Garden of Lies (42 page)

the war itself?

Reflexively, he made the sign of the cross.
Poor Trang. How many others besides? And why

not me? Why was I spared?

Suddenly, he didn’t want to know. He was tired, so tired. His mind was beginning to float

again.

He licked his lips, and tasted something salty. Blood. His lips were cracked, rough as old

cardboard. “Water,” he said. “Are you a nurse?”

“Doctor,” she said, smiling. “But please ... call me Rachel. I feel as if we’re old friends by

now.”

She filled a paper cup from a pitcher of water on the small metal table beside his bed, and held

it to his mouth, supporting his head with her hand. She was surprisingly strong for someone so

small. Her long ponytail brushed his cheek, soft as a kiss, and he caught a whiff of lemony scent.

The scent brought another fragment of memory drifting to the surface. A dream, really, but

maybe something like it had really happened. He had been in a dark place, a tunnel, walking

toward a light at the other end. A light so intense it hurt his eyes, like looking into the sun. But he

was drawn to it, as if by a magnet. The closer he got, the happier he felt. And strangely lighter, as

if the pull of gravity were growing weaker with each step. He hurried, almost floating.

Then the tunnel was suddenly filled with a strong, almost overpowering fragrance. A heady

scent that was a mixture of lemon [248] blossoms, and summer grass, and the good smell of

freshly ironed dresses hanging in his mother’s chifforobe. There was a voice, too, a woman’s

voice. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he felt her beckoning him. Pulling him back ...

away from the light. He fought it at first, but the pull was too great. And at last he surrendered to

it. ...

Now, as he drank of the lukewarm water, tasting her scent, he thought:
It was her.
This tiny

woman named Rachel. She had pulled him back from some brink. Death? Dear Christ, had he

been as far gone as that?

Was he supposed to feel grateful to her? Yeah, probably. But right now all he felt was wasted.

He just wanted to sleep. ...

When he had finished drinking, she eased his head gently back onto the pillow. “You were

wearing this when they brought you in.” She pressed something into his palm. Cool. Metallic. His

Saint Christopher’s medal. Rose had given it to him the day he shipped out. He had put it on, then

forgotten he was wearing it. “I saved it for you. I thought you might ... need it.”

“Thanks,” he said, closing his fist around it. He tried to summon Rose’s face, but it didn’t

come. The only picture that came to his mind was of the snapshot he carried in his wallet. He’d

taken it last winter out at Coney Island. A perfect day, he remembered. A whole day just for

themselves. They had had hot dogs and fried clams at Nathan’s, then walked and walked down

the deserted windswept boardwalk, feeling like the only two people in the world, until their

fingers were frozen inside their mittens. He had taken a picture of Rose, posed a little stiffly

against the shuttered entrance to some boardwalk attraction, black hair blowing across her face,

cheeks flushed, her smile tentative, as if she couldn’t quite believe her happiness and half-

expected that at any moment something would spoil it.

Rose, dear Rosie, didn’t you know you were safe with me? Couldn’t you see that?

“Sleep now,” Rachel said. “I’ll come back when you’ve rested a bit more. Don’t expect too

much of yourself at first. You’ve been through a lot.”

Suddenly, he didn’t want her to leave.

“Please,” he whispered, “will you sit with me until I fall asleep? Just a few minutes longer?”

[249] She smiled, and sat down on the very edge of his cot, laying her fingers lightly across his

wrist. His hand, he saw, was bound with gauze and adhesive tape where an IV needle was stuck

into a vein just above his knuckles. But he didn’t seem to mind. “I’ll stay as long as you like,” she

said.

A week later, Brian was sitting up in bed. A pillow across his knees formed a makeshift desk

for the battered spiral notebook over which he was bent. His hand was trembling; it had been so

long since he’d held a pen, or even sat up for longer than it took to relieve himself on a bedpan.

But once he began to write, the words flowed easily:

Today is the last day of June. Bobby Childress had his track tube out two days ago.

This morning they shipped him out to the naval hospital in Okinawa. A couple of hours

ago, they brought in another guy with a tube sticking out his chest, and one arm

missing. Someone said he’d picked up a whore in Quang Tri, and that she left him a

little present before slipping off into the night. Deke Forrester spoke for all of us when

he said, “Too bad it wasn’t the clap.” That’s how you get to think after a while. It’s

never a question of good or bad, just degrees. How bad is bad when you’re lying next

to a guy with a couple of oozing stumps where his legs used to be? Or a nine-year-old

kid missing half his face?

As I’m writing this, a few of the guys are playing poker at the bed across from mine.

Big John and Skeeter Lucas and Coy Mayhew. Skeeter is dealing, and someone is

picking up the cards for Big John because Big John, who would have gone home to a

football scholarship, is missing all but two fingers on his left hand. And the guy holding

Mayhew’s hand for him is kidding him about “blind luck.” Mayhew caught a beehive

round in the face, which severed his optic nerve. He’ll never see again, but he

considers himself extremely lucky it wasn’t a lobotomy, compliments of the US of A.

The weirdest part about all this is, with all their leftover parts stuck together, they

make a whole. No, better than that. There’s a generosity of spirit ... I don’t know how to

explain it ... just that I’ve never seen anything like it, not even in battle. The quality of

mercy, in the words of old Will Shakespeare. Yesterday I saw that quality in a
[250]

paraplegic who dragged himself out of bed to spoon-feed a buddy too sick to sit up.

At night is when they cry. It’s like the wind blowing in the trees, you get so used to it.

The sound of men weeping quietly into their pillows. We all want to go home, but we’re

scared, too. The world is the same, but we’re different. Some of us on the outside, all of

us on the inside. And we’re all wondering, What’s it going to be like? How can we go

back and pick up the pieces when none of the pieces fit anymore?

I’m thinking about Rose just now. What she looks like, how she felt. I have to work

hard at it, like drawing a picture in my mind. That scares me. I know I love her as much

as ever, but the harder I work at remembering, the farther away she seems. Does she

still think about me? Will she want me back? But even if she does, I’m not sure who it is

she’ll be getting. Not the guy who took care of her, who’s been looking out for her since

she was a kid. Now I’m not sure I can even take care of myself, much less anyone else. I

get scared in the night sometimes. I think about Trang, and Gruber, and Matinsky, and

I cry. I cry just like a damn baby, and it scares the hell out of me. Why shouldn’t it

scare the hell out of Rose, too?

Listen, Rose, if you’re out there somewhere tuned into this station, for God’s sake,

write to me. Say you love me. Say you’ll love me no matter who you find walking

around in my skin when I get back. Say
—

“Letter home?”

Brian looked up to find Rachel standing over him, wearing an oddly wistful expression. How

long had she been there?

“You could call it that,” he said.

He laid his pen down on the closely written page, and felt some of the ragged tension in his

muscles drain away. He was glad to see her.

Admit it, man, you look forward to it.
Well, okay, that was true. He’d gotten into the habit of

expecting her around this time of the evening. When it was quiet, as it had been these past few

days, she always dropped by. It was just that he hadn’t realized until this moment how much it

mattered to him, how much her presence soothed him. To be honest, he was a little ashamed to

admit it, even to himself.

“Hey, Doc!” Big John called over. He waved the stump of his [251] right hand, his dark face

split in a grin as wide as the Mississippi. “I’ll front you a game if you want to join us.”

Rachel laughed, and called back to him, “Fat chance, not after the way you skinned me last

time.”

Big John threw his head back in a booming laugh. “Sister, if I had any aces hid up this here

sleeve, you’d a been the first to know it.”

Brian knew that this was a form of respect, the teasing. They knew she cared, and they also

knew she didn’t put up with any bullshit. He suspected a few were probably in love with her.

Big John went back to his game. Rachel sat down on the end of Brian’s cot. She was wearing

her hair loose tonight, and it seemed to crackle about her face like some kind of electrical field.

She had just washed it, and the red highlights stood out, winking like sparks under the hard glow

of the bare bulb over his bed. He caught her clean, citrusy scent, and was grateful. He’d had

enough of the rotten smell of death on this ward, and each time she visited him, bringing her

smile, the brilliance of her blue eyes, her fragrance, it was like a small gift to be slowly

unwrapped and savored.

Now he wished he had something to offer her in return.

“It’s a journal I’ve been keeping,” he explained when he saw her looking curiously at the

spiral-bound notebook. “I started it at the beginning of my tour. Each day I write a little

something. My short-timer stick, you could say.” Some guys carried a stick with a notch in it for

each of the remaining days of their tour. And each day they sawed off another notch with their K-

bar until there was nothing left but a stub and it was time to go home. A kind of talisman, he

supposed. He shrugged. “It keeps me sane.”

She nodded. He saw from her expression there was no need to explain. She understood so

much. She said, “Supplies of sanity are running short around here, so take it where you can get it.

Which reminds me, I brought you something.” She reached into the pocket of her khaki shirt, and

fished out a chocolate bar. Ghirardelli’s Bittersweet. His mouth watered just looking at it. “My

mother sends them. She likes to pretend I’m at summer camp, just like when I was ten. So

welcome to Camp Loony Tunes.” She passed it over, her gaze falling once again on the notebook.

“What will you do with it?”

[252] “I don’t know yet. Maybe just keep it around as a reminder. If I ever have a son, I’d want

him to know.”

“You like kids?” She looked sad.

“Sure, I do. Six younger brothers at home, I’d better. I’d always planned on having at least a

dozen myself some day.”

“Only a dozen?”

“Well, for starters.”

She joined him in laughing, but he thought her laughter seemed strained.

Suddenly it struck him that he did have something to offer her after all. “Would you like to

read it?”

“May I?” Her head snapped up, an eager expression spreading across her heart-shaped face.

Brian thought how odd it was that he didn’t feel shy about revealing his most intimate thoughts

to her. But then, how surprising was that really? She knew his body better than his own mother

did. In a way it was as if she had given birth to him. She had brought him back to life, she had

touched every part of him, cleaned his filth, fed him, nurtured him. How natural then that he

should already feel connected to her.

He handed her the journal, expecting her to tuck it away in one of her pockets to read later on.

But she surprised him by opening it right then and there. She began to read, and didn’t stop, or

even move except to turn the pages, until she had finished the very last. one.

More than an hour had passed. It was past ten, the chocolate just a lingering sweetness on the

back of his tongue. The poker game was breaking up, men shuffling back to their beds with the

unsteady gait of old drunks. Lily was making the rounds, checking trach tubes and dressings,

dispensing medication. All through the ward there was the creak of bedsprings settling, men

adjusting their ravaged bodies for a position that might let them sleep.

When Rachel looked up, Brian saw that her eyes were shining with tears. “It’s good,” she said,

her voice tight. “You made me feel something, and dammit, I don’t
want
to feel.”

“I know what you mean,” he said, “about not wanting to feel. I thought about writing a book

when I get home. That’s why I started the journal, so I wouldn’t forget any of it. But now I don’t

know if I could. It would be like living it all over again.”

[253] She nodded. “I understand. But that’s all the more reason, isn’t it? How else are we going

to stop this craziness?”

Brian tried to think. He picked up his pen and twirled it around and around inside the circle of