by Kahn, Denise
“Can’t make it anywhere.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Ask my father.”
She stared at him, not understanding, but she did know that this guy was hurting. “Come on, a handsome guy like you, you got your life ahead of you. You’ll go places, I can tell. Don’t let anything or anybody get you this down.”
William’s chin sat on the bar, his hands around the glass. He stared at the ice cubes. Only his eyes moved. They looked straight-ahead and then up a little. He smiled at her. “Nice balconies,” he said.
“Wha’?”
William lifted his index finger from the glass and pointed to her bosom and then slid off the chair and passed out.
“Alright guys,” she shouted from behind the bar to some of the other men, “do me a favor and pick him up. He can sleep it off on the couch in the back room.”
William woke to a sledgehammer pounding his skull and the back of his eyes. His body ached and his mouth felt like dry old shoe leather. He opened his eyes very, very slowly for fear they would explode from the banging. When they didn’t he looked around and tried to figure out where he was. Then he remembered, the bar, the redhead with the big boobs and… his father. He felt his blood pressure rise. He closed his eyes again and hoped it was just a dream. When it wouldn’t go away he realized the nightmare was real. He also realized he was hungry. All he had had the day before was the whisky. He tried to get up but his muscles and joints ached and weren’t responding whatsoever. His big body was squeezed around like a curled up shrimp into the small couch. He managed to straighten out and stood up. He teetered a bit until he steadied himself against a wall. He checked his wallet. All he had was a dollar. He was broke.
“Well, if it isn’t Sleeping Beauty!” The redhead said.
William cringed at the sound of the gongs exploding in his head. “Jesus, not so loud, lady.”
“Come on, I’ll make you breakfast.”
“Why?”
“Why what? You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
“Famished, but why are you helping me?”
“Look, you need to put somethin’ in that bod’ of yours and you’re just a guy who could use a little helping hand.” She took his arm and helped him move toward the kitchen. “You seemed kinda’ down last night so I figure you could at least use a good breakfast.” They staggered along. “Oh, and I got big ears if you want to talk, and big shoulders if you want to cry.”
William stared at her. “And big balconies too,” he said.
The redhead laughed boisterously.
William smiled for the first time in days. “You know, you’re beautiful.”
She sighed. “Flattery will get you everywhere.” She took him by the hand and sat him on a chair.
“And probably a good cook.”
“Just wait ‘til you taste my bacon.”
William searched for a job, any job, but didn’t find anything and the bitter Chicago cold made it even more miserable. After hours of searching he went back to his friend at the bar.
“Hi there Will,” she chanted as he sat on the stool in front of her. “How’s it going?”
“Well, I haven’t found anything yet and I’ve got just enough to buy a bowl of chili and a cup of coffee.” William knew that he could eat all the crackers he wanted with the chili. “And that’s what I’ll have.”
“Comin’ right up. Nice and hot.”
The next day William enlisted in the Army. He knew he wouldn’t starve, and he would get away from the damn cold, and his even colder father. With his university degree he could have been an officer but he didn’t want to stay in the military for five years, so he went in as a Private, which was only three.
When he finished boot camp he was given a choice: Alaska or Panama. He went south to the warmth and figured he could practice the Spanish he had learned in school. William loved Panama. The people were friendly, he could understand them, the food was plentiful, the fruit was delicious, and it was hot. He would sneak out of his bunk at night, take his machete and go into the jungle and return with what seemed like an entire tree of beautiful ripe bananas for all of his buddies. On his own time he joined the diving, swimming and water polo teams and he and his teammates won most of their competitions. William excelled and won medal after medal. He came in one one hundredth of a second behind the world record in the breaststroke. On one of his platform dives he slipped and fell awkwardly into the water. It resulted in bursting both his eardrums. By the time he arrived at the dispensary the sides of his face were swollen like a newly inflated balloon. He sat in front of the doctor and looked at him. The doctor wasn’t paying any attention to him. When he finally came over to check the ears William screamed in pain. He removed his pistol and laid it on his lap. “You’re going to be gentle, right Doc?”
“Absolutely,” the doctor said looking at the sidearm.
William’s diving career was over. The pressure of the deep was no longer an option. The damage had been done, but he remained on the other teams and coached the divers.
William was interested in the Army Air Corps. He wanted to be a pilot. He took all of the tests and passed each one flawlessly. On the last one they flunked him. His temper rose and he demanded an explanation.
“You have Daltonism,” the test officer said, “we can’t use you.”
“What the hell is Daltonism?”
“In medical terms it is known as protanopia, basically a red blindness. You can’t really distinguish reds from greens.”
“So? You can’t cut me out because of reds and greens.”
“All right, let me give you an example: You’re on a mission. Something happens to the plane, you’ve been shot up, or whatever. You’ve got to land somewhere fast. You see a prairie in front of you, but it turns out to be a forest, not to mention that the lights in your cockpit are flashing red and you think they’re green. Get my drift?”
“Got it.”
Although William’s dream of becoming a pilot was shot down before he even got a chance, he tried different fields and excelled in arms. He was an expert shot, loved communications, had very sensitive hands and a natural sense of engineering. He designed new weapons—small pistols to large airplane guns. He built them and tried them out. He assembled them right on the planes and tested them. William couldn’t fly the aircraft, but at least he was constantly in them. He was also sent out on difficult missions, by plane, on horseback with the cavalry through rough terrain and on small boats in the ocean.
At some point he and another soldier found themselves in the Panamian jungle. They were scouting for locations to build a new base. They walked for days in the heavy humidity. Their uniforms turned from beige to brown from their sweat, and they continuously wiped hundreds of mosquitoes off of their arms. More than once they were bitten and after a while they didn’t even bother.
One night, eating around their campfire, they heard a sound. “Mac, did you hear that?” William asked.
“Yeah, a cat, a big mother of a hungry cat.” They heard another growl.
“Oh, shit,” William said, and slowly got up. “There, look,” he pointed. They saw the glowing eyes in the dark. Mac aimed his rifle and shot. The sound reverberated throughout the jungle and they heard a muffled growl.
“He’s not dead,” William said.
“Yeah, I can tell. We’ve got to follow it. There’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded cat.”
“Yeah, I know. Come on, or we might have some nasty uninvited guest tonight.” William quickly put his boots back on. He felt something crawling inside one of them and pulled it off. A scorpion came out and nonchalantly walked away. William felt the sweat run down his back. Before putting the boot back on he held it upside down and shook it. This would become a ritual he would do completely unconsciously for years. “Walters, come on!” Mac whispered, urging him on. William nodded and the two men cautiously moved deeper into the dense foliage of the jungle to search for the wounded animal.
They tr
ead cautiously through the stifling humidity when suddenly William spotted the jaguar high up in a tree. The piercing fluorescent green eyes stared back at him. He felt a shiver run up his spine. “There!” He whispered to Mac as he nudged him. William aimed his rifle, held back for the briefest of seconds, and felt the sweat running down his face and back. William did not believe in killing unless he was threatened. He knew if necessary he wouldn’t hesitate, but with animals it was somehow different. The rules were different, yet with the imminent threat he knew he had no choice. He exhaled slowly, held his breath, and fired. He shot only once and they waited. No growling, no dying sound, not even a body falling down. That was definitely not a good sign, and they knew it.
“That’s it, I’m outa’ here,” Mac said, running back to their camp.
“Right behind you, Mac.”
The two men ran as fast as they ever had until they reached their campfire. They took turns staying awake until the morning when they would find out what had happened to the jaguar. At dawn they went back to search for the animal. They knew that a wounded cat was the most dangerous of species, and they had to find him. And they did. William’s bullet had penetrated it’s skull between the eyes in the same tree. The jaguar had expired right there without moving an inch.
“Damn good shooting, Walters.”
“Yeah, thanks.” William mumbled.
They walked solemnly through the jungle and headed back to base, when suddenly William heard an alarming whisper next to his ear. He reeled around to see what it was, but it was too late. A ten-foot boa constrictor instantly wrapped itself around him. He tried to pry it loose but it was useless. As quick as lightning the huge snake constricted around his body, suffocating him, pulling the air out of his lungs. He was lifted effortlessly off his feet like a marionette. He didn’t even have enough time to call Mac for help. He could feel the immense reptile tightening itself around him even more. William saw black spots before his eyes. The oxygen was leaving his body. He grappled in his semi-conscious state for his machete, but the snake covered it. William managed to squeeze his hand between his body and the boa’s and pull it out. He found the head and with the last bit of energy left extracted his arm and slashed at the head until it was cut through. The snake uncoiled like a stiff branch and William dropped down hard. Mac who just realized what was happening rushed back. He saw the dead snake and whistled. “Damn, that’s one huge monster!”
“You’re telling me,” William said, gasping.
“You alright?”
William nodded. “Yeah, help me up. Let’s get back to base. I want a shower, food and a bed—in that order.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Mac helped William up, spat on the snake, and the two men marched on to their destination.
When they arrived at the base Mac was practically carrying his partner. Two guards ran to help. William’s skin tone was a faded ochre, and he was shaking and sweating at the same time.
“What’s wrong with him?” One of the soldiers asked.
“The guy kills a jaguar, and the biggest snake you ever saw, and a damned mosquito brings him down! Get him to the dispensary, and fast.”
William spent the next two weeks in and out of consciousness, drinking quinine, sweating and delirious from malaria. At some point, when he was lucid, he thought he should maybe have gone to Alaska. There were no nasty creatures up there, big or small.
When William was discharged from the military he returned to Chicago and found himself back at his regular hangout. Roxanne was thrilled and put a bottle of Scotch in front of him.
“Nope. I’m done with that,” William said.
“You don’t drink any more?”
“Just one or two every once in a while. I overdid it when I was in the Army and didn’t like myself any more.” William remembered waking up one morning in Panama, going to his locker and pulling out a bottle. He drank heavily, blamed it on his father, the tough times and his mother’s passing. It was six o’clock in the morning. He looked at the bottle in his hand and threw it against the wall. That’s ridiculous and that’s enough, he said to himself.
“Okay,” Roxanne said, and poured him just a glass. William nursed it.
“Do you know anyone who needs extra help?”
“Like a job?” William nodded. “See that guy over there? I think he might be looking.
“Thanks Roxanne.” William walked over to the man. He was wearing a suit that was too small, as if it belonged to a younger brother. His belly protruded out and the buttons were begging to burst. His tie looked like he had wiped his last pasta dinner on it and just by looking at the face that only a mother could love William wondered how badly he had been laughed at as a kid. “Would you be looking to hire some extra help?” He asked.
“What can you do?”
“What do you need?”
“You know anything about guns?”
“My specialty,” William answered.
“Like fixing them up?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, come over tomorrow, meet me at this warehouse. Pay’s not bad.” He gave William the address.
William found the warehouse and was immediately put to work. There were pistols and machine guns stacked on several tables. They looked like they’d been through a war. They were scratched, dirty and mishandled. “Looks like gorillas got hold of these. No respect for fine machinery,” William mumbled to himself.
“Can you shape them up?”
“No problem.”
William had a lot of work and he was paid well. He didn’t ask questions and did his job. He would take all the pieces of each weapon apart, meticulously clean them, replace some parts or rebuild them and put them back together. It didn’t matter what weapon it was, he knew them all, from Gatling guns to .45’s. He did this for a while and then got bored. He left the job and later found out that he had been fixing Al Capone’s weapons. He was glad he hadn’t known anything about it any earlier.
William went to Washington D.C. and applied to the State Department. They hired him on the spot. He was fluent in several languages, was an armaments and communications expert and had military intelligence training. When WWII broke out, he was sent to the embassy in Greece as a military attaché.
♫
20TH CENTURY
WWII
CHAPTER 24
“Paliatzis! Paliatzis! I buy new and old! I buy new and old!” The middle-aged man guided his donkey through the once wealthy Athenian neighborhood of Plaka. He was one of the ambulant merchants roaming through the streets trying to make a few pennies; trying to survive the ravages of the German occupation in Greece. Nareg Garabedian was once a poet—refined, educated and a gentleman—until the war. Now, in tattered clothes little better than rags, he bought and sold objects from people’s homes, who in turn were trying to survive by selling their wares to buy a little food. The entire city was sealed off. Food was practically non-existent, except for a few peasants smuggling in what they could from the fields outside of Athens. Raisins, rationed at that, were the only food the Germans allowed the Athenians to stay alive with.
“Over here!” A woman’s voice rang out from her upstairs window. Nareg looked up and above the geraniums hanging from the window box.
“Yes, Madame, what can I do for you?”
“Please, come in.”
Nareg attached the donkey to the steel gate and entered the large whitewashed square patio leading to the house. While magnificent, he could tell it had seen better times. He felt comfortable, as he quickly understood that the people living in this home were good, decent people. He could tell by the way the flowers had been lovingly planted and kept. They looked healthy and happy and their perfume gently filled his senses. Above one of the corners of the patio hanging laundry hid a little arbor of succulent grapes hanging from white wooden beams. His mouth watered. He hadn’t seen such beautiful fruit since before the war. The patio was cool and inviting, the atmosphere warm and welcoming. Nareg was alrea
dy arranging words in his mind for a new poem.
“Kaliméra!” The woman said, walking out of the doorway and into the patio.
“Good day to you, Madame,” Nareg said, taking his hat off. He had not expected such a beautiful woman with fine features. She was middle aged, a classic Mediterranean beauty. Nareg was sure that the older this woman became the more attractive and alluring she would be. She had very black hair that shined almost dark blue, a heart shaped face that framed warm, caring and intelligent eyes, and the most perfect lips and teeth he had ever seen. And she had class.
“Oh, you look very hot! Please sit down, I’ll bring you a big glass of cold water.”
“Please, do not inconvenience yourself.”
“Don’t be silly. Now, sit down. I’ll be right back.” As he watched her go back into the house Nareg couldn’t help thinking that this elegant woman looked familiar. He did as she asked and sat down at a little table covered with a white lace tablecloth. She promptly came back out with a little tray holding a very tall glass of cool water.
“Now, you relax for a while, drink as much as you need and have a bite to eat. I apologize that I do not have anything else to offer you,” she said, lowering the tray onto the table. Nareg almost cried when he saw the batch of grapes on the plate in front of him. “This is too much, Madame, I cannot accept this. I am, though, very grateful.”
“My name is Valentina and if you do not eat this, I shall be very insulted.”
“I would never wish to insult you. You are very kind and I am deeply grateful. This is why I have made my home in Greece, because of people like you, because of your generosity and hospitality. My name is Nareg Garabedian. I am Armenian. I am at your service, Madame.”
Valentina knew of the sacrifices the Armenians made. When the Germans invaded Greece the Commander told the Armenians that they would be safe if they joined with the third Reich. The leader said that the Greeks had welcomed them to their country when they were without a homeland and they were proud to be citizens of Greece. They would endure whatever a Greek would. Since then, they had been persecuted just as harshly as the Greeks, sometimes even moreso.
