Soul Survivor (15 page)

U. S. Marines’ invasion of Iwo Jima in March 1945.

It was another of those startling moments when Bruce was both baffled and infuriated by this blazing mystery. Something was
going on, but he didn’t know what. He felt he was desperately groping his way in the dark, guided by little flashes of light
that came out of the mouth of his two-year-old son.

This was something way, way outside Bruce’s method of logical research skills and the known realms of experience. For this,
he sure as hell would need innovation, inspiration… and luck.

He was still thinking about his father’s visit. Ted had left for the reunion of his China Marines. And then something clicked.
Maybe there was a reunion of World War II veterans. Bruce typed in “World War II War Veteran Reunions” on his computer, and
a bunch of Web sites popped up. One of them contained a reference to an escort carrier Web site. Scrolling through it, he
found a reference to a
Natoma Bay
Association reunion.

Bingo!

The Ship

S
EPTEMBER
, 2002

B
RUCE LEININGER SAT in a window seat on Continental Airlines flight 1107, which was maneuvering for takeoff from San Diego
International Airport’s Lindbergh Field. He preferred a window seat and this flight had plenty available. There was no one
alongside him, no one in front, and no one in back. In fact, there were only 40 or so passengers for the 150 seats.

He remembered that the airport had been strangely deserted. Wednesday—hump day—was never a slow travel day, yet this Wednesday
it was so empty, it was spooky. But Bruce didn’t mind. He would pretty much have the plane to himself, all the way to the
Houston hub. Three hours of undisturbed quiet.

He needed the time. Bruce had just attended his first
Natoma Bay
reunion, and swimming through his head was an unassembled jumble of brand-new facts. While a lot of things had been clarified
by his meeting all those gray, fading veterans, the story had now grown more complicated and enigmatic. Questions and answers
overlapped, collided, and failed to make sense. He needed to organize and solidify his thoughts, and on an airplane flying
thirty thousand feet in the air was as good a place as any.

It was a morning flight with breakfast snacks, but in spite of the 9:30 a.m. departure, Bruce ordered a Scotch.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We’re flying at thirty thousand feet, and the weather is clear, and
we should get into Houston a little early. I would now like to ask for a moment of silence, in respect for those who died
exactly one year ago today, in the attacks of Nine-eleven…”

So that was it! It had completely slipped his mind. Nine-eleven! That explained all that empty space in the terminal and on
the plane. It was not just an anomaly in the traffic flow: it was the ghost of the World Trade Center!

Nine-eleven—so much had happened since then…

Bruce had been at work when the airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania.
It had been a routine morning, broken open suddenly… and then Andrea had called to alert him; an echo of every conversation
everywhere in America was repeated:

“Did you hear?”

“I’m watching.”

Like everyone else, they were each dumbfounded, glued to the closest TV set (he in his office, she in their home), as the
fresh bulletins flashed and crawled across the television screen. So much coverage, so little comprehension. For a while,
everyone just kept watching, as if awaiting some explanation. But the same news scrolled by again and again, as the same planes
flew into the same buildings, which collapsed, over and over.… And, in the end, everyone was left with the same wounded rage.

In Lafayette, as everywhere else, soldiers were called up, yellow ribbons went around the trunks of trees, and the bewildering
question “What comes next?” left everyone in a suspended state of nervous anticipation.

For the Leiningers, gripped as they were with their child’s long dilemma, the daily business of moving on took a strange new
urgency.

Well, it was something else to contemplate while the plane streaked home from San Diego. Not that Bruce’s mind was inactive.
The reunion had put fresh strains on his conscience. There was the matter of the lie. It weighed on him heavily. It had started
innocently enough—he told it only because he couldn’t see a way around it—but like all lies, it had grown out of control and
become this enormous, unmanageable thing.

It began with the phone calls, almost two years earlier, in the autumn of 2000. The calls came after James’s unforgettable
Thanksgiving utterances about Iwo Jima and Jack Larsen. Bruce had been a little crazed back then, desperate to uncover the
mystery of Jack Larsen’s identity.

After his exhausting searches through myriad Web sites, he found the Escort Carriers Sailors’ and Airmen’s Association, plucked
four names off that Web site, and began to make blind phone calls. One number was disconnected. Another member of the group
he sought was in the hospital, dying. A third never answered. The fourth was Leo Pyatt. It took Bruce a lot of tries, but
the man finally answered his phone.

I got Leo on the phone and I said, you don’t know me, but I’m interested in
Natoma Bay.
And he said, did you serve on it? I said no, I didn’t serve on it. He asked if my father served on it. I said no. Then he
asked me a question for which I was completely unprepared. Simple, really, and I was an idiot for not having anticipated it,
for not being prepared—for not having an answer ready.

“So why are you interested in
Natoma Bay
?”

I was flapping my mouth, not geared up for so obvious a question, but I couldn’t tell him that my two-year-old son is telling
me about your ship and about Iwo Jima and everything else. So I lied. I said, well, there’s a guy in my neighborhood who is
talking about your ship…

“Who is he?”

“He’s a good friend… Ravon Guidry.”

That’s the trouble with lies; you go down that road and pretty soon you’re in a swamp…

“… And he’s got an uncle that was talking about the ship. He’s got Alzheimer’s; he’s pretty marbled out most of the time.…
But we found out that
Natoma Bay
was a real ship, so I just started looking. You see, I’m a writer and I’d like to do something to memorialize
Natoma Bay
. I’m thinking of writing a book….”

Pretty soon you’re just babbling and rambling like a crazy person, but good old Leo Pyatt must’ve taken pity on me. He said,
“Okay, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

And that’s how the lie started. Bruce was going to write a book about
Natoma Bay
. In spite of his worries about his phony improvisation, it turned out to be brilliant. It gave him complete license to poke
and probe without having to mention the fantastical possibility that his two-year-old son—according to his wife and several
members of her family—had been Leo’s shipmate. There was the glaring and even more improbable detail that the particular World
War II pilot they were talking about had been killed before his own father was born. And if all that weren’t enough, it was
this same out-of-kilter father who was on the other end of the phone. Not the ideal pitch for establishing trust with a crusty
old veteran.

A book was the perfect cover. He got to ask his questions without having to undergo psychiatric evaluation. And Bruce proceeded
right to the heart of the matter:

“Were there Corsairs on
Natoma Bay
?”

“No. Not that I know of.”

There! He’d made his case. There were no Corsairs. James had gotten it wrong. Bruce had effectively debunked the whole story,
along with the wacky possibility of reincarnation. Bruce felt at once a great lift and a plunge of disappointment. He had
proved his point: no Corsairs, no reincarnation. Period. But it left him a little deflated nevertheless. Could it be that
easy? Was that all there was to it? One question? So he decided he’d better push it a little further. A good researcher doesn’t
get derailed by the first bump in the road, or inconsistency. If he was nothing else, Bruce was thorough:

“Okay, well, what kind of planes flew off the ship?”

“Oh, the FM-2 and TBM.”

“What are they?

“The FM-2 was a small fighter. They called it a Wildcat. And the other was an Avenger with a crew of three.”

“Cool. Those were the only planes?”

“Those were the only planes that I ever saw fly off the ship.”

“Were you a pilot?”

“I was an airman. A radioman on a TBM Avenger. My squadron was VC-81.”

“What does ‘VC’ mean?”

“‘VC’ means ‘composite squadron’—more than one type of aircraft was assigned to it.”

“Can you tell me anything about what happened at Iwo Jima?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I flew thirty-six combat missions. We flew sortie after sortie supporting the battle….”

And Leo began to talk about the rough air battle, with the deadly ground fire and the flak, and as he was really getting into
describing the action, Bruce asked another question. He wanted to clean this thing up completely, and there was still the
matter of the identity of the pilot.