Koko by Peter Straub

Author:Peter Straub
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Horror, Fantasy, Suspense, War, Thriller
ISBN: 9780007103676
Publisher: Centipede Press
Published: 1987-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

4

“So you think I ought to go back to him tonight?” Maggie trailed after the General as if clinging close to his broad military back for warmth and strength—she was not levitating now.

“I didn’t say that.” The General darted into one of the aisles of his impromptu church to align a chair. Everything around them, the red vinyl of the seats, the yellow walls with the garish oils of a pigtailed Jesus confronting demons in a misty Chinese landscape, the cheap blond wood of the altar, gleamed and sparkled and shone in the harsh bright light the General and his congregation preferred to any other sort of lighting. And he and Maggie spoke in the Cantonese, similarly hard and brilliant, in which he conducted his services.

Standing by herself before the shuttered Harlem window, Maggie looked nearly bereft. “Then I apologize. I didn’t understand.”

The General straightened up and nodded approvingly. He went back to the aisle, stepped around her, and proceeded up the side of the church to the altar rail and the altar.

Maggie followed him as far as the rail. The General made minute adjustments to the white cloth on the altar, and at length looked at her again.

“You have always been an intelligent girl. You just have never understood yourself. But the things you do! The way you live!”

“I do not live badly,” Maggie said. This looked like another replay of an old, old argument, and she suddenly wanted to leave, to go downtown and stay with Jules and Perry in one of their rickety East Village tenements, to escape into their mindless club-hopping and their mindless acceptance of her.

“I mean—living in such ignorance of yourself,” the General said mildly.

“What shall I do, then?” she asked, unable to keep the irony out of her voice.

“You are a caretaker,” the General said. “You are a person who goes where she is needed. Your friend was in great need of your help. You brought him back to health so successfully that he no longer required your assistance, your caretaking, and all his usual problems returned to him. I know men like him. It will be years before he gets to the end of what combat did to him.”

“Do you think Americans are too sentimental to be good soldiers?” Maggie asked, really curious to know if he did think this.

“I am not a philosopher,” the General said. He went into a storeroom behind the altar and returned carrying a stack of hymnals. Knowing what was expected of her, Maggie came forward and took the hymnals from him. “But you would perhaps be a better soldier than your friend. I have known some caretakers who were excellent officers. Your father had a great deal of the caretaker in him.”

“Did he go where he was needed?”

“He often went where I needed him,” the General said.

They were walking side by side down parallel aisles, placing hymnals face up on the chairs.

“And now I suppose you want me to go somewhere,” she said at last.

“You are doing nothing now, Maggie.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.