This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

Outside, the MPs form a protective barricade between the jail and the crowd. The officers are armed to the teeth with rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, two heavy machine guns. The crowd sings. The crowd chants. The crowd flips birdies at the MPs. They rip their shirts, beat their chests. They mock the MPs, calling them boy scouts.

Alex again looks for Frank. It’s nine thirty now and he hasn’t seen his older brother all day. Alex is worried now. Something’s about to happen. If not now, then soon. Something awful. He thinks to run back to his barrack, check on Mother.

But then two men step forward: the commanding officer of the MPs, Captain Martyn Hall, along with his lieutenant. They are tall, imposing, silver-haired white men used to getting their way. Especially with minorities, with Oriental types. They tell the crowd to disperse, it’s time to go home.

“Don’t tell us what to do!”

“You’re breaking camp rules!” Captain Hall yells.

“Screw camp rules—”

“—and martial law has just been declared!”

“Screw martial law!”

“Anyone who violates martial law will be—”

A rock is thrown at Captain Hall. It whizzes by his head, almost hitting him. His eyes are wide with indignation. To think a Jap would have the temerity to throw a rock at him—

“TEAR GAS!” he orders the MPs. “Fire them in!”

His lieutenant starts pulling him back. “Martyn, tear gas? You sure?”

But it’s too late for second-guessing. MPs are already tossing tear-gas and vomit-gas grenades into the crowd. The crowd yells, disperses as the canisters hit the ground and go rolling. White fumes hiss out. But a northerly wind blows most of it harmlessly away. The crowd returns. Pissed.

“You’re teargassing us?” they shout angrily. “We were just standing here! You going to shoot us next?”

Insults are hurled, cigarette stubs, sand. That is all the crowd has to throw. Then someone finds another rock.

It is thrown at the MPs. They duck, glare back, trying to spot the culprit. Some MPs are frightened. Others are chomping at the bit: action at last.

Another rock is thrown at the MPs. The crowd getting louder, pushing forward.

“Hold the line, boys,” Captain Hall shouts. “Remember Pearl Harbor! Exactly one year ago. Remember what they did to us.”

The crowd edges closer. It hollers, shouts.

“Put on gas masks!” Captain Hall orders. “Fire in all the tear-gas cylinders. On my go!”

The crowd, seeing the MPs putting on the masks, becomes incensed. It edges closer. Yelling, fists raised high into the sky, hollering—

BANG!

Not the blast of gas canisters.

But a gunshot.

The crowd freezes. It can’t be, no way, not a gun, why a gun—

BANG BANG BANG.

A different kind of blast, this the rat-a-tat of a submachine gun.

Panic. Pandemonium. Screams, high-pitched and unstrung.

Warning shots, Alex thinks, these were warning shots fired over our heads.

A young man in front falls, legs cut out from under him, arms flailing. The crowd spins, backpedaling, sidestepping—

Another person drops.

More gunfire tears into the night.

More bodies hit the dirt.

“Frank!” Alex screams. He’s shoved from behind, gets spun around. Now he’s facing the MPs. He sees muzzles flashing, two of them. Someone smacks into him from the side, sending him to the ground. Raw pain swims up his left side. “Frank!” His cry a wheeze.

Dust everywhere. Smoke everywhere. The ground shaking, from thousands of panicked feet. From within this pandemonium, the sound of a car, the screech of rubber, more gunfire, a crash. Screams, shouts.

Then quiet. Bodies lie scattered along the ground, some curled into fetal positions, others quivering. A few stationary. Moaning starts from all around.

He hears screams of panic, of anger, he hears MPs shouting, perhaps at one another.

“Alex!”

Frank’s voice. Alex lifts his head. He can’t locate his brother, it’s too dark, too much swirling dust.

“Alex!”

There. Frank. Ducked low beside a barrack.

“Frank.”

Their eyes meet. Frank runs over, his big brother, his head bent low. “Alex, you okay?”

Alex has no idea. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“You’re grabbing your side.”

“I’m fine.”

“Did you get hit, my God, did you get hit?”

Alex doesn’t know. He’s clutching his side. Frank pulls his hand away. Shoves up his sweater, his shirt, and Alex is already flinching. But the exposed plate of skin is pale and unbroken.

“We have to move, Alex. Get up!” Frank hoists Alex up, pulls him along. They start legging it. Searchlights cutting manically left and right, making shadows dance in macabre fashion. Shouts. Chaos. The air frizzled with the stench of smoke.

A dark pool of shadow before them. A man, crouched in it, cradling someone unconscious. “Help!” he screams louder. “Somebody help!”

Frank bends down to help. He jerks up. Stares at his own hands. They’re coated with slick, thick blood. Blood from the man on the ground, so much of it pooling around him.

“Grab his legs,” Frank yells at Alex and the other man. “We’ve got to get him inside!”

Together, the three carry the unconscious man into the nearest building. The police station. His body, slack and limp and slippery with blood, is difficult to carry. Around them, screams, shouts. Other people lying on the street.

Frank kicks open the door, settles the man down on a table. Ceiling light shines down on the victim’s face.

“He’s just a teenager,” the other man says. “They mowed down a kid.”

Frank’s face is stricken white. “It’s James,” he whispers.

“You know him?”

“A friend from school.”

The man pulls James’s sweater vest up, searching for an entry wound. “I can’t find anything.”

“All this blood, though.”

They flip James over onto his stomach. A dark, bloody hole in the center of his vest.

“They shot him in the back,” Frank mutters, his face drained of blood.

“My God,” Alex whispers. He backs away from the table. “I never thought they’d shoot us. I never thought America would do this to us. To their own.” He stumbles backward, his head spinning. The world gone mad.

“Alex?” says Frank.

Alex pushes through the door. But outside, there’s no reprieve. More bodies lying on the street, in pools of blood. Friends bent over them, trying to help. Some of the injured are groaning. Blood leaking from wounds in their backs or sides.

They were all shot while retreating, while running away.

Alex feels something breaking in him. And hardening, too.

* * *