Universe of Two

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  Today, it galls me that I remember precisely the number of lives lost in each sinking. I memorized them. I had no sense of thousands of actual Japanese boys drowning, their families’ hopes and hearts going to the bottom of the ocean with them.

  Yes, I know that Japan started the war, in the attack on Pearl Harbor. I know that sinking their navy was essential. But today, at my age, it does not diminish my patriotism to say that I grieve for the cost of the conflict on all sides. There is glory in victory, but it can be solemn, too, aware that all sides experienced the pain.

  In retrospect, I wish Charlie had been working on submarines. A torpedo is a simple object, really, a kind of bullet. The truth was far more complicated, and therefore the effects of my ignorance would prove to be far more harmful.

  Then the phone would ring, Greta would laugh uproariously, and off I’d go into an adventure. I had simplified the war so that I could withstand it.

  Eventually—it was bound to happen—Greta suggested a dance. At Douglas Park, which I knew from high school was named after the guy Abraham Lincoln defeated in the debates, who went on to be a United States senator anyhow. I recoiled from the idea though. Dances meant dancing. With dancers. Why take the risk?

  But I loved that park. There was a lagoon in the middle where my father taught Frank how to fish. I have a picture on my dresser my mother took that day: Frank, with the proudest ten-year-old expression on his face, holding up his first catch: an ugly catfish as long as my arm. I’m at a point in life where I do not care much about material objects, but that image is one I cherish.

  Maybe I was justifying. I could have gone to that park anytime. And the girls were perfectly capable of dancing without me. But they pleaded. One whose mom ran a salon offered to do my hair for free. Then Greta asked me to be her backup, in case a certain Brian she was supposed to meet at the dance didn’t show up for some reason. Which provided the excuse I needed to say yes.

  I didn’t go overboard. Didn’t wear my best dress. Didn’t accept the offer for my hair. The one special thing was that I wore the necklace my father gave me for my sweet sixteen, a string of tiny pinkish pearls.

  “Don’t you look nice,” my mother said, peering up from her latest novel. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you go to a dance looking more like your actual self.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Is that a compliment or a criticism?”

  “I guess that depends on what you think about your actual appearance. Personally, I prefer authentic to false.”

  “I’m still not sure what you mean.”

  She let the book fall into her lap. “I already said you look nice. Just because you’re back-dooring Charlie, you don’t have to fight with me. It’s your life, Brenda.”

  “I am not back-dooring anyone.” I almost shouted it.

  “Then we agree.” She lifted the book again, giving it her full attention and then some. “Have fun, home by twelve.”

  I left the house seething. What was back-dooring, anyhow? My first stop was Greta’s house. We were going to meet the other girls and then share a cab. The second we were outside, I asked her what it meant.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. She wore a yellow dress that showed off her bosomy figure. “I think it means cheating on somebody. Where’d you hear it?”

  “Some book my mom is reading.” I checked to make sure the clasp of my pearls was secure. “Do you think going to this dance means I’m back-dooring Charlie?”

  Greta chuckled, throaty and free, enough to lift anyone’s spirits. “Didn’t he tell you that he’s dancing every weekend? Does that mean he is back-dooring you?”

  “Of course not. I totally trust him. In fact, his telling me is part of why I do.”

  “Then you only need to worry if you do something that you can’t tell him.”

  “Greta.” I gave her a quick hug. “You’re the best best friend.”

  The band was fantastic. Usually in those days, half the musicians in a group were gone in the service, and you could tell. But this sextet was first rate, with an enormously fat clarinet player in front who could really swing.

  His intonation was impeccable, never sharp or flat unless he bent a note on purpose. Every song the band would set things up, playing chords and a beat like making a stage for him to stand on. His cheeks would bulge and he’d lean back, and then out would blast a rush of notes, high and stylish and full of energy, like a fast-talking guy trying to whirl a girl into romance.

  He seemed to know every song, too, because someone would call out a tune, and half a minute later the clarinetist would be playing it, and playing with it, eyes so wide in delight you could see the whites, while the rest of the band struggled to catch up.

  I hadn’t been there five minutes when a man—twenty-seven, I’d say, way out of my range—appeared and asked me to dance.

  “Happy to,” I said, and out we went. He was good, too, knew how to lead so a girl could trust him. Plus his hands never wandered one inch. After three tunes I thanked him and took a step away. He made a little bow, then tottered off to find another lass.

  Which was perfect. Fun and no harm done. This must be how Charlie did the square dances: light as a feather, keeping his distance. A boy my age came along, red-haired and smiling too much for my tastes, and asked if I wanted to cut a rug.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m taking a break.”

  I saw him on the floor one song later. So no guilt. The clasp of my pearls kept sneaking around to the front, but I slipped it back and went on enjoying that knockout clarinet player.

  Greta’s Brian showed up after all, and they danced to every song. They shook and spun on the fast tunes, snuggled close on the slow ones, and later in the night they had a long smooch on the floor for all of us to see. Everyone clapped for the band when the song ended—except me. I was clapping for my friend.

  The band leader announced that people should pair up, last dance. I sidled over toward the punch bowl. Scanning the room I saw Greta, not with Brian but holding the arm of some other guy—I spotted how whoa Nellie handsome he was, despite an arm in a sling—and they were arguing about something. I hurried over.

  “What’s the matter?” I said. Any guy who fooled with my friend was in for it.

  “Here.” He waved a hand at me. “Let’s ask Brenda herself.”

  “Fine.” Greta released his arm. “Go ahead.”

  The band started up, a sweet slow song. Couples were nuzzling around us. I wanted to get this guy out of Greta’s hair—how did he know my name, anyhow?—so she could snuggle with her boy.

  “What is it?” I shouted to be heard over the music.

  Handsome shouted back. “I told her you were the prettiest girl at this dance, and I want to meet you, and dance with you, and marry you.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I told him he was crazy,” Greta yelled, “and you already have a fella.”

  “Greta honey?” Brian had reappeared on the dance floor. “Shall we?”

  “You’re nuts,” I told handsome. “Leave my girlfriend alone and you get one dance.”

  “Brenda—”

  “Go, Greta. I’ll be fine.”

  By degrees she turned away, until Brian drew her close and they started to sway. When I raised my right arm as if to waltz, handsome took it and led me to the edge of the dance floor. It was less crowded, not as loud. Then he lifted my arm again and took my hand, resting the sling of his right arm on my hip, and we did a little side to side. I intended to say not one word. I hoped it would be a short song.

  He studied his shoes a minute, not much of a dancer. For all his zeal, we were barely moving. When he raised his face again, the downpour began.

  “My name is Chris Beatty, I was between you and Frank in school but, Brenda, I always thought you were beautiful and spirited and interesting, and I’m an airman now, a pilot assigned overseas, can’t say where, but we were shot down and I dinged my arm, four surgeries, they sent me home to heal up so they can get me ba
ck to the war . . .”

  He paused to breathe before charging ahead.

  “. . . and I’ve not been up to much but annoying my ma and tormenting my little sis who is in tenth grade, until tonight when some buddies dragged me here—”

  He glanced past me, over my shoulder as if to spot his pals and prove that he was telling the truth, but then he continued like he was running downhill and his legs got going too fast. What girl wouldn’t be flattered? It was adorable.

  “. . . I saw you across the room early on, and, Brenda, I’ve spent the whole night going back and forth do you talk to a girl when you’re shipping back really soon, do you bother her, but then I remembered the one thing I have learned from this war so far—I mean besides how to fly and navigate and all—one thing that matters, because I learned it the hard way . . .”

  At that his voice tightened the slightest bit, not in some masculine fakery, but as though he was about to cry. I felt it, too, in my throat, without knowing what he was going to say. He leaned forward, his body expressing some kind of amazing urgency.

  “. . . which is that everyone dies, everybody, I’ve seen buddies do it right before my eyes and the only question is when, what day is your number up, and did you make good use of the time you had . . .”

  Then he reached forward before I could think, and hooked one finger in my strand of little-girl pearls. He leaned me ever so slightly toward him, as if to convince me, as if to make me believe.

  “. . . but if I let you walk away it might be the last time I see you, ever, so I started across the floor and then your friend stepped in before I could ask you to dance, or talk to me, or ask you please God to marry me, Brenda. Please. Please.”

  He wound himself down, he gulped and caught his breath. He released my pearls. A pilot. Who had been shot down. Who knew what he wanted. Who was, now that he stood before me, quite frankly, gorgeous.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I replied. But I rose up on tiptoe to whisper close into the whirl of his ear, “Dance with me now, and we’ll see about the rest.”

  22.

  Charlie sat in the back of the pickup as it swayed over open terrain, trying not to vomit. Most crewmen perched on the gunwales, like dogs with their heads out the window. A bold few dangled their legs off the tailgate. But Charlie carried another new assembly, so he sat in the truck’s well to protect it, his belly feeling every pitch and yaw.

  Meanwhile the summer sun roasted him, the dust dried his lips, and he felt similarly sunburned by the remove he sensed from the crew. No longer did he work with them all day amid the ponderosa. They saw Charlie only when he had something to test.

  At last the truck eased to a halt. The driver set the brake, tilting his cowboy hat forward. When it came to napping, Charlie thought, the man was a professional.

  Bronsky climbed out on the passenger side, and with his strange fastidious steps to protect his shoes, he minced down to the bowl while unfolding a blueprint. Charlie stood and took deep breaths.

  The site boss sniffed in his direction. “Fish.”

  “How are you today, sir?”

  Instead of answering, he turned at the sound of his director’s boss’s boss calling for a measuring tape. One by one, Bronsky checked the measurements of the munitions circling the bowl—ten piles of TNT, every nest of yellow crystals equidistant from the center and from one another. Crewmen helped as the director called for adjustments of an inch or two in each mound of explosives, while the rest stood well back. To Charlie, they appeared as interested as if they were watching a chef prepare a meal that someone else was going to eat.

  He climbed off the truck, cradling the assembly, and shuffled down the slope. The only crewman looking his way was Monroe, who he’d seen as recently as breakfast, his usual garrulous self, but who now greeted Charlie with a discreet nod.

  “Fishk,” Bronsky called, eyes on the blueprint. “Do your businesses.”

  “Hi, fellas,” Charlie said, ambling out into the bowl. No one replied. He placed the assembly on the ground.

  The work absorbed him: unwinding the wires to a safe distance, attaching the detonator. Absently, he began to hum. “Camptown Ladies,” doo-dah, doo-dah. When everything was connected, Charlie waved to the site boss, who as usual sounded his air horn. Rather than telling the boys to move away, as before, now the blast signaled that they might return within visual range, to watch the fireworks.

  Bronsky hovered as Charlie connected the assembly to a car battery. “Ready, sir.”

  “All clears,” the Russian unit director cried out—the one of his many speech habits that the boys chose to mock behind his back, announcing “all clears” when they finished a meal, chugged a beer, flushed a toilet: “all clears.”

  A whole lexicon of ridicule was developing on The Hill. Los Alamos was nicknamed Lost Almost. A girl with shapely hips was known as a Project Y. Every time the water ran out or the power failed, the boys would cry “Shangri-La.” The strangeness of their situation seemed to increase daily. Those who obtained driver’s licenses saw not their name beside the photo, but a number, and their address was “United States Army.”

  “God forbid a policeman ever pulls me over,” Giles said. “He’ll think this is a play license.”

  There was no police force on The Hill, however, only MPs with open contempt for civilians, their tempers as sullen as hungry teenagers. There was no telephone for personal use either. For radio, there was a station that broadcast on The Hill only. Men world-famous in their scientific fields strode about in dungarees and shirtsleeves, often unshaved, unless a photographer appeared for some reason. The gents would resurface in suits, their faces sleek and fingernails clean. There was one teahouse halfway down the hill, and one restaurant, but it was above the rank and finances of barracks boys. They made do with the rare weekend trip to Santa Fe, riding there and back in drab green Army buses, their wallets full on the way down but empty on the way back, with little to show for the trip but a hangover and the occasional tattoo.

  When a fellow staggered back into the barracks, the boys would greet him: “Did you meet any local girls?” Nearly always, he would grin in defeat. “All clears.”

  Now Bronsky unceremoniously unlocked the assembly, confirmed that the bowl area was empty, then jammed the circuit closed. The explosions were tidy, tests of control rather than yield, but nonetheless an entertaining sight. The boys who’d snuck their heads out from behind trees and rocks enjoyed eight bursts of light bringing eight bangs of noise, rushes of dust and smoke from the perimeter of the bowl, debris tossed in eight directions.

  The crewmen cheered, Monroe yelled, “Hell yeah,” but Charlie hung his head. Two piles had not gone off. A gray cloud rose, leaving a chalky taste to the air.

  Bronsky marched down the hill to loom over one of the duds, eyeing it from every angle, then swept with his hand as if to dismiss the entire situation. Charlie stumbled down the slope, stopping at the concrete’s edge.

  “Next time Fishk, you leave assembly in truck until all else is connected. Yes?”

  Charlie scanned the bowl: eight scars on the concrete, two mysteries. “Yes, sir.”

  “Disconnect these two,” Bronsky said, pointing, though Charlie had already squatted by one of them, removing the feckless wires. “And please to throw in trash.”

  Only one thing could repair Charlie’s spirits after a debacle like that, and when he returned to the barracks after dinner, that exact thing was waiting on his bed.

  Dear Charlie,

  I took your advice, or followed your example anyhow, and at the urging of my girlfriends, last Saturday I went to a dance.

  Feeling a flash of insecurity, he glanced up to see that the barracks were nearly empty. A few boys napping at the far end. The gap in days between Brenda’s last letter and this one was the longest since they had parted in the Great Hall of Union Station. Each day now, Charlie saw how much destruction could take place in a fraction of a second. With the expanse of time since their last kiss, any
imaginable thing could happen. He swallowed hard before bending back to the page.

  You would have loved it. There was a clarinet player with perfect embouchure, brilliant tone, and a clever idea every three seconds. Also his repertoire was limitless. People could call out any old tune, and half a minute later he’d be playing it. He kept us dancing till midnight. I only went out on the floor for a few numbers, but they were good fun, and I thought of you and all your square dancing.

  The best gossip of the night is that Greta may have landed herself a fella, though I haven’t had a chance to squeeze all the juicy details out of her. I saw them smooching during a slow song, so I hope he doesn’t have to go off in the service anytime soon.

  On she prattled, news and chatter, and it did Charlie’s heart good. More than anything the letter said, its mere existence was a balm. She was thinking of him. She took the time to write.

  “Before you, Charlie Fish,” Giles said, sauntering down the barracks aisle, “no one had ever detonated six devices on one assembly. Eight is a fine achievement.”

  “Tell that to the man who wanted ten.” Charlie lowered the letter. “But wait. You guys in Electronics heard already?”

  “My friend, the minute you succeed, we will have to build feeder wiring for long-distance initiation. Your progress is our workload.”

  “No one tells me anything.”

  “I told you: compartmentalization. But I have worse news.”

  “And so far today you’ve been nothing but rainbows and unicorns.”

  Giles laughed. “That’s funny, Charlie. You just made an actual joke.”

  “It was an accident. What’s the worse news?”

  “My division is developing electronics equipment for twenty-four detonators.”

  Charlie drew back like a trout doubting a lure. “But they want the firing to be simultaneous. How can you do that with two dozen terminals?”

  “It’s madness. My only question is whether they want you to be juggling knives or fire sticks while you perform this feat of magic.”