The Writing on the Wall: A Novel

by W. D. Wetherell

  Badly—how else could she react? Extravagantly. Wildly. She could have cursed reading the word the first time and she could have shouted the second time and the third time she could have screamed and even that wouldn’t have been commensurate with what she felt. The word had slapped her, then fallen off the plaster right smack into her lap, with those spiky t’s and sordid r’s and the dirty vowels that served as their glue.

  She went out to the kitchen and fixed herself supper to get away from it. She swept the wallpaper scraps off the floor and burned them outside to get away from it. She stood naked under the hose. But her little cleansing ceremonies didn’t work, nothing worked, and so she went the other way, deliberately thought of the word constantly, saying it over and over to herself until it was nonsense.

  Torture. Torture. Torture. Torture. That old childhood trick, like deliberately spinning yourself around and around on the grass until you got dizzy. Torture. Torture. Torture. Torture. Torture.

  That was better, it was beginning to blur now—she turned the sewing room lamp off and went upstairs to the bedroom. Torture. Torture. Torture. Torture. Torture. Torture. Torture. She said it so many times it became automatic, her imagination kept it up in her sleep. Torture became torch-her became tore-her became toss-her became touch-her—and touch-her had never hurt anyone. When she woke up in the morning, went downstairs, ate breakfast, picked up her tools and began stripping, determined to finish the room in one final go, the word hardly meant anything, Dottie could use it all she wanted, it was nothing but a blur of ugly syllables that hardly tortured her at all.

  Two days later I discovered Beth’s writing with the very first strip I peeled off the wall in the TV room which I guess had been her parlor but we had put the TV in there when we first bought the house and it’s been there ever since up on a shelf along with all my women’s magazines and Danny’s first buck or at least its antlers. There was a foldout couch I kept meaning to replace and a coffee table with a checkerboard built into the top where Danny always used to beat Andy and Andy never seemed to mind. Since becoming an abandoned woman I didn’t see any reason to keep it tidy so it was the room that needed working on the most.

  I wasn’t as surprised by the writing as you might think. Ever since we moved here I had sensed somebody else in the house like a restless presence that couldn’t rest. Ghosts you’re thinking and you’re probably laughing. But I never thought ghosts I thought well some poor soul once lived here who had a hard time and the echo of that is still bouncing off the walls. Peeling back that first strip you know what I thought? THERE YOU ARE!!! Just like in hide and go seek. Even then I was slow on the uptake. I thought it was a recipe she had jotted down on the wall while she was papering or a calculation about how many rolls she needed or some simple sort of reminder.

  If I stripped off more paper I would have discovered what it really hid but just then I heard a noise outside like a giant blender crushing ice. I felt like I’d been caught doing something secret so I reached up as high as I could and tucked the edge of that first strip back under the molding and patted it down so the writing was hidden again and only then went outside.

  A big Greyhound bus was pulling over to the side of the road ANOTHER BUS so it seemed like my place had suddenly become Grand Central Station. The driver climbed down muttering to himself and right behind him of all people came Andy! “Lend a hand?” the driver asked and Andy nodded. He gave me a little wave and followed the driver around to the back of the bus and the next thing I knew the two of them were under there hammering away at a pipe that had bounced loose on one of our potholes. When they scooted back out again Andy’s uniform was covered in mustard-colored grease which made him look like a hot dog after crawling through a bun. The driver climbed inside then threw a duffel bag down to him and snapped off a salute.

  “Enjoy your leave, soldier! When you get over there give ’em hell for me!”

  That eased the shock since at least I knew now it was leave that had brought him home. He hadn’t said anything in his last letter but he was never one to say. He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead like he’d only been gone a few hours and followed me over to the porch. I think he would have continued right straight to the TV room but I wasn’t going to let him do that at least not right away.

  “Home sweet home,” I said sort of prompting him.

  He looked around and nodded. “Home sweet home.”

  “So, you got a leave?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Regular?”

  “Embarkation.”

  “You’re going?”

  “Nam.”

  “How long is your leave?”

  “Thursday.”

  “And you ship out?”

  “Monday.”

  “I thought it might be Germany.”

  “Nope.”

  That’s pretty much how our conversation went the two of us circling around each other on the porch like Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston me jabbing him ducking.

  “Well come on in, come on in! Take your shirt or tunic or whatever it’s called off and I’ll put it in the wash.”

  You need to be careful with Andy since if you tell him something he’ll do it. Right there on the porch he started stripping off his uniform! That made me laugh. Same old Andy! But the truth is he looked different than when he left not skinny and hard like you would think after basic training but thicker and puffier especially around the middle. His hair was pushed straight back in a crew cut and his acne was just as tomato red as ever and his eyes still had that meekness that used to irritate his dad and the dimple under his lip still reminded me of Kirk Douglas but what surprised me most was that over his belt hung the beginning of a paunch. I couldn’t help sticking out my hand and patting it as sort of a question.

  “Good chow,” he said. “The cooks are pals of mine and I can never say no when they offer me seconds.”

  That’s all I could get out of him about army life. He went up to his room and when he came back he had on the white t-shirt and khaki work pants that had always been his favorite clothes. I asked if he was thirsty but he said not particularly and went right over to the TV room and plopped himself down on the couch. One of his favorite shows was on which turned out to be a soap opera and he told me who all the characters were and what rotten things they were doing to each other. Just by luck I had chicken cutlets in the ice box which had always been his favorite and I fixed them with red potatoes and corn on the cob and maple biscuits and brought it to him on his old Donald Duck tray and when he saw what it was I got the first real smile I’d seen yet.

  I sat down on our beanbag chair so he was in between me and the TV screen and though I pretended to watch it what I mostly did was watch him. Part of what I felt was what any mom would feel if her boy was going off to war proud and apprehensive but after that it got more complicated. Vietnam sat off in this numb zone that had something to do with television and something to do with politics and since I never had time for either of those things it could have been Mars they were talking about. No one in town had ever been sent there. It would have worried me more if he had been going to Germany to face all those Russian missiles and tanks.

  Loving Danny losing Danny had worn me out I’m not ashamed to admit that. Both before and after his brother’s death Andy was just THERE he wasn’t the kind of boy you worried about and so it was hard to worry about him now. He had his arm hooked over the back of the couch to keep from sliding off onto the carpet but he kept inching lower and lower anyway and it was pretty funny how limp he became how slack. I thought to myself well that’s Andy for better or worse. That’s Andy and he’s all I have left in the world and I love him more than I ever thought.

  “This next one’s my favorite,” he said and just like that he was sitting ramrod straight on the couch. “Is it nine yet?”

  He didn’t look like he could bear waiting. He patted the couch made a space for me and once the program came on talked a mile a minute telling me what it was about.<
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  “The Man from Uncle,” he said. “They’re good guys and what’s funny is one of them is a Russian and yet they work together stamping out world crime. See? There he is! Ilya Kuriagin. Uncle is the agency they work for. Here’s the other one, Napoleon Solo. They’re getting their assignment, hold on to your hat!”

  He was still watching TV when I went to bed and he may have been there all night because when I got up in the morning he was back on the couch though now he wore a black t-shirt not a white one. If that’s how he wanted to relax during his leave it was fine by me though later in the morning I asked him to help me gather blueberries and of course he hopped right up. He was good at picking he could hold cupfuls in his hands but I was pretty good myself so we soon started a competition to see who could fill their bucket up first.

  He took a shower after that went back to the TV. About four I heard somebody at the front door. August! I hadn’t seen her since Lilac’s baby and as we stood on the porch she filled me in on the news. They had cleared brush for a field. Their berries were spectacular. There was a new calf. Luddy was adorable. Granite had come back from Canada with the sweetest weed yet.

  “That’s wonderful,” I told her. “But you must be tired from your walk. Come inside with me there’s a little surprise.”

  I led her down the hall to the TV room but all there was of Andy was an empty depression in the couch. “Wait here,” I told her and went out to the kitchen then up to his room but there was no sign of him. That confused me but since I hadn’t told August about him yet I took her back outside. I’d been meaning to introduce her to Therese LaBombard and I figured now was as good a time as any and when I walked her up there the two of them immediately hit it off. August had learned French at private school and Therese spoke Quebecois but they managed to understand each other all right and Mrs. L. gave her a blueberry ketchup recipe that had been in her family for years.

  I walked August a little way in toward the hills and stood watching until she was out of sight. When I went back into the TV room Andy sat slumped on the couch.

  “Where’d you disappear to?” I said. I figured he was shy with so pretty a girl.

  “I didn’t disappear anywhere, Mom. I’ve been right here all afternoon.”

  That was a lie but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why he would bother. But that was the last day of my vacation and I didn’t want to ruin it by arguing. I made meatloaf for dinner and we watched TV for a while and then I asked him to go for a walk with me to watch the sunset and he gave me a nice hug before I went up to bed.

  “I’m really glad to have you here,” I told him.

  “Me, too,” he said softly. “Really happy.”

  I always leave for work before the sun comes up but I left a note saying that maybe later we could go for a swim in the stream or drive into town for ice cream. At the hospital things were crazy busy mostly the usual confusion that comes when you’ve been gone on vacation but then a patient coded in the afternoon and no one could get an IV started on this retired railroad man and his family got hysterical and Tina Holbrook came up to our floor and started yelling at me for messing up her overtime schedule. As if that wasn’t enough one of our orderlies Tom Titus who had spent the last eight years leering at me every time I came in range slunk up to me by the desk as I was getting ready to go home.

  “You’re gorgeous,” he said which was his usual opening line.

  “Not now, Tom.”

  “Fuck you then.” He pointed toward the lounge at the end of the hall. “This bald farty guy wants to talk to you.”

  The good thing was that Tom put me in a bad mood. I walked down the hall determined not to take shit from anyone. The bald guy resembled a gangster with a forehead of cement and jowls that looked stuffed with fishing sinkers so I wasn’t surprised when he waved a card in my face and announced he was a cop.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said with a smirk.

  He had a Boston accent and his cheek was scarred with a birthmark that looked like a slab of bubble gum plastered across the side of his nose. FBI? I felt like saying. You look like the kind of crook the FBI is supposed to hunt down. But I didn’t say that.

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  He seemed used to that.

  “When’s the last time you saw your son?” he demanded.

  “Danny? 1964. He shot himself playing cowboy.”

  The agent looked down at his clipboard.

  “Andrew Peach.”

  I’d held on to my attitude until then which was all about laughing him off but the moment he said Andy’s name everything changed so fast it was like one of our nurses had given me a hypodermic that pumped wariness and caution right straight into my heart.

  “Three months ago when he left for basic. Why? There’s nothing wrong with him is there officer?”

  The agent moved his tongue around so it was like he was licking the bubble gum from inside.

  “He went on embarkation leave three weeks ago and hasn’t reported back since. His unit shipped out last Tuesday for Vietnam. It was AWOL before that but now it’s desertion.”

  “Missed the plane? He can catch another one, you must have plenty.”

  “Desertion means fifteen years in the stockade. Aiding and abetting him means five years in a federal penitentiary, a $25,000 fine, plus we take your house. I’ll ask you again, Mrs. Peach. Have you seen your son or do you know where he might be hiding?” “You must be mistaken, officer. Andy loves the army, he was looking forward to going overseas. He’s the easiest boy in the world to get along with.”

  “You haven’t seen him? Haven’t gotten a phone call? Gotten a letter?”

  “I have no idea where he is.”

  “I hope that’s veracious. My men are searching your house this very minute.”

  My heart jumped with that and I made a fluttering gesture with my hand like Scarlett O’Hara about to faint. The agent decided he had me just where he wanted. He warned me again about the penalties for desertion then went on to say that if Andy turned himself in or reported to Fort Polk all would be forgiven but he only had twenty-four hours and past that anything might happen since there was a war on even though plenty of people pretended there wasn’t. He finished by giving me his business card telling me he’d be in touch and then as he grabbed his fedora he asked a final question that seemed the most random and pointless of all.

  “How far is Canada from here, Mrs. Peach?”

  “Ten miles. You going sightseeing?”

  He grimaced enough that his jowls jiggled but he didn’t answer me or at least not directly.

  “Canucks,” he said. “Fucking animals.”

  The drive home was torture. I was sure some mistake had been made though I couldn’t understand what the mistake was or how I could fix it and this drove me crazy plus I expected to see Andy being led from the house in chains. It’s normally a twenty-minute drive but I did it in ten. Too fast too obvious so I slowed down and drove past the house to make sure I wasn’t being followed. Things seemed peaceful enough and when I got to the porch and heard the TV blaring I wanted to cry in relief.

  Andy sat slumped on the couch staring at one of his soap operas and didn’t realize I was there until I stepped in front of the screen and turned it off.

  “Hey,” he said in gentle protest.

  I didn’t waste any time.

  “When did they come?”

  He looked sleepy like I had interrupted his nap and rubbed his eyes like the sandman had him.

  “Hour ago.”

  “Where did you hide?”

  “Never had to. They didn’t come here. They drove up the road to Mrs. LaBombard’s. Three cars full. I heard her shouting and that’s how I knew they were there.”

  “They went to the wrong house?”

  “I’ll say. She was shouting at them in French and waving a broom around. They didn’t look happy and so they drove off.”

  I can’t tell you how calmly he said this like all the e
xcitement had nothing to do with him.

  “Explain,” I said sitting down on the couch next to him.

  Home three days and already the brushy tips of his crewcut were beginning to soften and curl over and he sat there trying to stroke them flat. He had some nasal problems when he was little which makes it seem like he sighs whenever he takes a deep breath and that’s what I got now one of his deepest most reluctant sighs.

  “We were due to ship out from San Diego and they said if we wanted to spend our five days of embarkation leave there it was okay we could join the unit at the air base once our time was up.”

  He folded his hands together and smiled.

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, a bunch of us thought that would be fun so we went to the Greyhound station.”

  “And?”

  “We had to wait at the lunch counter for the next bus west. I got talking to this discharged private who had just gotten back from Nam. He was going home to Nashville and he was complaining about how long a trip it was and it was boring without anybody to talk to and if I had nothing better to do why didn’t I come along with him and when we got there he could show me the sights.”

  “So instead of San Diego you went to Nashville?”

  “Didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He had hundreds of stories about things he’d seen while he was fighting over there. You know. Not so nice things. But when we stopped in Little Rock he got talking to this hooker and didn’t get back on the bus so I changed my ticket and headed for Knoxville instead.”

  “Knoxville? Why Knoxville?”

  Andy shrugged. “Always liked the sound of it.” He rapped hishand against the wall. “Knock knock who’s there?”

  “You stayed?”

  “Couple of days.”

  “Doing?”

  “Thinking about things.”

  “What things?”

  “Met this girl and she was going to Atlanta and she asked me to go along and I said sure why not. I was AWOL by then anyway. It was pretty hot in Atlanta and I couldn’t get cool no matter what I did and her boyfriend showed up so that’s when I began thinking about heading home.”