The Children's War

by C. P. Boyko

  Forty minutes later, the resident, a radiologist, and a surgeon ushered them into a consultation room and explained in subdued voices that they wanted to operate. “It doesn’t appear to be appendicitis,” said the resident, speaking to Burris, “but the abdominal cavity is infected and the peritoneum is inflamed. We can reduce the inflammation and attack the infection with antibiotics, but we need to know what the underlying cause is. The urinalysis and the blood work do not show the kind of bacteria typically found in a primary spontaneous peritonitis.” —“I don’t understand anything you’re saying,” said Rachel. —The radiologist said, “We think we see something on the X-ray that might be a tiny perforation in the large intestine.” —The surgeon said, “We want to fix that, and while we’re at it, wash all the bad bacteria out of the abdominal cavity. All right?”

  “How dangerous is this procedure?” asked Burris. —“It’s much, much less dangerous than not doing it.” —Rachel stifled a moan. “Can we stay with him?” —“Not in the operating room, no. But you can wait right outside, and we’ll keep you updated.”

  They sat in the corridor holding hands; but as time passed and each pursued their own thoughts, their hands came slowly apart. Burris kept expecting to recognize or be recognized by one of the many doctors, nurses, and midwives whom Lucrenzo had named in the lawsuit. Would they make him leave when they discovered who he was? Would they refuse to treat his son? —Rachel, to combat remorse, and clinging to the future as to a talisman, made indistinct resolutions: From now on . . . Never again . . . I promise you . . . —Burris, in contrast, wallowed in remorse: I should never have sued the hospital; I should have spent more time at home; I should have been more firm with her; I should have hired a nanny . . . —As far as Rachel knew, a perforated intestine was an ulcer, and ulcers were caused by stress—by fear and worry. Who but Burris had taught her baby to worry and to fear? —Gradually the anger and frustration that Burris dared not direct at the hospital staff began to settle upon his wife. She should have taken the boy to a doctor three days ago. —From now on, thought Rachel, things will be different . . .

  Two hours later, the resident emerged from the operating theater to say that the worst was over. Two weeks later, Rachel and Burris were finally allowed to bring Oxley home from the intensive care unit. And two years later, there was still no one who could tell them the cause of these tiny, recurrent leaks.

  Marva Leehaven, the director of Shady Tree preschool, had never seen as unhappy a boy as Oxley Kornorek. He screamed when his mother dropped him off, he screamed when she came to pick him up, and he screamed for most of the interval. He would not nap. He pinched the other children and scratched himself. He would not let anyone help him go to the toilet, and invariably made a mess. He went into trances. He stole and hid the same snacks that he refused to eat when they were given him. He interrupted. He did not share. He was always taking off his clothes. He was pale, puffy-eyed, and sniveling, and one of the teachers had noticed that he was spotted with bruises. But most alarming was the bleakness of his imagination. Describing a picture he had drawn of his family, he had pointed at the figure of his father and said, “He’s trying to kill me with a knife.” Asked what his mother was doing, he’d said, “Running away.”

  Marva called a meeting with Oxley’s parents. His father, an eminent dentist, was unable to come, but his mother quickly put Marva’s mind at ease. The boy, she explained, suffered from a rare gastrointestinal disorder that poisoned his blood. “They think that’s what causes his fits.” She apologized for not informing her sooner; it had been such a hectic month. “If you like, I can get Doctor Ghernan to call you; he explains it much better than I do. Or I can make you a copy of the letter he wrote to our last daycare. Or both.”

  Rachel Kornorek was bright, and solemn, and warm, and she was patient but firm with her son, who sat fidgeting but uncomplaining in her lap for nearly five minutes before wriggling free. When she warned him not to leave the room, he slammed his head on the doorknob and slumped to the floor screaming. Without interrupting the conversation, she returned him to her lap and stroked his hair with absentminded affection.

  Marva suggested that perhaps it would be better, after all, if Oxley waited outside in the play area. —“All right. Hear that, bunkie? You can go play.” She put him down and opened the door for him, but now he did not want to leave. Groping for some justification, he moaned, “Elsie hates my shoes.” —“That’s okay. You hate her shoes too.” —Marva frowned; but Oxley seemed mollified. He ventured past the threshold, then lunged hollering towards some indignity being done to a toy he considered his own. Rachel shut the door softly on the altercation.

  The director’s manner became informal, and Rachel knew that she had made a good impression. When the talk turned to Burris, she was pleased to praise his calm, his strength, and his commitment as a parent, feeling more judicial with each judgement she delivered. It did her no harm to commend him; she could afford to be generous.

  “Your husband works full time?,” Marva asked. —Rachel laughed. “And then some.” —“Do you work as well?” —“I used to help out at a bookstore occasionally, but lately there hasn’t been time. Oxley’s kind of a full-time job.” —“Are you getting enough help? How’s your support network?” —“Oh, great. My mom is always around, and some of my best friends have had babies recently, so we prop each other up. And then there’s you folks. I can’t tell you how helpful it is to have these two extra afternoons a week to catch up on my grocery shopping. For some reason, the fluorescent lights and the cash registers just make Oxley crazy.”

  “I’m glad to hear we’re of assistance. Of course, our mission as a preschool is not just to provide childcare, but to prepare and equip these children to integrate themselves into the larger society.” —Rachel agreed readily, and asked if there was anything she should be doing differently.

  Marva had some ideas, which she shared. At the end of the meeting, Rachel seemed grateful and resolute, and Marva, gratified, felt that they had accomplished much.

  Oxley, however, was not ready to leave. He had just craftily and efficiently demolished another child’s block tower, and was exulting in a rare sensation of power and success. The mere sight of his mother was enough to remind him of his usual abjection. The transience of joy, the perpetuity of misery, the fundamental hostility of the world to all his wishes, were revealed to him with crushing clarity. His understanding had no words with which to contain these felt abstractions, so it rendered them in images: he saw himself in chains, being eaten by snakes and spiders, and burned by flaming swords, eternally. He let loose a belly howl of outrage and despair.

  Marva watched Rachel pick him up and carry him out the door, writhing and clawing like a cat. Gravely she uttered her verdict: “Poor boy.” —“Poor mom,” said a colleague.

  —Marva conceded that the child was a handful.

  When at last they were on the road, Rachel said, without reproach, “Well, you certainly made mommy look bad today.” Oxley’s cries subsided as he puzzled over this. Had something happened to his mother? Did she look bad? Had he done it? He strained to see her in the rear-view mirror, desperate to confirm his fears before they could grow worse.

  Rachel stopped at the pharmacy for Oxley’s and Burris’s prescriptions, made an appointment for herself and Oxley with the hairdresser next week, delivered a box of Oxley’s old clothes to Alexis, swapped a bag of magazines and children’s books at the library, paid the telephone bill, and bought herself a coffee and Oxley, for his patience, an ice cream bar, which he had disseminated across the backseat by the time they arrived home. She gave him a banana to eat in the bathtub while she tidied the bedroom; she dressed him and let him undress himself in the kitchen while she made two curries, one for him and one for Burris; then she put him in his old car seat with a newspaper, a crayon, and a new noisemaking toy car, which he tore, ate, and dismantled, respectively, while she fixed the broken shelf in t
he refrigerator.

  Burris came home in a good mood, having successfully hypnotized two patients that day. To vent his happiness, he hugged his son, gave his wife advice, and, with a voluptuous profligacy of dishes, utensils, and spices, cooked himself a fresh meal, which he sat down to and enjoyed like a prince amid the cozy clutter of his palace.

  “Are those my socket wrenches he’s playing with?” —“No,” said Rachel. “They’re mine.” —He raised his eyebrows. “Since when do you have socket wrenches?” —“Since today. I don’t like yours. And now we both have a set.”

  —He chuckled. “I cannot in good conscience approve such extravagance.”

  He put Oxley to bed, and over his protests read him a story. Then, while Rachel puttered in the kitchen, he sat in the den, listening to music and dreaming of one young woman’s teeth.

  “Sorry I missed that meeting,” he said, when at last Rachel joined him on the sofa. “I couldn’t get away.” —“That’s okay. I covered for you.” —“What did she have to say?” —“Oh, just that he’s a pain in the neck.” —“Did she give you a hard time?” —“No. She was quite nice, actually. Maybe too nice.” —“What do you mean?” —“I don’t know. She was a little too pragmatic.” She paused and hunted her thoughts. “I guess I’d rather be blamed for some things than absolved of everything.” She tossed her head and laughed. “That must be my upbringing.”

  She recounted for him the director’s suggestions: positive reinforcement, timeouts, consistency, and exercises in visualization, verbalization, and sharing. —Burris put his arms around her. “Maybe what he needs is someone to practice with.” —“Like who?” —“Oh, like a sibling, maybe.”

  —Rachel grinned. “It’s funny you should say that.” —“What’s so funny?” —“A coincidence. Guess who I visited this morning.” —“I’m sure I have no clue.”

  “Doctor Leahy.”

  He gave her a searching look.

  HIGH GROUND. —SERGEANT MONTAZO wriggled on her belly to the crest of the ridge and surveyed the valley below through her field glasses. She had never seen landscape like this before. The gaunt and ragged mountains were smoothed in spots with shelves of snow; the rolling foothills were checkered with cottony groves of trees and swaths of furze; a stream twisted like a child’s scribble through pastures splashed with wildflowers; a dirt road divided cultivated fields that from this height looked no larger than patches on a quilt; and a village, asleep or abandoned, lay nestled in the blue shadows like an heirloom in velvet. The sky was slowly filling with infinitely gradated dawn—colors that, she would swear, did not exist back home—and even as she watched, a sliver of sun topped the horizon and poured its pearly warmth across the valley floor. Overcome, she lowered the field glasses, and the scene dissolved into daubs of colored light. She resolved to return here someday, with a camera, hiking shoes, a pipe, and a companion. No part of her would admit that nothing could ever again carry her halfway around the earth from home to a comfortless mountaintop at daybreak, or that for this exquisite moment she had the war to thank. To relieve her emotions, she decided to drop some shells into the valley.

  She beckoned to Culverson, the new radio operator, who joined her on the ridge. She gave her a lesson in artillery observation. A good observer with high ground and a radio, she said, was more powerful than even a battalion of rifles, for she could rain down ordnance on any position in her view. “So,” she asked, “if you were the enemy, where in this valley would you place your observatory?” After some thought, Culverson indicated the same unobvious vantage point that Montazo herself had selected. Montazo grimaced. “All right, wiseass, but why?” —Culverson shrugged. “Good field of view both up and down the valley. Overlooks the village, and that crossroads down there.” —Montazo raised the field glasses again. There was indeed a crossroads in the distance. Scowling, she said, “Okay, sure, sure. Let’s assume that’s your target. What’re you going to tell your arty?” —“To shell it.” —“I mean, what are its coordinates? How far away do you think it is from our position?” While Culverson considered, Montazo added, “It’s not something you can teach, distance estimation. A person’s either got it or they don’t.” —“I’d say twenty-two, twenty-three hundred yards. Add maybe seventy elevation.”

  This was so accurate that Montazo, exasperated, said nothing more. Muttering, she made some new estimations, did some calculations in her notebook, then grabbed the handset off Culverson’s back and dialed the field artillery frequency. She gave them coordinates, and requested a full concentration.

  After a minute, the shells came shrieking down from the sky and landed with elegant precision, in little puffs of smoke and debris, inside the village. A moment later came the reverberant rumble of the explosions. Two buildings had received direct hits. Montazo, had she not been prone, would have placed her fists on her hips.

  “Isn’t that a civilian village?” asked Culverson. —“It’s abandoned.” —“Oh. I thought I saw smoke from the chimneys. Yeah, look, there’s people coming out into the street.” —Montazo glanced through the field glasses. “This is a free-fire zone. Anyone still in that village is either enemy, or abetting the enemy.”

  “Oh,” said Culverson. “Should we hit them again?”

  Sergeant Montazo did not reply. She crept back down the ridge and climbed into her funk hole, where she opened a packet of curried beans and awaited the counterattack.

  Sniper Bait. —Late in the afternoon, Speed Bumps, intoxicated with coffee for want of anything stronger, took her idea to Pschaw and Smith at the communication dugout, which had been harassed the past few days by an unseen sniper. “I’ll stand on the roof and draw fire; you watch for the muzzle flash.” —“That sounds like a bad idea.” —“Don’t worry. They can’t hit me if I keep moving.” And she was certainly moving. She shuffled from side to side, rubbed her hands, wagged her eyebrows, and rolled her shoulders alternately in a cajoling manner. Smith and Pschaw doubted whether they could have hit her at point-blank range. They agreed to the plan. It might be fun.

  She climbed onto the sandbagged dugout, hollering and waving her arms. Then she began to writhe and spin and lunge about. She leered, and guffawed, and bowed, and sobbed, and hopped in place. She made ugly faces and vulgar gestures. She cocked a hip and tossed her head like a model; she flaunted herself like a saleswoman displaying an irresistible product. She soon drew an appreciative crowd; even Smith and Pschaw crawled out of the post to watch. She began to feel invincible, as if her body were composed of air.

  The sniper watched too, but refused to take a shot at the crazy woman. She was, in effect, a casualty already.

  Later that night, Smith was shot in the face through the loophole. The bullet passed through one cheek and out her open mouth, doing little damage. She finished the word she was speaking, but not the sentence. She’d been telling Pschaw about her parents’ upholstery business.

  Still Alive. —Sunachs monitored her fear like a blackout warden, lest any glimmer of it be seen by her comrades. This hypochondriac self-consciousness only aggravated the inevitable effects of insomnia, malnutrition, danger, and caffeine, so that her teeth were always on edge, her heart felt strangled in her chest, perceptions poured through her like radiation, and her nerves jangled constantly, like telephones ringing just below the threshold of hearing. To prevent her hands from shaking, she kept them busy cleaning her rifle or shuffling cards; to camouflage the starts and flinches to which she was prey, she flexed her shoulders and wagged her head like a pugilist; and her trembling lip she concealed behind a sneer. No one but she suspected that she was a coward.

  She coped best when under fire, because then all her idle wits and muscles were enlisted to hug the ground, or to hold her weapon still and squeeze the trigger. For this reason, she usually volunteered for patrols. She was perhaps happiest when crossing a minefield or skulking through the enemy’s positions, because it was only at such times that he
r inner turmoil seemed balanced by, even justified by, the ambient threat.

  Volunteering one night for a retrieval patrol, she discovered within herself a new, unfathomed fear—the residue, perhaps, of childhood ghosts and bogeys: she was, it seemed, terrified of dead bodies. As the patrol crept noiselessly through the moonless valley, every rock appeared to her a smirking skull, and every shrub, every log, every shadow appeared a writhen, putrefying carcass. But when at last Vrail found the body they were looking for, lying twisted and limp in a puddle, its mundane lifelessness was puzzling, and somewhat frustrating, to Sunachs. Under the pretense of checking it for booby-traps, she put her hands all over it, searching for some justification for her earlier dread. But this thing was just clothes and cold, sticky meat. Not even the cavity in the back of the skull, nor the dry eyeball under her thumb, could explain her horror. This body was just a body—one that bore no resemblance to the corpse that poisoned her dreams. It proved, too, to belong to an enemy, so, after stripping it of its boots and its buttons, they left it where it lay.

  In an effort to exorcize, or at least erode, her newfound fear, she undertook to study the dead around her—to scrutinize them with one eye turned inward, as it were, to record her own reaction. Taking advantage of a canteen halt one day, she dropped into a bomb crater where a dead peasant lay festering in the sun. This time she felt no fear or awe, but only an understandable revulsion. The stench, for one thing, though horrible, was not horrific: nothing that smelled so much like rotting garbage could be uncanny. And the blotched and bloated face, which the gases of decomposition had distended and discolored, was too garish, too inhuman, to be frightening. She peeled back the man’s lips to reveal the teeth, the visible part of the skeleton; but still she experienced nothing but distaste.