After the First Death (2 page)

So we carried on a fairly normal conversation. About my classes, the guys: Yes, Mother, they’re a good bunch. They leave me alone, mostly because I’ve come on the scene too late and it’s hard to absorb me (they are not blotters, after all), but they are tactful, which surprises me really. I mean, Elliot Martingale is such a character with his clowning and all, and yet he came up to me the other day and said: “Marchand, old bastard, I looked up the back issues of the papers the other day and you’re all right, know that?”

I felt either like bawling like a baby or laughing madly; either way, he’d think I was a complete nut. I felt like bawling because those were the first words anyone at Castle had said directly to me and they confirmed my existence here, something I was beginning to doubt. Until that moment, I might have been invisible or not there at all. And I felt like laughing madly because what Martingale said was so very wrong. What Elliot Martingale read about in the papers, my part in the Bus and the incident at the Bridge, was a million miles from the truth. Not lies exactly, of course. But information that was misleading, vague where it should be specific, specific where it should be vague. Inner Delta is very good at that sort of thing, of course.

There, I’ve said it: Inner Delta.

Like pulling a bandage off a festering sore.

Or a diseased rabbit from a soiled magician’s hat.

Which, of course, is treason on my part, both as a son to my father and as a citizen of my country.

But do I really have a country?

And do I have citizenship anywhere?

I am a skeleton rattling my bones, a ghost laughing hollow up the sleeves of my shroud, a scarecrow whose straw is soaked with blood.

So much for the dramatics.

My name is Benjamin Marchand, son of Brigadier General and Mrs. Marcus L. Marchand. Although I am temporarily lodged at Castleton Academy in Pompey, New Hampshire, my home is at 1245 Iwo Jima Avenue, Fort Delta, Massachusetts.

Stick around. I may pass out picture postcards any moment now.

Those asterisks denote the passage of time. From 8:15
A.M.
when I began typing this to the present moment: 10:46
A.M.
Don’t ask what I was doing those two and a half (more or less) hours.

But I’ll tell you anyway.

After writing, I dressed and ran all the way up to Brimmler’s Bridge, looked out at the frozen wasteland below, but decided for some perverse reason that I wanted to see my father before doing anything rash. Maybe I’m a masochist.

On the way back, I met Biff Donateli. He asked me if I would be joining the guys this evening in an excursion to the nearby domain of Pompey, where the amber of the gods would be quaffed by a select group of Knights. Knights of the Castle, get it? Anyway, Donateli talks like that—amber of the gods, for crissakes—although he looks like a thug, a hit man, dark and hairy.

The invitation stopped me in my tracks. I almost did a double take, like in the movies.

“Maybe,” I said.

“That’s the first complete sentence I’ve ever heard you utter,” Donateli said, hustling away, his coat spotted with small explosions of snow from the snowball fight. I envied him. Those make-believe wounds.

Then I felt invisible again and looked to see if I actually left footprints behind me in the snow.

Back to that conversation with my mother.

A leftover, a postscript, maybe.

She said: “That description of your father. The way you described him to old Mr. Chatham. You realize you were describing yourself, don’t you?”

“But Father, too?”

“You decide that, Ben.”

On the desk near the window there’s a Castle yearbook. The year my father graduated.
Knights and Dayze.
I haven’t looked at it yet. My father’s picture is inside, of course, with the pictures of all his classmates, but I don’t want to look at his picture. Not yet. I haven’t seen him since the bridge because I don’t want him seeing me. I’m afraid to even look at his picture because his eyes will be looking into mine. And I know I couldn’t face those eyes even in a prep school yearbook.

I like that idea of picture postcards. Even verbal ones.

The first: Fort Delta.

An aeriel view. High up, like from a communication satellite: Fort Delta, located in almost the geographical center of New England. Closer view: barracks, post exchanges, residences, etc. All buildings the same, whether the Ulysses S. Grant Theater or the General John J. Pershing School I attended, all as alike and featureless as those houses and hotels you buy in Monopoly.

Delta is an ancient army post, with a history dating back to the Spanish-American War just before the turn of the century. I have no time to indulge in history and yet it’s important to understand Delta in order to understand Inner Delta.

Fort Delta played its role through all the American wars—First World, Second World, Korea, Vietnam. And through the peace. As a processing center or a training ground for paratroopers and other specialists.

Home sweet home—that has always been Delta to me.

There was a report a few years ago that Fort Delta
would be closed down as an economy move. This came at a time when there was antiwar sentiment in the nation.

I approached my father, horrified.

If a kid lived in New York City, they couldn’t close down New York, could they? Or Boston? Or even Hallowell, next door to Delta? But this was my home, where I played ball, went to school, to the movies, to the chapel twice a year at Christmas and Easter, where my father worked, where my mother was active in the Officers’ Wives Association and planted her flowers and hung her clothes on the line in back of the house. How could they think of shutting this down?

Don’t worry, Ben, my father had said.

But I worried anyway.

My father was right. Delta was not closed down and its activities were not curtailed in the slightest.

My father said: “See?” A note of quiet triumph in his voice.

Now I know what he knew and couldn’t tell me. Fort Delta wasn’t closed because of Inner Delta. Keeping Fort Delta open had nothing to do with the special Economic Impact Statement ordered by the Department of Defense or the Presidential Decree based on the Impact Statement. It had nothing to do with editorials written in the newspapers or speeches made by congressmen in Washington. Inner Delta was the key. Inner Delta was the tail that wagged the dog, that nobody knew about but a few people, my father among them. And Inner Delta was the reason I ended up on the bridge and why a bullet created a tunnel in my chest and why I dream of screaming children at night.

Another picture postcard: My father. A general who does not want to be a general.

My father, the patriot.

I only saw him in uniform that one time when he summoned me to his office. He wore the stars and stood behind the desk and for a moment I didn’t recognize him. I had a feeling he wasn’t my father at all, that my father had ceased to exist and an actor was taking his place, an old actor like Gregory Peck on old television movies. My father said: “Sit down, Benjamin.” It was all very strange and formal because he never called me Benjamin and I had never been in his office before. I could feel my heart beating heavily, like a Chinese gong in my chest, because this was an important occasion. I knew little about his work except that it was secret and my mother and I were not supposed to ask questions. I knew, however, that his work was very special and separate from the regular Fort Delta routine. How did I know? Slips of the tongue. Phone calls I overheard. My father often spoke in a sort of code, but I cracked some of the code. Like, on the phone, he’d say: “Peripheral.” After a while, I realized that meant I was around someplace, on the edges, and he wasn’t free to talk.

I also knew the nature of his profession but not its details. Psychological stuff, behavior intervention, whatever that means. I ran across an old university journal in which he wrote out his theories and although the stuff was mostly double-talk to me, I noted the introduction in which he was described as a pioneer in his field, worthy perhaps of a Nobel Prize someday. To complete the portrait: my father was a professor at New England University in Boston before he accepted the commission and took my mother and me to Fort Delta when I was, like, three years old.

Anyway. I sat in the office and my father began to address me. Not talk to me but address me. As if I were not his son but a stranger who had suddenly become
important to him. I hadn’t connected my visit to the office with the bridge and the hostages until he began to talk. As he talked, I felt a drop of perspiration roll down from my armpit like a small cold marble. But at the same time I was happy and excited. Scared, too, of course, but somehow happy, knowing that I was suddenly a part of the secret life of my father.

No more room on this particular postcard.

Call it amnesia.

Emotional amnesia, maybe.

Or whatever the hell you wish.

Who the hell are you anyway, out there looking over my shoulder as I write this?

I feel you there, watching, waiting to get in.

Or is anybody there?

I once read the shortest horror story in the world. I don’t know who wrote it.

It went something like this:

The last person on earth sat in a room.

There came a knock at the door.

Who will knock at my door?

When he arrives, will my father be wearing his uniform? Check One: Yes ____ No ____ Unsure ____

Will I be able to look him in the eye? Check One: Yes ____ No ____ Unsure ____

Will he be able to look me in the eye? Check One: No ____ No ____ No ____

Maybe I should make another and final trip to Brimmler’s Bridge before he arrives.

And take that sweet plummet into nothingness as the wind whistles through the tunnel in my chest and the hole in my heart.

part
2

Miro’s
assignment was to kill the driver.

Without hesitation. As soon as the bus arrived at the bridge. Everyone must know without any delay that the takeover of the bus was critical, and that sudden death was fact not probability. When Miro was handed the revolver by Artkin, it felt heavy in his hand, although he had used the small automatic weapon countless times in target practice. But always a cardboard target. Now the target would be a human being. Miro swallowed with difficulty as he squeezed the barrel of the gun. The smell of the weapon, that peculiar slippery smell of oil, agitated his nostrils. He almost sneezed.

“You’re pale,” Artkin taunted.

Which Miro expected. Artkin had always taunted
him, and Miro had learned to absorb the taunts without comment. Perhaps he would not have been able to answer, anyway. His throat was tight, constricted. He was afraid that if he tried to talk he would not be able to gather enough saliva and would somehow choke.

“You’ll be all right,” Artkin assured him, his voice suddenly kind. That was Artkin—abrasive one moment, gentle the next. He had also killed three people in Miro’s presence in the past two years, each of them in cold blood. And now it was Miro’s turn to follow Artkin’s example.

Artkin smiled. But now contempt edged the smile. “After all, you are sixteen.”

Miro tried not to show his anger. He tightened his lips, kept his cheeks taut. He was furious that Artkin should think that killing someone—who? a bus driver? a nothing?—should bother him. Or perhaps Artkin was taunting him again to keep him keen, on edge, sharp. Either way, Miro was angry. He was not a child anymore. And inflicting death did not bother him. Neither did the contemplation of the act. He had been waiting for four, almost five years now. How else could he justify his existence, make his life meaningful before it was taken from him? His brother, Aniel, had died too soon, before making his mark, before fulfilling his promise. No, Miro was not apprehensive about the delivery of death; he worried only that he would not do a professional job.

“Let us review the plan,” Artkin said, formal and precise, but the sneer always close to his lips. Like Elvis Presley when he sang certain songs. Miro allowed his eyelids to half close now, not really listening to Artkin rehearse the plan yet again. Miro had learned the trick of humming silently, running a song through his mind,
and he did this now, an old Presley song without the sneer in it, “Love Me Tender,” not like some of Presley’s more raucous songs. Artkin did not like distractions, particularly when he was outlining plans. He liked to review plans the way other people like to play cards. And he did not approve of foolishness like Miro’s fondness for Presley’s music or other American diversions: those television cartoons, for instance, that Miro lost himself in every Saturday morning if a television set was at hand. Miro continued to hum soundlessly as he listened to Artkin review the plan. Overtaking the bus, driving to the bridge, killing the driver, waiting for the first message to be delivered. Suddenly, Miro thought: What is the driver doing this minute? Did he have any premonition of his death? Did he know that tomorrow at this time he would be mute, silent, still forever?