Dark to Mortal Eyes

by Eric Wilson

  “Scoot? You still awake?”

  His breathing skipped, then turned heavy. No reply.

  She slipped a pencil from her new case and, by firelight, wrote:

  who will discover the gold in me

  without the use of dynamite?

  A pause. A nibble on the eraser.

  dreams and hopes, buried alive

  beneath the rubble of strife

  Josee slapped at a mosquito, then crouched to ensure that the canister was still in her bedroll. With her sleeping bag removed and situated in the tent, the metal object felt cold and unyielding against her hand. A chill crawled along her skin. She hurried to cinch and knot the cord with all the strength her small fingers could muster.

  2

  Black Feather

  Kara was out here, eluding him. Although pillars blocked Marsh Addison’s view as he descended the flared brick entryway, he could hear his wife’s footsteps on the gravel and could smell her perfume through the late-October mist.

  “Now what?” he called. “Talk to me. Let’s try to work this out.”

  Inside, supper plates cooled on the formal dining table. Maybe he should go back in and finish without her. Baked salmon and Brie, last year’s Pinot Gris harvested on their own estate … To let such delicacies go to waste bordered on sacrilege. Food was his religion, wine his personal sacrament. He’d been raised here at Addison Ridge Vineyards, guided like a trellised grapevine into his role as master vintner.

  “Kara.”

  No response.

  “Come on, stop playing games with me.”

  Beneath the portico he loosened his tie and listened to the rain. Considering his recent rise in wine-growing circles, he was still perplexed by his miscues in the marital department. Not that he had much to go by. His father had died while he was an infant, and his mother still held to her widowed status. Marsh’s relational approach reflected his ties with his mother—cordial and steadfast, yet aloof. After twenty-plus years with Kara, he was aware he had a few edges left to smooth. More than a few perhaps.

  But haven’t I been trying? Haven’t I gone the extra mile?

  No pun intended, he thought. Across the water-soaked gravel, the white BMW Z3 was testimony to his efforts. A birthday gift for his wife. One sweet machine.

  “Honey,” he tried again. “Please, can’t we talk this out? Come back inside before the salmon gets cold.” He just wanted some resolution here—and his meal.

  Which she was quick to note. “Have mine, too, Marsh, if that’s what you’re after.”

  Definitely from his left. He took a step that direction, but the diesel equipment clattering between the trellises disrupted his senses. “Okay, I give in. Where are you?”

  “Not now, Marsh. I haven’t the energy for verbal warfare with you.”

  “A war?” Two additional steps, zeroing in. “That’s hardly fair.”

  “The way you undermine me, I simply can’t deal with that right now.”

  “How can we carry on a conversation when I can’t even look at you?”

  “You haven’t seen me in months, not really.”

  He found her seated at the base of a pillar. “It’s the marketing campaign,” he said, “not you. National distributors, European connections … I know it’s been hectic around here, but we’re exceeding our goals. We’re taking it to the next level. Do you realize what this could do for the vineyard? For my father’s legacy? For us?”

  “Since when have I been part of this?”

  He sighed. “What do you want from me?”

  She stood and swatted dust from her derrière. “I want you to meet your daughter. Is that so horrible a thing?” Wine was sloshing over the rim of the glass in her hand. Her eyes, too, were brimming.

  “We’ve already discussed this. More than once, I might add.”

  “Because you won’t listen, Marshall.”

  “This is pointless.”

  “See, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  “Kara—”

  “The way you tune me out as though I’m not even here. Try to tell you something, and you … you’re a million miles away, reading wine reviews, thumbing through the day’s receipts. Remember the way we used to actually talk over dinner?”

  Marsh did remember. They’d survived the mistakes of those early years, but his stock as a husband had since gone into a prolonged tailspin. He couldn’t pinpoint the moment things had turned. Couldn’t specify the cause. He provided shelter, security, a shopping budget—not to mention annual excursions to the Caymans—yet the distance between them continued to widen. Through it all, Kara’s gentle disposition was the glue that refused to let go, and Marsh was grateful for that. He really was. But her expectations seemed unrealistic. It just wasn’t … it wasn’t normal that he should have to carry the onus of intimacy upon his shoulders.

  Men aren’t wired for romance. How many times have I tried to explain that?

  Kara, seeming to catch the bitterness in his gaze, looked away. The glass tilted in her grip, dribbled amber liquid onto the drive. “Marsh, I’m planning to meet her, with or without you.”

  “Without.”

  “She’s our baby—”

  “You know that as a fact?”

  “Our daughter.”

  “Either way, we gave her up for a reason. Do we have to replay that discussion? We made a decision, a tough decision that cost us many sleepless nights. You know that as well as I do. Now, just when it seems it’s all behind us … no, it’s back again.”

  “She’s back. Her name’s Josee.”

  “You’ve had too much to drink. Please, honey, maybe we should discuss this later.”

  “Why won’t you do this? Your refusal to meet her can do nothing but—”

  “But what? Hurt a relationship we’ve never even had? It’s been two decades, Kara. She wants nothing to do with me, and I can’t blame her.”

  “She knows you’re not interested—that’s why. She’s just afraid.”

  “Well, then—”

  “You both are.”

  “Wrong!” Marsh felt his pulse pounding in his neck. “This is nothing more than a silly delusion. Do you understand that? You think you’re going to restore things with one magical meeting, but—I hate to break it to you—it doesn’t happen that way.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do know it. Josee knows it. Apparently, you’re the one blind to the truth. We have it good here, and now you’re going to jeopardize all that.” Marsh gestured to the slopes of Addison Ridge, where Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes shimmered in necklaces of rain. His father, Chauncey Addison, had carved this business from the ground; his mother, Virginia, had fought to maintain it; and Marsh had acquired it like a mandate from the grave. Transformed it into a viable business too—with a lot of sweat and panache, thank you very much.

  “I need some time to think,” Kara said. “Without all the trappings.”

  “Whatever works.”

  “Marsh,” she spoke in a quavering voice, “do you suppose there’s a reason they call them trappings?” She did an about-face and took one limping step.

  “Wait.” He set a hand on her arm, combed a golden strand from her shoulder. She teetered on high heels and turned back. He touched her teardrop-diamond earrings—another of his gifts. Or didn’t they count for anything? “Kara, I’m not trying to sound harsh. You’re working through a lot of emotions, I know that, but I’m not sure you’ve weighed the consequences. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

  “It’s what she wants, Marshall. It’s what I want.” She brushed the lapel of his jacket. “Please, darling, I can’t turn her down. What kind of mother would that make me? It’s been three weeks since Josee first called … my daughter, my baby. Every hour of every day I’ve had her running through my thoughts. She’s gone to the trouble of tracking us down, and as her parents, we at least owe her an explanation.”

  “Her parents?” Marsh huffed as residual doubts gripped
him.

  “Darling, when will you believe me that I—”

  “Listen.” He mounted the brick steps. “You just do what you have to do, okay?”

  When she rejoined him at the dining table, neither said a word. Marsh admired the way her disheveled hair framed her petite face and downturned caramel eyes. After all this time, still so attractive. Still so hard to read. True, he knew a few of her secrets, but perhaps his attempts to forget them had blinded him to her current state.

  Of course, his family bore secrets as well.

  Insinuations. Shame. Matters best kept tucked away.

  In light of the vineyard’s recent successes, Marsh marveled that in a lavish home with a desirable wife his future could be so imperiled by one door into the past.

  “I’m all over it, Mr. Steele. I’m there.”

  “That’s good to hear.” Stahlherz removed his clenched fingers, watched Beau flex his wrists. He said, “Go ahead and drink up. We need you fully cognizant. You do understand that if you’re captured, you know nothing about me.”

  Beau sipped from the cup. “Never heard the name Steele in my life.”

  “It’s not an uncommon name. Even if you say something, they may suspect you’ve made it up.”

  “But I already know—”

  “Know what?”

  Beau leaned in. “That it’s not your real name. Gotta protect your own backside.”

  “You, my friend, are one of the sharper tools in the shed,” said Stahlherz. “Don’t be mistaken though. If you do reveal any details of our purposes, I’ll personally drop you where you stand—in a prison cell, a witness stand, wherever. I will not hesitate.”

  “Fair’s fair.” Beau slugged down a mouthful of coffee, and Stahlherz saw a twitch run down the recruit’s arm. “We’re all expendable. You taught me that yourself.”

  Amused, Stahlherz finished the cappuccino and let his gaze drift up the alcove walls. He had difficulty locking eyes with his recruits. Some of them interpreted this as insecurity, yet that wasn’t it at all. Truth be told, he feared they would see his disdain.

  Pawns, that’s all these kids are. To be shifted about, exploited, and sacrificed.

  “Beau,” he said, “you’re certain that imprisonment will not deter you?”

  “Not even.” Beau’s words became muddled. “This one guy—he and I overhauled an entire engine at a farm in Philomath—he says the slammer’s not bad so long as you keep to yourself. Bring it on. I’ll take the rap.”

  “Have you talked to him about us? We’re resting our hopes on you, my friend.”

  Beau shook his head, choked down the last of his coffee. His movements were growing jittery; his eyes were glazing over. “You made it clear: No runnin’ off at the mouth.” The kid’s rambling grew louder. “I swear my lips’re sealed. I wanna be part of what’s goin’ down.”

  Stahlherz lifted a canvas sack onto his lap and located the zipper. “And what, precisely, do you believe is ‘goin’ down’?”

  “Like you always say, it’s for you to know and me to find out.”

  “Actually I say that it’s on a need-to-know basis.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. That’s exactly what I told him.”

  “Told whom?”

  “Uh, no, what I meant was—”

  Stahlherz slashed his fingers across his recruit’s shoulder and hooked them into a pressure point. The boy’s words crumbled into a moan while Stahlherz continued digging into skin and nerve tissue. After retracting his fingers, he unloaded from his sack a worn denim jacket. Certain that the pockets contained the requisite items, he wrapped it across Beau’s back, then beckoned his sedated rook from the sack.

  “Your turn,” he directed. “I told you your chance would come.”

  With glassy eyes reflecting the bar’s neon light, the bird clawed his arm, a fiend rising from the darkness. Stahlherz jerked. A talon—breaking his skin!

  “Careful there. You do as you’re told.”

  Ka-kaw-reech! A paroxysm rippled through the creature’s muscles.

  Stahlherz mouthed an injunction: “Rook captures pawn.”

  The bird hovered over the table, then, in a shuffle of feathers and talons, settled on Beau’s shoulder. Kee-reech-reach-insiiide! It spoke into the boy’s ear, the tip of the beak dipping into the orifice like a pen into an inkwell. Beau’s lips parted in a gasp, seeming to repeat his earlier comments as statements of acquiescence: We’re all expendable … Bring it on. I’ll take the rap.

  Without further fanfare, the rook disappeared.

  Stahlherz stood and wiped at his wound with a napkin, then plucked at the single black feather now protruding from his recruit’s ear. The girl lowered her magazine to the counter and peeked over her glasses at Beau’s immobile figure.

  “He’ll come around,” Stahlherz said, slipping currency onto the magazine. “A bit disoriented, but he’ll be ready for his assignment. Fifty dollars? I think that’ll cover the extra ‘shot’ you put in his drink. Audentes fortuna juvat.”

  “Fortune favors the daring,” she repeated in English. Then pocketed the cash.

  Stahlherz had intended for his words to seal her loyalty, yet as he shuffled out the door, he was annoyed by the lackadaisical shrug of her shoulders. “You live your life. I’ll live mine …” It seemed to be this generation’s motto. Though it served his and the Professor’s needs for privacy, it made motivating their recruits laborious.

  Is there no one willing to fight? Are there only pawns on this board of life?

  Stahlherz challenged the night. “A fight to the death—that’s what I want. Come now, Mr. Addison, surely there are easier ways to get the job done, but let’s you and me make a game of it.”

  3

  What You Cannot See

  Josee Walker emerged at dawn from the tent. Her muscles felt like damp ropes strapped across her back, and her hips creaked like old fence slats. I’m falling apart, she thought. Defective merchandise. She snugged a coat over her Seattle Mariners sweatshirt.

  Across the firepit, Scooter was perched on a decaying log. “You sleep okay?”

  She shrugged. “How long’ve you been up?”

  “A while, I guess. Didn’t sleep much.”

  “Me neither.”

  Her mind had been mulling over today’s reunion. Wednesday, October 29. For the first time since birth, she would see her mother. One o’clock at Avery Park. No big deal, but she’d go through with it for her own peace of mind, then move on. As for her father, Marsh Addison? According to Kara, he was “conflicted and confused.” He’d opted out. Typical dirt bag. Had his thrills, but wants zero responsibility. Like I care.

  Scooter leaned back on the log. “Whaddya say? Should we turn this thing in?” He rolled up his poncho, rubbed the canister he’d concealed on his lap. “Could be some cold, hard cash in it for us, a reward. You never know.”

  “Scooter!” Last night’s fears returned in a rush. “What’re you doing with that?”

  “S’okay, babe. Just checkin’ things out.”

  “Could be dangerous.”

  “It says: Gift.”

  “Gift?” She snatched the object away, drew her finger over a row of faded numbers and letters. “G-I-F-T. I didn’t even notice that in the dark. Well, there’s some twisted humor for you. Looks more like an old artillery shell.”

  “The grand spankin’ mother of all bullets.”

  “What if,” she theorized, “it’s from World War II? You know, Oregon’s the only state that had war-related casualties on her own soil during the war. Soldiers used to train near here at Camp Adair. Every once in a while a farmer’ll dig up some old armament and get his picture in the paper. Think that’s what this is?”

  “Don’t know. Is that really true—what you said about Oregon, I mean?”

  “It’s not like Puget Sound’s the only place things happen.”

  “It’s where you and I hooked up, isn’t it?”

  “Ooh, good answer. Might have to give you a poin
t for that one.”

  Three years ago they had met and formed an immediate bond that carried over into friendship, art, and love. Josee had been a freshman and Scooter, a sophomore at the University of Washington. They’d dropped out the following summer, however, convinced that college was a diploma mill devised by corporate greed to raise a working class of loan-imprisoned drones. Nope, that wasn’t for them.

  They’d formed an artists’ colony in a travel trailer on his grandmother’s lakeshore property. Word got around. Soon budding artists and musicians arrived, yearning for expression and connection, for the sense of family of which most had been deprived. Josee spent hours in the living room, leaning against the rattan couch, filling a journal with poetry and pencil sketches. Behind the trailer, Scooter crafted metal sculptures in a shed pieced together with scrap aluminum siding and two-by-fours. When his creations were complete, Josee gave them titles. Often she matched them with one of her poems. As a team, she and Scooter sought out spots to display each welded image—on the porch, on a stump facing the lake, among the trees shading the pitted drive. Together, they sold their work at local galleries and cafés. The minimal cash flow was enough to keep them afloat.

  Scooter edged forward on his perch. “Think you’ve got a point, Josee. Looks like it could be GI: government issue. Like a war relic or something. Be careful with it.”

  “Excuse me? I can take care of myself.”

  “You’re a hundred and ten pounds.”

  “And all muscle—don’t you forget it.” Though she tried to sound lighthearted, she found herself twiddling her eyebrow ring between two fingers. She considered the canister, feeling torn between the threat of the unknown and the allure of the forbidden.

  “Josee?”

  “Huh?”

  “You with me? You okay?”

  “Yep.”

  “You look like you’re off somewhere else.”

  “Did I ever tell you about my grandfather? He died a few years after World War II, or so Kara told me on the phone. Never knew him, never even met the man.” Another page, Josee brooded, missing from her scrapbook. “She sent me his picture, thought I might be interested.”