The Great Perhaps (19 page)

“Welcome to Crystal City, Texas. This is a detainment facility for interned families of foreign nationals. You will be staying here for some time but please remember, this is not your home. This will never be your home.”

H
ENRY, NOW FOURTEEN,
terrified by his unfamiliar surroundings, had stopped talking. Crystal City was divided into two large sections, one set of facilities for Germans, one for the Japanese, with both groups of detainees under heavy guard at all times. The young man did not like the feeling of being constantly watched, the long shadows of the soldiers crossing and recrossing the narrow streets. In Crystal City, there was no place to be alone, no place to hide. The sun hung close to the earth, its terrible heat piercing everything. It left no secrets untouched, no quiet places to sit and stare and dream. Though the German children had their own elementary school and high school, with its very own school newspaper, marching band, and sports facilities, Henry found no books to his liking in the school’s library, no drugstore where he could go buy the latest issue of
Justice Society of America
or
The Airship Brigade
, no empty alleys to pretend he was somewhere else. In the stark landscape of the internment camp, everything was plain and lifeless. There was nothing to be excited about, no adventures to be had, no reason to talk. And if it was his father who had cost them their home, whose easy laughter and convincing lies had forced them to be sent to this awful place, then Henry would prefer not to speak at all. Having decided his father really was a coward, a crook, a spy, he gave up saying anything to anybody.

A
ND SOON HE
found he could no longer daydream. The world of Crystal City was all flatness, as if the real world, the world of the little tailor shop and his delivery job, were only memories now. The family’s “home” was very nice, a small, square-shaped bungalow with a small kitchen and a room for his parents and another for him and Timothy to share. But there were no skyscrapers on the horizon. The spectacular clouds had vanished from the reaches of the sky. All was dull and sun-bright now, an empty world without shadow or fog or dimension. There were no gray moments of twilight, no dark gangways, no snow-filled alleys to explore, nothing silver or striking or imposing along the skyline to help the boy imagine what might be possible instead. Each night, as Henry lay in his cot, the soldiers marched back and forth along the perimeter of the fence, their footsteps echoing colorlessly. The footsteps of the soldiers then became the footsteps of the G-men in Mr. Miner’s stairwell, then the sound of his friend Mr. Miner, leaping from the open window. Henry, terrified in bed, found he could not sleep. He could not fly up and over the wire fence using make-believe; he could not dream an escape for himself because he could not dream.

O
NE DAY,
stalking along the outside circumference of the camp, counting his footsteps as he went, Henry looked up and watched three transport trucks pull into the administration area. He saw several Japanese families being escorted from the trucks, their bags set down in the gray dirt as they took in the hopeless angles of Crystal City. As he stared, he caught sight of two tiny girls, twins, their dark eyes and dark hair luminous in the Texas sunlight, each holding one of their mother’s hands. One of the girls was in a blue dress, the other’s was purple, and as they looked around at the plain rectangular buildings, the tall wire fence, the young men in uniforms hustling back and forth with their rifles, they did not cry or flatten or sink with dismay. The two twin girls, together, leaning over in the dirt, began to write something, using the tips of their fingers, drawing a picture, scribbling something before their mother tugged gently at them and they followed the rest of their family toward the Japanese section of camp. As soon as the families cleared out, Henry, still counting his steps, searched among the footprints and marks made by the heavy suitcases, until he found what the two twin girls had drawn in the dirt.

It was a picture of two birds, their pointed beaks touching, as if to kiss. Inside of each bird was a single Japanese word, a letter perhaps. Henry stared down at the strange little drawing in the dust and wondered if maybe it was a secret message left for someone to decipher. He soon decided it was the two girls’ names, written in the dust to mark their new home. He looked down at the two tiny birds until he had memorized their shape, then continued on, counting his steps until a guard near the gate told him to move out of the way.

L
ATER THAT WEEK
,
Henry quietly sought a place to be alone, in hopes that by being alone—out from under the watchful eyes of the bored soldiers and the difficult glare of the midday sun—he might once again be able to daydream. The young man searched the dusty circumference of the camp, until he finally discovered a small, unlocked utility shed—twenty or so yards behind the administration building—which was filled with tools, shovels, brooms, and gardening equipment. It wasn’t very dark but it was incredibly hot. Climbing over a pair of sawhorses, Henry could feel his entire body shivering with sweat. Slowly, he closed the door and sat in the corner, the shed lit by the bright sun streaming through the gaps between the metal sheets overhead. Henry closed his eyes and immediately he was in a submarine, moving undetected, several leagues beneath the surface of the murky ocean. Just outside the submarine’s hull was a squid, perhaps, or a school of vibrant, translucent fish, their strange skeletons visible through their shimmering skin. Perhaps he was all alone, searching out the lost city of Atlantis, or transporting secret weapon plans to the British, while in the clouded waters above, a Nazi gunship searched for him, depth charges at the ready: “
All engines stop. We are surrounded by a Wolf pack but fear not.
” Or better still, he was miles and miles above the surface of the earth, in the airship X-1, speeding off toward several thousand uncharted galaxies: “
Prepare yourself, Airship Brigade, for intergalactic flight! Five-four-three-two-one! All systems go!
”

Henry hardly realized he was speaking aloud to himself, his voice high and unsure and scratchy. Just as he imagined a breech unexpectedly erupting in the airship’s hull, poisonous space vapor leaking into his lungs, the storage shed exploded with light, and Henry, startled from his daydream, let out a high, strange-sounding cry.

“Who’s in here?” a low voice mumbled. “Hinkley? Is that you? I can hear you whispering, you wing nut. It’s me, Doug.”

Henry, hiding behind the rack of shovels, could see a young man in uniform, his handsome, broad face broken in a smile.

“Hinkley? You better hop to. The lieutenant is looking for you. We got a truckload of rations to unload.”

Henry held in his breath, closing his eyes, his heart beating hard in his chest.

“Hinkley?”

The young soldier stepped into the shadows, reaching out a hand. When the soldier saw Henry huddled there—a pale young man with a narrow face, mouth mumbling in frightened whispers—he went for his rifle, dropping the gun awkwardly at his feet. Henry saw the gun fall and cried out as the rifle discharged, the round ricocheting inside the empty shed, the sound muffled by the noise of transport trucks passing by. The soldier, just as frightened, grabbed the gun, and stared down at it with surprise, seeing his mistake.

“Wow. Sorry about that, kid,” the soldier said. “The safety wasn’t on.”

Henry nodded, still in hiding behind the tools.

“Are you okay?”

Henry muttered something, his body still trembling.

“Well, what are you doing in here, kid, in the first place?” the soldier asked.

Once again Henry could not speak. His mouth moved but the sounds that came out were only faint whispers, the ghostly outlines of words.

“Well, come on out of there, kid.”

Henry nodded and hurried past the young soldier, whose eyes were bright and whose face was flushed with sweat.

“You shouldn’t be back there. Someone might get jumpy and shoot you or something.”

Henry nodded again.

“Yes…,” he muttered.

“What’s a matter? You don’t understand English?”

Henry shook his head and then pointed to his mouth.

“You don’t speak English or something?”

Henry nodded again. The soldier smiled a little with comprehension.

“You go to the school? The German school here? You talk German?”

Henry shook his head no, then whispered:

“I was…just scared. I’m…I’m…okay.”

The soldier smiled a little wider and then looked down, embarrassed for poor Henry. “Well, you shouldn’t be back in there all by yourself, kid. Someone might get the wrong idea and think you’re up to no good. Now, what was it you were doing in there all by yourself?”

“Nothing. I was just…I was just…nothing,” Henry muttered, unable to catch his breath. He looked down and saw that his knees were still shaking.

“Well, you better go on home now before my lieutenant comes along. He’s not likely to believe you weren’t up to some kind of mischief.”

“Thank you,” Henry whispered, nodding once, then again, then a third time. “Thank you,” his voice unfamiliar in his throat.

The young soldier laughed as Henry hurried away, still in a panic. As the boy turned, he looked at the name on the soldier’s green uniform, seeing it stitched in block letters:
FAULK
. Lying in his unfamiliar bed that evening, whispering to himself, Henry remembered the soldier’s kind, surprised face and dreamt that the two of them were best friends already.

H
ENRY BEGAN TO FOLLOW
PFC Faulk after that, shadowing him in secret at first, as the young soldier hurried from his position on guard duty to escorting new internees to their quarters, then, in the dark, hurrying back to the rectangular gray-brick barracks for a few hours of sleep. Not long after their first meeting, Private Faulk would catch sight of the strange, silent, bright-eyed boy skulking behind him, trying to be sneaky, but always stumbling or tripping or staring blankly for too long. One afternoon, while Private Faulk stood guard near the rear entrance of the camp, he glanced over and saw Henry hiding a few yards away, around the corner of the dispensary building. The boy seemed to convince himself of something, before he hurried over to where Private Faulk was positioned and handed the young soldier a small piece of paper. Just as quickly, Henry hurried off again, hiding in the shadows of the dispensary once more, watching as Private Faulk unfolded the note.
Thank you for not ratting me out.
Private Faulk read the note once more and looked up and saw the boy grinning behind his hand. Private Faulk, only a young man of nineteen himself, folded the note back up, glancing around to be sure his lieutenant was nowhere in sight. A few moments later, the boy hurried toward him again, handed him a second note, and then quickly disappeared, running awkwardly back toward his family’s bungalow. Private Faulk pulled at the corners of the note and looked down and saw what the other young man had written. It said,
You are a true friend.

W
HEN
H
ENRY WAS NOT
hiding in the shadows, following Private Faulk around the compound, he usually lurked near the Japanese side of camp, staring through the wire at the boys and girls running up and down the dusty street, giggling, playing tag, their voices high and unfamiliar, their laughter something distant and dazzling, and still only a few yards on the other side of the fence. He would stand there for an hour or two, looking for the twin Japanese girls. They usually sat in the shade near their mother, resting in front of their tiny bungalow, sometimes gently brushing each other’s hair. Other times, walking along the fence—the fence which did not limit movement between the Japanese and German sides of camps, but discouraged it by offering only a narrow open gate—Henry would see other drawings the twin girls had etched in the dirt: two butterflies, two elephants, two horses, each decorated with the strange Japanese characters. Henry, dreaming himself into a comic book story, imagined they were asking for his help, asking to be rescued. Once, he saw them drawing in the dust only a few feet from him, kneeling together on the other side of the fence. He waved to them, and slowly, in unison, they returned the gesture, moving their small hands with graceful apprehension. The next day, he left a note for them as well, a drawing of two girls with bird wings for arms, placing the folded paper in the crook of the wire fence. When he returned later that afternoon, he was elated to see the note was gone, and a drawing of an enormous apple had been scratched in the dirt. Soon, almost every day after that, Henry was leaving them drawings; strange monsters, underwater cities, maps of other worlds. If he happened to see the two twin girls kneeling beside the fence and if he called out to them, they would ignore the sound of his voice, afraid of approaching the wire perhaps, or possibly preferring the silence of the secret game they had all invented. Once he found a miniature paper crane, another time a paper butterfly, and still another time a tiny white paper flower, all left in between the crooks of the wire fence. Henry guarded this collection of paper objects, hiding them beneath his narrow bed, taking them out late at night to ponder their intricate, unknowable meanings.

O
NLY A FEW WEEKS
later, Henry was hiding in the equipment shed pretending he was piloting a test rocket deep into the heart of a volcano when Private Faulk slowly opened the shiny silver door. The light from the late Texas afternoon cut through the shadows of the shed, revealing the shape of Henry hiding beside a stack of concrete mix. Private Faulk marched inside the equipment shed carrying a worn-out-looking portable radio beneath his arm. He slipped off his helmet and struggled to find a cigarette inside his depressed-looking dungarees. He lit it, exhaled, and gave young Henry a worn-looking smile. “Hinkley and me found it last night. There’s a whole pile of junk kept in this building on the other side of camp, near the Japs. Movie projectors, radios, all kinds of stuff. We figured if no one was using it, we might as well, you know, get some fun out of it ourselves. We’ll see if the battery’s any good.” The private gave the dial a turn and listened as a Gene Autry song quietly rose to life. Private Faulk took a long drag, then, remembering himself, offered the boy a cigarette of his own, but Henry, unsure what to say or do, just shook his head, staring down at his worn-out shoes.