Saints+Sinners

by Saints

  “Who she really is?” he echoed.

  She reached out and put a hand on his cheek. “You know what you’ve done, Connor?” she said sympathetically. “You’ve just created a woman out of a name—the way the pioneer in the old story made a wife out of snow. It’s no crime. We’ve all done it at one time or another.”

  * * *

  Riding the tramway to Ogilvy’s Department Store, Connor was as nervous as he had ever been. His erotic reveries had ceased completely, and now he could only see Arundel as furious and afraid.

  Ogilvy’s was filled with Ottawa housewives looking for bargains on rayon stockings, “ski togs,” and Regal Ware pots and pans. Arundel was dressed as she had been when he first met her; she was just another dowdy matron, taking a break at the small in-store tea room.

  “Hello, Mrs. Grey,” he said fearfully.

  “Mr. O’Flynn,” she said, with no trace of disquietude. “Please sit down.”

  Connor understood that he should get right to the point.

  “I felt that you hated me yesterday,” he said. “You seemed to think we were enemies. But we’re not.”

  “No,” she said. “I know that now.”

  “You do?”

  He wondered what had changed, why she seemed so calm now; but just then the waiter brought more hot water for her teapot, and they were both silent.

  “And you don’t know anything about my name,” she pressed, once they were alone.

  He shook his head. “I just thought that Arundel was a beautiful name and that it should have a story.”

  He had the strongest feeling that she guessed everything—that he had fantasized about her, made for himself (as Lilly said) a woman out of snow. His face burned. But she didn’t seem contemptuous or sorry for him; she just nodded and stirred her tea.

  “Is Arundel your secret name, Mrs. Grey?” he asked conversationally.

  She took a placid sip of tea. “You could say that. My secret name, my magic name—my true name.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “Different things. It comes from the French word for swallow, hirondelle. It means ‘dell of eagles’ in Old Norse. It’s the name of a town in England. It’s the name of Bevis’s war horse—Bevis of Southampton—in the old poem. And so on.” She smiled. “I like a name with lots of stories inside it.”

  Connor frowned; the etymology of the name shed no light on why she should want to keep it a secret.

  “It was my lover who gave me that name,” she added, poised as ever.

  “Your lover?” repeated Connor hoarsely.

  He had sat up straighter at “lover,” but one glance told him that she wasn’t referring to him.

  “Lovers do that, don’t they?” she said. “Take you out of your ordinary name and into your magic one.”

  “But your husband”—Connor was working hard at unravelling it all—“he doesn’t know your secret name?”

  “He knows me as Arundella, or just ‘Della.’ But neither of them is me.” She looked straight into his eyes. “Because ‘Arundel’ doesn’t really have a sex, does it? It could be a woman’s name, or a man’s. It just depends…on the story.”

  Connor stared at her for a long moment and then removed his bewildered gaze to the refuge of his teacup. In his confusion he vaguely remembered a story about the Eskimos, who believed that at a certain time in your life, you needed to take on a new name, to re-inspire yourself…Should he reply with that? Anything to get him over this very awkward moment.

  “So now you know the story behind my name, Mr. O’Flynn,” she said, crumpling up her napkin. “And what I want to know is…is my story safe with you?”

  What story? he thought, but said soberly, “Until death.”

  “Good. Because my name is very precious to me.” For the first time she smiled at him. “Goodbye, Mr. O’Flynn,” she said, getting to her feet.

  But Connor remained sitting. “Mrs. Grey, do you read poetry?”

  She looked down on him curiously. “Why, yes, I do. What about you, Mr. O’Flynn?”

  “You asked me that question before. Do you remember?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.” She dabbed imperturbably at her mouth with her napkin.

  “You quoted me some lines about sparrows towing Aphrodite in her chariot. Or maybe it was swallows.”

  Now she seemed to lose a bit of her poise: she turned her face away slightly, as if in disbelief. “I quoted that to you?”

  “Yes. You know the poem?”

  “Of course; it’s Sappho. But I really can’t remember quoting it to you. Not to you.”

  Connor caught the emphasis and smiled ruefully. Arundel, you don’t know the power of your name, the power of your transformation. He had been like a tuning fork brought close to one already sounding: he had begun to resonate in sympathy—and at the same pitch.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said, getting to his feet. “Good-bye, Mrs. Grey.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. O’Flynn,” she said, still bemused.

  “And thank you.”

  * * *

  Arundel’s secret would be safe with him—he was a Southerner, after all. Still, he felt he’d had a narrow escape. He really had no desire to know more about the stories inside Arundel’s name. It was all a foreign country to him: snow, ice, skin-flaying winds, strange feral stars and women who seemed to share the qualities of those elements. He just wanted to forget this latest rococo episode and keep grinding away at life. For that was how he lived now: grinding away at the days while the days ground away at him.

  And yet, the next Saturday afternoon, he loaded his skis onto the Wrightville streetcar, got off at the end of the line, and thrashed his way to Lac des Fées. He came no closer to imitating the easy swing of the other skiers, but at least his bindings worked (his friend Win had done some repairs), and this time he remembered to take a full flask of bourbon. When he got home, he felt he was improving.

  And one day at Dome Hill, tramping doggedly up, he happened to glance at the northern slope, where skiers had built a good-sized jump out of hay bales. He saw a skier racing toward the jump and recognized Lilly Standish, wearing her usual black slacks and flight jacket. Even an expert like Lilly was wobbling a bit with the bumps, but she maintained her speed. Her knees were bent, her chin raised, her ski poles tucked under her arms.

  Connor watched as her skis went up the slope of the jump. Straightening from her semi-crouch, she leaned forward at the waist. Her toque came off but she kept her form beautifully. For a second she was embayed in the blue, a woman held up by a strange power—as if, hidden high in the sunlit air above, streamed a vast cloud of small harnessed wings.

  *From Sappho, Selected Poems and Fragments by A. S. Kline (translator), © 2005

  Runner-up

  The Unit

  Aaron Hughes

  For

  “Navy Simon” & “Fireman Rick”

  [Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation (ADIO)]

  [Branch: Royal Australian Navy (RAN)]

  [Investigation re.: Leto, H. Commander]

  [Clearance: Level 7 Only]

  [Interview held at: [Redacted]]

  [Interview Subject: Prusa, N. Chief Petty Officer]

  [Date: 23 February 2016, Monday]

  [Time stamp: 17:00]

  My name is Nester Prusa. My rank is Chief Petty Officer. I am a Navy Clearance Diver. My Service Number is [Redacted].

  I was there that night. I saw everything. Or nearly everything. What I didn’t see, I pieced together later from talking to the other guys in the unit.

  I can talk about it now. Because you can’t touch him. His reputation is so strong now that nothing you can say will tarnish it.

  And soon, it won’t matter anyway.

  * * *

  They call me “Nessie.”

  I suppose it’s a play on my first name, Nester. And because I’m a scuba diver. And, somehow, that fucking Scottish water creature, which kind of looks like the double-snake emblem
of our unit. Who the fuck knows how these nicknames really start? All I know is that they stick like shit to a blanket. And they stick for life.

  Commander Heracles Leto saved me. I don’t mean that he just saved my life in the field; countless times at that. He saved me in all the other ways that matter, too. He saved all of the guys in our unit. Well, we all know that’s not true: it turns out he couldn’t save everyone. But those of us who are left, we’re alive because of him.

  Heracles—Herc—was second-in-command of one of the Navy’s CDTs [Clearance Diving Teams] in Sydney. It was a good team, but he wanted better: he wanted his own team. At some point, Herc accepted who he was, and he’d made peace with himself.

  So, he decided he would establish a team of like-minded guys. He made discreet enquiries with the other teams. He’d heard rumours across the service about men in the other units. Some of us were in New South Wales, but most of us were in units across the other states. Many of us were from some fucking wog or ethnic background or another. He sought us out.

  I was a Leading Seaman at the time. My career was going nowhere fast. So was I. I drank too much. I partied too hard, even by Navy standards. I slept around, too. Not with other sailors—even I wasn’t that far gone—but I’d become a slut. I’d even barebacked with a couple of guys, just for the thrill of it. I was a fucking idiot. I was lucky not to catch anything serious. Well, apart from that one really fucking bad case of the crabs.

  Herc travelled across the country seeking us out. Like him, I was in Sydney at the time. One night, he followed me to a seedy back-room leather bar. He bought me a drink; actually, he bought me six. He struck up a conversation. I knew who he was straight away, though. But I listened. He made a good case. He did with all of us. He spoke well, like a leader, someone you could trust. His reputation didn’t disappoint. None of us turned him down.

  Looking back now, I wished a couple of the guys had said no. Maybe things would have turned out differently.

  Have you met Herc? No? I didn’t think so. I guessed you hadn’t interviewed him yet. Do you have any idea of the man? What sort of a presence he is?

  Herc is big. I mean, seriously big. Navy divers are usually smaller guys. Because it’s easier to get in and out of tight spots in and under the water if you’re leaner.

  Not Herc. Six foot three. A-fucking-mazing tattoo down the length of his long back; two snakes, intertwined, winding down and around his body, ending along the line of his pelvis. Mind you, the tattoo looks a bit worse for wear these days, given all of his scars. He’s a fucking Greek man-mountain. So fucking hairy, he gives one of the mincing homos near our base a wet dream once a fortnight when he gets the faggot to wax him. Otherwise, he’d never have been able to get in and out of his dive suit without an entire fucking tin of talcum powder. He chose the rest of us against type, too. None of us are less than five foot ten. He wanted a team of guys who looked like they could kick arse, and who could actually do it, too.

  But that’s just the physical. You won’t know who Herc really is until you meet him and talk with him. You’ll get a real sense of his strength then. I’m not saying he’s a fucking saint; none of us were, are, or ever fucking will be. Especially Phemus. No one who goes to war comes back quite the same. But Herc’s a real leader. You don’t see many of them in the service anymore. His mojo got all of us to trust him—I mean really trust him—and it got us all into his new unit.

  Herc’d had unofficial approval from his CO [Commanding Officer] to make enquiries. Once he got all the guys lined up, he went back and put in a request for a new team. Do you know what sort of respect he commanded, even back then? To be able to head-hunt guys for his own team?

  The transfers all went through, quickly and quietly. For various reasons, some units—like mine—were all too glad to be rid of us. One at a time, we shipped into Sydney.

  We turned up on the Monday for “hell week.” Which is just what we got: ten days of pure, un-fucking-adulterated hell. We’d all had diving experience. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been there. I’d even sobered up a bit for it.

  But it wasn’t enough. Herc knew that for our unit to work—to get any sort of respect—we had to be tougher sons-of-bitches than all the other teams. So, he set about breaking us down, then building us back up again. In that week alone, we were put through nearly forty staged dives; ten more than the other units. It was brutal. A couple of the guys couldn’t keep up. The rest of us made it through. But that was only the start.

  Over the next six months, we worked harder than any other unit. We trained, we dived, we worked out, we studied. We stacked on the physical and mental muscle to be the best.

  And yes, the rumours are true: we were all fags. There you go, it’s on the official record now. Who gives a fuck, though? Everyone in the upper ranks knew. No one cared. We did our fucking job. Better, usually, than anyone else. Herc gave us a diamond-hard focus.

  You’re probably thinking: it was like a fucking faggot porn movie, yeah? Bunch of muscled up meat-heads, high on testosterone? Sucking and fucking each other senseless all night, in our bunks, in the barracks, in the water? Dream on.

  There was none of that.

  Herc had made it crystal clear: don’t shit where you eat. Besides, we had to rely on each other to survive in combat. We were tight, but not that tight. There’s a difference between fucking a guy’s arse, or taking his cock, and saving that same arse and cock in combat. Herc made sure we knew the difference. At least that’s how it started in the beginning. But there’s always one exception to every rule.

  Me, I saw it from the first day Petty Officer Hylas Driope walked in the door. Eventually, everyone did.

  You could feel the electricity in the room, between him and the boss. They both ignored it at first. As a result, Herc was harder on the Jew-boy than the rest of us. He pushed him something fierce. But Hylas took everything Herc dished out and he still came up smiling, although sometimes grimacing.

  Hylas was beautiful.

  I mean, yeah, he was handsome, but he was fucking beautiful. Long of limb; “coltish,” I heard him described once. A ranga with pale skin so white you could see the blue veins running underneath, especially when we got out of the ice-cold water after a dive. And those fucking curls. The rest of us had short, back and sides. Hell, like Heracles, most of us shaved our heads because we were in and out of the water so much. Not Hylas. Yeah, he had short hair, but he kept those Shirley Temple curls. Made him look even younger than he was, but not like a girl. He was too much of a man.

  Hylas became the centre of the unit. He was easy with a joke. He’d be the ear for your problems. He’d help you with your studies when you struggled. He’d push you in the gym when you flagged. He listened when, in the early hours of the morning, you felt like a fucking imposter and a failure. And when you were shaking from sheer exhaustion, fucking frozen from being in the cold water for hours on end, he’d help your fumbling fingers with your diving gear. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for the guys in our unit.

  * * *

  Case in point.

  Not long after he’d arrived, we were prepping for a night dive. My hands were shaking. I was having the DTs from all of the alcohol I had tried to replace my blood with over the last couple of years.

  Edgy and jittery, I was speeding through my pre-dive check. I’d thrown my equipment on and was about to dive in.

  Hylas grabbed my upper arm none too gently. I spun around, ready to deck him. He had his goggles and mouthpiece on already and could only point.

  I looked down and realised I hadn’t clamped off one of my tubes. It would have taken awhile under the water before I’d realised my air mix was off.

  Maybe I would have realised in time. Maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe down under the water in the dark, where it gets so cold that your dick shrivels and your nuts escape up into your chest, I would have just fucking surrendered. At that time, I didn’t have much of a reason to live.

  And if I had, maybe I wouldn’t be s
itting in front of you fuck knuckles today telling you my truth.

  I kid you fucking not: Hylas was there for me, for all of us. Sometimes he saved us. Sometimes he helped us save ourselves.

  After our first tour of [Redacted], we realised what it meant to lay down your life for another guy in the unit. But, somehow, Hylas went beyond even that. He was really there for all of us. He was fucking beautiful, and I don’t care how much of a fucking pansy knob-gobbler I sound when I say it, either.

  * * *

  It took a while, but Herc saw who Hylas was, too.

  He came to realise that Hylas was the glue of the team. He encouraged it, but Jesus, he was hard on the kid. Hylas was no idiot. He knew what the deal was. Herc was hard on him because he cared. He really fucking cared for Hylas. He cared for all of us, but there was something special about Hylas. Sometimes you see it in combat, when a guy shines in the heat of battle.

  Have you needle dicks ever seen that? Have you ever seen a soldier light up in the field? Have you ever seen a man fucking blaze? I didn’t think so.

  That’s what Hylas was like. It was like those—what do you call those fuckers, androids?—in that fucking sci-fi movie that Phemus, our comms guy, used to watch all the fucking time: “The light that burns twice as bright, burns for half as long.”

  That’s the light that Hylas had. We all saw it. Herc saw it.

  Later—too fucking late—I realised that Polyphemus, or Phemus as we called him, had seen it, too.

  Over the next year, we watched the sparks fly between Hylas and Heracles. All through our first tour together in [Redacted]. Man, what a fucking year that was! Then when we got home, we kept watching them. We knew the deal and we respected it. We understood the rules. But somehow, like I said, we all knew that some rules are meant to be broken. It just took a while for both of them to realise it, too.