The Cloud Atlas

The end of the message was more curious, just three words: WOMAN! FAMILIES! FARMS!!! It summoned up some kidlike frustration in me: I wanted to know what they were saying. Surrender, yes, but what about this last bit? Why one woman? Whose families? What farms?

I stayed down on the ground, even as I heard other folks getting up. I guess I was instinctively waiting for the all-clear signal from training days, and once I came to my senses, I slowly dusted myself off. When I heard nothing but voices, and in the distance, some sirens, I realized they'd gotten the plane. They'd shot him down, or perhaps he'd crashed-one of those then-bizarre “kamikaze dives” we'd heard happened much farther south in the Pacific theater. I read my slip again, said the word aloud, softly, felt my tongue flicker like a snake's: “SSURRenndderr.” I wasn't much of a soldier. Just hearing the word-hearing me say it-made me shiver slightly.

Most other folks were laughing and yelling. One of the bar owners had burst onto the street shouting that he would honor the slips as coupons, each worth a penny before 5 P.M. Another door to another bar popped open with shouts of a better offer. Soon enough, the streets of Anchorage were overcome with the sort of riot that the pilot, gone to his glory had intended.

* * *

I USED TO JOKE-I suppose you could call it joking-that the kamikaze pilot represented the whole of my Alaskan welcoming committee. He certainly did better than the Army which did its best to ignore me during my first weeks above the sixtieth parallel, to such a degree that I eventually had wandered downtown in time for the kamikaze pilot.

For the rest of September and the first part of October 1944, I reported each morning at Fort Richardson to a Building 100, where I was supposed to receive my new orders. But each day I was told the captain I'd been assigned to was away, and I was dispatched to some service detail in his absence-unloading supplies, setting up tents, even directing traffic. Or I was simply sent back to the barracks. But I didn't like spending time there, since the barracks I'd been assigned was nothing more than a giant tent, half the length of a football field. It was dark and damp and had an odd smell that one of the guys said was mustard gas and another said was formaldehyde.

Of course, avoiding the barracks had put me downtown during the leaflet drop. I was a good Catholic boy and thus ascribed little to chance; God was obviously displeased I'd gone to Fourth Avenue, what with all its temptations. So when the next free block of time presented itself, I stayed on base. To prove to God I was starting anew, I even sought out the chapel.

Inside, I discovered just how upset with me God was.

“You're late, Sergeant!” Father Pabich barked when I entered. Tall, bearlike, and every inch the longshoreman he once was, Father Pabich, I came to discover, had a vigorous faith. He mostly saw me for what I was-a kid, scared and vulnerable and misplaced-and decided to do what he could.

“Sir,” I said, lurching forward.

“Father,” he said.

“Father, I-” I looked at my watch. “Late for what?”

“For Mass,” he said, and walked back through the door he'd just come out of. He returned pushing a small cart and wearing a stole.

“You'll serve,” he said. He looked at my name strip. “Belk?” he asked. “You're not a Jew, are you?”

I shook my head. “Catholic.”

“There's no rabbi here,” he said. “Shot down. Aleutians. No other rabbi for a thousand miles,” he added, ducking below the cart, and slapping whatever he found there on top: a candle, a napkin, a breviary. “Don't light the candle,” he said, and then darted back through the door. I stood there, trying to decide whether I could leave. But before I did, Father Pabich had reappeared, hands folded. He pointed me to my place with his chin and began the Latin. I didn't look up until it was my time to chime in. When I did, his voice paused as he evaluated my response, and then rolled on. At communion, he filled the chalice with wine, almost to the brim, and drank down half of it. Then he saw me out of the corner of his eye, and held the chalice out to me. I took a sip and handed it back. He looked inside and handed it back to me. I took another sip. He grabbed it back out of my hands and drank down the rest.

When Mass was finished, he told me to stay, and then rolled the altar cart back inside. He reemerged without the stole, carrying a package of cigarettes. He shook one out, looked at it a moment, and then lit it. I'd already prepared an answer for when he offered me one, but he never did. Instead, he sat there, studying me, until something over my shoulder caught his eye. He stood up.