Death of a Century

by Daniel Robinson

  Mostly, though, he preferred to think of anything other than France. He was often unsuccessful in that.

  He closed the books back inside their drawers and turned to walk out before remembering the engravings on Gresham’s notepad, the indented lettering left from the previous page’s words. The notepad was still on the end table near where Gresham’s head had fallen on the sofa, and Joe tilted the paper in the light to expose the phantomic outline of pressed words. Other than recognizing the page as a list of names, however, he could not read what had been written.

  He turned on the electric lamp next the sofa and tore the page from the pad and held it closer against the light, turning it in every direction and angle to the light of the floor lamp, but he could read little more than before. From the desk, he took a page of carbon paper and placed it over the note page, rubbing lightly over the imprint. He felt like a young boy discovering the mystery map to a long lost treasure as the list of names with simple marks next to each formed in relief, white against black. He read them out loud, as though the act of speaking the names would reveal their identities. Then he placed the page on the table and looked at it.

  Rene Marcel

  Jean Marcel **

  Thomas Wilde **

  Frederick Gadwa

  Paul Dillard—

  None of the names meant anything to him, no Churchills or Hydes or Pershings among them, except that of Dillard which he recognized from the paper he had given to the sheriff. He copied the names into his own notepad, folded the original, and put them both into his shirt pocket. He looked again at the desk. There was nothing to explain what the names meant nor why Gresham had written them.

  He wondered if Gresham might have kept another copy of his manuscript in the house. Not in the desk, but maybe upstairs in his dresser or boxed in the spare room. He took the stairs to the second floor singly and slowly, feeling the presence of death hovering in the house like Banquo’s ghost.

  All he found in the spare room were traces of the Great War—worn uniforms, a mess kit and bed roll, tarnished medals, a pitted and rusted helmet, other helmets and knives and a Lugar pistol stolen from dead or captured Germans, an Austro-Hungarian flag. He pocketed the Lugar for no better reason than he had no gun and its weight felt reassuring. Searching through the boxes was like returning to the trenches, for as he searched the things of war he could hear the distant terrors of injured or blinded men, the shrieks of dying horses, the necrotic hum of circling flies.

  He walked to the bedroom, turned on the floor lamps, opened drawers in the night stand and dresser, searched the closet and under the bed. He opened a packed steamer trunk left in the middle of the room filled with clothes ready for the trip. On top of the trunk was Gresham’s passport and a safe deposit key, which he might be able to use if given time and opportunity. Before he could search the trunk, however, he heard another automobile in the drive outside.

  An engine stopped. Two car doors slammed shut.

  Joe looked through a crack in the window shades, knowing while he looked that whoever it was could see all of the lights on in the house as well as his silhouetted figure in the upstairs window. Two uniformed policeman jogged through the increasing snow and mud from the garage to the house, their heads down and shoulders hunched inside yellow slickers, their hands tight on their hips holding holstered weapons from bouncing. Neither seemed to notice the rear bumper of Joe’s Hudson beyond the back wall of the garage. For once Joe was happy about the rain and snow, for it kept the two officers’ eyes looking down at their feet and the muddy driveway.

  Joe took the stairs two and three at a time, then started toward the kitchen door in the rear of the house before remembering his overcoat draped over a chair, leaving a wet spot on the front room floor. As the front door opened to send a flare of light across the entry, Joe lifted his overcoat from the chair. He had few choices and only one that he had time to try. In those wet winter months of Connecticut, people kept furniture eight to ten inches from the wall to allow for air circulation and keep mold and mildew from growing along the baseboards. The previous night someone had pulled the sofa an extra couple of inches out, looking for some clue. He slid behind it, feeling much like a man crawling into his trench.

  Two sets of footsteps stopped in the entry before continuing into the lighted front room.

  “And look here, Will.” Joe recognized the voice of the tall uniform, Snyder. Joe listened as Snyder’s disembodied voice trailed into a whisper.

  “I see it,” said Will, the other uniform, his voice graveled and low. “He was here for sure. Lights on, wet floor. Gone upstairs, you think?”

  “Maybe. Most likely he’s already gone, though, else we’d have seen his car.”

  “Probably right.”

  “Damn but I was wishing he was here. After that little stunt in town, I was looking forward to taking a little air out of his tires.”

  “I’ll check upstairs anyway.”

  “Okay. You have a look-see and I’ll check around down here.”

  Joe heard the sound of snaps unlocking and the rub of something against leather, the sounds of a pistol being drawn. He pulled closer into himself, compressing into his small trench as much as he could. He listened to both sets of footsteps, hearing them in a parallax of sound, one ear following the feet of those that ascended the stairs and with the other ear those of Snyder’s shuffling from front room to hallway to kitchen and back.

  Echoing from the second floor landing came Will’s voice, “Nothing up here ’cept a few drips of water.”

  “Nothing down here either.”

  A silence followed in which Joe felt each second pass, listening to the shuffles and movements of the two men and hearing the loud beat of his own pulse. He knew they had found him and that they were training their pistols on the sofa, ready to kiss it and him with a flurry of bullets. He readied himself against the wall in order to push the sofa into the two men and dash for the door.

  He heard Will speak, “There was some boxes open upstairs.”

  “They weren’t open last night. Let’s go back up and see if we can find anything missing.”

  Another silence filled with the rush of blood through Joe’s ears.

  “First, though, let me call the sheriff and let him know what’s what.”

  One set of boots walked to and up the stairs. The other crossed the room to the desk. A phone lifted from its hook and four numbers dialed on the rotary.

  “Sheriff Jackson.”

  A desk drawer opened. Some papers were crumpled and others shuffled. Something was lifted from the wall and after a moment was placed on the desk. Snyder mumbled, “Damn if those doughboys sure liked to photograph themselves. Like they was on a world tour or—” His words stopped short and Joe held his breath.

  “Sheriff? Snyder. Me and Will are out here at Gresham’s house. . . . Yes, he was, but he must have left just before we arrived. Lights were on and there’s puddles of water on the floor and a wet spot on the back of a chair. . . . Probably from his coat. . . . Yes. Some opened boxes up there. Will’s looking through them now. . . . Yes. . . . No. I’ll go have a look with him. . . . Yes . . . Like I told you, this guy’s the one. We should have. . . . Yes, I know. Sorry, sheriff. . . . We parked in the garage, so if he comes back he won’t see us. . . . Okay. We’ll wait, and if he comes back we got him. If he runs, I’ll just have to shoot his sorry ass. . . . Yessir.”

  The phone slapped down.

  “Stupid son-of-a-bitch,” Snyder said and walked off to join Will upstairs.

  Joe poked his head from behind the sofa, ready to recoil if he saw Snyder looking back like some sniper in the woods. He was alone but he knew not for long and crawled from his spider hole. Out of a pen box on the desk, Joe took scissors with which he clipped the phone line.

  He took the copy of Joyce’s novel and a framed photograph of five men standing in a muddy trench, the object he had heard Snyder remove from the wall and place on the desk. He walked quickly into the ki
tchen, conscious of the pad of his heavy-soled shoes on the old wood floor. He slipped out the back door, and without looking back, he ran first into the garage to pull loose the spark plug wires from Snyder’s car. Then he rounded the garage on the opposite side from the house, started his car’s engine, and jumped the Hudson through the mud and down the driveway. He caught a mirrored glimpse of Snyder raising his weapon before Snyder and the house disappeared behind a line of trees. A shot rang out, but the noise—like the bullet and the house and the shooter—was lost in the woods.

  Nobody lived within three miles of Gresham, so Joe figured he had at least forty minutes before Snyder could slosh through the mud and find a telephone to call the sheriff. He hoped the sheriff would first drive to Gresham’s home. That would give him another thirty minutes to get to his apartment and grab a few things and leave. If the sheriff went to his apartment first, Joe figured he might have only five extra minutes. Forty-five total, and half those taken up driving to town. He pressed on the accelerator, wheels sliding a little before taking purchase.

  The clouds had settled even more fully since Joe had left town. With the snow falling hard and heavy, the day was settling into darkness. He turned on the small box heater in his automobile, but he was still cold, shivering. The trees lining the road passed like brief shadows.

  He parked in an alley a block away from his apartment building and ran to the building, not at all concerned that someone might take notice. He hoped that people would think he was running to get out of the snow and would not see the unstable look in his eyes. So he ran, his fedora pulled tight on his forehead, overcoat open and flapping wildly in the wind and snow. He did not bother jumping slush puddles or looking at traffic and barely slowed at the building’s door. He bounded the stairs, taking two and three in a stride, and stopped once inside only for a quick breath after closing and locking the door behind him.

  He spared no time taking note of his up-turned apartment, the product of the sheriff’s intense curiosity. With his breath coming in gasps, he pulled clothes and shoes from the bedroom dresser and closet to stuff into a tattered canvas duffel bag. On top of those clothes he spilled toiletries from his bathroom and the suit he had hung to dry, its incriminating blood stain still marking the pant leg.

  He started from the bathroom back into the front room when he heard a key tickling the front door lock to his apartment. He stepped back against the bathroom wall, pressing himself as tight as possible against the wainscoting.

  “Thank you,” the sheriff told someone, probably the building manager. “No need to worry. I’ll just wait here until he returns.” The door closed. Joe again listened to the sound of someone walking.

  The sound of the steps grew then receded into the bedroom.

  Joe’s jaw tightened. He found it difficult to swallow. He wished that the water falling from his overcoat would stop hitting the floor with such loud drips, drips loud enough to eclipse the sounds of his breathing and heart pulsing through his ears.

  He looked around the bathroom for a place to hide. Nowhere and no chance of making it to the front door without being caught or shot. The window was too small for him to shimmy through, so he pushed himself tighter into the cracks of the wainscoting.

  The sheriff’s steps returned from the bedroom, moving with quickened and tightened spacing. The sheriff had found the emptied drawers and the emptied closet.

  “Shit-almighty,” the sheriff swore beneath his breath as he stepped into the bathroom.

  Joe punched the sheriff in the temple, a cold-cocked sucker punch that sent the little man straight down quick and hard and face first on the tile floor.

  Joe turned him over and sat him against the bathtub like a stringless marionette and stopped the bleeding from his nose, then tied his arms and legs tight with a telephone cord from the front room. He thought of gagging him, but worried that, with his nose probably broken, he may need his mouth to breath.

  “Sorry, Sheriff,” he said.

  He took the sheriff’s gun, a Smith & Wesson .45 revolver with a short barrel, balanced it in his hand for a moment, thinking how he was accumulating a nice arsenal of small guns. Lifting his bag of clothes through the bedroom window and out onto the fire escape, he took one last look at his home before slipping out and down the metal staircase and then the alley to his car.

  The bank was on his way out of town. He stopped long enough to close out his own bank account. He knew the police would have already placed a stop on Gresham’s accounts after the morning’s escapade. The teller hesitated giving him so much cash. Following an okay from a manager, Joe pocketed nearly $500 in large bills.

  He drove out of Greenwich with his lights on and not a single look in the mirror until he had almost reached the limits of the small city. Pointing the Hudson toward New York City meant passing Gresham’s house one more time and possibly meeting Snyder driving back into town. His luck had held through the day, either by a cable or by a thread but held nonetheless. He just hoped that there was enough elasticity to it that it would hold a while longer.

  He passed a Ford truck coming into town. Through the driving rain, he could just make out Will sitting between the driver and Snyder. The two men were engaged in a heated argument and the driver was watching the road. Joe slid back far enough in the shadows of his car to not be seen. He watched as the three faces in the farmer’s truck passed. None of them paid notice to the traffic leaving the city; the deputies’ faces turned in anger to one another and the driver having a hard enough time in the snow and looking through discordant windshield wipers and distorted glass. Joe held his breath and watched the truck disappear into the veil of snow behind him. Neither their Ford nor his Hudson slowed or wavered.

  Joe pulled quickly into Gresham’s driveway to take the steamer trunk with him. He could easily do without Gresham’s clothes, even if they might fit, but he did not want to draw attention to himself checking into a first class cabin on a Cunard liner with no major luggage in tow. As he left, he offered one last salute to his friend, “To the Lost, brother.”

  As he neared the wreckage of last night’s crash, he slowed and stopped on the road’s narrow shoulder. He wandered for a few minutes through the mired and snow-covered ground. The only papers he found not already turning to mulch in the snow and mud were sodden, with the inked words running together as though speaking an ancient rune. With no help there, he left.

  Driving to New York, through the intermittent changes of snow and rain, he stopped once in Mamaroneck to fill his gas tank. The rain there had stopped and the air smelled heavily of wet grass and sulfur. The clouds were marbled, gray and black, and threatening another storm. A pair of large oak trees near the garage were thick with birds clinging to the skeletal frame of branches. Stripped of his overcoat and coat, Joe’s shirt clung to his back wet from sweat. The air was electric. He knew that the storm was not yet over.

  He took a hotel room a few blocks from the Fourteenth Street dock before driving back up to the Bronx, leaving the car parked near the new Yankee Stadium, the keys swinging in the driver’s door. He then rode the subway back downtown to his hotel.

  The next morning he woke early, well before the sun had risen. With the reflections of the city’s lights, the sky was a blue-black, the color of singed steel. A dream of his father had woken him fully from his sleep. The sudden crack. His father’s slow roll into death and the absolute lack of anything he could do except watch, which he did in his dream, though he had not in his youth. No bells, no tears, no priest, no church.

  Joe blinked and sighed. A shiver went through his body. He rose and dressed, preparing to return to the place where his generation and the last century had died.

  III

  “One must have lived through such moments to realize their tragic and passionate beauty. Hundreds and thousands of men in the vigor of their youth are massed together awaiting the shock.”

  —“Captain X,” Scribner’s Magazine, May, 1916

  *Describing the Seco
nd Battle of the Champagne*

  WHEN THE SUN CAME UP, IT WAS TO A HARD, SHARP WETNESS THAT sliced to the bone. Joe took a clean suit and wool overcoat from Gresham’s steamer trunk before sending the trunk to the ship ahead of him. Gresham had been slightly less than an inch taller and only a bit wider in girth than Joe, so the suit fit Joe with the looseness of someone who had recently lost weight, or who had just recovered from an illness, or returned from war. He left the hotel and began his walk to the docks, steam rising from the gutters as he stepped across them outside his hotel’s entrance. The day was cold enough that he considered wearing Gresham’s rough buffalo robe but decided that the short walk would keep him warm inside the heavy weave of his overcoat.

  The Berengaria, a twenty-year-old prize of war, would return him to France. The only other times he had sailed on a ship of that size was going to and returning from the war. The large and stout ship with its three black funnels scraping the heavy sky rested like a steel monolith in its berth. Ropes and boarding planks tethered the ship to the old wooden dock.

  Waiting until a crowd arrived, he fell in with a group of college men as they boarded. He was the only sober one of the bunch. Gresham’s passport was looked at and the ticket was stamped. A young officer with red hair and more freckles than whiskers welcomed him to the Berengaria. After finding his cabin, Joe returned to the deck for the embarkation. Once underway, the ship’s broad beam would cut a wide and steady line through the ocean, leaving his past in its wake.

  Standing near the stern of the big ship as it pulled away, he watched New York and America slip to the horizon and then drown into the line of the sea. In so many ways, his life had been formed in the crucible of that European war, and now, on that large and three-stacked ship, he was returning to the maw of the furnace that had forged him.