“It’s not a problem, anymore. Really. Gosh, Sara, it was nice of you to stop down and wish me luck.”
“I know you’re still not sleeping. I know you’re still having the nightmares.”
“Sara, please…”
“I’m not going to say anything. I know you’re keeping it to yourself so the doctors won’t keep you in here. You want to go home, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, and suddenly my goddamn eyes were wet. What is this shit!
She slipped her arm around my shoulder. “Come ’ere, big boy.”
I wept into her blue blouse, and she patted me like a baby. Another woman did that once, babied me while I bawled; I’d seen somebody I cared for die, violently, and it had rocked me, and Sally had helped me through that.
“There, there,” Sara said.
I sat up, glancing around, hoping nobody saw me. After all, I wouldn’t want to look like a nut in a mental ward; people would talk.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not going to say anything to the doctors. You’ll be better off back in Chicago, anyway. Do you really know some of the people you say you know?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong, haven’t you ever met anybody famous?”
“Oh sure. Napoleon, for instance, and a guy who thinks he’s Hitler.”
“Did you ever consider that if you had the genuine articles they’d be in the right place?”
She smiled broadly, showed me those pretty childlike teeth. “Good point.” She stood. “If you’re ever in Washington again, try and look me up.”
“Are you implying you’d go out with a former mental patient?”
“Sure,” she said. “There’s a man shortage.”
“Some compliment. Say, how’s Dixon doing?”
Her cheerful expression faded and she shook her head; sat back down. “Not so good. He’s up on the sixth floor. No early Board of Review for him.”
“Damn. What about that Navy guy who wasn’t talking, the uh, what did you say his condition was called?”
“Catatonic,” she said, and started to giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
“I shouldn’t laugh. You remember the fuss he made, when we fed him with a tube?”
I had helped her, on several occasions, her and the corpsman, feed the guy his mixture of tomato juice, milk, raw eggs, and purged meats and stuff; if they won’t eat, they get this concoction in a tube down the throat, but this guy-completely clammed up otherwise and placid as glass-would go berserk when you tried to put the tube in him.
“He’s started to talk,” she said. “He’s had some shock treatments, and he’s talking now. He told us why he squirmed so when we tube-fed him.”
“Yeah?”
“He thought it was an enema and we were putting it in the wrong end.”
We sat and laughed and laughed and pretty soon I was crying again, but it was a different kind, a better kind.
She stood.
I stood.
“Good luck,” she said. She touched my face. “Get some sleep.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. Sat.
She swished off; pretty legs. I’d spent hours here beating my meat, thinking about those legs. There’s not much to do in a mental ward.
I wiped some residue of moisture off my face, thinking what a sweet cunning little bitch she was. She knew I was holding back; she knew, hypnosis or not, there were things I hadn’t told Wilcox.
Hell, there were things I couldn’t tell Wilcox. There were doors that just wouldn’t open. Or was that jumble of events, that rush of images in the shell hole, simply the fever that had gripped me then?
How the fuck did Monawk die, exactly? He was shot. Who shot him?
Well, the Japs, of course. Don’t be stupid.
Then why did he have black, scorchy powder burns on his chest, where he was shot? Why was the hole in his goddamn back big enough to drive a Mack truck through?
Close range; somebody shot him close range.
With a.45, that had to be it, like the.45s we all had, Barney, D’Angelo, those Army boys, me.
Me.
Like the.45 I had in my hand when I noticed the powder burns on Monawk’s dungaree jacket…
I bent over, covered my face with my hands. No, I hadn’t told Wilcox about that. I hadn’t told anybody about that. I hadn’t told anybody that I thought I’d seen it happen, Monawk’s murder, but I, goddamnit, I repressed it, it’s stuck back here someplace in my fucking head but I can’t, I won’t remember.
Did I kill you, Monawk? Did you scream and endanger us all and I killed you?
“Private Heller?”
It was the captain. In the doorway of the conference room.
“Please step in.”
I did.
“We’ve reviewed your case,” the captain said, sitting back down behind the table. I remained standing. “We’re quite impressed by your recovery, and are convinced that you are in every way ready to rejoin society.” There were some papers in front of him, with various signatures on them; he handed them to me.
My Section 8.
“And here’s your honorable service award,” he said, handing me a little box.
I didn’t bother opening it; I knew what it was: my Ruptured Duck, the lapel pin all armed forces vets got upon their discharge-so called because the eagle within the little button spread its wings awkwardly.
“Check with the front receiving desk, and they’ll help you arrange transportation. You should be able to make train reservations for this afternoon, if you like. You’re going back to Chicago, Mr. Heller.”
I smiled down at my discharge. Then I smiled at the captain. “Thank you, sir.”
He smiled too and stood and offered his hand and I shook it. I went down the line shaking all their hands. I lingered with Wilcox, squeezing his hand, trying to convey some warmth to this heavyset little man who’d brought me back to myself.
“Good luck, Nate,” he said.
“Thanks, Doc.”
Just as I was leaving, he said, “If your trouble sleeping persists, check in at the nearest military hospital. They can give you something for it.”
I guess I hadn’t fooled him so good, after all.
“Thanks, Doc,” I said again, and headed back to my ward, to pack my sea bag.
It didn’t matter what happened back there in that shell hole; that was over, that was history. What mattered was not that Monawk died, but that some of us had lived through it. Fremont and Whitey hadn’t, of course, but Watkins did and D’Angelo and the two Army boys and Barney, hell, Barney was a hero. They said he killed twenty-two Japs with those grenades he was lobbing. They also said he was still over there, on the Island. Still fighting. How could he still be over there?
And me here?
I sat on the edge of my rack and thought about how screwy it seemed, going back to Chicago to see some federal prosecutor about Frank Nitti and Little New York Campagna and the Outfit bilking the movie industry. What did that have to do with anything, today? Who cared? Didn’t they know there was a war on? It seemed another world, Nitti’s Chicago-a lifetime ago.
Not three short years…
The deli restaurant on the corner was calling itself the Dill Pickle, now, and the bar next door was under new management. Barney Ross’s Cocktail Lounge had moved to nicer, more spacious digs, across from the Morrison Hotel, where Barney kept an “exclusive” suite. I lived at the Morrison myself, in a two-room suite, not so exclusive.
Which was still a step up from the days, not so long ago, when I slept in my office, on a Murphy bed, playing nightwatchman for my landlord in lieu of rent. My landlord, the owner of the building, was then, and was now, one Barney Ross.
Who had walked over from the Morrison with me on this brisk Monday morning, back to the former site of his cocktail lounge, above which was-or anyway had been-my one-room office. He wasn’t the only one who was expanding.