by Greg Fields
“That’s flak, Anne.”
“Oh.” She paused a few seconds. “What’s flak?”
Only the tightest self-control kept Finnegan from bursting into a spasm of laughter. He shifted sharply in his chair, draping his left leg over the arm to turn his body away from the center of the room. He dared not make eye contact with Rosselli.
“Flak is what they call anti-aircraft fire, Anne. The Germans have spotted them from the ground and they’re shooting up at them plane.”
“Why? They don’t stand much chance of hitting it, do they?”
“Better than you think. Just watch the movie for a while, Anne.”
A few minutes later the paratroops made their drop. One landed hard and rolled over, grimacing and grabbing his leg.
“Was he shot?” asked Anne.
“No, I don’t think so. He just landed wrong. He probably broke a leg.”
“But he had a parachute.”
Finnegan squirmed again. Dan Rosselli coughed, and Finnegan knew that Rosselli was fighting back his laughter as hard as he was himself, and that Dan was on the verge of losing. The cough covered an uncontrollable throat spasm.
“Why don’t the others come?”
“They can’t, Anne. They’re occupied several miles away. They’re all under fire.”
“Wasn’t that poor planning?”
“War tends to be unpredictable.”
“What’s that?” A German tank, then two, broke through the forest and turned toward the pinned paratroops.
“A tank, Anne.”
“Oh. I thought so. Germans, right?”
At this Rosselli could take no more. He stood up quickly and half-sprinted out of the room, burbling under his breath about the bathroom. Finnegan smiled, recognizing Dan’s desperation, then returned to the ridiculous farce taking place before him.
The Allied assault failed. Any attack on the village would have to come solely from ground forces without the aid of airborne troops. The American forces advancing to the village disengaged from the relentless Germans, retreating far enough to give them space to review a suitable new strategy, and leaving the stranded paratroops to their fate.
“They can’t do that,” said Anne. “The paratroopers are all going to end up in a prison camp, or dead. How can they leave them like that? That’s not right.”
“There’s nothing else they can do, Anne. There’s no way to break through the German position. Those paratroops are surrounded.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem right just to leave them out there. They’ll be killed.”
“It’s wartime, Anne. They kill us, we kill them.”
“But to leave them there like rabbits to be slaughtered. Not even to try to help them fight their way out. It doesn’t seem right.”
“All they’d do is get more people killed if they went in after them”
“It’s not right,” repeated Anne.
Finnegan and Rosselli again leaned forward for some popcorn. Finnegan took great care not to make eye contact. Since the movie had started neither had spoken. Finnegan for his part could think of nothing to say that would make any sense within the context of what was happening. ’I’m trapped in a Ionesco play,’ he thought. ’Maybe it’s like an onion and I’m just looking at the outermost layer, lying on the floor while they peel away at the rest.’ But he really didn’t believe that.
The show continued. Anne Newbury commented respectively on the characters’ uniforms, the amusing sound of their names, their odd gyrations upon being shot, the homely girls who were supposed to be Dutch, and the fact that all the Europeans could speak fluent English.
“It’s a device, Anne, so there are no subtitles. It’s not real life.”
“It just seems funny to me.”
At 11:15 the movie ended, mercifully. Finnegan and Rosselli leaned back in their chairs. Unknowingly they had been perched forward during most of the show. When it was over they fell backwards, exhaling, two prize fighters retreating to their corners after a brutal ten rounds.
On the couch Tom and Anne sat whispering for several minutes. Finnegan this time made no effort to overhear. He could not believe that anything they were saying could possibly have any significance. He glanced across at Rosselli and could tell by the look in his friend’s eye that amusement had turned to annoyance.
McIlweath, though, preferred not to notice anything but what sat next to him. He spoke low and earnestly. Anne smiled, and whispered back.
“Anne and I were thinking of going out for a bite to eat. Would either of you like to come along?”
“Not me, Dice. I’ll see you tomorrow. That is, if you don’t wake me up when you stumble in, you clumsy bastard.” McIlweath flinched at the word. “Nice talking to you, Anne.”
And with that Rosselli bounded down the hall, free at last. Finnegan followed soon after, first paying his respects to Anne and Tom. He heard them tromp down the stairway as he entered Rosselli’s room. He found his friend naked to the waist and about to head for the bathroom.
“It’s a good thing they’re gone,” said Finnegan. “If Mac thought Anne might see you like that, he’d be compelled to kill you on the spot. Protector of the young lady’s purity, and all that.”
“Can you believe it? Hold on, I’ll be right back.”
Finnegan sat down at McIlweath’s desk and thumbed through a magazine until Rosselli returned. His friend climbed into his bunk, pulled the covers to his chest and rolled on his side to face Finnegan. “Can you believe it?” he repeated. “Conor, were we even there tonight?”
“Not so you’d know it.”
“That really ticks me off. I mean, it’s rude if nothing else. All they did was whisper to each other.”
“Call it a blessing, pal. Otherwise she might have directed some of those questions to us. Jesus Christ, it was like watching with a little kid.”
Rosselli rolled onto his back and laughed loudly. “God, I’ve never heard anything like it. ’Who’s that? What’s he doing? Why is he wearing those funny clothes?’ It was unbelievable.”
“Mac tells me she’s intelligent,” said Finnegan, breaking into a smile.
“Yeah, real bright. Christ, she doesn’t even know where the fuckin’ Netherlands is.”
“But she’s got a 3.8, big guy. She wants to go to med school. Just like you.”
“Don’t equate me with her, pal. She may have a 3.8 but she’s thick as a brick.”
“How does she make the grades then? There’s got to be a spark of analytical intelligence buried in there somewhere.”
“I’ve seen the type, Conor. Ever since I’ve been here. They live in the labs, all day, working on their projects or even devising new ones. Read their textbooks three and four times over, memorizing facts and formulas without ever considering where those facts come from, and what those formulas really mean. They’re after the grades and they’ll do anything to get them, but they never really learn anything. They never learn how to think or analyze or question.”
“Seems to me,” said Finnegan, “that Anne learned how to question very well.”
Rosselli smiled, then continued. “They parrot back the things they’ve memorized without ingesting anything. A regurgitated education. They get the grades, but they’re worthless outside of their textbooks. She’s that type, Conor. She’s shallow, and thick, and she’s been protected all her life. Now Mac’s going to play the gallant, chivalrous suitor. You can tell already, and it makes me sick to see it. I’m surprised he’d let himself fall into something like that.”
“I don’t know, Dan. Isn’t that a bit harsh?”
“I’m telling you, Conor, I’ve seen her kind in action. They have yet to grow up. They’re not adults yet, and they have absolutely no common sense. Their whole social development has been arrested somewhere around the age of thirteen. They still live the way they did then. They still have the same values, the same outlook. There’s no need for them to change. Except that now, instead of getting the best grades in geograph
y or biology, they’re getting the best grades in organic chemistry and physiology. And they keep moving down the road, one step at a time, from high school to college to med school, because that’s that they’ve been geared for. That’s the proper way for them. The only way. The steps are hard but they know the technique. The problem is that they get there without picking anything up along the way. I shudder to think that Anne Newbury will someday be a doctor, deciding issues of life and death, but there seems to be no avoiding it. I just hope to Christ I’m never her patient.”
“You really think she’s like that?”
“Absolutely. What do you think?”
“I think she’s pretty simple. And I also think that if Tom keeps seeing her, we’re going to have a good time making fun of her behind his back.”
“Such as?”
“Well, it’s obvious Mac has to explain everything to her.”
Rosselli went into a girlish falsetto. “Tell me about the colors, Tom.”
Finnegan replied in a low, drippingly serious whisper, “What do you want to know, Anne?”
“Well, what’s my favorite color, Tom?”
“Black, Anne.”
“Oh. That’s like the nighttime, right? When it’s dark outside?”
“Yes, Anne. But I’ll be there to protect you.”
They both laughed. It was absurd, all of it. The evening, the girl, the boy, themselves, and their parody of it. Absurdity that made no sense. But they laughed, and abandoned their search for meaning. What meaning can be found between friends, at once slightly bitter, on a winter’s Saturday night?
“Good night, Dan. I’ll see you in the morning,” and as Finnegan left the room he flipped off the light.
***
One late afternoon in the middle of the week, before dinner and after classes, Conor Finnegan went for a run. There was nothing strange in this. He liked to run three or four times a week if he could. He enjoyed keeping himself strong.
The day had been cold. In fact, it had been a cold week, a cold month. The temperature had not risen above freezing for several days. Finnegan pulled on his thick sweatshirt and zipped it up to his neck. He drew the string of his sweatpants taut. On his head he pulled a woolen hat, tugging it down over his ears. He bent over to tie his shoes. ’The right side of that one is wearing thin,’ he thought. ’Pretty soon my toe will be breaking through.’
After stretching, Finnegan pulled on a pair of ragged cotton gloves, worn through on three of the fingertips, and bounded down the stairs. At the bottom he opened the outer door. Cold air stung him, and his first breath of it pierced his lungs. He stepped outside, shutting and securing the door behind him. There was no need to lock it. Pausing on the brick steps, Finnegan drew four deep breaths and looked at the approaching twilight.
The sky, cloudless, shot to the crystal blue horizon. It was the kind of color that shows only on a handful of days, and those the sharpest, freshest days of the year, broken-glass days. The sun had moved behind the house, but it still cast fading shades of orange, the deepest hues nearest the roofline, then draining in brightness as they rose, creating shades for which man had not yet conceived names. Up the street on either side the trees stood bare, their thick brown arms topped with scraggly broken fingers. Across the way, Buccleuch Park still held a greenness, but it had been muted by weeks of snow and autumn rain. In more than a few places patches of snow remained, flecked with tiny spots of black grime. The houses on the street stood dumb, tightly shut. From one or two of the chimneys there issued a wispy stream of white smoke. Habemus Papem.
It smelled like winter. Finnegan smelled the setting sun, and his nostrils flared as he drew it in. He caught the rich, loamy scent of the spongy ground. He inhaled chimney smoke, and the crystal blue of the sky, and the colored reflections of the parked cars. He smelled the steam of his own breath. The cold air ran down his throat and filled his lungs, mixing with and driving out the warm apartment air that was as sedentary as he had been all day. He drew deep breaths, and held them, smelling what he had inhaled.
’It is winter, and I am here, far beyond anything I have ever known. Tonight the sun will go down into the warm Pacific, and I have seen it. The cold will not come there, where I grew up, and the waves will run into the empty sand, miles away; years away. On the beach, near the hills, near the mountains that are hard and rocky. It is cold here. It is winter, as it has been for centuries, yet I have never known it. I am here now, and it is all so strange. So cold, and so very different.’
Finnegan hopped down the four brick steps. He walked across the street to the park, bent over one last time, grabbing the toes of his shoes, took a final relaxed breath, and broke into an easy jog. He stayed on the road that circumnavigated the park. Three-quarters of a mile to the other side, then another quarter down George Street until he reached the old steel bridge and the towpath.
As he ran, Finnegan looked around him. The park was empty. Ahead of him to the left were the tennis courts, netless. Ahead to the right stood the gaunt white gazebo, useless even in the best of weather, but a landmark nonetheless. It appeared as stark as the trees that framed it. Finnegan looked behind him. He could see the sun now, a magnificent orange sphere throwing off light in blankets rather than tendrils. The colors shot up and out in nameless orange-blue-purple-white hues. As the road split, Finnegan veered left to avoid a small ravine. The road sloped downward then, not gradually at all, but sharply, so sharply that he really didn’t have to run at all. His weight, caught now by gravity, pulled him effortlessly down the slope.
At the bottom of the hill ran George Street. To the left, tucked into the elbow between the park and the road, rose an apartment complex of several stories. It was a landmark, too, visible even from his own apartment, although Finnegan usually chose to ignore it. Somehow it didn’t seem right, this huge modern tower sitting adjacent to such rare parkland. In the warmer months he would see residents sitting on their patios as he ran by, but tonight there were no signs of life. It was too cold.
He reached the end of George Street and, glancing for traffic, trotted across the roadway to the old bridge. One or two cars headed down from the other direction, most likely students returning from the Busch campus across the river. Even so, traffic seemed unusually light. Finnegan stepped over a cable and glided down the stony rise that led from the towpath up to the bridge itself. The ground underfoot squished with each step.
Finnegan was not tired although he paused briefly to check the footing. The ground had been washed into softness by the season’s moisture, and stones, tree roots, and small divots ran across the path. Once before, in late summer, he had stepped on a root here and twisted his ankle. He had not been able to run for two weeks afterward, nor could he play tennis or basketball. Now he was always careful, especially as the darkness loomed.
To his left the murky water of the Delaware and Raritan Canal sat motionless. To his right flowed the Raritan River, a silty brown, even in patches of a bright twilight. Here and there pockets of suds floated on the surface, residue from some unknown plant upriver. Finnegan turned behind him. In the far distance rose the buildings of New Brunswick and Highland Park, simple structures that appeared deceptively clean in the dying light, their usual grime masked by a brilliant sunset. In the near foreground stood the three river dormitories. Only the sides facing the river were visible and Finnegan tried to pick out the window to his old room on the sixth floor in the closest building. But it was like looking at a sheet of pockmarked red cardboard, and he couldn’t make out where he had lived for two years. He noted the balcony there, six floors up, shook his head twice and turned back to the towpath. A narrow strip of land split the river from the canal, the stark, barren trees lining it standing sentry. Finnegan took another deep breath and quickened his pace.
Above him he heard the traffic from the road running along the river atop the high thirty-foot slope falling to the towpath. In quick glances he saw the backs of the houses on that road. Most of them were complete
ly hidden once the trees sprouted leaves.
Ahead of him lay an empty stillness. Finnegan ran on, keeping his rhythm, counting his steps. He could feel his feet kicking up specks of mud. His sweatpants most likely would be filthy from the knees down. He felt the strong, crisp air filling his powerful lungs. If it were not a good day for him, his arms and legs would become leaden, and sharp pains would knife through his side. But there was none of that tonight. Finnegan’s limbs felt hard, almost rocklike, yet very supple. His muscles rippled his skin. His relaxed breathing dictated the pace of his run.
Finnegan passed a familiar tree on his right, a particularly gnarled birch beyond which he could see clearly the college’s math building on the Busch campus. He had calculated this to be about a mile and a half from the bridge. By now he was usually a bit winded, and beginning to plod. Here it would be a five-mile run total, two and a half out and two and a half back. Here is where he would normally turn around. But tonight he felt light. Finnegan was still running on his toes. He would push onward, just a little further.
The light grew dimmer. The sun had sunk all the way below the horizon far behind him. The sharp air stung his face. A thin line of mucus trickled out the edge of his right nostril and froze there. Yet his breathing continued evenly, and his step remained easy. Just a little further.
He pushed onward and felt no pain at all, and no fatigue. The noise of the traffic above him had ceased altogether so he deduced that he was beyond the point where the road veered away from the river, a good three miles from the bridge, and maybe three and a half. As he ran he discovered new landmarks and new views. He was well beyond the Busch campus now. Across the river were houses—clean, mostly white, shuttered and prim. He noticed a church spire he had never seen before.
With the sun gone, the evening grew dark quickly. There was little light to delineate his steps. He slowed his pace, and gradually jogged to a stop. He still felt fresh, his limbs as powerful as they had ever been. Through the dim light Finnegan saw steam rise from his body. It wafted upward and blended into the river’s silhouetting darkness. He recalled the first time he had noticed it. It had fascinated him then, it was so bestial.
