A Thousand Scattered Pages

by JayRain

Someday he'll put the pieces together in a way that makes sense. For now, the memories are scrawled on scattered pages in a dozen different journals: out of sequence, out of time, out of body, out of mind. Just who is Bucky? He hopes writing down the fragmented memories, as he recalls them, will lead him to an answer. It isn't always pretty, but it has to be done.

25. Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor

War's a funny thing. It's always far off, always happening to someone else. Until it's on your back stoop, and it's happening to you.

War came to the back-most back stoop for us: Hawaii. Most of us listened to reports of what was happening in Africa and Germany. There was talk about Asia. But it wasn't ever anything we took seriously. U-boats silently floating into the harbors and piers of the east coast? Sure. That was our back yard. That was where we played. I had a job on the docks for a bit. We would sit around at lunch and shoot the shit while we watched the water. I don't think we even really thought it would come to that, but the threat was there.

Then we woke up one morning in December and everything changed. Suddenly the Pacific was more than a mysterious expanse of blue on the left side of the map. Hawaii was more than just a chain of islands and pineapple farms. Japan was more than just islands off the coast of China. The U-boats could come into the harbors, and the war planes could fly over our roofs.

We weren't safe anymore.

Not that we ever really had been. But we had this illusion that we were insulated, that those things happened over there. Until they didn't. Until they happened here.

I remember Pop's face. He sat there all still, listening to the president on the radio, just staring at nothing. He looked kind of pale. At one point I think he stopped breathing. His jaw was clenched tight and maybe he was trying to hold back tears, which was weird because Pop didn't cry. Mom could only sit with him, hand on his shoulder. I didn't get it then.

Now I do.

Pop fought in the Great War. It was supposed to be the war to end all wars. And here was another war: greater, bigger.

Worst of all: he looked at me and Robert, and then at Steve, who was over before mass. Mostly he looked at me and Robert. He wasn't seeing sons, he was seeing soldiers.

We weren't safe anymore. Maybe we hadn't ever been.

The only certain thing that Sunday morning was that the world we'd known was different and couldn't ever be the same again. We woke up that morning, jolted out of the dream of peace our fathers earned us. It would be great to go back to sleep again, but I don't think we'll ever get that back. We learned a lot, but most of all we learned that war doesn't just happen there. It happens here, too.