Day of Reckoning

by John Katzenbach

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, it turned out to be an enemy squad, moving in front of our position.”

  “What happened?”

  “We had a fight, and we won.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Shooting and everything?”

  “Yes. We called in for artillery, too, so there were great big explosions. It was like being caught right in the middle of the fourth of July fireworks. Scary and beautiful all at the same time.”

  “Did you shoot anyone?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it was so dark it was hard to see. I was shooting my rifle like everybody else, but I don’t know if I hit anything or anybody. But that’s not the point. The point is, if we hadn’t all been awakened by the joke, then we would have been taken by surprise and maybe we wouldn’t have won.”

  “Oh. I see. Well, what happened next?”

  “By morning we were in a big battle. But that’s another story. But I’ll say this. After that night, we had a rule: Jersey Jerry told the joke every time the going got tough. It was like a good luck charm, because it saved all our lives that night.”

  “Like a magic saying?”

  “Right.”

  “We should think up something like that.”

  “All right, let’s try.”

  Judge Pearson felt a sudden harshness inside. It wasn’t the best magic saying, he remembered. He had an abrupt vision of walking past his friend’s body, months later, on a different island. He had been shot through the forehead by a sniper, and his body was rigid and mocking in death, as if sneering to hide his jealousy at those who lived on. Judge Pearson remembered how much he’d hated seeing those men who were killed by a single shot, or a single piece of anonymous flying shrapnel. In an odd way, he preferred to see the men whose bodies were ripped and torn apart by great explosions, shredded by machine guns, blasted by mines. It was as though their deaths were less capricious, less specific. If Jersey Jerry had ducked his head a millisecond earlier, he would have lived. In a battle where murderous hunks of metal were filling the air, death was somehow logical and understandable. How could one expect to live through the firestorm? But he despised the idea of someone sighting down a rifle barrel at his heart or his brain and uniquely stealing his life.

  But even after he died, we still told the joke. And it seemed to work for us, if only a little bit.

  “Grandfather? Here’s a riddle I learned in school: What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”

  Judge Pearson knew the answer, although he had not heard the saying in decades.

  “I don’t know, Tommy. What, some sort of bug?”

  “Man!” said the boy. “When he’s a baby, he crawls on his hands and knees. When he gets a little older, he walks on his two legs, and when he gets to be old, even older than you, Grandfather, he uses a cane to help him walk. That’s three.”

  Judge Pearson laughed. “That’s a fine riddle,” he said.

  “How shall we make it into a magic joke?” the boy asked.

  “We’ll just say, tell the walking riddle, and then we’ll both know what we mean. How’s that?”

  “The walking riddle. Okay.”

  Tommy reached out and took his grandfather’s hand in his. The two of them shook with mock solemnity. Then they both smiled and laughed.

  “Do you think it will work like magic?” he asked.

  “Why not?” Judge Pearson replied.

  “That’s right,” Tommy answered firmly. “Just why the hell not?”

  “Tommy!” the judge said. “Who—”

  “Well, that’s what my dad says when he gets a little mad and wants to sound a little strong and angry, like, ‘Tommy, why the hell won’t you get into the bath,’ or something like that.”

  The judge laughed out loud at the boy’s perfect imitation of his father’s voice. We forget sometimes that we are raising little mirrors, on which we etch everything, he thought.

  Tommy smiled and stood up.

  “Grandfather, one thing has bothered me all day. It’s the first time I’ve ever spent an entire time, like a whole day, without seeing the sky. I don’t know what sort of day it was outside. I mean, even when I was sick at home, I still had my window. And even when I was younger and I would have to go to the hospital and have all those tests, I still would know somehow. Somewhere I would see out and I could think about what sort of day it was and what it would be like if I were outside playing. But here I can’t tell whether it rained or snowed or if the wind blew or the sun shone, or maybe it got a little warmer and I could have gone to the playground at school with just my sweater on. We can’t tell anything in here and that sort of bothers me.” Tommy shook his head. “It’s just like we were in prison.”

  The judge got up and stood next to the boy. Prison, he thought. An odd combination of ideas started to form within him.

  “Well, let’s see. Let’s try to guess. What do you think?” he said, but all the time he was mentally chewing over what his grandson had said.

  “All right. But how?”

  “Well, if it had rained, we would have heard the rain hitting against the roof and running in the gutters. They must be right outside the attic, so right away, we can rule that out.”

  “Okay. No rain. But what about snow?”

  “Good question. But when it snows, there’s a way that you can feel it lying on the roof. It makes it colder. Here, let me hold you up and you feel, and tell me if you can sense it.”

  The judge was guessing about this.

  Nevertheless, he reached down and lifted his grandson up, so that the boy could stretch and touch the ceiling.

  “It’s cold,” Tommy said, “but not so cold.”

  “So, what do you think?”

  “No snow,” said the boy.

  The judge put the child down and Tommy went over to the weak spot in the wall. He put his ear up and remained there silently for a few seconds. Then he shivered.

  “But real cold. I could hear a bit of wind, too.”

  “So, let’s figure the temperature has continued to go down and the wind is blowing a bit.”

  “Now, how about the sky? Cloudy or clear?” Tommy asked.

  “That’s got me stumped,” Judge Pearson replied. “Sometimes the wind will clear out the clouds. Sometimes it blows strongly and they seem to collect.”

  Tommy shivered again. “I think cloudy,” he said. “I think there were lots of big gray clouds overhead and people took their boots to school and work because they were afraid it would snow. The cold air feels damp, like that little bit that gets inside you right before it starts to really come down hard.”

  “Well, last year we had six inches of snow two weeks before Thanksgiving, remember?”

  “And Christmas we went sledding over at Jones Farm.”

  “So, it could be getting ready for real winter.”

  “I hope so,” Tommy said. “This year I’m going to play ice hockey in the peewee program.”

  The judge turned away. This year, he thought. He had an overwhelming desire to hide his head from the reality of their situation, but instead he sat and saw Tommy walk to the weak spot in the wall. The boy touched the wood gingerly, pushing at the planks.

  “Grandfather,” Tommy said, “I think we should start trying to get these free. Maybe take the nail and scrape away at them, like you thought. It would give me something to do.”

  Judge Pearson saw the boy’s look of doubt, and thought suddenly: Why the hell not?

  He stood up and said, “Dammit, Tommy, we’ve sat about too much. Let’s try that.”

  He stepped over to the wall and knelt down to inspect it, “Oka
y,” he said. “We’re going to start. Quietly.”

  But as he stood up and turned to get the nail from its hiding place, he heard footsteps in the hallway outside their locked door. “Back to the bed, Tommy!” he whispered urgently. But his head was churning with another thought: She has put us in this prison consciously. But she has also told us, without thinking, how to act. What did she do? She slugged the guard her first day. She plotted out all the terrible details of what she’s doing. But what she didn’t do was what I have been doing: sitting around and feeling sorry for myself.

  Tommy jumped across the attic and the judge followed behind him as the door opened and Olivia Barrow walked through. She carried a small tape recorder in her hand.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” she said briskly. “Keeping ourselves amused, are we?”

  The judge just glared at her. He noticed that Tommy, too, frowned instead of shrinking.

  “During my eighteen years of paid government vacation, I spent precisely six hundred and thirty-six days in what was called administrative segregation, which is bureaucratic-speak for something any person familiar with old Jimmy Cagney movies would know as The Hole. It wasn’t nearly as nice as this, judge, but you’re probably getting the idea.”

  “So what now?” Judge Pearson asked angrily.

  “I just need to steal a little part of you, judge. And a little bit of the boy there, as well . . .”

  “Forget it,” the judge said.

  She paused and let the silence between them grow for an instant.

  “Do you remember the Getty kidnapping, judge? The billionaire’s grandson? Not that long ago, now, was it? Anyway, those kidnappers had their sincerity doubted. They ran into extraordinary reluctance on the part of the old moneybags to come up with the bucks. Very bad move. Bad business, all around. They had to demonstrate quite graphically the sincerity of their intentions. Do you remember how?”

  Judge Pearson felt as if he’d been struck in the stomach. Images flooded back from the evening news and the newspapers, all of the same horrific event: The kidnappers had lopped off the boy’s ear and sent it to the reluctant billionaire.

  He squeezed all his muscles together and felt a rise in anger. I won’t have it anymore, he thought. I won’t allow her to twist and threaten. No more.

  He realized he was on his feet, and had pushed Tommy behind him.

  “You won’t touch anyone,” he said coldly, evenly.

  Olivia put her face a few inches away from him.

  “Don’t give me orders,” she said.

  “You won’t touch him.”

  “Who are you to say what I can and can’t do?”

  She suddenly thrust a revolver barrel up under the judge’s nose. He didn’t move. He didn’t acknowledge the presence of the weapon.

  “You won’t touch him,” he said again.

  For an instant, the two remained frozen in position. The judge was aware of the barrel pressing cold against his face, of her finger on the trigger.

  Then she lowered the weapon.

  “Very tough, judge, very tough. Good show.”

  She stepped back. Then she mockingly clapped her hands together.

  “Very strong showing by the underdogs. I admire will and determination, judge. Probably the only things I do admire.”

  She let out a small laugh.

  “We probably have more in common than you think,” she said.

  The judge relaxed suddenly, but he narrowed his eyes and continued to glare at her.

  “Yes,” he said. “We’re getting to know each other a little bit better now, aren’t we?”

  She paused, not answering directly, but nodding slowly.

  “But still, I need something from you,” she said. “And now you will cooperate. I will even ask nicely: Please. Pretty please.”

  She tried to bait him with the sarcasm in her voice, but for the first time was unsuccessful, and for an instant he thought he saw a different anger flashing in her eyes, one with perhaps a small element of doubt at its core. Then, just as swiftly, it was gone, replaced by the steady burning determination that he’d come to anticipate.

  The judge looked down at the recorder in her hand and envisioned himself more than forty years younger, waiting for the dawn’s fake promise of security with his friend in the jungle foxhole. Posse, not pussy, you dumb horse. He said the joke to himself and felt stronger and alert, as he had on that awful, clammy night in the past.

  Megan called Karen and Lauren: “Girls, come on!”

  They were at her side in a moment, their voices raised with instant questions: “Is something wrong?” “What is it?”

  Megan shook her head. “No, I just need some fresh air. We all do. I took the phone off the hook and we’re all going to go outside and get some air for a couple of minutes. Get your coats.”

  The twins nodded in unison and started throwing on winter clothes. Megan looked at them and for an instant thought about how she loved each differently, although she always thought of them together. Karen has her father’s sturdiness and cool, appraising eye. Lauren is more emotional, more willing to give in to fantasy and adventure. More like me.

  She gestured at the girls. “Come on, we need to look at something.”

  They followed her out, quieted by curiosity.

  Megan saw the last moments of day skulk from the gray sky and felt night chill pull at her. She shivered away the discomfort and saw the twins pull their coats closer to their bodies. She walked down the path to the sidewalk, then turned and looked back at the house.

  “How long have we lived here?” she asked.

  “Mom! Come on, you know,” said Lauren quickly.

  “Eight years. Since right after Tommy was born, remember?” Karen said. “I remember nothing worked at first and the house seemed too big.”

  “And the furnace went out the first winter, and we almost froze that one night. Brrrr, I’ll never forget that,” Lauren said quickly, “because Karen looked like a Martian wearing socks on her hands, and that silly old red hat. And there wasn’t enough room in the downstairs closet for all the winter coats, and it got lousy television reception, so we couldn’t watch our shows. I mean, now it’s okay because of the cable, but I thought it was crazy when we moved in.”

  “Do you know why I loved this house?” Megan asked.

  “The neighborhood?” Lauren tried.

  “It’s got good schools,” Karen pointed out.

  “No,” Megan said. “Because it was the first house that I really felt was mine. When you guys were born, we were still living with Grand­father and Grandmother. Then we moved into a rental house in Belchertown, then a ranch-type house in South Deerfield, which we bought because Duncan got a good deal on the mortgage. But I hated those places, because they weren’t like me. This house was. I know things didn’t work quite right at first, but I always felt like this was our home, more than any other place. It was where you guys really grew up. It was here Tommy got started, and where he had all his struggles. Because this was the place where Duncan and I were home. You know, the first Christmas after your grandmother died, when instead of going there, Grandfather came here, do you remember?”

  Both girls nodded.

  “I wanted to cry that Christmas. Not because my mom was gone, which was sad and terrible and made me lonely, because I still miss her, but because I had finally, I don’t know, stopped being someone’s child and started being myself. She would have understood that. You won’t understand it for some time, but someday you will. It’s not wrong to have your own life, or to want to be on your own. But it’s hard to find your way sometimes.”

  “Is that what happened with you and Dad?” Karen asked. “I mean, back in the sixties.”

  “Sort of. We were looking for something. Everyone was. It took a long time to figure it
all out.”

  Megan thought of peace signs and long hair, American flags burn­ing, bell-bottom jeans and ragged leather vests. The music of revolution thumped in her head, heavy bass beat and screeching guitars. Columbia. Berkeley. Haight. The summer of love. Woodstock generation, followed by Altamont and Kent State. Up against the wall. Her pulse quickened.

  “It wasn’t wrong, what we did,” she said. “It may seem like it now, but it wasn’t wrong then. No—” She hesitated, then continued. “Well, the robbery was always wrong. But it was hard to see it that way, back then. And it seemed like such a smaller wrong, in com­parison with all the others that were happening all over the world, every day.”

  “But you changed?” Lauren asked.

  “Well, yes and no. The world changed. We went along with it. It was as if the whole world wanted to forget about all the things that happened then, and we wanted to be forgotten right alongside. Maybe that was a mistake, you know. Maybe people should have kept worrying about all the things that we worried about then. But it was such an intense time, and I guess the world couldn’t stand it. So things became calmer, more sedate.”

  “But Olivia, she didn’t change?” Lauren asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “How could she?” Karen said. “She was in prison. All she could see was how the prison changed. Not her.”

  “That’s right, too,” Megan replied softly.

  “That’s probably why she hates us so much,” Lauren said.

  Megan nodded. She was about to say something, but instead she paused, looking up at the sky. She could see the moon hanging over the treeline, shedding wan light through the stark branches. “The year you guys were born, 1969, a man landed on the moon. It probably doesn’t seem so remarkable for you, what with the space shuttle and all that you’ve grown up with. For Duncan and me, too, it was pretty much what we’d expected. We’d grown up with the bomb ourselves, and technology was something we were all used to. But I remember sitting with Grandmother and Grandfather, nursing you two, watching it on television. The incredible thing was not that we landed on the moon, but the way your grandparents stared at the television screen in amazement. They said it was because they were born back in the twenties, when the world was so new to technology. They were children of a depression. Airplanes were barely invented. They had grown up on Buck Rogers and they had never thought it possible that they would see man go to another world. That was something reserved for science fiction.”