PROLOGUE

The first thing he heard was a string bass – one long, low note that was so insistent, so constant, that he could feel it, as much as hear it, vibrating at his core. It must have been a string bass, because he was at a party, maybe a high school reunion, and there was music, and he danced with a girl. He knew her, but she might have been any of several girls in his class. They slow-danced. She nestled against him, his hand strong on her back pulling her to him, and a staggering sense of longing came over him. They danced for a long time, whispering to each other in words that only they could understand. And then, they were jarred suddenly by an alarm, shrill and loud. A fire drill. Everybody started moving, hurrying, jostling and banging against each other, and he and the girl got separated. He was at a wide doorway, the crowd surging around him, pushing him outside. Somehow, the string bass kept playing, that one droning note. He searched frantically, but he couldn’t find the girl. Then his heart broke because he realized that the longing was not for the girl, but for the enormity of everything else – his life, what was, what might be, or might never be, or never even be comprehensible. He woke, sobbing, the drone deeper in him than ever. A nurse hovered over him. “Bad dream?” He blinked. It was all he could do. She placed her hand on his cheek, and the feel of her calmed him a little. He tried to raise his head. It wouldn’t come up. “I need…” But she didn’t understand what he needed any more than he did. She was back with a syringe. Before he slipped over the edge he heard her say, “We’ll be there in a couple of hours.” When he woke again they were landing at Ramstein.

ONE

The stateside hospital was huge – endless hallways that seemed to go nowhere, a cacophony of sounds, people in white and green in a hurry. But Jonas had his little corner. There was the physical space of his bed in the ward, then the wheelchair, as they worked over the places where his body had been violated – but more than that, what he came to think of as his area where everything about him existed, body and all the rest. Ever since he joined the Navy, he had been told to police up your area. Keep it neat and squared away. So he worked to keep the mind part of his area quiet, to make it, as much as possible, the absence of things. For one thing, it helped to deal with the pain, which began to slowly subside as he started to heal. But it was much more than that. He lived a great deal in long, blank silences -- not just not thinking, but unthinking. He lived in the midst of the bustle of the ward and the exam rooms and the grim intensity of the rehab areas, but he let none of it intrude on his area. He kept to himself as much as possible, avoided conversation. There was nobody he wanted to talk to. He told himself he was squared away. As far as his body, there were no missing parts except for the little finger and ring finger on his left hand, sheared off by one of the rounds that struck him. That round, after removing the fingers, had smacked into his left shoulder, passing a millimeter from his carotid artery and lodging between the artery and clavicle. The other had gone in low on the inside of his right quad and exited at an upward angle through his thigh, shattering the femur and just missing his groin.
There had been surgeries – first in Germany and then again in the States. He understood the basics from his medic training, but when the healing was progressing and his mind was clear enough from the fog of the meds and concussion, he borrowed an anatomy book and went over what they had done to save him. They had sewed all the ruptured stuff back together and put a steel rod in hisleg. He would have a permanent limp. He thought, I almost wasn’t here. And then he thought, maybe I’m actually not. The shrink was a young guy, maybe thirty. Lieutenant Commander Corrigan, making small talk, explained that he had gone to school on a Navy scholarship and was fulfilling his obligation. Jonas took note of that word, obligation. Lieutenant Commander Corrigan looked tired, and Jonas figured it had mostly to do with the stacks of folders on his desk and the table behind him, all these guys with missing parts and screwed-up heads that Corrigan was supposed to fix. The office didn’t help – drab Navy issue furniture, washed-out fluorescents.
Jonas was still in his wheelchair. Corrigan had cleared a small space on the desk directly in front of him and he had a singlefolder open, leafing through it while they talked, but he seemed hemmed in by the stacks of folders on either side.
“How’s the rehab going?”
“Fine, sir.”
“Things healing okay?”
“Seem to be, yes sir.”
“Pain?”
“Some. Getting better. Easing off the meds. Sir.”
“That’s good.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Corrigan looked down again at the folder. “Do you mind if I
call you Jonas?”
“That’s okay, sir.”
“So if it’s okay for me to call you Jonas, you don’t have to call
me sir.’”
“What should I call you?”
Corrigan shrugged. “’Doc’ would be okay. That’s what they
call you, isn’t it? ‘Doc’? I’ve never had a corpsman in here before. So
we’re just a couple of Docs.”
“I’m not a doc anymore,” Jonas said, “I’m a patient.” He
held up his bandaged left hand. “And when I get out of here, I’m
gonna be a civilian.”
Corrigan nodded at the file folder. “Medical discharge.
How do you feel about that?”
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“They say I’m unfit for duty.”
“No, Jonas, that is not what they say. They say the nature and
effect of your wounds make it…”
“Same thing, isn’t it? Guys with missing parts, a corpsman
without fingers who can’t walk right? Unfit for duty.”
“Let’s go back to my question. How do you feel about it?”
“I’m okay with it.”
“Oh?”
“A-OK. Sir.”
“You’ve had your war.”
“That’s about it.”
“Well,” Corrigan said, “for now, you’re still in the U.S. Navy,
and the Navy wants to help you deal with your situation.”
“What situation?”
Corrigan pursed his lips and scrunched his eyebrows. “We
want to help you sort through things. The physical, the mental, the
emotional. What happened.”
“And what’s that? Doc?”
Corrigan lifted the file folder a couple of inches, then set it
back down. “What you did…what you went through…”
“I don’t remember a single thing.”
“Dissociative amnesia,” Corrigan said. “Inability to remember
important aspects of trauma.” It sounded like he was reading
from a textbook. “It’s common after trauma, and usually temporary.”
“Temporary.”
“Somewhere, Jonas, you remember exactly what happened,
every detail of it.”
“Then am I a liar?”
“You’re protecting yourself. It’s perfectly natural.”
Jonas laughed, no mirth to it. “Then are you saying I’m two
people?”
Corrigan shook his head. “Not exactly that. But there’s
a disconnect, and that’s what we want to help you deal with. We
want to help you to re-connect.” Corrigan opened the folder again,
flipped a couple of pages, then looked up.
“You really don’t know what happened?”
“Not a thing.”
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“Here’s what they say you did, Jonas. Your platoon came
under fire, took a number of casualties. Disregarding your own
welfare – and serious wounds -- you rescued five wounded Marines.
You were hit twice yourself. Does any of that sound even vaguely
familiar?”
“I know I got hit twice. I can tell that every time I move
and look at where my fingers used to be. But how it happened? No.
Honestly, no.”
“You know that your unit commander has recommended
you for the Navy Cross.”
“Yeah, I heard that.” He made a face. “I don’t want it.”
“What do you want, Jonas?”
Jonas sighed. “To get the fuck out of here.”
“I can understand that. But getting the fuck out of here
doesn’t solve anything.”
“What does?”
“Dealing with things.”
“Look,” Jonas said, “whatever they put in that report, it’s
done, and I lived through it, and I’m okay.”
“Do you not want to know?”
“As far as I’m concerned, it just doesn’t matter.”
Corrigan tapped his head. “Somewhere in here, Jonas, you
know, and you know you know, and sooner or later you’ll have to deal
with it. The later it is, the worse it can be.”
“You think I’ve got PTSD.”
Corrigan pulled a piece of paper from the folder. “In your
initial screening, you were positive in two areas. What we just talked
about…avoiding thinking about what happened, avoiding situations
that might remind you of it. And then, feeling numb or detached
from other people, from activities, from your surroundings.”
Jonas shrugged. “Just trying to stay squared away.”
“Any nightmares?”
“Some trouble sleeping,” Jonas said, “but I’ve got meds for
that. They help.”
“Hyper-vigilance? On edge a lot? Sad? Anxious? Depressed?”
“None of that. They just say I’m not paying attention.”
Another glance down, studying the paper. “They also say you’re
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withdrawn.”
“Just trying to keep my shit together.”
Corrigan looked at his watch, then put the piece of paper
back in the folder. “Tomorrow, you start with a therapist. I’ll be
keeping tabs on things, and if at any point you feel a need to talk
directly to me…” he cut a quick glance at the stack of folders on his
left, “…we’ll arrange it.”
“Thank you,” Jonas said, and then added, “Sir.”
Charlene Frick, a civilian. She had some stacks of folders
too, but not as many as Lieutenant Corrigan. For the first session
they just talked. She didn’t seem in a hurry to get to anything grim,
and that was okay.
Just before his time was up she said, “Your parents…”
“What about them?”
“You’re not staying in touch.”
“We’re not close,” he answered.
“But they’re concerned about you. They were here right
after you came in, stayed for a few days. Do you remember that?”
“No.”
“Since then, they’ve been back, but I’m told you won’t see
them, won’t answer phone calls, don’t open letters and packages.”
Jonas could feel something lurch in his gut, shit from way
back that he needed to keep at bay. “Tell ’em I’m okay. But I don’t
want to see ’em or talk to ’em. Not right now.”
“You’re not close.”
“Right.”
“Can you tell me about that?”
He wished there was a window to look out of. But there was
just the walls and a door that stayed shut. “A couple of years ago my
father kicked me out of the house. And then I joined the Navy.”
“Can you tell me a little more about that, being kicked out?”
“Not much to tell. We had an argument and he kicked me
out.”
“You were…how old?”
“Senior in high school. Eighteen.”
“How did you feel about it?”
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“I wasn’t surprised. He’s an asshole.”
“And your mother?”
“She let him.”
“You blame her too?”
“I don’t blame anybody. It just happened, it’s just the way
they both are.”
“Where did you go?”
“Stayed with a friend until I finished school.”
“A classmate?”
“A doctor.”
“Can you tell me about him?”
“He was the guy who delivered me. Did all the doctor stuff
when I was growing up. Doctor Ainsley.”
“So you called him when you were kicked out?”
“He heard. He came and got me. It was just a couple of
months until school was done, and then I joined up.”
“Someone you trust?”
“He’s always had my back.”
She kept pressing him, trying to nudge him into his past, but
he got tired of it. Can you tell me about…can you tell me a little about…
Well, no, he couldn’t, or wouldn’t. It was done. Why dwell on it?
He fell back into one-word answers and then not even that, and she
let it go.
But the next session, she brought it up again. He parried
with her for awhile, then grew weary of it, and decided to just go
ahead and tell her some of that way back shit, and maybe that would
satisfy her and she would shut the hell up about the rest of it.
Rodney Boulware was the closest thing Copernicus had to a
genuine sports celebrity. He played everything in high school, went
to Florida on a baseball scholarship, left after his junior year when
Cincinnati offered him a pro contract because he had a 98-milean-
hour fastball to go with a decent slider. He worked his way up
through the minors, Double-A in Waterbury one year, Triple-A in
Indianapolis the next. At the end of that season, with Cincinnati
going to the playoffs and one of the relief pitchers sidelined with a
torn hamstring in his push-off leg, they called Rodney to the bigs. He
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pitched an inning and a half in one game, preserving a Reds win,
and two innings in another when they were down five runs and headed
back home. The Reds seemed high on him, and he tried not to
be too disappointed the next Spring when they shipped him back to
Triple-A, telling him it wouldn’t be long before he was back with the
big club. Then he tore up his shoulder, and when he and Cincinnati
finally figured out that it was all over, he came back home to Copernicus
to coach the high school team.
Gladys had had an uneven time of it. She grew up with a
sizeable fortune around her, thanks to Copernicus Manufacturing,
which made specialty fabrics, including liners for landfills. When she
was twenty-one, just home from college, her father hired a fellow few
years older than Gladys – Gordon Laycock -- to help him with his
expanding business. Her father liked the young fellow’s enthusiasm
and confident manner, and when Gordon courted Gladys and asked
for her hand in marriage, the father was most agreeable. Seven years
and a son later, Gordon took over when the father died of a heart
attack at a textile convention in Chicago. Took over and proceeded
to run the business in the ground. When Gladys’s brother, a neurosurgeon
in New Orleans, stopped getting his monthly checks from
the business, he came home and started digging. Gordon had stolen
and pissed away most of the money – a good bit of it gambling.
The neurosurgeon made sure Gordon went to prison and convinced
Gladys to divorce him. Also, he shut down Copernicus Manufacturing.
The town never quite got over it – a lot of jobs down the
tubes, people moving away. Gladys, lone among the family left in
Copernicus, stayed mostly out of sight until, within a year of Gordon’s
incarceration, she shocked everybody by marrying Rodney
Boulware. Her son Byrd was by then twelve years old, and she told
friends that Rodney would be a good father, a strong male figure.
Her friends said that Gladys had always seemed like the kind of
woman who needed direction. A year into the marriage, Jonas was
born.
People in town thought Rodney was a charmer – good talker,
affable, firm-handed but fair with his baseball teams. He knew a hell
of a lot about baseball, and he had his kids doing things they didn’t
know they could do, and they won a state championship. People
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loved him for that.
At home, he was ill-tempered, arbitrary, intense. And
critical, especially of Jonas, who was skinny and uncoordinated and
didn’t give a damn about baseball. Rodney loved to argue, or rather
to lecture. Disagree with him, and you could count on enduring an
hour of relentless harangue, and then days of silent treatment. Then
there was Byrd, son of the first marriage, who was thirteen when
Jonas was born. Byrd was everything athletically that Jonas wasn’t.
Byrd became a multi-sport star, and Rodney was all over it, and let
Jonas know he didn’t come close to measuring up. He wasn’t physically
abusive – Jonas sometimes wished Rodney would just hit him
and get it over with – but he could cut Jonas down to nothing with
words, make him feel small and weak and fearful. He learned to
hate Rodney with everything in his soul. But also, by the time he was
passing adolescence, he developed an exquisite, fine-tuned antenna,
the habit of watchfulness, reading people, all the signals. He began
to figure that what made Rodney privately bitter and troubled had
mostly to do with his lost life. Copernicus was a long way from Cincinnati,
and coaching a high school team, successful though he might
be, didn’t come anywhere close to what might have been.
Rodney sometimes turned his ill temper on Gladys, and
Jonas became intensely protective. He couldn’t change Rodney, felt
powerless to fight back in any overt way. But he could hunker down,
stay quiet, not do anything to set him off, and comfort Gladys in
small, unobtrusive ways. She never complained. She took direction.
There seemed to be a kind of fatalism to her. Jonas came to see that
it was a defensive mechanism that worked for Gladys, and so he began
to make it his own. He learned to compartmentalize. There was
Rodney, and there was everything else. An image popped into his
head: Rodney as an outhouse where all the shit was. And then there
was the world outside the outhouse. Jonas grew in the determination
to keep the shit where it belonged. There was more to life than that.
The only person he talked to about it was Doc Ainsley. Doc
seemed to be around a lot, more than just being Jonas’s doctor, with
once-a-year checkups and the occasional visit for a cut or a cold.
Doc was a great reader with a huge library, and when he found that
Jonas also liked to read, he started lending books. He had Jonas
reading Hemingway at twelve, Faulkner at fourteen. Jonas didn’t al20
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ways completely understand what he was reading, but he knew when
he finished a book like that, he felt somehow different. And what he
didn’t understand, Doc could help with. Doc would send him home
with a couple of books, and when he came to return them, they talked
about what Jonas had read, how it made him feel, and then there
were a couple of more books to take with him. Jonas came to think
of their book times as little islands where ideas danced in the sand. A
long way from the outhouse.
Jonas endured Rodney for a great long while before things
came to a head. And the reason things finally came to a head, oddly
enough, was sports. Golf. Jonas defied Rodney – loudly, openly, in
front of a lot of people. And Rodney kicked him out.
“That’s it,” Jonas said when he was finished telling Charlene
Frick. He was drained, his whole body flushed and feverish. But he
was also exhilarated. It was the first time he had ever said this much
of it out loud. The Rodney thing had always been there with Doc
Ainsley, but it was largely left unsaid. It was enough that the island
was there. But now…I said it, what an incredible fucking asshole my father
is, and now I’m free of it.
“That’s all I’m ever gonna say about that,” he said to Charlene
Frick, “so don’t ask.”
Charlene studied him for a moment, and then she said quietly,
“Jonas, thank you. I know it took a lot. Now that you’ve said it,
how do you feel?”
“About the same,” he said.
“What you’ve just shared with me, it’s truly important.
You’re putting together your history, giving voice to it. Past is prologue.
What we’re after is re-connecting with your past, all of it,
leading up to your combat experience. When we do that, we arrive
at the point where the trauma happened, and we can open that up,
too.”
“You’re trying to get me to re-live it,” he said. “Well, I can’t
do it. I’m just a total blank and I have no interest in changing that.
I’ve said as much as I’m gonna about my parents, and I can tell you
about joining the Navy, my training, doing my job with the platoon.
But if what they say about when I got shot up is true…”
“It is true,” she insisted. “It’s all on paper. Eyewitnesses. It’s
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part of your truth, and right now, maybe the most important part.
Jonas, you did an extraordinary thing. But that extraordinary thing
was also horrific. It almost got you killed. You’ve got to deal with
that on a conscious level. You’ve got to reconstruct it, so you can see
it for what it is…”
That was when he lost it. “Fuck reconstruct!” He slammed
his hand on the arm of his chair. “I don’t want to know! I won’t
know! Doctor Corrigan says there’s two of me. Well shit, send me
two paychecks. Whoever that other guy is, he ain’t bothering me.
I’ve lost him. And I’m gonna leave him lost.”
Frick recoiled, eyes wide. But then she took a deep breath
and said, “I understand your anger. It’s natural. You should be angry.”
He sat there very still, calming himself, getting himself back
in his area. It took a minute or so, but he got things squared away,
buttoned-down. And then he gave her a big smile that seemed to
surprise her. “Angry? Well, I’m pretty pissed off at the bastards who
shot me.”
“You have a really nice smile,” she said. “I just wonder
what’s behind it.”
“Quiet,” he said.
It went on while his body healed, and Jonas could tell that
Charlene Frick was getting weary with it. She probed and questioned
and tried her best, but he made no effort to help her take him
where she wanted him to go. He didn’t, wouldn’t, help. There was a
growing air of sadness about her. And why not, he thought. He and
all of these other tough cases – limbs gone, bodies disfigured, some
of them horribly, psyches blasted, all those folders in her office and
Corrigan’s. He understood perfectly what they were trying to do,
help people make some peace with what was left of themselves. And
those who went where he was unwilling to go – re-living horror – it
must be a special kind of horror not only for them, but also for Frick
and Corrigan and the rest of the mind people. You could listen to
the saddest things on earth and you had to go away and hide before
you could cry. How could you do that and not become a trauma
victim yourself ?
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There was, in the recesses of his mind, that ancient thing, the
need to comfort, to tell Charlene Frick that she was a good and caring
person and she shouldn’t worry about him, that he was okay. But
he didn’t. He was through with trying to comfort people, especially
if it meant scaring up old ghosts. In shirking that, he knew he was a
failure, and he had spent much of his young life fearing failure. But
this one, he was willing to live with.