by John Altman
Once she had drawn herself up, Jessup tried again. ‘Listen: that’s a patch-up job I did. We bought you some time. But you need a hospital, missy. They’ve got to look inside you, see the extent of the damage. I just plain don’t have the equipment here.’
Her striking turquoise eyes found his face.
‘Listen,’ he said again. ‘I don’t know any other ways to say it. If you don’t get to a hospital, you’re dancing with the devil. All we’ve got to do is pile into my truck and I can have you—’
The gun barked, silencing him.
She searched the house.
In a cigar box beneath an upstairs bed she found sixty-five dollars and fifty-three cents, which she pocketed. In an adjoining bathroom she found iodine, Goody’s Headache Powder, Neo-Aqua-Drin lozenges, Alka-Seltzer, Pepto Bismol … except for the iodine, all worthless.
She vomited into the sink. Her belly churned; the bandage around her shoulder dotted red even through the gauze. Leaning against the edge of the porcelain, she fought to remain conscious. The old sawbones had spoken the truth: sooner or later, she would need a hospital.
But not yet. Not until she had made more distance.
She spent a few queasy seconds studying her reflection in the cabinet’s mirror. At the moment, she was no longer Elisabeth Grant. But she not yet become someone else. She was between identities. Perhaps she had reverted to Elisabeth Hübener, of Wittlich, in the Rhineland – not the cool exquisite beauty molded to perfection by Karl Schnibbe, but the pale, sickly original model, fussed over ad nauseum by her mother, shunned and despised by everybody else.
After a few seconds more, she moved on.
She kept searching, looking now less for things of value than for a comfortable place to spend the remainder of the night – traveling again without resting was out of the question. The back porch, with its cold fresh air and clear lines of sight, was tempting. But she would risk frostbite out here. Still: she could allow herself a moment.
Settling down onto an old-fashioned porch swing, she looked out across a pond scrummed with ice. Another mirror, she realized suddenly: this one reflecting a line of silhouetted black pines on the far bank. A distant loon called with enviable aplomb. The crisp smell of resin filled the night, summoning bitter-sweet memories of a long-ago Christmas.
After a few minutes a blustery wind picked up, creaking the hinges of the swing, coaxing a watery tear from one eye. She went back inside. Forsaking beds and couches, she chose a creaky old rocker from which she could easily slip out the back door if necessary. Pulling a hand-woven quilt across her lap, holding the gun with its two remaining bullets loosely in one hand, she closed her eyes.
The Blood Banner flapping, Karl Schnibbe uncompromising and uncompromised, ranks of soldiers goose-stepping in perfect unison down the Unter den Linden … she could hear the rap-rap of their boots now. She smiled faintly. It was a sound filled with promise.
Libby, Josette had said, sometimes I wonder about you.
She rubbed a hand over her face, pulling the features into a tragic mask. Then she forced her mind ahead. In the morning, she would keep moving. She would know her destination only when she reached it.
All paths, she thought, led somewhere.
She sat very still, wondering if that was really true, for a very long time.
EPILOGUE
ANACOSTIA
Trudy Zane wept.
Her father comforted her, patting her back as if burping a baby. The minister delivered a brief eulogy. Beneath a cold wind, Isherwood tried to balance on his cane while keeping hands jammed in coat pockets. A registrar and two gravediggers milled nearby, looking disinterested.
After the service, people lined up to toss dirt on the coffin. Philip Zane’s infant son, passed back and forth between relatives, squalled and fretted. The turnout had been respectable but not tremendous. Isherwood could not help thinking that Zane deserved better.
Shortly thereafter, he found himself inside the nearest dark bar, telling himself he had come only to fill his growling belly. Funerals, his father had used to say, made a man want to eat and fuck. Neon signs blinked and buzzed in frosted windows. When the barkeep approached, Isherwood ordered a burger and a Moxie. Working down the soft drink in a few gulps, he ordered another and then staked out his territory: Zippo, crumpled prayer leaflet, cane, cigarettes, and baleful glare.
When his hamburger arrived, Isherwood pushed away the plate without touching it. Downing his second Moxie, he lit a cigarette instead. He looked at bottles lined behind the bar. They reminded him of glittering soldiers, preparing to mount an offensive. They would come in force, and his defenders, bristling in square, would successfully repel the first wave, and then the second … but the enemy would keep coming. Without eternal vigilance, he risked being overrun.
Halfway through his next sickly-sweet pop, someone settled onto the bar stool beside him. Through a series of tacit clues, Isherwood endeavored to let the stranger know that he wasn’t interested in conversation. But the man wouldn’t take the hint. When the intruder ordered a vodka, Isherwood recognized the voice. Turning his head, he grunted acknowledgement.
The Chief took one of Isherwood’s cigarettes. The travails of the previous weeks had left new grooves on the man’s face … but, of course, none of them had come through unscathed. ‘Been trying to get in touch,’ he said. ‘You can be a hard man to track down.’
‘Evy’s back.’
‘Making up for lost time, eh?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ Spooner picked a book of matches from a bowl on the bar, folded back the cover. ‘I was hoping to ask you to swing by Treasury. We’ll get the paperwork moving, strike that provisional from your status … Consider yourself fully reinstated, Ish, whenever you’re ready.’
Isherwood’s response was slow. Four days since his last pill, and five weeks since his last drink, yet still he found himself stringing thoughts together listlessly. Dressing that morning for the funeral, he had lost himself in a dark valley, staring into space for ten full minutes in the midst of putting on a sock. ‘Appreciate that,’ he said at last.
‘Well, hell; we can use you. Ike’s on his way back to Washington.’ Spooner’s cigarette described a strained little circle, perhaps at the thought of all the protection Eisenhower might still require. ‘He says Key West was as bad as Gettysburg. Now he needs a vacation from his vacation. I told him, be careful what you wish for; he’ll have his hands full, gearing up for the convention.’
‘He’s decided?’
‘Funny thing. Rumors aside, he was on the fence right up until the end … but now he’s committed. Won’t give his enemies, he told me, the satisfaction of doing their job for them.’
Isherwood nodded. In the end, it had proved impossible to shield Eisenhower from the truth. Of course, the President had slammed a lid on the story. The chief executive had to maintain the illusion of invulnerability. Agents Zane and Whitman had officially died in the line of duty – their wives would get the pension – but files with details had been permanently misplaced.
A black-and-white television hanging in one ceiling corner played footage of Soviet trucks carrying missiles. Isherwood watched for a moment, and then looked away. ‘The girl?’ he asked.
Spooner shook his head. ‘No match from AFIS, and nothing else to work with. She’s plain gone. Same with Bolin. Dead ends and blind alleys, whichever way we turn.’ He ground out his cigarette and pushed the ashtray a symbolic inch away. ‘Everything’s self-contained; nothing leads out. The puppet masters covered their tracks well. Only thing we’ve turned up is the missing housemaid from the farm. Found her beneath a bed, once she started to go rotten.’
Isherwood smoked hard, exhaled a clock spring of smoke.
‘But look at it this way, pal: the glass is more than half-full. The President’s alive. That’s what counts.’ But the Chief sounded dubious, as if trying to convince himself, and the nuanced look on his face belied the
simple confidence of his words. ‘And the DA finessed that thing. You’ll have to present before the grand jury, but it’s just a formality – they’ll go for necessary force.’
A few empty moments passed. The neon signs flickered and droned. Spooner pulled the ashtray closer again and helped himself to another cigarette. ‘You know who the real winner is in all this? Dick Nixon. Ike’s got cold feet, after all he’s been through, so he’ll stick with a known quantity – Nixon stays on the ticket after all.’
The bartender glided by, read the situation, and kept going. Spooner let the man get some distance and then, with sudden feeling, laughed. ‘Hell, old buddy,’ he said, ‘that was a close one, huh?’
Isherwood closed his eyes briefly.
‘Scared the hell out me, I don’t mind telling you. When you can’t trust your own … That’s how they got Caesar. It’s the ones inside the wheelhouse you’ve got to look out for.’
‘We dodged a bullet,’ said Isherwood.
‘Pun intended, I trust.’ Spooner took out his wallet. ‘Listen, I’m heading back to Treasury. You want to tag along?’
After a few seconds Isherwood slipped off the bar stool, collecting his talismans – leaflet, cigarettes, Zippo – and reaching for his cane.
‘Heading home,’ he said. ‘Thanks anyway.’
Evelyn snored lightly beside him.
He smiled slightly in the darkness. The snoring would mortify her, had she been aware of it. And it would keep him awake, as would the lack of space in the bed – after so many nights spent alone, sharing a blanket again was taking some getting used to. But it was the kind of getting used to he didn’t mind.
Plink.
His gaze traced a network of cracks in the ceiling. Restlessly, he conjured pictures from the mosaic of ragged lines: boiling oceans, cities of ash, expanding mushroom clouds; corkscrews, bottles, Martini glasses, whiskey tumblers, vials of pills; Zane’s squalling wife and baby, the rifle sticking from the top of the silo like a steel snout, the slow tumble of girl and gun falling together off the platform. At length, he closed his eyes.
Plink.
Without whiskey, the wheels in his mind never stopped turning. When he did eventually lapse into sleep, dreams would be waiting – abstruse and perplexing skeins which left him feeling, upon waking, slightly unmoored from reality, one step to the left. But at least he could not recall the details of the dreams during the days. Small favors.
Plink.
He sighed, flipping over. That afternoon he had spent two hours wrestling with wrenches and washers and screwdrivers, but his victory had been short-lived. The bathroom faucet was leaking again. In the morning, he would redouble his efforts. There would be time to kill between morning and afternoon doctors’ visits. Until then …
Plink.
… Well, he wasn’t sleeping anyway. And Evelyn seemed somehow able to snore right through it.
His mind kept wheeling. He yawned: tired, beyond a doubt, but unable to switch off his troubled brain. Turning over again, he laid an arm across Evelyn’s quiescent form. He remembered the Chief’s words from what seemed like very long ago. There’s no lack of men in this country today sitting just where you are now – dying for a drink, and trying to get the hell past whatever happened over there. There’s no shame in it.
In fact, he thought, there must be more of us now than ever. Korea had produced a new crop of veterans, and thus a new groundswell of baffled wives and families back home. And fresh schisms had opened, in the so-called United States of America, along other fronts: between the big bands and a colored wildman from New Orleans named Little Richard; between the Supreme Court, declaring that state laws establishing separate schools for blacks and whites were unconstitutional, and a determined resistance led by Senator Harry F. Byrd; between the parents of countless new babies born after the war, and those who had to find schoolrooms and teachers to accommodate the sudden boom. At least there was comfort to be taken from the idea that, in passing his sleepless nights staring at cracks in the ceiling, he had company.
He yawned again. Eventually, he would need to figure out what to tell Spooner about the job offer. But for now, he still had time.
He sank farther – away from consciousness, away from Evelyn’s snoring and the leaking faucet, away from thoughts of past and future – to a place where dreams and nightmares still churned but, upon waking, went unremembered.
* * *
From The Anacostia News. Wednesday, September 12, 1956, Page 28:
Anacostia births:
ISHERWOOD – to the wife of Francis K., 610 Good Hope Street; a son.