they took him for the last time to the hospital, he told me that I would have to be the boy for the both of us. I wanted so badly to help him. I told my mother that Billy could have my right lung and my heart, that the doctors could give me his, and we'd just trade off for a while. But of course, they didn't do that.'
I listened, and didn't interrupt Peter, because as he spoke, he walked closer to the wall where I'd begun to write our story, but he wasn't reading the words scrawled there, he was telling his own. He took a drag from the cigarette and then continued speaking slowly.
'In Vietnam, C-Bird, did I tell you about the point man who got shot?'
'Yes, Peter. You did.'
'You should put that in what you write. About the point man and my brother who died young. I think they're part of the same story.'
'I'll have to tell them about your nephew and the fire, as well.'
He nodded. 'I knew you would. But not yet. Just tell them about the point man. You know what I remember the most about that day? That it was so damn hot. Not hot like you or I or anyone growing up in New England knew hot. We knew hot like in August, when it was a scorcher, and we went down and swam in the harbor. This was an awful, sickly hot that felt poisonous. We were snaking through the bush single file and the sun was high overhead. The pack on my back felt like it had every item I needed and every care I had in the world packed inside. The bad guys had a simple policy for their snipers, you know. Shoot the guy in front on the point and drop him. Wound him, if you could. Aim for the legs, not the head. At the sound of the shot, everyone else would take cover, except for the medic you see, and that was me. The medic would go for the wounded man. Every time. You know, in training, they told us not to foolishly risk our own lives, but we always went. And then the sniper would try to drop the medic, because he was the one guy in the platoon that everyone owed, and this would bring everyone else out into the open, trying to get to the medic. A remarkably elemental process. How a single shot gives you an opportunity to kill many. So, that was what happened this day, they shot the point man, and I could hear him calling for me. But the platoon leader and two other guys were holding me back. I was short. Less than two weeks in my tour left. So instead, we listened while he bled to death. And that's the way it was reported back at headquarters later, making it seem inevitable. Except it wasn't true. They held me back, and I struggled and complained and pleaded, but all the time I knew that if I wanted, I could break free. That I could go for him, all it would take was a little more effort. And that was what I wouldn't spend. That little extra push. So, instead, we had this little charade in the jungle while a man died. It was the type of situation where what is right is what will be fatal. I didn't go, and no one blamed me, and I lived and went home to Dorchester and the point man died. I didn't even know him all that well. He'd been in the platoon for less than a month. I mean, it wasn't like I was listening to my friend die, C-Bird. He was just someone who was there, and then he cried for help, and kept crying until he couldn't cry any longer because he was dead.'
'He might not have lived, even if you'd reached him.' Peter nodded, smiling. 'Sure. Right. I told myself that, too.' He sighed. 'All my life, I had nightmares about people calling for help. And I didn't go.'
'But you became a fireman…'
'Easiest way to do penance, C-Bird. Everyone loves the fireman.' Peter slowly faded from my side. It was midmorning, I remembered, before we got a chance to speak. The Amherst Building was filled with sunlight that sent creases through the thick leftover smell of violent death. The white walls seemed to glow with intensity. The patients were walking around, doing their regular shuffle and lurch, but a little more gingerly. Moving cautiously, because all of us, even in our mad states, knew that something had happened and sensed that something was still to happen. I looked around and found my pencil.
It was midmorning before Francis had a chance to speak with Peter the Fireman. A deceptive, glaring spring sunshine burst past the windows and steel bars, sending explosions of light through the corridors, reflecting off the floor that had been cleaned of all the outward signs of murder. But a residue of death lurked in the stale air of the hospital; patients moved singly or in small groups, silently avoiding the places where murder had left its signs. No one stepped in the spots where the nurse's blood had pooled up. Everyone gave the storage closet a wide berth, as -if getting too close to the scene of the crime might somehow rub some of its evil off on them. Voices were muted, conversation was dulled. Patients shuffled a little more slowly, as if the hospital ward had been transformed into a church. Even the delusions that afflicted so many of the inmates seemed quieted, as if for once taking a backseat to a much more real and frightening madness.
Peter, however, had taken up a position in the corridor where he was leaning against the wall, staring directly at the storage room. Every so often his eyes would measure the distance between the spot where the nurse's body was discovered and where she had been first assaulted, in the wire mesh enclosed station in the center of the hallway.
Francis moved toward him slowly. 'What is it?' he asked quietly.
Peter the Fireman pursed his lips together, as if concentrating hard. 'Tell me, C-Bird, does any of this make any sense to you?'
Francis started to respond, then hesitated. He leaned up against the wall next to the Fireman and began to look in the same direction. After a moment, he said, 'It's like reading the last chapter of a book first.'
Peter smiled and nodded. 'How so?'
'Well,' Francis said slowly, 'it's all in reverse. Not reverse, like a mirror, but as if we are told the conclusion but not how we got there.'
'Go on, C-Bird.'
Francis felt a kind of energy as his imagination churned with what he'd seen the night before. Within him, he could hear a chorus of assent and encouragement. 'Some things really bother me,' he said. 'Some things I just don't understand.'
'Tell me some of the things,' Peter asked.
'Well, Lanky, for starters. Why would he want to kill Short Blond?'
'He thought she was evil. He tried to assault her in the dining hall earlier.'
'Yes, and then they gave him a shot, which should have calmed him down.'
'But it didn't.'
Francis shook his head. 'I think it did. Not completely, but it did. When I got a shot like that it was like having all the muscles in my body sliced, so that I barely had the energy to lift my eyelids and look out at the world around me.
Even if they didn't give Lanky enough, some would have done the job, I think. Because killing Short Blond would take strength. And energy. And more, too, I suppose.'
'More?'
'It would take purpose,' Francis said.
'Go on,' Peter said, nodding his head.
'Well, how does Lanky get out of the dormitory? It was always locked. And if he did manage to unlock the door to the dormitory, where are the keys? And why, if he did get out, why would he take Short Blond to the storage room. I mean, how does he do that? And then why would he' Francis hesitated, before selecting the word 'assault her? And leave her like he did?'
'He had her blood on his clothes. Her hat was underneath his mattress,' Peter said with a policeman's stolid conclusiveness.
Francis shook his head. 'I don't understand that. That hat. But not the knife that he used to kill her?'
Peter lowered his voice. 'What did Lanky tell us about, when he awakened us?'
'He said an angel came to his side and embraced him.'
Both men were silent. Francis tried to imagine the sensation of the angel stirring Lanky from his nervous sleep. 'I thought he made it up. I thought it was something he just imagined.'
'So did I,' Peter said. 'Now, I don't know.'
He began to stare at the storage closet again. Francis joined in. The longer he stared, the closer he got to the moment. It was, he thought, as if he could almost see Short Blond's last seconds. Peter must have noticed, for he, too, seemed to pale. 'I don't want to think Lanky could do that,' he said. 'It doesn't seem like him at all. Even at his worst, and he certainly was at his scariest yesterday, it still doesn't seem like him.
