“I. Never. Loved. You!” She stood shivering. Defiant.
Morgenstern smiled. “It’s your rebelliousness I loved most.” He turned his back and she burst into flame. Morgenstern walked back toward the door as flame began to overtake the small space, tossing the unused match in the corner.
“Wait!” Withers cried out. “Please don’t leave me!”
Morgenstern turned and appraised the man. The magician looked at him with sad eyes that looked as dry as glass. “You were in the audience tonight. You are dying.” He smiled again.
“I don’t want to die.”
“That’s not the first time I’ve heard that.” Thick black smoke began to pool and eddy along the ceiling of the caravan spreading out behind the magician like a broad set of black wings. “Why should I listen now?”
Withers coughed. He couldn’t catch his breath to plead.
Morgenstern bent down close, holding a finger to his lips to quiet him. His touch was pleasantly warm and soft. “I could feel your cancer when you first sat down in my audience. It’s inoperable.”
Withers blinked against the rising heat and wished that the thing in front of him would untie his hands at least so he could rub at his stinging eyes. “I’ll give you anything,” he choked.
“Anything?” The black angel beat his wings, swirling the smoke around him in dark, suffocating eddies.
Withers breath caught. And then he said, “Anything. Everything!”
Morgenstern laughed in his face. Withers felt the ropes loosen and fall away. He staggered up from the chair and the room pitched as he swooned from the sudden pain in his head. The beast caught him and held him up.
Withers cried out as Morgenstern’s hand plunged into his abdomen. The dark man pushed his flesh aside and slid his hands up under Withers’ ribs. The thinning air in the room was overtaken by thickening smoke. He was suffocating. His vision dimmed. His hearing lessened. From far away he heard a voice that said, “Never repent.”
Withers felt a ripping in his body that eclipsed every other sensation of pain he’d experienced, in war, on the force, in sickness. Every hard thing in his life was a joy compared to what Morgenstern did with his hand. And as much as he wanted to black out, to fall out of the world into blissful oblivion, he was held right there, in his body, feeling every searing tug and jerk and tear. Until Morgenstern pulled his hand free and held it up, showing Withers a wetly shining mass of meat—the meat that had once been killing him.
The magician tore at it with white teeth until a piece the size of a plum came off and the thing swallowed it like a pelican eating a fish: chin up, tissue sliding down.
“Want a taste?” he asked.
Withers squinted his eyes shut as hard as he could and shook his head like a child being offered ipecac.
“You don’t know what you’re missing. None of you have any taste, really.” Two more bites and the ball of rebellious flesh was gone. Morgenstern picked Withers up in his arms and carried him outside the trailer. He set the man down in the grass by the fence. People rushed around them with buckets and hoses trying to put out the fire. None of them paid the men any mind.
“What did you just do? Did I just sell you my soul?”
Morgenstern laughed again. “Of all the things you have—this planet, your time on it, a comfortable life in a universe hostile to everything . . . and still, you want a soul. Don’t be so greedy. You already got more than you deserve.”
The magician left to get a bucket to help put out the fire. Withers heard him shout, “My God, Lili’s in there!” as though he meant it.
Withers rolled over in the grass and pushed himself up off the ground. He took a deep breath in the night air and relished it.
ALL DREAMS DIE IN THE MORNING
Everything was disorienting. Rifles popped in a constant dull crackle competing with mortar bombs and grenades to still his ears. The rain fell in heavy sheets, obscuring the men behind the tree line shooting at him, making their muzzle flashes sparkle in the dark like the starry sky above Ripton, back home, on the Fourth of July. Thunder boomed softer than bombs, and men screamed and splashed as they ran and fell in the maelstrom. And he tried to make sense of a tiny spot in the chaos of it all, and find one of them to kill. Everything worked in bombastic concert to prevent Jake from seeing the enemy. Focusing on a shadow, he aimed and fired. A shadow fell. He fired. Nothing changed. He fired, and a grenade exploded in front of him, peppering his face with hot sand that felt like a thousand little stings. He fell back behind his fortification, gasping in panic and pawing at his eyes, desperate to assure himself he still had them.
He choked and sputtered as the rain beat down on his stinging face. A pair of hands gripped him. He panicked, not knowing whose they were. With his M1 firmly in his grasp, he tensed, ready to fire or swing the stock around. What he couldn’t do was see whether it was another Marine grabbing him, or the enemy. A voice called through the din. “Blackmun! Jake! Are you all right?” He shook his head and wiped at his eyes. The rain blurred them again the second he brushed them clear. A flare lit up overhead, lighting the rain like falling embers. The face above him was a backlit silhouette, indistinguishable from all the others rushing back and forth behind it, but he recognized the voice. Jim from Georgia—who gave him a raft of shit about being a New England Yankee but always held out a hand when Jake needed one—was looming over him pulling him out of the dark. “Up, Jake. On your fuckin’ feet!” he cried out over the sounds of war. Jake pawed at his head feeling for his helmet before sitting up, and felt only the damp hair that had grown out long past regulation length since they’d landed on the island. Jim shoved his lost helmet at him and pulled him upright. He heard a bullet cut through the air right next to his head before he saw the tracer round rip into Jim’s chest and send the big man sprawling on his back.
He slapped his helmet on, dumping filthy water over his head, and jumped on top of Jim, trying to find the wound, trying to see if he would be okay. The rain pattered against Jim’s fixed, open eyes. The ragged black hole above his heart stained the Marine green fabric of his shirt black. He would never be okay again.
Jake pivoted on his knee and swung his rifle around at the line of muzzle flashes in the bushes across the creek, firing blindly at the lights. Movement to his left drew his attention and he saw a row of their soldiers splashing in the water, trying to advance on their flank. Sergeant Hull shouted at the men on the line to redirect fire, but he didn’t need to be told. He advanced, turned his aim on them, squeezed the trigger, and a man fell. Two more behind that one crumpled before he had a chance to get a bead on either one. One after another, the enemy collapsed into the water, dead. Jake fired until he heard his clip ping as it ejected from his rifle. He jammed another clip in and kept firing until he heard the Sergeant scream, “Cease fire, cease fire,” his words almost lost in the thunder and rain. The men obeyed. Their guns and mortars silenced, only the weather disobeyed his command.
Every peal of thunder made him flinch. He returned to his part of the entrenchment to find Sterling and Stone squatting next to Jim. They weren’t working to rescue him. Neither applied pressure or tried to beat life back into his body. They sat, staring into the face of their friend who used to tell jokes and share his rations though he complained of being hungry. When they’d kidded him that his size made him a bigger target than the rest of them, Jim beat a fist against his chest, and said, “Stay behind me, boys!”
Jake clenched his jaw and looked at the bodies of the enemy on the far shore, lying still in shallow water. One of them was responsible for that hole in Jim’s chest. One of them had killed him. And though dead, in Jake’s mind, that account wasn’t square. Not by a long shot. Whoever he was, he might’ve died for his Emperor, but the rat bastard deserved to die again for killing his friend. He scanned the line looking for someone who could take the guilty man’s punishment and deliver it to him in Jap Hell. Not a single one, dead or alive, volunteered to courier his punishment. So, Jake sat
in the hot dark, soaking wet. For the first time since landing on the island, he was thankful for the rain. Thankful it concealed his tears.
He awoke with a start, gasping and crying out. His feet caught in the sheets and he kicked, struggling to free himself before they could get him, hold him down and bayonet him. A cool hand on his chest preceded a light “Shhh. You’re all right. You’re here with me.” He gripped her wrist and blinked away the dream lingering behind in his eyes. The island jungle retreated, leaving him in their bedroom lit in the blue hue of early morning, not the cold white fire of an enemy flare. The sheers Dene had sewn the winter before moved slightly with the gentle air pushing through the gaps in the window frame. He’d rather sleep with the windows open, but he didn’t want the neighbors to hear his screams. Though he felt fairly certain they could anyway.
“Was it the same one?” she asked. He nodded. He never told her what the dream was about, but she knew the same one had been haunting him for more than a decade. Though it didn’t visit him every night, it came often enough he dreaded sleep, especially in summer when the heat and humidity settled in and reminded him of the islands. That morning was cool, though. The temperature had finally dropped overnight and their bedroom was almost chilly. It was nice under the covers with her.
He fell back onto his pillow and she lay down beside him with her head on his shoulder, tracing a finger up and down the center of his undershirt. Her touch was electric and made him stir under the covers. He turned his head and she looked up and kissed him with dry lips that tasted like salt and sleep. She smiled and the lines around her dark eyes deepened, giving him a peek at her face as it would be in another twenty or thirty years when those lines were permanent. He loved the future of her as much as the present and the past all in that single moment.
Cupping her breast in his hand, Jake craned his neck forward for another kiss. She caressed his stomach, slipping her fingers under the bottom of his shirt to tickle the hair around his navel, then walked them down and pulled at the drawstring at the front of his pajama bottoms. He drew her closer and her hand came out of his pants and pushed lightly against his chest. She got up on an elbow and turned her head away, coughing. She took a deep, dry-sounding breath before coughing again, harder, with a rattle in her lungs he could feel through the mattress. He tried waiting for the spell to pass, but she rolled away from him and sat upright on the edge of the bed. Her back convulsed with each painful sounding hack and wheeze.
“You call the doctor yesterday, like I asked you to?” he asked, timing his words in between her explosions.
She looked over her shoulder at him, one hand covering her mouth and shook her head, no. While she liked her doctor fine, she disliked doctors in general and avoided calling on them on principle. Shy of needing stitches or a cast, she’d say they had more important things to do than worry about her. “It’s just this damn cold,” she said. Her voice was a rasp. “I’ll get over it. Doc Haringa has real sick people to look after.”
“You are sick. Been a month you since first caught that cold. How much longer you going to hold out?”
With a hand on her sternum, she rolled her eyes and sighed. “If it’s not better by tomorrow, I’ll call on him.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, Punkin. I’ll do it.” She leaned back on one hand and he got up on an elbow, craning his neck forward for a kiss. Instead, she tussled his hair and stood. He knew her cough wouldn’t be better tomorrow or the next day. He knew that it wouldn’t ever be better unless someone looked at it and maybe gave her something to fight the infection. But there was no arguing with Dene. She was convinced it was just a cold that she couldn’t shake and there’d be no telling her otherwise—no matter how many letters came after your name. He resolved to call Dr. Haringa after breakfast. He reckoned he’d done harder things than drag her to the doctor’s office kicking and screaming.
She pulled her robe around her shoulders. “I’ll go fix us up some coffee,” she said. “You want eggs?” He wanted to say all he desired was her getting back into bed with him. But their attempt at affection had kicked off another coughing spell. A second try would just start that rattling motor running even harder. He sat up, trying to hide the last of his erection by bunching up the covers in his lap. The sad look on her face told him she noticed as much as he did that both of them were getting out of bed unsatisfied. She picked a pack of cigarettes up off the nightstand and lit one before holding the pack out to him.
He slid one out even though he preferred Lucky Strikes to her menthols, struck a match and said, “Eggs’d be aces, Swee’Pea.”
She walked out of the bedroom leaving him alone with his memories of intimacy and killing. The breeze stole through the gaps like a low breath and the smell of rosemary from the garden rode in on it. His stomach rumbled. He took a drag of her menthol.
The stink of cigarettes and body odor woke Jake from already fitful sleep. Not one of them had enjoyed a shower in weeks, but Private Foster smelled riper than anyone else on the island. As if his body was producing a protective cocoon of musk strong enough to block out everyone else’s B.O. He sure as shit didn’t smell like rosemary. That was it, right? He’d dreamed about smelling rosemary. And about her again. Whoever she was. Like all his dreams, her face faded from his mind until he was left only with an idea of who his Swee’Pea might be.
“Jesus wept, Foster. You could make a vulture puke.” Foster smiled, stuck up a middle finger and walked on, seeming proud of his reek.
Jake stuck a leg out of his rack and tried to stand without dumping himself out of the hammock onto the ground. The sun was barely up but it was already oppressively hot and humid. The sensation recalled the memory of the steam towel shave his father had treated him to the day before he left for Camp Lejeune. His mother had balked and said, “Willya look at his chin? There aren’t enough hairs on it to pluck, let alone shave.” She wanted to protect her boy—or the idea of him still being a boy, anyway. The old man had insisted, telling her that “the boy” was a man, and goddamn it, he needed a proper shave before he sailed halfway around the world to fight a war. He marched Jake out of the house and they loaded into the truck and his Pop drove him to Frank’s Tonsorial Parlor. Pop didn’t much care for the name—he didn’t like to put on “airs”—but Frank was a buddy from the First War and he wouldn’t go anywhere else to get his hair cut, no matter how high-toned the sign above his barbershop door might be. Not if his life depended on it.
Frank welcomed Jake inside, standing in his white, side-buttoned barber’s jacket and holding a pair of silver shears as if he been interrupted cutting a phantom’s hair. Pop told him they were there for his son’s first steam shave, and Frank sat him down and didn’t say a single word about how little soft red stubble there actually was on his chin. The barber reclined the chair, wrapped his smooth face in that steaming, moist towel, and talked to him about ladies and politics like he was a regular old friend, instead of some seventeen-year-old kid who had as much need for a straight razor to be drawn across his skin as he had an idea what awaited him under a skirt or in the Solomon Islands.
Standing in front of his hammock felt like being under that towel, except it was wrapped around his entire body instead of only his face, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t get untangled from it. Sterling and Stone waved to him from the chow line.
He shambled over and wished them a good morning. “Breakfast that bad, or do you always look like that?”
Passing by with a freshly filled tin cup, Jim from Georgia said, “Say what you will, but Uncle Sam only provides the finest meals for his boys overseas.” He pulled something out of his cup that looked like a long grain of rice . . . until it squirmed between his fingers. He popped it in his mouth and the others groaned. Jim pounded his fist against his chest. “Protein, Marines! It’s the fuel that’ll take us to Tokyo!” He wandered off, fingers searching for another maggot.
Jake said, “Something seem . . . off about Jim today?”
He found the others sitting in the tall grass on a rise near their camp, laughing and smoking Lucky Strikes. Jake settled in near them and wiped the last of his meager portion of breakfast out of his cup with a filthy finger. He stuck it in his mouth and sucked it clean before wiping his hands on his equally filthy dungarees.
Chris Sterling pulled a picture out of his breast pocket and passed it over to Stone. “That’s her,” he said. “Connie. She’s waiting for me back home. Smart as a whip. She’s a teacher.” Stone made a wolf whistle and passed the picture on to Pearl who said something about wanting her to teach him something. Sterling shot him a glare with no promise behind it. Stone pulled a picture out of his wallet and handed it over. Sterling said, “Ooh, she’s a destroyer all right.”
“Don’t you know it! Her name’s Roberta.” Stone held his hands out in front of his chest and said, “She’s smart too.” They laughed and kept passing pictures around, talking about the one back home, re-reading the last letters they’d gotten from them. They all listened to the same tales of life in the States, about picnics and paper drives and how proud everyone was of what they were doing, as if someone told all the girls not to mention anything that might sour the mood of the boys. They declared that they wanted them home safe and soon and made unwritten promises in between the innocent words of their letters.
“Hey, Blackmun. Show us yours. Who’s waiting for you?”
Jake stared into his empty mug, brows furrowed and lips tightly pressed together. There was no picture in his pocket or wallet. The only girls waiting for him to come back home were his mom and a nun from St. Mary’s school who wept before he left, even though she used to threaten him with Hell for shooting spit wads at the chalkboard. He glanced over at Rod Freeman sitting next to him and snatched a picture out of his wallet. Freeman demanded the photograph back, saying that was his sister, but Jake held him off with a hand and said, “That’s her. That’s the girl I’m gonna marry when I get home.” He looked at his friend and said, “What’s her name?” The Marines laughed at the absurdity of it. Freeman’s eyes narrowed and his jaw flexed. But his face relaxed when he seemed to realize that no harm could come to his sister through her picture.
13 Views of the Suicide Woods Page 11
