–
by Jeffrey Loeb
–
Two guards show up early, rattling the cell door. From his grimy corner, Rory McCarthy can just make out their frowzy, brown uniforms against the red sun. “Up, Ma-Kotty,” one screeches, “up, up.” He recognizes Cheese-dick’s girly voice; he knows the other one must be Roly Poly. The two are asshole buddies.
The barred door swivels inward, and Rory feels himself jerked to his feet. The two Korean soldiers bang his head rudely against the bars, and he gets a brief glimpse of hanging cobwebs. Then he’s outside in the frigid, swirling dust, being drug toward the ratty, board shed the prisoners call the schoolhouse. It’s the site of his nightmares: Most guys never come back out.
When the door opens, Cheese-dick turns Rory over to two other guards, ones with green fatigues. Chinese. No words pass: Everyone seems to know the routine. The place seems bigger inside. They stand him next to a chair with straps on the arms and wires dangling. Its rawness sends shivers through him. Every prisoner has heard the screams that come out of the shed. His knee throbs from the embedded shrapnel.
He spots a table across the room; sitting behind it is a burly Chinese officer, a long scar marking his cheek. He’d been expecting the normal headman, the one they called Pits because of his acne. His heart jumps; he feels dizzy, like he’s losing his balance. The guards grab him under the armpits and haul him over to the table, toes dragging, barely able to stumble and then only because they hold him up.
The big man lays a letter on the table. The paper seems thick and crude to Rory, curled at the corners like it’s been damp. The words themselves are typed. The officer places a pen on top of it and says only, “You sign.” No other conversation.
Rory leans down and puts his forearms on the table, struggling to bring the print into focus. It’s a confession, he makes out, and states in crude English that he’s used poison-gas and executed civilians. It also says he and other U.S. soldiers are regularly ordered to commit such acts by high-ranking officers.
None of it is true. Without raising his eyes, he shakes his head. The big man, whom he’s started thinking of as Scar, slowly gets up and comes around the table. Rory drops his eyes, afraid to look up. He draws himself in, waiting for a flurry of the quick, hard blows to the ribs the North Koreans like to deal out. Instead, the Chinese officer sits on the corner of the table and stares at him. Nothing else.
After what seems a long time, Scar turns and says something to the guards. Rory finds himself being slammed into the wired chair, the straps buckled to his arms and legs, cutting into his injured knee. He howls with the pain but has no chance to resist. Some sort of headpiece is fitted on him. He feels the room spinning, like he’s going to pass out.
When he’s able to raise his head again, Scar sits staring closely at him, then says again, “You sign.”
He shakes his head no.
Scar purses his lips and nods to a third guard standing near the wall off to the side. Mounted there is a toggle wired to what appears to be an electrical generator on the floor. A low hum comes from the machine. More wires run from there to his chair. The soldier reaches over and pulls the switch.
Everything feels heavy all through his body, but sharp too. The weight forces him down like jagged rocks being piled on top of him. He can’t move his limbs or muscles. It’s the feeling he had at Chosin – like floating away from himself.
Then the pain comes. It won’t leave. He can’t focus. His head strains backward. His fingers twitch. He’s powerless to stop them.
It slows. His chin falls to his chest. He feels hands lifting his head and holding it steady. He looks into Scar’s eyes again, but closer, more directly. “You sign,” the large man repeats. His breath reeks of garlic.
Rory shakes his head, barely able to do so. He has no idea where he finds the will.
The heaviness returns. He feels headed to a new place; return seems doubtful – it’s like being underwater, deep, thrust hard by waves against sharp reefs. He shudders at what he sees coming toward him: a dazzling light, bright and blinding. Like the one at Chosin when the Korean soldiers had drug him out of the shell hole.
The heaviness stops. The water recedes, the coral points gone. He sees a shape behind the light. His mind seems empty.
Scar emerges. He holds up the paper and stares, but the kindness Rory saw before has gone out of the man’s eyes. This new look tells him he won’t come back next time. He tries to reach for the paper but can’t lift his hand. It’s still strapped down.
A guard frees his arm, but the hand won’t stop shaking. Scar helps him. He places his own hand on Rory’s back and leans him forward. He puts the pen into Rory’s hand. He steadies Rory’s wrist over the place he needs to sign.
Rory signs. Scar takes the pen and pats him gently on the back. He says, “Good. Tell truth.”
Rory feels grateful to the big man, as if he’s been a friend to him at a time of great need.
–
–
–
–
Jeffrey Loeb lives in NYC and terms himself a writer, having had pieces in War, Literature, and the Arts, Adelaide, African American Review, American Studies, Cottonwood Review, and other journals. I also wrote forewords to reissues the Viet Nam War memoirs Memphis, Nam, Sweden and Black Prisoner of War. In previous lives he was a teacher – university, college, prep school, and at one point inside Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary – farmer, cable television manager, assistant city manager, construction worker, bartender, and furniture mover.
–
–
–
–
–
–