Connie Willis - Passage

“I was in the tunnel,” he said, beginning his fifth account. They were alone in the lab. Richard, eager to get his bloodwork analyzed, or maybe unwilling to listen to another of Mr. Wojakowski’s rambling stories, had taken the blood down to the lab himself.

“It was dark, I couldn’t see anything, but I wasn’t scared. I had a kind of peaceful feeling, like when you know something’s going to happen, but you don’t know what, and you don’t know when. Like the day they bombed Pearl.” I knew he’d find a way to work the Yorktown into this, Joanna thought. “I can still remember that morning. It was a Sunday—”

Joanna nodded, wondering if she should try to get him back on track, or if that would just send him veering off on some other story. He usually did eventually work his way back to the question she’d asked. She leaned her chin on her hand and prepared to wait.

“I’m coming back from shore leave in Virginia Beach—the Yorktown was in Norfolk—and I saw this sailor up on the island—” He fished in his pocket and brought out the tattered picture of the Yorktown. “That’s the island,” he said, pointing at the tall tower in the middle of the ship. It had three cross-barred masts that Joanna assumed were radio or radar antennae, and an assortment of ladders.

“See, that’s the radar mast, and there’s the bridge,” Mr. Wojakowski said, pointing to them. “So, anyway, he looks like he’s going to break his neck, he’s coming down off the island so fast, and he’s got a paper clutched in his right hand.”

He folded up the picture and put it carefully back in his wallet. “I should’ve known something was up—the only thing up that ladder was the radio shack—but I didn’t even think about that. I just stood there, waiting to see if he broke his neck, and when he didn’t, I went on down belowdecks to change out of my civvies, and then I heard ’em announcing over the PA that the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor, and I knew what he must’ve been carrying was a telegram.” He shook his head at his own slowness. “I had that same kind of feeling in the tunnel, waiting for something to happen, and not knowing what or when.”

He looked expectantly at Joanna, but she wasn’t listening. She was trying to remember what he’d said that first day, when she’d asked him about his age. He had told her he’d signed up the day after Pearl Harbor, she was sure of it.

“Some of the guys didn’t believe it, even when they heard it over the PA,” Mr. Wojakowski said. “Woody Pikeman comes in and says, ‘Who’s the wiseguy?’ meaning the PA announcement. ‘The Emperor Hirohito,’ I says.”

“Mr. Wojakowski,” Joanna said, “I just remembered a meeting I have to be at.” She stood up and switched off the minirecorder. “If you don’t mind—”

“Sure, Doc,” he said. “You want me to come back later?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know how long the meeting will take.” She scooped up the recorder and her notebook.

“I’ve got lots more to tell you,” he said.

“I’ll call you and set up another time for us to finish your account,” she said firmly.

“Anytime, Doc,” he said, and ambled out. As soon as he was gone, she picked up the phone, intending to page Richard, and then changed her mind. She needed to check the transcripts before she made an accusation.

She set the receiver down and stood there with her hand on it, trying to remember exactly what Mr. Wojakowski had said about enlisting. She had only half-listened to his rambling war stories, but she was positive he’d said he’d enlisted the day after Pearl. None of them had even known where Pearl Harbor was, except his kid sister, who’d seen a newsreel at the movies the night before.

She went down to her office. She hadn’t transcribed that account yet. She rummaged through the shoe box till she found the right tape, stuck it in the recorder and fast-forwarded to the middle. “Well, after we hit Rabaul…” Too far. She rewound. “Dead before she ever knew it…” Forward again. “…The funny papers.” Here it was: “…in comes the lady from two doors down, all out of breath, and says, ‘The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor!’ ”

Joanna skipped forward. Kid sister, newsreel, Desperadoes. “And the very next day, I went downtown to the navy recruiting center and signed up.”

She put her hand to her mouth, thinking, Oh, my God, he made it up. But which one? Or had he made up both versions? Or all of it? It didn’t matter. If even part of his account were concocted, it meant his descriptions of his NDEs were useless.

Unless he’d told her the story about signing up after Pearl Harbor to cover up his real age. She’d thought that first time she saw him that he had to be nearly eighty. He might have made up the story to hide his age and then, in the heat of describing the NDE, forgotten and told her the truth. If it was only a matter of lying about his age, everything else he’d told them might be true.

But how could they be sure? She thought about his other stories, the soda fountain, the Hammann sinking with all hands in two minutes flat, his joyous rescue by the miraculously resurrected Yorktown, flags flying, sailors waving their white hats in the air. They had all sounded completely credible. But so had both accounts of December seventh, 1941.

She needed some kind of outside confirmation. She could call the library and ask them where the Yorktown had been on December seventh, but that wouldn’t prove Mr. Wojakowski had been there. She supposed she could call the Department of Veteran Affairs or the navy and find out if an Edward Wojakowski had served on the Yorktown, but that would take time, and probably bureaucratic red tape. She needed to find out now, before Richard sent him under again.

She leafed through the transcripts, looking for something that might be independently verifiable. The dive-bomber—what was his name? Here it was, Jo-Jo Powers—who had crashed putting his bomb on the flight deck? No, that might have been in a book, or a movie. There was a movie called Midway, wasn’t there? She remembered seeing it in the action section at Blockbuster. So, none of the Midway stuff. What about his ditching of his plane in the Coral Sea? That story was full of facts that should be independently verifiable—dates and events and place names.

She scrolled through the transcripts, looking for the account of the rescue. Here it was. He had ditched his plane in the Coral Sea, swum to Malakula, been smuggled by friendly natives to another island, set out in a dugout canoe for Port Moresby. The Yorktown, meanwhile, had limped back to Pearl Harbor for repairs, been refitted in three days, and then sailed straight to Midway.

She needed a map. Who would have one here in the hospital? Maisie, she thought, remembering the map on the cover of one of her disaster books, and scribbled down the details. Coral Sea, Malakula, Vanikalo. She scribbled down the dates, too, on the off-chance that the sinking of the Yorktown counted as a disaster, and ran down to fourth.

Maisie was lying propped against pillows, glaring at a video. “ Pollyanna,” she told Joanna disgustedly. “All she does is tell people to be glad about stuff. It is so sickening.” She pointed the remote at Hayley Mills, wearing a white dress and a big blue sash, and switched it off.

“She falls out of a tree later,” Joanna said.

“Really?” Maisie said, perking up. “Do you want to hear a neat thing about the Hartford circus fire? The Flying Wallendas, they were this acrobat family, they were up on the high wire, and they heard the band play the duck song, and—”

“Not right now,” Joanna said. “Maisie, I need a map of the islands in the Pacific Ocean. Do you have one in one of your disaster books?”