"Our cause is never more in danger than when
a human...looks round upon a universe from which every
trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks
why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."
--The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis
NOTE: Misquotes from "San Francisco" (c) Donald Cross, 1954; Quotations from Psalm 139, King James Bible.
And Thy Right Hand Shall Hold MePrayer was at once instinct and consolation. When he was a little kid, growing up in the poor Polish quarter of Manhattan, Benedyk had prayed when he was hungry and there was no food in the apartment. He had prayed when the big boys threatened him. He had prayed when his father was doing dangerous work on the docks. He had prayed, and somehow things had always worked out.
When his brains and tenacity had brought him to West Point, Ben had still found comfort in prayer. Prayer had got him through some exams he really should have studied for but somehow neglected. Prayer had won him that last ball game against the Middies. Prayer had helped him find his true calling.
When he had courted Martha, he had prayed. He had prayed for discernment. He had prayed for guidance. He had prayed for the right words with which to woo her. He had prayed for continence and the strength to resist temptations of the flesh until after the marriage-vows were said. He had prayed, and at last he had taken her as his wife.
When Martha had told him that she was pregnant, he'd prayed for the health of the child. He'd prayed for the safety of the mother. He'd prayed for a little girl he could pamper and spoil as he had never been pampered or spoiled. And in the fullness of time he had held his newborn daughter and known that his prayers had been heard.
The only time prayer hadn't been enough was when his marriage had started to sour. This failure had shaken his faith for a time, but something so intractable could not be overthrown by one setback. In time he had come to accept that he and Martha weren't meant to be together, and that no amount of prayer could change that. It didn't mean God wasn't listening. All it meant was that the answer was no.
So prayer should have been enough now. It should have been, but anguish greater than any that he had ever known was blinding him, and his mind could find no room for prayer. Instead, it roamed in recollections of the moments before the crash.
It was the duty of a commander to ensure the safety of his men. Some might be willing to rely exclusively upon reconnaissance maps and the testimony of chieu hoi informants, but not Colonel Wojiehowitz. He insisted on accompanying the surveillance pilots on their pre-combat runs. This morning… or the last morning he remembered: he had no idea how long he had been lying here like this… he had climbed in next to the smart-mouthed Naval pilot leading the expedition, and taken off over the jungle. Tomorrow they were raiding an outpost eighteen miles north of Cham Hoi.
An anti-aircraft missile had taken them out. Ben had a dim recollection of reefing on his ejection handle and pulling the ring on his 'chute, but not a hell of a lot after that. Slanted eyes and clucking in an unfamiliar tongue…and so much pain that he wished he had his 'forty-five, so that he could blow his brains out.
Now he was lying in the bed of a truck, staring up at the matted canopy through anguish-bleared eyes. There was something very, very wrong with his shoulder. It felt like it was on fire. Not a warm, tickling fire, nor even a roasting blaze. This was an inferno that Dante would've been proud of.
The chirping, alien voices of the soldiers who had picked him up from wherever he had landed filtered through to Ben's ears. The vehicle shuddered as the back hatch was lowered. Rough hands seized each ankle and the semiconscious colonel was dragged over the rusty metal. His legs fell over the edge and a fist closed around the front of his uniform shirt. Ben could not hold back a hoarse scream as he was pulled into a sitting position, the cloth of his garment dragging forwardon his mangled shoulder. The sound earned him a sharp slap that temporarily startled all sensation out of the universe.
When he gained some kind of understanding of his surroundings, Ben realized that he was on the ground in the midst of a clearing. Dim and indistinct through blurred eyes, he could see the thatched huts of a gook village. He felt a thrill of terror. He had heard stories about the way that the Vietnamese welcomed downed pilots. That he was a passenger and not a pilot was not a distinction they were likely to draw.
There was a shrill shriek of rage that seemed to come from the throat of a woman—or else a banshee from the very gates of Hell. It was followed by jeers and cheering, throats eager to voice their hatred even as hands and feet exacted some small vengeance for a decade of brutal war and untold destruction. A boot caught him below the ribs. A bamboo switch fell against his neck. Scrabbling hands began to tear every vestige of clothing from his body. The villagers taunted him in their strange tongue, the act of beating him providing catharsis for long years of hatred and terror. Ben screamed again, begging them to stop. A sandaled foot smashed against his mouth, and he began to choke on something hard and sharp that he realized must be a tooth. Then the universe exploded in agony as one of the natives yanked on his injured arm and the flames in his shoulder rose up to swallow him.
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He drifted in and out of consciousness, lost in wretched anguish. His thoughts roamed indistinctly, weaving around one another. He was fairly certain that his name was Ben Wojiehowitz, but beyond that he had difficulty reconciling his thoughts. He was a little kid, standing in the New York heat watching the ragged men waiting in the breadlines. But Donna was there, crying because some punk kid had pushed her off the tire swing, and he vowed that that kid's father was going to hear about it, because nobody picked on his little princess. The battalion was assembled for inspection, and Private Dobson had once again neglected to polish his boots sufficiently. And there was a skull leering at him, yellow and broken teeth enormous between the sunken cheeks, and eyes, horrible and gleaming, raking over his body. His shoulder… his shoulder burned. It burned with Satan's own fire.
Ben tried to pray. He had to cling to something, and he tried to make that something prayer, but the words wouldn't come. He couldn't form words. He wished he could die. He wished Donna didn't have to see him like this. He wished that skull would stop ogling at him that way. It was unnerving.
In annoyance, Ben tried to swipe at it, to knock the jawbone off of the obscenely gaunt cheeks. His hand twitched skywards, and the skeleton grabbed his wrist with cold, denuded fingers.
"Easy, soldier," it said. "You had quite the party last night."
Ben realized he was losing his mind. The pain had pushed him over the edge. There had been no party last night. Last night… but days and nights were a blur since the morning before the mission. Pain and rough trails. The crazed villagers.
"I'm just going to put your pants on," the skull continued. Its voice was filtering through a bank of thick fog, and Ben could make no sense of the words. "As much as I envy your physique, I think I've seen about enough. Kick me if I hurt you."
Ben wanted to comply, because the agony was immediate, but he had no strength. The tugging and pushing on his bruised and aching legs was too much to be borne. Long before the bony hands reached the pulpy skin of his pelvis, he lost consciousness.
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"I left my heart in San Diego. High on a hill it calls to me, to be where the little cable cars climb halfway to the stars. The morning fog may chill the air…"
Singing floated past the agony and into Colonel Wojiehowitz's ears. He tried to call out to the singer, but his throat was dry and all he could manage was a tiny croak.
The song continued, gravelly and off-key. "I don't care. My love waits there…"
An American. An ally. He was safe. The capture, the beatings, all of it was just a bad dream. Or maybe a hallucination, because the pain was still there even though the confusion was not. He must've been wounded in action. He was lying now in a cot in some hospital bunker, and it was an orderly or a medic, or perhaps a fellow patient, who was singing.
"…in San Diego. Above the blue and windy sea. When I come home to you, San Diego, your golden sun will shine for me…"
Heartened by the simple melody, Ben opened his eyes. It took a moment for the ceiling to come into focus, and abruptly he realized that that was a misnomer. It wasn't ceiled at all. Bamboo-rail rafters supported the deteriorating reed thatch, through which tiny patches of the pale sky could be seen.
"My love waits there, in San Diego…"
Ben's nose was the last sensory organ to join reality, and he instantly wished that it hadn't. The air was thick with the stench of unwashed bodies, the sharp pong of feces, a sour ammonia-like smell that Ben finally identified as stale urine, and an acrid, caustic stink of vomit or vinegar. All of this was overlaid with the heavy scent of the deep jungle and a distant reek of livestock. Ben gagged reflexively, and the singing stopped.
There was a movement, and a husky voice said, "Hey, fella, you awake?"
Ben tried to find the source of the voice, but he couldn't move his head and so was limited by the range of his eyeballs.
"Benedyk, are you awake?" the voice asked. "Hello, can you hear me?"
Benedyk? No one had called him that in forty years. Ben tried to fight the pain and the disorientation.
"Wh—" he croaked. Pressing his lips together, he somehow found the strength to form words. "How do you… know my… my name?"
There was an empty laugh. "Unlike certain parties, you've still got your tags," the voice answered.
Questions flooded Ben's muddled mind. Unable to triage them or control the floodgate between his brain and his mouth, he babbled senselessly. "Who—what—shoulder—"
"Yeah, it's a mess," the voice agreed. "Rifle wound?"
"I don't… I can't…."
A filthy hand with spider-like fingers and cracked, overgrown nails came into view and settled on Ben's forehead. Then the head followed, and Ben recognized the face of the skeleton who had been haunting his delirious wanderings.
Never had Ben seen so hideous a creature. An almost translucent layer of gray-hued skin wrapped the skull, stretching grotesquely over the cheekbones and the sockets of the deep-shadowed and sunken eyes. Filthy black hair framed the gaunt features in straggling, matted curls. There was a cyanotic tinge to the cracked, scabby lips, and oozing red sores were clustered around the mouth. A dark bruise marred the jaw, and the flesh around the left eye was purple and swollen enough that the its capacity for vision had to be impaired. The neck supporting this horror looked so thin and stringy that it was a wonder it could bear the weight.
The emaciation continued into the shoulders and the twisted ribs. The right collarbone had been broken but not set, so that one matchstick arm dangled higher than its mate. More and bigger bruises blighted the man's chest, and there were deep, bloody welts lapping around from his back. A black, scaling scab as thick as Ben's thumb and longer than his hand dissected the prominent breastbone. Red and offensively obvious, an ulcerous lesion festered between two of the mutilated ribs.
Ben felt the bile rising in his throat.
"Don't worry," the wasted wraith said, his gravelly voice sympathetic. "Thinking will get easier. Right now the important thing is to get you talking. You're Benedyk Waj… I don't think I can manage your last name without a hint."
The pallid mouth twisted into a horrible travesty of a smile, further accenting the mask of starvation. It was the smile that finally turned Ben's stomach. Acid and mucus rose in his throat and he gagged. There was a lighting bolt of agony as firm, skeletal hands rolled him onto his good shoulder, holding his head while he vomited up the sparse contents of his stomach.
As soon as he could control himself, Ben tried to pull away from the loathsome, stinking creature. It smelled of death and hunger and rotting meat.
"Stay away!" he hissed. "Leave me alone!"
"Take it easy," the monster soothed, running a comforting hand up Ben's battered back. The colonel cried out feebly as the thin fingers struck an especially tender place. "Sorry," his assailant said. "Don't be afraid. We'll look out for each other."
Ben didn't want to look out for this walking corpse. He couldn't even stand to look at it. The thought that this was his future, what he would become if left to the mercies of these slant-eyed barbarians, terrified him beyond words. That terror manifested itself as loathing of his fellow captive. Shaking with fresh nausea, Ben shook his head. "Get the hell away from me, you animal," he growled.
The hand withdrew. "Okay," the gravelly voice intoned softly. "I'll be right here when you need me."
"I don't need you!" Ben snarled. "You stay away from me!"
Trembling and pain-wracked, Ben lay still and struggled to pray. There were no words. He could not voice his needs, nor exorcise the debilitating fear that gripped his heart. At last, abandoned and alone, he fell into an exhausted slumber.
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Worse than the pain was the thirst. As Ben rolled his swollen tongue in his parched mouth, he relived old memories. Playing in the icy spray of a Manhattan fire hydrant. Skinny-dipping in the Sea of Japan during the long, waiting weeks that had comprised so much of the Korean War. Summers in Ohio at Martha's parents' cabin, teaching Donna how to swim. The lake was cool and sparkling, the air hot and balmy. He dipped his head under the surface and rose, shaking the fluid from his hair and treading with his legs.
"Come on, honey: jump in!" he said. "I'm right here!"
Donna, standing on the pontoon platform with her skinny little legs quivering nervously, shook her six-year-old head so that the wet curls slapped her cheeks. "It's too deep, Daddy. I'll sink," she said.
"I won't let you sink!" Ben vowed. He held up his arms. "Jump, baby. I'll catch you!"
Still she hesitated, but this time she made no verbal protest. Ben tried again.
"Come on, Donna," he called. "One, two, three; JUMP!"
She jumped, and his hands made contact with her armpits. Together they sank beneath the water, and Ben gave two strong, swift kicks to carry them back to the surface. She broke from the water with a whoop of delight.
"AGAIN!" she cried. "Let me do it AGAIN!" Her thin arms twined around his neck as she smothered him with wet kisses. "I love you, Daddy!"
Ben closed his eyes, basking in the wetness and the sunshine and the child's radiant adoration.
When he opened them again there was thirst and darkness and desolation.
He could hear the shallow breathing of his cellmate nearby. Too near for comfort, given the reek of the man. Ben tried to creep away, but found the wall. Indeed, there was a wall at his head and a wall at his feet. The room could not be much more than six feet square.
The air was hot and heavy, and presently through the pain he could feel the pricks of gnats and mosquitoes. He moaned softly.
The filthy, emaciated being lying near him awoke with a snort of surprise. Ben could just make out his shadow as he sat and crept forward.
"You okay, Benedyk?" he whispered. "The pain bad?"
Idiot. Of course the pain was bad. Ben had never been so miserable. He tried to lash out, but his dry throat stopped him. He made a soft choking sound.
"You thirsty?" the man asked, his voice tinged with genuine concern.
"Get away from me," Ben croaked. He could smell the sour scent of malnutrition on the man's breath. In other circumstances he might have had compassion for one who had obviously suffered privations he couldn't yet imagine, but right now he was more concerned with his own plight. At least this soldier, whoever he was, wasn't lying incapacitated, unsure of the state of his own damned body! And thirst… so thirsty…
"Well, I think you're thirsty," the man said. He grabbed Ben's ankles and curled them up close to his body, away from the door.
"Don't touch me!" Ben cried, quivers of revulsion coursing up his legs at the feel of those smutty hands.
"Ssh," his cellmate hissed. "You're asleep."
That was manifestly false, but Ben was so glad when the reeking sack of bones moved away from him that he didn't argue. For a moment there was silence, and he could see the bare chest and thin arms faintly against the walls, frozen in position.
Then there was a loud banging and a howl that sounded like something from a bad Halloween movie. "Charlie!" the P.O.W. roared, hammering on the wood. "CHARLIE!"
There was a thump from the other side of the door, and a sharp order in Vietnamese. The emaciated wretch scrambled to his feet as the door opened. Backlit by moonlight, a gook in the black pajama uniform of the all-but-defunct Viet Cong jabbed an M-1 assault rifle into the hut. The prisoner bowed deeply.
"Bao cao," he said.
The soldier nodded curtly, keeping his weapon carefully trained on the captive's stomach. The American spoke quickly in Vietnamese. There was a pause.
"Nuoc?" the man said when his captor made no reply to his first query.
The soldier backhanded him with such force that he stumbled against the wall, and then kicked him in the ribs. The prisoner made a soft sound of suffering. Ben closed his eyes hastily as the guard turned his face towards him, holding his breath and praying that he might be spared such mistreatment. After all he, unlike the fool now gasping painfully for air, had done nothing wrong.
Apparently the soldier saw justice, because the door closed and there was the sound of a bar being dragged to, followed by the clang of a padlock. For a long time there was silence. Then Ben could hear the other man crawling towards the back of the room, where the reek of filth was strongest. Moments later there was a sound of retching.
Utterly revolted and yet ashamed, Ben raised his good hand to cover his eyes and nose. He failed to pray. He could not pray. He was unworthy of the blessing of prayer.
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He awoke to find himself alone. He had no idea how long he had been lying like this, but to judge from the quality of the light drifting through the rotted gaps in the badly chinked walls, it was late afternoon now. Ben tried to sit up, but he was too nauseated. He did, however, manage to raise his head enough to catch sight of his bruised body. A pair of coarse black pajama pants like the enemy wore had been put on his legs. He was bewildered for a moment, then remembered the attack by the villagers, how they had stripped him of everything in the frenzy of violence that was to blame for so much of his current agony. A hot flush of shame came to his cheeks at the memory of the indignity. It was heightened when he realized that he had wet the front of the trousers.
It was cold in here, but the air he breathed was still somehow hot and suffocating and nauseatingly foul. Raising his left hand he felt his dog tags, cool and familiar around his neck. On another chain was the little pewter crucifix that Donna had bought with her hoarded allowances for his Christmas gift the year she turned seven. There hadn't been any other Christmases after that one.
Now Ben could see her face, small and pale like that of a frightened pixie, watching from around the dining room door while her parents had their umpteenth shouting match in the kitchen. He hadn't paid any attention to it at the time.
Back then it had seemed best to make a clean break. Martha had kept the house, and got uncontested custody of their daughter. It wasn't that Ben didn't love Donna. It was that Donna deserved a whole life, with one house and one family, not the life of a castaway, shunted eternally between two parents who hated each other. But now he wished, more than anything, that he had stayed in his little girl's life. Leaving her was the hardest thing he had ever done. Despite his pain and his terror, he thought about her now. Worried about her. She'd be eighteen this winter. Going to college. Finding a boyfriend. Starting her own life.
There was a sound of boots on the ground, and the door was opened. Two guards shoved Ben's cellmate into the hut. He crumpled to the ground, twitching and trembling. One soldier stepped into the cell and thrust a crudely carved wooded mug towards Ben. Instinctively, he took it. It was full of water. Frantically he raised his head and drew it to his lips, slurping anxiously. The water was warm and bitter tasting, but he drained the dish as quickly as he could. Then his head fell back with exhaustion. The guard turned sharply on his heels. He kicked the naked heap of noxious humanity as he left; Ben reflected that that seemed to be common practice. The door was barred again.
Ben turned his head to stare at the quivering form, red as a lobster and covered in welts and blisters. No sound but staggered wheezes emanated from it, but the smell was as strong as ever. The air seemed to grow denser with the man's very presence.
When he did not move, Ben at last attempted to extend his left hand to touch him. He could not quite reach. The whip-striped back stiffened and shuddered as a muscle spasm ripped through it. Then one leg jerked abruptly. It was followed by an arm, then the other leg. As if having some kind of seizure, the man began to twitch violently, sharp motions shaking his form. It might have been minutes, or hours, that these bizarre convulsions ran their brutal course, but at last their victim fell back, shrunken belly towards the ceiling, with a moan of sheer exhaustion.
"What the hell's wrong with you?" Ben asked harshly, his voice fuelled by the water.
The man rolled his head towards him. His lips looked like they were coated in a thick layer of beeswax, and there was a milky froth at the corner of his mouth. Weary brown eyes, bloodshot and grotesque in the thin face, turned themselves upon Ben.
" 'M stiff… Tiger… cage…" the man gasped, his voice croaking painfully. "They leave… 'ny water?"
Ben glanced at his hand, still curled around the empty cup. For a moment he felt shame at his selfish impulse, then indignation at being made to feel guilty for availing himself of a fundamental need. He hid the cup with the baggy leg of his pants. "No," he said coldly.
The eyes closed, and the face lost some of the eerie aura of belonging to a living skeleton. Without those glowing orbs it looked like it belonged to a proper corpse. A soft moan shook the sparrow-thin chest, and he coughed in muffled agony.
He lay still for so long that Ben thought he had fallen asleep or died right there. Then at last he rolled onto his stomach and crept carefully onto his hands and knees. He groped around for a moment, until his hand lighted upon a filthy rag stained with blood and mud and bodily waste. Disgusted but fascinated, Ben watched as the wretch shook out the cloth, then began to put it on. It was a pair of coarse cotton shorts with a frayed twine drawstring. The ragged garment satisfied modesty, more or less, but did nothing to improve the wearer's appearance. When finished with this mockery of a toilette, he crept towards Ben, who froze in disgust, waiting to see what would happen next. As the feral figure drew closer Ben could see the flesh peeling away from a red, sunburned nose, from the right nostril of which a dark trickle of blood was oozing resolutely. One of the grime-blackened hands lit upon Ben's forehead.
A sigh sounded out. "I was afraid of that," the creaking voice said. "You've got a fever. Let me take a look at your arm."
Ben allowed this despite the smell, for the pain was worse now than ever, and the searing heat in that quarter was overpowering. Then the man bent his shaggy head low over the wound.
"I think maybe…" the creaturebegan, then stopped. The stink of his filthy hair was grew quickly unbearable. Ben struck out with his left hand, which connected harshly with skin-swathed bone.
"Get away from me!" he said, for what seemed the thousandth time. "Leave me alone! Go away! You stink to high heaven! Stay away from me!"
A flash of hurt passed through the obscenely expressive eyes, before their owner schooled them. "Sure," the scarecrow said softly. "You get some rest. I'll watch in case Charlie comes looking for trouble."
The emaciated bodydragged itself on hands and knees towards the door, coughing dryly and licking clumsily at peeling lips. It did not even occur to Ben to try to pray.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMBen awoke knowing that he had to vomit, but not sure how to get to a sink. He sat up and screamed in anguish. Then suddenly there were thin arms around him, Donna's little arms, and her damp curls brushed his ear as he threw up with all the strength still left in him.
"That's right," a gentle voice murmured. Gentle, but cracking painfully, dry and tormented. "Bring it all up. You'll feel better."
Ben opened his eyes. It was night. He could see the dim rays of moonlight through the cracks in the wall of the tiny, fetid hootch. He could smell the dead skin and sweat and vileness of his fellow prisoner. As his eyes accustomed to the lack of light, he saw that the front of the man's battered chest was glistening, covered in the bile from an empty stomach.
From a not-quite-empty stomach. Ben felt another surge of shame. The man knew now that he had lied about the water. He could tell from the shattered voice how far gone with thirst the other soldier was. He could have saved him a little…
"All done?" the man rasped. Ben nodded wretchedly, and his head fell back into the gentle arms. "All right. You're running a fever."
"You said that before," Ben complained. The pain was so much more than a distraction. It was as if a sword had been pulled from the forge and driven, red hot, into his arm. He moaned. "It hurts!" he cried.
"No," the other man said. "No, it doesn't. Talk to me. You're Benedyk. How the heck do you pronounce your last name?"
"Wojiehowitz," Ben said.
A hollow, cracking laugh sounded out. "I've got one of those kind of names, too," he said. "Now, Benedyk—"
"Ben."
"Ben. Now, Ben… Navy? Air Force?"
"Colonel. U.S. Army."
"A grunt. Figures. West Point?"
Ben nodded once.
"I'm Navy. Annapolis. Grew up in New York."
"Me… me too…"
"Hey, no kidding? Where abouts?"
It turned out that they came from the same area, the poorest neighborhood on the island even today. As the pain began to recede Ben felt the burden of anxiety easing. Here he was, halfway across the world from civilization, and this filthy savage was reminiscing about the spooky old Westley house and the soda fountain at Mr. Travers' Drugstore. When Ben began to fade, the Navy man started to talk baseball.
"Of course, even the Yankees had nothing on the Navy team of '54."
Ben laughed hoarsely. It cost him a great deal in anguish, but it was worth it. "Hell, no. Army forever," he said.
The wasted skeleton bristled in the growing darkness. "I'll have you know I pitched for Navy," he said.
"What, with an arm like that?" Ben asked, reaching up to pinch the spindly branch of bone and skin that held him.
"Best in the Armed Forces!" he proudly proclaimed, his voice gurgling a little in his moisture-starved throat.
"Hah. I was star batter for the Army. Nobody could beat us."
"What year?" the man asked.
"Forty-eight," Ben rasped.
"Huh. Didn't take your cadidiots long to go downhill, then!"
All night while the fires of inflammation raged in his body Ben lay in the other man's arms, prompted to talk and kept conscious by his hoarse, rambling voice and his absolute refusal to give up his prey to the deadly grip of slumber. His nose long since deadened by the myriad stenches of his environment, Ben did not notice the new smell. A sickly-sweet, spiced reek, the meaning of which was not lost on his more experienced companion. Gangrene.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMBy dawn Colonel Wojiehowitz was running a fever of a hundred and four, but he wasn't aware of that. He wasn't aware of anything but a wretched desolation.
"Donna, Donna," he mumbled thickly. "Oh, Donna…"
With a soft grunt, his living pillow awoke. "Ben?" he whispered, his larynx scarcely able to form the words. "Ben, you 'kay?"
"Donna," Ben moaned. "I want my Donna…"
He could feel the spindly hand pressing his forehead, though the overpowering fire in his arm negated all other sensations. Dimly, the Naval man's voice drifted to him.
"Donna? Wife? Girlfriend?"
"Daughter…" Ben answered. "Little daughter Donna… Donna, I love you… I love you, baby. I love you…"
The world was losing coherency. Ben knew true self-hatred. He was vile and loathsome. He was the stinking, inhuman wretch, not this man holding him. He had left his daughter, his only daughter. Never told Donna he loved her. Now it was too late.
Guilt for every oversight and transgression of his life started to assail him. That biscuit he'd stolen from the bakery when he was eight. The plate he'd broke and thrown down the airshaft in the tenement. A cat he'd caught, and tied tin cans to its tail so that no matter how fast it ran the terrifying sound followed it. Academy pranks and misdemeanors gone unpunished… the endless petty squabbling with Martha… Donna… his evil thoughts against this person who was holding him now, despite everything, despite the way he had treated him, the water, the way Ben had thrown up all over him, still, still holding him… the man who'd eased the passage through the hellish night…
The pain was too great. Even he could now smell the cloying foulness of decay. He didn't need to ask to know where it was coming from. He could feel the infection, the poison in his blood. His limbs were cold. He was afraid.
"She knows that," the other man said fiercely. "She knows you love her. You're her daddy. She knows you love her. Donna. Donna Wojiehowitz. Some day I'll tell her. I promise I'll tell her. She'll know her daddy loves her."
The words soothed Ben's soul, melting away the torment. Into his heart came peace. Into his mind came a psalm. Mama had loved it. She had taught it to him… but it was so long ago… Ben could hardly remember it… except for a few verses in the middle… a few verses…
"Whither shall I go from Thy spirit," he croaked. He could scarcely form the words. The sound was thin and weak. "And whither… whither shall I flee from Thy presence…"
"Right here's pretty good," the other man rasped. "No sign of God 'round here."
He recognized it! He knew what Ben was saying Of course, of course he would, Ben reminded himself. They came from the same neighbourhood. They'd taken First Communion at the same church, ten years apart, but still, at the same church. Who wouldn't know this psalm?
More words came to him. "If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there," he breathed. At last, at last the words with which to pray were coming to him. This psalm, this beautiful psalm. The articulation of the truth that he was not alone. That God was there, as he had always been there. As Ben was so certain he had always been there.
"Unless You've gone fishin'," the other prisoner said sardonically. "I guess the Creator of the Universe needs a holiday now and then, right?"
This Ben tried to convince him. He had no words with which to debate, so he spoke with what he had: the verses. The psalm. "If I make my bed in hell, behold: Thou art there," he breathed faintly.
This time the laugh was hard and bitter. "Well, you've literally done that," he said. "But He's not here. He's forgotten us. I've been here… God, I don't even know how long any more. There's no God here. He doesn't give a damn."
Ben closed his eyes. He could no longer keep them open. He could feel his heart failing, overcome by the necrosis in his wounded limb. Still his lips moved. "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea…"
"I tried both," the other man said. "And you know what? It landed me here. Now I'm not likely to do either ever again." His voice cracked a little, and he coughed dryly.
"Even there shall thy hand lead me…" Ben gasped, fighting the pain and the dehydration to force out the words.
From the broken lilt in his voice, the other man was weeping now. "God, I wish that were true, Ben, but God's not here. He doesn't care about the likes of us. We're forgotten. God's forgotten all about us, same as everyone else has. Nobody cares. There's nobody here to care but the Devil. I'm sorry, Ben. You're gonna die here with nobody but the Devil and me. No God. Just the Devil and me."
They were words of despair, but Ben was too far gone to be swayed by words. Only actions could penetrate his fading mind: only the physical contact with this man he had used so heartlessly, but who still held him. It was this, and not the bleak soliloquy, that communicated to his soul. The thin arms tightened their consoling hold on Ben's failing body. The breath of the other human being bathed his chest, no longer sour, for no scent could reach through the pain, but warm and welcome in the ocean of endless cold that was swallowing him. A crystal tear fell from one of the reddened eyes that he could no longer see, and landed on Ben's fluid-famished lip. The tiny bit of moisture gave him what little he would need to finish the recitation.
As he felt the pounding of the wounded heart of the man embracing him, Ben knew that the nameless Naval officer was wrong. God was here. He did care. He had provided what was needed in this final hour. He was here, tangibly present in this wretched hootch deep in the enemy jungle.
And with his last breath Colonel Benedyk Wojiehowitz spoke words that he had never truly understood until this moment.
"And thy right hand… shall hold me."
FINIS