by Jack Cady
Plus everyone would know it was Burnside’s wheelie. He’s the only one of the wheelchair bunch strong enough to pop a good one. He spun the chair in three intersecting circles, like an ad for Ballantine’s. "A snort before lunch, and a snooze after." He pointed the chair toward his room.
"It’s the solitary drinkers who end up doing time," I told him. "You shouldn’t drink alone." I followed Burnside, and I followed slow. On good days I can make it through these hallways leaning on a cane. Most days I chase a walker. This place is—this place. If we did not have bullshit, we’d be dead. Let me explain.
Pain around here is real. Around here bodies do not heal, and exercise does not work out stiffness. Doctors can mask some serious pain with pills, and people can hide from pain a little bit by using sedatives and drugged sleep. Pain here is eternal, like sunrise and sunset. It’s a part of conditions, part of a deal which says: if you live long enough, you have to hurt.
In this place puke is nasty, sour, bile-filled, vomit that more often than not travels along raw throats from guts that can no longer work a full shift. Puke comes laden with blood. In this place hip bones are so fragile one dares not stumble, and people who fall out of bed do not survive. When one is very, very old skin becomes thin as tissue paper, and cartilage around the nose disappears causing it to retract. The face looks like a skull with skin.
This is human stuff; the human thing we do not like to think about, not even when it’s happening. Sooner or later, though, it comes to a lot of us. The only people who are young forever are the ones who early on have the bad luck to get in the way of bullets or trucks or killing disease. The message in this place says: you weren’t smart enough to die young, so get it figured out.
Some people don’t figure. They become TV stiffs, and TV sucks them into its own darkness. Some people do figure, but they mask their figuring with bullshit. Bullshit is the first line of defense against pain, or, as Burnside says of corporal Harvey—"All that poor bastard had was cancer. I’ve got cancer and a Combat Infantryman’s Badge."
"You’ve only got the prostate kind," I tell him, "and Harvey had it in the gizzard. Prostate comes from frigging around with preacher’s wives. Anybody can get it."
The first line of defense against pain . . . the other secret about pain is that it’s easier to handle if you don’t feel sorry for yourself. Burnside and I, and most of these geriatrics, learned about not feeling sorry for yourself during grade school. Of course, all of that happened some years ago. The reasons for our learning are now in history books. As Casey Stengle used to say, "You could look it up."
So I followed Burnside as he headed for our room. We bunk two to a room in this place, until it comes time to die. Then they move us into solitary. As I followed I looked forward to a jolt of bourbon, either Burnside’s bourbon or mine. Burnside could find whiskey in the middle of the Sahara, and I could find the beer chaser.
Our stash hides in what used to be a dumbwaiter. This hospital has been redesigned so many times even architects lose track of how everything fits. At one time or other dumbwaiters were plastered over. We opened this one, flushed plaster piece-at-a-time down the latrine, and I hung battalion colors of the 120th Engineers over the hole. The 120th is not my outfit anyway, and screw the 120th.
"That was one swell party. Harvey must have meant something to somebody." Burnside uncorked the Jim Beam. We were both having a tough time because of Harvey. Dan Harvey had been a good friend.
"I always thought those ghosties were just part of your imagination," Burnside said. "Ross, you’re getting elderly."
He took a belt, wiped his mouth, then took a little sip and passed the bottle. I took it from him just in time to keep it from getting dropped. Burnside looked up, fumbled, saw something standing behind my shoulder. His face went white as a corpse. Then his mouth twitched, and his hands dropped to the wheels of the chair like he was ready to lead a charge. "What are you doing here?" he whispered, and for the second time in a single day his voice held no b.s. He looked at me. "You’ll want to take a lick outta that bottle before you turn around."
A Japanese soldier stood behind me as I turned. He seemed polite. He looked almost solid, nearly real. This kid couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, though with Japs it’s hard to tell. He wore one of those dink uniforms with a sash. He bowed. I bowed right back at him, or at least as well as a stiff back and hips can. Old shapes took me over. The courtesy seemed downright civilized after bunking beside Burnside. The bow seemed to please the kid. He smiled, then vanished. Puff. Little blue mist. Nothing.
I turned to Burnside, and Burnside was so bleached I thought he died. His bald head shone, and fluorescent light lay across it like polish. Those heavy shoulders slumped, and his mouth formed what I feared was a permanent ‘oh’. Then his hands stirred. "This is serious," he said. "Pour another shot, but don’t pass the bottle. I’ll drop it surely."
I sat on the bed, and my hand, which naturally trembles, really trembled. The whiskey, which is one of the last good things in life, roiled my gut, but was worth the roil. "Tell me," I said to Burnside.
"It happened on the Canal," he told me. "At the time he was a better man than me. We accidentally bumped into each other while mutually retreating. I shot him in the gut and my M1 popped its clip. Empty. He leaned on a tree, slid down to sit on his butt, and pointed a pistol at me. He studied the situation, and saw how we’d all been reamed. I could see it in his eyes. He just plain said, ‘Aw, screw it,’ which is ‘shiranu ga hotoke’ in Japanese. Then he flipped the pistol away, tipped on his side, and declared peace on all the world."
Rubber soles padded in the hall and I hid the bottle beneath a pillow. Burnside’s ears are not as sharp as mine. He took my signal, though, and had his face more or less composed by the time nurse Johnson entered the room. "There’s a little more to it," he whispered.
"This had better not be happy hour," Johnson said as she entered. Nurse Johnson is on day shift, and that improves our days. "You deadbeats don’t fool anybody."
Johnson gets more dejected than most of the other nurses when she loses a patient, and she’d just lost Harvey. Sometimes she hangs around us, I swear, just because we still show a little life. It perks her up. We do our best to behave indecent.
In this geriatric ward doctors outrank Jesus, who, as the Navy boys will tell you, was only a carpenter’s mate. Doctors, though, stand with God at their right hands. Nurses range in rank from cherub right on up to holy saint.
And how, one may well ask, did all this come about? And where, one may well ask, does nurse Johnson fit among that celestial chorus? And for how long, one may further ask, has Burnside been trying to put the make on her?
Take it by-the-numbers, because Burnside isn’t going to score anyway, so there’s no big hurry:
Some people here are dark towers of pain, and some are small, dense, compressed mounds of pain. Burnside, for all his fanny rides a wheelchair, qualifies as a dark tower with flares burning at the top. You don’t become a compressed mound, around here, until you lose sight of everything happening beyond your own body. When the body is all that’s left for the brain to think about, doctors become the center of the universe. If Burnside did not cuss presidents, and chase women, and originate reams of originals and copies in the way of bullshit, he’d become a mound. I would myself, except, of course, nothing about me hurts except my walker which has four legs and thus more opportunity.
And who am I to judge? At this age everybody has his own pain and his own ghosts, or his own memories; and perhaps ghosts and memories are all the same. People wrap themselves in the past, spinning cocoons around pain. Memories insulate against the ice of death creeping upward from their feet, against eternal cold entering their veins. Men dream of childhood, of crystalline winters warm by woodstoves . . . although ice flowers form on windowpanes of the soul; and they dream of a cherry tree in blossom, and perhaps the welcoming smile of a girl they met but once, yet dreamed of always.
So who
am I to judge? I’m just another dogface who rode the G.I. Bill. A dogface who became a high school history teacher who became retired, who became adjudged incapable of living alone; and maybe the judges were right. On the other hand I’ve seen Europe and Asia, and know how to run B.A.R.s, 30 m.m. m.g.s, mortars, and tests in American history given to teenagers equally endowed with hope and beauty and zits.
And nurse Johnson, who is she?
She’s one of those dreamers for whom the world has no time. Let’s call her early thirties, which is kindly, and beautiful which is true. She tucks her long hair up under her silly little cap, and walks long-legged through these halls in a way that makes you thankful for the memories of women. Her nose is a little too sharp for the cover of fashion magazines, and her look is too kindly to ever get her hired for television. Her eyes are hazel, her mouth generous, her body enticingly slight. She moves like a girl when she’s happy, and the soul of tiredness when she’s not. Nurse Johnson cares too much about her job, and is going to burn out. I hope she holds on until Burnside passes. Burnside claims to have spent his whole life in debauchery, and nurse Johnson, who is his greatest challenge, should also be his last sight when leaving this vale.
And thus, in the ranks of heaven, is nurse Johnson a one-ring Warrant Officer, which is just enough gold braid to sing alto in the chorus of the Lord.
"It’s these fast machines," Burnside said to me and patted his wheelchair. "They always get the girls." To nurse Johnson he said, "Sergeant Ross was just leaving."
Johnson stood beside the bed where I sat, smiled a sad little smile, and pretended to ignore Burnside. "The dayroom’s in an uproar. You guys did something that upset everybody. What?" Her hair is kind of dishwater blond, but gleamy. It fluffs and softens the effect of that sharp little nose.
"Nothing much," I lied. "Burnside told a couple sea stories. Corporal Harvey kicked. Burnside sang something about Minnie the Moocher. Burnside’s the man you want." No good could come from telling any nurse about an infestation of ghosts.
I hate to see so much sorrow in a face, and Johnson’s reflected about as much sorrow as anyone could bear. She can’t get it through her head that being dead is not that big a deal. Toward the end Harvey’s pain out-paced the drugs. He was bed-ridden. He wouldn’t put up with spending his life in bed, nor would I, nor would Burnside . . . at least not alone.
"He left messages for you both," she said. "I liked corporal Harvey, even if he did hang out with you guys." Johnson should work in a maternity ward, not with geriatrics. "Minnie the Moocher," she said to me. "Do you guys ever tell the truth?"
"On Sundays."
"Or when it don’t cost a red cent," Burnside said. "Sergeant Ross is cheap, but I know how to show a girl a good time." As he spoke he kept looking around like a man searching the jungle for snipers. His Japanese ghost would probably not show up with a nurse nearby, but with ghosts who can tell?
"Both of you are going to hate this, or at least I think you are." Nurse Johnson’s mouth held just the littlest bit of a sad smile. Her eyelids were a little blinky, a little teary. It came to me that maybe we’re more to her than pluses or minuses on a nurse’s score sheet. On the other hand, no sense getting too emotional.
"Corporal Harvey understands why the Buddha smiles," she said to me. "He told me to say that to you. He also told me that he has been instructed not to explain it to you." She turned to Burnside, and she sort of bit her lower lip.
I tipped and nearly fell off the edge of the bed. Nurse Johnson was flipping it right back at us. Men dying of cancer do not leave final messages. Men dying of cancer live in great caverns of pain, caverns illumed with the unrighteous fires of infernos real as those of Dante. Men dying of cancer writhe internally, the violence and chaos of tumor overreaching any last intelligence. Pain becomes pure, probably, and maybe such purity has something to do with the Buddha, but sure as hell men don’t talk about it.
"And for sergeant Burnside," nurse Johnson said, "and I quote verbatim: Harvey said, ‘Get off your goldbrickin’ butt and find an honest job.’"
"Got the last word didn’t he?" Burnside’s voice filled with admiration even as he continued to scout the room. "Harvey always could pile it on." Burnside was not exactly distracted, but his attention went toward shadows in corners, or any other place that might hide visions and worries from the past.
I sort of blinked at nurse Johnson, and she sort of winked at me. Burnside sat between us, and Burnside was stupidly buying every ounce of it. I figured this day marked a turning point in nurse Johnson’s career. This was bigger than Paul Bunyan. She had just bullshitted the most noted purveyor of b.s. ever to appear in the history of the American West.
For three days the geriatric ward fell back into the drone of routine, except for occasional sorties by TV stiffs. The lads, and two lasses, made tracks to the back windows of this wing beyond which lies Memorial Gardens, the military cemetery, or, as Burnside puts it, The Old Soldier’s Home.
Burnside and I went as well, but we did not settle for looking out the windows. We inched through the doorway, onto a concrete terrace, and looked over the terrain. It was not a position I’d wish to defend, and not a position I’d wish to take. From a tactical point of view it’s an infantryman’s nightmare.
There’s a narrow strip of lawn bordering the terrace, then a narrow cemetery with gleaming markers running crosswise the hill; as if some wiseacre had pasted a decorated bandage on nature. At the lower edge of the cemetery there’s third growth forest, gently sloping over desolate ground, the last undeveloped area. Beyond the forest a rickety footbridge spans a ravine, and, when across the bridge and at the bottom of the hill, there lies the remnants of a Victorian park. The park was once a place where ladies and gentlemen strolled, and where children played. When this hospital went military in the long ago, something happened down there. Maybe it became off limits. Maybe the darkness we’ve but lately noticed has dwelt in that park among shadows of neglect. The covered bandstand is broken, the roof cracked, the steps rotted. Ornamental iron fences are rusted, and ornamental trees stand unpruned, while hedges are overgrown. From a distance, though, it still looks like a spot of sanity in all that desolation.
No one goes there anymore, not even to cut firewood. Our V.A. ghosts don’t go there. If it is a haunted wood, a haunted park, a haunted spot of history, then it’s haunted by something more hideous than ghosts, and more dangerous than guns. This hospital has its safe side, with roads and lawns. It has this dark side, dark nearly to black, empty of life. Not even a bird chirps, and the only way you could defend that position would be with light artillery. If you attacked it you would get nothing but tree bursts from mortars.
Burnside and I, along with the resurrected TV stiffs, gazed across rows of glowing white cemetery stones beneath the flowing flag of a great nation. We gazed toward the forest, the ravine, then toward a city that once exported food and manufactures to the world, a city that now exports only noise and entertainment; and imports everything else. Not one of the TV stiffs, viewing that lordly flag and chronically troubled city, had enough gumption to rub his crotch.
"There’s more to tell about that kid," I later said to Burnside, reminding him about his Japanese ghost.
"He was young, and I made him dead. You’ll recall there was a war goin’ on. I was only young. I figured to score information about the enemy. I went through his pockets." Burnside motioned upward to the remnants of the Japanese battle flag. "They carried these personal battle flags. He can have it back. I only use it to get the girls. Women can’t resist that kind of accomplishment." Burnside’s voice seemed a little forced, like he was having a hard time spreading it; and that was another first.
Change filled the air like low-grade electricity. Everyone, except those in the final stages of senility—and maybe even those—could sense that the far side put together its own routine.
Shadows drifted along the walls, although nothing solid enough to cause a shadow appeared. Murmurs hovered beh
ind everyone’s ears, little whispers from the past. After the first day, newsreels began running in our minds, newsreels of the passing parade, a parade of history and war. I heard voices of people dead and gone, some of them loved, and some despised. I heard mutters of cannonade rumbling behind broken horizons. I heard terrified squalling of children, heard the voice of the enemy speaking crackling kraut language; and I heard the sobbing of women, because, yes, it is possible to sob in German.
I heard again, sounds from the invasion of Europe and sounds from emplacements in Korea. Burnside heard things a little differently. Being ambitious, Burnside tried to square away the whole Pacific theatre before doing occupation duty in Japan.
"I always feared you were a little feeble-minded," he told me, "but never thought you’d run around with someone who’s hearing things. You’re a nut case, Ross."
Meanwhile, routine droned right along. Nurse Johnson remained busy, distracted, continually ignoring the pain of her job as she tried to reduce swelling in lives around her. Nurse Johnson heard no ghosts and saw none, perhaps being too busy. Routine sustained her and steadied us; and this is the way routine runs, even in a geriatric ward invaded from the other world as—we may assume—most of them are.
Day begins at four AM when pain pills wear off. Very old people sleep but indifferently. We wake and wrestle whatever greets us, be it suppurating sores, or unknit bones. From four until six most lie in the stupor of half dreams. Voices from the past congregate, argue, complain about our attitudes. Brothers, long dead, appear as in their youth. They bandy jokes, or present intense situations that never really happened, but could have if everyone had been smarter at the time. Fathers cuss and mothers explain. Sometimes a favorite aunt appears . . . but, sometimes, the hours between four and six breed monsters. Men see faces: of people they have killed, or women they betrayed.