by Susan May
“What will we do with you, Mr. Baker? I want a doctor to check you. We’ll need to get that wall and window repaired—immediately.”
She sipped her coffee and continued. “In fact, that window is dangerous. Promise me you won’t go near it?”
She set down her cup, staring at it. Then she stopped, as if suddenly remembering something, and looked up.
“Is that how you hurt yourself? Did you fall against the window?”
I shrugged my shoulders, the only true answer I had for her.
“No, you couldn’t have done that, could you? Maybe the window, but not the wall… no.” Her lips pursed, and she tutted and shook her head. “Maybe the local kids. Vandals? Do you think, Mr. Baker? Did you see anything?”
Oh, I saw plenty. But I’m not telling you.
She picked up her coffee cup, and stared at the yellowed melamine table between us. “Vandals. I bet that’s it. Little so-and-sos.”
I stared at her and sighed loud enough to catch her attention, hoping she’d interpret it as a sign of exhaustion. Please just go, I willed.
She looked up from her headshaking, and her face softened. Here was my chance.
“Can you help me back to the bedroom? I think I need to rest.”
“You need a doctor,” she said, nodding her head with each word.
“I need to rest,” I firmly repeated. “Really, that’s all. I bumped my head. I don’t remember. It’s nothing.”
She took a deep breath and slowly expelled it, as she tilted her head sideways and back.
“I don’t think I should—“
“Please. I’m just tired.”
She breathed another “tsk,” as if I were now part of the vandal’s gang.
“Please,” I said, as an ache behind my eyes began to build.
She chewed her bottom lip, staring at a point behind me. Then her face relaxed. “Okay. One proviso. You call me the instant you feel lightheaded, or if a bad headache comes on, or you feel unbalanced. Anything not normal. All right?”
My head bobbed up and down.
She herded me into the bedroom, changed me into my pajamas, and tucked my body in as if I were a weary five-year-old returned from a big day out.
“I’ll make you something to eat and pop it in the refrigerator. I want you to eat all of it when you get up again. Do you hear me?” She patted my hand.
Her tenacity would have impressed Mavis. She would be my wife’s version of “a keeper.” I called her “a keeper” too, but I was thinking more of animals in a zoo imprisoned until the day they died. Yes, she was “a keeper,” Mavis.
And more.
I wouldn’t know that until later.
Chapter 3
An explosive rumble, followed by the sound of cracking and splintering wood, jolted me awake. It was dark when my eyes opened, my senses immediately alert.
Flickering light lit the slit below my bedroom door. For a moment, I thought Claire was playing games with the light switches.
Now I faced a familiar choice. Go watch the spectacle, which always seemed to shorten it—some kind of strange reward for my attendance—or stay here and wait. They would eventually go; they always did. Except for last night, the anomaly. That made this a different choice, one that was uncertain and somehow—
A flash again.
The vibrations of this explosion I felt through the bedclothes. My hand shook as much from the tremors as from my shock. Normally I could control my emotions. It had taken decades of familiarity with fear, but eventually we’d become bedfellows in life. Tonight my heart leaped like a trapped animal.
Then I heard the voice.
At first, I thought it was just another new part of it, just like the grenade and Charlie O’Shea and his silent mouthing. After another tremor and another flash from beneath the door, it came again. The muffled words were indiscernible and muted, but the terror in them resonated loud and clear.
My neatly folded dressing gown lay at the foot of the bed, courtesy of Claire. The chaos I heard propelled me to my feet; I threw the gown on more quickly than my eighty-eight years usually allowed. The only thing slowing me down was the complexity of forcing arthritic fingers to knot the sash while panicked. Intermittent flashes, like rapid fireworks, continued outside the door as my hands slipped and contorted around the material.
Was I mistaken, or were the explosions growing louder?
Finally I’d tied the damn knot and gathered my faculties, and I was in the hall. From here, I had a straight view to the living room and the cracked window. The cracks now reflected a fiery light playing through from the front yard.
There was Claire at the window, staring out, a silhouette against the illuminations, an intruder in the drama.
“Claire?”
She swung about, her eyes saucers in her pale face, her hand cupped to her mouth. When she saw me, her hand dropped, and she cried out, “What is it? What’s happening?”
She saw it.
How? These were my nightmares. They belonged to my past. They couldn’t be here for her to see. What would that make them?
I used everything in my trick bag to stay calm and steady, my heart beating like that of a startled animal. Reds, yellows, and brilliant whites burst in from outside, dappling the darkened walls like grains of brilliant sand thrown against them.
“You see it?”
Claire nodded, and then seeing me move toward her, she swung back to face the window, where the filament cracks had multiplied, urged on by the proximity of this night’s explosions.
When I moved beside her, she didn’t turn to me, but continued to stare out, bewildered, hypnotized. She stuttered barely recognizable words, “I … I s-s-see some … What’s—?”
A loud bang sounded, followed by a crack. It came from a tree near the perimeter of my property. Then a boom, and a second later the hissing of sand and dirt spraying against the window.
Claire screamed and took a step back, one shaking hand pressed against her mouth. The reflection of my creased, strained face looked back at me from the glass. How could she and I both view a scene that didn’t exist?
Mist surged and swirled in a sweeping wave of gray. Through the smoke, red-gold flares shot upward, only to fade in moments, then fall back to earth fifty feet away, exploding on impact. Glowing remnants lit the ground like scattered embers, except these were not of warmth but of destruction, of killing.
Shrill, sharp gunshots echoed in the street, until the whir of a machine gun spilling its rounds drowned out the lesser sound.
My hand found its way to the glass again, as if touching it might cause the mirage to disappear. At first touch, as if my fingers were electrified, the glass shattered with an ear-splitting crack. Glistening shards and splinters exploded into the air, raining down on Claire and me. Cold air and smoke rushed in, laden with the smell of gunpowder and the wretched stench of death.
Instantly our arms flew up in an attempt to deflect the glass. I caught sight of my hands and saw blood seeping out through cuts in the creases. I felt nothing.
The destruction of the window must be another part of the illusion. Damn, it was so vivid, I could taste the air.
My instinct was to move away from the window, but I was drawn to the vision outside of it. The wind had kicked up, clearing patches in the smoke, just as it had back in ’44.
Through the hollows in the curling gray-white, I saw them. Poor wretched souls they were. Bodies toppled upon bodies in piles of anonymous death. Men dropped so rapidly that they still clutched their guns, eyes blank, staring at comrades who battled forward only to be cut down themselves a few feet farther on. The sand ran red with their life, terrible crimson rivers straight from hell.
As the mist retreated, I saw their eyes. Eyes I’d never before seen in the visions. Open eyes, hundreds of them, all turned toward me. Unseeing, unmoving—but knowing. So knowing.
A low phht zinged past my face, close enough that I felt the air move and the heat of it. Phht—another. Phht�
�and another. I ducked down below the windowsill. Claire quickly moved beside me. I wanted to turn to her and explain. Whatever it was that she saw, it was not what she thought. It couldn’t be.
Yet the room glowed with the color of exploding armaments, the smell so strong I was beginning to gag.
I knew I should move, do something. Get Claire out of there. I was frozen, afraid, and weak, just as I had been seventy years before. Just as I had done at eighteen, so I did at eighty-eight: I lay there, and I prayed for it to end.
Chapter 4
The memory of that morning was so vivid that I could still taste the salt of the sand in my mouth and feel the grit between my teeth. I lay on Omaha Beach, on June 6, 1944. I’d made it under the machine gun bunkers.
By then, five hundred men had already died so that some of us—the lucky few—could make it there to the overhang of the salt cliffs. In its shadow, we would be safe. When enough of us were there, we would climb up and over and overrun the gunners. More would die, but it was our best chance.
So I waited as instructed, gathering my breath in short, hurried gulps, not daring to look back down the beach toward the sea. I didn’t want to the see those left behind. Hearing them was bad enough.
I’d been there ten minutes when I saw, under the shadows of the cliffs, a man moving sideways toward me, crawling on his arms and knees. For one terrifying moment, I thought it was a Jerry bastard.
I struggled frantically with my gun, trying to heave it around and level it up before me, ready to fire. My hands shook so much that if it had been the enemy, I would have been dead.
Turned out it was our reedy platoon sergeant, Bill Black—an ex-jockey we called Blacky.
He took one look at me and whispered through gritted teeth, “Calm down, Baker.”
“How?” would have been my answer if I could have spoken, but my teeth were chattering too much. My body was rigid; the only part of me moving was my shaking hands, and I had no control over that. We’d fallen into hell, or more accurately, been offloaded into hell. No amount of training could prepare a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old for this.
I tried to follow Blacky’s orders, tried to still my hands, my jaw. Reaching for a chain around my neck, I pulled at the Saint Christopher’s medal my mother had given me the day we shipped out.
Then I took five deep breaths.
Between the second and the third, I felt my heart slow a little.
Somehow, by the fifth, I’d brought my panic under some kind of control.
Blacky saw it in my face, that I’d come back from the edge. I’ve often wondered, if I’d succumbed to my hysteria, if he hadn’t picked me, if he had moved on to some other hapless soul, how would my life have turned out?
I did calm down, and when he saw that I was quiet, he began to speak in a clear, frighteningly calm voice, his gaze never leaving my face. His dark brown eyes bored into me as each word left his mouth and sank into my brain.
“That’s right … Breathe, son. Okay? Good. Now listen, Baker. I need you to do something. It’s very important. Do you understand?”
My head nodded automatically. He was my superior; even if I didn’t agree, I would do whatever he commanded. They’d trained us well, and explained in detail what would happen if we disobeyed or abandoned our post in combat.
“Right. Now stay with me, Baker. For some reason, we can’t get through on the radios to the landing vessels.”
He paused, letting that sink in, though I couldn’t understand why he was telling me. I wasn’t a radio operator, so I couldn’t help him with that. I was still trying to comprehend why he was talking to me, thinking maybe he’d mistaken me for someone else. In fact, I was about to set him straight when he continued.
“I need you to go back down the beach, back to the landing crafts, and find Colonel Ryan. Tell him to stop the landings and to retreat. Able and Baker Companies and the 5th Rangers radioed us ten minutes ago. They’re inland and moving forward. They’re certain they can take this bluff from the rear. This beach assault is suicide. We need to send the landing troops back to avoid unacceptable casualties. Each minute we lose hundreds—in an hour, thousands.”
He raised his voice to almost a shout. “Understand, soldier?”
My head moved as if encased in Jell-O; I nodded before I fully understood his words, before it had sunk in that he wanted me to go back down that beach, face the gunfire and the grenades, crawl through the broken bodies, and do what—save the day?
I wouldn’t make it. I knew that in my heart. He was asking me to die. Sending me to die, when I’d only just made it here to safety. Here, where they’d told me to wait for the others. Here, where I wouldn’t die just yet—where I had a chance.
“Soldier! You understand? You go now. Every second counts.”
He reached out and tapped my helmet, as you might pat an obedient hound. “Good man, Baker.” Then, assured by my nodding, he was off, traveling back the way he had come.
I was alone.
I swiveled my head around to look down the beach, through the smoke of the battle and the mist of the morning. The combination was so heavy that I could barely see twenty feet.
I turned back to look for Blacky, to tell him “no,” that I couldn’t do it. He’d already disappeared behind the curves of the dunes.
Panic overwhelmed me. With each beat of my heart, it spread through my body like an immobilizing poison. Every breath I took echoed in my head so loudly that I imagined the enemy would hear me, peer over the top of their dugout, and lay a stream of machine gun fire into my position.
I burrowed my cheek into the cool grains of sand and held it there. The sand formed a perfect pillow, calling to me like a siren to stay in the shadows, in the safety.
There were men back there; “thousands,” Blacky had said, who needed me to go down the beach and send them back to safety. I was one man, and yet, somehow, this enormous responsibility had fallen upon me. Eighteen years old and asked to be a hero, when twelve months ago I had been nothing more than an insurance company clerk.
I rolled over and stood against the sandbank, propped straight up by my backpack. The sun was moving higher in the sky, lifting the gray cloak of mist, and the vista of the beach lay before me. Bodies in green and tan splattered with red dotted the cream landscape. Large crossed planks of wood and steel—“Rommel’s Asparagus” we called them—some with barbed wire, obstruction barriers against our landing parties, lay scattered along the beach like a giant game of jacks.
Even over the ceaseless gunfire, I could hear the moaning. Multitudes of injured and dying, sounding more like animals than men. Just listening to it was agonizing.
The unnaturalness of it all—me, on this foreign land, staring at this scene beyond anyone’s wildest imagination—overwhelmed me.
Every second counts.
I checked my gun, the feel of the cold metal in my palm really of little comfort. Much good the gun would do me. When the bullet came, I wouldn’t see it. It would hit me in the back of my head or my body. My only chance was to weave and crouch. And pray.
That was a lot to remember.
A hum, growing stronger every second, built in my head. Every breath I took sounded so loud it felt as if an airtight bubble had settled over my head. My heart banged into my ribs.
Thu-ump. Thu-ump. Thu-ump. It beat so hard it hurt.
I took a step. then another. I twisted my head at an unnatural angle to peer up at the bunkers.
Thu-ump. Thu-ump.
I knew I couldn’t stop now. If I stopped, I wouldn’t have the strength—no, the courage—to keep going.
Another two steps and I’d left the shade. A few more, and I’d be in the line of sight of the gunners. The rushing of blood through my temples, now an accompaniment to my heart.
Thu-ump. Thu-ump.
Two more steps and I’d be there.
The kill zone.
Something took over at that point: legs that felt like jelly, muscles behaving like loose strings of f
iber, were suddenly filled with steel. My body, pumping adrenaline, took off of its own accord, with me along for the ride. A silent, terrified passenger.
Without thinking, I ran left five paces. Then fell to the ground.
Breathe. Breathe.
Thu-ump. Thu-ump.
Then up again. Springing like a cat.
My legs pumping, driving into the sand.
Another five paces to the left. Then three to the right.
Longer strides, stretching. If they were scoping me, they couldn’t anticipate how far I would travel.
Then down. Flat on my stomach, near a barrier.
Breathe. Thu-ump. Breathe.
Mouth in the sand, eating grit, my body nestled against other bodies—dead, motionless, bloody bodies. Sucking in oxygen, as if I’d just surfaced from a deep-water dive.
God, my chest ached.
Don’t panic, Jack.
Thu-ump. Breathe!
And pray. Remember to pray.
God, please save me.
Tilting my head up from where I lay, I looked back up the beach. I’d only traveled fifteen feet. This zigzagging was getting me nowhere. I had to hurry. Get out of here. Keep moving. That’s what they’d drilled into us.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Stand up, Jack.
As I jumped up, I heard the zing. Then a sharp sting. It caught me in the right calf, sending me toppling over. It hurt for a second; then there was little pain. That shocked me more than the hit. When something enters your body at that speed, you expect something more. It just felt hot, like the worst bee sting you’ve ever had.
I lay facedown in the sand, waiting. Seconds became minutes of just breathing, containing the panic.
Nothing.
They hadn’t targeted me. It was a random bullet.
Slowly sliding my leg up along the sand, I reached around and touched the wound. There was an entry and an exit. That was good. Tentatively, I pushed my right foot into the sand, checking to see if it still had strength to bear me. It felt solid. It still didn’t hurt too badly, though it was beginning to throb, as if I’d banged it against the side of a door.