Via Dolorosa Read online

“You will, too, Lieutenant,” Myles said.

  “Sure.”

  “You’ll be haunted, too.”

  “Okay, Myles.”

  “By all this.”

  “Okay.”

  “Shit,” Myles said with little humility, “just shoot me in the head.”

  “Myles…”

  “Have baby,” Myles said, more blood frothing at his lips. “In stomach.”

  “Close your eyes,” said Nick.

  —Chapter XXIV—

  Sound filtered back to him. Water. Lapping water against… against…

  Then vision: and he opened his eyes on a midnight sky, speckled with a thousand stars. He was frozen and numb. He knew, too, that he was in pain…but he could no longer actually feel pain.

  “Because I’m dead,” he whispered. “I’m dead.”

  “Almost, but not exactly,” said a man’s voice.

  Immediately Nick sat up—and immediately he vomited water into his lap. He was in a small johnboat out on the sea, staring at Roger, who was busy rowing the boat and staring back at him. Beneath the light of the full moon, Roger’s skin was pale, mealy and translucent, speckled with the roving flutter of countless cicadas. They were caught in Roger’s hair and clung like brooches to his shirt. They batted their wings against his cheeks and ears and, like conspirators, soldiered across the white terrain of his forehead…but he did not seem to notice.

  “What the hell…” Nick managed, attempting to right himself into a comfortable sitting position on the floor of the boat. Doing so sent a bolt of electric pain up his right arm. He looked down, not knowing what to expect, and saw that his bandage had come loose and fallen away, and that the hand and the arm itself had swollen to twice its size. It throbbed dully. Looking quickly up at Roger, he said, “What happened?”

  “You almost drowned,” said Roger.

  “What…what…” But then it all started to return to him. He felt his heartbeat quicken. “The boat. Where is it? I was…I was swimming to the boat…”

  “Is that what you were doing?” asked Roger, though the tone of his voice was void of all sincerity, all interest.

  “Where did it go?” Looking around, he could only see the placid black water and the lights of the island. The Kerberos had vanished.

  “If you’re talking about that big cabin cruiser,” said Roger, “it’s gone. Went south along the island, probably down toward Florida.”

  “It’s gone so quickly?”

  “Quickly?” Roger said. “I scooped you out of the water over an hour ago, Nick. You’ve been sleeping for most of that time.”

  Nick said nothing and simply let Roger’s words sink in.

  The boat rocked. Every once in a while, they could hear the solid pling! as a cicada drove itself into its aluminum side.

  Finally, Nick said, “None of this makes any sense.”

  “All right,” said Roger.

  “You saw me in the water? You pulled me out?”

  “Looked like you could use the help. You went under pretty quick.”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “I’m out here every night,” said Roger. A cicada attempted to creep inside his mouth. Roger hardly seemed to notice. The bug played about his lip, vibrating its cellophane wings, then disappeared back into the night. “I’m out here every night. Out here looking.”

  “For your daughter?” Nick heard himself say.

  “She hasn’t been found yet. I’ll be out here until she’s found. Until I can bring her home.”

  Then, like an epiphany, it dawned on Nick that he hadn’t met a single soul on this island that wasn’t in some phase of mourning…

  How could that be? How?

  “Where are we going?” he asked Roger. “Where are you taking me?”

  Roger laughed dryly and without humor. “You make it sound like I’m kidnapping you. We’re not crossing the River Styx.” Roger nodded toward the coast. “I’m taking you back to the hotel, Nick.”

  Nick turned and, sure enough, could see that the island was drawing nearer. He could see, too, the eastern face of the old, magnificent hotel, and could see the lights on in the main lobby beyond the stone veranda, and in some of the rooms.

  “I want you to go home, Nick,” Roger said from nowhere. “Do you understand? I want you to stop painting that mural and go home.”

  Nick frowned. “I don’t…I don’t understand…”

  Roger shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Just promise me that you’ll do it.”

  “Roger—”

  “Just promise me.”

  “All right. I promise.” He considered. “You were the one who complained about it to the hotel manager. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Roger said.

  “Why’d you do it?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Was there anything else he could say? “I’m going to get some of the staff and paint over it after you leave.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it shouldn’t be there.”

  “Why?”

  “Doesn’t matter, Nick,” Roger said again, just as calm as the first time. “None of it matters. You’ll leave tomorrow and the mural will be fixed.”

  “I don’t get it,” Nick said.

  “All right,” was all Roger would say.

  Once they reached the shore, Roger silently pulled the oars into the boat and stepped out into the water. Without speaking, he walked around the front of the boat and assisted Nick in getting out. His bare feet touched the water and he was immediately chilled throughout his entire body. His arm, once again destroyed, was held close to his chest; he could feel his pulse beating just beneath the ruined surface.

  “Thank you,” Nick said.

  “All right,” said Roger. Like epaulettes, cicadas had lighted on his shoulders, the front of his shirt, in his hair, the sides of his face. He did not seem to notice.

  “I hope you find her,” he said, turning toward the hotel.

  “I will,” said Roger. “Eventually.”

  Inside, the muffled hum of calypso music permeated the darkened hotel corridors, traversing the hallways like water through the ranks of a sinking submarine. Shaking the rain from him, brushing away the cicadas that clung to his own clothing, Nick listened to the music and felt like closing his eyes and never opening them again. However, he felt his bare feet carry him down the hall toward a set of closed banquet doors. The Riviera Room.

  How low can you go? he thought.

  Reaching out, taking one of the handles, he popped the door open and felt the heat from the room accost him, along with the colorful strike of music. He peered into the room and saw men and women alike, oddly similar in appearance (almost freakishly so), dancing in a conga-line beneath a limbo stick. The room was bright, warm, comfortable…but Nick was aware of a pang of aloofness within him, certain that he was out of place and did not belong here with these lively, dancing, singing partygoers. He watched a beautiful woman bend and twist, bend and twist, and wondered if she had been the beautiful woman who had cried then laughed the night his wife, Emma, had won the red parrot.

  Emma.

  Emma was gone.

  He closed the door and turned away, walking in wet clothes and bare feet down the empty hallway. He recalled the handgun and pressed his good hand to the waistband of his pants. But the gun was not there. He had lost it somewhere on the beach, or somewhere in the ocean.

  As he walked, he could hear the calypso music fading behind him, dying away, replaced only by the vague hum of another sound—a scale, a drone, a bleat. A saxophone.

  Above his head was the mural. He could make out the shifting shapes of cicadas still moving across its surface. In the half-light, there was too much left to his imagination: the faces of the soldiers, now in his mind, were too real. So was the anguish and agony on those faces. The steaming, grease-smelling tanks. The wedges of soldiers collected just beyond the first roll of dunes, marred with the treads of heavy tanks. And a girl, in
the far right corner of the mural, jarringly out of place in the midst of this battlefield. A young girl—a child—in a blue and white checkered sundress. And he recognized her three times: first, as the girl standing behind him in the photograph taken by Isabella in this very hallway; second, as the girl who had been standing outside that day on the other side of the pools, when the burka-clad woman had stepped around the side of the hotel (and what is real?); and finally, and most shockingly, as the little girl in the photograph kept in Roger’s wallet.

  It was possible that he had seen Roger’s photograph and had subconsciously added the girl’s likeness to the mural. Likewise, in his hallucinations, his brain had once again summoned that photograph and had made him imagine he saw the girl standing on the other side of the pools that day outside the hotel. Sure, those things were possible.

  Anything, he knew, was possible.

  He continued down the hall, still hearing the fading calypso music, and still hearing those deeper, more melodic sounds coming from somewhere, somewhere…

  Backtracking down the hallway, he paused outside a second set of closed banquet doors. The Bodega Room. Listening, he was certain of what he was hearing…

  Opened the doors…

  Goat-Man Claxton stood by himself, coaxing deep, soothing notes from his saxophone. The room was dark, wood-paneled, dimly-lighted, and all the high windows had the shades pulled. A silver beam of moonlight worked its way in past one of the shades, and the beam spotlighted the young jazzman. Nick stood by the door, not moving, hardly breathing. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest. It was almost beautiful—angelic, even—to see Claxton in such a way. And Claxton played in the only fashion befitting him: eyes closed, horn held loosely, lovingly, away from his body, his back arched as if someone were running an invisible feather down its sleek, black length. The tune was unrecognizable…but Nick recognized both freeness and longing in the melody, and something about it rendered upon him an immediate and profound melancholy. Notes, birthed by rite of simple passion, created out of thought, out of nothing, rose and expanded like hot air, dipping and raining down all around the room and all around their beautiful creator, filling the empty, wood-paneled chamber with an ambiance unmatched by anything Nick had ever heard before in his life.

  Then the sound died all around them.

  “That was beautiful,” Nick heard himself say.

  “Right on,” intoned the jazzman.

  Nick remained in the doorway; on the floor ahead of him, his shadow stretched out long and distorted and like something from another world. And the silence was suffocating. Finally, Nick spoke again.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  The jazzman merely looked at him with those cold, black eyes.

  “What do I do?” he asked.

  The jazzman simply shrugged, as if nothing in this world could possibly matter, and said, “Play it loud, rabbit.”

  —Chapter XXV—

  He entered his hotel room, feeling the tremors of fever threatening his system. He shut the door behind him and stared at the empty room for a long while. Then he disappeared into the bathroom where he showered under a steaming hot stream for as long as his tired skin could handle.

  Back in the room, he toweled off and slipped into a fresh pair of slacks and one of his painting shirts. Sitting on the edge of the bed, alone, he began to massage his right hand, his right arm, trying desperately not to think of anything, anything at all.

  He heard the patio doors open and looked up. Emma came into the room, through the sheer curtains like a vampire. She was dressed plainly in a white cotton blouse and nondescript pants, faint pink in color. She stopped, apparently surprised to see him sitting there. He, too, froze. He could not find any words.

  Finally, stupidly, he managed, “Emma. I thought…”

  “I was outside,” she said. “Watching the bugs.”

  “Yes.” He stood and moved around the room, like someone suddenly confronted with a friend who may or may not be an enemy. “Yes…”

  Emma crossed the room and pulled herself onto the bed, her back against the headboard. Her eyes never left him.

  “I…” he began. “I don’t…I don’t…”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “For all of it. All of it. I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  “No,” he said. “No. Me—I’m sorry. Me. Me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Me,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m—”

  “Shhh,” she told him. “Come here.”

  He went to her, climbed up the bed and curled like a cat in her lap. And broke into tears. He felt her hand come up to his neck, touch him there, and slide down his back. He could feel every hitch of his own body in the press of her hand against him. He cried freely and did not open his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for all of it.” He said, “All of it.”

  “All right,” she said calmly, her hand still on his back.

  “All of it.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  Collecting himself, taking a breath, he said, “I’ve been thinking a horrible thought. For the past few days, Emma, I’ve been having this horrible, horrible thought…”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Like you said—just like you said—we are in a dream. For the time we’re here, we are in a dream.”

  “I remember,” she said.

  “And I started to think that I was dead. That I never made it out of Iraq at all. The letter you got was real and I truly had died that day in the ambush.”

  Emma began raking her fingers through his hair.

  He said, “It’s a dream, all of it.”

  Emma rubbed his cheek. He felt one of her teardrops fall on his forehead.

  “Say something,” he told her. “Please. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m not dreaming and we have a chance. Tell me.”

  She said nothing; rubbed his face.

  “Tell me,” he begged, beginning to sob again. “Say something. Please…say something…”

  “Nicholas,” she whispered. “My Nicholas.”

  “Emma,” he sobbed. “Emma…”

  And she held him in the ghostly glow of moonlight.

  About the Author

  Ronald Malfi is the award-winning author of the novels Snow, The Ascent, Floating Staircase, The Narrows, and several others. In 1999, he received a degree in English from Towson University, and has since spent much of his time traveling across the United States visiting the obscure yet notable cities which serve as the backdrop for much of his fiction. An excursion to Hilton Head Island in the fall of 2004 served as the impetus for Via Dolorosa, where the author spent several nights occupying a local jazz club while contemplating and discussing the country’s ongoing campaign overseas. The novel was written a few months later in a tiny Annapolis apartment overlooking the gray waters of the Chesapeake Bay. He currently lives in Maryland with his wife Debra and their daughter.

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