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Phil drew his knife and ran at the portly soldier, feeling that if he could get that machine gun, he could do a fair amount of damage. Maybe a lot. He plunged the knife into the nape of the Jap’s neck. It was his first kill, but in the heat of the moment that hardly registered. The Jap shrieked and fell forward. The skinny machine-gunner ahead of him turned, raising his weapon.
“Loot! Drop! Drop!” Myers screamed.
Phil didn’t, because in that moment he thought of the Answer Man. Will I be hurt? he had asked. The Answer Man said no, but then Phil realized he’d asked the wrong question. He had asked the right one just before his five minutes ran out. Will I be killed? And the answer: No, Just Phil, you will not be killed.
In that moment on Eniwetok, he believed it. Perhaps because the Answer Man had known his mother’s maiden name and where his father had been born. Perhaps because he had no other choice. The skinny Jap opened fire with his Nambu. Phil was aware of Myers staggering backward in a spray of blood. Destry and Molocky fell on either side of him. He heard bullets whip by on both sides of his head. He was aware of tugs at his pants and shirt, as if he were being nipped by a playful puppy. He would later count over a dozen holes in his clothing, but not a single bullet hit him or even grazed him.
He opened fire, raking the appropriated Nambu from left to right, knocking down Japanese soldiers like Kewpie dolls. Others turned, momentarily shocked to stillness by this unexpected attack from their rear, then opened fire. Bullets struck the sand in front of Phil, covering the toes of his boots. More ripped at his clothes. He was aware at least two of his men were firing back. He pulled another ammo belt from the dead Jap at his feet and opened fire again, unaware of the twenty-pound weight of the Nambu, unaware that it was heating up, unaware that he was screaming.
Now the Americans were returning fire from the other side of the dune; Phil could tell by the sound of the carbines. He advanced, still firing. He walked over dead Jap soldiers. The Nambu jammed. He threw it aside, bent, and a bullet whanged his helmet off his head and sent it flying. Phil hardly noticed. He picked up another machine gun and began firing again.
He became aware that Myers was beside him again, half of his face awash with blood, a piece of his scalp dangling and swinging as he walked. “Yaah, sons of bitches!” he screamed. “Yaah, you sons of bitches, welcome to America!”
That was so crazy Phil began to laugh. He was still laughing when they crested the dune. He threw the Nambu aside and raised both arms. “Marines! Marines! Don’t shoot! Marines!”
The counterattack—such as it was—ended. Sergeant Rick Myers was awarded a Silver Star (he said he would rather have had his right eye back). Lieutenant Philip Parker was one of 473 Medal of Honor recipients during the Second World War, and although unwounded, his war was over. A photographer took a picture of his bullet-riddled shirt with the sun shining through the holes, and it made all the papers back home in what combat Marines called “the world.” He was an authentic hero, and would spend the rest of his service in America, making speeches and selling War Bonds.
Ted Allburton embraced him and called him a warrior. Called him son. Phil thought, This man is ridiculous. But he hugged back willingly enough, knowing when a hatchet was being buried.
He met his son, now nearly three years old.
Sometimes at night, lying wakeful beside his sleeping wife, Phil thought of the skinny Japanese soldier, the one who had heard his compatriot’s dying scream. He saw the skinny soldier turn. He saw the skinny soldier’s wide brown eyes beneath his field cap, a scar in the shape of a fishhook beside one of them. Something the skinny soldier might have gotten as a child. He saw the skinny soldier open fire. He remembered the sound the bullets made as they whispered around him. He thought of how some of those passing slugs had tugged playfully at his clothes, as if they weren’t pellets of death, or worse, bringers of lifelong injury. He thought of how sure he’d been of his survival because of the Answer Man’s—call it what it was—his prophecy. And on those nights he wondered if the man under the red umbrella had seen the future… or made it. To this question Phil found no answer.
2
On his War Bonds rounds, which consisted of speaking engagements in the New England states and sometimes New York as well, Phil had the chance to talk with many soldiers who had served, and heard many stories of difficult homecomings. One ex-Marine put it very succinctly. “At first, after four years apart, we were strangers sleeping together.” Phil and Sally Ann were spared this awkward phase, possibly—probably—because they had grown up together from childhood. The physical love between them came naturally. Once, at the moment of their mutual climax, Sally Ann said, “Oh, my heero,” and they both collapsed with the giggles.
Jacob was shy of him at first, clinging to his mother and looking with fearful eyes at the tall man who had come into their lives. When Phil tried to hold him, the boy struggled to be put down, sometimes crying. He would toddle to his mother, grasp her leg, and stare at the stranger he was supposed to call Daddy.
One evening while Jake was sitting between his mother’s feet and playing with his blocks, Phil sat down across from him and rolled him a tennis ball. He expected nothing, and was delighted when Jake rolled it back. Back and forth went the ball. Sally Ann put down her book to watch. Phil gave the ball a low bounce. Jake put out his hands and caught it. When Phil laughed, Jake laughed with him. After that it was all right between them. Better than all right. Phil loved everything about his son—his blue eyes, his fine brown hair, his sturdy body. Most of all he loved the little boy’s potential. He couldn’t see the man Jake might become and didn’t want to. Let it be a surprise, he thought.
There came an evening late in that year of 1944 when Jake refused to let Sal pick him up and carry him to bed. “Want Daddy,” he said. It might not have been the best night of Phil’s life, but he couldn’t think of a better one.
Will Curry prosper the way I think it will? he’d asked on that long-ago day that seemed like a dream (although he still remembered each question asked and each reply given). The Answer Man had told him it would, and he was right about that, as well. Partly because of his fame as a Medal of Honor–winning Marine, but mostly because he asked a fair price for his services and because he was good at his job (“a clevah bastid,” the locals said), Phil Parker had more clients than he could handle in the years after the war.
The associate he’d added in 1939 was killed in a bombing raid over Hamburg, so Phil added a new fellow, then a second, then—at Sal’s urging—a young woman. That caused some disgruntled talk among Curry’s old Yankees, but by 1950, there were new people in town with new ideas and new money. A shopping center was built in the neighboring town of Patten; Phil and his associates did the legal work and made a good profit. In Curry, the five-room grammar was replaced by a spanking new eight-room elementary school. Phil bought the old building for a song, and it became his new office: Phil Parker & Associates. The Allburtons came often to visit with their daughter, their grandson… and, of course, with the war hero. Phil was quite sure Ted had come to believe he had always supported his son-in-law’s prescient decision to move to Curry, which was booming.
Phil was able to put aside any old animosity he might have held onto concerning his father-in-law because of Ted’s fierce and unconditional love for Jake. On the boy’s sixth birthday, Ted gave him a little baseball glove and played underhanded toss with the boy in the backyard until it was almost too dark to see and Sally Ann had to tell them both to come in and eat supper.
No matter the press of work, Phil always tried to get home before dark in order to have a catch with his son. By the time Jake was eight, they were standing thirty feet apart, then forty, and throwing overhand.
“Bring it, Dad!” Jake would cry. “Really steam it in!”
Phil wouldn’t throw even close to as hard as he could have, not to a boy of eight, but he increased the speed of his throws little by little. On spring and summer weekends, the two of them would sit together listening to the Red Sox on the radio. Sometimes all three of them.
One November day, after they had been out throwing the baseball in two inches of snow, Sally Ann took Phil aside. “Did you play ball as a kid? Because I don’t remember that you did.”
Phil shook his head. “Pick-up games after school, sometimes, but not often. I could field, but I couldn’t hit worth a damn. The guys used to call me Whiffer Parker.”
“I never played sports, either, but Jake… is he good, or is it just my imagination and a mother’s pride?”
“He’s good. I can’t wait to take him to his first Sox game.”
That happened in 1950. They sat in the bleachers, Phil on one side, Ted on the other, the boy between them, staring at the green outfield grass of Fenway Park, eyes wide, mouth agape, his bag of popcorn forgotten on his lap.
Ted leaned over and said, “Someday maybe you’ll be out there, Jake.”
Jake looked up at his granddad and smiled. “I know I will,” he said.
