by C. E. Murphy
Swear ta God, my knees buckled. Couldn’t let myself fall down, ‘cause that woulda been embarrassing, but I got a couple inches shorter for a second there and Annie’s lips twitched, tryin’ ta hide a smile. I said, “You’re laughing at me, doll,” and she said, “Yes,” without a bit of apology.
“Well, all right, I guess that puts a fella in his place when he’s…” My heart was slamming like a jackhammer, and I was getting dizzy with nerves. “Look, sweetheart, it ain’t much, but I wanted to…” I swallowed again, wonderin’ why it was so hard to get through a simple question. I muttered, “Ah, hell,” and fished in my slacks pocket for that box, and held it up.
Annie’s hands went to her stomach an’ I thought she’d stopped breathing. All of a sudden I figured I’d better do this right, an’ got down on one knee, scared as a kid sneaking into a haunted house. Annie watched me with eyes big as saucers, and she wasn’t breathing, so I hurried it up, stumbling over my own words. “Well, it ain’t much, but I’ll getcha something better before we—I mean, will you, Annie? Will you marry me, sweetheart?”
The box just about flew outta my fingers when I tried opening it. Annie caught it, her hands tiny and delicate next to mine, and I turned red from the collar up. She straightened the box in my palm and put her hands over it, smiling right at me and not looking at the box at all. “Of course I will. Of course I’ll marry you, Gary. I love you.”
All the breath rushed outta me. Funny how thinking a girl’s gonna say yes and waiting for it to happen are two separate things. “I love you too, sweetheart. Right from the first moment I saw you.”
Annie tipped forward to kiss me, murmuring, “You’re a romantic,” against my mouth. “Now get up before you stain the knee of your trousers.”
I got up, sorta offended and mostly grinning. “Some romantic you are. Doncha wanna see the ring?”
Her dimples showed up again. “Of course I do, but I’m marrying you, not a ring.” She opened it then, though, while I was back to mumbling, “It ain’t much, but I wanted to have somethin’, and I’ll getcha somethin’ better—”
“Gary.” Her voice was funny an’ tight. “Gary, it’s perfect. It’s beautiful. I forbid you to get me a different one. Put it on me?” She wasn’t so graceful, either, takin’ the ring outta the box, so I felt better fumbling it onto her hand with thick cold fingers. We both stood there looking at it a moment when it was on, a pretty little gold thing with pearls on either side of a chip of diamond. Annie had long fingers for somebody her size, and sensible nails that wouldn’t get in the way of working, an’ she was right. The ring looked perfect. I tucked my fingers under hers and brought her knuckles up to my mouth for a kiss. She laughed and threw her arms around me, the long sleeves of my coat smacking my shoulders. I picked her up and spun her around, feeling like some kinda movie star, an’ put her on her feet again to give her a kiss.
“Wish I could marry you right now, doll.”
“You could,” she said impulsively. “Or tomorrow, at least.”
“Nah.” I brushed my thumb over her jaw and shook my head. “No, sweetheart, I wanna do it right. I don’t wanna be in a rush. And I don’t wanna—”
“Don’t.” She put her fingers over my mouth. “Don’t even say that, Gary.”
“I didn’t say nothing!” But I’d been gonna, and we both knew it. I’d been gonna say I didn’t want to risk leaving her a widow. I didn’t want to risk leaving her with a baby and no Pop for it. I didn’t wanna risk leaving her with a baby and me not being there when it was born, for that matter. But she didn’t want me to say it, maybe afraid I’d jinx something if I did, so I just took her hand away and kissed it again. “And I won’t say nothing,” I promised. “You write to me, though, all right, sweetheart? Everything about your day, so I know what I’m comin’ home to. Swear to God I’ll never get bored of it. It’s gonna be my lifeline.”
“Are you afraid?”
That wasn’t the kinda question a guy should answer truthfully, I bet. They’d been teaching us to fight, an’ teaching us not to think, but anybody with two brain cells to rub together knew war wasn’t safe. So it took me a minute to answer, standing out there in a park with a warm spring breeze playing with Annie’s hair and making everything seem all right with the world. “Not afraid. Kinda…apprehensive, I guess. I wish there as another way, but if there was—well, I wouldn’t have met you, if there was, so it ain’t worth thinking about. It’s gonna be fine, Annie. It’s all gonna turn out all right. I’m gonna come home to you.”
Her eyes were brighter than I liked to see them. “You sound so certain.”
“I am. I got a feeling.” I guessed maybe a lot of soldiers had that feeling at the back of their minds, saying they were coming home safe, or they might end up deserters. But mine was the one I’d heard before, telling me something was right or wrong, like Annie’s Pop being an artist, even if I didn’t know why it was wrong that he was. I trusted it, either way, an’ brushed tears off Annie’s cheeks before kissing her again. “I got a feeling,” I promised. “It’s gonna be okay. You wanna head back? Warm up?” I smiled. “Show off that ring?”
“Oh!” Tears or not, her smile came back. “You don’t mind?”
“Mind? Mind? Lady, what kinda guy minds if the most beautiful girl he’s ever met wants to tell everybody she’s marrying him? A’course I don’t mind! C’mon, doll.” I tucked her up against my side. “Let’s go tell the world.”
And my father. That wasn’t what she said next, but in the scheme of things, that’s what seemed most important. The friends, the congratulations, Andy wanting ta know if I needed a best man already, alla that was expected. Mrs. Macready looking happy and sad all at once, I figured on that too. But excepting the paintings, there’d been no sign of Annie’s pop, and he’d kinda slid from my mind. I woulda asked the old man for Annie’s hand in marriage before popping the question, if I’d known he was around at all to ask, but when I said that to Annie she shook her head and said it didn’t matter.
The day before I left, I found out why.
Annie didn’t say much on the long drive into countryside alternating between barren rock and crop fields. I tried to start up conversations a couple of times and got the message after that. Just when I was starting to think she was gonna kill me and dump the body, and about to ask if I oughta be worried, she turned down a paved road in the middle of nowhere, and idled the car while we waited for a big set of iron gates to open up. Two words were sculpted across the gates: BELLREEVE INSTITUTION.
Hospitals were one thing. Institutions meant somethin’ else entirely. I said, “Annie,” real quiet, and she shook her head and wouldn’t talk ‘til we were parked in front of the main building. A new building, big and clean-looking, with pillars like some kinda plantation estate moved a couple thousand miles west. Grass was cut short for acres all around, with stands of trees left in place to make shade for a few folks who were out in the spring sunshine. They looked okay, for crazy people. Wearing slippers or goin’ barefoot, but they were dressed in regular clothes and nobody was screamin’ or tryin’ ta kill anybody like they always were in books about insane asylums.
Annie put her hands on the steering wheel, looking straight ahead as she talked. “I was almost hit by a car when I was seventeen. Our car had broken down and I was walking back to town to get help, and I’d left Dad with the car. He limps. A war injury. So it was easier and faster for me to go.”
I said, “Don’t matter why,” quiet as I could, but she wasn’t much listening to me just then. Mostly she was tellin’ a story that I thought ate her up inside, maybe one she was afraid I was gonna judge her for. One she was afraid was a deal-breaker for me, ‘cause a crazy parent might mean she’d go nuts someday too. I wasn’t gonna reassure her yet, not until she could hear me, which I reckoned might take a couple decades. I had the time.
“I was about half a mile from Dad when the car came out of nowhere. I didn’t hear it coming, and I still don’t know how it missed m
e. Something knocked me aside, and Dad…” She took a deep breath. “Dad swore he’d seen a man on a silver horse come down from the sky and tackle me.”
I twitched and sat up straighter, feeling like somebody’d rung a bell nearby. Annie’s jaw got tight. “After that he began to…have visions. About the man on the silver horse, and a lot of other things. He started painting them, and started telling stories about the paintings.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she wouldn’t let go of the wheel, much less look at me. “They got more and more awful, his stories. Stories about magic things happening. About demons and devils and…and sometimes about heroes, but the heroes lost a lot. And then after a while he started…”
She wiped her eyes and choked the steering wheel again. “After a while he started thinking I was important in all those stories. That the silver man had protected me because of that. And he wouldn’t…let me out of the house, not even to go to school. He was trying to protect me, he said, but he started getting…violent, and it…it just got worse and worse, Gary, until finally we didn’t have any choice. We’re lucky,” she said with all kindsa desperation in her voice. “We’re lucky, because the institutions aren’t like they were even just a few years ago. They treat him well. He’s not dangerous as long as he thinks I’m safe, so we tell him…well, we don’t tell him anything. We tell him I stay home except for when I come to visit him, and he paints, and…I should have told you. I should have told you before, but I was so afraid you’d—” She buried her face in her hands, and I finally took that as a chance to say something.
Or to pull her up against me an’ hold on, which seemed smarter. I kissed her hair and let her cry while all sorts of crazy thoughts swam around my head. Same ol’ voice saying this ain’t right, while the resta me wondered what the hell it mattered if it was right or wrong. Wasn’t like I could change what was, and when I thought that, the voice said hell, what if I’m remembering it wrong? and got quiet again.
Any other time and I mighta mentioned it all to Annie, mighta said I thought I was going crazy, but sitting in front of a nuthouse that her dad was inside didn’t seem like a good time to make jokes. Instead I said, “Don’t change nothin’, sweetheart,” against Annie’s hair. “Don’t mean I love you any less, and it don’t mean I’m worried about our future, all right? I’ve seen his paintings. Your old man’s an artist, and everybody knows artists are crazy. It ain’t a bad thing. S’all that I’m gonna see in this, okay?”
Annie laughed, except it sounded more like a wet snort. I couldn’t help laughing too, an’ she laughed again in embarrassment, ‘til I was belly laughin’ and she was snorting like a hog in mud. Tears ran down both our faces and we leaned on each other until laughs turned to giggles and finally into wheezing sighs. I kissed her hair again and said, “Better now?”, and she sat up to look at herself in the rear-view mirror.
“All except my makeup.” She touched under her eyes, tryin’ to wipe away mascara smears, then took a tissue from her purse and got herself tidied up again. As she folded it away, she said, “I love my dad, Gary. I wish he wasn’t in here, that this hadn’t happened to him, and I know it’s uncomfortable, but…be nice? Please?”
“He’s your father, doll. He’s always gonna have my respect.” We got outta the car and she took my hand, leading me into the institute. It smelled too clean and the halls echoed, but the doctors and nurses smiled hello, and called Annie by name as we went upstairs to an art studio. I hung at the door a minute, surprised to be watching half a dozen people painting and drawing. “This ain’t at all like what I thought it’d be.”
“It’s one of the newest institutes in the country. There were reform laws passed a few years ago.” Annie glanced at me to see if I knew what she was talking about, and I kinda shrugged. I remembered seeing somethin’ about it in the papers and hearing it on the radios, but it hadn’t affected me, so it hadn’t made much impression. “They used to be very bad,” Annie said. “A lot of them are still bad, but this one—a wealthy man’s wife was the first patient here. He had it built for her, so she could get the best care in the country. We were lucky to live so close, so Dad could come here instead of one of the other places. That’s him,” she said with a nod toward an older fella with hair blonder than Annie’s. He was sitting with his back to us, facing a window, but the painting he worked on didn’t have anything to do with the view. All I could tell was it was a woman with dark hair, but she seemed familiar somehow.
“Will he mind if we interrupt him?”
Annie shook her head. “He paints things from visions, not from the world, so the light never changes and the images never go away. It’s fine.” She tugged me forward, saying, “Hi, Dad,” when we were a few feet way.
Tim Macready turned to look at his daughter, a smile already in place. But then he looked past her at me, an’ the smile fell away into slack-jawed relief. He sank in on himself, hands going over his face, and dropped his forehead all the way toward his knees. The painting behind him was a green-eyed girl in her twenties, wearing her black hair so short it looked almost like my own military cut. I’d never seen a girl with hair like that, nor wearing the kinda outfit she had on: a white tank top short enough to expose her belly, jeans real low on her hips, and combat boots like my own. She had a kinda beaky nose, and a skinny scar on one cheek, and a buncha jewelry that didn’t match each other: something like gold earrings, but on the back curve of her ear, not the lobe, a silver choker necklace, an’ a chunky copper bracelet on her left wrist. Even weirder, she had a little purple bracer shield on one arm, and a glowin’ blue sword in the other hand.
I didn’t know what ta make of the painting, except looking at it was like a shot through the heart, just like seeing Annie for the first time. I stood there going hot and cold, and Tim Macready said into his hands, “It’s you. Thank God it’s you. You’ll take care of her now.”
CHAPTER TEN
Two months after I got to Korea, Annie wrote to say her dad was coming home. He’d quit painting that day, never even finishing the one he’d been working on, and the visions that had haunted him faded away. After a month, her letter said, the doctors had started being cautiously optimistic he’d recovered, and after two, they thought he was safe to go home. She’d explained to him about her being in school, and he was all right with it,
which is so strange, after so long, that it’s hard to explain, Gary. For the
past three years he’s been so adamant that I do nothing to risk myself, and
now to have him coming home, knowing that I’m only home for the
summer…my mother is worried, but trying not to show it. I only hope he’ll
be well enough for me to go back to Oakland in the autumn.
Well, no, it’s not the only thing I hope. I hope you’ll come home to me soon,
too, so we can be a family. I love you.
Letters like that could keep a guy going a long time, and I got a stack of ‘em every time there was a mail call. Resta the guys gave me grief, but it was envy, not meanness, that drove ‘em. I took it without complaint, knowing too many of ‘em didn’t have anybody writing them at all.
Korea wasn’t what I expected, truth be told. I couldn’t have said what I had expected, but I guessed I had this kinda blank slate in my head for it to fill in. Except it was really blank, sorta nothing more than sand and sky, so coming halfway around the world to find out the same kinds of wildflowers grew in Korea as in my back yard in Washington kinda threw me. They spent a lotta time in Basic telling us about the enemy not being like us, but the folks I saw looked tired and afraid, and that was how me and my buddies felt a lot of the time. ‘course, my commander woulda said I was looking at the South Koreans, our allies, but the only reason I could tell Northerners from Southerners was which end of the gun they were on.
One of the guys had it worse, though. He was an America-born Korean called Danny. Danny Kim, our ghost-man. He went in and out behind the lines like nobody’s business, disappearing for days and
weeks and coming back with intel. Mosta the time when he showed back up he tried to slip into camp quiet-like, so he could shower and get into uniform before anybody laid eyes on him. We knew what he did anyway, ‘cause he wore his hair longer than reg so he could blend better with the locals. Still, it was one thing knowing and another thing seeing him come in, dusty and broody, wearin’ local-style loose pants and t-shaped shirts or torn-off jeans and bare feet. I caught him coming in one night when I was on perimeter duty. I was staring out at the dark, listening to the sound of a crying baby needing help, when he came outta the trees and said, “It’s not real.”
For an ugly minute him and me were on opposite sides of the war, and I was the only one with a gun. The baby’s crying got louder, and something wrong came through it, a kinda nails-on-chalkboard sound for real, not figuratively. “It’s not real,” Danny said again. “Don’t go out there, Muldoon. You won’t come back.”
“Shit, man, I don’t know if you’re real.” I waved him by, and stood my ground. After a little while the screaming faded, and I went out at dawn to have a look around. There wasn’t a baby, and there wasn’t any kinda sign there’d ever been one. I went back to camp feeling uncomfortable. At breakfast Danny showed up in the mess hall looking crisp as any soldier, and sat down next to me. “Thanks for not shooting me.”
“Thanks for not letting me go out there. What was that screaming?”
“A demon,” he said so easy I almost believed him. “It’s been suckering guys in some of the other platoons, and they’re going home in body bags, so don’t listen to it. Not ever.”
“Right.” I stared at him a minute, then shuddered. “What’s it like out there, all alone?”
Danny said, “Hell,” reflexively, an’ we both laughed. He said, “Confusing,” under the laughter, though, and I wasn’t surprised to hear it. It couldn’t be easy spin’ on your parents’ people, but it wasn’t something to talk about in a mess hall with a buncha officers nearby, either. So he said, “Where are you from, Muldoon?” instead, and we got to talking about the west coast and places we’d like to visit. “Assuming we make it out of here,” he said, and I shrugged it off.