Angels of Destruction (24 page)

26

L
ost, not all at once, but in stages of suffering, the girl vanished into her own oblivion. Gone was the ebullient spirit she must have had before the long stay in the hospital, replaced by an imposter, an eggless shell. The child in the bed opened her eyes for the first time in a week as Paul pushed the morphine through the syringe and into her bloodstream. In her eyes, cognition at his act, a mix of shock and gratitude for the mercy he bestowed before she went to sleep for good. She was the seventh and last of them to endure beyond bearing. Though they were under orders not to treat the radiation-sickness patients at the Nagasaki Prefecture medical center, but merely there to observe and advise the Japanese doctors, Paul knew the seven were dying and no amount of rest or penicillin or vitamin therapy would ever cure them. Sent a month after the bomb, the Army Medical Corps had missed the worst of it, the utter devastation. While the city itself looked as if it had been stomped on by the gods, the dead had been buried. The thermal burn victims, the maimed, and the injured took priority in the immediate triage, and then those with highly penetrating radiation—the
hibakusha
—whose debilitations varied widely began arriving. Paul witnessed the delayed effects in some patients, initially asymptomatic, but who showed up days or weeks later. A woman whose hair fell out in hanks. An elderly man with a crosshatch of burns on his back. Dozens complaining of fatigue. A husband and wife who both started bleeding uncontrollably from their mouths one morning after breakfast. They all thought themselves survivors, but the unfortunate who crowded the wards could not outrun the slow poison in their bodies.

He had written just once of the mercy killings. A heartfelt letter to his sister Janie back in the States, and it was her reply that had lain hidden in his files since 1945. She had offered consolation and assurance—“you were putting them out of their misery”—so that when he finally came back home, he could leave the horror behind him. Returning to his new wife, Margaret, and his small-town general practice, having safely buried the memory of the seven euthanized patients, he talked in vague measures about Nagasaki, chose not to dwell on the past, but to move on as quickly as possible to the normalcy he craved.

Penned in old-fashioned handwriting on nearly translucent paper, the letter from his sister seemed like a relic unrelated to his life's story. He had no memory of it when Erica confronted him the night she came back from her high school trip. He had no idea why she was waving the thin sheet like a toreador's cape. Misplaced, forgotten, the words brought back the anguish of his decision, the memory of each lethal dose. After reading the letter, he folded his hands over the paper and closed his eyes, and a vision appeared of the young Japanese girl, wrapped as if for the grave beneath the thin hospital sheets, her life and pain draining away, a wry smile on her lips as if she dreamt of the summer days before the shattering blast. Paul did not see his own daughter's distress, her confusion over this damning evidence, and that look in her eyes that said she had already found him guilty before he could speak.

Erica stood across from him in front of his desk, suddenly tall and imposing. Her face was red and raw from crying.

“It was just after the war,” he told her. “And the patients were all in such excruciating pain. They'd never get better, so—”

“How could you do such a thing? I thought you took an oath. First, do no harm.”

He rose and walked to the door, closing it with great care. “Please keep your voice down,” he told her. “Your mother doesn't know.”

“Doesn't know? You never told her? How could you?”

“I thought it best—”

“Never told her you killed those people? I don't know how you could keep such a secret from your own wife, not a word in all those years. And your own daughter?”

He shut his eyes again, and the Japanese girl walked into the room in a white kimono bruised by plum blossoms. He could not understand the words she was saying but her tone was clear. He opened his eyes and leaned his back against the door. “Your mother and I were just married when I got called up. I never thought I would go, I was too old, you see, but they needed doctors.”

“To save people, not to kill them. What's the matter with you? Husbands don't keep such secrets from their wives. Not the ones they love, but maybe you never really loved her enough to trust her.”

“I just didn't see what good it would do. I didn't want your mother to be afraid.”

“To think the worse of you?”

Paul stepped toward his daughter, seeking forgiveness. “It was a world ago, Erica.”

She stormed past him, swung open the door, and ran off into the night.

And when she ran away for good, he remembered the day she had found the letter, saw it as the beginning of her break from them both. Already growing up and outside her father's desperate love, she turned to the misbegotten boy and his crazy ideas. She became lost to him, not all at once, but in stages of suffering until she, too, vanished. Just as they all were going from him. Those he had once loved.

27

T
hey thought the malady might be the residual poison in her system or traces of the drug that had caused the sleeping sickness in west Tennessee, a relapse brought on by the shock of the accidental shooting, or a bad case of fatigue after more weeks on the road than planned, but whatever the cause, she could not stand the rolling nausea that struck with such force and tenacity. Under slow descent of dusk, they made it as far as the town of Shawnee, where she threatened to turn herself inside out if he didn't find her a motel bed for God's sake, where she could lie at anchor and get some sleep, for the flatland tilted at the horizon and the rising moon spun like a top. The next morning was no better, for the nausea returned, and she hung her aching head over the porcelain bowl in their six-dollar room. She felt dizzy and hot, drunk and dying, dead and about to be born. Because he hankered for doughnuts, Wiley left her flat on the floor, her face mashed against the cold hard tiles and praying to be taken from this life of such abiding misery. And she prayed for forgiveness, unable to get rid of the vision of the gunshot man, replaying the scene till she could see clearly the pen, and not a gun, in his hand, and she must have known as it happened, she told herself, that the first shot had come from Wiley; in that split second necessary to pull a trigger, she had realized her mistake, was penitent in the act of commission, but panic overwhelmed her judgment. I'm sorry, so sorry.

“Are you okay, lady?” A woman's voice enriched by the acoustics of the bathroom. “Wake up if you hear me.”

Opening one eye, Erica first saw the soft deer-brown shoes, the white-stockinged ankles and strong calves beneath the hem of a maid's uniform. In a rush of motion, the legs disappeared as the woman bent to her knees and lowered her head. Her thick black hair was drawn back severely, stretching the skin at the temples, and her eyes, black as holes, revealed no more information than her placid features. She reached out and brushed Erica's hair away from her face. “Have you been drinking? Drugs?”

“I am sick.”

“Do you need any help? A doctor?”

Suddenly aware of her nakedness, she drew in her limbs, curling into a tight ball. “Can you get me some of my clothes?”

The maid stood outside the door while Erica dressed, and when the door cracked open, she smiled and held out her arms to guide the girl to a chair. “You feeling better? You're white as a snowman. You had anything to eat today?”

Erica swiped at the air. “Nauseous.”

“Ginger ale and peanut butter crackers,” the maid said, and then left to fetch them from the vending machine just outside. When she returned she found Erica slumped in the chair. “Eat this. Old Indian medicine.”

“You're an Indian?”

“Lenape. You heard of the Delaware tribe?”

“You're a long way from Delaware.”

“No, I'm a local yokel. My guess is you're a long way from home, though. What's your name, child?”

“You can call me Nancy. What's yours?”

“I'm Josie.” She pointed to the name badge pinned to her smock. “Get something inside you, child.”

She nibbled at the edge of a cracker and sipped the can of ginger ale as Josie made the bed with the crisp economy of one who has dressed thousands. When Erica was little, she would follow her mother on wash day. Laundry basket perched on her hip, Margaret climbed the stairs with folded sheets and laid them out upon the dresser and then stripped the beds. Behind her mother's back, the girl jumped on the bare mattress, giggling as she positioned herself dead center, still as a soldier, and Margaret would pretend not to see her, pretend she was not there, then snap the sheet in the air till it billowed overhead like a sail, like the falling sky, to cover her body. Thus hidden, she would not move, suppressing all laughter, and her seeker would say, “What's this lump?” with gentle hands pulling and tweaking and massaging the tiny shroud till Erica rose up like a ghost shrieking with laughter, the sheets wound around her like a caul, born again into the world.

Josie smoothed the blankets with her palms and pulled up the covers as if she were saying goodnight and tucking in that same child, and then she sat on a corner to face her. “You're getting some color back, good.”

On bitter February days, Erica would complain of flu or fever, or if the temperature outside dipped near zero, Margaret would consent with no fuss, telling her to stay home from school, shutting off the lamp again, and she would lie in darkness, buoyed by the warmth of her bed, the bitter cold pressing against the blinds, sometimes falling asleep again till nine or so, and then call for her mother. Margaret brought tepid ginger ale or pale tea, the crackers, a bowl of chicken noodle soup for lunch. Afterward a story or the morning paper's comics read together on pillow tops. Palm to the forehead, a reprieve. By four o'clock, the winter's day slowly weakened to dusk, and they'd cuddle on the couch for an old
I Love Lucy
rerun or
Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,
and worn out by her purloined leisure, she would nap until her father came home from the clinic. Now she wanted nothing more than to have this stranger stay with her, wrap a blanket over her in the chair, and remain until she could fall asleep.

“How long has it been?” Josie asked. The question, having no referent, confused her. “You are expecting?”

“Me?” A calendar whirred in her mind. “Expecting what?”

Folding her hands together, Josie drew in a breath. “Two months gone, I'd reckon. Don't you know?”

“What makes you think I'm pregnant two months? Some old Indian magic, in touch with Mother Earth?”

Pleased with the girl's sass, Josie laughed and rocked back on the bed. “Some old mother magic. Three babies of my own, though they're old stinkers now, but it was always the same. Sick as the dog's breakfast, but the moment passes, once your hormones settle.”

“I'm not having a baby, just a little bit sick.”

“Are you sure you're not just a little bit pregnant?”

She searched her memory. Her period should have come while they were at the Gavins’ house in the hills. But no, surely she would remember if it had. Last time? Her friend Joyce Green had asked her to come swimming—one last dip of summer—and she had to be off cycle to risk the pool. She had missed two. “I'm only seventeen,” she said.

“I could be wrong. But you got the look, and the morning sickness. Best you find a doctor. How old's that boy you're with? When I first seen him, he looked like an army man, that short hair, but that boy's no warrior—”

“He's eighteen.”

“—just a boy with a gun. I seen what's in the back of that red car, if that is your car. Where you two from?”

“Back east. Pennsylvania.”

“Girl, you got to get yourself back, no matter how far away, how hard it is. Go see a doctor first, take care of that baby.”

“My father's a doctor.” She looked stricken. “Jesus, I can't believe it.”

“Jesus ain't got nothing to do with it. Go on home, child.” Josie patted her hand. “Listen, you're worried ‘bout what your mama will say, what your daddy will do. Sure, they'll be angry at first, how could you have done, and let me get my hands on that boy. But they'll come around, and nine months, you show them that li'l angel, they'll melt away and forget and forgive. Take up their burden, that's their job, your mama and dad. Get that boy to get you to a doctor, and get you home before you're too far gone.”

Alone in the room, she shut the door and began to cry. A prairie wind shook the windowpanes, startling her, and she composed herself and pressed the flat of her hand against her waist, expecting to feel something inside, but she felt no different, she felt nothing at all. From the space between the bed and the wall, the mangle-faced grocer rose from the dead and pointed his fountain pen at her, and when he opened his mouth to accuse, out poured a river of blood black as ink. What would she tell her parents? Would they send her to jail? She shut her eyes and tried to clear all questions from her mind.

So long ago, it seemed, when he first told her of the Angels, Wiley's voice had intensified, the words spilling over like champagne foam in a flute, such rich passion that she ceased to receive the meaning of his sentences, the battering flow of his paragraphs, and heard only the symphonic rise as he worked himself into a kind of sexualized frenzy. They were to save the world by destroying corruption—especially the authoritarian grip of the state, the church, big business. All they had done was rob a few people poorer than they had been. And shoot a small-town grocer in the face. The thought of Wiley as a father put her on the edge of feeling. Livid, dangerous, he was lit within as few boys his age were, and she had loved that great mane of curls, his earnest eyes, the way he walked defying wind and gravity, how he beat back the sea with chains, how his skin flamed at each touch. She remembered why she had fallen so hard and, once smitten, allowed herself to be subsumed by all that he said, though his words now seemed husks of someone else's thoughts, a screen for his anger and self-hatred. Bad as her father. She clawed at her doubts, pushed them away, and washed her face again, put on new lip gloss, ran a brush through her hair.

The sound of his singing preceded him by half a minute. Morrison and The Doors intensifying as each step drew near till the key clicked in the door, and he came in wired, happy she was up and dressed, swinging a bag of doughnuts by two fingers and grasping a coffee with the other three. Sugar and grease perfumed the room. “Good news, babe. I mapped the rest of the way. Sixteen hours to Vegas, and another eight or nine from there to San Francisco. We can be there by the end of the week and begin again like we planned.” The aroma of coffee and heavy sweetness made the gorge rise in her throat, but she choked back her fears and offered him one last honest smile.