Kim Robinson: The Lucky Strike

Fitch cut in. “When the bomb is dropped Lieutenant Benton will record our reaction to what we see. This recording is being made for history, so watch your language.” Watch your language! January choked back a laugh. Don’t curse or blaspheme God at the sight of the first atomic bomb incinerating city and all its inhabitants with X rays!

Six-twenty. January found his hands clenched together on the headrest of the bombsight. He felt as if he had a fever. In the harsh wash of morning light the skin on the backs of his hands appeared slightly translucent. The whorls in the skin looked like the delicate patterning of waves on the sea’s surface. His hands were made of atoms. Atoms were the smallest building block of matter, it took billions of them to make those tense, trembling hands. Split one atom and you had the fireball. That meant that the energy contained in even one hand… he turned up a palm to look at the lines and the mottled flesh under the transparent skin. A person was a bomb that could blow up the world. January felt that latent power stir in him, pulsing with every hard heart-knock. What beings they were, and in what a blue expanse of a world!—And here they spun on to drop a bomb and kill a hundred thousand of these astonishing beings.

When a fox or raccoon is caught by the leg in a trap, it lunges until the leg is frayed, twisted, perhaps broken, and only then does the animal’s pain and exhaustion force it to quit. Now in the same way January wanted to quit. His mind hurt. His plans to escape were so much crap—stupid, useless. Better to quit. He tried to stop thinking, but it was hopeless. How could he stop? As long as he was conscious he would be thinking. The mind struggles longer in its traps than any fox.

Lucky Strike tilted up and began the long climb to bombing altitude. On the horizon the clouds lay over a green island. Japan. Surely it had gotten hotter, the heater must be broken, he thought. Don’t think. Every few minutes Matthews gave Fitch small course adjustments. “Two seventy-five, now. That’s it.” To escape the moment January recalled his childhood. Following a mule and plow. Moving to Vicksburg (rivers). For a while there in Vicksburg, since his stutter made it hard to gain friends, he had played a game with himself. He had passed the time by imagining that everything he did was vitally important and determined the fate of the world. If he crossed a road in front of a certain car, for instance, then the car wouldn’t make it through the next intersection before a truck hit it, and so the man driving would be killed and wouldn’t be able to invent the flying boat that would save President Wilson from kidnappers—so he had to wait for that car because everything afterward depended on it. Oh damn it, he thought, damn it, think of something different . The last Hornblower story he had read—how would he get out of this? The round 0 of his mother’s face as she ran in and saw his arm—The Mississippi, mud-brown behind its levees—Abruptly he shook his head, face twisted in frustration and despair, aware at last that no possible avenue of memory would serve as an escape for him now, for now there was no part of his life that did not apply to the situation he was in, and no matter where he cast his mind it was going to shore up against the hour facing him.

Less than an hour. They were at thirty thousand feet, bombing altitude. Fitch gave him altimeter readings to dial into the bombsight. Matthews gave him windspeeds. Sweat got in his eye and he blinked furiously. The sun rose behind them like an atomic bomb, glinting off every corner and edge of the Plexiglas, illuminating his bubble compartment with a fierce glare. Broken plans jumbled together in his mind, his breath was short, his throat dry. Uselessly and repeatedly he damned the scientists, damned Truman. Damned the Japanese causing the whole mess in the first place, damned yellow killers, they had brought this on themselves. Remember Pearl. American men had died under bombs when no war had been declared; they had started it and now it was coming back to them with a vengeance. And they deserved it. And an invasion of Japan would take years, cost millions of lives—end it now, end it, they deserved it, they deserved it steaming river full of charcoal people silently dying damned stubborn race of maniacs!

“There‘s Honshu,” Fitch said, and January returned to the plane. They were over the Inland Sea. Soon they would pass the secondary target, Kokura, a bit to the south. Seven-thirty. The island was draped more heavily than the sea by clouds, and again January’s heart leaped with the idea that weather would cancel the mission. But they did deserve it. It was a mission like any other mission. He had dropped bombs on Africa, Sicily, Italy, all Germany…. He leaned forward to take a look through the sight. Under the X of the crosshairs was the sea, but at the lead edge of the sight was land. Honshu. At two hundred and thirty miles an hour that gave them about a half hour to Hiroshima. Maybe less. He wondered if his heart could beat so hard for that long.

Fitch said, “Matthews, I’m giving over guidance to you. Just tell us what to do.”

“Bear south two degrees,” was all Matthews said. At last their voices had taken on a touch of awareness, even fear.

“January, are you ready?” Fitch asked.

“I’m just waiting,” January said. He sat up, so Fitch could see the back of his head. The bombsight stood between his legs. A switch on its side would start the bombing sequence; the bomb would not leave the plane immediately upon the flick of the switch, but would drop after a fifteen-second radio tone warned the following planes. The sight was adjusted accordingly.

“Adjust to a heading of two sixty-five,” Matthews said. “We’re coming in directly upwind.” This was to make any side-drift adjustments for the bomb unnecessary. “January, dial it down to two hundred and thirty-one miles per hour.”

“Two thirty-one.”

Fitch said, “Everyone but January and Matthews, get your goggles on.”

January took the darkened goggles from the floor. One needed to protect one’s eyes or they might melt. He put them on, put his forehead on the headrest. They were in the way. He took them off. When he looked through the sight again there was land under the crosshairs. He checked his watch. Eight o’clock. Up and reading the papers, drinking tea.

“Ten minutes to AP,” Matthews said. The aiming point was Aioi Bridge, a T-shaped bridge in the middle of the delta-straddling city. Easy to recognize.

“There’s a lot of cloud down there,” Fitch nodded. “Are you going to be able to see?”

“I won’t be sure until we try it,” January said.

“We can make another pass and use radar if we need to,” Matthews said.

Fitch said. “Don’t drop it unless you’re sure, January.”

“Yes, sir.”

Through the sight a grouping of rooftops and gray roads was just visible between broken clouds. Around it green forest. “All right,” Matthews exclaimed, “here we go! Keep it right on this heading, Captain! January, we’ll stay at two thirty-one.”

“And same heading,” Fitch said. “January, she’s all yours. Everyone make sure your goggles are on. And be ready for the turn.”

January’s world contracted to the view through the bombsight. A stippled field of cloud and forest. Over a small range of hills and into Hiroshima’s watershed. The broad river was mud brown, the land pale hazy green, the growing network of roads flat gray. Now the tiny rectangular shapes of buildings covered almost all the land, and swimming into the sight the city proper, narrow islands thrusting into a dark blue bay. Under the crosshairs the city moved island by island, cloud by cloud. January had stopped breathing, his fingers were rigid as stone on the switch. And there was Aioi Bridge. It slid right under the crosshairs, a tiny T right in a gap in the clouds. January’s fingers crushed the switch. Deliberately he took a breath, held it. Clouds swam under the crosshairs, then the next island. Almost there he said calmly into his microphone, “Steady.” Now that he was committed his heart was humming like the Wrights. He counted to ten. Now flowing under the crosshairs were clouds alternating with green forest, leaden roads. “I’ve turned the switch, but I’m not getting a tone!” he croaked into the mike. His right hand held the switch firmly in place. Fitch shouting something—Matthews’ voice cracked across it—“Flipping it b-back and forth,” January shouted, shielding the bombsight with his body from the eyes of the pilots. “But still—wait a second—”