Back of the Envelope

I was reluctant to copy and paste a story from my writings page onto my blog. I ultimately decided to move this story because some people have said that they've had trouble accessing it from that page. I don't know why--I've never had trouble doing so, but I figured I ought to put it on the main page to make sure it's available. It is a very short story, composed as a writing experiment to give a child's eye view on war. I'm happy with how it turned out, although you shouldn't attempt to read any politics into it.

War was a bad thing.

All the grownups said it. Sometimes Max wasn't so sure they believed it, though. He and his mom had been at the grocer's when they heard the news about the one bomb that had destroyed a whole city in Japan. Mr. Clark, the grocer, had whooped and laughed. "That'll show them damn Japs!" he'd said, grinning at them and expecting them to grin back. Max had only felt scared. Sometimes they had air raid drills, and his mom would hold him and shush him and tell him, loudly to be heard over the screaming sirens, not to be afraid, that there weren't any real bombs. And if, heaven forbid, there ever were, they'd be small ones, not aiming for them, that they'd miss them by miles. He wondered whether some mom in Japan had held her little boy and told him the same thing... as one bomb, not aiming for them, missing them by miles, had killed them and thousands of others even further away.

Then they'd heard of a second bomb a couple of days later. "And if they don't give up, we'll keep dropping bombs on them until they're all dead," Mr. Clark had said. Max only prayed, prayed with all his might that there were no more bombs.

When Veejay day came, people laughed and cried and went to church to pray. War was a bad thing. Max believed it whether the grownups did or not. Max and his mom prayed too, but they didn't go to church. They stayed home and she held him, trembling as she sobbed, her tears making his hair wet, and he started crying too, without knowing why at first, and then learning the one thing that proved once and for all that war really was a bad thing.

Daddy was not coming home.

My sister liked this story a lot. My mother thought it was good, but predictable.