Namesakes

by Emery C. Walters

  * * * *

  At the time, of course, I, present-day lying-in-the-hospital Blaine, knew nothing about any of this and after a while, both Frederick and I fell back to a deep sleep. Later, I dreamed about pirates and an old fashioned ship, but at least I didn’t talk about it out loud. I’ve never forgotten that war dream, if indeed that’s what it was. It was so real, and so confusing, and so intertwined with the air disaster and what I read between the lines when I was well enough to read. There’d been love on the Cagafuego as well, the original one I mean, the pirate ship. Was the captain of that my direct ancestor too? I’m pretty sure he must have been, and of course, once again, very much like me.

  The next morning my parents and sister came and the doctor was there and in walked two policemen and the principal of my school. Introductions went all around, and I was still waking up while all this was going on. “When is this?” I asked again, still dazed. “Where’s the Cagafuego? Is my crew all right?” As soon as I said it, I knew it was weird, but a part of me really wanted to know.

  Everyone started to speak at once but only Frederick’s voice came through to me. He said, “When do you think this is?”

  “Ninteen forty-four,” I said. “Unless it’s still 1642 but I’m thinking that’s in the past, I mean, who sees pirates any more, right? I’m not crazy, you know.” Here I chuckled, laughing at myself. Sort of. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I saw someone looping their finger around their ear and thought, logically, ah, the technical term; loopy. Fuck them. Then I hoped I hadn’t said that out loud too.

  * * * *

  Just thinking about all this now makes me wince, but I went on anyhow, gradually fuzzing right out into my fantasy/history/concussion-fueled mystical time warp again. “My ancestor Drystan sank his ship, or the British Navy did, him being a pirate and all, but the Germans got my plane. And by the way, where the hell are we? You didn’t answer me last time. What happened? Is this Germany?”

  “What do you think happened?” asked one of the cops, catching on quickly that, obviously, something wasn’t quite right. He shot a quick glance at Frederick and then turned back to me, a patronizing but amused smile hiding his confusion.

  “Well, we fucking crashed, didn’t we?” I answered bluntly, like it was obvious. “It’s partly my fault—the navigator was shot and I turned to miss the—and we got lost in the fog…” Suddenly aware that everyone was staring at me with completely blank looks on their faces, I stopped talking, again fully aware, though not for long.

  “What crashed?” asked my dad, bewildered.

  “The Cagafuego. My plane. That wasn’t her real name, that’s just what we called her cuz the rear gunner—Gunnar—love to fire his guns! And you know, it’s—in the - family…” I looked at my father like he should have known all this and was just being stupid. Then I very patiently told him the plane’s info, like you’d tell your name, rank and serial number; so he could understand what I was telling him better. And slowly he did, because suddenly my dad turned absolutely white and had to sit down in a hurry.

  Now everyone stared at him. In a croak, his voice shaking, he asked, unable to look at me, “Who are you?”

  “You should know. You named me after him, your grandfather Blaine. The one who went missing…in…” I couldn’t go on. People were staring at me again.

  Frederick spoke up, his hand trailing down my arm for a minute first, still comforting me. “I wrote down everything he said last night. I thought it was just an interesting dream. But the location—I mean, where he said his—the—plane went down, well my family comes from that area and I know the village and the hills there…I mean, my dad does, and his dad too…” And he handed the pages to my father, who glanced over them quickly.

  “Of course it would all be overgrown by now with the plane, if it’s still there, hidden beneath the trees and all. But…” here Frederick stopped and looked at my father, who was holding his head in his hands and still staring down at the pages before him.

  When he looked back up at me, everyone else stopped staring at him and turned back to me again for a minute. It might have been funny in a ‘watching a tennis match’ kind of way, if it hadn’t all been so chilling, plus I was beginning to hurt all over. After a second they all turned and stared back at my dad again. He cleared his throat. “I’ve never talked to Blaine about this. There’s so much truth to this though. There’s no way Blaine could have known these things. Losing his father to the war—my father never talked to me about it. My mother told me eventually, when I demanded to know why I had no grandfather on that side. She said not to talk to my father about it, as it only hurt him so much.”

  When my dad was through talking, I could see a shiver run down his spine. Mom dropped into a chair and went pale too. She didn’t faint this time though. “Blaine is named after my grandfather,” Dad went on quietly. “He did go down during WWII. His plane was never found. If the directions given here are right, and I’m going to check, we might find the plane. Or what’s left of it…We always just assumed the entire crew had died. I’m sure that’s what happened, but it would be good to know for sure. I’ll have to ask my dad though, and maybe he’ll rest easier to finally put some closure to this.”

  “Tell them the rest,” my mother put in.

  Dad cleared his throat. “Well, yes, there was talk that since the—bodies—were not all found, that perhaps they’d, uh, walked away from the war, gone AWOL, you know. It was too horrible to contemplate, to lose your father not to war but maybe to his own choice, to walk away from a wife and son back home. It was horrible that it was even suggested to them, but it was. And it hurt my father deeply.” My dad looked like he was ready to cry. Everyone was completely silent, completely still, until my mother moved to pat my father’s arm in comfort.

  “I can help,” put in Frederick, rubbing his eyes like he’d almost cried. “The family name, Maximillian, the town…I mean, it all goes together now. I remember my grandfather once saying something about a plane, but I thought all the people on it were dead.”

  I zoned in on that last part, and since I was, after all, technically ‘loopy’, I started to cry. “But I don’t want to be dead!” I sobbed, “I mean, I don’t want…uh…”

  I must have looked as confused as I was, and the only thing that brought me totally back to the present was dear old Maggie, who walked up and pinched the living hell out of the back of my arm. “Ow!” I screamed, pretty much summing up the whole week or so. Then she handed me a soda, and I forgave her as I sipped.

  * * * *

  Everyone was talking at once. I could hear them right here in the room—and I could hear them over the intercom or radio in the plane. I could see the doctor and my mom, and I could see the ground rushing up to meet my falling plane. I could hear the voices rising, and I could hear my crew screaming. I think I could have gone out of my mind then, except I could still feel Frederick’s hand now steady on my arm, and taste the cold soda on my tongue, or maybe I was just gradually getting over the knock on my head. Anyway, gradually the plane slipped away, and I was grounded there in the hospital room once more. The plane was going down and going to crash, but I was no longer, in any way, on it. I turned my head and looked at Frederick. That one look was when I knew—not just in my thoughts, but all through me—that I was gay. And that was not a bad feeling at all, especially because of Frederick. The way Frederick was looking at me, there was no issue of age or taking advantage whatsoever. I knew he loved me. I felt safe, set down the soda, and went back to sleep, a calm, restful, healing sleep.

  They kept me another two days, and I loved almost every minute of it. I don’t know how Frederick got out of work but he spent most of the time with me. My parents came every night around 7:00 P.M., and then he and Maggie would go down to the cafeteria and talk. She knew by then. I can’t believe my parents didn’t figure it out. I wondered if I should tell them, but I was afraid to.

  I realized that’s why my namesake had not come home. He’d
been afraid to. I knew what he was, and so did he. Perhaps he just couldn’t go back to what he was supposed to be, just as there was no way I could not, either. You can’t shrink. It would be killing off an important part of yourself. I was unwilling to do it, and I knew the previous Blaine could not do it either.

  * * * *

  Dad had been talking to his father about what I’d said, and he’d set wheels in motion to find out more. Nobody doubted the truth of what I’d said, which when I thought about it, sounded really weird, but then, adults are very weird. They were looking for something across the world and decades ago in time, but didn’t pay any attention to what was right in front of their noses. If I had my way, Frederick would someday be their son-in-law. Maybe we’d even adopt a child, and Mom would get her wish that I’d someday have a child just like me. Do all mothers tell their kids that?

  Finally I was sent home. And—yay—no school for two weeks! And only then after the doctor looked me over again, made sure I was no longer ‘delusional’, and that my knees were going to stay healed over. No more gym for yours truly until at least next semester and while I had really enjoyed running track, I never wanted to go there again.

  Frederick called me every day and tried to stay away so my parents wouldn’t get suspicious. I was desolate and took to playing music that I didn’t quite like just to cover up my feelings, and have something to hate and a reason to feel bad. I moped. I had nobody to talk to. I became obnoxious. Maggie said that wasn’t anything new.

  The police came to talk to me about the attack. I told them everything I knew, but frankly, most of it was gone. I knew I’d known who the boys were, but I didn’t now. Not a clue.

  The third night I was home, we were all sitting in the living room after dinner, most of which I’d shoved around my plate, sighing audibly. Suddenly my sister said, “Shit!” and jumped to her feet. We all stared at her. It was my time to be a jerk, not hers! “Look, you guys,” she almost shouted. “Blaine’s as queer as a two dollar bill.” (We all knew she meant three, but it was so cute nobody corrected her.) “Get your noses out of your—um, books (she had been going to say asses, I just knew it), and see what’s right in front of you.” She pointed at me. I almost trembled. “Frederick’s his boyfriend, and he loves him, and for God’s sake his father’s going to help you find that plane and stuff, and you should just invite him to come over. Then I won’t have to listen to Blaine playing his stupid, crappy music all the time and sighing and moaning, and we can all have some peace and quiet.” She flounced back down onto the couch amid the dead silence that followed. I sat right there smiling like a moron, listening to her, my hero. I sighed once more for good measure, and immediately reached for my phone to call Frederick and tell him all about it. I couldn’t stop grinning.

  My dad snorted, put his paper back up in front of his face and said, “Yeah, yeah, gay, we already knew that, didn’t we dear? What’s the big deal?”

  My mouth fell open with shock. Then I realized it wasn’t true. My dad has a really weird sense of humor sometimes, and, remember, he liked to be right. I looked at my mother who had turned white again. “Is that all?” she finally got out. My sister nodded. My mother added, “Oh holy Christ on a crutch, what else, God, what else? Why do these things always happen to me?”

  Dad snorted with laughter behind his paper. Crisis averted. Who knew? But wait, if Dad wasn’t lying, then how did they know?

  “Thank God,” said my sister. “If I have to listen to ‘Over the Rainbow’ one more time, I’m going to go crazy!” With a dramatic sigh, and placing the back of her hand on her forehead, she stood up and swished out of the room.

  I couldn’t help myself. I looked my mother right in the eye and whimpered, “Am I going to Hell?”

  Dad snorted. His paper shook. Mom rolled her eyes. “Of course not. You’re Episcopalian.” She noticed the phone in my hand. “Tell whatshisname we’re having fried chicken.”

  * * * *

  I was dumbfounded. But when Frederick answered the phone, I said, “Hi, honey! Dinner’s at six. Hurry over!” and nobody blinked an eye. I decided Maggie would have to be both our Maid of Honor and our Best Man.

  Frederick knocked on the door at 5:30 P.M., just in time for drinky-poos. He brought a chocolate cake that said ‘Happy Birthday’ on it. He said he’d just grabbed the first one he saw. That very night, after dinner, Dad started a phone campaign that would have rivalled a politician’s. There were calls to the Army, to the British Army, the German something or other, and of course, his own father. My mother, for God’s sake, had suggested I take Frederick upstairs to see my room. I think she was a little unclear of the concept that the word ‘boyfriend’ indicated. After all, my sister took her girlfriends up to her room all the time, didn’t she? Before she figured out the difference, we were up the stairs and behind the closed door.

  We sat together on my bed. Frederick glanced at the door. “There’s no lock,” I said sadly.

  “You’re not eighteen yet,” Frederick replied, sadly.

  I leaned forward, my eyes doing what I considered sexy pleading.

  He leaned forward, his eyes closing, his breathing heavy.

  Bam!! The door hit the opposite wall. My heart stopped. I almost wet myself. My sister barged in, narrowly missing being hit by the door as it bounced off the wall and swung back at her. She threw herself on the bed, almost in my lap. “So, Frederick,” she said blithely, bouncing up and down, “How’s the church music business?”

  To me she added, “Mom told me to come up here and tell you to stop whatever it is you were doing.”

  “It worked,” I replied. “Even my heart just stopped.” Actually that was a lie. In reality my heart had sped up so much I was afraid it was going to explode. When that door banged open, I had been completely terrified.

  “There’s chocolate cake,” Maggie soothed. “You should have seen Mom’s face when she remembered she shouldn’t leave you two alone up here.” She waggled her eyebrows.

  So that’s how we ended up back downstairs again. The cake was delicious. I got the piece that said ‘Happy’. We sat in a stupor in the living room while Dad organized some notes and made his calls.

  As it turned out, my dad was able to have the plane located. It took a while, but he did it. The directions I’d given were spot on, and with input from Frederick’s family, there, on a remote hilly slope, one that had been wooded at the time and was now densely covered with secondary growth, the wreckage of the plane—complete with two skeletons—was found. It wasn’t all in one piece, but it was identifiable.

  * * * *

  I had a bad night after he told us all about it. It wasn’t exactly a dream that ruined my sleep, but more like what PTSD must be.

  I hate when other people tell me their stupid dreams, but I’m going to tell you mine anyhow. I was standing next to a bed. I was also in the bed, hurt, having just crashed in the plane. The other me, the standing one, had pulled me out, saving my life. Then we split back into two people again, two separate people, but I knew him, I knew him as well as I know my own lover, well, soon to be lover.

  But in that moment, with the smell of fuel and burning, and the present only the war, all I knew was Gunnar; he was all I had that was real, at least, real in the deepest sense of my identity. There was only one thing on my mind—Gunnar, my love, my everything. “Help me! Help him!” I cried as the other me, whom I recognized but did not know, had dragged me away. “Nein! Ich kann hilfen nicht,” he shouted, and I understood him.

  We’d been taught German in case we ever crashed, and I’d studied it in high school back home too, because I had to take a language, and French was the only other one they offered. The guys said French was sissy, so of course, we all took German—and all the girls took French.

  A dog was barking furiously and the man had kept dragging me away. I stopped screaming and started to sob. “We can’t help them. The other man is out; he’s over there.”

  I saw it was Thomas. I didn’t
care. It wasn’t Gunnar.

  Before I passed out I saw my saviors, three angels of mercy, two men and a girl, or, woman. Later I learned their names, Dieter and his sister Janina, and Friedrich, who had gone into the plane and pulled me out.

  Friedrich told me later that I’d had a blow to the head; so they didn’t pay much attention to the odd sounds I made. Neither of them spoke English or they would have known…or maybe, somehow, Friedrich did, considering what we meant to each other later.

  I wanted to die. It was Janina who took care of me, and her soft and gentle hands reminded me of my wife. Janina’s mind was no longer whole, but she was sweet and could do things around the house with a ready will and cheer, a healing cheer. When she offered herself to me, it was easy for me to say no, sweetly, and I never had to explain why. She was fine either way. But Friedrich knew, somehow, he knew.

  We set up housekeeping, the three of us. It was Janina and me to the public, to the family, to the village, but it was Friedrich and me in the bedroom. Nobody ever knew for sure. I’m sorry to admit I was eternally grateful for Janina’s mental status.

  But one night, several months after the crash, when the Germans troops were in the area, taking away animals and meat and whatever they could find, and the occasional Jew who might have been hidden here or there, I woke up with a nightmare. I was screaming about a pirate ship. We were sinking. I was terrified! The Germans broke in and listened. Instead of carting me off as crazy, they laughed, delighted by my tale of the horrible pirate and his sinking ship full of gold. Or maybe it was Janina.

  And then I was screaming, me, the real, now, me, until at last Janina, I mean Maggie, woke me with a gentle touch, or rather, a terrific pinch to the back of my arm. I always wanted to say this, she smiled, “There, now you have something to scream about!” Then she rubbed my arm when she’d pinched it, and got serious again. “Who is Gunnar?” she asked. “And who is Drystan?”