Scarborough Fair and Other Stories (15 page)

“Guess so. That's okay. You gotta be tired of all that hitch hikin' anyway.”

Amato reached out a hand that was not Woody's hand, but a younger hand, more deeply tanned and slimmer in shape—his own hand, and grabbed the one extended to him. He rose to feet that wore jungle boots, like the ones the other guys wore. He was wearing fatigues too. He almost didn't recognize his own—well, not body, exactly, but his appearance. It had been a long time since he'd been just himself. “You can see me?”

“Sure I can. You can see me, can't you?”

“Yeah.”

“Same difference. Look, Amato, you've had a long detour on the way home but you're okay now.”

“Who
are
you guys?” Amato asked as the two of them walked over to the group. “Are you all haunting this place or what?”

“You could say that. “

“I bet all of you have your names there though, right?” Amato said, jerking a thumb—his thumb—back toward the Wall.

“Most of us, yeah. But look, man, if they knew you were dead, you'd be here too. Don't make no nevermind to us. We don't stand on formality.”

“So isn't there a heaven or a hell after all?” Amato asked. He hadn't thought about any of that since the split second before he attached himself to his lighter, but now found the subject vitally interesting.

“Oh yeah, sure, but you're not stuck there, you know. You can come and go. Most of us were ready for a war when we died. Eternal peace is a little hard to take when you're jazzed for action. So we hang out here a lot, look at the presents, read the poems, wait and see if any of our folks or our old buddies are visiting.”

“So you can go on leave from heaven? That's a new one.”

“Yeah, and some of the brothers have been to hell and back too.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“That's why we're here. We're sort of the pathfinders for any new recruits. We've lost a lot of guys
since
Nam too because of it. Died from wounds, physical or otherwise, or got cancer from agent orange and died that way. Not too many of you dudes who were missing show up like this though. We're glad you're here. Even if you're not so sure.”

“Oh, I am. I mean, I thought that I had to stay with Woody to stay—well, me. But—“ he looked back toward the lighter, feeling a little insecure without it. Kind of like a genie without his bottle might feel, he guessed.

Someone was there, reaching for the lighter.

Amato freaked. “'Scuse me,” he said to his guide, and headed back to the intruder, “Hey, my buddy left that for a friend of ours. It's very special to us and—“

The intruder looked up, the boonie hat falling back to reveal wild red curls corralled into pigtails, and wide round golden brown eyes. “Sorry,” she said. “But I think it was left for me. I had a patient once who carried a lighter like this. It belonged to his friend who disappeared during a firefight.”

“Shari?”

She stood up. The boonie hat was the only piece of military attire she wore now. Otherwise she was in sandals and one of those Mexican dresses in bright turquoise embroidered around the neck and hem with flowers in hot pink, purple, red, lime green and bright blue.

“Do I know you?”

“Well, we didn't meet while I was alive exactly but I'm Woody's friend—Johanson's friend. I died in the same firefight where he got wounded. That was my lighter. And uh—my ride home and my connection with life for the last thirty years.”

“I can see why you might be a little possessive of it,” she said. “I wasn't going to take it anywhere. I just wanted to see it, kind of as a reminder...”

“Oh, hey, no, that's okay. I haven't smoked in years—I mean, Woody hasn't. He left it with you. I guess he left
me
with you. Only—what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“I was on my way to a party with some other nurses and the chopper was shot down,” she said, after all these years still looking as bewildered and hurt beyond death as he had felt himself. Life had dumped her out so early.

He reached out, awed and exhilarated by how easy it was this time, and gathered her into a hug. “Oh, baby, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. Woody didn't know.”

She returned the hug for a moment, but then backed off a little way. She still didn't really know him.

So he used the charm that had got him through his teens and said, “Well, a party huh? That explains the dress. Very nice, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“You weren't here when I got here,” he said, when she remained silent.

“No. I stayed here for awhile right after they put my name up. At first I met a lot of my former patients who crossed over after Nam in one way or another—and a couple of other nurses I served with. But, I don't know. I just feel like something didn't go right in life, you know? That something was interrupted, or left undone. “

She looked back at the lighter and sighed, her golden eyes bright and teary.

“I really liked your friend,” she said. “He was a little strange and had a pretty short memory, but--did you know he sent me a Christmas present?”

“Yeah, I knew. We sent you a Valentine too...”

The dress was sleeveless, her crossed arms bare. She shrugged, as if she was suddenly cold. “I wish he'd left that here too,” she said in a small voice. “My folks didn't want me to join the service. They put a stone with my name on it in the veteran's cemetery. “ She smiled up at him but her smile was a little quivery.

He quickly began telling her about life with the Johansons, the irritating funny stuff he knew she'd appreciate.

But instead of laughing , as he hoped she'd do, she said wistfully,“It must have been great living with Woody all these years, being close to people.”

He thought about it for a minute then dropped the act and said seriously, “Better than staying in Nam, I guess. But I was sort of eavesdropping on
their
lives. If was okay when Woody was younger, back when we first got home from Nam. But he should have got rid of the lighter—rid of me--sooner.”

“But you helped him and his wife.”

“Maybe if I hadn't been in the way, he wouldn't have needed so much help. The only time I was really glad I was there—all the way glad, was that night we were in your hospital and taking cover with you under the bed. “

“
You
remember that?” she asked. “Your friend didn't. He promised he'd take me to see New York when we got out, then he said he didn't remember anything about it.”

Amato said, “Of course he didn't. He was out of it. But I wasn't going to let him waste time being delirious when we could be talking to you. When
I
could be talking to you. And that was
me
by the way”

“All that time I was talking to a ghost and I didn't even know it?” she asked. “You sure fooled me.”

“I didn't mean to. I didn't—well, I didn't feel like a ghost.”

“No, you didn't. You felt more like a person than your friend did, to tell you the truth.” She bit her lower lip and those big golden eyes searched his face. At last she grinned.

“Sounds like you remember an awful lot about it after all these years.”

“I do. “

“Me too. I've never forgotten your face.”

She laughed and moved closer to him. “You're way ahead of me. I never saw yours before now. But it's very familiar—you're very familiar.”

“I ought to be,” he said. “I was living through Woody and Becky and you know what? Becky is a terrific woman, and Woody is so damned lucky to have her. But I was really disappointed when we didn't hear back from you at Valentine's Day and he just turned around and married her. I always wished he'd married you, because I wanted to.”

She reached up and touched his face, and he was thrilled all over again that now he could feel her fingers, light and strong and cool as he had imagined they had been touching Woody back in Nam.

“I doubt I ever stood a chance with him,” she said. “I was surprised to get that bracelet for Christmas. I just knew that in spite of the feelings that I thought were between us, he'd forget all about me.”

Amato looked down at her left wrist and saw that just above the big sturdy nurses' watch she wore, there was an MIA bracelet, a simple thin silver-colored cuff. He suddenly felt a lightness that had nothing to do with being disembodied.

She followed his glance and held up her hand. He took it in his own, supporting her wrist with his fingers as he read the name engraved on the bracelet.

“Sp 4th Class Nicholas Xavier Amato, ” it said.

“Of course he wanted to forget about you,” Nick said, slipping his arm around her. “He knew, somehow or other, that you're my girl.”

“Yeah?” she asked, and snuggled against him a little. He could even feel warmth, just as if they were still alive.

“Yeah. That's
my
name you're wearing, lady.”

“No kidding,” she said. She hooked the wrist with the bracelet around his neck and said, “Well, then. I guess I can date enlisted men if I want to now.”

“Damn right,” he said, eyeing the group of guys still laughing and talking at the far end of the Wall. “But this place is a little crowded with people who can eavesdrop on our private conversation.”

“We don't have to stay here,” she said. “We can go anywhere we want.”

“So I hear. Okay, that being the case, tell you what. You want to see the City. I know a nice little Italian place in my old neighborhood. We won't be able to taste the food but the atmosphere is great.”

DEDICATION:

For those still missing in action, whose names have not been inscribed with those of their comrades on the Wall.

AUTHOR CREDITS

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is a Vietnam Army Nurse Corps veteran and author of numerous short stories and 25 novels, including the 1989 Nebula award-winning HEALER'S WAR. She has been collaborating with Anne McCaffrey on the Acorna series. Her most recent solo novel is CHANNELING CLEOPATRA.

Rick Reaser is a Vietnam combat veteran who has far too many friends whose names are on the Wall. A multitalented individual, Rick is a jewler, a scientist, and a terrific storyteller. Although he does not himself write fiction, he dreams it up so well he has been Scarborough's muse for the last couple of years, providing inspiration and imaginative flights of fancy when all she can see is a blank page.

AFTERWORD:

Although I actually did the writing on the story, I asked my friend Rick for an idea for a story he would like to see written. As he often can do, he told me a story with a plot line and a complete first scene, which I used pretty much as he narrated it, though I added a few details. I checked with him to make sure my changes jibed with his concept. His original idea would have been pretty much a guy kind of story—all of the characters being buddies who served together. He liked the idea I had come up with in an earlier draft of the spirits who hang out at the Wall being Pathfinders for their comrades who come later, as an elite group in Nam had been Pathfinders in a different sense, so that concept remained.

Because I am a female vet and I was writing it, I felt like there needed to be a strong feminine component in it too and the nurse was a natural under the circumstances. Finally, as I turned Rick's ideas and my own over and over in my mind, I realized that this was a love story, and the MIA was the soulmate of the nurse, whose name was on the Wall. One symptom of PTSD is a failure in the ability to bond and have a lasting relationship—especially with the opposite sex. Woody Johanson is obviously having that kind of problem with his marriage. My own romantic fantasy about those of us vets who do not find someone to share our lives with is that for us, our personal Mr. or Ms. Right died in country before we met them. It's nice to think everything could still work out in the afterlife.

by

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Mu Mao became Aware as he was reborn yet again. That is to say, once more he became embodied, for his rebirth occurred not at the body's physical emergence from the mother's womb, but from the time Mu Mao realized, “Here I am again. Here I go again. What now?” The current body gained Awareness as it was dumped unceremoniously into a cage with three siblings, all as hungry as Mu Mao, reincarnate, suddenly was.

Just once it would be nice if rebirth took place in a lovely home, somewhere warm, with soft blankets laid down for the arrival of the sweet little much-adored and wanted kittens. Instead, Mu Mao the Magnificent found himself in an animal shelter, among many other cats and kittens.

He knew it at once by the smell—it was clean, which was a blessing. And at least there would be some food. Often he was born into the wild, or into some great colony of wild cats. Being a Bodhisattva and helping others work out their destiny and achieve Enlightenment was no easy task when one had to skitter up trees to avoid being eaten by larger predators. Worse was having to avoid being eaten by other larger and more feral cats. Mu Mao was now born into perhaps his thousandth lifetime, the first several hundred of which had been devoted to evolving into the wise person, shaman, healer, priest, lama, hermit, monk, and counselor he had ultimately become, the latter thirty devoted to his reward—being born into the highest possible lifeform, that of a cat. He found it particularly upsetting when others of his exalted species aimed their teeth at his own helpless little kitten tail. True, even some cats had to evolve, but he found their process unnerving.

Did
no one
in charge of fate think it necessary for Mu Mao to help his fellow lifeforms from the standpoint of being a companion animal to some doting two legged being with opposable thumbs?

When he had slaked his hunger and thirst, he researched his current situation by examining closely the papers covering the floor of his erstwhile home. They looked fresh and current and he could still smell the ink so he knew they must be no more than a day old at the most. It was the year of the Cat, according to Asian astrologers, and from the date, within the sign called Leo in Western astrology. The sign of the cat. Very catty. Reeking with cattiness. Very clearly, Mu Mao's current mission would be concerned with events unfolding in the realm of his fellow felines.

“Ahem,” his Mother of the Moment said. “What do you think you are doing? Tear up that paper at once! Cats can't read!”

“I beg your pardon, gentle mother,” he said politely, “But I can. In several languages actually. Which I also speak, though only after judicious consideration for the sensibilities and circumstances surrounding me. However, other than the information I have already gleaned, the reading matter lining our cage tells me nothing of value concerning our current situation. Perhaps you can enlighten me. Is there some great event in the making within the realm of cat-kind?”

His mother, a calico of undistinguished markings, reached out a hard paw and swatted him across the cage. “Don't get saucy with me, young kit! While you drink my milk you go by my rules. Cats don't read and cats of our clan don't meddle in the affairs of the realm. What business have we with royalty ? Did royalty step in a prevent my farmer's land from being sold, the barn which has been the personal domain of generations of my ancestors from being torn down to make a parking lot for a shopping mall? Did it keep my elders from being put down and you and your brothers and sisters and me from being put in here where no doubt we'll be gassed as soon as the kits take the kennel cough? Don't speak to me of matters of the realm!”

“I beg your pardon,” he said with what sounded like a small pitiful mew as he washed his face very quickly to try to wash away the pain of the blow. It didn't take much to hurt when you were five and a half inches long from nose to tail tip.

However, a small thing like personal discomfort could not obstruct his duty and so he sought other sources of information. The cage beside theirs was filled with what looked like a vast black and gray striped fur pillow. Mu Mao reached out a paw and touched the pillow. “I beg your pardon, sir or madame as the case may be,” he said to the pillow. There was no reply. It might have actually been a pillow—it might have been dead, except that there was some warmth emanating from beneath the fur and the coat twitched ever so slightly as Mu Mao touched it.

“Hey, little fella, don't bother the poor old guy,” a man said. Mu Mao turned. The man was looking sadly toward the cage containing the inert animal. Mu Mao, sensing that there was something for him here, rubbed himself against the front bars of the cage and gave a small, cute mew. Manipulative and disgusting perhaps, but effective.

The man undid the latch of Mu Mao's new home and lifted him out, holding him in one hand and stroking his head with a finger. It felt very good. Most nice things that happened to Mu Mao felt very good. Feeling very good when at all possible seemed to be one of the benefits of possessing the qualities of Catness.

“Would that older cat have hurt that little baby kitten?” a woman's voice cooed from somewhere to the left and slightly behind the man.

“I doubt it. But the poor old guy has enough problems without being harassed by a little punk like this guy,” the man told her. He wore a nametag. It said “Andy.”

“Oh?” the woman asked without much interest, and sneaked a finger around Andy so that she could tickle Mu Mao's chin.

“Yeah, poor old cat is a sad case. He's lived with the same guy for almost twenty years and now his master is dying. The guy thought maybe if the cat came here, he'd have time to find a new home before his master died. But the old cat ain't havin' any. He sits like that with his face to the back of the cage.”

“Maybe he needs more attention,” the woman said. Her voice carried no reproach that Mu Mao could hear but Andy reopened Mu Mao's cage and returned him to his siblings, then opened the adjoining cage and extracted the other cat.

The other cat lay like a lump in Andy's arms, unresisting, but also indifferent and stiff, a deeply resentful look in his narrowed eyes.

He did not respond to Andy's voice or touch or to the woman's. He just sat there and glowered and pretty soon Andy put him back into his cage.

Mu Mao's heart went out to him, but when he tried to speak to the old cat again, his siblings pounced on him and rolled him around the cage and his mother began to wash him with more energy than was strictly required.

After that, he needed a nap. When he woke up, the people had gone home. The first time he lived in a shelter, he thought that when the people went home, all of the animals would go to sleep. He was wrong. This was when the cats gossiped through the bars and wires of their cages.

“Did you hear?” asked a bobtailed black tom two levels down. “The King of the Cats is dead and nobody knows who the new king is or where he might be.”

“That's silly,” said a fluffy neutered calico spinster. “How can anyone mislay a king?”

The tom tried to lash his bobbed tail and thumped it against the bars. “It's more a case of the king mislaying his mistresses—and potential heirs. Tom Gamble was a very busy cat. The ladies always liked him and he hated to disappoint them.”

“Perish the thought,” Mu Mao's mother said, yawning and settling her chin on her paws. “The world never has seen such a lot of scruffy longhaired tawny striped kits as His Majesty sired. And which of them is the crown prince, well, that's anyone's guess.”

“His Majesty wasn't much to worry about details,” sniffed a gray tabby. “He never did appoint a court oracle.”

“You don't
appoint
one of those, ” a white almost-a-Persian said loftily. “They are born, not made. Not even by kings.

“Well, whoever was made didn't get recognized anyway. So now here we've got Bast-knows-how-many potential heirs and nobody to sort them out. There'll be fur flying for sure, bloody civil war because of it I tell you.” The black bobtail was warming to his subject.

Mu Mao peered carefully down through the screen of his cage. He wondered if black bobtail tom had any idea what a war was like. By now, many generations of cats had come and gone since the end of the world. The warlords had made way for governments which were if no less rapacious at least more peaceable about it. These governments were extremely polite to each other. For now. A cat civil war wouldn't involve nuclear devices, probably, but it could still be an ugly and horrible thing. As the many times great grandsire of almost all of the cats in existence today, Mu Mao mourned any carnage among them.

A frightening thought occurred to him then and he checked his own body. Whew! He had a little sooty black tail and a white chest and paws, black back with a white spot, white belly with a black spot. His face would either be black or have a mask he supposed. It didn't matter. He was not a ginger cat as Tom Gamble and his likely heir were. So the heir was not him. Nor did he feel especially oracular. Therefore, he was free to pursue whatever business seemed to call for him to put a paw in.

As soon as the others settled down for the night, he began.

The first thing to do was get from his cage into the adjoining one, to confront the terribly depressed cat.

This presented only a small difficulty for Mu Mao, who as the most esteemed of lamas had excelled in the Tibetan psychic sports, which naturally included breath, and even molecular control. He simply exhaled all of the air in his body. His mother was not watching. Perhaps if she had been, she would have been alarmed for when he exhaled, he exhaled the air between his very atoms, becoming so small as to be virtually invisible. Thus he could easily slip through to the next cage, after which he inhaled mightily and regained his former kitten size, perhaps even adding an additional ounce or two of air.

Then he padded forward to confront the bitter old cat.

The old one was not sleeping, but brooding with both green eyes slitted resentfully.

“My dear sir, you simply cannot continue like this,” Mu Mao told him. “You frighten away those who would save you by your unfriendly demeanor. I have it on good authority that it is nearly impossible for an adult cat to find a home from one of these places as it is.”

Mu Mao thought for a moment the old cat would swat him but the poor fellow seemed to lack the energy, and instead sighed, letting much of the air out of him self, though not to the degree that Mu Mao had done.

“Don't speak to me of homes. A home is nothing but an illusion based on the whim of a fickle and callous race. I should know. From the time I was smaller than you, all through kittenhood, I was with him, his true companion, loving him when others rejected him, bringing him mice and birds when he was hungry, licking his wounds. I even submitted to the veterinarian's knife so that my natural urges to mate and sire children would not interfere with my closeness to him. And now, after all these years, he has betrayed me. Dumped me like so much feline garbage, given me into the hands of these people who cage me here, without my pillow or dish, without my weekly treats or my toy, without the drug that gave me the feeling of being wild and free—and without that cruel unworthy man I have loved for so long. He doesn't want me any more. I don't care. I hate him now. I hate all humans and I don't want to live with them. If I must live with another one in order to live, then I prefer to die.”

“Oh, you will die if you keep this up,” Mu Mao said. “But then you will be with your friend if you do, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

“You heard Andy. Your friend is dying. That is why he had you sent here to find another home.”

“You understand what they say? It means something?”

“You mean you don't? You lived all those years with one man and didn't understand what he said?”

“Well-no. Not really. It didn't matter. I didn't actually need to. He would say things in a kind voice and I knew I could do as I wished and if he sounded stern and pointed at something I knew I shouldn't go back to it until his back was turned. Otherwise, he fed and petted me and babbled to his heart's content and I sat on his lap and purred for him and meowed when I wished him to do something in particular. I must say, he spoke better cat than I did human. But then he stopped speaking to me, would not lift his hand to pet me, and finally turned away from me and allowed others to take me from our bed and put me into a vile case and bring me to this place where you see me now. Perhaps he was bored with me, do you think? I have heard others here speak of how their people became bored with them when they no longer performed kittenish antics such as someone like yourself might do. When that happens, I understand it is not uncommon for the people to simply dispose of one, as has happened to me, and get a newer edition.”

“No,” Mu Mao said firmly. “That is not what happened at all. Andy explained it to the woman. Your friend was dying. He wanted to see you in a good home before he had to leave, to make sure you would be cared for. Even as he dies, he cares for you and worries for your welfare.”

The old cat stared at Mu Mao and a large tear ran down the short fur along the side of his nose. Mu Mao noticed that he had black circular stripes that joined on the bridge of his nose, like spectacles. “He will be all alone and he sent me away to spare me. But I don't want to be spared. I want to be with him. I want to go to him. If I die too, I don't mind. But I can't bear to be locked up in here when he needs me.” The old cat stretched briefly then rose to his feet and began pacing in a manner that was extremely tiger-like. “If I thought he would live until morning I would raise such a ruckus that the man—Andy—would unlock my cage to see what was wrong and then I would give him a great scratch and make him release me and I would run out the door very fast and home again.”