by Tim O'Brien
In the mirror, where John Wade mostly lived, he could read his, father's mind. Simple affection, for instance. "Love you, cowboy," his father would think.
Or his father would think, "Hey, report cards aren't everything."
The mirror made this possible, and so John would sometimes carry it to school with him, or to baseball games, or to bed at night. Which was another trick: how he secretly kept the old stand-up mirror in his head. Pretending, of course—he understood that—but he felt calm and safe with the big mirror behind his eyes, where he could slide away behind the glass, where he could turn bad things into good things and just be happy.
The mirror made things better.
The mirror made his father smile all the time. The mirror made the vodka bottles vanish from their hiding place in the garage, and it helped with the hard, angry silences at the dinner table. "How's school these days?" his father would ask, in the mirror, which would permit John to ramble on about some of his problems, little things, school stuff, and in the mirror his father would say, "No problem, that's life, that's par for the course. Besides, you're my best pal." After dinner John would watch his father slip out to the garage. That was the worst part. The secret drinking that wasn't secret. But in the mirror, John would be there with him, and together they'd stand in the dim light, rakes and hoses and garage smells all around them, and his father would explain exactly what was happening and why it was happening. "One quickie," his father would say, "then we'll smash these goddamn bottles forever."
"To smithereens," John would say, and his father would say, "Right. Smithereens."
In all kinds of ways his father was a terrific man, even without the mirror. He was smart and funny. People enjoyed his company—John, too—and the neighborhood kids were always stopping by to toss around a football or listen to his father's stories and opinions and jokes. At school one day, when John was in sixth grade, the teacher made everyone stand up and give five-minute speeches about any topic under the sun, and a kid named Tommy Winn talked about John's father, what a neat guy he was, always friendly and full of pep and willing to spend time just shooting the breeze. At the end of the speech Tommy Winn gave John a sad, accusing look that lasted way too long. "All I wish," Tommy said, "I wish he was my father."
Except Tommy Winn didn't know some things.
How in fourth grade, when John got a little chubby, his father used to call him Jiggling John. It was supposed to be funny. It was supposed to make John stop eating.
At the dinner table, if things weren't silent, his father would wiggle his tongue and say, "Holy Christ, look at the kid stuff it in, old Jiggling John," then he'd glance over at John's mother, who would say, "Stop it, he's husky, he's not fat at all," and John's father would laugh and say, "Husky my ass."
Sometimes it would end there.
Other times his father would jerk a thumb at the basement door. "That pansy magic crap. What's wrong with baseball, some regular exercise?" He'd shake his head. "Blubby little pansy."
In the late evenings, just before bedtime, John and Kathy often went out for walks around the neighborhood, holding hands and looking at the houses and talking about which one they would someday have as their own. Kathy had fallen in love with an old blue Victorian across from Edgewood Park. The place had white shutters and a white picket fence, a porch that wrapped around three sides, a yard full of ferns and flower beds and azalea bushes. She'd sometimes pause on the sidewalk, gazing up at the house, her lips moving as if to memorize all its details, and on those occasions John would feel an almost erotic awareness of his own good fortune, a fluttery rush in the valves of his heart. He wished he could make things happen faster. He wished there were some trick that might cause a blue Victorian to appear in their lives.
After a time Kathy would sigh and give him a long sober stare. "Dare you to rob a bank," she'd say, which was only a way of saying that houses could wait, that love was enough, that nothing else really mattered.
They would smile at this knowledge and walk around the park a couple of times before heading back to the apartment.
Sorcerer thought he could get away with murder. He believed it. After he'd shot PFC Weatherby—which was an accident, the purest reflex—he tricked himself into believing it hadn't happened the way it happened. He pretended he wasn't responsible; he pretended he couldn't have done it and therefore hadn't; he pretended it didn't matter much; he pretended that if the secret stayed inside him, with all the other secrets, he could fool the world and himself too.
He was convincing. He had tears in his eyes, because it came from his heart. He loved PFC Weatherby like a brother.
"Fucking VC," he said when the chopper took Weatherby away. "Fucking animals."
In 1982, at the age of thirty-seven, John Wade was elected lieutenant governor. He and Kathy had problems, of course, but they believed in happiness, and in their power to make happiness happen, and he was proud to stand with his hand on a Bible and look into Kathy's eyes and take the public oath even as he took his own private oath. He would devote more time to her. He would investigate the market in blue Victorians. He would change some things.
At the inaugural ball that evening, after the toasts and speeches, John led her out to the dance floor and looked directly at her as if for the first time. She wore a short black dress and glass earrings. Her eyes were only her eyes. "Oh, Kath," he said, which was all he could think of to say, nothing else, just "Oh, Kath."
One day near Christmas, when John was eleven, his father drove him down to Karra's Studio of Magic to pick out his present.
"Anything you want," his father said. "No sweat. Break the bank."
The store hadn't changed at all. The same display cases, the same carrot-haired woman behind the cash register. Right away, when they walked in, she cried, "You?' and did the flicking thing with her eyebrows. She was dressed entirely in black except for a pair of copper bracelets and an amber necklace and two sparkling green stars pasted to her cheeks.
"The little magician," she said, and John's father laughed and said, "Little Merlin," and then for a long time the two of them stood talking like old friends.
John finally made a noise in his throat.
"Come on," he said, "we'll miss Christmas." He pointed at one of the display cases. "Right there."
"What?" said his father.
"That one. That's it."
His father leaned down to look.
"There," John said. "Guillotine of Death."
It was a substantial piece of equipment. Fifteen or sixteen pounds, almost two feet high. He'd seen it a hundred times in his catalogs—he knew the secret, in fact, which was simple—but he still felt a rubbery bounce in his stomach as the Carrot Lady lifted the piece of apparatus to the counter. It was shiny black with red enamel trim and a gleaming chrome blade.
The Carrot Lady nodded, almost tenderly. "My favorite," she said. "My favorite, too."
She turned and went into a storeroom and returned with a large cucumber. The sucker move, John knew—prove that the blade was sharp and real. She inserted the cucumber into the guillotine's wooden collar, clamped down a lock, stepped back, pulled up the chrome blade and let it fall. The cucumber lay on the counter in two neat halves.
"Good enough," said the Carrot Lady. She squinted up at John's father. "What we need now is an arm."
"Sorry?"
"Your arm," she said.
His father chuckled. "No way on earth."
"Off with the jacket."
His father tried to smile—a tall, solid-looking man, curly black hair and blue eyes and an athlete's sloping shoulders. It took him a long while to peel off his jacket.
"Guillotine of Death," he muttered. "Very unusual."
"Slip your wrist in there. No sudden movements."
"Christ," he said.
"That's the spirit," she said.
The Carrot Lady's eyes were merry as she hoisted up the blade. She held it there for a few seconds, then motioned for John to step behind the count
er.
"You know this trick?" she said.
His father's eyes swept sideways. "Hell no, he doesn't know it."
"I do," John said. "It's easy."
"Bullshit, the kid doesn't have the slightest—"
"Simple," John said.
His father frowned, curled up his fingers, frowned again. His forearm looked huge and meaty in the guillotine collar.
"Listen, what about instructions?" he said. "These things come with instructions, right? Seriously. Written-down instructions?"
"Oh, for Pete's sake," John said, "she told you to relax."
He grasped the blade handle.
Power: that was the thing about magic.
The Carrot Lady folded her arms. The green stars on her cheeks seemed to twinkle with desire.
"Go on," she said. "Let him have it."
There were times when John Wade wanted to open up Kathy's belly and crawl inside and stay there forever. He wanted to swim through her blood and climb up and down her spine and drink from her ovaries and press his gums against the firm red muscle of her heart. He wanted to suture their lives together.
It was terror, mostly. He was afraid of losing her. He had his secrets, she had hers.
So now and then he'd play spy tricks. On Saturday mornings he'd follow her over to the dry cleaners on Okabena Avenue, then to the drugstore and post office. Afterward, he'd tail her across the street to the supermarket, watching from a distance as she pushed a cart up and down the aisles, then he'd hustle back to the apartment and wait for her to walk in. "What's for lunch?" he'd ask, and Kathy would give him a quick look and say, "You tell me."
Briefly then, as she put the groceries away, Kathy's eyes would darken up with little flecks of gray. Such eyes, he'd think. He'd want to suck them from their sockets. He'd want to feel their weight on his tongue, taste the whites, roll them around like lemon drops.
Instead, he'd watch Kathy fold the grocery bags.
"You know, maybe I'm way off," she'd say, "but I get this creepy feeling. Like you're always there. Always worming around inside me."
John would smile his candidate's smile. "Very true. Not worming, though. Snaking."
"You didn't go out today?"
"Out where?"
"I don't know where. It just seemed—"
He'd pin her against the refrigerator, tight. He'd run a hand along the bone of her hip. He'd whisper in her ear. "Boy," he'd say, "do I love you. Boy, oh, boy."
"So you didn't go out?"
"Let's be cobras. You and me. Gobble each other up."
Sorcerer was in his element. It was a place with secret trapdoors and tunnels and underground chambers populated by various spooks and goblins, a place where magic was everyone's hobby and where elaborate props were always on hand—exploding boxes and secret chemicals and numerous devices of levitation—you could fly here, you could make other people fly—a place where the air itself was both reality and illusion, where anything might instantly become anything else. It was a place where decency mixed intimately with savagery, where you could wave your wand and make teeth into toothpaste, civilization into garbage—where you could intone a few syllables over a radio and then sit back to enjoy the spectacle—pure mystery, pure miracle—a place where every object and every thought and every hour seemed to glow with all the unspeakable secrets of human history. The jungles stood dark and unyielding. The corpses gaped. The war itself was a mystery. Nobody knew what it was about, or why they were there, or who started it, or who was winning, or how it might end. Secrets were everywhere—booby traps in the hedgerows, bouncing betties under the red clay soil. And the people. The silent papa-sans, the hollow-eyed children and jabbering old women. What did these people want? What did they feel? Who was VC and who was friendly and who among them didn't care? These were all secrets. History was a secret. The land was a secret. There were secret caches, secret trails, secret codes, secret missions, secret terrors and appetites and longings and regrets. Secrecy was paramount. Secrecy was the war. A guy might do something very brave—charge a bunker, maybe, or stand up tall under fire—and afterward everyone would look away and stay quiet for a while, then somebody would say, "How the fuck'd you do that?" and the brave guy would blink and shake his head, because he didn't know, because it was one of those incredible secrets inside him.
Sorcerer had his own secrets.
PFC Weatherby, that was one. Another was how much he loved the place—Vietnam—how it felt like home. And there was the deepest secret of all, which was the secret of Thuan Yen, so secret that he sometimes kept it secret from himself.
John Wade knew he was sick, and one evening he tried to talk about it with Kathy. He wanted to unload the horror in his stomach.
"It's hard to explain," he said, "but I don't feel real sometimes. Like I'm not here."
They were in the apartment, making dinner, and the place smelled of onions and frying hamburger.
"You're real to me," Kathy said. "Very real, and very good."
"I hope so. Except I'm afraid to look at myself. Literally. I can't even look at my own eyes in the mirror, not for long. I'm afraid I won't be there."
Kathy glanced up from the onion she was chopping.
"Well, I adore looking at you," she said. "It's my second favorite thing to do."
"Good. I still wonder."
John put the hamburgers on a platter. Kathy dumped on the onions. She seemed nervous, as if she were aware of certain truths but could not bear to know what she knew, which was in the nature of their love.
"If you want," she said, "we'll skip supper. Do my favorite thing."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
"Kath, listen, I need to tell you this. Something's wrong, I've done things."
"It doesn't matter."
"It does."
She smiled brightly at a spot over his shoulder. "We could catch a movie."
"Ugly things."
"A good movie wouldn't hurt."
"Christ, you're not—"
She picked up the hamburger platter. "We'll be fine. Totally fine."
"Sure," he said. "Wait and see."
"Sure."
They were quiet for a moment. He looked at her, she looked at him. Anything could've happened.
***
Sorcerer didn't say a word about PFC Weatherby. It was reflex, after all. But for many days he felt a curious discomfort, almost giddy at times, almost sad at other times. On guard at night, watching the dark, Sorcerer would see PFC Weatherby start to smile, then topple backward, then make a funny jerking motion with his hand.
Like a hitchhiker, Sorcerer thought. A poor bum who couldn't catch a ride.
On the afternoon his father was buried, John Wade went down to the basement and practiced magic in front of his stand-up mirror. He did feints and sleights. He talked to his father. "I wasn't fat," he said, "I was normal." He transformed a handful of copper pennies into four white mice. "And I didn't jiggle. Not even once. I just didn't."
It was in the nature of their love that Kathy did not insist that he see a psychiatrist, and that John did not feel the need to seek help. By and large he was able to avoid the sickness down below. He moved with determination across the surface of his life, attending to a marriage and a career. He performed the necessary tricks, dreamed the necessary dreams. On occasion, though, he'd yell in his sleep—loud, desperate, obscene things—and Kathy would reach out and ask what was wrong. Her eyes would betray visible fear. "It wasn't even your voice," she'd say. "It wasn't even you."
John would force a laugh. He would have no memory beyond darkness.
"Bad dreams," he'd tell her, which he believed to be true, but which did not sound true, even to himself. He would hold her in his arms. He would lie there quietly, eyes wide open, taking from her skin what he needed.
And then later, sometimes for hours, Sorcerer would watch his wife sleep.
Sometimes he'd say things.
"Kath," he'd say, peering down at her, "Kath,
my Kath," the palm of his hand poised above her lips as if to control the miracle of her breathing. In the dark, sometimes, he would see a vanishing village. He would see PFC Weatherby, and his father's white casket, and a little boy trying to manipulate the world. Other times he would see himself performing the ultimate vanishing act. A grand finale, a curtain closer. He did not know the technique yet, or the hidden mechanism, but in his mind's eye he could see a man and a woman swallowing each other up like that pair of snakes along the trail near Pinkville, first the tails, then the heads, both of them finally disappearing forever inside each other. Not a footprint, not a single clue. Purely gone—the trick of his life. The burdens of secrecy would be lifted. Memory would be null. They would live in perfect knowledge, all things visible, all things invisible, no wires or strings, just that large dark world where one plus one will always come to zero.
All night he'd lie watching her.
"Kath, sweet Kath," he'd murmur, as if summoning her spirit, feeling the rise and fall of her breath against his hand.
11. What He Did Next
John Wade slept late the next morning, a jumpy electric sleep. It was almost noon by the time he'd showered and moved out to the kitchen. Still groggy, he brewed up a pot of coffee, scrambled three eggs, and carried his breakfast out to the porch. Another brilliant day: ivory clouds pinned to a glossy blue sky. He sat on the steps and ate his eggs. Little dream filaments kept unwinding in his head—hissing noises, a flapping sound.
At one point he glanced behind him, startled. "Hey, Kath," he said.
He listened.
Then he yelled, "Kath!"
Then he waited and yelled, "Kath, come here a minute!"
Inside, he rinsed the dishes and poured himself another cup of coffee. A half hour, he thought, and she'd show up. A nature hike or something. Most mornings she liked to head up along the shoreline or follow one of the trails out toward the fire tower. Another half hour. An hour, tops.