A Question of Mercy (17 page)

Mar 1953

My Jess
,

What I did not say in my last letter is that while I was in that a ditch I saw blood coming through my own sleeve and pants, but the medic came and fixed me up. If you get a wire saying I was wounded, just ignore it. I am telling you the truth. I was only grazed, and though there was a lot of blood, nothing was hurt. I wrote to my parents too, so they wouldn't worry, but who knows when they, or you, will get my letters
.

Anyway, we moved back out of the line of fire for a few days, so I'm getting some rest. It feels good to sleep all night long, keeping both eyes closed. This afternoon I walked beside a river and found these two violets, and I'm sending them in the letter. If it's getting to be spring here, maybe it's spring there too. I'm just now beginning to see the importance of little things, but don't know how to explain what I mean. There's so much wreckage over here. These fucking people have been living like this for so long. Excuse my language, but how do they stand it? This country is so small, and with so many people. They all look alike. It's hard to tell the good ones from the bad ones
.

The moon is full tonight and I am sending you two violets from a river near where I am. So that is something good
.

Jess lifted the smashed, dry violets and held them to her lips. She wanted to smell something of the fragrance, but couldn't. The petals were still intact and she left them in the letter as he had sent them. Some of the purple color lingered near the center.

Dear Jess
,

It must be almost April by now. Nothing much to say. It's been raining for twelve hours straight. We were flooded and the water supply was screwed up for a couple of days. We move out tomorrow. There are so many times when I'm out in the field and I want to talk to you, like tonight after everything is set up and in position. Nothing to do but lie here and think about why the man behind me and in front of me gets killed, and I don't. I spend more time thinking about saving the guys around me than I do killing the enemy. If we don't watch out for each other we'll get our shit blown away. Excuse the language, but that's the way we say it over here
.

If it weren't for the other guys around me, I don't know what I'd do. My God, all we do is just wait for another day to start and finish, and keep following orders. It helps to think you are listening to me. I just wrote to my Mom and Dad, but I don't tell them what I tell you
.

Another one, short, scrawled, written quickly:

I was about 12 yds behind the red panel that shows the end of friendly territory. All of a sudden a mortar came in. It hit my Captain and killed the radio operator. The Capt. started walking towards me, holding his chest and I was lying on my stomach looking up at him. He almost fell on top of me. He went to the hospital. He is all right, I think. Then another mortar hit and it lifted me about a foot off the ground. I got a piece in my arm, but I'm okay. I don't know what kept me from being killed. Maybe I was so close to the explosion that stuff just blew over my head. I don't know. But that radio operator (I didn't know him very well) told me to write his wife if anything happened to him. He has a boy, 5, and a girl, 2. When I think about writing that letter I get nervous. I don't know what to say. If you hear that I've been wounded, don't worry. The medic fixed me up and I'm fine now. I hope I come back home soon. I hope for a lot of things
.

Silent lightning flared up like a huge sheet in different parts of the sky.
Sam. Sam
. Jess heard her breath soar out of the silence, and imagined that he could hear her call his name half-way across the world.

As time grew close for Adam's trip to Cadwell, Jess knew she would go with him. She wondered if Clementine had thought about the fact that he might die there, or worse: he might live a dead life. With so much on her mind, her grades were suffering. Finally, she called her father.

“We can't do it,” she said when he picked up the phone.

“Jess. The doctors have assured us …”

“I don't believe them.”

“It's Clementine's call, Jess. She's Adam's mother. She gets to decide.”

Jess did not argue with that reasoning. “How is he? Can I speak to him?”

Adam came to the phone and told Jess about Hap and the tricks he knew, and the booby trap he had made with a bucket, pancake batter, marbles, and grape jelly. “I put it over the door so it would fall on somebody, but Papa B. found it.”

When Edward got back on the phone, he asked Jess about Sam. Jess told him a few things, and her father made sympathetic sounds through the phone.

When they hung up, nothing had changed.

— 21 —

I
t was the end of April and the middle of the night when Jess arrived home. They would leave for Cadwell on Wednesday and she had a day or two to be with Adam. When she opened the door, the house was dark. Everyone was asleep. She went to Adam's room and woke him.

“Hey,” he said, sleepy-faced.

“I just got home,” said Jess. “It's late, almost two a.m.”

“Is it tomorrow?”

“Well, yes. I guess it is.

Adam looked at the clock. Over the last year he had learned to tell time but with the series of shock treatments he had forgotten some things. “It's tomorrow,” he said. “Are you home for good?”

“Not for good,” she said.

“Do I still have to go to Cadwell? Don't make me. I won't be bad anymore.”

“You're not bad, Adam.”

“I'm bad for touching. Police man came.” Adam stared hopelessly at Jess, his hand rising up, then stopping in mid-air.

“Listen,” she said. “Let's go downstairs and get a snack.”

Adam threw back the covers. He wore pajama pants, but no top. His shoulders looked broad but he had lost weight and Jess could see his ribs. He slipped on some socks and Jess told him to put on his robe.

They went downstairs quietly, not speaking until they reached the kitchen.

“I don't want to go to Cadwell tomorrow.”

“You're not going tomorrow.”

“Is it tomorrow now?”

“You're not going today or tomorrow,” she said. “Not until Wednesday. What do you want to eat?”

“Milk-toast.” Clementine usually made milk-toast, sprinkled with brown
sugar and cinnamon, when Adam was sick. It comforted him, and Jess believed he needed that now. He might not get it again.

They both ate milk-toast and drank the rest of the sugary milk from the bowl. When Adam put down the bowl he reached to touch Jess on the lips, but suddenly halted. Jess's heart cracked at the thought that Adam could never touch a woman. His normal desires, without direction, were stifled completely. She felt pity for all the tenderness he felt, but could not show.

“It's okay,” she said. “We're friends.” So Adam ran his fingers over her lips and cheek, then touched her hair and shoulders, as he might stroke a puppy.

“I like you, Adam,” Jess said. But Adam didn't speak. Jess rose to turn on the radio over the stove. “You want to dance?” She found a slow song. “Remember when I taught you dance steps, and took you to my school dance? You liked that, didn't you?”

Adam nodded and stood to take the correct position—the way Jess had taught him. He stood like a manikin as Jess placed her hand on his shoulder, then lifted his other hand into the air. Adam laughed as they glided around the kitchen. Neither spoke, as music softened the room. He leaned to smell her hair. When another song came on, Adam wanted to dance again. He looked excited now and, as Jess moved in close to him, she could feel him grow hard against her. When he did, Adam caught his breath and made a sound. He was breathing hard. He didn't know what to do with himself.

“Adam?” Jess shifted under the pressure of his hand at the small of her back, their arms still in the air. Maybe this had been exactly the wrong thing to do, Jess thought, but in a few days it wouldn't matter. After the operation, it wouldn't matter. “Adam?” she said again.

Adam jerked away from her. He murmured words too indistinct to hear, talking to himself rapidly. He had a look of terrible guilt. “I won't,” he said. “I won't make you mad.”

He turned and scuttled away down the hall into his own room. It was not enough to say that she knew how he felt; she didn't know, but she hoped that she might have offered more pleasure than alarm.

“Adam! Come back! I'm not mad.”

Adam came to the doorway and leaned against the jamb, and Jess walked over and kissed him lightly on the lips. Her hope was that Adam would feel some release in his bones and that the voices in his head could find a gentle gratitude. She hoped she had given him something, anything; she hoped she had not, instead, unleashed more dark loneliness.

“Now you know what kissing is,” Jess said, smiling. “But you can't go kissing anybody else. Hear?” Then she added. “Adam, you're a good kisser.”

He smiled and turned to go back to bed.

The next morning at breakfast Jess told Clementine that she had gotten in at two a.m. and she and Adam had come downstairs and made milk-toast. Clementine smiled.

“I'm a good kisser,” Adam said, but Jess shook her head hard.

“What did he say?” Clementine turned to face them both. At that moment Edward came in and welcomed Jess with a big hug of his own. “Did Clementine tell you that Calder was coming? He's going with us to Cadwell.” Edward seemed relieved that Calder (instead of himself) would be the one to sign Adam into the hospital. Adam smiled at the thought of seeing his father.

“He won't be here until the day we go,” said Clementine. “He wanted to stay for several days, but I didn't want that. I wanted us to have these last few days together.” What Clementine did not say was how she was afraid that Calder might make the whole thing more difficult. He had already objected to sending Adam away.

Over the last days Clementine's old thoughts were returning: how it would have been better for Adam if he had never been born, how the world offered nothing but hard choices for him. A few weeks ago she mentioned her thoughts to Edward, saying she wished Adam could suddenly get sick and die, then she could care for him until his death. “I wish he could die here under my care.” She put her hands to her face.

“Clementine!” Edward couldn't believe his ears. “A life is a life. You mean it would be better for
you
?”

Clementine was sorry she had said anything. “You think Adam really wants to live the life he'll be living?”

“I think they'll take care of him. Doctors and nurses will care for him every day.” Edward didn't know what else to say.

Clementine shook her head furiously. “Still.” Edward left the room. He could not listen.

The family spent the next couple of days together; but, to Jess, the time felt like a death watch. On the day before they went to Cadwell, Clementine packed a large bag for Adam and sobbed behind closed doors. No one wanted to stay in the house. Edward went into town to settle things at the store and go by the bank. Clementine bought groceries for Adam's favorite meal of Salisbury steak and gravy and biscuits. That evening they would go to a movie, one with cowboys that Adam had chosen.

So, in the afternoon, with no one in the house, Jess and Adam walked the path to the river. Adam wanted to tell the river goodbye, but kept repeating how he didn't want to go away. He walked ahead of Jess and held his
shoulders back as if they were braced. There was a force in him, but a force that was held caged. His eyes over the last couple of months kept a blank look, as though forgetting had already set in. His gait was awkward over the bumpy path. Still, he walked fast.

The day had turned sunny, but the air held a chill that, in a few weeks, would be gone. They walked past a weeping willow where Adam reached for a limb and swung forward landing flatfooted. His jacket was new and red, and had a brown corduroy collar that he liked.

Once, he turned and looked at Jess, and it seemed as though he might laugh. Then he ran forward yelling, “Last one to the river is a rotten egg.”

— 22 —

F
or a whole day an upcountry river had rolled along beside her, and Jess wanted it to follow her all the way to the boardinghouse. In the late afternoon she saw the mouth of a rickety barn. She slept there all night in the smell of new hay, and woke to a dog barking. Jess sat up to see if it was close-by.

She washed her face and brushed her teeth in a stream at the foot of the hill, then checked to see how much money she had. Not much. The dog still barked, though his barking had grown hoarse and frantic. She thought he might be hurt, so she stepped through the trees to look. The dog, a mixed breed—something between a hound and a German shepherd—was tied to a dog house with a long chain.

A man walked across the yard toward the dog house. He carried a baseball bat and stumbled as though he were drunk. He yelled at the dog, and Jess moved behind a tree to watch. The dog was about a hundred yards away, and could not stop barking until the man raised his bat and swung hard, missing the dog, at first. It circled the dog house, shorting the chain. It cowered with the approach of the man. The man had him trapped, so the dog began to growl and tried to bite the man's leg. This time the man did not miss, but missed the dog's head, hitting it somewhere around the mid-section. The dog cried out with a woman-sound, a high-pitched yelp that told Jess his ribs had probably been broken, maybe more. Then the barking stopped, but not the man, who reached back again and brought the bat down hard onto the dog's head this time, ending the suffering.

What struck Jess was the dull sound of the blow and the blood that sprayed so variously with the force of the bat, and the man's face that held a look of calm determination. He wore a blue chambray shirt with trousers too short and a cap that shaded his eyes, but not his expression. His hat had come off with that last blow, and he picked it up. He was not over forty, with shoulders broad as a lumberjack's. The house, this man's house—a creepy
structure, dark inside, though the porch light was on—loomed behind him. He stumbled towards it. The dog's head, Jess could see it, was not recognizable, though his lower body convulsed for a few moments before it lay still.