A Long December

by Richard Chizmar

  I argued that I had nothing to write about, and he laughed at me.

  I got angry, and he laughed harder.

  He waved his arms. “Look around, Cavanaugh. We’re in Belgium, for Godsake. Surrounded by bad guys and endless haunted forest. Last month we were in France, marching through bombed-out towns with names we couldn’t even pronounce. Every day, side by side with men from cities and states we’ve never set foot in. Write a story about what you see, what you hear, what you feel. Write about the Sergeant. Or, hell, I don’t know, write about home if you want.”

  “Home?”

  “Sure, why not? All I know is that you’re never happier than when you talk about those stories you used to write when you were a kid.”

  “Exactly. Kid stuff. Monsters and aliens from outer space. It was dumb.”

  “Not dumb, and if you think that, then write about something else. Keep a journal.”

  I thought about it for a quiet moment.

  Henry pushed himself up from the tree he was sitting back on and thumped me on the shoulder. “Just make sure you write something good about me, Cavanaugh. C’mon, let’s go grab some grub.”

  A quick thud of footsteps sounded from behind us. Before I could even reach for my rifle, Sergeant Thompson was kneeling beside our foxhole, reaching down to Parker with a box of ammunition.

  “All you get until reinforcements show up.”

  Parker opened his mouth to say something, then decided against it. He took the box and found a dry spot for it inside our hole.

  “Henry?” I asked, scared to hear the Sergeant’s answer.

  “Hanging on. Not hurting anymore.”

  I nodded and adjusted my helmet. When I looked up again, the Sergeant was gone.

  Mostly, I wrote about the guys or things I missed back home.

  Fishing for perch in Hanson Creek with my little brother. Playing with the dogs. Catching fireflies and watching the girls in their Sunday dresses. Listening to my Mom and Pop teasing each other.

  Henry was right; it came pretty easy to me. The feelings and the words. Words I never would have even dreamt of saying out loud flowed onto paper as quickly as I could scribble them.

  Last week, I wrote about a skirmish we had gotten into with a handful of Germans holed up in a machine gun bunker. Everything I remembered seeing and feeling and hearing and smelling…I wrote it down. Henry asked if he could read it and liked it so much, he read it aloud to some of the other boys. It was embarrassing to listen to their compliments, but I also kind of liked it. Even the Sergeant said it read like something from a newspaper or Life magazine.

  After that day, I thought about turning it all into a book if I ever got home again, but I didn’t share that with anyone. Not even Henry.

  At least once a week, he would remind me: “Don’t forget to write something good about me.”

  I would smile and shake my head and joke back at him: “Do something good for a change, Henry, and maybe I will one day.”

  My “journal” has now grown to fill most of three notebooks. The kind you see school kids tucking under their desks before the first bell rings every morning. I traded two bars of chocolate to a guy in supply for the first notebook. A German helmet for the last two and a new box of pencils. Each notebook contains about a hundred pages and every page is filled except for the last twenty or so of the last notebook.

  I never would’ve dreamed I could write so much, but it just keeps coming out of me.

  I miss my mother more than anyone else back home, but I think the best thing I’ve ever written is about my father. More words I could never say out loud—especially not to him. Henry said it almost reads like a poem, and I agree with that. After some thought, I even gave it a title. “Heroes”:

  I’ve always watched him. Secretly. From the time I was a child. Watched the way his eyebrows danced when he laughed. The way he lit his pipe or handled a tool, like a magician wielding a magic wand. The way he walked the family dog; bending to talk with it or ruffle its fur, but only when he was sure no one was watching. The way he read the newspaper or one of his tattered old pulps, peering over the worn pages every few minutes to keep me in check. The way his eyes twinkled when he called me “son.” I’ve always watched him.

  That’s just the start of it, but for me, writing those words was like traveling back in a time machine. It was like…magic.

  The mortars started again just minutes ago. Screaming overhead. Getting closer. Great chunks of shattered trees and frozen earth showering us in our holes. When the mortars go silent, they will come, with guns and bayonets. There are only eighteen of us left now. Word came an hour ago that the artist had died. No more fancy Yankee talk. No more drawings. No more goofy smiles.

  He’d sketched most of the men at one time or another. I take out a folded piece of heavy paper from my journal and unfold it. It’s my face, but older and thinner than I remember it. It’s good. It’s better than good; it’s magic.

  I fold it back up and tuck it in my journal.

  Help isn’t coming. At least not in time for us.

  I know that now; maybe I always knew.

  Parker is huddled at the bottom of our foxhole like a frightened rabbit. Eyes like quarters. Stuffing cotton in his ears.

  I grab my rifle and secure my helmet and think one last time of Henry.

  Henry the artist. So much talent. So much joy. Gone.

  If I make it home, I will visit his folks, his sisters. Sit with them and drink lemonade and tell them what a fine young man they had gifted to the world. If I don’t make it, I hope what I have written is enough.

  It will have to be.

  (Item 174765C—Bound Notebook—Found in Ardennes, Belgium; property of Private James F. Cavanaugh; Worthington, South Carolina; 99th Infantry Division; killed in action January 14, 1945)

  (for William V. Chizmar and Richard Matheson)

  Family Ties

  1

  A couple years ago, my momma told me about the one and only time she saw her daddy cry. It was a very long time ago at his youngest brother’s funeral. Uncle Bobby was her favorite uncle in the whole world, Momma said, and he’d got himself killed at the factory. Momma told me it broke her heart to see her daddy that way. Felt like something inside of her was dying, like her heart was just ripping apart.

  That’s how I felt when they brought Jason into the courtroom.

  Like something inside of me was dying.

  He seemed so small. So scared. His arms looked so skinny in the handcuffs. And he wouldn’t even look at me.

  He hadn’t been the same big brother for a long time now, that’s for sure, but the old Jason still lived inside my head. The way he used to wink at me and laugh when he was up to no good or fooling around teasing Momma. The way he used to take charge of a bad situation out on the street and turn it around. Or the way he could look at you with those big brown eyes of his and make you believe you could do almost anything, even fly if you wanted to. I was his Little One, and he was my big brother. Always so strong and sure of himself.

  Now, sitting up there on the witness stand, as the lawyers and the judge asked him questions, he mostly just stared at the floor in front of him. Nodded his head every now and then. And when he did look up, it was like staring at a stranger. Like someone you passed on the street corner and never thought twice about.

  A tear rolled down my cheek, and before I could wipe it away with my shirt sleeve, Momma did it herself with a balled-up Kleenex. “You okay, honey?” she whispered.

  I nodded and tried to smile.

  Momma knew I wasn’t okay. She’d been through this before a couple of times with one of her nephews, but this was my first time inside a courtroom. It sure looked different than on television. Everything was so big and the ceilings were so high and the furniture didn’t look all shiny and pretty. And there weren’t a lot of fancy-dressed people running around yelling and giving speeches like on television either. Just me and Momma and Jason, the judge, and a bunch of fat law
yers and policemen. And some lady with curly red hair who was typing everything that was being said.

  It was cold, too. Real cold. Didn’t they have heat in a place like this?

  I hugged myself and shivered. It all made me feel so small. Like a little girl. Much younger than fourteen years old. It all made me want my big brother even more.

  “I’ll always be there to watch your back, Little One,” he used to tell me. “Try not to worry so much. I’ll take good care of you.”

  And he had. Up until six or seven months ago. Until everything changed…

  2

  Jason had been more than just a big brother to me. He’d been my father, protector, teacher, playmate, my best friend in the whole world. He and Momma were everything to me. Our daddy had taken off soon after I was born. Left one morning for work and never came back, Momma told me. Rumor was he moved down to Baltimore with some other woman. Jason was three at the time. I saw a picture of my daddy once. It was old and wrinkled and faded, but he didn’t look a thing like Jason or me. Just some stranger is all.

  From the time he was old enough, Jason took care of me. Took good care of me, too. Making sure I was dressed for school on time and had some breakfast. Making sure I did my homework before watching television. Teaching me to read better than anyone in my class and how to write cursive. How to wash my clothes and help keep the apartment clean. Always checking on me after school and making sure I wasn’t smoking cigarettes or hanging around with what he called “the bad kids.”

  Momma did the best she could with both us kids. And her best was pretty darn good. We started out in the projects. Rats, roaches, brown water, and a whole lot worse. But Momma worked two jobs all day long and took in some baby-sitting whenever she had a couple of free hours. When I was six, we moved three blocks north to a two-bedroom apartment. It was still pretty cold in the winter; heck, I’ve never lived anywhere where the heat works the way it’s supposed to; but we had hot food on the table and store-bought clothes on our backs. No more food stamps or charity for us. Momma was a proud woman, and she taught us kids to be the same way. Most nights, she’d come home from her first job, shower, grab a bite to eat or squeeze in a nap, and then she was gone to the bus stop and her night job. Seven days a week it was like that. Sometimes we teased her and called her the Phantom.

  “It won’t always be like this, kids,” she’d promise us. “It’ll keep getting better and better. Just you wait and see.”

  And we believed her, too.

  In the meantime, it was up to us to take care of ourselves. But it wasn’t all work either. We had fun together. Lots of it. We’d play board games when it was raining outside and watch movies on television. Jason even pretended to like to watch cartoons with me. Sometimes we’d play Stratego or Monopoly or cards at the kitchen table and bake chocolate-chip cookies or cupcakes. I can still see Jason now, walking over to check on the cookies and me pretending to sneak a peek at one of his game pieces. He’d give me one of those I-know-exactly-what-you’re-doing looks and wink at me. He never once yelled or got mad because he knew I wasn’t really cheating; just teasing him and trying to get a rise outta him.

  The summer I turned ten years old, Jason taught me how to play basketball. How to dribble and pass the ball. How to shoot and play good defense. He was a great teacher; he was real patient and hardly ever got mad or frustrated, even when I didn’t listen to him. And he was tough with me, too. Didn’t treat me like a sissy or anything. Later, when I started playing rec ball at the YMCA on Saturday mornings, he came to every game and sat in the stands with his friends from school. I could tell he was proud of me.

  And, of course, it was Jason who brought Simon home three days before my twelfth birthday.

  Simon was a skinny little runt of a gray kitten. The first time I laid eyes on him he looked more like a baby beaver than a cat. Jason had found him inside a Dumpster behind the Laundromat meowing away in a rainstorm. Said he was afraid the poor thing might’ve drowned if he hadn’t come along. Figured the kitty could keep me company when he was at basketball practice after school or working down at the video store. That evening, we went down to Fisher’s Pet Store, and he bought me a collar, a food and water dish, some cat food, and a place for Simon to use the bathroom. He gave me a big hug out on the sidewalk in front of Fisher’s and wished me an early Happy Birthday. That’s how I like to remember my big brother.

  A few months later, when I started whining that Simon liked Jason more than me, he really surprised me and brought home another kitty. A girl kitty this time. He named her Samantha—after the mom on Bewitched—and we made a return trip to Fisher’s Pet Store. Simon and Samantha took to each other like brother and sister, and Samantha grew to be as fond of me as Simon was of Jason. Some nights she would sit on my lap for hours and watch television, and she slept at the foot of my bed every night, curled inside the covers.

  It was around that time that Momma got her promotion at the store, and she was finally able to quit her night job. Good thing, too, because before long she was busy at the store every night until eight or nine o’clock. She usually came home about an hour before my bedtime. But just wait and see, kids, she told us a few weeks into her new schedule. It’ll be worth it. It comes with a good pay increase and a lot of responsibility. My gosh, we were so proud of her. I remember we celebrated with dinner at Pizza Hut and a movie afterward. Jason gave a toast at the restaurant, and Momma started crying and laughing at the same time, and then I did, too. Jason said we were both crazy ladies and acted all embarrassed and ran off to the restroom, shaking his head at us.

  So, things were good for us then, and for about a year after that. We both kept on missing Momma, but Jason and I understood why she had to be gone so much. And we still had each other. It was probably the happiest time of my life.

  Then, just like that, things started to change.

  Jason started to change.

  It was little things at first. I noticed he didn’t smile as often as he used to. He wasn’t as funny as he once was—not as many wisecracks or practical jokes or silly faces. And he didn’t spend as much time hanging around with me either—watching television, playing games, or playing with Simon and Samantha. Some days after practice he went right to his bedroom and stayed there until dinnertime. Some mornings I had to wake him up for school, when it had usually been the other way around.

  And then it got worse. He went from being a little moody to downright grumpy. Some days he was mean to me; other days he just ignored me. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t done anything at all to make him act this way. Some nights we’d sit at the kitchen table eating dinner and not say a word to each other. It was like living with a different person.

  I talked to Momma about it, and she told me it was probably just “girl trouble.” That’s exactly what she called it—girl trouble. Promised me that she would talk to him. Said all teenagers went through it, and you just watch and see, he’ll be back to his old self before we know it.

  But she was wrong. It just kept getting worse.

  Soon, I started noticing other things. Jason didn’t shower as often as before. Sometimes I could smell the sweat and the stink on him all the way across the room. And his clothes were always wrinkled and dirty. For someone like Jason, this was a big deal. In the old days, he used to be such a sharp dresser, so handsome and cool; all my girlfriends used to say so.

  And then there was school. Once basketball season was over, he started missing classes. Some of my friends would tell me they saw him leaving school early, or once in a while, he would tell me he was sick and for me to leave without him in the morning. He would promise that he was coming in late, and then he’d never show up at all.

  I tried to tell Momma what was going on, but she was real busy at work, and Jason always had an answer for her anyway. He was good like that; he always had it covered.

  One of the worst things of all was how Jason started treating Simon and Samantha. First he just ignored them. He didn’t feed them
anymore or clean their litter boxes when it was his turn. He didn’t play with them. He pretty much pretended they didn’t exist. That was bad enough, but then he got mean. He started pushing them away when they slinked over to him for attention. He tried to kick them when they got in his way. That kind of thing. I couldn’t understand how he could do those things, but soon he was like that pretty much every day.

  Then, one day, I found out his secret. His dirty little secret.

  I came home early from practice one Saturday afternoon and walked in on him in the bathroom by accident. The door wasn’t locked, and I didn’t even know anyone was home. Jason was bent over the sink, smoking a little glass pipe. His face was all red and sweaty and his eyes were wild and glassy. I knew what he was doing right away—smoking crack cocaine. I ran into the kitchen crying, and he followed me, the pipe still in his hand. I was hysterical, screaming and crying. Jason sat me down at the table and calmed me down, but first I made him put the pipe away; I couldn’t even stand to look at it. We talked for almost two hours that night, and this is what he promised me:

  He said it was only a phase he was going through. Kind of an experiment. Everyone was doing it at school, and he wanted to try it. But he knew it was stupid, and he’d already decided that it wasn’t for him. Today was only the third or fourth time he’d tried it, he swore to me. So, no problem, he would stop. He didn’t like the cocaine, and he certainly didn’t need it. He would stop. It was as simple as that.

  I wasn’t sure if I should believe him or not, but he was so convincing. So much like the old Jason. God, it felt good to see and hear him like that and to be able to talk to him again. He wasn’t at all like the stranger I’d grown to know.

  So, by bedtime that night, Jason agreed to never take drugs ever again. And I agreed not to tell Momma anything and to trust him. We were sister and brother again, and we watched television—Simon and Samantha on our laps—until Momma came home from work. I honestly thought things were going to be better from that night on.