Ash Wednesday (37 page)

"I watched. There was no warning, no preparation at all. They bound the feet of both Cong, then grabbed the boy and stabbed him through the ankles with one of the stakes, right in front of the Achilles tendon. Then they lifted him up, swinging and screaming, and set the stake in the wooden framework so that he hung upside down. A long knife slit his throat, and a basin caught the blood. It all took only seconds. When I tore my eyes away, I saw the father staring at his dead son. It seemed like it took forever, but finally the basin was filled and a soldier handed it to
Kriger
. He drank some of the blood—there must have been two quarts of it—and then passed it to the others. They all drank, and set it down empty. Then
Kriger
knelt and asked the Cong something. He shook his head no.
Kriger
just smiled, and he nodded to one of the others. The guy took a long knife and made a bunch of slashes in the boy's chest and pulled something out. I didn't see what it was at first—just something small and dark. It wasn't until he held it out to the father that I saw it was a heart. Then he ate it.

"The father screamed then, and tried to get away, but he was tied so tight he could only thrash around. When he quieted down,
Kriger
talked to him again, but again the man said no. 'He's tough,'
Kriger
said to us in English. 'But he'll break. Five days, boys. Five days.'

"He explained it to me later. Aborigines did it, he said, and it was the worst thing he could think of. They let the boy hang where he was and put a tub beneath him. When bodies decay, they . . . well, parts
liquify
. And it drips down . . ." Brad stopped, his mouth hanging open as if he was incapable of making it form any more words.

"That's enough," said Danvers. "You don't have to say any more."

"But there
is
more."

"Not for today. Later maybe. That's enough for today."

Brad opened his eyes and looked at Danvers. "We got the information," he said. "The Cong talked."

Danvers gave him a cup of coffee and told him that what had happened to him was unique, out of the ordinary. He said it was no wonder that it had affected him the way it had. But it was something that could be dealt with, and wouldn't he please consider meeting with him once a week?

Brad made an appointment for the following week, but when the day came, he knew that he couldn't say any more than he'd already said. He stayed home. Danvers called him, but Brad told him he wasn't interested anymore and hung up. True to his word, Danvers never did anything else about it.

Maybe he should have gone back, Brad thought as the snow fell all around him. Maybe if he had, he'd be someone else now, with different dreams and memories. Maybe he'd have
adapted
. War. Just war. War's not real, so the things you do in war aren't real either.

Bullshit
.

He got into his car and drove to Merridale. He hadn't intended to stop at the Anchor, but when he thought how good a drink would feel without the presence of Christine or Wally, he parked and went inside.

The bar at the Anchor was shaped like a racetrack, with the patrons seated all around, and the bartender and his supplies in the middle. The music was loud, people were talking, and
Bry
, the bartender, raised a cautiously welcoming hand as Brad entered. It felt good to be there, homelike, and Brad smiled as he shrugged off his coat and hung it up. He sat, ordered a Miller draft, and reached for the peanuts. Then he saw Jim Callendar sitting directly across the bar from him.

For a second it seemed as if he looked into a mirror. The eyes were haunted, the face pale. The effect of being
followed
was there,
tormentingly
, and for the first time he felt pity for Callendar, knowing that their sins were shared, their
guilts
were equal, their honor had been spat upon and dragged through sewage.

But just as he pitied Callendar, so did he hate him, out of a well of strength that only self-hatred can fill. And for the first time too he knew the truth of that.

"Mr. Wilson," he said.

Jim looked up, saw Brad, but his face remained immobile. "Mr.
William
Wilson," Brad clarified.

Recognition came into Jim's eyes, and his expression sharpened. " `In me,' " he quoted in response, “ ’see how clearly thou hast murdered thyself.' " He nodded. "Mr. Meyers.”

“We meet again."

"We do. Buy you a drink?"

"Thank you, no. I've got one."

"You think we're doppelgangers?"

"Why?"

"Why call me William Wilson? I know my Poe.”

“Fitting we should be." Brad sipped his beer. "Have you thought any more about what we talked of the last time?”

“Specifically?"

"Reasons. Reasons for what happened here. In town.”

“Wait. I can't hear you." Jim came around the bar, thinking, It all comes together, everything comes together, and sat next to Brad.

"Why this has all happened," Brad said.

"You mean for us? For you and me? I've thought about it. And I think you're right. Idiotically, irrationally, selfishly, it has happened for
me
. No, wait," he said quickly, "I mean that my . . . fate is bound up in it. " Jim's words were fuzzed. The drinking was evident. "Maybe not just for me, maybe for other people too, but
goddammit
, there's
gotta
be a reason, doesn't there?" He looked narrowly at Brad. "But why for you, eh? Why for you?"

Brad smiled grimly. "What's yours is mine. We are linked.”

“We are?"

He nodded. "In ways you could not imagine. Linked in life and death."
Bry
brought another beer at Brad's gesture. "What do you think about death, Jim? In light of what we have experienced in the past few months. "

Jim smiled in spite of himself. It seemed years since he had had a decent half-drunken barroom discussion over abstractions, and he warmed to the man by his side, who seemed so enigmatic and threatening, yet somehow understanding, even sympathetic. "I don't know," he said, trying to sound more sober than he really was. "I suppose I think that death is death. Final. Forever. Complete and total oblivion. And these . . .
boogeymen
haven't changed my mind one way or another about that. They have no consciousness, I don't believe that. But what they've done is to change something in us—maybe our awareness of death. I mean, I'm
afraid
of it—death—because as shitty as life is, it's all we've got, you know? I don't want to lose it. I'd do
anything
not to lose it."

He stopped, remembering suddenly what he
had
done, or had not done, and took a quick drink. "I think everybody thinks about death a lot," he went on, looking away from Brad, "but now we think about it more. We're
reminded
of it constantly, of our own mortality, of the fact that someday
we'll
be blue spooks in the parlor. It's like living in a cemetery. Only it's more—I don't know what—more spiritual maybe?"

"It's like Ash Wednesday," Brad said calmly.

"Ash—"

"When the Catholic kids would come to school with ashes smeared on their foreheads. To remind them one day a year of their own deaths, that they were mortal and would have to suffer death to be with God." He sipped lightly from his glass. "It's as if every day is Ash Wednesday."

"Do you believe in that? That there's something after?”

“I believe more than you. It isn't final. Whatever happens, it isn't final. Death is too kind for that."

"Kind? Death kind?"

"I told you once before that there are worse things than death. And there are."

"Nothing's worse than death."

"What do you know?" Brad said sharply. "How much do you know? You go through one thing in your life that tests you and you fuck up and that makes you an expert? You gutless
shit!
"

“Hey, hey,"
Bry
said from a few yards away, "take it easy now."

"Fuck off!"

"I mean it, Brad. No fights in here."

"I'm not fighting, I'm
talking!
"

"Well, talk softer or take it outside!"

"Who's gonna make me do
that?
You, Brian?"

Bry
pushed a button underneath the bar, and
Emeric
Jerney
appeared from the kitchen as if by magic. "What's the problem?" he asked.

"Brad's gettin' loud,"
Bry
told him.

"I'm just
talking
, for
crissake
!"

Jerney
squinted, his broad face becoming broader. "Why you
hasslin
' in here again? You been okay for a long time. Now you
wanta
start more trouble?"

"I'm not starting any goddamn trouble!"

"And you watch your mouth! I got diners in here.”

“Fuck your diners! And the horsemeat you serve 'em!" The Hungarian reddened. "Okay. Okay, that's it. Out. Right now. Out! Pay up and out!"

Brad threw a five-dollar bill on the bar. "You want a tip,
Bry
? Huh? You want a tip? Here's a tip—watch your ass. That's my tip to you,
fuckface
." He looked hard at Jim Callendar. "How about you? We gonna finish our conversation?" Then he turned and walked out, snatching his coat from the rack and rattling the hangers. Jim paid, and followed him.

When he got outside, Brad was standing at the bottom of the ramp that the
Jerneys
had installed a few years ago for the nursing home residents who banqueted there once a month. "Now, whose fault was all that, I wonder," Brad said, his left leg shaking nervously. "What do you think? No, don't bother, I know, my fault. Always my fault. Always the fault of the half-nuts Vietnam vet, right? The coiled killer on the edge of sanity?" He shook his head. "You have no idea of what it's like to be a figure out of legend. In another ten years
mamas'll
be scaring their children with stories of people like me. And you know the crazy thing about it? It's
not
a bum rap. Oh, for most maybe. But not for me." He stepped closer to Jim. "
You
know, don't you? You know that there are a lot of things inside me . . . but the greatest of these is rage. Because you have it inside you too."

He put out a hand and touched Jim's face tenderly. "We're two of a kind, Jim. You just don't realize it yet."

Jim stood, oblivious to Brad's touch. "No. I don't . . . have anger in me."

"Of course you do." He tapped Jim's cheek lightly, barely enough to sting. "It's just that you don't know. You just haven't been pushed to the edge yet. But you will be." He struck Jim's face again, harder, so that Jim's head jerked aside, but snapped back immediately, as if he were a soldier at attention. "I bet you've never even been in a fight, have you? Never had anybody hit you for real, huh?" Brad made a loose fist, and backhanded Jim so that he staggered slightly. "Do you think that
I
could make you angry?" he said, and threw a left uppercut into Jim's middle that left Jim breathless.

Brad straightened up. "Come on," he said. "Come away from the light."

Jim followed him, pausing only long enough to let his aching stomach eject the several hours worth of drinks he had poured into it.

They were in the shadows now, and Brad went about his work slowly, methodically, with the careful placement of a sculptor seeking the correct balance between flesh and stone. The blows were not meant to disfigure, maim, or draw blood, although they did all three. Their purpose was pain, and in that they were most highly effective, although Jim Callendar seldom cried out. His grunts and squeals were bound with the iron of his own fulfillment, so that they seemed to be the calls of long pent-up and suddenly released passions.