No Dominion (The Walker Papers: A Garrison Report) (17 page)

Her breath caught and she knotted her hands together, hiding ‘em in the sleeves of my jacket. She looked down at ‘em, biting her lip, then looked back at me. “When?”

“Saturday.” Somethin’ was wrong with my throat. I cleared it an’ said, “We leave Saturday,” again. “You gonna wait for me, doll?”

Annie Macready stood up and shook my coat sleeves back so she could stand arms akimbo and give me a look that shoulda taken my skin off. Didn’t, though, ‘cause there was a lotta sweetness behind it, like she was tryin’ to be fierce and only partway making it. “What do you think I’ve been doing the last four months, Garrison Muldoon?”

Swear ta God, my knees buckled. Couldn’t let myself fall down, ‘cause that woulda been embarrassing, but I got a couple inches shorter for a second there and Annie’s lips twitched, tryin’ ta hide a smile. I said, “You’re laughing at me, doll,” and she said, “Yes,” without a bit of apology.

“Well, all right, I guess that puts a fella in his place when he’s…” My heart was slamming like a jackhammer, and I was getting dizzy with nerves. “Look, sweetheart, it ain’t much, but I wanted to…” I swallowed again, wonderin’ why it was so hard to get through a simple question. I muttered, “Ah, hell,” and fished in my slacks pocket for that box, and held it up.

Annie’s hands went to her stomach an’ I thought she’d stopped breathing. All of a sudden I figured I’d better do this right, an’ got down on one knee, scared as a kid sneaking into a haunted house. Annie watched me with eyes big as saucers, and she wasn’t breathing, so I hurried it up, stumbling over my own words. “Well, it ain’t much, but I’ll getcha something better before we—I mean,
will
you, Annie? Will you marry me, sweetheart?”

The box just about flew outta my fingers when I tried opening it. Annie caught it, her hands tiny and delicate next to mine, and I turned red from the collar up. She straightened the box in my palm and put her hands over it, smiling right at me and not looking at the box at all. “Of course I will. Of course I’ll marry you, Gary. I love you.”

All the breath rushed outta me. Funny how thinking a girl’s gonna say yes and waiting for it to happen are two separate things. “I love you too, sweetheart. Right from the first moment I saw you.”

Annie tipped forward to kiss me, murmuring, “You’re a romantic,” against my mouth. “Now get up before you stain the knee of your trousers.”

I got up, sorta offended and mostly grinning. “Some romantic you are. Doncha wanna see the ring?”

Her dimples showed up again. “Of course I do, but I’m marrying you, not a ring.” She opened it then, though, while I was back to mumbling, “It ain’t much, but I wanted to have somethin’, and I’ll getcha somethin’ better—”

“Gary.” Her voice was funny an’ tight. “Gary, it’s perfect. It’s beautiful. I forbid you to get me a different one. Put it on me?” She wasn’t so graceful, either, takin’ the ring outta the box, so I felt better fumbling it onto her hand with thick cold fingers. We both stood there looking at it a moment when it was on, a pretty little gold thing with pearls on either side of a chip of diamond. Annie had long fingers for somebody her size, and sensible nails that wouldn’t get in the way of working, an’ she was right. The ring looked perfect. I tucked my fingers under hers and brought her knuckles up to my mouth for a kiss. She laughed and threw her arms around me, the long sleeves of my coat smacking my shoulders. I picked her up and spun her around, feeling like some kinda movie star, an’ put her on her feet again to give her a kiss.

“Wish I could marry you right now, doll.”

“You could,” she said impulsively. “Or tomorrow, at least.”

“Nah.” I brushed my thumb over her jaw and shook my head. “No, sweetheart, I wanna do it right. I don’t wanna be in a rush. And I don’t wanna—”

“Don’t.” She put her fingers over my mouth. “Don’t even say that, Gary.”

“I didn’t say nothing!” But I’d been gonna, and we both knew it. I’d been gonna say I didn’t want to risk leaving her a widow. I didn’t want to risk leaving her with a baby and no Pop for it. I didn’t wanna risk leaving her with a baby and me not being there when it was born, for that matter. But she didn’t want me to say it, maybe afraid I’d jinx something if I did, so I just took her hand away and kissed it again. “And I won’t say nothing,” I promised. “You write to me, though, all right, sweetheart? Everything about your day, so I know what I’m comin’ home to. Swear to God I’ll never get bored of it. It’s gonna be my lifeline.”

“Are you afraid?”

That wasn’t the kinda question a guy should answer truthfully, I bet. They’d been teaching us to fight, an’ teaching us not to think, but anybody with two brain cells to rub together knew war wasn’t safe. So it took me a minute to answer, standing out there in a park with a warm spring breeze playing with Annie’s hair and making everything seem all right with the world. “Not afraid. Kinda…apprehensive, I guess. I wish there as another way, but if there was—well, I wouldn’t have met you, if there was, so it ain’t worth thinking about. It’s gonna be fine, Annie. It’s all gonna turn out all right. I’m gonna come home to you.”

Her eyes were brighter than I liked to see them. “You sound so certain.”

“I am. I got a feeling.” I guessed maybe a lot of soldiers had that feeling at the back of their minds, saying they were coming home safe, or they might end up deserters. But mine was the one I’d heard before, telling me something was right or wrong, like Annie’s Pop being an artist, even if I didn’t know why it was wrong that he was. I trusted it, either way, an’ brushed tears off Annie’s cheeks before kissing her again. “I got a feeling,” I promised. “It’s gonna be okay. You wanna head back? Warm up?” I smiled. “Show off that ring?”

“Oh!” Tears or not, her smile came back. “You don’t mind?”

“Mind?
Mind
? Lady, what kinda guy
minds
if the most beautiful girl he’s ever met wants to tell everybody she’s marrying him? A’course I don’t mind! C’mon, doll.” I tucked her up against my side. “Let’s go tell the world.”

And my father.
That wasn’t what she said next, but in the scheme of things, that’s what seemed most important. The friends, the congratulations, Andy wanting ta know if I needed a best man already, alla that was expected. Mrs. Macready looking happy and sad all at once, I figured on that too. But excepting the paintings, there’d been no sign of Annie’s pop, and he’d kinda slid from my mind. I woulda asked the old man for Annie’s hand in marriage before popping the question, if I’d known he was around at all to ask, but when I said that to Annie she shook her head and said it didn’t matter.

The day before I left, I found out why.

Annie didn’t say much on the long drive into countryside alternating between barren rock and crop fields. I tried to start up conversations a couple of times and got the message after that. Just when I was starting to think she was gonna kill me and dump the body, and about to ask if I oughta be worried, she turned down a paved road in the middle of nowhere, and idled the car while we waited for a big set of iron gates to open up. Two words were sculpted across the gates: BELLREEVE INSTITUTION.

Hospitals were one thing. Institutions meant somethin’ else entirely. I said, “Annie,” real quiet, and she shook her head and wouldn’t talk ‘til we were parked in front of the main building. A new building, big and clean-looking, with pillars like some kinda plantation estate moved a couple thousand miles west. Grass was cut short for acres all around, with stands of trees left in place to make shade for a few folks who were out in the spring sunshine. They looked okay, for crazy people. Wearing slippers or goin’ barefoot, but they were dressed in regular clothes and nobody was screamin’ or tryin’ ta kill anybody like they always were in books about insane asylums.

Annie put her hands on the steering wheel, looking straight ahead as she talked. “I was almost hit by a car when I was seventeen. Our car had broken down and I was walking back to town to get help, and I’d left Dad with the car. He limps. A war injury. So it was easier and faster for me to go.”

I said, “Don’t matter why,” quiet as I could, but she wasn’t much listening to me just then. Mostly she was tellin’ a story that I thought ate her up inside, maybe one she was afraid I was gonna judge her for. One she was afraid was a deal-breaker for me, ‘cause a crazy parent might mean she’d go nuts someday too. I wasn’t gonna reassure her yet, not until she could hear me, which I reckoned might take a couple decades. I had the time.

“I was about half a mile from Dad when the car came out of nowhere. I didn’t hear it coming, and I still don’t know how it missed me. Something knocked me aside, and Dad…” She took a deep breath. “Dad swore he’d seen a man on a silver horse come down from the sky and tackle me.”

I twitched and sat up straighter, feeling like somebody’d rung a bell nearby. Annie’s jaw got tight. “After that he began to…have visions. About the man on the silver horse, and a lot of other things. He started painting them, and started telling stories about the paintings.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she wouldn’t let go of the wheel, much less look at me. “They got more and more awful, his stories. Stories about magic things happening. About demons and devils and…and sometimes about heroes, but the heroes lost a lot. And then after a while he started…”

She wiped her eyes and choked the steering wheel again. “After a while he started thinking I was important in all those stories. That the silver man had protected me because of that. And he wouldn’t…let me out of the house, not even to go to school. He was trying to protect me, he said, but he started getting…violent, and it…it just got worse and worse, Gary, until finally we didn’t have any choice. We’re lucky,” she said with all kindsa desperation in her voice. “We’re lucky, because the institutions aren’t like they were even just a few years ago. They treat him well. He’s not dangerous as long as he thinks I’m safe, so we tell him…well, we don’t tell him anything. We tell him I stay home except for when I come to visit him, and he paints, and…I should have told you. I should have told you before, but I was so afraid you’d—” She buried her face in her hands, and I finally took that as a chance to say something.

Or to pull her up against me an’ hold on, which seemed smarter. I kissed her hair and let her cry while all sorts of crazy thoughts swam around my head. Same ol’ voice saying
this ain’t right,
while the resta me wondered what the hell it mattered if it was right or wrong. Wasn’t like I could change what was, and when I thought that, the voice said
hell, what if
I’m
remembering it wrong?
and got quiet again.

Any other time and I mighta mentioned it all to Annie, mighta said I thought
I
was going crazy, but sitting in front of a nuthouse that her dad was inside didn’t seem like a good time to make jokes. Instead I said, “Don’t change nothin’, sweetheart,” against Annie’s hair. “Don’t mean I love you any less, and it don’t mean I’m worried about our future, all right? I’ve seen his paintings. Your old man’s an artist, and everybody knows artists are crazy. It ain’t a bad thing.  S’all that I’m gonna see in this, okay?”

Annie laughed, except it sounded more like a wet snort. I couldn’t help laughing too, an’ she laughed again in embarrassment, ‘til I was belly laughin’ and she was snorting like a hog in mud. Tears ran down both our faces and we leaned on each other until laughs turned to giggles and finally into wheezing sighs. I kissed her hair again and said, “Better now?”, and she sat up to look at herself in the rear-view mirror.

“All except my makeup.” She touched under her eyes, tryin’ to wipe away mascara smears, then took a tissue from her purse and got herself tidied up again. As she folded it away, she said, “I love my dad, Gary. I wish he wasn’t in here, that this hadn’t happened to him, and I know it’s uncomfortable, but…be nice? Please?”

“He’s your father, doll. He’s always gonna have my respect.” We got outta the car and she took my hand, leading me into the institute. It smelled too clean and the halls echoed, but the doctors and nurses smiled hello, and called Annie by name as we went upstairs to an art studio. I hung at the door a minute, surprised to be watching half a dozen people painting and drawing. “This ain’t at all like what I thought it’d be.”

“It’s one of the newest institutes in the country. There were reform laws passed a few years ago.” Annie glanced at me to see if I knew what she was talking about, and I kinda shrugged. I remembered seeing somethin’ about it in the papers and hearing it on the radios, but it hadn’t affected me, so it hadn’t made much impression. “They used to be very bad,” Annie said. “A lot of them are still bad, but this one—a wealthy man’s wife was the first patient here. He had it built for her, so she could get the best care in the country. We were lucky to live so close, so Dad could come here instead of one of the other places. That’s him,” she said with a nod toward an older fella with hair blonder than Annie’s. He was sitting with his back to us, facing a window, but the painting he worked on didn’t have anything to do with the view. All I could tell was it was a woman with dark hair, but she seemed familiar somehow.

“Will he mind if we interrupt him?”

Annie shook her head. “He paints things from visions, not from the world, so the light never changes and the images never go away. It’s fine.” She tugged me forward, saying, “Hi, Dad,” when we were a few feet way.