Gin and Tonic, Florida

My father served aboard the uss Franklin (at one point nicknamed “The Ship That Wouldn’t Die”) during World War II. When I was about twelve years old, I began to connect his war years to the nervousness I detected in him, his distant solitude, the way he slipped inside the house at the sound of thunder and the gathering clouds as the hot, humid climate gave way to the coast of Japan. It was the rainy season. The low, rumbling sound of thunder gave off the percussive effect of explosions as heavy droplets of rain crashed through the palmettos and bayonet palms; the rain spattered on the pavement, crackling with a sound like fire. I’d watch my father turn to escape into the house, and I couldn’t help but think of the black-and-white photos I’d found hidden away in one of the back closets—roiling towers of smoke, men battling a raging inferno, twisted metal carcasses of fighter planes.

I remember sitting in front of the television with my brothers on one of those afternoons when the rain drove us in from mowing the lawn and clipping the hedges. During a commercial break while we were watching Championship Wrestling, I flipped to another channel only to see raw black-and-white film footage from the Pacific Theater. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was the Franklin. I knew it from the photos I wasn’t supposed to know about in my dad’s closet. As my dad walked into the room, I asked, “Hey, Dad, is this your ship on tv?”

“I’ll be goddamned,” he said. “Watch. Watch right there,” he added, pointing to the gun turret beside which he’d stood that day.

It was about to be engulfed in flames, he explained, from an explosion on the flight deck. We watched his gun turret ignite as all four barrels breathed fire. He told us that he and the others were forced to jump or burn to death. And he told us what the water felt like when he hit, how he’d landed in rope netting and became entangled in it, his Ka-Bar knife missing, how he thought he was going to drown.

Easing back into his chair, Dad lifted his glass in salutation to the uss Franklin as it burned on the screen before us. “I’ll be got to hell,” he said. “Never thought I’d be sitting in my den, watching my own life on television.”