Barnaby raised his fingertips to his chin.
“I got bandages.”
“Yes, bandages from when you were shot in the head. I wanted to talk about the day you got injured. The day you were shot.”
“It burned.”
“The bullet?”
Barnaby winced.
“Okay, if you could, tell me what happened before the bullet struck you. Let’s say the hour before.”
“I had such rotten luck, pulling the short straw. I had nothing but rotten luck since I got to Italy.”
“Why were you pulling straws?”
“For the forward observer. ‘TP’ patrol, we call it: target practice, ’cause that’s what Germans use you for. You’re sniper bait. Wandering right up there in the German lines. ‘Go tell me if Jerry ate beans or sausage for dinner,’ Captain says. ‘Follow the sound of the gunfire and locate Jerry’s exact position.’ I sure as hell didn’t wanna go. But I didn’t have a choice. Short straw. Those are the rules. A few of the guys in the squad reminded Captain that I’d been seeing eyeballs in the trees, that I wasn’t eating. But Captain said fair is fair, I got the straw, and he wasn’t gonna chuck a thousand-year tradition of drawing straws on account of one yellow belly.”
“Where was this?”
“I never saw maps. All I’d been told was there were two parts to Italy: mountain Italy and flat Italy; you go up or you go across. Mountaly and flataly. This was in flataly. In some forest. North of Rome. Thick tree trunks, thick leaves. There were acorns or walnuts on the ground. They were crunching underfoot, loud as thunder.”
“Were you alone?”
Barnaby pushed himself upright, his eye alert. “See, I heard footsteps. The others were supposed to hang back until I radioed in the German position. Nero and Jensen were doing a second patrol, but went in a different direction. Captain Brilling is famous for going forward with his men, said he would never ask a man to do something he wouldn’t do himself, but he wasn’t coming with me. I tried hard to keep myself calm. I lugged my rifle through trees, trying to be mouse quiet. But the twigs and acorns kept crunching and my legs started shaking. My teeth were clacking so hard, I wedged two pieces of gum in my mouth. I was alone, you see, all alone with who knew how many Germans taking aim. . . .
“The Germans were supposed to be across this stream, on the other side of a blasted bridge, hiding out with a machine-gun encampment, but the fog was so thick I couldn’t see a bridge. I was walking through a cloud, giant trees rising up out of nowhere. It was so foggy, I suddenly thought I might be dead already. I couldn’t tell if I was moving forward or backward. Finally I bumped into a rock and sat on the ground but I couldn’t breathe right. I was sucking in the fog, my lungs gulping it down like I was drowning. I was making too much noise and I knew that big blue eye could see me.”
“The blue eye?”
“From my mess tin!”
“It’s all right, Christopher,” said Juliet, stroking his arm. Would the vision ever leave him? Could such a horror be erased from the mind?
Barnaby’s knee shook, and Juliet looked to Willard, worried this might mark the end of the session, worried that the Pentothal would wear off and she’d lose her chance to ask about Tuck.
“His pulse is still steady,” Juliet whispered, truthfully.
Willard nodded, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. “Tell us what happened next, Christopher.”
“I sat there ’til the fog lifted. I don’t know how long went by. A few hours, I reckon. It was getting dark. I couldn’t see anything but dark branches overhead. But I could hear an owl hooting so loud it was like he was sitting on my head; frogs were croaking, and those footsteps, crunch, crunch, crunching across those acorns. Then guns were firing. Before I knew it, the ground was exploding.
“I ran ’til I felt water on my feet and realized I was in the stream. I moved left, but I heard a bang, and water came pouring down on me. I turned right and heard this snap-snap-snap. It sounded like laughing; that’s what a machine gun sounds like, bullets laughing at you. And they were calling my name, Barnaby, Barnaby, so I went underwater. I stayed under ’til my lungs were fit to burst and came up gulping. The air filled my lungs so fast I thought I’d choke. Then the fog was lifting and across the way I saw a row of Germans, flat on their bellies, guns pointed at me.
“I moved left and right but the bullets kept coming. Finally I crawled out of the water and stopped moving.”
Juliet thought this might be a break in his tale, a chance to ask about Tuck, but Willard interjected: “Where was your pistol? Did you fire at the Germans?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I kept seeing the whole thing like it wasn’t me. Like I was that big old blue eye staring down. And they kept shooting but they weren’t hitting me, like they didn’t really wanna kill me, just wanted to scare me. But I wanted them to hit me, I wanted it to end.”
A look of surrender glazed Barnaby’s eye, and his voice softened, drifting into a child’s bedtime meanderings. “I just lay down, closed my eyes, and thought of home. I wanted a moment of peace before I died. I thought of Tina. She’s got a baby coming. I told her I loved her, and suddenly all the noise stopped. Then I felt that heat. Like a coal poker through my brain.”
“Did you shoot yourself?”
“It wasn’t me pulling the trigger.”
“Then who did?”
Barnaby whispered: “The blue eye.” His chest rose abruptly and his lungs began to pump hard. Juliet felt his pulse quicken.
Dr. Willard set his pen in the open spine of his notebook. “Okay, Private Barnaby, when I count to ten, you’re going to return to consciousness—”
“Christopher.” Juliet rose to her knees. It was now or never. “Christopher, did you ever know a man named Tucker? He was in Sergeant McKnight’s unit.”
“Tuck-er,” Barnaby said slowly. His head turned from side to side, as though he were looking for someone. “Tucker!” he yelped. His chest heaved and his hands clutched at the litter. “Forgive me!”
Willard’s hand landed leadenly on Juliet’s shoulder and pulled her away. “Enough.” He rubbed Barnaby’s back and resumed counting while Juliet penitently placed her hands in her lap. She wanted desperately to interrupt his count, to ask Barnaby more, but stopped herself. At ten, Barnaby’s eye flickered to alertness before glazing over with its familiar blank stare.
“Christopher, can you lift your right arm for me?” Willard asked. “Christopher, can you lift your left arm? Christopher, can you hear me? . . . Christopher? . . . Christopher?!”
Willard tossed his notebook to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” Juliet whispered.
Willard shook his head, staring at his recording device. “Attachments to people from home are quite strong,” he said, “even in this mess. I assume this Tucker is a boyfriend? A fiancé?”
“My brother.”
He looked up. “Brother.”
“I know it wasn’t the appropriate time.”
Lifting his notebook from the floor, he mumbled: “Understatement.”
“I thought it might be my only chance.”
Willard took a slow, deep breath as he studied her. He pushed a tuft of hair from his glasses. “Your brother is dead? Missing?”
She paused. “Missing.”
Willard’s gaze traveled in rapt deliberation around the cluttered tent. In all his work exploring the suffering of men at the front, did he have any idea, Juliet wondered, the effect it had on their families back home? Did he understand her desperation? The sense of responsibility she felt to her brother?
A gravelly sigh slowly wrested its way out of him. “Nurse Dufresne, I’m far from perfect, but I try my best to be a compassionate man. I’m sorry for what you must be going through. It must be awful. I won’t question you further on this subject—not for lack of caring, but because I believe in maintaining a professional emotional distance. The work we do is emotional enough. That s
aid, please understand that these sessions are crucial to rebuilding this man’s emotional and mental health.” Willard gently laid his hand on Barnaby’s forehead. “He’s drugged, he’s vulnerable. As you can see, I walk him carefully through a sequence of events, I follow where his mind takes us; we open doors slowly, cautiously. You can’t yank him into a different line of questioning; it could be harmful. I truly wish I could help you, and I wish Barnaby could help you, and perhaps he can once he is recovered. But right now he can’t even help himself.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“Good.”
She had said it firmly, yet she doubted its truth. Her mind was already sifting and speculating, wondering why Barnaby had screamed Tuck’s name and said, “Forgive me!” What did Barnaby want Tuck’s forgiveness for?
“Come,” said Willard, signaling Juliet outside. “He won’t go running anywhere in the next ten minutes.”
The night air offered a faint respite from the muggy tent. Willard patted at his pockets until he found a flattened pack of cigarettes. He lit one and walked ahead of Juliet toward a table outside the mess tent. He sat with his back to the table, so that Juliet was compelled to sit beside him.
“That discussion could have brought him back to the realm of consciousness. It means there’s even more to unlock—perhaps a lot more.” Willard studied his cigarette. “This will take a while. Eating an eyeball . . . I’d love to say it was a nightmare, but there’s one thing I’ve come to learn through all this: The human mind doesn’t invent the worst. Nightmares are mundane compared to what actually happens up there.” He turned to her. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask: Are you certain you’re comfortable with what you’re hearing? I wouldn’t hold it against you if it was too much.”
Juliet longed to tell him about her nightmares, but what if he thought her too fragile for the work?
“I’m comfortable enough,” she said, and from the slow, sad nod he offered in response, Juliet wondered if she had marooned Willard with his own discomfort, if he, too, was haunted by the blue eye.
They heard footsteps and turned to see Mother Hen approaching, swinging her flashlight. “Oh, the bloody heat. I thought Africa would kill me. This,” she said, wagging her tongue to taste the night air, “it’s like the air itself is sweating.” She thumped onto the opposite bench and in politeness, Juliet and Willard pivoted to face her. Mother Hen’s eyes moved suspiciously between them and she glanced at her watch.
“Your shift ended four hours ego, Nurse Dufresne.”
“I was working with Dr. Willard. We got Barnaby speaking again.”
“I see.”
“Nurse Dufresne has been invaluable,” Willard said. “Barnaby is the most stubborn case I’ve seen.”
“Well, I hope the progress moves rapidly. There’s a racket from above about a court-martial. Major Decker has been getting a lot of pressure.” She pulled a cigarette from her pocket and Willard extended the flame of his lighter.
“I doubt it will come to that,” said Willard.
“I have come to the conclusion these days that anything can happen.” Mother Hen removed a folded paper from her pocket and flattened it on the table. “This crap was all over the hospital perimeter.”
The Girl You Left Behind
The Way of All Flesh
When pretty Joan Hopkins was still standing behind the ribbon counter of a five-and-ten on Third Avenue in New York City, she never dreamed of ever seeing the interior of a duplex Park Avenue apartment. Neither did young Bob Harrison, the man she loves. Bob was drafted and sent to the battlefields of Europe thousands of miles away. Through Lazare’s employment agency Joan got a job as a private secretary with wily Sam Levy. Sam is piling up big money on war contracts. Should the slaughter end very soon, he would suffer an apoplectic stroke.
NOW JOAN KNOWS WHAT BOB
AND HIS PALS ARE FIGHTING FOR!
Joan always used to look up to Bob as the guiding star of her life, and she was still a good girl when she started working for Sam Levy. But she often got the blues thinking of Bob, whom she hadn’t seen for over two years. Her boss had an understanding heart and was always very kind to her, so kind indeed, that he often invited her up to his place. He had always wanted to show her his “etchings.” Besides, Sam wasn’t stingy, and each time Joan came to see him, he gave her the nicest presents. Now, all women like beautiful expensive things. But Sam wasn’t the man you could play for a sucker. He wanted something, wanted it very definitely. . . .
Poor little Joan! She is still thinking of Bob, yet she is almost hoping that he’ll never return.
“I used to think,” said Mother Hen, her face slack, pulling a flask from her back pocket, “that the sheer magnitude of war—the blood and the bone and the loss of life—would somehow erase all of those smaller concerns of heartbreak and betrayal, lust and covetousness. Or at the very least, idiotic prejudice. Scapegoating the Jews? Half the doctors who stitch these boys back together are Jewish, and yet this filth”—she jabbed her finger at the leaflet—“will have its power. I thought the sight of death and the fear of death would make saints of us all, would strip us bare of all want and worry except staying alive and saving lives, and we would rise to the occasion of discovering our own greatness. Just like all the boys who enlisted—they enlisted believing they were deeply courageous, expecting to prove themselves heroes. And here they are, weeping in their beds at what they have now learned of themselves, of humanity. Are they not, Dr. Willard?”
Willard nodded.
“Death, it seems, only makes us all the hungrier to live deeply and fully,” she continued, “which, in turn, means chaotically and cruelly. I don’t understand. It’s as though we insist on leaving our mark, no matter how messy. All those urges that once seemed fleeting and superficial turn out, when we are faced with the possibility of slaughter, to be the very essence of us. My nurses finish assisting an amputation, feeling the ruin of a man’s life in their hands, and then rush off to fix their hair and find husbands. Men sitting in foxholes, fighting to save the whole of Europe and civilization, can be brought to tears by this printed rubbish—the thought of girlfriends back home fucking their bosses. Such extremes of emotion coexist within the human beast. At times, I confess, it overwhelms me.”
Mother Hen gripped the table and swayed, though whether this was the effect of alcohol or sentiment, Juliet couldn’t tell.
“The human mind,” said Dr. Willard, “is more unknowable than the entire ocean, or all the space between the stars.” He smiled. “It’s why I will always have a job.”
“Especially here.” Mother Hen stubbed out her cigarette. “So when Private Barnaby spoke, dare I ask what he said?”
“Quite a lot,” answered Willard, exchanging a brief look with Juliet. “But it’s hard to know yet what is essential. We’ll get him saying more.”
“The poor creature,” said Mother Hen.
They all sat awkwardly for a minute, listening to the cacophonous pulse of crickets and tree frogs, that primal bleating of insect and amphibian sounding out over the night long before there were wars or humans to fight in them.
Willard stubbed out his cigarette. “We should probably get Barnaby back to the Recovery Tent.”
They said good night to Mother Hen and carried Barnaby’s litter across the encampment. In the Recovery Tent they settled him into his bed, and Willard lifted Barnaby’s clipboard and wearily shook his head. “I didn’t like what she said about the court-martial. I want him saying more. And soon. Maybe next time we’ll try reading him some of those letters again. How far back do they go and when is the most recent?”
Juliet took the envelope stuffed with letters from beneath his bed and shook the contents free. She began unfolding each of the pages, and Willard reached for Barnaby’s musette bag. Juliet was arranging them chronologically when Willard said, “Also, a token from his wife could be useful.” He was waving a small white glove.
Pearl’s white glove.
CHAPTER 8
A RUMBLING OUTSIDE her tent woke Juliet. It sounded like the earth coughing up crust, a guttural gagging of the ground. For a moment she wondered if she’d dreamt the noise. In the dark she groped for her helmet, and then across the tent a flashlight came on. Bernice was sitting upright, her eyes wide and her chin extended as she turned her head slowly from side to side, straining to listen. Her thin lips shone with Vaseline.
“I don’t hear a plane,” said Bernice. “And I didn’t feel the ground shake, did you?”
Juliet touched the ground. “I don’t think so.”
“A bomb shakes the ground.”
Juliet scratched the inside of her ear; she thought she heard something outside, a distant whine, a faint whimper. An animal? A child?
She turned, instinctively, to look at Glenda’s bedroll.
“Where is she?” Juliet asked.
As Juliet and Bernice rushed out into the humid night, figures in bright white underwear were spilling out of the nearby pup tents. The sky was lit by a low full moon. Everyone was swinging flashlight beams in nervous, haphazard arcs, uncertain of what to do next. Juliet and Bernice joined a group of nurses from the next tent, all knuckling sleep from their eyes, yanking out hair curlers to fasten on their helmets. As the distant whimpering grew louder, something in its uneven undulations, something in the broad, haunting silences between moans, made it clear they were listening to a human. Animals cried out in pain, Juliet knew. Humans cried out in fear of their pain; it was a sound she had come to know well.
Huddled together, the nurses moved cautiously. From nearby tents, groups of ward men and doctors and engineers converged. Soon four distinct bands were traveling the wide row between tents, cylinders of light sweeping the ground around them like electrified particles on the rim of a molecule. The groups veered slightly left, then right, mostly silent, trying to determine the source of the cries, until someone in the lead called, “On the hill!”
The Secret of Raven Point: A Novel Page 12
