GH O TI

f i sh

Battling the Japanese Fleet

By Stephen F. McCann

Henry burst from the sheets in full, long-limbed, lanky agitation, and stood between his side of the bed and the wall with his chest heaving and his piercing blue eyes wide open. It seemed only moments before he had been curled up with Dennis between Mildred and himself. However, a small weathered wooden box with reddish cylinders sat on the foot of the bed and Dennis stood near it with a dirty finger in his mouth and growing concern in his eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” Henry said, “where did you get a box of goddamn dynamite.”

“Watch your language, Henry,” Mildred said. “Besides, it looks like a box of railroad flares to me. What makes you think it’s dynamite?”

Henry pointed to the side of the box facing away from her. “I don’t know,” he said, “Maybe because on the box it says DYNAMITE.”

“Oh dear,” Mildred said, pushed and pulled blankets aside, and slid out of bed. “Come here, sweetheart,” she said to Dennis and held out her hand, “Is that really dynamite?”

Dennis walked over to her, removed the finger from his mouth, clutched her hand, and said, “I was using it to blow up the Japs. Just like Uncle Hap did in the Navy.”

Mildred patted her son on the head and said, “Let’s go down stairs to the kitchen. Your dad can handle this.”

“The kitchen?” Henry said, “Try heading down the block. Did you see how much goddamn dynamite is in there? How about going over to your mother’s? Look at this thing; it’s at least half-full. I gotta call the police. Where did you get this, Son?”

“Henry, you’re babbling,” Mildred said. “Try to calm down a bit, all right? Try pretending you’re back working the emergency room and you’ve got two car accidents and a heart attack coming at you.”

“Yes, yes,” Henry said, “Think of it like it’s an emergency room.” Henry still looked worried, but his breathing returned to normal. “You take the boy to the kitchen, and I’ll haul this god-awful mess down to the ditch behind the garage.”

“Good idea,” Mildred said.

By the time Henry stepped through the backdoor into the kitchen, he felt much better. The box of dynamite was still a hazard, but at least it now sat low in a ditch with a cinder block garage between it and the house. Though he did not remember much of his military training in the Army, he felt fairly sure that he had placed the explosive so that if it did pop, most of the energy would radiate away from the their house and toward the Seventh Day Adventist Church across the street. Since the Adventists worshipped on Saturdays, Sunday mornings found the building deserted. And they probably owned insurance on the property.

In the breakfast nook with the morning sun pouring through the east windows, Dennis ate a bowl of Applejacks cereal while Mildred, still in pajamas, sipped a cup of her thick-as-motor-oil coffee. A whiff of sour dough biscuits beginning to bake scented the air. Henry sat down and Mildred patted his hand. “It’s going to be all right,” she said and her smile made him chuckle.

“Sure you don’t want another child,” he said and pointed his thumb at Dennis as he sat down.

“I’m still thinking about it,” she answered. “I put the biscuits in just before you walked in. They’ll take about twenty minutes.”

Dennis finished his Applejacks by tipping the bowl up to his mouth and a small portion of the remaining milk dribbled down the sides of his mouth. His sandy-blond hair was long enough again that it could now appear tousled. Though he had bathed only the night before, his early morning wandering had already marked him with dirty smudges and grass stains. Dennis rarely slept late on weekends, and since no cartoons shown on television on Sundays, he often took off across Empire Hill, where their house sat halfway up the south side. This gave them a view of Short Creek a hundred yards away and past it, one of the planes dotted with barren and abandoned lead mines and tailings surrounding the main portion of the town of Angela, which lay farther south still. They forbid Dennis from playing around the abandoned mine shafts. Most likely, though, he found the dynamite somewhere out there—abandoned and forgotten by a mining company.

“We don’t say Japs,” he said to Dennis, “We call them Japanese, and they’re our friends now.”

“Uncle Hap calls them Japs,” Dennis replied.

“Uncle Hap also thinks professional wrestling is real,” Henry said. “We forgive him for it because he fought for our country and is a coprocephalic.”

“What’s that,” Dennis asked.

“Careful, Henry,” Mildred said.

“It’s medical,” he told his son, “And I think you listen to your uncle’s war stories too much.”

He turned to his wife and said, “Looks like the boy inherited the muscles on your side of the family. Hope he doesn’t get the eccentricities. Even I thought that box felt heavy when I carried it to the ditch. I can’t imagine our little pocket Hercules here hauling it up to the house. Has he told you where he got it?”

“He got it down where he wasn’t supposed to be playing,” Mildred said and looked hard at Dennis.

“And If I’d had my Applejacks, I bet I could have carried the whole box,” Dennis said.

Henry stole a piece of toast from Mildred’s plate of buttered toast and fruit. With the fright and excitement, he had not felt the need for his usual morning coffee. Besides, he was beginning to hope he might return to bed and if he could simply pretend he had not heard his son’s last remark, maybe he could. A simple piece of toast and no coffee. Call the police later. Back to bed for now. Ah, but he found intelligent women attractive, had spurned the stunningly beautiful but vacuous sorority girls who chased him in college, and married brainy Mildred—nice-looking Mildred too—who had to ask, “What do you mean by ‘the whole box’, Dennis?” At least he had not called the police yet.

Indeed, Dennis’ box of dynamite originally held a full load of sticks. He found the box in a small man-made cave on the north side of Short Creek (technically not among the plane of lead mines) under a plank of wood. He sought bugs, but found a box loosely buried in the ground instead. He tried laboriously to carry the entire box for a short distance (he wanted to show Mom and Dad his exciting find)—this gave him enough time to think about Uncle Hap and World War II and how from half a mile away, the houses scattered across Empire Hill looked like a fleet of Japanese ships. Therefore, as Henry began his trek across the hill with Dennis as his guide, he considered his misfortune at not having a stupid child. Dull-witted children required so much less work.

“You’re sure you used only one stick with each house, right?” Henry asked Dennis as they walked up the steep incline of Windsor Street. To their right, houses sailed up and back down from East to West on the South side of Empire Hill. To their left, the hill, covered here with only tall grass and short trees, sloped even more sharply before leveling out at Short Creek

“Yes,” he answered.

“All the houses on the hill?”

“No, I didn’t get the Robaughs’ house or Janet and Jane’s place.”

“So, five houses, right?”

Dennis stopped and began counting on his fingers. He stopped only after holding up six fingers. “I got Mr. Jenkins house too.”

“Jenkins is by the creek, not on the hill.”

“He was a scout for the fleet. Just like . . . “

“Yes, yes, just like Uncle Hap told you. I should get his ass out of bed and retrieve all this dynamite.”

They began with Agnes Bradshaw’s house and worked their way up and then down the hill. By the fifth house, they performed with the precision of a Marine drill team. Dennis either stood watch twenty yards away while Henry retrieved a dynamite stick placed against a house foundation, or, in two instances, he occupied the neighbors dogs since they did not know Henry as they did the boy. Then, with Dennis still many yards away, Henry walked down the hill and placed the dynamite with its companions in the box. Finally, together then, they trudged with Sisyphean gaits back up the hill to do it again.

“Great,” said Henry as he and Dennis now carefully walked down the hill to Richard Jenkins’ little shack by the creek, “Almost got the last house done. Then we can call the police and we’ll be all done.”

“Why do you gotta call the police,” Dennis asked.

“To get all them soldiers taken away,” Henry said and pointed back where he had placed the box of dynamite.

The Richard Jenkins house sat near Short Creek. In the winter with the trees bare, they could see it from their Empire house. Jenkins was one of the few colored men in town. He had lived as a widower for three years and worked at the Eagle-Picher smelter plant. Henry remembered him from a few years back when he had come to the office with a nasty puncture wound in his arm and needed a tetanus shot. Reserved in manner, but with wary eyes, the old man aroused a chill in Henry.

With their routine now well practiced, Dennis stood back while his father approached the house to retrieve the dynamite. He found it with no problem, but as he bent over to retrieve the stick, he heard Jenkins’ voice behind him, “Dr. Elder, isn’t it?”

Startled, Henry stood up and spun around. “Jesus,” he said, “You scared the hell out of me.”

He saw Jenkins ten feet away with a shotgun trained on him.

“Whatcha got there, Dr. Elder,” Jenkins asked. He fixed his eyes on Henry. His white frizzy beard now hung much longer than before.

Jenkins stared at the stick of dynamite in Henry’s hand. He nodded his bald brown head and pointed the gun at the stick of dynamite in Henry’s hand. “Doc, I asked what you was holding in your hand.”

“Oh Jesus, Mr. Jenkins. This isn’t what it looks like. Really. You’re not going to believe this . . . funny story, actually. You see, my son, lovely boy, he’s sort of got this insatiable curiosity . . .”

“I watched my daddy die when I was eighteen,” Jenkins said, “back in twenty-one, in Tulsa. They hung him from a tree and burned down our house. It wasn’t no shack like this thing I live in now. We had a nice house. Daddy done good back then. But all them nice white people up and killed him. Why would a nice white man like you be kneeling down by my house with a stick of dynamite?”

“I know, Mr. Jenkins, it looks kind of strange, but truly, I was picking it up because my son Dennis left it here.”

“Your boy done it, huh?”

“No, no, no. In fact, no. See Dennis really likes his Uncle Hap--God only knows why--and tells the boy all these stories about the war and the Japanese . . .”

“The whole goddamn town of Tulsa went crazy back then. All the white folk, even the ones said they liked my daddy; they all went crazy on all the colored folk when some white woman said a black boy done something to her. My daddy was a good man. I watched him die. Seems like I’m still watching and I’m getting tired of it. Whatcha doing kneeling down next to my house with a stick of dynamite, Dr. Elder?”

Henry felt sweat trickling down his back and he found his mouth so dry and his throat so tight, and he truly did need the power of speech now if he ever did. The fight-or-flight response gripped his body tightly but neither flight nor fight appeared an option with a double-barreled shotgun a few feet away and a stick of unstable high explosive in his hand. He couldn’t fault Jenkins for what he had been through, but damn, he had to convince the man of his true intentions.

Henry heard a distant, faint, high-pitched whine. Jenkins heard it too because he looked up. The whine stopped for a moment and began again.

“What’s that,” Jenkins asked.

Henry carefully turned around and looked up the hill a bit and through the trees. There, just visible, he saw Dennis. The boy had approached closer, but only enough to see the house.

“It’s Dennis my son, Mr. Jenkins,” Henry said, “He’s scared. I . . . please, I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m just picking up after him. He found this dynamite and was playing soldier and . . . please let him go home. We can talk, we can talk, can’t we?”

Jenkins lowered the gun and narrowed his troubled angry eyes at Henry, “I don’t hurt childrun, Dr. Elder,” he said. Then, to Dennis he yelled, “Come on down here, boy. I ain’t gonna do nothing. I ain’t gonna shoot nobody.”

Dennis came running and Henry ran to him and picked him up. Dennis cried and babbled something Henry could not understand.

Henry hugged him and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Jenkins isn’t going to shoot Daddy. I’m fine.”

“I don’t want the police to take us away,” Dennis said.

“What,” Henry asked.

“I don’t want the police to take us away, Dennis repeated, “I don’t want to eat only bread and water and wear striped clothes and hit rocks. I’m sorry. I don’t want the police to take me away for putting dynamite on people’s houses and making you pick it up.”

“You weren’t worried that Mr. Jenkins was going to shoot me?”

“No,” Dennis said. “Can we tell the police I did it all and you won’t have to go to prison?”

Henry laughed quietly. “No, nobody’s going to jail. And I’m sorry if I made you think Mr. Jenkins was going to shoot me. No boy should have to worry about such things.”

Henry felt quite sure that Jenkins did not completely believe his story. But he believed enough, and trusted enough that he told Dennis that the police have better things to do than take away little boys.

“Go on,” Jenkins said. “Had enough of y’all.”

And that night after the police and fire department removed the dynamite, the three ate apple cobbler, and laughed, and Mildred insisted that Dennis sleep with them.

“Sweet prince,” she said into Henry’s hair and he chuckled quietly. Turning to Dennis, his eyes barely open, his breath slow, she whispered, “And my brave princeling too.”

As sleep slowly claimed him, Henry considered the cold haunted bed Jenkins shared with only the night and he tightened the embrace in which his long strong arms held his wife and child.

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