Lovely War(60)
“What happens now?” Aubrey asked.
Jim Europe took off his robe and began changing into his uniform. “First thing,” he said, “you’re telling nobody what happened. Understand?”
Aubrey sat up. “You think people aren’t going to notice him missing?”
Jim fed a leg into his trousers. “He’s sick,” he said. “You helped him to the infirmary.”
“You mean, you’re going to hush this up and let those bastards get away with it?”
Jim Europe’s look reminded Aubrey that he was speaking to a superior officer. It was harder to remember that when the superior officer was buttoning his trousers over his union suit.
“I’m letting nobody get away with anything,” Europe said in a heavy tone, “but I’ll handle it my way. I’m not going to add to this Hatfield–McCoy devilry. ‘An eye for an eye’ doesn’t get us to the Front, and we didn’t come here to play soldier with marines.” He fastened his socks to his garters. “As for you, you’re getting on that train this morning for Aix-les-Bains.”
Leaving? He wasn’t supposed to. Colette. “I wasn’t on the roster.”
“You are now.”
Colette stood, a silhouette in the light at the end of a long, long corridor. Small, like a statuette. As he watched, the hallway stretched longer and longer until she disappeared.
Joey should be alive right now. If someone had to die, it should be the reckless one who ignored the rules and brought destruction down on an innocent man. A guy who would sacrifice his friend’s life so he could sneak out to see a girl didn’t deserve to live.
“Send your girl a letter when we arrive, but I’m getting you out of this mess.”
He knew it. Before he even found the body or discovered Joey missing. That disorienting feeling in his sleep. This was the message it had been trying to send.
Of course it was. I sent it to him. It was no boon, but I needed to prepare him. Wrapping him in confusion was more merciful than leaving him with full faculties to face the stark truth.
He had stumbled upon my gates. I am gracious to my guests.
Lieutenant Europe poured Aubrey a refill. “I’ve got a lot to do before sunup, and you’d best not be around for any of it. Get back to bed, and sleep if you can. We leave at seven.” He handed Aubrey the glass. “Drink that. You’ll need it.”
Aubrey drank the burning cup and followed his feet out into the snow, back to his barracks. Last time he’d returned to this door, Colette’s kiss still hung on his lips. That aliveness, that joy that he felt beside her, the music, the possibilities—they all slipped down beneath the undertow pulling Aubrey Edwards to Aix-les-Bains and far away from his own soul.
HADES
Homecoming
ACUTE TRAUMA TO the head swells the brain, choking off those parts that control breathing and heartbeat. Before the brutes had quite finished killing Joey Rice, he slid from terror into insensibility. His body, realizing no recovery was possible, swiftly implemented its self-destruct procedure, releasing it host, the soul, from any further fear or pain.
Untethered, unbound, and still unconscious, the soul of Joseph Rice winged its way across the portals of earth and eternity, and arrived at my doors.
He opened his eyes, his true eyes, and found himself in a grassy field dotted with small white flowers. Bigger by far than Central Park. Birds sang. A warm breeze wrapped itself around him and rustled the boughs of nearby trees.
He found his feet on a path that led to a familiar door. He opened it and went inside.
It was his home in Harlem. His parents’ flat. There was his mother at the table, doing her nightly crossword puzzle. Beside her sat his father, replacing a guitar string. They shared a bowl of popcorn between them on the table. A photograph of Joey in a jacket and tie stood on the mantel.
“Mom,” he called. “Dad. How’re you doing?”
They didn’t look up.
He stood by the table. “Mom, Dad! It’s me, Joe!”
I joined him. No footsteps, but he knew I was there. He didn’t look. “What’s going on?”
It’s better, I find, to let liberated souls figure things out at their own pace.
“Am I dead?”
He turned toward me. I’d taken the form of his dead grandfather, but Joey wasn’t fooled.
“Does it feel like you are?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “What was that grassy place?”
“Asphodel,” I told him. “Do you like it?”
He seemed unwilling to admit that there is anything to like about being dead. This is common and does not offend me.
“Tell me straight. I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“You are.”
“Then why am I here?”
“It’s where you wanted to be.”
He turned back to his folks. He knelt beside his mother and stroked her hair.
“I’m sorry, Ma,” he told her. “I’m so sorry. I said I’d always look after you.”
She didn’t notice a thing. She did, however, decipher a tricky clue.
Joey’s father got the new string tested and tuned. He fingered a few experimental chords to make sure the strings were in agreement. Joey squeezed his father’s shoulders.