C
OBB WAS FLOUNDERING
in the tunnels again. They reached out for him no matter where he was and sucked him in. He got lost every time. The body he was looking for was always in a different cell but he always found it.
It turned lopsidedly. Suspended by its wrists from a hook attached to a pulley, arms twisted up behind its back, it resembled a body hanged in effigy, more a parody of itself than an actual human form. A gurgling sound, like water moving in a clogged drain, came from inside the hood and the sound so terrified Cobb that he cried out and his shocked breath extinguished his candle.
A frenzy of activity gripped him.
He re-lit the candle—his hands were shaking and he had to strike a second match—then he held the candle between his teeth and force-fed a dangling tail of knotted rope toward the pulley. The body crashed down without warning. It was a dead weight, snuffing the candle, knocking Cobb to the floor. With dread, he pushed at the body and rolled himself free. He lit the candle again and fumbled with the knots on the hood. A sheet, twisted tightly to make a thick soft rope, had been used to tie the hood around the neck.
Cobb was all thumbs.
He could still hear the guttural rattle.
He loosened the sheeted knots. He ripped off the hood.
He was staring at the face of his mother.
Cobb’s terror was absolute. He backed off frantically but he was tangled, hobbled, snared in the corded sheet. He stumbled into blackness and fell.
“Help me!” he shouted. “Help!” He pounded on the floor of the cell. He was desperate for an inhaler, he could not breathe. He could see his high school pennants on the wall. He could see the trophy for second prize in math. He could see a worn pair of running shoes, much too small, beneath his bed.
“Cobb!” called a querulous imperious voice. “Stop yelling and come here when I call.”
“Stay away from me!”
“Goddammit, Cobb.” It was not his dead mother’s voice, it was his father’s. “You wake me up with your goddamned hollering, you can damn well come when I call.”
Cobb’s heart was still thumping.
“Goddamned bed’s leaking,” his father shouted. “It’s sprung a leak. You get yourself here on the double.”
“Coming, Dad.”
The hallway between his own bedroom and his father’s was narrow. Cobb felt his way. He could barely see the warden up ahead. He could hear rats under the house. He lifted his father from the bed and carried him out to the porch. His father was as light as a child. It was not quite dawn and the stars and a pale rind of moon were still in the sky.
Cobb was fully awake now.
He remembered the email from the VA hospital:
Your father discharged himself after surgery. Insists that he wants to die at home. Condition critical.
Cobb had flown from Baghdad to Paris, Paris to New York. He had rented a car and driven south. Two days ago, he had reached Promised Land.
For a moment, before settling the old man into the rocker, he savored the fact of cradling his father in his arms. “I’ll change your sheets, Dad. And I’ll get you some dry pajamas.”
“Get these damned things offa me first. They stink.”
“Okay. Sure.” Cobb tugged at the sodden pants. He was shocked by the pallor of his father’s thighs, by their frailty, by the birdbone ankles. “Here,” he said, taking off his own pajama jacket. “Cover yourself with this while I get you dry pants.”
“Who the hell’s gonna see me?” His father batted the shirt away. “I’ll piss on anyone who comes on my porch.”
Cobb smiled. “Better than shooting them, Dad.” He felt almost light-hearted.
It was a dream. It was just a bad dream.
“And bring me some Jack Daniels,” his father said.
“Dad, you haven’t had breakfast yet.”
“Jack Daniels is breakfast.”
“The doctor said your liver’s shot and you’re diabetic. You’re killing yourself.”
“That’ll break a lot of hearts,” his father growled.
“It’ll break mine,” Cobb said.
“Bullshit.” His father mustered enough energy to goad the rocker to creaking motion. The muscles in his skinny shanks tensed. His limp penis flopped against the rocker’s pine seat. “I’ll break more than your heart if you don’t bring my whisky.”
“Dad, I came home to look after you and keep you alive. The doctor said you won’t obey medical orders, and you refuse to have nursing care.”
Cobb’s father, naked from the waist down, heaved himself out of the rocker and took a step toward the door before collapsing.
“What the hell are you doing, Dad?”
“I’m going for my shotgun is what I’m doing. If I don’t get my whisky, I might as well put a bullet through my head.
Take your pick. You can bring me my Jack Daniels or my gun.”
“Okay, Dad, you win. I’ll bring your whisky.” Cobb carried his father back to the rocker on the porch and went into the house.
“And by the way,” his father called after him, “in case you haven’t heard, that crazy Gideon Moore’s got cancer. Never let a drop touch his righteous lips and he’s gonna beat me to the grave, is what I hear. So don’t you go giving me shit about Jack Daniels.”
Cobb reappeared in the doorway, the sodden pajamas still in one hand. “That’s a shock. How long’s he had cancer?”
“Who the hell knows? They don’t go to doctors, those Pentecostals, because God’s s’posed to look after them. The younger one, the little sister—what’s her name? I can’t remember names any more—she defied her daddy and got a doctor to come, but that was after her daddy turned yellow. Pancreatic cancer, the fastest downhill trip you can get. He’ll be lucky to see Christmas, stupid bugger.”
Cobb leaned his forehead against the door jamb. He could feel too much past bearing down. “He was always kind to us. He never charged us, remember, that time the pipe in the kitchen burst.”
“We never had a pipe go bust.”
“Yes we did, Dad. Don’t you remember? It was right after—”
Right after I found my mother. Come to think of it, you were blind drunk and I had to run all the way to Leela-May’s house and Gideon Moore drove me back in that crazy beat-up truck and the whole way back he was praying out loud and I was terrified he might shut his eyes while he was driving but he fixed that pipe and he told me I could stay at their place whenever I needed to, but I never did. I was afraid of sleeping in the same house as Leela-May
with only a wall and a door in between. I was afraid I’d go up in smoke. I was afraid I’d catch fire and their house would burn down.
“Maybe I dreamed it,” he said.
“You dreamed it, and you’re daydreaming now. I gotta wait for my whisky all day?”
“Sorry.”
When Cobb brought Jack Daniels and dry pajamas, his father took a deep swallow and said: “I know I’m a grumpy old bastard, Cobb, but you turned out okay anyway, no thanks to me. I musta done something right.”
Cobb busied himself with getting the pants over his father’s ankles. He kept his eyes low. The rough warmth was so unexpected that he was afraid some inner rampart might give way. He knew this would embarrass and infuriate his father. He managed gruffly, “You did okay, Dad.”
“I did lousy.”
“You drew a rotten hand. I don’t forgive Uncle Sam for withholding your purple heart.”
Calhoun Slaughter, shifting his bony ass to wriggle into the dry pants, was so startled that he wet himself again. “Shit,” he said. “Fucking useless pisser’s done broke.” He kicked the clean pants off his ankles and used them to mop at himself. “Shit, son, don’t go wasting your juices on that. If you knew how many men deserved medals but never got ’em…Well, you
do
know, of course you know. It’s a total fucking lottery, war. No one knows what the hell they’re doing, and afterwards no one can remember what happened, and what does it matter? The way I see it, life’s shit, you have bad dreams, then you die.”
“It matters,” Cobb said fiercely. “In war, there’s right and there’s wrong.”
“Yeah, there’s right and there’s wrong,” his father said. “But when you’re trying to stay alive, it ain’t easy to tell which is
which, especially in the heat of the moment.” He gulped at his whisky. “Never knew it was something you got so worked up about.”
“Dad…” Cobb was stunned. How could his father not know? “It’s always upset me. You got punished when you should’ve got a medal.”
“Is that why you’re hollering in your sleep?” his father asked.
“I’m hollering in my sleep?”
“To wake the dead.”
“Sorry. Bad dreams.”
“Join the club,” his father said. “But don’t have bad dreams about me.”
“They’re not about you.”
“A Bronze Star in Afghanistan. Special Forces. Major, heading for colonel. And then you suddenly go and quit the army. Tell me why.”
“I told you, Dad. I moved sideways. Private unit. Lots of guys are doing it.”
“Why?”
“Better money, for one thing. More autonomy. And some stuff can be done better this way. There’s more leeway, less oversight. I’m still in intelligence, but I’m freelance.”
“So why are you hollering in your sleep?”
“Because something went wrong. Fucking turf war.”
“Something always goes wrong. There’s always turf wars.”
“This was my own stupid fault. I’ve got stuff on my conscience.”
“Cobb, all these years I been thanking my stars you took after your mother, not me. That you ain’t got a demon on your back. Ah, shit.” His father clutched at his side. He gritted his teeth in sudden pain. “This is killing me, Cobb.
Thank you, Jesus, I been saying all these years, and you gotta know I don’t think about Jesus a whole lot, but my boy got a Bronze Star. When I got to bragging about you at the VA hospital in Columbia, they had to put a bag on my head to shut me up.”
Cobb pressed his fist against his mouth and bit down hard on his hand.
“Now you’re telling me I passed the poison on?” his father said.
Cobb turned away and stumbled toward the porch steps.
“Hey, dammit, you come back here, boy,” his father ordered, “or I’ll shoot you stone dead.”
From lifelong habit, Cobb paused and turned. He even managed a weak grin. “You sure know how to hand out compliments, Dad.”
Come here
, his father’s hand signalled. Obedient, Cobb returned.
Here
. His father pointed to the floor at his feet. Cobb sat on the weathered boards and laid his head against his father’s naked thigh. He could feel the bone. His father put his hand on Cobb’s head. They did not speak for the longest time.
“I had bad dreams,” his father said, “so you wouldn’t have to. Shit happens. It’s not your fault. Don’t lose any sleep.”
“This
is
my fault, Dad. Whereas you, you never did anything wrong.”
“Are you nuts? I did a million things wrong. You gotta understand this, Cobb. I didn’t do anything wrong the day the APC blew up, but I did plenty of other things wrong. The worst one…I
should’ve
been court martialed for that.”
“Court martialed? For what?”
“I never told anyone. I probably should’ve. I should’ve told your mother. If I’d told her, she would’ve understood…She
probably would’ve understood.” The old man clutched at his side and grimaced. “
Unhh…unhh…
” he gasped.
“
Dad
, don’t distress yourself.”
“If I’d told her, everything might’ve been different.”
“It’s okay, Dad. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter, dammit. There’s something you need to know
.
I need to pull the pin on this before I shove off. Stand by for the rubble.”
“Dad!
Dad
! Don’t get so worked up. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack. It doesn’t matter. Truly, it doesn’t matter. You’ve always been a hero to me, I swear to God.”
“It’s like a stuck videotape. I never stop firing that shake’n’bake mortar. I never stop thinking that hut’s full of Vietcong but only children run out, nine, ten, maybe thirteen children. Who’m I kidding? I know exactly how many. I counted the bodies. Thirteen. They’re burning to death in Willie Pete before my eyes. No photos, no journalists, no one ever knew. But me, I never stop seeing those kids.
“So here’s something you gotta understand, Cobb. I should have told you. I should have explained. The APC thing, the shooting a guy in the back of the head, the corpse-kicker thing, all that hate mail, I was
grateful
for it. It was like hush money. I had this fuckin’ great boulder of guilt to carry round and every hate letter, it took an ounce off.”
“Dad. There’s no way you’re guilty. You couldn’t have known.”
“I know I couldn’t have known. Doesn’t make any difference to how I feel about dead kids. If I’d told your mother…”
“No one can talk about the worst stuff.”
“She was pregnant.”
“What?”
“When she killed herself. She was pregnant.”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“When she told me,” his father said, “I freaked out. I couldn’t handle it, Cobb. I just couldn’t handle it. I knew there’d be hell to pay. I’d freaked out the first time too, when she told me you were on the way. I hit her, Cobb. I don’t remember doing it, but I saw the bruises. I never believed you’d be born alive or born normal, and when you were, I knew the leg-trap was still out there somewhere, waiting to snap its jaws shut. I knew it wouldn’t let me off twice. So I told your mother to get rid of it. I ordered her to.”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“That’s why she did what she did.”
“Jesus, Dad,” Cobb said again, and the rampart did give way then, for both of them.
They held each other and for the first time in his life, Cobb heard his father weep.
“When you’re hollering in your sleep, Cobb, what are you seeing?”
“I can’t tell you, Dad.”
“Haven’t you been listening to me, boy? If I’d had the sense to tell your mother—”
“This is different.”
“How?”
“It’s so much worse.”
“How could it be worse than killing children?”
“It just is.”
“Can you fix it?”
“I’m trying to. I can’t figure out how.”
“Don’t do nothing, like I did. You’re smarter than me. You’ll figure it out, and while you’re figuring, you can bring me another Jack Daniels, and by the way, I’ve been meaning to tell
you, crazy Gideon’s older girl, the wild one, has come back to see her daddy before he dies. Don’t look as though you’ve seen a ghost. It’s natural, ain’t it? Even runaways like you and her come home for the last goodbye.”