DURING HIS CAPTIVITY, he had invented games to occupy his mind, speculating on the great mysteries that had no solutions, speaking to dead comrades-in-arms, revisiting his lifelong fascination with anthropology and history. By listening to the footfalls and voices of his captors, and the shutting and opening of doors, he knew the basement room he occupied was at the end of a corridor, one that had a stone or brick floor. No, it wasn’t a corridor. It was a tunnel with a trapdoor at the far end, one made out of perhaps oak and steel that fell heavily from a ceiling with enough force to jar the floor. The tunnel smelled of lichen and water seepage. It smelled of the tomb, or a cave deep inside the mists of Avalon, the kind to which mankind continually returned in one way or another. The fascination with the netherworld, the spirits that groaned inside the trunks of trees, the sword frozen in the rock, the hunters chasing the stag across the heavens, all of these things were less about magic than testimony to the glory of creation. It was not coincidence that the walls of the great catacombs of Europe were stacked with row upon row of grinning skulls, as though they had come home and joined a party in progress that no one else saw.
Shortly after Jessie’s falling-out with Jeff, the sound of the trapdoor striking the floor reverberated down the tunnel, followed by footsteps hammering down steps or a ladder, then the voice of Arnold Beckman shouting, “Get down there, you pair of jackasses, and clean the toilet and the grease trap and mop the floors, and stay there until I get to the bottom of this!”
“Sir, that woman is lying. She come out of the bedroom in the nude,” another voice said.
“I understand perfectly. You’re such a debonair and handsome pair that an educated woman can’t keep her clothes on while she’s around you?”
“No, sir. What I mean is she showed us the scar on her stomach. That’s how come we knew about it. We thought maybe this was something she does to people, like a nymphomaniac carrying on, and you was fixing to tell us not to worry about it, maybe you was just playing a big joke or something. Jesus Christ, Mr. Beckman.”
“A joke? She says you licked her scar,” Beckman said.
“Whores lie,” said Jack. He didn’t fit with the others. He was more aggressive, surly, the kind of man who enjoyed fighting with his fists and breaking things.
“You don’t get to call her a whore,” Beckman said.
“Okay, she’s not a whore,” Jack said. “She just acts like one. I told her I didn’t like sloppy seconds. It set her off. Whores like to put on airs. But she’s not a whore, so this don’t apply to her.”
“You said that to Maggie Bassett?” Beckman asked.
“Who cares what I said? The cunt is lying.”
“What did you say?”
“You sent us to watch her. That’s what we done,” Jack said. “Except she snookered all of us. She got Jim and me on the bone, then run us out of her house with a pistol and took you over the hurdles. That don’t make me feel too good. She must be one great piece of ass.”
“Wait here a minute,” Beckman said.
“Forget it,” Jack said. “I was at Saint-Mihiel. I knew I shouldn’t have signed on with a Hun. I formally resign and now salute you with both my buttocks. Here, kiss my West Texas ass.”
A silence followed that was so intense, Ishmael’s eardrums were creaking. Then he heard Beckman’s voice again: “Pull your pants up and look at me.”
“What for?” Jack replied.
“This.”
The blast must have been from a shotgun, probably a twelve-gauge. Ishmael heard the pellets bounce off the stone and scatter along the tunnel. He also heard a scream like that of a man who’d had his eyes gouged out, then the kla-klatch of the empty casing being ejected and another shell being pumped into the chamber. Someone, probably Beckman, was now descending a set of wood steps, his weight balanced, taking each step in measured fashion, the shotgun probably held in one hand.
“Mr. Beckman, I didn’t say nothing bad about the lady,” Jim said. “She’s got her side of the story. I ain’t criticizing her for it. What I told you is what I saw and what I heard.”
“Shut up.”
“Sir, what are you fixing to do?”
“I’m deciding.”
“Cain’t you give him a chance?”
“You want to trade places with him?”
“No, sir.”
“A shocking revelation. Can you hear me, Jack?” Beckman said. “Don’t play possum on us. Look up here. You won’t have to worry about boners anymore. How do you like this?”
There was another blast from the shotgun. This time Ishmael could smell the burned powder.
“Stop trembling and clean this up,” Beckman said. “Get the others to help you.”
“Where are we supposed to take him?”