‘After awhile it stopped. I opened my hand, expecting it would be full of blood, but there was only the mushroom, all wrinkled up, with the shapes of my fingers mashed into it. Wasn’t no blood on the mushroom, in my hand, on his gun, nor anywhere. And just as I started to think I’d done nothing but somehow have a dream on my feet, the damned thing twitched in my hand. I looked down at it and for a second or two it didn’t look like a mushroom at all — it looked like a little tiny penis that was still alive. I thought of the blood coming out of my fist when I squeezed
it and I thought of her saying “Any child a woman get, the man shoot it out’n his pecker, girl.” It twitched again — I tell you it did — and I screamed and threw it in the trash. Then I heard Johnny coming back up the stairs and I grabbed his gun and ran back into the bedroom with it and put it back into his coat pocket. Then I climbed into bed with all my clothes on, even my shoes, and pulled the blanket up to my chin. He come in and I seen he was bound to make trouble. He had a rug-beater in one hand. I don’t know where he got it from, but I knew what he meant to do with it.
‘ “Ain’t gonna be no baby,” he said. “You get on over here.”
‘ “No,” I told him, “there ain’t going to be a baby. You don’t need that thing, either, so put it away. You already took care of the baby, you worthless piece of shit.”
‘I knew it was a risk, calling him that, but I thought maybe it would make him believe me, and it did. Instead of beating me up, this big goony stoned grin spread over his face. I tell you, I never hated him so much as I did then.
‘ “Gone?” he asked.
‘ “Gone,” I said.
‘ “Where’s the mess?” he asked.
‘ “Where do you think?” I said. “Halfway to the East River by now, most likely.”
‘He came over then and tried to kiss me, for Jesus’ sake. Kiss me! I turned my face away and he went upside my head, but not hard.
‘ “You’re gonna see I know best,” he says. “There’ll be time enough for kids later on.”
‘Then he went out again. Two nights later him and his friends tried to pull that liquor store job and his gun blew up in his face and killed him.’
‘You think you witched that gun, don’t you?’ Darcy said.
‘No,’ Martha said calmly. ‘She did . . . by way of me, you could say. She saw I wouldn’t help myself, and so she made me help myself.’
‘But you do think the gun was witched.’
‘I don’t just think so,’ Martha said calmly.
Darcy went into the kitchen for a glass of water. Her mouth was suddenly very dry.
‘That’s really the end,’ Martha said when she came back. ‘Johnny died and I had Pete. Wasn’t until I got too pregnant to work that I found out just how many friends I had. If I’d known sooner, I think I would have left Johnny sooner . . . or maybe not. None of us really knows the way the world works, no matter what we think or say.’
‘But that’s not everything, is it?’ Darcy asked.
‘Well, there are two more things,’ Martha said. ‘Little things.’ But she didn’t look as if they were little, Darcy thought.
‘I went back to Mama Delorme’s about four months after Pete was born. I didn’t want to but I did. I had twenty dollars in an envelope. I couldn’t afford it but I knew, somehow, that it belonged to her. It was dark. Stairs seemed even narrower than before, and the higher I climbed the more I could smell her and the smells of her place: burned candles and dried wallpaper and the cinnamony smell of her tea.
‘That feeling of doing something in a dream — of being behind a glass wall — came over me for the last time. I got up to her door and knocked. There was no answer, so I knocked again.
There was still no answer, so I knelt down to slip the envelope under the door. And her voice came from right on the other side, as if she was knelt down, too. I was never so scared in my life
as I was when that papery old voice came drifting out of the crack under that door — it was like hearing a voice coming out of a grave.
‘ “He goan be a fine boy,” she said. “Goan be just like he father. Like he natural father.”
‘ “I brought you something,” I said. I could barely hear my own voice.
‘ “Slip it through, dearie,” she whispered. I slipped the envelope halfway under and she pulled it the rest of the way. I heard her tear it open and I waited. I just waited.
‘ “It’s enough,” she whispered. “You get on out of here, dearie, and don’t you ever come back to Mama Delorme’s again, you hear?”
‘I got up and ran out of there just as fast as I could.’
Martha went over to the bookcase, and came back a moment or two later with a hardcover.
Darcy was immediately struck by the similarity between the artwork on this jacket and that on the jacket of Peter Rosewall’s book. This one was Blaze of Heaven by Peter Jefferies, and the cover showed a pair of GIs charging an enemy pillbox. One of them had a grenade; the other was firing an M-1.
Martha rummaged in her blue canvas tote-bag, brought out her son’s book, removed the tissue paper in which it was wrapped, and laid it tenderly next to the Jefferies book. Blaze of Heaven; Blaze of Glory. Side by side, the points of comparison were inescapable.
‘This was the other thing,’ Martha said.
‘Yes,’ Darcy said doubtfully. They do look similar. What about the stories? Are they . . . well .
. . ‘
She stopped in some confusion and looked up at Martha from beneath her lashes. She was relieved to see Martha was smiling.
‘You askin if my boy copied that nasty honky’s book?’ Martha asked without the slightest bit of rancor.
‘No!’ Darcy said, perhaps a little too vehemently.
‘Other than that they’re both about war, they’re nothing alike,’ Martha said. ‘They’re as different as . . . well, as different as black and white.’ She paused and then added: ‘But there’s a feel about them every now and then that’s the same . . . somethin you seem to almost catch around corners.
It’s that sunshine I told you about — that feeling that the world is mostly a lot better than it looks, especially better than it looks to those people who are too smart to be kind.’
Then isn’t it possible that your son was inspired by Peter Jefferies . . . that he read him in college and . . . ‘
‘Sure,’ Martha said. ‘I suppose my Peter did read Jefferies’s books -that’d be more likely than not even if it was just a case of like calling to like. But there’s something else — something that’s a little harder to explain.’
She picked up the Jefferies novel, looked at it reflectively for a moment, then looked at Darcy.
‘I went and bought this copy about a year after my son was born,’ she said. ‘It was still in print, although the bookstore had to special-order it from the publisher. When Mr Jefferies was in on one of his visits, I got up my courage and asked if he would sign it for me. I thought he might be put out by rne asking, but I think he was actually a little flattered. Look here.’
She turned to the dedication page of Blaze of Heaven.
Darcy read what was printed there and felt an eerie doubling in her mind. This book is dedicated to my mother, ALTHEA DIXMONT JEFFERIES, the finest woman I have ever known. And below that, Jefferies had written in black fountain-pen ink that was now fading, ‘For Martha
Rosewall, who cleans up my clutter and never complains.’ Below this he had signed his name and jotted August ’61.
The wording of the penned dedication struck her first as contemptuous . . . then as eerie. But before she had a chance to think about it, Martha had opened her son’s book, Blaze of Glory, to the dedication page and placed it beside the Jefferies book. Once again Darcy read the printed matter: This book is dedicated to my mother, MARTHA ROSEWALL. Mom, I couldn’t have done it without you. Below that he had written in a pen which looked like a fine-line Flair: ‘And that’s no lie. Love you, Mom! Pete.’