Макс Коллинз - Road to Purgatory

“Mike...”

“It’s that this life... don’t misunderstand, tonight was wonderful, like turning a few pages and having years just drop away... but I don’t know that I can... I don’t know that I...”

In the moonlight, his eyes looked moist.

“Michael. What’s wrong? What is it?”

He shrugged and something gruff came into his voice, a little forced, she thought. “Baby, things happened over there. You waited for me, but I didn’t wait for you. I was with ten, eleven prostitutes... Filipino girls mostly, plus a couple of nurses.”

She recoiled. “Why are you telling me that? You didn’t have to tell me that.”

He locked onto her eyes; his expression was hard but not unkind. “You need to know these things, so that you can understand that I’ve changed. I killed hundreds of Japs, Patsy Ann. Hundreds.”

“They’re the enemy.”

“Right. And I was side by side with Filipino Scouts who used to be our enemy, too. I’m not sorry I did it — it needed doing. A soldier does his duty... That’s what soldiers do, kill other soldiers.”

“Right...”

“But they were still people, Patsy Ann. And I killed them... You know the first thing I did when they let me out of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital?”

“No.”

“I took confession. I sought absolution for killing these people, only... I didn’t even know how many I killed. How many Hail Marys, do you suppose, for every fifty Japs?”

“Michael... it’s wartime...”

His eyes widened, and the one that wasn’t glass rolled. “That’s right!... but not here in this Saturday Evening Post cover, come alive. When I came here, what, ten years ago? I found this sheltered little world comforting. I... I had some experiences you don’t know about, ’fore I came here, when I was a kid.”

“You can tell me.”

“No I can’t. What I can tell you is, I lived here for ten years and I pretended that I was somebody I wasn’t. I pretended that those things never happened to me. That I was a normal kid, like you and your sister Betty and my pals Bobby and Jimmy and everybody else in this jerkwater town.”

“You don’t have to be cruel.”

“I don’t mean to be. But on Bataan, something happened: I sort of... woke up. Remembered who I was. And then today, tonight... I remembered something else.”

“What?”

His hands were on the steering wheel — as tight as if he were strangling someone. “I remembered that you can live in a town like this, and think you’re safe. And you’re not. Everything can get taken away from you, in an instant.”

“You’re scaring me, Michael.”

“I mean to. I still love you, Patsy Ann. But you need to know that I’m... having a little trouble. Sorting some things out.”

She touched his arm, tentatively. “That’s okay... I don’t care about those other women...”

He laughed harshly. “I tell you I slept with a dozen whores, and that I killed hundreds of men, and it’s the whores you forgive me for?”

She withdrew her hand. “Michael! Please! Stop...”

Again, the hard but not exactly cruel expression locked onto her. “Patsy Ann, if you love me, you’ll stay away from me. And because I love you, I will stay away from you.”

“Stay away...?”

“Not forever. Maybe just a few days. Maybe a few months. But I need time. Time to work this out.”

“I’ll help you work it out! Please let me—”

“No. You can’t help me with this. Do you believe I love you? That I still love you, and have since sophomore year?”

She leaned near him, almost close enough for them to kiss. “Of course I do. And you know that I love you, and that together we can face anything. If only we trust each other...”

“Then trust me — trust me that right now, at this moment, we are not right for each other.”

She began to cry; and the worst part was, he did not take her into his arms.

“Someday, maybe,” Michael said, raising his hand as if to brush away her tears, but stopping short. “Only, right now I’m not sure I’m fit company for any man... let alone, woman.”

And he got out of the car and walked away.

She clambered out onto the sidewalk, and the prettiest girl in town just stood there with tears smearing her makeup and snot glistening on her upper lip, and she cried, “Goddamn you, Michael Satariano! Goddamn you!”

But if he heard, he gave no indication, just walking down the tree-shaded sidewalk, until his silhouette blended with the dark.

For as many times as Michael had accompanied Papa Satariano to Chicago, the Loop remained intimidating in its size and bustle and sprawl. Of course, to the Satarianos, Chicago meant the Near West Side of the Randolph Street Market and Little Italy, where twice a week Papa S. could buy wholesale his vegetables, fruit, virgin olive oil, spices, fish, sausages, ricotta, Parmesan, Romano and Provolone cheeses, and other supplies.

Despite the relative nearness of DeKalb, Michael had only been to Chicago a handful of times otherwise — a high school field trip to the Art Institute, and occasionally taking Patsy Ann to the theater or on some other special date.

Going down State Street the other day, seated on the back of a Cadillac convertible, waving at the cheering crowds, well-wishers surging toward him only to be held back by police, people hanging out of windows gesturing frantically as a snowfall of torn paper... from ticker tape and old phone books... cascaded down, that hadn’t seemed like Chicago. More like some bizarre dream, or nightmare...

Now, alone in the family’s 1936 blue Buick business coupe, Michael felt small as the great masonry buildings reflected off his windshield, magnificent structures ranging from would-be Greek temples to starkly functional modern tombstones. For a boy whose adolescence had mostly been spent in a small town, the crowded rectangle of the Loop — defined by the elevated tracks — seemed a cacophony of traffic roar and intermittent train thunder, a towering world of thronged sidewalks, mammoth department stores, and giant movie palaces.

The imprint of the war on the city made itself evident from buy bonds posters and service flags in storefront windows to horse-drawn wagons that mingled uncomfortably with autos, slowing traffic and providing the streets with an earthy sort of litter. The vehicles didn’t have the alphabet of ration stickers Michael had seen on the East Coast, but that would come soon enough. Women on the sidewalks — the city’s fabled wind exposing legs sans silk stockings — outnumbered men, at least those roughly in Michael’s age group, who when you did see them were often in uniform.

Michael’s destination was one of Chicago’s most impressive monuments to itself: the Federal Building. On Dearborn between Adams and Jackson, extending to Clark, the massive turn-of-the-century structure — an ornate cross-shaped edifice with a classical dome — served as the Midwestern administrative center of the US government.

Michael was in uniform, because he had been summoned to the Federal Building at the request of Captain McRae, the army public relations officer. Perhaps McRae had changed his mind about switching Michael’s military status to inactive duty; that was fine with Michael, as long as he was given something constructive to do — he had no intention of putting up with any more of this PR baloney. He was a soldier, not a flack.

He performed a minor miracle by finding a parking place on the street and headed inside. If Michael had felt small before, walking across the three-hundred-foot-high octagonal rotunda, his footsteps echoing like tiny ineffectual gunshots, made him feel infinitesimal. An eyeblink ago he’d been in a steamy jungle; now he was surrounded by polished granite, white and sienna marble, mosaics and gilded bronze.