“Your Daddy and me and Doc Milliken were in the Kansas Militia, back before the Great War, playing hard boys to make ourselves feel good. Then that fight started up in Europe and President Wilson tried to keep this country out of it. But there were lads like us that wanted in on the action. We’d grown up on stories of the Mexican War and Civil War, watched the Spanish War go by without us. We were already hitting thirty, and feared we wouldn’t make it in. This was our turn.
“Anyway, there were American pilots flying for the French, and American boys fighting for the English. The British Army came out this way, looking for strong, able men for a special project. They signed us up, taught us stuff they learned in the Boer War, stuff they couldn’t teach their own boys for fear of the newspaper publicity.”
“I’ve heard of the Boer War.”
“We were eager to go,” Mr. Bellamy continued, as if I hadn’t said a word. He seemed to be slipping back in his own mind. “Doc Grainger was still alive then, and Milliken hadn’t finished school yet. We wound up killing Germans for the Russians on the Eastern Front. We did a good job, until the Russians sold out to the Germans in ’17. We got interned, in a camp at the mouth of the Pechora River, where it flows into the Barents Sea. It was cold as hell, nothing to eat but ice, snow and rifle butts.”
Somehow, this story was coming full circle to Pegasus and its tomb in the Arctic ice.
“One thing lead to another, and eventually we was let go. We just stood there on that frozen beach in front of the gates of our camp, not knowing where to turn. We all made it home by different routes. Doc Milliken got rescued by a British unit fighting for the Whites outside of St. Petersburg. Your dad stowed away on a freighter from Arkhangelsk to Iceland.”
He laughed, still deep in memory, his voice chilly and bitter.
“None of us came home the same. Not me, not the Doc, not Grady. I made my own choices, got into the shine business later on after the Volstead Act. Doc Milliken, he hooked up with Hauptmann and some of the other German sympathizers around here. Bunch of closet fascists, those boys and girls. Sheriff’s Department’s still full of them. Your dad, he just pretended it never happened. Came back to that boy Ricky and your mother and made up stories about the Western Front.”
I had never known any of this about Dad. He had always said he was a doughboy in France. I wished he were still alive to talk to about this. I wished I was going to stay alive long enough to talk to him about anything. I glanced up at Mr. Bellamy. He was looking at me, expecting a reply.
“What happened to you?”
His voice was barely a whisper. “The Cheka picked me up, kept me for another year or so.”
“Cheka?” I asked.
“Dzerzhinsky’s secret police. Lenin’s hit men. They call it the NKVD now. Narodny Kommisariat Vnutrennikh Del.” The Russian words rattled off his tongue like he’d been born to the language. “People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs.” Mr. Bellamy sighed, looking sad. “I didn’t come home until 1920. Mrs. Bellamy had Floyd almost seven months later. Fine, strapping nine pound baby boy.”
I was so busy thinking about the NKVD that I almost missed what Mr. Bellamy said about Floyd. Floyd didn’t. Behind me, he gasped.
“You mean you and Mama…?” Floyd asked. His voice trailed off. I wondered exactly how could a fellow ask his father what Floyd was thinking.
“It don’t matter now.” Mr. Bellamy looked angry. No wonder he’d been willing to lock her up, then dump her in the cess pit. I was sure he hadn’t meant to say this much, but I had started him talking and he’d just gone on.
I couldn’t figure whether or not I was surprised that Mr. Neville hadn’t reacted to anything Mr. Bellamy had said. He obviously knew the whole story. I was trying to sort through what Mr. Bellamy had told me, ignoring how Dad’s untold history made me feel as I puzzled through the facts. I didn’t have much time left — Mr. Bellamy had made it quite clear he planned to kill me. Was there some angle here? I had vaguely known of the NKVD. Like he said, the Reds’ secret police. Stalin’s thugs, these days.
“Who’s my daddy?” demanded Floyd.
“Shut up, boy.” Mr. Bellamy laid the shotgun back on the table and clenched his fists. Mr. Neville shifted his grip on the pistol, waiting to see where this would go next. I wanted to sink into the floor, vanish without a trace. For all that they’d turned out to be monsters, I couldn’t help but care about the Bellamys — they’d been like family to me all my life.
And I was even understanding how they became monsters. I hated myself for sympathizing with Mr. Bellamy.
“I stood in the hallway upstairs and listened to her scream while she bore you,” he said with a snarl. “I raised you from a pup.” He stood up, his voice rising in volume. “I taught you how to run and fight and shoot, taught you about women, sent you off to the war and waited for you to come home. I’m your Daddy, by God, and you will show me the respect that I deserve.”
Mr. Bellamy grabbed the shotgun and pointed it over my head. I watched in fascinated horror as he pumped the action. I didn’t dare turn around to look at Floyd. I was too afraid of the gun.
Mr. Neville lifted his pistol, wavering it between Mr. Bellamy and Floyd somewhere behind me. “You going to be all right, Alonzo?” he asked.
“Get on out of here, Marvin,” growled Mr. Bellamy. “This here’s family business.”
Mr. Neville glanced at me with another of his rare, small smiles. He slipped the pistol back in its holster, nodded at the three of us, and walked toward the kitchen. “Don’t do anything hasty, Alonzo,” he called as he left.
The back door slammed a moment later. I hoped he was going to fish Mrs. Bellamy out of the cess pit, but Mr. Neville didn’t seem to be the public-spirited type.
In front of me, Mr. Bellamy was breathing hard. Even with his recent miraculous recovery, I could hear his lungs wheeze. He was old, too old to have gone to the Great War and been broken on a Russian beach. Behind me, the floorboards creaked as Floyd shifted his weight. There was the soft rustling of his shirtsleeves rubbing against his chest as he moved his arms. Was he getting ready to fight? Was it better or worse for me if they fought? I had no idea, so I kept my mouth shut. This was no business of mine, but I was stuck in the middle of it. Literally.
“You made me hurt Mama,” said Floyd. His voice was low and painful. I’d never heard Floyd sound so honest in my life. His emotions served him, not the other way around. “Lock her up, then dump her out there.”
“She was writing out a note to Hauptmann,” answered Mr. Bellamy in the same low, painful voice. He seemed to be picking his words with care. “You know that, boy. You caught her at it. Then Marvin didn’t give us no choice. He nearly made us kill her. It would have been you next, Floyd. And you’ve always been loyal to me. Those Reds are hard bastards.”
Why was she trying to contact Sheriff Hauptmann? I thought he was a Nazi agent. Of course, Mrs. Bellamy might not have known that. And he was still the Sheriff, Nazi or not, with an interest in chasing Reds. Either way, I didn’t dare ask.
Floyd coughed, maybe choking back a sob. I wished like crazy I could see his face. “You said we had to get her out of the way. You made me hustle her out there when Ollie came, to stand in that filth. You always hated her. Now I know why.”
Good boy, Floyd, I thought, slumping down in my chair. Remember who you are.
“Floyd.” Mr. Bellamy’s voice had gone very, very flat. The pain was gone, replaced perhaps by determination. Both of them stank now, sharp sweat filling the air of the dining room. The shotgun hadn’t wavered. I sank further into my chair and thought of Floyd’s boast about his father’s marksmanship.