Half World: A Novel

by O'Connor, Scott

  He came back from the war and what had he done?

  Pushing paper towers, careful to leave enough space for the front door to open, for someone to enter the maze.

  The woman’s name had come to him in a newspaper article. She was a photographer, showing some of her work in a gallery in town. This was before the foot had gone bad, and so he’d gone to the gallery and looked at her photographs. He had recognized some of the faces in her pictures, street kids who had told him their stories. He saw her standing at the far end of the room, smiling and talking to a group of admirers. He had seen her before, long ago, when she was a girl. He had seen her in the front window of the house on the hill, arguing. Henry March’s house. Her name was in the paper; it was stenciled onto the front window of the gallery, as if she wanted to be found.

  What Walter was planning. What they had planned together. The hospital in the north. He could already see the flames on his TV. He could already see the news broadcasts. How many hostages, how many dead. He could see the headlines, transcripts of investigations, high-level hearings. The truth pushed into the faces of the sheep reading their morning papers, forcing them to see what they were a party to, what their lives, their houses and dreams really cost. He wishes he could be there when it happens, at the hospital, that he could stand in the rubble among the bodies, but he knows he will never leave this house again. He must content himself with his own final action. The last ghost will come and they will have their battle. So he must stay vigilant. He must be ready.

  Some writers talked about movies, about TV shows, as if this meant anything, as if it could compare to this.

  He came back from the war and what had he done? Such a simple question. He’d asked it so many times. What had he done?

  He had sold telephones. He had sold telephones.

  He reached for his notebook, his pen. He needed to write this down before he forgot it, before it was taken from him again, but his notebook was not where he’d left it. He moved as quickly as the dead limb would allow, crashing into furniture, lamps. Pill bottles toppling, crystals falling, breaking their beams of light. Breathing hard, his heart grinding like it was going to sputter and fail. Not yet. Don’t go yet. After all this time, the waiting, the planning. He sits on the carpet, trying to catch his breath, slow his heart. Feeling the numbness in his arm dissolve. Not yet. The notebook is there on the floor, right beside where he fell. He picks it up, opens to a blank page. Pen tip on paper, a tiny dot of blue ink. What he had remembered. He had come back from the war and what had he done?

  It was gone. He dropped the notebook, the pen. All this paper surrounding him, so tall, so dry. Moths in the air, flitting from tower to tower, dust falling from their wings.

  He let his head fall back against the bookcase.

  They took everything worth taking.

  6

  Jimmy wouldn’t do the radiation or the pills. Elaine had done the radiation, doctors in goggles behind leaded glass, Elaine alone in a chair on the other side, bombarded with atomic rays. Her skin burned, her hair shed. Her body still warm as Jimmy carried her back to her hospital room. The orderlies were there, offering, it was their job, but Jimmy was going to lift his own goddamn wife into her bed. Elaine pleading to stay uncovered even though it was the middle of winter, the room bone cold, Jimmy’s teeth chattering. Elaine’s cheeks and breasts burned, her insides burned. Jimmy holding a glass of ice water to her forehead, her wrists. Elaine saying, I don’t think they’re going to get it this way, I don’t think they’re going to burn it out of me. Jimmy telling her not to talk, to save her strength. Holding the glass to her cheeks, her ankles. Elaine saying, I think it’s tougher than this.

  The pills were no better. Elaine’s roommate had been taking the pills. A woman about their age, already a widow, her husband dead from a heart attack a few years earlier. An easy exit. This woman given paper cups of capsules and tablets, gagging while she tried to swallow. Lurching out of bed to vomit in the toilet, or the sickness coming on her so suddenly that she couldn’t stand fast enough and simply threw up on herself, on her bedclothes. Spitting, crying while the nurses cleaned her up, carried her from the bed while they changed the sheets. The woman reduced to this, something to be lifted and wiped.

  The pills were no better than the radiation. When he’d been presented with the options, Jimmy had told his doctor that he wasn’t interested in either.

  In Los Angeles he rented another car, a massive Lincoln, a grandchild of the car he’d driven in San Francisco, maybe. He called Squires’s number from a pay phone and got another number from Squires and hung up and waited. Called the new number. Squires sounded like he couldn’t believe the call, that this was really happening. Jimmy asked what new information he had and Squires said that there was nothing yet, just what he’d already passed along. Squires asked about his trip, where he’d gone, where he was now. Jimmy hung up the phone with Squires in midsentence.

  He sat in a motel room with the photographs Squires had given him. Pictures of a big guy with long hair and an unruly beard. Looked like a burnout, looked like a bum. Shots taken from a distance, the bum coming in and out of a drugstore with booze bottles in brown paper bags. This was their guy, or somebody’s guy, the hound who was already on the trail. He looked about right. He looked like one of the fuckups they used back when Jimmy was working, guys who would do just about anything for money or booze or dope, the chance to feel like one of the boys.

  Squires had given him three addresses. The first was Henry March’s old address in Oakland. March’s wife was still there, supposedly, along with his son. This would be a dead end. Jimmy wasn’t sure why Squires had given him the address. He already knew the address. Jimmy sitting down the block from that house years ago, watching Hank March taking a walk, holding his unsteady son’s hand.

  The second address was March’s daughter, now in Los Angeles. This was closer to what he needed. This was more of a possibility. She’d estranged herself from her mother, apparently, and this might mean something, the reason for the split, something she might know.

  The third address was a house on the beach, a science-fiction writer who Squires had stressed should be seen first. Squires had said that he didn’t know the relevance of this man to what they were doing, only that he was relevant in some way. The writer’s name meant nothing to Jimmy. Back at the Atlanta airport, waiting for his flight, he’d looked at the paperback spines on the newsstand shelves but had come up empty.

  It wasn’t much, but it was enough. He could work with it. His old self was coming back. He could feel it in his arms, his hands. Strength returning. Getting off the mountain, out of those fucking airports. Driving in the Lincoln with the windows down. West Coast air. Shaking off the rust.

  * * *

  He lost two days to his sickness. Two days, three days, it was hard to tell. Facedown on the floor in the motel bathroom. Sitting on the toilet. Unable to stand for the hot spears in his groin, his ass. Stripped to his undershirt and shorts, his sweat chilling on the cold floor. Two days, three days. Drinking water from the toilet like a dog.

  There was a small window high on the wall, facing the alley behind the motel. Bums came into the alley, rummaging in the trash. Men laughing at night, drinking, breaking glass. Hacking coughs and curses in Spanish. From his angle on the floor, Jimmy watched the window, listened in the dark.

  He stayed in the bathroom. Sometimes he turned his body to look out into the other room, the beds still undisturbed. He had to fight the urge to crawl to a bed, burrow inside. He knew that if he got in he would never get out. He would die in that room. But he would not die in the bathroom. He knew this, somehow, he was sure of it. As long as he remained prone on the floor this would pass. This was a warning, a glimpse into the future. What he had to look forward to.

  He slept intermittently. He had learned over the past few months how to sleep through pain. He had come to accept it, a constant
companion. He put himself to sleep knowing it would be there when he woke and was proven right when it was waiting for him in the morning. This was comforting, somehow. There was some small measure of vindication involved.

  On the second day, the third day, he smelled hot dogs cooking through the window from somewhere down the street and he wanted a hot dog, hungered for a dog with the works and then he knew he would get up from the floor, would stand again, would walk, reenter the world. Before long he was in line waiting for his hot dog, was standing by a picnic table in the parking lot devouring the thing, his teeth slashing, the meat bursting from its skin. Knowing he’d throw all this up in a matter of hours, minutes maybe, but unwilling to moderate at this point, not after what he’d been through over the last few days, not after getting a look at where he was headed.

  * * *

  The waves tumbled onto the beach, spitting froth. Jimmy sat in the Lincoln and watched the house, the water, waiting for night.

  Jayne would be home by now. She would have found the notes, would have called Steven, and he and the kids would have flown down, everyone looking for Dad, for Grandpa. It would have made the local news, maybe. Search-and-rescue teams trawling the gullies and creeks.

  Full dark. Jimmy got out of the car, crossed the road. There was a wooden footbridge that ran back along the side of the house. He was now at the point where simply walking was painful. This was called progression. This was called metastasis.

  The windows of the beach house were dark, curtains drawn, though there seemed to be a light in there somewhere, seeping through. Jimmy realized he already had the gun in his hand. Must have taken it out as soon as he’d left the car. Old habits.

  The door was unlocked. Jimmy turned the knob, pushed it open. Tight hinges, like there was someone behind it pushing back. No, it wasn’t the hinges, there was a bunch of shit in the way. Through the light from the road Jimmy could see what looked like walls of paper, books, notebooks. Slowly sliding, little avalanches, blocking the door. He shoved it all the way open, stepped inside.

  His eyes adjusted, slowly. Paper everywhere, piled nearly to the ceiling. A path or a tunnel carved through it, leading farther into the house.

  A flashlight. Maybe a flashlight would have been a good idea. Stupid old man.

  There was light coming from the other end of the tunnel. Jimmy went farther in. The tunnel turned, turned again.

  Someone coughed. Jimmy knew that cough. Jimmy woke with a cough like that every morning. An old man’s cough, impossible to stifle. Expelling dust. Jimmy turned a corner. Paper walls. Another corner. Another and a man was there, ten feet away, standing in the tunnel, backlit from the room behind. A fat man on crutches, his face unshaven and soaked with sweat. The man looked at Jimmy and something tumbled into place inside him. Fear now, flickering in his eyes.

  Something clicked inside Jimmy, too. This man.

  Jimmy said, “I know you.”

  The man backed into the room, just a single lamp on in there but so bright compared to the dark house. Jimmy blinded, walking forward with his eyes almost closed, the gun pointed out in front and thinking, I know this man. Strip away the age and sickness and this man is familiar to me.

  “My name is Robert Zelinsky.” Jimmy heard the voice from somewhere in the room. Still so goddamn bright. He tried staring at the black metal of the gun to focus his eyes. Pointing in the direction of the man’s voice.

  “My name is Robert Zelinsky,” the man said. “My name is Lawrence Tarhammer.”

  Jimmy’s eyes were working again. The man was standing against the back wall of the lighted room. The bed had been pushed to the side, a dresser, a desk, piles of paper, everything shoved to the walls except eight or ten kerosene tanks set in two rows across the room. Jimmy standing in the middle of the rows, this man standing at the other end holding a shotgun.

  “My name is Daniel Davis,” the man said. “Denver Dan Davis. That is my true name, my only name.” His shotgun aimed at the kerosene tank closest to his bandaged foot.

  Jimmy turned back through the door, into the tunnel, heard the shotgun fire, then nothing, no explosion, a missed shot, lucky, lucky, stumbling back through the darkness, the paper walls collapsing, threatening to bury him, Jimmy pushing through the paper, another shot, then nothing, still lucky, Jesus, out the front door onto the footbridge, running, limping, the pain beyond pain, making it to the end of the footbridge, out on the road, no headlights, the pavement hard under his steps, the pain everything, and then there was another shot and the explosions chained through the house, ripping through the walls and roof, lighting the night orange and yellow and red. Jimmy fell forward, off the side of the road toward the Lincoln, rolling, explosion after explosion, the night lit to midday, Jimmy covering his head, the sound of the house collapsing, the stilts giving way, the footbridge, a wooden groan and crash on the rocks, and then just the sound of fire and a ringing in Jimmy’s ears.

  He opened his eyes and the sky was mostly dark again, just gray smoke and the light of the fire behind him. Something in the air, falling. Looked like confetti. Landing on his eyes, in his open mouth. A slow rain. Weightless paper scraps twirling in the air.

  PART FOUR

  * * *

  Blue Line

  1

  Coming back, calling, waking slowly, thoughts returning, smells, sounds returning, coming back, touch, the feel of air on his face, in his nose, his mouth, his eyes still closed, calling, gathering pieces of himself, coming back, waking slowly, then Thomas’s eyes open, Thomas awake.

  Just before dawn, dark shapes in the gray room. The other bed, the shared dresser. Outline of the window; slow, rippling flashes in the glass, occasional headlights from cars or the train. Grain swimming in his sight like television static, soft and silent as snow.

  Thomas sets his feet on the floor, pressing his toes into the wood, the balls, the heels, feeling the solidity beneath him, the earth two stories below. The ragged end of a prayer or verse circling in his head. Trying to catch it by its tail, pull it back so he can see its entire body, the long bright string of words, his lips moving in the dark.

  Prayer of Richard. Hezekiah’s Prayer. Prayer for the Sick.

  The rusty squeal of far-off train brakes navigating a turn. He stands at the window that later in the day will look out onto the brown brick of the neighboring building but now simply looks out into more gray. Cold morning, the second in a row. He squints at the clock, trying to make out the time in the dark. Alarms are set for five-fifteen, seven days, but he is always up early.

  Dressing quietly. Ducking to see himself in the mirror. Patience with his thick fingers as they attempt to maneuver his shirt’s buttons through their eyelets. Patience with the ponderousness of his movements. Breathing deeply, fully, as he has been taught.

  In the bathroom, someone flushing in one of the stalls behind him, another early riser, Geoffrey or Gregg or Lavar, one of the newer men who still can’t sleep, haunting the hallway all night, pacing down to the bathroom and then turning and walking to the window and the fire escape at the other end. The movements of these men a comforting thing to Thomas, their eyes open while he slept and splintered, while pieces of him scattered in the night.

  Philippians 4:13. Matthew 8:8. Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof, but just say the word and my servant will be healed.

  Breakfast in the dining hall, other men coming in, stifling yawns, lighting cigarettes, sitting at the long tables with coffee and eggs and bacon, hash browns, buttered toast. Smoking and talking, low-toned conversations, just a word or two on each end, then long spaces of silence. Checking watches, the clock on the wall above the bulletin board. Checking Bibles, checking watches.

  Everyone into the Fellowship Hall at 6 A.M., filling the rows of folding chairs. More cigarettes, smoke swirling lazily in the overhead lights. Some men already wearing their orange jackets, checking and rechecki
ng their pockets for Bibles, cigarettes, change, the small paper cards with the address and phone number of the ministry barracks. Always checking, rechecking. No one here used to constancy or routine. No one here used to things being where they thought they’d put them.

  Reverend Lee’s aftershave enters the hall a half second before Reverend Lee. Six-oh-five, precisely. Routine is crucial, precision is crucial. Out beyond the boundaries of routine and precision are chaos, temptation, anger. The men have all been taught this and they know it to be true. They have lived beyond those boundaries.

  Reverend Lee steps to the podium. His gray slacks, his white dress shirt, his black tie. Shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, shoes shined and gleaming. He checks his watch. Even Reverend Lee reduced to checking from time to time. Even Reverend Lee still feeling the pull of that other place.

  Reverend Lee looks out over the assembled and says, Let us pray. The men stand and bow their heads. There is the prayer and a short sermon and then any necessary announcements. Lists of duties, names of new arrivals, a weather report. Things to be aware of. Construction on certain lines, problems in certain cars. At the end of the meeting Reverend Lee steps from the podium and takes the hands of the men in the front row and those men reach back and everyone clasps hands, reaching over empty seats, across the center aisle, heads down, eyes closed.

  Prayer for the Work Day. Prayer for Peace. Happy are we who are called to His supper.

  They leave the Fellowship Hall and wait outside to board the bus. Early light now, noise from the street. The bus’s exhaust mixing with cigarette smoke. The bus is a repurposed school bus, painted black with white hand lettering: Outreach Christian Fellowship. Rev. Lee Metzger, Pastor.