The Bomb Read online

  7

  Sorry awakened when the sun was a quarter of the way to the horizon, ran down to the lagoon, and plunged in, then got a spear from the canoe and began walking toward the barrier reef. As he neared the ocean, moving by the windward brush, threading through the last palms on that side, he was suddenly face-to-face with an angry hak, its wings stretched to the full seven feet. Guarding a nest of chicks, the frigate let out a throat rattle and Sorry backed down to the edge of the water, aiming his spear at the bird.

  Within a few minutes he had a blacktail snapper flapping on the tip of the spear. He killed it with the usual bite behind its head, then circled back to where he was camping. He scaled the fish with a shell and ate some of it uncooked.

  As twilight, with all its shades of Pacific blue, began to cast shadows in the palm grove, the bird cries grew fewer and softer, except for an occasional outburst. Sorry took up the magazine and started at the front again. He wondered again why the Japanese people, with all their wonderful machinery, couldn't live in peace.

  When darkness finally spread over the lagoon and island, he put the magazine away in the plaited pouch and waited for the moon to rise. When full, or near full, the moon gave the night hunter the gift of light, shining down on the shallow, low-tide water on the shelf inside the barrier reef. The tide would be high again in a few hours, higher than at any other time during the month.

  If the ocean was behaving, the hunter could always see the glistening blue-green backs of clawless lobsters that lived down in the outer reef's crevices and canyons and came up on the knee-deep, clear-water inner shelf at night to feed. It was easy to spear them in the ivory light. So at the time of full and near-full moon, there were feasts in the village.

  When the moon had risen a quarter of the way up from the sea, a white-orange ball in the eastern sky, it took Sorry no more than an hour to get a lobster each for the eleven families. He put them in the netting he'd brought along, pulled it tight with twine, and then staked the net in a tide pool for pickup in the morning. He knew the same thing was happening over on Bikini. A dozen men would be out with their spears.

  Later, when the moon was overhead and beginning its descent to the west, he bedded down. The day had been a good one. Tomorrow morning he'd pick green coconuts and then set sail for home.

  Best of all, he'd been alone, thinking no thoughts except the ones he wanted to think. He'd done everything exactly as he'd planned. That was what his father had done on Bokabata, and he had come home happy.

  Yet, all day here on Nantil, he knew he hadn't really been alone. August was still around, just as everyone who had died and was buried on Bikini was still there, according to Grandfather Jonjen. Grandmother Yolo believed they walked the beach at night.

  Before the time that Yolo had entered her world of near silence, she'd told Lokileni and Sorry stories of Micronesian demons and ghosts and demigods and trees and fish that spoke. Mwoakilloa was home to the lazy giant Lodup. Ebadon, an islet of Kwajalein, was home to a female demon who kidnapped the four children of Likidudu. Yap lagoon was the home of a galuf, a monstrous sea lizard. Lokakalle, a murderer, lived on Ijoen, an islet of Arno Atoll. As a child, Sorry couldn't get enough of old Yolo's stories.

  Bedded down so close to where August had been torn to little pieces, Sorry felt his presence and remembered him, but not in a frightened way. In his mind, August was saying that the war had killed him on Nantil and he'd done nothing to cause it. The selfish war itself had done it.

  Sorry remembered August's smiles, his laughter. They'd fished together, played games together, wrestled in the surf and sand, raced along the beach, come to this very island together. He remembered August's solemn face, his warm eyes.

  Suddenly, he was looking at the moon through tears. He knew he could never return to Nantil. It was too painful. He wept about August and suddenly found himself weeping about his father. He cried until his ribs hurt and then finally fell asleep.

  ***

  He awakened at dawn and was up on his elbows, looking out across the lagoon, when a lone Laysan albatross flew by at water's edge. Albatross were seldom seen this far north, but there it was, with its big white body and seven feet of white-and-black wings, their tips as sharp as spears. It glided along without effort and then twisted its head and moaned. He could hear it clearly.

  A warning! Jonjen had said that an albatross had come by Bikini a long time ago and moaned. A typhoon hit several days later.

  Something terrible was going to happen to their atoll. The tournefortia tree had warned about it; now the albatross.

  In December 1942, Enrico Fermi and his team of physicists set atomic elements into a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction on a snow-covered squash court of the University of Chicago. Known as Chicago Pile Number One, it was the second major step toward the making of an atomic bomb.

  8

  "It moaned just as it passed by me," Sorry said, the sight and sound of the big white-bodied bird lingering on in his mind.

  "Albatross often do that," his grandfather said, "But they don't come near here very often."

  They were by the canoe shed. Sorry was unloading all the things he'd picked up on Nantil. Lokileni, Tara, and Sorry's mother were a few feet away, watching.

  "Maybe it was lost," Sorry said.

  "They come around occasionally," his mother said. "Years ago, one followed your father's big canoe for three days. He was going to Wotje. They ride the ocean air currents and follow ships or boats. Why, I don't know."

  Jonjen, sitting cross-legged in the sand, said, "They are not a good omen."

  Sorry's mother looked over at her father. "I thought you'd say that."

  "Remember the typhoon," Jonjen said darkly, his eyes fixed on her with annoyance.

  "Of course I do," she answered. The lagoon waters had swept over the island waist deep, destroying all the dwellings and flooding the taro pits. Everyone took to the swayback palms, holding on to sennit loops. "No albatross caused it."

  "The albatross was carrying a message from God, a warning. We'd sinned," Jonjen insisted.

  Sorry's mother gave up. Arguing with her father was useless.

  Sorry said, "Let's hope we don't have another one."

  He had been seven when that storm hit, and he'd had nightmares for months.

  Typhoon season, especially in the western Pacific, was between July and October. Bikini wasn't on the usual typhoon route. But he couldn't think of anything else the albatross might be warning them about.

  Other families had come to the canoe shed to look at what he'd found on Nantil. Most of the time beachcombing was best on the barrier reefs, though the waves sometimes smashed things against the coral shelves. Things that floated ashore in the lagoon were usually from ships anchored there.

  Chief Juda would soon divide up what Sorry had found on Nantil, except the fine wooden chair. Sorry would keep it for his family. He couldn't guess why the white men had thrown it overboard.

  ***

  The rainy season arrived a month later, and just in time. The islanders had used a lot of coconut water since the past October. The tropical rainstorms of the summer months were often downpours, the heavy, dark clouds draining water over the atoll, curtain after curtain of it.

  But the first rain was gentle, and they ran around capturing, as always, what they could in anything that would hold water. Sorry went to sleep that night hearing the pleasant drum of raindrops on the thatch roof.

  The first real storm that year arrived during the day a few weeks later, adding more precious water. With it came thunder and lightning, unusual for the north Marshalls. This time there were wind gusts that shook the dwellings and drove the rain inside; the cisterns overflowed.

  Sorry could tell when a big summer storm was approaching. The air became hotter and stiller. Ripples began to appear in the lagoon, though he couldn't feel a breeze. The sun disappeared behind haze before the sky turned blue and black. Then the surf would begin to sing in a deeper voice.

>   The rainy season usually ended with a last storm in early November. Until it arrived again the next summer, Bikini might have a few light squalls, the rain shimmering through sunshine, barely dampening the sand. The sun would quickly dry the island.

  No typhoon came roaring out of the west that year. Perhaps the albatross and the tournefortia tree had been wrong.

  In 1943, on a long mesa extending from the Jemez Mountains, near Santa Fe, New Mexico, work began on the production of an atom bomb. The Los Alamos laboratory was instantly the most highly guarded, secretive place in America.

  9

  Two months after the albatross, Sorry's uncle, his rikorān, Abram Makaoliej, his mother's brother, sailed into the lagoon unexpectedly. By himself, he'd steered an eighteen-foot outrigger canoe from Eniwetok, about 170 miles away—a voyage full of risk. He'd been away a long time. Sorry's mother had thought her brother was dead.

  Abram had brought his personal possessions in a canvas bag, as well as white people's games and other gifts for the family. He'd also brought a guitar wrapped in a yellow raincoat.

  "Aha! You thought I was dead!" he shouted, standing in the wet sand of the lagoon shore like an actor onstage. "But I do not die so easy!"

  His grin was as bright as the sun; his square face was carefree. His hair was South Seas curly, black as sea urchins.

  Sorry was openmouthed.

  Abram had "jumped" an American merchant ship in Eniwetok harbor, left it without permission, and then "borrowed" the canoe. He could be put in jail for leaving the ship, as well as for stealing the outrigger. He seemed not to give either act a thought.

  Sorry's mother had talked about him many times. "A wild man," she said. "Fearless!"

  "A crazy man," Jonjen had said, with a laugh and a shake of head. "He once wrestled a big octopus, underwater, at Lomlik. I saw him do it. He was not much older than you, Sorry."

  And here he was, of medium island height and weight, heavily muscled. He had intense eyes, darker brown than his skin, and that wide, shining al grin. He was thirty-two years old.

  "Where is Badina?" he asked.

  Mother Rinamu blinked and swallowed. "He's dead. Four years ago. He disappeared along the barrier reef. He was spearing."

  Abram took her into his arms and held her a moment. "He was a good man."

  She nodded.

  "And who is this?" he then asked, looking at Sorry standing in awe by the prow of the stolen outrigger, water lapping at his toes.

  "Our manje, Sorry." The firstborn.

  Abram extended his hand in a hard grip. To Sorry it was like touching lightning. "We will have fun, manje, you and I," Abram promised.

  Lokileni, as well as almost every villager who was not out fishing, was also there, having been summoned by Jonjen and the Ah-hoooo! of his conch. A son of the island had returned, alive and well.

  "And you are the sister," he said to her. "So pretty you are."

  Thin-legged, dark-haired Lokileni, in her oversized faded Mother Hubbard dress, lowered her head and smiled at the sand.

  Sorry saw Tara watching the stranger with interest. In turn, Abram's eyes lingered on her.

  Then he took a look around. "A few more houses, a few more palms, a few more pandanus. It hasn't changed, this island, has it? But what's that wooden one?" He nodded north, up the beach.

  "That's where the Japanese lived," Sorry said.

  Abram frowned widely. "They were here?"

  "Yes," Chief Juda admitted.

  "And you didn't kill them?" Abram was frowning at everybody in disbelief.

  "We thought about it," Jonjen said. "We talked about it..."

  "How many?"

  "Seven."

  Abram snorted. "Only seven? I'm sorry I wasn't around."

  Having known him less than five minutes, Sorry thought his uncle would have taken care of the Japanese overnight. Cut their throats one by one. He was not a coward.

  Sorry's mother broke in. "I'm glad you weren't here, Abram. None of us would be alive." She had said Abram was ferocious, like the ancient warriors of the northern Marshalls.

  Abram laughed and hugged her. "I need some cloth."

  "For what?" she asked, beaming at him.

  He was clad in a blue shirt, khaki trousers, and brown leather shoes. White man's clothing. "For the old thing."

  Jonjen said, "The old thing is over, except for work."

  The "old thing" was a loincloth.

  Foreigner clothing was now prized. Some of the men were wearing Japanese army shirts, hats, and pants, courtesy of the deceased occupants of the wooden house. Some were wearing Japanese shoes. All the girls and women wore the tentlike Mother Hubbard dresses. Sorry knew they dated back to the first missionaries, who came in 1904, when the Germans still ruled the Marshalls. Only when fishing in boats or netting or spearing along the shore did the men wear loincloths now. Sorry did, too, for work, sometimes.

  But Abram insisted on a loincloth. He said he'd been wearing foreigner clothes all the time he was away. He laughed. "My privates should be comfortable, day and night."

  Then he scanned the tops of the nearby palms, eyes alight, and said, "There is not a single coconut left on Eniwetok. The bombs and shells blew them off. I haven't climbed a tree or had a drink of the water in years."

  Sorry watched as Abram dropped his trousers and sprinted to a swayback palm—the easiest to climb—and went up, shouting over his shoulder, "My feet have grown soft!"

  Twisting a nut off, he dropped it to the sand, then backed down, making fun of his soft soles. "The first thing I have to do is make them tough again," he shouted. Soft feet always had trouble with palm bark and coral.

  All over the groves, sharpened hardwood sticks stood upright in the sand. A coconut was peeled by shoving its husk down on the stick, then twisting to pry off the outer shell. Abram did this, then punched an eye out of the nut and drank deeply. The juice ran down his chin and throat.

  There was a feast that night, to celebrate the safe homecoming of Abram Makaoliej. He was clad in his new loincloth. The women giggled when he swooped in front of them playfully, flirting with them, laughing. Tara Malolo watched him with amusement. He played white men's songs on his guitar. He could speak English.

  Sorry couldn't take his eyes off the stranger. He'd actually been to ailīnkan, he'd been there! There was a large, ragged scar on Abram's right side, starting above the ribs and going down to his stomach. In time, Sorry would ask him how he got it.

  Everyone ate and sang and danced most of the torch-lit night. Feet stomped steadily on coral sand to the clicking of hardwood sticks and Abram's slap of cupped hands on his bare chest and thighs. His grin was like a torch, Sorry thought. Following tradition, the men danced with men, the women with women.

  Abram Makaoliej was home at last.

  At Trinity Flats, New Mexico, a place Spanish conquistadores had called Jornada del Muerto, the Journey of Death, the first full-scale test of an atomic bomb was conducted at 5:30 A.M., July 16, 1945. Witnesses were speechless at the force and size of the explosion. Acres of the alkali sands were melted into glass.

  10

  Abram slept late on his mat, weary from his long voyage and the celebrating. When he awakened and ran down to the beach, diving into the lagoon, Sorry followed him to the water's edge.

  Naked as an eel, laughing, Abram kicked and bobbed up and down, shaking sparkling droplets from his head. He'd forgotten that only girls and women could bathe in the lagoon; men had to bathe on the ocean side, in barrier-reef pools. The missionaries had seen to that. Sorry was hesitant to remind him. Perhaps someone else would.

  When Abram finally stood up in the shallow water, he made a joke. "The water feels the same."

  How did it feel fifteen years ago? Sorry was almost afraid to talk to Abram, show his ignorance. He had nothing to talk about. Compared to Abram and Tara, Sorry believed, he knew absolutely nothing.

  Abram nodded up toward the village. "Same, same," he said.

  In the
midmorning shade of the palms, the women were going about their usual work of preparing food, weaving mats, sweeping around the dwellings. They took care of the coral pebble paths and street. Some of the men were out on the lagoon trolling for yellowfin tuna or wahoo: meals for tomorrow. Sorry would join them in the afternoon.

  Other men were repairing nets or working on the outriggers in the canoe shed. The islanders were seldom idle, except at midday and on Sundays.

  "Same, same," Abram said again, nodding. "I think we hunt for a shark tomorrow."

  Sorry couldn't believe what he'd just heard. Home less than two days, Abram wasn't satisfied with lagoon fishing.

  "All right," Sorry said, already excited. "I know where a big mako lives."

  "The one I have in mind is bigger," Abram said. "Meanwhile, I want to walk around the island by myself. I have many memories."

  Sorry nodded, and off went Abram and his memories.

  He watched as his uncle stopped by the nearest fire pit, one belonging to the Ijjirik clan, and dug around in the hot coral stones with a stick. Abram pulled up baked taro.

  Then he walked slowly north, eating, deep in thought. He was a little bowlegged, Sorry saw. The muscles bulged in his legs and buttocks, visible on either side of the loincloth. His uncle Abram must have worked very hard on those merchant ships.

  Yes, Abram could easily have killed all of those Japanese soldiers, easily strangled them, Sorry thought.

  ***

  Back at the family dwelling, two hundred-odd feet up the beach slope and across the street, Sorry said, "We're going shark fishing in the morning."

  "Who is 'we'?" his mother asked.

  She was plaiting a mat with a needle, the long wing bone of a tattler—all needles were made from bird bones. The young pandanus leaves were dried near the cooking fire, then plaited. He'd seen her plaiting hundreds of times, usually sitting with other women in one or another of the houses. Sometimes they sang hymns. Tara and his near-silent grandmother were there now, plaiting, too.