Thank You and Good Night Page 3

  “Sorry Hugh, and yes, Paige, he gives me advice in exchange for a penny. Asking his two cents costs me one.”

  “Emery… you can be off-putting sometimes,” Paige responded, but this was said with her eyes in the mode used to create half a smile.

  “I’m not kidding, half portion. Don’t you have an article to write or something? Get lost,” Hugh continued, ignoring Emery’s odd statement.

  “I do have an article to write, but that can wait. You say you just asked Paige to the prom? That’s great news, Hugh, and I do hope it goes well for you,” Emery said, feigning good nature.

  “Scram, Asher.”

  “Oh I will, but you should know, I’m still asking Paige to the prom, too. If there’s anything we’ve learned from Mr. Dahl’s economics, it’s that all good business needs competition. Good for us.”

  “You’re funny, Emery,” Paige said. The word ‘funny’ had a bit of a negative focus put on it, however.

  “Yeah, he’s funny all right,” Hugh agreed in a frown.

  “Well, thank you both.”

  “Okay, you had your laugh. Now go on,” Hugh said, trying to affect a slight cheer through the layers of nuisance Emery had caused him.

  “I can’t, Hugh” Emery replied, “See, I already asked. Surely, you can see that it would be rude not to hear her answer. It’s basic courtship diplomacy.”

  “Well, she hasn’t answered me yet. And I asked first. You’ll have to get your answer later. It’ll be ‘no’.”

  “All right, that’s only fair, but things like ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are quick to say, of course, so I’ll just wait and get the rejection over with. Paige?”

  Emery stood there, waiting. Hugh pointed toward the end of the hallway and stared at Emery, a serious look in his eyes. When Emery simply nodded and smiled, playing dumb, Hugh shook his head and turned his focus to Paige.

  “I’m gonna lose my temper. Tell him to leave.”

  “Okay,” she said. Paige had known Emery for quite some time. They had once written stories together for school, and then beyond that assignment, he had spent many years somewhat impressing her with little fantasies. She preferred not to like him as much as she did.

  “You’ll have to leave, Emery,” she said.

  “Oh, no need to mind me. You two go on with your discussion. I’ll be quiet. I have the patience virtue. It’s not as good as most other virtues, but Macy’s always has it in stock and it’s very affordable, so I have a lot of it,” Emery said. Paige put a quick lid on her mirth, which wanted to manifest in the physical.

  “You want me to black your eye?” Hugh asked.

  “That depends on which one.” Hugh seemed to like this reply very much.

  “Both.”

  Emery was a bit frightened then. He had known that the impulsive nature of his sudden approach would be troublesome, especially because it would infringe upon the attention Hugh Karcher was receiving. Though Emery’s presence had been tolerated thus far, he wasn’t entirely certain it would end without a row. It seemed nearly assured, now, and Emery’s size was minute. In that particular vein, were one to view it in simple mathematics, Hugh’s physique was almost totally comprised of tens, and Emery’s was a hodgepodge of random odd numbers closer to the deuce than royalty. Perhaps Emery needed to vacate, as asked.

  “Look now, you boys calm down,” Paige threw in, trying to intervene.

  “You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry for intruding,” Emery acquiesced. Perhaps he had done enough in introducing his question, and would be best to let her think on it. No need to get battered about by a larger man. Women did not seem to favor that.

  “Outta here, crumb. I mean it,” Hugh said. Perhaps Emery did not like that a person would shorten the three words ‘get out of’ into the paltry ‘outta’. Perhaps Emery did not like being called a crumb. Perhaps there was the matter of jealousy over his varsity loss. Perhaps, also, Emery was annoyed by Hugh’s good fortune to the point he wanted to marginalize Hugh’s idiocy and make it come out, in full force, feeling that Paige might not like a more summery show of Hugh’s nature.

  “Wait, I changed my mind,” Emery baited, “You were wrong, after all. I’d like to continue intruding.” Emery thought about his eyes then, and which of them Hugh would black first.

  “Look Asher, ya can’t throw a ball and ya sure can’t throw a fist. This is your last chance to make tracks.” That had been rude of him to say, though ostensibly correct. Emery did not have the best of throwing arms. The last chance given was a nice offer. Hugh began rolling up his sleeves. The young man’s arms were imposing. This was distressing but if there was anything to Emery beyond the oddity of his attitude in most things, it was a driven nature and an almost selfish need to be regarded.

  “Paige, would a blacked eye or two ruffle my chances of accompanying you to the prom?”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed. She was a little fond of him, and had known him for years, but she did not want Emery to stay and get into a losing fight with Hugh, a boy for whom she was also fond.

  “Honestly, Emery, you’re too much,” she said.

  “Oh, he’s a real card. Right, Asher? Always a character? Great fun. But see I don’t like characters, and I don’t like you. At all. I don’t like your looks, I don’t like your attitude, and I don’t like your arrogant articles in my school newspaper. They’re bad and you’re a louse,” The Karch said.

  “An autograph? No, I... I couldn’t do that.”

  “I think I’ve had about all of this I care to,” Hugh said, grabbing Emery’s shirt and pushing him flat against the lockers. The jarring of the row caused the Micro-man in Paige’s locker to activate.

  “The largest bundle of nerves in the human face is submerged behind the philtrum, along the upper lip,” the Micro-man buzzed. Hugh articulated his arm to pummel this particular bundle of Emery’s nerves. How unfair. Emery’s Micro-man so seldom gave freebies. The fist struck hard. Emery turned within a bright, orange flash that confused him greatly.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  EXT. NORTH HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL FIELD - AFTERNOON

  A typical football field with bleachers on either side. There is a practice session happening between many student players and two coaches.

  LONG SHOT of The home-team bleachers, TWO PEOPLE sitting on them near the middle.

  SLOW ZOOM TO:

  The two occupants, PAIGE and EMERY. Sitting and talking on the bleachers. The wind is picking up and we can hear the varsity football team practicing on the field.

  PAIGE:

  So, do you remember when you had me come to your father’s stable so you could pose on that horse? Wanting me to write about it for class?

  CUT TO:

  That. A strange and childish thing suitable for a brazen boy. He had been this in droves and perhaps still was that childish boy.

  “That was just dumb,” he laughed, “I had this idea that you’d be impressed. Chronicle my adventures.”

  “Well, it was silly, yes. I thought you were kind of crazy. Are you still hunting dinosaurs and fighting the good fight?”

  “No, I’m on to sniping Nazis now,” he said, though this was untrue. Mostly he imagined his way to girls and making the varsity team, two things he had expended much energy trying to make happen in the recent past, things that had not happened.

  “You should chronicle your own adventures, sometime,” she said.

  “Diaries are for girls,” he replied.

  “My brother keeps one.”

  “Huh.”

  “And I didn’t mean a diary. Not like that. I meant stories. So you could write about being a sniper that gets the Nazis. Or whatever else goes on in that head of yours. Like for books. Or you could write for the radio.”

  Hugh Karcher, then running drills with the team below, had ceased looking at them, for now. His status as an active player for the team was not jeopardized so long as he behaved. Emery held a minor guilt over this predicament, as his own behavior had been impulsive, r
ude, and rash, which had caused Hugh to act honestly to those things. There was a bit of shame in Emery that in gaining Paige’s favor, he had inadvertently caused much more dislike from Hugh than he had originally thought would result. Had he reported the fight, Karcher might have had trouble from Coach Hertz. That would have been unfair.

  That Emery and Paige then sat on bleachers within view of Karcher had been her idea. Emery had begun to understand that certain sorts of trouble invigorated her. Emery was uncomfortable hovering near The Karch as they were; it seemed like rubbing it in that Hugh had lost her favor in punching him, something Emery had caused to happen with a certain chiseling.

  “The Nazis are really scary,” she said then. This was abrupt. He looked at her and nodded.

  “Yeah, to everyone,” he agreed, “They’re out of hand. Like wolves. And the Japanese are running along side.”

  “Almost everyone is being taken off to fight. You will, too,” she said then. Her concern lifted his spirits, until he accidentally lowered them again with his next statement.

  “Well, it’s the right thing,” he said, mortified with himself for uttering this, “and we have to help do something about them.” His stomach turned, however. He felt as if he were stating it was all right to eat your dead if you were hungry enough. This was not right, just a thing that could be. United States involvement in Europe and was not a thing one could call right or wrong, but rather a thing that simply had come to be, and was now inescapable.

  “It’s so brave to be like that. To not be scared about it. I can’t imagine what it would be like to fight over there. Courageous.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “But would you enlist even if you don’t get drafted?”

  He thought this over. In his mind, he heard the words of the Micro-man echo and gain ballast. Nobility. Need. Showing no fear.

  “I’ve applied to a few colleges, but if I had to, I’d enlist, sure,” he fibbed, “I’m not afraid of enlisting. They need us.” He had no intention of ever doing any such thing, however.

  “There’s something funny about you, Emery.”

  “Oh?”

  “You keep me guessing.”

  “Sure, I guess. But fighting for your country is… well, it’s noble.”

  “I like guessing about you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes, but don’t get thick about it. I only like it a little,” she said.

  “Well, I don’t assume I’ll be asked to go, or that they’ll want anyone soon. This war is going to end any day now. The Germans are falling apart. We’ll take Japan apart any second now. I’d be surprised if it lasted another month.”

  Paige agreed to join him for the upcoming prom. He had not been certain she would want to go with him, and had been operating on a rather slim diet of juvenile hope. The war had been present for some time, but the worst seemed past, and unlike those seniors he knew the previous year, he was not in a panic about the draft, nor the plausibility of his ending up in the fray, himself. William, his older brother, had been able to use his status as a political writer and fact-checker for the Washington governor to keep himself out of the war, and the value of a powerful friend or two was tantamount his continuing security. Emery did not have these connections, aside from his brother, who had little clout, but time would be Emery’s compatriot, as the draft would in all probability be rescinded by the time his graduation came about. He was free to enjoy his youth somewhat, to have a lively, smart date for the prom, to watch the games and try and do what it was boys his age were asked when there wasn’t a war on: Plan a life, pick a career, choose a school, fall in love, even make his own enemies, instead of being given them.

  “You think I could write for the radio?” he asked.

  “You’re creative. You could figure it out, I bet. If I can write, so could you. I want to write for the Home Journal. You’ll have to find your own rag, though. Men don’t write for the Home Journal.”

  “My mom reads that. I think I want to teach kids. Be a coach, like Hertz.”

  “For football?”

  “Well, more than that. An instructor. Physical education. But a coach, too, sure.”

  “I see. Honestly, I thought you had to have more warts to be a coach.”

  “I’ll grow them.”

  “The one by his eyelid bothers me,” she said then, her shoulders giving a shudder.

  “You’re right, I’ll need more warts, I think. Maybe a boil or two. I’m sure I can pick a few of those up along the way.”

  “Or you could get some smarts, and do something else entirely.”

  He gave a false chuckle and let a slight frown escape, careful not to let her see this. The moment curdled and he stopped talking about the future. She did not approve of his, and he knew, prom or not, that he would not be a part of hers. Still, he felt he had waged a thing, and it had gone in his favor, and for the first time in his life, approaching a girl had not ended at the initial stage. Over the next weeks, war or not, Hugh or not, and even in the light of Paige’s newly developing loss of interest in him, he still felt good about things, and by the end of each hour, he fell a little further into the hue of pleasantry.

  Chapter Three

  OPENING CREDITS, NARRATION.

  TITLECARD: THE WAR

  FADE TO:

  EXT. A DOUGLAS C-47 SKYTRAIN IN FLIGHT, 1944 - NIGHT

  Rain against an uncertain, dark backdrop, flash of lightning in the distance. We see the plane in turbulence, bearing forward at great speed. The frame is shuddering.

  CUT TO:

  INT. THE SAME SKYTRAIN – SAME TIME

  LONG ANGLE from COCKPIT through the noticeably nervous 511TH PARACHUTE INFANTRY REGIMENT. Among these men we see SOLDIER ASHER.

  IN FROM LEFT steps HOST ASHER, looking out of place in a black suit, to CENTER, BEGINNING INTRODUCTORY MONOLOGUE. He is introducing a scene in which his younger, soldier self is to take part:

  HOST ASHER:

  Please bear witness to one Emery Asher, all-American young man in the service of his country, a soldier in a terrible war that has encompassed much of the world. While most people would be horrified at the thought of plunging from a soaring airplane, young Asher makes a habit of it. He drops into a bullseye of the enemy’s den with a rifle and a prayer. In just a moment, Private Asher will earn his nation’s Purple Heart. An award for being wounded, but this injury, physical upon first examination, will be eclipsed by a far deeper wound, a sense of dread that will forever return to him in nightmares, straight from the murk of his most unmentionable fears, a heart-stuttering panic lodged in his own memory, across continents, oceans, and even time itself, all the way from The Other Side.

  ZOOM TO:

  SOLDIER ASHER in M1942 paratrooper uniform. He is fidgeting with his cargo snaps. LIEUTENANT MERRILL OF THE CONFEDERACY walks among the young squad, his medals jangling and saber strapped to his hip, orating to his men and preparing them for the jump.

  FADE TO:

  Boots polished to regulation appeasement, though for so little reason. Cargo pockets with bellows, some of them empty. Two snaps for each pocket and four pockets to a coat. More of them on the pants. Emery grunted and tried to center himself. This was an incessant activity in which he only made ground for seconds at a time. He let his snaps be and waited, trying to clear his mind. This was not a minor task, and he failed. In not half a minute, or near in thought a month, his fingers woke and he found himself checking his snaps again. The plane dipped in the uncertain, troubled weather, toward the ever-approaching, unknown event below, matching well the devolving mood of the men on board. Unlike the spirits of the paratroopers, however, the plane shortly rose again.

  “Thirteen eyes. Check ‘em. And tuck the pants; we wanna keep sharp,” Lieutenant Merrill shouted over the din of the engines. His saber’s scabbard tapped against a young man who leaned back on the bench to avoid its further intrusion on his fear-based meditation.

  The young men glanced at one another’s drab, olive boot
s, laced to the top and tight. Pants tucked into the upper cuff. Nervous eyes noting secure gear, most men with haversacks, three with Musette bags, then the eyes found one another, the absence of their earlier bolstering and jags with the onset of flight in a Pacific downpour. Their thoughts had turned to the streaking of their machine across the wavering sky, knowing that they would lose even the familiarity of this to the night in but minutes.

  Merrill stroked his mustache into his beard, adjusted his cavalry hat and patted his Colt pistol. The soldiers needed his orders and assurances to keep from the inevitable horror of what they were about to do. All had jumped before, most more than once, but this next was a drop into a certain sort of pit, a place hot with enemies. There was no question as to whether combat would occur, or how many axis soldiers they might be facing, as with some previous jumps. This fight was already in place and they were being thrown out to fall at its side. They had been prepped on the terrain before, on maneuvers into Leyte, should there be a need. Now there was. Leyte, where the enemy’s cover was a sprawl of choice hiding spots.

  Merrill cleared his throat and functioned as per his reliable nature, shouting and ordering the small things to light, barking and grumbling into the sound of the engines, keeping young, panicky hands occupied and moving.

  “Strap your gear and get it snug. Might be a Skytrain but we don’t check bags here. That’s your life you’re wearin’, boys, so get it on tight.”