by Julie Berry
“But let’s get this straight. You’re not the one who should’ve gotten killed. Joey shouldn’t have gotten killed. Nobody should’ve been killed. A black man’s got as much right to live, and see a girl, and go to the toilet, for Chrissake, as anyone else.”
Europe’s words crashed down like a wave, and then, like a wave, they slipped back out to sea. If Aubrey was supposed to find any comfort in them, it didn’t last.
Jim Europe paced back and forth, thinking. Aubrey watched the still form of Joey, under the draped sheet. How odd it was that not the slightest breath or movement stirred the sheet. Because he was dead. Over and over, the surprise of it clawed at him.
“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.
“Dad,” he whispered. “I didn’t make it.”
His father began a song in earnest. “I looked over Jordan, and what did I see, coming for to carry me home . . . ?”
Joey turned to me once more. “It’s going to kill them when they get the news,” he said. “Especially if they hear how it happened. Dad’s heart might not hold up. And Ma—”
He began to cry. I am so often moved by souls whose first concern is not for their own lost years, but for the grief their passing will cause to those they love. It’s more common than you might think. The most ordinary mortal bodies are housed by spectacular souls.
“Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home,” sang Joey’s father.
Joey knelt beside his father and rested his head on his knee.
“Somebody’s got to warn them,” he insisted, “so the news doesn’t destroy them.”
“It sounds good in theory,” I told him, “but in practice, where death is concerned, it’s quite tricky to pull off.”
“Somebody’s got to look after them,” Joey said. “It’ll be hard for them for years to come.”
“Why not you?”
He stopped and looked at me. “Could it be me?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“Don’t I have ”—he gestured broadly—“things I’m supposed to be doing?”
I smiled. “Not strumming harps, or stoking fires, if that’s what you mean.”
I liked Joey Rice.
“What else happens here?” he asked. “In Heaven, or the afterlife, or whatever?”
I rose to leave. “The options,” I told him, “are practically infinite. And you have all the time you could wish for to explore them. But anytime you like, you can rest in Asphodel.”
Joey sat in a chair between his mother and father. “I think I’ll stay here awhile.”
“Stay as long as you like,” I told him. “I should warn you: it won’t be easy.”
“Wait,” he said. “Am I supposed to be judged? Have my soul weighed, or whatever it is? Good or bad? Should I be worried about that?”
I shook his hand before leaving the room. “It was a very brief examination,” I told him. “You’ve already passed.”
ENTR’ACTE
Three Trains—February 12–13, 1918
APOLLO
ONE TRAIN TOOK the 15th New York Band to Nantes, where they kicked off their tour with a standing-room only concert in the opera house. They played French military marches, “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and plantation melodies.
“Then came the fireworks,” drum major Noble Sissle recorded. “‘The Memphis Blues.’
“Colonel Hayward has brought this band over here and started ragtimitis in France; ain’t this an awful thing to visit upon a nation with so many burdens?” wrote Sissle. But when “The Memphis Blues” was over, the audience roared, and Sissle made a discovery. “This,” he wrote, “is just what France needs.”
Which is precisely why I had brought them there.
Aubrey Edwards, however, missed the whole show. He lay curled like a cocoon in the backseat of an empty car on the train.
APHRODITE
Hazel and Colette boarded a noon train from Saint-Nazaire, bound for Paris, with nothing but excitement and fun on their minds. It would be midnight before they reached Paris.
They passed the time with a game Colette invented. “What’s Your Secret?” As passengers, porters, conductors, and waiters passed by, Colette and Hazel spied on them and then proposed to each other what each stranger’s secret might be. A stout, stern woman, Colette declared, suffered an unrequited passion for her dentist. A miserly looking old man, Hazel decided, wept nightly over the grave of his childhood goldfish. A blue-eyed soldier was a German spy. A forlorn young woman in a fine but faded coat was a Russian Romanov princess in exile.
Laughter was just what Hazel needed. She was a mass of nerves and butterflies, but they only added to the thrill of anticipation. Mortals curse me for the jitters of love, but I overlook it. Such delightful terror proved to Hazel that she was alive.
It’s what I do best.
ARES
At dawn, James took a supply line from a few miles behind the lines to a depot in Bapaume. From there, a southbound train took him to Paris. It was a ride of about five hours.
He watched the signs of war slip away behind him until all that was left was countryside. Even frost-covered, it was painted with rich colors. He marveled that color still existed, that there was anyplace left on the planet not scarred by shell holes.
He wished he could peel off the war like a scab. All he wanted now was to be was a chap with a lovely girl at his side. Even if his uniform was all he had to wear.
(They never just send me soldiers. They send me heartaches.)
The warmth of the train car, its lulling rhythms, and a month of sleep deprivation pulled James under. He didn’t even realize he’d fallen asleep until the conductor jolted him awake by declaring they had reached Paris.
ACT THREE
APHRODITE
Gare du Nord—February 13, 1918
I’D WAITED MONTHS for this. I was not about to leave anything to chance.
In all that vast metropolis, Hazel and James approached each other. Two needles in an enormous haystack. How easily they might have missed each other! But I was the magnet at the center. The nearer they drew, the stronger my hold upon them.
I flitted back and forth between them like a sparrow. Find the restroom, James; your face needs washing. Hurry along, Hazel, but not too fast; James needs to clean his face. Colette, buy that poor girl a flower. She’s as gray as her coat. Find some water, James. It’s been a long ride. Perhaps a mint while you’re at it. Breathe, Hazel. This is no time to pass out. Smile, James; you’re about to see Hazel. Don’t worry, Hazel. It’ll all be fine.
I like to keep a little bit of nervousness simmering. It keeps mortals alert at crucial moments. Sensitive to every detail. It imprints lasting memories. These moments belong to forever.
Everything now depended on this moment. When they saw each other, would they see their heart’s desire? Or a stranger they’d imagined they were fond of in a brief moment of loneliness?
At four p.m., by the clock over the door to the terminal, Hazel approached the grand stone façade of Gare du Nord, the largest and busiest train station in Europe. It was enormous. It made her feel like a mouse, going in. Small, insignificant, and about as attractive.
She’d slept and bathed at Colette’s aunt’s flat. Colette made all decisions involving clothing and hair, as Hazel was, herself, completely incapable of thought. On their way, Colette bought a pink rose from a street vendor and pinned it onto her friend’s gray coat. When they reached the plaza outside Gare du Nord, Colette kissed both of Hazel’s cheeks.
“I’ll be in this café across the street with a book,” she explained. “If he hasn’t come in an hour, come find me. If you don’t find me, I’ll see you back at Tante Solange’s this evening.”
Hazel took a deep breath and went inside.
The grand entryway was dim in the late afternoon. Up ahead, the glass-and-iron train shed glowed with golden sunlight reflecting off the mist from steam engines. Train after train lined up in the shed, while thousands of disgorged people poured around her like water around a stone.
It’s so big, she thought. I’ll never find him.
French soldiers in their gray-blue uniforms and British soldiers in khaki were everywhere. Tradesmen and laborers, porters and conductors and engineers, businessmen and politicians, and mothers and children. James could walk right by her and never see her.
Where was the best place to see and be seen? Did she look pathetic and conspicuously desperate, standing right in the center of the station?
That’s not what James thought when he saw her.
He emerged from a second trip to the lavatory, rechecking his tie. It was 4:02. The terminal swarmed with people, but her stillness at the center drew his eye. There she was.
He stood a moment, watching her. That was her. That was the shape of her nose; he’d forgotten. Her hair was a bit different; her coat and hat were the same. She’d traded her dark blue wool muffler for a thinner, finer scarf of rose-colored silk (merci, Colette), and pink certainly was her color. Against the teeming backdrop of the vast station, she shone like an angel. Her cheeks were flushed, her face anxious, adorable, and dear as she watched for him to appear. For him.
He should go to her. He shouldn’t prolong her waiting. But he couldn’t move.
That there were females in the world! After weeks at the Front, they were a forgotten miracle, these beings who smelled clean and pleasant, and wore bright colors, and did not go about killing one another!
It wasn’t sex on his mind. Not lust. More of a baffled reverence. Like a child’s first sight of a Christmas tree. But give me time, and I’d supply whatever was lacking.
This girl had traveled all the way across France to spend a day and a half with him.
That he should be the reason this lovely girl was here felt like an outrage, a lie, an offense against nature. He had fleabites all along his ankles. The skin of his feet, where he hadn’t removed boots for weeks, looked like cheese. He should take the duffel bag he’d borrowed from Frank Mason, turn around, and get right back on the next train north to Bapaume.
Enough, James. Enough.
All right, Hazel. Look to your right.
She turned. She saw him.
What is it about uniforms? What magic spell do they cast? The service dress hat, the trench coat, the tunic with its brass buttons—to see it all draped over her boy from the parish dance, from J. Lyons tea shop, and the Royal Albert Hall—prepare herself how she might, she was slain by the uniform. She wasn’t the first. (The current war’s getup has much more sex appeal if you as
k me, and you should.)
Even before Hazel dared to smile, her face lit up, and she took a step toward him. James knew then that, outrage or no, he was not getting back on that train. Ever, if he could help it.
APHRODITE
Archimedes—February 13, 1918
IT WAS ARCHIMEDES of Syracuse who first said that the shortest distance between two points was the straight line connecting them. Far be it from me to ever cast a shadow upon the wisdom of a Golden Age Greek, but Archimedes had it wrong. The length of the straight line between two people who don’t dare admit they’re in love is infinite. Especially after months apart.
But they got there eventually.
They stood, face-to-face. Still young, still whole, still beautiful.
And yet, changed—each a little leaner. More experienced. More complicated.
Neither of them could remember a word of English.
That Hazel. You see why I am so very fond of her. She got past that problem in a trice and flung her arms around James. She left him no choice but to wrap his arms around her and hold her close. Hesitation is not an option in a full-body tackle. Her hatpins and hairpins gave way, and he buried his face in her unraveling hair. After weeks of her being an idea, a memory, a dream, and some bits of paper, here she was, warm and real, holding on to him as if she was afraid to let go.
In truth, she was. But all hugs must end, so they pulled apart, just a little. That hurt too much, so he rested his forehead and nose upon hers. Sometimes happiness is just about more than a body can bear.
Was this the moment? Would there be a kiss? All three of us were thinking it.
Not yet.
Fine. I’d waited this long; I could wait a little longer. At this rate, James’s entire Paris leave would be spent standing in this very spot.
“Are you hungry?” Hazel asked him. “Tired? You must want to lie down.”