The farmhouse stood at the end of a gravel road that wound through Doran County like a scar through scarred earth. The oaks that lined the driveway were ancient, their bare branches clawing at a sky the color of old pewter. Victor Dedrick sat in his wheelchair by the window and watched the road, though no one ever came to visit anymore. The road was empty. It had been empty for years.
He had been sitting here for three hours when the call came. The voice on the other end of the line belonged to a man named Aldridge, a former officer in the Bureau of Internal Security who had served under Victor during the war. Victor remembered Aldridge well. He remembered the way Aldridge followed orders, the way his eyes followed the men he commanded, the way his hands followed his conscience. Aldridge was dead now, dead for fifteen years, but his voice still echoed in Victor's memory like a pulse that would not stop.
"You have a visitor, Mr. Dedrick."
The nurse's voice came from the doorway, and Victor did not turn around. He kept his eyes on the road, on the place where no one came, on the empty gravel. The voice belonged to a woman named Cora, the day-shift nurse at the Bright Haven Nursing Home. She was fifty years old, with a face like a crumpled paper and a manner that spoke of nothing. She had seen everything. She had worked at Bright Haven for twenty years, and she knew what the name Dedrick meant.
"Tell them I'm not receiving visitors."
Cora left. Victor listened to her footsteps retreat down the hallway, the soft shuffle of orthopedic shoes on linoleum. Then he turned his chair toward the door, because the voice had been a man's voice, and the man belonged here, to this house, to this room, where the road was empty and the oaks were bare.
Aldridge stepped into the doorway.
He was younger than Victor remembered, but the years had been kind to Aldridge. He had been a lieutenant, a man who followed orders, a man who did what was necessary. The necessary work, he called it. Aldridge had been the one who taught Victor what necessary meant, the one who had shown him how to follow orders, how to clean the village, how to bury the dead, how to live with the things he had done.
Victor looked at him and saw the pale eyes of the photograph, the one that Clara had sent, the one that had arrived in the anonymous envelope. The photograph was in his hand now, creased with age, the black and white image of a burning church and the smiling faces of men in uniform. Aldridge's face was among them, the pale eyes that Clara stared at for a long time, the eyes that had witnessed things and done things and would never be called to account.
"Hello, Uncle."
Victor did not extend his hand. He kept his hands on the wheels of his chair, the wheels that had carried him through the years, through the rooms, through the fields, through the war. Aldridge stood in the doorway, his uniform from the old days, his pale eyes in the photograph. Victor looked at the man who had once been his subordinate, the man who had called him a necessary worker, the man who had done the work.
"I know who you are."
Aldridge did not smile. He had not smiled in sixty years, not since the church, not since the trench, not since the drainage ditch where the boy had hidden. The boy who had crawled through the forest, who had walked for three days, who had made it to the refugee camp, who had made it across the border. He had made it to the other side. Aldridge had made it to the farm, to the obscurity, to the silence that Victor had maintained, to the amnesty that had protected him, to the whitewash that had washed the investigations, to the quiet rehabilitation that had carried the men who had done monstrous things.
"I know what you did."
Victor's voice was flat. His voice had been rusty from disuse, from sixty years of silence. He cleared his throat and spoke to the man who had never spoken, the man who had built a life on silence, on suppression, on the understanding that some things were too heavy to carry and too heavy to bury. He had built a life on the careful suppression of memory.
"Sixty years," Aldridge said. "Sixty years of silence. And now you come to my house, to the room where I keep my potted plants, to the television where I watch the game shows. I have been a success. I am a survivor."
The words came out like a confession, like a crack, like something opening inside the old man. The television was off, the curtains were drawn, the pale autumn sunlight was fading from the sky outside Clara's window. The hold music was a saccharine instrumental version of a song she vaguely recognized, a tune that had been popular decades ago. The receptionist came back on the line, her voice puzzled.
"Mr. Carver isn't in his room. He checked himself out about an hour ago."
Victor did not respond. He had been agitated, the nurse had said. He had been carrying a small bag, a bag that contained sixty years of silence, a silence that he carried with him. The old man was moving through the darkness, through the cold autumn night, through the night that had fallen over the capital district. The past was no longer content to remain buried. Aldridge was waiting.
He had been waiting for sixty years, waiting for the reckoning that he had long ago stopped believing would come. But the reckoning felt closer than it ever had before, closer than the dawn, closer than the walls that had been solid, closer than the books he had read a dozen times. He sat in his study and stared out the window at the bare fields that had once been worked by hands that were now dust. He would die here, alone, in the same room where he had been born. But tonight, the reckoning was closer than ever.
Victor closed his eyes and willed himself back to sleep. Tomorrow he would wake, and the walls would be solid again, and he would sit in his study and read his books and watch the bare fields and wait for the reckoning he had long ago stopped believing would come. But the reckoning was already here, and it would not be put back to sleep.
The past was already stirring.
No comments yet. Be the first to comment!