by John Altman
Plugging the neck of the bottle with the strip of cloth, he upended the whiskey briefly to soak the material through. He spent a fraction of an instant holstering the Colt and shoving the semi-automatic – a Smith & Wesson Model 39 – into his belt. Then he raised the bottle, corked by wet cloth, in his right hand, and dropped the Zippo from his clenched teeth into his waiting left palm. He flicked the wheel; the flint sparked; he touched flame to wet cloth; his foot rose and thudded against the bathroom door, rocking it open and popping off one hinge.
Before him in the kitchen stood three men: one facing the bathroom, two facing away.
As Isherwood threw the bottle, the man facing him fired. A powerful hand took hold of Isherwood’s left side, somewhere between armpit and pelvis, and shoved backward and down. As he fell, he turned his head reflexively to avoid crowning himself against the sink, at the same time keeping a slice of kitchen in his field of vision – thus he saw the curtain of flame spring up, consuming all three men, two of whom fled screaming, living pyres, as the third, caught dead to rights, simply flagged and folded where he stood, instantly filling the air with the stench of charred flesh.
A blast of heat followed, intense enough that Isherwood had to roll over and protect his head with his left arm, which for some reason – ah, yes, because he’d been shot – didn’t want to behave. Still, the arm proved capable of prioritizing, and managed to block at least the worst of the blast, although Isherwood sensed what felt like a very bad sunburn rising on his face and exposed forearm. Looking down, he saw without surprise that the arm was aflame.
Grimly, he found his knees again (better to die on your feet than live on your knees, Eisenhower advised) and jammed the burning arm into the water of the toilet, which gave a scabrous hiss. He felt awareness recede tentatively, a tide going out. Through sheer willpower, he pulled the tide back in.
With his right side propped against the wall, he pushed up to his feet. The fire was already flickering down as the alcohol evaporated. Only the body sprawled on the kitchen floor, with clothing just catching, burned with conviction. Gritting his teeth, Isherwood left the bathroom. He emptied the two shots remaining in the Colt into the man burning on the kitchen floor, then dropped the empty gun and drew the Smith & Wesson, cursorily checking its eight-round magazine.
From the direction of the study: scrabbling, crinkling glass. They were in retreat, he thought with a flash of disdain.
Instead of giving chase, he circled around the other way, to the study by way of the dining room. Before exposing himself in the doorway, he closed his eyes for a heartbeat and listened. Six men, as best he could figure, had entered his house. One lay dead on the floor behind him; one lay dead or dying propped in the living-room window frame. Two others were burning.
Raising the Smith & Wesson, he stepped through the doorway. He caught a man retreating, trying to climb back out through the dining-room window without resting weight against incinerated hands.
Near Route 30, Isherwood had shown mercy, aiming repeatedly for the gun arm – and let his assailant escape.
Now he took careful, deliberate aim at the spot where neck met back, and fired once.
The man folded bonelessly onto the parquet oaken floor. Isherwood moved on toward the study. For the first time he became truly aware of the wound in his side – gaping and sucking, a red, wet mouth. The pain was jumbled in with a thousand other imperatives, and he found he could do a sort of magic trick, making the pain disappear, although he had his doubts about how long the trick would keep working.
Outside the study, he listened again. Snuffling, scrabbling. Gathering his courage, he stepped in, catching a glimpse of a dark figure slipping away through a shattered window. By the time he drew a bead, the figure was gone. Run, he thought acidly. Run for your life.
That left two.
Throwing the last vestiges of caution to the wind, he stalked back toward the foyer. Through the thin wall separating him from the staircase he heard a creaking step. He had lived in this house for twelve years. Countless nights he had scaled those same stairs while drunk, trying not to make a noise to rouse his wife. He immediately placed the creaking step as the fourth from the top.
Firing through the wall, he was rewarded by a thump of dead weight, followed by a series of shallow successive thumps as the body slid down from one riser to another.
Two huge strides brought him back to the foot of the staircase: a full turn ’round the house. A dead man sprawled upside-down on the stairs: the sailor.
He found the last one in the living room. Badly burned, the man was having trouble wrestling his dead accomplice out of the windowsill. As he appeared unarmed, Isherwood considered apprehending him for questioning – but the tide was retreating again; better to take no chances.
Coldly, he gunned the man down.
Then he had pushed too far, and his knees were buckling beneath him. Landing on a floor slippery with blood, he cursed loudly. ‘Evelyn,’ he called. After drawing a breath, he tried again. ‘Evy – help me.’
He wasn’t sure if he had managed to say the words, or only to think them. Then the tide withdrew completely; darkness rushed in to fill the cracks. In his last moment of awareness he felt a cat’s rough tongue against his cheek. He remembered that Evelyn wasn’t here to help him. Then he was caught up in a violent black undertow and drawn swiftly away.
GETTYSBURG
Miss Dunbarton stood in the kitchen doorway, surveying her troops.
Maybe it was the sherry – but watching the girls hustle about, preparing to serve lunch, she felt a warm, almost maternal glow. After observing for a few moments, she stepped into the room and clapped briskly. ‘Attention,’ she called. ‘Attention, please.’
Activity clattered to a stop; half a dozen young faces turned toward her.
‘As we shall labor straight through Thanksgiving,’ pronounced Miss Dunbarton, ‘and as we shall then continue to work straight up ’til Christmas, it has occurred to me that perhaps we should pause to celebrate.’ Eyes glimmering puckishly, she looked from one girl to another. ‘Therefore I am pleased to announce that tomorrow at six p.m. a holiday party for the staff will take place in the parlor. Curfew will be suspended; there will be drinking and music and dancing and, of course, plenty of food; perhaps we can even invite some special guests. The timing’s a bit off, but better early than never.’
She beamed at her own small witticism. Her girls beamed in return, nudging each other with excited elbows. Josette and the new girl, Elisabeth, who had become fast friends, exchanged whispers. Miss Dunbarton considered admonishing them for impoliteness, but decided against it. At the moment she felt charitable even toward Josette, who listened to her radio every night in violation of the rules, and snuck men up to her room when Miss Dunbarton was off-premises, thinking nobody knew.
And what of the senator’s housekeeper? Again, it might have been the sherry talking – Miss Dunbarton had put down more than her usual ration, between breakfast and lunch, in celebration of the season – but Elisabeth Grant had proven an agreeable surprise. She didn’t flirt with the men, and except for her friendship with Josette she kept mostly to herself. She was pretty and charming and pleasant to have around. Any attitude she may have harbored had been kept out of view. She had done her work thoroughly and, as far as Miss Dunbarton knew, had broken no rules except for her late-night bull sessions with Josette. Overall the loss of Barbara Cameron, while inconvenient, seemed actually to have been a boon for the farm.
Animated chatter spread between the young ladies; Miss Dunbarton officiously clapped again. ‘Back to work!’ she cried. A bit of the carrot, a bit of the stick; otherwise they would mistake her generosity for soft-heartedness. Give these girls an inch and they took a mile.
In mid-afternoon a ten-foot Douglas fir, freshly chopped from the backyard, was trundled into the parlor, dripping needles and instantly filling the herdsman’s home with a sweet, citrusy smell.
Girls watched, wide-eyed and cooing, as
men wrangled the tree into a five-legged stand and then drilled screws into the trunk, clamping it upright. The tree was the coup de grace to a parlor already decked that morning with tinsel, wreaths, garlands, mistletoe, and glittering ornaments. A Christmas scene had been impressively rendered in miniature on a tabletop, with a tiny compact mirror doubling for an ice-topped pond, and lace antimacassars giving the illusion of a snow-covered field.
Watching along with the rest, Elisabeth felt a flicker of scorn. Although some of her earliest childhood memories were of Advent calendars and sleigh bells, she had soon enough discovered the vibrant, primal pagan deities – Fricka and Brünnhilde, Wotan and Loge – and never looked back. Compared with nomadic wolf-warriors hunting in throes of bloodlust and ecstasy, with gold coins and haunches of meat and fleeing young women perfumed with sweat and terror, Christian symbolism seemed insultingly weak.
Here in America after the war, however, frivolity and indulgence were the rules, as per usual. And why not? They had all worked hard, Elisabeth included; their hands were callused with the evidence. And the unchallenging symbols of Christmas were comfortable and easily digested. A sorority had developed, binding them together – even Elisabeth felt a reluctant part of it – and so they deserved a night to celebrate. There would be men to kiss beneath the mistletoe, and whiskey by the barrel, and music for dancing, and no unwelcome reminders of the laws of nature, the redness of tooth and claw. In fact, someone had already switched on the turntable, and the room brimmed with Perry Como softly crooning ‘There’s No Place Like Home For the Holidays’.
As Elisabeth watched, Josette was boosted up, star in hand, by farmhands who couldn’t resist the chance to sneak a glance under her skirt, winking and laughing. Then Miss Dunbarton entered the room, carrying herself with the extravagant precision of the tippler, and made a beeline for Elisabeth. ‘Miss Grant,’ she said. ‘How are we, this fine day?’
‘Very well, Miss Dunbarton. And yourself?’
‘Very well, thank you.’ The elder woman swayed slightly on her feet. ‘Looking forward to tomorrow’s party?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘We’ll need a hand serving and clearing. Everybody’s pitching in. I’d like you and Josette during the first hour, please, from six until seven.’
‘Of course, ma’am.’
For another moment Dunbarton glowed, oscillating, clearly full of Christmas spirits. ‘Until later,’ she said then, and weaved off toward Josette, who was being lowered to the floor, having finally pinned the star atop the tree. With Elisabeth looking on, they held a brief palaver. As Dunbarton headed for her next victim, Josette came toward Elisabeth, glowering.
‘Some party,’ said the younger girl beneath her breath. ‘Sounds like we’ll be working the whole time.’
Up close, Josette didn’t look festive at all; she looked as if she’d been crying, with the skin beneath her eyes shiny and hard. ‘Can we talk?’ she added.
Dunbarton was distracted. The help was milling aimlessly, shirking chores in the general confusion. Nodding, Elisabeth followed Josette upstairs. No sooner had the door to the girl’s bedroom closed behind them than she burst into tears.
Sobbing, she buried her face in Elisabeth’s shoulder. ‘James broke up with me this morning.’
Somewhat at a loss, Elisabeth patted the girl’s broad back. ‘Shh,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’
‘No, it’s n–n–not. He d–d–dumped me and I wasn’t even – I wasn’t even expect–pect-pecting it—’
‘Take a deep breath,’ said Elisabeth. ‘Settle down.’
Instead of a deep breath, Josette took her bottle of schnapps from beneath the bed. ‘Ah, fuck,’ she said eloquently, wiping at her eyes. She widened them and tilted her head back, trying to spare her mascara. ‘What is about me, Libby? What makes people walk all over me? It’s like I’m wearing a sign around my neck: kick me.’
Elisabeth said nothing.
‘It’s always been that way,’ Josette plowed on, ‘for as long as I can remember. There’s always been a James. There’ll always be a James.’ She uncapped the bottle and guzzled vindictively. ‘Luke, my fiancé, said he loved me. Until he got what he wanted, of course. You know what that is. And then he dumped me. And he laughed while he did it. That’s what happened this morning, Libby; James snuck in to see me, and we got a little drunk, and then we made love, right here, right on my bed; we made love, and then as soon as it was done …’ The tears rose again, choking her. ‘As s–s–soon as it was d–d–done—’
‘Oh, honey, don’t.’
‘—he s–s–said – he s–s–s–said—’
‘He’s not worth it.’ Elisabeth hugged the girl. ‘Shh.’
Moments passed. The sound of Josette’s crying blended with the plangent hum of wind through the house’s eaves – lower-pitched than usual, more spectrally alive – and the voices and music from downstairs. At length, Josette gave a final-sounding snuffle. She relaxed her clinch with Elisabeth, but did not let go completely. Drawing back a few inches, she left her hands on shoulder and waist.
‘I ask for it,’ said Josette in a dull monotone. ‘It’s my own damn fault. I ask for it, and I always have.’
‘It’s not your fault, honey.’
‘Don’t lie to spare my feelings. I may be a lot of things, but I’m not stupid. I ask to be taken advantage of, and then I ask to be dumped.’ A tendril of snot hung quivering from one nostril. ‘And it’s always been the way. If there’s a louse within a thousand miles, I’ll find him. And I’ll fall in love with him. And then I’ll cry like a fool when he dumps me. Oh, I thought I was doing it right this time, Libby. I waited to go to bed with him until he said he loved me. Now I realize: it was all just an act. It was all one-sided, the whole time. But I bought the whole story. Hook, line, and sinker. Like the fool that I am.’
Elisabeth shook her head. ‘It’s in the past,’ she said firmly. ‘Never look back, Josie.’
Josette’s eyes shone. Despite her best efforts, her mascara had run in two black smears down her round cheeks. ‘Oh, Libby,’ she said, with a sad little laugh. ‘I’m such a mess.’
‘You’re going to be okay.’ Elisabeth embraced the girl again, harder, and smiled. ‘I promise.’
ELEVEN
Never look back.
Doubtless good advice – but with her eyes closed and the scent of crisp resin lingering in her nostrils, the advice became indistinguishable from the recollection of receiving the advice.
She could see her father now, standing before the Christmas tree in their isolated cabin by the lake, trying to find the perfect bough off which to hang a glittering ornament. Elisabeth had been but five or six, overflowing with enthusiasm to help. Running toward the tree, she had slipped on a shred of tinsel, crashing hard against the plank-board floor. A moment later she had been up again, laughing. Then her mother had grabbed her from behind, twisting her arm up sharply, revealing blood trickling down her wrist where a splinter had broken the skin. Look at that, Elsa. Look what you’ve done to yourself. You must be careful. You are delicate! Concern had underlain the words, but they had come across as angry, and Elisabeth had burst into tears.
Five minutes later, rubbing his daughter’s wrist as she sat on his knee, Father had leaned in close and whispered beneath his breath. Don’t be upset, Liebchen. Your mother means well. You are all she has; you are her entire world. But I know that you are not so delicate as you might seem. When you get hurt – by the floor, by Mother’s tone, by anything – you must just shake it off. Never look back.
She had taken the words to heart. Later, alone in her room, she had turned them over, treasuring them – as she had treasured the tree they had trimmed, and her small Advent calendar with its chocolates and little toys and songs written on scraps of paper. She had not yet learned that these were the old ways, the crutches of the weak, and that she must leave them behind.
Before sending her to school each morning, her mother bundled her in layer upon laye
r of clothing, as if protecting a piece of fine china against breakage. As a result Elisabeth walked stiffly, lurching awkwardly through the school yard. Her fellow students teased endlessly, calling her Dresden, and Chinadoll, and Frankenstein’s Bride. The worst offender was a chubby brute named Inge, mannish even before puberty, a full head taller than her classmates, stocky around the shoulders and neck. Elisabeth tried to ignore the taunts, focusing on her lessons. She was a good student. After passing the Abitur, the graduation test, with flying colors, she would attend the University of Munich, where she would study biology. Then at last she would rise above her tormentors, proving her superiority.
But a change had been washing over the Fatherland – a great, irresistible tide. The first manifestations had been subtle. More coal became available; Elisabeth could no longer see her breath as she sat behind her desk in school. She encountered more horses and dogs, during her daily walks to and from the lakeside, as animals were less often butchered for meat. One day during her seventh year, a portrait of Adolf Hitler appeared in her classroom, and soon after, a Nazi flag. Many adults seemed uncomfortable with these developments, which to Elisabeth made no sense. They had complained bitterly about the deprivations following the War – but now that someone had arrived to show them the way out, they resisted. Her father compared Hitler to the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who with his flute led children to their doom. Her favorite teacher refused to start his class by heiling Hitler, insisting instead on the old greeting of: ‘Good morning, children.’ Her mother cautioned against joining the Hitlerjugend, claiming that the family could not afford the monthly dues of ten pfennig, and that the mandatory meetings would interfere with chores and church.
