by Gary Braver
“So, who’s the lucky guy?”
“His name is George King. He’s a great guy, and I know you’d like him.”
“I’m sure,” he said, and tasted acid. It was impossible to get his mind around the fact that what seemed so fresh—his marriage to Beth, who for seven years had been a fundamental condition of his being—had been cleanly snipped away. He felt like some sci-fi character who takes a star-drive trip to the next solar system only to return a few weeks later to an earth that had aged by fifty years. Suddenly it was the future.
“I just wish I hadn’t let you go alone,” she whimpered. Then in a sudden gush: “Why the hell did you have to take a damn swim in the dark … and all those jellyfish around? Huh? What was the point?”
“It wasn’t dark, and the water was warm, and I didn’t see the jellyfish until I got out to the rock. And my cell phone was in my pants.” He smiled, but she did not smile back. A prickly silence fell between them. He had gone alone as a private thing—to connect to a lost artifact of himself—something Beth couldn’t understand. “I barely remember what happened.” Dark water. Swimming like hell. Stroboscopic flashes of lightning. Aunt Nancy.
Don’t rub. Don’t rub.
She was standing on the beach frantically waving me in. Then she disappeared. Then she was back. Or someone else. Last-ditch hallucinations before the curtain dropped.
“All I remember was swimming to shore. Next, I’m in this bed.” He pulled up his sleeves with his fingers. Faint white scars striped his arm.
“You can barely see them. And they’ll fade.”
“Not that.” He raised his arms. “They look like starched swan necks.”
“In six months you’ll be Popeye again.”
“Until then, Olive Oyl in drag.”
She smiled. “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“Speaking of which, who’s paying for all this?”
“It’s all taken care of,” Beth said and explained that when Jack went into the coma she petitioned the court to be his guardian and promptly hired a Medicaid attorney who devised complicated strategies to preserve some assets and convert others to defray the cost of his hospitalization and nursing care. When Beth sold the house, she had put away half in a trust fund, which would co-pay with Medicaid for continued care, the excess of which would be available to him were he to wake up.
“Vince says he’s going to help find a place for you. And when you’re ready to leave, I’ll come back and help you settle in. So don’t worry about that. You’re going to have plenty of support.”
Jack nodded. But she had her own life, and once she left he didn’t expect to see her again.
Beth checked her watch. “I’ve got to go.” The nurses had given them only a few minutes, and his next PT session would begin shortly.
“You can come and visit us. Really. We’ve got plenty of room. I wish you would when … you know … you’re able to. It’s only five hours by plane … really.” She made a helpless gesture with her hands to apologize for crying. “I’m sorry.”
Jack nodded and felt his throat thicken. “Have a nice life,” he whispered.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” she snapped. “This isn’t good-bye.”
“‘Course not.” In the familiar cast of her eyes, Jack could see that Beth had decided that seeing him again would only make matters worse. And she was right.
She got up and put her arms gently around him. As best he could, he raised his arms around her shoulders, and he closed his eyes for an infinite moment. The aroma of White Linen filled his head as a hundred images flickered in his mind.
“Get well soon,” she said, and broke their hold. “Vince will be by tomorrow.”
She started to leave, then stopped. “By the way, does the name Mookie mean anything to you?”
“Who?”
“Mookie?”
“They got you doing memory tests on me, too?” He’d had three already, a fourth later today or tomorrow. Mookie. The name was like a small node sending up microwaves of recognition, but he couldn’t catch them. “I don’t know.”
“It’s not important.” She started toward the door again. “Oh, I almost forgot : You’re famous.” And she pulled out of her bag a newspaper clipping and laid it on his chest. She hesitated again.
“Go! You’re going to miss your plane.”
She nodded and left.
And Jack watched her pass through the door and listened to her heels against the tile receding down the hall, and for a long moment he stared at the space that she had occupied—a void, a negative space sucking at his soul—thinking from his perch of grief that his old life was over.
The article was from yesterday’s Boston Globe.
JELLYFISH COMA VICTIM RECOVERS AFTER SIX MONTHSA 33-year-old Carleton man who had spent nearly two hundred days in a “persistent vegetative state” recently regained consciousness at the Greendale Rehabilitation Center in Cabot, Mass.The case has been described as “absolutely extraordinary.” A former English teacher from Carleton Preparatory Academy, Jack Koryan slipped into a coma after nearly drowning six months ago in Buck’s Cove on Homer’s Island off the Massachusetts coast, where he was stung by rare and toxic jellyfish. According to experts, the tropical creatures were apparently attracted to the unusually warm coastal waters at that time … . Miraculously, Koryan survived the attack and has spent most of the last year in the Greendale nursing home, unresponsive to all contact in spite of the constant stimulation efforts from the nursing staff.Specialists comment that most patients spend only two to four weeks in a true coma. Contrary to expectations, Koryan is not cognitively impaired. In fact, his mental abilities are “extraordinary,” according to his doctors … .
Mookie. The word was like a deep itch that stayed with him for the rest of the afternoon.
46
ALL HE GAVE THEM WAS HIS NAME, rank, and serial number. That’s all he was supposed to give them. Name, rank, and serial number … Louis Martinetti. Corporal. US41349538.
And in the snap of a salute, Louis was back in the Red Tent—as the older POWs called it because that was your color when they got through with you. Red. As in bloody-pulp red.
The Red Tent. And Louis was going through it all over again.
He didn’t know why or how, because that was not where he wanted to be, but on the mission that Captain Mike Vigna had promised him. The special. Operation Buster. Instead he ended up again in the Red Tent. And by now he had lost count—not that it mattered—because it was like a closed loop—a Möbius strip of horror.
Louis was scared—so scared his bowels let loose. So scared that he wished they’d just shoot him in the brain and get it over with. He knew shit, but that wouldn’t stop them from what passed for sports with these godless Commie savages.
He remembered from the last time—from all the last times: no needles, no pliers, no electric prods that had been rumored. And not just him.
It was a large tent, and bound by arms and legs to a wooden armchair in the middle of the dirt floor was Fuzzy Swenson, stripped to his waist. His face was a mess of bruises, and thick strings of blood dripped to his lap from his mouth and nose. His hand kept twitching against the ropes as if trying to wipe himself. When he recognized Louis, Fuzzy moaned and vaguely nodded. He tried to say something, but one of the soldiers shouted him down.
There were five of them—two uniformed NK regulars, an older officer, and Colonel Chop Chop, who stood in the corner shadows and watched as the soldiers placed Louis in a chair facing Fuzzy. With the colonel in civilian clothes, with a shaved head and tinted glasses, was Gregor Lysenko, whom Intelligence had identified as his Russian advisor and had nicknamed Black-hawk. Chop Chop and Blackhawk. Like the comic book. What a fucking joke.
The soldiers bound Louis’s arms to a second wooden chair. They also put his helmet between his legs, binding them at the knee so he couldn’t release it. He told himself it was to catch his puke when they got down to business.
While they set him
up, Blackhawk said something to Chop Chop in what sounded like Russian. The colonel nodded and in a smooth, even voice he spoke a command in Korean to one of his soldiers, not taking his eyes off Louis. An older soldier translated in broken English.
They wanted information about troop deployment. Louis said he didn’t know anything about troop deployment.
He and other men of his platoon had been captured four days earlier when they got separated from King Company by a firefight with NKPA units in central Korea. All Louis knew was that they were part of a combat team assigned to defend a sector north of Wonju. But he had no idea where his company had advanced or what the deployment plans were. He also had no idea what other combat, artillery, or tank units were to be attached. That was not the kind of information that Command shared with grunts.
The colonel listened without response to the translation of Louis’s words. Then he said something soft and terse, and the baby-faced soldier backhanded Louis hard enough to cause his nose to leak blood and snot into the helmet. Was that what it was for? Couldn’t be. This was a torture tent.
The interrogation resumed, questions pelting him like stones: What heavy equipment did they have with them? What other battalion units were they joining up with? How many men? When was the next airdrop of the 187th?
“I swear,” Louis mumbled, “I don’t know nothing.” It was all he could say. It was the truth. He knew nothing. Nor did Fuzzy or the other guys in the platoon. Their mission was to proceed toward a ridge to the east of Wonju. They were not regrouping or reconnoitering with another company. They were just advancing and trying to save their asses.
But the soldier continued, demanding to know master battle plans, refusing Louis’s explanation that he knew nothing, that he was just following the leader like Fuzzy and the others.
When the soldier wasn’t satisfied, he put on a glove and swatted Louis again, but this time not very hard. And that made Louis suspicious that they were saving him for bigger things. They were.
The same line of questioning went on for several minutes until Colonel Chop Chop appeared to grow weary of Louis’s insistence. He mumbled something to the Russian, who responded with a burst of words. Chop Chop immediately conveyed the message to the baby-faced corporal, who gave Louis a look that sent a bolt of electricity through him. The soldier stepped between Louis and Fuzzy and removed a knife from a holster on his hip—a long, wickedly sharp looking blade that flickered in Louis’s face and made his heart nearly rupture. The soldier looked at Louis with that flat, inscrutable expression, then in a lightning move that Louis later thought was well rehearsed, he grabbed one of Fuzzy Swenson’s ears and sliced it off.
Fuzzy screamed as blood spurted from the side of his head. Still without expression the soldier dropped the severed ear into Louis’s helmet. It struck with an obscene plunk.
By reflex Louis tried to shake the helmet free. But the soldier whacked Louis in the face to remain still.
Louis looked down at the thing. It was horrible—just the bloodied rim of the ear, a gaping hole for the canal opening still attached to Fuzzy’s head. “Please,” Louis begged. “I don’t know anything. Please. Please.”
Fuzzy whimpered and bobbed his head, his hands jerking against the ropes to cup the pain, stop the blood. But he had been tightly bound, and his hands twitched like injured animals.
The interrogator shouted at him to explain the kind of armaments in his company.
Louis looked at the hideous severed ear. Make something up, he told himself. Make something up. Anything, or they’re going to cut Fuzzy into pieces and fill the fucking helmet.
He glanced at Chop Chop, who stood in the corner with the Russian studying Louis through those fucking half-moon black gook eyes—bright with pleasure. The bald Russian beside him looking like a warhead.
Louis began to mumble, trying to compose his mind to come up with something that sounded like military plans. The colonel said something and the translator shouted for Louis to speak up. But all he could do was mumble dissociated words—southeast corridor light armament northwest Howitzers reconnaissance … 17th Infantry Regiment …
But before he could cobble together something that made sense, the knife man pulled Fuzzy’s head up by the other ear and sliced it off.
Louis screamed. But Fuzzy only let out a gasp, since he was already half gone from the beating and loss of blood. His head flopped from side to side as if trying to free itself of the pain, his hands jerking fitfully. The soldier dropped the second ear into Louis’s helmet.
Louis looked at the officer. “I beg you, please, no more. Leave him alone. He didn’t do anything. He doesn’t know anything. I don’t know anything.”
God, help me come up with something, anything, just to stop these fuckers.
Louis mumbled something about a battalion of two hundred men with armored personal carriers and Howitzers coming from the east toward Wonju. He made stuff up and let it come, scraps of stuff he knew and stuff he just created in the moment. Anything.
The translator passed that on to Chop Chop, who responded. The translator then lowered his face to Louis’s and screamed: “No good. You lie. You lie!”
“No, it’s the truth. I swear.”
The Russian grunted something, and the colonel tipped his head at the soldier. He raised Fuzzy’s face and jabbed the point of the knife into his left eye, and with a flourish he scooped out the bloody mass and dropped it in the helmet.
Louis felt his gorge rise in his throat. But he held, barely able to register Fuzzy’s whimpering and pathetic attempt to free his bound hands to stop the flow of blood and ocular fluid. He closed his eyes and screamed so hard for them to stop that he hoped his brain would short-circuit-that he’d just pass out. Maybe shock himself out of this horrible nightmare place and wake him up on the other side of the globe where he belonged.
But none of that happened.
He was still in the Red Tent, bound to his chair with the bloodied head of Fuzzy across from him, his ears and gory eyeball sitting in the helmet between Louis’s legs and the Russian muttering more shit to Chop Chop. Louis tried to mouth pleas of mercy but Chop Chop grunted something, and the knife man jabbed out Fuzzy’s other eye and dropped the bloody thing onto the pile.
Louis closed his eyes against the sight, against the groans rattling out of Fuzzy’s throat, against the sight of his poor ruined head.
But they wouldn’t let him. The soldier sliced off four of Fuzzy’s fingers, one by one, and deposited them in the helmet. Then the thumb. Then they began on the other hand.
When Fuzzy appeared to have passed out, Chop gave the final order. The soldier jabbed Louis on the chin with the point of the knife, and in a flash, as his eyes snapped open, the bastard forced back Fuzzy’s head and slashed his throat.
That was all Louis remembered of the Red Tent, because they unbound him and hustled him out to the pen with the other prisoners.
Later that evening, as the sun dropped over the mountains, they brought him and nine other men from first platoon to a low bridge over some river. A detail of soldiers pulled them out of the trucks and lined them up shoulder-to-shoulder against the low rail of the bridge, maybe twenty feet above the water. In the distance Louis could see dark, rolling hills. He focused on a star just above the hills—maybe Venus or Mars, it made no difference—and he thought of Marie Carbone on the other side of the world—his high school sweetheart, the girl he had planned to marry when he got back to the States—and how she had no idea that at this very moment as she was waking up in her parents’ home in Wethersfield, Connecticut, he was being lined up over some godforsaken river to be shot dead.
Louis heard the metal snap as the machine gunners locked the belt of fifty-caliber shells into the magazine.
He heard the whimpers of the men staggering in terror beside him, knowing that this was their death.
He heard the alien syllables of Colonel Chop Chop’s command to fire.
And with his last breath of air bulbed in
his throat, Louis heard the moment explode with a ratcheting insistence that propelled him backward over the side and into the water.
By reflex, he held his breath and waited to pass into death.
But he did not pass into death. As he plunged deep into the chilled black water, he was stunned that he had not been hit. Amazingly, he was alive.
He continued holding his breath and let the current take him. Because his feet were loosely bound, he could make dolphin kicks. And when he could no longer hold his breath, he surfaced, took a gulp of air, and resubmerged, his back to the bridge where, if any soldiers saw him, they’d think he was just one of the corpses bobbing on the surface.
Three days later and half starved, Louis flagged an American spotter plane, and in hours a squad of GIs from Baker Company found him. For nearly two days he slept in the infirmary tent. And for the next fifty years he worked to get those Red Tent images out of his head.
But now they were back with brutal insistence.
47
JACK SHOOK HIMSELF AWAKE. ANOTHER BAD dream.
He could not remember what exactly it was about, and he was grateful—just vague images of misshapen creatures and screams and other nasty sounds he couldn’t identify.
Jack blinked around the room, taking in the shapes in the dim night-light as the dream dissipated.
Greendale. His room at Greendale Rehab.
The window with the broken Venetian blinds. The digital clock on the TV. 5:17. Muddy gray light seeped through the slats. Dawn light. He had been asleep since yesterday afternoon when the doctor was in with her test questions—when he had another spell.
Threw yourself a whopper, Jackie boy. Lousy dreams, loony conniptions. Hell, the coma’s looking pretty good.
The wall mirror above the bureau. The IV stand. The heart monitors on the rolling console beside the bed. His bed with the baby-blue spread, side bars to prevent him from falling out if he had a seizure. His rebirth crib.
He looked out the window into the predawn gray. How the world had changed, he thought. How he had changed since a bunch of jellyfish burned a hole in his tape.