A Certain Slant of Light (36 page)

  
James looked up into the top of the tree where a round, dark
patch trembled on the highest branch. "It's a nest," James said.

  
Diggs stopped ten feet off the ground and squinted at James.
"A nest." He shook his head. "The Germans bombed every stick
and stone into dust and that's a nest up there, that's what you're
telling me?"

  
"Bet me," James smiled.

  
"No."

  
The day was nearly silent. No bird, no mouse, not even a
beetle. The rumbling sounds were thunder, not shells. There was
an audible wheeze as Diggs breathed. A soldier coughed half a
mile down the trench.

  
"Let's play the game," said Diggs. "First day back, I'm taking
a hot bath while I drink a cold beer."

  
"Peach pie," James said, but he was looking up at the possible
nest.

  
"Susan O'Reilly," said Diggs.

  
"I'm going up," James told him.

  
"You'll get shot," said Diggs. "Or Brodie will kill you."

  
"I could be up and down in one minute."

  
Diggs started climbing down again. "No bet."

  
James laughed and slipped out of the rope he'd been using as
a sling chair. Staying hidden behind the trunk, he climbed
higher, using only gashes in the bark and broken limbs to pull himself toward the top. I rose with him just behind his helmet. The enemy line, laced in barbed wire on the horizon, breathed
gentle smoke from one spot but otherwise sat lifeless. The top of
the tree had been blown off, but the highest branches forked into
the air like a triton. James could wrap his arm all the way round
the trunk now, and he gripped the blackened bark with his knees.
He stretched up and with two fingers lifted the dark oval. As
James blinked at it, I heard thunder again and the hiss of what I
thought was distant rain.

  
I saw now that it wasn't a nest, it was a child's hat, small and brimless. It might have been blue once, a baby's hat, mysterious
and final. It seemed to come to life for a moment, jerking almost
free with a buzz like an insect. It wasn't until James saw a small
hole in the crown that he looked out across the barrens. I realized
then that the hiss had not been rain. Now James watched in dis
belief a flood of muddy uniforms flowing away from the enemy's
sandbags. He let the hat drop and fumbled for the whistle that
hung round his neck on a chain. A bullet cracked through his hand, spitting blood on his face. His arm jerked and the chain
snapped. I cried out but could not touch him. James watched the
whistle fall impossibly slowly to bounce off Diggs's helmet. Diggs
gazed up, the baby's hat in one hand.

  
James opened his mouth, but no words came. Gasping for breath, he watched the river of men sweep toward the frosted
trench below.

  
"Diggs!" He screamed. His friend smiled up, waving the
little hat, then hopped back as if someone had kicked him in the belly. He dropped to one knee and then fell. Barely touching the
spikes, James slid halfway down the tree, then dropped. I flew with him, wanting it to stop. If this was his death, I didn't want
to see it.

  
The wall of uniforms had roared into the trenches now. James clutched at Diggs's face, but the eyes were set. The coat was torn open at the waist, black and wet. James pressed a hand to Digg's
belly, blood flooding between his fingers.

  
"Oh, God." He was still trying to hold Diggs together when a bullet pinged off the helmet at his back and another kicked at his
head behind one ear, sending him rolling into the dirt where he stopped on his back, staring up the tree trunk, unblinking. This
was his last memory. He'd remembered it.

His eyes were still open when I realized that we were back in
Billy's bed. James was in Billy's body again, lying flat on his back,
but he wasn't seeing me or the room around him. He stared up at
the ceiling and frantically felt around his neck and chest, as if
looking for the chain and whistle he had worn as a soldier.

  
"James?" I touched his arm. He was so cold it scared me. He
didn't answer but covered his face and began to weep. I kissed and
rubbed his chest, trying to warm him.

  
"It's over," I said. "Don't look anymore. Come back to me."

  
He stopped crying, but he kept his eyes covered.

  
"It's time to be finished with it," I told him. "Diggs isn't there
anymore. None of them are. They've all moved on." I watched him as he uncovered his face and stared into the ceiling. "You
don't need to go back there anymore," I told him.

  
James gasped in a breath. "He was just here," he said.

  
"No," I said. "We're back in Billy's house."

  
"Diggs was just here in the room." James searched the whole
ceiling and looked around me into the corners. "He said he's been
trying to tell me for years."

  
I felt frightened that a spirit had been in the room with us
and I hadn't realized it. "What did he tell you?"

  
"That I was a jackass." James startled me by laughing. He
held his ribs as if it were an ancient, unused laugh that might
crack him in two. He pulled me close and hugged me. "It's all
right," he told me.

  
He was back in the present, but he was changed; I could feel
it, and it scared me. A weight had been lifted out of him, and he
seemed untethered, as if he might float out of my arms.

  
James looked at me for a long while as if he wanted to tell me
what heaven was like but couldn't choose the words. Finally he
said, "Just walk up to your hell and give it a push. Run through it,
and I'll be waiting on the other side."

  
But I had no idea how to start and was sure it was not as easy
as he made it sound.

  
"Don't be afraid to remember." He smiled at me. "What do
you say, Miss Helen?"

  
We hadn't heard the door open. But the voice shot at us like a
crossbow.

  
"Get out."

  
James sat up and held me behind his body as if he thought
Mitch might throw something.

  
"Put your fucking clothes on and get out!" He turned his back
on us as we scrambled for dress and pants. For one odd moment, I was crouched behind Mitch, reaching between his feet to pull my
book bag into my arms. I felt like an elf about to be crushed by a
giant.

  
"I'm sorry," said James.

  
"Shut up," said Mitch. I jumped up and backed away. James
was trying to pull on his pants but was losing his balance.

  
"It was a half day—" he tried to say.

  
"Out!" Mitch interrupted.

  
"It's my fault—" I started to explain, but James put a finger
to my lips and handed me the camera.

   
Mitch turned back around and stood aside, fuming, every
muscle tight, as we hurried past him out of the bedroom, me
clutching bag and shoes to my open dress and James, half naked,
his shirt and sneakers under one arm.

  
Mitch followed us to the front door and flung it open so hard
it banged against the wall. "Not another girl sets foot in this
house with you," he told James. "Get her home, and if you're not back in thirty minutes, I'm calling the cops."

  
We stood speechless on the welcome mat as the door slammed
shut.

I tried, but I couldn't stop shaking. We finished dressing on the
porch, a man and woman from across the street watching us from
their driveway. We walked back toward the bus stop, James with
my bag over his shoulder. A silent police car rolled past us. We held hands and didn't speak. There's still the loft in the theater, I
told myself, but the idea that we couldn't go to his house, and we
couldn't go to mine, filled me with dread. As we passed the park,
James was rubbing my hand with his thumb hard, as if he was
trying to revive me from our shipwreck, but his mind had latched onto something else.

  
"You shouldn't come all the way home with me," I said, as we
came to the bus bench. "You won't make it back in half an hour.

  
He put his arm around me and pulled me in so my face was
hidden in his neck. But he wasn't listening. I could feel his heart drumming hard. I could feel his throat tighten. I knew there was something he wasn't telling me. I pulled back and looked at him
to see what it might be. Now my heart started drumming, too. He
wasn't saying it out loud because he didn't want it to be true.

  
"We have to give the bodies back," I said. "Don't we?" He
gave one shudder and looked me in the eyes. Please say no, ]
prayed, but he nodded. Something in me knew that having James
was a dream, and now I was waking up.

  
"We can't," I said. "We don't even know how." But he just
cupped my head in his hands and kissed me. The way he was
studying my face was too terrible, as if he was going to fly up to
heaven without me and wanted to remember the exact color of
my eyes.

  
"Not yet," I said.

  
"Not yet," he agreed.

  
Over James's shoulder, I saw Mitch's car pull up to the corner
half a block down, but he turned away from us and drove south.
"There goes Mitch," I said. James turned, but the rusty car had
already changed lanes and disappeared.