Bright's Passage: A Novel (14 page)

“You find any lemons, Bright?”

“No.”

“Huh. Well.” Sergeant Matthews walked upwind of the grave with a few other men in the burial detail and stood there smoking.

Bright touched the lemon in his pocket. He smelled his fingers, smelled them again, and then rolled another man into the hole.

There came a short, sharp whistle, and a tremendous explosion threw Bright sidelong into the brush at the bottom of a tree trunk. After a while he woke up and blinked dozily. Above him in the sky, even the sun seemed to have been jostled from its slow transit by the force of the shell’s impact. His ears were bleeding and a boot was resting against his cheek. He shrugged it off. It wasn’t his. On the hillside around him, a few of the others raised their heads. He stood and picked up the leg, which he had buried ten minutes before, and tossed it back into the
hole that they had almost finished filling when the shell hit. He and the others looked briefly for Sergeant Matthews and the other smoking men, finding only pieces here and there on the trees and scattered about the ground. These also were placed in the grave and covered.

He walked a hundred fifty yards back and lay down on his woolen blanket. His head was angled downhill, but he was too exhausted to change position. There was a mark on his face where the boot had kicked it. He took the lemon from his pocket. It was a small, runty thing with mottled skin. He put it to his nose and inhaled convulsively. Lifting it again above his face to look at it, he turned it over and over between his fingertips before finally putting it to his teeth. He bit a small hole in the rind and began to squeeze the fruit in his fist, gently, as one would milk an animal, coaxing the juice into his mouth. While he slowly pumped the lemon, his eyes turned themselves upward into the blank sky.

“What wreckage this King has wrought.”

Bright took the lemon away and spoke softly. “Not now.”

“A new King must be found. This one has soaked the world in blood. He has allowed War to become so terrible that it can kill all of mankind. No King of Heaven has ever allowed War to become so powerful.”

“I said not now,” Bright said again, and continued to suck the diminishing lemon until it was a leathery husk. Then he lay there, licking his teeth, contorting his lips as the sour taste turned somehow to sweetness on his tongue.

Light seeped in beneath the moist rags on his face, and he was being scooped up and carried in someone’s arms. At first he knew it was the angel. Then he knew for sure that he was about to be rolled into a grave. He began to twist and kick out against the walls of a narrow hallway.

“Shh shh shh. It’s all right,” a woman’s voice came cooing from nearby. “We’re moving you someplace you can be more comfortable. Just lie still, lie still.”

The arms held him close and he lay still.

They ascended a set of bare wooden stairs and went through a doorway, then the sound of the footsteps changed and they were clicking across stone. The rags fell from his eyes and he was looking into the face of the sandy-haired man who was carrying him, then past the man’s face and up into a dome of painted blue sky. The ceiling was gently illuminated from below, as if the sun were about to rise in all directions. Aside from the chance embroidery of clouds, the sky was clear. There were no cherubs, no judges, no dying saints. There were no angels or mustard gas, no smoke or beautiful young girls; the dome was simply, blessedly, empty. He felt that he might like to drift in that sky forever, breathe that clean, cold air, and leave the earth below to consume itself.

They passed by a grand piano, a row of potted ferns lining the curvature of the wall, and finally out from under the dome and into a tight brass elevator. The doors closed and they moved upward. A cool hand rested against his head. “You have a fever,” a woman’s voice said. “I’m going to put these back over your eyes now.”

He closed his eyes and felt the cool rags against his eyelids. The elevator chimed open and he was carried down a quiet hallway. There came a click as a door opened and then he was being laid on cool sheets.

“Thank you, Dennis,” the woman said. A moment later the door clicked once more as the man who had carried him left the room.

“Water,” Bright whispered. She helped him sit up and the rags fell away again, and he saw her distinctly for the first time. She was about the same age that he was: perhaps twenty, perhaps younger. Her face, like the rest of her, still had the soft glow of baby fat. There was a light-brown birthmark, like the silhouette of a duck’s head, between her temple and her hairline. Her eyes were downcast.

“Where’s my son?” he said after he had sipped from the glass she held to his lips. His voice was torn. “Where’s my boy?”

She placed the glass on the nightstand and crossed the room to where a bowl had been set. “I’m keeping him in my room for the time being,” she said quietly. “The doctor has been in to see him. His rash is worse than yours, but we rubbed him with jewelweed. He didn’t like that very much, but he’ll be all right.” Their eyes met, and both looked away. “The doctor,” she said. “The doctor gave me some salve and told me to put it on you.” She paused a moment, embarrassed. “On your chest.”

Bright said nothing and she came to the side of the bed to stand over him. Whatever was in the bowl was pasty and grayish
in the low light. She pulled the sheet down slowly, exposing the amber blisters of the rash. “Oh,” she said, and bit her lower lip.

“I dreamed that it was mustard gas,” he said.

“What?”

“They would put the ones who got gassed in the same tents with everyone who got shot and shelled. The people who got shot didn’t make much sound, just lay there feeling bad. The ones who got gassed, though, they cried all the time. Calling out. The nurses would set their sheets up like tents so no one would have to see them like that, but you could still hear them.”

She took a dollop of the lotion on three fingers and held it suspended over his chest.

“Go on,” he said to her. “Put it on.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. She looked into his eyes briefly and then stared at his chest.

“They ain’t gas burns,” he said. “It won’t be as bad as all that.”

Still biting her lip, she daubed the cold poultice on the slight cavity below his sternum. He made a low rasp in the back of his throat and craned his neck backward against the pillow. She spread the lotion thickly over the welts and boils. “He said it was poison ivy, the doctor did. But he also said you were just worn out and needed to rest and eat.” Her hands were so red and rough that, if it weren’t for their size, they could have belonged to a man twice her age.

“I fetched my goat out of some bushes after it was dark. Must have been then. And then I went and fed my boy.” He took a deep breath, winced, and let it out through his nose. “I about killed my own boy,” he said. His head seemed to sink deeper into the pillow.

“It’s not your fault.” She took a rag and wiped her hands of
the lotion, then began to wash them in the little marble sink. “It’s not,” she said. “Is that how you were feeding him? With the goat? Where is your wife?”

“She died,” he said. He began to push himself up against the headboard. “Then there was the fire.”

“It’s coming close,” the woman said. “Today is going to be a full day. Please lie down.” She dried her hands on a towel and lightly pushed him back down with a few fingers on his shoulder.

“My horse and my goat need food and water,” he said, staring upward at the white plaster ceiling with its fine cornice and moldings. “I need to go and fetch them.”

“Dennis can go.”

She began to move about the beautiful room, arranging some flowers in a vase on the mantel, fluffing the pillows, making sure the curtains were drawn tightly against the light. “Was your wife named Angel?” she asked.

“No.” He looked at her suspiciously. “Why?”

“I’m sorry.” She reddened, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear as she backed toward the bedroom door. “You were crying out in your sleep. I think that Angel is a beautiful name.” She put her hand on the doorknob. “I’m very sorry I asked,” she said again quietly. She opened the door and turned to leave.

“My name is Henry,” he said. “Thank you for taking care of my boy and me.”

“Mine is Brigid,” she said. “I help to cook here.” She switched off the lights. “It’s still early. You should sleep more.”

“I want to see my boy,” he said, out of the curtained darkness.

“I’ll bring him in to you once you’ve had a chance to rest a few more hours. Now sleep.” She closed the door behind her, and Bright lay in the room’s stately, cool gloom, a delicate floral smell like lavender rising from the medicine that she had rubbed on his chest.

The armistice that would end the War was to be signed at eleven in the morning. All fighting was to cease after that. Still, the hate came and went as usual at dawn, and, as the sun began to rise on the last day of the War, he found himself running across the fields a final time toward the coughing guns in front of him. It was then that the hand had reached up and grabbed him as he tried to pass. It held him tightly around his ankle, and Henry Bright did the one thing he had sworn to himself that he would never do. He looked down.

A man was looking up into his eyes. “Henry Bright,” the angel said.

And then a bullet from somewhere had hit Bright in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground. Sometime later the War ended, but none of the dead got up and he couldn’t get up either. He wondered if he was dead too, and he tried to prop himself up on one elbow. The stretch of pain across his arm was like crucifixion, and he had to lie back down. He began to feel as cold as the hand that had wrapped itself around his ankle.

“Angel!” he called, but if the angel heard him it didn’t answer. Keeping his arms very still at his sides, he strained to sit up again. This time the hand still held his ankle fast, giving him
something to pull against until he was finally in a sitting position. His teeth began to chatter. The fields around him seemed empty of life in all directions. Here and there, as if fissures had opened up in the crust of the world, puffs of smoke lifted and blew off in the breeze, but this seemed like the only movement. He called out to the angel again, but it gave no reply, and he knew somehow that it was gone.

He pulled the field dressing from the inside of his belt. There was a wax envelope filled with white powder, a bundle of lintin, two pins, and a roll of gauze. His shaking fingers dropped one of the pins on the ground, and his heart went thudding in the back of his head as he twisted to pick it up. He tried to hold the stays between his lips but his teeth wouldn’t keep still, so he stuck the pins in the leather of someone’s nearby boot heel. He pulled off his punctured jacket and then his bloody shirt. He poured his canteen on the wound, but he couldn’t see if it was clean. His good hand looked enormous and tremendously real while it did its work, as if it belonged to a stranger. He watched it pour the waxen envelope of powder into the wound in his shoulder, and he heard the pop and sizzle of the powder as it cauterized the hole. The sound was like the small-arms fire of a faraway front line where nobody knew that the War had ended. It burned badly, the powder, and he pressed the twist of lintin into the wound and watched it turn red before his eyes. He threw it away and applied the other piece, then wrapped the gauze bandage tightly around it, managing for a few seconds to hold the end of the dressing between his chattering teeth to keep it tight until he had it pinned. Then he fell backward again and lay there looking up at a sky that was empty of shells, empty of bullets, empty of gas and planes, empty of bearded old men and beautiful girls, empty of angels.

The Colonel stood in the general-merchandise store puzzling over his money. On the counter lay the half box of bullets that the lady had counted out. He had spied her working alone through the window and straightened his uniform in the reflection of the glass. He’d removed his hat, run his fingers through his thin gray hair, and told his boys to wait for him outside the establishment.

“I seem to have a few mites less than the purchase price,” he said to her.

“Well,” the lady tried, “you could just buy fewer bullets.” The old man had been standing there looking at the coins in his hand quizzically for almost a minute, as if more money might suddenly appear.

“Yes …” His voice trailed off, and he looked up at her as if she might have more to say on the subject.

“The rifle can’t hold more than a few bullets at a time anyway, so why don’t you just buy a few and then come back if you need more?”

“Contractions,” the Colonel said softly.

“What?” She tapped the box of ammunition impatiently. “If it was me, that’s what I’d do.” A bowl of sugar cubes sat near the register.

“Was there a man in here with a baby yesterday?”

Duncan and Corwin stood watching him through the window as he questioned the lady.

“What?” The lady seemed annoyed to have the subject changed.

“Yesterday,” he continued. “A father and an infant. Henry Bright is the man’s name.”

The lady’s face softened a bit. “That poor man,” she said. “His wife died, and it’s only him left to care for that little boy.” She shook her head and sucked in her cheeks against the bitterness of it all. “The world is a cruel place, and there’s no denying it.”

“A little boy,” said the Colonel. “A little baby boy.” His eyes drifted off the woman’s face and over her shoulder at the bolts of fabric a moment before they snapped back. “It is a cruel place and there is
indeed
no denying it,” he agreed.

“You’re right about that,” the woman said, reaffirming the fact. “Now,” she said, tapping the box again, “can I help you with anything else?”

“May I?” The Colonel pointed his finger close to the sugar bowl.

She looked at the man’s dirty hands and then at the clean white lumps of sugar. She took one from the bowl and placed it on the counter next to the bullets.