by Joe Meno
“Dad?” Jonathan is calling out faintly. The boy throws his book bag on the yellow linoleum kitchen counter and then calls out once more. He listens for his father’s voice but instead he hears a boom and the tremble of a jet screaming across the rounded rectangle of the television screen. “Dad?” he shouts a second time, but again, there is no answer. Jonathan pours himself a glass of milk, then one for his father, and, carrying them both as carefully as he can, he shuffles toward the racket coming from the television room.
“Dad?”
His father, Henry, thirty-eight years old, sits in his place at the end of the sofa, with his unbuttoned white shirt, a dark blue tie hanging undone around his neck. There is a glow of sadness about him, surrounded by the dark wood paneling, the pale sofa, and the yellow shag rug, making the flesh of his hands and face look lifeless and ill. From the ashtray resting near the sofa, Jonathan sees his father has been sitting there for quite a while, a pyramid of stubbed cigarettes crushed on top of each other. Jonathan hands his father the glass of milk. Henry accepts it gratefully without a word. Jonathan takes a seat beside him and asks, “What are you watching, Dad?” but Henry does not answer.
On the television screen is the four-thirty news, and there is a story about the war in Vietnam being broadcast. Jonathan knows better than to ask questions while his father is watching the news, especially when it has to do with the war. Henry Casper sits quietly, his security badge from R and D—Research and Development at McDonnell Douglas—still pinned to the pocket on his white shirt. The television groans as a burnished silver F-4 Phantom drops a payload of napalm over the small gray and brown and green village of Trang Bang. Something important breaks in Henry Casper’s heart. The F-4 is his plane, one of the planes, a plane he has helped to design and build.
“Dad?” Jonathan whispers, but his father is faraway and silent.
An orange and red fireball engulfs an outcropping of trees and grass in one combustive show of flames—knocking the glass of milk straight from Henry’s trembling hand. There are two small girls, twin sisters, both naked, running from the flames, the clothes burned right from their skin, and all Henry can do is sit there on his sofa, thousands and thousands of miles away and begin to weep, quietly, regretfully, without surprise. His empty hands reach out toward the absolute distance of the television screen. Though Henry, in his position as an aeronautical designer, had worked mostly with the nose and wing design, on paper it had only been a drawing, a picture, a problem to be solved. On the TV now, the young girls are on fire, their mouths agape, shaken with all the fear of the world—why has he done this to them? He reaches out, ignoring his ten-year-old son, falling to his knees, placing his hands against the television screen. He is asking them to forgive him now, asking them to please listen, to know how awful he feels now, how small, how sorry. But there is no reply. Jonathan, upset, keeps repeating the word over and over again, “Dad? Dad?” until Henry turns, not recognizing his son’s voice, hoping it is the girls calling out to him, hoping, in their final moments, that they will forgive him. When he turns and faces his son, he sees they will not.
OR MAYBE THERE were no twin girls on the television screen at all. Maybe it had been a photograph or an article in a magazine or a story someone had mentioned at the office. Maybe the afternoon did not happen exactly the way Henry now remembers it. Maybe it does not matter—the order of events, the actualities, the facts. Maybe the image, real or not, transmitted across television waves or simply imagined, was enough.
AFTER THAT DAY, after watching the F-4 burn an entire village in a few static fractions of a second, Henry Casper will surrender himself to the television for another three months, waiting for the young Vietnamese girls to reappear. After using up his vacation time and one long month of an unscheduled medical leave, he will be fired by McDonnell Douglas. During those lengthy afternoons, he will only leave the television room for an hour or two, staggering around the house, looking for something to fix, a loose doorknob, the front porch railing. One day he finds Jonathan hiding in the familiar safety of his tiny bedroom. He spends hours watching his son glue together the wings of a model dinosaur, the chassis of a model race car, the nose cone of a model airplane, which the boy will hang with fishing line over his bed. At night, tucking Jonathan in, Henry will glance at the shadows of the winged dinosaurs and airplanes hanging over his boy’s head. He will understand then that he will never be forgiven for what he has knowingly or unknowingly been part of. He will kiss his wife Violet goodnight and return to the television room to watch the final news broadcasts of the evening, the stations signing off sometime in the night, the familiar static echoing from the room, the electric red, white, and blue of a flag waving in the darkness.
WITH THE LIGHTS off then, the television set now silent, Henry unwillingly begins to imagine that which he wishes he did not have to. He watches ghosts—those of the two twin girls—and others who are nameless, faceless, hundreds of them, all burned beyond recognition, as they crowd him in the tiny television room. They stand awkwardly amid the matching furniture, their stares vacant, like fallen stars or moons, all of them softly aglow. Somewhere among the phosphorous dead is Private Faulk, somewhere there are other familiar faces, all sad, resigned, his father and mother, his younger brother, Timothy, his older brother, Harold, killed in action, all of them are quiet, and yet they do not let him rest. They hover beside him in the darkness, the glow of their bodies shifting from blue to white. The only thing that quiets them is the noise of the television, its own light fierce, impossible to ignore, overpowering. Even after the last broadcast, Henry will sometimes turn the machine back on, the soft static clouding the glow of the dead with fields of impenetrable, electric snow.
THREE MONTHS AFTER his breakdown, Henry does not care what is on television during the day, as long as, at any moment, he can stand, sigh, check the knot in his robe, and cross the room to change the channel, searching for breaking news of the war in Vietnam. Violet, his wife, who seems to love him a little more since he has fallen apart, brings in trays of iced tea and small sandwiches for him. Jonathan, who sits near his father’s feet, watches whatever his father watches, news programs, nature programs, shows about American history. Together, they are silent, Jonathan doing his fourth-grade homework, lying on the yellow shag carpet, watching his father with curious dismay, Henry waiting for a message, an answer from somewhere beyond the screen that will let him live with a clear conscience again. But it does not come. It never seems to come.
TOGETHER, DURING THOSE months, father, fired from his job, and son, who is often quarantined from school with his mysterious seizures, watch The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, The Brady Bunch, The Price Is Right, cartoons like Yogi Bear whom Jonathan dearly loves, and early evening broadcasts of Batman, with Adam West as the caped crusader. Batman is their favorite show to watch together. Violet has sewn a fairly accurate Batman cowl for Jonathan, who wears the mask around all the time, even when he goes to bed. Sometimes, with the mask on, he will sit on the sofa beside his dad, dividing his attention between watching the show and watching his father’s smile, gauging his dad’s reactions out of the corners of his small blue eyes. Sometimes, after a particularly good episode, his father will stand, patting his boy on the head, leaving the television room for an hour or so. Spying on him, following his father throughout the house, Jonathan will see his father standing behind his mother in the bedroom hallway, his arms wrapped around her middle, both of them whispering. Sometimes his father will make a telephone call to some unknown party. Other times his father will walk to the front window and stare out, muttering small realizations to himself: “Looks like the Penneys got a new porch. Good for them. Good for them.”
AT THE AGE of ten, only a few months before the introduction of the antiseizure medication, Jonathan begins to fake seizures at school. Taking a cue from his father’s heartbreak and glad to be kept at home, Jonathan sits beside Henry all day, silent as he stares at the television for a glimpse of forgiv
eness that will not appear. Jonathan fakes seizures as often as once or twice a month. After each episode, he is kept home for several days, or up to a week at a time. His parents, both reasonable, or mostly reasonable, are terrified to send the boy back to class until a thorough assessment of his health can be made. A boy from Jonathan’s grade, Billy Anderson, brings his schoolwork by. Together, Jonathan and his father travel from specialist to specialist, returning home weary from the white institutionalized medical offices. Jonathan will sometimes wear his pajamas all day, quietly playing in his room, building his dinosaur models, reading an abridged version of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, waiting until he hears the electric buzz of the television suddenly flicking on, the sound of his father waking up.
IN SECRET, while Violet takes a better-paying job at the telephone company, father and son watch hour after hour of television in silence, Henry searching the commercials, the game shows, the cartoons, for the shadows of the wounded Vietnamese girls. Once he thinks he sees them in a detergent commercial. Another time, he is almost positive that the girls are on a children’s show. Finally, they both appear as contestants on The Price Is Right. The girls do not jump up and down. They do not seem happy. They are both wearing the same white dress and they are no longer burning. They are ghosts. They have been trapped in this perfect world of luxury cars and vacuum cleaners and sparkling stereo equipment. They do not seem angry, only very, very sad. They do not win anything. They stand beside a row of products, their heads down, their eyes entirely dark. They are barefoot. They do not want to be on the game show, but because they are now ghosts they have no choice. The world of television, of reruns and repeated images, is the world of lost spirits. Henry, nervous in his spot at the end of the sofa, cannot watch it anymore. He gets up, cinches his robe, and switches the channel. It does not seem to matter. Now the two ghost girls are standing in the background of Kojak, dressed as underage prostitutes. Henry switches the channel again, and this time they are on Happy Days, a pair of odd-looking bobby soxers. He gives the knob another turn and all of a sudden the landscape of the moon appears—it is footage from an observatory telescope. The two ghosts have vanished somewhere in that distance, in that vast blackness. Henry watches the screen suspiciously, each flicker of movement, each white pixel, but no, now they are gone.
Henry then flips through the channels, finding a rerun of Batman, the garish outfits, the bright exaggerated sets, no sign of the lost girls anywhere. They are still out there somewhere, though, Henry is sure of it, trapped with all the other ghosts he has ever known, waiting patiently up there on the moon now, where everything always goes when it is forgotten.
Taking a seat back on the couch, Henry turns and looks over at his son, who is busy with a stack of homework. He gently places his hand on the back of the boy’s neck and says, “Don’t ever be afraid to say you’re sorry.”
“Dad?” Jonathan asks, his eyes looking up from his spelling assignment.
“When you foul something up. Don’t ever be afraid to say it was your fault. You’ll live a much happier life that way.”
“Okay,” Jonathan says, shrugging his shoulders, staring down at his homework.
“Don’t you wanna watch Batman?” Henry asks his boy.
“We’ve seen that one before. It’s Catwoman. She steals a golden cat.”
Henry nods. “I have a hard time keeping them all straight, I guess.” He looks over at his son and smiles, seeing the boy’s hand, so small, busily writing out his assignment. Henry taps his finger against his knee, wanting to say something more, to let the boy know how proud he is of him, for not giving up, for hanging in there, for trying to face whatever keeps happening to his little head, but all he can figure to say is, “Well, you can always count on Batman.”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s your mask? How come you’re not wearing it?”
“I can’t wear it and do my homework. It’s too hard to see out of.”
“Well, sure. I get it. You need any help with what you’re working on?” Henry asks.
“Nope.”
“Well, if you do, all you have to do is ask.”
“Okay.”
“Jonathan?”
“Yes?”
“Never mind, kiddo. You just do your schoolwork.”
“Okay.”
Henry watches his son for another moment or two and then whispers:
“Do you understand why I had to quit my job?”
“Dad?” His son’s face is small and confused.
“Do you know why I haven’t gone to work in so long?”
Jonathan shakes his head, embarrassed for some reason, and looks down at his schoolwork. “No. I guess not.”
“It’s only that sometimes…sometimes it takes courage to do something, and other times it takes courage to not do something. Does that make sense to you?”
Jonathan nods, still unsure, wanting to please his dad. His father reads this in the boy’s bright eyes.
“You’re a good boy. You know that, don’t you?”
Jonathan, his face red from hearing his father’s words, does not turn. He only shrugs, staring down at his schoolwork.
“You’re the best thing I ever did,” Henry whispers. “The best,” and then, feeling the boy’s embarrassment, he nods and stares off at whatever’s playing on the television.
ONE EVENING, after a particularly good episode of Batman, feeling unusually happy—the televised image of the burning village only a distant, foggy dream—Henry hurries out to the garage, his son secretly following. Jonathan, hiding at the edge of his father’s yellow Cougar, sees his father struggling to pull down a large cardboard box from a high shelf, marked with a great painted X. Jonathan blinks, watching as his dad tears open the taped cardboard flaps, fumbling through its contents, some old magazines, a few record albums, some photographs, a fraying black suit.
“This was a suit your grandfather made,” Henry says. “It doesn’t look like much but it’s all I’ve got left of him.”
Jonathan nods silently. From within the suit jacket’s lining, a brown spider emerges, narrowly escaping. Henry and his son watch the tiny creature hurry off, disappearing into the shadows of the gloomy garage. Henry’s eyes do not leave the spider, not for a long time, and then, with a thoughtful turn in his eyes, he looks down at his son and murmurs, “Jonathan?”
“Yeah?”
“I hope you forgive me someday.”
The boy’s face goes white, as he’s unsure of how to respond.
“For what, Dad?”
“For what? For quitting my job. For leaving us in the lurch. For being a coward. Will you forgive me someday?”
“Oh.” Then, without thinking, the boy mutters, “Sure, Dad.”
“We always have to try to forgive the people we love. I think it’s the bravest thing we can do. When the time comes, I hope you will.”
Jonathan is silent for a few moments and then whispers, “Okay, Dad.”
“Okay,” says Henry, smiling. He begins to rummage through the box again and seems to find what he’s looking for.
“What’s that?” Jonathan asks.
“Comic books.”
“Wow,” Jonathan whispers, astonished. On the covers are spacemen, werewolves, superheroes, some he recognizes, like Superman and Batman, some he doesn’t, The Airship Brigade, The Flash, The Green Lantern, Hourman. They are struck in valiant, noble poses, fighting it out with cruel-looking villains, performing incredible feats of strength.
“The Airship Brigade,” Henry mutters, handing an issue to his son. “Now this one was always my favorite.” He taps the cover twice, then goes on searching through his childhood belongings. Jonathan flips through the miraculous stories, Alexander Lightning piloting his zeppelin bravely through the sky, rescuing a silver-skinned princess. Henry lets out a low whistle and lifts something from the box. It is a tattered record album, red and black and yellow, a great golden zeppelin crossing a silver moon. Henry is grinning, staring down at i
t, elbowing his son lightly.
“What do you think of this?” he asks, but Jonathan just shrugs.
“It looks okay.”
“Okay? Do you know what this is?” His father turns the record sleeve over and taps it with his forefinger twice. “It’s a V-Disc. From during the war.”
“Oh.”
“It was a radio program from when I was a kid. I used to listen to it all the time.”
“Oh.”
“They used to play the stories on the radio. They’d record it on records, you know, some of their best adventures. That’s what we got here: Mysterious Islands in the Sky.”
“That’s cool.”
“Cool? Kiddo, you don’t know what you’re missing. Come on, let’s go check it out. Grab those other records there. Good. Okay, let’s go.”
Jonathan, holding the comic books and records to his small chest, looks up, and for the first time since he can remember, he notices his father is beaming.
FATHER AND SON are sitting in the front parlor beside the outdated Sears stereo. The needle makes contact with the rough grooves of the old record and instantly produces a sound. It is like a magnificent storm has suddenly swept itself into the room, lightning and wind echoing from the hi-fi’s speakers. Then there is the theme music, horns and strings announcing, “The Continuing Adventures of Alexander Lightning, teen commander of the undefeatable Airship Brigade!” A thunderbolt hisses with fiery electricity through the speakers. “Episode One Hundred: Mysterious Islands in the Sky,” the announcer Pierre Andre shouts with flair and dramatic promise. Jonathan smiles at his father, who winks, turning the treble down on the hi-fi, then hurrying back to his seat.
