He found he could make tears in his eyes, and they fell warm on his face just like tears, but they couldn’t be tears cause he hadn’t cried since he was a kid, and now he was some monster almost father, but they felt warm and tear-like they sat on his cheeks feeling sorry for him, each drop a little bit of sorry, each tear a little thing lacking the complexity to be a creature, the power to be alive, but doing more than a drop of water does when spilled from a Poland Spring bottle, not manufactured and handled, but made by his own eyes, a magic way to have his cheeks touched without any person to touch his cheeks.
MCGRADY’S SWEETHEART
She was bleeding, but got into bed. He pushed the extra pillows to their feet. The newspaper drifted to the floor. The futon sat on top of a massive rug they’d gotten at a tag sale. They felt a cold thing under the sheets and it was a nickel.
I don't have a tampon and I don't care, she said, if you don't care. She laughed and made a face. He put his hands on her shoulders. Bleed on these sheets, he said, you have fought so gallantly in the war. She shook off his hands. I'm not that gallant, she said, I ran from the enemy and tripped on a rock. Bullshit, he said, I heard the shot. He tried to tear the sheet with his teeth. Until the nurses come, he said, I’ll stay by. No, she shook her head, run while you still can, the enemy will be crowding the horizon any second. He looked out and the horizon was clear. The ground was all torn up from soldiers’ boots. The moon was behind a big fancy piece of cloud. I could never leave you bleeding, McGrady, thinking things that might be the last things you ever think.
What are you thinking now?
While you were in the trench with the boys, I was running free in the wide open. I thought, couldn’t we find another excuse? Sure I like my soldier’s outfit. What kid doesn’t dream up a uniform, real obstacle courses, of being scared? We need a war to sleep outside?
Wallace couldn’t stop the bleeding. He sat his back against a giant tree. His helmet had rolled off to some rocks. McGrady sprawled in his lap like an old mutt dog, and heavier. Wallace had lost track of their troop and his radio was acting up. He fiddled with the dial, got some music to calm McGrady, who was still talking last words. Of which there were a lot. At first he tried to remember them to tell McGrady’s sweetheart and family, but McGrady had lost so much blood as to now lose sense. Wallace held the soldier’s soft hands and gazed around at the wilderness, the grass’s lazy way of resting on other grass.
McGrady murmured at him, something about animals, how animals sleep as well. McGrady whispered, Blue fields have a say. Wallace decided to agree. I might want to go into tent design, McGrady confessed, maybe after the war. Wallace said tents were a growing field and inquired about potential designs, but McGrady clammed up, blood soaking the grey uniform, dripping into the dirt.
A lunacy permeated the scene. Flies fluttered about screaming. Leaves rustled in eerie agreement. Wallace chewed the same old gum he’d started the day with. His moustache tickled and he sneezed. He listened to the crickets’ chant, their limbs whirring incessant and enthused. He saw the sun had sunk low in the horizon, had had the sense to.
* * *
A mosquito landed on Wallace’s arm and his arm was around McGrady. They watched the mosquito position itself to draw blood. McGrady slapped it and killed it, slipping back unconscious. McGrady’s light eyes now shut, Wallace took another look on McGrady’s face. Rosy cheeks and a prominent, upturned nose that looked noble and snubbing, sandy, curly hair careless and stuck to a forehead cool with sweat, a switchblade scar on the chin; McGrady looked like some choir kid gone jazz. Wallace expected zonked-out soldiers to look serene, but McGrady’s lips were in a sneer. With fingers flaking of dried blood, Wallace nudged McGrady’s lips to make a more angelic mouth.
McGrady had shot the best, then Culler, quietly great, unconsciously great, then Lodi, for sheer persistence, almost by mistake Lodi as third, next Horowitz, then the rest all about the same, Wallace, Rogers, Serg. Van Creerie, Fitsky, Myles. Wallace had met McGrady at training. Watched as the soldier hopped the fence during morning sprints, and rolled a cigarette, tossing a dandelion in with the tobacco. He’d seen then McGrady had style, and admired that. With the only scissors in the Battery, Sergeant Van Creerie had done the boys all trim except for McGrady, who’d refused, walking around with a hairdo. Also the Mess Hall, McGrady could dance. Really really dance.
When they all shared pictures of their sweethearts, McGrady wouldn’t, said it was private. They could only imagine McGrady’s then, and Lodi said it must be a homely one, a nose that looked like ears, an eye with something swimming in there, a face victim, like the men in the ward. Wallace thought the opposite though, a sweetheart too beautiful to share, a cool, knowing nose, eyes that had depth, lips that looked nice. A figure that flattered clothing. A voice that glorified talking. If Wallace concentrated on it, he could conjure that voice, bold and melodic. It was best never to get the name of another soldier's sweetheart, the lying awake time was too wild, took a man's reality and twisted like an ankle.
They hadn’t been the slightest prepared. Horowitz was half-shaved when he saw something reflected in his bit of mirror. A bullet whizzed by, and with soap on his face, Horowitz dove into the brush and curled into a ball. He pretended he was dead. He listened to the skirmish, Lodi's cursing, insane laughter. With his eyes hard shut, it was a radio drama. He imagined he was with his sweetheart at the theater. An animal, rabbit maybe, ran flat into his side, but took no lingering moments with Horowitz, immediately scooted off.
After the enemy had up and quit, Horowitz heard the distant sounds of his troop reforming, yet chose to crawl the other direction. He kept low to the ground, dragging his feet through flowers and mud, a broken bottle, pausing at what looked like long johns, weeds, moss, miles of poison ivy, an ant hill of angry red ants, until finally he felt brave enough to stand. He stood, thought of Jeannie once more and limped off. His leg was not injured in any physical sense, but he thought to limp, a sudden blooming of alibi. After a few steps, the limp felt real. He ached for Jeannie, hot legs, funny ways, plus a fear about leaving the boys; it all got solid like gunk in his leg. He limped on. His politics were weak to start with. His honor strong, but on a break. Lagging and sorry-assed, he limped away. In the distance, he heard Wallace singing to what looked like McGrady, who was down, but Horowitz’s legs kept this game, walking. Through the woods meant Jeannie. Trains went to her, horses, wagons. A bullet brings a man away, why not to where someone was?
Horowitz only had one picture of his Jeannie, but it was top rail. The men had all sorts of perfectly lewd things to say about the hotdog she was holding, but Horowitz was a good sport. His sweetheart worked in an arsenal, building guns. Myles’s girl looked a dream, but he got huffy if a soldier took too long looking. Fitsky’s had very sensuous lips and right this minute was running a sock factory, so he claimed. The men pictured that home was swirling with girls, covered with it. In the bars, it was girls playing pool against girls. The beaches filled. In winter, sleds. Girls on skates. Snowball fights with girls.
Wallace didn’t have a sweetheart. He was the only one. He tried to imagine himself jogging with Fitsky’s sweetheart. Tossing socks to her in the factory. Cooking her all kinds of dinner. Wallace didn’t even have a wife who had died or a sweetheart who was mad. He said the reason he didn’t have a steady was he was an oversexed bachelor, that he had given more women ‘the time’ than he could count on both hands and feet. This was true. Wallace was nice-looking, confident, and came from a town of seven women to every man. In his town, they joked there was something feminine in the water. Recently, they’d found something in the well supply, but it wasn’t hormones or shampoo, just an unhealthy amount of metals, giving teeth a blue tint. But Wallace loved to talk sweethearts, while McGrady grew quiet when talk turned that way, as it often did in the evenings, causing Wallace to believe McGrady was the most lovesick of all, and Myles to think it was humbug, there was no sweetheart to start with.