which was almost dry. Squad D used the bridge. Halfway across, it
blew up. Perhaps it had been detonated from downstream. More
likely, someone - perhaps even Billy himself - had stepped on the
wrong board. All nine of them had been killed. Not a single
survivor.
God - if there really is such a being - is usually kinder than that,
Dale thought. He put Lieutenant Anderson's letter back and took
out Josh Bortman's letter. It had been written on blue-lined paper
from what looked like a child's tablet. Bortman's handwriting was
nearly illegible, the scrawl made worse by the writing implement -
a soft-lead pencil. Obviously blunt to start with, it must have been
no more than a nub by the time Bortman signed his name at the
bottom. In several places Bortman had borne down hard enough
with his instrument to tear the paper.
It had been Bortman, the tenth man, who sent Dale and Andrea the
squad picture, already framed, the glass over the photo
miraculously unbroken in its long trip from Homan to Saigon to
San Francisco and finally to Binghamton, New York.
Bortman's letter was anguished. He called the other nine "the best
friends I ever had in my life, I loved them all like they was my
brothers."
Dale held the blue-lined paper in his hand and looked blankly
through his study door and toward the sound of the ticking clock
on the mantelpieces. When the letter came, in early May of 1974,
he had been too full of his own anguish to really consider
Bortman's. Now he supposed he could understand it - a little,
anyway. Bortman had been feeling a deep and inarticulate guilt.
Nine letters from his hospital bed on the Homan base, all in that
pained scrawl, all probably written with that same soft-lead pencil.
The expense of having nine enlargements of the Squad D
photograph made, and framed, and mailed off. Rites Of atonement
with a soft-lead pencil, Dale thought, folding the letter again and
putting it back In the drawer with Anderson's. As if he had killed
them by taking their picture. That's really what was between the
lines, wasn't it? "Please don't hate me, Mr. Clewson, please don't
think I killed your son and the other's by--"
In the other room the mantelpiece clock softly began to chime the
hour of five.
Dale went back into the living room, and took the picture down
again.
What you're talking about is madness.
Looked at the boy with the short blonde hair again.
I loved them all like they was my brothers.
Turned the picture over.
Please don't think I killed your son - all of your sons - by taking
their picture. Please don't hate me because I was in the Homan
base hospital with bleeding haemorrhoids instead of on the Ky Doe
bridge with the best friends I ever had in my life. Please don't hate
me, because I finally caught up, it took me ten years of trying, but I
finally caught up.
Written on the back, in the same soft-lead pencil, was this notation:
Jack Bradley Omaha, Neb.
Billy Clewson Binghamton, NY.
Rider Dotson Oneonta, NY
Charlie Gibson Payson, ND
Bobby Kale Henderson, IA
Jack Kimberley Truth or Consequences. NM
Andy Moulton Faraday, LA Staff Sgt. I
Jimmy Oliphant Beson, Del.
Asley St. Thomas Anderson, Ind.
*Josh Bortman Castle Rock, Me.
He had put his own name last, Dale saw - he had seen all of this
before, or course, and had noticed it... but had never really noticed
it until now, perhaps. He had put his name last, out of alphabetical
order, and with an asterisk.
The asterisk means "still alive.' The asterisk means "don't hate
me."
Ah, but what you're thinking is madness, and you damned well
know it.
Nevertheless, he went to the telephone, dialled 0, and ascertained
that the area code for Maine was 207. He dialed Maine directory
assistance, and ascertained that there was a single Bortman family
in Castle Rock.
He thanked the operator, wrote the number down, and looked at
the telephone.
You don't really intend to call those people, do you?
No answer - only the sound of the ticking clock. He had put the
picture on the sofa and now he looked at it - looked first at his own
son, his hair pulled back behind his head, a bravo little moustache
trying to grow on his upper lip, frozen forever at the age of twenty-
one, and then at the new boy in that old picture, the boy with the
short blonds hair, the boy whose dog-tags were twisted so they lay
face-down and unreadable against his chest. He thought of the way
Josh Bortman had carefully segregated himself from the others,
thought of the asterisk, and suddenly his eyes filled with warm
tears.
I never hated you, son, he thought. Nor did Andrea, for all her
grief. Maybe I should have picked up a pen and dropped you a note
saying so, but honest to Christ, the thought never crossed my mind.
He picked up the phone now and dialled the Bortman number in
Castle Rock, Maine.
Busy.
He hung up and sat for five minutes, looking out at the street where
Billy had learned to ride first a trike, then a bike with trainer
wheels, then a two-wheeler. At eighteen he had brought home the
final improvement - a Yamaha 500. For just a moment he could
see Billy with paralysing clarity, as if he might walk through the
door and sit down.
He dialled the Bortman number again. This time it rang. The voice
on the other end managed to convey an unmistakable impression of
wariness in just two syllables. "Hello?" At that same moment,
Dale's eyes fell on the dial of his wristwatch and read the date - not
for the first time that day, but it was the first time it really sunk in.
It was April 9th. Billy and the others had died eleven years ago
yesterday. They -
"Hello?" the voice repeated sharply. "Answer me, or I'm hanging
up! Which one are you?"
Which one are you? He stood in the ticking living room, cold,
listening to words croak out of him mouth.
"My name is Dale Clewson, Mr. Bortman. My son--"
"Clewson. Billy Clewson's father." Now the voice was flat,
inflectionless.
"Yes, that's--"
"So you say."
Dale could find no reply. For the first time in his life, he really was
tongue-tied.
"And has your picture of Squad D changed, too?"
"Yes." It came out in a strangled little gasp.
Bortman's voice remained inflectionless, but it was nonetheless
filled with savagery. "You listen to me, and tell the others. There's
going to be tracer equipment on my phone by this afternoon. If it's
some kind of joke, you fellows are going to be laughing all the way
to jail, I can assure you."
"Mr. Bortman--"
"Shut up! First someone calling himself Peter Moulton calls,
supposedly from Louisiana, and tells my wife that our boy has
suddenly showed up in a picture Josh sent them of Squad D. Sh
e's
still having hysterics over that when a woman purporting to be
Bobby Kale's mother calls with the same insane story. Next,
Oliphant! Five minutes ago, Rider Dotson's brother! He says. Now
you."
"But Mr. Bortman--"
"My wife is Upstairs sedated, and if all of this is a case or 'Have
you got Prince Albert in a can,' I swear to God -"
"You know it isn't a joke," Dale whispered. His fingers felt cold
and numb - ice cream fingers. He looked across the room at the
photograph. At the blonde boy. Smiling, squinting into the camera.
Silence from the other end.
"You know it isn't a joke, so what happened?"
"My son killed himself yesterday evening," Bortman said evenly.
"If you didn't know It."
"I didn't. I swear."
Bortman signed. "And you really are calling from long distance,
aren't you?"
"From Binghamton, New York."
"Yes. You can tell the difference--local from long distance, I mean.
Long distance has a sound...a...a hum..."
Dale realized, belatedly, that expression had finally crept into that
voice. Bortman was crying.
"He was depressed off and on, ever since he got back from Nam, in
late 1974," Bortman said. "it always got worse in the spring, it
always peaked around the 8th of April when the other boys ... and
your son..."
"Yes," Dale said.
"This year, it just didn't ... didn't peak."
There was a muffled honk-Bortman using his handkerchief.
"He hung himself in the garage, Mr. Clewson."
"Christ Jesus," Dale muttered. He shut his eyes very tightly, trying
to ward off the image. He got one which was arguably even worse
- that smiling face, the open fatigue shirt, the twisted dog-tags. "I'm
sorry."
"He didn't want people to know why he wasn't with the others that
day, but of course the story got out." A long, meditative pause
from Bortman's end. "Stories like that always do."
"Yes. I suppose they do."
"Joshua didn't have many friends when he was growing up, Mr.
Clewson. I don't think he had any real friends until he got to Nam.
He loved your son, and the others."
Now it's him. comforting me.
"I'm sorry for your loss;" Dale said. "And sorry to have bothered
you at a time like this. But you'll understand ... I had to."
"Yes. Is he smiling, Mr. Clewson? The others ... they said he was
smiling."
Dale looked toward the picture beside the ticking clock. "He's
smiling."
"Of course he is. Josh finally caught up with them."
Dale looked out the window toward the sidewalk where Billy had
once ridden a bike with training wheels. He supposed he should
say something, but he couldn't seem to think of a thing. His
stomach hurt. His bones were cold.
"I ought to go, Mr. Clewson. In case my wife wakes up." He
paused. "I think I'll take the phone off the hook."
"That might not be a bad idea."
"Goodbye, Mr. Clewson."
"Goodbye. Once again, my sympathies."
"And mine, too."
Click.
Dale crossed the room and picked up the photograph of Squad D.
He looked at the smiling blonde boy, who was sitting cross-legged
in front of Kimberley and Gibson, sitting casually and comfortably
on the ground as if he had never had a haemorrhoid in his life, as if
he had never stood atop a stepladder in a shadowy garage and
slipped a noose around his neck.
Josh finally caught up with them.
He stood looking fixedly at the photograph for a long time before
realizing that the depth of silence In the room had deepened. The
clock had stopped.
THAT FEELING, YOU
CAN ONLY SAY WHAT
IT IS IN FRENCH
STEPHEN KING
From
The New Yorker, 1998
A second honeymoon in the Florida Keys. What could be more
relaxing?
FLOYD, what's that over there? Oh shit. The mans voice speaking
these words was vaguely familiar, but the words themselves were
just a disconnected snip of dialogue, the kind of thing you heard
when you were channel-surfing with the remote. There was no one
named Floyd in her life. Still, that was the start. Even before she
saw the little girl in the red pinafore, there were those disconnected
words.
But it was the little girl who brought it on strong. "Oh-oh, I'm
getting that feeling," Carol said.
The girl in the pinafore was in front of a country market called
Carson's "Beer, Wine, Groc, Fresh Bait, Lottery" - crouched down
with her butt between her ankles and the bright-red apron-dress
tucked between her thighs, playing with a doll. The doll was
yellow-haired and dirty the kind that's round and stuffed and
boneless in the body.
"What feeling?" Bill asked.
"You know. The one you can only say what it is in French. Help
me here."
"Deja vu," he said.
"That's it," she said, and turned to look at the little girl one more
time. She'll have the doll by one leg, Carol thought. Holding it
upside down by one leg with its grimy yellow hair hanging down.
But the little girl had abandoned the doll on the store's splintery
gray steps and had gone over to look at a dog caged up in the back
of a station wagon. Then Bill and Carol Shelton went around a
curve in the road and the store was out of sight.
"How much farther?" Carol asked.
Bill looked at her with one eyebrow raised and his mouth dimpled
at one corner - left eyebrow right dimple, always the same. The
look that said, You think I'm amused, but I'm really irritated For
the ninety-trillionth or so time in the marriage, I'm really irritated
You don't know that, though, because you can only see about two
inches into me and then your vision fails.
But she had better vision than he realized; it was one of the secrets
of the marriage. Probably he had a few secrets of his own. And
there were, of course, the ones they kept together.
"I don't know" he said. "I've never been here."
"Once you get over the causeway and onto Sanibel Island, there's
only one," he said. "It goes across to Captiva, and there it ends. But
before it does we'll come to Palin House. That I promise you."
The arch in his eyebrow began to flatten. The dimple began to fill
in. He was returning to what she thought of as the Great Level. She
had come to dislike the Great Level, too, but not as much as the
eyebrow and the dimple, or his sarcastic way of saying "Excuse
me?" when you said something he considered stupid, or his habit
of pooching out his lower lip when he wanted to appear thoughtful
and deliberative.
"Bill?"
"Do you know anyone named Floyd?"
"There was Floyd Denning. He and I ran the downstairs snack bar
at Christ the Redeemer in our senior year. I told you about him,
didn't I? He stole the Coke money one Friday and spent the
weekend in New York with his girlfriend. They suspended him and
expelled her. What made you thi
nk of him?"
"I don't know," she said. Easier than telling him that the Floyd with
whom Bill had gone to high school wasn't the Floyd the voice in
her head was speaking to. At least, she didn't think it was.
Second honeymoon, that's what you call this, she thought, looking
at the palms a that lined Highway 867, a white bird that stalked
along the shoulder like an angry preacher, and a sign that read
"Seminole Wildlife Park, Bring a Carfull for $10." Florida the
Sunshine State. Florida the Hospitality State. Not to mention
Florida the Second-Honeymoon State. Florida, where Bill Shelton
and Carol Shelton, the former Carol O'Neill, of Lynn,
Massachusetts, came on their first honeymoon twenty-five years
before. Only that was on the other side, the Atlantic side, at a little
cabin colony, and there were cockroaches in the bureau drawers.
He couldn't stop touching me. That was all right, though, in those
days I wanted to be touched Hell I wanted to he torched like
Atlanta in "Gone with the wind," and he torched me, rebuilt me,
torched me again. Now it's silver. Twenty-five is silver. And
sometimes I get that feeling.
They were approaching a curve, and she thought, Three crosses on
the right side of the road. Two small ones flanking a bigger one.
The small ones are clapped-together wood. The one in the middle
is white birch with a picture on it, a tiny photograph of the
seventeen-year-old boy who lost control of his car on this curve,
one drunk nght that was his last drunk night, and this is where his
girlfriend and her girlfriends marked the spot -
Bill drove around the curve. A pair of black crows, plump and
shiny, lifted off from something pasted to the macadam in a splat
of blood. They had eaten so well that Carol wasn't sure they were
going to get out of the way until they did. There were no crosses,
not on the left, not on the right. Just roadkill in the middle, a
woodchuck or something, now passing beneath a luxury car that
had never been north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Floyd, what's that over there?
"What's wrong?"
"Huh?" She looked at him, bewildered, feeling a little wild.
"You're sitting bolt upright. Got a cramp in your back?"
"Just a slight one." She settled back by degrees. "I had that feeling
again. The deja vu."
"Is it gone?"
'Yes," she said, but she was lying. It had retreated a little, but that
was all. She'd had this before, but never so continuously. It came
The Collective Page 14
