Dodging and Burning

by John Copenhaver

  “Billy didn’t knock,” Lily said, holding herself a little straighter. “He kicked the door in, splintering the frame, and came bounding into the room. His stint as a deckhand had made him stronger. I jumped to my feet and started for the bathroom. He caught me by the arm and shoved me against the wall, cracking the back of my head against a painting. He clapped his hand over my mouth and said something like, ‘You ran away and blamed it on me. I loved you, and you treated me like that. Why would you do that?’ He reeked of alcohol, sweat, and dead fish. I’ve never hated someone as much as I did right then. I slammed my knee into his crotch, and as he grabbed himself, I shoved him hard. He fell against the bed and sank to the floor, arms and legs splayed like a rag doll. I told him, ‘I can’t love you, even if I wanted to. I love Georgiana.’ I had never said it out loud, like that.”

  Emotion surfaced in Lily, brimming at the corners of her eyes, moistening her lips. George put her arm around her. What did they want from me? Didn’t they remember what I had just been through? Sympathy and anger, selfishness and sadness collided in me, bewildered to be crossing each other’s paths in the same mind.

  Not knowing what to do, I touched Lily’s knee and said, “Please. It’s very late.”

  George looked at me and nodded as if she understood. “I reached the bottom of the stairs just as Lily reached the top,” she continued. “I saw her smile at me—can you imagine that! And then I saw Billy. He pushed her from behind and she fell forward, tumbling, her body hitting the steps hard until she was at my feet. Billy stood and watched her. When he saw me, he tore down the stairs and barreled past me, knocking me back against the wall. I yelled at him, ‘She’s pregnant! Pregnant, you hear!’ He paused for a second, didn’t look back, and then was gone. Lily was bruised and bleeding but still conscious. I called for an ambulance. She was lucky. He could’ve killed her.”

  “We weren’t that lucky,” Lily said, looking at George.

  “You lost the baby,” I said.

  She nodded and wiped the dampness from her cheeks with the palms of her hands. “Once I recovered,” she said, “I decided to return to Jitters Gap and confront Daddy. I didn’t want to hide anymore. I lost my baby in my fight with Billy, but I discovered I had it in me to tell people who I was. Doing that made me feel real, like I was somebody.

  “So a week ago, Jay picked me up at the train station in that rickety car of his and drove me over the mountain to Jitters Gap. You know, Bunny, he seemed different then—sullen and out of sorts—and he said a peculiar thing to me. He asked, ‘Have you ever tried to explain something, something difficult to explain, but the harder you tried to straighten it out, the more you bent it out of shape?’ I told him no, not really. To be honest, I didn’t know what he was talking about. He’s always speaking in riddles. I asked him if he was okay, and he said, no, not at all, but he knew what he needed to do, and that was something. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it anymore. When he dropped me off, he told me to give him a ring if I needed him.”

  Jay had gone a long way to bend the truth out of shape for Ceola and me, so I had a hard time imagining he was trying to explain something to us; it seemed like he was striving to do just the opposite.

  “That first night home,” Lily continued, “I told my father Billy had kidnapped me, which of course wasn’t true, and that he’d beaten me, which was true. He was sympathetic at first, maybe a little relieved. But yesterday, when I finally told him about George, about falling in love with her, he aged ten years right in front of my eyes. He didn’t shed a tear, or yell and carry on. He just left the house. I called Jay and asked him to pick me up around dusk, but to wait down the block and out of sight. I didn’t want Jay and my father to get into it. When Daddy returned, he just said, ‘I want you to stay missing. I never want to see you again as long as I live.’ He gave me an envelope full of cash and said, ‘Consider this your inheritance. Now, you need to leave.’ Even though Jay was waiting, I let Daddy drive me to the train station. I didn’t want to risk the two meeting. Besides, I was sure it’d be the last time I’d see Daddy.”

  I wondered how my own father would’ve taken such news. I didn’t understand how Lily withstood it. I also wondered if Ceola had been with Jay, waiting for Lily in the shadows. Did she know? She’d been with him at the carnival, after all.

  “On the station platform, a girl came up to me,” Lily said, shaking off her sadness with a halfhearted smile and answering my question as clearly as if I’d asked it aloud. “She told me her name was Cee and she was Jay’s friend. I didn’t know what to make of it. She kept saying, ‘I can’t believe you’re alive.’ She had a funny look on her face, like she thought I was the Second Coming or something. She asked me about photos, too—some snapshots of Jay’s. He’d shown me photos of himself and his boyfriend, Robbie, but she meant photos of me. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I really wish I knew what you’re both talking about. Anyway, Billy was probably at the station too. She may have kept him away until I could board the train. I’m thankful for that.”

  “So you really don’t know anything about the photos of the dead woman?” I pressed.

  “Dead woman?” George echoed.

  “The girl didn’t mention a dead woman,” Lily said.

  “Jay showed Ceola and me several photographs of a murdered woman, who he led us to believe was you,” I said slowly. “He pretended he’d only met you briefly on the train and had agreed to take your picture for a modeling application, for a department store in the city. But when he went to meet you, he found you murdered in the woods, and he took photos of your body—which of course was gone by the time we arrived at the crime scene. We even went to Jitters Gap twice and spied on your father under the pretense of an amateur investigation. He planted a pair of expensive shoes for Ceola to find in the woods and told us he discovered the second page of the letter you sent him in your father’s garbage. I found the first page on my own; that’s how I arrived at the Howard and Croc’s. He didn’t plan on that. I suspected he was up to something, and I wanted to find out what. That’s why I’m here.”

  “You got more than you bargained for,” Lily said, seemingly uninterested in Jay’s treachery. “I’m truly sorry about Billy. He’s a monster. Henry put him in the hospital, by all accounts, so he shouldn’t be bothering you anymore. I wish he had killed him. It’s a selfish wish. I wouldn’t want that sort of trouble for Henry, though.”

  “How are Teddie and Tim?” I asked.

  “Tim has some broken bones. Teddie is bruised and hysterical. They’ll both recover, but it has taken something out of the place. I bet they’ll close their doors for a while. But they’re a resilient bunch down there. They have to be.”

  Lily smiled at me and gently placed her hand on my forearm. “I wanted to meet you and talk to you,” she said, “because I need you to stop looking for me. I want to honor my father’s request to stay missing. I never want to return to Jitters Gap. I want to begin a new life with George and be happy. Can you understand that?”

  “I was only looking for you because I was looking for Jay.”

  “Maybe he’s looking too?”

  I knew what she meant and jerked my arm away from her.

  “She needs to get some rest,” George said, looking at me disapprovingly. “We’ve kept her up all night.”

  As I was showing the two women out, Lily spun in the hall and said, “Oh, I remembered another thing that girl mentioned. It was a story called ‘A Date with Murder’ or ‘A Date with the Dead,’ or something like that. I don’t know why she thought I’d be interested, but she told me it has something to do with photographs and predicting the future. She asked if I had ever read it. A very strange girl.”

  I shut the door and curled up on the bed. I heard the chirping of birds, and the sky had brightened to dull lavender. As I drifted in and out of sleep, the title “A Date with Death” surfaced in my mind. It was the name of the story Ceola and Jay had read together several times. I’d seen the m
agazine in Ceola’s hands. On the cover, the Grim Reaper loomed over a blonde in a tight evening gown, its skeletal hand reaching for her throat.

  A few hours later, I awoke gasping for air.

  17

  CEOLA

  When Jay came back from taking Letitia to her room, I was relieved to hear his voice calling to me. I dug out of the clutter and dusted myself off.

  In that short period of time, the gloom he’d watched duck and skitter in the shadows of the room had entered him like a possessing spirit. His shoulders were drooped, his shirt collar twisted, his hair tossed forward, his eyes down. He even mumbled to himself as he searched for his whiskey.

  After pouring a tumbler full, he gave me a hard stare, like he was sizing me up. Then, without a word of warning, he began unbuckling his belt. I backed away, pressing my shoulders against his dresser and pulling my arms tight around me.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  He unbuttoned the fly of his trousers and shoved them down around his knees. Although his white undershorts weren’t revealing—I’d seen much more in his photo—I was shocked and terrified. First, the photos, then the kiss, and now this!

  “Look,” he said, stepping forward and yanking up the hem of his shorts. Running from the top of his right knee to mid-thigh was a deep red scar, crosshatched with stitch marks. “Do you want to feel it?” he said, and gave me an odd half-smile.

  I shook my head no.

  “Here,” he said, and shuffled over to me. “Come on. It’s not going to hurt you. Really. I was going to show it to you before Grandma burst in.”

  I shrank from him, twisting my face away. It felt like he was a little boy threatening me with a frog or a water snake.

  “Okay,” he said. “That’s okay.” But I could hear the muddled disappointment in his voice.

  “I’ll touch it,” I said, letting my arms fall to my sides. “I guess it won’t hurt.”

  He reached out, caught me by the wrist, and, being gentle, guided my hand to his leg. I stuck out my index finger and ran it down the hard, puffy tissue. It was cool and dry, not what I expected.

  “That’s what the Germans did to me—what I did to myself, really. I just didn’t want you thinking I made up that story.” He released me, and I inched away from him, still leery. He pulled up his pants, buttoned them, and buckled his belt. “So it’s time for me to tell you what I brought you here to tell you.”

  I found my place on the cot. He sat beside me, took a swig of his drink, and began again.

  “I returned to England to recover at Netley Hospital on the southern coast,” he said, his voice drifting, like he was a little unsure of himself. He recovered and continued.

  After going under the knife, he was finally on the mend. He read a lot—the latest Christie or Carr novels—and several books on photography, even some books on writing codes. He studied the Victorian molding on the ceiling of the ward, tracing the rosettes and plaster curlicues over and over, anything to keep his mind off what had happened. But when he was sleeping, Darren’s empty, snow-speckled face rose up in his mind, and he’d wake with his heart pounding, drenched in a cold sweat.

  Once he was in a wheelchair, he set out to explore the hospital. With his leg propped in front of him like a knight with his javelin, he knocked open the French doors from his ward and rolled into another long hall that was subdivided by curtained cubicles like his own. Nurses scolded him for being in the way as they rushed from station to station, but despite the tsk-ing and finger waving, they seemed pleased to see a soldier up and moving around. He wound his way through the hospital’s long, telescopic wings, observing the hustle and bustle of the staff. Occasionally, he would steer into a quiet corner, where he could study the gingerbread molding, or the shafts of warm sunlight, or whatever caught his fancy.

  It wasn’t an unhappy place for him. The way the morning sun hit the walls reminded him of the whitewashed art deco hotels on Ocean Drive in Miami. He pretended the beach he had dreamed about was just outside those windows. Eventually, as he healed, he grew bored with mystery novels and plaster ceilings and got the itch to take photos again. He wanted to replace the awful image of Darren with a new one, anything that would drive that moment from his mind.

  He asked the head nurse if she could find a camera for him. It took several weeks, but finally, a handsome young sergeant paid him a visit. He handed him a Miniature Speed Graphic and said, “If you fix it, it’s yours.” Jay lit up.

  The sergeant said, “Daekins is the name. Write to me if you get it fixed, and I’ll make sure you have plenty of film.” Jay spent the rest of the week tinkering with the camera. He wrote to Daekins when he was done, and within a week the film arrived.

  He kept a photo journal, snapping photos of Netley’s rooms and halls, its columns, towers, and brickwork, and its long stretches of arches and windows. He caught soldiers taking walks in the sunshine, leaning on one another out on the lawn, reading magazines, hitting croquet, playing cards, grinning and flipping him the bird. He wanted to capture the mood of the place, what life was like there. When he felt stronger, he snuck into the intensive care ward and snapped photos of dying soldiers, always taking time to talk to them and tell them what he was doing.

  “I wasn’t trying to be rude or hurtful,” he told me. “I just wanted to record what was happening. Always, if they asked, I would stop.”

  “Did anyone want your photos?” I said. “Like Photoplay or something?”

  Jay smiled. “The Eagle’s Eye, this GI propaganda rag, published a couple—a shot of one-armed soldiers playing Ping-Pong and another of a local winter dance with perky British girls tugging on the arms of unsteady soldiers. They wouldn’t publish any of the dead. They told me it was disrespectful and bad for morale. ‘No one wants to end up like that.’ But I never stopped. I wanted them to know someone was paying attention. I didn’t care what the higher-ups said. Or what Darren said. The truth is the truth.”

  I placed my hand on Jay’s forearm, trying to show sympathy the best I could, but the gesture rang false. I wasn’t touching him for the same reason I had touched his scar. He looked at my hand like it was a big bug that had landed there, and then he glanced up at me. Right then, I recalled peering over the edge into my grandpa’s well one night and seeing the moon’s reflection in the rippling water at the bottom. Jay’s eyes glittered just like that water. I felt like I did at the top of the Ferris wheel, like he wasn’t looking at me but through me, at something he was remembering. I hated that feeling.

  “Cee,” he said, breaking away, “I haven’t forgotten. You want to know why Lily Vellum is alive and who’s in those photos I showed you and Bunny. I promise to get to that, but I had to tell you about the Ardennes and Netley. It has everything to do with what I’m about to tell you.”

  Once Jay could walk without crutches, he started taking leave and going to London. Large sections of the city were destroyed during the Blitz, but it was still buzzing with life. In a GI bar, he overheard drunk soldiers joking about Soho being London’s “magical land of fairies.” He was feeling lonely, so it seemed like the best place to go searching for others like himself. He began haunting bars and clubs, seedy places tucked behind dilapidated storefronts, holes-in-the-wall disguised by rubble, the remnants of air raids, but every boy he met was interested in only one thing. Their easy smiles and hungry, wandering glances made him uncomfortable, even angry. Jay just wanted someone to talk to. So he said to hell with Soho.

  On February 10, a letter from Letitia came in the mail. It was a date he would never forget. After going on about the winter weather and complaining about the upkeep of the farm and pleading for him to return home, his grandmother scrawled in her loopy, uneven lettering—“A boy from town, who you may have known, is missing in action and is thought to be dead. His name is Robbie Bliss.”

  “Before I left Royal Oak,” Jay said, stopping to catch the emotion in his throat, “I cornered Grandma in this very room. She sensed I was about to tell
her something unpleasant and pulled away and shook her head no. I told her I was in love with a boy, that I loved boys, but she wouldn’t hear it. She tried to push past me, but I held her by her shoulders. The expression on her face was pure agony, as if I was driving a stake through her. She began rambling about how I was aimless and wayward, that all I did was walk around with my camera taking pointless pictures, that hard work would straighten me out, that since I didn’t grow up with a father as role model, I’d never learned how to be a man. When I told her that wasn’t the case, she called me a fool and threatened to kick me out.

  “‘I love Robbie Bliss,’ I said, calm as I could manage. I repeated Robbie Bliss, wanting his name to sink in. She spat at me, and I let her go.

  “That afternoon, she was wailing in her bedroom, which I knew I was meant to hear. I tried hard not to hate her. When I saw her the next day, she was gloomy but said nothing about the argument. Gradually, her mood lightened, and she began treating me better, even joking with me. I became convinced she had come around. But when I read that letter on February 10, I knew I was wrong, very wrong. Her letter wasn’t written to inform me of his death but to let me know, to her, he had never existed at all, and neither did I—at least not the boy who said he loved another boy.”

  I wrinkled up my forehead and frowned at Jay in a way I’d seen film actresses do. I wanted to show him love or at least understanding, but it wasn’t how I felt. I was full, right up to the brim. I wanted to yell, “I’ve heard enough. That’s all I can take!” but I just sat there, dumb and pretending.

  He knocked back his whiskey. His facial muscles gradually loosened, and his eyes became watery and began searching the darkness. In a hushed, attenuated voice, he explained that, after news of his disappearance, Robbie began coming to him in dreams. He saw him by Culler’s Lake, standing very still, the sun reflecting behind him. Then by the ocean, his feet sinking in the sand, the blue water shifting and deepening with the passing clouds. In these dreams, Robbie’s face was calm, not smiling, and then sad and fixed. He was in ripped-up fatigues, snow on his shoulders and in his eyelashes. He had creases around his mouth, and his eyes were rings of ice, and then he was bleeding and his head was loose and open like Darren’s—