“Nothing,” the muscular man, Major Putnam, said. He sipped from a Styrofoam cup of coffee and watched the television monitors. Again he wore civilian clothes.
“Well, he must be doing
“Nope,” Major Putnam said. “Nothing. When he came in, I figured he’d pour himself a drink, go to the bathroom, read a magazine, watch television, do exercises, whatever. But all he did was go over to the sofa. There he is. That’s what he’s been doing since you left him. Nothing.”
Alan approached the row of television monitors. Massaging his right elbow where the nerve that Buchanan had pinched still troubled him, he frowned at a black-and-white image of Buchanan sitting on the sofa. “Jesus.”
Buchanan sat bolt straight, motionless, his expression rigid, his intense gaze focused on a chair across from him.
“Jesus,” Alan repeated. “He’s catatonic. Does the colonel know about this?”
“I phoned him.”
“And?”
“I’m supposed to keep watching. What did the two of you talk about? When he came in, he looked. .”
“It’s what we
“I don’t understand.”
“His brother.”
“Christ,” the major said, “you know that’s an off-limits subject.”
“I wanted to test him.”
“Well, you certainly got a reaction.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the one I wanted.”
12
Buchanan was reminded of an old story about a donkey between two bales of hay. The donkey stood exactly midpoint between the bales. Each bale was the same size and had the same fragrance. With no reason to choose one bale over the other, the donkey starved to death.
The story-which could never happen in the real world because the donkey could never be exactly at midpoint and the bales could never be exactly the same-was a theoretical way to illustrate the problem of free will. The ability to choose, which most people took for granted, depended on certain conditions, and without them, a person could be motiveless, just as Buchanan found that he was now.
His brother.
Buchanan had so thoroughly worked to obliterate the memory that for the past eight years he’d managed not to be conscious of the critical event that controlled his behavior. Not once had he thought about it. On rare occasions of weakness, late at night, weary, he might sense the nightmare lurking in the darkness of his subconscious, crouching, about to spring. Then he would muster all his strength of resolve to thrust up a mental wall of denial, of refusal to accept the unacceptable.
Even now, with his defenses taken from him, with his identity exposed, unshielded, he was repulsed sufficiently that the memory was able to catch him only partially, in principle but not in detail.
His brother.
His wonderful brother.
Twelve years old.
Sweet Tommy.
Was dead.
And he had killed him.
Buchanan felt as if he were trapped by ice. He couldn’t move. He sat on the sofa, and his legs, his back, his arms were numb, his entire body cold, paralyzed. He kept staring toward the chair in front of him, not seeing it, barely aware of time.
Five o’clock.
Six o’clock.
Seven o’clock.
The room was in darkness. Buchanan kept staring, seeing nothing.
Tommy was dead.
And he had killed him.
Blood.
He’d clutched Tommy’s stake-impaled body, trying to tug him free.
Tommy’s cheeks had been terribly pale. His breathing had sounded like bubbles. His moan had been liquid, as if he was gargling. But what he gargled hadn’t been salt water. It had been. .
Blood.
“Hurts. Hurts so bad.”
“Tommy, oh, God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
Push him.
Just horsing around.
Didn’t think Tommy would lose his balance and fall.
Didn’t know anything was down in the pit.
A construction site. A summer evening. Two brothers on an adventure.
“Hurts so bad.”
“Tommy!”
“Doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“
So much blood.
When Buchanan was fifteen.
Still catatonic, sitting bolt straight on the sofa, staring at the darkness, Buchanan felt as if a portion of his mind were raising arms, trying to ward off the terrible memory. Although he was chilled, sweat beaded his brow. Too much, he thought. He hadn’t remembered in such detail since the days and nights before Tommy’s funeral and the unendurable summer that followed, the guilt-laden, seemingly endless season of grief that finally
Buchanan’s mind darted and burrowed, seeking any protection it could from the agonizing memory of Tommy’s blood on his clothes, of the stake projecting from Tommy’s chest.
“It’s all my fault.”
“No, you didn’t mean to do it,” Buchanan’s mother had said.
“I killed him.”
“It was an accident,” Buchanan’s mother had said.
But Buchanan hadn’t believed her, and he was certain that he’d have gone insane if he hadn’t found a means to protect himself from his mind. The answer turned out to be amazingly simple, wonderfully self-evident. Become someone else.
Dissociative personality. Buchanan imagined himself as his favorite sports and rock stars, as certain movie and television actors whom he idolized. He suddenly became a reader-of novels into which he could escape and become the hero with whom he so desperately wanted to identify. In high school that autumn, he discovered the drama club, subconsciously motivated by the urge to perfect the skills he would need to maintain his protective assumed identities, the personas that would allow him to escape from himself.
Then after high school, perhaps to prove himself, perhaps to punish himself, perhaps to court an early death, he’d joined the military, not just any branch, the Army, so he could enter Special Forces. The name said it all-to be special. He wanted to sacrifice himself, to atone. And one thing more-if he saw enough death, perhaps one death in particular would no longer haunt him.
