A Question of Mercy (16 page)

“You can't let this happen to him, Daddy.”

“What can we do? We can't keep him locked in his room all day!”

“But that's what an institution does!”

“No. They have activities and a place to go outside, and doctors, and even classes.”

“What kind of classes? Can he take his hubcaps?”

“Probably not.”

“Daddy!” she wailed.

Her father walked to the window, looking out as if some answer might appear. “When Clementine looks at Adam now,” he said, “she looks at him as though he is already gone.” He turned back to Jess. “Somebody called the other night,” he said. “Claimed they saw Adam peering into a window. I didn't even tell Clementine.” He waited a long moment. “I think he was looking for you.”

“I could come back home. I could leave school.”

“No. I won't keep your life on hold for Adam. And I won't let
you
do it either.” He walked toward her, held her. “Not an option. Your mother would never forgive me.” Jess liked when he mentioned her mother as though she were still alive.

Later that evening she told Sam what her father had said. Sam suggested that Jess go with Adam when they took him to Cadwell. “You should be there with him,” he said.

“I don't think I can do that.”

“It'll be hard on you,” Sam said, “but easier on Adam.”

“I wish you were going to be here.”

“You'll write and tell me everything,” Sam said. “I'll write you every day. You'll get so many letters from me you'll be sick of them.”

“No.” She wiped her face on his shirt. “I won't.”

“I'll write to Adam too,” he promised.

Jess loved this man. She loved him more than she thought it was possible to love anyone. Tonight she would sneak into his room to be close to him. Sam would sleep on a rollaway bed in the room where Clementine kept her new electric Singer sewing machine. She still did sewing for people in town, but not as much since Adam had been in trouble.

Jess went to tell Adam goodnight. “Remember after the bee stings, when I used to put a muffin on this bedside table?” she said. “So you would wake up and find it?”

Adam laughed. “Papa B. still does sometimes,” he said. “But Hap eats it before I wake up, and crumbs spill everywhere.”

“Did you show Sam your hubcaps?”

“Yeah. He said he would bring me a new one next time he came here.”

Jess helped Clementine clean up the kitchen, and Edward talked with Sam in the living room. Probably about generals. Jess had told Sam that she would come to his room when everyone was asleep. The idea made Sam nervous, but he didn't tell her not to come.

At one-thirty a.m. Jess tiptoed down the hall, stepping on boards she knew would not creak, but if she did make a creaking sound she rushed quickly over the spot. When she got to Sam's room, she pushed the door slightly, but the sound of opening made her stop so she squeezed her body the rest of the way through. Sam stood beside the bed, and they sat down, huddled together.

Sam moved to close the door.

“Don't,” Jess said. “It falls open again, and makes a sound when it does. We should lie down on the floor, I think. We can be quiet.” They slid to the floor, pulling a blanket and two pillows from the bed. They touched each other, barely whispering, and gave long silent kisses.

“We have to do this fast,” Jess told him.

Sam touched her legs and breasts until he pulled her on top of him, then turned her over. Only their swishing and turning could be heard. “This is crazy,” Sam said. “Your dad would throw me out so fast.”

Jess wanted him and she urged him inside her. This memory would have to last a long time. She couldn't help but make little noises. As they lay back, happy, but not quite sated, they heard Clementine's voice in the hallway. Jess stood and pulled some cover around her.

“Adam, what are you doing up?” Clementine said.

“Nothing,” Adam was standing in the hallway, near their door.

“Get back in bed. Did you go to the bathroom?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Okay then. Go back to bed.”

Adam went to his room and closed the door. Jess listened for Clementine's bedroom door to close, hearing her father ask what was wrong and Clementine explaining, while Jess slipped quickly down the hall to her room. She lay awake wondering if Adam had stood at Sam's door, if he had seen them.

The next day they opened a few early Christmas presents. Sam would leave that afternoon to spend the rest of Christmas holiday with his parents. Adam gave Jess the first present—a necklace made out of metal and beads. “I made it at Cadwell,” he told her.

“It's beautiful, Adam.” She held it up to her neck.

“I hate Cadwell.”

“Next time you go, maybe I can come back from school and go with you.” Jess still wasn't sure she could do it.

“You will?”

She gave Adam the coveted Cadillac hubcap with chrome covering the spokes. It was wrapped in red tissue paper with a huge green bow. She gave Sam a photo of them both on a hillside. An old farmer had come by and she had asked him to take their picture. All day they had walked the countryside, unable to leave each other. “You can take that with you,” she said.

Sam gave Jess a record album that included their song “The Glory of Love.” When she opened it, they both sang together:

You've got to gi-ive a-little, take a-little,

And let your poor heart a-ache a-little,

That's the story of, that's the glory of love.

Adam

“Nothing comes easy,” his mama had told Adam, as if he did not already know this lesson better than most, as if he did not wake in the night in some lonesome space with wide bands of emptiness
.

When Adam saw Jess go into the room where Sam was sleeping, he put his head in the crack of the door and saw them rolling on the rug. The blanket flopped off. Jess lay naked—the way he had seen her once in the shower—and Adam's heart hammered in his head. Jess kissed Sam's mouth, and rolled on top. She made sounds like a kitty
.

And Jess said, Yes. She said, Yes, like that. Then his mother came into the hallway. She said, Adam, go back to bed. Adam, what are you doing? He said,
Yes, ma'am. And the apple pie smell was everywhere, like suppertime. In his room Hap lay asleep on the floor
.

After a little while, Adam heard Jess in the hall. She stopped at his door. She touched the doorknob, but did not come in. The shape of her in his mind was soft like roses, with a sound like kittens. And Adam felt mashed down, pushed into the ground under honeysuckle where he played Hide-and-Seek with Jess, getting tangled in the vines until she lifted his arm and pulled him out
.

His room was dark now; everything was dark now. Light came from the bathroom and Adam cried softly, his face ran in the dark. Hap jumped onto the bed and licked him, but Adam could not forget seeing Jess lean over Sam. Nothing inside him could be quiet; but he lay in his bed, his arms and legs like a man floating in the water. He stayed that way, mashed down, until he was asleep
.

— 20 —

T
he return to school, without Sam close-by, was lonelier than Jess had imagined. She looked for his letters each week, and though they never arrived regularly, they came in packs of three or four at a time with postmarks from odd looking places. When Katy brought her three letters from the post office, Jess took them to the corner of a study room to be alone.

Jan. 18, 1953

Sweetheart
,

I'm thinking about you right now. Every part of you. You know what I mean? I wish I could come to the campus where you are and walk under the trees. But I'm so far from that! Last night air strikes made these hills shake. I'll tell you this, I understand now what my training was all about. Yesterday when we landed and waded ashore, I remembered “not to run in water, to let the waves carry you.” Then, as soon as we hit ground, we ran. You never know what you're going to do under fire, but we found out real fast. Big guns fired from ships to the shore, but I didn't know we were being shot at until I saw slugs hit the sand beside me. We ran full speed to find cover under a hill of ground. Another thing from training, “don't fall on the ground when running under fire.”

Planes fly over us all the time. You can see how nobody sleeps much at night. Right now is pretty quiet or else I could not be writing and thinking about you. Now I will sleep, and maybe dream too
.

Jan. 1953

Sweetheart
,

I'll be glad when this war is over, and I wish it was over right now. Your letters come and I read them so many times. You can't even know what they mean to me. I got two from you today. I keep them in my pocket. It makes me feel normal to read your letters. And nothing here is normal
.

Yesterday we got new vests, and a good thing! We had to string barbed wire in front of the infantry positions. We were loading the wire and stakes when we heard Chinese mortars firing just over the hill. I ducked down under some old railroad cars, so did everybody else. My lieutenant (Lt. Frank Mason from Kentucky, kind of quiet, shy) said we better get out of there. We ran down the hill and under a bridge, and walked down the middle of a river about a foot deep
.

When we got back to camp, somebody with a bullhorn said, Hit the deck! We all fell down flat real fast, and these lights come on, searchlights, and our guys start shooting with machine guns. Jess, that weapon is crazy. Bullets come out like from a fire-hose. But it was
our
guys firing, so bullets went right over our heads. They chopped down those Chinks. When I looked back, I could see how close they'd been. I could've thrown a rock and hit them. They had bayonets. But after the machine guns started firing, they took off
.

Seems like I've been here a long time already, but it's not even a month yet. I keep your picture and look at it every night before I sleep. I'd like to have another one of you. I like when Adam draws pictures for me. Anything. I'll write a letter to him. Tell him that
.

Jess opened the next envelope with her thumb, and hoped that President Eisenhower could make the war end soon. This letter was short, different.

Jess, maybe I shouldn't say this, but two days ago I shot a guy at close range. And, even though I've shot the enemy plenty of times, it was never so close before. I saw his face when he fell. He was young, probably sixteen. He saw me too, and said something. I don't know what. When I shot him he fell right next to me. Blood was everywhere. Maybe I shouldn't say this. I lay for a while in a ditch next to him and pretended we were both dead. I could feel his uniform against my arm, and knew he probably had somebody at home waiting for him too. I hope I never have to do that again. And when we're not fighting, we're just waiting for something, food, letters, a night maneuver. I don't know. I don't know why I'm here
.

Over the next weeks Jess reread Sam's letters, weaving them into her days and nights like a strong fabric. She didn't tell Katy and Doris what Sam was saying. His letters felt like a secret. But she did tell them about Adam. “He'll be sent to Cadwell in May. He has to live there!” She shook her head. “Sam thinks I should go when they take him.” She got quiet before admitting, “I don't want to. I don't want Adam to think I'm the one deciding to send him there.”

Katy agreed with her, but Doris sided with Sam. Doris was the kind of girl who thought it important to do the hard thing, rather than the easy
thing. She had come to Mt. Chesnee two years ago and last year had won the Danforth Award for character. “What he'll remember is that you were with him. He'll know you'll come back to see him.”

“You don't understand,” Jess said. “After they operate on him and he has more treatments, he might not even know who I am. They do lobotomies there.”

Neither girl knew what that was.

“It's when they operate and take out what makes Adam Adam. They cut out part of the brain, so he won't feel much. Just calm. Sometimes it damages other areas too, like speech or memory. After a while, Adam may not know any of us, not even Clementine.”

“Why does he have to go?” Katy asked.

“Clementine can't stand the thought of Adam going to jail. She really can't stand it.”

“She can stand
this
though?” Doris said.

“I guess she can stand Adam being under a doctor's care more than the thought of jail.”

“Some choice,” said Katy. “What will you do?”

“I'll probably do like Sam says.” Jess sighed. “I don't know.”

It was three weeks before Jess got another packet of letters. The girls all had mid-terms that week, but Jess was only half-prepared. She knew she wouldn't make herself study any more. She waited until the other girls were asleep and stepped onto the porch at the end of their hall.