“But us soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines, we must be the Other, the stranger, the odd thing that people maybe thank or maybe hate, but either way we are something different and weird and scary and not at all like you good, nice civilized folk.”
“I’d say that’s a little bit—”
“That way,” he charged on, “that way you don’t have to recognize that you were the ones who recruited us, you and millions of people just like you. Oh yeah. You picked us out as too poor for college, too undisciplined for work, too patriotic for self-preservation, easy targets, easy marks. Then you trained us, you invented our equipment, you elected the commander in chief who sent us to war, you hired the Congress that drafted us, you paid taxes to support a military bigger than the next fifteen countries combined.”
Joel was counting off the injustices on his skinny fingers. The moment felt identical to listening to a patient trying to reason with his mortality, protesting against something inevitable. My job wasn’t to make sense of it, or even respond. This was about a poison he needed to get out of himself. It was, quite literally, a stage of grief.
“You bought the planes, oh yeah, big fancy fast planes, and the fuel for the planes that flew us to the foreign land. You made the trucks and the fuel for the trucks, and the seat and windshield and steering wheels and the tires, man, knuh, the fucking tires that brought us to the battlefield. Then you put guns in our hands and ordered us to pull the triggers, do it or we go to jail, do it or we die. And when we did what we were told you washed your hands and said killers, you fucking monsters and heroes and murderers. Then you watched TV and ate and shat and bought stuff, all the time telling yourselves over and over that your hands were clean, your conscience, you sleep fine at night, oh yeah, you got no complicity whatsoever.”
“What’s up, Joel?” Michael stood at my side. I could feel him bristling. “Did I miss something?”
Joel faced the ground. He swallowed hard. “Windy weather, my man. Knuh. Getting mighty windy on your old lady out here.”
“That’s what it sounded like.”
“I’m OK now, I’m cool. She’s cool too. Cool lady.”
Michael remained between the old man and me. He ran his hands back through his hair, as though he were stroking down his hackles. “You off your meds or something?”
Joel shook his head, laughing. “Brother, I am never off my meds.”
AFTER THAT, Joel stepped back by the shed, and everything went faster. Michael unzipped the gun case and affixed his rifle to the platform, its carrying strap folded aside. He handed me the orange headphones and plastic protective goggles. He focused the scope, showed me how to adjust the platform height, pointed to where I’d release the safety, and demonstrated how to load the gun.
I couldn’t do it. My hands kept shaking. I reminded myself: I was the tough one, the expert in pain. I could do it.
But I dropped the round in the dirt. Michael brushed it off and handed it back to me. It was an odd thing, to receive a bullet from my husband. I thumbed the shell into the chamber. It slid in at an angle and stuck there. He had to take the gun off the platform and bang it against his palm to get the round out.
After that there were no more preliminaries. I clamped on the eye and ear protectors. He told me to lean down to the scope to find my target. Somehow the target had become mine. But the lens was hard to see through, its focused part a bright circle surrounded by darkness that kept moving around.
“You have to hold still to see squarely,” Michael bellowed. I knew he was only raising his voice so I could hear him through the headphones. “Get close on it.”
He leaned down and scooped his arms around, cradling me in against the gun. Oh, I felt the man in him just then, the strength of his arms, the way his gender masked vulnerability with certainty. I curved my back against him, as if to increase the surface area where we were touching. Michael pressed me into the weapon while my eye settled against the scope, and with arresting clarity the target came into view: a human torso with concentric rings around a yellow bull’s eye on its chest.
“Fire when ready,” Michael called, rising away.
For a moment I thought I might vomit. My mouth tasted as if I’d eaten something foul. But there was no way I would ruin this moment, squander this opportunity to understand my warrior by knowing his weapon, and I swallowed everything back.
I thumbed off the safety and touched my forefinger to the trigger. So this was what he did. Over and over, under the most intense time pressure imaginable. Take too long and the enemy spots you. Shoot too soon and you miss. Take too long and you die. I curled my finger and held my breath. I pulled a fraction, nothing happened. Then there was a burst and I’d blinked, and the bullet went wild to the right.
Joel was clapping his bony hands. “Woo-eee. Good banging, rookie.”
“Yow,” I said, rubbing my shoulder. “That really kicked me.”
“You have to hug it tighter,” Michael said, loading another round. “Love it right up close.” He pressed me into the gun again, warm and alive on my back. I would have stopped everything to prolong that contact, but he was gone and upright and I was holding the weapon.
Love it up close. Right. I pulled the stock tight to my shoulder, suppressing a wince. I pressed my eye to the scope. Wrapping my finger around the trigger, slowly I squeezed, and again the burst came from under my arm. That time I had no idea in which direction the bullet had veered.
“OK, OK, headphones off.”
“What is it?” I asked. The kick hurt less that time, but already I could tell my shoulder would be sore later.
Michael bent like a football coach inspiring his huddle. “You’re throwing the bullet. You’re pushing it out there. Just let the gun surprise you. It has all the power it needs, believe me. Just aim, and let the rifle do its work.”
Let it surprise me? What did that mean? I put the headphones back on and wrapped myself around the weapon without his help. And squeezed the trigger like I meant it. This time I did not blink, and the gun stayed steady. Through the scope I could see a little dot I’d made on the target, a black puncture up in one corner. Damn if I can deny it: I felt a dirty little thrill.
We spent another hour, Michael instructing in a measured voice, though also pacing behind me before I shot. Joel crept forward to add a word or two. Breathe out all the way, he said, then a little more, and then fire. The air smelled of gunpowder, metallic and sour. I shot perhaps twenty times. Most rounds went wide of center. But each time I managed to nip the merest piece of that target, I felt a rush of pride.
“Enough?” Michael said eventually.
I nodded, gulping despite a dry mouth. “Enough. Thank you.”
“No thanking.” He started out into the field. “Let’s see how you did.”
But it struck me that there was one way I could take this day further, and I spoke without thinking. “Aren’t you going to have a turn?”
He pulled up, arching his back as though he had taken an arrow between the shoulder blades. Michael stood that way fully half a minute, then shuffled a half circle back to me.
In a blur he snatched the rifle, loaded it, and hooked the strap with his elbow to pin the gun against him. It was scary, how quickly he brought one eye to the scope, leaned forward as if he were planting a spear in his enemy’s chest. And held that way, frozen.
The moment sustained itself like a violin’s high clear note. The summer meadow held its breath. Joel watched him with unmoving eyes.
Then the pistol rang out from the range’s other side. Michael released a massive exhale. He opened the chamber to remove the round and held it in one palm.
“No,” he said, thrusting the rifle into my hands. “Not in front of you.”
I stood there wondering what I’d just done. As he strode off into the tall grass, Michael called back over his shoulder. “Feel free to sh
oot me anytime.”
While my husband took things down, Joel came coughing up beside me. I turned to him, trying to rub my shoulder without drawing too much attention. “In the war, how do you decide who to aim at?”
He sniffed. “Depends on the mission. With a caravan, you take the lead driver. One shot and they pour out of the other vehicles like ants.”
I imagined those ants, each one a human being, rushing into an ambush.
“In your nonengaged situation, though,” Joel continued, “you pick the highest ranking officer.”
“How do you know who that is? Do you learn their uniforms?”
“You can’t count on that. Clothes in a battlefield get torn, passed around, generally trashed. One time I remember, though.” He chuckled, leaning against the shooting bench. “These two VC standing side by side in my scope. Course, I know I’ll only get one, on account of one shot gives your location away, it’s pop and run and don’t look back.”
Joel raised an imaginary gun to his shoulder, sighting down its barrel, moving right and left, right and left. “So which one, you know? Who’s the lucky guy? Then one of them pulls out a map and starts reading it while the other one’s standing by. Dead giveaway, so to speak. Oh yeah. Hello, Officer Map, and good night.”
He lowers his pretend gun. “Even today, you’ll never catch me looking at a map. I’d rather stay lost than get popped.”
Michael emerged from the field, holding up the target. “Check this out.”
There were five punctures on the outermost rings, which I now realized meant they were nearly a foot off the mark, and one just above and to the left of the yellow center.
“Look-ee there.” Joel took the sheet, cackling his approval. “Bang bang.”
“Decent pattern.” Michael began picking up brass casings from my shots. “Six on paper on the first day.”
“Just lucky,” I said. “With a good instructor.”
“Don’t be modest,” Joel said. “Around here it’s OK to admit it. You’re a natural born killer.”
“No.” Michael paused in his clean-up and spoke at the ground. “One in the family is enough.”
Joel wandered away while Michael packed up, but he ambled back with a gallon jug that had a bright orange top. “You mind if I do the OJ bit?”
Michael made a sour face. “Not a good idea, buddy.”
Joel shuffled his feet. “If she wants to know what it’s really like . . .”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“It’s a nasty thing Joel does to teach people,” Michael answered. “An exercise in perspective.”
“Sometimes the truth is nasty, knuh.”
“Actually,” I said, “a little perspective would be helpful right now.”
“See?” Joel leaned down into Michael’s face. “Part of the story, Milk. You know it is.”
Michael’s shoulders slumped.
“Life ain’t like Hollywood,” Joel persisted.
“This is my wife—”
“Makes it even more important that she sees.”
The Professor’s instruction came to mind: To understand a warrior, understand his weapon. My shoulder hurt, but not enough to quell my curiosity. “I don’t know what this exercise is about,” I said, “but if it helps me understand . . .”
“There you go,” Joel said. “C’mon, Milk. Explain the jug lesson.”
Michael sighed and stood up. “Deb, what is the human body like ninety percent made of?”
“Water. Though it’s closer to sixty percent.”
“So here’s this,” Joel said, shaking the jug. It was full of water. Then he held it toward Michael. “Do the honors? Maybe fifty yards. Whatever you think for a definite hit.”
Michael took the jug with a defeated air. While he strode back into the field, Joel skittered over beside me.
“In the movies, you know, a guy gets popped in the noggin, there’s a little black dot in the center of his forehead, right?”
“Sure.”
“And the hero, he always gets shot in the arm, right? Maybe a red blotch on his shirt, but he keeps on going.”
“Pretty much every time.”
“Well, I’m here to give you the news, which is that all that stuff is one hundred percent Grade A bullshit. As you are about to see.”
“I’ve worked in emergency rooms, you know,” I felt compelled to say.
“Maybe so.” Joel eyed me. “But I’m betting you saw handgun wounds. Nobody, knuh, nobody came in after getting hit by a banger like this here.”
“Is that kind of gun so rare?”
“Naw. But if anybody got shot by this, they went straight to the morgue.”
Michael had returned, and he loaded the rifle without looking at me. “She can hit this one with her eyes closed,” he said. The jug sat on a little rise of dirt, strangely homey among the tattered targets and cardboard boxes.
“You take your time there, Deborah, and just pop that puppy.” Joel sighted down his pointing finger. “If you can, don’t blink. Oh yeah. You need to see what happens.”
I imagined it would make a little hole in front, a bigger hole in back. I’d read such things. Still, I was uneasy. Joel’s energy—and Michael’s reluctance—made me feel as if I was being played with somehow. Both men stood there, not saying anything more. Michael had agreed that this exercise would give me perspective. What would I accomplish by saying no?
Sliding eye and ear protectors back into place, I sat again at the platform table, lowered myself to the scope, and saw how much easier a shot was at that range. I could read the lettering on the jug’s label. I aimed for the O in Orange, breathed out as Joel had told me, and squeezed the trigger.
There was a splash, of course, water spraying in all directions. But that was nothing beside the fact of the jug vanishing. It wasn’t broken, or split into pieces. The container had disappeared completely.
I panned the scope over and around the dirt pile. There was nothing, not even the orange cap.
“I don’t understand,” I said, sliding off my ear covers.
“Look here,” Joel answered. He drew a hand across his chest at sternum height. “You hit a human being anywhere above this line, there’s no neat bullet hole or little old bleeding. You hit a guy anywhere here on up, you pop his fucking balloon.”
It was as if he had punched me in the stomach. I staggered back, my arms dropping. This was what they saw. This was what they remembered.
I turned to Michael, who stood with his shoulders still stooped. I came before him, wilted. “Thirty-one times?”
His lips pressed hard against one another.
“Oh, lover.” Forgetting the boundaries I had promised to respect, the reserve and fragility of my husband, I fell into him, just pressed myself against his chest. All those people, no wonder he drew their faces night after night. I burrowed into him.
After a while Michael raised his hands and placed them on my back. They were as stiff as boards, nowhere near the caress or comfort that I needed. But I thought: I’ll take it for now. I’ll take it, and take it, and take it.
FOE BOMBS OREGON!!! So read the 72-point headline in the September 10, 1942, edition of the Oregon Journal of Portland. Beneath, smaller headlines declared that the sub might have been sunk. Also that Japan was preparing a major attack on the U.S. coast. Also that the submarine had returned to Tokyo.
The initial headline was correct, the smaller three not so.
Two days later, hubris had overcome alarm. An editorial cartoonist drew a giant boot stomping out a fire. The boot was marked “US Forest Service,” while the tiny whiff of remaining smoke was labeled, “Jap incendiary raid.”
By September 14, the Times of Coos Bay carried an advertisement for “war risk property insurance.” The attack had disrupted local capitalists not
a whit.
Meanwhile the I-25 carried four more bombs. Although sailors biding their time on the ocean floor had no way of knowing how severe a fire might be scorching the Oregon woods, by every other measure the mission had been a success. The catapult worked, the plane took off and landed, and at least one fire was burning. Moreover, Soga was still alive.
Lieutenant Commander Tagami ordered the sub to draw westward, away from shore. Some days would need to pass before another mission could constitute a surprise. Furthermore, instead of attacking at dawn, Soga would fly when a bomber was least expected, at night.
On September 29, 1942, twenty days after the first bombing, the I-25 surfaced sixty miles north of Brookings. This time, the bomber flew over a blacked-out coast. For navigation, Soga therefore relied on the Cape Blanco Lighthouse, which sat on a promontory above dramatic cliffs.
Documentation of this flight was less thorough than that of the first, except to note the difficulties Soga experienced. The mission began after midnight, and taking off was vastly more challenging in the dark. Nonetheless, Soga flew successfully toward Mount Emily, Okuda released both bombs, and the E14 turned back to sea. However, on his return Soga could not find the submarine.
Without the I-25, death was certain. Only weeks before, a Japanese ship had sailed out of a bomber’s range, and the aircraft’s pilot and crew were never heard from again. Now low on fuel, Soga circled back past the lighthouse, then reversed course again. In the predawn light, he finally spotted the submarine’s wake.
This time the plane dismantling and storage took place without American discovery. The I-25 cruised to the bottom unattended by depth charges.
Nonetheless, Soga’s extra flight time bore consequences. Two lookout towers, fully manned this time, reported sighting (and identifying) the aircraft at about 5:20 A.M. Nine people confirmed hearing an explosion. By 7:15 a U.S. Forest Service supervisor near Grassy Knob, Oregon, had spotted rising smoke. Before a fire crew reached the site, wet weather spoke again, and the blaze sputtered out.
The second bomb remained unaccounted for. Search teams from the 174th Infantry, the Forest Service, Civil Defense, and the Advance Warning System all spent the full day scouring the approximate target area. They returned at dark without success. The unexploded device lay somewhere in the undergrowth.
The Hummingbird Page 14
