Lodi and Rogers knew each other from before. They hung close together, compulsively making jokes. Wallace knew army men took on new habits. Men found themselves singing and whistling away, using all sorts of slang, praying, counting. Lodi was constantly putting caterpillars on men’s backs, wailing nonsense from pretended bad dreams. One time, Lodi made and wore a hat of flowers while Rogers laughed himself into a fit.
* * *
Beautiful, mutated, hungry for kisses, dripping slime. Wallace pictured McGrady’s Sweetheart shaving hairy thighs, fiddling with the clasp on a Tiffany’s bracelet. Loading up firearms, ruining a pie. So what if it was mutant as Lodi said, scaly skin, turkey neck. No one can tell a soldier who to love, only who to kill. With McGrady dying in his arms, he found such slogans easy to come up with. Trees are hard friends. Rocks don’t know shit. War doesn’t build character, it reveals it. That would look fine, sewn on some army banner in the Mess Hall, thought Wallace. Here was a brief moment in which Wallace felt he could compose any number of hit songs, haikus, or improvisational routines, but like moments, it ceased, crashing invisibly into the next.
Horowitz found railroad tracks and happily limped alongside. He’d shot, skinned, and ate a rabbit for breakfast. The railroad reminded him of a story of McGrady’s.
Back where McGrady called home, a new railroad line was hammered down and one part went deep in some woods. Neighborhood kids would scour the tracks for dead animals. Animals hadn’t yet gotten the hang of these trains, would occasionally freeze terrified when one came barreling by. Kids would bring these smashed possums home in a burlap bag, lay them out to marvel, tease the little sisters. One day McGrady goes and all alone and dead on the tracks is a squirrel, but wearing a tiny tuxedo. This part made the soldiers all laugh and Horowitz had to explain what a tuxedo looked like to Myles. Myles said, So, it was someone’s pet then? McGrady said, No, just a fancy ass squirrel. This got the boys wheeling. Myles said, Was it a doll? Life-like, done good? McGrady snorted, No, figure this squirrel came across a perfect-fit suit in the woods, looked good, felt right, and went about his life like that, in style.
Myles didn’t believe it. He went off at the mouth calling liar. Said McGrady’s Sweetheart was a phantom made-up one, and the well-dressed squirrel another hallucination. Wallace whistled. Myles jabbed his bayonet in McGrady's direction, wrathy and fit to be tied. McGrady just turned and grinned. Oh boy, McGrady said to Myles, You're the kind who can't trust the clouds to stay up. Always fearing they might fall and wreck your house. McGrady stopped to stare at the bayonet’s sharp tip, then continued. Now, I don't bluff Myles. But me and you are different kinds. You need to hold a piece of something to understand it. So, some luck ever understanding anything of mine. Myles let his bayonet down a little, his arm tired. McGrady went on, Go back to your tent and do whatever it is you do. Spare us your personality for a while, go on. Myles didn't budge, just sat there pouting. Van Creerie was taken with the story and often when they saw something strange or miraculous, he would say, Like a squirrel in a suit! And everyone would find themselves agreeing.
Alone with cold McGrady, no new blood, all dried, browned, Wallace missed the boys. The area around him was jokeless. His mind made nauseous connections and to keep calm, he strained to remember the sweetheart pictures. Every warm-blood in that troop would admit they’d spent too much time with those pictures. They got passed and passed around. Culler’s picture wasn’t even photographic. His was a drawing his sweetheart had done from the mirror. Lodi’s was taken at a fair and there was a phony backdrop of mountains painted behind her. Wallace could still picture Horowitz’s, standing in a summer dress, holding a hot dog, smiling to herself.
* * *
Jeannie looked at a picture of Horowitz and then set it down on her dresser. She closed her eyes and tried to remember Horowitz’s laugh, but the laugh that rang in her head was of her old school boyfriend, George. George had the greatest laugh, completely surprised like he hadn’t at all planned on laughing, hadn’t known what laughing was, and here he was, doing it, laughing! When George laughed it seemed that there was nothing else important, and hurrah for that, because it sounded like he was not anymore capable for anything else. When George laughed it made Jeannie laugh, which made George laugh, which made Jeannie, made George, Jeannie, George; so naturally Jeannie sought to make him laugh, dancing around, trying out voices, asking strangers peculiar things, and their times together were sure lively. At the orchestra once, George with his hiccups, but he couldn’t help it! Poor George! It was a recurring ailment of his, really. He would hold his throat with horror. But Horowitz! Who was more sincere than Horowitz? And smart? With a build that could carry Jeannie out from burning houses. Jeannie would set fire to a house just to have Horowitz carry her off! And Horowitz was the better kisser, had tons more tact. But if she were to remember who was the friendliest, the best at conversation with strangers, then it wasn’t George or Horowitz, it was that terrible rat of a man she went with one summer, who only wore knickerbockers in loud tweeds and wished her to part her hair on the opposite side of what was usual for her. He did excel at putting people at ease, though a temporary, formulaic ease. But if she could take different qualities from different men and arrive with a new man, this new man could not beat Horowitz. The mixing wouldn’t work. This new man would be some sociopath for sure, a problem man who lay on your breasts and couldn’t ever push himself off, whispering, adorable misfit whose shyness gave him hives, or a loudmouth advertiser for useless horseshit. Oh Horowitz, Jeannie said aloud, wherever you are, come home and I’ll make you a sandwich while you cry.
* * *
McGrady’s Sweetheart lived in a swamp, had grown gills, wore a necklace of fish eyes, killed boar, raccoons, stole bird eggs, baby crocs, ran screaming from porcupines, shivered in the night. Rode around on an alligator, counting its scales. Scientists camped out to research the creature. They pressed sweaty binoculars to their faces. They wrote in their journals, “McGrady’s Sweetheart demonstrates the variation possible in a species.”
McGrady was cold and unresponsive. Wallace’s legs were asleep, but he did not move. He knew it was time to dig a big hole and hug his losses, but he sat there bored and stunned. It was his fault. The wilderness breathed leaves, bugs, breezes. Nothing was anyone’s fault. The wilderness alluded to change. The wilderness was inhuman. Wallace stroked his moustache nervously. The wilderness was a place, was a force, covered the earth, and he was just a thing inside it. Humans warm and with skin, houses of uneven wood planks, the ground the bottom, the sky real high. Wallace put his hand on McGrady's face. Eyes closed, mouth closed, but a nose stays the same. Open and closed. A nose is like a statue, thought Wallace. A nose is most like clay. A nose is the sculpture of a face, thought Jeannie, staring hard at the picture of Horowitz. A nose is for fun. A face wants to say something forever and forms the nose, stuck forward, to present the rest of the face, thought Jeannie. Wallace nodded. A nose is defiant. Stubborn and undisputed, thought Jeannie, touching her own. Wallace settled back against his tree. It was grainy dark in the woods around him, the moon awake and glaring.