Micah was twenty. He had grown up rough, and by then had done some rough business himself. But what was happening in the shack had nothing to do with the war. Micah understood that Beechwood and the other two men could have as easily done the same to a US soldier if they thought they could get away with it.
“Private Shughrue,” Beechwood said in his plummy southern twang, “this man has information of a vital nature. We are simply endeavoring to extract it.”
Micah regarded them. Sykes, beefy and beady-eyed. Hooper, looking like a boy caught filching dimes from his mother’s purse. But what Micah recalled powerfully was a personal dryness: his own fear leeched the moisture out of his eyes and nose and mouth, his veins running thick as if his blood had been mixed with flour.
“You cannot,” he said more firmly.
Beechwood smiled. “We are, and we will.”
With that, Micah hit his CO in the face. Beechwood’s nose cracked and he fell back with a squawk. The Korean soldier moaned. Hooper and Sykes came on next, clouting Micah with closed fists. Micah fought back, but one of them clipped his chin and sent him crashing to the ground. Beechwood had recovered by then. They all put it to him, stomping his skull with their heavy mud-caked boots.
“Enough,” Beechwood announced, panting. “We’ll kill him. Can’t get away with that.”
They dragged Micah to the brig, where he was imprisoned for assaulting his commanding officer. One month in a lightless cell, fed bread teeming with lice. By the time he got out, Captain Beechwood and the others had shipped out. He never knew what became of the Korean soldier.
Once home, Micah nursed fantasies of hunting Beechwood down and doing to his former commander what Beechwood had done to the Korean. But Micah’s tendency to square the scales was not so strong then. And anyway, some part of him understood the impulse. The three of them had been scared deep in their souls. Fear manifested in terrible ways, especially during wartime. It shows a man the face he didn’t know he had. Later Sykes and Hooper might have been remorseful—Hooper especially—waking with nightmares about what they had done. Beechwood, probably not. All men are built to different tolerances. Put in identical straits, they react differently. And those who act rightly despite that crawling fear cast shame upon those who cave in to it.
Quite simply, you never really know what type of person you are. Micah understood that now. A man never can tell which side of the line he lives on. He will exist forever ignorant until that moment—ruinous and unflinching—when he is forced to confront his hidden inner self.
“Did you get everything from the camp?” Ellen asked, snapping Micah back to the present. Off Micah’s nod, she said, “Any problems?”
“We saw something.”
“What?”
“Some… creatures” was all Micah could say.
“Animals?”
“Not quite.”
He could tell she was about to launch into a barrage of questions about their encounter. Tiredly, he held his hand up to stop her.
“They could be dangerous,” he said. “That is the key point. They may have followed us back… or they have been here all along.”
“Did they attack you?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
How could he frame it? That those things had seemed more like prison guards than attack dogs? He didn’t want to talk about it. Or about the Preston School, either—both he and Minerva felt it would sow deeper fear within a group that was already crippled with it.
Ellen said, “I made something for you.”
She reached into her pocket and came out with three small glass balls.
“They’re eyes,” she said. “I made them in the glassworks.”
“You did not have to do that.”
“Nobody has to do anything, Micah. I did it because I wanted to. I tried to match the shade.” She peered into his eye. “I think I got pretty close. Go on. Try one.”
He took one from her palm. It looked like a marble, except with a credible human eye structure at its center. He reached for his eye patch… then hesitated.
“It is not pretty,” he said.
“I don’t imagine so.” She feathered her burn scar with the fingers of her free hand. “At least yours can be covered up.”
He took the patch off. His empty socket had some lint in it, same as what collects in a belly button. He swabbed it out and tried to pop the glass eye into his socket. It wouldn’t fit.
“Wait a sec,” said Ellen.
She went to the pump and returned with a bucket of water. She dipped the eye and handed it back. The wet eye still didn’t fit. It was too big.
She handed him another one. “They’re slightly different sizes.”
He dipped the second eye in the water. This one slipped past his eyelid and into his socket. He could feel it bumping around.
“Too small.”
“Aha, it’s like the three bears,” she said. “Porridge too hot, porridge too cold.” She held up the third and last eye. “Let’s hope this one’s just right.”
Micah winked; the second eye popped out of his socket. He tried the last one. It fit pretty well.
“Let’s take a look,” Ellen said. “It’s… hmmm, it’s drifting left. I’ll center it.”
She put her finger on the eye. Micah felt it move.
“There.” She clapped. “Perfect. You look like less of a desperado now. You can get a square john job after this. A cashier, a bank teller.”
Now Micah smiled. “Those would suit me fine.”
He could picture it. The little house in the burbs, the white picket fence. The nine-to-five. Ellen was part of it, too. A goofy fantasy, but still, he could see it.
“Can I ask?” he said, touching his face—the spot where Ellen’s was burned.
She faced away from him. Had he spoken out of turn?
“A bold ask, Mr. Shughrue,” she said.
She remained silent for a spell. Then she faced him and said, “When someone can no longer scare you into doing what they want you to do… well, let’s just say they resort to other tactics.”
She pumped her legs and started to swing. Her eyes did not leave his own.
“You don’t know how bad someone is sometimes,” she said. “Because at first, none of that badness is evident. It’s all goodness—or, if not outright goodness, then at least nothing especially cruel. That’s my problem. I like guys with an edge. But there’s edge and then there’s edge, and when I was younger, I couldn’t tell the difference. My sister’s the same way.”
She pumped her legs harder. The swing carried her up and down. The hinges squeaked.
“So when you finally see that badness, Micah, you’re kind of wed to it. That badness doesn’t want to let you go. And it gets angrier and angrier that you won’t bend to it the way it thinks you should. It’s pissed that you aren’t scared of it anymore. So it tries to make you scared again. Any old way it can.”
“Uhhh…,” said a voice behind them. “Hey.”
Micah craned his neck to see Ellen’s nephew, Nate. Ellen dragged her feet through the dirt, bringing the swing to a stop.
“What are you doing here?” she said. “Isn’t someone watching you kids?”
“I snuck away.”
Ellen said, “God, Nate. Someone has to know where you are at all times.”
Nate sawed his forearm across his nose. “Sorry.”
Ellen went over to him. Hugged him fiercely. The boy didn’t protest.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything this morning,” he said. “When… when they dragged you and the other man out of your house.”
“Like what?” Ellen said. “What could you have said?”