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I let go of the rusty chains and jump off the playground swing, yelling “Bombs over Tokyo!” and begin my flight. I draw the words out to fill the few seconds in the air perfectly.
My father sent me out to play. If he calls for me, I can hear him from here at the school playground, and I can’t get lost going home from here.
I don’t know where Tokyo is on a map, or even Japan, or any other country besides the United States. I just know that Tokyo is where my father said the enemies lived, the ones that he fought in the war. The word ‘Tokyo’ sounds exotic to me, like the name of a dark nation on another planet in another galaxy, a place certainly deserving of my bombing. My mouth feels good saying “Tokyo.” When I say it loud and drag out the ending, like Toe-key-oooooooo, I can feel my words echo off the brick walls of the school next door to the playground. This makes me feel that my bombs are powerful.
I see bombs exploding noiselessly on Tokyo in the black-and-white documentary newsreels I watch with my mother and father at the Gilbert Stuart Theater every Saturday morning. My father wants me to see them so I will know about war, but he doesn’t want to talk about what we see after it’s over. I sit spellbound as bombs send dirt, branches, and fragments of guns and trucks and buildings into the air. From seeing the fireworks on the Fourth of July, I know bombs make a noise that hurts my ears and shocks my insides when they explode.
It is all a game of tag—find the enemy and bomb them and win. I don’t know that the ‘enemy’ is comprised of dads and moms like mine, and kids like me. Or that bombs shred legs and heads and eyes, and leave blood and other gooey body parts on walls and in the dirt, and even on other people. I don’t know that bombs can kill or make some people live in so much pain that they wish they were dead.
I pull myself up onto the hard wooden seat of the cockpit for another bombing run, wiggling into position and clamping my hands onto the chains. I am happy being in the sun, without adults nearby, although they are within shouting distance if I need them.
I pump my legs to gain height, feeling like a bird that is about to take off on a long journey to Tokyo. I don’t know that my father had helped liberate a camp in Burma where he wished he could fly over the bodies he had to step on to rescue the almost dead. I heard my mother tell her sister about it on the phone. I don’t think he has ever spoken a word of it to anyone but my mother. When I heard my best friend’s dad ask him about it, my father said, “Another time,” and turned and walked away.
I approach the highest point of my swing, thinking I could touch the sun with just one more pump of my legs. I feel like a king about to create nightmares for my kingdom’s enemies. My father has nightmares. I hear him scream terribly some nights, like the sounds a wolf makes when being attacked by a bear on TV shows. I hear my mother trying to sooth him. I imagine her rubbing his head like she does to me when I skin a knee or squash my hand in a door. I don’t know about my mother’s fears of him killing himself and maybe all of us, too.
As I arc back to earth, I think about how proud my father would be if he saw me killing the enemy. I wish I could have fought next to him. This thought makes me put on my fighting face and yell as loud as I can.
I hit the dusty ground and make as loud an explosion sound as I can, like the nasally roar of Niagara Falls, and the enemy is vanquished. To demonstrate the force of the blast, I tumble across the dry dirt onto the playground’s brown crabgrass. But I am unhurt. As always, I am invincible.
I stand and dust off my flannel-lined jeans, the ones my mother bought three sizes too big so I could wear them for more than one year. Mom doesn’t mind scrubbing playground dirt; it’s oily stains she hates. I wonder why my father can’t get rid of what is haunting him by scrubbing his head in the shower. Maybe it’s an oily stain. His Army uniform hangs spotless and crisp in a bag in the basement. I once asked him if he would put it on so I could see what he looked like as a warrior. He got kind of quiet—I thought he was going to yell at me—and said, “Maybe when you’re older. Now go outside and play.”
I rush to the back of the line behind my playmates to make another flight on the swing, wishing I didn’t have to wait my turn to rain further destruction down on Tokyo. I don’t want to know that my father has just broken a sweat when he remembers seeing his best friend cut in half by a mortar round on an island near Japan. I like how my father is the head of our clan, the one my mother and I listen to for answers, the one who gets the first helping of the main course at dinner.
I hear my mother calling me to come home for lunch. I begin to run toward our prim Cape Cod house, across a field and a brook, through neighbors’ yards, dodging bombs and bullets, making explosion sounds as I swerve and dive, my arms outstretched. I imagine gliding into my home airfield, where my fellow airmen embrace me and pat me on the back. I am their hero.
I run into the kitchen, letting the screen door slam behind me. I am unaware that it is good luck that has brought me to this moment, that I am one piece of bad luck away from losing my carefree life. I know that if something bad did happen, I would run into my parents’ arms and they would protect me. I don’t know that this won’t always be the case, that I might be in a real war some day and my cries for my father or mother will get drowned in the cloud of other screams around me.
I wrestle into my chrome and Naugahyde chair across from my parents and bow my head for grace. I peek at my father’s hands and admire how strong they look with their callouses and scars. I wonder what they have done to the enemy, if they still have the blood and scent of the enemy on them. My father catches me looking at him and I feel like a thief caught red-handed. My face breaks into a sheepish grin and he says, “What’s going on? What’s so funny?”
I feel trapped.
I look to my mother for help.
She glances at my father with a tired face, and says, “Let him alone. He’s just a boy.”

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