Machine Dreams

the Zero. The big wing rose up, breaking water a hundred yards out. The plane had gone in nose first and then tipped in the surf, rolling sideways so the wing reared out of the water, fuselage shredded at the tip.
    Farther on, the aluminum ribs were visible, holes blasted in the overlaid structure, the red sun of Hirohito’s empire flapping.
    Warrenholtz took a picture of the wing and stripped down to swim, but Mitch sat in the shade of the Jeep, smoked a cigarette. He watched the ruined wing and the white floating form of Warrenholtz. Later they drank more paregoric before starting back but still had to walk into hilly brush across the beach road and relieve themselves, with Warrenholtz grousing how it was all good revenge for the Papua boys, see the Yanks with their diarrhea scowls once a month on the average. When they got to the top of the rise above their own Jeep, Warrenholtz saw the Nip, saw the brush move where the Nip was crawling, drew his gun and yelled. Mitch saw then the lobbed grenade flying high into the air but knew it was hopelessly off target; the Nip was hurt and had no aim. The grenade burst off to the right and the sound was deafening; after that, Mitch walked in, the spiky grass to his knees; somewhere Warrenholtz was yelling
“Kosan, Kosan, Tomare,”
the words ridiculous and piping after the burst of the ammo, but the Nip kept crawling deeper in. The tall grass wavered. Mitch saw momentarily the fields behind the farm at home, and he drew his own gun and fired—fired again and again into the grass until the chamber was empty and Warrenholtz stood beside him, staring not at the grass, which had long since stopped moving, but at Mitch.
    Mitch saw Warrenholtz’s lips moving and heard sounds he knew were words, but the words were like buzzing over a bad wireless, like Warrenholtz had a radio voice and the voice blinked on and off. They stood still and the grass was motionless in the hot sea air; Mitch put the pistol carefully into his holster and could feel the heat of the gun through his shirt, good, then he was fine and the mechanical way things sounded was maybe because of the loud grenade. Probably Warrenholtz couldn’t hear good either, but even as Mitch thought so he knew he was wrong: not just his ears were funny but his body was strange to him; he looked at thefield with a feeling of total detachment, as though he saw the grass and the swell of the land from a low-flying plane. No part of him. He couldn’t feel his feet or the ground under him. He touched the leather holster and his own chest, felt the front of his shirt. Had he been hit and didn’t know it, couldn’t tell? No, he wasn’t hurt, this was something else. Warrenholtz walked forward toward the Nip in the grass and Mitch watched, stood and waited. As he stood, his whole frame of vision rotated once, smooth and circular, the figure of Warrenholtz turning around like the long straight khaki hand of a clock. He must be dizzy but he wasn’t; the world turned once, once only. Far away, Warrenholtz nudged the corpse with his foot, bending until he was lost to sight and then straightening, shaking his head as he turned to come back.
    They sent a native patrol out to bury the Nip, and later in the warm night they drank PX scotch. They tied up the sides of Warrenholtz’s large tent so the tent was only a canvas roof over a board floor; the parrots flew through the space as Warrenholtz whistled, and the two birds perched on his shoulders, cocking their green heads and chortling low-pitched sounds. Soft vibration right into his bones, Warrenholtz said, like an idling of small motors. Mitch asked then where the Nip had been hit.
    “He was burned and his gut ripped open,” Warrenholtz said, “but not by you. You weren’t trying to hit him. I don’t know what the hell you were doing.”
    Mitch got the leave he asked for; Warrenholtz had sway with the CO and interceded to be sure the leave was granted. After Mitch came back, the episode seemed forgotten and Warrenholtz never mentioned it again except indirectly. Sometimes he drawled on about the war in his liquid Texas accent; how the war had a filthy smell and sneaky way of crawling along deadly for years like some endless Guinea python.
    Mitch looked over at Katie and then at the screen; the wolf had made an appearance and wore bloodshot green eyes.
    “Katie,” Mitch whispered, “are you warm enough?”
    She nodded.
    “Want some popcorn?”
    She nodded again, anything to