With a Hammer for My Heart: A Novel

FROM GARLAND'S NOTEBOOK

FROM GARLAND'S NOTEBOOK: / / / could come back over the bridge now—aw, Hickcock blew the bridge, don't you remember? Last thing he did. Against the sky, everything splattered. Canaan said, "Goddamn! You can pulverize anything!" Said it before we saw Hickcock, his square hands. I would have sent him back. On the line too long. He'd eaten his peck of dirt, swilled his blood, and then some. Wasn't steady, like he had been. I could see. Them others could see, too, but they weren't looking. And I didn't have the badges to say who lives, who goes forward. If I'd of quit . . . What if I'd said, The hell with this; come on, Canaan, these bastards are going to get theirselves killed; if I'd of just started marching, me and Canaan, seceding from this war, buddy, not firing another round; you boys go on, just excuse us, we done enough murder, think we'll ease on home. And who would have stopped der Fiihrer then? Damned if I know. But nobody would have stopped Canaan. Maybe not Elias, either. Elias, I threw stones at when he was scared to climb down the tipple. Fool thing! If I'd of hit his hand, he could have let go and fallen. Maybe died. Maybe got a 4-F. Sack of potatoes, tub of guts. Like I could have picked 101 WITH A HAMMER FOR MY HEART Canaan up and run back with him. Back where? Who even knew where we were, splayed on the map by some pin? Round-top trains going by. Bosom of Abraham. So take the Promised Land and go home. Come on, Canaan, we'll hotfoot it; we'll swim on back to Kentucky. We'll discharge our own selves. On the charge of insanity. Everybody else's. Get you out of this pigsty, take you home, let Nora fatten you on soup beans, then ship you back to whoever you call Pa. I've got Lawanda, you know. She's breathing. Doesn't dream what the world can do. Wants to run smack into it. You can't tell a person about that bridge. That it's going to blow. That Hickcock set the charge deep in the mountain. That the war is everywhere. It's in her schoolbooks, in the water fountain—turn the handle and it flashes. All the bones that light up this ground. 102 ...