But it is a Mystery with a capital M.
Part of me has felt all these years that I had untied myself, had beaten her to death, and then had somehow wrapped myself up in the ropes again.
Houdini, after all.
We buried her in a desolate spot, so deep that the coyotes and scavengers wouldn’t be able to dig her up.
I heard, years later, that Red Town eventually flourished and became more than a saloon and whorehouse railroad stop. It expanded out into the mesa, and I think a shopping mall was built near the spot where we buried her.
Harry said to me, at four that morning, driving back to base, “No matter what happens, we can’t ever say we met her. Or were even there. The other girls won’t tell. They don’t like cops. But you and I have to be clear on this. We were never there.”
“Where?” I asked, and then Harry muttered, “Jesus,” and I knew our friendship was over that morning.
When I heard he died later, in the war, I felt bad for him. I missed him, too. We had done our time together, and that’s a bond even after it passes.
I wonder if he ever got over the sight that had greeted him when he stepped out of the ordinary world of red light night and into that motel room of me tied up and a dead woman on the floor.
But now, he’s in the Dark Game.
19
Suddenly, like an overnight celebrity, I became revered among the Enemy in the camp.
No longer made to sleep in the hole, I had a straw mattress beneath me, and I ate regular food with some of the lower officers. More of my own countrymen arrived at the camp. I saw them as they trooped in, proud and wounded, through the barbed wire at the edge of the jungle. The camp was in a flat wetland area, but with long planks connecting marshy islets, until you got to the end of the swampy part, and rose onto higher ground. The commander’s headquarters was at the highest point, and I got to calling it Mount Olympus. The pits and holes where the Americans were kept, I called Tartarus. I taught Hoax, who now accepted his nickname happily from me, about the various levels of Hell, and he and I cooked up a scheme to begin a new set of torments for my countrymen.
We would take Dante’s Inferno, which was easy enough to find, even with the supposed anti-European sentiment of the Enemy, and create elaborate Rings of Hell for the prisoners.
Next, I talked about the Cannibal Torture. I suggested a whole new way to do this. Why even use the Axeman, despite his pleasure in the act of cutting off flesh and bone from a live victim?
Why not me, their countryman? What would be more horrifying than a well-fed compatriot slicing off the lips of his fellow American in front of the remnants of a once-proud platoon? A USO show from Hell, I called it, and it took Hoax several days to see this as the less grandiose and more intriguing idea. Dante’s Inferno went on the back burner, as it were. Instead the USO Show from Hell would begin.
We’d have beautiful girls dancing for the boys. Then, we’d have the main event. I’d do a comedy routine, I told Hoax. I’d strip them of their dignity. I’d cut off bits and pieces of the happiest, sweetest guy they knew, the youngest of their friends, the one they thought of as a mascot.
Right before their eyes.
“They’ll tell you what you want to know,” I said. “They’ll divulge their mother and father’s addresses if you want, once we do this.”
Hoax, not suspicious in the least, was thrilled. Yet, he still didn’t completely trust me, for he felt the Axeman should be there to do the slicing. I wasn’t handed knives or razors. I was still a prisoner, albeit a Friend of the Enemy, as they proclaimed loudly, nightly, into the pits and holes of Tartarus.
20
The prisoners built the stadium, first.
I oversaw its construction, and they worked tirelessly and swiftly, for I told them that it was a monument to their Dead. That it was their Memorial, and that they must take pride in it. I spent some nights with them, talking of how we were going to be well-treated by our captors, and that they must trust me, despite appearances. They did not trust me at all, I could tell, but they had the resignation of those who wait for freedom to come from outside their sphere. The helicopters raiding from the sky, perhaps. The end of the war itself, perhaps. They had lost the will to escape. They had lost the will to resist. They were broken, yet capable men.
They did as I told them to do.
I also spent nights with them, playing the Dark Game.
I needed their minds. I need to bring them into a state of calm and of service.
I needed for them to hear only my voice.
21
The bleachers went up, the theater backdrop created. Within two weeks, it was, by the standards of the jungle, a beautiful imitation of an amphitheater, and could seat forty or fifty men.
The night of what I called The Most Magnificent Show in the Universe, finally arrived.
A banner announcing this, painted from human blood, hung from the wall.
The celebrities of our Damnation were there: the Commander, with his long face and inscrutable gaze; my friend Hoax, a chubby, round-faced fellow who whispered in the Commander’s ear, no doubt about the show to come; the Enemy soldiers, dressed as if for an evening at the theater. No doubt the women with some of them were not wives, but girlfriends who lived in the nearby Enemy Town, just beyond our Doom City. The girls had fine red or blue dresses on, as if they would go to a celebration after the show. The men were dressed in full military garb. Cocktails were served, a rarity at this outpost, but the liquor had been distilled from a local flower, and left behind a scent like jasmine.
The air fairly crackled with the electric moment to come.
I felt as if we were going to stage a great Broadway show. Or a spectacular Fourth of July fireworks demonstration.
It would be, I was certain, the inauguration of some wonderful event that might be remembered and talked about for years to come.
The usual excitement of opening night spread, even among my countrymen. They were brought in, roped at the hands, shackled at the legs, shuffling to their seats, although I kept a contingent backstage, the actors in the drama to unfold.
Footlights consisted of small fatty candles laid in a semi-circle around the stage floor. The backdrop, an enormous canvas that had once been an officer’s tent covering but was now painted with scenes of the Enemy’s Great Leader, stepping on all things American.
Just seeing the backdrop made the Enemy guard cheer and raise their glasses.
What they didn’t know, of course, was that I had made sure that a bit of the opium water that I had grown to know well had been stirred into their drinks, and as I led them in their national anthem, as they stood and sang bravely and happily, they drank — all, including the girls — I could tell from their expressions that they had begun to go into a slight blurred state — the strong alcohol and the poppy had some effect.
The opium would help me with what I needed to do. First, I said, “We are here for a momentous occasion! This is the inauguration of a great moment of historical significance!
We are all the proud and the brave who have learned so much from our Enemy, who is really our Friend and who wishes to teach us the errors of our ways and the true path of life! Here, on this very stage, you will see the wonders of transformation!
You will see the magic of the ancients! The famous tricks of the fakirs of India! The secrets of the alchemists of old Europe! The mystical wonders of the sorcerers of ancient Mesopotamia!”
I spouted all the bull I could, and Hoax stood up and translated every word for the Enemy. They laughed, and brawled while some of my countrymen portrayed the President and our military leaders. They tripped, simulating intercourse with each other, acting like buffoons and idiots, all at my command. The laughter from the stadium was enormous, even from Americans, whom I had brought into a state of the Dark Game just for this evening.
Hoax probably laughed the hardest, and once, when I glanced up at him, I saw the Enemy Commander slap him on the shoulder and whisper
some approval in his ear that made Hoax beam.
The dancing girls came out next — they writhed and gyrated for the men. I had given them unhealthy doses of the local drink, and they began touching each other and taking off their clothes until they were nearly naked. This got the Enemy to cheer further, and the girls threw garments up to them.
My own countrymen sat quietly, as I had commanded for them to do in the Dark Game.
I could see that their eyes were glazed over, and they awaited my word.
Finally, I announced the evening’s entertainments. “Tonight, good gentlemen and ladies, for your pleasure, the Axeman and I will carve up several Americans before your eyes. They will devour one another, as that is the way of our kind, and you will see how corrupt in our very beings we truly are. But first, I ask for volunteers from among you. For I want you to participate greatly tonight. Do I have any takers?”
The Enemy ranks roared approval, and many leapt from their seats to volunteer. But I wanted a special man to come forward. I wanted an important man.
“Commander!” I called out.
“Yes!” cried my countrymen, “Commander!”
Hoax laughed, clapping his hands, turning to his leader. “Commander!” he said.
The Commander shook his head violently, laughing the entire time.
While he resisted coming forward, I brought the few remaining men from my own company out on the stage. They were further along in the Dark Game than the other prisoners.
Each was blindfolded, and they held each other’s hands. I had spent four nights with the three of them to make sure that their minds were switched into another realm, so that my voice and my mind was their only guide.
“Commander!” I cried out again, and even the Axeman, coming up beside me, raised his glinting blade as it caught the last of the sunlight and called the Commander by full name.
Finally, goaded, blurred from drink, the Commander came down from the bleachers.
I raised a hand and called out a word of cheer, and all the Americans began clapping for him, and soon the Enemy guard clapped as well, whistling, as the Commander went on stage.
“We have a magic show tonight!” I shouted to the noisy audience. “But we must have silence, now! Absolute silence!”
Within a minute or two, those in the bleachers quieted.
I glanced up at Hoax who smiled and nodded as if watching his prize protégé.
I thought of my friend Harry, blown to bits by a landmine. I thought of little Davy, tortured in front of me, tortured until his last breath left him.
I went up and blew out more than half the candles. The sun was going down, and darkness surrounded us. Only six or so candles lit the stage. It was an effect I’d worked on — the backdrop now seemed ominous and evil — the Commander’s face on the backdrop seemed to have gone in shades into a diseased, corrupt form rather than the healthy look that backdrop had when sunlight was upon it.
The crowd quieted even further, although I heard murmurs among the Enemy that set my teeth on edge. They had begun to feel uneasy.
The Commander stepped up next to me, and he even patted me on the shoulder. He announced to the crowd that I was a shining example of the realignment procedure that had been developed in the Great City. I told the Axeman that it was time to begin the carving of the Americans. He brought the blade up to the ear of one of my boys.
I stopped him, and announced, “Why an ear? Can you make a good purse from it, ladies?”
A tittering came from the women in the bleachers as if this were the cutest of jokes.
“I think not! Why not flay him alive? Right now? But even better, see how his friends,” I pointed to the other two men, “don’t know what’s to come? Their ears are stuffed with wax. Their eyes are covered! Why not have them skin their friend for the delight of the Commander?”
Cheers went up, as I had expected. In the dark, of course, it was the Americans who began the cheer, but in a stadium, cheers and claps become contagious. People want to be enthused about a show, and so the Enemy began clapping and cheering.
Then, when they quieted, I asked the Axeman for his blade.
Now, this was the point when my nerves nearly destroyed what I was about to do.
The Axeman gave me a strange look, but his Commander, the Supreme Leader of the camp, nodded to him, and told him in a not-friendly tone, to go on. The pressure of an audience watching did exactly what I wanted it to do — the Commander was caught up in the magic of the theatrical moment. He wanted the show to go on as planned.
Reluctantly, the Axeman passed me the blade.
It was heavy, and its edge was sharp.
“You will now see,” I announced, “one of the Evil Americans be skinned before you, and before your Commander, by his own compatriots!”
The audience went silent as I passed the blade to one of the blindfolded men.
Quickly, however, I took it back, and whispered to the three men whose ears were not, in fact, blocked, “Now. To your left.”
I turned with the blade, and stabbed the Axeman in the groin, and then cut my way up into his belly and sternum —
As the audience began to gasp —
And the three men, blindfolded, grabbed the Commander and tore at him as if they were wild dogs.
In their heads, they were wolves, in fact, and they believed that they were tearing at a stag in the hunt.
The commander screeched, but the men were strong, and in the darkness of the stadium, the Enemy rose, panicking, but it was too late.
They had drunk the opium and liquor, and my countrymen had already risen up with gnashing teeth and a strength that they had never known they’d had in their bodies.
I wanted to see Hoax one last time, to see the look on his face when he knew that this had not gone his way. That he had misplaced any trust he had in me. But it was too dark, and knowing him, he probably died too quickly.
I heard what sounded like wolves tearing at bleating sheep in the dark.
22
The beauty of the escape of my men — men from various platoons who now thought of me as their hero — was that none could remember the show at all.
By dawn, not all the prisoners had survived. Many had died in the fight.
But those who lived, blood on their faces and blotching their clothes, awoke without memory of the past year.
They didn’t know the atrocity committed against them, neither did they know of their own savagery, which had killed the Enemy in the camp.
By dawn, I commanded the men, still under the influence of the Dark Game, to set fire to the last of Hell.
23
An old memory: I was sixteen, and my father lay dying in his bed.
My mother, who had to take up work now, needed me home to help nurse him while he was in pain.
I sat each day with him, and one morning, when I brought him his breakfast, which he barely touched, he told me, “You’re an evil son-of-a-bitch, Gordie. You show the world how good you are, but I know who you are on the inside. I’ve seen it since you were a baby. You have the Devil in you, and you spend your time hiding it.”
I sat with him, patiently, nodding so that I might not appear to be the bad child.
Then, when he was through talking about my evil and how I was going to Hell, I offered him a glass of water.
He drank it, greedily, and passed the glass back to me.
“I still love you, dad,” I said.
“I know you do,” he said.
In the afternoon, he died, peacefully, in his sleep.
I missed him terribly.
His lifeless body, in that bed, made me remember the day he had me shoot my dog and had taught me about how sometimes, Death is a friend.
24
There. I’ve told you it all. I’ve told you about the war, and the young woman, and my father.
My youth, pulled from the drawer, so you can look at it and judge me.
I should be tied up.
Bound.
Whipped.
It is the only way for me to go out of this body, the freedom of my mind to wander.
It intensifies the Dark Game for me.
I don’t want to remember anymore.
I want to close the drawer now.
I want to lock up the past.
I give to you, my wife, Mia, the key.
Only Connect
1
Watch the scenery awhile. It’ll take your mind off the pain. I’ll tell you all about him, if you’ll just listen. You must never breathe a word of this to anyone, but I can tell you’re an understanding sort. You won’t betray me.
His name was Jim, and he worked at the train station taking tickets. He grew up in Hartford, but moved to Deerwich-On-Sparrow, called Deerwich by most, on the Connecticut coast—in his early twenties, the job had seemed good. He’d begun his career riding the rails taking tickets and cleaning the cars, but he’d moved up so that at twenty nine he could sit behind the glass and say, “Roundtrip to Boston leaves at 9:15. That’ll be $49.50.” His head often pounded when it rained, and he was prone to popping aspirin as if it were hard candy and just sucking on it until the headache went away. The sound of the train as it arrived in the station aggravated his condition, but Jim had begun to think of the headaches as normal. He’d long forgotten that they had never existed before he began working with the railroad.
It was the train wreck that had begun his journey toward discovery. One night, fairly late for the train— which had been due in before midnight—there was an awful screeching, from some great distance along the track. The old timers knew what this meant, and they all ran out to see the spectacle. All except for Jim, who stayed back.
He went to grab another bottle of aspirin from beneath his perch. He felt around, but all his fingers found was a completely empty bottle. He stood from his stool, stretching, yawning. Outside, he heard the scraping of metal—the train, he would later learn, went over an embankment, into the river, and some child somewhere would be blamed for playing quarters on the tracks—the shouts of onlookers as the train tossed like a restless sleeper from its bed—but Jim took the opportunity to walk across the street to the drugstore for aspirin.
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