FLASHed

16. Without a glitch

I remember the god-damned dinging of the clock, it yanked me out of a sleep so darn deep that they may as well have pulled me right out of the frigid ground and from six feet down at that! It had been another night of fewer than three hours shut-eye; we'd all be working around the clock like this for weeks getting ready for the big event. You see it was July of nineteen forty-five and I was a Captain in the United States Army and assigned special duties as journeyman logistician--a fancy name for the chump who gets things done and one of the few propeller-head  types to be out in the desert camp for the past year or so--ever since a bit of steel shred my Achilles tendon right off the bone out at Bataan, one of the lucky ones--rest in peace those damned souls that we left behind.

It was still dark when the clock rang. I sat to attention and jumped out of bed, limping fast, as was my style in those days, into the kitchen area of my small base hut where I flicked on the light and went to straight to the issued calendar on the wall as was my daily routine. I picked up the thick carpenter's pencil that I'd tied under the big sheet that was already covered in lead crosses and thick with notes, but on this morning it was to be the big cross--Monday, the sixteenth of July, the day we deploy the Gadget. I was crossing the square out with an extra thick line when I noticed--and I can still see it as if it was yesterday--it was something particularly strange and unexpected: the project calendar title, printed in standard black military type, it read, 'Project TRINITY'. As clear and dark as that same morning, there it was!

So, I'm suspecting that you couldn't guess my issue with those words. Well, to my mind, then and now, they were not right, or at least, not as I remembered them from just a few hours before. I washed my face and returned to the calendar, expecting the title headline to appear as it should have been. I should know, as I'd dedicated the last part of my life to the smooth runnings of 'Project TRIAD'. I knew it, as sure as I knew the black of my boots, as it was Project Triad as named after a poem by the Director's aunt or someone of his kin, her name was Crapsey or some such:

These be

Three silent things:

The falling snow;     the hour

Before the dawn;    the mouth of one

Just dead.

I memorized the damn thing for some no good reason when I was setting up headquarters with the Director. Not that I have anything against poetry and such, hell, I'm an educated man! But, on this morning I took another look, and the doggone calendar still read Project Trinity.

I thought that maybe I'd finally had one of the kinds of nervous spells that made a lot of good men of that time to be not such good men. I had to admit that it'd been hard since Bataan, but I was a real trooper, as-tough-as-they-come, as they say. I'd been working hard, but so had everyone else in the camp and the whole darned war in general.

On that day, of all days, I didn't need any distraction and so did my best to put it behind me, shucks, I had a camp of hundreds to organise and wasn't going to drop a dime. So, I didn't think about Project Triad again until I was sitting ready for grub with the other officers, it was real formal-like and, I had to transform the mess into the fashion of a briefing room -- that was my job. Breakfast was eggs and bacon, a special setting because the all the chiefs were there. At the long table, I sat next to my old pal, MP Captain, Chuck Maddison. "Morning Chuck," I said as I had for the past two years as we'd been assigned on the project together.

"Henry."

The mood was as severe and as solemn as could have been, but there were a couple of minutes before the briefing would begin and breakfast was being brought in, so I thought I'd commandeer Chuck's ear, "Hey Chuck", I said, "Notice any different this morning, anything out of the ordinary."

"Out of the ordinary? What, besides the fact that we're in a camp with four hundred of the smartest people in the world out in the middle of the New Mexico desert and just about to let off the mother of all explosions; only the biggest fucking bang since the beginning that all men and women can remember since setting foot in the Garden of Eden? That kind of out-of-the-ordinary?"

"Haha, wise guy, huh?" I chuckled at Chuck, that old dog, who shook his head. But, thought I'd give it one more shot, "No, the project name. Project Triad."

"What are you talking about Henry? Is there a new project no one told me about? Classified I bet. It's no surprise that no one told me about it. I just wish they'd wait for this project to end before they start another."

"Project Trinity"

"Yes, Project Trinity." He gave me a quizzical look just as our steaming plates were dropped on in front of us.

"God save our souls, Henry, this is going to be a live one." He said before digging in.

And that was the last time for many years that I spoke to anyone about my dislodged, homesick memories. The climax for Project Trinity went off without a glitch. The Gadget detonated and we dropped its big brothers on the poor bastard Japs not much more than a month later.

I told myself that poem, Triad, every day since.

* * *

Today, in nineteen seventy-two, I'm an old man haunted by my sins, and limping a great deal slower than I did in the good old days. Finally, I've tracked down a man in the highlands of Peru. He's a witch doctor, and they call him Bombero, or the Troubleshooter in American English. They tell me that after we drink some magic elixir that's supposed to taste like sick, he's going to show me something called The Source. 

God only knows I need to believe it.

fin.

about 1000 words

<◕.◕> First published here on 30 August 2018