Waiting For Shiva
by
Kevin Donohue
Waiting For Shiva
by Kevin Donohue
© Copyright 2014 by Kevin Donohue
ISBN:9781310574313
All characters, places, organizations, applications, and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or real places, organizations, applications, and events, is purely coincidental.
Authors' Note:
Table of Contents
Waiting For Shiva
Books by Kevin Donohue
Waiting For Shiva
If the weather is fair, I usually spend my days walking along the shore of Kestrel Cove, Delaware. Although it is difficult to navigate my walker in the sand and shoals, I take pride in my self-reliance and never need to call for assistance from my handlers. I have always cherished the challenges and bumps in Life's road. Maybe that is why I have always succeeded and prospered, knowing that nothing was ever meant to be comfortable and easy. I am a Prescott, after all! We Prescotts never flinch in the face of adversity and have always shown our quality. I walk proudly in good standing with my ancestors and the blessings of the Master, and the proof is in the pudding: I just celebrated my ninety-first birthday here at the Terrapin Island Federal Correction Facility. My mind is focused, my will is unshaken, and my body… well, my tired old cadaver is doing the best that it can manage, considering the circumstances.
There are only three of us here at any given time on my personal Devil's Island: myself, my nurse, and one of my rotating crew of guards. There are no barbed wire fences or machine gun towers at this oh-so-exclusive seaside resort. Only sharks and a Coast Guard cutter patrol the choppy waters between the island and the mainland, accessible only by small craft and a daily ferry.
My guard Chambers sits yonder on the jetty with his fishing pole, waiting for the afternoon ferry to transport him back to the mainland. My night guard Rufus is due to arrive for his shift on the same ferry.
My nurse's name is Mason. He works a 24 hour shift and then takes 24 hours off, when Dennis takes his turn. Dennis is studying to be a gerontologist.
Mason tells me that he was born in Jamaica and came to the U.S. when he was a child. He has a wife and son in Wilmington. Mason stands six feet six inches tall, weighs about 280, and is 28 years old. A very nice young fellow. I am truly sorry that I will outlive him if I can't persuade him to leave early on today's afternoon ferry. Tonight is the night. After dark, Rufus and I have an appointment to keep with a submarine. A rubber dingy is hidden in some marshes, about one quarter of a mile down the beach. I have no intention to finish out my days in this glorified prison, exclusive and swanky at it is.
As I perch my bones on a sea-drift log, I drift away and find myself back in 1945, gazing out at a different sea. It almost seems like yesterday.
Mason is fascinated that I rode in the plane that dropped the big one on Hiroshima.
“Tell me more about Enola Gay, Senator.”
“I was only in the way, Mason. To be perfectly honest, I was so damn scared that I wet my pants—by the way, that’s still classified—the part about pissing in my pants!”
Mason didn’t get my lame attempt at humor.
“Did the pilot really shoot himself, Sir? You know, years later?”
“I think that's an urban myth, Mason.”
“Tell me more, Sir.”
“Very well. As you know, my father was Assistant Under-Secretary of the Navy. I was just a puppy of twenty-three just out of Princeton, and already eying a career in politics. Daddy set me up with the Manhattan Project, partially to keep an eye on what was going on, and also to gain creds in order to advance my budding political career.”
Alamogordo, New Mexico, 1945
The night was black and moonless as I sat with ‘Colonel Wintergren’ in an army jeep parked on a ridge about ten miles up-wind from ground zero. A chill desert breeze penetrated my overcoat, so I took another slug of whiskey and swished it around in my mouth. Even at age 23, I was still pretty much of a greenhorn at drinking. I passed the flask back to the Colonel as we waited for Shiva.
“Any minute now,” Wintergren said quietly. “Scared, Prescott?”
“Well, you HAVE heard the weird theories making the rounds, right?”
“Are you referring to the one that suggests that we can possibly set the earth's atmosphere on fire?”
I nodded, and reflected on the fact that I had not yet deflowered my fiancé Prudence, among other things.
“Highly unlikely, Prescott,” Wintergren chuckled. “I think that Oppenheimer planted those rumors just as a prank, to tell you the truth. Aw hells bells, if it happens, it happens! I imagine that it would be very quick and painless! No one could ever say that we didn't go out with style, the good old USA!”
I shivered at the very thought, and took another measured sip of whiskey.
“My father says that the bomb will hasten the war's end, and save American lives.”
Colonel Wintergren snorted in response.
“Oh, Prescott, you ARE just a green young pup, aren't you? Listen to me, son. Now that we have airstrips on Iwo and Okinawa, our B-29 Super Fortresses can bomb the Nips into ashes with conventional bombs and achieve the very same results! You do know about Tokyo, don't you? How about Hamburg and Dresden? Tens of thousands of civilians were incinerated in that single raid over Dresden, which was in fact just a friendly reminder to our, ahem, Russian allies that we now own the skies, young man. It is now OUR turn to assume supremacy.”
Colonel Wintergren just loved the sound of his voice, a rich rolling baritone.
“The Bolshevik Bear begs to differ and is now preparing to make his move into the Pacific Theater…so we must act, hopefully in the nick of time. We should have boldly taken the bull by the horns immediately after World War One, and maybe this entire war could have been prevented, but thanks to the Reds in our very own government, we dropped the ball back in 1918. “Peace in our time…” The years flew by… we could have taken out Stalin back in the twenties, when we had the chance… anyway, let’s get back to point: it has been decided that this wonder bomb must be dropped on a city, ANY city, BEFORE the Ruskies declare war on Japan and make their move into the Pacific. WE paid for this Victory with our blood and treasure, and the Pacific must remain an American Lake. This bomb is mostly a message to Uncle Joe and his Bolshi devils.”
“Will we ever use this bomb on the Russians?”
“No, and that's the pity.”
The Colonel paused for another slug of whiskey.
“You did speak with your father today, correct?”
“Yes, Sir. I am to rendezvous with Little Boy at Pearl, and then from there—”
Just then, Wintergren's radio squawked: “BRAVO SHIVA BURMA SHAVE!”
“This is it, Prescott! Put on your goggles, pronto!”
Suddenly the night became day, and Shiva emerged from his bottle.
“Daddy, in his infinite wisdom, flew my fiancé Prudence out to Honolulu to bid me farewell (in his stead), and I guess you can say that nature took its course! Our daughter Priscilla was conceived, as best as I can estimate, sometime during the wee hours of July 18, 1945, at a motor hotel just outside of Pearl Harbor. 24 hours later, I lit out to sea on the newly arrived USS Indianapolis, bound for Guam, Saipan, and Tinian Island, along with 'Little Boy', my special charge.”
“You mean the bomb.”
“Correct. Captain McVay didn't care for me, and probably thought that I was a snobby, privileged, son of a career politician who had never served a day at sea — which was not
hing but the truth, of course! Daddy was deathly afraid of ships and airplanes and suffered from a chronic phobia about drowning, among other things… so he designated me to be his eyes and ears. Like most government bureaucrats, the Prescotts have never been very popular with the rank and file, and we were seen by our underlings as spies and interfering busybodies. They were right, but somebody has to do the dirty work… anyway, I kept to myself during the crossing.”
“Wasn't that ship sunk, Sir? I remember reading about those poor guys in the water, fighting off sharks…”
“Indeed. Thanks to the stupidity and paranoia of people like my father, 900 men died needlessly, unnecessarily! The waste, such a waste!”
“Why was that, Senator?”
“After we were safely dropped off at Tinian Island, the Department of the Navy, including my father, ordered the Indianapolis to continue on to the Philippines through submarine infested waters unescorted in stealth, citing security reasons. Supposedly, Nimitz wasn't in the loop. Even the Navy Search and Rescue were kept in the dark. Typical SNAFU, and one of the biggest blunders in the whole goddamned war… Secretary Forestall and