Days of Infamy (22 page)

Lundquist scribbled a note. He asked, “Have you got any flying experience?”

“No, sir,” Joe admitted, wondering how much trouble the admission
would get him in. Again, he couldn't tell what Lundquist was thinking. The man had one of the deadest pans Joe had ever seen; he wouldn't have wanted to play poker against him.

“But you do drive a car as well as work on them?” Lundquist persisted.

“Oh, yes, sir,” Joe said. “I've had my license since I was sixteen.”

“Any accidents?”

“No, sir.”

“Tickets?”

“Just one.” Joe thought about lying, but they could check. The ticket might not wash him out. If they nailed him in a lie, he figured that was all she wrote.

The selection-board chairman shuffled through his folder. “I see you have your letters of recommendation in place.” He looked over each of them in turn. “Your boss and your two high-school coaches. They know you pretty well?”

“If they don't, nobody does.” Joe wondered if he should have tried to get letters from important people—judges or politicians, maybe. The only trouble was, he didn't know anybody like that.
I'm an ordinary Joe
, he thought, and grinned a little.

“One more question,” Lundquist said. “Why do you want to do this?”

“Why? Sir, the day after the Japs jumped on Pearl Harbor, my old man tried to join the Army. He wanted to hit back, and so do I. They wouldn't take him—he's forty-five, and he's got a bad back and a bad shoulder. But I was so proud of him, I can't even tell you. And what he did got me thinking. If we are going to hit back at the Japs, who'll get in the first licks? Pilots flying off carriers, looks like to me. So that's what I want to do.”

The man who looked as if he'd played second or short remarked, “Kid's got a head on his shoulders.” That made Joe feel about ten feet tall. He tried not to be dumber than he could help, but he was no big brain. If they wanted guys with high foreheads and thick glasses to fly their fighters, he was out of luck.

“Why don't you step outside?” Lundquist told him. “We need to talk about you behind your back for a little while.” Joe did a double take when he heard that. Lundquist was a cool customer, but maybe he was okay underneath.

Joe could hear them muttering about him in there. If he put his ear to the door, he might make out what they were saying. He didn't do it. It was something else where getting caught would land him in hot water. Not doing it turned out to be smart. Ten seconds later, two guys in sailor suits turned the corner and came past him. They paid him no more attention than if he were
part of the linoleum. But if he'd been leaning up against the door, that would have been a different story.

He wanted a cigarette, but didn't pull the pack of Luckys out of his pocket. He didn't want to have a butt in his mouth when they called him back in, and it'd be just his luck to get halfway down the smoke when the door opened.

Again, that turned out to be the right move, because a couple of minutes later the door
did
open. “Come on in, son,” Lundquist said. “Have a seat.” As usual, his face gave no clue to what he was thinking. He might have been about to give Joe what he wanted, or to arrest him and send him to Alcatraz.

Silence stretched. Joe craved that cigarette more than ever. It would have calmed his nerves, slowed his pounding heart. Finally he couldn't stand it any more, and said, “Well?”

“Well, we're going to make you an appointment with the psychological officers,” Lundquist said. “If they don't say you've got an unfortunate tendency to raise hedgehogs in your hat, we'll see if the Navy can make a flyboy out of you.”

“Thank you, sir!” The words seemed cold and useless to Joe. What he really wanted to do was turn handsprings.

“No promises, mind you, but you don't look too bad,” Lundquist said.

The man who looked like a middle infielder added, “You had all your paperwork in order the first time you came in. That's a good sign right there—you'd be amazed how many people have to try three times before they bring us everything we need. No promises, no, but my guess is you've got what it takes.”

“See the petty officer at the door,” Lundquist said. “Make yourself a psych appointment for right after the first of the year. Good luck to you.”

Joe thanked him again and left the conference room. His feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. He might have been flying even without a fighter under him. The petty officer, who had an impressive array of long-service hashmarks on his sleeve, set up the appointment for testing. That Joe had passed the selection board didn't impress him. By all appearances, nothing impressed him.

Out in the street, Joe half expected people to stare at him and point and say,
There's the kid who's going to shoot Tojo's medals off his chest
. They didn't, of course. To them, what he'd accomplished didn't show. The gray-haired man at the street corner who wore a helmet and an armband with CD—Civil Defense—on it was visibly part of the war. Joe wasn't.

On the same corner, a kid in short pants was peddling the
Examiner
. “More Jap landings in the Philippines!” he bawled, over and over. “Read all about it!” Joe gave him a nickel and took a paper.

He read the
Examiner
as he walked back to the garage where he worked. Lots of people had their noses in newspapers, far more than had read as they walked before the war started. Every so often, they'd bump into each other, mutter excuse-mes, and keep on reading as they walked.

Not much of the news was good. The Navy was laying mines outside harbors on the East Coast to try to keep German subs away. Congressmen were fuming that blackout regulations weren't strict enough and were being ignored. The Nazis and Reds were both claiming victories in Russia.

Rooting for the Russians felt funny. Joe's old man had admired Mussolini before he got too chummy with Hitler, and couldn't stand Stalin. But the USA and the Soviet Union were on the same side now, like it or not.

“How'd it go, Joe?” his boss asked when he walked in.

“Pretty good, Mr. Scalzi, I think,” Joe answered. Dominic Scalzi's family and the Crosettis both came from the same village south of Naples. That wasn't the only reason Joe had a job there, but it sure didn't hurt. He went on, “Thanks again for your letter. I had all my ducks in a row, and they really liked that.”

“Good, kid. That's good.” Scalzi lit a Camel. Joe couldn't see how he smoked them; they were strong enough to grow hair on your chest. The garage owner was a short, round man with a graying mustache. He blew a smoke ring, then sighed out the rest of the drag in a blue-gray cloud. “I shoulda told 'em you were a lousy good-for-nothing. Then they wouldn't take you, and you could go on workin' for me a little longer.”

“Probably not much,” Joe said. “If I don't end up a Navy flier, the draft'll get me pretty soon.”

“I said a little longer.” Dominic Scalzi was a precise man, a good thing for a mechanic to be. He jerked a thumb at the little washroom off to one side of the work area. “Go on and change into your coveralls. Long as you're here, I'm gonna get some work outa you. See if you can clean the gunk outa Mr. Jablonski's carburetor, will you? He's been pissing and moaning about it for weeks.”

“I'll try,” Joe said. “You want to know what I think, I think the carb on a '38 Plymouth is a piece of crap.”

“I don't give a damn what you think. I just want you to clean out the son of a bitch.” Scalzi's uniform was an almost Navy blue, but all it had on it was
Dom
machine-embroidered over the left breast pocket. Joe's was just like it except for the name.

He grabbed a hasty cigarette of his own while he changed out of his jacket and slacks and into the scratchy denim coveralls. Before he came out, he flushed the butt down the toilet. He figured on soaking the carburetor in gasoline before he got to work on it. Gasoline and cigarettes didn't mix.

Once he'd soaked everything with the gasoline, he went after the valves and springs and made sure no deposits could interfere with their functioning. Then he reassembled the carb. His hands knew what to do, almost without conscious thought on his part. He had the carburetor back on the engine before he really noticed what he was up to.

The key was in the ignition. He started up the Plymouth, listened, and nodded to himself. The car sounded a hell of a lot better than it had when old man Jablonski brought it in. He waved to his boss. Scalzi came over, wiping his greasy hands on a rag. He listened, too, and gave Joe a thumbs-up. Joe grinned. It was turning into a pretty damn good day.

C
ORPORAL
T
AKEO
S
HIMIZU
liked the way things were going nowadays much better than he had a week earlier. The attack over the western mountains had made the Americans fall back for their very lives. They still hadn't pieced together a line to match the one they'd held in front of Schofield Barracks and Wahiawa. With a little luck, they wouldn't be able to.

They hadn't quit, though. A Yankee machine gun up ahead spat death across a pineapple field. Shimizu crouched in a foxhole. Sooner or later, a grenade or mortar bomb would take care of the machine-gun crew. Then he'd advance again. Or, if one of his officers gave the order, he'd advance sooner than that. And if the machine gun blew out his brains or chopped his legs out from under him . . . in that case, like it or not, one of the chowderheads in his squad would get a star on each of his red-and-gold collar tabs.

Meanwhile . . . Meanwhile, Shimizu lit a cigarette from a pack he'd taken off a dead American. The tobacco was amazingly smooth and mild.
Any way you look at it, the Americans live better than we do
, he thought. He made
twenty yen—about four dollars and sixty cents—a month. He wondered what an American corporal got paid. More than that, or he missed his guess.

Cautiously, he stuck his head up for a look around. He saw where the machine gun was: in a sandbagged position behind a creek. Whoever'd sited it had known what he was doing. If there were no mortars handy, he didn't see how anyone could knock it out. The gunners would shoot a man with grenades before he got close enough to fling them.

He ducked down in a hurry. He wasn't going to order anybody forward to throw his life away. Lieutenant Yonehara had done that, and what had it got him? Nothing but a grieving family back home.

Of course, Colonel Fujikawa or some other officer could order the men to advance, and they would have to go. What would happen to them afterwards? That was in the hands of karma. So Shimizu told himself, anyway.

“This way! Forward! It's clear over here!” The shout came in Japanese, from ahead and to the right. It wasn't just Japanese, either. It was Hiroshima dialect—from Shimizu's own part of the country—and old-fashioned Hiroshima dialect at that. It sounded like somebody who'd never been off a farm in the back of beyond till the Army grabbed him. Shimizu would have thought only old grannies talked like that nowadays.

But if there was a way forward . . . He sprang out of his hole, shouting, “Come on, men! Let's drive the Yankees back again!”

He wasn't the only one who'd emerged. Quite a few soldiers had heard that shout. They all jumped up and started running ahead and to the right. And the American machine gun and nearby riflemen remorselessly chopped them down. Shimizu had learned better than to stay on his feet very long under fire like that. He threw himself flat and, still on his belly, started scraping himself a new hole in the ground.

Amid the screams of the wounded, somebody yelled, “
Zakennayo!
”—a pungent, all-purpose obscenity—and then went on, “Must be one of those Hawaii Japanese!”

Shimizu dug harder. He muttered, “
Zakennayo!
” too. They'd told him before he set out that there were more people of Japanese blood in Hawaii than any other group. From what he'd seen, that was likely true. Most of them had roots around Hiroshima, too. That was why the Fifth Division, which drew its manpower from that region, was on Oahu now. And they'd told him the
Hawaii Japanese would be delighted to see these islands come under the Rising Sun.

That . . . wasn't so obvious. Some of the older men and women seemed glad enough to see the Japanese. A lot of the younger ones, the ones born here, seemed anything but. This fellow had just got several soldiers shot.
If we get our hands on him
 . . . Shimizu thought longingly.

He cursed again as he threw dirt in front of himself. The Americans and the damned Hawaii Japanese had suckered him. He squeezed the entrenching tool till his knuckles whitened. Of course the bastard sounded as if he came from the dark side of the moon. Most of the Japanese here had old-fashioned accents. They or their ancestors had been peasants to begin with, and the language here hadn't changed with time as it had in Japan.

He'd just got the foxhole half as good as the one he'd left behind when mortar bombs did start whistling down around the American machine gun. Those bursts sounded sweet to him—but not sweet enough to make him stick his head up out of that foxhole. If he did, the Yankees were liable to blow it off for him.