Paullina Simons - The Summer Garden

“I got no money for a new boat.”

“Borrow it from a bank. They’re bending over backwards to help men get on their feet after the war. Get a fifteen-year boat mortgage. With the money you’ll make, you’ll pay it back in two years.”

Jimmy got excited. Suddenly he said, “Go halves with me.”

“What?”

“It’ll be our boat. And we’ll split the profits.”

“Jimmy, I—”

Jimmy jumped up, spilling his beer. “We’ll get another deckhand, another 12-trap trawl; we’ll get a 1300-gallon live tank. You’re right, we’ll make a heap.”

“Jimmy, wait—you have the wrong idea. We’re not staying here.” Alexander sat with the cigarette dangling from his fingers.

Jimmy became visibly upset. “Why would you be leaving? She likes it here, you keep saying so. You’re working, the boy’s doing all right. Why would you go?”

Alexander put the cigarette back in his mouth.

“You’ll have the winters off to do what you want.”

Alexander shook his head.

Jimmy raised his voice. “So why’d you get a job if you were just going to raise anchor in a month?”

“I got a job because I need work. What are we going to live on, your good graces?”

“I haven’t worked full time like this since before the war.” Jimmy spat. “What am I going to do after you leave?”

“Plenty of men are coming back now,” Alexander said. “You’ll get someone else. I’m sorry, Jim.”

Jimmy turned away and started untying the rope from the staysail. “Just great.” He didn’t look at Alexander. “But tell me, who else is going to work like you?”

That evening, as Alexander was sitting in his chair, showing Anthony how to tie a hitch knot through the marlinspike in his hands while they were waiting for Tatiana to go for their evening walk, there was shouting, and what was unusual this time was that a male voice was participating.

Tatiana came out.

“Mama, do you hear? He’s fighting back!”

“I hear, son.” She exchanged a glance with Alexander. “You two ready?”

They walked out the gate and started slowly down the road—all of them trying to hear the words instead of just the raised voices.

“Odd, no?” Alexander said. “The colonel arguing.”

“Yes,” Tatiana said in the tone of someone who was saying, isn’t it fantastic .

He glanced puzzled at her.

They strained to listen. A minute later, the mother came barreling out of the backyard, pushing the wheelchair with Nick in it through the tall grass. She nearly knocked herself and her husband over.

Thrusting the chair into the front yard, she said, “Here, sit! Happy now? You want to sit here all by yourself in the front so that passersby can gawk at you like you’re an animal in a zoo, go ahead. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about anything.”

“That much is obvious!” the colonel yelled as she stormed away. He was panting.

Tatiana and Alexander lowered their heads. Anthony said, “Hi, Nick.”

“Anthony! Shh.”

Anthony opened the gate and went in. “Want a cigarette? Mama, come here.”

She looked at Alexander. “Can I have a cigarette for him?” she whispered.

But it was Alexander who went to the colonel—his body and face slightly twisted—took out a cigarette from his pack, lit it, and held it to the colonel’s mouth.

The man inhaled, exhaled, but without his previous fervor with Tatiana. He didn’t speak.

Tatiana put her hand on Nick’s shoulder. Anthony brought him a stag beetle, a dead wasp, a raw old potato. “Look,” he said, “look at the wasp.”

Nick looked, but said nothing. The cigarette calmed him down. He had another one.

“Want a drink, Colonel?” Alexander asked suddenly. “There is a bar down on Main Street.”

Nick nodded in the direction of the house. “They won’t let me go.”

“We won’t ask them,” Alexander said. “Imagine their surprise when they come out and find you gone. They’ll think you wheeled yourself down the hill.”

This made Colonel Nicholas Moore smile. “The image of that is worth all the screeching later. OK, let’s go.”

Swezey’s was the only bar in Stonington. Children weren’t allowed in bars.

“I’m going to take Anthony on the swings,” Tatiana said. “You two have fun.”

Inside Alexander ordered two whiskeys. Holding both glasses, he clinked them, and put the drink to Nick’s mouth. The liquor went in one gulp. “Should we order another one?”

“You know,” said Nick, “why don’t you order me a whole bottle? I haven’t had a drink since I got hit eighteen months ago. I’ll pay you back.”

“Don’t worry,” Alexander said, and bought Nick and himself a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. They sat in the corner, smoking and drinking.

“So what’s the matter with your wife, Colonel?” Alexander asked. “Why is she always so ticked off?”

They were leaning toward each other, the colonel in a wheelchair, the captain by his side.

Nick shook his head. “Look at me. Can you blame her? But not to worry—the army is going to get me a round-the-clock nurse soon. She’ll take care of me.”

They sat.

“Tell me about your wife,” Nick said. “She’s not afraid of me. Not like others around here. She’s seen this before?”

Alexander nodded. “She’s seen this before.”

Nick’s face brightened. “Does she want a job? The army will pay her ten dollars a day for my care. What do you say? A little more money for your family.”

“No,” Alexander said. “She was a nurse long enough. No more nursing for her.” He added, “We don’t need the money, we’re fine.”

“Come on, everyone needs money. You can get yourself your own house instead of living with crazy Janet.”

“And what’s she going to do with the boy?”

“Bring him, too.”

“No.”

Nick fell quiet, but not before making a desperate noise. “We’re on a waiting list for a nurse, but we can’t get one,” he said. “There aren’t enough of them. They’ve all quit. Their men are coming back, they want to have babies, they don’t want their wives to work.”

“Yes,” said Alexander. “I don’t want my wife to work. Especially not as a nurse.”

“If I don’t get a nurse, Bessie says she’s going to send me to the Army Hospital in Bangor. Says I’d be better off there.”

Alexander poured more needed drink down the man’s throat.

“They’ll certainly be happier if I’m there,” Nick said.

“They don’t seem like a happy pair.”

“No, no. Before the war, they were great.”

“Where d’you get hit?”

“In Belgium. Battle of the Bulge. And there I was thinking colonels didn’t get hit. Rank Has Its Privileges and all that. But a shell exploded, my captain and lieutenant both died, and I was burned. I would’ve been fine, but I was on the ground for fourteen hours before I got picked up by another platoon. The limbs got infected, couldn’t be saved.”

More drink, more smoke.

Nick said, “They should’ve just left me in the woods. It would’ve been over for me five hundred and fifty days ago, five hundred and fifty nights ago.”

He calmed down by degrees, helped by whiskey and the smokes. Finally he muttered, “She is so good, your wife.”

“Yes,” said Alexander.

“So fresh and young. So lovely to look at.”

“Yes,” said Alexander, closing his eyes.

“And she doesn’t yell at you.”

“No. Though I reckon she sometimes wants to.”

“Oh, to have such restraint in my Bessie. She used to be a fine woman. And the girl was such a loving girl.”

More drink, more smoke.

“But have you noticed since coming back,” said Nick, “that there are things that women just don’t know? Won’t know. They don’t understand what it was like. They see me like this, they think this is the worst. They don’t know. That’s the chasm. You go through something that changes you. You see things you can’t unsee. Then you are sleepwalking through your actual life, shell-shocked. Do you know, when I think of myself, I have legs? In my dreams I’m always marching. And when I wake up, I’m on the floor, I’ve fallen out of bed. I now sleep on the floor because I kept rolling over and falling while dreaming. When I dream of myself, I’m carrying my weapons, and I’m in the back of a battalion. I’m in a tank, I’m yelling, I’m always screaming in my dreams. This way! That way! Fire! Cease! Forward! March! Fire, fire, fire!”