The Bells of Times Square Read online

  Before that, though, there was the washing, and Nate did not acquit himself well during that. No, he didn’t thrash around and abuse the poor man trying to clean his wounds, but he did cry and moan and use several swear words that he hadn’t been aware he knew.

  After all of that, he found himself apologizing.

  “I am sorry for all that racket,” he said humbly. “I don’t mean to be a bad patient after all you have done.”

  “You’re not a bad patient,” Walter replied smartly. “You’re a loud patient, but you’re never mean. And I appreciate that you grab the couch instead of belting me one. Man, I’d be black and blue after the medic tent.”

  “You’re a medic?” Seemed a stupid, obvious question, but Nate would learn that nothing was ever obvious with Walter.

  “Nope, not at first,” Walter said. He had a basin of water and carbolic next to the bed and washed his hands in it as he spoke. The basin was already red, but Nate had seen him go to the pump at the kitchen sink and wash again and again, so Nate wasn’t worried. “When we landed in Tunisia, most of our platoon got wiped out as we were coming ashore. Just me and Jimmy were left, and Jimmy was hurting. Took him to the medic tent and . . .”

  When Walter looked away, his face was so twisted in misery that Nate couldn’t remember his own pain.

  “I am so sorry. You miss your friend?”

  “We were—” Walter shook his head. “Ain’t no good words for us. And he died, and I had nothin’—no captain, no squad, no platoon. But I was in the medic tent and used to bein’ useful. I don’t know how long we were there—a month? Two? Landed in November, followed the army to Morocco, but the medic tent kept me. Guess I really was useful. Learned all sorts of stuff.” Walter stood and grabbed the basin, walking to the sink with it. There was a wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and he had a pot set there to boil most times, Nate noticed. Now, he put his instruments in it—scissors, a scalpel, the needle he’d used to repair the gash in Nate’s thigh and hip—and left them to boil while he rinsed out the bowl and washed his hands.

  Nate watched him do these things from the corner of his eye and was reassured. It was not easy to keep clean, or to keep the instruments clean, but Walter made a good effort.

  “You seem to have learned a lot,” Nate sallied, mindful that he still didn’t have enough wind to speak very loudly. “They gave you your doctor’s bag, right?”

  “They did not,” Walter said, shaking his hands rapidly to get rid of the excess moisture. “That came from somewhere else.”

  “Oh.” It was a rebuff if Nate had ever heard one.

  “Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Walter said, but not unkindly. “You’re about done in, and that’s not a good story.” He dried his hands off on some of the same linen that he’d used to bind up Nate’s wounds. It had faint blue stripes on it, and Nate recognized it as sheets—they had probably come with the house.

  When his hands were dry, he stood near Nate and put his hand on his forehead. “Fuck. Fuck, you’re warm. You’re warm, and all that boiling bullshit didn’t do any fucking good. Goddamn it—”

  “Don’t stop washing your hands,” Nate begged. He had heard stories of the barbarian goyim doctors who did not value cleanliness like the Jewish ones. Watching Walter take all that care with sterilization had been reassuring.

  “Wasn’t planning on it. ’Bout the smartest thing the army ever taught me. But Jesus, are you hot. Fuck.”

  “Aspirin?” Nate asked. “Willow bark?”

  “Is that some sort of a tree?” Walter looked at him sharply. “’Cause brother, they’ve got trees aplenty around here. You got no idea.”

  “Yes,” Nate said, and he could feel it now, the surreal, achy, shivering cold that came with illness. His wounds were swollen, and the wide-gauge needle that let him breathe felt like a lead pipe shoved through his flesh. Walter said that eventually the lung would heal, and then they could extract the thing. Nate wondered if it was appropriate to dance on the day that happened.

  Walter’s hands patted his cheeks briskly. “Stay with me, Nate,” he said, matter-of-fact. “You are the first human being I’ve talked to in nearly two months—I’d rather you not die. Now what in the hell does a willow tree look like?”

  “We have them in the States,” Nate said, remembering them in Central Park and planted in the spaces in the sidewalk. “They’re beautiful trees, lots of hanging branches like cat tails, tiny leaves.”

  “Do they have furry things on them in the spring?” Walter asked excitedly. “’Cause nobody told me that’s what that was. We got them—or this place has them. They’re out behind the house. ’Kay, Nate, you stay with me here. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Walter’s feet slapped the floorboards, flapping like a schoolboy’s, as he ran out of the small elegant cottage, and for a moment, Nate was confused. Zev? Zev, are you here? I thought you died—influenza, remember? You were the strongest of us. Father was so angry.

  That anxious slap slap returned, and a breath of sun-warmed air blew into the room.

  “Is it really March? It feels much warmer than March,” Nate murmured, feeling dreamy. It wasn’t the same gray sky they had left in England, was it?

  “It’s the woods,” Walter said frankly, and Nate smiled at him widely.

  “Walter! I am so glad it is you. For a minute you sounded like Zevi, and he’s been gone ten years. I was very confused.”

  “Yeah? Well, one minute you were talking about the weather and the next you were talking about your dead uncle. I should think so.”

  “Brother,” Nate said without self-pity. “My older brother. Influenza. I got it too, but I lived.”

  “Mm.” Walter grunted, clearly uncomfortable. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Let’s see if you can live through this too. Here—is this the kind of tree you mean?”

  He held up a few willow whips, the gray furry buds growing just large enough to sprout some green.

  “Yes,” Nate said, smiling through his shivers. “If you can strip the bark and boil it, it should take down the fever. My mother learned that from her bubbe, but she said that was for people in the old country.” Nate laughed a little to himself before shivering some more. “Funny that she would remember that, though. Strange things our parents give us that we cannot give away or put on a shelf.” He was sounding more and more like his grandmother and father just talking about them. Maybe it was being sick, but the New York Yiddish he’d worked so hard at suppressing was rising to the top, and he couldn’t seem to stop it.

  “Speak for yourself. My old man ain’t given me nothin’ I wanna keep.” That flat, Midwestern voice was passionate and bitter. “Now hang tight for a bit, okay? Gonna take me some time to brew this up, and I don’t want you going nowhere.”

  “I did have a formal dinner planned for eight o’clock,” Nate said, laughing at himself. “I am going to have to give my regrets.”

  “You’re a real card, you know that? You should go on the radio, that’s what I think.”

  Nate chuckled. “Would they play big band music too? I would like to dance in a zoot suit, in purple like a king.”

  “I don’t even know what in the hell that is.” Walter’s voice was fading in and out, and he was making free with the pots and pans in the kitchen. Nate grunted, and it turned into a whine. Always, always, the stove on, making the house so hot, and the smell of firewood permeated everything, almost worse than diesel oil and airplane fuel, which he could never get away from; it was even on the clothes he was wearing now.

  “It’s hot!” Nate shouted. “And my feet are sweating!”

  “You are fucking delirious with fever is what you are!” Walter shouted back indignantly. “And you are the loudest son of a bitch I have ever heard. Now shut up, and gimme a chance to work!”

  “Shut up? That man just told me to shut up. Heh heh heh. He should be my father!”

  “I heard that! Now you’re just being mean!”

  Nate could never say why, b
ut that struck him as being hilarious, humor of the highest order! That was Bergen and McCarthy right there! He was not sure how long he lay there, giggling, before Walter tapped him on the shoulder and, mindful of his wounds, helped him sit up.

  “Mister, I do not know what you are like in your real regular life, but I have got to tell you that right now, you are a one-man vaudeville show.”

  Nate gasped in pain and thought it was hard to breathe. But he was thirsty, and not so out of his mind that he didn’t know the bitter-smelling brew was his salvation. He grasped Walter’s chapped, work-gnarled hands and steadied the cup to his lips. Sip, sip, sip. He took a breath and met Walter’s bemused eyes over the brim of the thick ceramic mug.

  “I am usually quite reserved,” he said sincerely.

  “That’s a real shame,” Walter said with equal honesty. “I could listen to you ramble all day.”

  He smiled then and winked, like it was all a big joke, but Nate saw something then, something haunted, something with the loneliness of a god.

  “You are so sad. Such pretty eyes and so sad.”

  To his dismay, Walter looked even sadder. The lean mouth parted slightly, and the round, blue-green eyes grew shiny. “Now hurry up and finish it off,” he urged. “’Cause when you get better, I know you ain’t gonna remember that.”

  “It’s hard to breathe,” Nate said, and although he was not talking about the shunt in his lungs, that was what Walter did for him: fixed the valve so Nate could breathe. Nate took a more sober breath and finished off the bitter dregs of the willow bark tea. It would’ve been a lie to say he felt better—although the liquid down his throat had been nice—but he did feel cared for.

  Walter laid him back down, grabbing a bolster from the high-backed chair across the room to give him as a pillow. Nate settled into the couch with a sigh. Sometime since Walter had first brought him into this room, he’d taken Nate’s jacket and his pants and boots, and had found a sheet for him to lie on. The sheet was folded in half, the edge tucked between the couch cushions, the loose end snugged tightly around Nate’s body in true military fashion. Nate pulled the sheet up to his shoulders for the feeling of security and nothing else.

  “You’re good at that,” he acknowledged out of nowhere. The once-stunning pain had faded to a lion-sized ache.

  “Good at what?” Walter asked. Without Nate quite remembering how it had happened, Walter was across the room again, crunching his knees to his chin as he curled up on the love seat. Nate squinted and looked outside, but it only seemed late afternoon. But then, this boy stayed awake with you all last night. He probably needs a nap.

  “Taking care of me,” Nate said, wondering if this was a hard concept for the boy to understand.

  “I took care of the animals on the farm back home,” Walter said through a yawn. “And my little sister.”

  “What a good boy,” Nate said, falling back to sleep now that some of the pain was alleviated.

  “I’m eighteen,” Walter told him with dignity, and Nate hurt himself with a gasp.

  “How can that be?”

  “Easy,” Walter mumbled, obviously close to sleep. “Turned eighteen in August, joined the army the same day, shipped out in November, captured in January, escaped in February, and here it is, almost April, and it’s still not a year since my birthday. Now do me a favor and quit yammering and let a guy get some sleep.”

  But now Nate felt mournful. Such a beautiful boy. I wonder what he will look like when he’s all man.

  “You need to slow down,” he said succinctly. “You will run out of things to do and not make it till twenty.”

  Walter’s laugh, sleepy and confused, was enough to let Nate know he didn’t take it seriously, and Nate was able to close his eyes and sleep.

  Several more days, several bouts of fever, lots and lots of willow bark tea.

  Walter had changed the sheets and done the laundry, and finally, finally, Nate lay tired and dozy but not sick. Walter had pulled the shunt out, and Nate could breathe without help.

  It was a glorious, exhausting feeling, and Nate wanted to lie down and enjoy it, except his bladder was calling to him. It made a furtive, whispering sound now, but soon it would not be nearly as kind about expressing its need.

  But he didn’t want to get up yet, because he would need help, and he didn’t want to wake Walter.

  Morning sun made its way through the boards on the windows and illuminated his companion’s face. Eighteen—young—and terrifyingly resourceful. He’d applied himself to Nate’s convalescence with an astounding single-minded resolve. The abandoned house in the woods gave them many amenities—Nate would be the first to recognize that without shelter and clean water he would have been better off staying in the plane and hoping for rescue before he stopped breathing.

  But Walter had nursed him through the fever, fed him broth made from old salt and a new rabbit, and brought him an empty can to piss in. He’d wiped down Nate’s body, giving an efficient, welcome sponge bath. Once, when Nate could smell his own sweat so strongly it troubled his stomach, Walter had washed his hair using warm water and some soap he’d found in the bathroom cupboard. Nate could still smell the perfume on the milled soap, and he hadn’t sweat as much since the bath, so the smell remained comforting.

  He’d laughed with Nate, as well—or at him—but then, Nate remembered being foolish often in the throes of the fever. But the fever was gone, and he was no longer foolish. Tired, and his body ached but not excruciatingly so. He wasn’t foolish, only a little bit in awe.

  “What’re you looking at?” Walter muttered, rolling to his side to talk to him. “You been burning holes in me for about five minutes now.”

  Nate grimaced. The man was admirable, but he was also blunt.

  “I have to relieve myself,” Nate said with some embarrassment. “I would rather use the washroom than the mason jar, if that is all right with you.”

  Walter grunted and swung his legs around to sit up. “That’s fair enough. But I been using outside. There’s still an old outhouse there. They had a running water line to the bathroom, but it’s been turned off—water closet doesn’t flush.”

  Nate blinked and smiled slightly. “What is this place?” he mused.

  “I been thinking about that,” Walter said, standing up and stretching. He wore pants, tailored for someone much taller and larger than he was, with suspenders to keep them up, and he had folded the cuffs multiple times and tacked them, probably with the surgical thread he’d used to stitch Nate. They seemed to float around his small waist, almost like clown pants. Nate eyed the boy critically, wondering if watching his own mother tailoring his clothes was enough to give him the expertise to fix Walter’s. Walter stretched his hands over his head then, in a curiously catlike gesture, and the knit undershirt he was wearing hugged what appeared to be a trim, almost-gaunt little body.

  Walter lowered his arms and grinned at Nate, not abashed in the least at another man’s regard. “I’m scrawny, I know it.” He smirked. “I got the body of a turnip in a drought, or that’s what . . .” His smirk faded, and he swallowed. “That’s what Jimmy used to say.” It had cost him to finish his sentence. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get sad on you.”

  “Not at all,” Nate murmured. “There is no shame, I think, to miss a friend.”

  Walter glanced at him sharply. “That sounded all Jewish and stuff. Is that like . . . like a saying or a proverb or something?”

  Nate searched his mind. “No, I don’t think so. I think it’s mostly common sense.”

  That grin came back, stretching Walter’s cheeks, making him look about ten years old. “Well, it’s good sense, but it sounds awfully damned Jewish.”

  Nate grinned back and sat up creakily. He envied Walter’s scrawny body and the ease with which he moved. “I take it you haven’t met many Jews.”

  “In Beauchamp, Iowa? Are you kidding? Indians, yeah, we got some of them, but they mostly stay on the reservation.” Walter’s face fell. “Seemed a s
hame. There’s a bunch of kids near us when I was growing up. Liked to play stickball. My dad was a real bastard to ’em, but they let me play anyway, when I could get away from him. So, like, I heard about the Jews getting shut up in ghettos, and I thought about them kids on the reservation, except not ever getting to come out. They were nice kids.” He smiled uncertainly at Nate, as though he wasn’t sure how this bit of information would be taken.

  “I’m jealous,” Nate said, because honesty had served him well thus far with Walter. “You had peers. Children to play with. I was always . . .” Too shy. Too different. Too Jewish for the goyim, not Jewish enough for the Jews. Too afraid of looking too long at the wrong person. “Alone,” he said after that pause.

  Walter grimaced. “Yeah, well, I’ll bet you wish you could be alone to take a leak, don’t you? C’mon, let’s go.”

  It was the first time Nate had been outside—or even on his feet—since Walter had brought him here. As Walter shoved his bony shoulder under Nate’s arm and made himself available as a human crutch, Nate was struck by how much he didn’t know about this area where they had crashed. Of course, Nate had spent his entire life in the city, and he had no experience with the closely wooded area in Moselle.

  “It’s pretty,” Nate observed, leaning heavily on Walter. He’d learned in the past days that Walter was surprisingly sturdy.

  “Yeah. Iowa’s a lot of flat. This felt like something special.”

  “I was not expecting the heat.” Not with so many trees, that was for certain.

  “I’m not sure if it’s seasonal, or if the woods are just dense, or if there’s a factory nearby,” Walter confessed. “But it was cold and snowy when I first got here. I’m sort of grateful for the heat.”

  The old-fashioned outhouse was back behind the house, far enough away so the smell wouldn’t bother the inhabitants, close enough to not get lost in the woods on your way to take a piss. There was a garage nearby, with the door closed and green paint peeling from the sides.