Mike Meginnis - Fat Man and Little Boy

“Which one?”

“The basic one.”

“You want cheese, ma’am?”

“Why not?”

Little Boy orders for himself and Maggie. The waitress gives them crayons from a crayon box she carries. They draw on the blank white undersides of their paper placemats. She does a picture of Dorian and Pierrot, which is all she’s drawn since she met them. Rosie says it’s just a way of processing her feelings. She says Maggie is a deeply feeling girl. The brothers always look like they’re in pain the way she draws them. They seem to try to push each other away, their heads tilted as if pulling, and one of them is always crying, though it changes which is which. The only detail that ever looks quite right is the egg-shaped gap between their necks, inside which gap she always draws a little moon, just as she saw it then. The rest is sort of a mess.

Fat Man watches the salt and pepper shakers like it’s the only way he can keep them from talking.

Someone else comes in. A couple teenagers. The girl is pretty. The bell rings again. Charlene tells them to sit where they like. She’ll be with them shortly.

There’s a pain in Fat Man’s gut that won’t go away, though he knows what he can do about it. There’s a gun there, Masumi’s—empty, cold, and hard. He’s been wearing it taped up in his own folds to hide it from his family, who use his pockets freely, who wipe their snot on his pants, who make him carry things for them, but who don’t touch him otherwise now. He used medical tape—the kind that sticks to skin, secreted in the line that bisects his stomach like a sideways ass, wrapping bandages around the point of division. It makes him walk a little funny but discomfort suits a man of his girth. It seems right that he should waddle, that he should rest a hand on his gut as if to hold something in place, seeming now to suffer an ulcer, seeming now to adjust a hopeless girdle. When Fat Man left the country he couldn’t bear to leave the gun. While he taped and bandaged it up inside himself, Rosie knocked on the bathroom door, asked him what in hell he was doing that was taking so long. He said it was a number two. She said to hurry it up then. He said, “You can’t hurry genius.”

Now the kids are asking for more paper. Rosie takes some from the notebook she keeps in her purse for this purpose, tearing out three sheets each for Little Boy and Maggie. The kids snatch them from her hands.

Fat Man asks Rosie how it feels being back in the USA. She says she doesn’t feel like she’s back. “It all seems so new. Some of that is I’ve never been to the west coast. Some of that is I haven’t been back since the war. Some of it is they’re a bunch of brats here and I’d like to wail on them a while.”

“I could go for some wailing,” says Fat Man.

“Or whaling!” shouts Little Boy, making a big fat gut on himself in the air with his hands. Maggie giggles. Fat Man kicks him underneath the table.

“That was uncalled for,” says Little Boy.

“What did you do?”says Rosie.

“Nothing,” says Fat Man.

“Nothing,” says Little Boy.

Little Boy salts his fries basket. He pours ketchup. He asks Maggie would she like anything on hers. She shakes her head nuh-uh. They knock their feet together sideways underneath the table. The soles of his shoes make a nice cloppy sound against the soles of hers.

He cuts her grilled cheese in half down the diagonal because the kitchen didn’t bother and because that’s what she likes. He asks her if she wants her crusts. She says yes. Rosie has been teaching her to clean her plate so she can get big and tall. Little Boy doesn’t see the urgency in that. All the pretty girls are short.

Maggie scrapes off the scabbed cheese goo where it dripped from the sandwich onto her plate and sucks it off her finger. Little Boy eats his fries. He asks where they’ll go for the rest of the day. He asks if they’ll see a movie. Rosie says they can see the people who make the movies instead. Fat Man says that they can see a movie if they want. They’ll be here for weeks, after all. Little Boy says can they go to the beach. Fat Man says that can wait until tomorrow. Little Boy says can they tour the homes of the stars. Fat Man says they can do that in a few days.

Little Boy says he promised Maggie a tour of the homes of the stars first thing.

Fat Man says he shouldn’t promise things he can’t deliver.

Maggie is still picking the cheese from her plate.

Little Boy nudges her with his elbow. “I bet you can’t eat your sandwich before I eat my hamburger.”

She wolfs it down, finishes before everybody, gets cheese on her cheek.

Little Boy napkins it off.

She says, “Can I ride in the plane?”

“I haven’t got any quarters,” says Fat Man. “It’s not so fun anyway.”

“I’ll get some change if you give me a dollar,” says Little Boy. “I can take her outside.”

Rosie opens her purse.

Fat Man closes it and says, “I don’t want her playing with that kind of toy. They warp young minds. Look at these kids.”

He motions at the Hollywood children. One of them has climbed up on a table. The kid wears a cowboy hat and a T-shirt with a sewn-on picture of a bucking bronco. He pretends to shoot with gun-fingers. “Pow pow! Pow! Pow pow pow!” His mother tries to pull him down by the cuff of his pants. She begs him to behave. He stomps on her fingers.

“You want her acting like that?” says Fat Man.

Little Boy says, “You wouldn’t be a brat, would you Magnolia.”

Maggie shakes her head.

Little Boy says, “Come on, we’ll play in it without the quarter. The best part is sitting in the cockpit anyway.” He leads her out by the hand. He hoists her up into the cockpit. When he looks in the window he sees Fat Man is looking out at them, watching so closely. Like he doesn’t trust Little Boy with his daughter. He ought to. Little Boy knows her best. Little Boy takes care of her all the time. Little Boy knows how to make her laugh.

Little Boy named her, for God’s sake. He loves her more than anybody.

He stands behind the plane, hands planted on each wing. There are four fat springs underneath the plane, attaching it to the base, and in their center a hydraulic mechanism to make the plane bounce for a paying customer. Little Boy can tilt and jostle it a little if he puts his back into it. “Now you’re shooting them down,” says Little Boy. “Fire the machine guns, Magnolia.”

“Budda budda budda!” she shouts.

He bounces the plane. “Now they hang left. Swoop with them.”

“Eeeeaaaauuurrrrrrhh.”

He tilts it left as hard as he can, lifting the right wing, pushing on the left one’s end.

“There’s so many of them, coming at you from all directions.” He pokes her all over with his fingers, makes her giggle, pokes her under her arms, between her ribs, in her tummy, belly button, back of her neck, behind her ears, saying pow pow pow, pow pow pow.

“No, nooo, no, I dodge them.”

“You can’t dodge them all. Your engines are failing.”

“I fix the engines,” says Maggie. “I’m a mechanic.”

“Japan comes into view!”

“Japan?”

He turns the plane left, twists it to the right, pushes hard to quake it, she’s laughing and scared all at once.

“Budda budda budda budda!” she shrieks.

“You only have a short window of opportunity to drop the bomb and win the war.”

“Drop the bomb?” says Maggie.

“No, no, not yet. You’ve got to wait till you’re over the target.”

Maggie hunkers down. She squeezes the wheel. “I’m ready.”

“Not yet,” says Little Boy, husky, low in his throat. He wipes sweat from his forehead. “Not yet.”

“I’m ready!”

“Give it another second. Be patient. Calm. You only get one chance.” His body hums inside. His guts clench and loosen. Stomach burns. The feeling of free fall. Weightless. Turning mid-air like a pinwheel. The moment before impact. Heat. Light. Thunder. White-out. White.