Joe’s directions led far to the west of town, out where the marshes, the bay, and Fishtown all came together near the very edge of Deadwhale, a point where no one lived anymore, no lights burned, and all I could here were crickets and the distant crash and roar of the waves.
The sun was mostly down. I had one of Robin’s bikes, but the road was bumpy and cracked, and I was walking beside the bike now. A ruined house slumped off to the side where the road vanished into the weeds. It was a wooden house raised on stilts that collapsed in back, tilting the house almost into the mud. A set of broken planks led from the back out over the shallow puddles. There must have been more water once, but the bay didn’t come in this far anymore.
All the paint had peeled off the walls. The windows were long broken out. There was a ripped screen in one, all shredded and dangling, and the house was half-hidden and choking in the wild grass. Mosquitoes swirled and bit at my neck and legs. Occasionally I'd hear a splash in the water.
I waited the longest time. He’d made me promise not to come inside till I saw a flash of light. I was scared. I could hardly see the house. I couldn’t see the road. I tripped once over the bike. Everything was still and strange and lonely, but mostly what scared me was Joe. He’d hardly said a thing on the phone, just giving the directions and making sure I understood. There were long pauses between words. I could hear him breathing. He made me swear to keep everything secret.
Then he asked, “Do you understand?”
I told him, "Yeah, yeah, I understand," and then his voice got down to barely a whisper, to where it hardly sounded human anymore, and then he said, "Itchy, I died.” And the phone clicked dead.
There were a few stars now, no moon, and then a flash of fire that sent up strange shadows and vanished, just the flick of a lighter, or a match, in the dark of the house. I laid Robin’s bike in the road. I’d been holding the handlebars, standing beside it in the dark. It made me feel better, ready for a getaway. Now I felt naked, groping along, the steps creaking underneath me. I climbed them toward the black hole behind the doorway. Weeds swished between my legs. The railing creaked and snapped a bit in my hand. I stepped through that black mouth into the house. It was hot in there, and right away I called his name.
“Joe.”
I waited a long time. Spider web brushed my face. Something scraped across the floor, maybe a mouse or a rabbit, or who knows what? I squinted into the black but couldn’t see a thing, absolutely nothing. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I reached for my matches. I always had matches, because Robin hardly used electric light in the apartment, only candles.
The second I struck it, something slapped against my hand, and the match went out.
“Give me them.”
He snatched them away. I smelled the smoke. I smelled Joe.
“No light,” he said. “Sit.”
I felt like he had a gun on me. Like if I didn't sit and fast, there'd be a flash and a roar. I found a spot on the dirty wood. My heart beat hard, and I kept thinking about his words on the phone.
“Itchy, I died.”
Then he spoke. “You didn’t tell anyone?”
“No. God, does it have to be so dark?”
“I see better in the dark.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t see shit.”
“Learn.”
I slid back against the wall. I felt safer with something behind me. There was spider web on my hand, spider web in my hair. Something shot across the floor.
“How’s Robin?” he asked.
“Better now, I guess. Are there rats in here?”
“She’s lost,” he said.
“Joe, what’s running around in here? I’m not sitting here if some rat’s going to run up my leg.”
“I’m watching her,” he said. “I’m watching Suzanne.”
I heard something digging at the far wall. My eyes weren’t adjusting much. I couldn’t find Joe.
“How long you been back?” I asked.
“Just before your thing at the factory.”
“We were worried about you, scared. I was afraid you died.”
“I did,” he said. “But only for a while.”
“Did what?”
Wings fluttered deep in the house. They stopped, then fluttered again. I couldn’t see, but I could hear every sound, every strange bird, frog, and cricket.
I wasn’t sure I understood him. All the humor was gone from his voice, all the personality and charm. I imagined his face blank. I imagined his eyes off-center, glazed, and far away.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Why didn’t you contact anybody?”
“I was lost,” he said.
His voice came from different spots in the room. He must have been pacing, but I couldn’t hear him move, and his voice was so soft and clear.
“You’re Robin’s lover,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I whispered.
“It's fine.”
Something slammed way back in the house. I wanted to move. I wanted to run. I wanted to see Joe so bad, but no matter how hard I strained, I saw nothing.
“I saw everything,” he said. “Only I didn’t know who you were, and I didn’t understand it all. I’ve been away so long, and there were so many dreams. I mean, not just away from Deadwhale, but away, away from my body, from consciousness, from earth. I died, Itchy.”
I felt sick when he said it.
“Come on, Joe. Quit saying stuff like that. It’s getting me sick. My stomach, you know, like I'm going to throw up.”
“It’s true.”
“What then? You’re some kind of ghost?”
“No,” he said. “My heart beats. I find food in the woods, but for a short while in that Viet hell, I was dead, and after that, well, after that I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean, you were dead?”
“I was dead in the grass. I saw my arm hanging. I saw my face burnt and the whole squad around me, all dead, just sort of hovering above it all, watching the NVA, the enemy troops, you know, picking over our bodies, pumping rounds in our chests if we weren’t stiff enough, or had a bit of heartbeat, ripping off our boots, stacking up our weapons. I could feel the others with me, only somehow I knew they were farther gone. They were going on, but for me, it hadn’t been decided.”
He was closer now. I could hear him breathing. I could smell him again, a mix of things, like grass and dirt and sweat, maybe a bit of smoke, the smell of the war, I guess.
“I used to like that body,” he said. “I worked on it, two hundred push-ups a day, sit-ups on the beach, like Charlie, combing my silly hair, and there it was, my body, me, all burnt and bleeding, my face black, my arm hanging, and I just didn’t care. I didn't fucking care.
“I was happy to be away from it. I had no feelings, just curiosity, while they sliced off that poor, dead, ruined arm. Who knows why they did it? There wasn’t much left of it anyway, just some splinters and melted skin, but they hacked it off with a knife and threw it in the trees. I didn’t hate them. I didn’t give a shit about the arm. I felt sorry for them, really, and just a little sorry for my body, and I was confused why the stump didn’t pour blood. It’s funny what you wonder when you’re dead.”
“You saw all this? You didn’t dream it? I mean, when they gave you morphine or something?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. I was dead. My friends were dead, and the men who’d ambushed us were taking our stuff. They were quiet, nervous, very businesslike, and I wanted to know them, to understand, and I had the feeling I loved them and we were all the same, and I realized, in some higher way, some way that had nothing to do with reasoning, that the war was wrong. Oh, man, I knew it then. It was so wrong, and there I was in the middle of it, in a place I had no reason to be, and then I died.”
“What do you mean you died? How’d it happen? Your arm, I mean, the whole thing? I mean if you died, how is it you're sitting here somewhere right now scaring the shit out of me?”
“I don’t know. I remember something hitting some sergeant in the neck. I can’t remember his name, but I remember how he blew up, just disintegrated, except for his head, and that floated up into the air. Yeah, imagine that. And I saw it. And there were screams, fire and shots and pain, terror and confusion, and then nothing, man. Fucking nothing.
"There’s blank spaces, weeks, even years gone from my memory, but mostly I can’t remember what happened that day or how I ended where they found me, and even, for a long time, months I guess, I couldn’t remember my name.
“They found me miles from where I should have been. My arm’d been bandaged and my face. I’d been fed. They told me this in the hospital, and when they asked my name or my unit or where I’d been, I couldn’t tell them. I couldn’t tell them anything. I could only remember my dead body and dying, the peace, the light, and meeting my father, and then there were just dreams, days and days, an eternity of dreams.
“I died, but they let me come back. I have a mission, you see.”
“What’s that?”
“To die again,” he said.
“But why? What good’s that?”
“Please, Itchy. I can’t explain. I get tired when I think about it. The doctors say there’s no damage to my mind, but I get so tired, and I have this terrible pain in my fingers, the missing ones, you know, the phantom fingers just hanging out there throbbing.
“Come back. Every night. Please. I know how to live in the jungle in the dark. I was a good soldier. I believed for a while. I followed orders. I killed men. Maybe I killed children. Maybe I killed women. Maybe I didn't. I don't know. There's fires. There's fires in my brain. There’s straw burning and walls falling. There’s crying. And I'm counting the dead. Am I counting the dead? Is that me? I don't know. I don't know what's true and what's not. I know I believed. And then I didn't. Then I didn't at all. These fucking burning fingers. Jesus.
“It’s lonely. A different sort of lonely. There’s nothing lonely like combat, all the noise and fear and confusion, the shit and the piss and blood and then the silence when your mind turns off and you don't know who you are anymore or what you've done or what you’re doing, just running and shooting and trying not to die.
"I need to know what’s happening in the town and with Robin and Suzanne. I need to know when it’s time.”
"Time for what?"
"Just when it's time. When it's fucking time. I need to know."
“So go home. Visit Robin. You’re killing her. You’re killing them both.”
He was quiet for a long time. Something buzzed off my face. I swatted at it longer and harder than I should have, but it was gone. I heard a scuffling in the corner behind one of the walls. I imagined Joe heard it, too. I imagined he knew every sound in that house, every sound for miles around. I imagined he knew how to live with rats and every kind of bug and spider. He was at home in the darkness. He was part of it.
“I’ll see Suzanne when I’m ready,” he said. “Tell her that I’ll find her, but don’t let her find me. Don’t let anyone find me.”
“And Robin?”
“I’ll see her at the end. At the factory.”
“She's losing her mind, man. She's going to lose her mind.”
“Tell her I’m with her. Convince her. When the time’s right, I’ll be there. But she’ll never find me, and the harder she looks, the harder it will be. And tell her this, Itchy, so she’ll believe in me. Tell her she shouldn’t feel guilty, that what happened was my father’s fault and that he forgives her. My father forgives her, and so does the neighbor.”
I heard my breath hiss out, like something hard and tight blew up inside me and just popped. I reached for him in the dark. I wanted to touch him, to prove he was there, that I wasn’t dreaming. I could sense him all around me, but I couldn’t reach him.
“Who’s the neighbor?” I asked.
“The light in Robin’s dreams,” he said. “The one Suzanne calls 'the keeper.' “
And then I was angry. I was sick of it. The bullshit. The cruelty. The leaving us all behind and coming back wounded. All this talk about dying and dying again, like some bullshit story in the bible. Like Jesus dying on a cross to redeem the sins we’d never committed.
I didn’t believe the bible. I didn’t believe Joe. I didn’t believe he had some special mission. I didn’t believe he died or had to die again or that our Ferris Wheel was haunted or whatever the hell it was his sister was always talking about.
I shouted at him. “Just come fucking home, Joe. Just come fucking home. Come home, now, with me.”
And then I stopped. I heard the shuffling again in the wall, claws against wood, like something trapped, scraping, fighting like hell to get out. Something fluttered against my face, and I stabbed at the dark, but all I got was air. The shuffling stopped. I whispered his name, but there was no one there. I was alone. Just me in the dark, angry, confused, scared, crying just a bit.