The Hummingbird (10 page)

Ryan promised to give me something in return, though I insisted that he shouldn’t. But who was I to know what a dying man’s necessities are? He felt compelled to show gratitude.

Ryan is the man who carved me the hummingbird, which turned out to be a totem of my work, a permanent reminder that every patient is capable of enormous and unexpected gifts. My challenge is to remember that, and to see the person behind the problem.

At Mona’s the problem was drink: hers, her children’s, their friends’. While I was inside swabbing her med-line, I could hear the partiers through the screens. Their tone was bitter, caustic. One night the railing broke, and a man fell onto the lawn. It was the only time I ever heard laughter there. While he poured forth a recitation of filth to make a sailor blush, the rest of the crew roared and cackled. When he answered them by swearing with greater passion, their hilarity sounded like barking dogs.

Some days were not so bad, though I couldn’t say why. They just went more smoothly, and I was less edgy. So I began keeping track: when was it easy, when was I uneasy. Eventually, I realized that my mood was established before I’d even gotten out of my car.

That’s not unusual in medicine; the caregiver’s experience can often be a useful diagnostic tool. A psychologist who is taking a patient’s history and begins to feel depressed, for example, has received a clear indicator that the patient is depressed himself.

At Mona’s house there was no obvious signal. It was something nuanced. I needed three full weeks to figure it out. One evening, when I was running a bit behind schedule, I noticed: There was a green Mustang on the front grass, its chrome back wheels jacked up but the rest of it in rusty condition. When that car was present, my mood was anxious. Yet I had no idea whose vehicle it was. How could I have subconsciously connected the car to the negative atmosphere at the house?

Before I could solve that riddle, the answer presented itself. On that night, I was late, and I hurried into Mona’s room to check her line. Two men were sitting beside her bed. Her hair hung down into her face. The cigarette smoke was as thick as steam.

“It’s a little close in here,” I said, opening the one window that worked. No question, I would arrive home smelling of smoke. No one replied.

I turned to assess the situation. All three of them held large glasses of dark liquor. I asked Mona how her day was.

“Lousy,” she slurred. “What else?”

“Sorry,” I said, coming beside her bed. “But we can’t mix these things.”

I took her glass away. She glared at me, trying to focus. Meanwhile I carried the glass into the kitchen and poured its contents down the sink.

One of the men was at my elbow instantly, smelling of booze. He was much taller than me and stood too close. “What the hell you doing, little missy?”

“Giving alcohol to a person on pain medicines is a really bad idea.”

“Well I’m her fuckin’ son. And I say if she wants to hoist a few fuckin’ drinks, it ain’t gonna hurt nobody.”

“Actually, it will. It will hurt your mom, perhaps seriously.”

“Maybe you didn’t even fuckin’ notice, but she’s already in a world of hurt, Miss Priss.”

“Miss Priss? Is that the best you can do?” I stepped past him to finish filling Mona’s pouch, but on the way I did something that I regret to this day. I laughed. One little snort, but it conveyed a long paragraph of contempt.

Now a man like that has little enough to shore up his ego, only a jacked-up car and a mouth full of bravado, and I had popped his tires. He glanced around to see who had heard. I looked too—just us. Then I went about my business, lines and pouch, while he stood in the doorway smoldering. I left without another word between us.

They fired me the following morning. I received the email from my boss before breakfast, so they must have called the agency mighty early.

Timmy Clamber was next, and he lasted one day. Not exactly a gay-friendly household, I’d say. Then heroic Grace Farnham stepped in, with her gospel voice and skillful diplomacy, and they kept her on. I felt relieved for the patient, the family, and myself.

I can’t say that I forgot Mona, but she faded quickly because my next assignment was also a tough one. Allison was an elderly piano teacher, a devout Catholic, whose husband was a retired plumber and whose five grown sons either still lived in the house or were on the same block. She was in the final weeks of a valiant ovarian cancer fight. Allison had taken care of all of those men for so many years, she did not even know what her needs were, much less how to ask for them to be met.

For me it was a month of mind reading, guessing at signals, and biting my tongue while the fellas stood around with their hands in their pockets. At the end I was proud that she died pain-free, rosary in her fingers and a priest at her bedside in the final hour.

When I spotted Grace Farnham in the office a few weeks later, I went straight to her desk. Perhaps not the most organized worker in the office, she was searching for something among the piles of papers. I stood there a moment, liking the way she smelled—floral yet maternal, like a fourth-grade teacher. When she glanced up, I said I was glad Mona had finished life in her care because it guaranteed a happy ending.

“Lord, no,” Grace said, pausing in her search. “That case was not pretty, Deborah dear. One sad household.”

“But why? She had that great drip device.”

“Well, it seemed like she was drawing pain meds through the tube faster, but I just gave her more. You know I’m not sharp on titrating dosages like you are. So it took me a bit to figure it out. Then I ran water on the tube and sure enough there were pinholes. That oldest boy of hers was diverting.”

“What are you saying?”

“An addict, I guess. Or user, anyway. He was tapping her line to steal some injectable.” Grace rubbed her forehead. “Oh, I wish you had kept on with that one, Deborah. It wouldn’t have gone so badly.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“He messed up, of course, contaminated things, and gave his poor mama meningitis. As if her life weren’t difficult enough.” Grace shuffled the papers on her desk. “That Mona, she suffered hard.”

Ouch. I had been on to that guy, I’d had his number. But I put my ego first and took the firing gladly. If I’d stayed, maybe I would have caught the diverting earlier. Maybe Mona would not have died in misery. And that is how one uncompassionate laugh can weigh a thousand pounds forever.

THERE WAS NO GREEN MUSTANG
parked in front of the house when I reached home that night. There must have been some similar signal though, some subtle but accurate indicator, because anxiety surged in me the moment I pulled into the driveway. I’d been improving at that, diagnosing Michael’s condition before setting foot in the house. Before I’d shut off the car that day, I could tell something was not right.

The news on the radio didn’t help: a shooting at a mall in Ohio. After killing four people and wounding six, the gunman shot himself at the scene. A familiar story, sadly enough, and the randomness of its violence would make anyone nervous.

But even after I’d shut the engine off, I felt a tension in the quiet, as if I were a little kid caught at something and was about to get yelled at.

I climbed out of the car and peered around. There were no external indicators, no signs of trouble. Just Michael’s shoes beside the front door, his socks tucked inside. That wasn’t his routine, but the day was warm, and he’d walked home from work. So why would that put me on alert?

I have no idea. Nor can I say why the strange rhythmic sound from inside caused my stomach to flutter. But something made me turn the handle gently and open the screen door slowly so that it would not squeak. Something made me stealthy as I entered my own house.

Michael sat at the kitchen table, his back to me. My mouth went dry as I took it all in: Three racks of large brass bullets, polished to a yellowy shine, perhaps two hundred rounds per rack. His rifle, which we had agreed would always be kept locked in the hall cabinet because the big gun made me nervous, leaned against the counter. My husband wore camouflage pants, a tight white t-shirt, and one army boot. That rhythmic sound was Michael going back and forth with a brush, buffing the other boot so that it shined.

His neck was red with exertion, arm and back muscles flexed, head bent in concentration.

Nobody knew the statistics on returning soldiers better than me: Four hundred thousand men and women with PTSD. Twenty-two suicides a day. And here was my psychically wounded man gearing up as if he were about to invade the city of Portland. Of all the emotions I’d experienced since he came home, that was the first time I had known outright fear.

“Sweetheart?”

“Jesus,” he said, wheeling in his chair. “Why are you sneaking up on me?”

“You didn’t hear my car?”

“God almighty, Deb.” He held the brush against his chest a moment, then pointed it at me. “Startling Michael Birch is not a good idea. Really not.” He shook his head. “Understatement of the year.”

He bent back to his boot, buff buff buff.

It felt like a hospice situation. The pressure, the heightened emotions, the vast difference in circumstances of people involved. And so I knew the rules for handling moments like that: Resist all urges to turn away, even though my insides were trembling. Find the courage to face directly into the wind.

“Any special reason you’re suiting up today?”

Buff, buff. “Had a call from Gene.”

“Gene?”

He paused, staring at the floor. “Jesus, Deb. Gene Cleaves? The guy who lost his leg in our IED attack?”

“I’m sorry. I forgot his name for a second.”

Michael went back to boot polishing.

“How’s Gene doing these days?”

“Finished PT and OT and now he wants to get his riflery chops back. Invited me down to the range next week.”

“I see.”

There was so much more I wanted to say. About lavishing affection on his gear when he could not spare one caress for me. About what shooting again might stir up in him. About how all of this was scaring me.

Then I remembered what the Professor had said earlier that day: First you must understand his weapon.

I crossed the kitchen and picked up the rifle. Heavier than I’d expected. Colder too. The gun seemed inert, just dull metal, but I knew it was capable of enormous things.

Michael was watching me intently, boot brush suspended mid-stroke. He rested his wrist on his knee. “What’s up, Deb?”

I cradled the gun to my chest. Professor, I thought, I hope you are right.

Then I squatted, looking my husband full in the face. “Isn’t it time you taught me how to shoot this thing?”

ICHIRO SOGA FLEW TWO SORTIES.
He managed two take-offs, navigated two flights, and dropped four bombs.

Obviously his mission did not achieve its intended goals. Not even the mighty 1942 U.S. Department of War could have suppressed the news of a massive conflagration in the forests of southern Oregon.

Nonetheless, Soga punctured coastal complacency. He revealed weaknesses in American defenses. Eventually one of his bombs did inflict lethal damage.

His initial salvo passed over Brookings, a coastal logging town, then inland toward Mount Emily. The area is now known as Siskiyou National Forest; to Soga, the abundance of trees was staggering.

Understand the pilot’s perspective: An island nation is perpetually starving. It is an inevitable consequence of geography. Some commodities are unavailable.

Thus do island nations possess few options. Those inhabited by peaceable peoples tend to suffer perpetual poverty. Think Haiti, think Zanzibar. Others entertain notions of empire. Think Great Britain in its imperial years.

Into this second category of ambition one might fairly add Japan in the early twentieth century, its islands tucked southeast of the Chinese trove of natural resources. Notions of empire in the Land of the Rising Sun were prompted by the imperatives of isolation. For Soga, therefore, what lay below him was a target too large to miss.

The first bomb fell and exploded. Both pilot and navigator saw it ignite.

With one wing 170 pounds lighter than the other, the plane yawed to the opposite side. But Soga kept the nose forward, maintaining steady rudder pressure with his feet. He flew six miles in that fashion, until they passed over an area known as Bear Wallow Lookout. There Okuda released the second bomb. There was no visible flame that time. This failure may have been the result of a lapse in Japanese incendiary technology, but the previous week’s downpour might have been a likelier cause. The weather that kept Soga submerged had also drenched the region’s trees.

Meanwhile, the first bomb’s fire caught and grew.

If the U.S. coastal military forces proved insufficiently vigilant, the mainland was ready in other important ways. North of Soga’s flight path, a series of catastrophic forest fires known as the Tillamook Burn had torched 355,000 acres in 1933. The flames had proved beyond human power to extinguish and only went out when the rains of the Pacific Northwest poured down. The blazes cost the timber industry $442.4 million in 1933 dollars, deepened the Depression in that region, and produced a plume of hot ash that reached ships 500 miles out to sea.

Since then, a system of fire towers known as the Advanced Warning System stood ready. The AWS was a civilian organization, loosely connected to the more militarized Civil Defense Corps. The AWS commander for southern Oregon down to the California line was one Donny Baker III, about whom more in a moment.

Howard Gardner of the U.S. Forest Service was first to observe the plane. A prospector, hunter, and woodsman, he was deeply familiar with the landscape. The bomb went down in a large, unlogged stand of timber. Later Gardner became the toast of the state, attending celebratory dinners in Portland and beyond—a tour that ceased only when he returned home upon the birth of his son.

While firefighters raced to the scene, it is worth noting that Soga’s bomb revealed significant American weaknesses.

Foremost, the land he flew over in 1942 was the longest stretch of U.S. coastline without a radar installation. From Cape Perpetua in northern Oregon to Fort Bragg in southern California, a span exceeding 450 miles, the only tools for enemy observation were human eyes, either in ground patrols or in timber towers.

These facilities were rustic in more than construction. Most had communications systems so primitive, they verged on the comical. To reach the army command post in Brookings, for example, required calling the Driscoll Hotel. A person answering the phone would then run 500 yards to the command post, and the recipient would run 500 yards back to take the call. Also, the hotel closed daily from 8:30
P.M.
till 8:00
A.M.
During those hours, communication involved a thirty-eight-mile drive up the winding coast highway.

Dysfunctions in the chain of command exacerbated the problem. In the early daylight hours of September 9, Private Harold Moyer was foot-patrolling the Harris Park beach area when he heard a plane overhead. Limited visibility left him unable to identify the aircraft beyond noting that the tips of its wings were square. It beggars imagination how a soldier assigned shoreline duty would be unacquainted with makes and models of enemy aircraft. Moreover, under orders not to leave his position, Moyer obeyed. With no means of informing the command post, he therefore kept his observations to himself. Not until much later in the day, when an officer overheard him chatting in the barracks, did Moyer’s superiors learn that he had seen the aircraft. Any opportunity for pursuit had passed hours earlier.

What explanation could there be for these lapses? Perhaps primarily, the officers in charge were woefully inexperienced. Responsibility for that portion of Oregon lay with the Army’s 44th Division, 174th Infantry, Company G. The company commander was First Lieutenant Claude Waldrop, who had begun that assignment on August 8, 1942—thirty-one days before Soga’s mission. Waldrop had the aid of Joseph Kane, who had become a second lieutenant in June and was assigned to Company G in late July. On this command, the paint had not yet dried.

When Kane learned about his soldiers’ awareness of the bombing, inability to identify the aircraft, and failure to report their observations, he instructed them to remain silent in any interrogations by army investigators. That order shielded him from immediate repercussions. Later, it also earned him a court-martial.

In all, Soga’s route flew him into the exact center of the least well-guarded part of the American coastline. In coming weeks, among U.S. military leadership, legitimate questions of espionage arose. How did the Japanese know precisely the most vulnerable place to attack?

MAINTAINING DISCIPLINED ADHERENCE
to the mission plan, Soga flew back to sea on a heading the inverse of his inland approach. He spotted the I-25, landed, and observed as the deck crane hoisted his plane aboard. Once he went below, Soga informed his captain that he had spotted two freighters nearby.

Tagami ordered immediate pursuit. Simultaneously, a U.S. Army bomber on a routine patrol had spotted the Japanese vessel. The aircraft was captained by Jean Daugherty from the 390th Bomb Squadron, 42nd Bombardment Group, based at McChord Field in Washington. The I-25 was in the process of submerging, but its decks were just awash and the conning tower was plainly visible.

Immediately, Daugherty’s bomber changed direction, bearing down on the sub. By then only its periscope remained above the surface. The plane dropped two 300-pound depth charges, set to explode at 50 feet under water.

After the bombs detonated, air bubbles and oil came to the ocean’s surface. The bomber made another approach, dropping a third depth charge, but it did not elicit more bubbles or oil.

The army dispatched three other planes to the area. They too dropped 300-pound bombs, set to detonate either 45 seconds after release or when they reached the ocean floor. No evidence of the sub’s presence remained.

Aboard the I-25, Captain Tagami determined that the damage was not extensive. He ordered the diesel engines shut off, electric motors started, and repairs made. The sub sat in silence. Soga returned to his berth, listening to the depth charges’ detonations, then placing his sword back in a secure spot.

U.S. Army air patrols continued over the area, monitoring calm seas until night fell.