After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

  Freddy was confused. “I’m not following.” Before he got this far in his retelling I already knew.

  His admission only caused Tim’s blush to deepen. Tina slapped his shoulder again. “They’re not having sex!” She told him in a loud whisper.

  Tim chuckled uncomfortably. “Old world civility is not entirely gone, my dear. Margaret has been through quite an ordeal. I would never force her to do anything she was not comfortable with. This is her wish and I will honor it.”

  Freddy nodded his approval. “I think we’re gonna get along just fine.”

  “Freddy pounced on me almost right away,” Tina declared. “He didn’t even let me get my shoes off.”

  “Tina!” Freddy was startled.

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “You’re talking to my mother.”

  “So. She’s a grown woman.”

  Freddy cast up his hands.

  Tim was probably happy to have to focus off himself for the moment. “You know, a gentleman typically seeks out the approval of a lady’s father before he may court her. I will gladly settle for her son’s.”

  Freddy leaned forward and shook his hand and knew they were friends.

  -

  They had a nice dinner. The women cooked and the men cleaned – a fair trade I would say. Dinner conversation shifted between each couple – how they met in particular – and then roamed any number of topics from current events and the weather to the similarities between baseball and cricket.

  Freddy discovered early on that Tim was a nut for American muscle. He was a Ford man through and through and loved Mustangs. Respectfully, they stuck with the dinner conversation until the dishes were cleared and they were ensconced in the kitchen. The ladies had wandered off to the living room with their coffees and the wrench-talk commenced.

  The first surprise came when Tim told him England had the old pony car since the sixties. It was more than just an American icon. “Quite a number of British servicemen were stationed in the Americas,” he explained and made ‘the Americas’ sound alarmingly like ‘the colonies’. “They brought cars back with them – typically Mustangs.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes,” Tim nodded. He seemed perfectly at ease with a dish towel in his hand. “It’s no different than Americans and Canadians bringing back Morgans and Healeys or whatever.” He was smiling to himself while he worked at an old, long dry water spot on one of the wine glasses. “But I never did get a ‘Stang until after I was stationed here. Petrol’s bloody expensive in England and parts are worth more than one’s first born!”

  Freddy grunted. In the living room the murmur of conversation had died out. He could hear Tina’s ooh’s and ahh’s and the occasional gasp or titter of laughter and he knew his mother had brought out the old photo albums.

  Another side of Freddy reemerged, was recreated or rediscovered that weekend. It was a side of him I always knew was there. Somewhere. I rarely if ever saw it. I don’t think he even knew it was there and when it came out the monster tucked its tail and ran yipping for the darkest corner on the deepest level. It was his humanity.

  The nice family dinner, the pleasant conversation and camaraderie – he reveled in them. He recalled these moments fondly. Even the photo albums and the embarrassment he felt were good. This was all new to him and he liked it. He felt part of something; living in a post card.

  Could he only have stayed there a week or a month. Between Tina and Tim and his mother he might have been saved. The monster was only one part of him. I knew it was and that part could be made to diminish. It could have been ignored and forgotten. I know nothing about psychology but I could see the promise of light in Freddy when he told me about his weekend.

  He chased Tina around the house to recover a photograph she had taken from the album. She vowed to show everyone. He caught her eventually and tackled her onto the sofa. Freddy tickled her until she was breathless and gleefully begging him to stop. Tim was laughing. Maggie was trying to hold a disapproving glower and failed.

  Freddy got into a happily heated debate over Ford versus Chevy and big-inch motors versus smaller, high-revving race engines. This ended with Tim flicking him with the dish towel. Maggie voiced her disapproval and was chased through the house with the same towel. Tina laughed and she too was chased.

  It was good. It was wholesome. It was real life. It was Andy Griffith and Married: With Children all rolled into one. It was perfect.

  -

  As the evening wore on Freddy again found himself alone with Tim. They were on the back patio under a clear, darkened sky enjoying a remarkably warm night. Banks of melt-hardened snow still ringed the concrete slab and lingered along the north wall of the garage but the trees were budding and the lawn was greening. Maggie’s tulips were above ground and would soon be in bloom where the deer didn’t get to them first.

  There would likely be snow again before April was out. There usually was. Calgary would get it worse as would places further north along the foothills. What came on the fifteenth would be gone by the twentieth. When it melted the lawns would emerge a brilliant emerald and the trees, like the world’s largest Chia pets, would burst into life seemingly overnight. Spring would arrive. It was usually on that afternoon, you know, just between winter and summer.

  Tim smoked cigars and favored a semi-sweet port to dip them in while he smoked. But like Freddy he wasn’t much of a drinker and even the cigars he only smoked on occasion. He offered one to Freddy as they settled into their lawn chairs but it was declined.

  “The aroma of yours is enough,” Freddy said. He wanted to know about the army, about killing. He had no idea how to go about asking.

  Tim solved his dilemma by broaching the subject himself. “You want to know what it’s like, don’t you?” He pulled on his cigar just enough to keep it burning.

  Freddy watched him, not speaking. This was a new Tim, a different Tim than the dinner-time Tim who managed to be both reserved and easy going at the same time. This Tim sounded the same but the joy was gone from his eyes, the humor from his words. His eyes grew distant and his stare returned full-force in its purest form. His voice was as dead as his eyes but Freddy could hear the regret buried in there. His own darkness came through but it was darkness thrust on him by duty and service. It was a darkness tread into willingly but never eagerly.

  “Sorry?” Freddy tried.

  “Yes. I’ve killed men,” Tim replied. “It isn’t my custom to talk about it. People always ask but they are never ready for the answers. They think they are but they aren’t. You are.”

  Freddy watched him and listened to more than his words. It was not his lips that moved when he spoke. It was his soul. His words had flesh. They had life.

  “You’ve killed, Freddy. I know.” Tim exhaled a slow tendril of tobacco smoke mingled with the faint mist of his frosting breath. His eyes were wide and black in their depths beneath the livid porch light but he did not look at Freddy while he spoke. He looked at nothing. “You knew the man you killed. Mostly I did not. Mostly.

  “At first I was sent into combat. Later I led men. In the end I was merely giving the orders for others to kill and die. It is easy for the common soldier to kill – far easier than his commander – because he never has to know his enemy. Our training teaches us to ignore the face, to see only the shape. Killing becomes an impulse, like sneezing. Or flinching.

  “For you it was not an impulse.” Tim glanced his way for the briefest of moments before his eyes were lost again. “You made a conscious choice to do what you did. I should ask you what it is like to kill.”

  Freddy didn’t trust himself to speak. He knew he would have to say he liked it. He would listen to himself telling this man the truth of it and damn the consequences. Instead he merely sighed.

  “It’ll always be hard to talk about it,” Tim told him. “The doctors cannot help – not really. They don’t understand. The mind is not a motor – you cannot just read a book or take a course and understand a ma
n’s thoughts or his feelings. They say they can but I don’t know. I reckon one day…” He shook his head and fell silent.

  “I had a good shrink,” Freddy told him.

  “Did he help?”

  “She – and not really. She didn’t really try to help. I think that’s what made her good.” Freddy realized as he spoke this was true. Liza had helped him – or would have if he had let her. “She just listened and she told me I was normal and everything would be okay. It would work itself out.”

  “They always tried to fix me,” Tim breathed. “Killing men never got to me. They were shapes – like I said. I don’t even know how many I killed. I couldn’t even hazard a guess. But losing men – that’s different.

  “Thirty-seven men died under my command. Thirty-three of them died in combat, three in accidents and one of the flu before he could be evac’ed. The bloody flu, if you can believe it.” Tim fell quiet for a moment. He rekindled his cigar with an old Zippo, the brass worn black and smooth from the pads of his fingers. “I remember every face and every name of each of those men but that last one is the one that bothers me the most. The others I can almost accept. I can almost live with their deaths because death in combat and even in accidents is normal. But the flu?

  “His name was Michael Riley and he died of the flu. It was during a peace-keeping mission in Somalia that was anything but. Even today I could be arrested for talking about it. We weren’t supposed to be there. A chopper wouldn’t come and we couldn’t get help until we reached the coast. At least the Navy would pick us up then. We lost our transport and we walked for three days through scrub forest and mangrove swamps. By the second day we were forced to carry him. The temperature was nearly in the forties. A hundred percent humidity. The air felt cool next to his skin. He died two klicks from the shore, four hours from dusk and a doctor.”

  Tim fell silent again and did not speak for long minutes. His cigar burned out in his hand and was forgotten. His distant eyes focused and grew hot with self-loathing as he fought with himself to speak.

  Freddy waited. His own darkness swam around him but for the moment it was secondary. He could understand this man. He could understand his pain and his sorrow in ways I would never be able to. I could empathize perhaps but I would never understand. I would never feel it.

  “Those are the men I can say I’ve killed, those thirty-seven,” Tim said finally, “but Michael Riley is the only one I ever watched die. His is the only death I can really blame myself for. He’s the only one I lose sleep over.” He pulled out the Zippo again and paused in the act of re-lighting his cigar. “This was his,” he said, holding it out for Freddy to see. “It belonged to Michael Riley – the first,” He lit his cigar and passed it to Freddy. “His grandfather carried that lighter in World War II and his father held it through his service and out to the Falklands in ’82. Michael was an only child, as his father had been and his grandfather. It was always a small family.

  “His mother thought I should have that. Her son left it at home because he was afraid to lose it. She believes that’s why he died, because he left the luck at home. She thought I should have use for that luck. Michael was the first of the family to die for his country this century. He will be the last of his family as well. That branch of the Rileys is done.”

  Freddy turned the lighter over in his hand. The manufacturer’s stamp on its bottom plate was faded, worn nearly to oblivion, but just legible enough to read. Zippo manufacturing company, it read, Bradford Pennsyvania, 1938.

  “I told Mrs. Riley that I blamed myself for her son’s death although I know there is nothing I could have done differently that would have saved him – she asked me that; if I could have done anything differently. I told her there wasn’t.” Tim smoked his cigar and his eyes went away again. “She knew I couldn’t tell her how her boy died or where he died but she just wanted to know if he died doing his job, if he was helping people.”

  “Was he?”

  Tim nodded slowly. “I like to think so. I like to think we all were. But I don’t know. She understood that, his mum did. She understood better than any of the rest of us. She said, ‘If you like to think so than likely it’s the truth,’ and she gave me that lighter.” He sighed, chuckled and coughed once.

  “Smart lady,” Freddy said. He held out the lighter to Tim.

  “No. Keep it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can.” Tim replied. “I’ve got no children of my own and I am finished with the military. I’ve found your mother.” He paused and shook his head. “No, I’ve no more need for luck. But you might.”

  Freddy held the lighter out for a second or two longer and slowly drew it back. He looked at the lighter again. He flipped the lid and lit it, the flame warm and orange, cool blue at its core. “I never blamed myself,” he said, “for my father’s death. I never have.”

  Tim looked at him sharply. In the flickering Zippo light, his eyes glistened wetly. “Tell me about it.”

  Freddy sighed. Upstairs he could hear his girls – his mother and his girlfriend – yammering away in innocence. Maggie wanted to make Tina a summer dress and they were up in her sewing room taking measurements. Absurdly he found himself trying to remember if Tina was wearing underwear.

  “If you can’t…” Tim started.

  “No, I can.” Freddy thought about the knife and the blood. He thought about the way Carrie’s throat had popped and crunched like the joints of a chicken under the pads of his thumbs. He cast these thoughts aside. He could not think these thoughts right then, not with those eyes on him. His own eyes would betray him. He blocked out the world and breathed the smell of Tim’s cigar, the damp funk of spring mud, of woodsmoke and barbeque. The world – that world – was the corners and he could not be there just then. It took but a moment to gather himself.

  “I blame my father,” Freddy told Tim and looked at him. While he said it, it was true.

  Ch10. The Coldest Winter Night

  The Coldest Winter Nights

  Tina and Freddy took a break that summer. There was no fight, no harsh words – just harsh realities. Freddy went home to Prince William Falls and Tina went home to Hanna. It was a six-hour drive – a drive they both knew neither of them could easily make. Tina would be working in her father’s store six days a week and Freddy was back at Clausson’s on vacation relief. There would be no way of getting time together for more than a night.

  “I love you, Freddy,” she told him as they stood together beside her over-loaded Corolla, “and I’m gonna miss you.”

  Freddy smiled. The truth of their situation was obvious but he was still trying to fight it. He admitted he would miss her more than just between the sheets.

  “I don’t want you getting cramps because of me,” she tried to be funny. “I’m sure you got an old girlfriend to look up. Do it. Just remember you’re coming back to me in the fall.”

  He wanted to say the same but the very thought of another man’s hands on her, being inside her … it brought a red mist to his vision. “I don’t want anyone else,” he said quietly.

  “Neither do I.”

  “Then don’t,” he tried and hoped it sounded casual. “Stick to the girls and I’ll stick to my hand. You can massage out the cramps later.”

  “That still bugs you, doesn’t it?”

  Freddy said nothing.

  “It’s okay. I get it.” Tina kissed him. “There’s not exactly a lot of doable guys in town anyway. I’ll be back begging for it.”

  She was astounding. Here she was telling Freddy she would remain faithful to him. Yet it was okay for him to go out and fuck his brains out. But he believed her. He knew she would stick to her word even if it became painful.

  As for Freddy – I didn’t know what he would do. He was no longer the awkward teenager with an edge. He was confident and competent. There was very little sexually he had not done or would not be willing to do again. Such a rare talent would not go unnoticed. I doubted his own self-control was so s
trong he would be able to resist willing flesh for long.

  They said their good-byes. They would talk every few days and hopefully get together a couple or a few times. Their plans were great. They were solid. The summer would just breeze by and they would be back together again. Tina got in her car and drove off. She was still his girl and he wanted her to stay that way. I could see the darkness behind his eyes and I knew – if not his then no one’s.

  -

  Freddy went home and I followed. We both worked at Clausson’s. He was on the kill floor and I was in my puke green Dickie’s on the night custodial. For me the summer became one long, sleepless blur where work and being Freddy’s shadow blended. At times I could not tell if the sun was rising or setting. Sometimes I would have to look out a window to know if it was day or night.

  He was doing it to me. I knew that. It was his game and several times I felt like just giving up, surrendering. He could go ahead and do whatever it was he wanted to do. I found my will fading as I nodded like a long-haul trucker in the small hours of the night and I would snap back, scared shitless at how weak I was becoming.

  No. I knew I could not give up. I would not even it I could. The world needed to know about him. I needed to be the one to tell it.

  That summer did slip by like any summer in our childhood. I know now that every summer is like that no matter how old we become. One day the leaves are fresh and vibrant in their colors, the sun glittering off their waxy sheen. The grass grows by the foot and it is as soft as goose down. That day came and went and a few in between. The next day dawned and winter’s breath was once more in the air. It is always like that, I guess. Summer is boiling water. The rest of the time we are just waiting.