Old Soldiers

by Kit Reed

  Jane rises to close the door.

  "Why, no." Gram is terribly upset. "Of course not. No."

  But the doors in this place are jiggered so they won't really close. Regulations, Jane thinks. Health care centers have to come up to code. She soothes her grandmother with bits of blueberry muffin. The old lady chews and chews but when she spreads her mouth in a new smile, the bits of blueberry muffin are still there.

  Suddenly the old man's tone changes. "Why, you didn't kill Vic, you tried to save him."

  Uneasy, Jane glances at her grandmother, but Gram is fixed on the television now. She smiles on as though she doesn't hear.

  "But he died anyway!"

  "Oh, look, Gram." Jane warbles. Her voice is shaking. It sounds sweet and false. "Look at Rosie."

  "Do you want to know who killed Vic? Do you?"

  "Isn't that a pretty red shirt?"

  Anguished, the old man finishes. "I killed Vic."

  "My God." Jane shoots a look at her grandmother. Did she hear? Is she afraid?

  ~

  I didn't kill Angus and I didn't kill the my point man, I got a citation for what I did, the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star but it was shit because I couldn't get an erection and I couldn't get a job. I was shit and my life was shit and I hated them, because before the war ever happened it already was. Alana left me for that Hunky refugee and took the kids but I showed her, I did, I showed them all.

  ~

  All except me.

  ~

  "I know who killed Vic," the old man cries.

  "Pretty red shirt. Your mother ought to wear red," Gram says. "It would take people's minds off the wrinkles and the fat."

  "Gram!"

  Gram goes on in the unruffled tone she uses when Mom cracks during one of these lectures and starts to yell. Just when you love her best she gets a little mean and you remember she always was. "If only she'd get herself up nice, like my girls Rosie and Oprah do."

  From across the hall, the news comes in on a sob. "I killed Vic."

  "They're just television, Gram." What if the old man really is a murderer?

  "Lose her looks and she'll lose her handsome man and then what will she do?"

  "Mom looks fine." What if he kills Gram?

  "Aaaaaahhh." His throat opens in grief. "Aaaaaah."

  "Shh," Jane murmurs, "please don't."

  And with that brilliant smile that lights up Palmshine, Gram burbles, "Poor Vic."

  "Shh, don't worry. It's just crazy talk, Gram."

  Nothing to worry about, Jane tells herself. Veteran, Congressional Medal of Honor or something, all that. Even if he could walk, what would he use? No scissors and no razors allowed here, plastic silverware.

  But Jane worries. She's worried ever since they moved Gram. In a play she knows, street cleaners came for you with rolling garbage cans. You heard the tin whistle just before they took you away. In one story, it's the Dark Men who come. They live in the mortuary and work by night. When they finish with you, you are another store dummy in the window at Neiman Marcus, and nobody knows. What if evil really is out there, not things you are afraid of, but something real? What if the doctors are ranching organs and selling them by night? What if some Svengali in white tries to bilk Gram out of her money and starts pinching when she says no? Secret beatings and spiteful bruisings go on in places like this, sexual abuse and worse. Anything can happen when you're old and frail and can't get out of your chair. Should she stay here and protect Gram? But Jane has a life and a day job. She can't sleep at the foot of Gram's bed every night, even though Gram's so small now that there's plenty of room. Besides, Mom researched. Palmshine is run by staunch Methodists with big dependable feet, good, kind Methodist faces and capable Methodist hands. Palmshine is the best of its kind, Mom researched it. It's right there so in Consumer Reports.

  Then why is she so upset?

  Mostly, it's the shouting. "Who killed Vic?"

  "Look, Gram," Jane says, pointing to a branch outside the window. "Look at the pretty bird."

  Gram turns her head obediently. She looks right at it but does not see. "Pretty," she says with that lovely, undiscriminating smile.

  In the next second she's asleep. It happens. Jane's used to it. She's also pledged to stay until six. If she's not here when Gram wakes up – if she doesn't stay until the supper tray comes – "Oh look, Gram, it's lovely Sunday dinner, turkey and apple crisp, again" her grandmother won't eat. If she doesn't stay her grandmother will wake up alone in her pretty room on a Sunday night and start to cry.

  ~

  Nobody can stand living with the dead I know that stink of decay, when they pull back the robe to wash me I see in their faces how it smells, well stick your face in it put your hands into it and inhale, take me the way I am if I can't stand it how can you so wallow in your own stink and stay the fuck away I don't want you but I won't let go until I get my revenge on you God damn you, it's all your fault unless it was Alana's, she was gone and the boys were gone when I got back so it's her fault unless Angus started it, why didn't you just say no, unless it was the Lieutenant for putting me in charge or those candy mouthed shitfaced sons I had with their greedy shiteating smiles you can all just go to hell and stay there and leave me alone and I'll stay here

  ~

  Let me in.

  ~

  As long as Gram keeps smiling, Jane can handle it. She can live with the shadows and the shouting, but Gram isn't in right now. Jane is alone with it.

  "You didn't kill Vic."

  "Oh, stop it." She turns up the TV

  The punchline rolls in. "I killed Vic," he cries again. Again.

  Trembling, Jane pats the air above Gran, she apologizes to Rosie – are these shows on a loop? Spilling into these cheery rooms even on Sundays when real TV is showing something else? "I'll be right back," she says, and even though at Gram's age sleep is tenuous and leaving her is risky, she slips into the hall.

  "Do you know who killed Vic?" The old man's shout meets her at the door. "Do you?"

  "Stop it." She slams into his room. "Just stop it!"

  "What?" His head turns at the sound. "What?" he shouts, glaring at nothing. His mouth is a furnace fueled by hatred. "Go away!"

  But Jane is angry now. "I'm not going anywhere until you shut up."

  "It's you." For a moment his voice softens. "Is it really you?"

  "Who do you think I am?"

  Something changes. "Thank God you've come."

  A part of Jane knows you shouldn't walk into things you don't know about, but it's too late. Besides, the shadows are massing outside the door and if she stands here long enough they will come rolling in. Something is out there waiting, whether for her or for Gram or for this old veteran, she does not know. There is more at issue here than Jane's sanity or her grandmother's comfort and safety. The trouble – and this is what strikes her dumb and leaves her cracked open, vulnerable and waiting – is that she can't say what. Because the old soldier's tone has changed she says gently, "Just be quiet now, OK?"

  "And now that I have you here. It's Anzio, don't you see?" He clears his throat like a lecturer about to start. "Tobruk." Big voice for a man in his what, eighties, nineties. The old veteran looks well and handsome, considering – flowing white hair, square jaw, sharp brow, knife-blade nose.

  "You're hurting people out there. That's all."

  "Don't you see what I'm talking about?"

  "That's enough!"

  "Stand still, Alana. Don't you dare walk out while I'm talking to you! Bizerte, don't you get it? Montecassino. Normandy. Tobruk."

  "I said, that's enough." Jane puts up her hand as if to ward him off but the battlefield names keep rolling out on a current of rage and it is too much. It's just too much.

  "You know you were fucking him, you bitch, and all the time... Don't you see where I was?"

  "Just stop!" It's his health that angers her, the strong arms and firm jaw and the forearms like blades; there are dumbbells crossed on the side table and a
metal triangle hangs above the bed. This old man is so strong that he can go on forever. He can shout on and on unless somebody stops him. "Shut up."

  He is raging at a world of people she can't see and never was, people that she won't see and can't help and it is terrible. "That's all you know, Sergeant." Then, "Shut up, you unfaithful bitch. Shut up or they'll shave all your hair and rape you to death. They'll lock you up."

  She shouts back, "Shut up or they'll lock you up!"

  This is how he silences her. "I was locked up. Who do you think killed Vic?"

  "Who are you?"

  "You weren't there, Sergeant. None of you were, so you don't know what became of us. What do you know about it?"

  Jane throws back her head like a horse that's been spooked; eyes wide, whites showing all the way around. "Oh, stop it. Just don't!"

  "What do you know about Vic?" The eyes the old man turns toward her are like milk glass, shining and opaque. There's a chance that he still doesn't know that Jane is here. It doesn't matter whether she's here or not or who she is or even whether she's listening. The harangue is etched into his mind. "You didn't crawl through shit and you didn't see your buddy's face blown off or your best friend's belly torn up by a grenade. You didn't see anything, you little bitch," he says. So he does see her. And now that he sees her his face splits open and she looks into the agony. He is crying for both of them. "You careless, careless bitch."

  The pain is so obvious and so powerful that her voice shakes. "I'm so sorry it hurts!"

  "Who did this to us? Whose fault is it then?"

  Trembling, she backs away. "I'll go get somebody."

  "Don't! I'm not finished with you."

  "I'm only trying to help."

  "Shit on that. Shit on your help." The old soldier rolls his head from side to side on the pillow, looking here, there, nowhere, tossing hopelessly like a child who's never been rocked. He is struggling. "Don't go." Words back up in his throat and he strangles on them.

  ~

  I said, let me in!

  ~

  "I'll get a doctor."

  His face writhes in a series of conflicting expressions. "Fuck that shit. Get out!"

  "They'll give you a shot."

  "You bitch, you're just like all the rest of them." The old veteran is so filled with grief and hatred that the words come out in puffs like exploding shells. "Alana, the kids. Now go away."

  Jane is stumbling backward to the door when his expression changes. There is a stir at her back. It's more than a shadow, she thinks, but can't be sure. There is something new in the room. Whatever it is, it keeps her in place while the old man's words blur with pain and stop being speech. He groans aloud. She tries again, "Please let me get someone."

  "Just go away! Take the kids and get out of here." He can hardly breathe. "Get out before you get hurt."

  Trapped in the bed like that, how could he... Still she's afraid. Her voice trembles. "Just don't hurt my grandmother."

  "You have no idea what I can do."

  "Nurse! The bell, Mr. ah."

  "That's classified!"

  "OK, OK." Shaking, she advances. "Ah. Don't hurt me, I'm just going to reach over here and ring the..."

  "No! You have no idea what I can do."

  "I'm only trying to help!"

  "Stay back!" The force of his hatred overturns her, "You have no idea what I can do to you!"

  "You did it," she murmurs, frozen in place. "You killed Vic."

  "I did. I kill everything I love!" The rest comes out in a spray – his story, Jane guesses, but so distorted by resentment that she can't make it out – a dozen voices fill the room: allies and enemies, traitors, everyone, the story that came before everybody else comes tumbling out so fast that nobody could sort it out, and as he rambles, shadows begin rolling into the room. He rasps, "Yes I killed him, and I'll kill you too."

  At her back something moves and she wheels, startled, and looks into its face. He looks so nice. "Who are you?"

  "I'll kill everyone who..." But the furious old soldier sees it too. He bares his teeth, thundering: "Go away!"

  But the gnashing, outraged old man can't frighten the young one no matter how loud he shouts. The young soldier is smiling, fresh-faced and handsome and easy in the fatigues, with his combat boots hanging down from laces knotted around his neck, hitting the dogtags that dangle from a chain until they clink. The muddy helmet swings from one hand. With the other, he makes a cross on his lips as the old man in the bed goes on railing:

  "It serves him right, you know. God damned Vic..."

  "What?" she cries.

  "It serves you right."

  This nice young man; she asks, "What did you do to him?"

  Shh. The newcomer shakes his head and without speaking he tells her, Shh. You don't need to know.

  "Who are you?" she asks. Then she knows. It's Vic, he is this patient's long-dead victim and now he's come back to confront the man who murdered him all those years ago. She turns to the young soldier. "Oh, Vic. Poor Vic!"

  The old man sits bolt upright. "You called?"

  "Vic?" She turns from one to the other. The profile, the eyes... She covers her mouth and points at the veteran in the bed. "You're Vic!"

  "This is all your fault!" The milk glass eyes snap wide. His voice overflows the room and roars down the hall. "You brought him, you bitch. Get out."

  Jane hears footsteps approaching – the nurse, orderlies – but she says, "Oh my God, I'm sorry." She doesn't know why she's crying, but she is.

  "Die, you bastard." Propped on trembling arms he snarls at the young man, "Finish it!"

  The air in the room shimmers. There is a decision hanging fire.

  ~

  Not now.

  ~

  "Die, God damn you. Go ahead and get it over with!"

  Jane wheels to protect the young soldier – Vic? But he shakes his head. No. In the next second, he is gone.

  "Get out!"

  As the head nurse comes into the room. "Victor Earhart, you stop that! You stop abusing people around here! I'm sorry," she says to Jane. "He has a history."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Bitch, you bitch. You get the fuck out!"

  "Don't worry," she says to Jane, "he does that to everybody, he just drives people away." With the heel of her hand she straightarms the old veteran, pushing him down on the pillow. "Keep it down, Vic, or I'll have to give you a shot."

  Vic?

  "Shut up, Vic, she's going."

  Vic.

  "Go away." He is howling now. "Go away, God damn you, go!"

  "I am!" Sobbing, she runs. Jane retreats to Gram's room, to nice Gram who has been stripped of her possessions, her flesh, of all the old, bad complications, so the sweetness is the only thing left. And the pain, she sees now. The pain.

  "Oh," Gram says, extending her arms. Her smile turns on with the force of a thousand halogen lamps. "Oh, how nice!"

  "Oh, Gram." Jane advances with her arms out, she can hug Gram and even though Gram has lost her powers she can still make it all right. In the next second she realizes her grandmother isn't looking at her. The old lady's thin arms fan out in a welcoming hug and her face lights up, but it isn't her granddaughter she's reaching for and it isn't Mom. It isn't anybody in this world, Jane understands. Gram is reaching for somebody else.

  Turning, she sees that the shadows have followed her out of the old veteran's room and gathered in Gram's nice place, and with them, the new force that came into the building today to effect – not revenge, a rescue? Young Vic is standing here in Gram's room in his fatigues with boots around his neck and the helmet dangling. He's taken off his dogtags and he carries them in the other hand. Grinning, he tosses them to Gram.

  Across the hall, the old veteran starts. "Who killed Vic?" Old man, old man! He can't shut up. Now he'll never shut up.

  ~

  I came for you. Come with me?

  ~

  "Oh Gram, please don't..."

  With that smile
blazing, she does.

  About the author

  Kit Reed calls herself "transgenred," as she's never quite figured out where she belongs in the market, probably because she writes for her readers– and herself. Her novels include mainstream fiction, psychothrillers and SF. Enclave is her most recent. P.S. Publishing released What Wolves Know this year, with stories that originally appeared in Postcripts, the Yale Review, F&SF, Asimov's SF and the Kenyon Review.

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