Ned thought she might be a couple of years older than he.
“Hello, Nurse Irene Prafke.” Through slitted eyes, he read from the name tag pinned to her starched, white apron. A beautiful name for a beautiful lady. Ned decided he might just be falling in love.
For a fleeting moment, he felt a sense of betrayal, but didn’t know whether he was the guilty one, or if he was the one betrayed. With a sense of wonder, Ned found he was having trouble remembering anything, up to and including his own name. Thoughts kept circling around on themselves, bent and twisted in his memory.
It was a great relief when Nurse Prafke smiled, a delight to behold, and said, “Hello yourself, Sergeant Smith. How do you feel?”
Sergeant Smith? There was no doubt she was addressing him by name. A name, anyway. And it almost sounded right, but—not quite. He frowned.
Irene Prafke answered the frown. “Are you in pain, soldier? I can tell doctor you require another injection of morphine, if you like.”
Ah. Ned’s moment of near panic ebbed. Therein lay his problem. Morphine had always had a strange effect on him, though how he knew this was hard to say. The drug killed the pain quite effectively, while giving him troubled dreams he could never quite decipher. Real or imaginary? He’d never forgotten his name before, though. Not to the point of arguing against his name being Ned Smith.
Ha! He pounced on his own logic. She’d called him sergeant first, not Ned. He’d figured out Ned by himself, so all was well. He wasn’t losing his grip on reality—not at all.
He remembered being shot. His leg again. Again? The only way to keep these strange ideas from entering his consciousness, Ned decided, was to contend with the problem right away.
Okay. He knew he’d been shot in the leg. How badly? That was the question, since there were degrees of seriousness. All the way from burning his hide to taking the whole leg off. It wasn’t that bad. Not yet.
He was certain he fell somewhere in between the two extremes, but the only way to prove it was to test for himself. The doctors here were nothing more than sawbones. He had more schooling—more experience, too, most likely—than any three of them put together.
Shocked by this harsh conclusion, and unsure how he’d come by it, Ned forced his sore leg to move in more a simple flexing of the muscle than a shift in place. His eyes screwed shut from the pain. Though he froze as still as could be, the wound burned as if lanced by a thousand-watt electric wire.
He drew breath, puffed out; drew breath, puffed out. Minutes passed before he regained control.
Irene watched, her expression compassionate, relaxing only after he did. “I’ll call the doctor,” she said, turning toward the door now the worst was over.
“No! Don’t leave, please. Stay and talk with me. You can help me most by talking.” The strength of his protest surprised Ned, but he had the strangest feeling about this woman. He couldn’t explain what exactly. Not yet.
To cover the slight embarrassment of the moment, he said, “I’m sorry, Miss Prafke. Thank you, but I don’t deal well with morphine. It gives me bad dreams.”
“Mrs. Prafke,” Irene amended gently. “It’s Mrs. Prafke.”
He was appalled at the slug of disappointment the information forced him to swallow. Inadvertently he moved again and her red-faced correction was somehow lost amid the contingencies of the moment.
And so he was forced to endure the unwrapping, then rewrapping, of the dressing on his leg, and finally, over his protests, to suffer the indignity of yet another morphine injection. All this from a quack who hadn’t a quarter of his own skill and knowledge.
“A horse doctor, Ned? That’s all you are.” He tried saying that to himself, but heard the wrongness in his own words. Damn, he was so mixed up, he didn’t know which way was up. He hated the gaps in his memory.
Nurse Prafke stayed with him while the morphine took control of his mind. He plunged abruptly into a drugged sleep filled with every one of the tormented dreams he’d expected. The last clear sight he had was of her gentle face hanging over his like a disembodied angel. Only her eyes weren’t a demure hazel anymore. They’d changed to vibrant dark, almost black eyes, fringed by long, thick spider leg eyelashes. He always wanted to lose himself in those eyes.
Always? Whose eyes were they?
He almost had the answer—something to do with magic. Then he was distracted by a whisper heard like faraway music on the wind.
“Caleb, where are you? Come back, Caleb Deane.”
Ned thrashed, compelled by and wanting to obey the witch-lady’s demand, but the morphine wouldn’t let him go. He remained captive.
Caleb Deane? he thought to ask. Then who the hell am I?
CHAPTER 12
Breakfast was a non-event. I gulped coffee hot enough to burn the little bumps off my tongue, then cooled the result with cold OJ. I don’t, mind you, ordinarily recommend such a practice since it’s a good way to crack the enamel on your teeth. At this point, however, I had other, more important things to think about.
The first such point was to get out of the house before Dad and Scott started in on me again. Then there was the one that said Caleb’s predicament was my fault—all my fault. How could I dispute the justice of that accusation, even though I hadn’t been on the spot when Caleb disappeared? I’d bought the Colt, I’d stored it on the shelf. I might even have inspired the events by piquing everyone’s curiosity.
Oh, yes. My fault. Mine. And so the responsibility of putting things right also belonged to me.
Dad appeared not to notice when I left the apartment. He was much too occupied in keeping the phone lines hot, yakking it up with Scott, to hear me creep past him on silent feet. “No news, is good news,” I heard him say. Yeah. Right.
THE BETHANY HOME had a whole different perspective in the clean, morning light. Yesterday evening, the place had seemed closed and eerie to me, both because of the silence and emptiness I’d found within, and because of August von Fassnacht’s strangeness.
This morning, with people, caregivers and residents alike, stirring purposefully on the grounds, it appeared a normal, if large and heavily peopled, residence. A man was already out on a small tractor mowing the lawn.
Inside, the old building was dark, same as on my previous visit. Again, as previously, no one stopped me from going anywhere I wanted, or asked my business. The Tweety-bird lady was not around and I made my way to Mr. von Fassnacht’s room without being accosted by anyone.
Tapping on his door, I waited. Nothing. Tapped again, and waited again.It didn’t seem reasonable he would be out so early. I knocked, firmly this time, and leaned forward to lay my ear close to the door. I thought I heard someone, although the door remained closed.
Was he trying to avoid me? Aggravated, as well as a little worried, since he had looked terribly beaten, tired, and old when he ousted me from his room only a few hours ago, I knocked once more, hard. Nothing.
What if he’d died during the night
I tried the knob
At first it resisted, locked up tight. Then the door sprang open and I stumbled gracelessly into his room. August’s smile was bitter and thin, contrarily happy to have embarrassed me.
“Come in, sis, before you fall in.
I grunted, one hand grabbing at the doorjamb to recover my balance, the other holding my heavy purse at my side to prevent it from swinging into anything. I smelled soap and shaving lotion as I brushed past him.
“Since you’re here,” he said, “I suppose this means your lover-boy never made it home. Maybe he doesn’t want to come back. You ever think of that?”
Actually, no, I hadn’t, and didn’t spare much thought to it now. “He has no reason to want to stay there, Mr. von Fassnacht, unlike you. Although, for the life of me, I can’t see why you want to go back either. When you left, your country was at war, on the verge of being beaten. Twenty years later, it was the same story again. Then came all the other things—a country divided, communism, the Berlin wall. Anyway, do y
ou think you can change that girl, Eva? You must see that she isn’t— wasn’t—worth a single, sad thought.”
“Yes. I know. You showed me exactly what she was.
Funny. He didn’t sound grateful
“As for the rest, call it redemption, if you like, or expiation for my sins. I’ve spent the last eighty-five years of my life wondering why I lived through that war and others did not. Why fate let me kill and not be punished for it. Why some cosmic deity let me take another man’s identity and flourish under his name.”
Good Lord! I couldn’t help being startled. Did he really think he’d had a good life
“Flourish? Is that what you call living like this?” I let my eyes wander over his few possessions, then walked over to the single two- by-four foot window to take in the Bethany’s manicured lawn.
From where I stood, punishment seemed a more descriptive term, whether he thought so or not.
For all I knew, he might have millions tucked away in a brokerage account somewhere, own land and palaces here and abroad, have fifteen affectionate children waiting for the weekend to come visit, but somehow I didn’t believe so.
His pale face reddened. “But I lived, Boothenay Irons, when I should’ve died. Lived and lived and lived, until I can’t stand it anymore. At one time I accepted my life as a gift. Now I know it for something else.”
Yes. A curse. But I refrained from saying so out loud.
Anyway, he led me over to a table underneath the single window, seated me, then poured coffee from a drip-filtered pot into a bone china cup. A linen napkin was at each setting, rose colored to match the flowers painted on the cups. All exceedingly genteel, and odd in a self- acclaimed murderer.
August himself was haggard. His eyes looked like deep pits bored into his skull; his lips drew tight over teeth that seemed too large to fit in his mouth. His head pulled forward on his neck like a turtle looking for a handout. He wore a sherpa-lined denim vest over a long-sleeved shirt buttoned to the neck as if he were cold. I was almost certain he’d shrunk between now and yesterday.
He still didn’t look the hundred-plus he claimed to be, but he was definitely gaining on it. Worse, he seemed ill. I most assuredly didn’t want him kicking off yet; not until I’d figured out how to trade him for Caleb. Assuming I ever found Caleb, that is.
Seating himself across from me, August leaned back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest and stretching out his legs. I think he meant this to show he was totally relaxed and taking these strange goings-on with a grain of salt—cool and casual, yeah. Only his eyes said something different.
“That was quite a show you put on last night,” he said, trying a grin that didn’t quite work. “I still haven’t figured out how you did it, or where you discovered that little incident with Eva. What you got for a follow-up?”
To tell you the truth, his attitude took me by surprise. He felt the power, even if he couldn’t use it himself, in same way he knew the Colt was the catalyst. Last night, after he got over being terrorized, he’d wanted me to take him back in time and leave him. What had changed?
“What do you mean, show? Have you decided you don’t want to go back after all?”
“No,” he said, his face haggard. Then, “Yes. To be perfectly frank with you, sis, I was kind of thinking I’d dreamed the whole thing. Sometimes I do have terrible dreams, so vivid and real, they wake me up if I’m sleeping. But times when I know I’m awake, I can still hear people screaming and crying. I taste the smoke of my gunpowder and feel the burn of mustard gas on my skin. I’m old, girl. I’m entitled to wonder what’s real and what’s not. To wander in my mind a little bit.”
Was he asking for comfort?
“Don’t we already have all this can-you-can’t-you, how-do-you-do- it stuff out of the way? The change just happens. Don’t start doubting yourself and your own perceptions, August,” I told him quietly. “And don’t doubt me. You know last night was neither a dream nor a trick. I’m not into playing tricks on the elder generation.”
Unfolding his arms, he leaned forward, his studied casualness dropping away. “You didn’t bring the Colt with you.”
I shook my head. He wasn’t asking. He knew I hadn’t. Did the gun have so much power over him that he could tell whether or not it was present? I imagine that’s why he’d been searching for it so urgently.
“No point in dragging a gun around if I don’t have to,” I said. “We don’t need it yet. There’s only one way to handle this kind of thing, and that’s to know exactly where and when you’re going, who you’re going to meet, and what you’re gonna face when you get there. That’s what we need to do next. We need to plan our campaign.”
The statement was a bald-faced lie on my part. I’d never once in all these years been truly prepared for any of the adventures I’d had. Having the information on where and when and what would be an enormous help, since I couldn’t trust August von Fassnacht when it came to lifting Caleb out of his difficulty. I’d have been willing to take money on the old fart reneging on the deal we’d made if I were to return the pistol to him.
I took the first cautious sip of my coffee, surprised to find it was still warm. I felt as if I’d been here for hours.
August must have decided to take my spiel at face value, for he reached into the inner pocket of his vest and pulled out the sheaf of photographs we’d gone over before.
“Campaign, eh. I guess that means you want to know all of my secrets.”
“Only the ones that pertain to the war and that’ll help me find my friend.” I still found myself reluctant to say Caleb’s name out loud to this old man, afraid in so speaking I’d jinx Caleb somehow. Illogical, I know, but in the past I’d found trusting my instincts worked more often to my advantage than not.
“Where shall we start? You want to learn about my cousin Willie, whose life I stole?” Sighing, he separated the photo of the young American soldier from the three he’d fanned out on the table amongst the coffee cups. “Let’s do it, sis. If the remembering and the reliving of those times is what it takes to set me free, then I’m game.”
See? Though I had, he’d avoided mentioning Caleb at all, which pretty well assured me that if push came to shove, we’d be working at cross purposes. He was aiming at his own freedom, not Caleb’s. My agenda against his. A large part of my job was to make sure the two jibed.
This time I picked up on more of the details in the photograph. I noticed the boy was standing in the middle of a rather barren yard with a large Army style building in the background. He was unsmiling, though I sensed this stemmed more from the social mores of the day than from a somber inclination. No one smiles in those old pictures that I’ve ever seen. Such a serious facade makes a subject’s age hard to judge, though I guessed Will at around twenty. From what he’d said, von Fassnacht had been a couple of years older.
When I looked up from the photo, I saw the old man was trembling. In some odd way, this evidence of tension on his part made me feel better. It helped to see what he’d done to his cousin all those years ago still bothered him. Time had not let him forget.
He summoned up a smile now. “Willie was always a good kid,” he said. “He dogged his older brother Frank and me around like a faithful puppy every summer for four years. Then, in 1912, the Titanic went down and my mother wouldn’t allow me to sail to America that year. I remember I was devastated, and mad as hell.” He shot a glance at me. “You’ve heard of the Titanic? Well, don’t go thinking I ever sailed on a ship like that. My mother sent me second-class on a passenger freighter, and I expect I was lucky she didn’t opt for steerage. Mother wasn’t much on coddling children, especially me.”
No. I supposed not. A woman who will send her seven-year-old to a military boarding school probably isn’t too concerned about his comfort and well-being.
“The thing is,” August continued, “I couldn’t have cared less how she sent me, as long as she did. As it happened, I only got to go once more, the summer I turned seventeen.
Willie was fourteen that year and Frank had completed his first year at Princeton University. Frank had become a man.”
August had no photo of Frank, but quite suddenly, I saw him. With the curious chemistry between the old man and me, we had, at the same instant, looked down at Will Mueller’s official military portrait and, in next moment, found ourselves watching three boys at play.
Close enough to smell a commingling of summer heat, river water, green grass, crushed fern and the huge, old cottonwood trees, I felt chilled droplets splash onto me when the youngest of the boys swung out over the water at the end of a rope, dropping in a mighty explosion of spray. The other two cheered.
Then I saw a whole mélange of times; saw the same three boys as they grew from child, to teenager, to manhood. I saw them always in the same place on the river, at the deep pool where they dared each other to swing higher, curl tighter, drop harder. I saw the oldest, Frank, take the youngest, Willie, piggy-back on the kid’s first drop
Willie shrieked with glee, his arms squeezed tight around his brother’s neck, his skinny legs in a waist-lock. A young August tread water outside the drop zone, prepared to dive for survivors—only it wasn’t necessary. The brothers bobbed to the surface squirting water out their mouths like spouting whales and flicking sodden hair from their eyes.
“Did you see, Gus?” Willie shouted in innocent excitement. “I did it! Told you I would, didn’t I, Frank?”
“Damn near choked me to death with those twiggy, little arms of yours,” Frank said, obviously proud of his younger brother’s courage. I judged Frank to be around sixteen-years-old and Will maybe as much as ten.
“Vell done, Villiam,” the young August said, his accent sounding very German. There was no meanness in him—not then.
In a transition that didn’t allow for the passage of time, the next blink of my eyes showed the boys, older now by several years, and this time they were skinny dipping in the same river pool.
Shadow Soldier (The Gunsmith Book 2) Page 12
