This Is How I'd Love You (9 page)

He follows the sound with his light and is startled to see a horse, its nostrils flared, its eyes alight with panic. The horse bares its awkward, yellowed teeth, bellowing another horrible complaint. “Damn,” he says quietly, wishing he hadn’t bothered to get out of the truck. Wishing he’d just backed away from the tree and driven on into the darkness. But now he has no choice. Charles moves toward the animal and it quivers. It is standing on three legs, the fourth nowhere in sight. A bulging, inside-out wound is throbbing and oozing, its parts hanging in the space where there was once a leg.

“Oh, hell,” Charles says, pressing his sleeve against his own chin. “What’s happened to you, huh?”

The animal tries to move, to rush at Charles, but it stumbles and falls, crushing its own entrails beneath its body. It howls a terrifying protest and Charles holds both his hands out in front of him, hoping to calm or quiet the beast.

Charles realizes immediately that there is nothing to be done. He kneels on the ground and the horse continues to fight, thrusting its good legs in desperate, painful attempts to right itself.

Charles places one hand against the beast’s face, wishing its terrible moaning would cease. The flanks of its jaw are soft and significant like Charles’s favorite childhood Labrador, Tux. He strokes the horse gently with his fingertips, remembering how when he was a boy, he’d often sneak Tux to his bedroom, allowing the dog to sleep on his bed. Tux’s heavy body near his feet was a constant, unspoken reassurance and when he awoke with the dog’s soft, graceful profile having inched ever closer to his own, he felt adored. His mother and father didn’t approve and both he and Tux were scolded when Charles appeared for breakfast with Tux’s blond hairs clinging to his navy uniform jacket.

Charles tries to soothe the horse, speaking the reassurances that come without thought, the blood from his own gash dripping onto the suedelike muzzle of the dying beast.

Its eyes are black and knowing; its lashes as thick and pretty as any girl’s. Charles lets the horse see the pistol cradled in his other hand.

“You’ve fought as hard as any of them,” Charles says, sensing that the horse is grateful for the vibrations of his voice. He still whines with each labored breath, but he no longer screams. Charles thinks of all the carts that this creature has pulled across long distances, its regal silhouette providing comfort where there is none.

Charles presses the chamber firmly against the horse’s forehead as his other hand rests upon the animal’s hot, slick jaw. When his Labrador had developed a tender lump under one ear and he was unable to control his bowels, Charles’s father put him on a lead and took him somewhere across the river. Charles never saw Tux again. His mother brought him the dog’s collar that night as he cried beneath his quilt. She placed the faded leather strap upon his dresser. Then, with her hand on Charles’s forehead, she shushed him. “Suffering is for little boys and the mothers who love them and hate to see them cry. It is not for animals.” Charles can hear his mother’s voice even now as he turns his face away and squeezes the trigger. The sound of the gun cracks and the bullet pushes hard against the horse’s head, yanking it away from Charles, leaving it inches away from his hands.

Charles suddenly remembers the words from the margin of Mr. Dench’s letter.
The horror that surrounds you now will recede into a past that you can leave behind.
Does this girl have any idea what it means when she writes the word
horror
? Can she possibly know what it might mean to him if she were to recognize his hidden message? Can she possibly imagine that he is thinking of her now, without even knowing her? Thinking of her words just after he’s fired his pistol into this poor horse’s head?

“I’m sorry,” he says as the blood soundlessly leaks out, soaking through his pants where he kneels. He turns away from the horse and walks back to the truck and replaces the gun in its holster. Wiping his face, wincing at the throbbing he’s just noticed beneath his chin, he backs the King George away from the tree. The engine whistles slightly, a wisp of smoke escaping from the hood. He ignores it and drives on up the darkened hill to where he fears men have already died on account of his delay.

 • • • 

T
hough he continues to aid Charles in his fool’s mission to provide beds for the gassed soldiers from which they may dictate their last words, against the prohibitions of the doctors, Rogerson is loath to load any casualty who can talk. Also, he has started cursing like a soldier.

“I don’t wanna hear their voices. I just want bodies. Give me blood, guts, shit. I’ll take a man in ten pieces so long as he keeps quiet. If they can talk, they can wait. Or they can die without giving me nightmares.”

Charles, the memory of the horse’s terrifying moan still fresh in his mind, props his foot on the dashboard. “Would you really have shot those first three? If you’d known, I mean? Before we got them to hospital?”

The wind whips through the cab, buffering their words with its insistent whoosh. “Do we believe in the Golden Rule during war? Or is there a moratorium on all that?”

Rogerson lights another cigarette, his habit more and more urgent by the day. “All I know is I’d want you to shoot me, Reid. Put the bloody bullet through my head or my heart and let me go quickly. We heard them coughing out their own rotted lungs. We fucking listened to their throats closing. Dying from the inside out. Whatever short, joyous life they lived to that point matters none.”

“Agreed.” Charles nods. When he told Rogerson about the horse, his entrails hanging, slick, from his belly, Rogerson only served himself another scoop of potatoes. Rogerson had grown up on a farm, seen all kids of livestock butchered and euthanized. It didn’t faze him. But Charles had been unable to sleep, remembering the weight of the horse’s head once the bullet pierced it. The heat draining out and its flesh sagging almost immediately. The clap of the gun seemed to reverberate in him, making his fingers numb and useless. He’d wanted to feel his effect on the world and now he had. “But it’s hard to know. I mean, what the universe might have planned. I hate to get in the way of God.”

Rogerson laughs and drags deeply on his cigarette, letting the cherry crackle and burn persuasively. “God knows good and well that there is no cure for chlorine gas, Reid.”

“Sure. But what about the suffering? Could it mean something? Maybe the end, painful as it was, allowed one of those boys to find a peace he hadn’t had before.”

Rogerson lets the ashes hang precariously over his own lap. “You’re talking fairy tales now. Or a kind of devotion to God that I don’t have. Nor does he, Reid. He doesn’t really give a shit about us. Isn’t that part abundantly clear? We are not his first priority. Who knows what is? But you took more care with that horse than God has ever taken with one of us.” The ashes fall just then, singeing the seat. “God does not take care of us. We take care of each other.”

Charles turns this over in his mind. He thinks of Mr. Dench and how closely his atheism resembles Rogerson’s belief. “What good is it to believe in God if you don’t think he can protect you?”

“Despair. I can’t tolerate the meaninglessness of nothing. God exists so that I can sleep at night.”

“This mess,” Charles says, pointing at the relay post that has just come into view, boys spilling out its doorway, limping and bloody, “makes it all seem meaningless. Or full of meaning. I can’t decide.”

“Well, while you’re walking the philosophical highway, I want to urge you not to be seduced by the idea of suffering. We’ve all got the right to happiness. Regardless of who made us or who’s in control, life means nothing if it’s dull and dreary. Drug addicts and boozers believe in suffering.”

“What do you believe in, then?”

“Bullets, heaven, and pretty girls,” Rogerson says, offering Charles the last drag of his cigarette.

Charles smiles, letting the smoke linger at the back of his throat. Exhaling finally in one long breath, he says, “Get to Rome and tell it to the pope. A finer edict has never been spoken.” Laughing, they unload the first stretcher from the back of the King George.

For a reason he cannot explain, Charles once again thinks of the girl. He will not say it aloud, he can barely articulate the thought, but in this moment he has stumbled upon the idea that perhaps her few simple sentences have cracked the code. Perhaps everything he’s done, everything he’s doing, has all been meant only to lead him to Miss H. Dench.

T
oday as she looks up the hill, Hensley is still thinking about Mr. Reid’s latest letter to her father. There is something different about this one. It strikes a tone of intimacy and wonder that Hennie does not recognize. It is written in fading pencil, the gray words looking more and more ephemeral as the letter progresses.

My next move is my king’s knight to KB3. I’ve spent parts of entire days imagining which vowels and consonants might govern the plans for the pieces with which you entice me. How strange that I can almost hear one of your gentle pawn’s voice in my head, unsure of everything but its pale coloring. Your words, however, have created a self that has kept me occupied through the days and nights that masquerade here as dark, endless caves full of horrors. An English regiment took cover in the cellar of an abandoned farmhouse nearby and Rogerson and I had to meet them there to retrieve their injured, whom they’d already carried an unfathomable distance. As I stood there in the dim room, English soldiers all around me, clamoring for cigarettes and canteens, I found myself worrying about this pawn—faceless and nameless, but familiar all the same—hoping it will never recede into any past that might be left behind. How foolish of me, you may think. Get ahold of yourself, it’s just a chess game, man. But since your last letter, this gentle figure is a creature that lives in my mind, though I am sometimes sure I will die before I can see the endgame.

By the way, how is your new address? When I read that you were relocating such a great distance I was concerned. I hope everything is well with you and your family. I remember reading about the indigenous owls of New Mexico. Have you seen any? I’ve always admired the daring and wisdom of those birds, their round, echoing hoots making even the darkest night less lonely.

In thanks,

Charles Reid

By the end, the lead had become so dull that his signature is hardly more than a thick looping smudge. Even so, Hennie moves her index finger across the page, mimicking his script, slowing especially over his name, until she can trace his signature perfectly. Inhabiting his body, exiting her own, she crouches down under the table, imagining the cramped feel of the cellar, the roughness of chapped lips, the stale smell of urine on her clothes, the sound of artillery just outside.

She also knows exactly how she will respond, for it is clear the letter is meant for her. He has found her notes in the margin and he is intrigued. More than a chess game, he longs for her words.
My dear Mr. Reid, My father and I are political exiles here in southern New Mexico, masquerading as a mine superintendent and his adventurous daughter. I’m not sure which of us is better disguised, for he knows next to nothing about mines, and I am hardly adventurous. You see, I am a girl of just seventeen, recently admitted to Wellesley College, fond of textiles, not fortresses. I’m sure your hopes will be dashed when you hear just how perfectly dull your imagination’s occupant actually is, but I will make a heroic effort to give you words worth the postage. Alas, our correspondence has only begun and already I must chastise you. Please, do not invoke your death. It is not a matter to be tossed around cavalierly. Some might even say it could be used to manipulate a person’s emotions. Let’s agree to exist for each other forever. You are alive here on the page, here with me in our borrowed adobe house in the middle of nowhere. I will keep your pages, your words, as evidence of your vitality. Our existence can reach as far into the future as can be imagined. Look at that, we’ve created our own immortality. Regardless, there are lots and lots of stars out here in the desert and your safety will always be one of the things I wish for when I see one make its lucky streak across the black sky.

She is still under the table, composing her reply, when Berto comes in the front door, whistling twice, and slides a box onto the tabletop. She knows it will be filled with the items her father has chosen from the grocery: tins of smoked fish, a jug of milk, cider, fresh beans, a wedge of soft cheese, and ham bones.

She looks at Berto’s boots, the black leather old and broken around the toes. To Hensley they look just like the pair she imagines on Mr. Reid. She wiggles her own toes, but they are unfettered; she is barefoot. This, even more than Berto’s presence, brings Hensley back to her present.

“Boots,” she says, even as she reaches her hand out and places it on one, in greeting.

It is a manly boot, but there is something overgrown about it, something clumsy. Without thinking, Hensley pushes her thumb into the toe and the leather gives way easily. There are no toes in the way; no manly foot resides in these manly boots.