there will be banquets in his honor, parades.

He never flies again. The next day comes the news of a bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Japan's surrender is inevitable. A few of the boys get some work, but never The Ace. He spends most of his time in his bunk reading cowboy paperbacks.

The movie shows footage of the mushroom clouds rising over Japan. Tendrils of smoke. Billow and bloom. Dust, and flaws in the film—the film's flaws are like a part of the bombs, another kind of explosion.

“So that's how it was,” whispers Matthew, hoarsely. “I thought it was different.”

The Ace goes home. He goes there in a plane, but someone else is flying. He's just miserable. But the audience knows what he doesn't know—how excited are his mother and father, all the girls at home, his chums, some also returning, but none so decorated as he.

At home he rides a bus a long time. When he gets off the bus he walks to a barn and waits there. His father picks him up in a car. They ride together in silence. His mother hugs him when he gets home, but it's somehow not like what Rosie imagined. The picture lingers with The Ace a while. He finds a job at a hardware store. Women depend on him to take down paint and other things from high shelves. The girls who were so hungry to see him back never materialize. He spends most of his time alone, the way he did before. There's a parade. It doesn't make him happy. Something about the bomb, thinks Rosie. He couldn't consummate his mission, did not in fact kill Every Blasted Japanese, did not conquer the Pacific. If they had dropped the bombs a year before, how much would it have changed things? Would his friends have had to die?

But it's more than that. Rosie wonders where the engine sound has gone that covered all the hometown dialogue, which can now be heard clearly. She realizes that there was never any letter about The Ace's heroism, that the newspaper articles were never written, that the girls never dreamed of his coming home. These were his fantasies. Each vision was always preceded by a slow advance of the camera on Danny's face. This was the movie entering his mind.

The film ends with Danny Ericson watching a more handsome veteran dance with the girl of his dreams. Meanwhile Danny—now twenty-one—smokes a cigarette and drinks on what seems to be his usual stool at the bar. The credits scroll over a brassy, hopeful orchestral song that gives no quarter to the tragedy of the film's conclusion.

The part that will stick in her throat like a fish bone is the way they edited the film. It was all fades and wipes, or shots of similarly shaped things transposed on one another, so that an apple became a target, a pen became a plane, a cloud became a newspaper, a bullet a paint can, the sun a woman's eye, a woman's eye a firework, the firework an exploding American plane, the shrapnel confetti, peanut shells candle drippings, bunk bed dessert cart, whipped cream fire, the bombs became each other, became a tall building, the windows of the building became the eyes of the people who watched the parade, lining the streets. Everything was something else and nothing was itself. It made her teeth chatter.