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People always thinks it’s on account of Eleanor that he’s called Radar, but it isn’t. Seems like he’s had to tell that to everybody in camp, and then people go away, or go aways away, like Colonel Blake did, and then he’s got to tell it again to the new ones.
“Radar,” they say, all of them, and he can always hear it coming before they even open their mouths. There’s always a smile there, like they’ve figured him out, and every time they’re wrong. “Because of her, right? The antennae?”
And then he has to say aw shucks no, colonel sir, it’s on account of how I knew you were gonna say that, sir, on account of how I always know. And he shrugs a little, and smiles down, so that Eleanor perched up on his wool cap can shake her antennae at whoever it is, just to keep em guessing. The smiles always slide slow off their faces right then, and they don’t understand anymore, but that’s okay. They’ll see.
And honest, it’s a darn good thing Radar’s radar’s got nothing to do with Eleanor, seeing as it’s so important to the both of them. Eleanor doesn’t talk, and people think it just means they’re shy, which he’d agree to, sure, but really, adult luna moths just don’t have mouths, see. Eleanor doesn’t talk because she can’t.
Maybe other people’d think that’d be hard, a daemon who flat can’t talk. Other people, Radar’s heard them talk to their daemons like talking to a friend, like they’re somehow a separate person to theirselves. Captain Pierce and Coralise for a pair, lord only knows, can’t be quiet for a moment. It makes Major Burns twitchy to hear them at it, on account he’s one of them that thinks daemons should be seen and not heard, but that never stops Captain Pierce and Coralise. If they couldn’t talk to each other whenever they please, well… Radar can imagine, but he doesn’t much want to. He doesn’t think that’d go well at all.
But for him and Eleanor, they don’t mind. Radar knows what she’s about to say anyway, and he doesn’t mind talking for her, when he needs to. He just don’t often need to, is all. Eleanor flutters about, as big as a pale green hand, and shakes her tails and wiggles her big furry antennae. She perches on the switchboard when it’s about to light up, and perches on the radio antenna when it’ll get him better reception, and perches on the peephole in the nurses’ showers to warn him when somebody’s coming who’d get them in trouble. She rides on the brim of his wool cap, and fluttered among the lures on Colonel Blake’s fisherman when he was still here, and once, she took a single look at Klinger’s mint green dress and landed square on his pillbox and spread her wings wide like an ornamental butterfly and stayed there a good hour until Radar had to go on duty. She sleeps on his bear and folds her wings into the curve of his hand. She flies big, wobbly circles over his head when the choppers come in.
Eleanor is green, but she’s not olive drab. She’s the sweet pale green of new buds on the farm, of moonlight through his mother’s kitchen curtains. She glows in the dark, seems like, like the dial on an airman’s watch. Each wing has a tail, and they’re so soft and delicate, like a lady’s silk stockings blowing on a line. Her eyespots are purple. Her antennae are orange. He catches her in his hand, careful-like so he won’t hurt her, and feels them fluttering along his thumb. Her body is small under her wings, white and furry, and her eyes are dark and round.
They don’t need words much, is all.
He remembers, some nights when the shelling gets close, how it was when she settled. It was late summer, 1950, when the war was fresh started. They’d had their draft board the week before, and they were shipping out to basic in a few days. Eleanor had been spending a lot of time as a rabbit, then, like she had in ‘43 and ’44, but this time it felt more like it was maybe permanent. She was quick and nimble and twitchy. They both were. She slept under his other arm, then, opposite his bear, and that night she pressed her head into his shoulder and said, “Radar.”
He’d known what she wanted even then.
Eleanor under one arm and their teddy in the other, Radar padded sockfoot out to the porch. It wasn’t late, but dusky. They’d gone to bed early that day, and Radar no longer remembers why. All he remembers is standing there on the porch with Eleanor, and watching the moonlight slide silver over the rye. There were fireflies out, bunches of em, and crickets croaking from among the stalks, and they’d gone to the porch rail to look out at their climbing tree, where Eleanor had spent so long as a squirrel up its branches. She shifted to that form for old times’ sake, scurried up to his shoulder, and then to his head, and Radar had laughed.
“Not gonna be able to goof off much in the Army,” he said.
“Not much,” said Eleanor.
“Gonna have to be serious all the time, I bet.”
“I bet.”
Radar didn’t have to say he was scared. They both were.
There were so many things that they could say.
Do you think we’ll be on the front? Probably not, we’re too small. Yeah, and we wear glasses. That wasn’t enough to keep us out of the Army, though. Maybe it’ll be enough to keep us behind a desk. What do you think basic will be like? Hard I think, but no worse than harvest time. What do you think Korea will be like? Oh, gee, I dunno. Think the girls’ll be pretty? Sure, like Katherine Hepburn in Dragon Seed, remember? Oh yeah, oh gee. They’re commies now, though, aren’t they? Who are? The Chinese, like in that movie. Oh yeah, I guess so. North Koreans, too, of course. And the Ruskies. Think they’ll teach us to tell em apart? Who apart, the Ruskies? No, the North Koreans and the South ones. Can you tell em apart? I guess we’ll find out when we get there. It’ll be soon, now, won’t it? Three days and then five weeks and then however long it takes to get there, sure. Then we’ll know, won’t we? Sure, we’ll know.
There were so many things that they could say, but they didn’t much need to. They knew.
They looked out over the farm, but not the way they would now, if they could go back. They didn't know, then, just how far away they'd go, just how much they'd forget. Now, Radar thinks, they'd stare with wide eyes at every nick in the paint, as if making their eyes wider would let them see more. They'd pass each square inch of the place under their eyes, compound and glassed in together, and when they finished, they'd do it again. Then they'd work through their other senses one by one until they knew what home was and wouldn't forget again. These days, Radar can't quite remember the color of the air or the smell of the light in Iowa. All that memory is hazy, buried under grey and green, dust and drab, canvas and gauze and the sound of distant mortars. Radar's not much worried. When they get back, they'll learn it again, and one day maybe even Korea will be the hazy one.
But on that night, not even two years ago, can you imagine, they didn't know to memorize a place like that. The crickets kept singing, slower as the sun went the rest of the way down, and the fireflies bobbed and wove, and the rye fields sighed in the wind. And out of the oak tree came floating a big green moth, glowing brighter than the moon.
“Radar,” said Eleanor, with wonder in her voice, and leapt into the sky on radium wings.
It was the last thing Radar ever heard her say.
