It wasn’t the terrible sense of being spread innnitesimally thin over an infinity of pain and darkness; things had just gone black, like closing your eyes. If this is death, John thought, there’s not much to it.
But it changed. There was a little bit of pale light, some vague figures, and then colors bled into the scene, and after a moment of disorientation he realized he was still in the apartment, but apparently floating up by the ceiling. Lena was conscious again, barely, twitching, staring at the river of blood that pumped from between her legs. Pansy looked unreal, headless but untouched from the neck down, lying in a relaxed, improbable posture like a knocked-over department store dummy, blood still spurting from a neck artery out through the screen door.
His own body was a mess, the abdomen completely excavated by buckshot. Inside the huge wound, behind the torn coils of intestine, the shreds of fat and gristle, the blood, the shit, he could see sharp splintered knuckles of backbone. Maybe it hadn’t hurt so much because the spinal cord had been severed in the blast.
He had time to be a little shocked at himself for not feeling more. Of course most of the people he’d known who had died did die this way, in loud spatters of blood and brains. Even after thirty years of the occasional polite heart attack or stroke carrying off friend or acquaintance, most of the dead people he knew had died in the jungle.
He had been a hero there, in this universe. That would have surprised his sergeants in the original one. Congressional Medal of Honor, so-called, which hadn’t hurt the sales of his first book. Knocked out the NVA machine gun emplacement with their own satchel charge, then hauled the machine gun around and wiped out their mortar and command squads. He managed it all with bullet wounds in the face and triceps. Of course without the bullet wounds he wouldn’t have lost his cool and charged the machine gun emplacement, but that wasn’t noted in the citation.
A pity there was no way to trade the medals in—melt them down into one big fat bullet and use it to waste that crazy motherfucker who was ignoring the three people he’d just killed, laughing like a hyena while he shouted obscenities at the police gathering down below.
Castle fires a shot through the lower window and then ducks and a spray of automatic weapon fire shatters the upper window, filling the air with a spray of glass; bullets and glass fly painlessly through John where he’s floating and he hears them spatter into the ceiling and suddenly everything is white with plaster dust—it starts to clear and he is much closer to his body, drawing down closer and closer; he merges with it and there’s an instant of blackness and he’s looking out through human eyes again.
A dull noise and he looked up to see hundreds of shards of glass leap up from the floor and fly to the window; plaster dust in billows sucked up into bullet holes in the ceiling, which then disappeared.
The top windowpane reformed as Castle uncrouched, pointed the shotgun, then jerked forward as a blossom of yellow flame and white smoke rolled back into the barrel.
His hand was whole, the fingers restored. He looked down and saw rivulets of blood running back into the hole in his abdomen, then individual drops; then it closed and the clothing restored itself; then one of the holes in his chest closed up and then the other.
The clothing was unfamiliar. A tweed jacket in this weather? His hands had turned old, liver spots forming as he watched. Slow like a plant growing, slow like the moon turning, thinking slowly too, he reached up and felt the beard, and could see out of the corner of his eye that it was white and long. He was too fat, and a belt buckle bit painfully into his belly. He sucked in and pried out and looked at the buckle, yes, it was old brass and said gott mit uns, the buckle he’d taken from a dead German so long ago. The buckle Hemingway had taken.
John got to one knee. He watched fascinated as the stream of blood gushed back into Lena’s womb, disappearing as Castle grinning jammed the barrels in between her legs, flinched, and did a complicated dance in reverse (while Pansy’s decapitated body writhed around and jerked upright); Lena, sliding up off the floor, leaped up between the man’s back and the wall, then fell off and ran backwards as he flipped the shotgun up to the back of Pansy’s neck and seeming gallons of blood and tissue came flying from every direction to assemble themselves into the lovely head and face, distorted in terror as she jerked awkwardly at the door and then ran backwards, past Castle as he did a graceful pirouette, unloading the gun and placing one shell on the floor, which flipped up to his pocket as he stood and put the other one there.
John stood up and walked through some thick resistance toward Castle. Was it time resisting him? Everything else was still moving in reverse: Two empty shotgun shells sailed across the room to snick into the weapon’s chambers; Castle snapped it shut and wheeled to face John—
But John wasn’t where he was supposed to be. As the shotgun swung around, John grabbed the barrels—hot!—and pulled the pistol out of Castle’s waistband. He lost his grip on the shotgun barrels just as he jammed the pistol against Castle’s heart and fired. A spray of blood from all over the other side of the room converged on Castle’s back and John felt the recoil sting of the Magnum just as the shotgun muzzle cracked hard against his teeth, mouthful of searing heat then blackness forever, back in the featureless infinite time-space hell that the Hemingway had taken him to, forever, but in the next instant, a new kind of twitch, a twist ...
~ * ~
23. the time exchanged
What does that mean, you “lost” him?
We were in the railroad car in the Gare de Lyon, in the normal observation mode. This entity that looked like Hemingway walked up, greeted us, took the manuscripts, and disappeared.
Just like that.
No. He went into the next car. John Baird ran after him. Maybe that was my mistake. I translated instead of running.
That’s when you lost him.
Both of them. Baird disappeared, too. Then Hadley came running in—
Don’t confuse me with Hadleys. You checked the adjacent universes.
All of them, yes. I think they’re all right.
Think?
Well ... I can’t quite get to that moment. When I disappeared. It’s as if I were still there for several more seconds, so I’m excluded.
And John Baird is still there?
Not by the time I can insert myself. Just Hadley running around—
No Hadleys. No Hadleys. So naturally you went back to 1996.
Of course. But there is a period of several minutes there from which I’m excluded as well. When I can finally insert myself, John Baird is dead.
Ah.
In every doom line, he and Castlemaine have killed each other. John is lying there with his head blown off, Castle next to him with his heart torn out from a point-blank pistol shot, with two very distraught women screaming while police pile in through the door. And this.
The overnight bag with the stories.
I don’t think anybody noticed it. With Baird dead, I could spot-check the women’s futures; neither of them mentions the bag. So perhaps the mission is accomplished.
Well, Reality is still here. So far. But the connection between Baird and this Hemingway entity is disturbing. That Baird is able to return to 1996 without your help is very disturbing. He has obviously taken on some of your characteristics, your abilities, which is why you’re excluded from the last several minutes of his life.
I’ve never heard of that happening before.
It never has. I think that John Baird is no more human than you and I. Is? I suspect he’s still around somewhen.
~ * ~
24. islands in the stream
and the unending lightless desert of pain becomes suddenly one small bright spark and then everything is dark red and a taste, a bitter taste, Hoppe’s No. 9 gun oil and the twin barrels of the fine Boss pigeon gun cold and oily on his tongue and biting hard against the roof of his mouth; the dark red is light on the other side of his eyelids, sting of pain before he bumps a too
th and opens his eyes and mouth and lowers the gun and with shaking hands unloads—no, dis-loads—both barrels and walks backwards, shuffling in the slippers, slumping, stopping to stare out into the Idaho morning dark, helpless tears coursing up from the snarled white beard, walking backwards down the stairs with the shotgun heavily cradled in his elbow, backing into the storeroom and replacing it in the rack, then back up the stairs and slowly put the keys there in plain sight on the kitchen windowsill, a bit of mercy from Miss Mary, then sit and stare at the cold bad coffee as it warms back to one acid sip—
A tiny part of the mind saying wait! I am John Baird it is 1996
and back to a spiritless shower, numb to the needle spray, and cramped constipation and a sleep of no ease; an evening with Mary and George Brown tiptoeing around the blackest of black-ass worse and worse each day, only one thing to look forward to
got to throw out an anchor
faster now, walking through the Ketchum woods like a jerky cartoon in reverse, fucking FBI and IRS behind every tree, because you sent Ezra that money, felt sorry for him because he was crazy, what a fucking joke, should have finished the Cantos and shot himself.
effect preceding cause but I can read or hear scraps of thought somehow speeding to a blur now, driving in reverse hundreds of miles per hour back from Ketchum to Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic, holding the madness in while you talk to the shrink, promise not to hurt myself have to go home and write if I’m going to beat this, figuring what he wants to hear, then the rubber mouthpiece and smell of your own hair and flesh slightly burnt by the electrodes then deep total blackness
sharp stabs of thought sometimes stretching
hospital days blur by in reverse, cold chrome and starch white, a couple of mouthfuls of claret a day to wash down the pills that seem to make it worse and worse
what will happen to me when he’s born?
When they came back from Spain was when he agreed to the Mayo Clinic, still all beat-up from the plane crashes six years before in Africa, liver and spleen shot to hell, brain, too, nerves, can’t write or can’t stop: all day on one damned sentence for the Kennedy book but a hundred thousand fast words, pure shit, for the bullfight article. Paris book okay but stuck. Great to find the trunks in the Ritz but none of the stuff Hadley lost.
Here it stops. A frozen tableau:
Afternoon light slanting in through the tall cloudy windows of the Cambon bar, where he had liberated, would liberate, the hotel in August 1944. A good large American-style martini gulped too fast in the excitement. The two small trunks unpacked and laid out item by item. Hundreds of pages of notes that would become the Paris book. But nothing before ‘23, of course, the manuscripts. The novel and the stories and the poems still gone. One moment nailed down with the juniper sting of the martini and then time crawling rolling flying backwards again—
no control?
Months blurring by, Madrid Riviera Venice feeling sick and busted up, the plane wrecks like a quick one-two punch brain and body, blurry sick even before them at the Finca Vigia, can’t get a fucking thing done after the Nobel Prize, journalists day and night, the prize bad luck and bullshit anyhow but need the $35,000
damn, had to shoot Willie, cat since the boat-time before the war, but winged a burglar too, same gun, just after the Pulitzer, now that was all right
slowing down again—Havana—the Floridita—
Even Mary having a good time, and the Basque jai alai players, too, though they don’t know much English, most of them, interesting couple of civilians, the doctor and the Kraut look-alike, but there’s something about the boy that makes it hard to take my eyes off him, looks like someone I guess, another round of Papa Dobles, that boy, what is it about him? and then the first round, with lunch, and things speeding up to a blur again.
out on the Gulf a lot, enjoying the triumph of The Old Man and the Sea, the easy good-paying work of providing fishing footage for the movie, and then back into 1951, the worst year of his life that far, weeks of grudging conciliation, uncontrollable anger, and black-ass depression from the poisonous critical slime that followed Across the River, bastards gunning for him, Harold Ross dead, mother Grace dead, son Gregory a dope addict hip-deep into the dianetics horseshit, Charlie Scribner dead but first declaring undying love for that asshole Jones
most of the forties an anxious blur, Cuba Italy Cuba France Cuba China found Mary kicked Martha out, thousand pages on the fucking Eden book wouldn’t come together Bronze Star better than Pulitzer
Martha a chrome-plated bitch in Europe but war is swell otherwise, liberating the Ritz, grenades rifles pistols and bomb runs with the RAF, China boring compared to it and the Q-ship runs off Cuba, hell, maybe the bitch was right for once, just kid stuff and booze
marrying the bitch was the end of my belle epoch, easy to see from here, the thirties all sunshine Key West Spain Key West Africa Key West, good hard writing with Pauline holding down the store, good woman but sorry I had to
sorry I had to divorce
stopping
Walking Paris streets after midnight:
I was never going to throw back at her losing the manuscripts. Told Steffens that would be like blaming a human for the weather, or death. These things happen. Nor say anything about what I did the night after I found out she really had lost them. But this one time we got to shouting and I think I hurt her. Why the hell did she have to bring the carbons what the hell did she think carbons were for stupid stupid stupid and she crying and she giving me hell about Pauline Jesus any woman who could fuck up Paris for you could fuck up a royal flush
it slows down around the manuscripts or me—
golden years the mid-twenties everything clicks Paris Vorarlburg Paris Schruns Paris Pamplona Paris Madrid Paris Lausanne
couldn’t believe she actually
most of a novel dozens of poems stories sketches—contes, Kitty called them by God woman you show me your conte and I’ll show you mine
so drunk that night I know better than to drink that much absinthe so drunk I was half crawling going up the stairs to the apartment I saw weird I saw God I saw I saw myself standing there on the fourth landing with Hadley’s goddamn bag
I waited almost an hour, that seemed like no time or all time, and when he, when I, when he came crashing up the stairs he blinked twice, then I walked through me groping, shook my head without looking back and managed to get the door unlocked
flying back through the dead winter French countryside, standing in the bar car fighting hopelessness to Hadley crying so hard she can’t get out what was wrong with Steffens standing gaping like a fish in a bowl
twisting again, painlessly inside out, I suppose through various dimensions, seeing the man’s life as one complex chord of beauty and purpose and ugliness and chaos, my life on one side of the Mobius strip consistent through its fading forty-year span, starting, starting, here:
the handsome young man sits on the floor of the apartment holding himself, rocking racked with sobs, one short manuscript crumpled in front of him, the room a mess with drawers pulled out, their contents scattered on the floor, it’s like losing an arm a leg (a foot a testicle), it’s like losing your youth and along with youth
with a roar he stands up, eyes closed fists clenched, wipes his face dry and stomps over to the window
breathes deeply until he’s breathing normally strides across the room,
kicking a brassiere out of his way stands with his hand on the knob and thinks this:
life can break you but you can grow back strong at the broken places
and goes out slamming the door behind him, somewhat conscious of having been present at his own birth.
With no effort I find myself standing earlier that day in the vestibule of a train. Hadley is walking away, tired, looking for a vendor. I turn and confront two aspects of myself.
“Close your mouth, John. You’ll catch flies.”
They both stand paralyzed while I slide
open the door and pull the overnight bag from under the seat. I walk away and the universe begins to tingle and sparkle.
I spend forever in the black void between timespaces. I am growing to enjoy it.
I appear in John Baird’s apartment and set down the bag. I look at the empty chair in front of the old typewriter, the green beer bottle sweating cold next to it, and John Baird appears, looking dazed, and I have business elsewhere, else-when. A train to catch. I’ll come back for the bag in twelve minutes or a few millennia, after the bloodbath that gives birth to us all.
~ * ~
25. a moveable feast
He wrote the last line and set down the pencil and read over the last page sitting on his hands for warmth. He could see his breath. Celebrate the end with a little heat.
The Best of Joe Haldeman Page 40
