by Beau North
“Why don’t you take a picture?” Bert said between bites.
“Ah, sorry.”
“You don’t exactly look the same either.” Bert looked pointedly at the scars that laced the side of Richard’s face.
“Tell me about it.” Richard took an unused butter knife he’d set out and tapped it against his false eye.
“Took part of a grenade to the face on Hill 355.
Bertram put down the hamburger he’d been about to bite into and stared at him.
“You went back in? After what happened to you in France?”
“I did.”
“Were you born that stupid or did you have to work at it?”
“Bit of both, I guess.”
Bert pushed his plate away. “You’re unbelievable. Rich boy with everything handed to him, and you can’t stop trying to get yourself killed.”
“I don’t need a lecture, believe me. I know it was stupid.”
“Surprised you didn’t jump at the chance to get into this next one.”
Richard’s brows drew down as he picked at a bit of lettuce left on his plate. “Do you think they’ll take it so far as to put boots on the ground?”
Bert scoffed. “How could they resist? It’s always about who’s swinging more pipe, isn’t it?”
Richard shook his head. “God. I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“You can wish in one hand and crap in the other―see which one fills first.”
Richard tried to smile but fell short. He dreaded the thought of another conflict. War had marked his life from birth, when he’d come into the world while his father was manning battleships during the Great War. He’d lost parts of his body and much of his sanity in his own battles. It was enough for two lifetimes, let alone one.
“Well, I couldn’t do it again. Even if I was fit for duty,” he pointed at the prosthetic eye. “I can’t stomach any more bloodshed. I don’t have the convictions I had in ’41 when I enlisted or the death wish I had in ’51 when I jumped back in, feet first.”
“I’m worried about this one, Fitz. It’s going to be long and bloody.”
“It’s already been going on longer than Korea, and no end in sight,” Richard said.
Bert sighed and drank down the last of his tea, ice cubes rattling against the glass.
“What happened to you, Bert?” Richard asked suddenly. “If I’d known, I would have helped.”
“It’s a long story, but what I told you back there was true, mostly. After we got back… It was ’46 before I got home, you know, I was…kinda messed up from it all.”
Richard nodded but said nothing. This was familiar territory for him.
“The house was gone by then. They’d built it too close to the bayou. It had already started sinking when I left. The foundation couldn’t take the strain, cracked right in half. My younger brother had taken a job teaching at a boarding school. My sisters were scattered to the winds. I still don’t know whatever became of Marie. Momma was in a care home. I had nowhere to go.”
“Weren’t you getting your veteran pay?”
“It all went to that care home. And even that wasn’t near enough. I ended up taking the job with the UP, working the freight cars hauling coal or what have you, but, by then, I was hitting the bottle pretty hard. We’d just finished a run out here and was due to head back when this happened.” He swept his hand over the stump of his leg. “I was drunker than Cooter Brown, passed out in an open car. Got a rude awakening when the train started moving. I fell, got my foot tangled up in the works. Lay there for hours until someone happened along and saw me. By then, it was too late to save the leg. It was all downhill from there, but it did cure my drinking.”
“Jesus, Bert. I wish I’d known.”
“Why, because we were such good friends?”
“We were kids who got on each other’s nerves. You’re still a human being.”
“We drove past whole camps full of human beings on the way up here,” Bert said, picking apart a hamburger bun. Richard noticed a hangnail that was clearly infected and suppressed a shudder.
“You’re right. Truth be told, I’d like to start…well, something to help. I was thinking…I was thinking you could help me get it started.”
Bert laughed. The sound make Richard’s stomach clench. “Are you offering me charity?”
“No, I’m offering you a job, you hick.”
“Why?”
Richard shrugged. “Why not? You know more than most what would be helpful. You could tell me where to start addressing immediate needs while I figure out how to make things work in the long run.”
“Maybe.” He sounded dubious.
“Look, I’ve got a spare room. You can stay with me until you’ve saved enough to get on your feet again.”
“You want me to stay here. With you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. You’d prefer the Ritz?”
“When rich people want to take in transients it reads like a Shirley Jackson story.”
“Wow, Bert.”
Bert scowled. “Surprised I knew who Shirley Jackson is?”
“No. Surprised you can read.”
“An advantage of having both eyes still.”
Richard laughed. “All right, smartass. The guest room is yours for as long as you want it.”
March 20, 1956
Dear Slim,
Forgive this mawkish bit of nostalgia. It comes on me so suddenly sometimes, and the only way to exorcise it is to write another of these interminable letters.
As I write this, an old…well, colleague, let’s call him, is sleeping in the next room. We were never friends but are brothers in arms, nonetheless. Teo Bertram was like a flea on my back all the time I was in training, and later when we waited to be dropped into France. His life took many hard turns to put him in my path. Seeing him again has reminded me how close I came to drowning in my own sorrows, how easy it would have been to end it all had it not been for you, magical girl. You saved me in more ways than I can name, and it occurred to me tonight that I never actually thanked you. I thanked you by punishing you, hating you as much as I loved you, for years and years. My eyes are clear now. If not for you, I never would have held my son. I never would have met Evie. I never would have been in a position where I can now help someone the way you helped me. And not just that. I have a mind to find more men like Bert, to give them the hand up they need. I couldn’t have gotten here without you.
Thank you, Slim, for all these chances I didn’t deserve.
Love,
Richard
33
June 7, 1958
Bluebell Cottage
Village of Bray, Berkshire
3 September ’55
Dear Richard,
I’m so sorry to hear that things are not working out the way you’d hoped in California, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Running away seldom solves all our problems, but sometimes we just need to, the way we need air. Believe it or not, I understand perfectly.
You know, of course, that our door is always open to you, should you choose to darken it.
And to answer your question, Pansy has decided on the viola. I know I shouldn’t laugh at my own child but it’s a damn rip snorter hearing her play. I’m sure she’ll improve with practice, but part of me wants to freeze her at this age, where everything she does is the most precious thing I’ve seen. I wanted the same with Sadie, and now she’s a proper little miss, very prim and if you please, etc. And that’s funny in and of itself. It’s the village school, I think, that’s made her a bit full of herself. I sometimes have to remind them that their future is full of promise and opportunities a poor girl from Fremantle never had. I love them, but sometimes I envy them.
Arthur put the half-finished letter aside and sat back in the chair, thoughts racing through his pounding head. He’d sat down at the desk by the window that his wife preferred, looking for the headache powders she kept there sometimes. He was already overdue at St. Michael’s to patch loose brickwo
rk on the tower, but he’d stumbled in late and slept the sleep of the dead drunk. He’d had a long day of completing the last of the village annex work and a long night of buying drinks for the crew at the pub. Evie had risen with the girls, gotten them off to school, and left to do her shopping without a word to him. He hadn’t given it much thought. The silence between them had begun to grow in the last five or six years. He’d thought it comfortable, that they knew everything there was to know about each other. He knew from this letter that his wife still had a great deal to say but never bothered to say anything to him.
He knew he’d hurt her quite badly when she’d found out about his dalliance with the young widow who had blown in and out of town in a season all those years ago. Was that where the rupture had begun, he wondered, or had it been the arrival of the first letter from Richard Fitzwilliam?
He thought Richard a bit of a soft bloke but had never begrudged her the friendship. How could he, when that friendship had come with a price tag of nearly four thousand pounds? That money had saved them, had allowed his mother some dignity in her final months, had allowed them the quiet life in a peaceful village they’d both wanted after the dirt and chaos of London rebuilding itself.
Arthur was a practical man. He wasn’t one to get carried away with emotion. He’d never been jealous of Richard before, because he knew that Richard was not the sainted James Fitzwilliam. The stories of that one had painted a picture of a man too good to be true. Handsome, gallant, patient, and rich. Arthur knew that he never would have gotten a second look from the beautiful Evelyn Ross had James Fitzwilliam survived. But Richard had never been a threat to him. Richard was impulsive, erratic, obsessive. A bit too self-indulgent, even petty at times. And he’d been secure in knowing that Evie thought his antics amusing but little more.
But now he wondered if he’d just been willfully blind? The tone of Richard’s letters (which he sometimes read at his wife’s insistence) had changed since he’d nearly died in Korea. He’d become more reserved, more cautious, in thought and action.
More James-like altogether.
She’s in love with him. The realization struck him like a hammer blow between the eyes. He picked up the letter—more than two years old now—and scanned it again. It was innocuous enough at first glance, but Arthur could see what was clearly written between the lines.
Running away seldom solves all our problems, but sometimes we just need to, the way we need air.
Arthur dropped the paper, not caring where it went. He’d found it stuffed in the desk drawer, slightly crumpled but still legible. Ill tidings delivered years too late.
Head in hands, he sank under the weight, the enormity of what he felt. He wasn’t a stupid man, and he knew that he’d failed his wife time and again, leaving the door open for this.
He remembered after his brief affair, how she’d taken the girls to Southend-on-Sea for four days. In those four days, she never called once, not even to let the girls say goodnight to their da. He’d missed them so terribly that he’d drank himself into a blind stupor, praying and swearing that he’d never stray again if she’d only come home. The next day she had returned, her face and shoulders tight with tension. He’d pulled her to him and spelled out all his regrets, his promises. And he’d kept that promise.
But Evie, he realized, had given him no such pledge..
June 7, 1958
The Brown Fox
Village of Bray
* * *
“Morning, Arthur.”
The publican, Branscombe, was a mountain of a man, nearly as tall as Arthur, but with the wide shoulders of a butcher and the belly of a lifetime beer drinker. He’d been running the Brown Fox as long as Arthur had lived there, and he still didn’t know if Branscombe was the man’s actual name or where he was from.
He nodded at the giant of a man. “Bran.”
Bran narrowed his eyes at him. “Bit early, innit?”
Arthur shrugged and took a seat. “I’m a bit shambles this morning.”
Bran nodded and went back to polishing the glasses to a shine. The Fox was an old pub, but Branscombe kept it neat as a pin, every glass and bottle spotless, every table scrubbed. He disappeared into the back and came back a moment later with a plate laden with beans and toast, a charred bit of sausage, and powdered eggs scrambled until fluffy. Arthur’s stomach twisted, but he made himself nod his thanks.
“I won’t have any tomato for a few days yet,” Bran said in his deep rumble.
Arthur shook his head and picked up a fork. “Don’t like tomato, never have.” He looked town at the food, his stomach swimming.
“Hair of the dog?” Bran placed a glass of dark beer in front of him. Arthur picked up the glass and drank half of it down, a rich, malty brew, in one long draw. He wiped his lips, feeling loads better and years younger already. “Cheers.”
Bran went about his cleaning, leaving Arthur to his breakfast. He found that he could eat now, with the pain in his head and worry in his heart somewhat abated by the drink. When the food was gone, Bran took his plate and silently placed another beer in front of him. Arthur drank this one slowly, savoring the head-swimming feeling that told him he’d never fully sobered up from the previous night’s revelries. This wasn’t unusual for him, but he didn’t usually return quite so quickly as he had this time.
If not for that bloody letter.
It was the letter, and all his pondering on his own domestic life that had driven him to the Fox so early in the day, when he should have been at St. Michael’s. He’d promised the vicar as a favor to check the loose bricks personally.
With the loose-limbed confidence of a heavy drinker, Arthur wondered if he’d been overthinking his wife’s friendship with the American playboy. They’d had him in their home. He sent baskets of fruit and gifts for the girls at Christmastime. When Arthur’s mother died, he’d sent a beautiful wreath of white roses, a gesture he’d found genuinely touching at the time. Maybe Arthur was seeing what wasn’t there, and the problem wasn’t that Richard Fitzwilliam was a good bloke, but that he was a better man than Arthur was.
Bollocks. Arthur drained his third drink and pushed back from the bar, taking some crumpled notes from his wallet.
“Off to the allotment?” Bran asked, counting out his change in coins. Arthur shook his head, tottering.
“St. Mikes. Promised Mr. Lowman I’d look at some loose brick.”
Bran’s forehead wrinkled in concern. “You look like you’re about to go arse over tit, mate. Should I call the missus to come fetch you?”
“No!” The word came out strong enough to shock them both a little. Arthur had never been one to raise his voice. Branscombe raised his hands in surrender. “Your funeral.”
Arthur took the change Bran had given him and put it on the bar. “Apologies, Bran. I’ll walk it off before I see the vicar. Don’t call Evie.”
Bran nodded and scooped up the change. If Arthur had been a little more sober, he would have noticed the worry in the other man’s eyes. But he didn’t notice it, giving a slight wave and a smile before stumbling out into a bright, blue afternoon.
June 7, 1958
Los Angeles
“It’s not right.”
Richard waited, arms shaking with effort, sweat pouring down his back in a thin river that soaked through his t-shirt. He looked back at Bert.
“Any day now.”
“A little to the left,” the Louisiana twang was barely audible in the man’s smoke-roughened voice.
With as much care as his aching arms could manage, Richard slid the painting down into place, feeling the heavy-duty cable catch on the hangers that had been drilled into the wall.
Richard stepped back and reviewed his work. The painting itself had not been heavy, but the frame, a simple brushed gold, had to have weighed forty pounds. Holding it in place while Bert got the hangers in place had been a backbreaking effort. He wiped his sweat-damp palms on his jeans.
“What do you think?” he asked the other
man.
Bert hobbled back to the couch and collapsed like a soufflé taken out of the oven too soon. Richard had managed to procure the newest crutches for him, but Bertram adamantly refused the offer of a wheelchair. For two years, they’d co-existed in crabby companionship, and their shared determination to see their new veterans association thrive had done wonders for both men’s hearts and minds. Richard threw himself into this new responsibility, dutifully returning to New York to spend holidays and birthdays with Ben. Bert had gotten himself healthy again, thanks to long hours spent swimming in the pool. He looked younger, less haggard than the man Richard had stumbled across sleeping in a doorway on Havenhurst Avenue.
Bert looked up at the wall, the painting, and scrunched his face.
“What’s it supposed to be?”
Richard shrugged. “Art, I guess.”
“What’s it called again?”
“I think it’s Untitled.”
The painting was one of Anne’s. He’d purchased it from her last gallery show because he thought he could see some shadow of himself in it, in the blue-green swirls of paint and the yawning, skeletal figures that seemed to be scratched into the layers of color rather than painted on.
Bert shook his head. “Don’t like it.”
Richard grinned. “You don’t have to. I’ll hang up some Alice Smiths in your room. You’ll feel right at home again.”
Bert picked up a Newsweek and began flipping through it. A smiling Jack Kennedy looked out from the cover. “Jack Kennedy―Shadows of ’60” the headline read. Richard shook his head and used the hem of his shirt to wipe the sweat that dripped from his hair. He thought Kennedy was all right…for a navy man.
He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. Even the cold tap was bathwater warm. Outside, the pool sparkled, inviting in the hot desert sun.
“Let’s go for a swim,” he called back to Bert.
“You trying to force me to exercise?” the other man called back.