Bright's Passage: A Novel (18 page)

“These ones ain’t staying here,” one of the men holding Corwin said to Dennis. “Not inside with the children or the women.”

“Or the dogs!” someone else yelled.

The hardware-store man went on: “They live over near where we come from. Believe me, there’s nothing about these ones that ain’t wrong.”

“They might even’ve started the fire,” said the big man holding Duncan. He had a thick pink scar running through his right eyebrow. “They ain’t staying here.” He twisted Duncan’s arms hard, as if to emphasize the point. Duncan’s body seemed to slacken against the pain, then all of a sudden he jerked back, butting his captor up under his chin with the crown of his head. The man winced in pain and let go of Duncan’s arms, grabbing a hank of his black hair and spinning him around. He rammed the heel of his hand into Duncan’s nose, releasing a spurt of blood and sending him to his hands and knees on the concrete floor. The man hauled his boot back and kicked him in the stomach. Duncan curled into a gulping, gasping ball at his feet. The man was about to kick once more when Dennis stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder.

“You do that again, you can all find somewhere else to stay.”

The man appeared to consider the option, then lowered his foot.

The Colonel looked at his son there on the cold floor and began to smile faintly to himself. He came to stand by Dennis. “I need my own room,” he said. “On the top floor. With the other veteran.”

Dennis knelt to help Duncan to his feet. Duncan stood, running
a dirty sleeve across his nose. He looked at the red-stained arm as if it did not belong to him.

“I have come to a decision!” The Colonel’s voice suddenly escalated to shrill oratory, as if he was reciting epic poetry. “Of my own volition and for no other reason, I will send my boys to stay in the barn. They will be of no trouble to you good people.” He pivoted in a martial style to regard Dennis and the hardware man at once. “Is this agreeable to all parties?”

“That’s not the safest place for them to be,” Dennis said. “The fire will get there pretty quick. I was heading out there soon to fetch the animals closer in.”

“My boys are no cowards and are no strangers to livestock. I hope they can be of some assistance in that regard.”

Dennis looked at the hardware man, who shrugged back at him. “Not my animals out there,” he said. He nodded at the men holding Corwin and they let go of his giant, sloped shoulders.

“Both of you go to the barn,” the Colonel commanded loudly. “Stay there until you can either be of use or until the fire burns you out.” After a beat he added, “Mind the chickens, but keep special watch over the horse and goat belonging to the veteran.” He ran his tongue over his teeth in thought, then added, “I expect them kept safe, do you hear me?”

Corwin made for the basement door. The Colonel fixed Duncan with a dismissive look. The boy looked back at his father, his upper lip still wet with blood, then over at Dennis, and finally at the basement doorway through which Corwin had just passed. Then he walked through the group of Fells Corner men as if he had turned to shadow.

The Colonel returned his attentions to Dennis. “As for myself,” he said, “I shall take a room on the top floor, as—”

“Go and talk to Brigid down the hall in the kitchen,” Dennis interrupted. “Maybe she can help you like she helped the other fella.”

“Git,”
the hardware man said, and spat on the Colonel’s boot.

It was sometime in the late afternoon when he felt strong enough to rise. His uniform was ready for him on a chair, the freshly pressed trousers and jacket hanging over its back, his underwear, shirt, and socks folded in a neat pile on the seat cushion. Atop the pile lay the ivory comb. Someone had stitched closed the bullet hole in the jacket’s shoulder with black thread. He stepped into the trousers and boots, then paused before buttoning his shirt to smell a sleeve. The soap had left a scent behind that he remembered. Lemons.

He pulled the shirt on gingerly over the welts on his chest and then picked up his mother’s comb. Somehow the fragile thing had survived the nightmare of the last few days. The ivory woman, whose kneeling, hand-clasped body formed its handle, looked just as composed now as she had when he had run the comb through Rachel’s hair for the last time. He held it up and looked for cracks in the delicate tines, but the light was not strong enough and so he took it to the window.

A cursory knock sounded at the door and Amelia strolled into the room. “H.! How wonderful that you’re up and about! And just in time too, just in the nick of time. You’re watching the fire. How dreadful! Let’s watch it together a moment, just you and me.” The windows gazed out upon the lawn and the
white barn in the distance. The sky was too dark for afternoon, and where the sun should have hung there was now only an undulating black curtain of heat which pulsed through the windowpanes upon his face like the throb of an open furnace. “I’m leaving,” she said. “They say the time to leave is now or never, so now that Lawrence is done shooting at birds, he’s gone to fetch the car.”

He raised a knuckle to his teeth. “Where are you going?”

“Oh, back to Washington. Back to Washington and then to get married. All that. There’s no more putting it off.” A new crowd of people was coming through the gates on the far edge of the lawn. Carts and horses were laden with family possessions. “He wants to be a diplomat, does Lawrence,” she mused. “He will be too, I’m sure. Which means moving someplace dreadful. Indochina, Indonesia, Indiana, who knows.” She shook her head. “I mean, really—shooting at birds.”

The big pumper engine that they had brought down from the coal mine to fight the fire had gotten stuck in the grass. Henry watched them pushing it forward and back. It belched smoke that was even blacker than the fire as the wheels rocked ineffectually in the soft earth.

It flashed into his mind suddenly that perhaps he had never left the War at all. Maybe, in fact, the War had never ended. It was impossible, standing here, to tell. The flames, the men with shovels, the people who had lost their homes and now stood clutched together, their faces chapped from the heat and windblown … He grabbed a hank of the curtain for support and hung on to it. His body still lay on the field where it had fallen. He was floating above it, looking down.

Amelia’s voice was lost amid the particulate sift of dust raining down on his helmet, the punch of mortars, the gasp of his own breath as he labored to pull air through his gas mask.

He thought of the Colonel, that looming, constant presence,
and of Duncan and Corwin, whose atrocities had followed him ever since that awful night when they had come out of the French farmhouse and stood above him, jamming dirty fingers in his mouth.

The War, the fire, the Colonel, and the angel: It felt as if some gigantic stone had somehow dislodged itself and begun rolling toward him down the long, slow curve of the world. Soon it would catch up to him, run him and his little boy down, crush them flat, plow them under. He opened his eyes.

Down in the drive, beautiful, shining automobiles were being frantically packed. “I told Lawrence I was going to say goodbye to you and then go find a flask of something for the road. I’ve been gone so long he probably thinks you’ve made off with me.”

“You’ve got to take my boy with you,” he said suddenly.

“What?”

“When you go, you have to take my son with you,” he said again. “Take him away from all of this.” He nodded out the window. “He don’t need me. He needs a mother.”

She looked at him in frank bewilderment.

“Like Bithiah,” he added. “She was the Pharaoh’s daughter.”

“You’re talking nonsense, H. I can’t do that. I think you need to lie down.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the comb. “Take him with you. When he’s older, give this to him. Tell him it was his grandmother’s.”

“You’re cracked, H.”

“Please,” he said. “Just take my boy with you. Be a mother to my boy. I can’t … I can’t care for him.”

“Listen, H.” She pushed the comb away and, reaching up, took his face in her palms. “Listen to me now. Everything is going to be
all right
. It will be
all right
. I don’t know what happened to you out there. I won’t ever know, but I do know you made it to
safety. The fire can’t reach you here. You’re beyond it now and you’re safe, do you hear me? Do you hear me, H.?” She glanced out the window and then back at him. “And
please
don’t worry about your boy. He’s in good hands and, anyway, even if the fire does come, Lawrence says there will be plenty of caravans to take everyone away.”

“You don’t understand.”

“No, I certainly don’t.” She smiled sadly and patted his cheek, then took a deep breath. “Anyway, on to business. I’ve arranged it with the manager, and you can stay here as long as you wish. I’d recommend you do too. You look terrible, H. Get some rest and see how you feel in a few days. Order room service. I have to leave,” she said. “Goodbye, Henry.”

The silver and coffee pantries were deserted, but the Colonel found the girl he was looking for in the food pantry. The wood and metal room was cool and dark, about half the size of a boxcar, and lined, floor to ceiling, with shelves and shelves of peach, plum, and cherry preserves; flour and cornmeal; pickles and relish; canned goods of every kind; cheese wheels and sugar cubes; pats, sticks, and baker’s blocks of butter; pitchers of cream; bags of salt. To his left the wall was taken up with utensils—bread knives, wooden pails, a sugar dredge, can openers, knife polishers, colanders, strainers, a hot-water urn, and various contraptions whose uses were a mystery to the old man. She had her back turned to him as he came to lean against the tin door frame. His eyes wandered over the food before resting on the damp wisps of hair that whorled at the back of the girl’s neck. After a time he rapped against the floor with the rifle butt. She started and turned. The infant slept in a sling against her chest.

“The man suggested that I speak with you about being moved to quarters on the top floor of the hotel.” She seemed in a spell as she looked at the gun in his hands. He rapped the rifle butt sharply on the ground once more, and she came back to herself. “Are you unwell, child?”

Her face had taken on the soft glisten of candle wax in the light of the nearest ceiling bulb. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just worn out. Excuse me.” She walked toward the doorway, but he did not step aside. She swallowed twice convulsively, fear flooding her chest. “Excuse me, please.”

“It would appear as if my boys and I brought the fire to your very door,” he said. “You have been so kind to us and all the other unfortunates—my boys and me, the young veteran and his infant son on the top floor. Such kindness.” He stepped across the threshold into the pantry with her, pulling the door gently closed behind him until it latched with a galvanic click.

She looked at the wall of knives, knowing that he had followed her gaze even as she did so. “I …” she said, blinking. The blades hung within reach, swaying and winking slightly at her. She could have lunged for one, reached out and grabbed one—she knew each of them, their feel, their balance and weight—but instead she felt her arms wrap themselves protectively around Henry Bright’s son.

The Colonel flicked the light switch off. In the sudden darkness she felt him step between her and the knives on the wall. For a long moment the two listened to each other breathing in the blackness.

“A story,” he began. “Once there was a good-hearted soldier, a hero, who, having served his country, retired from the battlefield in order to till the land and raise up a family. Having married the beautiful sister of a dearly departed comrade, he settled down with her to raise a family. The other sister, jealous of her fairer sibling, married a vagrant, sometime coal miner and gave birth to a rogue.”

She heard the singing sound of the blades as the Colonel leaned back against the wall of knives. “As for the good-hearted man, he and his beloved wife had three beautiful children: two handsome sons and a pretty daughter, who was the man’s darling.
When his wife died, this good-hearted man, now a widower, found the great solace of his life in watching his children grow, especially the girl, who was beyond compare in beauty and virtue. As the years passed she became ever more radiant, grew up indeed into a beautiful, chaste young woman.” He paused and listened for her. “Are you still there, child?”

Her voice came smally. “Yes.”

“Good,” he said. “Good. Now then, do you remember the rogue born of the ugly sister? Well, the rogue grew up too, but not into a proud young man, no. He grew up into something awful. Into a monster. And then, one night a year ago, without warning, he rode his horse to the old man’s house, woke the old man and his children from their sleep, and, with some combination of enchantment and violence, abducted the old man’s beautiful daughter and took her away to live with him in the same maggot-strewn ditch where he himself had been raised.

“In the blink of an eye, his dreams of a happy old age vanished and he saw himself for what he really was: just a foolish old man.”

He coughed. “I am sorry, Miss Brigid. The smoke of the fire,” he said. He flipped on the light switch. The barrel of the rifle was only a few inches from her forehead. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. He coughed once more. “Would it be too much, do you think, to ask you for a drop of that cognac I saw there? I have not had cognac in a very, very, very long time.” He motioned with his head to a dusty bottle sitting low on a shelf. “If it is not too much to ask.” He looked at her expectantly. She stood paralyzed, unsure of what he meant for her to do. He cocked his head once more toward the bottle and she knelt slowly to retrieve it. He followed her with the rifle barrel as she stood back up. “The stopper,” he said. “Please.”

She pulled the stopper from the bottle. At the sound of the release, the baby woke in her arms and began to keen.

He shifted the rifle unsteadily to one hand and held the other out to her. “Hand it to me,” he said. He took the bottle and lifted it halfway to his lips. Here he paused, however, and considered her. “Step forward,” he said.