by Michael Cart
Janet walked with her shotgun balanced over her shoulder. She didn’t dare sling it over her back to make it easier to carry—the very thought felt like surrender. As long as she was armed, she wasn’t a hostage.
The point where Elphinloan Castle stood gave spectacular views up and down the Fife coast, including the village seawall and harbor and the lighthouse on the opposite headland, and the abandoned public pool and the antiaircraft gun emplacement in between. Janet could see her own house. She couldn’t see her father sitting in front of it, though. She was too far away. She wondered if Struan Lennox was still sitting on the stone bench scanning the skies with his binoculars. She wondered if he could see her.
She couldn’t see her father, but she could see the gunners still manning the cannon on the concrete sunbathing terrace, like tiny doll figures far below across a stretch of rock and lapping water. As Janet and the German airman came close to the edge of the cliff, he hunkered down to avoid the soldiers below skylining him, and barked an order at Janet to get her to do the same.
“You must be joking!” she snarled. “What d’you take me for? They know I’m here, anyway.”
But they didn’t. She’d sneaked around them without them noticing her. And even if they’d noticed, they wouldn’t know she was in trouble now. Janet lashed herself angrily: Can you not put your gun to some decent use even if you can’t bag a pigeon, save your faithful dog, or shoot an enemy?
She glanced down contemptuously at the pilot now lying at her feet. Then she raised her shotgun to her shoulder and fired it once out to sea. The gunners looked up at the sound and gave Janet friendly waves.
As she raised her arm to wave back, the airman grabbed her ankle and pulled at her leg. His grip was firm and rough, and the electric shock of his hot, sweaty palm locked around Janet’s bare ankle threw her off balance nearly as much as the violence of his grasp. For a moment, Janet teetered terrifyingly on the edge of the cliff. For a moment, she had a choice between throwing herself forward to escape him over the precipice or throwing herself backward into his arms.
She fell backward, still clutching the Dickson shotgun, and the German airman pulled her against him so that they were both lying on their stomachs looking over the edge. He obviously thought she was his hostage.
She gave him a thump on the shoulder with the stock of the shotgun and struggled free of him, hugging the Dickson under her arm so she still had control of it even if she couldn’t fire it. She inched away from him a little so that he couldn’t easily try to grab the gun away from her. He rubbed at his shoulder and gave her a cold, accusing stare.
“I didn’t hit you very hard,” Janet sneered. “You’re wearing a great big jacket and it’s a wee light shotgun, you great softie.”
He tilted his blue-toned pistol at her as a reminder and a warning, but thank God, he didn’t try to struggle with her anymore. Instead he looked away from her, gazing intently out at the landscape of the Firth spread out below him. Janet lay still on her stomach a few feet away from him. She was afraid that if she tried to get away he’d grab at her again. Wondering what to do next, Janet followed the airman’s gaze out over the water.
The Firth was beautiful. She had never seen it from this angle. With her face at the cliff’s edge she had no sense of being attached to the ground. It was like being a bird above the landscape, like looking at the view from the sky. Everything was in miniature: the concrete swimming pool, the harbor, the harbor wall, the lighthouse on the opposite headland, the crags of the Isle of May in the distance and the Bass Rock behind it, the blue mainland beyond. Janet wondered if the airman noticed all this beauty now or if he had noticed these things earlier, when he’d been flying over them. Or if he noticed them at all.
“D’you have a plan from here?” Janet asked the downed enemy pilot with polite sarcasm. She hated him.
The German pilot pointed at the cluster of masts down in the village harbor on the other side of the concrete tide pool. The pool was full of water; the tide was up and over the edge of the concrete rim. You could see the outline of the pool’s edge beneath the water and the barbed wire the soldiers had bolted down along the rim. The concrete wall of the pool was a broad, straight, regular rectangle, faintly green beneath the film of seawater that covered it. It seemed out of place among the scattered boulders of the craggy Fife coast.
The German airman pointed at the boats in the harbor insistently, gesturing with his slim blue pistol for emphasis.
“I am not getting you a boat,” Janet said hollowly.
The airman sighed and wiped his forehead. He was sweating beneath his heavy fur-and-leather jacket; the blood on his face was beginning to dry now. He looked exhausted, but not badly hurt. He wanted Janet to lead him to his escape. And unless she did something about it, he would eventually escape.
“If you mean to steal a boat,” Janet told him, “good luck getting past the antiaircraft station.”
Something in her voice made him pause. Finally he barked another query at her. She wondered how to make him understand anything she said.
He gestured again at the boats in the harbor and pointed east, toward the place where the Firth opened out into the North Sea. In one of the small sailboats or a launch, it wouldn’t be impossible for a determined man to make it across to the safety of his own occupying army in Norway. With a fair wind or a motor, it would take about two days to get to Stavanger, maybe less. It would be hard work on your own. But he might get lucky and be taken on board a German patrol boat before he made land.
The Luftwaffe pilot frowned. He pointed to the boats again and drew a little path in the air with his free hand. He gave Janet a command in German and she was pretty sure what he was telling her to do.
Show me how to get around the antiaircraft station to the harbor without them seeing me.
Janet shook her head. “No. There isn’t a way!”
He gave her an arch look of doubt and irony.
It was the same look her dad wore when he was on the telephone with the Ministry of Information and they were ordering him to produce some image he thought sounded ridiculous.
It was a look of disbelief that anyone could take him for such a fool.
The German airman pointed again at the tidal pool. In the time since they had come to the edge of Elphinloan Point, the tide had fallen enough to reveal the white concrete rim of the abandoned swimming pool with its garland of barbed wire shining in the sun. The water had dropped six inches in ten minutes. You could make an accurate measurement of the rate it was falling because there were depth lines painted on the outside corner of the pool.
Janet realized with dismay exactly what the pilot was thinking. If he waited here lying low for as little as two hours, he’d be able to sneak around the antiaircraft station by creeping behind the concrete wall of the pool when the tide went down.
There wasn’t a thing Janet could do about the tide.
She wriggled a little farther away from the Luftwaffe pilot. She moved slowly and stayed low, aware that if she startled or angered him he might try to overpower her in a physical struggle, and the thought of rolling with him in the heather made the heat rise to her face and turned her stomach with fear. She did not want to end up pinned beneath him. It had nothing to do with being so close to the edge of the cliff.
After another few tense minutes had passed, the airman reached into his jacket and pulled out a silver cigarette case. He offered Janet a cigarette.
She stared at him in astonished disdain and shook her head.
He set down his pistol for a few moments, on the far side of his body, while he lit a cigarette for himself. Then he picked up the gun again and lay propped on his elbows on his stomach in the sun, casually smoking and watching the imperceptible fall of the tide as more and more of the concrete wall of the swimming pool slowly revealed itself.
Janet took a long, deep breath. Something rebellious in her wanted to show him she could be as casual as he. Then slowly, deliberately, she reloaded
her shotgun so that she was armed with two shots instead of one. The German airman watched her with weary resignation at this ineffective defiance. He finished his cigarette. After some time he said suddenly, with clear, slow enunciation, “Ihre Hündin. Es tut mir leid.”
Janet stared at him. He pointed over the moor, back toward the wreck of his plane. Back toward the place where he’d shot Flora.
He touched his heart gently with his hand and held it pressed there, as if it hurt him. He repeated softly, “Es tut mir leid.”
She guessed what he was saying. Your hound was clear enough even in German. The rest—
It meant, I’m sorry.
Whatever she’d taken him for when she first saw him staggering out of the cloud of hellfire after the explosion and the gunshot, he wasn’t that anymore. He’d become human again.
And she knew he wasn’t going to shoot her. Not if he was sorry about Flora.
Then Janet heard the shouts—the soldier lads from the antiaircraft station calling her name.
They’d seen her fall, right after she’d fired her gun at the sky, and the Luftwaffe pilot had pulled her off her feet, and they’d come looking for her.
Janet scrambled to her knees. She had to get a little farther away from the cliff’s edge before she put up a fight, or risked yelling in response. The airman scrambled up beside her, his pistol still clutched in his big hand, pointing it now at Janet’s head. She didn’t believe for a second that he’d pull the trigger, but the soldier lads didn’t know that.
The first of the soldiers appeared in the looming shadow of Elphinloan Castle, spotted Janet and the German pilot standing there. The soldier yelled to his companions. The other lads came running up the cliff path and across toward the cliff’s edge. All of them carried rifles that could take out the engine of a dive-bomber if it flew low enough and you were a good enough shot.
The German airman was surrounded now. He had no choice but to surrender or fight alone and likely, quickly, end up dead.
Suddenly Janet didn’t want any part of it. She didn’t want the soldiers to kill this desperate human boy with a man’s competent body in an enemy uniform, any more than she now wanted to kill him herself.
Janet put her shotgun down. She took a few steps toward her own loyal lads, the ones who’d come looking for her when they wondered or guessed what was happening to her.
Now for the first time that morning, Janet had turned her back on her enemy. She’d made a decision to trust him, but her shoulder blades still crawled with unease. Halfway to the poised, waiting solders, she turned back to look at the airman.
He was walking behind her, meekly following in her path. He still held the slim, blue-barreled pistol, but he carried it hanging at his side now, pointing earthward.
Janet held out her hand, and the airman gave her his gun.
She put that down, too.
“Thank you,” said Janet. “I’m sorry also.”
He nodded wearily and walked at her side into the waiting circle of the enemy.
DARK HOBBY
Edward Averett
In another life, Swayzee might be popular, handsome, well liked. Might arrange his accomplishments on a shelf above his dresser so they could be the last things he sees before the lights go out at night. Instead of that bottle of medicine. In another life.
But this is his life. He stands outside the back door and places the flat of his tongue against the rusty metal mesh of the screen just to see what it feels like. It is cold and shocking.
He’s in the middle of a fight with himself but can’t take a side. The sweet corner of his brain fights with the sour.
Tell Grams, sour. Don’t tell her, sweet.
Tall and thin like a clothespin, he slaps the side of his head and paces along the porch. Slap one side. Yes. Slap the other. No. No talent up there for making any big decision, so they say at school. Not much talent anywhere that can be measured in the regular ways.
He finds her in the kitchen, the radio playing country music, a big pot of chili on the stove, a big scowl on her face. “You been up there?” she asks. He watches her old jowls jiggle, plays dumb so she’ll ask again and he can watch them some more. He guesses she has gained maybe twenty pounds.
“Nothing up there,” he says. “Not a damn sign of her.”
“Watch that mouth.” She waits an instant, has his attention. “You’re not too big to send away, too.”
This is minor for her, easier than his rushes of mayhem; the way his personal electricity jumps the wires sometimes. He stares her down. She stares back. The two of them locked in an embrace not of their own making. It’s as if she is telling him, Can’t you do something about this life of mine? She figures he can’t, but that is the lie she tells herself. He knows there is a witch called guilt that sleeps in her heart. Every once in a while the witch wakes up and accuses her of sending her only daughter away. He can see the picture she makes in her head of herself standing on the front porch while Gramps folds his arms across his chest and forbids Swayzee’s mother to ever come back. The guilt witch hatched in her heart when Grams didn’t say a thing and has eaten most of it away since.
His mother being sent away probably wouldn’t matter much except for what happened later. It’s seven big years now since the air balloon in her veins. He sometimes stands in the upstairs bathroom with his shirt off and underpants tied in a tourniquet around his upper arm. His undisciplined penis pushes against the cold porcelain of the sink. He pretends to sink a needle into the crook of his elbow, like Gramps described it.
She took a damn needle, filled the thing with nothing but the air we breathe. Then jabbed a hole till the blood swirled in the syringe. Plunged it home.
Afraid of things sharp, Swayzee uses the handle of a toothbrush.
Pop. Her brain went bald, then grew fingerlets of blood. Cut off her thinking. Dried out her heart. Do not ever, Swayzee, do not ever put air in your veins. There are other ways to accomplish things. Whaddya think I taught you how to aim for? Gramps is old old and was in the Pacific Theater so he should know.
Now Grams wins the stare contest. She can do it till her eyeballs grow tacky. “She’s up and had them, hasn’t she?”
“Think so,” he replies.
A quiver at the corner of her lips. What keeps her heart beating is a mystery to everyone. After all, she doesn’t like Gramps. Throws food down in front of him like he is a nonpaying customer. Doesn’t use the pre-spot remover on his clothes, so he sits on special occasions at the VFW with his Purple Heart and coins of grease decorating his shirts. Swayzee is a burden to her. She squeezes lemons over his open wounds. She curses the important people on the TV. Curses the school administration.
“Don’t even know what that means,” she says to them. “Speak English.”
“We can accommodate him, but let’s not set our expectations too high.”
Grams harrumphs. “Well, he ain’t retarded. Boy could shoot an apple off the top of your flat head.”
How many times has the palm of her hand brushed her forehead in frustration? By now, the world owes her a living, but this is not living.
From out of the radio, Swayzee hears this: “There is no good life that doesn’t have a few dark hobbies.”
This was from Gramps back when he could finish his sentences strong: Secret of life. Never let ’em know even the smell of your sweat. Just show ’em what you can do.
He follows her up the hill toward the barn. He can barely keep up. She seems to like this part. He speeds up and tries to pass her, but catches a swinging elbow. He falls into the drying black walnut leaves.
“Get up,” she commands. “You got to show me.”
“I need to wax my shoes,” he says.
She looks up at the sky, framed by the dark arterial limbs of the trees. It is cold, but she hasn’t noticed till now. They speak in smoke signals. “There’ll be a deep freeze tonight.” She reaches down and yanks him up by the arm. “Come on. This ain’t the only thing I got to do
today.”
They are in the barn that actually used to be a small house. Sometimes Swayzee pretends it’s still a real home. Chickens lay eggs in the sink. They roost and shit in the master bedroom. Gramps once removed the testicles of a jersey bull in the living room. Down the hallway toward the bathroom is where she heads. She’s given up on Swayzee. But it doesn’t matter: her ears are like a dog’s, and the calico is blowing the silent whistle. She stands in front of the shower with her hands on her hips. Swayzee pokes his head inside her elbow. He sees a writhing, maggoty ball of new kittens. The calico looks up at them. Her lips move but only Swayzee can see and hear. Put some air in my veins, why don’t you?
“Fetch a gunnysack.”
Off he goes. He’ll make a good soldier, Gramps used to say. Good at following directions. Fastest in his class, I’ll bet. Took him what, two minutes to get it put together and loaded right? He searches the baby’s room for the old grain sacks but can’t find what she wants. He pulls away the bale of hay with his big hand then tugs on the cord that lifts up the secret door. He swoons for a moment. Sees them all lined up like sardines in the cans he and Gramps eat from. Bullets. One by one, he’s filled up this space. Little by little. Stolen from behind the cedar chest. From the box under the old magazines in the cellar. They seem to fall from the sky, and Swayzee holds out his hands in supplication as he collects them all and hides them away in this hole. He closes the trapdoor, shoves the bale back over, and returns to her.
“No gunnysacks there,” he says.
She doesn’t believe him. “Bring me a sack. I don’t care what it is.” The calico’s lips move again, but Swayzee slaps his hands over his ears so he can only hear it deep in his brain. Let me keep one little girl, it says. The one that looks like me.
He drags back a big, thick paper grain sack. He wants to stay, but she pushes at him. “Go do your job,” she says. “Go on.”
He’s down the hill again. Her herb garden is surrounded by the stones she needs. He selects two smooth, freckled ones and hefts them in each hand. Now the border of her garden looks like a boxer’s mouth with a couple of teeth knocked out. He looks up and sees her coming down the hill. She throttles the top of the bag like the neck of a goose. Behind her, the calico trails. She squats and cries, then runs to catch up.