We Were Beautiful Once (43 page)

“What're you doing locked up?”

“Ask that fuck next to you,” Jack answered in a raspy voice.

Infuriated, Cho hollered something in Chinese.

“He says we can't talk. I'll make contact,” Trent said coolly.

Later that night, Trent returned to Jack's cell. “Jack, Jack,” he whispered.

“Trent?”

“Yeah, they got me sleeping out back in a shed, can't talk long, but wanted to catch up.”

The men talked about family and briefly about their experiences following their separation at boot camp. “You'll never guess who's here,” said Jack.

“How the fuck do I know, who?”

“Girardin, you know, the guy my sister dated. He was up at your place once.”

“Girardin, how could I forget?  That bastard ratted on me—remember the car thing?”

“Oh yeah,” Jack chuckled.

“Laugh, all you want...  but if I see him...  he's toast.”

A sound came from outside, and the men went silent. “I better get back,” Trent warned.

 

The next morning before six, two guards took Jack from the four-by-four cell to a seven-foot deep, three by five hole covered by a rotting oak door. They pushed the cover aside and shoved Jack backward.  He fell onto a floor rife with dog bones.  Unsure about what he stepped on, he leaned against the wall until his legs gave way, and he fell on his back. A china-blue sliver of daylight came through a crack in the center of the cover. Eventually the sky turned cobalt black; the temperature plummeted.  He started walking up and back, before a rush of diarrhea forced him to the pail. He curled up, trying to stay awake, fearing he would die from overexposure. About an hour later a wool blanket and a tarp fell into the hole. He wrapped himself, fell asleep. Next morning, a guard lowered half a bowl of millet. It went this way for three days and nights, and on the fourth day his meal did not come. He felt he would die from hunger, thirst, the dryness in his eyes. He had shortness of breath—like he did after beatings from his father or the prison guards. He curled into a fetal position, his eyes opening and closing and producing a stroboscopic view that encircled him. Then it happened. He imagined he faced the dirt black wall where a man—exactly like himself, but a civilian—looked through a green stained glass window. He heard a deep, low voice.

“Jack, my man, who dropped you here?”

“Dunno, slipped in from nowhere,” he answered, wondering where the voice came from.

“Jack-Be-Nimble, where are you?”

“Right,  right here,” he sobbed, adding, “I don't understand.”

“Jack-Be-Quick. My brains blew. I'm on the other side...  I flew.”

“Tell me, what is it you say?” he begged through sobs.

“Soul drifted one way, body another.”

And so it went, hearing an incomprehensible ghost, but answering best he could. In due course, Jack slept, waking the next day to the sound of the sliding cover and a sub-zero blast of air. A guard handed him a bowl, half rice, half water. Then he heard the voice again.

“Jack, you've dried, died.”

He faced the wall. An image, twisted eyes, stared back.  A voice coming from deep inside, “With neither soul nor love you're ole, caught in a murky fold. Tipping man, one end points to heaven and the other hell, a swirl, a slow whirl, gyrating, rotating 'round you can't see, out, in, up, down, crack a light, look, you can't reach it, can you...  went by...  my, my.”

Jack listened spellbound. “Another chance, missed, pissed, can't choose fast to outlast the list. Ha, ha. Don't lose sight of it. Get your timin' right so you can fight. Don't slide. Hide, hurry, options are...  narrow, big arrow.”

And it went this way, talking nonsense, isolated, until the guards dumped him back in the hut, delirious, malnourished, his sour smell adding to the gut wrenching odor that already saturated the shadowy quarters. He lay twisted, doubled over at the door like an old drifter coughing up dry air. He felt Roger and Montoya drag him to a spot between them. Someone removed his clothes, laid them out flat to dry, and checked his body. Except for the evident mud and caked feces, there were no misshapen bones or bruises.  But his hands and finger joints were swollen to almost twice their normal size, nails thickened, yellowed, several split to the cuticle. Montoya saw Roger bring in a heap of snow, melt it and bathe Jack, inch by inch. The men watched. They had never seen one man wash down another man.  Someone brought back an extra portion of soup and in a week's time Jack seemed to regain strength—although he had a raging cold. Roger on one side, Montoya on the other, he felt secure.

In the weeks that followed Jack contracted something that made his hands puffy and more ominous, and he had a wound on his leg, hardened by a pus oozing scab. His mind was far from right—not that it was by any measure before his incident in the pit—but Roger was more concerned about the leg infection. A blizzard blew in from Siberia, giving Roger the opening to make a run to the storeroom where the Chinese kept medical supplies. Guards were safely indoors, and by staying in the shadows and the cover of snow blowing at 70 miles per hour, he had the opportunity he needed. The storeroom was unlocked, and he easily retrieved a bottle of alcohol and clean gauze. He was confidently on his way back to the hut, when he felt a blow from behind from a baton-swinging guard, who dragged him to the dayroom. There he saw commandant Cho, and standing next to a wall map, a prisoner that looked like a matured Trent Hamilton.  The man glanced at him and turned away.  A Chinese interrogator asked him what he was doing, and Roger confessed he was looking for medical supplies, which was corroborated by the evidence the guard found after he clubbed him. Roger thought that he would be put in the lock-up behind the dayroom or maybe even the hole, but the Chinese, for reasons he could not fathom, dragged him back to the hut.

But Roger was right: it was Trent, and Trent had recognized him.  And it was something that would haunt Trent throughout the winter that lay ahead.

Two nights later, Jack relapsed, rambling, in a daze, a fever, his leg on fire. A bright moon shone through a small crack in a window covered with boards and revealed Jack's swollen, ashen face—open-mouthed, struggling to scream, eyes wide, trance-like, staring into the abyss. He felt Roger lift his head on his lap.  He felt him press his fingers over his eyelids and close them, as he had seen done for more than a few dead men.

“Sleep, Jack, sleep.  This will end.”  

Jack's mouth grimaced shut.

Just before Jack passed out he heard Roger say, “Today, I saw patches of green across the river—two boys sitting on the shore like a painting, like Homer's
Boys in a Pasture
I once saw in a museum, a long time ago.”

 

 

 

JACK LOOKED FOR JULIE IN THE BACK OF THE COURTROOM. Their eyes met. He took a deep breath.

“Mr. Prado, before the break I'd asked if it were not true that Roger Girardin was one of the men assigned to mine clearing.  But more directly, let me ask you, Mr. Prado, do you know what happened to Roger Girardin?”  Nick asked, his shoulders noticeably slumped.

“I once believed I'd killed him!”

Doubting what he had just heard, Nick asked for confirmation.  “You? I'm sorry, Mr. Prado, please repeat that?”

The courtroom stilled. Jack planted his face in the palm of his hands. Nick asked quietly, “Mr. Prado, why did you believe you killed Roger Girardin?”

“It's a long story,” Jack said, sounding completely spent.

“You knew Roger before the war, did you not?”

“Of course,” he answered, as if everybody knew.

“He was your sister's boyfriend?” Nick asked, guardedly.

“Yes,” he answered sheepishly.

“Did he die?  Are you sure?”

“I'm sure.”

“How did it happen?  How did that poor boy die?”

“It comes back to me like a dream remembered. I'd really forgotten, put it far back in my mind, until I heard Mr. Preston. Sometime, late winter '53, they sent a few of us to clear mines, like Mr. Preston said. A bunch of us, me and Roger. Don't remember the other names. I was out of it most of the time. A zombie—I felt like a zombie.  Guards gave us iron rods, pickaxes, you know.  We had to stab the ground, looking for mines, because it was snowed over.”

 “Was Trent Hamilton there?” Nick asked.

“Don't know.  Don't see him when I try to remember.  But I see the dog that followed him. Strange, I don't see Trent, uh, Mr. Hamilton.  We were in teams of two or three. Teams were two, three hundred yards apart.  I see me and Roger away from the rest, poking around a mound next to some woods. All of a sudden, an explosion. Guard went down—blew his leg off at the knee. Dead, I figure. I see Roger, too. He's about ten feet from me...  on the ground. When I get to him, he's bleedin' from the gut. I put my hand on his coat. It's warm, wet. He's in shock. I figure...  still able to know what was goin' on. Asks me, how bad. I don't know. ‘Don't let me die like this,' he begs. Blood soaks his coat. ‘Can't do it,' I tell him. ‘Do it...  do it before they come, don't let me die like this.' I'd been in a fog. I don't know what to do. If his gut's opened? The worst. You die, slow. Hear men yelling, getting closer. I see the dog.”

 

Lindquist looked to the back of the room where Julie sobbed openly.  “I am afraid I will have to ask the marshal to escort out anyone who may be interrupting these proceedings.”

 

Nick waited until the courtroom quieted down.  “Trent's dog?”

“Yeah, the mongrel.”

“And Trent?”

“Like I said, no. But I'm confused. I turned Roger on his side. The guard with no legs had a rifle. I ran over got it, ran toward Roger. It's hazy. Thought I heard a shot.”

“What do you mean ‘thought you heard a shot?'” Nick asked, measuring his words.

“Well, gunfire, but somebody cold-cocked me. Maybe I imagined all of it.”

“Did you fire the weapon?”

“Don't know.”

“Was the weapon aimed at Roger?”

“Maybe.”

“Was it your intention to kill him, as he begged?”

“Don't know.”

“What happened then?”

“I came to in the cell in back of the dayroom.”

“Were you grilled?”

“No, left alone. About a week later, brought me out. Bunch of Chinese, maybe five, sitting at a long table. Cho was there and Trent, too—he had the brown dog. Asked me what happened. Trent translated. Told them much as I remembered. Claimed I'd shot him. So I figured I did but couldn't remember.”

“Shot Roger?”  Nick repeated what he had heard. “You figured you'd shot Roger?”

“Yes, yes, shot.”

Stubbornly, Nick wanted Jack to add an element of doubt that he had shot the boy. “But you don't know for sure?”

“No, no, don't know for sure.”

“You did not defend yourself?” Nick shouted.

“Told them I saw someone else. Between us, I'm not sure.”

“They didn't believe you?”

“Guess not.”

 “What'd they say?”

“They ordered me to be shot,” Jack gulped.

“Did they say you killed him?”

“No, don't think they actually said that, no. Said I shot him. I remember they didn't say I killed him. Next I knew, I was hauled off by half-dozen guards. Walked for a day, toward Manchuria. Crossed the Yalu, over one part that still had ice. Asked if I was going to die, nobody talked.”

“Where'd you end up?”

“A holding cell.”

“How long?”

“'Bout a year, don't know, seemed like that. Finally, me and about two dozen other guys were taken back to Panmunjom, and the U.N. took us from there.”

“Did you tell the army what happened? When you were released?”

“Told them I thought I might have fired at Roger. Told them up to the point he was wounded, and the rest, yes.”

“When you came home, why didn't you tell people around you what'd happened? Why did you keep everything to yourself? Tell anyone?”

“'Cause, when I came back, the Army knew what I'd done. It was still a crime to fire your weapon at your own—you know, to kill a soldier.  No excuses. Was told by this Army lawyer. Asked a lot of questions about other guys I knew there. If I was ever in Death Valley. A lot of questions about Roger. Asked if he ever told me about any killings of civilians, infiltrators.”

“What are infiltrators?”

“You know, North Koreans dressed sometimes like civilians.” There was a moment of silence.

“Did Roger ever tell you anything about civilians being killed?”

“Yes, and he thought the Army was involved. Said he'd taken pictures.”

“Anything else about the pictures you can remember?”

“Said he thought one of the guys looked familiar.”

Harris jumped up, “Objection, hearsay, move to strike that last answer.”

“Sustained, stricken.”

“Did he tell you who he thought that guy was?”

Harris jumped up again, “Objection, hearsay.”

“Sustained.”

“Tell us what happened next.”

“They'd let me go if I didn't talk about what happened.”

“And that's why you didn't even tell your sister, Julie?”

Jack remained silent.

“Mr. Prado, is that why you didn't tell Julie, your sister?”

“Figured Julie didn't need to know. Painful not knowing, but knowing? Was worse. Afraid how she would've taken it, you know —me being accused of killing Roger. I was afraid if she learned that...  ”

Nick focused on Hamilton. “What about Hamilton?  He knew Roger was killed?”

“Yeah, he knew, he knew.”

“Do you think he helped in your life being spared?”