Heroes, Page 7

  I started climbing in the darkness, up the steep steps that workers climbed to repair portions of the steeple. The heat intensified and the stairs narrowed as I ascended, my heart beating heavily, my breath coming in gasps, the sound like cloth ripping.

  Pausing to gather strength and wait for my heart and lungs to calm down a bit, I looked for the stone door that could be swiveled aside to allow access to the outer surface of the steeple. My fingers found it. Grunting, gasping, I managed to move it aside on its rusty hinges. I looked out at Frenchtown below me, the dark shapes of the three-deckers, the shadowed streets, the stars closer than I’d ever seen them as if I could reach out and pluck one of them from the sky.

  Despite the calmness of the summer night, a gust of wind caught me by surprise, cooling the perspiration on my face and forehead. I rested there, bathing in the sudden coolness. Then peered out again, craning my neck to look down at the cement sidewalk below. How long would it take to plunge toward the sidewalk? Still staring down, I began to mumble a prayer, in French, the old Notre Père, the way the nuns had taught us, then stopped, horrified at what I was doing. Saying a prayer before committing the worst sin of all: despair. I thought of St. Jude’s Cemetery and the pitiful graves set apart from the rest, the ones who had taken their own lives and could not be buried in consecrated ground. I thought of my mother and father—could I disgrace their name this way? Did you hear what Lefty’s son did last night, jumped to his death from the steeple of St. Jude’s?

  I could not die that way. Soldiers were dying with honor on battlefields all over the world. Noble deaths. The deaths of heroes. How could I die by leaping from a steeple?

  The next afternoon I boarded the bus to Fort Delta, in my pocket the birth certificate I had altered to change my age, and became a soldier in the United States Army.

  I always thought I would spot Larry LaSalle on Third Street, would see him striding along like Fred Astaire, bestowing that movie-star smile on people he met. I would shadow him through the streets and follow him home, note his address, and then return late with the gun in my pocket, ready to do my job.

  Instead, I learn of his return from, of all people, Mrs. Belander, as I come back from another round of searching the Frenchtown streets.

  I overhear her talking to a neighbor as they stand on the back porch. Mrs. Belander is folding clothes she has drawn off the clothesline that links her house with the three-decker next door. The neighbor is Mrs. Agneaux, a big woman with flushed cheeks and bulging eyes. They are talking in French and I linger nearby, listening like a spy. They don’t realize that I understand most of what they are saying as they talk of the weather and then of old Mr. Tardier, who likes to pinch women on the derrière when they pass.

  I am stunned when I hear the name of Larry LaSalle on the lips of Mrs. Agneaux.

  The French language spoken by Canadians passes quickly on their tongues, almost like music, sometimes so quickly that the words are lost as they cascade in the air. I draw closer to catch every syllable and miss some of them but hear enough to make my heart begin to race and my flesh to grow warm. I am concentrating so hard that a headache begins, a throbbing pain above my eyes.

  What I obtain from Mrs. Agneaux’s quick tongue is that Larry LaSalle has returned to Frenchtown, he walks slowly as if his legs hurt, he is living in the second-floor tenement of a three-decker owned by someone whose name I don’t catch, on the corner of Ninth and Spruce.

  “Which corner?” Mrs. Belander, bless her, asks the question I myself want to ask.

  “The green house, cheap paint, bought discount, fading already …”

  But I don’t hear the rest of her description.

  I have heard enough.

  Larry LaSalle has returned to Frenchtown.

  And I know where to find him.

  The gun is like a tumor on my thigh as I walk through the morning streets against the wind that never dies down. April sunlight stings my eyes but the wind dissipates its heat, blustering against store windows and kicking debris into the gutters.

  At Ninth and Spruce, I pause and look up at the three-decker and the windows of the second floor, where Larry LaSalle can be found at last. Does he suspect my presence here on the street? Does he have a premonition that he has only a few minutes left to live?

  I am calm. My heartbeat is normal. What’s one more death after the others in the villages and fields of France? The innocent faces of the two young Germans appear in my mind. But Larry LaSalle is not innocent.

  The steps leading to the second floor are worn from use and age, and I think of all the people who have climbed stairs like these, who have worked in the shops and come home heavy with weariness at the end of the day. As I stand at the door of Larry LaSalle’s tenement, I touch the bulge in my pocket to verify the existence of the gun. The sound of my knocking is loud and commanding in the silent hallway.

  No response. I wait. I rap on the door again, hand clenched as a fist this time.

  “Come on in, the door’s not locked,” Larry LaSalle calls out. That voice is unmistakable, a bit feeble now, yet still the voice that cheered us at the Wreck Center.

  Hesitant suddenly, uncertain—his voice giving reality to what I must do—I step into the tenement and into the fragrance of pea soup simmering on the black stove, steam rising from a big green pot.

  He is sitting in a rocking chair by the black coal stove, and narrows his eyes, squinting to see who has come into his tenement. He is pale, eyes sunk into his sockets like in the newsreel at the Plymouth, and he seems fragile now, as if caught in an old photograph that has faded and yellowed with age. His eyes blink rapidly as if taking quick pictures of me. Is there a glimmer of fear in his eyes? My heart quickens at the possibility.

  “Francis, Francis Cassavant,” I announce. It’s important for him to know immediately who I am. I don’t want to waste any time.

  “Ah, Francis,” he says, his eyes flashing pleasure because he doesn’t sense my mission.

  “Come in, come in,” he says, the old enthusiasm back in his voice.

  He rises slowly from the chair, steadying the rocker as he lifts himself up. As he holds out his hands in greeting, I go forward to meet him. We shake hands. At the last minute, when it seems we might embrace as old friends and comrades, teacher and pupil, I pull away. His white hands clutch the air before he clasps them together and settles back into the chair.

  “Sit, sit,” he says, indicating the chair next to the window opposite his own.

  “Take off your jacket,” he says. “Your Red Sox cap, too, and your scarf …”

  I don’t move. I don’t take off anything. I don’t plan to stay long, only long enough to carry out my mission.

  “Don’t be afraid to show your face, Francis. That face, what’s left of it, is a symbol of how brave you were, the Silver Star you earned …”

  “You earned a Silver Star, too,” I say, having to reply, and marveling again how Larry LaSalle was always one step ahead of us just as he now knows about my face and the Silver Star.

  He shrugs, sagging in the chair, sighing, as if tired suddenly.

  “It’s good of you to visit …,” he says, smiling the old movie-star smile. “Makes me remember the old days at the Wreck Center. Those were good days, weren’t they? That table tennis championship. What a great day for you, Francis …”

  A deep sadness settles on me, as if winter has invaded my bones.

  “You made it possible. You let me win.”

  “You miss the point, Francis. You deserved to win. It was more than a game. More than a score. You played like a champion and deserved the trophy …”

  Why did it have to turn out like this?

  “But those days are gone now. And the war is over. Everything’s different. Not only the war but everything,” he says. Lifting his hands, he studies them. Then looks down at his body. He rubs his thighs. “No wounds that you can see, Francis. But I’m worn out. They called it jungle fever at first but I don’t think they really know
what it is …”

  Maybe your sins catching up with you.

  “And you, Francis. Will you be okay? Will you heal? Be like new again?”

  “Yes.” I don’t feel like going into all the details or telling him about Dr. Abrams because it’s not going to happen, anyway.

  Silence falls in the room and he shifts his body in the chair. I touch the gun in my pocket to remind me of my mission.

  “How did you get in the army so young?” he asks, focusing his eyes on me, the way he did in the old days, as if my words were the most important he had ever heard.

  I tell him about the forged papers. “They were taking anybody with a heartbeat in those days.”

  “Just a kid.” Shaking his head, his eyes alight with admiration. “And you became a hero …”

  I had always wanted to be a hero, like Larry LaSalle and all the others, but have been a fake all along. And now I am tired of the deception and have to rid myself of the fakery.

  I look away from him, out the window at the sun-splashed street. “I’m not a hero,” I tell him.

  “Of course you are. I heard about you, read the stories in the newspapers …”

  “Know why I went to war?”

  “Why does anybody go to war, Francis?”

  “I went to war because I wanted to die.” Lowering my voice as if in the confessional with Father Balthazar: “I was too much of a coward to kill myself. In the war, in a battle, I figured it would be easy to get killed. And I wouldn’t be disgracing my father and mother’s name. I looked for chances to die and instead killed others, and two of them kids like me …”

  “You saved your patrol. You fell on that grenade …”

  “When I fell on that grenade, I wasn’t trying to save those GIs. I saw my chance to end it all, in a second. But a freak accident happened. My face got blown off and I didn’t die …”

  His voice is a whisper: “Why did you want to die, Francis?”

  “Don’t you know?” Stunned by his question, then realizing that he hadn’t seen me that night.

  “Nicole. Nicole Renard.”

  His mouth drops open and he flinches as if reeling from an unexpected blow.

  “I stayed behind that night.” My own voice is now a whisper. “I heard what you were doing to her. And I saw her afterward. Those eyes of hers and what was in them …”

  Shaking his head, he says: “You wanted to die because of that?”

  I still want to die.

  “What you did to her. And I did nothing. Just stood there and let it happen …”

  “Oh, Francis. You’re too hard on yourself. You didn’t do anything you should feel guilty about, that should make you want to die. You couldn’t have stopped me, anyway, Francis. You were just a child …”

  “So was she.” My lips trembling.

  A long sigh escapes him.

  “Is that why you came here? To tell me this?”

  I take the gun out of my pocket.

  “Here’s why I came.”

  I aim the gun at him, my finger on the trigger.

  But my hand is shaking and my caves are running and I am suddenly overwhelmed by the knowledge of what I am about to do. Why has it come to this?

  “You could have had anybody,” I say, my voice too loud, booming in my ears. “All those beautiful ladies at the dance that night. Why Nicole?”

  “The sweet young things, Francis. Even their heat is sweet …”

  Sweet young things. Had he done it before? How many young girls had been invaded by him?

  I shake my head in dismay.

  “Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil. I love the sweet young things.”

  “That isn’t love,” I say.

  “There’s all kinds of love, Francis.”

  “Then, didn’t you know that we loved you?” I say. “You were our hero, even before you went to war. You made us better than we were …”

  He sighs, his lips trembling, and his voice trembles, too, when he asks:

  “Does that one sin of mine wipe away all the good things?”

  “That’s a question you should ask Nicole,” I say, my eyes measuring him. Until this moment I haven’t planned where I will place the bullet, whether to aim for that spot between the eyes or for his chest, his heart. It isn’t a question of aiming, really, not at this distance. Only desire. The desire to avenge what he did to Nicole and to the other young girls, now that I know about them.

  He waves his hand at me, as if dismissing the gun in my hand.

  “Know why I’m sitting in this chair, Francis? And barely stood up when you came in? My legs are gone.” He gestures toward the table and I notice for the first time the aluminum crutch leaning against the table. “No more dancing for me, Francis. No more sweet young things. No more anything.”

  “Am I supposed to feel bad for you?”

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he says, turning his eyes away from me. “If I wanted one thing, it would be to have you look at me again the way you did at the Wreck Center. When I was the big hero you say I was. But it’s too late, isn’t it?”

  I am tired of this talk, impatient to do what I’ve come here to do.

  “Say your prayers,” I tell him, just as I’ve rehearsed those words so many times through the years. I’ve decided to aim for the heart after all, to shatter his heart the way he broke Nicole’s and mine—and how many others?

  “Wait,” he calls out, reaching toward a small table next to his chair and a cigar box on the table. He opens the box and withdraws a pistol, like my own, a relic of the war.

  I flinch, my finger agitated on the trigger, but he places the gun in his lap, cradling it in his hand.

  “You see, Francis. I have my own gun. I take it out and look at it all the time. I place it against my temple once in a while. I wonder how it would feel to pull the trigger and have everything come to an end.” He sighs and shakes his head, then nods toward me. “So lower your gun, Francis, one gun is enough for what has to be done.”

  He sees the doubt in my eyes and, in a swift movement, removes the magazine from his pistol.

  “Empty,” he says. “You’re safe, Francis. You were always safe with me. So put your gun away. Whether you know it or not, you’ve accomplished your mission here. And you couldn’t have killed me anyway, in cold blood.”

  We stare at each other for a long moment.

  “Please,” he says, and his voice is like the cry of a small child.

  I lower the gun. I remove my finger from the trigger. My hand trembles. I put the gun back in my pocket.

  “Go, Francis. Leave me here. Leave everything here, the war, what happened at the Wreck Center, leave it all behind, with me.”

  Suddenly, I only want to get out of there. The aroma of the soup is sickening and the tenement is too warm. I don’t want to look into his eyes anymore.

  My hand is on the doorknob when he calls my name. I open the door but pause, making myself wait. But I don’t look at him.

  “Let me tell you one thing before you go, Francis. You would have fallen on that grenade anyway. All your instincts would have made you sacrifice yourself for your comrades.”

  Still trying to make me better than I am.

  I close the door, my face hot and flushed under the scarf and the bandage. The coldness of the hallway hits the warmth of my flesh and I shiver. It seems as if I have done nothing but shiver since I returned to Frenchtown.

  His voice echoes in my ears:

  Does that one sin of mine wipe away all the good things?

  I go down the stairs, my footsteps echoing on the worn staircase.

  Downstairs, at last, after what seems like a long, long time, I pause at the outside door. The sound of a pistol shot cracks the air. My hand is on the doorknob. The sound from this distance is almost like that of a Ping-Pong ball striking the table.

  The sound of the doorbell echoes unendingly through the long corridors of the convent
. Waiting, I step back and look at the faded redbrick exterior of the building and the black forbidding shutters at the windows. On summer evenings, we played our games—Buck, Buck, How Many Fingers Up? and Kick the Can—in the schoolyard until a nun threw open the shutters, clapped her hands and sent us scurrying home in the gathering twilight.

  The door opens and an old nun with transparent skin looks suspiciously at me. I am accustomed by now to the shock my appearance gives people and try to make my voice gentle and unthreatening.

  “Is it possible to speak to Sister Mathilde? I’m one of her former pupils.”

  She studies me for a long moment with her pale blue eyes, then gestures to me to step inside. She ushers me to a small room to the right of the foyer. The familiar smell of strong soap and cabbage cooking hangs heavy in the air.

  Nodding toward one of the two straight-backed chairs near the window, she waits until I sit down before turning away. She hasn’t spoken a word. Her footsteps fade as I settle myself in the chair, wondering if I am on a futile errand. I am here because I remember how often Nicole visited the nuns in the convent, strolled the grounds with Sister Mathilde and knitted socks and scarves for servicemen with the sisters. I wonder if Sister Mathilde might know what happened to Nicole or where her family moved.

  The whisper of starched clothing and the clump of heavy shoes announce Sister Mathilde’s arrival. As she enters the room, she touches the long black rosary beads that dangle from her hip to the hem of her long black skirt. Her skin is as white as the starched wimple framing her face.

  She regards me curiously and I take off the Red Sox cap. “Francis Cassavant,” I say.

  “Of course, Francis,” she says, a smile lighting up her eyes. She seldom smiled in the classroom. “I hear you served your country well. You have made us all proud.”