SCENE THIRTYIsle d' Tresor, Richmond, Virginia. The same day
Jim stood in his room, running his fingers again and again down the letter Jessy left behind for him.
'they said that tellin' you that truth would end up bein' a kindness, Mister Jim. But I ain't rightly sure. They said you purely needed to know the truth of the thing, and I don't know that I truly understand that, either. I only know it cut you deep. And for that, I'm always gonna be real, real sorry. And I only know you's as brave as any one I ever seen and a whole lot more than most, includin' little Jessy. And for knowin' you, Mister Jim, I'm always gonna be a whole lot glad…" Jim read over and over, shaking his head and drawing his mouth taut against the useless curses rising in his throat.
"And for knowing you, Jessamyn-Talitha Miller, I'm always gonna be a whole lot glad." Jim sadly promised the image he'd constructed of that young mother in his mind. "You were as brave as anyone I've ever known, and a whole lot more than most, including me."
He was almost sick, and chilled through, with reading that young mother's last words. But by now it was as if Jim could hear her dictating that letter for him. So he had to 'listen to her' as many times as he could stand it. He owed Jessy Miller that much! And how many other Jessys were out there, lost in Richmond's booming post-War rebirth? How many struggling, frightened freedwomen and freedmen were out there all through the country, Jim pondered, doing all they could for their families? How many Jessys had ended up by now like the one he knew, selling their weary, desperate souls just to keep their kids alive!
Keeping kids alive, that was the bleak theme of the other partial memory he'd recovered, just today. Somehow Jim knew without understanding that he'd been in that muggy, crowded room once, years ago. He'd been in that deadly dangerous patch of hell, filled with anxious, defiant kids and angry, desperate men, and cold eyed monsters… monsters walking upright on two legs, like Minotaurs.
Two monsters ruled that darkened, dismal space, and the complex around it, built of red brick, black cast iron and grey stone. One of them talked constantly it seemed, in a dozen languages, most of which his hearers couldn't understand. That one was the broad shouldered, heavy eyed monster of the pair, with ironic humor always playing in his eyes. That one had a European accented voice as hard and stern and bitter as quinine. But he was not so covertly enjoying himself as he played with mens lives and minds. All he wanted from them were their spirits and their wills. And that was Herr Professor Doctor Stephan Johannes Sebastian Aynsley of Vienna and Newport News.
The other fiend-in-charge there was sickeningly familiar to Jim now, but veiled from his memory then. He was as thin and long limbed as a spider, and ten times as poisonous as a Diamond back. His voice was high and commanding in its own way, icy cold enough, Jim would always remember thinking, to freeze a grass fire on the prairies. There was no humor in him in this memory. He was all ice and rage, ready to devour the world he hated, if that would restore the world he wanted. Control was his drug of choice and power was his only diet. This was Gideon Alexander Remiel Boudin of Atlanta and Port au Prince in Haiti.
Until today, this memory had been walled up as solidly as if a master mason did the work. There'd been no sign, not even one of anything living behind those walls. There'd only been a sense ghosts whispering somewhere barely within earshot, of fragments, shards and slivers from a lost time. Now an angry,drunken soldier broke down that wall and hell came flying out like bats out of an attic or ravens out of an abandoned barn.
"An' from what we heerd that crazed fellow there he's been off his nut for so long now he probly couldn't tell you!" The first man shouted. "We heered he got his head turned around six ways from Sunday whilst the War was still goin! Why, it come to us that this here West woulda gone t' one yer Federal pens, or gone straight onta face a firin' squad back then, but it got all covered over how he nigh onta kilt th' Genrl back then! It was told us that West got in it up to his neck with folks that just hungered to do away with Genrl Grant and a lot more big brass b'sides, sometime in th' last two years of th' War. But it got buried, that's what we was told! An' you don' want that put about now as th' plain fact of the matter, do you? No, you don' want no more scandal an' troubles doggin' you and the rest of the damn fools up in Washington's City, do you?"
Jim West stood in his room down the hall from Mac's workroom at one end, from Miguel's small research laboratory at the other. But even though one part of his mind knew this was a Saturday in early February, 1873, he was losing that awareness from minute to minute. He was falling back into a time he had every reason to forget. A time he counted as very nearly the worst calamity of his War years, the weeks after he saw thousands upon thousands of men fall to Death in the beginning of the Overland Campaign.
"Jim," Artemus said, knocking the door frame of Jim's room, where the younger man had left the door wide open. "James, we've got those three fellows all square away now, sleeping off their drunk. You really did a fine job on them, partner. I think you may have broken the red head's hand on that iron jaw of yours…Jim!"
"What? What's the matter, partner? I was just … I was… " Jim hesitated, losing the nightmarish memory as if it were only a dream he'd woken up from, again.
"You were just ten thousand miles away, partner, for the second time today." Artie finished. "What's going on? Is it Jessy's letter? Is that it?"
"What else would it be, Artie? She's dead, her brothers, her husband and her kids all are dead, all murdered. And all for what? So somebody could give me some more bad dreams? I've got plenty of those without any help at all. So, how was that possibly, possibly worth seven lives?" Jim demanded, squaring his jaw and his shoulders.
"I don't know." Artemus answered. "And I'm sorry that I doubted her. I truly am, James."
'she knew that. She said so. We were all kind and good to her, she said." Jim sighed and shook his head. "But not good enough, huh, partner? We didn't really help Jessy did we? We didn't think to even ask if she had a family anywhere around. We didn't ask her if she was scared of us, because we were Yankees, or scared of working for us because some folks around here are still fighting the War. We didn't ask if she had a last name, a brother, a husband or a child.
No, we just … gave her a job to do, and… so did someone else. And that someone murdered Jessy Miller. And I'm really a lot more interested in who that was right now than in whatever three drunks wanted to tell me. Can you find that out for me, partner? Can you do that for Jessy? I'd do it myself. But I don't think enough of the local records are transferred into Braille quite yet. We have to do this for Jessy and her family, Artemus. We have to. What good are we anyway if we don't, if we can't?"
"Not much good, Jim. I'll get right on it. I think I might find a County clerk still working …" Artie offered.
"No, you can't. Not this evening. Tomorrow's Sunday, remember? They'll be all closed up by now. Monday will have to be soon enough, for Jessy… " Jim said, turning his head away.
"Well, I really came up to tell you Ani's about ready to ring the bell for dinner, anyway." the older agent said. "Why don't you…"
"No. I'm not… not exactly hungry." Jim answered, shaking his head again. "What? Why are you staring holes right through me all the time these days? I swear, Artie, I can almost feel it!"
"Why am I? Alright. Alright, I'll tell you, Jim. You drift off for minutes at a time. You seem to forget what was going on around you when you …drifted. You shake your head, or turn away or just shut down so completely lately that I keep thinking one of the Companies is about to pay me a visit. But they don't. They haven't." Artie told him. "And I'm beginning to think there's not a very good reason why that would be the case. Can you help me out here, James?"
'sure, Artemus. Which way did you come in?" Jim quipped, without any humor.
'very funny, James. But that joke has a beard a mile long. What's going on with you and your brothers?" Artie asked.
"Nothing." Jim shrugged. "What should there be?"
"What should there be?" Artie echoed. "Are you serious? There should be a good two dozen L's right here, clamoring for their dinner, and especially for dessert first, if they can get it, which they can. There should be at least that many D's arguing with me and Mac and Ori's boyyos about how they could have, and they did handle those three drunks just fine all on their own. And the Ws, well, I'd think there would have been some of them coming to watch that little skirmish. And V Company…"
"What about the Company I have lead position in, Artie?" Jim demanded, frowning and folding his arms across his chest.
"As I understand it they've taken over the reins of the whole organization, since that little confab down in the cellar,Jim. That being the case, I'd think the Vs would have been out in strength today, out in the garden and maybe even here arguing with me, right now. But none of those things are happening. So, I'm still left to wonder what they are doing nowadays and why?"
'they're resting, Artemus. Why is that so hard to understand? They pretty much had a rotten time the past two years and a little more!" Jim retorted. Then he began to laugh, with a harsh edge to his laughter that Artie couldn't miss. It had always meant Jim was about to lose his supposedly unflappable temper.
"What's so funny, James? Or do I want to know?" the former actor asked, grimacing.
"You, Artie. You are. And I'd think you'd get the pure irony here as much as I do." Jim said. "Aren't you the one who couldn't even believe the Companys really existed, something over a year ago?"
"I was and it was one of the dumbest lies I ever believed, myself." Artie admitted, frowning. 'so, what's going on with your brothers, James? Why do you keep on ducking that question?"
"Why should I answer your questions, pal, when you surely know all the answers yourself, being you're such a …genius?" the younger man shot back.
"Not all the answers, but some, yes, I'm more and more sure that I do." Artemus answered. "And it has something to do with the reason why some people decided I must be a genius, years ago. I remember what I see. And I remember what I hear just about exactly, both, just about one hundred percent of the time. And right now what I'm remembering is what you told L and W, and D Company, that day in the cellar, when we'd been looking for the Ls for most of two days. You said:
'I know you wouldn't do this, if you could. But if it were humanly possible, right now I'd be telling you to banish me and find yourself a much, much better brother. But you won't do that, Sir. As I said you wouldn't do that, even if you could.
However, I feel obliged to add that according to every element of the Watch' structure, V Company was envisioned, was purposed to take over the reins, to take the point, to stand as the shield-wall for all our older brother-Companies, when it became clear the late War was about to start. And we did that, for a little while, BB. But we failed, Sir. We failed our Brothers many, many times, in the one duty at which they never failed us, even once.
So what I wanted to tell all y'all is just this, Sir: If you will once more entrust V Company with their sworn duty to the Watch, we will hold the reins with all our strength, and all our will and all our hearts, against all comers. We will take back the Watch and keep it as it should have been kept all this time, more than a dozen years, now, firmly in our hands and safeguard it with our lives against any and all enemies.'
And that, my angry friend is exactly what you've been exhausting all your own resources trying to do for your brothers, ever since that day! You've somehow mixed up guarding them with locking them away, somehow, somewhere inside your head. And it's just about killing you, Jim, keeping them there. You haven't slept, you're plagued with nightmares, again. So you're losing your appetite, so you're not eating. So you're losing weight again, leaving your health at risk. You're leaving yourself open to liars and murderers and their helpless dupes. And you're closing yourself off, pulling away, and locking yourself up at the same time! Now, who do you imagine would be really, very glad to see you doing this to yourself, and to your friends, and to your brothers, who?"
"Oh, do I get to answer something, now?" Jim scoffed, looking more worried to Artie's gaze than angry.
"With impunity, General West, sir." Artie shot back.
"Great. Let's see, the question is who would want…who would be glad, very glad to see me all locked up inside my own head, again? Well, let me think! Who was it, a year or so ago, who kept declaring that the Watch … aren't you the one who kept declaring that the Watch was just someone trying to make your partner look completely, completely insane. And of course your Faultless Partner couldn't be nuts, now could he, General Gordon, sir!" Jim answered and once more turned away.
"Jim, the President is alive. President Ulysses Simpson Grant, he's alive and well." Artie insisted, for what felt like the thousandth time, pushing his own temper down. "And whoever wants you to think differently is doing a real bang-up job these days, I'll grant you that much. But they're lying. They're paying people like those three soldiers, and they're coercing people like Jessy Miller to repeat and repeat and repeat that lie. Now, Mac was pretty plain in what he said about his lying to you, about you believing he'd do that for any reason whatsoever. And you've known him longer than you've known me by about… "
"By almost ten years." Jim finished. 'mac met my Dad when I was twelve. What's your point?"
"Just this. Poor sad little Jessy had a reason for what she did, for repeating this lie. She was threatened with her family's life. And she knew the people who made those vicious threats well enough to know they'd make good on them. Those three soldiers admitted to us they had a pratical reason for repeating this lie. They were each paid more money than they make in a year to do that." Artemus explained.
"And the woman who paid them is one Ani's very least favorite persons from her Richmond social circles. She's a woman who's been here often enough to know the layout of the house and garden, to know who you are, so she could describe you to them, and a woman who held slaves all her life, along with the rest of her family here around Richmond, until the War we need now is to link her to Boudin, which shouldn't be all that hard, and that's the ballgame, James."
"And what's your point?" Jim demanded. But Artie could read his friend's face damn well by now and saw the ice breaking.
'my point is that no one on the team, no one in this house, no one in the Service and certainly none of us who have been your friends for more than ten years has any reason at all to lie to you, and certainly not to lie over and over and over again. So I'd appreciate it if you'd believe …us and not a lot of … strangers." Artie said, wondering if he'd just touched off Jim's temper again.
"You say that as if you think I want to believe … strangers." Jim answered quietly. "I don't. I don't want to believe I did the worst thing I could possibly imagine doing. Would you want to, in my place, Artemus? No, I don't think so. And you … you talk a good game, but you still don't get the dynamic between me and my brothers. No, you really don't.
So I'm gonna make one more stab at explaining it to you, and then I'm gonna … I dunno, give up on it as a bad job, all around. I'm here now, because of my brothers. I'm minimally sane now, because of the Companies. I'm … alive and more or less intact now because of The Watch, because of the Four. I OWE THEM! I owe them the protection they were supposed to get from me for the past … twelve years now. So, that's what I'm doing, these days, Artemus, when I'm not dodging your questions or Jacques' penchant for dosing me to the gills!"
"Jim," Artie began again, but Jim held up one hand in a clear negation.
'did I say I was finished explaining this to you? No, I didn't. So, shut up and LISTEN, for once!" The younger man said, no longer trying to hold his temper that much. "You're right about one thing, and only one. It's a damned difficult maneuver, keeping the Companies safe this way. But it's the only way I could figure, okay? And I've tried it before. And it seemed to work then. And you weren't there, Partner. So you don't get to tell me I'm wrong, not this time.
The last fall of the War, when the Overland Campaign was suspended for that season, you might remember we'd been getting reports for months about a prison no one had heard of, between Richmond and Fredericksburg, in that countryside. And when I say no one had heard of it, that included a lot of our contacts and double agents in Richmond, then. So Thomas, Frank and James Richmond started sending volunteers behind the lines to find out what went on. They sent five soldier-agents, none of whom got a single, solitary message back to them. And one of those five was Frank Harper, Jr."
"Okay, I do remember that, Tommy Harper practically told his Dad and Mac and the Colonel they had to send him, next or it would look pretty bad on the Bureau." Artie nodded, ignoring Jim's harsh manner for now. "And that's when you stood up."
'that's when I jumped up and got in that idiot boy's way." Jim agreed. "And I made a pretty damn good case about how I'd do a better job, being I grew up in northern Virginia. So, I got the job. And the fact of the matter was, I wasn't in the best shape I've ever been in, just then. It's kinda funny to me, now. I had the life I ALWAYS WANTED. I had exactly what I'd wanted more than anything else I knew, more than raising horses with Dad or building ships with Jimmy, or anything at all. WHAT I WANTED FROM THE TIME I COULD REMEMBER, I had then. And it was empty, Partner. It was empty and half dead, like that old oak by the stables at home, and like me. I was half dead, then, myself, after The Wilderness and … Cold Harbor and Spottsylvania … and the Crater…"
Jim shook his head when Artie coughed, an old signal between them to ask if the younger man was done with his spiel for whatever bad guys were listening and it was Artie's turn to crank up 'the game'.
"And I … sometimes I think… my brothers WERE lettin' me down easy…. Sometimes I think some of us MUST have lain down and died there… Because we were already half dead from the War… We were already numb, from seein' the boys killed and cut up and dyin' … by their thousands… by their tens of thousands… blue.. Blue carpets of our dead Union boys… Grey mounds of dead Confederates, piled like cordwood, tangled up in each other… bleedin red stains, dark red stains on blue coats… and butternut grey…
And … we were so, so far from anything like the stories we loved… Roland and Arthur, Geraint, El Cid, and Lancelot, Mordred and Galahad…We couldn't find anything to love about the very life we'd worked and struggled and pushed and pulled every string we could find to get! So I took this new job, and I thought… I really thought I could maybe find something… to give a flying damn about, again. And then it just got worse… because we walked inside those gates… and we … the truth is, in some ways, we never came out again…" Jim was shuddering now and couldn't seem to stop. Artie put one hand on each of his friends's shoulders and gave Jim a moment to at least save his voice.
"Jim," the former actor stated, not asking a question. 'this is what you remembered while we were out in the garden with those …drunken dunces, isn't it? This is about that place Mac and I and Jacques rode down to later that fall and found you and hundreds of prisoners who'd been 'unaccounted for' on all the rolls and rosters for months. And the people who ran it …"
"Were our friends, our very best non-friends, Herr Professor Stephan Johannes Sebastian Aynsley and Gideon Alexander Remiel Boudin." Jim nodded.
"And because of what Remy Boudin knows about me and Jimmy and our family, Stephan also knew just what to do with me, back then. And it didn't help that I came down with malaria, and I got shot in the leg, or else I fell and broke it. And it didn't help that I was half dead inside. And as I say, Stephan learned from Boudin how much I hated … how much I feared being trapped in close spaces, alone. And that was what worked against me and my brothers better than anything else they ever did."
"Of course Boudin knew about that … difficulty. He helped to create it, damn him." Artie frowned."But maybe you need to stop talking about this right now, Partner, at least for a while."
"…'m not sure I can." Jim shrugged with a tired half grin. "Of course you already know Stephan used his isolation cages or boxes or whatever he called them five years later in that old house outside Baltimore, too. I guess I never asked if he treated you to both of them."
"I only remember one, that was a like a … a coffin stood on its end." Artie answered, shivering.
'the other looked like a cell, most of the time. It had iron bars on four sides, and a key lock, well, what looked like a key lock. I think it was more complicated than that, cause I couldn't get it to open with anything I tried. But then, then it had these metal shutters, that he could open or close with what looked like a railroad track switch." Jim went on. "And if he wasn't satisfied with my 'Memory Work' or if Remy wasn't happy with my 'Loyalty to the One' the same thing always happened.
Stephan would say 'You're not taking the Work forward this way, Torry. You're not memorizing, or working as hard or as quickly as I know you can. So, we'll say auf wierderzehn for now, and resume Work when you're read to take the Great Work forward to its proper ends. Then he'd crash those shutters closed and there'd be no light, no sound, no warmth for … I don't know how long.
And if Remy wasn't pleased with my … responses, he'd laugh in my face and start talking about how many others he could have chosen for HIS Courier in HIS Great Work. He's start yammering about how privileged I was to bring about HIS Shining Destiny. So I should far better appreciate my Place in the Work, and do better, when our Lessons began, again. Then he'd have someone throw that switch and down those shutters would clang.
Later, in both places, someone very strong would drag me out, like a kitten, by the scruff of the neck. And someone would throw me face down on the floor. And the light in that room was like knives in my eyes, even then, and the noise was like enfilading fire. And …and… I couldn't move or think or talk at all. But I could feel just one thing. I felt like I'd die, or go raving mad, if they put me back in those boxes, ever again. AND I KNEW I'd … do anything at all not to go back inside." Jim shuddered and stopped. 'that's all I've remembered from back then."
Artie thought there might be something more but also thought he'd pressed Jim far enough for now, maybe too far. "Okay, Let's stop for now at least. That was … a lot to get through. You're not coming down for dinner, right? Ani will send something up for you, I'm sure. Get some … "
'rest." Jim finished. "Yeah. Artie…you were right to prod me, just then. And you know how I hate to admit that. But you were right. I needed to tell you about that … place… that place… during the War. You may be the only other living person
who … knows what it felt like."
"Yeah. Yeah, Jim. It's okay. I won't tell anyone you're agreeing with me. One armed truce at a time is my limit. And I've still got that one going with Miguel." Artie joked.
'really? Well, maybe the two of you should negotiate a formal peace treaty sometime soon." Jim quipped.
"Nope. Nope. No can do, James. The world as we know it just might come to an end if we ever did." Artie laughed and reluctantly left Jim on his own.
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
'the world as we know it might come to an end?" Jim repeated softly to himself, as the door closed between him and his partner. "Partner, you still don't understand the core truth in all this… all these nightmares. The world as we knew it burned to the ground and disappeared, years ago. It died, Artemus, while we were busy looking the other way, I guess. It's been gone so long, I'm not sure I can remember what it was like a bit.
And besides, you never got far enough along to recieve the last injunction Stephan Aynsley gave me, the one Boudin put in my head again, just months ago: If I remember what is forbidden to me, I must die. If I BEGIN to remember what is forbidden, I will die. If I begin to remember what is forbidden to me as the Courier of the Great Work, rather than betray the One, I must die. Rather than betray the One, I will die. Rather than betray, I will die … by my own hand. If I begin to remember… "
Then Jim froze in place, and couldn't move an inch for a long moment as a harsh realization came. After months, after years of being forbidden just these memories, just the ones that would trigger his 'final precaution against betrayal', his mind and memory, his heart and spirit were flooded with them day to day and night to night. He was being signaled, via decades old codes and prompts, to take up the Courier's endgame at long last. He'd done all that was demanded of him by the Great Work and the One. He could take the hero-martyr's coup d'grace if it was offered, or administer it himself, if it was not.
He wasn't being tormented by the past. The past was complete, unreachable and unchanging. He was free of past torment and of the future both now. He was being given due notice. He was receiving his termination order. He could take his place as the Cherished Southron Achilles, the Beloved, Immortal Southron Liberating-Martyr. He could lay down his arms with honor and know his place secure, his duty discharged, his struggle won. Nothing more was left him but his own proper end. And that was all prepared, now. He'd only lacked the bitter words of a drunken soldier to light his final path.
Ain't y' even heered what happened t' them boys from the 18th North Carolina? You surely know what they done, right? You surely know them boys shot ol' Stonewall Jackson plumb off his horse, right after that fight at Chancellorsville, don't ya? Well, them boys in that ol' 18th they figured a hex got put on them that made 'em do that. They figured they done th' Cause its mortal woundin' that time. And some of us Yankee boys, we figure maybe they did just that. And so most of them 18th North Carolina boys they picked themselves off, one after another after another as time went on… till there's practically none of 'em breathin'!
So me an' my boys here we heered you was still walkin' the earth and still free an' clear, no jail time, no trial, no trouble about what you done t' our Genrl Grant! An' we come by t' ask this here question: Genrl, why ain't you already done fer yourself when it's been four long years since y' put Sam Grant in the ground? What's been keepin' you, huh, Genrl? Why ain't you in th' ground somewheres, too? Why ain't you down in th' deepest part of Perdition by now, is what we don't get? Why ain't you offed yourself, Genrl? You warn't too yella to kill ol' Grant, but now you're too damn yella t' kill your own self?"
"No, not anymore, boys." Jim whispered to those soldiers and all the others he remembered as loving Ulysses Grant as much as he ever had. Jim walked to his bedside table, a small secretary, actually, built the old way with dozens of cubbyholes and drawers, and hidden doors. Tapping here and tugging there, pulling this knob and pushing that latch, he opened one hiding place after another. From one of the larger cubbies, Jim drew a fifth of bourbon, pilfered from Ani's kitchen. From one of the smallest drawers he took a scalpel, stolen just today from Miguel's small surgery behind the house. He set both items on the small desk's drop down writing surface. Those tools would aid one of his planned escapes, if such furtive measures were needed.
From a hidden shelf Jim next drew a packet of snowy white powder that Miguel used only for patients in the most devastating pain, and another of the same brownish compound Jessy Miller had been given, that Ani and Miguel had been analyzing together. Either one of these would dispatch him the former soldier knew from listening to his friends and reading certain odd Braille journals he'd collected. He had a choice then, and the certain means of confusing anyone who tried to learn what James West died from. Only when all these alternatives were lined up within easy reach, did the agent sit down at the desk to go through a handful of cherished, familiar objects.
His grandfather David Arthur West's pocket watch, that had come with that gentleman horse breeder from Ludlow, Wales, sixty years ago was the first cherished item. Jim didn't need his eyes to know its engraved brass casing gleamed even the low light of his room. He didn't need his sight to bring to mind the inscription Meredydd Jennet Howlys West placed inside. 'For my own Davey, so you'll always know when to come home to –your Merey'. He'd polished this watch himself with much use and tremendous daily care, for two decades. A horseshoe nail, the gift of his own canny, dry-witted grandfather Jaimey Randolph was the next of Jim's belongings to appear. It had become a family tradition in their branch of Virginia Randolphs for fathers or grandfathers to gift their offspring with these practical, significant objects. It became even more important, and more memorable to Jim, when it went with him to West Point and beyond, where the chant would always start up, as soon as a classmate saw the nail: 'for want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe, the horse was lost..' His first year nickname soon became 'Cadet Lost'.
Next in the row were two battered tin soldiers in Continental Blue and Buff from the Revolutionary War. Feeling their hinged sides and time-smoothed details, Jim heard his grandmother Randolph telling him over and over again that: 'Randolphs? Torry, all the Randolphs, like your Granpa Jaimey are fine lookin' people, well set up, nicely conformed, handsome as the day is long. But this is why they need Torrances and Singers, Monroes and Ashtons and all the rest of their extended family to multiply and multiply and make a lot of sensible second cousins for them to marry: They haven't had a lick of sense amongst them, since the Revolution. Now you remember that, Torry-Little when time comes for you to find a bride.'
'm sorry, Granma, 'm truly sorry, I don't think that's likely gonna happen, now. Jim considered, twenty five years later, as he picked up the last object on the desk in front of him. This was a daguerreotype case, with a worn velveteen cover and two pictures inside. On the right was an image of himself in his Second Lieutenant's Uniform, taken right after graduation, which Jim was fairly glad he couldn't see tonight. On the left was an older image, one he wished he could look at forever, of his mother, Jessamyn Annabeth Randolph West, taken on her last birthday.
He knew every detail in it by heart. She wore her favorite silver-green moire silk dress with creamy, fragile lace at the
collar and cuffs, and a cameo brooch in soft green and cream, showing a portrait style image of a mother and her infant child. His mother's glossy dark chestnut hair was styled in a way he'd heard his father liked quite a lot, with ringlets high against her neck in back, ribbons woven all through of the same moire, and soft curls flowing down by her face. And her bright green eyes that Jim had been told a thousand times were identical to his own, were smiling at someone behind the picture-maker. His imagination always suggested to Jim that either he or his father was the one who made her smile in quite that day-bright way.
'momma, you're so, so pretty, momma! Like a fairy-angel, Momma! Torry loves you so veryiest many much an' much!" Jim whispered to the image he couldn't see, and the woman he'd never forgotten. He heard himself speaking like a child of three or four, and couldn't understand why. But it didn't matter now. Soon it would never matter, ever again.
momma, it hurts so veryiest much you're no here! Why'd you go t' be a angel, Momma? Whyn't you could be stayd heres with your Torrys-Littles, please? Whyn't mees could be keeped you heres, Momma, why? The little boy he'd been whispered.
There was no answer. There never had been one, except in the furthest stretches of his lonely imagination. He was alone. He always had been and that was only as it should be. He'd owned some comfortable, comforting delusions now and then of being sheltered, of being welcomed, of being needed in the world. They all were dead now. They were only empty fancies of a disordered mind, in any case. He was a singleton, a loner, and an outcast. That was as it must be, because there was something wrong, there was something cold and empty and lethally poisonous wrong with him. He knew it. He knew it without question now because he destroyed or scattered, maimed or shattered everyone he held dear, everyone he wanted close to his heart, ever.
What had been tormenting images from the past were only instructional engravings on his mind, now. Sightless in all other venues, in his battered imagination he could see what those nightmares were meant to teach him, finally. No longer bewildered he could embrace these lessons and he did. At long last he knew why he'd had to live alone all this time, why he'd soon die alone as well. In the darkest corners of his spirit, in the emptiest reaches of his heart, in the bleakest moments of his existence, lay the answers, patiently waiting for him.
His enemies, so-called never formed him, never changed him. He made common cause with them, time and time and time again! His tormentors, so-conceived never broke him, never marred him. He was just as base, just as deformed as they were, from his beginnings! His adversaries, so-designated never hated, never despised him. That self loathing was his native air and soil, that contempt was the root of his existence. All his raging and protesting against them was absurd to the point of pain, now. He was only hiding from the mirror they held up to his own failings. All his diatribes and accusations were smokescreens and duck-blinds for his own remorseless nature. He was only dodging, only running from himself. And no one can really do that, ever.
I felt like I'd die, or go raving mad, if they put me in those boxes, ever, ever again. AND I KNEW I'd … do anything at all not to go back inside. That's all I've remembered from back then. He remembered telling someone, not too long ago. And he was lying. And the friend he told it to, likely knew that, very well. All he had to do this instant was close his blind eyes and the scene rose all around him.
Sixteen ragged, angry, defiant, frightened boys ranged around him like a color guard. A dozen men in fancy civilian suits stood in one corner of the sweltering room, while thirty or so men in every possible variation on a worn, patched and fading Union soldier's uniform crowded along the other wall and out the single doorway. He was the center of their attention now, the focus of every pair of eyes around him. He was the one they came to watch there. He was the protagonist/antagonist/fool of this little drama, this morality play they were staging. So he put on quite a show, hoping his whole audience would approve it.
Leaning on a makeshift crutch, because in an escape attempt or some other foolish effort, he'd fallen and busted his right leg in several places, he performed for his widely divergent 'patrons'. Trembling with the effects of his malaria, dizzy and sick with exhaustion, he held that 'center stage' for minutes, for hours, for days, it may have been. Soon or late one blended blurrily into another and another. And there had been some purpose to all this once. He felt sure there had been. But it was well and truly lost now, and so was he.
'I can't… so I … yes, yes, I know I've failed you. And … you've … you've been so patient, really. Only… I am… I was an officer… I am… I was a soldier… And there are … Codes of … of Military Justice, there are… Manuals of Arms that … that cover … so much more than that… there are Rules … of ..of Engagement.. which… you might… might not … know… And they say… they clearly say … they don't allow for … children … or… or civilians… I know, yes, yes, I know, you may not … may not understand… but these boys here… these … hostages…' The prisoner recited.
'I can't… I can't… So I can't… do what you … what you … wanted… because… because they're children! They're just children… and … So, I know now, I know… yes, yes, that you were … you have to test me… here. I know that… I understand. So, I understand… that you really don't… you really don't want … Because you know I am … I'm … ready to do … to follow your… your orders… And so… I know, I know that you… don't want these … these children… harmed… Because I …I'm prepared, now. I'm prepared and I have to do what you want… I can only do what … you want! So you can't… you don't… you don't …'
Then his director, manager, producer and co-star in the small production read his lines, in an icy voice the man on the crutch would have known in a blizzard, in a hurricane or in a firestorm. 'And what if we still require of you what was already asked, Courier? What then? Will you dast defy us, even now?'
'No, no, no, no, no, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir…' the prisoner on the crutch at center stage eagerly answered. 'I can't. I can't. I can't defy you… I can't defy you, no, no, no, I can't and so I … I know … You… you..you see… I can't defy you, so I know… you don't… You only … only need to… to test me… here… I know that… I know that… '
'Then you 'know' this incorrectly, Courier. You must revise your data, we would think, as it seems quite, quite faulty.'
The long limbed, icy mannered, icy voiced other said. 'You were given an unmistakably direct order, Courier. And yet we stand here sweltering in this miserable place, awaiting your compliance with our wishes! Must we, at this late stage begin again to find a properly obedient Servant of the Great Work and the One?
Must we now dispense with someone we have fruitlessly, it seems expended all our wisdom, all our insights, all our comprehension of the world on? Must we thrust you back to the boundaries of Oblivion on which we found you wandering, Courier? Or will you now properly, deferentially and categorically obey us? Those are your only choices, Captain. Those are your sole alternatives, Torry. You will now choose one or the other, Nothingness or Compliance, Nonexistence or Submission, Isolation or Obedience. Do we, can we finally have that clear?'
'Clear, clear, clear, clear… ' the prisoner, one Captain James T West tried to answer. But his throat was closing on the words, his mind was shattering once again and his wiry frame, covered only by his uniform trousers, cut away on the right for a makeshift splint there, was finally collapsing. The rough floorboards of that 'office' rushed up to srike him in the face, the crutch crumpled under him and he fell, flailing and screaming into absolute darkness.
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