Bury This

by Andrea Portes

  Nineteen forty-four. A practical joke, waking up in this whispery, bleached, spick-and-span place after the ratatat-tat, ratatat-tat of that killing shore at Omaha Beach. Muck and water and spiderweb blood, dodging bullets in the brine, a kind of chaos worse than death itself. And yet, death all around, practically promenading down the beach in a black robe and parasol, “Yes, yes, children. Keep it up. Bring me more. More! You are prolific today. A great day. A hallowed day. A banner day for death.”

  And then this here, this hall of alabaster, almost a church in its respectful, stone silence. Waking up the first time, for seconds only, above him a nurse and doctor in matching white coats and matching white concerned postures.

  “And how is our patient?”

  “Lt. Colonel? Lt. Colonel Krause? Can you hear me? Can you hear my voice?”

  And briefly, the thought “Have I made it to heaven? Is this the immaculate fluffy cloud place I’ve been hearing so much about? If so, I’d thought the nurses would be better looking.” And then a laugh, to himself.

  A laugh coming out of the patient.

  “He’s delirious.”

  “He’ll be fine. Keep an eye on him.”

  And the sound of the matching white coats moving away, moving away now to another sucker lying on his back, mummified. Resentful, betrayed somehow, to hear, “Private Reiter. Can you hear me? Can you hear my voice?”

  Same shtick. Same shtick, different sucker.

  And then the blanket of sleep, a gauze of days, hours, weeks spent flat-back hearing the whispers echoing off the walls, from far away an occasional scream, a few times, late night, the sound of a grown man crying. Muddled sobs in the moonlight, muttering retreats, buried in the pillow. Shh.

  The second time waking, more substantial, a stronger visit.

  “Can you hear me? Can you hear my voice?”

  Eyes blinking, a different nurse. This one, a brunette with a face like a pie, a sweetheart face. Maybe this is heaven. Ah, is there anything better than bleeding out on a death-walk tide and waking up to a pie-face cherub of a girl in a cotton starch hat? A system contrived to melt your heart into goop. For you, I’ll do anything. You saved me. You saved me from that death-waltz shore.

  Stirring, trying to get up. “Where am I? Where is this?”

  “Don’t get up, please, Lt. Colonel. There. That’s better. This is Charterhouse Military Hospital. Recovery Ward.”

  The name a homing device, a passkey, a map.

  “You’re healing. That’s your job now. Getting strong again. Let’s don’t rush it.”

  The brunette hair a shade darker than mouse but lighter than chestnut. An English kind of hair, no dyes. An English face, no button nose, but a funny shape anyway. A drastic shape, cut off too early.

  “What’s your name, nurse? I want to tell my friends back home about the pretty nurses they have over here.”

  “Oh, now.” Straightening his pillow above his head, leaning forward, placing his blanket just so.

  “Lucy. My name’s Lucy.”

  “Well, then. I’ll tell the folks back in the States that the best-looking Lucys come from England. It’s the only place for Lucys.”

  “Oh, come now. You rest.”

  And then, back into the painkiller gauze, back into the cobweb dreams in a place made of stone, chalk sheets, and 3 AM sobbing.

  Getting out a month later, he seemed taken over by a death drive, a gulping, grabbing, smoking endless void to fill with only one thing. Girls.

  Girls were the answer to that stretch of grim reaper sand and that ratatat-tat he heard nightly, sometimes waking him from sleep. Blonde girls. Brown girls. Redheaded girls. Tall girls. Short girls. Girls with nothing to ’em. Girls with big tits and red-painted lips. Girls with black hair. Girls with platinum blonde hair. Girls with honey-colored Rita Hayworth tresses in tight-fitting sweaters and peach silk dresses.

  There was no amount of girls to quench this death thirst, not that he didn’t try. Oh, did he ever. Sometimes two girls in one night. One for dinner. One for drinks. It was easy, in that save-the-world uniform, with that save-the-day story, the troops spreading out over France, pushing the bastard Krauts back. And Patton, well, you gotta love the guy, one thing about that reckless son of a bitch, he knew how to win a war, that’s for sure. Trouncing the Germans, trampling them into the fields, outsmarting those sneaky fuckers. We’ll show you how it’s done. Bastards.

  And the reports, coming back from the front, horror-eyed clips about stick figures in stripes, camps of bodies, ovens. Ovens! It was inconceivable. It couldn’t be true. Could it? Everyone asking everyone, have you heard, have you heard? Sick fucks. Good thing we have Patton.

  Girls cure it! Girls make it go away. Late night or early night or any time of day, really. Drawn-on pantyhose, don’t have to draw them off. A parade of buckles and hooks and clasps, blood-red lipstick, hot roller curls, cascading down, transparent bready flesh and below, somehow, the shuddering forgetting of the ratatat-tat. Mary, Ethel, Rita, Rose, Lizzie, Catherine, Betty, Angie, Kate, Amelia, Amanda, Abigail, Mabel, Isabel, Izzy, Grace. All of them, all of them colliding into one flickering late-night clamoring bliss. And then, the next day, another.

  Shipping back to the States, back home to Muskegon, recovered, he’d stop over in New York, just for a few days, to celebrate. Knowing, too, that in New York, there would be more of this, more girl frenzy, more girl medicine.

  And walking into Clark Monroe’s Uptown House, he had every intention of a blonde, brunette, redheaded girl marathon, until he saw across the bar a raven-haired girl who didn’t give a fuck about him.

  A girl named Dotsy.

  TEN

  Whooping cough. Pertussis. Three months old. Twelve weeks in this world and there they were, racing through each light, red lights even, to get to Mercy General Hospital before paroxysm, seizure, death.

  Elizabeth Lynn Krause, an infant, not gonna make it. That’s not what they said, but you could tell, that’s what they were thinking. A newborn nose crusted over in snot, that flek flek flek, hoop hoop hoop, over and over.

  The nurse had practically grabbed the baby and thrown her in the Mercy General ER herself. Tubes and pipes, pipes and tubes, a pipe in her mouth, to clear the lungs, a tube down her throat. Breathe, baby, breathe. Lord above, clear out this gunk, do not slaughter this innocent.

  And Dotsy, after all she’d been though. The nine months of waddling, the conked-out childbirth, the breast to baby’s lips.

  The truth of the matter is, before the nine months, Dotsy’d always been what they liked to call “nervous.” Frantic. Terrified. Misfiring. A brain full of turning gears and pistons, backfiring, broken, sped up somehow. Her brain a constant tumbling, a careening landscape, a frenzied paralysis of fear, terror, hysteria, pointed, sparked by . . . nothing. A panic dread. A blank canvas urgency to do . . . what?

  That was what the drink was for. The stiff cocktail was to quell the panic. Calm down! Stay still! Stop spinning! It was only the firewater remedy that put this riveting panic brain to rest. Shut it off. Please someone put a wrench in the gears. And the vodka was the wrench. And the gin. And the whiskey. For others, a pleasure. For her, medicine. Panic killer. Brain freeze.

  But the nine months had shifted the startle gears, too, somehow. The pulsing, rushed, stubborn hormones had taken over Dotsy and set her down to rest each night. You’re okay. You’re okay now. Sleep.

  The storm had subsided. Nine months of serene, tranquil waters. Yes, she knew it was the hormones, of course. But knowing didn’t break the spell. Basal nature. Stubborn, willful, unrelenting.

  And when the baby arrived, the breast to her mouth, the neurotransmitters, hormones, had flooded the waters again. Oxytocin. Love drug. Love your baby. You will never stop. You will protect this crying, goopy thing with your life. You never knew, did you? Well, Dotsy, this is it.

  And the nursing, again, a drug of calm, serenity, tide. A body drug of peace, an armor of ardor. A shield. You are happy. You ar
e happy now. All is passed. Everything is as it should be.

  And Dotsy knowing, knowing it was a trick, an ambush, releasing halcyon into the blood. But again, knowing was irrelevant, superfluous, laughable even. Knowing didn’t change it. Unrelenting nature. Miracle bodies.

  And how Dotsy had hated her body, too, all those years before. What is this thing? What is this thing I have to go around in? What is this thing bleeding and bubbling and burbling? This secret thing, I can’t tell anyone. She hated this thing. Didn’t everyone? Wasn’t that the point of being a girl? To hate this flesh that bleeds, this bread body, this too-vulnerable carousel, this danger-part below. This place where they’ll get you.

  A body of secrets and shames and holes. A panic body. A fear vessel. A hurt-me cast.

  But the nine months of calm drug, the three hours of love drug, well . . . suddenly the body was not any of these shames and holes and embarrassments. The body was a fucking miracle. How did it do that? Where did that milk come from? How did it know to keep going? How did it know to change when the baby changed? Grow when the baby grew? Give the baby just what it needed, when it needed it? The right milk, the right chemistry? Each day, each week, each month, every month, after baby was born? Grow with baby? Change with baby? Shut off when baby was done? Only enough for baby? Unattainable, a mystery still, for science. All those lab technicians in white coats cannot do what one breast does without thinking.

  Ha!

  Why did I hate this thing again? The “weaker” sex. The “rotten walls.” The “feminine” vessel. Ha! What a laugh. Thinking, more than once, a joke but not a joke . . . if men had babies we’d be extinct. Dotsy went from frantic panic lush to calm love drug cherub without transition. Without awareness. Without strife. An accidental transformation. But a saving one. Nevertheless.

  And then, with little Elizabeth baby girl whoop whooping in Mercy General Hospital, in the ER, poked and prodded with tubes and pipes . . . Dotsy knew, knew in every cell of her veins . . . if the baby goes, I go, too. Where the baby ends, I end, too.

  Bury me with her. Bury me under the ground and I will hold her through eternity. I will wrap myself around her and kick off fate, protect her through the tides and the rapture and the infinite beyond. I will slip down deep under the dirt and carry her home.

  You cannot take her away from me. You cannot bury my baby. Bury me, oh Lord. Bury me.

  The panic of not knowing, the panic of not being able to fix it, the panic of helplessness. Fear. Worry. Screaming, pulverizing terror. Those days in August 1956. Those not-know days. Those stab-your-heart days. Dotsy spent mornings in Mercy General Emergency. Nights in Mercy General Ward. The Lt. Colonel begging her to come home. Sleep. You must rest. Please.

  Sleep!

  As if it were possible. No sleep. I’ll sleep when she sleeps. I’ll sleep when she sleeps forever. You won’t be able to wake me up then. Just try.

  And that final night, the end night, the night they all knew she was going, it was over.

  Dotsy had ducked out, around the block to a place called Dreamers, a far cry from the Downbeat Club on 52nd. A shit-basket watering hole full of bloats. An end-your-life hole. A give-up.

  In this place, knowing she would have to end her life tomorrow, tear her skin off, what would she do, how would she do it, knowing she would have to burrow down into the boot hill dirt, the cemetery bed. Dotsy had proceeded to get shit-faced.

  The panic button pushed, the terror gears grinding, the dizzying abyss had, after nine months of bliss and then three, caught up with her. Here it was again, say a greeting now to your old friend panic. Your lifelong friend. The one you trust. You thought you’d gotten away, didn’t you? With that nine months, and that baby girl, and that magic body, chest of gold? You’d thought it was over, this spinning cycle of fear? Well, drink up, Dotsy. It’s gonna be a long life.

  “I’ll have another.”

  Gulp.

  “I’ll have another.”

  Throw it back.

  “I’ll have another.”

  ’Til the stool starts somehow not to hold and the mirror-glass wall of bottles starts to spin like a merry-go-round and suddenly, blissfully, thankfully, the panic-head flies up and Dorothy Krause, the Lt. Colonel’s wife, sways woozy off the bar stool onto the floor. The white-and-black checker tiles get to spin, too, and suddenly all the world is a white-and-black tornado and there are voices, yes, there are—but they are far away, up and above this spinning carnival ride, another ride, another promenade.

  And the Lt. Colonel gets called, out, out of his dreams in the middle of 2 AM. And there she is, his handsome wife from Odessa, lying broken on the white-and-black tile of this crap-lounge called Dreamers.

  A husband gets to walk through the pore-blotch faces, the bloodshot eyes, the flannels. A husband gets to pick up his wife off the floor and carry her, with the bartender, back to the car, back to the house. Back to the bed. A husband gets to take off her shoes. One shoe. Two shoe. Red skirt. Blue shoe. A husband gets to lie his wife on the bedspread and place her, tuck her tight. Quiet. Gentle. Silent. A husband gets to love his wife, helpless. To want to tear out his heart and give it to her. Replace her broken pieces. Take me. Take me, Dotsy. I will deliver you.

  And, in the morning, the kitchen dawn of the day, the coffee grinds brewing in the kitchen, the phone rings and the phone gets picked up and there’s a pause, a miracle pause, a savior pause. And the Lt. Colonel puts down the receiver and stares at the ceiling. A husband gets to tell his wife.

  “She made it. Our baby girl made it.”

  A wife gets to cry into her pillow, thank you. A wife gets to whisper thank you, Lord. A wife gets to hold her baby again and never, ever let her go.

  A wife gets to stand there, forty-seven years later, in the middle of Beth’s room. Light blue. The white wood doll bed and dresser, the white gilded mirror, the light blue curtains, the white closet door, a wife gets to stare at a portrait while, somewhere in town, a projector flickers round and round, telling how her baby girl got put six feet in the ground.

  ELEVEN

  The facts.

  On March 3, 1978, Elizabeth Lynn Krause, age twenty-two, clocked in at 6 PM for an eight-hour shift at the Green Mill Inn.

  There was snow on the ground. It was a brisk thirteen degrees, with a seven-below wind chill.

  At 9:15, an anonymous 911 phone call was made. “Please . . . something’s wrong . . . there’s noises . . . a robbery.” A man’s voice, middle-aged.

  Two days later, Beth Krause was found on the outskirts of town, off Route 31, dumped by a tree, in ripped clothes with multiple injuries, pummeled, strangled, and discarded. Around her neck, a Wedgwood locket, blue and white.

  These were the same facts from years ago. Nothing new. So it was strange that now, twenty-five years later, Detective Samuel Barnett, now a thirty-year veteran of the Muskegon Police Force, would look up at that screen, that small-town screen playing that small-town documentary, and say to himself quite simply, in the parlance of the town, “Something’s jacked.”

  But that’s exactly what he did.

  As the students, sweet kids, Lars, Danek, Brad, and Katy were congratulated lavishly by the townsfolk, fellow students, and even fellow members of the force . . . although “force” was a strong word for the boys in blue from Muskegon. They were more of an “inkling.” As Lt. Colonel Charles Krause and his elegant wife, Dorothy, were noticeably absent, but thanked nevertheless, Detective Barnett had his mind on a clock.

  Yes, it was the clock that ticked and tocked and beat its hideous heart between his ears, chiming its way through his cranium and emerging front and center, as elegant as an atom.

  The clock said 8:45.

  Don’t you see? The clock, thrown willy-nilly next to that crappy little safe in that crappy little wood-paneled office of the Green Mill Inn, said 8:45.

  But the robbery . . . according to the 911 phone call, was taking place at 9:15.

  All this time it had been thought,
the innocent bystander on the 911 call had said, “There’s been a robbery.” Past tense. But no. The tape was played and replayed in the film. The commotion, the “something wrong” was supposedly happening at 9:15. But the clock, in the background of the crime scene, frozen now forever on celluloid, was stopped at 8:45.

  He could kick himself for missing it. Yes, he was a rookie, but goddammit.

  Through the muttering, smattering of minions, Detective Samuel Barnett wedged his way, whispering in the ear of poor little rich Danek, frightened by the urgency of the cop.

  “Play it again.”

  “Excuse me.” Danek wondered if this was some strange form of compliment. Not a request.

  “Play it again.”

  Silence.

  “But, sir—”

  “Listen, kid, all I’m asking is you close those doors, grab the projectionist, and play it again.”

  “Right now?”

  Danek didn’t know if he was angry or thrilled. What should he be? He was both.

  “Yes, kid, right now.”

  And that was that, cops get their way in little podunk towns, especially with college students with straight A’s and aspirations toward, what, the Supreme Court, the attorney general, the presidency.

  Yes, of course, Danek would replay the documentary . . . a private screening for the detective. How thrilling! Flattering, really.

  Let the flicker down, draw the curtain up, make the small room a place of thinking. Danek wondered if this would help him get into Princeton.

  PART III

  ONE

  Maybe it was excessive to go over there so much, the day after Thanksgiving, the day before Christmas, to set up the tree, take out the ornaments, boxes from storage, to buy the Douglas fir, to fix the tiny white glitter lights, to string the tinsel, to hang the stockings, and to do so all to a selection, sappy indeed, of Christmas music, carols, chosen by Danek, of course, on this newfangled thing, this iPod, he had exhibited to a chorus of oohs and aahs.