Chapter Eight

HE lay quietly on the bed listening to the music that came in the open window. His eyes were wide and staring, yet they saw nothing. He didn't turn them toward the window. He didn't want to see the kind of day it was, the sky so soft and blue, the sunlight so golden on the fresh spring green of the trees. With one hand he clutched the sheet that covered him to his chest as if he were afraid it would be torn from him.

The music stilled, leaving a quiet that echoed in his mind. Unconsciously he listened for the next tune. He knew what it would be, they always played it just when the bus was pulling out.

He reached for a cigarette on the little table next to the bed. He put it in his mouth and lit it. He drew deeply on it, waiting for the music to begin again.

The sound of voices came to him. They floated lightly and softly on the breeze. Men's voices. Women's voices. Nice words. Soft words. Tender and somehow gruff words.

"So long, nursey, if yuh wasn't a looey I'd kiss yuh!"

A soft warm laugh and then the answer: "Go ahead, soldier, but watch that arm. Don't forget what the doctor said!"

Other voices. Men's voices. Man talk. "I coulda got in, bud. Honest. But then she had to go an' pull her rank on me!"

Disgusted agreement. "Yeanh. They only put out for officers."

The first two. His voice: " I'll miss you."

Her voice: "I'll miss you too."

"Kin Ah come back an' see yuh sometimes?"

A second's hesitation, and then the reply: "What do you want to do that for, soldier? You're going home!"

One at a time the voices faded away. For a moment there was a silence, then the roar of a motor being started.

His free hand tightened on the sheet. Now. Now it was coming. The music hit him like a wave in the ocean. It rolled over him until he felt he was drowning in it. It was loud. It was brassy. It was written to torment him.

"When Johnny comes marching home again, tra la, tra la."

He put his hands to his ears to shut out the sound. But the music was loud and it pushed its way past his hands. He heard the gears being meshed, the cries of farewell, and over it all beat the loud, pulsing, dissonant sound of the music.

At last the music died away. He took his hands down from his ears. They were damp with the sweat that had run down his face. He took the cigarette from his mouth and put it in the ashtray on the little table. He dried his hands on the bed-sheet.

Slowly the tension seeped from him. His eyelids drooped and almost closed. He was tired. His breathing slowed. And after a while he slept.

The sound of dishes rattling in a tray awakened him. With the same motion with which he opened his eyes, he reached

for a cigarette. Before he could light it, a steady hand held a match under it.

Without looking up, he dragged deeply on the cigarette. Thanks, Rock," ho said.

"I got your lunch, Johnny. D'yuh want tuh get outta bed to eat it?" Rocco's voice was as steady as his hand had been.

Instinctively Johnny's eyes turned to the crutches at the foot of the bed. They leaned against the bed, a constant reminder of what he had become. He shook his head. "No."

He lifted himself with his hands as Rocco straightened the pillow behind him and bolstered it so that it would support his hack. Rocco put the little stand on the bed across his thighs. He looked down at the plate and then away.

"I'm not hungry."

Rocco pulled a chair next to the bed and sat down and looked at him. He took out a cigarette and lit it. He let the smoke out his nostrils slowly. "I can't figure you out, Johnny," he said quietly.

Johnny didn't answer.

"You're supposed to be a buggin' hero, an' yet you're afraid to get out of bed," he continued in the same quiet voice. "You're the same guy that charged a German machine-gun nest single-handed. They pinned a medal on yuh. In fact, two medals. Ours an' the Frenchies'." His voice filled with quiet wonder. "An' yet yuh won't get outta bed."

Johnny uttered one violent ugly word. He turned and looked at Rocco's impassive face. "Let them go walk on their damned medals. They gave 'em to Joe too, but it don't do him any good now. I tole yuh enough times that I didn't go alone. If I'da I nown Joe got it, I woulda quit right there. I didn' wanna be a hero."

Rocco didn't answer and they sat there silently smoking their cigarettes. Johnny was the first to break the silence.

He gestured toward the seven empty beds in the room with him. "When is the new batch comin' in?" he asked.

Rocco turned and looked at the beds and then turned back to him. "Tomorrow morning," he answered. "Till then yuh got a private room." He looked at Johnny speculatively. "What'sa mutter, Johnny, getting lonely?" Again Johnny didn't answer.

Rocco stood up and pushed his chair back. He looked down at Johnny. The sympathy that showed on his face was not apparent in his voice; it was studiedly casual. "Yuh could've gone with 'em if yuh wanted, Johnny."

Johnny's face froze into a mask. His voice was as casual as Rocco's had been. "I like the service here, Rock. I think I'll stay awhile."

Rocco smiled slowly. "This is a transient hotel, Johnny. It ain't my idea of a place to settle down."

Johnny squashed his cigarette in the tray. He looked up at Rocco. His voice was bitter. "You can afford to have your ideas, Rock. Nobody's makin' you stay here, but if you do, keep 'em to yourself."

Rocco didn't answer; he picked up the tray silently and put it back on the little wagon. He pushed it toward the door of the room, walked back to the bed, and picked up the crutches. He looked at them and then turned to Johnny.

"We got guys here who'd think they was lucky if they kin use these. Get wise to yourself, Johnny. You can't lay in bed all your life."

Johnny turned his face to the wall, away from him.

Rocco stood there a moment. Something inside him wanted to cry. It had been that way ever since he came across Johnny lying in the little ditch where the machine gun had been.

A few yards away was Joe's body and in the trench near the gun were three dead German soldiers. Johnny was almost unconscious, but he kept saying over and over in a mad sort of delirium: "My leg, the damned wretches stuck it with a lot of needles!"

He knelt swiftly at Johnny's side and rolled him over. Johnny's right trouser leg was soaked with blood. He swore quietly to himself as he quickly cut the trouser from it and saw the line of perforations made by the bullets just above the knee. The blood seemed to pulse its way through the opening.

He cut a strip from his blouse and made a rough tourniquet, which stopped the bleeding. It was after that he first tried to move the leg.

He could still hear Johnny's scream ringing in his ears. It was a sound of pain and horror. It hung high in the air over the now almost quiet battlefield.

"Rocco!" Johnny had screamed in a sudden burst of recognition.

"Don't take my leg off!" Then Johnny's body had gone limp. He had fainted.

Rocco had carried him back to the medical officer. He stood there while the medic shook his head. He watched while the medic cut the flesh away above Johnny's knee and exposed the splintered bone. He watched the doctor almost casually take the amputated leg and throw it on a pile made up of others and then draw the skin of the stump down as tight as he could over the raw flesh and stitch it together, leaving only a small opening for suppuration.

It was while Rocco trudged along beside the stretcher as they took Johnny back to the small hospital after the operation that he felt Johnny's hand grabbing at his sleeve. He looked down.

Johnny's eyes were wide and staring at him. "Rocco, don't let them take my leg off. Stay with me. Don't let them!"

Rocco's eyes had filled with tears. "Go to sleep, Johnny," he said, "I won't let them hurt you."

The war was over and Rocco did not go home with the others. He transferred to the medics and followed Johnny from the hospital in France to the hospital on Long Island. He had made a promise to himself that he would stay with Johnny as long as Johnny needed him. Maybe it was because he felt that it was his fault to begin with. Because he had issued the order that had sent Johnny on the mission. But it wasn't his fault that it got mixed up. Everything was wrong that day. He still couldn't figure out how, with everything going wrong, the attack could work out right. But it did.

And now he stood beside the bed looking down at Johnny. Pity surged within him and moved his hand. He placed it on Johnny's shoulder.

"Johnny," he said softly, "Johnny, look at me."

Slowly Johnny turned around, drawn by some inexorable warmth flowing from the hand on his shoulder. He looked into Rocco's face.

Rocco's eyes were deep with understanding. "I know how you feel, Johnny. But you're gonna have to face it. Yuh got things to do an' friends tuh meet on the outside. An' I'm not gonna let yuh hide from 'em in here." He drew a deep breath. You're gonna walk because I'm gonna find the thing that will make you want to."

Johnny looked into his eyes and found himself slipping into their depths. Instinctively he pulled himself back. "If you want to find the thing that will make me walk," he said bitterly, "go find me my leg." He turned back to the wall.

Rocco's hand fell to his side. There was a pain inside him, a deep quiet hurt that was born of Johnny's repulse. Quietly he left the room.

At night Johnny had a dream. He was running down a long familiar street. It was a long street and its end was nowhere in sight. Yet Johnny knew what lay at the end of that street and he wanted to go there. He had been running for hours and hours and now the end of the street was coming into view. A girl was standing there. She was only a slim figure, but he knew who it was even though he could not distinguish her features.

Just then the street filled with people. They stood and looked at him running and they laughed and pointed. "Look at that one-legged cripple trying to run," they laughed.

At first Johnny didn't pay any attention to them. His mind was on that girl who was standing there waiting for him. But as he drew nearer and nearer to her, the people began to laugh louder and louder. At last he stopped. "What's so funny?" he asked.

"You," one of them answered derisively. "Everybody knows a one-legged man can't run!"

"I can tool" Johnny said.

"You cannot!" a chorus of voices answered him mockingly.

"I can, I can!" he screamed at them. "I'll show you!"

He turned and started to run, but suddenly he realized he wasn't running at all, he was hopping. He tried desperately to run, his heart pounding, suddenly frightened. And then he fell.

The crowds of people gathered around him. "See," they said, "we were right. You can't run." They laughed at him.

"I can run, I can run, I can run," he sobbed, struggling to get to his feet. He looked down the street toward the girl. She had turned and was walking away from him. "Wait for me!" he cried desperately. "I can run!" But she was gone.

He opened his eyes in the night; they were wet with his tears. He took a cigarette from the table with trembling fingers and put it between his lips. He was looking for a mate! i when suddenly one glowed in front of him.

He dragged on his cigarette and then looked up. Rocco's face was limned in the dim glow from the match. Johnny took another deep drag from the cigarette. "Don't you ever sleep, Rock?" he asked.

Rocco blew out the match. In the dark his teeth shone as he smiled. "How can I?" he replied, "if I have to keep chasing you up and down the halls all night?"

Johnny looked at him in sudden surprise. "What do you mean?"

Rocco smiled again. "I heard yuh yelling an' decided to look in. You were poised there on the end of the bed, ready to take off. I pushed you back an' you started to holler: 'I can run.'"

"I must've been dreaming," Johnny said.

"Not for my money you weren't," Rocco said quietly. "It wouldn't s'prise me atall to find yuh doin' it. Some day maybe." He picked up the crutches and tapped them together. "After yuh learn to walk!"

Chapter Nine

THE recreation hall was crowded as Rocco pushed the wheel-char toward a small space on the floor where Johnny could see the screen. Johnny looked around him. The faces he saw were eager, expectant, bright with anticipation.

Ever since the news had got around a week ago that they were going to see a moving picture in the recreation hall, the talk around the hospital had been about nothing else. Men who had not displayed interest in anything heretofore were suddenly interested, alive.

Johnny had been one of these, much to Rocco's surprise. When he had heard about it, he had straightened up in bed. I want to see the picture," he said to Rocco.

Rocco looked at him. There was a look on Johnny's face he hadn't seen for a long time. A look of anticipation, of excite­ment. "Sure," he said, "sure. Walk or ride?"

Johnny looked at the crutches and then back at Rocco. "I think I'll ride," he said, trying to smile. "It's got more class and besides it guarantees a seat."

Rocco laughed. Suddenly he began to feel better. It was the first time in a long while he had heard Johnny try to joke.

During the week that followed, Johnny plied Rocco with questions. Did he know what picture it was? Who was in it? What company made it? Who directed it?

Rocco didn't know any of the answers. It seemed no one did. All they knew was that they were going to see a picture. He thought it was strange that Johnny should ask all these questions. "How come you're so curious about the picture?" he asked.

But Johnny didn't answer and Rocco thought he had fallen asleep. But he hadn't. He lay there, his head on the pillow, his eyes shut, but his mind was awake—vividly awake with an excitement he never thought he would know again. He had not written to Peter or anyone since he had been hurt. Their letters had been unanswered. He didn't want any sympathy, any acts born of charity. If he had been unhurt, he would have gone back gladly, but this way, crippled, he could not envision himself as being anything less than a burden to them. So he had not written and had closed his heart and mind to the past.

He looked around the hall. The projection machine was not too far behind him. Lovingly he let his eye dwell upon it with all the fondness a man might look at his home. And it was true. Suddenly he was homesick. Homesick for the smell of the celluloid strips as they ran through the projector and came out warm. For the thin, tangy, crackling ozone-like smell of the carbon arc lights in the machine itself.

He gestured to Rocco. "Push me over to the machine," he said, "I want to see what it looks like."

Rocco pushed him near it and he sat there quietly watching the operator thread the film into the sprockets. He felt good just watching him.

They began to draw the curtains over the windows and gradually the room grew dark. Then it was pitch-black and he couldn't see anything. He wanted desperately

to light a cigarette, but he remembered he couldn't smoke sitting near the film as he was. He heard the faintly familiar buzz as the carbon sparks caught, and then the strong bright light flashed on the screen.

Words flashed on. At first they were blurred and then they were clear and distinct as the operator set the focus on his lens. Johnny read the words, his lips moving as he passed over them.

To the soldiers at Long Island State Hospital:

The motion-picture equipment and the film you are about to see has been donated to us by Mr. Peter Kessler, president of Magnum Pictures, Inc. He has made this presentation to us on behalf of the more than fifty of his coworkers and employees who have served with us during the past war, many of whom have not returned.

We can do no more than say "Thanks" to Mr. Kessler for his kind and generous gift and express our appreciation by enjoying the show that is about to follow.

signed: Col. James F. Arthur, U. S. A.

COMMANDING OFFICER,

LONG ISLAND STATE HOSPITAL

The words flashed from the screen almost before Johnny could grasp their meaning. He had been frozen to his chair when Peter's name had flashed on the screen, but now it was gone.

And in its place came the familiar trade-mark, the opening shot that identified every Magnum Picture: the big champagne bottle with the champagne flowing into a glass until the glass was filled to the brim. Then the words covering the whole screen in Gothic lettering:

MAGNUM PICTURES

PRESENTS

Johnny's voice reached Rocco's ears in an agonized whisper. "Take me out of here, Rock!" it said with suppressed intensity, "Take me out!"

For a moment Rocco stood still in surprise. He didn't understand it. Johnny had been so eager to see the picture, and now before it began he wanted to leave. He leaned forward. "What'sa matter, Johnny?" he whispered in his ear. "Yuh sick?"

He could see Johnny's fists clenched on the arm of the chair as he replied: "No. Just take me out, that's all. Take me out!"

He steered the wheelchair to the door and out. The bright lights in the hall hurt his eyes and he blinked for a moment; then he looked at Johnny.

Johnny's eyes were squeezed tightly shut, so tight that tears stood in the corners of them. His face was white and strained and drops of sweat stood out on his pallid skin.

Quickly Rocco pushed him back to his room and helped him into bed. Johnny's body was trembling. Gently Rocco covered him and stood near him. "Was it somebody you knew, Johnny?" he asked gently.

Johnny's eyes opened suddenly and stared at him. Accidentally Rocco had stumbled on the truth. He must not know any more. "No," he said slowly. What was that thing he had heard the doctors talking about the other day—claustrophobia, the fear of being shut up in a small place and not being able to get out. Make Rocco think that was what had been the matter with him.

"Suddenly I couldn't stand it in there any more," he said. "I felt I would never get out." He laughed self-consciously. "I must have that claustro—er—something the doctors talk about."

Rocco looked at him but didn't answer. His mind was work­ing. Johnny wasn't fooling him this time. He was going to find the real reason behind the way Johnny had acted. If he had really been afraid of being cooped up in there, he never would have been able to stay in this room so long a time.

The girl came out of the officer's room. She smiled at Rocco. "You may go in now, sergeant. Captain Richards will see you."

He thanked her and went into the little office. He drew himself to attention and saluted the officer.

The officer negligently returned his salute and looked up at him wearily. "Sit down, sergeant," he said in a tired voice. "We don't hold with the formalities in here."

Rocco sat down in a chair opposite the officer's desk. The officer looked down at the paper on his desk and then up at Rocco. "Your request is a most unusual one, sergeant," he remarked.

Rocco leaned forward in his chair. "It's the only way I believe we can help him, sir."

The officer grunted and looked down at the paper on his desk again. He studied it for a few minutes and then spoke. "I have Corporal Edge's service record here as you requested, but there is nothing on it that would give us any clues as to his family or friends or background. He took no life insurance from us and the only one to be notified in case of injury to him is one Joseph Turner, now deceased." He took a pipe from his desk and filled it with tobacco. He held a match to it until it was drawing comfortably. He looked over at Rocco. "You say he says he has no place to go and that he wants to remain here."

Rocco nodded.

The captain shook his head. "Well, there's no way we can force the man to leave short of bodily ejection if he doesn't want to. The only thing I can see is to transfer him to a mental hospital."

Rocco jumped to his feet. "There's no reason for that, sir," he said quickly. "Johnny's all right. There's no more the matter with him than there is with me."

"You seem to know him very well," the officer said.

"We were buddies," Rocco answered simply. "We were in the same outfit overseas. I sent him on that mission on which he got hurt and Joe got killed."

The officer nodded his head slowly. "I see," he said, "and you feel responsible for him?"

"Sort of," Rocco admitted.

"Is that why you stayed in?" the officer asked.

"Yes, sir," Rocco answered.

The officer was silent for a while and then he spoke. "I commend you for your feelings, sergeant, but if all the people in the service took their responsibilities as deeply as you, we would have more orderlies in the hospitals than patients."

Rocco made no reply.

The officer continued: "That, however, does not resolve our problem. Have you any further suggestions?"

Rocco leaned forward in his seat. He spoke anxiously. "If you could get Joe Turner's service record, maybe something on it would give us an idea of Johnny's background."

The captain thought that over. "And if we did, sergeant, we are not allowed to investigate any further." He paused for a moment and then added: "Officially."

Rocco smiled understandingly at him. "I know that, sir," he said, "but I might accidentally stumble across something that would be of great help."

The captain stood up. He returned Rocco's smile. "Accidentally, of course."

Rocco got to his feet. "Then you will try to get a copy of Joe's service record, sir?"

The captain nodded his head.

Rocco stood on the street in front of the building. The sign over the doorway read: "Magnum Pictures Company, Inc." He hesitated a moment and then entered the building. He was in a small reception room.

A girl's face peeked through a small window at him. "No hiring done here, soldier," she said.

"I'm not looking for a job, miss," he said. "I came to see someone."

"Oh, I'm sorry, sir," she said. "Whom did you wish to see?"

Rocco took the slip of paper from his pocket and looked at it. "Mr. Peter Kessler."

"Your name, sir?" she inquired.

"Sergeant Savold, Rocco Savold," he answered.

"Won't you sit down, please?" she said. "I'll see if Mr. Kessler can see you."

Rocco sat down. He sat there for almost fifteen minutes. He wondered if the girl had forgotten about him. The window flew up suddenly and the girl's face looked out at him.

"I have Mr. Kessler's secretary on the phone. What do you wish to see Mr. Kessler about? He's very busy at the moment. If you tell her your business, she will put you down for an appointment."

Rocco hesitated for a second. He didn't want to talk with the secretary, but she would have to do if he couldn't talk directly with Mr. Kessler. He nodded.

The girl handed a phone through the open window to him. "Hello," he said into it.

The secretary's voice was briskly efficient and impersonal. "I'm Miss Andersen, Mr. Kessler's secretary. Can I help you?"

"I—uh, I don't know, miss," he said, "I wanted to speak to Mr. Kessler on a personal matter."

"You can speak with me," the pleasant impersonal voice replied, "I'm also his personal secretary."

He thought for a second. She would have to do. "I wanted to speak to him about Johnny Edge," he said. There was a sudden silence on the other end of the phone. "Did you hear me, miss?" he asked anxiously.

The voice that spoke now was a different one from that he had heard before. "I heard you," it said. It was very faint, he could hardly hear her. "You wanted to speak about Johnny Edge?"

"That's right, miss," he said, suddenly excited. "Do you I know him?"

"Yes," she answered. "Is he all right?"

"Sure," he said, smiling into the phone, "sure."

"Thank God," came the fervent whisper back into his ear.

Chapter Ten

ROCCO pushed the wheelchair into a small walk on the far end of the grounds. They were almost a quarter of a mile away from the hospital. It was quiet here. Tall hedges growing on either side of the walk, small beds of flowers spaced carefully between them. The wheelchair stopped. Johnny looked up.

Rocco's hands were going through his pockets.

"What are you lookin' for, Rock?" he asked.

"My cigarettes," Rocco answered. "I'm fresh out."

"Take mine," Johnny said, reaching into his pocket. There weren't any there. Puzzled, he looked in the other pocket of his blouse. It was empty too. Funny, he thought; he had put some there just before they left. "I'm out too," he said.

Rocco looked at him strangely. "Yuh mind if I run back to the canteen an' get some?" he asked. "I’ll be back in a few minutes."

"Go ahead," Johnny said, " I’ll be all right."

Rocco turned and started back. Johnny turned the wheel­chair into the sun and leaned his head back. He could feel the warm rays of it on his face. It felt good. His hand hung over the sides of the chair and toyed with the long blades of grass. Idly he pulled at a few and stuck them in his mouth. They tasted a bitter green. He smiled to himself. "You can't taste a color," he thought. He sat there basking pleasantly in the sun.

He felt drowsy and lazy. It would be good to get out of the chair and lie down in the cool grass and rest. He turned his head to one side and looked at the ground. It would be good, but it was not for him. He would not walk on the grass and throw himself on the ground as he used to. It was for others to do, not him. He shut his eyes again and faced the sun.

He heard footsteps behind him. "Rocco?" he asked without turning his head or opening his eyes. "Give me a cigarette."

He felt a hand place a cigarette between his lips. He heard a match striking. He drew on the cigarette and felt the smoke going deep into his lungs. "It's nice out here," he said.

"You like it, Johnny?" It was a familiar voice, but not Rocco's.

He opened his eyes suddenly and spun the chair around. A cry burst from his lips. "Peter!"

Peter stood there, his face pale and drawn, his eyes wet with tears. He shook his head. "Yes, Peter," he said slowly. "Didn't you want to see me, Johnny?"

Johnny sat there completely still, his cigarette frozen to his lips. He couldn't speak.

Peter moved closer to him and took his hand.

He could feel the warmth of Peter's hand on his and suddenly his

feelings rose in his throat and began to choke him. He leaned forward over Peter's hand and began to cry.

Peter's other hand rested on Johnny's hair. "Johnny," he said, his voice shaking, "Johnny, did you think you could always hide from those who love you?"

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14