Flashback

by Nevada Barr

  Since he cannot speak when this mood is upon him--due no doubt to the fact that even the slenderest of syllables cannot force themselves through iron-clenched jaws and lips compressed to a bloodless seam--our entire drama was enacted in near silence. Only the ring of my husband's boots on the brick and the whisper of my skirts entangling with Tilly's told of our exodus.

  Joseph grabbed each of us by the upper arm and marched us from the door of the dungeon. Struggling would only have drawn attention to our indignity, so we allowed ourselves to be escorted ignobly back to quarters. Joseph never looks so handsome as he does when in high dudgeon. His hazel eyes were sparkling, his dark mustache framing that sensuous mouth and setting off a nose that must have been introduced into his French ancestors when they fought the Saracens in Spain. Perhaps I am pitifully like that old dog we used to have. He never seemed to care if we were yelling at him or stroking him as long as we were paying attention to him.

  That night and the next day I kept myself out of his way, doing housewifely things for his comfort, and left Tilly to bring him around. Though I know soft ways and womanly wiles are best, I cannot bring myself to do them. Even after two decades there is a devil in me that wants to meet the devil in him out in the open. And, too, I believe our sister could wrap Lucifer himself around her little finger if she set her mind to it.

  Even with beauty, cunning and youthful zeal, such is my husband's inner strength, it took Tilly thirty-six hours before he would agree to let us tend Joel. The fort surgeon refused to treat a "traitor," and Joseph refused to order him to do so, but in the end, I think he does have a heart if not of gold then at least not entirely of stone and didn't want the boy to die alone and uncared for.

  Having begged what necessaries we could from the small infirmary in the parade ground--bandages and a blanket were all they said they could spare--we set off to get the key and then go to the dungeon.

  The passage of another day and the insistence of the Lord in pouring the rational balm of pure sunlight down from a stunningly blue sky had done much to calm the garrison and return the soldiers to routine. Just that quickly was Joel not forgiven but forgotten. None of the guards so much as raised an eyebrow when we appeared, bandages and buckets of fresh water in hand, to ask for the key.

  "He's dead," Tilly whispered when I opened the dungeon's door.

  "Hush." Should the boy still live, I didn't want him to hear her despair. He lay, without moving, in his own waste--the reek of it filled the vault. Diffused light from the gun slit showed us a full water bucket and an empty slops bucket. Food had been left for the pleasure of rats and mice, who graciously vacated the area at the noise of our arrival.

  Blood and bruising made Joel's flesh the color with his stained uniform, still confederate gray only in the places where rebel insignias had been ripped from it subsequent to his capture.

  "He's warm," she said. "That means he's alive."

  The vault was near ninety-eight degrees at a guess. Even a cold-blooded creature from the depths of the ocean would have been warm to the touch. I felt for a pulse in his throat just under his jaw and was pleased to tell Tilly: "Yes, that means he's alive."

  I could see Tilly was shortly to become useless with the emotion of the past days, so I set her to the task of clearing away the old food and sweeping up the crumbs. When she'd left the cell to fetch broom, dust-pan and cleaning rags, I removed Joel's clothing and cleaned him as though he were an infant. Tilly at her tender age did not need to see that part of a naked man, but it was the one part of Private Lane's body that was unhurt and, though my experience is limited to my husband and the boys we used to spy on swimming at the old quarry, Joel is a well enough made man.

  The rest of him was painful to look at. There was bruising on his chest so dark and vicious I knew the ribs underneath had to be broken. His abdomen was black and purple as well, but it felt neither terribly hot nor swollen. Had the beating ruptured something inside, Tilly's and my roles as ministering angels would soon have changed to those of undertakers. Ropes had cut both arms, and his thumbs remained so swollen and angry I could not be sure he'd ever have full use of his hands again.

  In a previous letter I described the injuries to his face. Suffice to say, though still grim and disfiguring, I did think they looked somewhat better. He looked more man than monster. I felt his face, and the bones had not been broken but for his nose. It will never be so neat and straight as it once was.

  As I washed his most delicate areas, his member twitched and started to swell. Modern scientific theory would have it that when people die the heart is the last organ to cease functioning. I believe with men the center of life is located somewhat further down.

  "Tina," he whispered. I was so pleased that he had not entirely left this world, I wasn't terribly interested in what past peccadilloes I had inadvertently awakened in memory. And I most certainly will not tell Tilly his first word was not her name.

  I left the vicinity where I had been giving such life-affirming ministrations and knelt by his head. "It's Mrs. Coleman," I told him.

  "Oh my God," he mumbled and his eyelids twitched. The flesh around them was too battered to allow his eyes to open fully, but even so I could see alarm there. To wake and find oneself being touched intimately by the prison warden's wife must have been jarring to his poor beleaguered mind.

  To calm him lest this new horror shake his tenuous grip on consciousness, I told him where he was and why I was at his side doing what I suspect was once the job of "Tina." The alarm faded and he closed his eyes but did not leave me.

  "Thirsty," he said.

  Holding his head in my lap that he might not choke, I drizzled nearly a cup of water between his parched lips. Having drunk, he seemed much revived, and I sent a belated prayer of thanks to the Almighty for the strength and recuperative powers of the young.

  By the time Tilly returned, I had Private Lane as clean as a sponge bath allowed and decently covered from the waist down by the blanket.

  I gave her a moment to weep over Private Lane, which I think did him nearly as much good as the water and the "bath," but when she began peppering him with questions that were bound to upset the balance of his humors, I sent her off on more errands.

  We stayed, dripping water and encouragement into Joel, for near two hours. He spoke again several times and seemed clearheaded but fell easily into restless dozing that was tormented by dreams. Finally he fell into what I dearly hoped was a restful sleep and not a return of the unconsciousness that is so like and so near to death.

  Tilly and I knelt one to each side of him, my knees aching from so long against the hard floor. Tilly cradled one of Joel's hands in her lap, looking at it as she asked me: "Will he be crippled?"

  Honestly, I could not say and didn't wish to burden her with my opinion. "He needs a doctor," I said instead.

  Between us lay the hurtful knowledge that the fort's hospital was closed to Joel, and Captain Caulley had hardened his heart against the man who'd spoken traitorously of the murder of our president.

  "We'll do our best," I promised.

  Tilly said nothing for a minute, then: "There's another medical doctor at Fort Jefferson."

  There are no other doctors at Fort Jefferson and for a moment I sorted through my memories in the vain attempt to find one. Then it came to me.

  "Oh, no, Tilly."

  She said nothing, but by the way she looked at me I could tell neither of us were to have any peace till it had been tried.

  9

  When her eyes grew too tired to read, Anna returned to the broken-out gun portal. The moon was low, yet she could feel its light upon her skin if she closed her eyes. My mind is no place to play alone, she thought and kept her eyes open, her brain focused on real three-dimensional things, things she could touch.

  Staying awake in these wee hours wasn't difficult. Sleep seemed like a thing of the past, something she used to do but was no longer necessary. That in itself was odd. Thinking back, she knew that she should
have been exhausted--not just mentally but with the body fatigue that demands sleep. No wonder she was getting squirrelly. Had she access to sleeping pills she would have happily drugged her body into submission. As it was, there was no point in going to bed; she may as well stare at the moon as the ceiling. Sitting still she was at least resting.

  Unfortunately stillness without exacerbated restlessness within. Her mind with its specters would not leave her alone. The corners of her eyes were plagued with flickerings of almost unseen things flitting from shadow to shadow. Too long staring at the silver track the moon lay across the quiescent ocean and it began to change subtly, to move in sinister ways. The fear that had torn at her earlier when her sister, her psychiatrist, for God's sake, didn't immediately assure her she was sane, that normal people saw ghosts on a regular basis, returned.

  Frank Herbert's Bene Gesserit had it right: fear was a mind killer. Anna needed a litany of facts to hold the irrational world at bay.

  "Idle mind; devil's playground," she whispered, and resolutely turned her mental processes to the events of the night, something real--or so she had chosen to believe--to let her gray matter chew on.

  A boat had exploded and sunk. This boat was carrying a lot of extra fuel. An NPS boat had been sunk by a chunk of flying debris. Bob Shaw saved an unidentified Cuban man. Anna saw a ghost. There was a light in the upstairs bedroom of Lanny Wilcox's quarters. A person shut a door. A person crossed the moat and climbed over the outside wall into the sea.

  How these things interrelated--if they did--was lost to Anna. What she should do about any of it was also a mystery. Investigation of the sunken boats would continue come sun-up. Identification of the Cuban man would be done by Florida State law enforcement. The ghost or ghost-hoax was within Anna's jurisdiction, but she could not bring herself to venture into the dark where the nearly unseen skittered about and so that, too, would have to wait till morning.

  Lanny Wilcox's bedroom and her own were the only viable choices remaining. She chose Lanny's. If one wasn't going to sleep, surely it was more interesting not to sleep in a man's bedroom than one's own.

  With this thought, the image of Paul Davidson sprang clear and strong behind her eyes: the square shoulders, the slow smile that never came cold and always reached his eyes, the southern drawl, the way he called her "darlin'."

  A wave of emotion so strong it wrung a flood of tears from eyes dry an instant before overcame her. Not since the months after her first husband, Zach, died had she so longed for a man. Had Paul appeared before her on the moon-swept brick she would have married him on the spot, abandoned the park service, given her life over to him, and gladly crawled into the circle of his arms, there to hide safe and warm for all the years left to her.

  Davidson did not appear. After a time the disconcerting flow of tears dried up and she was left with nothing but Lanny Wilcox's bedroom. She fetched another pair of shoes from her quarters, running shoes this time, quiet and tightly laced, and donned a pair of underpants. Creeping about in the middle of the night seeking unsavory persons was not an activity she wanted to undertake without panties. Thus sartorially fortified, she descended the stairs to return to the administrative offices for the key to the ex-Supervisory Ranger's house.

  Her flip-flops were where she'd stepped out of them at the steps. She took them in and tossed them on her desk, then retrieved the key, along with a heavy six-cell flashlight. Anna was the acting Supervisory Ranger, there was no rule stating she could not enter quarters to investigate a suspicious occurrence yet, for reasons she didn't understand, she knew she would not turn on any lights in Wilcox's quarters.

  Lanny's front door was closed but not latched. She didn't need the key.

  Aware that normal people were abed at this hour and that the Shaws' house shared a wall with Wilcox's, she moved even more softly than was her habit, leaving doors ajar lest the click alarm Teddy, presumably sleeping next door. There'd been no room on the medevac helicopter and she was to take the sea plane to Key West in the morning.

  Unsure of precisely what she sought, Anna first opened the refrigerator. The core of people's lives often lay in their refrigerators and medicine cabinets. Nothing remained in Lanny's that could go bad. Someone--probably Teddy--had had the foresight to remove food that would spoil. A six-pack of Yoo-Hoo with one bottle missing, an unopened plastic jug of drinking water and a door full of condiments were all that had been left. The water jug had sprung a leak and about a quarter of its contents glistened atop the vegetable trays.

  The freezer contained nothing but ice cubes and frozen entrees. Apparently Lanny ate with the creativity and nutritional concern of the average bachelor. Anna moved on.

  Built over a century before, the house was small to modern eyes, the rooms cramped, the windows few and high off the floor. Between the tiny kitchen and a living room not much bigger was a sort of stile: three steps up to a landing from which narrow stairs ascended to the rooms above and three steps down the other side to the living area. Having gained the landing, Anna stood still in the chill air--the air-conditioner left running so Wilcox wouldn't return to mildewed goods and verdant walls. Her flashlight soundlessly searched that which was in plain sight. Wilcox was a packrat. The little rooms were crammed with the usual and the unusual garnered from half a lifetime in the parks. The walls were covered with framed pictures. Two posters, one of the Devil's Post Pile, one of Chaco Canyon, bumped frames over a derelict sofa. Photos of rough-clad men and women in hiking boots and packs were scattered around. Mixed in were carved masks, mostly foreign-looking: South American, maybe some from Mexico, one clearly left over from a past Mardi Gras. The floor was equally well covered with books, boots, skateboard, compact disks, unopened junk mail, magazines and dead plants in gaily-painted ceramic pots. Forlorn and useless, a pair of snow skis stood in one corner.

  Anna turned her light back the way she'd come. The kitchen side was marginally better: counters were clean and the sink was free of dirty dishes. A small wooden table flanked by two very nice wooden folding chairs, probably from the nineteen forties, took up most of the floor space.

  The kitchen walls were more interesting than those in the other room. Wooden boxes of varying sizes, from one no more than three inches square to the largest, probably eighteen by twelve inches, had been mounted on the plaster. The boxes were painted in such vibrant colors that Anna's flashlight seemed to ignite rather than illuminate them. Several had been hung so their lids fell open. Inside were scenes complementing or contrasting those on the outside. The artwork was original and fine.

  Anna judged art by several criteria. The first was if she could do it, it wasn't art. That disqualified a whole slew of modern painters who slathered, sprayed, glued, welded or stapled shapes together. These box worlds she could not have created. A woman had done them, she'd have sworn to that. The themes were fierce but intensely female with an undercurrent of medieval Catholicism running through. An angel with a scarred face and broken wings stood between a group of armed men and a donkey laden with palm branches. Inside the box were flies and white feathers, the angel and ass either dead and buried or ascended to heaven.

  Theresa, the fiancee who had run off with Lanny's heart and sanity, was probably the artist. For a moment more Anna was lost to the present as her flashlight fired up one box after another. Each was a miniature theater, the lights just coming up on the actors in the midst of a dynamic scene. When Anna reached the last, she felt a sense of both satisfaction and loss, the way one feels when finishing a good book.

  Her brain switched from the divine to the prosaic. She could understand why a beautiful young artist of such intensely personal yet universal images might abandon any number of men, but why would she abandon her work? Had it been Anna, these walls would have been stripped bare, the boxes carefully packed, before she gave a thought to the clothes she would wear or her toothbrush beside the sink.

  The bathroom at the top of the stairs was no bigger than a closet. Too small for a bathtub. To
ilet, shower and sink were close enough one could wash one's feet and brush one's teeth while sitting on the commode. It was the only room in the house free of clutter. Even a dropped tissue would have been sufficient to inhibit passage in the confined space.

  The medicine cabinet, small and old and standing out from the wall, was very like the one Anna remembered from growing up. It even had the same halo of rusty incursions into the reflective surface where metal edging met the glass.

  Anna trained her light inside. Here would be evidence of the weaknesses of the body: diabetes, dentures, headaches. Most Americans consumed quantities of over-the-counter drugs, and one in three was on some sort of prescription medicine all the time. Lanny was no exception. On the middle shelf were three prescription bottles: one for high cholesterol, one for high blood pressure and one Anna had a lifetime experience of, Levaquin, the three magic tablets to banish the misery of a bladder infection; one of the more splintery crosses women have had to bear. The prescription had been written six weeks before for Theresa Alvarez. Anna removed the cap and shook out two tablets. Theresa had left behind not only her artwork but the last of her medicine.

  Curiouser and curiouser. Anna put the pills back and resolved to check the closet, see if Ms. Alvarez had bothered to take her clothes in what was coming to seem a headlong flight rather than mere abandonment.

  The bedroom was jammed with more stuff. No floor space was visible. The walls were lined halfway up with boxes, books, scuba tanks, two backpacks and a lot of other paraphernalia related to outdoor adventure and indoor entertainment.

  The closet, the old-fashioned size, built when people had one outfit for the workweek and one for going to church on Sundays, was devoid of women's clothing. Three pairs of high-heeled shoes, obviously purchased before Theresa had taken up living on a desert island, were all that attested to her recent presence.

  Gingerly, Anna sat on the bed. Despite what one presumed to be nightly occupancy, it was also covered in piles. After losing Theresa, Lanny had snuggled down each night with laundry--presumably clean since there were no unpleasant odors--magazines and two CD players, one with the lid broken off.