Half World: A Novel

by O'Connor, Scott

  She set the two pictures together on the mantel as she had in Arlington, though she knew it bothered Henry and Hannah. It was painful to be reminded of the Thomas they’d known in that first year. But Ginnie needed to see those pictures together, what the distance between them made plain. That she’d missed something, she’d let something slip past. He had gone somewhere, just like that. Somewhere in that space she had lost him.

  There was a box with the books she was using for Thomas’s lessons, as well as the books the doctors in Washington had given her. Folded within the pages of a behavioral journal she found the self-portrait Thomas had made during one of his sessions, the crayon drawing of how he saw himself: a small metal figure, with a silver head and arms and legs, wheels connected by rods where his feet should be, chugging along on tracks that stretched from one end of the page to the other.

  The Locomotive Boy. This was what one of the doctors in Washington had called him. This after all of the psychiatry sessions, the tests, the disastrous attempts at the special school. Ginnie sitting in the doctor’s office and the man telling her this as if it were a diagnosis of some kind, as if he’d solved the mystery. The Locomotive Boy. Ginnie kept her mouth shut and listened. She’d spent years keeping her mouth shut and listening. She imagined standing, pounding the arm of her chair, clearing the doctor’s desk with a sweep of her arm. She imagined shouting until she was heard by this man, by all of these men. Shaming them into silence. How dare you. This is my son.

  When the doctor had finished, Ginnie thanked him and rose from her seat and picked Thomas up from the playroom down the hall, knowing that this would be their last appointment.

  She did not want him pitied, treated as if he was sick. She was tired of being accused, blamed by specialists who spent as much time trying to analyze her as they did Thomas. She would teach her son at home. She would find ways in, subjects that interested him, that sparked something, inevitably becoming unshakable obsessions, but openings nonetheless. She would use these openings to help him learn about the world, even in the smallest terms. How to read a transit map, a train schedule. How to talk about these things. The doctors, the teachers at his school had seen his long, loud monologues as symptoms, further proof of his illness. Ginnie saw them as successes. Thomas able, finally, to communicate. She didn’t care how loud or for how long he spoke. He could shout about transit schedules until Kingdom Come as far as she was concerned.

  There was a door at the back of the kitchen, a staircase leading to the unfinished basement. She’d had the movers put Henry’s desk down there, his bookcases. She’d arranged his poetry books on the shelves in what she remembered as their order on the shelves of his study in Arlington, though only Henry would know for sure. Some of the books had been with him since college, coming along into their marriage. Springtime in Chicago, she remembered, those early months after the war, soft evenings, sitting in their apartment and Henry reading verses of past friends, schoolmates, and then some of the masters, Yeats, Eliot, Williams. Henry’s voice deep and rich, wondering at the lines, the beauty and the mystery. Ginnie sitting on the window seat in the living room, pregnant with Hannah, watching Henry smoke, watching him read, an accountant by day, his head full of mathematics, but this beautiful man at night, his mind buzzing with words, with lines that found voice only with her.

  Things had changed with the move to Washington, and Henry’s new position. He came home late in the evenings, his dinner waiting for him in the oven, the children in bed, and when Henry read it was the newspapers. After the incident, he had returned to his poetry books, but then he read them almost secretively, certain volumes over and over, making notes in the margins, marking pages, returning to the same passages as if he was looking for some clue. It seemed like work, now. A burden more than a joy.

  The incident. This was how she thought of what had happened, that day in December. Henry’s incident. She didn’t know how he thought of it, what word he used. It wasn’t something he wanted to discuss.

  There was a noise from Thomas’s room, the low hum of his engine warming up. She opened his door to find him in his sleeping spot, on the floor beside the bed, looking out the window at the cerulean sky. After a moment he sat up and crossed to the electrical outlet, where he unplugged his imagined cord and clipped it back onto his belt.

  She reminded herself to be careful again, where she walked. Thomas stood in his doorway, looking out into the rest of the house, studying his rails. Sometimes he believed that his tracks had been disturbed, kicked or moved by Hannah, by the postman coming up the front walk. Altering some part of his apparatus was the easiest way to send him into a tantrum. It took a half hour sometimes to calm him down, holding him while he wailed, a strange, alien threnody, a single note of deep frustration. A sound so lonely that Ginnie could hardly bear it. There was a sense in that noise that no one understood, including Thomas himself. It was something she heard long after the tantrum was over, while Thomas splashed in the bathtub or Henry read him a storybook beside his bed.

  She emptied another box in the living room while Thomas played with his toy trains on the sofa, pushing the cars over the cushions, making engine and bell noises. In the den, she set her easels and rolls of unstretched canvas against the wall. She hadn’t brought any of her paintings from Washington. She hadn’t painted since Henry’s incident, months ago now, but it may as well have been years. She unpacked the rest of her supplies. The brushes felt unfamiliar in her hands.

  The house began to dim. An orange afternoon. In the foyer she helped Thomas into his jacket, put on her own. They would go to the market, then pick Hannah up at school. Hopefully, Henry would be home soon after.

  It would take time to get used to this place, this house, the progress of sunlight across the walls, the way the day moved through the rooms. It would take time, but she was patient. She had learned to be patient.

  She opened the door and stepped outside, waiting for Thomas to see his tracks, to take her hand with a coupling click. Then they started down the hill in the cooling air, the whistle of the train in the distance, her heels clicking on the sidewalk and the sound of her boy’s engine thrumming along beside.

  5

  Washington, D.C., Winter 1955

  Weir had been unreachable for only a few hours before panic set in. The man had never missed a day of work, so when there was still no word from him by lunchtime, Security sealed Weir’s office and began a search.

  Henry stayed at his desk, close to the phone. Rumors twisted through the hallways, so he kept his door closed, waiting, hoping for some kind of misunderstanding, some miscommunication. Weir ice fishing at his favorite lake in West Virginia; Weir visiting his elderly mother in Bethesda. Unlikely scenarios, Henry knew, but he clung to them as he watched the phone, the clock. Every hour Roy Pritchard knocked and leaned in the doorway and shook his head. No word. The afternoon waned. Henry sat at his desk with the incomprehensible possibility. Almost hoping, despite himself, that they would find a body rather than the alternative.

  Rain began to fall, then freeze, tapping on the glass, coating the sidewalks, the leafless trees. The windows in Henry’s office went dark. He pictured Ginnie and the children at the dinner table, the light and warmth of the house in Arlington. He tried to imagine moving from this spot, moving in the world again, but it was unthinkable, the idea of being anywhere but behind his desk, waiting.

  Another knock. Henry started to speak but found that he had no voice. Roy opened the door, stood in the hallway staring at Henry’s desk, the windows behind.

  “He’s gone,” Roy said.

  * * *

  They were brought to Weir’s house to view the wreckage. There was an FBI man sitting in a car in the driveway, a few others still poking around in the living room, though the house had been turned numerous times by then. Paul Marist from Security led Henry and Roy into the familiar kitchen, then through a door and down a flight of stairs to the
basement. Henry had never been below the house before. A line of bare bulbs were fixed to the joists in the low ceiling, burning away into the distance. A long, large space, empty except for a congregation of boxes at the far end.

  They walked across the basement in silence. Marist opened the lids on a few of the boxes. Memoranda and project files, personnel files, accounting sheets. Henry recognized his own signature on many of them, Weir’s on many more. There was a box of undeveloped microfilm, a box of audiotape spools. They turned to a small desk and some wireless encoding equipment that sat on top, still plugged into the electrical outlet on the wall. Marist flipped a switch on one of the machines. There was a low, rich hum as it warmed up.

  “We’ve already tested it,” Marist said. “Moscow on the other end.”

  Henry looked back the way they had come, the line of lights leading to the stairs and the doorway. Innumerable times, he had shared coffee in Weir’s den ten feet above, dinner in the dining room. Over drinks once at the kitchen table, Weir had nodded to the basement door and complained about the useless enormity of the space, how he was too intimidated to even attempt finishing it into usable rooms. Henry had repeated the remark to Ginnie in bed that night, and she had rolled her eyes and offered to trade houses with Henry’s childless, bachelor boss with too much space on his hands.

  Footsteps creaking above. The FBI men moving through rooms. Marist left Henry and Roy alone with the boxes and equipment, walked back across the basement toward the stairs. Roy seemed on the verge of saying something a number of times, but stopped himself, running his fingertips along the edges of the box lids. Henry stood motionless, looking at the keys of the encoder.

  Everything they had worked on, everything they had discussed, it had all been sent east into the mouth of the enemy. He wanted to set fire to the room, to the house. Even though the damage was done, even though what had been left behind was simply a message, a preening show of accomplishment. Henry pictured it all in flames, the papers, the boxes, the encoder, the house above. He wanted to burn the whole thing to the ground.

  Roy was speaking to him.

  “You should go home, Henry. Get some sleep. They’ll want to talk to you soon.”

  It took an hour to drive to Arlington, through the aftermath of the ice storm, the streets in sheets, lawns and roofs glistening in the moonlight, tree branches sagged and creaking. Not quite alone. He knew there’d be an FBI man in a car following somewhere behind. He was a suspect now.

  He sat in his driveway with the car lights off. In the living room window, he could see Hannah reading to Thomas on the sofa, Ginnie clearing the table in the kitchen beyond. This feeling was impossible to define. As if the structure on which he was made had been taken away, the armature pulled from his body. He had been trained to distrust everyone except Weir. Weir was the control. Weir was the truth against which all else was measured.

  He sat in the driveway and watched his house, his children. He pictured Weir loose in the world, a new man now, or something other than a man, intangible, flying east, his old clothes discarded, his name, his old face shed. A ghost in the night.

  6

  San Francisco, Spring 1956

  He introduced himself as Jimmy Dorn, the name as he said it sounding like a single word. He spoke in a distracted headlong rush, his eyes settling briefly on Henry before moving to the details in the background, the layout of the north apartment, the sight lines out the windows. A veteran cop’s sizing up of the premises.

  “Heyhowareya. Gladwell? Jimmydorn.”

  He was a great grappler of a man, possibly ten years Henry’s senior, thick in the neck and chest, his head bare and pink as a thumb. His brow was wet, the collar of his shirt dark with sweat from the climb up the stairs. He was breathing hard but that didn’t slow his forward momentum as he walked past Henry, immediately filling the space. His voice was low and loud, with the cigarette-and-booze roughness Henry had first heard during their brief phone conversation the day before.

  Dorn cracked a cough into his fist, pounded himself on the chest to jar something loose.

  “So show me around. This the bedroom in here?”

  Henry watched him, silent. Dorn wore a sharp blue suit, custom-cut. Not the kind of outfit easily afforded on a detective’s salary alone. He kept moving, briskly inspecting the kitchen, the closets, asking questions without waiting for answers.

  “Where’s the head? In here?”

  Henry waited in the living room. The toilet flushed once, twice.

  “Henry? Hank?”

  Dorn said the second name as if he had already decided on it. He returned to the living room, lifted the curtains away from the walls, poked the couch cushions with the toe of a wing tip.

  “Who did your decorating? The place looks like a Catholic girls’ dorm.”

  He stopped in the center of the room, finally catching his breath, then turned to look at Henry.

  “All right. Enough bullshit. Show me your setup, Hank. Let me see all the secret stuff.”

  * * *

  They had lunch at an automat on Powell. Henry sat at a table by the window with a cup of coffee, watching Dorn make his way down the line of lit compartments. With every plate he pulled, Dorn lowered his head and sniffed, recoiled and replaced the item. He finally settled on what looked like tuna salad and toast, sat down across from Henry.

  “Let’s not make a habit of coming here. I know a million great places where you don’t pull your lunch from a hole.” Dorn looked at his tuna salad without enthusiasm, then at Henry’s coffee. “Did you already eat or are you not eating?”

  “I’m fine with coffee.”

  “This is all I can have.” Dorn indicated the limp sandwich. “Half this. I’m trying to get back down to my fighting weight. Two-ten. Two-fifteen. My wife is on my back.” He took a bite. “Where you from, Hank? Originally.”

  “The Midwest.”

  “The Midwest.”

  “Chicago,” Henry said.

  Dorn flipped his tie back over his shoulder, tucked his napkin into his collar and spread it across the front of his shirt. “You married? Any kids?” On Henry’s look he waved off his own question, took another mouthful of tuna salad. “Forget I asked. Too personal. Won’t happen again.”

  “What do we need to get started?”

  Dorn wiped his mouth on his napkin. “We’ll need two girls. Maybe three, but no more than that. They chirp like housewives. I’m thinking a white girl and a Negro. A Negro would widen the net. That way you’re going to get Negro males, and white males who are into Negroes. We could have a Chinese, too. That could be number three. Then you’ve pretty much got the whole city open to you, except for the queers. The queers are a different story. I don’t know if you want to go that route or not.”

  “Let’s start with two.”

  “Two it is. No problem. You got any preference, Hank? Blondes, brunettes? I’m just joking. You look like a family man. I’m just pulling your leg.”

  “How are they paid?”

  “Cash at the end of the night. And a few favors. I can keep them out of trouble. The protection is what instills loyalty. It’ll keep them quiet. You look a little queasy, Hank. You sure you don’t want something to eat?” Dorn produced a pen and a small black datebook from his breast pocket. He touched the tip of the pen to his tongue and jotted a note on a fresh page.

  “All discussion of this type is off the record,” Henry said.

  “What record? There is no record.” Dorn finished his note, closed the book, and returned it to his pocket. “Don’t worry about any of this, Hank. I’ll take care of everything.”

  7

  Washington, D.C., Winter 1955

  Fifteen workdays in a windowless room with Paul Marist and Marist’s subordinates from the Office of Security. Questioned without rest, eight hours a day, except for a brief lunch when one of the officers brou
ght in sandwiches. Marist and his men devouring the food while Henry consumed only coffee and cigarettes and thought back through the morning, what he had been asked, the answers he had given.

  He knew of Paul Marist. He knew of everyone. Marist was a veteran of the gung ho operations wing of the company, an energetic figure who strode the halls, smiling and shaking hands. Something in him that Henry distrusted, that Weir had distrusted. That clear-cut sense of confidence.

  Fifteen days. Henry knew that there was an element of revenge to this. These men had spent years in fear of Weir, of Henry, and now Henry was alone, stripped of his patron. They had been correct to distrust him, to distrust Weir, they had been proven right, and now they would take full advantage of the redistribution of power. He had no argument. He understood their anger, their sense of betrayal. He understood their fear, the savage uncertainty. He was trying to discover the answer to the same basic question they were asking. What he knew when.

  They recorded the interviews, took copious notes. They gave Henry a polygraph test every day for a week. They never told him the results, but they implied that he’d failed, which was common practice in these situations. He didn’t argue. Henry stated his story and answered their questions and corrected Marist when he tried to lead Henry down another path. This was Henry’s job. They were good, but this was Henry’s job. They tried every technique they knew. They questioned him one at a time, two at a time, a roomful of officers at a time, a Greek chorus of accusation. They made promises and threats, insinuations. Some of these men he had trained. Some of his very techniques turned against him. Like being interrogated by his own children.

  He said nothing to Ginnie for the first two weeks. The shock was too great, the shame. What he had unwittingly helped Weir accomplish. It was something he needed to contain within himself. When he was home, he moved as if sleepwalking, his head still in the room with Marist while he and Ginnie and the children ate dinner, shoveled the driveway and the walk.