call Alcatraz, San Francisco’s island prison. It’s as bleak as that and more.
We’re stationed at a place called Enewetak Atoll, about halfway between Australia and Hawaii in the North Pacific. It’s about as far away from anything as you can get, which I guess is why the brass decided it’s an ideal place for nuclear experiments. The island is only two miles long, and pear-shaped, and it’s still the largest one in the Marshall Islands, a horseshoe-shaped coral reef of thirty small islands that surround a sheltered lagoon forty miles across.
Anyway, this morning, I lay in my bunk for a long time looking at a picture of Shirley and me. She’s so beautiful, and I’m just a skinny, pimple-faced kid. I wondered what she’d say if she could see me now, since boot camp pumped me up. I kissed her dimpled cheek and pressed her smiling face to my chest, my heart breaking all over again. Breaking up was the right decision for both of us, though. We were only eighteen years old then, twenty years old now. Too young to get married. Too young for me to die. Too young for her to be a widow.
I tucked the black-and-white photo back under my pillow and told myself I was overreacting. It was just my hangover talking. No one had ever said, or even suggested, that Operation Redwing would be my last day on earth. I told myself it was all in my head.
But it’s hard not to think that way, when we don’t even know why we’re stationed on this deserted island. After two weeks with no job to do but maintain the barracks, we couldn’t help but start to wonder why we were really sent here. I mean, who wouldn’t? And since we were all issued radiation badges to measure our level of exposure during today’s test, rumors ran rampant, despite all assurances that the exposure would be no more than getting an X-ray.
Master Sergeant Trayne’s voice—“This is it, men! Move! Outside and in formation now!”—got me jumping down from my bunk so fast my insides felt like they had rotted out. From all the gin I drank last night. We all drank too much, I wasn’t the only one trying not to think about what would happen today.
I stood outside in formation and checked my radiation badge one last time to make sure it was secured to my belt loop. My fingers were shaking.
“Eyes straight ahead. Arms at your side. Stand tall. Single file. Forward march.”
Our barracks are at the thin end of the island, which is only a few hundred yards across, so we had to march to the airstrip at the fat end, which is still only half a mile at its widest, though it counts for 90 percent of the island. My head pounded with each step.
“Backs to the center of the island.”
I turned and stood at attention facing the lagoon.
We’d been told the explosion would be one to two miles behind us, and if we faced the blast, our eyes could be permanently damaged, even if we closed them. We were also told there was nothing to worry about. I don’t know what kind of fools they think we are. I saw that the officers were wearing high-density goggles. How come we weren’t?
“H minus fifteen minutes.” A disembodied voice blasted through loudspeakers that had been set up along the water.
I crossed myself. I’m not even Catholic.
Master Sergeant Trayne walked along our rows, looking for any sign of an unshined shoe or a tarnished belt buckle. He stopped and glared at my friend Tom next to me. He flicked his fingers under Tom’s chin like he was chastising him for some great offense, but I think he just wanted to look good to the reporters on the nearby USS Mount McKinley, here to write about today’s test. But even though I thought it was all for show, the master sergeant’s cold, unfeeling eyes still sent a shiver up my spine.
“H minus ten minutes.”
I closed my fingers around the radiation badge at my waist.
“At ease. Relax.”
All around me were the sounds of shuffling feet, throats clearing, quiet conversations, strained laughter. I wasn’t the only one who was terrified. I scanned the landscape—nothing but perforated aluminum buildings and concrete slabs. All the island’s inhabitants were removed after World War II. The lush tropical foliage was leveled then, too. Now the only color on the island is the bluish-green water of the lagoon and our drab olive-green uniforms. And why were we brought here again?
“H minus seven minutes.”
I saw that the water tower had been tied down with steel cables. We’d been told that all structures deemed to be at risk would be secured. I mumbled under my breath to Tom, “Guess they don’t think we need to be tied down.”
“H minus five minutes.”
I felt Tom shaking next to me even though our bodies weren’t touching. I started humming a hymn from my childhood. It’s not that I was ever religious or anything. It just came to me. Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come? For His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches over me.
“Attention!” Master Sergeant Trayne paused. “You all know what attention means!”
“H minus three minutes.”
No one talked. No one coughed. No one moved.
“You are not to turn around until an announcement is made over the PA system at zero hour plus thirty seconds.”
The words to the hymn in my head got louder. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches over me.
“No one, repeat no one, will look directly at the fireball at zero hour.”
I held my breath. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
“H minus thirty seconds.”
For thou art with me . . . His eye is on the sparrow.
“Twenty seconds.”
I wanted to turn to Tom, grab his arm, but I didn’t dare. I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
“H minus ten seconds.”
“All right, men.” Master Sergeant Trayne’s voice was strained. “Arms raised and placed over your closed eyes.”
All I could hear was my own breathing, the words of the hymn in my head. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
“Five, four, three, two, one.”
ONE
2019
“Sylvia! Sylvia Jensen! Long time no see!”
Martin Lind still looks like a stereotype, albeit an aging one. No matter the season, even, like now, in early summer, he wears the same brown sport coat with patches on the elbows, now frayed around the edges, the same threadbare British ivy hat that he’s worn like a uniform for fifty-some years of his life. I wave once, tuck a stray strand of gray hair into the bun at the back of my head and scrunch down in the pew.
It’s not that I’m unhappy to see Martin. I like him, a lot, and have the utmost respect for him and what he’s doing. I just want to make sure that seeing him, as well as other activists here, doesn’t arouse in me a feeling that I should be doing more. Not that any of them can or want to make me feel that way. It’s my issue, not theirs, one grounded in an old childhood sense of not being enough that, in the past, pushed me to do too much and then left me feeling, always, that it still wasn’t enough. I don’t want to get sucked back into that pattern tonight. It’s an old and deeply rooted character defect I’ve worked hard to overcome. And now that my life is better than ever, more serene and accepting, I intend to keep it that way.
BERTHA PICKERING 1920–2018 is projected in bold black letters on a giant screen at the front of the sanctuary, and there’s a photo of Bertha smiling under the weight of her signature hat, its floppy brim covered with dozens of what she called her kick-ass buttons. She was in her nineties when the picture was taken but looks ten years younger than I do now at seventy-seven.
My iPhone pings, a text from my friend J. B. Harrell. I’m in town. On a story. Save