Chapter Sixty-nine

Pax materializes at Rick’s bedside. Rick has gotten himself into a sitting position, the undisturbed blankets still neatly across his lower half. His pillow is folded in half, propping him against the headboard of the hospital bed. He holds a glass in his remaining hand. On the canyon formed by his motionless legs is his collection of twenty-two little white pills. The twenty-second spheroid is today’s victory. He’s been counting them. The number never changes, never improves, never becomes a sure thing.

“I’m all right, Paxy. You can go back to bed.” Rick sets the water glass down on the bedside table. “Just counting.”

Pax sits, his amber eyes on the man. He yawns, releasing a tension he’s picking up from Rick.

“You’re just like him, you know. Always watching me.” Rick makes a little pile out of his collection. He’s a miser hoarding gold coins. “Are you wondering what I’m waiting for? Is that it? Should I be dramatic, or just efficient? Will they figure out my reason?”

Pax sets one paw on the edge of the bed, noses Rick’s dead leg as if trying to push him into getting up. It was what the dog once did, a hundred years ago, when they were both young and vigorous and had a wide-open future. When Rick would flop down on the sofa of his bachelor apartment to catch a few z’s after practice, the puppy would poke at him with his nose, up and down his arm, into the back of his knee. Get up! Play with me! Rick mildly wonders if the dog really understands what is wrong with him, if he thinks that Rick is just being lazy. “I wish I could take you out, run you on the beach, race you home. I wish that almost more than anything else.”

Francesca left the window open a little when she came in to bid him good night. A light breeze stirs the curtains, a spring zephyr reminding Rick of those taken-for-granted days of spring training. That very first practice, when the morning air was still cold but the sun promised an afternoon warmth that would have them stripping off their shirts by lunchtime. There was a taste to the air, as if excitement had a flavor. Now all he can taste is the metallic flavor of medication.

“You want something, don’t you, Pax? You want me to jump up and play with you like Keller does?” Rick hates it that the dog’s head cocks in an ever-so-cute fashion at the sound of Keller’s name. “You like him better than me?”

In answer, Pax stands and shakes, as if Rick is asking him unanswerable questions. He sits again to stare at Rick. It’s as if the dog will keep his eye on Rick all night long, making sure that the man doesn’t do anything rash. He’s a guardian and defender, a preventer of final acts. Rick points to the basket. “Go to bed, Pax. Now.”

With an almost human reluctance, the dog peels himself away from Rick’s bedside and goes to sit in his basket. But his eyes never leave Rick’s face. He’s looking at him with human eyes—Keller’s eyes—that portray a deep concern. A trick of the bedside lamp, and the dog’s eyes become Francesca’s, filled with an ancient love. She still loves him; she does. Despite Rick’s night terrors, his middle-of-the-night paranoia about Keller and Francesca, deep down he knows that whatever is growing between his wife and his caretaker, she still loves him. This tripartite living has cast them all into mutable roles. Husband, patient, wife, friend, sister, brother, stranger, caregiver, war veteran, war hero, fool. The only immutable quality is their love of Pax.

Rick digs deeper into the empty cloth pouch, his fingers searching for another morphine pill. Maybe he’s missed one. He is so tired. His wife and his friend might blame him for leaving them behind, but he is more cursed than blamed for having survived when his buddies had not. The one irreconcilable, the one factor that transcends all the other reasons for ending this struggle, the one he might scrawl on a piece of notepaper laden with his awkward left-handed writing, is his colossal and unforgiveable screwup. Keller idly remarks about coaching Little League, as if Rick could ever again lead a group of boys. Boys just a little younger than the ones in his squad, slaughtered because he thought he could pitch his way out of the situation. Killed by his own grenade, or finished off by the laughing Germans. How can he ever confess the shame of that? Yet without that confession, how can he ever make Francesca understand the magnitude of his despair? He allows her to think it’s his wounds that grieve him, and she allows that partial truth to be enough to account for his gloom. But maybe not enough for the desperate act he intends.

Keller will get it, the truth of why Rick has done this thing, and maybe he can leave Keller to tell Francesca the story of the grenade and Rick’s hubris. If he hasn’t already. Is there a code between them as there is between husband and wife—no outside secrets? Some code. Rick has hung on to his shameful secret, keeping it from Francesca and letting the sharp edges of guilt chisel away at his self-esteem. He doesn’t know if he’s more afraid that she’ll forgive him for putting his squad in danger, and try and make him forget that it happened, or hate him for it, for not being the man she thought he was.

Pax is back at his bedside. His eyes are no longer asking questions; they are zeroed in on what his hand is doing, the gathering together of his delivery from the constant pain of failure. He lifts his eyes to Rick’s, makes a tiny vocalization that sounds almost like the word no. Rick puts the pills, one by one, into the handy cloth bag, counting them yet again. There are still twenty-two.