Isaac's Gun by Dan Strawn

Author:Dan Strawn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: world war ii, hospital, san diego, wounded, ww ii, wave
Publisher: Bluewood Publishing Ltd

Monday, May 24, 1943

Danger In Eden

We rode in silence, each of us consumed by our private thoughts.

Sherrie drove east, past the orange groves, past Camp Haan, where soldiers waited in makeshift billets and practiced antiaircraft warfare, and past rows of B-17’s lined up on the tarmac at March Field. In an hour or so, we were climbing through the range of low mountains headed southwest, maybe fifty miles from the Santa Ana River canyon we had driven through the past Saturday. Not a hundred words had passed between us since we left her parents’ home for San Diego.

Sherrie? What were her thoughts? Were they twisting around Alfred’s unscheduled appearance and the news he brought? Or had she pushed them out of her mind and focused instead on the winding road?

Me? My mind was a jumble of conflicting realities and suspected causes, bitter ironies and biased musings. I couldn’t help but contrast random violent events in this Shangri La called California with the purposeful havoc of war. The causes of my wounds and the Captain’s suicide were obvious: planning by a determined foe. But what is the sense behind a harmless hunt for cottontails and the tragedy that came down at Danny Ishisaka’s place?

And just before we left, Alfred brought news to the O’Tooles in his ‘39 Ford patrol car: Rosa Lopez found molested and murdered alongside the canal. What’s the rationale for that?

“Everybody,” Alfred said, “knows she’d been seeing Freddie Soliz, and now he’s dropped off the face of the earth.” Then Alfred inquired as to whether we had seen Freddie or Rosa over the last two days.

Of course, we hadn’t, and that’s what got my mind going as Sherrie and I drove through the mountains in silence. Why hadn’t we? Isaac and I rode that canal on Sunday. Alfred said the dairyman found her next to the road late Sunday afternoon when he drove up on the berm to check the flow gates for the flume that led to his place. Why didn’t we see her? We didn’t go to the flume, but it was only a hundred feet or so from where the road left the berm and slanted to the valley floor. I remembered seeing the water rush out of the flue on our return trip. I didn’t see a body. Could I have been so taken with Isaac’s wild ride I didn’t see a dead person lying next to the road straight ahead of me? That’s hard to imagine, but I must have.

We stopped at a Flying A gas station in a pleasant little town called Escondido. Sherrie disappeared into the ladies’ room. By the time she came out, I had completed a similar trip and purchased a Dr. Pepper and an orange drink from the cooler out front. I handed her the Dr. Pepper and we climbed into the car. By the time we’d pulled back onto the highway, I felt up to broaching the subject with Sherrie.

“You know, your Gramps and I went right by there on Sunday morning.

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