Mike Meginnis - Fat Man and Little Boy

Fat Man gathers the medium in his arms. She is light, but not as light as she looks. Very slack. Warm. She shifts in his arms, going taut for just a second, long enough to curl against his body, warming his gut. He wants to kiss her cheek.

“Here,” says Little Boy, and he takes several of her peacock feather-needles from among the grass and roots. He pricks his finger. He says it doesn’t hurt very much, though as a drop of blood squeezes through his skin and out, he notes that he can feel his own heart beating.

“How does it feel?” says Fat Man.

“Slow,” says Little Boy. “Like tides.”

Masumi is not home. The brothers knock and knock and knock until they are sure. Little Boy takes out his key and lets them in. Fat Man goes first, and drops the medium on the bed, where her hair fans out beautiful and black, and her feet tangle themselves at once in the sheets. She pulls the sheets up over her breasts, though not her midsection or hips. Her eyes flutter open and closed. She resolves to sleep a little longer.

Masumi’s clothes are scattered on the floor in the shape of a flattened man. The white suit jacket, the white slacks, the socks laid out beneath the cuffs, one balled up, the other in the shape of a hockey stick—the shoes, laces still tied. A shirt, an undershirt, in two wads side by side on top of the jacket, like weird linen breasts. Little Boy prods one with his toe.

Masumi’s gun is on the dresser. Fat Man toys with it. He runs his hand over the barrel, feels the back end of the handle, all its fancy inlays. The gun is very cold. It makes his skin rise up in goose bumps. He scrapes his arm gently with his left hand’s nails, feeling them catch and stutter like phonograph needles on the scabby, gummy little caps that dot his skin.

Fat Man aims the gun at the door and squeezes the trigger. To his horror, it fires. The sound is nothing like he imagined. The bullet lodges in the door, which puckers all around it, a black quarter in a wooden kiss. The medium sits up like a mousetrap sprung, lifting bodily from the bed, hovering a second, hair rising like the tree’s weeping, lifted branches.

She falls into place, her hair collapses, clapping. “What the hell did you do? Get the fuck out of my cabin!”

“I didn’t know it was loaded.”

“Then why did you pull the trigger?”

“I assumed it wasn’t loaded.”

“Why would you ever assume that?”

Fat Man flails with the gun, now pointing it at the medium, not quite recognizing what he’s doing, not quite understanding that he means it as a threat. He means shut up. The medium growls and throws herself down on the pillow. She says to get out. She says, “Let me sleep.”

“Public drunkenness is a crime,” says Fat Man. “We’re here to keep you in until you’re sober. What would your husband think if he saw you this way?”

“He’d probably join her,” says Little Boy, who is meanwhile prying the squashed bullet from the door with one of his keys. His thumb touches it briefly. “Still hot,” he hisses.

Fat Man sits down at the table. He makes himself a drink, mixing lemon juice, sugar, and whiskey. The lemon is a little dry but it still squeezes nicely. He says, “Where is your husband anyway?”

“He’s on a trip. Go away. I don’t like you.”

“Your husband says he knows who we are.”

“He hates you too. He’s a proud Japanese.”

“I want to know who you are.”

She says, “My name is Masumi.”

“Like your husband?”

Little Boy says, “I got the bullet loose.” It lies steaming on the floor. He crouches over it, hands out as if he is trying to warm them.

The medium says, “It’s a neuter name. Both men and women have it. So my name is also Wakahisa Masumi. You should leave. Things are much easier for everyone when we don’t see each other.”

“What’s your problem?” says Little Boy. “What do you have against us?” He nudges the bullet with the toe of his shoe.

“He forgot?” says Masumi.

Fat Man shrugs, sipping his drink. “I can’t tell what he knows.”

“I know your names,” says the medium. “You’re Little Boy. You’re Fat Man. Why do you call yourself Matthew?”

“Other people call me Matthew,” says Little Boy. “That’s how a name works.” He looks from one face to the other, awaiting explanation. His eyes are fogged. “Quit staring at me.”

Masumi comes to the table. She invites Little Boy up as well, patting the third seat. She makes herself a drink and pours him one too.

“I’m not allowed,” says Little Boy.

Fat Man says it’s okay.

Masumi says, “My husband and I came here with plans to kill you both. We found, though, that you’d changed. You were calmed. The vortex of spirits centered on your bodies has become a much more contemplative swirl. We did not know what it meant. I still don’t know what it means. You still glow inside with Japanese, your body swollen with their love and need. It is a measure of your selfishness the way you bloat with them. He tried to kill you both. He didn’t try very hard, I guess. He couldn’t do it. You’ve grown.” She holds up her hands parallel and then extends her arms to spread them, illustrating growth. “He has come to see you both as Japanese.”

“Japan is not our home. We were born there,” says Fat Man, “but that’s all.”

“That’s usually all it takes,” says Masumi. “But it’s more than that. You define us.”

Little Boy looks down at the still-steaming bullet.

“We define America,” says Fat Man.

“I’ve never been,” says Masumi. “I can’t say what defines them. The hamburger?” She lights a cigarette and offers one to Fat Man, who takes it happily, trading the gun without a second thought. She gives Little Boy one as well—at Fat Man’s insistence, he smokes it.

“As long as you’re here and you stay calm, I can guide more ghosts into the world in human bodies, fully formed, good as the ones you took from them before, if perhaps a little whiter. Think of it as an underground railroad. In return, you get to stay in your hotel, with your widow, and enjoy this strange peace that you’ve made. You get to hold the babies.”

“The babies frighten me,” says Fat Man.

“Because you know what they are?” asks the medium.

“Their love.”

Little Boy says, “I’m getting sleepy.”

He takes a short drag, coughs harshly. His smoke bleeds into their smoke. Tendrils and teeth in a haze.

“Tell me,” says Masumi, “who was the tree before? It reaches out for you. It knows you, as the children do. But it isn’t Japanese. It will not speak to me.” Masumi cocks the gun. “Tell me where the tree comes from.”

“Little Boy will tell you,” says Fat Man. “Point your gun at him. I’m tired of being the target.”

“She was a tramp that Fat Man found by the well. She said her name was Anne once, but she never answered to it after. She stayed in his secret cabin all the time, where he keeps all the Jew stuff. Not the museum but the secret museum. She was very thin. She was dying. When I was being a baby he would lay me down beside her bed. She would sprout things. Molds, blades of grass, flowers. Fat Man fed her what he could get her to swallow. He was very kind to her.

“She smelled terrible. We couldn’t bathe her. One time Fat Man tried. He wrapped towels around his arms to protect her from his closeness, and tried to carry her to a big bucket full of soapy water. He had a sponge and wash cloth as well. He was saying he would take care of her. He was saying he would make the itching stop. She would scratch herself when she could find the strength, opening sores. The blood would mold if he was anywhere nearby.”