Hot NIght in the City by Trevanian

Author:Trevanian [Trevanian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2010-11-06T08:25:58.792000+00:00

“Yes, a hero.”

“What had he done?”

“It was from his commanding officer. Captain Frances Murphy? He regretted having to tell me that Private Lawrence McGivney had contracted an illness in the performance of duty. He was in a military hospital and would soon be shipped home so he could get every care and comfort—I remember the exact words. Every care and comfort. That's what I've tried to give him. Captain Murphy went on to say that Private McGivney was a cheerful and willing soldier and that he was well liked by everybody in the regiment. Think of that! Everybody in the whole regiment.”

Wait a minute. Being liked by everybody then getting sick didn't seem to me to be the stuff of heroism. But I didn't say anything.

And for a while Mrs McGivney didn't say anything either. She stood there brushing her husband's hair, a fond smile in her eyes as she seemed to reread the letter from his captain in her mind. Then she blinked and focused on me. “You know what I'd bet? I'd bet dollars to doughnuts you'd like another cookie. Am I right?” She looked at me out of the sides of her eyes in that coy Shirley Temple way.

“No, thanks, I—”

But she shook her finger at me. “Now don't you tell me you can't eat another cookie. A boy can always make space for another cookie.”

As she went for the cookie jar on the counter I asked, “What was Mr McGivney sick with?”

“Brain fever,” she said from the kitchen. “He ran this terribly high fever for days and days, lying in his bunk, sweating and shivering, sweating and shivering. The doctor at the veteran's hospital over in Troy—Dr French?—he told us that most men would have died.” She brought back one of her little decorated plates with a cookie on it and set it before me. She still had the hairbrush in her hand. The long white hairs entangled in its bristles made me shudder. “Dr French said that Lawrence had fought a long, heroic battle against the fever, and survived!”

Oh. So that was the kind of hero he was.

“But...” She sighed. “It was the fever that left him... well, like he is.”

“And you've taken care of him ever since?”

She smiled. “I wash him and feed him and... everything. He likes it when I brush his hair. He doesn't say anything, but I can tell by the way he sometimes smiles.”

So she had lived alone with him up here for more than forty years, cleaning him and feeding him and brushing his hair. Forty years. So long that the existence of Mr McGivney had dropped out of the collective memory of the block, which now thought of Mrs McGivney, when it thought of her at all, as just a shy old crazylady. But she thought of herself as the bride who had made a cozy nest for her soldier bridegroom.

I started to ask if she didn't get lonely, up here all day without anyone to talk—but a child's instinct for social danger stopped me short.

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