then that she saw the trickle of blood that oozed from her nose.
Russell made his way between two lines of empty beds. Distantly, he could see the one bed that was still occupied. The figure who lay in it did not move as he drew near.
“I brought you something,” he said.
Johnson’s eyes drifted over to him.
Russell showed him the photograph of Rita Hayworth, then propped it against the water jug on the table beside Johnson’s bed.
“What do they say is wrong with you?” Russell asked.
“No one knows,” Johnson answered weakly. “They say it’s in my head. A psychological thing. From the war maybe.”
“All the others are dead,” Russell said bleakly.
“Except you,” Johnson said. He smiled quietly. “And me… for now.”
“Do you remember what happened?” Russell asked him.
A strange terror gripped Johnson’s face.
Russell bent forward. “Tell me. Because except for these dreams I’ve been having, I don’t remember a thing.”
Johnson hesitated, his eyes now searching the room, as if for a way out. “Whatever they did to us, they did it for a long time,” he said.
“What did they do?”
“I don’t know.” Johnson’s face trembled slightly. “But whatever it was, they did it to you, too.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you were on the cot next to mine.”
And instantly, Russell was there, on his back, tossing in pain, his anguished gaze boring into the German soldiers who stood idly within the tent. He felt himself roll out of the cot and onto the floor, knocking over oxygen tanks and hospital trays, rolling desperately until he found himself behind the ball turret gun of the B-17, his hand reaching for the trigger, firing and firing, spraying doctors and nurses and the idling soldiers with a hail of bullets, filling the tent with acrid blue smoke until the gun finally went silent and he lay in the quiet, with no sense of who he was or where he was, but only that the gun had stopped and that everyone was dead, and suddenly he and his men were all in a French field.
“You and I both know it wasn’t Germans you killed that day. It wasn’t Germans at all,” Johnson said. “What did they do to us, Captain?” he pleaded. “What did they do?” He looked at Russell, drew in a labored breath, then suddenly began to twitch, his eyes rolling upward as his body went slack.
“Johnson,” Russell called. “Johnson.”
But he was dead.
Chapter Five
Sally pulled into the driveway, retrieved the grocery bags from the backseat, and headed into the house.
“Tom,” she called. “Becky.”
Odd, she thought, when they didn’t come dashing out of their rooms to greet her. She glanced across the empty living room to the door of Tom’s room. It was closed, but she could hear laughter coming from behind it.
She walked to the door, opened it and saw Becky floating three feet in the air, John standing beside her, passing his arms around her at all angles to demonstrate that there were no strings attached.
“How do you feel?” John asked her.
“Like I’m floating,” Becky answered.
“No headaches?”
“No.”
“That’s good,” John said, then caught Sally in his eye, and with a wave of his arm softly returned Becky to the floor.
“That was amazing,” Becky cried.
Tom shrugged. “Levitation’s easy,” he said sullenly.
Becky glared at him. “I’ve never seen
At dinner, Sally couldn’t get the sight of Becky floating in the air out of her mind. It had not looked like a magician’s trick, but something else, a… power. She looked at the stranger who sat across from her, hardly touching his food.
“You’re not hungry?” she asked.
“Breakfast lasted me all day,” John answered.
“You didn’t eat any of it,” Tom said accusingly. “I saw your plate.”
John kept his eyes on Sally. “Your headache?” he asked.
“It’s gone.”
John smiled. He looked curiously relieved. “That’s good,” he said.
For the next few minutes, Sally cautiously asked a few questions. She found out that John was from Des Moines, that he’d been working here and there at whatever job he could find. His answers were carefully thought out, and she sensed that he was checking some invisible notebook before each answer, making sure that it was right, and only then giving it: a process done at lightning speed, and yet, a process.
All the while Tom stared at John suspiciously, and with a hint of hostility.
“They’re looking for someone,” Tom said.
John’s eyes swept over to him.
“Some Army men came to the school today,” Tom continued. “They said to be on the lookout for a deserter, that he’d killed a truck driver a few days ago.”
John gazed into Tom’s eyes for a moment, then shifted to the window. “It’s beautiful country,” he said to Sally. “Would you like to take a walk?”
She nodded softly, and everything Tom had just said, all the alarm it should have caused in her, abruptly vanished. “Yes,” she said. “A walk would be nice.”
They left the children at the table, Tom still staring accusingly at John, daring him to reveal himself.
They mounted a nearby slope in the cool air. Sally felt strangely light, as if she were floating just above the earth, the bottoms of her feet lightly brushing the upturned grass.
“You’re a very special woman,” John said. “You need to believe me when I tell you that.” He stopped and looked at her pointedly. “I’ve done some things,” he admitted. “Hurt people.”
She saw how troubled he was, how desperately he sought peace. She felt herself give way to him, took his hand. “Come with me,” she said.
In the shed, clothed in darkness, she made love to him as she had never made love to anyone, softly and sweetly, yet with a strange abandon, possessing even as she was possessed, gaming ground as she gave it up, like a soldier who senses victory in surrender.
Tom stood at his bedroom window, peering down at the shed, his sister beside him, watching him silently.
“Let’s find his clothes,” Tom said darkly.
“But he’s supposed to be dangerous,” Becky told him fearfully.
Tom seemed not to hear her. He threw himself on the floor and peered under the bed. Nothing.
“Look at this,” Becky said.
