by Brian Payton
The constant drip and trickle of water is amplified.
Easley’s first instinct is to cuff him across the head. How could he have been so foolish? But the boy has gone gray with shock. Easley gathers him up in his arms. He steps with care away from the dark fire pit, finally laying him atop their nest. Easley covers him in the parachutes and gently props up his leg. He loosens the laces of Karl’s boot but does not remove it. It will help retain body heat. Once more, he runs his fingers along the shin where the point of bone threatens to poke through. Then he pulls the pant leg down so they won’t have to see it.
“I’m going to make a fire,” Easley says. “Then I’m going to find a splint.”
“They’ll kill us both if you surrender.”
“Surrender? Who the hell said ‘surrender’?”
“Just sit here with me awhile. Talk to me.”
Easley considers the boy. The dark, bruised smears at the hollows of his eyes, skin pale and greasy.
“Let me make the fire.”
Down at the pit, Easley assembles a little pile of coal, dry grass, and sticks. He holds the lighter in position. Three turns of the striking wheel fail to produce a flame. The fourth try is the charm. The grass catches fire and Easley pushes more nourishing blades atop the heat and light. It travels down stems and under the sticks until finally the coal itself is aflame. For the moment, they ignore the fact that the lighter has likely given its final performance. Easley arranges more coal around the little blaze until it can stand on its own. It is then he recalls the vodka. Easley pulls the bottle from his pocket and scrambles back up to the boy.
“Look what I found. It’s not whiskey, but it’ll make you feel better just the same.” He uncorks the bottle and holds it out to Karl, who first wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. After a tentative sip, he tilts it in the air.
“Once you’re warm and comfortable, I’m going to get a splint. Then I’m going to set that leg, and—”
“Sit with me.”
Easley sits.
“I’m tired. I just want to sleep, but I’m too cold. And afraid.”
“Karl.”
“I haven’t been much of a Christian.” The boy’s eyes bloodshot and shiny. “You know, much of a believer. I wouldn’t blame the Lord for not believing in me.”
The boy twists knuckles in his eyes as Easley looks on, ashamed of his own uselessness.
“You’re not alone,” Easley says.
He gestures to the booze. The boy finishes it off and holds out the empty bottle.
All at once, Easley is certain of two things: that the boy is still falling, and that he will do whatever it takes to catch him. He also knows that this is not a sentimental or unselfish devotion—it is an act of self-preservation. It is as much Easley’s leg cracked and useless, as much his own soul stunned and reeling.
“There’s still a few hours of light,” Easley says. “First I’m going to get you a splint and set that stinking leg. Then I’m going to scare up a couple of blue plate specials”—their term, of late, for mussels.
EASLEY RUNS ALONG the beach in the failing light, straining to see farther along the shore. It is the want of simple things like this—a long, straight piece of wood—that makes him hate this place so perfectly. He runs past the spot where he found the bottle of vodka. The day is too far gone to risk a trek to the village and back. When he reaches the cliff at the end of the beach, Easley feels his eyes welling up, the heaviness of having let the boy down. And then he remembers the post.
He jogs a steady pace. He arrives at the site as the setting sun flashes through a rent in the clouds, illuminating the ceiling of sky. Because the beach faces east, he cannot see the sun itself, only its remarkable effect on the day left behind. It shines up shades of copper and pink so dazzling it makes him stop. He imagines it filling his lungs. He pulls in all the beauty and light for the boy. If need be, he’ll bring it back to the cave and breathe it straight into him.
They had assumed the lone post might have marked a grave or some pagan place. They agreed they would respect it. Now, Easley falls to his knees and seizes it with his hands. It is about as thick as the boy’s ankle. He grips the base and pulls for all he’s worth. It breaks free of the earth and Easley falls back on a patch of wild celery. He scrambles to his feet, inspects the wood, and finds that it is rotten. To test its integrity, he pulls it across his bent knee—it crumbles into uselessness.
Easley drops the post and holds his face in his hands. He stumbles around in a rage and stubs his toe on a pile of stones. He curses the blushing sky, then scans the distance to see if anyone has heard. He backs away from the broken post, the pile of stones, the bitter celery. He stumbles back toward the cave.
The gap in the cloud widens, allowing stars to poke through. They offer the only illumination on Easley’s approach. He picks his way down the ravine and through the rocks by touch and memory—the way he would move in the dead of night through his childhood home, or the house on Aden Street. Inside the cave, only the faintest glow lingers around the ashes and coals. Easley calls the boy’s name but hears no reply. In the absence of light, he feels his way up to their nest. He startles when his hand glances the boy’s shoulder.
“Hey buddy.” Easley squats down.
All is darkness. Easley touches the boy’s shoulder again, but feels no response.
“Couldn’t find a splint, but I’ll get one in the morning.”
The boy’s head rolls forward.
“Karl.”
Easley puts his ear to the boy’s nose to sense if he is breathing. He feels the boy’s neck. Cool—and still, without a pulse.
“Karl.”
When Easley reaches for the boy’s hand, his own fingers come back sticky. He brings them to his nose, then his tongue.
“You . . .”
Easley locates the wrist, then the seam that’s been opened there. He moans out loud. He searches the other arm and finds a matching wound. Easley works his hand into the boy’s jacket and through the shirt. He finds more stillness there.
Easley cradles Karl’s head and shoulders. He rocks back and forth, and cries for the loss of a friend he never let close enough to know him. He cries at his failure to find a splint in time and for the mistake of having left him alone. He cries as never before. He cries with fear—not of death itself but of the wait he must now face alone.
* * *
EASLEY FOLDS EACH filthy garment removed from the body, left modest only in stained underpants. The diffused, midday light reaches through the cave to cold, waxen skin. A hint of jade where veins once flowed. The overall effect is marble. Easley raises his head from the task at hand to watch the birds turning in the mist. Thin fog softens every edge and line.
The wait for the turn of tide has finally come to an end. Adrenaline has been replaced with the kind of nervous, twitchy exhaustion that can only be solved with a big meal and a sleep of several days.
Bloodstained trousers, shirt, undershirt folded and stacked, as if destined for a drawer. Socks draped over the wall of the fire pit, boots paired up near the coal. I will have to wear them soon, Easley thinks, in order to avoid going mad at their sight. He must claim them as his own.
He tells the boy that he will be missed, that he will make good use of his things. One day, Easley vows, he will drive to Texas. He asks the boy to forgive him if he can. Put in a good word with the powers that be, if Helen is right and there is indeed a heaven.
Do not haunt me, my friend. Leave me in some kind of peace.
Easley scans the hills, sky, and sea. Seeing no enemy, he carries his burden to the beach. He lays Karl’s body on a bed of flattened rye. He removes his own boots, socks, and trousers, then gathers Karl up again.
The surf—tugging at his legs—is so cold it seems to burn. It would pull them both out to sea. Easley wades up to his waist, then turns his back on an incoming wave. Once it passes, he kisses the boy’s forehead and turns toward the deep. He lays the body in the foam as the spe
nt wave slackens and begins flowing out again. It floats heavily toward the next set, then tumbles back with the following break. He keeps watch until his legs beg mercy and he is forced back to land.
Easley dries himself and dresses again, not once giving in to the urge to turn. Only when his boots are laced, jacket zipped, does he permit himself one last look.
Sandpipers and plovers scurry along the edge of the tide, giving him the quick double take. He scans near and far, but the boy is already gone.
EIGHT
SHE AWAKENS WITH A START. HELEN HAD FALLEN asleep so easily after supper, drifting off to the sound of heavy rain lashing the windowpanes, coursing through the gutters above. Only two hours have passed. Her muscles are stiff, her skin damp with perspiration. She swings her legs over the side of the bed, stands, gathers her sense of place.
Helen stops unnoticed at the top of the stairs with a view to the living room below. Despite the late hour, the light is still on. Her father sits at the little card table, shoulders hunched, the space for three other players gone wanting. His good hand glides in careful, rhythmic motions as he deals the cards. A game of solitaire stretches out between a bottle of rum and a nearly empty glass. Unaware of her presence, he surveys the upturned cards. He takes another sip, the ice clinking in his glass. He places it back atop the coaster and rests his forehead in his hand.
Joe isn’t a heavy drinker, just a regular one. He’ll have two rums before going to bed. Helen doesn’t think it does him any harm and she’s never seen him drunk. It’s like baseball, radio programs, or mass on Sunday mornings. A small comfort in a world seemingly designed to deny them.
He flips over cards, three at a time.
Since moving back in, Helen hasn’t spent as much time with him as she’d planned, as she told herself she would. Instead she’s been deceiving him, telling him she’s been out searching for work when all the while she’s been preparing for her departure. And now she feels a great swell of tenderness, looking down at her diminished protector, her first love, her oldest and truest friend. She reaches for the railing, a slight creak issues from the old fir floor. Joe glances up and sees her standing there. He runs fingers through thinning hair.
“Sweetheart, what’s the matter?”
She doesn’t know where to begin.
“Come on down,” he says, looking around for another chair. He spies one folded and leaning against the wall by the bookcase. He nearly trips in his eagerness to get it.
Helen descends the stairs and resists the urge to help him as he shakes open the chair for her. He pats it twice. She takes up the seat—along with her father’s glass.
“You don’t mind if I have a sip, do you?”
“Let me get you a fresh one.” He starts to get up, but Helen tugs his sleeve.
“I’ll just have a taste of yours.”
Joe scatters the solitaire, stirs the cards around in lieu of shuffling, then—with one hand—deals a game of Crazy Eights. Helen pours two fingers of rum over the pebbles of ice. One sip and the alcohol glows at the back of her throat.
A stroke, she has been told, is caused either by a blockage of blood flow to the brain, or the opposite, a hemorrhage in the brain. A drought or a flood. It is unclear which occurred in her father’s head. While the recovery of his speech was rapid, his arm has been a different matter. In the first week there were slow gains, but now the gains have stopped. She has lost hope that his right hand will ever be of much use to him again. Helen picks up her hand of cards. He slides his seven cards to the edge of the table, lifts them up, attempts to spread them into a fan. A three of clubs escapes and falls face up. He lays his hand back down, retrieves the fallen card, and tries to spread them into a fan again—all the while stifling the curses she knows he keeps behind clenched teeth.
“How’s the job hunting?”
“Actually, that’s what I need to talk to you about.” This is the moment. She will deceive him no longer.
“Well good,” he says. “But before you do, I was thinking . . . I’d like to clear the air.”
He gestures to the discard pile. She should continue the charade of the game.
“Honey, you know I am not a sophisticated man. But I’ve lived a good life. The few regrets I have involved letting myself be talked out of doing what I know I should have done.”
“Daddy, there is something I have to tell you.”
“Even with your brothers. I don’t regret the way I raised them. Your mother thought I was too hard on them. I was hard, but fair. Maybe too quick to punish or scold. But look at them, they’re strong, successful men. They don’t like me too much, but I believe that’s the price I had to pay.”
“I can see how much you’re hurting,” he continues, “not knowing where John is. If he’s safe. I also know that you want to go and chase after him. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
He stares into her eyes with that expression of finality she grew up dreading.
“But none of that matters,” he continues. “If you think you need to go, then go. What I need is to make sure you’re not spending your life tiptoeing around here, waiting for mine to end.”
The man sitting across from Helen still appears to be her father, but now she wonders if his judgment has also been impaired by the stroke.
“I’ve been hiding things from you.”
Joe chuckles. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I found a way up. A safe way, through the military, that will get me close to the places he’s likely to be. Now, please just hear me out before you say anything.” Helen raises her hand. She must play this out carefully. “I have a chance to join a touring show. Ruth recommended me. She cashed in all her favors. An outfit called the USO.”
“USO . . .”
United Service Organizations she explains, quoting from memory the pamphlet Ruth had passed along. Catholic and Jewish groups, the Salvation Army, all teamed up to bring comfort to the troops in the form of comedy, song, and dance. Entertainment. Patriotic duty. Joe responds with a blank expression that says he’s paying out just enough slack for her to wrap around her neck.
“To boost morale,” she concludes. “The girls go wherever the troops are stationed.”
“That Ruth takes too many chances,” Joe says. “I’m surprised she’s not already knocked up. Or smoking opium.”
“What an unchristian thing to say!”
“In my day, we had a different sort of female entertainment on offer. A time-honored tradition.”
“Thank God your day is done. And we’re talking about a highly respected organization. Do you read the papers? Ruth has already completed a tour and has nothing but good things to say.”
Joe takes a deep breath then sighs, theatrically.
“You haven’t seen much of the world, honey, so let me paint a picture. Hundreds, thousands of men forced together, a long way from home, no women around. Then you and your girlfriends show up, parade around, whip them into a frenzy? You’re dangling raw steak in front of a pack of wolves.”
“Last year, they sent Bob Hope and Frances Langford to Alaska,” she says as a kind of proof. “Rehearsals are starting in Los Angeles. Most girls will be heading out to Hawaii after that. Ruth’ll be based in California and fly out to aircraft carriers.”
She brushes a lock of hair off her forehead and meets her father’s gaze. Joe takes a sip of rum and considers his daughter, carefully.
“One group is scheduled to go north.” She speaks in a measured tone. “I’ll get close, but I’ll be safe. Surrounded by soldiers and airmen who will protect us. Men John might have met . . . I know something’s happened to him. I know he needs me. This is my only chance.”
“You think you’re going to track him down in a battlefield while he’s trying to report on the war? What if he’s in jail? What if he’s hiding to keep from going to jail and doesn’t want to be found? Have you thought about that?”
Helen stands and glares down at him, determined not to cry.
Joe’s expression softens into the same confused look he’d have when, as a girl, she’d throw tantrums. The more emotional she became, the more helpless he’d be.
He gets up, walks into the kitchen, and returns with a box of cornstarch. He takes his seat, opens the box, and shakes a pile of bills atop the scattered cards.
“There’s got to be eight hundred dollars there, a bit more in the bank.”
He pushes the money toward her.
“Take it. You might need it. And I’ll feel better if you have it.”
She sits back down.
“Your mother . . . In those last weeks before she died, she didn’t want you kids anywhere near her. She didn’t want you to remember her that way. I have to admit that a big part of me didn’t want to see it either. Part of me wanted to run. I’ve never told anyone that before. But the truth is I could hardly stand being away from her even to take a meal. I knew without a doubt where I needed to be. Even she couldn’t have changed my mind.”
Helen moves her chair over, sits down beside him. She takes up his useless hand.
“You don’t have to admit it to me,” he says, “but you’d better admit it to yourself. You have no idea what you’re getting into. Remembering that fact now and then will help keep you out of trouble.”
Helen nods, dutifully.
“John may be dead,” he says. “You need to hear that from me. You also need to hear that if he’s gone, you will survive it.”
* * *
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY MORNING, Helen unfolds a map sketched out by the mother of the Los Angeles family with whom she’s been billeted. It soon becomes clear that she will be forced to hike the last quarter mile beyond the reach of the bus, in the bright sunshine, through a neighborhood of small, single-story bungalows, unpaved and littered streets, below teetering power poles and the odd palm tree. A dog trots past and down the sidewalk with purpose and direction. Helen tucks the map into her pocket and follows his lead.
