“What do you do for a living, Rick?”
“Pit. We work in the pit at Honest Jack’s. Ronnie’s good with his hands and I can watch out he doesn’t get back wrecks.”
“You mean, auto mechanics?”
“Yeah.” Rick looks down at the stained, callused hands that might have done other work.
“And how did you get into this, ah, project?”
“Catledge bought his car at Jack’s. I guess he has his eye out for twins. The bread helps.”
“Rick, what if your brother were, well, in a—”
“You mean if he was dead? If I had him put away? I guess I could.”
“So?”
“If he wasn’t dead I’d have to go to China . Maybe that’s not far enough, if he was really unhappy. While our folks were alive I rode to Buffalo on the bus once, you know, just to get away. While I was gone our dog got hit by a car. I could hear Ron like he was in the room. I guess he could make me hear him in China if he wanted. And his being … dead, that wouldn’t solve anything. It’s more complicated …”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not just him.” Rick twirls the ball again, looks at Dann. “See, it’s not like I was all right except for him. I’m not. He’s part of me.” His voice is almost a whisper. “He’s the part of me that can’t take it. Can you dig that? It’s like he’s part of me, only outside where I can’t fix anything. He got—left out. We’re, I’m not, I’m not okay without him. I mean, I need this break. But if he doesn’t wake up pretty soon, I, I can’t…”
He falls silent, rolling the ball between his coarsened hands. Above them a mockingbird is trilling arpeggios. Dann sees Rick is talked out, wants to be left alone to enjoy his respite. He touches Rick’s shoulder, unaware that the boy has derived comfort from their talk, and gets up and walks aimlessly away.
Dear God. The pain in Rick’s eyes. The waste. He is reminded of the pitiful history of a patient, a friend, who had an intermittently and inconspicuously mad husband. The dead dragging the living down. Or is it possible Rick and his twin are in some weird sense one person, cruelly sorted into two bodies? Life’s savage jokes. No matter. He dry-swallows the capsule. In a few minutes the chemistry of his bloodstream will carry reality away. He listens to the mockingbird, and discovers that his feet are carrying him around the end barracks, to the pool.
A man and three women are in the pool. Dann sits on one of the tin loungers on the shady side.
“Hi, Doctor Dann! Come on in!” The splashing turquoise-capped figure is Winona .
Dann makes benign, avuncular excuses and sits watching Valerie and Fredericka—Frodo—climb out on the sunny side. Frodo’s skinny, swarthy form is clad in a blood-red tank suit. Valerie is in sunny yellow, a seductive young body. She stretches out to sun. Frodo ceremoniously lets down the back of the chair for her, fetches a coke, lights her cigarette, sits cross-legged on the grass alongside. A pixie cavalier. It occurs to Dann that he is watching romantic love. He smiles, safe back in his cocoon.
The bearded figure of Ensign Yost climbs out and walks toward Dann, toweling vigorously. His bushy face laughs, he is every inch the folly mariner. Hard to remember the death working in that bone marrow. He sits down by Dann and lights a cigarette.
Dann starts the automatic rebuke, checks himself. Yost notices it, grins more broadly. They watch Winona’s determined progress up and down the pool. She splashes womanfully. Above them the mocker is still singing, varying his repertory with blue-jay shrieks.
“Peaceful here,” Dann offers.
Yost grunts. “I’d still rather be out in that sub.”
“I should think it would be extremely confining.”
“Yeah… But, a ship.”
Winona climbs out, fussily spreads out in a lounge by the girls.
“I got a couple thou put away, Doc,” Yost says meditatively. “If it gets bad again, I’m not going in hospital. No way, no sir. I’m going to lease me a little motor sailor and stay aboard, down the bay. Live there. Even if it’s winter.”
“I see.” Dann has heard something like this before, but the cocoon is holding. Something about this place seems to make for unfortunate confidences, he thinks remotely.
“On the water.” Yost’s voice is dreamy. “I don’t care if it snows. But they say this may last ’til next Spring. How about it, Doc?”
Dann is surpirsed; Yost seems to have come to believe in his disease.
“No one can predict, Ted,” he says, more or less truthfully. “What about your family?” Instantly, he regrets the question. No more revelations, no more.
“Don’t have one now,” Yost says inexorably. “When I got better last time Marie took the kid and split. I didn’t tell her it was temporary, see? Better for Dorothy that way.”
“Dorothy is your little girl?” Dann shudders, can’t help himself.
“Yeah. She’s six last week. I think Marie knew, she figured it was better for Dorothy too. Sometimes I feel bad, holding out the money for the boat. But Marie has a good job, she’s a GS-seven. That’s good security.”
“Oh, yes.”
Ted Yost talks on, describing the boat he plans to get. His deathship. But he is not morbid, he is looking forward with his whole soul to being on the water again, even if it is only the murk off Chesapeake Bay . Back to the sea, the oldest drive of all. Within his insulation, Dann winces. He knows none of this will happen, he knows how the relapse will come. Yost will find himself on the VA wards, trapped in tubing. Not the sea. Pity… What tragic flotsam has Noah collected here? Yost, Rick, Costakis—all in their different intolerable miseries. Well, he, Dann, can positively not take much more of this. And she has not appeared.
Announcing his intention to see how the equipment installation is coming along, he gets up to go.
“Thanks, Doc,” Yost says unexpectedly. What for?
As he rounds the end of the pool Valerie calls to him. Frodo is coughing evilly over her cigarette; Dann makes a mental note to check her and scratches it off again. Surprising how many of them smoke. Does it correlate with—whatever?
When he gets close he is momentarily bemused by Valerie’s bursting young breasts, her vulnerable little belly, and does not take in her whisper.
“Doctor Dann, that man is here again. What does he have to do with us?”
Dann stares around, finally spots a grey sedan beside the trucks in front of the barracks.
“You mean your Black Rider?”
“Yeah,” says Frodo. “What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Dann smiles.
“You could find out,” Valerie suggests. “Please, Doctor Dann. I’m so worried. He frightens me.”
“We didn’t agree to, to whatever he’s into,” Frodo adds rebelliously.
“I expect it’s some formality. They’re having trouble with equipment, you know.”
“Do you think we’ll do a test tonight?”
“I tend to doubt it. That’s what I’m on my way to find out.”
“Find out about him, please.” Valerie’s big blue eyes plead, her round cheeks tremble.
“I wish they’d get it over with and let us out of here.” Frodo stubs out her cigarette savagely. “This place is scaring Val. Me too.”
“I’ll let you know,” Dann promises. “But truly I wouldn’t worry.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Valerie breathes intensely.
Dann’s reassuring smile feels painted on. No more, no more. He all but lopes around the corner of the barracks, wondering how this peaceful place could scare anybody. They’re insane, of course. The mockingbird is still gurgling melodies.