Chapter Nine
John savored every page of the book, which told a story of soldiers stationed in Hawaii as a war with the Japanese began. He didn’t know anything about such a war, so he couldn’t tell whether the tale was true. And with Frankenstein as his only comparison, he couldn’t tell whether this was a good book. But he enjoyed it very much because it was his and because he’d been granted the great luxury of reading it.
One luxury among many, of course. He also had comfortable surroundings, nice clothing over a clean body, and the joy of seeing a great many wonders he’d only imagined. And he had Harry, who’d never once hurt him or made him feel like anything less than a man.
Ah, but John was not a man. When he finished the book and sat in the comforting puddle of lamplight, he again faced some painful truths and their corresponding questions.
What use did Harry intend to make of him? What would happen to John once Harry was done? Those were the practical questions. But more fundamentally, he wondered what it meant to be a monster. When he wore clothes, read books, conducted conversations, was he only fooling himself? Did he actually possess human qualities? What if he, like Frankenstein’s monster, turned murderous in the end?
And what did he want? What driving force kept him animate in a lifeless body? He thought he might know the answers to those questions, but the answers were far too uncomfortable to face. Perhaps that made him a coward.
Lost in contemplation, he startled when the front door opened. A moment later, Harry came stumbling into the room with his coat poorly buttoned, his hat askew, and a carrier with six brown bottles grasped in one hand. His cheeks looked ruddier than usual; his eyes, usually soft and warm, appeared dull and flat. “You’re still here,” he said.
“You told me to stay.”
“Yeah.”
Harry left the room for a few minutes, although John could hear him rummaging in kitchen drawers. When he returned, he’d shed the coat and hat, and he held one of the brown bottles. He collapsed heavily onto the couch before taking a long draw. “Blah,” he said, face twisted in disgust. “The Irish coffee was better.” But he drank more anyway.
After some time passed, Harry sighed. “What’d you do tonight?”
“I read one of the books you gave me. Harry, was there really a war with the Japanese?”
“Yeah. Germans too. My Uncle Jimmy died in it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I liked him.” He sniffed. “You don’t remember that war?”
“I know of… the Great War. That was against the Germans, I think.”
“That was over forty years ago. World War Two ended eight years ago. Now we’re fighting in Korea instead.”
John shook his head in confusion. There was so much he didn’t understand. During the silence, Harry drained his bottle. He left the room and returned to the couch with a full one.
“I’ll prob’ly be sick in the morning,” he said thoughtfully. “I used to think the word hangover was kind of scary. Made me think of a corpse hanging from a noose.” He glanced quickly at John and then away.
“Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“No.”
Maybe if John were a real person, he’d know what to do. He understood that something distressed Harry but had no idea what, or what actions he should take. It was possible that John himself was the cause of Harry’s misery. Surely it was repugnant to spend time so close to a monster. John worried about Harry—and worried about himself as well. Harry had brought him so much freedom and happiness. What would become of John if Harry abandoned him?
Harry held his half-empty bottle aloft, peering into the liquid depths. “Do you s’pose there’s demons in there?”
“Demons?”
“Townsend said that one demon keeps his ex-agent from going wild, so I guess maybe some demons ain’t so bad. Unless Townsend lied.”
Unable to make sense of this, John simply listened.
After taking another swig, Harry wedged the bottle between his thighs and stared down at it. “Mama used to tell us that Daddy was a good man. She said the Devil got into him during the Depression, when Daddy lost his job at the feed store and we were poor as dirt. When he— Those things he did, those weren’t really him, she told us. They were the Devil’s work. If we all prayed real hard, Jesus would chase the Devil away.” He looked at John. “We went to church every Sunday and said our prayers every night. But Jesus never did nothing.”
Those things he did. John’s otherwise faulty mind easily supplied him with possibilities about what those things might have been. His memories, it seemed, included a catalogue of cruel actions a man might visit upon his family.
“I never drank before tonight,” Harry said. “I didn’t want to swallow the Devil. But maybe now I have.”
John moved the Hawaii book from his lap to the little table beside him and slowly pushed himself to his feet. His legs felt unsteady, and although it required tremendous effort to walk the few steps to the couch, he made it without falling. After kneeling on the floor near Harry’s legs, John looked steadily into his eyes. “I don’t think there’s anything evil about you.”
Harry shook his head. “You don’t know that. I’m…. Everyone’s always said I’m worthless, but they ain’t exactly right. I could do a whole lot of bad if I wanted to. Maybe if I keep drinking, I’ll want to.”
“Then don’t drink.”
Anger flashed across Harry’s face, and John braced himself for a punch. But then Harry sighed and rubbed his own chin. “I lied to you.”
“About what?”
“You asked me if you were good… before. And I said yeah.”
“I wasn’t?” John was grateful he had the strength to keep his voice steady.
“I don’t know. I have no idea who the hell you were before you… before you died. You coulda been a mobster for all I know. A murderer. Maybe you deserve everything they done to you.”
Although John swayed on his knees, he didn’t fall. And he didn’t pull his gaze away from Harry. “Maybe I do,” he whispered. “But I doubt you deserve whatever your father did to you.”
Harry paled and blinked his eyes rapidly. Then, moving slowly like a very old man, he stood. “Going to bed,” he muttered. He shuffled away, the bottle still in his hand.
***
“Why the hell did you sleep on the floor?”
John tried to scramble away from the angry voice but was trapped against the couch. He curled into a ball instead. When no blows fell, he hazarded a peek; Harry was crouched next to him with a furrowed brow.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Harry said quietly. “And I can barely move without puking.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“My own damn fault, isn’t it? But why did you sleep on the floor? Couldn’t have been real comfortable.”
“It’s better than the cell,” John said, patting the rug.
“Yeah, okay, but wouldn’t the couch be better yet? Or the bed?”
“You didn’t tell me where to sleep.”
With a low groan, Harry collapsed onto his ass. “I’m no good at this. I can barely take care of myself, let alone anyone else.”
John uncurled and sat with his back to the couch. Despite sleeping on a hard surface, he felt better than the previous day. Stronger. More substantial. “Maybe I should ask questions when I’m unsure what you want of me.”
“That is a capital idea. I’m not smart, John. I’m not gonna figure things out on my own.” With another groan, louder this time, Harry got to his feet. “I need coffee. Maybe some toast.” Mumbling to himself, he shambled from the room.
While John sat on the couch, reading the previous day’s newspaper, Harry rattled around the kitchen, then spent some time in the bathroom taking a shower. This sounds like home, John thought, although he had no way of knowing the truth of that. He wondered if he’d lived like this before—when he did live. Perhaps he used to sit with the paper during a quiet morning, catching up on news and sports, maybe exchanging conversation with whoever was in the next room eating breakfast and washing dishes.
Had he once loved someone? And God, had someone loved him?
John sat by the front window and peered out through the lace curtains. Their street was a quiet one. Cars drove by occasionally, all of them strangely shaped to his eyes. A stout woman emerged from the house across the street and stood on her wide front porch to beat a small rug with a broom. A younger woman walked up the sidewalk pushing a baby carriage, a little girl skipping beside her. A mailman with a heavy-looking bag marched by but didn’t stop at their house. The door to the attached unit shut loudly enough for John to hear; a handsome blond man emerged, got into a car, and drove away.
Such ordinary people doing ordinary things. What would they think if they knew a monster was watching them? What would they do?
He felt extraordinarily fortunate to be granted this glimpse of their lives.
When Harry eventually returned to the living room, his greenish pallor had been replaced by his usual healthy skin tone, and he had a pillow crease on his cheek. “Let me see your feet.”
An odd request, but John held them up obediently and watched as Harry measured one of his own stocking feet against John’s bare one. “All right. Yours are just a little bigger.” Then Harry sat in an armchair to put on his shoes. “I’m going to run errands. Need anything?”
“I already have so much.”
Harry looked surprised and then smiled. “Yeah. I should remember how good I have it too.”
***
Within two hours Harry returned, grinning, and set a large bag on the floor. “Be right back.” He ducked outside and reentered the house with a box.
John watched with fascination as Harry unpacked a tabletop radio, a pair of black shoes, and several paperback books. Whistling cheerfully, he set the radio on a shelf, plugged it in, and spent a few minutes fiddling with the dial He smiled broadly when he found a station with a male singer. “Sinatra. He’ll do.” He winked at John. “I’ve never blown this much dough in such a short period of time. It’s fun. Do you know this song?”
“No. I think I was in that cell for a long time, Harry.” The newspaper had led him to that conclusion; very little felt familiar.
“Yeah. I forgot. Well, maybe you’ll like Sinatra. He’s good. But if you hate him, you can turn the station, okay? Anytime.”
“Thank you for letting me know.”
Harry barked a laugh. “I’m trying to remember to tell you things. Okay, but look what else I brought.”
It looked as though he’d chosen the books with John in mind. Most of them were novels of various genres, but one was a factual discussion of World War Two and another was a volume of poetry. John reverently touched the covers.
The bag also contained several pairs of socks. “Put ’em on,” Harry said. “And shoes. We can try that walk we were talking about.”
A walk outside. John’s hands shook so badly he couldn’t follow Harry’s directions, but Harry didn’t seem put out at having to help. Then Harry handed him the blue jacket he’d been wearing the first time John saw him. “It’s a little damp out. I forgot to get you a hat. Sorry.”
“I don’t think I can catch a cold,” John said, smiling to share the joke.
Harry helped him down the front steps, and then they walked slowly. Partly because John was still weak and unsteady, but also because he wanted a close look at everything they passed. The iron rings set into the edge of the sidewalk from when horses had been tied up on the street. The row of red-leafed trees dripping slowly. The slightly wavy glass in the apartment building’s windows. A rosebush bare of all but thorns and a few ragged leaves.
If Harry minded the snail’s pace, he didn’t show it. He strolled along with hands in his coat pockets, whistling the tune from the radio.
The park was just around the corner, which was fortunate because John wouldn’t have made it much longer. He collapsed onto the first bench, where he could gaze up at the branches of towering evergreens and the gray sky above them or look down a gentle slope to a playground where the swings sat idle. A few birds flitted and strutted about.
“That’s grass,” John said reverently. “I used to imagine it, but it’s better in person.”
Harry looked at him closely and then hopped to his feet. He scurried around, collecting small items: some needles from an evergreen tree, a twig he found on the ground, a bit of mossy bark, several blades of grass. He brought them over and set them on the bench beside John. “You can touch them. Smell them. You can smell, right?”
“Yes.” The pine needles poked at his skin and had a sharp, slightly bitter odor. The moss was exquisitely soft and spongy. The twig smelled of the earth on which it had rested. And the grass was fresh and sweet. It tickled his palm and made him laugh.
“Thank you,” he said, hoping the depths of his gratitude showed. “This is so precious to me. It’s a grand gift.”
“I’m glad I can do it.” Harry looked solemn. “I don’t think we’ll have long together.”
John fought to quell the sadness that wanted to rise inside him. Don’t be greedy, he reminded himself.
“Then I’ll treasure this all the more.”
***
Harry was quiet that afternoon. He seemed content to sit in the living room with John, listening to the radio while John read some very strange stories by an author named Asimov. But Harry grew more restless as evening fell. Eventually he disappeared into the bedroom, and when he came out, he wore a suit and tie and looked unhappy.
“I might be back late,” he said. “If you get tired, go to sleep anywhere you want.”
“All right.”
John wanted to ask about Harry’s plans but held his tongue. Through the window, he watched Harry walk to his car and drive away.