“I know,” Pop said. “For a lot of money, correct?”
The Cutthroat scowled and took a long drink. “Maybe there were side bets for money. But the bet between the lieutenant colonel and the Navy officer was for something else. See, the Navy guy has friends and family in high places. Like fucking Congress. So if the Army boxer won, the commander promised to have these friends pull strings and help with a promotion.”
“What if the Navy man won?” Pop asked.
The Cutthroat grinned and shook his head. “Then the commander was going to have dinner with you, Corporal. That’s what the lieutenant colonel promised. You must be famous or rich or something. Gotta say, it seemed like a lopsided bet to me.”
Pop drained his cup and set it on the floor. He seemed to wobble on his stool as he did.
“Very lopsided indeed,” he said, “since I wouldn’t do a favor for the lieutenant colonel if my life depended on it.”
I had been sipping the hot coffee and listening, but now I spoke up. “What about the eagle?”
The Cutthroat fixed me with an even gaze. “I still don’t know about that. Not for sure. But nobody ever knows anything for sure. No matter who you ask, or what you find out, you’ll never know all of anything that’s already past.”
The single lightbulb began to flicker. My stomach knot had relaxed, but now I found myself feeling lightheaded. I knew I should have had some chow.
“So I’m giving you both the opportunity to know as much as the lieutenant colonel,” the Cutthroat said. “I told him the legend I told you. And once, he asked me about taking power from animals. I said I couldn’t really explain that, since I didn’t understand it myself. But if he were to take a spirit journey or have a vision, like some shamans do, he might have a chance to know all the secrets he wanted. He might die and be reborn. He might be torn apart and remade. He might meet his totem animal and be given its strength. He might gain whatever he desired. He might even see his entire life from his birth to his death.” The Cutthroat shrugged. “Or he might go crazy. Or he might just pass out and sleep it off. It all depends on the individual.”
The Cutthroat stood up from the cot, and he split into five men before me. “Here,” they all five said in harmony. They reached for Pop and grasped his forearms. “You take the cot. My mother got this recipe from the same people who told her the eagle story, and she always said that the most important part was to lie the fuck down. There’s some mushrooms and other shit in it, and you don’t want to know what I have to do to mix it right. But it hardly ever kills anyone.”
The five Cutthroats put Pop on the bunk, and Pop curled up on his side. He looked like a toy made out of olive-drab pipe cleaners with a cotton-swab head. I could see his eyes behind his glasses, and they were like hard-boiled eggs.
Now the Cutthroat condensed into one man again, and he reached for me.
“You’ll have to take the floor,” he said. “But you’re younger. It’s fair.”
As he grasped my wrist, I watched my tin coffee cup tumble from my numb fingers. It turned over and over, and brown droplets spun out and circled it. The cup turned into the sun.
The bright light was high above my eyes. I could see it between Pop’s fingers.
“That’s the best I can do for you,” the Cutthroat’s voice said. I couldn’t see him anymore. He was far away. “Your enemy took this journey before you. But maybe you’re better suited for it. I don’t say that this means you’ll beat him, or that you’ll understand what he’s done. But at least now you have the same magic. So it’s a fair fight. You’re welcome.”
The earth shook with a deafening rumble, and the back of Pop’s hand fell against my forehead.
Then, in brilliant flashes, in a cacophony of voices and noise and music, I began to see everything.
Everything.
I began to see both the past and present of every place I had ever been, every object I had ever touched, every thing I had ever done. It was as if I were a movie camera in the sky, looking down and watching it all.
Then, even as the past and present were flashing and roaring around me, I saw the future as well. And not just mine.
Pop’s, too.
My advice: Never see the future.
Not anyone’s.
I’M IN MY FOXHOLE WHEN THE JAPANESE MAKE THEIR CHARGE. I HAVE TO struggle for my helmet, for my weapon. When I make it out of the hole I run backward, firing as they come toward me. Some keep coming even after I hit them. One gets very close and sets off a hand grenade, trying to kill us both. But he trips and falls, his body covers it, and I’m all right. Then, to my left, I see my sergeant bayoneted. I shoot the one who did it. But it’s too late.
A younger Pop, his hair not yet all white, is at a typewriter. It clacks and clatters, and the bell rings over and over again. He puts in page after page. He smokes cigarette after cigarette and drinks two bottles of whiskey dry, but he doesn’t stop typing. He does this for thirty hours without a break. When he finally stops I can see his eyes. And I know he has emptied himself. There is nothing left.
The colonel points at the little man on the ground and shouts at me. I look at the little man and know he’s a Jap who just tried to kill me. But now he’s lying facedown, his hands behind his back. He hardly looks like a Jap now. The colonel points and shouts again and again, louder and louder. I put the muzzle of the M1 at the base of the little man’s skull and pull the trigger.
Pop, much, much younger, is wearing a uniform and walking into a hospital. He doubles over coughing as he climbs the steps. A pretty nurse rushes over and puts her arm around his shoulders.
I am much, much older, sitting in a tangle of metal and plastic. A young man is using huge steel jaws to push the metal apart and make a hole for me. You’ll be okay, sir, he says. I’ll get you out. I manage to take a small plastic rectangle from my pocket. It has little square buttons. I punch the buttons and call my daughter. You’re right, I tell her. I shouldn’t drive anymore.
The colonel is standing over the dead eagle. He is holding a knife. The sailor who fought me appears at the hillock beside the lodge, and the colonel goes to him. You’ll have to trust me for an IOU, he says. It’ll be a while before I can collect my winnings. But you did good. And thanks for the bird.
Pop, looking only a bit older, but wearing a nice suit, is being escorted from a bus by armed guards. They take him into prison and put him into a cell by himself. He stays in the prison for six months. He writes a lot of letters. But all his books go out of print. The radio money stops. When they let him out, he is sicker than ever and looks twenty years older. He is broke and goes to live in a tiny cottage owned by friends.
Guess I don’t have any choice, the sailor says. But I know you’re good for it, sir. Do I still get the date with the nurse? The blonde who swabbed my face and said I was handsome for a Navy man?
I am standing at the altar with my younger brother beside me, looking down at the far end of the aisle, when the pipe organ blares and all of the people on either side of the aisle stand up. A gorgeous woman in white appears on the arm of an older man, and they walk toward me, smiling. I can’t wait for them to get here so I can find out what her name is.
You still get the date, the colonel says, holding out a bent eagle feather. Show this to her when she comes. It’s dark down there, and she has to know it’s you. She’ll be here in a little while. Go on down and wait.
The heavy, sweating man with greasy, wormlike hair leans forward and looks down from his high, long podium. I would like to ask, he says in a thick voice. Is Mr. Budenz being truthful when he told us that you were a Communist? So now Pop leans forward, too, toward the microphones on the table where they’ve made him sit, and he says, I decline to answer on the grounds that an answer might tend to incriminate me. He is out of prison, and he is poor. But they won’t leave him alone. They won’t let him at least try to write.