The Hawkman

by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

  Christopher knew the purpose of such stories, as they were told to frighten him, to make him dependent on the protection of those older and wiser than he. He had even seen some of this in Miss Williams’s stories, with impossible powers assigned to animals and the spirits of nature, and to gods that her stories made visible, even though gods were never meant to be seen or addressed so directly. Her tales were really no different than the ones he and his fellow soldiers had told one another during the war, which were likely no more than rumors, of feats carried out by other soldiers—delusions they needed if they were to conquer a division, a regiment, an entire country when they were simply individuals, wet and hungry. These were stories about incredible men, half-human and half-wrought out of nature itself, the mud and the snow, the barricades and the unruly hides of forest mammals.

  The monsters the soldiers created for one another were tall and wide, their faces just a formality, difficult to recall without the distinguishing features that mark one as German, or French, or even as an English gentleman. They were not born, but assembled out of the parts of lifeless men left to fester, to be kicked and picked over and forgotten; out of the animals that came to feast on those parts; out of anything and everything the weather and the landscape could add to the amalgamation. Once alive and upright, these creations avoided the borders of foxholes and trenches. Once confronted with the radius of destruction the war made, they became so inflamed that they would take it into their own hands to end the fighting. They would pluck soldiers from both sides and throw them onto the open plains, to starve; to be shot at; to become the same compilation of misery and waste as they were; to make monsters legion, a new breed from the war’s debris. To be caught by a monster and flung into No Man’s Land was a far more dire fate than death, because it was tantamount to being left alone without the bodies and uniforms of other men to push one forward, to demand that one keep pressing without looking back, without the slightest form of consideration. This was the true, primary fear of all soldiers, Christopher included—individuals who were once certain they could distinguish themselves as heroes until they discovered they were equally as happy to endure as survivors.

  This is what each man dreamed upon enlistment, the illusion that fed and inspired him: that he, a single man, might be writ large in history. It was not the same thing as wanting to be a hero. He simply aspired to be deemed so essential to the unfolding sequence of events that should any harm come to his person, some other soldier would be forced to come to his aid. He’d be dragged back by his fellows for medical attention; if he suffered loss of limb, a search party would be formed to find those lost pieces of his anatomy scattered on the battlefield. Other soldiers would be expected to lose their lives to rescue, and resuscitate, those integral bits. It was for far more lowly, and anonymous soldiers to be sent out to collect someone’s elbows and fingers, ankles and knee caps. It was not his. Each man proclaimed himself worthy enough to be reassembled through surgery, so he might be the one who lived; so he might be celebrated and memorialized for his individual feats and courageousness. So he could appear whole though his brains had been liquefied by bullets, his heart lacerated by shrapnel, his intestines disrupted by explosives. So his family remained under the comforting belief that he died in an almost regular, coherent fashion, like a man dying in his bed, or in hospital, or one struck down at a job, or in the street. He did not want his family to know how he could be rendered into parts and sections, as cuts of beef or poultry are prepared, undifferentiated in the lives they led. Each man wanted his family to think he conquered this most primary of all soldiers’ fears, that should his family be confronted with his death, they need not confront the cold, dripping violence of it. The stories that Christopher’s men told themselves of the forest men were no more fanciful and unfortunate than these visions of death.

  Christopher was lucky enough to have finished his service with both his limbs and wits about him, despite the fact that one of his legs was really more like a tail than a leg, which he could not wholly control and had to be dragged from place to place. Had he lost even more of himself, either on the battlefield or to a surgeon, he could have been replaced by another soldier, and in the history of the war, should it ever be written, he would be an unnamed soul, a body, a statistic. War made men famous, and it made them superfluous.

  Entering the drawing room with Miss Williams, whose equilibrium was increasingly dependent upon his arm, Christopher was struck by how it took two men—himself and Mr. Sheehan—to replace what Miss Williams had been. It took two men to approximate her gait and carriage, to move her from one place to another. Even then, it was a shoddy imitation he and Mr. Sheehan would likely affect together, in no way similar to how she had once arrived in rooms and unaccountably made herself the center of every one.

  “Miss Williams,” Christopher’s mother quietly proclaimed as they approached. Lady Margaret took Miss Williams by one hand and helped Christopher lead her to a couch with large pillows. “I was so sorry to hear of your illness.”

  “Thank you,” Miss Williams said, as if she was relieved to have been able to manage this reply. She allowed Lady Margaret and Christopher to lower her onto the cushions. Lady Margaret arranged the pillows behind her back, so she might sit up without much exertion. “I look forward to being through with it,” Miss Williams said with a sigh. “It cannot be soon enough.”

  “You look well,” Lady Margaret offered.

  “Thank you,” Miss Williams said again. “And thank you for your gift. It truly lifted my spirits.”

  “Should we begin with a story?” Lord Thorton asked. He had just made his entrance. He was rubbing his hands together in an uncharacteristic fashion; Christopher thought it crass, if not insulting.

  “Or perhaps we should call on your Rasputin to provide us with a musical prelude,” continued Lord Thorton, and he smiled as though quite pleased with himself.

  “I am sorry Mr. Sheehan could not accompany me, but I thought it best,” Miss Williams said.

  “I am sure you did,” Lord Thorton said.

  “And I have not been well enough to concoct a story,” Miss Williams went on, “particularly one for you, for whom the story may not be enough, so it must be accompanied by a succinct explanation.”

  “One could spend a lifetime deciphering one of your tales,” Lord Thorton said. “But I should like to tell you a story today.”

  “Please,” Miss Williams responded with much resolution.

  “It’s about a woman—a girl, really—much like you,” Lord Thorton began as he made himself comfortable on the couch opposite Miss Williams. “Her name was Emily Hobhouse.

  “Having failed at marriage, she sought out something to occupy herself, and she became a—what do we call such crusaders?—ah, yes, a reformer,” Lord Thorton continued. As he added to his story, it occurred to Christopher why his father preferred to have others speak for him. The man could not contain himself, whether it was his malice or his ebullience, when exercising his cruelty. “I apologize, “ Lord Thorton corrected himself. “She was not just like you. She was not a writer, professionally speaking.

  “But she did manage to publish one story: a very fanciful, libelous story about the war in South Africa.”

  “Dear,” Lady Margaret interjected. “Miss Williams must be well aware—”

  “Is she?” Lord Thorton asked. “I offered to explain this all to her, but she never accepted my overtures.”

  “And for that I owe you an apology,” Miss Williams acknowledged. “Please. Continue.”

  Lord Thorton nodded. “Once upon a time, Miss Hobhouse took it upon herself to rescue the women and children in South Africa, though their husbands, sons, and brothers were killing her own countrymen. She wanted to collect money, have her name in the newspapers, and all those things rootless girls want. So she concocted a scurrilous tale about starving women in the refugee camps, although there was plenty of food. I can
attest to that. She said there were children dying in the camps, but their mothers were too backward to care for them properly. So the only good she accomplished—”

  “I’m sure Miss Williams can guess at the rest,” Lady Margaret said.

  “I am certain I cannot,” Miss Williams conceded, “as I am no longer at my peak strength and must preserve what little I have left these days, I regret.”

  Miss Williams delivered her last statement in the most pleasant register her voice could affect, but it sent everyone’s eyes shifting around the room, and their hands fumbling for handkerchiefs or the tea service. Lord Thorton bandied his walking stick from palm to palm rather than break the silence, which he felt might bite back at him. Miss Williams leaned back against the pillows, and Christopher hoped they were cool against her back, restorative. The room’s French windows had been opened to invite the last of the summer air from the lawns and gardens. Miss Williams shut her eyes for a moment, and Christopher could see the effort she put into each breath, her chest stalling at times, the tremors as she exhaled and prepared to begin the cycle over again.

  “Which is why I trouble you now,” Miss Williams said. “My circumstances have obviously changed, and I should like to return to the States.” She paused and her chest rose again, although it did not appear to fall. “As soon as possible,” she added.

  “We are so sorry to have you leave us,” Lady Margaret said.

  “Yes, we—I am as well,” Christopher agreed.

  “Yes, yes, yes, we know all about it,” Lord Thorton said, and he stood up as though he had been troubled enough by Miss Williams and her circumstances.

  “Father,” Christopher interceded. “We—I should like to hear what Miss Williams has to say.”

  “You already know what she has to say,” Lord Thorton said, and he exhaled loudly, so everyone would know the precise degree of his irritation. “I assume you have tendered your resignation with the college,” Lord Thorton said to Miss Williams.

  “Not yet,” Miss Williams said. “I should like to discuss that with you first.”

  “As you wish,” Lord Thorton said.

  “What if I were to purchase the cottage?” Miss Williams asked, as quickly as she could expel the issue from her lips.

  “Absolutely not,” Lord Thorton said.

  “If I provided an endowment, for him and the cottage—”

  “No.”

  “I would of course pay you a fee—for administering the arrangement. Or I could make a donation to the college.”

  “You are mistaken if you think this is about as base a thing as money,” Lord Thorton said.

  Surely his voice extends, Christopher thought, beyond the drawing room and into the halls, the sitting rooms, the atrium, and downstairs into the kitchen and staff quarters.

  “That thing, which you mistake for a man, needs to return to wherever it came from. He has no place in Bridgetonne or any place where I still have influence. If the Boer women went back to their farms and started over where they should have, there wouldn’t have been a need to concentrate—”

  “Arthur, dear,” Lady Margaret pleaded.

  “Very well then,” Lord Thorton said. “I met my responsibility at every turn with regard to those women, and I am now meeting my responsibility at every turn in Bridgetonne. This lordship is the last bulwark against Bridgetonne being turned into an open camp of . . .” Lord Thorton paused, as if he dared not say what might most naturally follow in his speech. “Bridgetonne will not become another Bloemfontein, an open camp of the so-called lost to mewl over their supposed injuries. I offered you my expertise and you ignored it, so now—”

  “But Father. Wouldn’t this—if we—” Christopher knew he had to embark on a new line of reasoning. He had to, as he could no longer stand to see how pale, how absent of hope and blood, Miss Williams was becoming. He switched his eyes between his mother’s and his father’s faces, only to find himself caught between each parent’s aspirations for him.

  “But wouldn’t the cottage—her purchasing it—wouldn’t this contain the problem?” Christopher managed.

  “Does he need containing?” Miss Williams asked.

  “Mr. Sheehan does not require much,” Christopher went on; it was imperative that the conversation keep moving. “We—I—could of course oversee whatever is set up for him. We—Miss Williams and I—think he only wants to be left in his silence.”

  “That, I doubt,” Lord Thorton said. “For if you give him that much, he will desire so much more. And once those needs are satisfied, he will hunger for something else, until we—your mother and I, and you, Christopher, and this village, the entire countryside—will be under contract, like blackmail, to support all these malingerers, these—well, whatever they are calling themselves now. Perhaps the French will come up with a word for it, when they could just be peasants. And deserters—”

  “A deserter,” Christopher said, “does not volunteer his rank and regiment.”

  “And do we know anything of him beyond that? Is there a wife? Children? God help them. Why can he not properly present himself, explain his situation? Why must he go lunging about like some kind of monster, all to extract kindness? And why,” Lord Thorton asked, now addressing Miss Williams directly with the full force of his voice and oversized mannerisms, “why must you be so dedicated, so intoxicated by this, this thing that he is? I do not even know how to say it.”

  Miss Williams rose, without assistance but with great effort. Christopher thought everyone in the room, his father included, withheld their breath and watched Miss Williams as if she were a servant reassembling the contents of a china cabinet she had shattered.

  “I brought him into this . . .” she hesitated, as if she had found herself in a dreadfully foreign place, unexpectedly, and there was no polite way to describe it. “. . . into these circumstances,” she said. “And I am responsible for him. More so than you or your countrymen, obviously, who took him to war and abandoned him. Yet each of us has only our humanity to recommend us, and mine has been worn thin enough for one day.”

  She took a step away from the couch, and Christopher dove to her side, to catch her should she fall, then guided her through the gauntlet of his father’s stare and the vacant furniture. She was cold in her hands, which he tried to take up in his own, but he could feel the fever that had begun at the crown of her head and was now bleeding past her hairline. Out of the corner of his eye, Christopher could see his mother rise in a show of respect, while his father turned on his heels and strode back to his library. He wanted badly to say something, to say anything—if not to apologize for his father’s behavior, then for his own hubris for thinking his father was more of a man than he truly was.

  They shared another silent walk through Lord Thorton’s halls to the car waiting in the drive. Christopher knew each table, every portrait, the framed medals, certificates, and proclamations on the walls, as well as the holes and cracks they covered. But for Miss Williams, he imagined, all of it must have seemed a maze of possessions, claptrap and pretension. Everything was time and objects to his father; he must have looked at the war this way, a clot of time that had not coughed out people and heroics, but objects. Munitions, citations, maps that would have to be redrawn . . . The men who were transformed by that war, the entire of Christopher’s generation, were the rubbish—the guts and skin made inconvenient in the process. This must have been what his father saw in Mr. Sheehan, and now, Christopher knew what his father had to confront in his own son: the complications, the unintended consequences that could not be uniformly buried or hidden away, no matter the effort put into the project.

  As they walked away from the drawing room, Christopher could still hear the sounds of his parents’ conversation—taut, if not angry—and the sound of the servants scattering after Lady Margaret and Lord Thorton. The clatter withdrew from one room to flood into another. It was a bit humiliating,
as were the sounds of the kitchen downstairs: the collisions of metal and wood, dustbins and coal boxes, pots and ovens, cutting boards and floured hands. What was once seamless to Christopher—or perhaps he never had occasion to pay it this much attention—the estate that he would someday inherit, now seemed a tottering, rusting machine that required so much malice to maintain.

  “Would you allow me to accompany you on the drive back?” Christopher asked Miss Williams once they had reached the drive.

  “Yes, please,” Miss Williams replied, and Christopher was heartened, although he knew it was her illness that was answering, and not any particular affection for him.

  She was lighter to pick up now, easier to carry and deposit than just a few moments ago, although there was no reason for such a change. She was the same sick woman, but no illness could diminish one so quickly; at least no illness that Christopher could so easily name. Yet there was a new fluidity to her movements, the bending and adjusting, the intake of breath that she would not surrender until she was firmly nestled into the back seat of the car. She smoothed her hands down the dress so that the drape of the fabric was organized. Christopher asked her if she was comfortable, and she nodded. There was a dullness, a blank resignation, in her eyes. This is how vanishing begins, Christopher thought, not on the battlefield, but in the protracted fall of days and events.

  Christopher signaled the driver to depart, and as the car proceeded, they watched the scenery outside of the window—the grounds of his father’s estate: acreage cultivated by the tenant farmers; livestock roaming the pastures; fields of short, shaggy grasses, shorn for midsummer haying; hedgerows bursting with greenery—elms, hawthorns, gorse, and holly. There were stories here too, attached to the tree limbs Christopher and his sisters had jumped from; stone fences where they had tried to tie scarecrows; and amid the hay, rolled and baled, he and his sisters had tried planting their own seeds, or digging up roots for their own harvest. They played at being poor children, orphans from books that their parents and nurses would have been wise to have read to them, so they could be explained, set in the proper perspective. Instead, they usually read them to one another, and then, given the opportunity, they played at making their own versions of the plots. At the train station, they might count trains, as did children mysteriously deprived of their father in one story; in the house, they might invade a room reserved for the more pristine social events and use its furniture to build a city, as a jealous young boy did in another tale.