Things Invisible to See (23 page)

“Germany, Italy, Japan.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

She followed him meekly up the stairs.

HEAVY LOSSES

Charley LaMont to Sol Lieberman
[censored]

Western Desert

Dear Sol,

Nothing new to write about, but I’ll write anyway. Every day we bomb them. Every night they bomb us. Yesterday we bombed some German airfields. One of the ME 109’s put holes in a couple of planes, including mine. For every enemy plane we knock out we get to paint a swastika on ours. I have six swastikas on mine. I also have the arming pin from the first bomb (500 lbs.) I dropped on the enemy.

I hear that Tony and Louis are on a sub somewhere in XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

If you get a chance, send me the yearbook.

Your friend,

Charley

SIX HUNDRED DEAD

Tom Bacco to His Mother and Father
[censored]

Dear Mom and Dad,

At last I have the time to sit down and write you about what I’ve been up to. We just finished cleaning out a nest of Japs in XXXXXXXXXX. I’d rather fight the Germans any day. Japs are like those deadly snakes you never see till after they’ve bitten you or you happen to find one dead. They hide in the trees. It’s a funny feeling to walk through the jungle waiting for the trees to open fire on you. The noise is deafening. There’s sniper fire and machine guns (the Jap guns are higher pitched than ours) and strafing and mortars. The mortars are the worst. They go high and you can’t tell just where they’ll land. I feel like an outfielder judging a high fly.

After the big push there were about six hundred Japs lying around. You can tell them from a distance because they wear wrapped leggings. I sure admire our medical boys. They go unarmed right into the fighting and find the wounded. If they can’t carry them to the dressing station, they tag them: name, wound, what’s been done to relieve the pain.

Say hello to all your faithful customers at the shop. We could use a little of your Fix-It oil out in the field.

Love,

Tom

TROOPS ON THE MOVE!

Lying in bed, Clare listened to the band practicing at the high school half a mile away. Twinkles of sound, she used to call what was not really a tune but the voice of a far-off brightness.

Then, the whistle of the train and Helen calling her for supper. That would be the Wolverine, coming from Chicago, headed for points east. When she was a little girl, Hal would take her to watch the train come in, her mittened hand safe in his gloved one. She loved the bustle of baggage carts, the shining blocks of ice hauled on the ice cart, the golden glow of the varnished benches in the station, the fireplace big enough for her to walk right into without lowering her head. And the fortune machine that gave you your weight and fortune on a little ticket—that was almost the best of all.

But not the best of all. No, not as wonderful as the train rushing toward them, setting everything into motion. Boys who put their pennies on the track for the wheels to flatten had left them by now, and the message man was standing on the platform with his mysterious rune, a fork pronged like a huge Y, on which he impaled telegrams, and the train roared toward him, and he held it high—O brave message man!—and the engineer reached out of his high window and plucked it like a flower and was gone.

That was the best of all.

Sometimes the engineer waved at the people on the platform. Hal and Clare waved back, always. And when the train pulled out of the station, they went on waving at the faces behind the windows, and sometimes a white hand waved back, or a black one.

A
T NOON COOPER LAY
curled up in the bottom of the raft, and Ben, sitting on what Cooper insisted on calling the forward thwart (which was identical to the backward thwart) watched the tiny speck grow larger and larger. It did not appear to be a plane. It glided down and came to roost on the flat, dark sea.

Albatross.

Cooper had not told him about their wingspan, had not told him enough. This was no bird but a floating giant from heaven, majestic, though streaked with traces of its first mottled plumage. It did not stoop to the gull’s tricks—coasting on the currents, spiraling and climbing, then the quick drop into the waves, all show and appetite. The albatross rested on the water, close to the raft, and watched Ben.

Ben! Ben!

He heard but did not stir. All day the calms had held him in a slow dream, and the bird was a dream as well, and the smell of leeks and clover and new-mown grass.

Ben, it’s me. It’s Clare.

He started; he was wide awake now.

Harvey’s Bristol Cream,
said the albatross.

“My God, you did it!” shouted Ben. “You found me! You’re going to save us!”

I can’t save you,
said the bird.
I can only feed you.

“I’d like a gallon of fresh water and a steak, medium rare,” said Ben. “Make that two steaks,” he added, remembering Cooper asleep nearby.

The bird made a whirring sound deep in her throat.
You can’t give the Ancestress orders. She has to do things in her own way. I told you about her.

Of course. He should have known. Clare never traveled without her guardian spirit.

“Is she a bird or a woman?”

I don’t know what she is. I don’t think she’s a woman except in the way I am a bird
—

“But you’re not a bird. You’re Clare. Don’t leave me.”

I love you,
said the bird.
Remember that.

She was flying away from him very slowly.

“Wait! Come back!” called Ben. “I love you, Clare! I love you!”

He heard a dry cough and turned around. Cooper was staring at him.

“Get off the watch,” said Cooper. “You’re out of your head.”

Close to the raft, the water broke and a fish leapt into the boat, and Cooper lunged forward and rolled over on it. The fish put up no struggle.

The Ancestress had sent them a small shark, about two feet long. Hell, thought Ben, she might have sent us something better. Immediately he felt ashamed. Cooper hacked at the skin and cursed till the knife slit the soft flesh of the underbelly, which opened as easily as a zipper, and his hand slid into that awful pocket and brought out the liver, slippery, dense, and bright with blood.

A second time he reached in and fetched out the heart.

A third time he reached in and found two small fish.

All these gifts he divided with great care and handed Ben his portion. Without a word they tore into the liver. Ben shuddered.

“Tastes just like chicken, sir.” He fought back the urge to gag. “Chicken cooked in ammonia.”

They ate the heart and each peered into the blood-smeared face of the other.

“I believe the blood is nutritious,” said Cooper.

As if he had trained all his life for this office, he held up the head and the tail and drank the blood from the cup of the shark’s body and passed the cup to Ben. The blood was thin, watery, and had a strong bitter taste.

Not the storms but the calms. That’s what will kill us, Cooper told himself. He could hardly keep his eyes open, and what was there to see? Sea and sky, days and nights, all stretched into a flat, endless calm. His watch had long since rusted. You couldn’t keep out the salt water forever. One day the pistol wouldn’t work. He still kept the log. The stars would not rust. The moon would not rust. Not in his lifetime.

He put his hand into the water to feel the drift and felt his flesh ripped away; a shark dropped off, smacked the side of the raft, and plunged out of sight.

“Jesus!” said Ben. “Jesus! Right through the nail. Right to the bone, sir.”

As Ben wrapped the hand in rags to stop the bleeding, neither said what each feared, that one quick thrust of a fin could put a hole in the raft.

“Good thing I did the log this morning,” Cooper said. “I’m right-handed.”

His voice sounded firm, but his face was bloated, and under the peeling sunburn his skin showed thin and waxen.

“A good thing, sir,” said Ben.

The next evening Clare came again. Ben knew she was near by the scent of leeks and grass (tall grass, tall in the morning, cut down in the evening), and his thirst and weariness fell away as he scanned the horizon, fearing he might be wrong, that she was not coming, she had never come.

No, she was here! He gave a joyful shout. The albatross was resting in the trough of a wave.

She’s sending rain,
said Clare,
and a different kind of fish.

“Turn me into a bird,” pleaded Ben. “Turn me into a bird. I want to fly home.”

And what would you do when you got there, with no body to keep you? The bird is what I travel in, my love, not where I live.

A shot exploded so close to him that the bullet grazed his ear and seemed to jar his hearing loose; waves, wind, the cry of the bird went on without him. Ben spun around, terrified. Cooper was lowering the pistol he’d fired with his left hand.

The violent break from the bird’s body stunned Clare, left her scattered and confused, like water shaken from a bowl. She beat her spirit-arms, her spirit-legs, as the Ancestress had taught her. But she could scarcely move.

Stay in the shadow of my wing,
said the Ancestress and raised her giant wings over her.

Why can’t I fly?
whispered Clare. She could not even hear herself speak, though she tried to put the broken pieces of her voice together.

The spirit set free by a death is not the same as the spirit set free by choice. It does not move as easily as we do.

I’m not dead, I’m Clare.

But the body you traveled in is dead,
said the Ancestress.
After you have entered your own body, it will be a long time before you are strong enough to travel again.

Behind them, below them, darkness had fallen, but the raft glowed with a silvery blue light which held the shadows of the two men and the body of the albatross, shining like a star.

There was phosphorus in its food,
remarked the Ancestress.

By birdlight, Clare could see Ben crouching with his head on his knees so that he wouldn’t have to watch Cooper tearing the bird with his teeth.

A
T FIRST IT LOOKED
like an island, and then he saw it moving toward them.

“A boat, sir! A boat!” exclaimed Ben.

Cooper, huddled in the bottom of the raft, squinted toward the horizon. For two days he had not been able to focus his eyes, but he did not tell this to Ben.

“I can’t see it,” he said.

As if the boat itself heard him, it suddenly loomed much closer, and now Ben clearly saw it was a lifeboat, manned by a single rower whose back was turned to them.

“Shall I raise the flag, sir?”

“Save your strength. He’s seen us.”

The rower was a civilian, dressed—Am I dreaming? thought Ben—in a three-piece suit and fedora, and though he made all the motions of rowing, the boat appeared to be moving under some silent power of its own, for when he lifted the oars it moved quietly on at the same pace and drew up beside the raft.

“Wake up, sir. We’re saved.”

Cooper did not answer; he had fallen asleep just as the rower turned and Ben’s gaze met a familiar face.

“Good morning, children,” the man said.

“Death,” whispered Ben.

And time stopped on the high seas.

“You know my name, Ben,” said Death. “I hope you don’t mind if I call you by yours.”

I’m going nuts, thought Ben. Where are the fires? The eternal torments?

“You’ve just passed through them,” said Death. “You really are a glutton for punishment, Ben.” He leaned into the raft and put his arm around Cooper’s shoulder.

“Captain Cooper, I’ve come for you. There’s plenty of room in my boat. You can leave your life jacket behind.”

“Plenty of room,” muttered Cooper and put his hand trustingly into Death’s. And Death raised him to his feet.

“Don’t go, sir!” shouted Ben.

But Cooper allowed himself to be led into Death’s spacious dinghy, and the moment he set foot there, he seemed to revive, to become a new man.

“It’s wonderful,” he whispered. “I’m not thirsty.”

“Plenty of room to stretch out, Captain,” said Death, and Cooper stretched himself out to his full length.

“It’s wonderful,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m not hungry.”

“You forgot your map, sir,” said Ben. He waved the life jacket in front of Cooper’s closed eyes. “You forgot your log.”

“I don’t need them.”

He lay perfectly still. Death drew a silver coin out of his pocket and laid it on Cooper’s left eye.

“The other one, please,” he said, holding out his hand. “Before I can do anything for you, Ben, I require my fee.”

Slowly Ben slipped the coin on its elastic thread from around his neck and gave it to him, and Death broke the thread and laid the coin on Cooper’s right eye. Then he looked up.

“You’re next, Ben.”

“You said you’d do something for me.”

“Of course. A little reprieve. Will you come with me now or will you starve here and meet me later?”

“If I go with you now,” said Ben, “can I ever come back?”

“Only one man ever came back in the flesh,” replied Death, “and His was a rather special case.”

The sea was as still as if someone had turned it off, and the silence as deep as if someone had turned it on.

“My dad told me if you make a bet with Death, he has to accept.”

“You want to make a bet with me?”

Ben nodded. “If you win, you can take me on the spot. If I win, I want to live to be a hundred.”

“The die is cast,” said Death, with a smile at his own joke. “I suppose you brought your own dice?”

“No.”

“A chess set? A deck of cards? I am the grand master of all games, but I don’t furnish the pieces.”

“I only know one game,” said Ben. “Baseball.”

“Baseball,” repeated Death. “I know the game. Never played it myself.”

“Could you get a team together?” asked Ben.

Death was still.

“Your team against mine. The South Avenue Rovers versus the Dead Knights.”