Wick - The Omnibus Edition

by Bunker, Michael

  Cole turned down the cigarette with a wave of his hand.

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “But…”

  “That one was to keep me from soiling my pants,” Cole said, smiling. “I’m okay now.”

  Watkins laughed and shook his head. “You are a piece of work, Cole.”

  “That’s what they say.” Cole smiled when he said it and Natasha watched him smile, and then she looked at Jay Watkins. He motioned toward the darkness.

  “Well, we better push off. We have a long trip ahead of us. You two will be safe with us until we get to Mount Joy. I can’t tell you what things will be like when we get there, but you’ll be a step closer to Amish country.”

  ****

  They walked through the snow and darkness until they reached a road where the FMA unit was already packing up for the long haul south. Carts, buggies, wagons, and single mounts lined the road. A hundred soldiers on foot stood stamping in the cold, trying to defy hypothermia, anxious to get moving.

  Natasha and Cole followed Watkins and climbed up into the back of an Amish buckboard wagon. When they’d each found their seats, Watkins pulled out a bottle of what looked to be Kentucky Bourbon, and passed it around to everyone in turn. When the bottle got to Cole, the young man grinned from ear to ear.

  “Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.”

  He took a long swig and then wiped his mouth on his coat before handing the bottle to Natasha, who passed it on without drinking.

  Cole smiled to Watkins and winked, and then looked over at Natasha, who was glaring at him.

  “That’s from The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Cole said with a straight face.

  “I don’t care, Cole,” Natasha replied with her brows furled in mock anger. She stared at Cole for a moment before her own face broke into a smile. She leaned conspiratorially towards the others in the wagon and said, “My brother can get a little obnoxious with the Shakespeare.”

  “Okay, then,” Cole said, “if I have your permission.” Then he reached over and slapped his sister playfully on her knee. “Let us every one go home, and laugh this sport o'er by a country fire.”

  “Indeed,” said Jay Watkins, and with that, he turned his horses toward the south and gave a solemn nod towards the moon in the eastern sky.

  ****

  Six hours after Nick had placed his emergency call to Clive Darling, the five people in the catacombs under the restaurant in Mount Joy heard a commotion the likes of which they’d never heard before. They’d been sitting around and talking about the war, and the things they’d seen since the crash had started when what sounded like World War 3 erupted above their heads, and some of the concussions caused bits of mortar and stone to fall down into the cellar.

  Nick stared at the ceiling in awe. “It would seem that the battle is joined.”

  “Ain’t no party like an MNG party,” Ace said.

  “What are the chances this cellar collapses on us?” Elsie asked. There was worry in her voice, and she didn’t try to hide it.

  “This cellar has been here since before the Civil War,” Nick said. “It’ll shake, rattle, and roll, but I’m certain we’ll be alright.”

  “I’m fine down here!” The roar of mortars increased, and little Charlie had to yell to make his point.

  “We’d definitely rather be down here than up there,” Peter said, pointing upwards. The sounds from upside responded to Peter’s statement as if to emphasize his point. The violence being unleashed on Nick’s restaurant was frightening, and awe-inspiring. “I’m not sure a housefly could live through what’s going on up there!” Peter shouted over the noise.

  The assault was relentless, and Peter began to worry that—even if the cellar didn’t collapse—the damage and debris might take months to clear away, even if someone did know that the party was down in the cellar… which they did not. How are we going to get out of here? he thought.

  ****

  What followed, for another twenty-four hours, was a nerve-rending mind siege. The war raged fervently in Mount Joy, and the people in the cellar thought that at any minute, the ceiling was going to come tumbling down on top of them.

  The ceiling held, and after a particularly frightening barrage of mortar fire—at a moment in time that became crystalline in their consciousness—everything went eerily silent.

  The silence reigned for about twenty minutes, and no one in the cellar spoke a word. Each person just sat stoically, eyes rolled upwards, staring at the ceiling, waiting for another shell to drop, or mortar to shake the earth.

  Then there was a sound.

  There was a rattling over near the door, and Nick jumped up and darted in that direction. He started pulling some baskets of clothing and cardboard boxes out of the way, and after he did, Elsie, Ace, and Peter could see that a copper pipe, about four inches in diameter, extended down through the ceiling. At about two feet above the ground, the pipe flared open at its bottom.

  Nick looked over his shoulder and winked at the travelers. “If I were a careful man, this contraption would be the mechanism I’d use to stash the gold and silver and precious stones, you know, just in case we ever got robbed! The gold you paid me is down in this basket here. I would always drop the goods down the pipe after every transaction.”

  Now, the travelers watched as a single, folded piece of paper tumbled down the pipe and into Nick’s hands. He opened the note and read it, and when he was done he squealed and shouted with delight.

  “Woohoo!” Nick yelled. He hugged Charlie, who had a huge smile on his face. “Let me read it to you!” He held the letter near one of the lanterns and read aloud, with obvious glee:

  Hey, you Yankee bum! It’s over. We won. Quit hiding down in your cellar and get up here, ‘cause we got stuff to do!

  Love,

  Clive Darling.

  CHAPTER 47

  Mike stood in the open field next to the burn pit in the Carbondale Resettlement Camp. The corpses of the former camp commander and his closest officers lay in a tight line, face down in the snow. Mike stared at the bodies, and then slowly turned to look at the soldiers who were awaiting his next command.

  His head hurt, and there was a terrible lump behind his ear. He scratched the back of his head and thought of the blow that Sergei had given him, but he did not wince. He steadfastly refused to show any weakness in front of the men.

  He looked up and down the assembled line of soldiers, and he nodded his head. He could see on their faces that they fully accepted him as their leader and commander. Good, he thought.

  “I want the man brought to me who was in charge of the armory! Bring him to me right now!” Mike commanded. He stood with his shoulders hunched and his jaw clenched. It was slight, but if you knew the man intimately, you would know it. Fortunately, none of the assembled crowd knew him intimately. At least, not yet.

  Three soldiers dragged another soldier forward until the man was standing in front of Mike. Mike looked the man up and down with disgust.

  “Did you give that prisoner two of my hand-grenades?”

  The soldier looked down at his feet. In his mind, he went through a quick analysis of whether or not it would be good to lie to the new commander. He didn’t want to be given permanent kitchen duty, or get sent to the brig, but he also didn’t want to start out his time with the new commanding officer as a known liar. The soldier straightened his back. He’d made up his mind. He decided to tell the truth. He could deal with a couple of weeks of kitchen duty, or even substantial time in the brig, but he wanted the rest of the men to know him as a man who owned up to his mistakes. He looked Mike in the eye and nodded his head.

  “I did.”

  “You sold two of my hand-grenades to a prisoner, who then used them to kill my men and destroy my property?”

  “I did, sir.” It sounded worse to him, the way Mike said it.

  Mike pursed his lips, but nodded his head. He began to walk slowly around the soldier, and everyone waited—wondering
what punishment the new commander would mete out on the wrongdoer.

  “I appreciate you being honest,” Mike said.

  He pulled out his side arm and shot the soldier through the head.

  The body slumped to the ground and Mike waved for some of the men to drag the body onto the pile with the others.

  He turned to the crowd gathered nearby and told them that honesty was a good policy—that it was like a good deed done to your neighbor.

  The soldiers busied themselves around his feet, clearing the body and taking the time to rake the ground so that even any traces of the soldier’s blood were removed. The blood served as a reminder to the crowd that good deeds like that would not go unpunished.

  ****

  Stephen was dead. Her little boy. From the time he was old enough to toddle, she’d called him “Little Man.” At the end, Veronica looked down into his face, and he looked up into hers. She was reminded that the act of looking into one another’s faces, was something that had happened every single day of his life at some point. For Veronica, there had always been a spark in the Little Man’s face unlike that in any other face she’d ever seen.

  Now, as she looked into that face, she did not see any spark of life left. His body, carefully and lovingly strapped to the bed with long strips torn from Amish sheets, was finally motionless and at peace. The only remnants of the struggle that Stephen had faced in passing on were recorded in the sheets; in the wrinkled ridges where his body had convulsed involuntarily.

  There was a creak in the floorboards as someone shifted their feet. The thick ancient planks in the floor rubbed in place.

  Henry Stolzfus and his family stood behind Veronica, as she looked down on her boy. For a time, everyone was motionless. The Stolzfus family waited patiently for the next stage in the process. Henry flicked his fingers against the edge of his pants. It was a casual motion, but studiously so, as though he was trying to scratch an itch but didn’t want to disturb the scene with so obvious a display. He and his family knew this process well, and none of it was new to them. They would allow time for the mother to grieve and say her goodbyes, and then the Amish women would take the body into the great room to wash and prepare it. They knew the process so well because most of them had performed it many times in their lives. For the Amish, death is a part of life. While it is always sad, it is not seen as extraordinary. Death applies universally, and it must be handled in a way that reinforces this concept to everyone—especially the children. As in life, there is an order to death, and for now, they just stood quietly and waited.

  At the end of the bed, looking down at Stephen, Veronica was surprised that, along with her grief, she felt such an overwhelming feeling of relief. Strange, because she’d just watched the life drain out of her greatest love. She stood there and experienced it. Truly experienced it. As she did, she also experienced the unexpected, unspeakable, and contradictory gift of release. It was a brief moment, but it was unmistakable. She stood in the room, which was objectively beautiful in its simplicity, and she noticed the palette was blue and brown and white and tan. She noticed the cloth; from the imprinted sheets, to the layers of cloth hanging from the shoulders of these beautiful girls—these strong women. They waited and watched patiently.

  Veronica stood there; her long black braids hung in a tied up knot of a rope that draped beautifully over her shoulder, and her dark skin stood in sharp contradistinction to the palette of the room… shockingly so.

  To everyone else in the room, her face looked thoughtful, and beautiful, and restful, all at once. It had an angular simplicity. The face echoed in the face of the body on the bed— and both stood in sharp contrast against the paler, whiter faces of the Stolzfus family, and it was all part of the contrast that was impressed upon her mind.

  In that moment, Veronica D’Arcy found peace.

  A part of her left with Stephen. That’s the only way to say it. His body was lying on the bed in front of her, and she stood over him and let go of something. It was as if her art, her view of the world, her argument that simply by breathing in and out and viewing the world through the eyes of artful love that things must go well—all of that, simplywent. Her belief that looking at everything as merely art, and that this mindset would allow her to live satisfactorily in the world, flew away with her son.

  That antiquated view had helped her when John died. Then, she still had Stephen to hold onto, to help her hold that focus. And of course back then, the world was still intact. Whenever she looked into her son’s face, she would see John, experiencing her husband anew in Stephen, seeing his habits coming alive in her son, his pleasures. But now, her art failed her. Or… it failed to be sufficient to sustain her. She looked down at Stephen and felt that part of her slip away. That view of life could work—it had worked—if and when an artificial system of life-support could be maintained for most of the world’s population. Absent that life-support system, life as only art, was insanity. It was dementia.

  What she found instead, in its place, was reality. She experienced it with acceptance, and strength, and she found peace in it.

  For Stephen’s sake, Veronica was glad that he’d gone on from this world.

  Now, she looked down on her son, and in looking at him she did not analyze his color palette. She didn’t remark to herself about the intersecting lines of the sheets with the bed, or note how strange it was to see his musculature in harmony with the Amish severity of the place. Her normal artist’s eye was at rest. She looked at Stephen and she saw his father, and the life she’d once lived, and even though she was filled with love for her dead husband and son, she didn’t focus on any of that.

  Instead, from somewhere (who knows where these things came from?), Veronica had a realization. It was as if she came to understand that a page had turned and that it was time to move on. She saw the whole of the page, and she recognized that Stephen’s death was a representation of what was going on everywhere in the world. She was not in a position at that moment to exhaustively understand the thought, and she could not give voice to everything that Stephen was in that moment, lying there dead in an Amish bed. Nevertheless, an outline of the understanding was there. Maybe Stephen represented naiveté. Maybe he stood for innocence. Maybe he was a symbol of Western, Industrial decadence. Whatever the case, his death represented a particular kind of ignorance; one that comes to be in a world that exists within a framework of artificial ease.

  He was her boy, but he was the offspring of a life lived inauthentically. She’d tried to teach him to survive, but she’d started too late, and she’d never questioned the fundamental presuppositions of life and living. She’d tried to keep him by her own strength, only to find out that no one living has that power. No one can see all the filthy nails sticking out of all the hidden boards out there in the world.

  She breathed in the air and felt relief, and peace, and the realness of the moment. She believed that it would lead to the next moment, and for now, that was enough.

  She took a soft step backwards, and the Amish women took that motion as a signal. It was exactly that, a signal. The women moved past her and began their work, untying the boy from the bed. Veronica turned to Henry Stolzfus and nodded her head. The tears were flowing now, but not in an angry or violent way. She was not mad. The tears were marking her place, and she knew that when she stepped out of the room, she was going to be stepping fully into an entirely new world, a world where the veil of superficiality had been rent for her… for good.

  Henry Stolzfus put an arm around Veronica and led her out of the bedroom.

  She didn’t look back.

  ****

  The Battle of Mount Joy had turned into a pivotal battle in the civil war that was now raging across Pennsylvania. This will not come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. For one thing, the detail itself seems positively necessary for the narrative arc of the story. All of the characters must meet up somewhere and events must occur someplace, and Mount Joy seems as good a place as
any. It works from a topographical sense as well a historical one. It also works as a literary one. This will become clear as we go along but, for now, simply note that Mount Joy was special.

  In this Civil War, the battle had become a high-water mark of sorts. It demarcated a particular line along a larger battlefield map. Some General, looking at a map of the area, might have searched with his finger, and put that finger on the map at a particular place where he could focus his resources in such a way that it would inflict maximum damage. That point was Mount Joy. It was central to the conflict.

  It had a narrative arc all its own.

  ****

  The collision of forces at Mount Joy was initiated by an intensive MNG offensive that was designed to push the FMA southward, across the Susquehanna River to York, and then, eventually, to push them out of Pennsylvania and into Maryland, and from there, into the South. That is a mind-bending amount of detail to take in.

  The battle at hand was representative of a world gone mad with force, and unfolding events, in many ways, would mark the end of that world, at least for a time. During the peak of the battle, there was an uncountable torrent of bullets, and shells, and mayhem raining down on Mount Joy. Someone thought that this piece of real estate was important enough to destroy it utterly, but there was more to it. Much more. Even in the heat of battle, the observer must sometimes stop to smell the roses.

  Anyone who has been paying attention, or anyone who knows anything of history or of literature, can appreciate the fact that there is a symbolic war going on between forces centered along the imaginary lines of a map demarcated by the invisible boundaries separating York and Lancaster Counties. One mustn’t be a Civil War buff to know that by taking out a pen and marking a trajectory that followed along the path of the extended conflict, the line would eventually pass into Gettysburg, and then dip into the topmost corner of Maryland. It was as if a wall was being constructed by the conflict, forming imaginary boundaries into real ones. As people chose sides, it seemed that they divided out about as they did in the last such conflict. Historically, this imagined line of conflict brings to the mind another high-water mark, in another great conflict that once raged across the land, echoing its ancient voice, seeking our attention.