Billie Mosiman: Wireman

Daley gently lifted the cradled head and let the men carry the wounded soldier to the jeep.

“That one’s a goner,” he called to the men searching the wreckage.

They turned and came toward Daley, their M-14s glinting from the last rays of the sun.

“Where the fuck did you come from? And your buddy over there.” The soldier was upset, he was scared, and he was suspicious.

“We got separated from our platoon near Quang Ngai,” Daley said as he stood up.

“And you made it back?” The solider was incredulous.

“Yeah, we made it back.”

The two men looked with disbelief first at Daley and then across the road to the silent, waiting Nick.

“ Him .” The man indicated Nick with his rifle. “He’s got something on him. What’d he do, fall into a shit pond?”

“It’s blood. He needs help. He’s my brother, Nick. Nick Ringer. He…” Daley’s voice faltered, but the look on his face expressed a hidden truth.

“Cracked?” the soldier asked sympathetically.

Daley nodded and started across the road.

The second jeep had made a U-turn and slowed for the two soldiers who had been talking to Daley to jump aboard.

The driver yelled, “We gotta get this man to the medics. Start walking and we’ll be back to pick you up.” Daley lifted a weary hand in acknowledgment. As he neared Nick he heard his brother mumbling. “It’s all over now, Nick,” Daley said, taking his brother by the arm. “The whole goddamn shooting match is over for you. But I want you to remember. Hey…” He shook Nick’s arm to get his attention. “Listen to me. You’re going to be all right. Do you hear me? The killing’s over. That garrote…” Daley touched Nick’s buttoned-up shirt with his fingertips.

“I want you to give it to me. We don’t have to tell them everything.”

“You can’t have it.”

“Now Nick, I’m not screwing around with you. I want you to hand that thing over. I’ll take care of it,” Daley promised.

“What about the demons? They…”

“You can’t kill them with a wire, can you?” Daley interrupted. “Well, can you ?” He heard himself shouting and flinched.

Nick lowered his head. Daley looked at the blond, matted hair and remembered the droplets of blood shining in the light of the cigarette lighter. “Give it to me,” he repeated.

Nick undid two buttons and slowly reached inside his shirt. He brought out the garrote and held it before his eyes, mesmerized by its gentle rhythmic swinging.

Daley took the wire from Nick’s fingers and stuffed it into his own shirtfront. He patted Nick on the back and guided him back to the road.

“You killed them with the .45,” Daley said. “Say it.”

“I killed them with the .45.”

“That’s good, Nick. You’re going to be fine.”

“We’re both okay,” Nick said, nodding his head repeatedly.

“Right.”

“Daley?”

“Yeah?” The jeep was nearing, dust swirling in its path.

“Can you make Seth leave me alone?”

“I don’t think so, Nick, but by God, I’ll try my damnedest.”

Nick was working on a tentative smile when the jeep stopped for them. He spit once on the way into the camp. No one seemed to notice or care, except his brother.

Tacoma, Washington

Veterans Administration Medical Center

1975

NICK SAT in the vocational therapy room, the inner workings of a small lamp spread before him on a wobbly card table. They had expected him to make something. He balked at the beginning, and said such idiotic therapy should be reserved for men with paralytic brains. It was no wonder that returning veterans were unemployable, be thought, shuffling the pieces around. What kind of work could a basket weaver, lamp maker, ashtray designer do on the outside anyway?

Shakey was talking to him. He sat to Nick’s right, gluing together Popsicle sticks into the shape of an Apache village. He claimed he was Apache, although no one knew what an Apache village was supposed to look like.

Shakey talked for hours nonstop, flitting from subject to obscure subject. Nick often tuned him out.

“Neutron stars have a density comparable to our sun’s, but their radius is only a few kilometers. Imagine one of them falling on us. Pow! Our tiny planet would be instantly vaporized.” Shakey obviously was excited at the prospect.

Nick rolled the lamp socket in his hands, clicking the black button switch on and off. Neutron stars. Now it was a lesson in celestial phenomena. Shakey’s knowledge had no end.

Nick studied the older man’s face. Heavy jowls, pendulous full lips, hooded salamander eyes that seldom blinked. Shakey had been in Pearl Harbor when the bombs fell. When they retrieved him from the water, he was shaking like an old palsied man. The shaking never stopped. Shakey’s tremors sometimes quieted, permitting him to enter the mainstream of life outside the V.A. hospital. When they returned, interfering with whatever job he was able to secure, Shakey would admit himself for a two month stay.

It scorned highly unlikely to Nick that the man would ever get the Popsicle sticks to stand teepee fashion.

Every third one slipped from tremulous fingers and clattered to the floor. There were more sticks around his feet than in the Indian village.

“Where do you learn all that stuff?” Nick asked.

“Encyclopedias,” Shakey said. “Where else?”

“Do you learn everything in the encyclopedias?”

“Not everything. That’s not realistic. I know quite a lot though,” Shame admitted.

“Why bother? What good’s it gonna do you?”

“Well, knowing things is good for you. Take a neutron star, for instance…”

“You already told me about the neutron star,” Nick interrupted.

“Oh, yes, of course. Then what about pre-Columbian art? I can tell you about the classic Maya period. There’s a fresco at Bonampak, Mexico…”

“Never mind that. Tell me something else. What are my chances of getting out of here this month? My brother’s coming in from Nam.”

“Pardon me while I consult my crystal ball.”

“Come on, Shakey, I mean it. What’s the scuttlebutt? You’ve been coming here for years, You know all the shrinks. You can probably predict the release date for any man in this room.”

Shakey looked pleased. He slowly scanned the room’s occupants. It was true. He did know those things.

“Well? Any guess?” Nick pressed.

“A psycho stays put awhile around here, but I think you’re fooling them with true psychopathic ease.”

Shakey sounded very sure of himself.

“Cut the doctor talk. I was in combat.”

“Nevertheless… you are fooling them.” The older man tried to balance two halves of a teepee together.

Nick took them from Shakey’s quivering hands and fitted them evenly. He began to glue the Popsicle sticks into a conical shape.

“What makes you think I’m trying to fool anyone?” Nick had dropped his voice to a whisper.

“I spend more time with you than the doctors, Nick. I’ve been around a long time.”

“You think I’m crazy,” Nick said flatly.

“Not bad crazy. You’re like me. It comes and goes. Mostly it comes. You can’t blame combat forever.”

“You think I’ll get out?” Nick asked again.

“You’ll get out.”

Nick had been holding the teepee so that it would dry, but suddenly he let it fall. Shakey picked lip the two sections and tried once again.

“That’s what I had to know. They wouldn’t tell me. I want to go home.”

“Where’s home?” Shakey asked as the Popsicle sticks flew apart. Discouraged, he swept them from he table,

“Houston.”