Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop (39 page)

Why are they after me? What do they want to know? Andy said it’s no big deal, said I was acting crazy. No big deal for him, maybe. They don’t care about a man with family—they think a family man can be trusted, they know he’s got something to lose. They save their worry for grunts like me. We’re the dangerous ones, we’re the ones who got to be watched.

Why is Andy helping them? Can’t trust anyone anymore.

She could trace the effect of the drug from entry to entry. Jimmy seemed to rise like a phoenix to heights of supreme confidence and then plummet into confusion and paranoia in the course of a single page. But gradually each high became a little less convincing, and each low brought him closer to the flames.

January 20, 1991

Saw Pete again today.

Kathryn stopped. Saw Pete? But didn’t Peter say that he never saw Jimmy in the Gulf?

Saw Pete again? A single visit Peter might have forgotten—but more than one?

I was talking about Kathryn again, about how much I miss her—Pete blew up! Said I should stop whining, said I wasn’t the only one who loved her, who wanted to marry her. Who else? I said.

Turns out Pete’s got it worse than me. He’s not just sorry about Kathryn, he’s mad at Andy! He thinks Andy just got there first, thinks he took Pete’s place. What about me? I said. I got there before Andy—before anybody. Doesn’t matter, he said—it was HIS place, like Kathryn belonged to him or something. I told him he was nuts. I told him Kathryn would take me before she takes him. That’s when he took a swing at me. Not a little poke, either—they had to pull us apart.

And all this time I thought I was the only one.

Kathryn read the words again and again: Pete’s got it worse than me …

What made Peter angry enough to attack poor Jimmy—and what in the world did he mean that Andy had taken his place? The very idea should have enraged her—but it didn’t.

It chilled her to the marrow of her bone.

February 18, 1991

I’m in trouble. I’m in big trouble.

Andy found my stuff. He was digging through the MRE boxes under my cot—said he was looking for something to eat. He found the mirror, the razor, the straws—everything. I thought he’d blow a gasket but he didn’t. Said he understood. Said he wanted to help. Andy is a straight arrow. Andy is an okay guy.

But he told Pete.

Pete said he was going to turn me in! I asked him not to, I threatened him, finally I begged him. They’ll discharge me, they’ll wash me out. I’ll miss the show! You should have thought of that he said. It’s rules, it’s regulations, it’s the honor of the outfit. Don’t do this to me, I said. This could mean court martial, this could mean jail. I’m on his heels, I’m begging, I’m running after him like some sniveling mutt. We got all the way to the door of the HHC before he stopped. Okay he said, I won’t turn you in.

Not now anyway. Not NOW he said.

He was going to do it if I didn’t stop him. What if he gets steamed at me again, what if we have another fight? Pete gets
mean sometimes, he gets REAL mean. I won’t beg anymore and I won’t go licking his boots.

Not now he said—but maybe tomorrow or the next day …

I’m going nuts, I’m going nuts, I swear I am going nuts.

February 22, 1991

Word came down today, we’re going in tomorrow. Thank God—anything but this waiting. Haven’t seen Pete for three days. What is he doing? Who is he talking to? Had chow with Andy. Good luck tomorrow he says, good luck Jim. Yeah Andy you got the good luck. You got the girl, you got the good luck. Tomorrow I’m a hero and they give me the medal of honor—then Pete turns me in. I hope I take a bullet tomorrow, that’s the only way out of this mess. That’s MY luck Andy, you get the girl and I get a bullet.

Kathryn’s hands shook so badly she could barely turn the page. She prayed that there would be no further entry, that the three boys simply went to war and Andy was lost and Pete and Jimmy came home. She thought she wanted to know everything, that there was nothing worse than the agonizing uncertainty of not knowing. But now she understood for the first time that there was something infinitely worse—learning what you wished you never knew and could never again forget. The truth doesn’t care, Nick told her. Part of her still wanted to know—and part of her was sorry she had ever asked.

The boys she had loved since childhood, the boys who held her hand on the front porch swing, the boys with the bright, clean uniforms and the shining hair were dissolving before her eyes like wet sugar candy.

February 27, 1991

God have mercy on me a sinner. What have I done? I didn’t know. God forgive me. I didn’t know what I was doing.

We attacked Al Salman last night. We were with the French going in at night. We called in fire from the big 155 mms in back,
then we huddled and waited till the smoke cleared. That’s where we ran into Pete’s unit, and there he was.

God what happened—what went wrong? We moved too fast, we got overextended. They warned us, they told us no heroes, but it went so fast. It was so dark, it was so easy. Andy ran forward and took a position behind a berm—then it all came apart. We thought they were all dead, we thought all we had to do was walk in and raise the flag. They were there all right—a whole brigade of the Iraqi 45th. There was a firefight. Man, what a show—tracers and shells everywhere like fireflies like the 4th of July. Andy got cut off, there was nothing we could do except duck for cover. We could see him fifty yards ahead, but we couldn’t move, couldn’t get to him.

I poke my gun up over the wall and start firing high, firing to keep them away from Andy. I’m firing and firing and I look over at Pete. He’s aiming his gun but not firing. Now he’s aiming low, he’s adjusting his thermal site. He’s aiming at Andy!

Andy is waving to us, waving us forward. Come on he says, it’s okay now. I’ll cover you. Come on, why don’t you come? You can make it.

Pete fires.

I cover my head and I start to cry like a baby. I cry just like a little baby.

Pete looks at me. “I tell you what,” he says. “You help me bury my problem and I’ll help you bury yours.”

Kathryn stumbled back from the table, sending the chair clattering across the floor. She stood struggling for breath, not knowing what to do next, not knowing what to think or feel.

He’s aiming at Andy, the little words said, and Pete fires. Such simple words, such harmless words, but they tore through her soul like a bullet—like the bullet that killed Andy. Like the bullet from Peter’s gun that killed Andy! And now she knew, now she knew what she longed to know for eight long years—and she would give anything in the world not to know again.

He lied to me about Andy and about Jimmy and about everything every day since. He held me, and he watched me cry, and he told me that he loved me. I could have married him
and had children with him—the man who murdered my own husband.

The unfolding reality engulfed her like a series of thundering waves, each more powerful than the last, pounding her and tossing her about like flotsam and depositing her exhausted body at last on the cold kitchen floor. Kathryn drew a deep breath and prepared to weep, prepared to summon forth the keener’s wail that comes from the blackest corner of the soul.

But before she could make a sound, the doorbell rang.

It was four o’clock.

The doorbell rang again.

Kathryn tried to struggle to her feet, but a wall of nausea slammed her down again. She forced herself up, gagging, and tried to straighten herself as best she could. Her legs would not support her the entire distance to the door; she stumbled to the sofa and collapsed. She quickly wiped her eyes and waited, staring silently at the door.

The doorbell rang a third time.

What do I say? What do I do?

The man she invited to her house a hundred times before was a faithful and trusted friend, a man she had known and loved for three decades. But that man was dead now, gone forever, destroyed just minutes ago by a handful of words scribbled in a soldier’s diary. The man outside the door was a man she had never seen before, a liar and a murderer, a monster capable of unspeakable evil. Was she supposed to greet him with a kiss? Should she sit with him and hold his hand, the same hand that squeezed the trigger and casually put an end to her husband’s life? Should she
chat with him about the future—about their future—as though he had not single-handedly engineered the destruction of Kathryn’s entire world?

A moment later she heard the sound of a key fumbling in the lock. The door swings slowly open.

“Didn’t you hear the bell?” Peter said.

Kathryn said nothing. It was all she could do to keep her composure, to keep from vomiting or screaming or gasping for air. She felt like a child standing petrified in a dark room, overwhelmed by a sense of approaching evil. No, it was more than that.

She felt like a seven-year-old girl helplessly trapped in a ’57 Chevy.

Peter stepped closer and looked at her—at the pallor of her face, the emptiness of her gaze, and the rigidity of her posture. He whistled softly.

“Hey,” he said. “Who died?”

Nick watched the sheriff enter the house from a block away where he carefully hid his car behind a pair of rusting construction Dumpsters. His ’64 Dodge had become something of a landmark in Rayford, and this was one time he couldn’t afford to be recognized. He waited several minutes before approaching on foot, sticking close to trees and shrubbery in case he had to make a last-minute dive for cover. He would only need a few minutes to raise the hood of the sheriff’s car, take care of business, and be on his way. Five minutes had already elapsed. If Kathryn managed to keep the sheriff occupied for even half of the thirty minutes he asked for, he would still have time to spare.

The driveway rose sharply toward the house, and the black-and-white Crown Victoria was parked to the right of Kathryn’s car. He approached almost casually from behind—but twenty yards away he suddenly recognized a second figure in the car, a hulking silhouette on the passenger side.

Nick took several quick steps back, afraid that the deputy might have already spotted his legs in the rearview mirror—but there was no sign of motion or recognition from the car.

Nick glanced at the patrol car, then at the house—then at his watch.

“I’m sorry I kicked your Bug Man friend, if that’s what this is all about.” Peter searched in vain for the cause of Kathryn’s gloom. “But he had it coming.”

By sheer force of will Kathryn raised her eyes and looked at a face she had never seen before. For the first time she noticed the barracudalike jut of his jaw, the awkward spacing of his empty gray eyes, the spatter of cratered pockmarks on his mottled skin, and the wiry coarseness of his sallow hair. It was evil. It was all evil. Why had she never seen it before?

“I know you must be upset about the shooting,” he ventured. “You know, Dr. What’s-his-name.”

“Teddy,” she managed a trembling whisper. “His name was Teddy.”

“Whatever. That must have been tough for you. Sorry you had to see that.”

Kathryn looked into his hollow, soulless eyes.

“Why, Peter? Why did anyone have to die?”

“It’s a shame.” He shook his head. “Sometimes it comes to that.”

Kathryn stared at him. “What’s it like? To kill a man, I mean.”

“I don’t like to talk about it.”

“But I want to know. Do you look at his face, or do you avoid his eyes so you won’t hesitate to pull the trigger? Do you try to think of him as just a target—like one of those big silhouettes at the firing range—or do you think about where he came from, who might love him, who he might be leaving behind?”

He looked at her. “Boy, you’re in a mood today.”

“I want to know,” she repeated, holding back her tears.

“There’s no time to think. In my line of work, sometimes you have to make a split-second decision. There’s no time to think about things like that.”

“I’m not talking about your line of work—I’m talking about murder. What do you think about when there is time? What do you think about when you know you’re going to kill someone?”

He hesitated. “I don’t suppose a murderer thinks about any of those things.”

“Sometimes killing is necessary,” she said. “Sometimes it’s your
duty. You can always tell yourself later it was my job, I had to do it, he deserved to die. But what does a murderer think later? What does he tell himself? How does he explain it all away?”

A pause. “I suppose he tells himself he had to do it too.”

“He had to do it,” she repeated. “But of course he didn’t have to. He chose to. It was just his selfish, stupid, cowardly way of trying to fix things—trying to make things go his way.”

“I … I guess so …”

“Do you suppose a murderer thinks of himself as a good person who just had to do a bad thing? Because that’s a lie, you know. But maybe it doesn’t matter—maybe he’s gotten so good at lying to himself that he can’t tell the lies from the truth anymore.”