Today's Reading
Betty and Hump reached King Street—then, as now, a major commercial area in the city—and ditched the car. They headed out on foot, dodging shards of broken glass, exploded bits of drywall, and shredded bamboo. They passed the drugstore where she often camped out with a Coke, trading good-natured barbs with the young soda jerk in the hopes he would pass along a juicy bit of local gossip she could use for a story.
At least she thought it was the drugstore; the walls and roof were totally gone, and tinsel and shredded holiday wrapping paper hung from the eaves.
From the time she'd jumped into Hump's car, Betty was on the automatic pilot that many reporters shift into when on the trail of a good story. She was too busy scribbling to realize that she was down to the last few sheets of her notebook. But now it hit home. Last night, she and Alex had been having fun with friends, eating and drinking too much. How did she suddenly end up in the middle of a war zone?
She glanced at the marble soda fountain counter coated with a thick layer of pale ash, a half-eaten chocolate sundae perched at the far end. At the foot of one of the stools was a stack of writing paper. Half of the sheets were bloated, but the other half were relatively dry. She pushed the ragged pages into her pocket.
Hump gestured toward what had been the back wall of the drugstore; there was a fruit and vegetable market out back. A little boy sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by splintered fruit crates. Exploded pineapples and papayas revealed their flesh in a way Betty found almost obscene.
The boy was around five years old and dressed in a Buster Brown outfit and knee socks and sandals. He was smiling and humming softly as he played with a Christmas ribbon, running the end of the ribbon through one hand before repeating the process with the other. Maybe he lived nearby.
Hump took a few steps toward the boy. He and Betty traded slightly raised eyebrows, photographer-reporter shorthand for when you spot a perfect picture but don't want to spoil the mood. The kid, clearly in shock, hadn't seen them. At that moment, his whole world revolved around that ribbon.
"The kid is too happy," Hump whispered to Betty. "Can you do something about that?"
Betty and Alex didn't have children, but she felt protective of the boy. Where were his parents? Were they still alive? She swallowed hard and knelt down beside the boy, his pudgy cheeks smudged with ash and char. She offered up a few words about the ribbon, and he looked up at her with vacant eyes. As she contemplated her next move in the name of the Fourth Estate, she automatically asked forgiveness from whatever God could allow this degree of human devastation and reached for his little arm.
Then she pinched him. Hard.
A moment of stunned silence was quickly pierced by the shrill wail and shocked tears of a grieving child, probably shriller than they would have been twenty-four hours earlier.
Betty jumped back and Hump moved in for his shot. When he was done, she patted the boy's head to comfort him, and she and Hump returned to navigating King Street.
A week later, Hump's photo of the sobbing boy ran in Life magazine.
She felt bad for the boy, but a strange and satisfying energy coursed through her veins. She had forgotten about that old reporter's trick of tweaking a source to get a good story or photo, something she rarely called upon when interviewing yet another Honolulu matron about her latest gala event. In any case, it felt good to be doing something, anything, in the wake of such unfathomable ruin.
* * *
They got back in the car and headed for the harbor. Betty's nostrils flared at the pungent smell of explosives, and the burning diesel fuel made her eyes water; the ocean was on fire. She stared at the bubbles percolating on the surface of the sea, rising up from the submerged ships with their men still trapped. Some alive, she thought, but not for long. Betty steeled herself—that was her job, after all—and continued to scribble on the notepaper she'd taken from the drugstore as they headed for the harbor.
The attack had been only an hour ago, but the guards at Hickam looked like they hadn't slept in days. They were able to remember, though, that women weren't allowed on the base, so they waved Hump in but not Betty. She made a quick call to her editor, who told her to head for the emergency room at Queen's Hospital instead.
"Write something from the women's point of view," he told her.
What? she thought. She was in shock, still not processing the destruction that had descended upon her beloved Oahu. But through the thickness of that terrible day, his words came through loud and clear. "I couldn't figure out why the women should be any different from the men," she said decades later.
...
