Marcia Talley - Daughter of Ashes

‘The Chinese at Camp Number Three knew how to get information out of prisoners,’ Cap was saying matter-of-factly when I tuned in again. ‘Forty-three percent of the POWs died up there. Did you know that?’

I thought I heard a groan.

‘Tell me how you killed her!’ Cap bellowed so loudly that I was surprised when no one on the hospital staff came running.

‘Stop it! Stop!’ Ames wailed.

‘Tell me, you lying coward!’

Ames cried out again, keening, like an animal with its foot caught in a trap. I shot to my feet and straight-armed my way through the door.

Cap stood at the foot of Ames’s hospital bed. His cheeks glistened with tears.

Ames lay on his bed in a tangle of sheets. The IV feed had been torn from his arm; the tubing dangled uselessly from the bag, dripping sodium lactate solution onto the floor. ‘I didn’t kill Nancy, you’ve gotta believe me!’ Ames blubbered. ‘My father did! He offered her ten thousand dollars to go away, but Nancy turned him down!’

‘Cap?’ I said quietly. ‘Cap, it’s Hannah. You can let go of Cliff’s legs now.’

Cap turned his head and took me in without the slightest hint of recognition.

‘Cap? Let go of his legs.’

‘He’s not in Geneva,’ Cap muttered as I carefully unwrapped his fingers, one hand at a time, from their vise grip on Clifton Ames’s loosely-bandaged calves.

Once free of the pressure, Ames moaned with relief.

‘Cap! Cap!’ I took my friend by the upper arms and began to shake him. ‘You’re having a flashback!’

Cap raised his hands, palms out, as if shielding his eyes from a bright light. His eyelids fluttered.

‘Cap! It’s OK. It’s Hannah Ives.’

Meanwhile, Clifton Ames had found the remote and was frantically stabbing at buttons. The television mounted high on the wall turned on long enough for Doctor Oz to offer hints on how to reboot our immune system, then faded to black. The reading light over the metal headboard sprang to life. I held Cap’s arms in a death grip and was urging him backwards into the visitor’s chair in the corner of the room when the duty nurse barged in.

‘How can I help you, Mister Ames?’

Clifton’s eyes locked on mine for several long seconds, then flicked back to the nurse. ‘I, ah, I’d like some more water, please. The ice in my pitcher seems to have melted.’

‘Certainly,’ she chirped.

‘When you get a minute,’ I smiled toothily. ‘You might want to check Cliff’s bandages. He must thrash around a lot in his sleep.’

‘Be right back,’ the nurse caroled as she headed for the door carrying Cliff’s Styrofoam pitcher. ‘Only one visitor at a time,’ she reminded us as she passed by, then angled her head back and whispered, ‘But this time, I’ll make an exception.’

After she left, Cliff lay flat on his back, eyes closed, lips sucked in to form a firm, hard line. After some serious prodding, I persuaded Cap to accompany me up to the hospital cafeteria where I sat him down at a table, then bought us each a cup of coffee. Cap took a careful sip, then set the cup, clattering and sloshing hot liquid over the rim, into his saucer. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ he said.

‘You were having a flashback,’ I said. ‘To when you were a POW in Korea, I think.’

‘No food, no water, no shelter… that wasn’t the worst of it. Heated bamboo spears, lighted cigarettes, bottle openers twisted into open wounds…’ Cap shuddered, setting his cup to rattling again. His dark eyes bored into mine. ‘“We have ways of making you talk.”’

Words seemed woefully inadequate. I reached across the table and covered his hand with my own, squeezing hard and holding it there until the shaking stopped.

‘His father murdered Nancy!’ Cap hung his head. ‘What am I going to do now?’

The late Clifton Ames, Senior lay moldering in the local cemetery, way beyond the long arm of the law. He may well have murdered Nancy Hazlett, but that didn’t get Junior off the hook for Rusty’s accident or the murder of Kendall Barfield. Although he hadn’t exactly confessed to it, he hadn’t denied Cap’s bald accusation either.

But in Cap’s present state, there was no use discussing that with him now.

‘You’re going to go home,’ I told him firmly. ‘And tomorrow morning, first thing, you’re going to call your GP and get an appointment. Tell him what just happened. Talk it over. Do what he recommends.’

Cap nodded. ‘I hear you.’

‘Do you want me to drive?’ I asked.

Cap shoved his half-finished coffee aside. ‘No. Thank you, Hannah. I’ll be fine.’

‘You sure?’ I was reluctant to leave him on his own.

‘Positive.’ He gave me a hug. ‘I can see you’re worried, so I’ll text you when I get home. How’s that?’

‘Call me instead,’ I told him. ‘I want to hear your voice.’

I walked Cap out of the cafeteria, rode down to the lobby with him on the elevator, and accompanied him to the parking lot. Only after he’d climbed into his car and driven away did I locate my cell phone and check in with Paul. He had driven over that afternoon and was waiting for me at Our Song .

I told Paul what had happened in Clifton Ames’s hospital room. ‘Cap was completely out of it, Paul. He kept saying, “He’s not in Geneva.” Geneva?’

‘The communist Chinese were barbarians,’ Paul explained. ‘During the Korean War every rule set out by the Geneva Convention was broken. I imagine his captors kept reminding Cap and the other prisoners of that.’

Even though I was standing in the sun, I shivered. ‘“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,”’ I quoted.

‘Exactly.’

‘Can you drive over to Cap’s house, Paul? Make sure he gets in OK?’

‘You want me to sit with him for a while?’

‘Yes, thank you, sweetheart. I’d do it myself but I need to phone Sheriff Hubbard. Then I’m going back to check on Cliff Ames. There’s something I need to ask him.’

Five minutes later, I slipped back into the room where Ames lay on his bed, sheets in order, pillow fluffed, IV tubes properly reinstalled. Standing directly next to the bed, I said, ‘Tell me one thing, Mr Ames. What was your daughter’s name?’

Ames considered me with rheumy eyes. He blinked slowly. Then he rolled away, burrowed his cheek into his pillow and faced the wall.

‘Surely it doesn’t matter now,’ I said, addressing his back. ‘Please, tell me. What did Nancy name your baby?’

His shoulders rose and fell, rose and fell, but Clifton Ames never replied.

‘At length, the bad all killed, the good all pleased, Her thirsting Curiosity appeased, She shuts the dear, dear book, that made her weep, Puts out her light, and turns away to sleep.’

Charles Sprague , ‘Curiosity: A Poem,’ 1829

Baby Ella came home the way she left, in Wicks’ long, black limousine, except this time her body was resting in a tiny wicker coffin, woven from seagrass and decorated with pink ribbons and sprigs of fresh spring flowers.

Before she was buried beside her mother, Cap had been reassured by the undertaker that Ella was still swaddled in the rosebud blanket that had belonged to his sister, Nancy.

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord.

I was distracted from Father Ryan’s comforting words by a black Acura pulling onto the shoulder of the main road. A familiar figure climbed out and strode alone through the tall corn, its silk shimmering in the late morning sun. Jack Ames eased through the open cemetery gate and silently joined the tiny clot of mourners huddled around the open grave.

Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we therefore commit her body to the ground.