by Beau North
Lieutenant Sanderson entered, his face as raw and wind chapped as Richard’s own was.
“Colonel”―Sanderson nodded and stamped his feet―“Colonel Brandon is up from Division HQ. He wants to see you.”
Richard sighed and began putting on all the layers the winter winds made necessary. Like most of the men, he hadn’t changed his long johns since the second snow, and when he closed his eyes, he could not remember the feeling of a hot shower or a long soak in a tub. He remembered the time he and Abigail had stayed at the Waldorf, where they’d made full use of the large tub in their soapy escapades, how the steam from the hot water rose off his skin, how her hair had curled damply. He suspected he’d have to cut his clothes off when spring came; they’d be so stiff with mud and dirt on the outside, human sweat and shed skin on the inside.
“Push, pull, push, pull,” he muttered to himself as he dressed. That’s all they seemed to do; push forward and pull back. This wasn’t a war; it was a meat grinder that was perpetually chewing up either side.
The lieutenant stood back by the tent flap, watching him warily. Richard knew why. His bouts of gloomy silence, the letter burning…the men under his charge thought he might be crazy. Maybe he was, but they also knew that madness didn’t necessarily make him a bad leader.
Brandon was alone in the officers’ mess. A tall, sturdy New England man with wispy, ginger hair and an unreadable expression, Richard saw Brandon was a laconic sort of everyman, like Gary Cooper. The strong, silent type. He never needed to raise his voice to make his displeasure known. He’d never talk down to a man, and Richard admired him a great deal.
And what must he think of you? Wordy as a dictionary and crazy as a bedbug.
He saluted Brandon, who nodded and returned the salute, adding a brisk, “At ease.” For such a big man, his speech was cool and refined. He unrolled a map and produced a waxed pencil from his shirt pocket.
“They’ve got the Second pinned down here, at Hargru-ri,” Brandon began without preamble, circling the region with his wax pencil. “The Hungnam Road is too hot right now, so we’re going to need to lead the battalion here”―his pencil traced the edge of the mountain terrain. Richard noticed that Brandon never said you. It was always we, even though Richard would be the one leading this mission―“over the Toktong Pass.”
Richard squinted down at the map. It would be a hard climb in mild temperatures, brutal in freezing weather. “How many Chinese in between?”
Brandon drew arrows to indicate where he’d had reports of enemy soldiers. One, two, three. Richard felt an extra thump in his heart at the sight. He nodded.
“I can do it, sir.”
Brandon regarded him, his gaze too wise, too knowing. “I expect you can.” He turned back to the map, circling the rendezvous point with the Marines. “You’ll connect with Fox Company there.”
“Should I tell the men, sir?”
Brandon shook his head. “I’ll be the one to tell them, so they’ll know whose name to curse to hell when you’re marching over the mountains in knee-deep snow. You go rest. Do what you need to get ready. You should move out by 1600 hours.”
He did not spend the hours sleeping but reclined on his bunk, scratching out a few letters. One to Will, another to Evie. Nothing too serious. Nothing that said, “I very well may die tonight.” He thought fondly of Evie and her Arthur, wondering if the new baby had come yet. He could almost picture them in their tidy little home, Evie making Christmas pudding while Arthur hung the stockings over the fire.
South Hamgyong Province, North Korea
December 17, 1952
8 p.m.
The dry twig pop of gunfire was not an unexpected sound, but he still felt himself jump, startled at the matter-of-fact sound of it. He’d quickly and quietly led the Second back, away from the front lines, while his men answered the Chinese gunfire with the crack of American powder. The sound of screams from both sides seemed to rip open the night. It was so fundamentally wrong, that sound, though Richard wasn’t thinking this at the time. He was focused to the point of a blade on the mission, but, later, when he had time (too much time) to reflect on that night, he would remember the wrongness of that sound and silently allow that war was not just a sin, it was the greatest and vilest of evils.
With instructions barked to hustle, double-time to the rendezvous point, Richard unslung his rifle and went to go aid the men with covering fire. Private Carson was on the ground, just behind the makeshift barricade, his young, skinny body shredded by bullets. Steam lifted from the body into the cold night air, reminding him briefly of the roast which Darcy had placed on the table the last time he’d been at Pemberley, nearly a year gone now. Only Richard was fairly certain that roast hadn’t reeked of blood and shit. It’s all burning and blood and shit. Those words were as true now as they had been then, when he talked about another time, another war.
He could do nothing for the private now, but there were two other men still standing. One was firing mortars at the other side, each one firing off with a low thunk. To the side, there was a small cluster of squat rocks that stood about shin-high to him. He dropped to his belly; the frozen ground was so cold that despite his many layers of winter gear, he could feel his testicles pulling themselves up into his body. Great party but we just remembered we’re double parked.
He barked an order at the men to retreat as he propped his rifle in between the rocks, slowing his breathing.
He’d never be a sharpshooter, but he was a better shot than most, thanks to the admiral and the hunting trips he’d always hated as a child. Duck, deer, dove, grouse, rabbit, even squirrel. Richard figured once you’d hunted something as…well, squirrely as a squirrel, hitting a human target was a piece of cake. He was aware of the men retreating as he began to fire but paid them little mind. He listened for sounds from the enemy. A shot in the dark. Richard turned his rifle toward the sound, squeezed the trigger. Silence. Another shot, another return. Bullets struck the stones of his makeshift cover; chips of rock flew like confetti. He felt pieces of stone cutting his face, his hands, making small rivulets of blood flow, black in the partial moonlight.
He paused, listening. There. About twenty yards away, he saw him, a figure crawling through the scrubby bushes, his breath steaming the cold night air. Richard pulled the trigger; the next second a spray of blood painted the branches. He stopped to reload when a heavy, tube-like object hit the ground in the shallow trench to his left with an almost imperceptible thump.
Oh, fuck. “Grenade!” Richard rolled away as far as he could before a curious ripping noise rent the air, a searing sensation like fire but sharper, harder, turning his world to fire. I’m sorry, Slim, but I’m lousy at promises. The thought flitted through his mind quick as a hummingbird and then was gone, and he was gone with it, into a vast and silent unknown.
Pemberley Manor
4 a.m. Eastern Standard Time
Elizabeth jolted awake in her bed, still clutching her pillow. It’s happening again. She was unsure of where the thought had come from or what it meant. She’d gotten these feelings from time to time, bad dreams and rude awakenings, that seemed almost portents of bad news: before Granny Gardiner died or a particularly bad bout of illness for Jane; the night before she’d discovered a certain seaside hotel room empty and abandoned; and three nights ago, when she’d woken up and knew, somehow, that her second pregnancy was over before it had truly begun.
Sweat poured from her body, plastering her hair to her face and neck. Her womb throbbed dully, a terrible reminder of her recent disappointment. That’s what her mother called it anyway. “A disappointment, Lizzie dear, but it is not the end.”
Elizabeth’s logical mind knew that it was natural, that many women, her own mother included, had suffered such disappointments. She knew that she was lucky to already have had a healthy daughter who’d been carried and delivered with very little fuss. She knew all these facts, but she still felt the grief of that loss, a monumental thing that she couldn�
�t seem to shift. It wasn’t just the loss of the child she mourned, but the loss of its hope, the promise of that future in which that child lived and grew. It was, at that time in her life, the most devastating thing she had ever experienced. The pain she’d endured at Richard’s abandonment paled, seemed tiny in comparison to this.
Richard. She’d thought of him often since his last visit to Pemberley, when he’d visited before leaving them all for war. Damn fool. The bitter sentiment was becoming litany to her. She remembered the night before he’d left, when she’d slipped from her bed and padded softly down the cavernous corridor to his room. She could see from the crack under the door that the light was on; she could even see the shadows of his feet going back and forth across the carpet, pacing. Back and forth, back and forth. She’d paused outside his door, her hand raised to knock. How do you see this ending, Lizzie?
In her mind, she’d seen it all unspool like a ribbon coming loose from its spindle. She’d knock; he’d answer. She knew that he was waiting for her. It might very well have been the last time she saw him alive, and when she’d left him standing in the garden that afternoon, something had passed between them, some silent agreement that spoke of unfinished business.
It was the thought of her husband, the best man she knew, that made her loosen the fist she’d made to knock. She placed her hot palm on the cool surface of the heavy wooden door. William. Her reality was there, with him. Her dreams were ephemeral, passing through her mind like puffs of smoke. When they were gone, what was she left with but the life she’d built there, with Will Darcy? She’d made her choices, and didn’t regret them in the slightest, but that didn’t make her feelings for the person behind the door less bittersweet. Those emotions were a complicated tangle of pleasure, pain, gratitude, and impatience. Nothing is ever simple with you. But wasn’t that true of everyone?
Behind the door, the footsteps paused. She sensed him coming closer. Very close to the door, she heard his voice.
“Slim, is that you?”
A little sob escaped her. “Don’t open the door,” she said quietly. Silence on the other side. He was waiting.
“Richard,” she managed at last.
“Yeah, Slim?”
“Stay alive.”
Silence again.
“Promise me.”
“Lizzy—”
“Just do it. Promise me you’ll stay alive.”
There was a long pause. “Sure, Slim. I promise.”
Elizabeth rested her forehead against the door, and, for a moment, she knew somehow that on the other side he was doing the same.
She’d said goodnight and returned to her room, feeling guilty as she slipped into bed next to her husband, who’d rolled over and looked at her, fully awake.
They’d made love, and for Elizabeth it was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, with a quiet intensity that sent her outside of herself. When she fell asleep in his arms later, she felt no conflicts and drifted off with a glad heart.
That had been over a year ago, and, while she never for one second regretted not knocking on that door, she still worried for Richard. For William’s sake, and her own.
She threw back the sheets, having kicked her blanket off sometime in the night, and made her way to the bathroom, where she splashed her feverish face with cold water from the faucet. When she returned to bed, she said a quick prayer for Richard before falling back into an uneasy sleep.
Flashes of light in the darkness. Spikes of brilliant pain. He was no stranger to it. This ain’t my first rodeo. A nurse in army fatigues moved bloody bandages, her face pinched and strained. He thought, somewhere in the back, he heard Brandon’s voice.
“Get him to Seoul. Get him to Tokyo if you have to. I’ve got to see if I can get a line out to his family.”
Am I dead? He supposed that if he were, it would not hurt so very much. Everything looks so wrong.
19
Some other place.
Some other time.
It was too quiet, too peaceful to be real, but it felt real. It was a familiar world, soft and violet hued. Richard lay on a bed in a bare room. He realized with no surprise that it was his room from that little seaside hotel in Charleston, where he’d once loved a girl named Elizabeth Bennet.
Beside the bed, there was an uncomfortable-looking chair. Richard found he was unable to move, unable to rise from the bed, but sometimes people he’d known and loved would visit and sit near him when he wasn’t asleep, though he slept most of the time. He woke once to see his mother sitting beside him, knitting a pair of tiny booties. She looked over at him and smiled, the misshapen side of her face still frozen.
“I can’t wait to be a grandmother,” she said and went back to her knitting. What the hell are you talking about, Ma? Before she could answer, he drifted off once more.
Elizabeth was there, the curtain of her hair tickling his face as she whispered in his ear.
“I want what I want, Richard. Blue Jay’s flown away; he’ll come back another day,” she sang.
Slim. He tried to reach for her, but it was as though lead weights were tied to his wrists, keeping him immobile.
Once he looked over to see Evie sitting in the chair by his bed. Arthur stood next to her, holding one of her hands and smiling down at him. Behind her stood James in his dress whites, his hands resting on Evie’s shoulders.
“We both love her,” he said, smiling Richard’s own smile at him.
I know you both do. Strangely enough felt testy about it. And she loves you and Arthur, too.
James smiled again. “You didn’t used to be this stupid.”
Georgiana played piano while Anne and Charlotte danced a madcap, gravity-defying Ziegfeld Follies-esque routine. Abigail watched them with her cocky half-smile. She lounged by the open window, dripping with emeralds that flashed green fire, decked out in her best Dior. She took a long drag off her cigarette and exhaled a jet of smoke that was not white but pale lavender. “You’ve gone and done it this time, my darling. You’ve really stepped in the stink,” she said before pitching her cigarette out the open window.
Not all his visitors were welcome. He awoke once to see the German he’d killed, the one who’d put two bullets in him in a bombed-out cafe in Brest. The man smiled at him, the picture of calm despite the red ruin of his head.
Sie getötet mein bruder.
The admiral was there only once, standing at the window with his back to his son.
But of all his visitors, the most frequent and the most real was Darcy. He sat, sometimes reading or flipping through files in the chair next to Richard’s bed, and when Richard looked at him, the world seemed to be more solid, bright white instead of dusky twilight.
Darcy talked incessantly. About the weather, about the family, about Anne and Charlotte and Georgie and Baby Maggie and Elizabeth, even Aunt Catherine. He talked about Pemberley and visits from the Bennets, who always brought chaos to those hallowed grounds. Richard didn’t need to see his cousin to know he adored the chaos they brought; it was evident in his voice. Still Darcy talked. About Wickham and James, and their rambunctious youth. He talked about their time in Meryton, and how he was sure that he would die from his broken heart and then worried that Richard might do the same.
“I never told you,” he said, “that I’m sorry. I’m not sorry she chose me. But I am sorry that we hurt you.” Richard could not open his eyes or his mouth to tell him to get lost, so he thought it silently.
On and on, Darcy talked. Crop rotations at Longbourn, a new foal at the horse ranch, a sorry attempt to grow cherries in the orchards.
“What do I have to do to get you to shut up so I can get some fucking sleep?” Richard croaked, tired of listening to the incessant sound of his cousin’s voice.
Something fell to the floor with a heavy thump. A book? Richard didn’t want to open his eyes and look. His head swam in an ocean of pain.
“Jesus! Rich!” Richard felt the pressure of Darcy’s hand in his own. Before he coul
d squeeze it, the hand was gone, and Darcy’s voice was further from him, shouting for a nurse, a doctor, anybody.
“He’s awake!”
Richard, at last, managed to surface fully, his vision hazy and his mouth dry. Dry as a bull’s bum going up a hill backwards, one of Evie’s more colorful Aussie-isms. Evie. Had she been there? He couldn’t quite remember.
A woman in nurse’s whites was there, taking his pulse. Darcy hovered just behind her, and for the first time, Richard got a good look at him. He looked haggard, his hair a shaggy mess, the beginnings of a beard on his face. Bruise-like circles ringed his eyes.
“Jesus, D. You look like shit.”
Darcy smiled, but there was a sadness to it. “Yeah, you’ve looked better too.”
“Where?”
“You’re in the army hospital in Tokyo.”
“You flew to Tokyo?”
“Of course I did, asshole.”
“How long have I been…” Floating. “Out?”
Another hesitation.
“D?”
“Ten days. Well, eleven if you count today.”
He retreated into a fog-like no man’s land between sleep and awareness, dimly aware of a dull itch on the left side of his head. It wasn’t quite pain, but it terrified him nonetheless. He could hear Darcy badgering the nurse to fetch the doctor. Richard didn’t want a doctor. He didn’t want bad news or diagnoses. He wanted to stand up and run from the room on his own two feet. His trembling hand flew up to his head, felt the layers of padding that swaddled him there, and underneath that, the sting and itch of healing injuries. Not my head, please, God. He thought of his mother, sitting in the same place since 1930. Were there ever moments when her mind surfaced and she found herself unable to get up, to run, to be again? He prayed it wasn’t so, that she never felt the frustration and dread now clawing its way through his mind. Every possibility that presented itself more ghastly than the last. Would he forget himself, forget how to perform the most basic of tasks? Had he lost an arm? A leg? He knew what he could feel, but he also knew that a missing limb would continue to ache long after separation. Was he burned, misshapen as a half-melted candle? Would he walk again? What had become of his unit? Had anyone else been killed? Captured?
