Дэвид Гейтс - The Blue Mirror

“Any other irons in the fire?”

I shook my head. “I was hoping Stanley might come up with something else I could use,” I said. “Only trouble is, I’ve got nothing to give him in return.”

The hospital was fairly new, built sometime in the early seventies, I guessed. It was on a rise north of town, set off from neighbors, with a view through the trees to a small pond. A lot of the country villages beyond 495, the outer beltway, have become bedroom communities for the high-tech industries along Route 128, but Ayer is an anomaly. It sits outside the main gates of Ft. Devens, and for a good sixty years or more it’s been a company town supported by the army presence. Now there was talk of closing down the post. There was still a squadron of Ranger choppers based out there, and some logistical and support operations, but there was no longer a captive population of enlisted dependents, and the rental market was going down the tubes. Not a bad thing considering how local landlords had gouged the GIs with inflated rates. And the used-car dealers out on the Shirley road no longer had such easy prey. But the downside was that the bottom had fallen out of the tax base, and maintaining a decent hospital was suddenly a squeeze.

Tony wasn’t crazy about the hospital scene in any case. He’d spent too much time helpless on his back after he’d gotten creamed on the ice, but he was still game to go in and visit Stanley. I got his wheelchair out of the back seat, unfolded it, and helped him lever himself out of the front seat and into it. I was awkward about it, but Tony had long since gotten over any embarrassment.

“How’s your leg?” he asked.

I had an Ace bandage wrapped around my knee, but the tendon was still badly swollen and it felt like I had a lemon wedged behind the joint. I couldn’t bend my leg, and I couldn’t put any weight on it, either. Not that I didn’t feel foolish, since it was my own fault.

“Shouldn’t have turned your back on a woman,” Tony said.

“Don’t get me started,” I told him.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Tony said. “It’s not about sex, or gender, or whether she’s a victim herself. I only meant you shouldn’t take anything for granted.”

The thing about being brothers us that you figure you’re always in competition one way or another, but then they somehow manage to sneak under your radar.

We made our way through the automatic doors into the lobby.

Stanley was down the hall in a private room. We startled Maria when we went in. I realized she’d dozed off sitting next to Stanley’s bed, and it took her a moment to gather her wits.

Tony unbridled the charm. He had a gift for it, an effortless interest, because it was genuine. He rolled his wheelchair over next to Maria, not so close he was crowding her space, but making himself available. I didn’t hear what he said to her, but she smiled bravely and took his hand.

Stanley seemed to be just coming to, floating in a sea of painkillers and barely breaking water. I had the feeling he was losing buoyancy. He made an effort to focus.

“Hey,” I said, leaning in close so he’d recognize me.

“Jack,” he whispered, hoarsely. “Who’s that with you?”

“My brother Tony,” I told him.

He nodded, smiling, his eyes fluttering closed. “Always liked having you two come around,” he murmured. “Liked having kids at the shop. Reminded me of Stosh. Kept me alive during the war, knowing I had a boy I had to come home to.” His concentration was drifting, the drugs in the intravenous drip clouding his thoughts. He’d cut his moorings and was headed out to sea. “The Blue Mirror,” he muttered indistinctly.

I thought I’d misheard him. “What?” I asked, too sharply.

Tony had caught it. He swiveled around.

Stanley was in a reverie. “That’s what we used to call it, the Adriatic,” he said, so softly I had to bend over the bed.

“The blue mirror. On bombing runs into Rumania. Before you had to worry about the fighters. It looked beautiful, but it was hard as iron if your plane went down. I used to write letters to my son in my head, but I always forgot them by the time we got back.”

I glanced at Tony.

“I always forgot,” Stanley whispered, sinking back into the pillows, exhausted.

I straightened up.

Tony caught my attention, and belatedly I went over to pay my respects to Maria. I always feel awkward in situations where I have to pretend everything’s swell. I get claustrophobic and look for an early avenue of escape. Tony smoothed us out of it, covering our retreat.

We were just ducking out the door when Stanley revived long enough to say something else. “Bees,” he said, and fell back.

“Bees?” I asked Tony. I was driving him home, and he was sunk in his own thoughts. I figured he was brooding about the transience of human endeavor and Stanley in particular, but I’d missed a turn in the road while Tony had taken it.

“Guy name of Creek Fortier, you remember him?” Tony asked.

That was going back a ways. “Big guy with a beard, kind of rough around the edges but basically shy?”

Tony nodded. “Rode a thousand-CC Vincent,” he said.

“Right,” I said as the details started coming back to me. “Used to pull into Stanley’s shop once in a while, looking to cannibalize scrap. I remember the bike, a Shadow or a Lightning he’d restored. Why, what about him?”

“He was in Vietnam with Stanley’s son Stosh.”

I didn’t know where Tony was going, but I was willing to hitch a ride.

“Fortier came back, but Stan junior didn’t,” I said. “You’re thinking what?”

“I’m wondering if Creek Fortier weren’t a kind of surrogate son,” Tony said. “A way for Stanley to hang on to Stosh.”

“It’s a reach, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah,” Tony said, “but I knew there was something floating around in my head that I couldn’t put a name to. The kid, Andy, he would have been four or five years old at the outside, so you and me, we were too grown up to pay him any mind, right? He was underfoot, we probably treated him like the measles.”

I’d thought the same thing when I saw Andy in his office. When you’re in third or fourth grade, you don’t want some “baby” dragging on your coattails.

“Here’s how I remember it, though,” Tony went on. “Creek Fortier always had the time to humor Andy whenever he came by Stanley’s. It was like he was more comfortable on a kid’s level than he was with adults.”

“You see something unhealthy there?”

“No, that’s not what I’m getting at,” Tony said. “There was something simple about him, in the old-fashioned sense, like he was a case of arrested development.”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder?” I suggested.

Tony nodded. “Yeah, shell-shock, battle fatigue, whatever you want to call it. Stanley was always very protective, looked out for him, treated him gently.”

“Walking wounded,” I said.

“More than that,” Tony said. “I mean, not just being a good Christian. We both know Stanley’s a decent guy. I’m thinking he appointed himself Creek’s guardian angel, ran interference for him, paid off his bad debts. Basically assumed the burden, in other words.”

“Stanley lost a son, and Creek Fortier stood in for him.”

“I hadn’t thought about it for years,” Tony said. “Fortier had a place out in the sticks, up by Pepperell or Townsend, near the New Hampshire line. Worked on bikes, raised his own vegetables. Stanley used to say he was a pioneer, born in the wrong century.”

“You’ve got a better memory than I do,” I told him.

“It’s what Stanley said that brought it back.”

“Which?” I asked him.