Juliet heard Willard lift the lantern. He held it close to Barnaby’s face, then shifted it toward Juliet. He studied her expression, which she was rapidly losing the power to compose. Her cheeks felt hot, her eyes moist. Her desperation must have shown. For months Tuck’s voice had been fading from her memory; she’d had trouble even picturing his face. But here he was, vivid and alive, in the half light of a ruined hotel suite. She nodded pleadingly for Willard to continue.
Willard slowly turned back to Barnaby: “So you knew Tucker Dufresne?”
Barnaby worked his thumbs nervously over the green velvet of the armrests. “I owe Tucker.”
“What for?”
Barnaby shook his head, sharply. “It wasn’t what they said.”
“What did they say?”
“Lies. Nothing but lies about what he did.”
Willard looked down for a moment, evidently disturbed, then returned his stare to Barnaby. “Okay, explain to me what happened next, Christopher.”
“McKnight ordered me and Dufresne to check this field past the town. We had to stay low, crouching in the grass. I followed Dufresne; those were the orders. He’d been with the squad longer and always knew what he was doing, never got in harm’s way. He told me not to get trigger-happy—one pop from my rifle, and Jerry would know right where we were. But pretty soon there was gunfire, and out of nowhere the whole field started shaking, the ground spraying dirt. Dufresne started crawling faster, and I was just trying to stay still, but he said to keep moving, he could see a dugout ahead. I wanted to hide under my helmet, but Dufresne was shouting, ‘Move your ass, Barnaby,’ so I started moving and the next thing I knew, I felt this awful heat in my shoulder. It felt like I was pinned to the ground. ‘I’m hit,’ I called. ‘You gotta keep moving,’ he yelled. But the ache in my shoulder was coming on strong, so I set my head in the grass and closed my eyes. I was getting ready to say a prayer when Dufresne yanked me by my legs, pulling me along the grass. Musta been forty yards. Bullets kept flying over us—you could hear them when they came close—but pretty soon we did a roll-tuck into the dugout.
“‘Jesus, you shouldn’t have done that,’ I told him.
“‘Probably not.’ He was tired, I could see. Afraid, too. I think we’d both wet our pants from fear.
“He poured sulfonamide on my wound, then tore the sleeve off his shirt and tourniqueted my arm. I couldn’t move much, and I asked him how long he thought they’d keep shooting. ‘Days,’ he said. ‘Minutes. Doesn’t matter. Anyone crosses that field, I shoot.’
“Dufresne was like that. Tough as nails.
“But the firing continued all around us, and we had no idea where the rest of the squad had gone. There was no one to cover us. So we sat there, talking low. . . . It was the first we’d really talked but we had to fill the hours—we talked about comics, cars, family stuff. He kept his eye on the field. That whole day went by, then the night. Dufresne was right. We were pinned there for two days, grenades getting lobbed just a few feet from our dugout. I was getting weaker, feverish. We were down to the last of our canteens. We kept thinking the squad would come looking for us—we were exactly where they’d sent us—but nothing. Dufresne was getting mad at McKnight. Had they left us for dead? We ate what we had, only taking small sips of water here and there so we could stay alert. We talked ourselves awake, talked about everything that ever happened to us. On the second night, I woke in the dark and realized the shooting had stopped. I was feeling so weak, I grabbed our last ration bar, took a bite, then whispered Dufresne’s name to give him some. But he was gone. You can’t imagine what that feels like. You come over here belonging to something, you’re a part of something: your squad, your battalion, your army, your country. You can do all these things you’d never wanna do because there are others there with you. You’re in this shit together. Then suddenly you wake up, alone, in some dark, human nowhere. You don’t belong to anything but the earth beneath you. You hope with everything in you that God above is watching, but Brilling always said God would think I was an abomination. I thought I’d been forsaken. I sat there crying in the dark, preparing to die alone, but as the sun came up, I saw Dufresne’s white glove sitting in my lap. It was like seeing a cactus in the desert. No one ever touched Dufresne’s white glove. It never left his jacket pocket. But I knew he set it there for me, a sign that he’d gone to get help. That’s the only thing that kept me alive, knowing I hadn’t just been left there. Knowing Dufresne was coming back for me.
“My shoulder was aching and I was still losing blood, so I closed my eyes. Soon I heard voices. Footsteps came toward me, and I felt my heart hammering. I got my breathing real still. I felt my body being turned about—I kept my eyes closed and stayed silent, thinking it was the Germans. Hands patted down my jacket; someone took off my watch, my dog tags; then everything went still. I don’t know how much time passed. My shoulder went numb. My head felt light. I passed out.
“Next thing I knew, I heard a thump and felt something heavy pressing against me. Then there was dirt on my face, falling in my nostrils, my mouth, and I started coughing. I felt hands on my face, brushing off the dirt.
“‘Shit, he ain’t dead!’ he laughs. It was Kirkland from the platoon.
“I could barely talk, I was so weak, but I asked about Dufresne. They said they hadn’t seen anyone else. I said he’d be headed back there to find me, that he’d gone to get help. They said no way in hell. They said the Germans had retreated in the night and the area was clear and he’d show up soon enough.
“At the field hospital they stitched me up. The company commander was there. Brilling. I showed him the glove, explained Tuck had left me with it and that I knew it meant he was coming back. I said they had to go look for him. Brilling got the wrong idea.”
“Wrong idea?”
“It made him crazy, that glove. He said I’d taken it from Dufresne. It made him crazy that Dufresne had saved me. Brilling had lost so many men it was starting to eat away at his mind. It was like he blamed himself for every death. He started saying maybe Dufresne had deserted, Dufresne was insubordinate, and I said I knew he’d never do a thing like that. And he asked me how I knew Dufresne’s mind so well. Dufresne left me that glove, I knew that. Someone else in the squad said they’d heard Dufresne’s voice in the night, shouting in the field. I thought about the possibility that Dufresne had been killed trying to get me help and I started to cry. I was still stretched thin from living alone in that dugout. The crying made Captain even angrier.”
“What exactly did the captain say to you?”
Barnaby invoked a haunting baritone that filled the darkened room: “‘Quit crying, you fucking pansy ass.’”
Willard removed his glasses and rubbed the corners of his eyes. “Did you talk to anyone about what happened in the dugout? About their trying to bury you? Did you see a psychiatrist?”
“I never met a psychiatrist ’til you.”
Willard’s jaw clenched; he shook his head. With a final, defeated jab of his thumb, he clicked off the recorder. “When I count to ten . . . One, two, three . . .” He stopped, looking at Juliet, at the tears brimming in her eyes.
He turned his gaze to the broken mirror and blinked in long, silent contemplation. He cleared his throat. “Christopher, Nurse Dufresne is here, and she’d like to ask you a few more questions. About her brother.”
Juliet clasped Willard’s hand in gratitude, and he set down his notebook and walked to the window. Hands plunged in his pockets, he studied the mountains through the billowing gap between the window and the sheet. Juliet moved to where he had been sitting. She had waited months for this chance.
“Christopher. The first day we spoke to you, I asked about Tucker Dufresne. You said ‘Forgive me.’ What were you asking forgiveness for?”
“That’s what Rakowski said he heard. Tuck saying ‘Forgive me’ somewhere in the dark. Those were the last words anyone heard from Tuck.”
Having hoped for months that somehow those
two words were the missing link between Tuck and Barnaby, Juliet was now stumped.
“And they have no idea who he was talking to?”
“Rakowski didn’t see a thing. Just heard Tuck’s voice.”
Juliet wrung her hands. “Did he seem okay?” she asked. “Not when you last saw him, but before that, in the time you spent with him. He sent me a letter and sounded troubled.”
“It was hard to know Dufresne’s mind. By the time I got there, he was always off eating cold rations by himself. I don’t think the army suited him. Didn’t really suit anyone decent. He liked to do his own thing, cut his own trail. He had a temper about things.”
She remembered what Beau said about Tuck getting into a fight in a rest hotel. Her heart sank; she hated to think of her brother unhappy, lonely. Why hadn’t he shared more of his troubles with her?
“Did he get my letters? I wrote him every day.”
“Oh, did he love those letters. He’d go off near a tree and read them over and over again. It gave him his peace. We talked about that the night in the dugout. Both of us had sisters writing up a storm. I told him all about Tina and he told me all about how you were a prodigy with science, winning prizes. He bragged about how you’d thrown off college to become a nurse. He said you were growing up fast, he could tell from your letters. He said you’d all been best friends but that maybe the war would make things different. He hoped you’d never know what he’d done over here.”
Juliet felt her stomach weaken; she could not bring herself to ask the next question: What had he done?
Willard looked back from the window to see if she meant to continue, and Juliet shook her head. Crossing the room, he once again began his count. As Barnaby blinked himself out of the haze, Willard crouched and tested his reflexes.
“Christopher, can you tell me your full rank and division? Christopher, can you tell me where you are from?”
Barnaby was silent.
“Christopher, can you tell me where you are now? Can you tell me your sister’s name?”
As Willard pressed on, testing and challenging Barnaby’s muteness, Juliet’s mind plunged into a swirl of speculation.
Tuck, she thought, I would have understood and forgiven everything. And yet she hadn’t asked Barnaby what he meant; she hadn’t wanted the details of what Tuck had done. Perhaps she already knew the answer. Day after day she’d watched the bodies carried in on litters. She’d helped carry some herself: American soldiers maimed and dismembered at the hands of Germans. Some twenty miles north, wouldn’t there also be a German field hospital? Where a young German nurse like herself would stare at the blood and gore inflicted by the Americans? By men like Tuck and Barnaby and Munson and Beau? He’d done what they’d all done: He’d shot and stabbed and charged and strangled. He’d lobbed grenades. It was the thing they never wrote about in their letters, the thing they never could write about, and it was everything; in between the details of food and weather and camaraderie, they never said, Dear Mom and Pop, I’ve become a killer.
Willard, disappointment evident in his expression, began leading Barnaby to the doorway. Barnaby had refused to speak, and Willard gestured impatiently for Juliet to join him. She touched the side of the bed, the green chair, the wooden floor. Tuck had been conjured up in that room, and she did not yet want to leave. But with great effort she finally stood and took Barnaby’s other arm.
In silence they crossed the long, dark hallway; they made their way down the stone stairs. On the ground floor, the light of the fireplace briefly warmed and lit them, and as they passed through the mess area, the nurses and doctors drinking hot chocolate at the long tables looked up eagerly, wondering if progress had been made. Willard shook his head perfunctorily, trying to rein in his despondency, and they continued out into the cold, black night.
A wet wind swept through the encampment, and the tents around them rattled and flapped. They led Barnaby back to the Recovery Tent and carried their gear to the Supply Tent. There, Juliet began placing things one by one into the metal cabinet. Her motions were jagged, unsettled. She was trying hard to compose herself. She wanted to get it done with and go back to her bedroll and curl up and sob. Willard stood at the threshold, staring for a long while at the starless sky.
“All done here,” she called, sealing the cabinet.
Willard slowly stepped into the tent and arranged two crates side by side.
“Sit,” he said.
She held her hands in her lap and did not look at him. She did not think he could possibly understand the despair she was feeling. He stared ahead as though carefully measuring his words.
“That’s not what you wanted to hear, I’m sure,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“You’re not going to lecture me about focusing on the patient at hand?”
He smiled gently. “Shoot me if I do.”
She felt her self-possession falter; tears began to rush her eyes. It no longer mattered if he understood; she just wanted to speak, to get it all out of her. “Just hearing about him . . . just hearing another person, a person who knew him, speak his name . . . It’s all I have now, and it was wonderful, and horrible. . . . I’d give anything for another minute with him, another second. But I don’t think . . . I think it’s impossible. Barnaby was the last person to ever see my brother. And he knows nothing. Absolutely nothing. I thought I’d made my peace with not knowing, but now . . . To come this close and still not know if he’s alive or dead. And it’s still all so strange. It’s just so odd that Tuck never mentioned Barnaby in his letters. Not once.”
Willard listened carefully as she spoke, responding with slow, measured nods. Then he cleared his throat. “I have to ask, is there any chance your brother was . . .”
She knew what he meant. “No.”
The swiftness of her denial seemed to displease him. “Because it could be a piece of the puzzle. It could even factor into Barnaby’s despair. Guilt over Tuck’s risking his life to save him. Perhaps there was an intimate emotional connection.”
Juliet looked at the ground and thought of what Beau had said that night in the cave about Tuck and Myrna: If you ask me, they were never very serious. She thought about his endless stream of insignificant girlfriends. Did it mean something? Was there something about him she hadn’t grasped? But after everything else, did it matter now?
“God, Dr. Willard, I don’t think so, but nothing feels certain anymore.”
“Well, we know your brother didn’t like McKnight killing prisoners. Perhaps that was the reason for his fraught letter.”
“They really do that? Kill prisoners?”
“And worse, I’m afraid.”
A dark shadow of possibility crossed her mind: if that was what the Americans would do to a prisoner, what might the Germans do? Her great hope that Tuck had merely been captured suddenly seemed terribly grim.
“Whatever befell him, Juliet”—Willard put his hand on her shoulder—“the worst is probably over. I know this feels as though it is all happening now, as you hear about it, as you think about it. Tuck is through it. You’re feeling the trauma of it, not him.”
She was grateful for his words. It was as though her mind had erected a chamber of thought, brightly lit and thrumming, in which anything terrible could befall Tuck, in which every awful scenario endlessly played out. She finally wanted to shut it off.
“Did you know that if you prompted Barnaby about that first episode,” she asked, “he might talk about Tuck?”
“It had crossed my mind.”
Willard stood and shifted toward the tent flaps but made no headway. For all his bombast and talk of regulations, thought Juliet, he couldn’t stop himself from helping a person in need.
“Thank you,” she said.
He offered a half smile, fighting a blush.
“Will that session help the appeal?” she asked. “Will it help Barnaby with anything?”
“Doubtful. I suppose I’m learning what it feels like to be sent in to fight a battle that�
��s impossible to win. I find out my equipment doesn’t work, I was given the wrong maps. Barnaby should have seen a psychiatrist during his first admission. You can’t leave a man in a dugout, bleeding to death, and then nearly bury him alive without asking him how his mind is holding up. You can’t just send him back into the lines.”
“We only treat the ones who come in here and don’t want to kill anymore. But they all sound mad.”
“It’s impossible to ask men to do what they do out there and not have it change them.”
In a flash, what Tuck said to Sergeant McKnight came back to her: I’m getting tired of that shit. Had Tuck been part of something similar before? “I think the killing—I think the violence—I think it drove my brother mad.”
“He wouldn’t be the first.”
“God, I hate it here,” Juliet said quietly.
“But I’m so glad you are here.”
She stood and faced him; his kindness had moved her, and she felt an impulse to touch him, a right to touch him. She stepped toward him now, stepped into him, as if he were a room that belonged to her. He did not retreat. She set her cheek against his chest and he placed his hand on the side of her head and they stood like that for quite some time. In the silence of the tent, she could hear his breath. She did not want to speak. She did not want to move. She felt something rise within her, something eager and aching; the thought pulsed and throbbed, and she shifted her head, slightly, suggestively, so that her face titled upward. Please, please, please kiss me, she thought. Lift my chin and kiss me. I think you are wonderful, kiss me. His hand remained on her head but he made no motion to change position, and slowly, nervously, Juliet looked up, hoping she might see in his face some reflection of her own yearning. His eyes had closed, but she could not tell if it was from longing or exhaustion. She moved her mouth close to his, so close she could feel his breath on her face, and suddenly his lips pressed into hers. Their mouths moved eagerly, hungrily. His hand roamed her hair. She felt him press into her, begin to lift her, and then as quickly as it had begun, he pulled away.
The Secret of Raven Point: A Novel Page 22