B. Alexander Howerton (14 page)

The procedure was routine, with no complications.  Julia,
however, had to be put under, because she was hysterical, and could not cease
her violent tremblings any other way.  Alan, pacing in the waiting room, wished
someone would knock him out.

Afterward, Alan helped her to his car.  They drove back to
her apartment in numb silence.  He helped her up the stairs, unlocked the door
with her set of keys, and ushered her inside.  She walked zombie-like over to
her overstuffed recliner, sat down, pulled an afghan over her, folded her arms,
and stared out the window, past the Wyrding Stone.

Alan had no idea what to do.  He stood in the middle of the
room, looking at her.  He started toward the kitchen, then stopped, then turned
toward Julia, then stopped.  He thrust his hands deep in his pockets and looked
up at the ceiling, then looked down at the floor.

“Sit down.  You’re making me nervous.”  Julia moved nothing
but her lips.

“Can I get you anything?”

“No.”

Alan sat down meekly on the edge of the couch and looked
pityingly at her.  She was as immobile as a statue.  For a seeming eternity,
neither spoke nor moved.

He finally said, almost inaudibly, “You know I love you.”

She whipped her head toward him, her eyes brimming with
tears.  “Can that change anything now?”

“No, of course it can’t, but….”

She turned to the window again.  “Then what’s the point?”

Alan’s jaw dropped open.  He suddenly felt as if he were not
even inhabiting his own body.  He had the strange sensation that he was floating
somewhere behind himself, watching the scene from a great distance.  After an
interminable, awkward silence, he worked up the courage to ask, “What are you
saying?”

“I don’t know, alright?  Just leave me alone!”  She waved
both her hands dismissively at him.

“Do you want me to go?”

“Go, stay, live, die, I don’t care.”

Now Alan felt a slight welling of anger rise inside him. 
“Now look, I’ve lost something here, too, today….”

She abruptly cut him off.  “Have you?  Have your really?  Do
you know what it’s like to have a life growing inside you?  To think you can
even hear the heartbeat?  Then to be told that that heartbeat is no good, that
that precious little life can’t make it, that a part of you is dead and has to
be ripped out?  Do you really know what that feels like?”  Alan could only
stare back, absolutely dumbfounded.  She turned again to the window.  “I didn’t
think so.”

After a long, awkward silence, Alan said, “Are you… blaming
me?”

“I have to blame someone.  You happen to be here.”

“That is completely unfair.”

Julia screamed at the top of her lungs, “DON’T TELL ME
WHAT’S UNFAIR!”

As if propelled by the blast, Alan slammed back into the
couch.  Julia slapped her hands over her face and started sobbing
uncontrollably.

Now Alan did not move.  After several minutes, Julia slowly
calmed down, although her sobs never completely dissipated.  She lowered her
hands and looked toward Alan with bloodshot eyes.  “I don’t think I can do this
anymore.  I don’t have the energy to start over.  We will always have this
hanging over our heads.  Even if we can repair our lives, and somehow continue
our relationship, I’ll always have this dread in the back of my mind that this
could happen again.  Maybe not, probably not, but I can’t face that possibility
at all.  Maybe we’re just not meant to be together.  Maybe this is a sign.”

Alan was powerless to move or speak.  He felt as if a
boulder the size of Michigan were laying on his chest.  He had difficulty
breathing.  Julia once again stared out the window.  With great effort, in
sympathy with a love he felt slipping away, Alan turned his head to match her
gaze.  He caught sight of the Wyrding Stone, casting its rays about, as if
absorbing all the energy from the room and dissipating it in transformed
energy.  He fought his own inertia and was finally able to stand.  He walked
like a condemned man over to the window sill and picked up the stone.  Staring
deeply into it, he said softly,  “Do you remember what Helen said when she gave
this to us?  She said ‘You may not necessarily know happiness in this life, but
you are meant to be together.  The stone has said so.’ ”  He turned to look at
her. “The stone chose us, Julia.  We have to try.” 

“The Stone! The Stone!”  In a raging fury, she leapt from
the chair and grabbed the stone from Alan’s grasp.  “I hate this damn stone!” 
She threw it with all her might at the window.  The sound of shattering glass
filled the air, and shards flew in every direction.  Alan had instinctively
ducked, although Julia had not thrown it in his direction.  Now he slowly
straightened and surveyed the damage.  Julia had flopped back onto the lounge
chair and was crying again.

She finally calmed down a bit, and began speaking in a
resigned tone, looking distractedly out the broken window.  “Can’t you see, I
just can’t do this anymore.  I can’t look at you, and touch you, and feel your
touch without remembering what our coming together has produced.  If that stone
was so magical and could bring us together, why couldn’t it have given us a
healthy baby?  It doesn’t make sense….” She trailed off.

“Julia, Julia,” Alan tried to say soothingly as he
approached to hug her.  She suddenly slapped him, very, very hard.  He recoiled
in utter shock.

“Leave.  Now.  I need to be alone,” she managed to squeak
out between sobs.

Alan felt entirely helpless.  He looked down at her for what
seemed an eternity, but was in reality only a few seconds, then slowly turned
and walked dazedly out of the apartment, shutting the door gently behind him. 
Now Julia really began to cry in earnest.

Wrapped in an impenetrable gloom, Alan did not even notice
the Wyrding Stone lying amongst shattered glass, glittering like a thousand
mirrors, in the front yard of Julia’s apartment building, as he got
mechanically into his car and drove away.

Miss Chatham!  Miss Chatham!  Come quickly!”

“What is it, Aung See?”  Mary Chatham rarely saw her aide so
excited.

“There is a man passed out on verandah!”

Mary dropped the bandages she was restocking in the cupboard
and followed a chattering and pointing Aung See out to the verandah of the old
governor’s mansion in Rangoon, which had been converted into a hospital.  As
Aung See had said, there was a man, dressed in an aviator’s garb, with a
satchel slung around his shoulder, unconscious on the porch.  He was shivering,
even in the stifling heat and humidity of Burma’s late tropical summer.  Mary
rolled him onto his back, performing a quick examination.  She peeled his
eyelids back and examined his irises.  She opened his mouth and peered into the
cavity.  She took his pulse.

“Malaria,”  she determined.  “Quick, get two orderlies to
take him to a bed in 3C.  I’ll go get the quinine solution.  Hurry!”

The next morning, Bill Langston awoke in an unfamiliar room
with a splitting headache.  His tongue felt like it was wearing a wool sweater,
and he still shook intermittently.  Once his eyes could focus, he believed he
was beholding a lovely dark-haired angel, haloed by white light, smiling down
at him.  The angel reached out, felt his forehead, then said, “I think we
caught it in time.  You’ll be fine after a few days’ rest.”  The halo resolved
into a nurse’s cap.

“Wha… Where am I?” was all he could blurt out.

“You’re in the Royal Air Force Hospital in Rangoon.  You do
remember you’re in Rangoon, don’t you?”  She laughed good-naturedly.

He relaxed back into the pillow.  “Yes, yes, but I don’t
remember how I got here.  The last thing I recall was working on my plane’s
engine, then getting an awful headache.”

“Well, you somehow managed to stumble here.  We found you
unconscious on the front porch.  You’re American, aren’t you?”

“Yes, yes I am.  Bill Langston.”  He extended his hand, then
winced at the effort.

Mary helped him put it back down.  “Your joints are swollen
from the malaria.  You must rest.”

“But I have to….”

She wagged a finger.  “Tut, tut.  I am the master here.  You
will do as I say.  You must rest here for a week, and take quinine solution, or
you’ll just make yourself worse, and I might not be there to help you next time.”

Bill sighed with resignation.  “all right, miss….”

“Chatham.  Mary Chatham.”  She patted the back of his hand. 
“Now I mean it. Stay in bed for three days, then, if I approve it, you may
attempt to stand and walk to the verandah.  Understood.”

“Understood.”

“Good.  Now, I have some other patients that need attending,
and I’ll bring you some broth later.  Sleep now.”

Bill smiled sheepishly and closed his eyes.

“There’s a good fellow.”  And she was off to tend to her
other duties.  Bill fell promptly back asleep.

He did actually stay in bed for three days, because to
attempt otherwise brought on waves of nausea and dizziness.  He slept the
majority of the time, and spent the rest of the time gazing out the window at
the dense foliage of the Burmese jungle, which had only been beaten back barely
enough to erect the few artifacts of civilization that constituted Rangoon, and
constantly threatened to re-encroach the lost territory.  On the evening of his
third day, Mary helped him walk falteringly out to the verandah for some fresh
air.  Bill leaned on the railing and breathed deeply, then coughed
spasmodically.

“Take care,” Mary said, rubbing his back through his robe. 
“You don’t want to push yourself too hard.”

Bowing his head and trying to gain mastery of his own body,
Bill waved a dismissive hand in the air.  Mary backed away a step.  Bill took
another, slower, deep breath, and this time sighed it out, with an obvious look
of relief.  He looked out at the town of Rangoon, which spread itself below the
hill that the old governor’s mansion occupied.  The few lights that were being
lit in the twilight battled the encroaching darkness and stillness of the
looming jungle.  The last gleams of the sun were catching the towering golden
spire of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, which rose like God’s finger pointing to the
heavens from the middle of the town.

“There’s a strange beauty about this place.  I love it
here,” Bill said appreciatively.

Mary came up next to him and leaned on the railing.  “It is
an odd place.  I cannot say that I understand it.  But I do so love the
people.”

Bill turned to gaze at Mary.  “I want to thank you for
saving my life.”

Mary blushed an turned away.  “I was only performing my
duty.”

Bill put his hand gently on top of hers on the railing. 
“No, really, I mean it.”

She withdrew her hand, gently but swiftly.  “Are you
Americans always so forward?”

It was Bill’s turn to back up a couple of steps.  “I… I only
wanted to thank you.”

She smiled at him maternally.  “That’s quite all right.” 
They both turned to watch night descend upon the town.  Then Mary helped Bill
return to his bed.

The next day, Mary allowed Bill to sit in a wicker chair on
the verandah for lunch.  She attended to a few other duties, then joined him
for a break.  “I must say, I do find your orange hair rather striking.  Was
your mother an orangutan?”  Bill quickly rolled up the newspaper he was reading
and swatted at her.  Giggling, she leaned back, avoiding the swing.  “Come now,
you don’t want to overexert yourself.”

“Well, isn’t there something in your hypocritical oath about
not exciting the patient?”

“That’s ‘Hippocratic oath,’ and anyway, I’m not a doctor, so
I can do anything I like,” she said imperiously, looking down her nose at him.

“Well, if I relapse, it’s all your fault.”  They laughed.

“So, tell me about yourself,” Mary said, after a short,
awkward pause.

“Well, like you already guessed, I’m an American.  What’s a
Yank doing way out here, in this god-forsaken jungle, you’re probably
wondering.”  Mary nodded, grinning.  “Well, that’s a long story.”

Mary folded her arms. “You’re not going anywhere for several
days yet.”

“Oh, all right.  Let’s see, how far back do I go?  Might as
well go back to when I graduated from Princeton in ’29.  My father, a rich Wall
Street banker, finally released my trust fund to me.  To his consternation, I
promptly cashed it in and bought me the best plane I could find at the time, a
Stinson Detroiter.  You see, he wanted me to follow him into the banking
business, but I couldn’t put up with all that stuffiness and pomposity.  I had
to get out, to go find adventure.  Lindbergh had crossed the Atlantic a couple
of years earlier, and there was nothing I wanted more than to fly around the
world and see what there was to see.  I was going to do that for a year or so,
then settle down.

“Well, of course, the market crashed later that year, and
there was no work for a young fresh college grad like me.  Turns out it wasn’t
such a bad move to cash in my trust after all.  But at that time, all I had was
my wits and my plane, so I decided to make a living that way.  I traveled all
over the world, ferrying cargo and passengers for whoever had the money.  I’ve
seen a lot of places and done a lot of things, and now I’m here.  I fly
supplies and ammunition up the Burma Road to Kunming for Chiang Kai-Shek’s
army.  How about you?”

“Me?”  Mary gazed off into the distance. “I’m in the nursing
corps, supporting the British war effort.  In truth, I’m just a young Sussex
girl who thought she wanted adventure and to see the world.  But now that I’m
here, I realize it’s not all beauty and excitement.  There is quite a lot of
tawdriness and grief in the world.”  She brought her attention back to Bill
with perky determination as she slapped her lap and said, “But I’m here, and there
is plenty of work to be done, and I make the best of it.”  She smiled wanly at
him, seeking acceptance of her situation.

Bill struggled to sit up straighter and exude more
authority.  “Well, sister, the way I see it, life’s too short to waste it away
wishing you were somewhere else.  Why, if you had a mind to, we could hop on my
plane and be gone tomorrow.  Where would you like to go?”

Mary looked down at her lap.  “My place is here.”

“No, seriously, I mean it, if you could go anywhere, right
now, where would you go?”  Bill gazed earnestly at her.

Mary returned his gaze and saw a deep sincerity in his
blue-gray eyes.  Her heart fluttered in a way she had never felt before.  She
was about to open her mouth to answer when Aung See came out on the porch.  “Miss
Chatham, come quick, please.  Man in 2C having convulsions.”

“Excuse me,” she said, and quickly ran into the hospital. 
Bill smirked to himself, then looked out and surveyed the town lying below.

That evening, Bill was again leaning on the railing of the
verandah, watching the sunset.  Mary eventually found him and approached him. 
“Feeling well enough to make it out here on your own now?”

Without warning he turned and gathered her in his arms, and
kissed her.  At first she was immobile with shock.  Then she began to struggle,
pushing his shoulders with her hands to try to disengage.  But he was too
strong for her, and, once the initial shock wore off, she found herself
enjoying the kiss.  While not altogether submitting, she ceased struggling. 
Finally, still holding her, Bill pulled his head back to gaze into her dark
eyes.  “I have something for you,” he spoke in a low tone.

“You do?” She responded nervously, not knowing what to
expect next.

He released her and reached down to the satchel at his feet,
that she had not noticed before.  As she attempted to casually straighten her
hair and dress, he fumbled in the bag, then removed a small bundle, about half
the size of a human head, wrapped in a leather pouch. 

“This is not the first time I’ve had malaria.  I got it in
Barbados in ’37 as well.  An old black witch woman took me into her hut and
cured me.  It was a bad case; I almost died.  She danced around me and poured
vile concoctions down my throat for a week, although I didn’t know it.  I was
delirious the whole time.  When I finally came to, she was smiling at me like I
was her new-born babe.  She said, ‘You gonna git sick agin, boy.  You gonna
need healin’ agin.  The woman who heals you then, she gonna heal your body
and
your heart.  ‘Cause you sick in the heart.  You don’ know where you belong. 
She gonna show you.  When you find her, you give her this.’ ”  He unwrapped the
bundle to reveal a strange stone, clear yet colorful, which caught the rays of
the single electric bulb on the verandah and cast them onto the ceiling in
splashes of color.  “She called it the Wyrding Stone.  She told me that the two
people it brought together were destined for each other.  She said it had
worked its magic for her, and now it was my turn.  I carry it with me everywhere,
never knowing when I’m going to find my healing angel.  Now I’ve found her.” 
He handed the stone to Mary.

She was stunned, speechless.  She gazed into the stone,
entranced by it, then looked up at him.  He was smiling down at her.  He took
her by the shoulders.  “Come away with me,” he implored.  “I’ll be well in a
couple of days.  Come with me, and we’ll fly away, anywhere you’d like.”  His
penetrating eyes did not leave hers.

She was entranced, entrapped.  A thousand emotions cascaded
over her soul in rapid succession.  She was overwhelmed.  “I…. I have to go.” 
She broke away and ran inside, as Bill reached after her.  “Mary!”

She raced up to her small room, shut the door, flung herself
on her bed, and sobbed.  The stone softly glowed beside her.

The next morning Bill was sitting on the verandah reading
the paper, sipping tea.  Mary came out onto the porch, and, not expecting to
see him, quickly turned and began reentering the hospital.

“Mary,” he called imploringly.  She hesitated, glancing
sidelong at him through the screen of the door she held open.  “Mary.  Please
come and talk to me.”  Indecision racked her brain.  She started back inside,
then stopped, backed up a step, then resumed walking forward, then stopped
again.  “Mary,” Bill called softly.  Finally she slowly stepped back, letting
the screen door swing shut, and sheepishly approached Bill.  He reached out and
grabbed the back of the other wicker chair at his table, pivoting it to make it
easier for her to access it.  “Please sit down.”  She sat down gingerly on the
edge, her back straight, and folded her hands in her lap, staring resolutely at
them.

Bill took a deep breath and sighed it out.  “I am so sorry I
came on too strong last night.  I was just so happy to have found my angel, I
didn’t know what else to do.”  Despite her nervousness, Mary felt a surge of
warmth spread across her cheeks at these words.  “I know you’re meant for me,
and me for you.  I’ve looked into that stone on countless nights, asking when
I’d find you.  The night after I came here, I asked it again.  It told me in a
dream that night that I’d found you.  I know it sounds crazy, and you probably
don’t believe me, but we’re meant to be together.”  Mary couldn’t suppress a
brief smile, though she continued to look down.

After a pause, she said matter-of-factly, “Mr. Langston,
you’ve been ill.  The fever has obviously addled your brain.  It is only
natural that you would have strong feelings for the person who brought you back
to health.  I’ve seen it before….”

“Bill whipped around in his chair to face Mary, and clasped
her hands in his.  She tingled as she felt his warmth.  “Mary, you know what
I’m saying is true.  I know you feel it, too.  I can tell.  I can see it in
your eyes, in your smile, in the way you look at me.  Say you’ll come away with
me.  If you hate it here so much, we’ll never go anywhere tropical again.  Come
to America with me, or back to England, or we’ll find our own private island
out in the pacific. Anywhere!  Just come with me.  Please.”