The children crossed my mind, but I must admit I saw them less as my mission in life than as crosses I had borne on my back while climbing Christlike toward the front lines. Heavy crosses that had caused me to fall hard to the ground, driving the pain into my lungs, putting me here where I would die in inches far from home.
"Why do you fret for yourself?" the old man said one morning. I turned and looked at him and his eyes were as animal bright as ever and there was no expression on his crunched, little face.
"I fret for the children."
"Ah," he said. "The children. Your job in the Corp."
I said nothing in reply and he said not another word until the middle of the night when I drifted into sleep momentarily, for all my sleep was momentary, and opened my eyes to the lamplight and the cold hospital air. I pulled a Kleenex from the box beside my bed and coughed blood into it.
"You are getting better," he said.
"I'm dying," I said.
"No. You are getting better. You hardly cough at all. Your sleep is longer. You used to cough all night."
"You're a doctor, I suppose?"
"No, but I am a soldier. Or was. Now I am a useless old man with no arm."
"In the old days a man your age would have been retired or put behind a desk. Not out on the front lines."
"I suppose you're right. But this is not the old days. This is now, and I'm finished anyway because of the arm."
"And I'm finished because of my wound."
"The lungs heal faster than anything. You are only finished if you are too bitter to heal. To be old and bitter is all right. It greases the path to the other side. To be young and bitter is foolish."
"How do you know so much about me?"
"I listen to the nurses and I listen to you and I observe."
"Have you nothing else to do but meddle in my affairs?"
"No."
"Leave me be."
"I would if I could, but I'm an old man and will not live long anyway, wounded or not. I have the pains of old age and no family and nothing I would be able to do if I leave here. All I know is the life of a soldier. But you will recover if you believe you will recover. It is up to you now."
"So you are a doctor?"
"An old soldier has seen wounds and sickness, and he knows a man that can get well if he chooses to get well. A coward will die. Which are you?"
I didn't answer and he didn't repeat the question. I turned my back to him and went to sleep and later in the night I heard him calling.
"Young man."
I lay there and listened but did not move.
"I think you can hear me and this may be the last I have to say on the matter. You are getting better. You sleep better. You cough less. The wound is healing. It may not matter what your attitude is now, you may heal anyway, but let me tell you this, if you heal, you must heal with your soul intact. You must not lose your love for the children, no matter what you've seen. It isn't your wound that aches you, makes you want to die, it's the war. There are few who are willing to do your job, to care for the children. They need you. They run in hungry, naked packs, and all that is between them and suffering is the Children's Corp and people like you. The love of children, the need not to see them hungry and in pain, is a necessary human trait if we are to survive as a people. When, if, this war is over, it must not be a war that has poisoned our hopes for the future. Get well. Do your duty."
I lay there when he was finished and thought about all I had done for the children and thought about the war and all that had to be done afterwards, knew then that my love for the children, their needs, were the obsessions of my life. They were my reason to live, more than just living to exist. I knew then that I had to let their cause stay with me, had to let my hatred of the world and the war go, because there were the children.
The next day they came and took the old man away. He had pulled the bandage off of the nub of his arm during the night and chewed the cauterized wound open with the viciousness of a tiger and had bled to death. His sheets were the color of gunmetal rust when they came for him and pulled the stained sheet over his head and rolled him away.
They brought in a young, wounded pilot then, and his eyes were cold and hard and the color of grave dirt. I spoke to him and he wouldn't speak back, but I kept at it, and finally he yelled at me, and said he didn't want to live, that he had seen too much terror to want to go on, but I kept talking to him, and soon he was chattering like a machine gun and we had long conversations into the night about women and chess and the kind of beers we were missing back home. And he told me his hopes for after the war, and I told him mine. Told him how I would get out of my bed and go back to the front lines to help the refugee children, and after the war I would help those who remained.
A month later they let me out of the bed to wander.
I think often of the old man now, especially when the guns boom about the camp and I'm helping the children, and sometimes I think of the young man and that I may have helped do for him with a few well-placed words what the old man did for me, but mostly I think of the old one and what he said to me the night before he finished his life. It's a contradiction in a way, him giving me life and taking his own, but he knew that my life was important to the children. I wish I had turned and spoken to him, but that opportunity is long gone.
Each time they bring the sad, little children in to me, one at a time, and I feed them and hold them, I pray the war will end and there will be money for food and shelter instead of the care of soldiers and the making of bullets, but wishes are wishes, and what is, is.
And when I put the scarf around the children's necks and tighten it until I have eased their pain, I am overcome with an even simpler wish for spare bullets or drugs to make it quicker, and I have to mentally close my ears to the drumming of their little feet and shut my nose to the smell of their defecation, but I know that this is the best way, a warm meal, a moment of hope, a quick, dark surrender, the only mercy available to them, and when I take the scarf from their sad, little necks and lay them aside, I think again of the old man and the life he gave me back and the mercy he gives the children through me.
Bar Talk
This is an old story I revised for a short story collection titled Fistful of Stories. The book came out spelled A Fist Full of Stories. I thought that fit the idea I had in mind, but everyone just thought it was a misspelling.
That is neither here nor there.
"Bar Talk" is just what it is.
A few minutes of story that I hope you'll enjoy.
Bar Talk
Hey, what's happening? Not much, eh? No, no, we haven't met. But I'm here to brighten your day. I got a story you aren't going to believe . . . No, no, I'm not looking for money, and I'm not drunk. This is my first beer. I just seen you come in, and I was sitting over there by my lonesome, and I says to myself, self, there's a guy that could use some company.
Sure you can. Everyone needs some company. And you look like a guy that likes to hear a first-class story, and that's just the kind of story I got: first class.
Naw, this isn't going to take too long. I'll keep it short.
You see, I'm a spy.
No, no, no. Not that kind of spy. No double-ought stuff. I'm not working for the CIA or the KGB. I work for Mudziplickt.
Yeah, I know you never heard of it. Few have.
Just us Martians.
Oh yeah, that's right. I said Martians. I'm from Mars.
No, I tell you, I'm not drunk.
Well, it doesn't matter what the scientists or the space probes say, I'm from Mars.
You see, we Martians have been monitoring this planet of yours for years, and now with you guys landing up there, saying there's no life and all, we figure things are getting too close for comfort, so we've decided to beat you to it and come down here. I'm what you might call part of the advance landing force. A spy, so to speak. You see, we Martians aren't visible to your satellite cameras. Has to do with light waves, and an ability we have to
make ourselves blend with the landscape. Chameleon-like, you might say. And we'd just scare you anyway if you saw us. We'd look pretty strange to you Earthlings.
Oh this. This isn't the real me. Just a body I made up out of protoplasmic energy.
The way I talk? Oh, I know your culture well. I've studied it for years. I've even got a job.
Huh?
Oh. Well, I'm telling you all this for one simple reason. We Martians can adapt to almost everything on this world—even all this oxygen. But the food, that's a problem. We find alcohol agrees pretty well with us, but the food makes us sick. Sort of like you going down to Mexico and eating something off a street vendor's cart and getting ill . . . only it's a lot worse for us.
Blood is the ticket.
Yeah, human blood.
Find that funny, huh? Vampires from Mars? Yeah, does sound like a cheap science-fiction flick, doesn't it?
You see—ho, hold it. Almost fell off your stool there. No, I don't think the beer here is that strong. There, just put your head on the bar. Yeah, weak, I understand. I know why you're feeling that way.
It's this little tube that comes out of my side, through the slit in my clothing. I stuck it in you when I sat down here. Doesn't hurt. Has a special coating on it, a natural anesthesia, you might say. That's why you didn't notice. Actually, if you could see me without this human shell, you'd find I'm covered with the things. Sort of like a big jellyfish, only cuter.
Just rest.
No use trying to call out. Nothing will work now. The muscles in your throat just won't have enough strength to make your voice work. They're paralyzed. The fluid that keeps the tube from hurting you also deadens the nerves and muscles in your body, while allowing me to draw your blood.
There's some folks looking over here right now, but they aren't thinking a thing about it. They can't see the tube from this angle; just me smiling, and you looking like a passed-out drunk. They think it's kind of funny, actually. They've seen drunks before.
Yeah, that's it. Just relax. Go with the flow, as you people say. Can't really do anything else but that anyway. Won't be a drop of blood left in you in a few seconds anyway. I'll have it all and I'll feel great. Only food here that really agrees with us. That and a spot of alcohol now and then.
But I've told you all that. There, I'm finished. I feel like a million dollars.
Don't know if you can still hear me or not, but I'm taking the tube out now. Thanks for the nourishment. Nothing personal. And don't worry about the beer you ordered. I'll pay for it on the way out. It's the least I can do.
Author's Note on Listen
Ever feel like no one's paying attention? That you're lost in the crowd?
Everyone feels that way from time to time, but there are people who feel that way all the time.
Shy people.
Insecure people.
I've known them.
That knowledge inspired this story.
Listen
The psychiatrist wore blue, the color of Merguson's mood.
"Mr. . . . uh?" the psychiatrist asked.
"Merguson. Floyd Merguson."
"Sure, Mr. . . ."
"Merguson."
"Right. Come into the office."
It was a sleek office full of sleek black chairs the texture of a lizard's underbelly. The walls were decorated with paintings of explosive color; a metal-drip sculpture resided on the large walnut desk. And there was the couch, of course, just like in the movies. It was chocolate-brown with throw pillows at each end. It looked as if you could drift down into it and disappear in its softness.
They sat in chairs, however. The psychiatrist on his side of the desk, Merguson on the client's side.
The psychiatrist was a youngish man with a fine touch of premature white at the temples. He looked every inch the intelligent professional.
"Now," the psychiatrist said, "what exactly is your problem?" Merguson fiddled his fingers, licked his lips, and looked away. "Come on, now. You came here for help, so let's get started."
"Well," Merguson said cautiously. "No one takes me seriously."
"Tell me about it."
"No one listens to me. I can't take it anymore. Not another moment. I feel like I'm going to explode if I don't get help. Sometimes I just want to yell out, Listen to me!"
Merguson leaned forward and said confidentially, "Actually, I think it's a disease. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but I believe it is, and I believe I'm approaching the terminal stage of the illness.
"I got this theory that there are people others don't notice, that they're almost invisible. There's just something genetically wrong with them that causes them to go unnoticed. Like a little clock that ticks inside them, and the closer it gets to the hour hand the more unnoticed these people become.
"I've always had the problem of being shy and introverted—and that's the first sign of the disease. You either shake it early or you don't. If you don't, it just grows like cancer and consumes you. With me the problem gets worse every year, and lately by the moment.
"My wife, she used to tell me it's all in my head, but lately she doesn't bother. But let me start at the first, when I finally decided I was ill, that the illness was getting worse and that it wasn't just in my head, not some sort of complex.
"Just last week I went to the butcher, the butcher I've been going to for ten years. We were never chummy, no one has ever been chummy to me but my wife, and she married me for my money. I was at least visible then; I mean you had to go to at least some effort to ignore me, but God, it's gotten worse . . .
"I'm off the track. I went to the butcher, asked him for some choice cuts of meat. Another man comes in while I'm talking to him and asks for a pound of hamburger. Talks right over me, mind you. What happens? You guessed it. The butcher starts shooting the breeze with the guy, wraps up a pound of hamburger and hands it over to him!
"I ask him about my order and he says, 'Oh, I forgot.'"
Merguson lit a cigarette and held it between unsteady fingers after a long, deep puff. "I tell you, he waited on three other people before he finally got to me, and then he got my order wrong, and I must have told him three times, at least.
"It's more than I can stand, Doc. Day after day people not noticing me, and it's getting worse all the time. Yesterday I went to a movie and I asked for a ticket and it happened. I mean I went out completely, went transparent, invisible. I mean completely. This was the first time. The guy just sits there behind the glass, like he's looking right through me. I asked him for a ticket again. Nothing.
"I was angry, I'll tell you. I just walked right on toward the door. Things had been getting me down bad enough without not being able to take off and go to a movie and relax. I thought I'd show him. Just walk right in. Then they'd sell me a ticket.
"No one tried to stop me. No one seemed to know I was there. I didn't bother with the concession stand. No one would have waited on me anyway.
"Well, that was the first time of the complete fadeouts. And I remember when I was leaving the movie, I got this funny idea. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I swear to you, Doc, on my mother's grave, there wasn't an image in the mirror. I gripped the sink to keep upright, and when I looked up again I was fading in, slowly. Well, I didn't stick around to see my face come into view. I left there and went straight home.
"That afternoon was the corker. My wife, Connie, I know she's been seeing another man. Why not? She can't see me. And when she can I don't have the presence of a one-watt bulb. I came home from the movie and she's all dressed up and talking on the phone. "I say, 'Who are you talking to?'"
Merguson crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray on the psychiatrist's desk. "Doesn't say doodly squat, Doc. Not a word. I'm mad as hell. I go upstairs and listen on the extension. It's a man, and they're planning a date.
"I broke in over the line and started yelling at them. Guess what? The guy says, 'Do you hear a buzzing or something or other?' 'No,' she says. And they go right on with thei
r plans.
"I was in a homicidal rage. I went downstairs and snatched the phone out of her hand and threw it across the room. I wrecked furniture and busted up some lamps and expensive pottery. Just made a general wreck out of the place.
"She screamed then, Doc. I tell you she screamed good. But then she says the thing that makes me come here. 'Oh God,' she says. 'Ghost! Ghost in this house!'
"That floored me, and I knew I was invisible again. I went upstairs and looked in the bathroom mirror. Sure enough. Nothing there. So I waited until I faded back and I called your secretary. It took me five tries before she finally wrote my name down, gave me an appointment. It was worse than when I tried to get the meat from the butcher. So I hurried right over. I had to get this out. I swear I'm not going crazy, it's a disease, and it's getting worse and worse and worse.
"So what can I do, Doc? How can I handle this? I know it's not in my head, and I've got to have some advice. Please, Doc. Say something. Tell me what to do. I've never been this desperate in my entire life. I might fade out again and not come back."
The psychiatrist took his hand from his chin where it had been resting. "Wha. . . ? Sorry. I must have dozed. What was it again, Mr. . . uh?"
Merguson dove across the desk, clawing for the psychiatrist's throat.
Later when the law came and found the psychiatrist strangled and slumped across his desk, his secretary said "Funny, I don't remember anyone coming in or leaving. Couldn't have come in while I was here. He had an appointment with a Mr. . . . uh." She looked at the appointment book. "A Mr. Merguson. But he never showed."