SUNDOWN IN ZION CHAPTER ONE
The man’s
fingers beat a count on his worn jeans. “Myra was the third. No, let’s see, she
was the second. I was still a young buck then, just back from the war. Met her
in a bar my second night home and she asked me to marry her three days later. She
was the impatient type, by God. Always was. I remember she would arch her neck
just before I got to the short strokes, and say, ‘Be still for a second.’ Let
me move a muscle then and she would light in moaning then screaming and scratching
and trying her best to break down the goddam bed and wake up all the neighbors.
A few seconds of that and she was done. You’d better be too, brother, ‘cause that
was all she wrote. Oh man.” He moved his head back and forth.
Gideon
Nelson turned to catch more, but the man had stopped and was looking at
something far away, something that neither of them could see. A man on his left
side joined the conversation.
“I like
women,” he said. “Hell, you put them in charge of the government and they’d
straighten things out, you bet.” He stopped to take a drag from a cigarette. “I
probly wouldn’t be sittin’ here now if a woman had been president in 1968.”
He was a
thin man with long faded hair descending from beneath a cap advertising the First
Cavalry with its distinctive horse’s head insignia. He smiled at Nelson,
revealing a set of rotten teeth. “Ain’t no woman gonna send a man off to war if
she can keep him here takin’ care of her business. Ain’t that right?”
“Rosealee
was the next one,” the man on the right said, before Nelson could respond.
“Course by then I wasn’t much good for nothin’ ...”
Nelson
stirred and leaned forward. The three of them were sitting, and a fourth was
standing near the main entrance of the Veteran’s Hospital in Little Rock,
Arkansas, a monstrous work of architecture comprising four large interconnected
octagons and claiming a circulation pattern that had confounded staff and patients
alike for nearly 40 years. Its design represented the sort of idea that, much
like the events that had shaped the lives of its clientele, seemed good at the
time but didn’t stand up well to a cruel reality.
Nelson and the others joined a
disparate collection of men and some women, many of them in wheelchairs, some
missing limbs, others in bathrobes and pajamas, most only ghastly shadows of those
“happy few” who might have crossed the Ruhr, walked away from the frozen
Chosin, or stood with Hal Moore in the Ia Drang Valley. Others, like Nelson,
could have melted, unnoticed, into any crowd on the street. He looked at his
watch. “It’s time,” he said. “You fellas take it easy.”
“I would
say I would take it any way I could get it,” said the main on his left. “But
hell, anymore I wouldn’t know what to do with it once’t I took it. What you in
for?”
“Shrapnel,”
Nelson said. “Leftover shrapnel.” He rose.
“Shrapnel,”
said the man to his right. “Hell, I got enough of that in me that I can’t even
go near a scrap iron yard. Goddam magnet would pick me up like some old junked
car. Can’t you see it swingin’ me around with my arms just a’wavin’?” He crossed
one thin leg over another and laughed. Nelson smiled. He stretched and started walking
away. The standing man nodded but said nothing, just sank deeper into his thin
windbreaker. The others resumed their conversation.
“Ain’t this
the ugliest goddam building you ever saw?” said one.
“It is,”
said the other. “But they take damn good care of you. Kinda like Eloise, my
fourth. Goddam, that woman was ugly. But boy could she cook. I remarried her
once’t cause I missed her cookin’ so bad.”
“They take
good care of us.” said the first. “They’ll fix that old boy up. He looks like a
tough ‘un anyway. Did you see them arms?” He stopped. “Good luck,” he yelled,
turning toward the entrance, but by this time Nelson was out of earshot.
Just before
he reached the automatic doors of entrance, his cell phone buzzed. He pulled it
from his pocket and checked the number. He glanced at his watch, then back at
the phone. He entered the building, turned into a quiet hallway to his right
and answered the call.
“Mr.
Nelson,” a familiar voice said.
“Yes.”
“Mr.
Nelson, it’s Martin. Martin Barker, Elvis Barker’s son. Do you remember me?”
Nelson
smiled. “Of course I do. How are you Martin?”
“I finally
talked Dad into letting me call you. Can you talk?”
“For a
moment,” Nelson said. “I’m at the VA hospital.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.
What’s up?”
“I need
help, Mr. Nelson. Dad said I could call you.”
“Are you in
trouble?”
“Oh no
sir,” he said. “Nothing like that. But I got troubles.”
Nelson
furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand. Are you still in school?”
“Oh yes
sir. Still at the Math and Sciences School in Hot Springs. Top of my senior
class.”
“That’s
great,” Nelson said. “Elvis is proud?”
“He’s done
everything but put up a neon sign in front of the store. Customers walk in now
and yell out, ‘yeah I know about your son’ before he can get started.”
“Sounds
like Elvis,” Nelson said. “What kind of troubles are you having?”
“Something
terrible happened to a friend of mine and you’re the only one I know who might
help.”
“What
happened to him? Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“It’s not a
he.” Martin said. “It’s a she, and she got killed.”
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