J. Lennon - Castle

I was followed at the stand by a physician I had never seen in my life, who testified that, after examining the body of the dead detainee, he could find no evidence that he had been questioned under duress, or in any way abused by prison guards.

When it was over, I was told to choose a place to live, and I chose a small town in the Midwest where I knew no one. I was put on indefinite furlough, set up in an apartment, and given an assumed name. A bank account was established for me, and soon my back pay and previous savings were transferred to me, along with an additional large amount, the purpose of which was never clearly articulated.

I don’t recall with any degree of precision what I did in those months. I was aware that my case was publicized, but by that time the election had taken place, and people were no longer engaged by the Iraq prison torture story. My own awareness of the situation in Iraq was vague, though it seemed clear that it was going no better than it had been when I was there, and perhaps had grown worse. In any event, I tried not to give it much thought. I think I spent a lot of my time walking, out to the edge of town and back, and then out to the other edge of town. I believe I read a lot of books, though I don’t recall which ones, or what they were about. I did not have a television; however, I am not certain what I did with the time I would have spent watching television, if I’d had one.

I began to feel as though I had chosen the wrong place to live, and that I should leave and go somewhere else. And one day, many months after my discharge, I closed out my bank account, and loaded everything I owned — it was not much — into my car, and drove east until at last I arrived in Gerrysburg, and bought the land upon which the house and the rock and the castle stood. I suppose that, in the end, this was something that I needed to do.

With painful effort, I managed to stand and raise my arm up to my own waiting hand. I braced my feet against the pit wall and began, slowly, to scale it; my other self leaned back, counterbalancing himself against my weight. My broken ribs rang with pain, but I would not stop until I had reached the top. When I had nearly made it, a second hand appeared to pull me the rest of the way, and I grabbed it. At last I was up and out, and I released my grip, and as I collapsed to the forest floor I was surprised to discover that my other self was nowhere to be seen.

I must have passed out, for when I opened my eyes, the sun had moved, and the light was golden, and the air warmer. I got to my feet and began to walk, and the sounds of the forest were the same as those of the night before, except that now they did not terrify me; rather, they recalled the sounds I would hear in the gentler days of my early childhood, before I was sent to Doctor Stiles, when my mother was still able, from time to time, to find happiness, and I would walk to the end of Jefferson Street to the swamp and explore the woods in solitude, content with myself and my mind and my senses, and know that I could come home to a warm meal, and a warm bed, and my mother’s loving arms.

I don’t know how long I wandered, but I do know that when I emerged from the forest I was terribly hungry and tired, and it was morning again, though which morning I don’t know. The bright sun was high over the house, which looked the worse for wear, as if a long time had passed since I renovated, or perhaps as if I had never renovated at all. But the unmown grass smelled wonderful, and I settled myself down into it, and lay on my back and let the dew soak into my clothes, and I closed my eyes and felt the sun on my face, and fell into blissful sleep.

When I woke, it was once again to bright light, this time from a window, divided into strips by open vertical blinds. Beside the window stood a woman in white, who smiled at me, and came to where I lay on a crisply sheeted bed. I felt her hand on my forehead, it was very heavy, and I felt myself drifting back into sleep.

I woke again. This time it was evening, the blinds were shut, and a different woman sat beside my bed, reading a paperback book under the light of a table lamp. The woman was my sister. She turned to me, and her face registered surprise. She lay the book face down on the table, beside the lamp.

“You’re awake,” she said, her rough voice light, cheerful. She was smiling and she smelled of cigarettes.

I tried to ask where I was, but all that came out of my throat was a croak. I became aware of my body: I hurt, everywhere. I felt simultaneously heavy and insubstantial, like a rusted thing, a length of wire. I coughed, and the cough loosed some horrible pain, beginning in my abdomen and radiating out through the rest of my body. I groaned. A tube was taped to my arm and entered the flesh through a needle; my chest was heavily bound and bandaged.

“You’re in the hospital,” she said. “I found you in your yard, at the edge of the woods.” Her gaze hardened into a look, perhaps of concern, perhaps of curiosity. She leaned forward. “They said your rib punctured your lung, Eric. You would have bled to death!”

I let my head roll back and I stared at the ceiling. It was white and cracked and very far away. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“Eric,” she said now, leaning closer still. “What were you doing ”

I shook my head.

She asked, with a tremor in her voice, “Was he there? ”

My sister and I gazed at one another, both of us weary, both of us older than we had ever been. She reached out, slid her hand underneath my sheets, and found my fingers. They were cold — I hadn’t noticed how cold until her warm hand wrapped itself around them. I needed to go back to sleep. But I answered her with a nod, and closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, she was gone. I lay still, saying nothing, trying to put together the pieces of my past few months. I saw the pieces as though they were blocks of algae on the surface of a still pond. And I was wading into the pond, trying to lift up each piece and put it with the others. But the algae just broke up in my hands, and my movement made waves in the pond, and the pieces floated away. And then I was one of the pieces, and it was my body that was breaking up and floating away, and when I opened my eyes again it was night.

Then it was day again, and my sister was there, in different clothes, and her hair was washed and still wet and tied back in a ponytail. There was someone with her, a man I’d never seen, heavyset, with a big gray beard, and he looked at me with something like sympathy. Then I was alone, and it was night, and there was a nurse holding my wrist. And I said, “What time is it?” and she told me to go back to sleep.

Then there was a time when I was fully awake, and I wanted to get up. It was daytime, and rain shook the window. Gently, slowly, I raised my head. I was starving, and my mouth was dry. I found the call button and pressed it and a nurse came, and soon I was eating again, and sitting up straight, and felt the life coming back into me. Within a few days I was walking and breathing without great effort, and a few days after that I was discharged.

Jill came for me in her pickup, with Hank at her side. He was the bearded man I had seen. He was gentle, somewhat shy, but he shook my hand firmly and said he was glad to meet me. He seemed sympathetic — whether to my convalescence or to something my sister had told him, I didn’t know. In any event, I appreciated the welcoming kindness of a stranger, and made a mental note to reward him, sometime in the future, with an overture of friendship. I was surprised and somewhat embarrassed to discover how deeply I had misjudged my sister. Whatever I might have held against her, she had helped me when I needed her help, and appeared, in the end, to have made a good life for herself. We drove to my house in silence.