Mike Meginnis - Fat Man and Little Boy

He goes to the door and shouts for Little Boy. “Matthew,” he calls. “Matthew!”

They sit together, waiting. He says, “I’d like a little chocolate if you can spare it.”

Mr. Bruce sneers. He has a piece himself, but does not share.

Upon Little Boy’s sitting down, Mr. Bruce offers him the chocolate bar. If the missing piece concerns him Little Boy doesn’t say so. He sucks his treat to make it last. The once-police ask him questions. He doesn’t answer most.

“Matthew, do you know any of these women?” says Mr. Bruce. He reads a long list. Little Boy shakes his head. He really doesn’t. A couple sound familiar. The rest are mysteries to him.

They describe the murders. How the girls were found. Some with necks snapped like flower stems. Some with guts cut out. Some merely disappeared. They might have run away, concedes the short one, but they fit the pattern: young, pregnant, pretty.

A feeling like a toothache grows in the center of Little Boy’s brain.

In a wasteland you can look for food, water, or people. You can wait to die. You can assign the blame for what’s been done, or you can accept it for what it is and survive. The food and the water can wait. The people can’t. They can’t wait to find the food and water. Some are screaming in a makeshift hospital bed. Others have glass in their feet. Ask yourself why you get nothing but hurt and bellyache. It’s best to eat with other people if you have to eat. It’s best to drink alone.

After the incident in Masumi’s cabin, after vomiting outside, after falling asleep on the grass, Little Boy found a taste for wines and spirits. He sneaks them where he can. They make a feeling like the toothache, or the tooth itself, only numb, a calcium whiteness coating the nerves, a bone-brittle fog. He hid the bottles in the blankets of the bed in his secret cabin, then, under cover of night and moon glow, he moved them to his second secret cabin, in both cases leaving several glasses in the dresser, tipped over on their sides.

They roll and clink together when he opens the drawers. Then he has a taste. The taste is good. It makes him sleep. The sleep is good, and dreamless, apart from certain vivid flashes.

Mr. Bruce says, “I know you didn’t mean to do anything you did.”

This is true. Little Boy didn’t mean it.

“It was all your uncle’s fault. He’ll be held responsible. All you have to do is help us. Cooperate, and we’ll cooperate with you. You scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours.”

Fat Man looks at him and nods. Maybe he wants to be turned in. For what, though?

They ask him how he sleeps at night. Alone? With help? Does his uncle touch him? Does someone hurt him? Has he ever hurt someone? Or something? Maybe they’re asking what he’s done to other people. Maybe they’re asking what other people have done to him. Maybe they don’t recognize a distinction.

“Sometimes a little boy gets confused. He doesn’t know who his friends are.”

His hair is getting long. He lets it fall over his eyes. He sucks his teeth, prodding their backs with his tongue. He sometimes wonders if these are baby teeth or grownup teeth, and if the former, will he lose them, and if the latter, can he keep them? He sucks the chocolate.

The short one is rubbing his shoulders. He purrs into Little Boy’s ear.

“If you tell us what you know … a very wealthy man … kind … he might adopt you … very grateful … tutors … fencing … horseback … imagine. All the chocolate you can eat … shares in the factory … a house like a palace … you never know, it never hurts to ask … he always wanted a son to call his own … only tell us what you’ve seen.”

Little Boy shivers.

“You’ve got to gather your wits, now. Think carefully. Does your uncle ever do suspicious things? Does he disappear for days at a time? Does he bring home unfamiliar garments or bottles? Does he cry suddenly? Does he talk in his sleep?”

Sometimes Fat Man says things with his eyes closed. It might be sleep. He narrates the apocalypse. “Dogs dragging their bellies,” he says, “over a junkyard.” Bees falling from the air, wings stripped. Boot treads sculpt the sand. Water in strange places—in shoes, in overturned umbrellas, in cars, in bags, in egg cartons, in fish tins, in capitols—frozen, come winter, into eccentric ice cubes.

“Bodies twisted in half, their shoes going one way, their hats in the other.” No more Jews, no more Japanese, all the blacks dead, white men perhaps an extra winter, warming themselves beneath the piled corpses of their enemies, blood igloos, all congealed, cat fur coats. “A smell you can’t get out.” The ocean swelling. Radio waves turned poison. Cups full with twitching ocular nerves. Piled teeth. “All manner of swarm.” Fumes. Horror.

“What are you thinking?” asks Mr. Rousseau.

“What?” says Little Boy. He bites the chocolate bar through. It sticks on his teeth.

The short one cuffs his ear. Bright, brief stars.

“You can’t beat a witness,” shouts Fat Man, standing from his chair with some effort, stomping his left hoof.

“You can discipline a child.” Mr. Bruce slaps the back of Little Boy’s head. “Come on. Tell us what you’ve seen.”

Little Boy puts his face on the table. “I don’t understand what we’re doing.”

Mr. Bruce screams, “WE ARE RIGHTING THE GODDAMNED SCALES OF JUSTICE.” He rips the chocolate from Little Boy’s hands—an audible snap as the string of drool connecting his chin to the bar breaks, spattering his cheek.

Now Rosie bursts through the door. “What in hell is going on here?”

She says it in English, in Spanish, in French, in Japanese.

Four languages for inner and outer peace.

In a barren field you can plant seeds or you can leave things as they are. You can break the silence or keep it. The widow chases the police out of the cabin. They say she can’t do that. She says get off her land. They say it is French land. She says the French sold it. She harps on French surrender. The once-police defend their country. Fat Man makes a farting sound with his mouth and hands. Rosie invokes the image of her husband hanging from a parachute, shot to pieces in a tree. This was for their freedom. Little Boy pretends to be asleep on the table. When everyone is dead you can try to bring them back, you can bury the bodies, or you can step over them.

Fat Man says he will bodily carry out the intruders and throw them at the wheels of their car. They say they will be back. They will find all the victims. They’ll name them. When all names are all collected they’ll come back, and then he’ll see what justice is. The short one knocks over a mirror. Rosie demands he pay for its replacement. He says he will not pay. She demands he pay for the mirror’s replacement. He pays.

Little Boy enjoys the silence—the quiet shiftings and huffs of the short one searching for his wallet, lost among the many pockets, the shuffles and puffs as he takes the paper money from its folds.

“Now go,” says Fat Man.

Seeing Little Boy is asleep, Rosie lifts him and lays him on the bed. In a minute he will shift and wrap himself in the blankets. His chocolate lips will smear the pillow case, leaving a brown sideways smile.

“Why are you crying?” says Rosie.

Little Boy can’t see it without opening his eyes. He can’t hear it either; instead the slow, pacing shuffle of his brother’s shoes on the floor.

“I hate to see a man cry.”

Some time later Little Boy hears a kiss.

“I am not a handsome man,” says Fat Man.

He says, “I am a fat man.”

He says, “Your husband was a handsome man.”

“He was,” says Rosie. “He was very handsome. So I’ve tried that already. It didn’t make me happy.”