Quartet for the End of Time (9 page)

I
N THE EVENINGS
, D
OUGLAS
'
S
father drank. It was always a mystery to him—like in church—how it happened. How the liquid diminished in the bottle, and how something arose slowly, inside—or alongside—his father as it did so. Something other than himself, and yet himself all the same. Something he always associated, for some reason, and at some level, with the Holy Ghost. His mother would sit in the corner, with the basket of clothes she perpetually mended, as though it were impossible to fix anything. As the night wore on, and Douglas's father spoke louder and louder, she stitched faster. Pausing only, once in a while, after no particular interval, to say his name, sharply.
Douglas
, she'd say. Sometimes just that. She knew that he knew what it meant. Other times, she would say it more to his father than to him. Douglas,
it's time.
But his father would not hear and, because he did not, there never was anything for Douglas to do, or anywhere for him to go when she said it, because he slept right there on the hard cot by the stove, upon which his father would at that moment be sitting—his eyes bleary and glazed with the presence, already, within him, of the Holy Ghost.

So he would not move at all, except to give a slight nod in his mother's direction, acknowledging to her that he knew she had spoken. He would not look at her directly. He would only turn his head slightly. Aside from that, he would remain very still, a book open before him, though by that time in the evening he never could understand what he read there. He would just stare down at the book and let his mind go kind of numb so sometimes it seemed that the Holy Ghost was mysteriously unsettling the very forms of the letters on the page. That they were rising up before him with his father's voice as he told the story once more— a story both Douglas and his mother knew by heart and could have recited themselves—of the terrible night he'd spent in Belleau Wood; half buried beneath the body of another man.

R
IGHT FROM THE FIRST
moment he'd woken he'd felt it, his father said. Something heavy and strange. He just … . knew, somehow (though the feeling had hardly returned to his body, and he could not yet see). Then he tasted blood on his lips, and was certain. It brought him back to life, he said: the taste of another man's blood. Its very strangeness on his lips revived him; stirred his own blood, once again, in his veins.

And do you know, Douglas's father would inquire of his mother and of himself then, how they came to recognize me as alive among all those dead men? But instead of waiting for a reply, or answering, he began to sing. The only song he ever sang:
And the roses will die with the summertime …
The words would rumble just as they did when he arrived with Douglas, home from the fields. Only this time there was the Holy Ghost in them.
And our roads may be far apart …
His mother's needle would be going at such a pace that by now there was no time at all between the stitches in which to discover there would be no time to finish anything. There was just the needle going in and out and the thread extending— not attached or attaching to anything at all—but just drilling and drilling itself through a single hole.
But there's one rose that dies not in Picardy!

Go to bed now, Douglas. It's past time.

Douglas would nod again, his eyes pointed straight ahead as if trained on the page, and the voice of his father would swim up from the blur of words there, which he could no longer make out, so that it would not be his father but the Holy Ghost that spoke. Then, in another moment, standing above him, his father would hold out his hand and say, Give it here a moment—meaning the book. He would not be angry, just—suddenly—sad. And so Douglas would hand over the book and another change would come over his father's face as he looked at it. When he handed it back he would say, simply: I read this, too. Or else it would be: Didn't. Never had the chance. He would place the book back into his son's hands, which he had not withdrawn, and tell him he was a good boy to study hard, and that he would grow up to do great things if he kept at it, and used the brain God gave him for more than counting rocks, or glasses of whiskey at the bar.

But then, just as suddenly as it came, he would abandon the sad, faraway note that had crept into his voice. After all, he'd shout: it's not like this is Amer-r-r-r-rica! Here, we all have to
work
for a living! Which was something he had once heard said by a Frenchman in Paris, who rolled his
r
's in a way his father could imitate. Then Douglas's mother, her needle driving itself into the solitariness of its singular, fathomless hole, would say (so quickly it might easily have been between a still-uncured case of hiccups that she spoke), Arthur, really, that's enough now. The
boy
, and his father would look up, surprised.

Enough? As though he didn't recognize the word. He'd repeat it again, quietly to himself. Enough. Then louder. Enough! Oh, is it? My dear! Is it? he'd ask. My
putteet shair-ee
? He would look abstracted and thoughtful, as though the question as to whether it was or was not “enough” were a mathematical problem to which some absolute and unwavering answer might still be found. His face would take on an expression of genuine concern—as when he had lifted the book from Douglas's hands and discovered the title to be something he either had or had not read. But in another moment he would begin to laugh, at first softly to himself. It would start almost like a tickle at the back of his throat, but then it would get bigger and bigger until he nearly choked on it.

Marry him for his pension! he would roar out, finally—between belts of laughter. Who's the sorriest of us now!

He was—it seemed—genuinely delighted by the words, and from time to time would scoop Douglas or on rare occasions even his mother up, so that her mending went flying (abandoned, permanently unfinished) to the floor, and steered one or the other of them around the little room in a sort of tuneless waltz, which kept time with his repeated exclamation: His pension! Yes! That will do! Until he collapsed, exhausted, and his mother was able, her small hand under his broad shoulder, to steer him to the adjacent room (really only a closet, at the back of the house), where they slept. She would give Douglas a single, final glance over her shoulder before she disappeared. In fact, she did not really look at him—just as he had not, all evening, looked at her. There was never
any point, that is, in which his mother's eyes made contact with his own. She only tossed her head in his direction—but he understood. That he was to do as he had been told some hours before: make his own way to bed, and pray heartily to God for forgiveness for whatever sins he or his father had committed that had brought the Holy Ghost once more—as though, indeed, he were one of them—into that house.

—

T
HAT LAST SPRING WAS AN UNUSUALLY WET ONE
,
SO IT WAS NOT UNTIL
the second week of May that all the corn had been planted. At the end of the week his father was paid, and when he was he went into town and came back with a lot of new things, which he laid out on the kitchen table. Everything was perfectly quiet. There were no cicadas outside, and no ghost inside, holy or unholy. As he laid down each object he had bought he pronounced its name—and each, together, the object and the word, made a heavy sound against that quiet.

Douglas's mother was not in her usual place by the stove. Her usual pile of mending was there, where she would otherwise have been, and Douglas felt the exact emptiness of the space she did not fill. His heart beat faster as if to fill it but it did not fill it. He was alone with his father as his father named things and placed them on the table: Rope. Ten feet. A silver canteen and a box of chewing tobacco. All of this and more were placed into the Army-issue rucksack on which his father's surname: S
INCLAIR
—also, of course, Douglas's own—was stitched in uneven red letters.

It was late. Douglas's father said: Time to turn in, son.

He wished his mother would return, but she did not. Even after he had, at his father's request, crawled into his bed by the stove for what would be the last time, he tried to stay awake. He tried to wait for her. It felt important that he should hear her familiar step on the porch before he slept. But he did not. He drifted to sleep despite himself, and woke only to his father shaking him softly on the shoulder. And so, the sun not yet fully risen, they went on their way that morning without taking leave of
his mother—who, asleep now in the adjacent room (his father said), it was best not to wake.

A
FTER A WHILE
—
SOME MILE
and a half—they came to the crossroads. Chet was waiting for them there. Douglas saw him from a distance, sitting by the side of the road. When he saw them coming, he got up with a grin. He was so tall and thin it looked like if he turned around sideways he might disappear. But he didn't turn, and came forward and shook Douglas's father's hand. Then he shook Douglas's hand, like he was grown-up, too, and then they all kept walking. His father and Chet talked a lot between themselves. Once, his father turned and said, Isn't that right, boy? But Douglas didn't know what it was that had been said, let alone whether whatever it was was right or wrong, so he didn't reply. His father gave him a shake and said, What's the matter with you? Look alive, now, son! So he tried to look alive, but it was difficult what with also having to try to keep up with their pace, and think about all the things he was busy thinking about just then. But then he heard his mother's name and paid attention.

She was gone all afternoon and half of the night, his father said— longer than he'd expected. But sure enough she'd come back with the ticket. Kept—he said—like a pledge at her father's house, since his return from the war.

How's that? Chet asked. And so his father explained how it was that, fresh from the service—with nothing to show for himself but his name— he had promised every penny of his bonus to his wife. Just as soon as it came through.

And it didn't seem too shabby a thing! his father said. A pension— ha! More than most could offer then. And now? Well. Somethin' better than gold. I gave that ticket to her daddy on the day we was married, so's he could see I was good for it; that I meant my word. And by God, I did—I
do.
Still—it was all I could do to convince her, now. It's a fair lot to risk—she said—losing a job, when most folks don't have none. And what with leaving her all alone (I was dead set, I told her, on taking the boy) …

Here Douglas's father paused. With the back of his hand, he wiped the sweat that had begun to collect on his brow. Well, that was a small price to pay—he continued—when you thought of it. Of what they had coming to them, if they just dared stand up and ask. I won that bonus fighting—Douglas's father said. Blast me if I'm not going to win it again by doing the same. And sure enough—he continued, after they had traveled a few more paces together in silence—she'll thank me, once we get what it is we've been owed. We'll quit this place—that's one thing sure; start us up someplace new. Get us a plot of land somewheres. Virginia, maybe. Tennessee. Send back for Lou once everything's paid. That's right, Douglas's father said; I can swear it to you now, Chet, as God is my witness. Neither I nor my boy will be coming back this way, to work for the Duke or any other man.

Though Douglas's heart had, a moment before, thrilled at the sound of his father's voice—at the thought of the plot of land, in Virginia, or Tennessee, which would soon be their own—another feeling, more difficult to place, mixed in now as his father spread his arm in a wide arc behind them and Douglas traced the path that it made with his eyes. A dull pain—too deep to trace to its particular source—as he thought now, in whatever dim way he could, of the time and distance they would have to cover before everything was “paid,” and they could send for his mother.

His mother, who—at that very moment (Douglas's heart lurched at the thought of it)—was first waking. Was realizing again (if, over the course of the night, she'd forgotten) that she had—as his father had promised—been left quite alone.

Both Douglas's father and Chet were quiet now. Only their feet, marching roughly in step—though Chet's legs were so much longer— made any sound. Douglas's father had placed his right hand over his breast pocket—where, inside, his bonus ticket lay—and Douglas looked at his father's hand, and the breast pocket beneath it, then down at the road, at his father's feet. After a while, without noticing at first, he began to count his father's steps beside him. One. Two. Three. Four. Why his father's instead of his own? Five. Six. Seven … It kept
his mind occupied, and at the same time reassured him of the progress they made. If he looked out, instead, too far down the road, it seemed they were hardly moving at all, and so never would get any nearer to anything, or farther away.

—

I
T WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTER NOON BY THE TIME THEY REACHED
Junction City. By evening, they had boarded a train heading east, toward Topeka and Kansas City. They shared a car, and the last of Douglas's mother's bread, with two men also bound for Washington. In exchange for the bread, one of the men, a broad-shouldered man named Jim, opened up a can of beans, from which they took turns eating from a single spoon. After each bite, the men licked the spoon so clean it shone, even in the dimming light. Then, just as they finished the can, and the bread was gone, the train ground to a halt, though they hadn't arrived anywhere. They stayed put like that for nearly an hour. Douglas wondered if they would ever move again, or if they would stay put like that, and have to walk all the way to Topeka, or farther than that, in the morning. His shoes were already nearly worn out with walking, and they had only been gone a single day. There was even a hole in the toe of one of them, and the other was split along the inside seam so that it was no trouble at all for dirt and sand to get in and he had to shake his foot every third or fourth step in an effort to get it out again. But it never did come out, once it was in. Not until they stopped and he cleaned the inside of the shoe with a corner of his pocket handkerchief. Only then, for a short time, when they first began walking again, was there no sand in his shoe. Then there was again. And the more sand that piled in there, the more would come, or so it seemed. And no shaking or hopping would get it out, but still Douglas shook and hopped until they sat down again, and his father said, What's wrong, boy? Are you going to dance like that all the way to Washington? And when he showed his father the hole in his shoe, his father told him not to worry. He was going to get him some brand-new shoes in Kansas City when they arrived there, he said, and in
the meantime they would patch the ones he had up good and solid. He took out a thick wool sock and told Douglas to put it on and then he said, Now see if that ain't better, see if any of that dirt can come in now; for a while it could not, but his foot sweated and got sore, and the wool scratched at the places on his foot that had already been rubbed raw.