Eddie's Bastard

by William Kowalski

  Thomas had been only sixteen, the same age his grandfather had been when he marched down the road barefoot to go fight his own war, and he hadn’t thought much of the incident at the time. He put the diary in a safe place and promptly forgot about it. But when he was packing his personal effects before going off to the Philippines, he suddenly remembered the diary, and dug it out again. It was a gift from one warrior to another, he thought grandiosely. He would read it on the train. No doubt it contained stirring accounts of hand-to-hand combat that would give him courage to face the enemy.

  Thomas reached into his duffel bag now on the train and took out the diary. It was bound in cracked leather, the covers plain and unadorned. He opened it to the first page. The paper had aged surprisingly well; it was only slightly yellowed and still supple. On the inside of the front cover, in an unpracticed hand, his grandfather had written the following:

  1866

  This Is Willie Mann’s book!

  The first entry read:

  May 21, 1866

  My Naym is Willie Amos Mann I Learnt to Write from a Feller in the Army of the Union and I be Twenty One Yeres old the feller who learnt me to Write and Reed was a Scoolmaster. To-day tis hot and We half been Working at the Corn all day Hoing Wedes.

  Thomas put the diary away again. This was not glamorous war history. This was boring farmer talk. Besides, the churning in his stomach made it impossible for him to concentrate. Though he hadn’t mentioned it to his mother, or to anyone else, he was desperately afraid, and though home was barely behind him, he was already lonely. More than anything he wished the war would end before he arrived in Buffalo. But he knew the chances of that were slim. So he sat on the train with his head against the window and his eyes shut, remembering home, until the train arrived in Buffalo and he disembarked, trembling, along with several other young men his age from various towns along the Mannville-Buffalo line. There a waiting sergeant lined them up on the platform and marched them off single file down the street to the induction center; and my grandfather walked into the open maw of the U.S. Army, never to return in quite the same form.

  The real reason Thomas Junior had joined the Army—as opposed to the other branches of the military—was not one of which he was proud. He’d never flown in his life, and had no wish to do so, so anything to do with airplanes was out of the question. He’d grown up on Lake Erie, and so was familiar enough with water to know that drowning also terrified him; therefore, the Navy was also out. The Marines were too crazy—he didn’t want to be among the first in any attack. He assumed that in the Army he would spend his time on the ground, a medium with which he was thoroughly familiar, with lots of other homesick and scared young men, and as long as he had at least one foot on the earth at all times, he thought being shot at was something he could tolerate with a modicum of manliness.

  However, after being inducted in Buffalo, Thomas was placed in a large cargo plane, along with forty-nine of his fellow soldiers, and flown to San Francisco. He spent his first flight vomiting quietly behind a bulkhead. After basic training, which he handled well enough, he thought, because it took place on solid land, he was placed on a troop ship and sent to the Philippines. There was more vomiting. When he arrived in the Philippines, it appeared that there’d been a mistake; he hadn’t been wanted in the Philippines after all, but in the Marianas. He was placed in another cargo plane and flown there.

  By this time Thomas realized he was in the hands of dangerous idiots. He imagined a room full of generals somewhere, gleefully poring over charts and maps and plotting where to send him next. When he arrived in the Marianas, he reported for duty and was told that there’d been another mistake; he was supposed to be in the Philippines after all, and so he simply did an about-face on the runway and got back on the plane.

  Not only was Thomas now airborne again, but he was flying high over an ocean that afforded plenty of opportunities for drowning, should they be shot down. When Thomas realized this, he resigned himself to death. He sat on his helmet, as he’d seen other soldiers do, to prevent any wayward shards of metal from doing damage to his nether parts in the event of an attack. Willie Mann’s diary was wrapped in several layers of oilcloth and secured to his stomach by means of packing tape.

  He was the only passenger on this particular flight. There was a pilot, a copilot, and a navigator, with whom he chatted from time to time. The navigator was a twenty-three-year-old engineering student from Kansas City who’d abandoned graduate school to join the Army Air Force. He hunched over his charts, shouting above the roar of the plane’s engines, reading coordinates aloud to Thomas to pass the time. They made no sense to him, but he was grateful for anything that would take his mind off the fact that he was flying, and over an ocean, no less.

  Incredibly, the next thing that happened was precisely what Thomas had been fearing since he boarded the first plane in Buffalo: an attack by a Japanese fighter plane, the dreaded Zero. It came as a complete surprise to everyone. They were not in an area of heavy Japanese presence and no trouble had been expected. He noticed first that the pilot was shouting loudly enough to be heard in the back of the plane. Then the plane reared upward on its tail and began a straining, creaking climb upward. Thomas was sent tumbling into the tail. The copilot came scrambling back into the cargo area. He and the navigator shouted at each other for a moment, with much pointing at charts and gesticulating heavenward. It occurred to Thomas that if they were lost, it was because the navigator had been too busy talking to him, and therefore it was at least partly his fault.

  The copilot went back to the cockpit. The plane completed its climb and promptly dove almost straight down, so that Thomas was sent flying into the tail again, this time floating weirdly, buoyed by G-forces. The navigator threw open a porthole near his table and unstrapped the machine gun that was fixed there. He pulled the trigger and swiveled his upper body back and forth. Shell casings spewed rapidly from the breech of the gun and littered the floor, and the reek of cordite filled the thin air. Through the porthole Thomas caught a glimpse of the underbelly of another plane, a small one with a gray body, as it zoomed past. It seemed ridiculously close. When they leveled out, the copilot came back into the cargo area.

  “Put on your damn parachute!” he screamed. He helped Thomas struggle into the bulky backpack that contained his parachute.

  “I’ve never used one of these before!” Thomas shouted.

  “Hopefully you won’t have to!” yelled the copilot. “But if we ditch, jump out that door”—he pointed to the great sliding cargo door, which Thomas doubted he could move by himself—“and pull this cord here!” He showed Thomas the rip cord and went back into the cockpit.

  That was the last Thomas ever saw of him. There was a tremendous rattling just then, as though the plane was being showered with baseballs, and several ragged holes appeared in one wall of the plane and then in the wall opposite as Japanese bullets passed through with the velocity of tiny meteorites. At the same moment, smoke began issuing from the cockpit. Thomas felt a sickening lurch as the plane keeled over to one side and began heading downward again.

  The navigator fired one last burst of the machine gun and ran to the cargo door. Together he and Thomas managed to push it open.

  “Wait here!” shouted the navigator. He ran into the cockpit and came out again immediately, his face the color of milk.

  “What about those guys?” my grandfather shouted.

  “They’re dead,” said the navigator. He said it quietly—Thomas saw his lips move, but he didn’t hear the words. He turned and looked out the cargo door, squinting against the fierce wind. Then he felt the navigator’s hands on his back. Suddenly he was tumbling out the door and through open space. He felt frantically for the rip cord as he flipped over and over, occasionally catching a glimpse of the navigator falling above him. Finally he found it. His parachute opened with a tremendous yank, as though the hand of God had reached down and pulled on his underwear. He stopped tumbling. He looked up again to
see if he could spot the navigator, but all that was visible was the underside of his own parachute. The bright Pacific sun shone through it, lighting up the silk exactly like a lampshade that Thomas remembered from one of the parlors at home.

  He looked down. He was, he guessed, about a mile above the sea, which from this height looked like a wrinkled blue bedsheet. Not so very far off were a smattering of tiny islands; he tried to steer toward them but only succeeded in spilling air out of his parachute, making himself fall faster.

  “I’m going to fucking die,” he said.

  Far below him he saw a minuscule splash as the cargo plane crashed into the sea. A sick feeling pervaded his body and he stifled the urge to vomit. Then from the corner of his eye he saw the navigator float past. He’d spotted the islands too, and was more adept at controlling his parachute than Thomas was, so that he was falling closer to them. There was about a quarter-mile of space between the two men. Thomas began to shout.

  “Hey! HEY! Hey YOU!”

  The navigator looked over. Ridiculously, he and Thomas waved at each other. Then the navigator realized Thomas’s predicament and showed him, pantomiming furiously, how to control his fall. The ocean was growing alarmingly closer, but so were the islands. He wouldn’t quite land on them, but he hoped fervently that he would fall close enough to swim for it. Thomas was a very good swimmer, perhaps because his fear of drowning was so keen; he’d never swum in very deep water, but he didn’t think it would be different from swimming in shallow water, provided he could get his clothes off before they dragged him down. He began shedding as many articles of clothing as he could reach. His boots would be the hardest to lose once he was submerged, so after much straining and contorting, he managed to loosen them enough to kick them off. Next he pulled off his socks with his toes. He removed his belt from under the straps of his parachute harness; once he was in the ocean, he would have to struggle out of the straps themselves. It would be very difficult. Thomas took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  Calm down, he told himself. The only way out of this is to remain calm. He rehearsed in his mind the steps he would go through: unbuckle the chest straps, pull his arms out of the harness, and then his legs. He would have to hold his breath for a long time, but he thought he could do it if only he could avoid the panic trying to beat its way up through him. Then would come his clothes. If he could get out of his pants underwater, he thought he could make it.

  He was only a thousand feet or so above the water now. The islands were still a good swim away, perhaps a mile. But he had swum that far many times before. He could do it. He was sure of it. He looked at the navigator again. He’d drifted closer to Thomas, and he was shouting something at him, something about “parks” or “barks,” but Thomas ignored him. He had to focus. Concentration was of the utmost importance now.

  When he hit the water, he pulled himself up into a ball. Then he went through the steps he had rehearsed in his mind. His parachute was designed to come off quickly, and he shed it exactly as planned. His pants, however, gave him a good deal of trouble. He sank several feet below the surface while he was trying to kick them off, and the panic came again, surging up from his belly through his throat. But he fought it off again. Finally he succeeded in getting out of them, and he pushed his way to the surface, where he took a deep gasping breath, removed his shirt, and began to tread water.

  Immediately he saw the navigator’s chute. He’d landed closer to the islands than Thomas, but not by much; in fact, the islands now looked impossibly far away. It was going to be a hell of a swim. Thomas struck out for the navigator. There was a slight swell, which bobbed him up and down like a cork; Thomas was grateful the waves weren’t larger. For the first time in his life he tasted salt water. It tasted like blood, he thought. He swam slowly, pacing himself, forcing his breath to come regularly.

  “Dear Mother,” he said aloud. “I’m sorry to inform you that I died while swimming for my life in the ocean, where I landed due to Army incompetence. I have discovered that the U.S. Army is a far more dangerous enemy to me than the Japanese.”

  It took him forever to reach the navigator. When he got there, he found the man floating, his head protruding from the hole in the center of the parachute, which billowed around him like a massive baptismal gown.

  “Get me the fuck out of this goddamn fucking thing,” said the navigator. He was crying like a child. “I can barely move.”

  “Right,” said Thomas. He began rolling up one side of the parachute until he reached the man’s head. He slipped it over him and saw that the man was wearing a flotation jacket.

  “They make us wear them,” said the navigator, “thank God. I’d share it with you but I’d drown. I can’t swim.”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Thomas. “I’m a good swimmer. Let’s unstrap you.”

  “I can’t swim,” said the navigator again.

  “Don’t worry,” said Thomas. “We’ll leave the jacket on.”

  “You can swim,” said the navigator. “Do you know how much money I’d give to be able to swim right now?”

  “I’m guessing quite a lot,” said Thomas. “Get out of that thing.”

  The navigator began to struggle with the straps of his harness. After several minutes he was free. He was still crying, ashamedly trying to stifle his sobs.

  “Don’t panic,” said Thomas. “Hear me? Stop crying. If we panic we’re done for. We have to make it to those islands.”

  “What’s that on your stomach?” asked the navigator.

  Thomas had forgotten about his grandfather’s diary. He looked down. It was still there, safely secured around his middle.

  “It’s a book,” he said.

  There was a moment of awkward silence. Thomas thought of explaining why he had a waterproofed book taped to his stomach, but decided that could wait.

  “I’m from Kansas City,” said the navigator. “There’s no damn water there. I should have joined the fucking infantry and gone to fucking Europe. Instead I’m in the fucking Air Force and I’m sitting in the water and we’re going to be fucking eaten by fucking sharks!”

  “No we’re not,” said Thomas. “Start swimming.”

  “Yes we are,” said the navigator. “I saw them when I was falling. Big ones. Back there.” He pointed over his shoulder out to the open sea.

  A cold chill swept through Thomas. “Oh my Lord,” he said. “Are you serious?” So that was what he’d been shouting as they fell.

  “Yes,” the navigator said simply. Then he looked up, holding one hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. “Look,” he said. “There’s another parachute.”

  Thomas followed his gaze. There was indeed another parachute drifting gently above the islands, a falling cloudlet dislodged accidentally from its nest high above the world.

  “Is it Tony? Is it Blake?” asked the navigator.

  “It can’t be,” said Thomas, guessing he was talking about the pilot and copilot. “They’re dead. You told me so.”

  “Oh my God,” said the navigator. “It’s the Jap. I must of got him! I shot his plane down!”

  “Start swimming,” said Thomas. “I’m going to go ahead of you. You’ll be much slower than me but you won’t sink. Just keep your breathing regular.”

  “Okay,” said the navigator. He was smiling now. “I shot down a Jap plane!”

  “I’ll see you over there,” said Thomas. “Just head for the closest one.”

  He began swimming with strong, even strokes.

  “I’m Phillip Neuberg from Kansas City,” the navigator called after him. “If I don’t make it, will you write to my family?”

  Thomas didn’t answer, but he made a mental note of it. Phillip Neuberg of Kansas City requests a letter home in the event of his demise. Right. Got it. He couldn’t waste any more time talking. He focused on his movements: kick, stroke, turn, breathe in, kick, stroke, exhale downward. He didn’t look any more to see how far the islands were. He just swam. He heard the navigator’s
splashes grow farther and farther away behind him. He had been swimming for about fifteen minutes when the first shark hit.

  The navigator let out a scream that pierced Thomas through to his soul. He forced himself to keep going. He couldn’t afford to let himself turn and look; there was nothing he could do anyway. He swam faster, as fast as he could without spending himself too soon. There came another scream, then another, and then the screaming abruptly stopped.

  Thomas swam as he had never swum before. I will not by eaten by sharks, he repeated in his head. I refuse. I’m going to make it. They won’t come after me. They don’t like me. They like Phillip Neuberg from Kansas City. I am the fastest swimmer in the world. I’m the human torpedo. I’m going to make it to the island and I’m going to kill that fucking Jap who shot us down and put me in this mess and I’m going to get rescued and go home to Mannville and sit in the front parlor with the lampshade that looks like a parachute with the sun streaming through it, and I’m never going to leave it again except to get another beer or to go to the bathroom. Swim. Swim. Swim.

  And in his head, he composed another letter, this one beginning “Dear Mrs. Neuberg, My name is Thomas Mann—no relation to the writer—and I’m sorry to inform you that I was with your son Phillip when he…”

  Thomas was flopped up on the beach by the surf like a sodden rag doll. He lay there for several minutes, just breathing. He thanked God that he’d been born on Lake Erie and not in Kansas. He had the feeling, at that moment, that his entire life had been spent in preparation for being shot down over the South Pacific and swimming to this island. He forgot about returning to Mannville. He forgot about the war. He forgot everything he knew except that he was alive, and that somehow he’d escaped the horrible fate of Phillip Neuberg of Kansas City, consumed by sharks.

  Thomas took stock of himself. He was nineteen years old and completely naked, except for the diary wrapped in oilcloth and strapped with packing tape to his stomach. He was half-full of seawater, and he was lying on a beautiful white beach several thousand miles from Mannville. Somewhere on the island was a Japanese pilot, a sword-wielding, idol-worshipping, baby-eating lunatic. Thomas had no food and no gun. It might be that there was no fresh water on the island. It might be that there was nothing to eat either. The situation, to put it mildly, was grim.