The sky was driving, whipping furiously over the far horizon, more of it ribboning in from the opposite direction to replace it. Faster and faster it unraveled, until he wondered if gravity hadn’t lost its mind and if he wouldn’t be tossed off the earth and spun into infinity like a top, or a crumb, or a fleck of dust, or an Austin Fletcher, anonymous child of the Midwest. Who would miss him, who would kiss him?
He looked at the sky from each of his windows, and in each window it was off a different hue, the colors stabbing separately into his house, pinning him within their crisscrossing center so that, once again, he saw himself as crucified. And once again it lasted for an incalcuable moment, like a flash camera taking your picture when you weren’t quite ready, causing you to wonder if your mouth was open, or your fly, or if there was any film in the camera in the first place.
He wasn’t frightened, for he knew that it had all been coming, everything in and about the house being a harbinger of its arrival, a precursor of the eventual. The only thing he did not know was what was coming and why it was coming. Time would tell. And time, at the time, seemed in quite short abundance.
He picked up his Winchester, and the heft of it gave him security, the kind of security he was familiar with: lodge the stock, sight the target, pull the trigger, and the enemy is wasted. But what enemy? What was out there in the vaporous gloom beyond his windows, setting the snow to swirl like a smokescreen insidiously laid down to mask someone’s movements?
Things were in motion, floating toward the house. Forms and shapes, amorphous and quivering at first, but gradually assuming the filmy silhouettes of men as it all drew closer. There were twenty of them, maybe thirty. It would be difficult to estimate their number and even more difficult to sight any one of them over a rifle barrel.
The sky drew darker as it slowed and settled on the land like a shot-down balloon, the principal color of it being swamp green. It was no color for a sky, though it did suit a jungle.
It would be a siege and then an attack. That was Charlie’s usual pattern. He’d circle and probe, trying to figure how many of you there were and how you were deployed. He’d taunt you with his shrill laughter and pigeon-English threats. There’d be silence—and then’d he’d be there, all over you, on top of you and in back of you, his black pajamas and sneakered feet covering his skulkings and muffling his sounds. Austin knew it all. In that sense he was on familiar turf. The bitch of it was that the rest of the patrol had vanished. Lost or picked off. And he was out there alone, bellied down in the fog, trying to focus his ears like a deer fixing the location of whatever predator was out there. He sniffed too, because sometimes he could smell Charlie. Charlie didn’t know from deodorants, and often, upwind, his scent would give him away.
“Austin?”
“Yeah. Who’s that?”
“Austin, ya got to get out of here.”
“Maynard?”
“A-yuh.”
“Maynard, where the hell you been? Where the hell is everybody?”
“Austin, ya don’t belong here.”
“Helluva time to be tellin’ me that. There’s a couple dozen Cong out there.”
“Austin—”
“And they know we’re in here. Who’s left in the patrol? Who do we have?”
“Austin, it’s my fault and I’m sorry. I never should’ve left ya this house.”
“Where’s Cunningham and the flamethrower?”
“Austin, listen to me—”
“You don’t keep your voice down, Maynard—. I swear, everytime we need him, that idiot Cunningham…”
“Austin—”
“Shhhh! Be quiet. They’re all over the place. In the trees, in the river. Jungle’s crawlin’ with ’em.”
“Austin—”
“Please shut up, Maynard. Some of ’em ain’t ten feet away.”
Maynard lay still on the floor of his house, craning his head up so that he could look out through the window, across the snow, at the encirclers not of this world. He could see their capes and their high Pilgrim hats. He could see the occasional flash of their square-buckles and their white collars and cuffs chalking the gray dimness. He resented having being used as a pawn and bristled at still not knowing what the eventual outcome would be. And he worried about the safety of his friend, who, obviously, knew less than even he did.
“They set down some kind of smokescreen, Maynard. You can’t see ’em, but they’re out there. Does Battalion know we’re here? Maynard? Does Battalion know?”
“Nobody knows. I been tryin’ to tell ya—”
“Well, another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Stanley.”
Maynard tried to think. The sky was turning black, serving as a deadly backdrop for the gray figures lurking in the obscure swirl. They were about to make their move—lighting torches, dotting the darkness they inhabited, spreading out into a huge semicircle some two hundred yards from the house. It was horrifyingly quiet, the torchlight playing against the windows on all sides, the mists spiraling, the mumbled voices becoming more and more audible as the semicircle slowly closed, like a noose being drawn about the house.
He looked over to where Austin was as intense as a mongoose, no sight or sound eluding him. It was his conditioned response to imminent battle. It was what had always made him so good at it.
“Hear ’em, Maynard? Must be about thirty of ’em. Comin’ from the river, from those rice paddies. Maynard? You still there?”
“I’m here.”
“Got any grenades?”
“Austin, I didn’t want it to be this way.”
“Tell them, not me. Now, do you have any grenades?”
“No.”
“Jesus, you really come prepared.”
“For Christ’s sake, Austin! Can’t ya see what’s happenin’?”
“Not too well. It’s a little dark out there. But I can see that you ain’t goin’ to be much help.”
“Please listen to me. I think ya can still get out of here.”
“I know. There’s a bus every ten minutes.”
“They’re out there, Austin, but—they’re not. All ya have to do is get out of the house before they get in. If ya get out, they can’t hurt ya. Make a run for it. You can do it.”
“Listen, Maynard, it’s a helluva time for you to go psycho on me.”
“No, you listen! You’re not in Nam, Austin! You’re in Maine!”
“That’s good to know, Maynard, but—”
“In my house!”
“Tell you what, Maynard—you just lay back and let me handle it. You just give me whatever weapons you got and I’ll fix up a nice welcome for ’em. Then we’ll get outa here like we always do.”
Maynard looked through the window again, into the protracted dark. They were closer, much closer. The torchlights brighter, the grumble louder, the semicircle tighter. It would soon strangle.
He looked over at Austin, who was standing, a rifle in each hand, unafraid, steadfast, not backing off an inch—so typically Austin that Maynard could almost have cried. “They’ll get in the house, Austin.” He said it dully, knowing that it would have no impact on Austin and that it would shortly be too late, but saying it all the same. It was all he could do. “I’m sorry, Austin. Sorry for the whole thing. It wasn’t up to me. Never was.”
Austin was not listening. He had more important matters to attend to. And, planting both feet firmly on the old wooden floors, he broke one of the windows with a rifle butt. “Okay, Charlie! You want it so bad?”
And Maynard knew that it was over. Still, he wanted to make his explanations, as best he could, for the record. “It was a setup. I didn’t really know it till now. You were the perfect choice and ya walked right into it.”
Austin fired, both rifles, from the hip and out the window. Then the shotgun, and then the .44. And then he set about reloading them all, coolly, like the good combat soldier he was. “You say somethin’, Maynard?”
“I said ya were hand-picked.”
“Corre
ct. I do not remember volunteerin’ for this shit detail.”
“I just want ya to know that if I knew what was goin’ to happen I wouldn’t of named ya in my will.”
“Oh, piss off, Maynard. I got work to do.”
He was on his feet and firing again, through another window. Through all the windows, the glass shattering, his guns blasting point blank at the fog—and still they came. Maynard could see them, floating across the snow, stepping over the window ledges, sifting into the house. Faceless and dead, their capes undulating like manta rays, there were twenty of them, thirty.
“They’re in the house, Austin.” He said it unfeelingly, just reporting the news.
Austin fired everything he had, his rifles steaming hot—but the attackers did not disperse. “They’re in, Maynard! Let ’em have it! Cunningham, you moron! Flamethrower! Flamethrower!”
Maynard watched helplessly as the torches bobbed and as Austin blazed away at everything in the room, at the old Boston rocker, at all the books, Thoreau included—all of which were summarily obliterated. Even the pine plank with the names disappeared in a splintering of wood and a showering of pulp. And Austin was every soldier who ever lived and ever fought and ever died.
“Fire! Fire! Fire! Cunningham, you——. Fire! Fire! Fire!” Denied the time to reload, he was using a rifle as a club, swinging wildly at all he thought to come within its perimeter. “Come and get it, Charlie! Step right up, folks!”
Maynard watched, and still the dark figures came, pouring through the no-more windows, their capes flapping, their torches fluttering like flaming birds, Austin swatting at them with his rifle, creating wicked arcs but inflicting no harm upon the inexorable specters.
“Attaboy, Cunningham, you sonofabitch! Maynard—where the hell are you?”
“I’m here, Austin. Right here.”
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
The kerosene lamps exploded, adding to the hellishness, and Maynard watched as Austin fell into the embrace of the consuming flames and the billowing capes. Maynard had done all he could to alter the unalterable. He had stepped in where he had no power and interceded where he had no rights. He had crossed borders and run boundaries on Austin’s behalf but had failed, as he feared he would, as he knew he must. Whatever trickery had been launched two years prior, it was all about to culminate. There was nothing more he could do other than wait and see—and from where he sat in that cold, damp house on that fog-drenched night, it certainly looked to him that Austin was as dead as he was.
22
Austin lay on the cold rock that constituted his cellar floor. It was hard and irregular and sharp, and his right ankle throbbed hotly. He had obviously injured it when dropping through the trapdoor, landing on it unevenly with his full weight, twisting it unnaturally, and it hurt. He hoped it wasn’t broken but wasn’t quite ready to test it, especially in the dark where his footing, at best, would be uncertain.
His head throbbed, too, not from the fall but from something else, and he was trying to sort it out, trying to pick his way through the night’s events and emerge with some vestige of rationality.
One minute he had been in the jungle, in the hot thick mists of Nam, spending his last breath, the Cong coming at him as liquidy shadows, black-garbed and quick, wrenching his rifle from his grip, and he was going down. And the next minute his fingers found the iron ring, dislodged the trapdoor, and he dropped into New England—just like that. Miracle or madness? More likely it was something else, something terribly in between. Something he had better decipher or fall into something far deeper than his cellar.
He didn’t move. Movement would be anathema, an impediment to thinking, if for no other reason that that it would require a decision (move to where?). Movement too would sponsor pain (his ankle). Pain would divert thought (how badly am I hurt?). And he could not allow thought to be diverted, not then. Thought had to be mustered and concentrated, like the rays of the sun converging on a magnifying glass, for he desperately needed some flash-fire answers.
It was filling in, albeit slowly. Jigsawed pieces and scalloped fragments—diverse puzzle scraps sliding about on their own because their owner, confused and hurt, was of no great help. They maneuvered, turned, navigated and addressed one another, struggling to link up, to slot in, to cog, to mesh, anything that might result in a totality that, though imperfect, Austin might understand and accept and soon, before his own mind split into Humpty-Dumpty shells that all the King’s horses…and all that.
Maynard seemed to be one of those pieces. Maynard had been with him. In the house, yes. Talking to him. But not about the same thing. How could Maynard have been with him, yet be so wildly out of sync with the circumstances? Austin had been fighting Cong, and Maynard had been talking house. Therefore, no, Maynard could not have been with him. Extension of thought: Maynard had never been with him.
Oh, in the beginning, yes, Maynard had been with him, via simple recollections and reconstructions of events and conversations that had taken place in Vietnam. It was all right to think back on those, for they had occurred, and were real, and were thus allowed. But Maynard’s later appearances—they were highly suspect. They wrung time and logic all out of shape, braiding twisted dialogue with incredulous ramblings. As such, they were not pieces to the puzzle, they were imposters, red herrings flaunted to confuse the issue and hinder the solution. They did not belong and had to be discarded. Final hypothesis: Maynard had been with him, so to speak, and for much of the time—but not all of the time, and certainly not that night.
Other illuminations were skinnying in. Illuminations, realizations and self-recriminations, all of them firing fitfully like a berserk Gatling gun, some hitting home directly, others ricocheting to target, still others missing altogether though the spent cartridges, to be found later, would eventually serve to complete and fasten the puzzle.
For example: There had been no Cong, and that stab of reality warmed him and he felt his senses rushing back to their posts and his intellect taking heart. There had been no Charlie on the night, overrunning him and burying him. He had imagined them. They had been a sometime recurring dream since the first time they happened to him, in Nam, over a year before. And from then on, frequently, whenever he was at low ebb and vulnerable, they could come at him again, at whim, fancifully and ferociously. Yes, there had been something out there in the night, some movement, some life, the bear perhaps, monstrous and mauling—but no Cong. For there had been no jungle, and no patrol, and no last stand—just snow and mist and cold and fear and imminent death, but no Cong.
So—two tricks played on himself by himself he was onto and had trumped. What else? What else had seemed but wasn’t? The fire? No. The fire was real. The fire had encroached and driven him to the floor, where, in the white smoke and coughing blindness of it, he had found the trapdoor and dropped through.
As to how the fire came to be: He had fired all his weapons, destroying the Boston rocker, and the pine plank, and all the windows, and everything within the house. Still, that act in itself had not caused the fire. Nor had the reluctant Cunningham and his long-awaited flamethrower caused that crowning inferno, for that man was still in Nam. It was himself, Austin Fletcher, who had caused it by shooting out his lanterns, the kerosene spitting up the walls as liquid flame, dousing the beams and ceilings with dripping fire, the entire structure immediately set to drowning as in a blazing sea.
And, looking up, he could see that the fire was still there, stretching across the open trapdoor square like the full-on jets of a gas stove, blue and hissing and licking. If he were to stand up, he would lose his head to it.
He continued to lie where he had fallen, the fire above him being all the light he had to work with. It hung above his head like a malignant blue moon, no longer an issue, since it would eventually run its course.
The issue was that the fall had jogged his objectivity and the pain had sharpened his awareness, and he was able to place time and events in sensible perspective. He had all of his ans
wers.
Well, almost all. One of them was still outstanding, lying like an unclaimed body in the morgue, unidentified and with few distinguishing features, i.e., if it wasn’t the Cong he had been fighting off, who was it?
The answer to that question would have to come later, because the smoke, instead of rising and billowing up and out of whatever was left of the house, was descending, choking blankets of it fingering down through floorboard cracks as well as from the trapdoor opening, while above and beyond it he could hear the freight-train noise of the fire still roaring through his house.
Not only was the smoke coming down—the fire was, too. The flames oddly more green than orange, more cold than hot. Well, he laughed, you burn down a witch’s house, what do you expect? “The Star-Spangled Banner” on a hot summer’s night?
The flames squiggled down farther than they had a right to, defying all laws of physics in that flames should rise and not fall. They pressed through crevices and vacant knotholes like snake tongues—flicking, darting, as if trying to reach him. Some of them almost doing it, chilling him with their reptilian proximity.
Breathing was becoming a problem. What oxygen there was hovered at ground level, and he had to lay his face into it. Everything above that six-inch layer was of a cold and translucent green, a gaseous yet gelatinous lime. And above that—the still visible tentacles of fire. And he knew that if just one of those tendrils were to touch him, or even barely graze him, he would freeze in time where he lay, like that ash-covered Pompeian at the foot of Vesuvius.
He could feel the temperature dropping, plummeting. And the six inches of breathable oxygen was quickly three. It was time for him to move on—and he did, dragging himself across the rough rock, his ankle suddenly alive with glass-chip pain, the green light following him like the eye of some omnipotent Cyclops.
He was not all that familiar with his cellar. He had seldom spent much time in it, descending into it only to select some of the foodstuffs it warehoused. He didn’t even know its dimensions—how far it extended and in what directions. He had never thought to explore it, assuming that it went no farther than the house’s outside walls. Nor had he ever lingered too long in it, being unanxious to chance upon whatever damp animal life might abound in it, rats and such never being much to his liking. And so, in dragging himself along, he was moving into an uncharted area—not that he had much choice.
Maynard’s House Page 22