Whipple's Castle

by Thomas Williams

  One mantis holds a metal spike with a round dial at the end similar to a roast thermometer. At a nod from the pulse watcher he reaches down and with even strength presses the spike through the tough chest skin, between two ribs, into the child’s heart. The mantises converse, taking a few more notes before nodding to the largest mantis, who comes forward seeming to be quite familiar with his duties.

  The scene shifts, and we are in the deep woods, a mile from the electrified fence and its towers. Colors sharpen; as if the clear call of a bugle had dispelled the weight of despair, the world is clean again. Tall fir trees drip with the melting snow, and several armed men are standing by a cheerful fire, talking in steady, low voices. Resolute, clear-eyed, good-looking men, it is a relief to see them, and to note that in every gesture of these avengers is the strength of right and justice, et cetera, et cetera.

  Back in the car on the rainy street, the smile Wood felt upon his own face was as bitter as a snarl. He could not help going back to the little girl, whom they hadn’t yet forced into the icy water. She is going to die, and she knows it. A child’s terror is close to the skin. All phenomena are brighter, colder, hotter, more lovely or terrifying. She pleads for life. It is to men she pleads. She pleads not to be hurt. But they do it anyway. It is inevitable. It is inevitable.

  Peggy found him sitting in his car. She had seen it parked there on her way downtown, and on the way back—she was driving Sally’s car—noticed that Wood was still sitting there. She turned around the information booth’s little island, parked behind him and went up and tapped on the window. He didn’t hear or see her, yet he sat there with his eye wide open. It gave her a bad scare. Finally she opened the door and got in beside him. He seemed to nod.

  “Wood?”

  He nodded.

  “Wood, are you all right?”

  “Peggy,” he said in his windy voice.

  “Yes, it’s me, Wood.” She picked his hand from the seat and put it between her hands. It was cold, cold as meat from the refrigerator.

  “Strictly speaking,” he said, “I’m not all right.” He kept his face in profile to her, so she could see only the black cord going across his hair, and not his eye patch. He looked so strong and confident in profile, with his straight nose and square chin. But this was Wood; he was strong. She turned in sudden fright and pulled his hand against her, squeezing it, trying to warm it up. “Your hand’s so cold! Like ice!”

  “I’m not sure what it is,” he said.

  “But you’re cold, cold. We’ve got to warm you up. You’re shivering!”

  “I can’t seem to drive the car, Peggy.”

  “Oh, my God!” she said, thinking of his wounds, of some possible latent damage to his nerves. “I’ll get you home. Come on. I’ve got Sally’s car. Can you walk? I’m parked right behind.”

  “I just came from home,” he said.

  “To Sally’s, then. There’s a nice fire.”

  “I really ought to get this car somewhere.”

  “Leave it!” she said. “Leave it!”

  “It isn’t that I can’t drive it, Peggy. I just didn’t want to there for a while.”

  “I want to get you warm,” she said. If he only knew. She wanted to wait on him. Already she saw him with his shoes off in front of the fire, warm and glowing. She’d make him a hot drink, and she’d sit on the rug at his feet and look up at him. They would talk of things. Forever.

  But now she’d have to be a little more practical. She got out of the car, went around to his side and opened the door. “Come on,” she said.

  “I’ve got all those books in the back seat,” he said.

  “Give me your keys and I’ll put them all in the trunk.”

  He handed her the keys, turning his head around to her, since she was now on his blind side.

  “You’re strong,” he said. “Did you know that, Peggy?”

  “Come on, get out,” she said.

  The rain had let up a little. He picked up his left leg and put it outside the car, then moved over to stiffen it and lock it. He stood up and looked down at her. His officer’s raincoat, with its shoulder straps, and his eye patch made him look rather rakish, like a pirate.

  “I’ll take care of the books,” she said. “You go get in Sally’s car.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, but he took a step to get out of her way and leaned against the car, his hands spread against the wet metal. She quickly put the two armloads of books in his car trunk and locked it. He still leaned against the car.

  “I am,” he said slowly, “what you might call ‘inexplicably weak.’”

  “Let me help you.” She took his left arm, and they moved toward Sally’s car. All he seemed to need was balance.

  “You are strong,” he said. “Little Peggy.”

  “How do you feel?” she asked. She opened the door for him.

  “Now, that’s funny.” He sighed as he leaned back against the seat to unlock his leg. “I don’t feel weak, exactly. Very peculiar.” As they drove up Bank Street he said, “Very peculiar. I said to myself, ‘Go over and get in Sally’s car.’ But it was like my muscles didn’t speak the same language. They kept asking what the hell that meant.”

  “But Wood, what could it be? Is it some sort of nerve thing?” She turned into Sally’s driveway and stopped next to the veranda steps.

  He was looking at the dashboard. “How many times I used to drive Sally around in this antique!”

  He was still shivering, and she got him into the house. Sylvia Beaudette took his coat. “Sylvia, how are you?” he said.

  “I’m fine, Wood,” Sylvia said with a sad smile. She looked older than she was, with red lines close around her eyes—the look of a person who weeps in private. She seemed to have shriveled since the war, and Peggy had often wondered, knowing the callow over simpleness of the thought, how Sylvia could get herself another husband if she let herself get all red and wrinkled like that.

  Sylvia took their raincoats, and Peggy and Wood went into the “comfortable” parlor, where Sally kept the old De Oestris furniture of leather and masculine bulk—furniture from the hunting branch of the family. Sally was here herself, sitting on a straight, armed chair of black wood, with brass lion-claw feet. She was utterly delighted to see Wood, and said so, her twinkly, glaring little blue eyes flashing back and forth between Wood and Peggy.

  Then all Sally’s vibrations stopped at once, as though she were a clockwork bird suddenly run down, only its jewels glinting. “What’s the matter?” she demanded in a resonant alto. Her eyes moved back and forth to see who would give the answer. Wood sat down into the leather sofa and leaned back with a sigh.

  “Wood didn’t feel good,” Peggy said.

  “I’ve known that for a long time,” Sally said, “and so have you. I mean why are you so upset right now, Peggy Mudd?”

  “He was…” Peggy began. But what was he? Immobilized, somehow. “He was sitting in his car, shivering.”

  “I was merely sitting down street in my car,” Wood said, obviously trying to be funny. “There I was, minding my own business, when this crazy young girl kidnaps me.” His hollow, breathy voice sounded cold and shivery-still. Sally was not amused, and Peggy turned away from their tense regard of each other, which seemed all at once familial, as though she were excluded. She put another small stick on the fire.

  Wood said, contritely, “I should never try to be funny. It’s never worked. I was having a chill of some sort.”

  “Hmmm,” Sally said. “You mean you’re coming down with a cold?”

  “I doubt it. If I was I wouldn’t bring it to your house.”

  “Then what is your trouble? Is it mechanical or psychic? Physical or mental?”

  “I’m not sure what it is,” Wood said. “All I know is it’s not a cold.”

  “I’ll get you something hot to drink,” Peggy said.

  “Get him a cup of green tea—a mug of it—with white rum in it. Plenty of rum,” Sally said.

  “In o
ther words, you’ve made your diagnosis already,” Wood said.

  “I think you’re more badly hurt than you try to make out,” Sally said. Peggy was standing in the doorway, about to go out, and they both looked at her, calmly, not with any real surprise that she stood there still. She turned to go. They seemed to hesitate to speak until she left, so she went on to the kitchen and made the tea.

  When she came back with the tray they hesitated again, and she had the feeling they had been talking about her. Wood sat back with his legs stretched out toward the fire. His shirt was open at the neck, a blue shirt she remembered from the time before he went into the Army. His chin was down, and he stared into the fire; the eye patch was so immediately noticeable it seemed to hide both eyes. She wanted to take it off. She wouldn’t mind what was underneath. There could be nothing about Wood that had to be kept from her sight or touch. That false leg, even inside the pants leg, looked too round, and the shoe didn’t cover a real, tender foot. That was part of a statue, not part of Wood.

  She poured him a mug of tea, and let him add rum from the bottle according to Sally’s prescription. Then she did sit on the rug near him, as she had imagined herself sitting, looking up at Wood, the presence of him. She was not unhappy that Sally was there, because she would not have to think of things to say. He needed an ashtray, so she rose quickly, conscious of the added strength his presence somehow gave to her legs.

  “Look,” Sally said, “I’m about to step out any day now. When I wake up in the morning I’m always just a little surprised.”

  “So that makes you an expert on chills?” Wood said.

  Sally grinned and shook her head. “Well, as chills go, that one’s pretty cold, wouldn’t you say? You’re so young I doubt if you’ve really felt that one. I don’t like to pull rank on you, Captain, but I’ve been through a long campaign myself.”

  “Don’t talk about dying,” Peggy said.

  “All right, dear,” Sally said. “That suits me fine. How about getting us some sherry? For you and me, and we won’t think about that subject. Sometimes I wish my brain had gone soft along with my skin and bones. Most of my generation’s gone, and the only ones left spend most of their time in kiddyland. Through the looking glass.” As Peggy went to the sideboard for the sherry, Sally went on, intensely now, trying to convince Wood. “Don’t think about such things—whatever they are! You’ve got most of your body left, and it’s young! Think with your blood. You’re a young man. Let your skin think for you!”

  “I’m afraid of my skin’s conclusions,” Wood said.

  “Don’t be facetious. Have you got some wounds you haven’t told us about?”

  “What sort of wounds?” Wood said, smiling.

  “You’re still being facetious, young man. I mean is there any physical reason why you can’t act like a young man? Is there any physical reason for your Weltschmerz?”

  Peggy saw Wood’s surprise at the word. “That sounds German,” he said. “What’s it mean?”

  “World sadness,” Peggy said quickly.

  “World sadness,” Wood said, looking straight at her, his dark eye bright. He turned to Sally. “See how ignorant I am? You mean I’m sad about the world? No, wait, Sally. I hasten to assure you that you know about all the wounds I’ve got. Okay?”

  “There’s nothing progressive about any of them? Nothing with a bad prognosis?”

  “Scout’s honor and all that.”

  “You don’t know how much we’ve all been worrying. Peggy’s talked with me about it before. And you don’t know how much your mother worries. Whenever she looks at you something gruesome happens to her face—it looks like she’s pressed up against a screen. Not pleasant to see.” She was still, waiting for his answer with her sherry glass poised at her lips as though she could not sip until he answered.

  “I’m sorry,” Wood said.

  “Because you remind me of someone, an old friend who had inoperable cancer and never told anyone about it. He seemed to find all our enthusiasms mildly amusing.”

  Peggy had blushed when Sally mentioned her worrying about Wood, but neither of them had noticed. Now, with this casual mention of cancer and death, her heart fluttered, fearing for him.

  “Weltschmerz, was it?” Wood said, musing. “Weltschmerz, huh? But I don’t want to cause any worry. Maybe I ought to go away from Leah again.”

  “No!” Peggy said. Her outburst embarrassed her. They both looked at her seriously. “I don’t think that would do at all!” she said. She saw Wood immobilized in a strange city, in a room among thousands of anonymous rooms, sitting with his eye glazed, as she had found him in his car. They waited for her to continue. “I think you should stay with us. With the ones that love you.”

  “Do you love him, Peggy?” Sally said.

  “Of course! We all do!” Then she thought, how was this a lie? She did not love Wood “of course” and with them all in any collective way. She loved him more than anything, more than the whole world, and she had loved him since her memory began. “I want to stay with you and try to help you,” she said, forgetting to be embarrassed. No, it was as a doctor or a nurse that she could say these things. “You said you weren’t all right and I know it. I saw you there in your car, and I’ve seen you when you were so unhappy!”

  “Yes,” he said, staring at her in a way that was completely unself-conscious, the one eye bright, the other that patch of darkness, blankness, like night and day. “I said you were strong,” Wood said. He still stared at her. “You’ve been good for us all your life.”

  Sally nodded. “That’s true.”

  But what did that mean? If they hadn’t been talking about her, she felt she might have understood. She was silent, confused. She took a sip of her wine and could not look back up at them. She could feel Wood’s attention, as strong as a touch. There were his shoes, one for a real foot, one not, and his cuffless Army trousers. She felt as though she bowed before him, perhaps gracefully, showing the part in her hair and her meek shoulders. I am thine to do with as you wish. As thee wish? But he must do something, or she would have to do it. She would follow him, hide in the back seat of his car, peer at him through windows and the cracks of doors. When he wasn’t looking she would slip under his skin. Just sitting here at his feet she was so happy.

  Wood’s night dreams were worse than his daydreams; the horror was more intense and less justified by where he was and what he saw. He merely felt. He dreamed of himself with two legs and two eyes, never mutilated; but in his night dreams the horror was like air or water, and covered every neutral object. When he dreamed of sailing, horror slid from the white sails. The green sea hissed, the clouds grew into anvils.

  Awake, the names of raids and massacres tolled in his mind. Every day this glut of murder presented itself to him, gaunt faces staring at him or at the sky. Their pain rose like a column of heat higher than the sun, and it was his flesh swooning, exulting in that force. Clearer visions inserted themselves as counterpoint: the kamikaze comes in low, comes on forever though hit again and again. Lines, loops, banks of steel flee out, hose out to bracket, strafe, miss, return. It is an ancient biplane as primitive to this time of war as a Model T, a construction of fabric and strut with a bomb strapped to its fuselage. The fire meets and holes it time and again, but slowly and intently it comes on. It is a bomb, the pilot a boy who has become his bomb. Even the great warships seem evanescent before this will. The lover of death comes to his love forever.

  Or he dreamed, awake, of his own eye discarded like a damaged grape. They must have had places to put things like that—parts, bones, meat. Did they take them to the fantail of the Maria and send them to the sharks and crabs? He saw through that warped, discarded lens dimly, as through a pinhole, a glimmer revolving slowly as it descended through the fathoms. Fish drifted by, silver and black. When would the sudden pluck turn out that tiny light? On the bottom awaited the crab’s slower embrace. And the leg, the foot; when the shark’s jaws crushed the ankle, rolling the bones together
, he felt that ghost pain and the relief, the dissolving into union with the cold jaws.

  But his night dreams, real dreams, began in peace and beauty, the fields waving amber, and a brave row of poplars, skies warm with fleece upon the blue. Then a word, a glance from some sourceless eye, and all turned to writhing. The clouds coiled in spasms, and the slimness of the poplars was that their arms were cruelly tied. Or the clear blue water of a lake turned briny and green before his eyes, and the smeared surface hid the secret of his horror yet gave it all away. Honor was the meaning of that world and yet whatever forces moved there were so stupid and obvious that he had to feel contempt. Contempt and horror—were these parts of an equation? Perhaps he hadn’t the will to try to solve it. Perhaps he knew the solution already, and it was not cure but destruction.

  28

  Wayne looked different after his year in New York. He seemed taller, older, sallower, and the dots of his shaved whiskers formed darker islands along his jaws. He seemed less pure, and the white streak in his hair, though she knew it was a thing he was born with, looked cosmetic, even garish—that word that had once been his favorite deprecation.

  He listened even less than before. When Kate spoke, even in response to a question, a nervous, almost impatient look came over his face. Yet he wanted her company, and he liked to have her stop by at the end of the day when the clerks were totaling up the cash register. Then, usually, they would go to Trask’s for coffee. She began to feel slightly official, Wayne’s designated audience, object, and thus replaceable, or somehow interchangeable. But maybe that haunted most women.

  One warm Sunday they sat on the grass of the square. Wayne was wearing a horrible light blue suit, white socks with a blue clock, and a gun-metal necktie with an orange ship’s wheel embroidered on it. He didn’t care at all about clothes, but the effect he gave was of a hick who did care. She experienced her usual guilt for making this judgment, but of course a little guilt couldn’t alter it. In a way it was his arrogance that caused him to look so awkwardly formal on a warm summer day.