The Box - 19. Chapter 19

September 5, 1944

God, I hurt so bad, so bad, but I have to write in this diary. If I don’t, I’ll go crazy. I’ll probably go crazy anyway. If I go crazy will they send me home? It may be worth it, even if I have to spend some time in the loony bin. I’m lying here in a hospital in Paris, with my leg all fucked up, but that’s not the real painful part. The real painful part is the emotional part. Eli was killed. Even though I was his Lieutenant, we’d managed to overcome that and become friends as well. I guess it helped that I let him fuck me every chance we got. He was a great guy. Was. His loss is a fucking tragedy.

Up until Eli was killed, things had been going pretty well. We’d made some pretty spectacular gains. We’d trapped a bunch of Germans in this thing they called the Falaise pocket, and captured about 50,000 of the bastards. Then we’d taken Paris. The French marched in first, and then we came in later. Damn this is one beautiful city. They’re saying the Germans were going to blow it up, but the commanding officer couldn’t stand to do it. I didn’t know Germans gave a shit about anything, much less saving a French city, but I’m glad this one decided not to destroy Paris. So we marched through, with the women cheering for us, making us all feel pretty fucking good about things, and then went off to fight the Germans as they retreated.

We were in this field and the Germans had a strong position in a farmhouse. The Captain ordered us to take it, and he figured the best way was to flank them. Only the Germans had gotten smarter about that, and we had gotten complacent. We maneuvered to the right and walked right into an ambush. One of those bastards shot me in the leg, managing to fracture the fucking bone and fuck up the whole damn thing. It’s hard to describe the feeling. First there was this massive blow, this jarring thud to my leg, and then the pain flowed over me like a wave that was trying to drown me.

I landed on the ground, right next to Eli, and I was talking to him, telling him that we had to take this group out, but he didn’t respond. I figured he’d just dove onto the ground like we were supposed to, but when he didn’t answer me, I knew there was something seriously wrong. I turned him over and saw a hole in his forehead where they’d gotten him. Now the pain was emotional as well as physical, but I was trying to focus, trying to force my mind to think when a wave of guys flew past me. I was scared shitless that it was Germans and that I’d be a prisoner. They told us that if they found a guy like me that was wounded, they’d just shoot me, so I was kind of resolved to die. But it was our guys, and then there was a medic there, giving me morphine, stopping the bleeding, and dragging me back to the field hospital. I was pretty out of it, and when I finally came around, I was in this hospital in Paris.

I’m hoping that my leg is bad enough that they’ll send me home, but based on the number of guys in this hospital, that’s probably not going to happen. They need all of us Lieutenants out there on the line, acting as perfect targets for the Germans. They’ve got my leg in a cast, but at least I can walk short distances, like to the bathroom. It’s really bad for the guys who can’t do that, because then they have to pee and crap in a bedpan and a nurse has to help them. How embarrassing is that? Not to mention that it smells pretty awful.

I think one of the nurses here has a crush on me, and it’s pretty cute. Her name is Annette, and she’s a real Able-Grable. She’s not really tall, but she’s got this beautiful auburn hair and a lithe, supple body that just screams “fuck me”. She spends a lot of time with me, just talking. I don’t know if she’s attracted to me, or if she just spends time with me because I know how to speak French, but whatever the reason, she’s here, and I like that. She’s gone from being just a nurse to being a friend, and right now I can really use a friend.

She asked me all about my life back in the US, and I tried to describe my family, Aaron, and Nathan, but thinking about all of them just made me sad. God, how I miss them. I think about my life and about all the dumb-ass things that seemed so important then, and now I’m faced with all this death and just plain evil shit, and it seems like total bullshit. I re-read some of this diary and it makes me want to puke. I was upset because I didn’t get a car on my birthday, while here guys, my guys, guys in my platoon, are being plucked off by German snipers. I whined because Aaron wouldn’t say he loved me, when I’d give anything to be with him again. But I guess I’ve been maturing. I read about Nathan and I smile, thinking about how he brings out the best in me, and how he ignites my body.

Annette comes from a different world. She’s from a working-class family, although I don’t really know what her father did for a living. It’s a French word I don’t understand. She came to Paris to work, and lives in some apartment that she claims is a dump. It’s in the bad part of town, but she promised to show it to me anyway. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get her to show me more than that. Ha ha ha. She’s pretty vague about what she did when the Germans were here, but all I really care about is that she’s pretty, she’s nice, and she’s a friend here, where I really don’t have any friends.

September 28, 1944

Aaron is gone. Dead. My life is over. I really don’t know how I can go on, how I can handle it. I just don’t know. I’ve never been this devastated, and I’ve never felt this low before. What’s the point of going on if you’ll never see the person you love again? Because that’s what my life is like now. I’ll never be able to see Aaron again, because he’s dead. Killed on some fucking island in the fucking Pacific by some fucking Japanese maniacs. I hate those bastards so much. I hate them with a passion that’s scary. I can’t write any more. I can’t do anything but cry.

September 30, 1944

It’s been two days since the chaplain came and told me Aaron was dead, and the pain isn’t any better. I wonder if it ever will be? How do you get over something like this? Do I even want to?

The fucking island he was killed on is Pelelieu. Normally we don’t get a lot of information on how and where a guy dies, but in this case, I got more details thanks to my mom. She evidently contacted the Army when she found out about Aaron and told them we were like brothers. Well, I guess since Nathan fucked Aaron, and I fucked Aaron, that kind of works. The Army got the chaplain to come see me here in the hospital and tell me what happened, and to help me deal with the initial shock. He was a really nice guy, and seemed very caring, but there wasn’t anything he could say or do to make this better. There’s no answer, no explanation for this bullshit. The only thing there is waste. It’s a horrible waste of lives, and in this case, one of the most important lives of all.

I guess after they landed on the beaches, there was a bunch of fire from the Japs, coming from a jungle. Aaron and one other guy snuck into the jungle to flank them, while the other guys drew their fire. The other guy made it out alive, but Aaron was evidently killed by an explosion. The explosion had ripped his body to shreds, leaving it so mutilated that it was unrecognizable, so there weren’t even remains to bury. They flanked the Japs though, and achieved their goal, so he’ll get a posthumous medal for it, according to the Chaplain. Like giving him a fucking medal makes it better. I know he was brave, I know how courageous he was, so that all means nothing to me. I just miss him. I think about the letters that I sent him that he’ll never get to read, and it just makes me start crying again. I was writing to air, to a phantom.

Then yesterday I got a letter from him that he’d written before the invasion, and it had been like a knife was inserted into my heart and twisted. Reading his cheerful lines, reading between them to see how much he loved me, was like having acid poured over my whole body. And then he ended it with that same stupid line: Never Ever Grieve, Only Remember, Steven. Fuck him. How can I not grieve? How can I not be miserable? How can I not think that my life is futile?

I guess that’s not entirely fair, because when I say that, it makes it sound like Nathan means nothing to me, and that’s not true. But I feel so fucking guilty about him now. It’s like because I lost Aaron, I didn’t have to chose between the two of them, so Nathan won by default. Somehow that makes our love seem cheaper, and that really pisses me off. How will I feel when I see him? Will I feel guilty? Will I look at his grin, the same grin that Aaron had, and be overcome with grief over losing Aaron? Will I be able to love Nathan without thinking about Aaron? What a fucking nightmare. This whole thing is a fucking nightmare.

I’ve cried so much I’m dehydrated. I can’t even stand it, the thought of him not being alive, of him not being in my life. I don’t know what to do to ease the pain. I could tell myself that it would be easier if I weren’t lying here in a hospital, with my body in serious pain too. Fuck that. I’d take the physical pain over this any day. Morphine can dull the physical pain. Nothing can ever bring Aaron back. I don’t even want to get out of here. I don’t want to go back and fight. I want to get away from this war, to run away where no one will find me, and put all this shit behind me.

October 1, 1944

I’m doing a little better today, at least on the outside. I’ve finally been able to stop crying, and it’s gotten to the point where I’m just sober and sad, not a maudlin nutcase like my mom must be. I can’t imagine how she’s dealing with this, or how Aaron’s family is handling it. Aaron was the apple of his father’s eye, his oldest son, and his favorite, without question. How will he deal with the loss of his oldest son?

I’m trying to picture Fred Hayes being proud of him, holding his head high because of how brave his son was, but I’m not quite sure he’d do that. I think he’d be pissed off, really pissed off. I hope to God he never finds out that Aaron’s mom signed off on those enlistment papers. He’d never forgive her for that. Never.

Last night I got laid, and that’s what’s helped me cope with this. That cute nurse, Annette, I found out her last name too. It’s Bordet. Anyway, she’s been watching me break down into this sobbing mound of pathetic flesh and she must have had mercy on me and fucked me just to shut me up. OK, I’m not being real fair here. She’s really sweet, and really caring, and even though I know she likes me, I’m pretty sure she fucked me just to make me feel better.

I was lying in bed, it was late at night so no one was around, and she stopped by to talk to me. She asked me all about Aaron, which was good, because it made me think of what a neat guy he was, but then it was bad, because I realized how much I lost. She gave me this hug, and then ended up lying in bed with me. The next thing I knew, I was hard as a rock, and she was on top of me, hiking up her skirt, and lowering herself down on me.

I guess I’ve been punking around for so long I forgot what it was like to be with a woman. She is so beautiful, so sexy and so soft. That lithe body I was talking about, well, she knew just how to move it. Barbie and Kim weren’t very experienced, so it was this wonderful, fumbling sex when I fucked them. Annette knows what she’s doing. This girl is no virgin. And damn was she fun.

We had sex, lay there for a bit, and then had sex again. I should have used a condom, especially since they tell us all these scary stories about diseases, but I just don’t give a shit. What do I care? Give me the clap. Go ahead. That’s worse than getting shot, or losing my best friend? Besides, I don’t think she has the clap. I think she’s just a lonely girl, who saw a friend in pain, and tried to fuck him out of it. It helped.

The weirdest thing of all, though, is that because I’d been talking about Aaron with her, when we fucked, it was like there were three of us there. I had a threesome with a ghost. I am so fucked up. I hope they send me home.

December 1, 1944

Well I didn’t get to go home. No, I’m in Belgium, fighting the fucking Germans. I guess I can’t complain too much. I got out of the hospital a couple of days after Annette and I had sex, and spent two more weeks recuperating in Paris. That was pretty much heaven. We explored the city, and each other, so it was one constant orgy of food, fucking, and sightseeing. What started out as a pretty casual relationship has bloomed into something a lot more than that. I really care about her, and I know she loves me.

The thing about it, though, is that if I think about whom I’d want to spend the rest of my life with, whom I’d want to be my partner; Nathan is at the top of the list. I guess that makes me queer, since I seem to like guys better. Thinking about him, remembering sex with him, that just really gets me going. But number two on that list would be Annette. She seems to understand me, and she has this cheerful, playful way about her that can brighten up even this dreary fucking war.

On my last night there, we went for a walk along the Seine and stopped at Pont Neuf, right over the river, and just gazed into its water. I’d looked over at her and told her that I loved her, and she’d smiled, then tried not to look too happy, then gave up and just grinned really big. She told me she loved me too. I told her that after this fucking war was over, I wanted her to move back to the US with me. She kept trying to tell me that Paris was better, but I think I can convince her. I wonder if I asked her because I really love her, or if it was just the moment. What happens when the war is over and she takes me up on my offer? Will I be happy or sad about that? I really don’t know the answers to that, all I know is that I had a great time with her, and she’s a terrific girl.

I got posted to a new platoon, and these guys are a hodge-podge of characters. They’re from all over the place. After the last time, it seems pretty easy to take over a platoon. I know what to do now; I know my job, so I’m not some rookie who’s descended on them to make their life more difficult. We’ve been heading up to the front, so I expect we’ll see some action shortly. In the meantime, I’m trying to get to know them, and their strengths and weaknesses.

December 3, 1944

We got mail up here yesterday, and I had a couple of letters with some interesting news. The first one was from Annette. I was pretty excited that she wrote me, and even more excited when I read what she said. Seems by not using a condom when we had sex I knocked her up, just like they told us in the sex education lecture. She told me that she’s pregnant, and I could tell by her letter that she was nervous as hell. It can’t be easy to be an unmarried pregnant girl in Paris. I guess for me that solidifies it. She’s having my kid, I know it’s my kid, and I have to make an honest woman out of her. The next chance I get, I’m going to Paris, I’m going to marry her, and I’m going to send her back to the US to have this baby. I wrote her a letter and told her that, and sent it off to her, so I hope that makes her feel better.

I’m nervous about that. I’m nervous about being a father. It’s exciting, but at the same time, I can’t help but think about all that responsibility. I guess I figured I’d finish up this war, go home, and then head off to college. Kind of a freewheeling guy, with no real responsibilities. I’ll probably end up doing that, only I’ll have a wife and kid along for the ride.

I’m also nervous about how Nathan will react. Will he think I don’t love him? And how the fuck am I going to handle this? I guess I’ll get married and still goof around with him. I’m wondering if he’ll be up for that, and if he is, if he’ll get married too. I’m not even married, and I’m already planning to cheat on my wife with another man. How fucked up is that? If you fuck another guy, is it really cheating?

The other letter I got was from my mother. She’s still a mess about Aaron, and that makes it pretty depressing to read her letters. I could tell that she was trying to be upbeat, and she was trying to decide whether to tell me all the news or not. In the end, she ended up telling me everything: because I know her so well, her attempts to cover it up don’t work.

From what I can gather, Aaron’s dad has absolutely lost control. He’s been so despondent over Aaron’s death; he’s started drinking a lot. I guess that’s made him unpleasant to be around, at least up until recently, and now he’s become unbearable. My mom says he found out that Aaron’s mom signed off on his enlistment papers.

Now that he knows that, he has an easy target for his grief, and it sounds like he’s making her life a living hell. My mom said she ended up in the hospital after falling down some stairs, but I know better. He must have beaten the shit out of her. It rips me up to think about her and what a nice lady she is, and to think about what he’s doing to her. Life in that house must be a living hell, not just for her, but for the other boys.

I know it’s not her fault because I spent all that time arguing with him before he went into the Marines. He would have gone anyway, with or without her signature. I wish I could get home and explain that to him, but I doubt he’d listen. He probably blames her for Aaron’s death and beats the shit out of her, and she probably blames herself, which is why she lets him get away with it. How many lives are going to be ripped up by this war? Too many. Way too fucking many.

Aaron said to Never Ever Grieve, Only Remember. I still don’t understand what that means, or why he capitalized it, but I think in the end you don’t do either. Losing people that you love, at least for me, just makes me numb.

1999

I stared at the diary, at that last word, and then flipped ahead, hoping for more, but there wasn’t more. That was the end.

“Is that it?” Brad asked.

“It would seem so,” I told him sadly.

“Did you know that your mother had a relationship with your father?” JP asked.

“I am here, am I not?” I asked him curtly.

“I’m not talking about sex; I’m talking about the emotional connection. It seems that at some level, they loved each other,” JP answered calmly, refusing to let me fluster him.

“I did not know,” I said. “She never talked about him, and I did not even know who he was until she died.” For some reason, I’d never asked her before that. Maybe it’s because we were so busy trying to survive, or maybe it’s because I knew she was sensitive about it, but we just never talked about it.

“How did he die?” Matt asked.

“I have the obituaries for both Aaron and Steven,” Brad said. Tonto must have put them in an envelope. “Would you like me to read them?” I nodded, and he cleared his throat. He could be such a performer sometimes. “Aaron got a smaller article. It looks like Steven’s was on the front page.” It made sense that in that hierarchical town, the son of a leading citizen would get a headline while the son of a factory worker would get a column in the obituary section.

The Claremont Daily Bulletin September 25, 1944

Corporal Aaron Hayes, USMC, was killed on the island of Pelelieu in the Pacific on September 16, 1944. Corporal Hayes was the eldest son of Fred and Martha Hayes, and recently attended Claremont High School. Corporal Hayes was leading a squad of men into the jungle to attack a Japanese sniper nest, and was killed by an exploding shell. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. A memorial service will be held at the East Claremont Presbyterian Church on September 27. Corporal Hayes is survived by his parents and five brothers. His brother Nathan is currently serving in the Navy.

The Claremont Daily Bulletin December 22, 1944

Lieutenant Steven Schluter killed during German Offensive.

Lieutenant Steven Schluter, USA, was killed on December 17 during the recent German offensive. His platoon was cited for bravery, and has been credited with slowing the German advance.

Lieutenant Schluter’s body will be returned to Claremont and buried in the family plot. A memorial service will be announced later. Lieutenant Schluter was the elder son of The Honorable Judge Barry Schluter and Gail Crampton Schluter. He is survived by his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Crampton and the Honorable Thomas Schluter, by his parents, and by his younger brother, William Schluter.

Lieutenant Schluter recently graduated from Claremont High School 7th in his class. He was a member of the school’s track team and baseball team.

1999

“Did you go to their funerals?” Brad asked JP.

“I went to Steven’s,” he said. There were tears in his eyes; there were tears in all of our eyes as we grappled with the tragic ending to this story. We knew it had to happen, we knew it was coming, but that didn’t make it any less sad.

“What happened to Nathan?” Matt asked. “Did he survive the war?”

“I don’t know much about my dad’s brothers,” Robbie said. “I think he moved to Detroit after the war.”

“I always wondered why Fred Hayes was such a monster, and treated his wife and kids so badly,” JP said. “I can’t say I agree with what he did, but I can at least understand the cause.”

“Aaron’s body was never found,” Wade observed. “Or at least not that we know of here.”

“What are you saying?” Robbie asked, almost belligerently.

Wade eyed him calmly, just like JP would, and I made eye contact with Brad at that same moment. We smiled at each other knowingly. “He talked about running away and living in the Pacific. Didn’t he say that if he turned up dead, Steven should look for him there?”

“You’re saying he’s alive?” Robbie asked, now incredulous.

“I don’t know, I’m just saying it’s a possibility. If they’d identified his body with certainty, like they apparently did with Steven’s body, then the issue would be closed. But since they didn’t, it seems it is possible,” Wade asserted.

“That’s a valid hypothesis,” JP interjected, forestalling Robbie’s emotional banter. “Where would he have gone?”

“I don’t know,” Wade said. He seemed so defeated, at not having all the answers.

“I need to take a break from this,” I told them. “I think I will lie by the pool for a while, and then eat dinner. Tomorrow, perhaps I can think about this some more.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Matt said encouragingly. We all scattered after that, indulging our interests while we subconsciously tried to sort out what we’d just discovered.

I found an air mattress and floated around in the pool, contemplating this whole series of events. I’d started out with a vague knowledge of my father, and now, after reading his diary, I felt like I knew him, like I’d actually met him and he’d been a part of my life. Now that I knew he was dead, it was like losing him all over again. I rolled off the air mattress and plunged into the pool, using the water to hide my tears.

July 9, 1999

I was up early, like I always was. I remembered back to the days when I was young and could sleep until noon. Maybe that was the true sign of old age, when you started getting up automatically at the crack of dawn. I sat in the kitchen, drinking my morning tea, when JP came in.

“You were noisy this morning,” he groused. He liked to sleep in later than I did.

“Listen to you, sounding like you are still a teenager and wanting to sleep in until the afternoon,” I teased him.

“It’s because I’m young at heart,” he said with a smile. “There’s actually a copy machine in the office here. I thought I’d make one or two copies of the diary, if that’s alright with you.”

“Why would you do that? I am not sure I want anyone else to read it,” I told him. It was very personal, and I didn’t want my father’s homosexual affairs to become public knowledge. I certainly didn’t want Tonto’s affair to become public knowledge, or Marie’s for that matter.

“I think you should edit out parts of it and then let Frank read it,” JP said. “I think he needs to see it. I think it may help him understand his own father better.”

That made sense. “You are right. I will leave it to you then,” I said handing him my briefcase with the diary firmly locked inside. He vanished into the office, and before I could enjoy some solace, Brad came in, looking irritated.

“We haven’t been able to find out who’s funding Amphion,” he said morosely.

“It is difficult to hide that kind of thing,” I observed. “Could it be that this Cary Chase is the legitimate leader, and not just a figure head?”

“It’s possible, but I just don’t think he is. His background doesn’t fit the profile. He had a number of jobs in the tech business, but didn’t serve as CEO in any of the companies he was with. In fact, it doesn’t look like he spent much time at the executive level either. I’m still trying to piece together his biography.”

I looked at him sternly. He was getting way too emotional about this. “This is business, it is not about winning. We must conduct ourselves just as we have been, and if we are meant to win a deal, we will win it. If not, we must pass.”

“Stef, business is all about winning,” he whined.

“You are whining, and you sound like Robbie,” I said, making him smile and irritating him all at the same time. “Business is about making money. If the deals aren’t structured right, we don’t make money. What good does it do us to negotiate funding agreements so rich that if we win them, we lose money?” Matt and Wade strolled in, but Brad didn’t let their presence distract him.

“So what are we supposed to do? Just sit around on a pile of cash?” Brad asked.

“If you are going to make decisions based on emotion, you aren’t going to have a pile of cash,” I shot back.

“What if they’re right and the paradigm is shifting?” Brad asked. ‘They’ were the collective experts on tech companies.

“Then we will have to evaluate our parameters,” I told him.

“What are you worried about?” Matt asked me.

“I am worried that this market is overpriced. I am worried that it is like the stock market before the Great Depression. The speculation, the amount of money flowing in, the amount of leverage, all of those things make me nervous,” I told him.

“You once told me Stef was the guru, and every time you went against him, you lost,” Matt said to Brad.

Brad rolled his eyes, and then smiled. “That doesn’t mean I can’t challenge his viewpoints.”

“In any event, we are supposed to be on vacation,” I asserted, determined that this would not evolve into a trip where we all worked as usual, only we did it on a beach. JP chose that moment to come sauntering into the kitchen with a few copies of the diary. He put them on the table, and we all just looked at them like they were coiled snakes.

Wade suddenly moved forward and snatched up one of the copies and began flipping through it. He had a determined look on his face. We all just stared at him. “Aaron left us a clue as to where he is,” he said.

“What?” Matt asked. “You really think he’s alive?”

“I think it is a distinct possibility. We just have to figure out where.”

“And how will we do that?” I asked. “The Pacific is a rather large ocean, with lots of little islands.”

“He left us a clue. Never Ever Grieve, Only Remember, Steven,” Wade said assertively. “Steven questioned why he capitalized the first letter of every word.”

“Maybe the capital letters mean something,” Brad observed. “N, E, G, O, R, S. Negors? What’s negors?”

“Maybe he’s living with black people?” Matt joked. When we didn’t laugh, he added an explanation. “Negroes. Isn’t that the term they used for black people back then?”

“In Aaron’s time, my ancestors called them ‘coloreds’ in polite society,” Wade deadpanned before JP startled us all by jumping up and running out of the room.

JP returned with his laptop computer. He’d bought a CD with a world atlas stored on it, so we all stared at him impatiently as his computer booted up, and then the program loaded. His thin fingers moved across the keyboard like lightning, until he found what he was looking for. He looked up at us triumphantly.

“There is an island off New Guinea called Los Negros,” he said.