by TJ Martinell
I wanted to wake him, but something kept me from reaching out and touching his shoulder or calling his name. Once he woke, I would need to speak, and I did not know what to say. I had had a long time to think about it, but all that came to mind was what I wanted to hear from him.
He stirred after I gently touched him on the shoulder, but his eyes didn’t open. I pushed my stool closer to him and leaned forward and whispered inside his ear.
Still no answer.
He had a peaceful face, like one who dreamed the sort of dream one wishes they never left once they awake.
“Father.”
He moved to the side and his limbs stretching out underneath the blanket. He groaned and breathed nosily. His eyes were clear as he looked up at the wall and blinked, then turned to me.
His pause left a somber realization. He didn’t recognize me anymore.
“Father, it’s Roy.”
An impenetrable expression remained as he sized me, studying my clothes and my fedora and my jacket hanging on the wall. He took a deep breath in and smelled the stale, disinfectant odor covering the stench of fresh wounds and soiled bandages. He struggled to lift his upper body, but fell back, still too weak to hold himself.
He looked at me again. Not in the eye. His gaze was fixed on my clothes, as though they were his and I had taken them without permission.
“Roy, are we where I think we are?”
“Yes, father.”
His hands lowered onto the blanket.
“The doctor said you should be fine in a few days,” I said. “Do you…do you remember anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you remember last?”
He was hyperventilating. I tried to calm him down, tried to tell him everything was fine and I was alright and we were safe. I asked him if he wanted anything and he didn’t seem to hear me above his loud breaths.
One of the nurses came by with some water, and I asked her to fetch a small glass of brandy. When she brought it, I poured father a small amount.
“I haven’t had a drink in years,” he said.
“How do you feel?”
“My head hurts like hell, but it’s not a headache. My muscles ache, too. Everything feels terrible.”
“You’ll get better,” I promised.
He looked at me, this time in the eye. “What’s happened?”
I knew what he meant, where I was supposed to start.
There was too much to tell. I kept the details sparse. It wasn’t out of embarrassment or shame. He was still recovering, not ready to hear it all. The day would come when I could tell him everything, or almost.
Maybe on that day he would be able to do the same. It became apparent today was not to be the one.
Father listened without saying a word. His eyes never wavered. When I had finished he looked at my clothes again and drank the last of his brandy. He then put his hand to his face again and heaved.
“Father, what’s the matter?”
He didn’t move. I got up and asked the doctor if there was any other medicine that would help. He suggested a transient pharmacist who traveled between Seattle and Renton during the week selling various drugs. I jotted it down in my notebook and tucked it away as I came back to my father’s side.
“I’m so sorry, Roy,” he said. “For all of this.”
“How is any of this your fault?”
“I got you into this.”
“No, you did not. I chose it.”
“Ha! I know what kind of a choice that is. Not much different than the choice I had.”
“It was still my choice.”
He touched my shirt with his fingertips. “I never wanted this for…for you. This was my life, but it wasn’t supposed to be yours. I wanted better things for you. You deserved better.”
“I’m glad it happened.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a better man than I was then.”
I was eager to move onto other matters. “Do you now remember anything, father? Anything from the detention facility?”
He blinked and looked up at the ceiling in recollection. “I remember some of it. The drugs they gave us. They made us forget. When they stopped giving them to us, we could remember. But it’s all very hazy.”
He looked at me suddenly, as though exposed. “You didn’t sound surprised about what I just said. About how this used to be my life.”
I was quiet.
“You know those things about me now,” he said.
“Tom told me.”
“He’s here! Where is he?”
This time, I looked away and covered my face.
“How did it happen?” he asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Tell me.”
“He helped us get you out.”
Father took the news better than I expected. It was something he had prepared for. Or perhaps his former resilient self was returning now that he had reentered his old world.
“Did you know each other?” he asked.
“He was a great friend to me. He looked after me. In fact, had it not been for him I would have never escaped.”
I put my hands on the stool and put my head down and stared at the gray floor.
“Why did you not tell me, father?” I asked.
He must have known I would ask him. He had an answer ready like it had been prepared long ago.
“As I’m sure you’ve realized by now, I was going to that night we were talking,” he said. “I had always wanted to tell you, but the time never seemed right. And maybe it was best I didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
He looked at me sadly. “When’s the best time to say those things, Roy? If I told you too young, it would have followed you the rest of your life and influenced you more than anything else. You couldn’t have told anyone. What kind of burden is that to place on a child? A secret like that can destroy them. You might have resented me. I didn’t want you to bear something like that until you were ready.”
“Did mother know?” I asked.
“I never put her up to what she said to you.”
He asked me to come closer until my stool touched the cot and my leg was pressed against it. His chest fell and rose rapidly and his hand shook in his lap.
“Son,” he said quietly. “There are things you won’t understand. Not now. I hope you will, someday. I know you will. I just can’t explain them to you.”
“What working for the ISA? Can you explain that?”
He stared. “Tom apparently told you everything about me. Then again, if he did, I don’t think you would be questioning me. You would know. Maybe you wouldn’t understand, but you would know.”
I searched my jacket for a cigarette.
“I’m not blaming you, Roy,” he went on. “It’s easy to be an idealist when you’re young. But as you get older you become more aware. You realize things aren’t the way you thought they were. Sometimes you make choices that on the outside seem a certain way but only make sense when you realize why.”
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“Somewhere safe.”
“Alone.”
I winced. “No,” I said.
“With who?”
“She’s like me, here for the same reason. But she’s not one of my girls, if you know what I mean.”
He asked for a cigarette. All the angst in his face fell off like scales as he took a drag and exhaled in relief.
“When I first saw you just now I thought I was dead,” he said. “I thought I had gone back to relieve my own past, to see myself and the choices I’ve made,” he said. “I’m sure Tom told you about some of my indiscretions…I don’t know what that makes you think of me. I’m not proud of everything I’ve done.”
“Neither am I proud of some things I’ve done,” I replied.
He touched my arm, his eyes full of a nameless hope. “T
hat’s life. There are things I did that I am not proud of, but I am glad I chose to do them. You will not understand me. Maybe you found another way, a better way. You are still young. Very young. The only way to know is to wait.”
“Wait for what?” I asked.
“Time reveals the truth better than anything.”
I would get no more out of him. Placing a hand on his cot, I reached out and grabbed the blanket and pulled it over the lower part of his body. I then told him to lie back down and rest, assuring him I would come back to visit him later in the week to see how he was getting along. He placed his head against the pillow and pulled the covers up to his neck like a child hiding himself from the darkness surrounding him.
I touched my father’s shoulder. He didn’t respond. It was like waiting for a person to arrive who never would.
***
I secluded myself like a monk inside Olan’s old office for the remainder of the day. Occasionally I stopped my work and listened to the typewriter clatter and the teletype pecking away and the clack of feet shuffling across the floor. I then looked at my desk and realized how bare and bleak it was.
While I read one of Tom’s stories that had finally been published I called his number. It was only after the five rings and no answer I slammed the phone down and got up and walked to the wall and kept telling myself he wasn’t dead. I had seen the dead body with my own eyes, touched it. But I was still in disbelief.
Outside the room the newsroom chatter had regained its normal air of sardonic humor as the writers traded curses amongst their collective laughter. They passed around a bottle of moonshine and scoffed at rumored threats by the other papers.
My Pravda remark had apparently made the rounds in the building. The nickname had stuck. Days later, anyone in Seattle knew what someone meant by a pravda or a provide.
There was an unmistakable difference in the mood. Others had told me similar things about our delivery crews and other workers. There were no more internal rivalries. The attacks had evoked deep resentment among even the most self-centered amongst our men.
Meanwhile, it had divided the city.
Lines were now drawn between neighborhoods loyal to our newspaper, the neutral papers, and those within pravda territories. Those stuck within pravda territory hung banners reading NO SURRENDER at the entrance to their neighborhoods, threatening violence if there was any attempt to coercively deliver other newspapers.
As the writers prepared to make their way to the library, I left on my own through the back exit. The parking lot was deserted due to the war. No one was forbidden to drive, but most chose to take underground passages or interconnected buildings. I drove onto the quiet street. It was not done out of defiance, but because I was determined to be free for as long as I lived, and if I lived for only a minute longer it was better than another sixty years attempting to avoid death.
I also knew I would not die like that, vaporized by a missile or shredded into pieces by a burst of gunfire. It was not arrogance born of conceit and pride, rather a truth I did not understand but accepted. This assurance should have comforted me. But I knew death better than that. It could not be cheated or conned.
A man only fears survival when he does not know what he must live through.
And who will be taken in his stead.
The library was in a festive mood. A rock band on the stage bellowed out a newly written song commemorating our victory against the pravdas. The crowds swelled and sang the lyrics together with slurred speech and glassy eyes. I thought them drunk until someone grabbed me and brought me to the front of the stage where the tables were empty. The lead singer for the band screamed the chorus, a stirring condemnation of the pravdites as quislings and sellouts.
Everyone took their seats as the song concluded and the band took a short break. I found myself sitting amongst a group of five. The only one without beer was Kowalski. His choice of poison was vodka. The waiter arrived with newspapers and the men jumped up to snatch their copy. They didn’t take much time to read them before launching into another discussion about the war. Kowalski remained strangely reserved, listening intently with a cigarette in his hand. As the conversation drifted over into women, he looked at me and gestured over my shoulder.
Jean sat alone in my old booth. Tom’s old booth. A glass of brandy was placed across from her next to the empty seat. She turned and gazed at me.
Kowalski blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke, a gurgle of laughter evident in his scratchy voice.
“Usually it’s the man who must wait,” he remarked.
“Usually,” I said.
“Don’t be unusual.”
“I already tried. It didn’t take.”
Kowalski croaked more laughter, his back prematurely bent as he scooted his chair closer to me, pushing aside the newspaper I had ordered. He coughed violently into his fist.
“I never told you this, but I knew your old man. You look just like him.”
I stared at him, wondering what he was getting at.
“I heard he’s on the hospital floor,” he continued.
“He’ll live.”
“Aren’t you going to talk to her?”
The random switch in topics left me confused. And annoyed.
“Why do you care so much?” I asked. “What’s she to you?”
“Nothing. That’s why I’m not talking to her. I’m wondering why you aren’t.”
“Not your business.”
He smiled, like he knew something I didn’t but had no intention of confiding with me. He moved his chair away and ordered another shot of vodka, smiling to himself.
The quartet arrived. The rock band came back on stage, choosing to maintain the quiet atmosphere with one of their slow ballads.
I went over to Jean’s booth and sipped on the brandy. We looked at each other and did not speak. She kept playing with her hands. Her hair was untied, fallen over the front of her chest. She grabbed strands of it and pulled them habitually.
“Are you angry at Casey?” she asked.
For some reason, the question didn’t seem random.
“Should I not be?” I asked.
“I think he is the reason you stay. You want to hurt him as he has hurt you.”
“It has nothing to do with him.”
She leaned her head slightly, the light shining down one side of her face. She turned so that her full complexion lit up, appearing less childlike.
“Would it be possible for you to leave?” she asked.
“Yes. But I won’t.”
“Why?”
“I have told you already,” I replied. “Do you think it is a bad reason?”
“I do not. I do not know for sure if it is the reason.”
“Even if I were to leave, where else could I go? My father has no money, no contacts, no family. This is all we have.”
She played with her hands again. “Will you really kill those men?”
“If they kill our people. I think you can appreciate this.”
“Can these people not be replaced?”
I reached for a cigarette and my Zippo. I turned and lit the cigarette and spat out a bad taste from my mouth before I replied.
“These people do not suffer for what they do. They get away with it. They must suffer. That is the whole basis of law. When you violate laws, you must be punished.”
“What they do is legal.”
“I’m not talking about their laws. I’m talking about natural law. People know what is right and wrong. All government does is provide an excuse for one group of people to do what is wrong against others.”
“Isn’t it someone else’s job to punish people who break this law of yours?”
“Like who?”
I looked at her curiously. “I don’t understand how you could be confused about this. Is there any doubt in your mind about what must be done? It’s not the best way or the most moral way. It is the only way.”
Tapping her fingers on the tabletop, Jean’s eyes looked beyond me, as if searching for something within me she hoped to find.
“What are you going to do when this is over?” she asked. “When will it be over for you?”
“When they stop.”
“They will never stop. You will never stop, then?”
I ordered another drink. The rock band had departed, leaving the SoDo Quarter to finish out the evening with a soft crooning that sounded like a mournful cry of a jilted lover. For most the men, it was our Achilles’ heel, reducing all voices in the library down to reverent whispers as we stood enraptured by Adrianna standing high above them, her deep blue dress sparkling like a sapphire.
“Are you ready to leave?” Jean asked hopefully. “It will be dark when we get back home.”
“I’m not going back home,” I said. “I’m spending the night with my father.”
“I can take care of him with you.”
“I’d rather you not. It’s not safe for both of us. You should stay somewhere else. The train car is protected. We have men monitoring the station at all times, as well as the entire street.”
“Do you blame me for Tom’s death?”
“No. I blame myself.”
I took my newspaper and carried it back to my original table, where Kowalski appeared intrigued by my return. A tacit rebuke seemed to be on the way but he guarded his expression behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, leaving me to fight off Jean’s voice in my head.
I pitied Jean, but not the way she presumed. I truly did take full responsibility for Tom’s death.
And she wanted to believe I was there simply for revenge. Here, I was the man I wanted to be. I also didn’t have to live under my father’s shadow. His legacy had long since come and gone.
I intended to carve out one of my own.
Chapter Fourteen
Standing in the doorway to my office, I hastily called to Laurie, Grigg’s writer.
“You hear from him yet?”
“No. Not a peep.”
“When was the last time you heard from him?”