These Silent Woods: A Novel(36)

No one knew we’d gotten pinned down there, with nowhere to go and the radios lost in the blast. Before long, we ran out of water, and Jake’s face and leg were looking bad, his whole left side a bloody, charred mess, and the flies were seething now, too many for me to keep away from him. That bothered me, the way they just descended upon him, like he was already dead, and I couldn’t keep them back. How long, I remember wondering, how long until he’d die on that table on that unknown street in an unknown town.

It was December 14th and things were looking bleak. Jake started reciting Psalm 23, which if you don’t know it, is a death song, in my opinion. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I told him to quit it. Bent down and got right in his face with blood and sand and muscle and bone and looked through all of it and said, “Don’t you dare.”

He changed his tune.

“‘Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee.’ Is that better?” he asked, looking at me. His face monstrous. The left eyeball a space of dried black blood but the right one, the same: kind and knowing. And yet he was smiling, I could tell. He’d been a handsome devil, before.

I squeezed his hand. “Sure, brother.”

“That’s Gerard Manley Hopkins.”

“Tell me about him.” I said this to get him out of the mode where he was brewing an infection and knew it and therefore gearing up to let go. I needed him to shift into English-teacher mode. I needed him to stay alive.

My tactic worked. He started talking about Hopkins and the Victorians and sonnets, none of which meant anything to me, but with him distracted I could scout the building a bit and not worry about him dying on me.

And so it was that Jake was talking poetry when I crept up and up, four flights of stairs to peer out a window. I had a pretty good sense of where we were but I knew I could confirm it from a higher vantage point. Once I got a look at things, I knew I could navigate our way back to base. Anyhow, like I said, people were back on the street. The bazaar was open, three kids were kicking a ball. From up there, I saw two figures closing in on the building, and they were headed right toward the entrance close to Jake. Jake lying on a slab on the brink of death and both of them sneaking, heads tucked, shoulders down.

Quick quick I darted back down the stairway, skipping steps, all those flights, and into the room and all I had was my AK, which would’ve alerted everyone that we were still there. And I couldn’t have that happen, not with Jake incapacitated and hours to go until nightfall. I remember running my hand along the wall in the stairwell, the steps that turned and turned. The rough feel of the stucco on my fingertips, the sound of my boots echoing down and down.

By the time I reached Jake they were both there in the room, standing over him and I thought he was dead already, that they’d finished what little was left of him, and a sudden fury swept over me, a thing so forceful I lost sense of everything I knew and was and all that was left was that room: my friend on the table, two people there to cause him harm, the flies that hummed and feasted, the heat.

I killed both of them. A man and a woman. Quick, but still.

The thing the woman had been carrying—it was a cake. Later, I fed it to Jake, crumb by crumb, because he wasn’t dead. They hadn’t touched him. Looking back, I’ve tried to convince myself that maybe they really would’ve hurt Jake, after all. Maybe both of us. Maybe I could’ve told them to get lost and they would’ve walked out of there and then told someone, and Jake and me would’ve gotten strung up in the streets. Regardless of what would’ve happened, though, whether they were there by accident or there to harm us, the fact is, I killed them, and I have to live with it.



* * *



Well. Bad things happen to people during war, even good people, as it did with Jake. It is no respecter of persons, war. Even if it doesn’t damage your body, it damages your soul. As it did with me. And now I’ve slipped into reliving that dreadful day yet again. Can’t ever seem to get away from it, can’t ever be free.

“Finch?” I rise from the porch, tuck the Ruger in my pocket, and head toward the backyard. It’s almost dark, and she should be back. I round the corner of the house. Pause. A sound. A motor? Not far and we never, ever hear a motor here, except when Jake comes, the main road being too far for sound to carry. The noise growing louder. Someone coming. For a second I allow myself to think it: Jake? No. “Finch!”

Tires on gravel. I scan the woods, looking for Finch, any sign of her. Nothing. My mind racing and toiling: Scotland, the girl we saw. I tuck behind the back side of the house. Headlights flicker through the almost-dark. The vehicle rounds the bend and comes into sight. A blue car, not sure the make, and inexplicably quiet. I turn around and search the woods again. No Finch and the sun is slipping behind the hill, throwing off a magnificent array of winter colors: yellow, salmon, red, pink. Within minutes, it’ll be completely dark, and now someone is here. Where is she?

The car pulls into the little flat spot in front of the cabin. Still, I have no plan except the Ruger in my pocket, but I wait and hope that something comes to me.





EIGHTEEN




The driver’s-side door opens and a woman steps out. I squint, fairly certain that nobody else is with her. She reaches high, stretching, then leans back into the car and pulls out a coat. She wears a long gray skirt and a baggy white sweater. Curly brown hair, short. No, pulled back and tied in a bun at the nape of her neck. She closes the car door and walks toward the house.