Down Jersey Driveshaft

by William J. Jackson

  He nods his head.

  Lyle reaches her hand under the bed sheet. Benny watches from one blurry eyeball, still faking sleep. He thinks she's checking an injury by the way Sulley lets out a groan. But the arm goes up and down. Benny finds it weird, but the eyelids are too heavy to figure it out now. Like everything else without resolve, answers will have to wait until tomorrow.

  In his dream, Benny is crashing into the spinning earth. The Spad's motor dies in a whimper while his body screams out from the legs down. Going down! Going down...

  He's up and moaning. Breathing in short, repetitive spurts, he wonders where he is, why the pain is still tangible. The infirmary is pitch dark. Boys snore, one moans. Benny's groin burns, stings and swells. He figures he must have to pee something fierce.

  So, why is it so drafty?

  A hard slap wakes up the infirmary, a cutting strike sending raw embers up his body. The embers fire at the speed of light, colliding into Benny's eyes to push out soft, warm tears. Where are the sheets? Why is his gown lifted up? What hit--?

  "Did you think I wouldn't know what goes on in my own house?" the sergeant drone of Nurse Lyle asks. Benny can hear her voice at the end of the bed.

  But he's too busy clutching his private, rolling around slowly, gnashing teeth and crying. He rolls over on his back to hide the jewels. The unseen nightmare called Lyle doesn't discriminate.

  The lash cuts Benny's backside, right across the lower end of his right side. It's edge leaves a straight razor line going down. The searing burn is unbearable. Benny curls up, petrified fetus. He bites the blood right out of the bottom lip while the nurse marks her territory.

  "Pissing the sheets like a five-year old? Grown men fight war, but come home to be babies? Not here. Not ever." The belt comes down on the backside again, making Benny flip over on to his back. Lyle tears into his hide: crotch, inner thighs, lower abdomen. Benny tries to curse her out but the teeth won't stop clenching. All that comes out is blood-dribble mumbling. On her eighth invisible swing, Benny finds his inner soldier, and lunges for the end of the bed.

  He finds dark air, a right knee colliding with the brass frame in bad fashion, and a cold hand shoving him face first toward the floor. Hands reach out to brace for impact, just in time to save his jaw from becoming wreckage. He's clumsy on the drugs and taped up tight. Too tight to defend, too weary for combat. The knee flares loud enough to get Benny screaming. His thighs are warm, sweat and blood trickle freely. He braces with the broken wrist, and cries aloud.

  Lyle isn't done.

  "Attack me? I care for you, keep you disciplined. First you get up without permission, night after night, pee on my sheets. And now? Attack me!"

  Benny rolls on the floor, slow to get up. New wounds marry the old, and the newlyweds won't allow Benny to feel at ease on the wedding night.

  "Just get back in bed," one of the boys whispers. "She'll stop if you say sorry and get in bed."

  Embarrassment makes the face hot with flushing blood. Pain makes him unsure what body part to cradle. Before Benny can decide, he's scratching the varnish off the wood floor, sobbing more. A weight presses down between the legs. It pushes down hard, a second before corkscrewing to the right.

  Benny splays out , arms and legs stretch near to tearing from the sockets. He can't take it, so words most foul roar out of his mouth. He finds the freedom to cuss like a sailor in between whimpering.

  "Benny!" the boys softly yell, their sole effort at collective strength.

  "Quiet." One word from the nurse ends the uprising.

  Nurse Lyle digs in her heel, feeling a grown man squirm beneath her tiny foot. "What do you say?"

  Benny can't even speak anymore. He's in and out of consciousness. His eyes feel swollen, freight trains are ramming against the optic nerves, stomach boils. He chokes on vomit, feels acid burns scar the throat. Inside matches outside.

  "S-s-s-s......."

  He thinks the heel is gone, though he's too hurt to confirm it, too whooped to move.

  "Did I hear something?"

  "S-s-sssrrreee." Benny rests his temple on the floor. For some reason, its cool solidity feels good against the backdrop of the fire. The body radiates outward, an unpleasant hum vibrates his legs.

  "Good for you. You are trainable. Back in bed."

  He barely notices the click of heels step away from him. Benny's mind utters failure from front to back. His body groans. His feelings are a moth in a spider's web, twisting every direction, finding more entanglement than escape. He can push up from the floor on the one good arm. The legs take much more coaxing, waiting. Wiggling, trembling, Benjamin Haskins stands to a crouch, head down. Lyle takes him by the arm. He jumps and lets out a frightened gulp. next to him, Benny hears the nurse inhale. He knows that sound, for he made it after every successful flight. Satisfaction.

  He breathes in and out in stuttered, skipped steps. Hurt too bad front and rear, he lays on his right side and shivers. Is it from cold, or agony? He can't think about it. He can't think. A whirlpool of anxiety, white water of weakness, tidal waves of uncertainty smash reason against the rocks.

  He doesn't even notice the syringe enter the vein. He flinches as Lyle applies every bandage to the new injuries, more so as thicker blankets cover his bare flesh. Many times, his breath stops dead when she touches him, when she caresses his face.

  "Men get my care, Benjamin. Boys need discipline. You need to decide whether, during your time here, you'll be a man, or a boy." She rubs his bandaged head like his mother used to after reading Robert Louis Stevenson before bedtime. Benny's skin crawls from the comfort, humbled by the control.

  She consoles him until the morphine incites blackness.

  In the middle of the night, or right before dawn (he can't tell), squeaking partially alerts Benny to wake up. In the small light of a dying candle, he sees a female figure sitting up on the bed next to his. The bed makes noise. He thinks...he thinks the boy that was in the bed is still lying there. What's...? The drugs call him back home.

  Days and nights are robotic. Benny wakes up to perfectly cooked meals of scrapple and asparagus so tender he forgets home. Sometimes he gets bacon and sunny-side-up eggs. He can barely walk. Ice is applied to his crotch every few hours. The doctor warns Benny not to get up at night again.

  "The dark plays tricks on the eyes. Very easy to stumble and hit the toilet. We had that happen to a few men at our old hospital in Philadelphia. Bad move. Could ruin a man for life, and surely you'll be wanting to take on a wife one day soon. Nurse Lyle was smart years ago in insisting the boys remain in bed. You're in good hands with her."

  During the checkup, he wanted to tell, to yell, to the doctor what happened. Each time, he imagined the doctor responding the same way:

  Laughter. "Why didn't you fight her off, or give her what for?" More laughter. Then the boys would laugh. Worse! Nurses might overhear, an then they'd laugh at his emasculation. He felt like his limbs were getting smaller just thinking about it, the people in the infirmary growing while he shrank away to nobody.

  Best to keep it bottled up, and throw that bottle into the ocean of the mind to wash up on Denial Island. Preserve what manhood remains. Yes. Solid plan.

  Benny tells himself that every night Lyle comes on duty. He never speaks, never resists. Get the bandages redone. Silence. Lyle empties out his bedpan. Silence. Go out during the day, choke on tobacco Corn Flakes in silence. Get morphine. Enter Dreamland, where planes crash, doughboys die and fight and die. Mom reads stories while baking a chicken pot pie. Dad talks about the ball game. A giant hand compresses his groin to nothing.

  Eighteen days pass without issue. Aside from men in spiffy uniforms from CPI coming to ask what he saw at Neuffen, life is quiet. The question is always the same.

  "Are you sure you didn't see anything out of the ordinary? We've heard about odd things from other soldiers."

  Benny shakes his head no each time. The black boxes were strange, sure. But they didn't mean anything to him.
And lately, he's had more personal concerns. Questions? He stopped asking them, doesn’t know what that is anymore.

  "Nothing? Some engineers pierced the wall. Said something rather...inconclusive. The boxes opened and closed on their own, moved in funny ways. Possibly hallucination, leftover German gas, parlor tricks. You see anything like what I'm describing?"

  Head shakes no. Benny stares at his big feet, like he doesn't know them. Sure, CPI did propaganda, and should be on its way out the door with the war being over. It's insane. Madness. Madness and agony pulled from a black bottle into a wicked syringe.

  Keep it quiet.

  "Perfect. I think this man is going to be all right. How much longer does he have?"

  Doctor gives him four more weeks to confirm head injury hasn't caused memory problems, and the complete healing of the broken left wrist and fingers. The brass come and go, ask their usual questions, and leave satisfied.

  Satisfaction never knocks on Benny's door.

  Time trips. In three days, Benjamin Haskins goes home. By now, Mom and Dad have driven from Pleasantville's sunny back roads to see their son quieted 'by the war', as Dad sees it. Mom suspects otherwise, but can't get Benny to crack. In three days, they'll return to pick him up. He can go to the Shore, watch ring-billed gulls in flight, oystercatchers drilling into the wet salty sand, hear baseball bats crack over home plate. Mustard seeds of renewal sprout in his heart.

  Night comes, and the morphine (now in smaller doses) wears off. Benny wakes up on his back, his body convulsing lightly up and down. He panics. It must be happening again. He rubs his eyes to see the dark better. Then, he moves his hands to the sides of the bed to get up and run. The left arm hurts, but can use it now. This time, he fights back hard.

  But no. His hands find no edges. They feel legs. Warm, smooth, pulsating legs. He slides his hands up and finds they're not his legs turned around and over him. Their hairless. They connect to a waist, solid and plush, that goes up and down. Each movement makes him groan. He's hot, annoyed and ecstatic all at once.

  "You've been a good man of late, Benjamin." Nurse Lyle serenades Benny with her tone, and more.

  He rockets up, shoving without thinking. Lyle holds on, digging nails into Benny's waist. By now, the infirmary has lost all of its boys. Only Benny remains. His body is abruptly seized by violence, numbed by a conflicting pleasure. Haskins is completely unsure what's going on, but he isn't taking it without a fight.

  "Why you stupid, worthless idiot!"

  "What are you doing?" He asks it in a whisper, still too scared to speak up.

  "Shut up. This is what men receive for being good! Lay back and enjoy it."

  Benny is smacked hard across his left cheek, more of a rending from a rabid eagle. His face heats up like sunburn. The fight in him dwindles. War trickles down to skirmish.

  Lyle moves on him, over him, more like a cougar with a carcass than a woman of passion. She claws his chest, his arms. She flexes repeatedly over his groin, giving him as much angst as ecstasy.

  "No..no I--"

  Lyle lays her temple on Benny's, and proceeds to bite his bottom lip. She licks his chin. Before he can think, she pours on the pressure.

  Benny reels, marlin on the hook. His brain thrusts one double-edged sword after another:

  Never hit a woman! Give a woman what she wants.

  Let the lady have her way. When’s the last time you had a broad?

  Defend your rights!

  Be giving. Don't let anybody take anything from you you don't want taken.

  The hallowed words of loving parents, of society, do more to confound than to aide. A stronger idea, a more potent adviser, knocks aside the others on the inside while Lyle rips/pleasures the outside.

  Exhausted.

  Benjamin turns his head to the right. He lies as still as a corpse, trying to recall happier times. But Lyle dominates there too. Lyle walks the beach, with Benny behind, smaller, ignored. Lyle ducks out of Pleasantville High School to join the war effort, a giant fourteen-year old passing for eighteen. Lyle flies a plane into battle, while Benny helplessly tells those boys around that it was really him. No one hears him. The boys die. Lyle endures. The boys. They die in the air, on the ground. Royce Ruckman, Walter Pike, Davey Summers...

  The next thing he knows, she's done. His body, compelled to release, offers Haskins the sweetest sensation of personal embarrassment he’s ever had. A sick, dissatisfied feeling strikes his gut and spreads across his body. He hears Lyle dressing. She lights a lantern, and wipes blood from Benny's skin. Bandages are placed. She washes his genitals with the care of a mother, talking the entire time.

  "Despite your initial response, I suppose you performed rather well. I mean, surely I'm not your first, what with you stationed in France of all places." She's out of breath. In between the heavy panting, she makes some sort of sound. Benny convinces himself it isn't chortling.

  Minutes pass while she tends to him. "I've never...I've ah..."

  "You can't be serious. Tall buck like you, no takers? Amazing, especially considering your stature. Oh well. Just as well you had a real woman like me to straighten you out than those young doe-eyed trollops. Did you a favor."

  She leaves him with a half a glass of water, and an aspirin on the table. Lights out.

  Benny waits long into the night, certain she'll be back, regurgitated from some shadowy corner to vomit all over his emotions. As he gives in to sleep, he surrenders to sobbing. Somewhere in his head, he's sure Lyle stole something from him.

  He just can't figure out what.

  Chapter Fifteen: Same Old Thing

  New Market Street hosts the Salem City Municipal Building. It's a remarkable red brick wonder from the resplendent days of Victoria, built in the regaled style of Queen Anne. Not too long ago, this beloved edifice was moved from one street to this one, a feat of modern man's ingenuity. Salem City has history in every corner, but it's history is not the primary focus as night dawns.

  Tonight, the chill keeps anyone from visiting its cupola, marveling at its iron signage, looking into its long windows, nooks and crannies. A mustached male face carved high above the door stares down at the shivering street. It's the face of Salem City, Watcher of Ages. If it had eyes, it would see a Chevy Aerosedan parked below full of saddened faces, the big man in the backseat shrunken by shame.

  Face looks like Walter Mitty, of all things. Benny tries to foment internal laughter. He fails miserably.

  "So," Crank talks in whimpers between rivulets of tears, "what happened after?"

  "I went home, that's what happened. Got a job, married Sofia three years later. Worked. Put it past me." Benny tries to cough up some defensive snarling to his voice, but the tone is flat broke, like his resolve. "Until I had to come back here."

  Skinny Bubba, who tries the whole time to pass off crying as rhetorical sniffing, chimes in. "Did--did-she know, man. You know, about what you've told us?" He blubbers in the passenger seat, waving Crank away as she offers him a box of tissue. The convenience of an A&P around the corner on Broadway comes in handy.

  "I...never said anything. Until now."

  "And your folks?"

  Benny gasps. He experiences a brief bout of choking. "My mother used to say the hospital in Salem...stole her son's joy." He gasps. "But, uh, she never asked me any...direct questions. My dad did, once."

  "You told him?" asks Crank.

  "...I....said the war...eats a guy up inside...worse than out. I think that's what I said. Yeah."

  "So no one ever--"

  "Crank, this ain't Italy." A modicum of bass aggravates the wobble in Benny's voice. "We don't discuss...certain things."

  Quiet, aside from sniffs and sobs, divides the trio.

  Municipal Face stares into Benny. Benny looks up at it, as if it were an omen, Lost Justice, Undead Past. Darn thing's judging me.

  But then, Crank is a gecko, climbing over the seat, her bulky boots use Skinny's shoulder as a ladder. In a hot second, she's cradling Benny
best she can, her little body curled around his chest, arms about the thick neck. She wants her grief to weld together the bent girders of his soul, tears to wash out the muck in the storm drains of Haskins' dammed up emotional well. He doesn't embrace her. She doesn't need him to. The hold is for support, not passion.

  He takes empathy for pity. Pity is shameful. Embarrassing. Flesh coloration washes out from Benny's face. He's as stone as the face on the building.

  "You are sooo brave," she whispers.

  He chortles. Bravery is a foreigner to him, a passerby who waved near the window of Benny's inner house once, and kept on going down the Road to Infinity.

  "Heh! Sure, kid...sure."

  "No, I mean it!" She grips his chest tighter, those thin but strong fingers massaging individual ribs. "Men don't tend to look back. Maybe it's better that way, most of the time. But you're trusting us with a secret part of you. That's special. Makes you stronger." She rubs her chin along his chest, enjoying it's warmth.

  "I don't think---"

  "Crank's right," Skinny adds.

  "But--"

  Skinny connects to Benny, eye-to-eye using the rear-view mirror. Skinny apparently mastered the Angry Father gaze early in life. Benny feels the heat, and so takes a vise to his tongue.

  "See," Crank whispers, "your hands don't tremble now." She raises her head long enough to force a smile. It softens him.

  Haskins sighs, a bellowing, wooly mammoth groan. He hates it that she's right. He hates vulnerability, especially now. War is here. Yes. He should be screaming it in his head. Can't muster it...

  "You may feel weak now, but it will get the burden off your shoulders. You can't have that on you now, what with Motherville and...." Crank lets her fingers talk for her, slipping down, massaging Benny's lower back. She leans in, her cap sliding back off her head.

  The massage is miraculous. Benny inhales, taking in the fruity essence of Crank's hair, the soft, unnameable scent of silky skin. His upper body loosens as his thighs tighten. Nothing breaks the nervous onslaught. But if only he could surrender to Frederica Musa right now! Why can nothing ever come nice and simple? Large hands seek now to explore this comforting soul. They roam. They stop. They resume. Heat, grief, loss, enticement. Every feeling known to Man on a carousel powered by a Pratt and Whitney engine. How do women do this everyday?