Hawaiian Pearl

Waters around the Arizona seethed, burned with blood and oil as Chaos gripped the Harbor. Uncle Bud reeled about the deck. His voice rising against the din: “Abandon ship! Abandon ship! Abandon the goddamn ship.” That afternoon in a makeshift medical camp he died from shrapnel wounds. My grandmother told me years later that he had saved others. Fire, flesh, and smoke dissolve into the sweep of a larger panorama when volcanoes formed these isles. In Iowa, the family gathered at church to celebrate with a brunch the first Sunday of Advent. Father MacDonald announced the attack. People scurried home to huddle around radios that crackled with static. Forty years later, a fine ash from Mount St. Helens passed over Grandma’s grave-side service. And she rests next to her son. Her mother-of-pearl music box, the one Bud had given her, almost kept her company. But she willed it to me. I placed it on a shelf by her picture in the living room. It still plays.