The Secret of Raven Point (16 page)

Because of Tuck,
she thought.
He’s what is really haunting me.
She needed to find out, once and for all, if Barnaby knew what had happened to Tuck. Even if Barnaby was drugged, even if it meant angering Dr. Willard. Then at least she’d be done with the nightmarish interviews.

Juliet also decided to write to Barnaby’s wife. For weeks the question of what, if anything, the army had told this woman had plagued her. Suppose Barnaby’s letters had just stopped? His wife was entitled to the facts, no matter how disturbing. And news of a suicide attempt certainly bested an unexplained silence. Rising in the semidarkness of her tent, Juliet composed a single-page missive describing Barnaby’s medical status, noting his auditory startle and visual tracking and other healthy reflexes, his drug-induced lapse into coherent speech, and her conviction that he would improve,
though the timetable was uncertain. At the end, Juliet added a brief postscript—she had to—asking if Barnaby had ever mentioned Tucker Dufresne.

Before breakfast, Juliet took the letter to the PX and then sought out the table in the Officers’ Mess where Dr. Willard was seated. She made small talk about supplies with the other nurses and then, between sips of coffee, asked Dr. Willard if he intended to conduct another Sodium Pentothal session with Barnaby.

“I’d like to assist again,” she said. “I wanted you to know that.”

Willard removed his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief. When he slid them back on, he looked at her with concentrated surprise. She felt sweat gather on her forehead. A fierce humidity had laid claim to the landscape. For days the sun had vanished behind screens of gray vapor, but the moisture never managed to gather into rain. There was a hot, jellied stillness to the air.

“You haven’t been upset since our last session?” he asked.

Juliet wiped at her brow. “What do you mean?”

“No need for me to put ideas in your head.”

The people seated around them began to gather their utensils and bowls; they pushed their chairs back and stood.

“Dr. Willard, you said there are a lot of locked doors in his mind. I just thought we might try another one.”

“I appreciate that you’re ready to pick locks and rattle doors on his behalf. Unfortunately, it’s a problem of logistics at the moment. The Isolation Ward is occupied, and it would be wildly irresponsible of me to subject the patients in the Recovery Tent to his memories. They could have troubling effects on the listeners. As I’m sure you can understand.”

Juliet looked away; did he know about her nightmares? Was he having the same ones?

“Well, surely there’s somewhere else,” she said.

The night was sweltering, the air thick and moist. Willard’s tent was a mess of textbooks and notebooks; graphs and charts hung from the canvas. At the head of his bedroll, where a pillow should have been, sat a black Smith-Corona typewriter, a letter abandoned midsentence. Nearby, on the ground, a tin bowl held a shaving brush and razor; a Monarch Lincoln camera sat barricaded by film rolls. Clutter everywhere, but not a single personal effect—no photographs, no postcards, no souvenirs or trinkets. The only private element of the space was the distinct musk of aftershave—rosemary and cedar, she thought—a scent Juliet hadn’t realized she associated with Willard.

She seated herself beside Barnaby’s litter, which they had set just inside the entrance of the tent, his feet jutting out into the night. Juliet hugged her knees so as not to disrupt the space.

Willard was busy rigging the recording device. A parabola of sweat stained the back of his shirt.

“This is much cheerier than the Isolation Ward,” said Juliet.

“Except my domestic organization habits leave something to be desired.”

“Are these books stacked for an air raid, or are you reading them?”

“I wrote one or two of those.”

Juliet thought she detected a boastful smile, but Willard turned quickly to dip the needle into the vial of Sodium Pentothal. He passed the needle to Juliet.

“We’re going to give you another injection, Christopher.”

The day before, Juliet had removed and redressed some of the bandages on Barnaby’s face, and she could now see the bridge of his nose and a section of forehead. His eye was open, motionless
and vacant as usual, but as she slid the needle into his arm, his eyelid fluttered.

“Private Barnaby, do you feel relaxed?” Willard asked.

“Hmmmm . . . very relaxed.”

“My name is Dr. Willard, I’m your doctor here, looking after you. Can you do me a favor and raise your right arm? Excellent. Your left? Wonderful. Can you touch your face for me?”

Barnaby raised his fingertips to his chin.

“I got bandages.”

“Yes, bandages from when you were shot in the head. I wanted to talk about the day you got injured. The day you were shot.”

“It
burned
.”

“The bullet?”

Barnaby winced.

“Okay, if you could, tell me what happened
before
the bullet struck you. Let’s say the hour before.”

“I had such rotten luck, pulling the short straw. I had nothing but rotten luck since I got to Italy.”

“Why were you pulling straws?”

“For the forward observer. ‘TP’ patrol, we call it:
target practice,
’cause that’s what Germans use you for. You’re sniper bait. Wandering right up there in the German lines. ‘Go tell me if Jerry ate beans or sausage for dinner,’ Captain says. ‘Follow the sound of the gunfire and locate Jerry’s exact position.’ I sure as hell didn’t wanna go. But I didn’t have a choice. Short straw. Those are the rules. A few of the guys in the squad reminded Captain that I’d been seeing eyeballs in the trees, that I wasn’t eating. But Captain said fair is fair, I got the straw, and he wasn’t gonna chuck a thousand-year tradition of drawing straws on account of one yellow belly.”

“Where was this?”

“I never saw maps. All I’d been told was there were two parts to Italy: mountain Italy and flat Italy; you go up or you go across.
Mountaly
and
flataly
. This was in
flataly
. In some forest. North of
Rome. Thick tree trunks, thick leaves. There were acorns or walnuts on the ground. They were crunching underfoot, loud as thunder.”

“Were you alone?”

Barnaby pushed himself upright, his eye alert. “See, I heard
footsteps
. The others were supposed to hang back until I radioed in the German position. Nero and Jensen were doing a second patrol, but went in a different direction. Captain Brilling is famous for going forward with his men, said he would never ask a man to do something he wouldn’t do himself, but he wasn’t coming with me. I tried hard to keep myself calm. I lugged my rifle through trees, trying to be mouse quiet. But the twigs and acorns kept crunching and my legs started shaking. My teeth were clacking so hard, I wedged two pieces of gum in my mouth. I was alone, you see, all alone with who knew how many Germans taking aim. . . .

“The Germans were supposed to be across this stream, on the other side of a blasted bridge, hiding out with a machine-gun encampment, but the fog was so thick I couldn’t see a bridge. I was walking through a cloud, giant trees rising up out of nowhere. It was so foggy, I suddenly thought I might be dead already. I couldn’t tell if I was moving forward or backward. Finally I bumped into a rock and sat on the ground but I couldn’t breathe right. I was sucking in the fog, my lungs gulping it down like I was drowning. I was making too much noise and I knew that big blue eye could see me.”

“The blue eye?”

“From my mess tin!”

“It’s all right, Christopher,” said Juliet, stroking his arm. Would the vision ever leave him? Could such a horror be erased from the mind?

Barnaby’s knee shook, and Juliet looked to Willard, worried this might mark the end of the session, worried that the Pentothal would wear off and she’d lose her chance to ask about Tuck.

“His pulse is still steady,” Juliet whispered, truthfully.

Willard nodded, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. “Tell us what happened next, Christopher.”

“I sat there ’til the fog lifted. I don’t know how long went by. A few hours, I reckon. It was getting dark. I couldn’t see anything but dark branches overhead. But I could hear an owl hooting so loud it was like he was sitting on my head; frogs were croaking, and those footsteps, crunch, crunch, crunching across those acorns. Then guns were firing. Before I knew it, the ground was exploding.

“I ran ’til I felt water on my feet and realized I was in the stream. I moved left, but I heard a bang, and water came pouring down on me. I turned right and heard this
snap-snap-snap
. It sounded like laughing; that’s what a machine gun sounds like, bullets laughing at you. And they were calling my name,
Barnaby, Barnaby,
so I went underwater. I stayed under ’til my lungs were fit to burst and came up gulping. The air filled my lungs so fast I thought I’d choke. Then the fog was lifting and across the way I saw a row of Germans, flat on their bellies, guns pointed at me.

“I moved left and right but the bullets kept coming. Finally I crawled out of the water and stopped moving.”

Juliet thought this might be a break in his tale, a chance to ask about Tuck, but Willard interjected: “Where was
your
pistol? Did you fire at the Germans?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I kept seeing the whole thing like it wasn’t me. Like
I
was that big old blue eye staring down. And they kept shooting but they weren’t hitting me, like they didn’t really wanna kill me, just wanted to scare me. But I
wanted
them to hit me, I
wanted
it to end.”

A look of surrender glazed Barnaby’s eye, and his voice softened,
drifting into a child’s bedtime meanderings. “I just lay down, closed my eyes, and thought of home. I wanted a moment of peace before I died. I thought of Tina. She’s got a baby coming. I told her I loved her, and suddenly all the noise stopped. Then I felt that heat. Like a coal poker through my brain.”

“Did you
shoot
yourself?”

“It wasn’t me pulling the trigger.”

“Then who did?”

Barnaby whispered: “
The blue eye.
” His chest rose abruptly and his lungs began to pump hard. Juliet felt his pulse quicken.

Dr. Willard set his pen in the open spine of his notebook. “Okay, Private Barnaby, when I count to ten, you’re going to return to consciousness—”

“Christopher.” Juliet rose to her knees. It was now or never. “Christopher, did you ever know a man named Tucker? He was in Sergeant McKnight’s unit.”

“Tuck-er,” Barnaby said slowly. His head turned from side to side, as though he were looking for someone. “Tucker!” he yelped. His chest heaved and his hands clutched at the litter. “Forgive me!”

Willard’s hand landed leadenly on Juliet’s shoulder and pulled her away. “Enough.” He rubbed Barnaby’s back and resumed counting while Juliet penitently placed her hands in her lap. She wanted desperately to interrupt his count, to ask Barnaby more, but stopped herself. At ten, Barnaby’s eye flickered to alertness before glazing over with its familiar blank stare.

“Christopher, can you lift your right arm for me?” Willard asked. “Christopher, can you lift your left arm? Christopher, can you hear me? . . . Christopher? . . . Christopher?!”

Willard tossed his notebook to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” Juliet whispered.

Willard shook his head, staring at his recording device.
“Attachments to people from home are quite strong,” he said, “even in this mess. I assume this Tucker is a boyfriend? A fiancé?”

“My brother.”

He looked up. “Brother.”

“I know it wasn’t the appropriate time.”

Lifting his notebook from the floor, he mumbled: “Understatement.”

“I thought it might be my only chance.”

Willard took a slow, deep breath as he studied her. He pushed a tuft of hair from his glasses. “Your brother is dead? Missing?”

She paused. “Missing.”

Willard’s gaze traveled in rapt deliberation around the cluttered tent. In all his work exploring the suffering of men at the front, did he have any idea, Juliet wondered, the effect it had on their families back home? Did he understand her desperation? The sense of responsibility she felt to her brother?

A gravelly sigh slowly wrested its way out of him. “Nurse Dufresne, I’m far from perfect, but I try my best to be a compassionate man. I’m sorry for what you must be going through. It must be awful. I won’t question you further on this subject—not for lack of caring, but because I believe in maintaining a professional emotional distance. The work we do is emotional enough. That said, please understand that these sessions are crucial to rebuilding this man’s emotional and mental health.” Willard gently laid his hand on Barnaby’s forehead. “He’s
drugged,
he’s vulnerable. As you can see, I walk him carefully through a sequence of events, I follow where his mind takes us; we open doors slowly, cautiously. You can’t yank him into a different line of questioning; it could be harmful. I truly wish I could help you, and I wish Barnaby could help you, and perhaps he can once he is recovered. But right now
he can’t even help himself.”