PART ONE
“All warfare is based on deception.”
—SUN TSU, THE ART OF WAR, 500 B.C.
“Everything which the enemy least suspects will succeed the best.”
—NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
“Japanese sanity cannot be measured by our own standards of logic. Japan’s resort to measures which might make war with the United States inevitable may come with dramatic and dangerous suddenness.”
—JOSEPH GREW, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO JAPAN, 1941
ONE
Biggs
PALATKA, FLORIDA—SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1940
He knew he could hammer the ball when it left Russo’s hand. The stripe of tape spun slowly, a lazy fastball, too lazy, floating toward him like a fat melon. He cocked the bat, then sprung forward, the bat meeting the ball, a hard thump, the ball now speeding away, rising. He began his run to first base, still watching the ball, hearing the shouts from the others, one voice, Clyde, the first baseman, “Holy mackerel. But it ain’t staying fair. Too bad.”
He touched first, curled toward second, his eye on the ball again, a quick turn in his gut. Beside him, Clyde said, “It’s gonna hit your house.”
Biggs watched it drop, a sharp punch through the kitchen window. The others turned to him now, and Russo said, “Holy crap. You busted it to hell. Your folks home? Geez, Tommy, I ain’t seen you hit one that far since high school.”
Biggs looked at Russo. “You never pitched me a fat one like that. I was gonna kill it.”
Russo turned again toward the Biggs house. “You killed it. Too bad it was foul.”
Biggs didn’t care about the game anymore, walked slowly off the field, past third base and the run-down lean-to that passed for the dugout. No one called him back, all of them silently grateful it was him and not any one of them.
He didn’t turn back, couldn’t hide the quiver in his voice. “I gotta make sure nobody’s hurt.”
His eyes stayed on the jagged hole punched in the window, and he moved with measured steps, in no rush to meet the wrath that would surely come from his father. At nineteen, Biggs knew there would be no belt, and his father had rarely used fists on his son. But there was anger in the man’s words, the deathly glare from his eyes. No matter how old Biggs might be, his father’s eyes showed a brutal viciousness, punishment enough for any offense.
Even before he graduated high school, Biggs had grown taller than his father, with broader shoulders, stronger arms. As he grew older, not one of his friends doubted that a nineteen-year-old with Biggs’s athletic strengths could handle any of his father’s mouthy brutishness. But Biggs knew that no matter the physical difference between them, his father was always to be obeyed. Or feared. His anger would often erupt for no apparent reason, a terrifying viciousness sometimes directed at Biggs’s mother, the man’s sharp voice carrying through the entire neighborhood.
As he grew older, Biggs finally began to understand just why his father seemed so angry. For so many of the men in the small community, the jobs had gone away, the lumber plant nearly shut down, one more casualty of the Depression. Some of those jobs had moved farther west, to another plant out in the Florida Panhandle. Men like Clarence Biggs seemed to live on hope and on pledges from the local politicians of the great efforts they were making to bring in more plants, factories, jobs for all. In every tavern, men repeated the optimism they heard from the newspaper—that the town would survive, even prosper, that Florida’s celebrated boom of the 1920s would return, and with that, opportunity for all.
But in this neighborhood of ragged homes with clapboard walls, of vacant fields of sand and sandspurs, there was very little to be hopeful about. No matter what the men in the fancy suits promised them, Clarence Biggs had stopped paying attention to what Palatka was trying to be. What was here, now, were broken men. They knew what poor was, their pride as empty as their hope. Like most of them, Clarence had settled for work where he could find it. Every day, he spent long hours at a seafood plant near the St. Johns River. There was nothing elegant about scaling and gutting fish, the pay not enough to buy the fish he cleaned, and the stench he carried home on his clothes reminded them all that Clarence was too weary and too defeated to be embarrassed.
Biggs reached the front door, stood for a long minute, glanced back to the weed-infested vacant lot that was the ball field. His friends were gathered, watching him, and he waved them away, thought, Just play the damn game. He lowered his head now, let out a breath. No, I guess they can’t do that. The only ball we’ve got is in Mom’s kitchen.
The doorknob was flimsy, barely catching, and he turned it slowly, pushed the door open, heard the familiar squeal. He slipped inside, was surprised to see his father standing, arms crossed, near the opening to the small kitchen. Tommy saw the ball now in the man’s hand, and his father held it out toward him.
“What kind of damned ball is this?”
He knew he was being baited, knew this would go however his father wanted.
“Only ball we got. The masking tape holds it together. Herman’s father had a roll.”
“Herman hit the ball through the kitchen window? Maybe one of those other jerks you play with? Maybe it was Babe Ruth, stopped by to play a couple innings.”
“No. It was me.”
“You? You actually hit the ball out of those weeds?”
“Yeah. Me. I’m sorry, Pop.” He saw his mother, coming slowly out of their bedroom, standing quietly behind her husband. “I’m sorry, Mom. Didn’t mean to bust your window. Hope nobody’s hurt or anything.”
She stared at him, shook her head slowly, a hint of anger in her tired eyes. She motioned toward the kitchen. “I had a head of cabbage chopped up in the sink. Making slaw for dinner.”
His father poked a finger toward him. “And thanks to you, that cabbage is in the trash. Full of busted glass.” Tommy looked downward, and his father said, “So, Mr. DiMaggio, unless you wanna chew your way through that mess, we got nothing else to eat tonight. Can’t make soup out of this damned baseball. And let me tell you one more thing, slugger. Somebody’s gotta fix that window, and right now. We got mosquitoes enough in this damn house.”
“Yes, sir. You want I should go to the neighbor’s, see if somebody can offer us something for dinner?”
His mother shook her head. “No need. I’ll get something from Mrs. King. She’s always offering collards from their garden. Mighty nice of her to help us out.”
He waited, as though there might be more, something else he could say. He was used to the despair in both of them, saw it again now. But his father surprised him, tossed him the makeshift baseball.