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.
The sailor goes down into the lodge, and the colonel walks away, past the eagle. Another sailor approaches. He’s in there, the colonel says, pointing back toward the lodge. Down where you boys have your fun. He threw the fight. He lost your money.
I am holding a baby. Her eyes look like mine. How the hell did this happen, I wonder. How did we finally have a girl after all these years? After all the bad things I’ve done, how did my life turn out to be this good?
The second sailor stops and stares down at the eagle. Never mind that, the colonel says. It’s just a dead bird. It’s none of your business. Go talk to your friend. He threw the fight.
In the hospital bed, Pop opens his eyes and he sees the woman. There have been dozens of women. Even a wife. But this is the one. The only one, really. She’s there leaning over him.
In the lodge, the two sailors argue. You sold us out, the second sailor says. The first says, no, I’m going to share the winnings with you guys. I don’t have any of it yet. But I will. Joe, calm down. Joe, no.
My daughter claps her hands the first time I walk to the mailbox and back without the crutches. You are one tough old bird, she says. Yes, I say. Yes I am. Guess what kind of tough old bird. I have its feather in my room. Have I ever shown you?
The woman leaning over Pop is at once plain and beautiful. That paradox was the first thing that drew him to her. And then her frighteningly sharp mind kept him there. More than thirty years now. She is his best friend, was several times his lover, has always been his savior. But he’s been hers, too, so that’s only fair. She looks so frightened. Why? Pop wonders, and then he knows. That makes him frightened, too. And angry. He’s sixty-six. That’s not old enough for this, is it?
The two sailors fight. The first catches the second with a punch to the jaw, but then the second shoves him back into the little room behind the jumble of sod and bone. He knocks him down, then slams his head back. He does it again.
Pop is frightened and angry for only a moment. Then he sinks away, down into warm black cotton, and can only hear the woman’s sobs from far, far away. It’s okay, Lilishka, he tries to say. It’s okay.
My little grandson and granddaughter run out and throw their arms around my legs, and I drop all the mail. So I look up at my daughter on the porch and ask her to go get her mother to help me. But she frowns and says, Dad, don’t you remember?
I don’t. So she begins to tell me.
XII
THEN POP WAS SLAPPING MY FACE, HARD, BACK AND FORTH ON BOTH CHEEKS.
“That’s enough,” he said. “That’s more than enough, goddamn it. Get up. Get your ass up right now, soldier.”
He grabbed my collar and tried to pull me to my feet, but he wasn’t strong enough. So he let me drop back down. My head thumped on the plywood floor, and then he started slapping me again. The light hanging above us shone around his wild white hair like a halo.
I almost slipped back into the visions, but Pop wouldn’t stop slapping me. Finally, I came up from limbo enough to grab his right wrist with my left hand. My right fist clenched.
“Hit me again, old man,” I said, my words slurring. “Hit me again, and I’ll lay you out.”
Pop sat down on the edge of the cot and ran his hand back through his hair. “All right,” he said. “I’d like to see that. You tried to slug me once before, and all I got was a cool breeze. I’m beginning to think you aren’t actually capable of hitting anyone who hasn’t been paid to take a dive.”
I struggled up to my knees, tried to make it all the way to my feet, and fell back onto one of the stools. It tipped, but Pop reached out and grabbed my sleeve to keep me from going over.
I didn’t say thanks. I was mad at him for smacking me around. My cheeks were burning.
Pop let go of my sleeve and then shook his head as if trying to clear it.
“That may have been the worst coffee I’ve ever had,” he said.
My head was muzzy, and Pop was going in and out of focus. But I was in the hospital’s supply hut again. I was in the here and now. I looked around the room for the Cutthroat and didn’t see him anywhere.
“He was gone when I came out of it,” Pop said, anticipating my question. “Then I heard you talking to people who obviously haven’t been born yet. So I decided that whatever you were experiencing, you’d better not experience any more of it. You’re too young for family responsibilities.”
I began to feel less angry toward Pop as I looked at him and remembered what I’d just seen. His hand had been touching my forehead, and I had seen everything about him.
Including his death.
“Did you . . . hallucinate?” I asked.
Pop looked at his wristwatch and stood. “We both know those were more than hallucinations. And I believe you and I saw and heard the same things, up to the point where I snapped out of it. But now it’s eighteen thirty, and I have to piss like a thoroughbred. Then I have to go into Navytown and ask around for a certain commander. I understand he’s an admirer of mine. Are you all right to take yourself to your bunk, or to mess, or wherever you need to go?”
I stood, too, but I was feeling considerably wobblier than Pop looked.
“Why aren’t you shook up?” I asked. “If you’d seen anything like what I saw, you’d be shook up.”
Pop smiled that thin smile. “I’ve seen a lot of things, Private. And they’ve all shook me up, even when they didn’t involve Aleutian magic. But the key is to realize that it’s all like that. It’s all magic, it’s all insane. So you make
