“I’ve got lots more to tell you,” he said.
“I’ll call you and set up another time for us to finish your account,” she said firmly.
“Anytime, Doc,” he said, and ambled out. As soon as he was gone, she picked up the phone, intending to page Richard, and then changed her mind. She needed to check the transcripts before she made an accusation.
She set the receiver down and stood there with her hand on it, trying to remember exactly what Mr. Wojakowski had said about enlisting. She had only half-listened to his rambling war stories, but she was positive he’d said he’d enlisted the day after Pearl. None of them had even known where Pearl Harbor was, except his kid sister, who’d seen a newsreel at the movies the night before.
She went down to her office. She hadn’t transcribed that account yet. She rummaged through the shoe box till she found the right tape, stuck it in the recorder and fast-forwarded to the middle. “Well, after we hit Rabaul…” Too far. She rewound. “Dead before she ever knew it…” Forward again. “…The funny papers.” Here it was: “…in comes the lady from two doors down, all out of breath, and says, ‘The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor!’ ”
Joanna skipped forward. Kid sister, newsreel, Desperadoes. “And the very next day, I went downtown to the navy recruiting center and signed up.”
She put her hand to her mouth, thinking, Oh, my God, he made it up. But which one? Or had he made up both versions? Or all of it? It didn’t matter. If even part of his account were concocted, it meant his descriptions of his NDEs were useless.
Unless he’d told her the story about signing up after Pearl Harbor to cover up his real age. She’d thought that first time she saw him that he had to be nearly eighty. He might have made up the story to hide his age and then, in the heat of describing the NDE, forgotten and told her the truth. If it was only a matter of lying about his age, everything else he’d told them might be true.
But how could they be sure? She thought about his other stories, the soda fountain, the Hammann sinking with all hands in two minutes flat, his joyous rescue by the miraculously resurrected Yorktown, flags flying, sailors waving their white hats in the air. They had all sounded completely credible. But so had both accounts of December seventh, 1941.
She needed some kind of outside confirmation. She could call the library and ask them where the Yorktown had been on December seventh, but that wouldn’t prove Mr. Wojakowski had been there. She supposed she could call the Department of Veteran Affairs or the navy and find out if an Edward Wojakowski had served on the Yorktown, but that would take time, and probably bureaucratic red tape. She needed to find out now, before Richard sent him under again.
She leafed through the transcripts, looking for something that might be independently verifiable. The dive-bomber—what was his name? Here it was, Jo-Jo Powers—who had crashed putting his bomb on the flight deck? No, that might have been in a book, or a movie. There was a movie called Midway, wasn’t there? She remembered seeing it in the action section at Blockbuster. So, none of the Midway stuff. What about his ditching of his plane in the Coral Sea? That story was full of facts that should be independently verifiable—dates and events and place names.
She scrolled through the transcripts, looking for the account of the rescue. Here it was. He had ditched his plane in the Coral Sea, swum to Malakula, been smuggled by friendly natives to another island, set out in a dugout canoe for Port Moresby. The Yorktown, meanwhile, had limped back to Pearl Harbor for repairs, been refitted in three days, and then sailed straight to Midway.
She needed a map. Who would have one here in the hospital? Maisie, she thought, remembering the map on the cover of one of her disaster books, and scribbled down the details. Coral Sea, Malakula, Vanikalo. She scribbled down the dates, too, on the off-chance that the sinking of the Yorktown counted as a disaster, and ran down to fourth.
Maisie was lying propped against pillows, glaring at a video. “Pollyanna,” she told Joanna disgustedly. “All she does is tell people to be glad about stuff. It is so sickening.” She pointed the remote at Hayley Mills, wearing a white dress and a big blue sash, and switched it off.
“She falls out of a tree later,” Joanna said.
“Really?” Maisie said, perking up. “Do you want to hear a neat thing about the Hartford circus fire? The Flying Wallendas, they were this acrobat family, they were up on the high wire, and they heard the band play the duck song, and—”
“Not right now,” Joanna said. “Maisie, I need a map of the islands in the Pacific Ocean. Do you have one in one of your disaster books?”
“Uh-huh,” she said, starting to get out of bed.
“You stay there,” Joanna said. “I’ll get it. Do you know which book it’s in?”
“I think Best Disasters of All Time,” Maisie said. “In the part about Krakatoa. It’s the one with the Andrea Doria on the cover.”
Joanna pulled it out of the bag and brought it over to the bed, and Maisie began searching through it. “Krakatoa was the biggest volcano ever. It made these red sunsets all over the world. Blood red. Here it is.”
Joanna leaned over her shoulder. There was a map, all right, but it was no more than a pale blue square with the outlines of India and Australia in black and a red star labeled “Krakatoa.” “You had a book with a map on the cover,” Joanna said.
“Yeah, Disasters of the World,” Maisie said. “But it’s not a very good one either.” She kicked off the covers. “I think there’s one in Earthquakes and Volcanoes.”
“Maisie,” Joanna protested, but Maisie had already gotten out of bed and extracted the book from the pile.
“It blew the whole island apart. Krakatoa,” she said, flipping through the book. “It made this huge noise, like a whole bunch of cannons.” Maisie turned pages. “I knew there was one,” she said triumphantly and dumped the book on the bed. “See? There’s Krakatoa.”
And there were Hawaii and the Solomon Islands and the Marshalls, scattered across an expanse of blue. “Do you see Midway Island anywhere?” Joanna asked, bending over the map.
Maisie pointed eagerly. “Right there. In the middle.” Of course. That’s why it was called Midway Island. And there was Pearl Harbor. Where was Malakula? She peered closer, trying to read the tiny print. Necker Island and Nikoa and Kaula, and a bunch of unnamed dots. It would be no proof of anything if Malakula wasn’t on the map. There were dozens of minuscule islands between Midway and Hawaii.
“What are you looking for?” Maisie demanded, breathing hard.
Joanna looked at her. Her lips were lavender. “Back in bed,” Joanna ordered, pulling back the covers.
“I want to help you look.”
“You can look in bed.”
Maisie dutifully clambered in and lay back against the pillows. “What are you looking for?” she repeated.
“An island named Malakula,” Joanna said, laying the open book on Maisie’s knees so they could both see it. “And the Coral Sea.”
“The Coral Sea…” Maisie murmured, poring over the map, her short hair swinging forward over her puffy cheeks. They had less color than the last time Joanna had seen her, and there were violet smudges under her eyes. It was easy to forget just how sick she was.
“Here it is,” Maisie cried.
“Malakula?” Joanna asked, following Maisie’s finger.