Finally, the soldier was finished. He thanked her and turned away, his companions shuffling after him. Iris stood alone beside the damaged tank.
“There are others,” Iris communicated.
Helen was exhausted. Her fingers ached.
“The attending can be yours,” Iris offered. “They rest outside time.”
Iris and the tank faded from sight. Helen opened her eyes to find twenty or so pieces of paper spread in front of her, all covered edge to edge with her hasty handwriting. A small, neat number had been put at the top of each page, presumably by her grandmother. Helen carefully stacked the pages in order, handling them tenderly.
“Helen?” her father said. “Are you all right?” He had spoken gently, but the sound of his voice made her wince.
She nodded and dredged up a smile to reassure him. She felt averse to speaking, and she sincerely hoped no one else would speak, either. Everything felt like too much. The light hurt her eyes, her belt and her collar and her shoes were too tight, and Mr. Grauer’s raspy breathing was scouring her eardrums.
Ursula made a sign with her hand that everyone seemed to understand to mean they should quietly leave the room, which they did. Helen heard her mother making good-byes at the front door.
“Now, Helen,” her grandmother said very softly, “you take your pages to your room to look at when you are ready. We will see them later.”
Helen stood up.
“I’m really fine,” she said to allay the worried expression on her father’s face. “Just tired.” The words scratched her throat.
“I’ll bring you up some soup,” her mother said, returning from the hallway.
That sounded perfect. Helen billowed with gratitude.
CHAPTER 21
APRIL 1942
Helen practically had his story memorized. For a week after the seance, she’d taken out the bundle of pages daily and carefully reread them. Every time, she felt a muted version of the excitement she’d experienced while taking down the young tank driver’s recitation. I did this, she thought. I brought this to light.
Growing up, Helen had accepted the idea of spirits and spirit communication as uncritically as another child might have accepted a sister who tap-danced or a house with warped floorboards. It was part of her personal atlas, part of who her grandmother was, only one of many defining characteristics of her family and her home life, and by childish extension, of the wider world. Though she’d resisted her own psychic abilities, and known by adolescence that they were not common, she hadn’t been surprised by them. But the tank driver had accomplished what years with her grandmother had not, what even her own visions had not. He had convinced her that death did not exist. Other soldiers came with similar stories and cemented her conviction, but she didn’t really need them. He was the first, and he was enough.
The thing I hated most was the noise. Guns, explosions. Shell splinters banging on the sides of the tank. It gave me awful headaches. All that’s over now, and I’m plenty thankful.
We were in the thick of it, see, and my captain was shouting at me to alter our course, but it was too late. We were hit, and I remember the captain cursing and saying,
“Christ, we’ve got it this time.” Then we were all standing outside the tank, wondering how we got there and feeling pretty lucky. The tank was in bad shape, though. I thought how it was my fault for not dodging quick enough and how now we’d have to walk back to base, which wasn’t gonna be easy with all the Germans and Italians between us and there. Me and a buddy went with the captain to give the tank a look-see in case maybe she was still able to move. We’d just got the door wrenched open when a shell came and knocked it clear off. But our luck was holding, ’cause we weren’t even scratched. Another strange thing—I noticed my headache was gone, even though that shell hit so close and the battle was still going on around us.
Then we looked inside the tank, and we saw bodies in it. Our bodies. The whole crew. And my buddy starts laughing and says, “Didn’t I tell you we’d wake up dead one day?” I laughed, too. Somehow I didn’t care, except that at the same time, I cared terribly. Then the captain says we’d better be going, but he doesn’t know where. He set out anyway, and since he’s the officer, we all followed, right through the battlefield. I could see the fighting like I was looking in the wrong end of a telescope.
As we went along, other guys joined in one by one. Didn’t say anything, just came up from somewhere and started walking with us. You didn’t see them coming. You’d just look around, and there would be another joe walking next to you or behind you. Even some of the enemy. That didn’t bother me. It didn’t seem important.
Then we got to a forest. It shouldn’t have been there, in the desert. It was beautiful, cool and green, and we all sat down under the trees and went to sleep. When we woke up, we felt different. We looked the same, but where our bodies oughta been tired and achy, they weren’t. I felt like I was standing on air. There was someone with us, a Messenger, he calls himself, and he went around to each of us and touched our heads. Let me tell you, when he touched me, it was like he was pouring something into me, I felt so happy and alive.
He says more’s going to happen to us. We’ll get stronger and have work to do. We won’t have bodies, not even these other, refreshed bodies, and it will be a great release, he says. Some of us might take longer than others to get used to everything and to stop missing home, but we’ll all come through eventually. There’s helpers here for us. It’s easier for me ’cause I was raised that there’s an eternal soul and that God’s in His heaven waiting for us.
The Messenger let me come tell you all this because love and prayers from earth can help us go on to the next part sooner. And another thing: lots of fellows have tried real hard to appear to their folks or their sweethearts, and they didn’t notice them. If you’re too sad, we can’t get through. It hurts to see you like that. It holds some of us back. We want you to know we’re okay. There’s thousands of us here, more arriving every day, and we are all okay.
Helen’s father wasn’t as affected by the results of the seance as she was, but he’d been impressed enough to allow her to continue sitting with the home circle twice a week, once at Mrs. Durkin’s and once at the Schneiders’. If there really were brave soldiers wanting to impart messages from beyond, he’d said, it would be unpatriotic to block their way. He still drew the line at including outsiders seeking to contact specific spirits or address private concerns. That smacked too much of a sideshow.
The seances at Mrs. Durkin’s house focussed on contacting what Ursula called Reisende, or wanderers. Unlike the tank driver and his comrades, Reisende hadn’t yet embarked on their new lives in the hereafter. Most of them were neither happy nor unhappy, though some felt lonely. They existed in a gray mist that emanated from themselves and prevented them from seeing the spirits around them waiting to help. Some of them were still too tied to earth, either longing for the pursuits and people of their earthly lives, or required to stay near earth in order to learn the lessons they had refused while alive. Chief among these lessons was the foolhardiness of living in isolation, with thoughts only of oneself.
Though Helen attended both seances every week, Ursula acted as medium in the Reisende sessions because of the danger of contacting “dwellers on the threshold.” Dwellers had passed away without having cultivated their spiritual natures. They were not necessarily evil, but they could be. There was always the chance that a dweller might try to control a medium in order to recite his past misdeeds or gratify his sensual desires. He might enter the medium’s eyes to see the physical world again as a living person does. He might amuse himself with the thoughts in the medium’s mind. Young, inexperienced mediums like Helen were especially at risk because they were more likely to be swayed by a dweller’s flattery or importuning. The home circle always called on strong teaching spirits whenever a dweller appeared, both for the benefit of the dweller and to protect Ursula.
Helen’s mediumship was confined to t
he circles in her own dining room. As on the first occasion, the group made no requests. Helen called Iris, Iris brought spirits, and Helen recorded their stories. Details varied, but the message was always the same: I didn’t know I was dead, someone came to guide me, I rested and awoke revived and joyful, I am all right, I am moving ahead in a land of light and love.
I blacked out. This was in Libya. When I came to, I hailed some passing trucks, but they ignored me. TARFU, we call it. “Things are really fouled up.” Then here’s this Arab in those long robes that they wear coming toward me, and I’m thinkin’, what’s he doin’ out here? When he gets to me, I see he’s really tall, maybe seven feet, and his face is real friendly and calm, so calm. It made me realize how much I was used to seeing men with strained faces all the time. He put his hand on my shoulder, and a feeling of intense life and joy went through me. It was everywhere in me. I could see colors—colors in the desert, where everything always looks the same—and I could smell roses. I heard music. I didn’t want him to ever take his hand away, but he did, and I still felt happy and well.
The Arab went to help some poor mug who was lying on the ground nearby, looking pretty beat up. I went over to watch. He touched the guy’s head and a kind of shadow grew up out of the guy’s body, slowly taking on the same features as the body. I could see he was feeling the same strength from the Arab’s hand that I had, and I was thinkin’ this Arab was one swell doc. Then I noticed the Arab was standing so that the guy who’d gotten up couldn’t see the body that was still on the ground, and it hit me that we must be dead. I coulda cried. “Are we dead, sir?” I said, and the Arab just looked at me. There was pity in his eyes, and I felt that he knew everything about me, that he understood me, and I didn’t feel like crying anymore.
Not all the spirits were from the desert. A seaman told of his ship sinking. He dove down to free his canary and discovered two birds, a dead canary in its cage and a live one singing. Underwater. He left the ship, passing easily through walls, which made him realize that he was dead. When he reached the surface, he heard bells, and he felt radiantly alive.
A pilot stood bewildered beside a crashed plane in France. Spotting a body hunched over the controls, he rushed to free the man, only to discover it was himself. Horrified at the awful condition of being apart from his body, and feeling too weak to extricate it from the wreck, he lay down to rest, whereupon he left his second body. “It was like shelling peas,” he’d said, “and I seemed to go on and be just as much myself outside both bodies.” A stranger arrived and took him to a place called the Garden of Awakening. The pilot lay down on the grass and immediately experienced amazing refreshment, as if the grass were electrified. He’d always felt, the times his plane was under attack, as if he were on the end of an elastic that would snap him back to safety, but now the elastic had been cut, and he felt at peace.
CHAPTER 22
MAY 1942
“These stories,” Billy said, tapping the pile of handwritten pages he’d just finished reading, “you made them up, right?”
“No! Why would I do that?”
Helen had known Billy might well express disbelief in the automatic writings, but when he actually did, she was not only disappointed but also annoyed and even a bit startled. As the stories had accumulated over the past few weeks, they’d shored one another up, each one rendering its predecessors both more credible and less extraordinary. By now, Helen regarded them almost as routine—amazing and wonderful, but routine.
“I don’t know why,” Billy said, irritated. “Maybe because you didn’t want your grandmother and her friends to think you were the bunk.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“No, no. Pipe down.”
“Well, I’m not lying. Or play-acting. I swear.”
They were sitting in Billy’s backyard, on a circular bench Mr. Mackey had built around the biggest apple tree. The tree was just starting to break out in clusters of white flowers. Helen was reminded of the song I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time. It was a pretty tune, both words and melody brimming with longing and faith in the future. The old song had been on the radio a lot this spring.
“I don’t think you’re a liar,” Billy said. “But maybe you heard a story somewhere sort of like these and then forgot about it, and now your imagination is bringing it back and fiddling with it to come up with new stories. They are all a lot alike.”
“They’re alike because they’re true.”
Billy leafed through the pages and held one up to her.
“What about this one? This poor sap watches his pals carry his body to a hospital tent. Next, his brother—his dead brother—shows up and takes him to the Rest Hall. C’mon, Helen, do you really believe there’s a place called the Rest Hall? Made of crystals? Where the fountains make music, and everyone feels happy?”
“I remember him,” Helen said, taking the page from Billy. “Later a Messenger came and took him to the Hall of Silence to rest some more. And the Messenger told him not to describe to me too much of what he’d seen, because a lot of it was illusion.”
“See? Even the spooks know it’s in your imagination!”
“No, Billy! These spirits are all very new, and what they see at first comes partly from their own ideas.” Iris had taught her that. “And they’re not poor saps.”
Billy stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets.
“I don’t like it, Helen,” he said quietly.
“What do you mean, you don’t like it? You can refuse to believe it—though I don’t see how—but what’s to like or not like about it?”
“It’s … I don’t know … it’s too …”
“Too what?”
“Too different.” He looked at her and frowned. “It makes you different.”
“But I am different. You already knew that.”
“Yeah, but you were always still a regular person, and we were together just like anybody else, and now you’re kind of … apart.”
“Apart?” Helen felt a tremor of anxiety.
“It’s almost like you’ve been going around with another guy.”
Helen reached out and tugged at his rolled-up shirt cuff. “That’s silly,” she said.
“Is it? You should see your face when you talk about them. It’s like they’re alive.”
“They are alive, in a way. But they’re gone. And it’s their stories I think about, not the boys themselves.”
As Helen said this she realized guiltily that it was not quite true. The boys Iris brought to the seances were all individual personalities to her, even though their stories repeated the same themes. Helen could bring up in her mind’s eye the look of each one, the color of his hair, the condition of his uniform, the peculiarities of his face and posture, the relative degrees of puzzlement and peace in his eyes. For the time of the seance, and to a lesser degree whenever she reread their accounts, she experienced them as dear and particular, not simply as anonymous bearers of engrossing tales. “My boys,” she’d thought more than once.
“It’s hard to explain,” she told Billy, “especially since you’ve never been to a séance.”
“So tell me how it works. Exactly.”
He positioned himself expectantly in front of her. Because he was looking down at her, the usual errant lock of hair fell across his brow, and it had the usual effect of making her want to touch him, but she resisted, straightening up as if she were a teacher about to begin a lesson.
“Well, I close my eyes and relax, and I slip into a sort of dream, except I’m awake. And then I see them.”
Helen judged this was not the right moment to introduce Iris.
“Then what?”
“Then I get this pins and needles feeling in my hands, or sometimes like they’re covered with spider webs, and I know it’s time to write. The spirits talk—one by one—and I take down what they say. I don’t look at the paper while I write, or even know what I’m writing until later.”
Billy was staring at her in a
peculiar way. Perhaps he was simply trying to absorb what she was saying, but she couldn’t help feeling it was she herself he was appraising.
“You enjoy it, don’t you?” he said in an accusing tone.
Helen felt caught out in a misdeed. He was right. She did enjoy it. There was an intimacy to the seances that was uniquely and almost physically satisfying. Those boys made her feel special and important, chosen, even loved. She knew she’d never make Billy understand. With sudden clarity, she realized it would be dangerous to try. She stood up and drew his hands out of his pockets, entwining her fingers with his.
“It’s just a kind of job,” she cajoled. “If I were in a steno pool, you wouldn’t be jealous of the men who dictated letters to me, would you?”
Billy pulled his hands away.
“I’m not jealous,” he scoffed. “How could I be jealous of dead guys? Imaginary dead guys.”
They stood in silence a few moments, each one looking at a different part of the yard. Finally, she tentatively laid a hand on his waist. When he didn’t reject her, she slid both arms around him and pressed her body against his.
“Trying to change the subject?” he said with put-on gruffness.
“Do you mind?”
He drew her behind the large tree to shield them from view and began kissing her. His hands rested at the small of her back and gently urged her to move against him. They swayed together, their hips travelling a small, exquisite ellipse again and again. Then, abruptly, Billy put his hands on her shoulders and firmly held her away. He took a deep breath, and grinning, raised his eyebrows at her. His face was flushed.
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