The Heart is a Poor Judge Ch. 06

Five minutes, or fifteen...it was hard to judge how many passed before Eddie spoke up again. "Well, you two know a hell of a lot more than you did yesterday morning."

Truer words were never spoken, thought Miguel.

Eddie looked back and forth between them. "Any impressions?"

The kid looked wearily at Miguel with sad, brown eyes. It seemed he wanted Miguel to speak first. It wasn't that Miguel had nothing to say, he just couldn't decide how honest he wanted to be. "I told you one of my impressions earlier," he said finally. "You didn't seem to like it."

"I'm fine with you voicing your concerns," said Eddie. "But I draw the line at remarks that are neither respectful nor constructive."

"All right," said Miguel, carefully ridding his voice of emotion. "I understand. It was just a lot to handle."

"Any part of it in particular?"

Miguel thought about it for a long time. He thumbed easily through a stack of photographs he stored in his mind: the face of one woman, then the other, the murky impression on the wall of the trailer, an errant ray of moonlight reflected from the glossy finish of Eddie's gun, and at last, the telltale twitches in the mouths and eyes of the workers. He shook his head. "No."

"You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

Eddie turned. "Gabe?"

The kid drew in a breath. "My father wanted each worker to focus on the responsibilities assigned to them. Nothing more."

"He did, that's true," Eddie said. "The thing is, he never considered either of you to be ordinary workers."

Gabe looked right at their boss. "I'll have to take your word for it, Eddie."

"I guess you will."

The kid adjusted the bag beneath his head, then folded his hands on his chest. He looked up at the night sky. "I don't know whether my father's methods were effective or not. But I think I am slowly coming to understand why he believed in them."

Eddie leaned forward, clearly intrigued. "And why is that?"

"Because of the nature of this industry, and other industries like it."

"And what is the nature of this industry and others like it?" (Did Miguel detect just the slightest discomfort in Eddie's expression?)

The kid hesitated. Something about the look on his face told Miguel he already knew what he wanted to say. He just wasn't sure if the time was right. "It seems to me that a person's level of involvement shares a direct relationship with the severity of moral reckoning they must engage in."

Damn. The kid was on fire.

"Interesting," Eddie said in a flat voice.

Silence followed. The fire flickered, weaker than before. Eddie added a few pieces of wood. Each of them them plunged, once again, into the depths of the flames.

Awhile later, Miguel looked over at the kid. His eyes were closed, lashes fluttering. His small chest rose and fell rhythmically beneath the thin, pale fabric of his shirt.

"He's something, isn't he?"

"He is," said Miguel.

"Did it ever cross your mind, before he told you?"

His boss was looking at him in a way that begged him to say yes. "I had no idea," he confessed. "I wish I could say it did."

"They're different enough that anyone could miss it. And then a moment comes along, out of fucking nowhere, where I could swear I'm talking to—" Eddie stopped, letting the words hang in the night air. No one spoke as the heat from the fire dispatched them upward and they dissipated into the atmosphere.

"I did dream about him once," said Miguel, "before I found out. It felt so important that he was there, in my dream, but I didn't know why. Anyway, I never have the same dream twice, and he hasn't shown up in any of the others."

Eddie scooted himself over the hard ground, closer to the fire. "I can't remember the last time I dreamt about something new. Feels like I've got one for each day of the week, and they just keep replaying over and over."

"So you only have recurring dreams?"

He turned his gaze out toward the vast darkness. "Guess so."

"Like what?"

Eddie took a moment to collect his thoughts. "There's this one where I'm at my own funeral. It's the whole cliché from the movies where I'm looking down at everybody from above, watching my body being lowered into the ground. Sometimes it's a casket, but other times I'm lying there, out in the open on some sort of gurney, dressed in a suit. I can see everyone's faces. My wife—she's crying...and the kids..." Eddie paused. "So that song I was telling you about, Old Folks At Home by the Robert Shaw Chorale, it starts playing—I've told my wife that's the song I would want played if I'm the first one to check out. But in the dream, it's live, and the singers are all standing on risers just off to the side. And here's the craziest part: I start looking at them, one face to the next, and every single one of them is someone I was with on the boat. Every single one. Old next to young...even some who didn't make it in the end."

"What boat?" Miguel asked.

Gabe's voice issued from the darkness. "The boat."

Miguel looked over. He could have sworn the kid had fast asleep. But now Gabe's eyes stared, unwavering, at their boss.

"The boat I got on to leave Vietnam."

Of course. Miguel should have realized.

"Anyway, I usually wake up at that point, once I start seeing all those faces. But it's not like waking up from a nightmare. Instead I am calm. The room feels extra quiet and still. And then I go back to sleep."