percent of the men gassed in World War One were fit for duty again in nine weeks. Nine weeks, David. The mortality figure for poison gas is somewhere around two percent. Mortality from guns and shells is twenty-five percent—ten times higher. The painful fact is that our father was an exception.”
David’s confusion was evident in his bunched eyebrows. “What are you telling me, Mark?”
“I’m trying to explain that, until Sarin was invented, my aversion to gas warfare was based primarily on the paralyzing terror it held for soldiers, and the psychological aftermath of being wounded by gas. Figures don’t tell the whole truth, especially about human pain. But with Sarin, chemical warfare has entered an entirely new phase. We’re talking about a weapon that has four times the mortality rate of shot and shell. Sarin is one hundred percent lethal. It will kill every living thing it touches. I would rather carry a rifle at the front than be responsible for developing something that destructive.”
David’s whole posture conveyed the reluctance he felt to stray onto this territory. “Listen, I swore I’d never argue with you about this again. It’s the same argument I always had with Dad. The Sermon on the Mount versus machine guns. Gandhi versus Hitler. Passive resistance can’t work against Germany, Mark. The Nazis just don’t give a damn. You turn the other cheek, those bastards’ll slice it off for you. Hell, it was the Germans who gassed Dad in the first place!”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Yeah, yeah. Jeez, I don’t like where this conversation’s ended up.” The young pilot scratched his stubbled chin, deep in thought. “Okay … okay, just listen to me for a minute. Everybody back home calls you Mac, right? They always have.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just listen. Everybody calls me David, right? Or Dave, or Slick. Why do you think everybody calls you Mac?”
Mark shrugged. “I was the oldest.”
“Wrong. It was because you acted just like Dad did when he was a kid.”
Mark shifted in his seat. “Maybe.”
“Maybe, hell. You know I’m right. But what you don’t know, or don’t want to know, is that you still act just like him.”
Mark stiffened.
“Our father—the great physician—spent most of his life inside our house. Hiding.”
“He was blind, for God’s sake!”
“No, he wasn’t,” David said forcefully. “His eyes were damaged, but he could see when he wanted to.”
Mark looked away, but didn’t argue.
“God knows his face looked bad, but he didn’t have to hide it. When I was a kid I thought he did. But he didn’t. People could’ve gotten used to him. To the scars.”
Mark closed his eyes, but the image in his mind only grew clearer. He saw a broken man lying on a sofa, much of his face and neck mutilated by blistering poisons that had splashed over half his body and entered his lungs. As a young boy Mark had watched his mother press cotton pads against that man’s eyes, to soak up the tears that ran uncontrollably from the damaged membranes. She would retreat to the kitchen to weep softly when she was sure his father slept.
“Mom never got used to them,” he said quietly.
“You’re right,” said David. “But it wasn’t his face. It was the scars inside she couldn’t handle. Do you hear what I’m saying? Dad was a certified war hero. He could’ve walked tall anywhere in America. But he didn’t. And do you know why, Doctor McConnell? Because he brooded too goddamn much. Just like you. He tried to carry the weight of the fucking world on his shoulders. When I enlisted in the air corps, he threatened to disown me. And that was from his deathbed. But long before that, he’d made you so scared and disgusted with the idea of war that he charted your whole life for you.” David wiped his brow. “Look, I’m not telling you what to do. You’re the genius in this family.”
“Come on, David.”
“Goddamn it, drop the phony bullshit! I was eight years behind you in school, and all the teachers still called me by your name, okay? I’m a flyer, not a philosopher. But I can tell you this. When Ike’s invasion finally jumps off, and our guys hit those French beaches, it’s gonna be bad. Real bad. Guys younger than me are gonna be charging fortified machine-gun nests. Concrete bunkers. They’re gonna be dying like flies over there. Now you’re telling me they might have to face this Sarin stuff. If you’re the guy who can stop Hitler from using it, or invent a defense against it, or at least give us the ability to hit back just as hard … Well, you’d have to do a lot of talking to convince those guys it’s right to do nothing at all. They’d call you a traitor for that.”
Mark winced. “I know that. But what you don’t understand is that there is no defense. The clothing required to protect a man from Sarin is airtight, and it’s heavy. A soldier could fight in it for maybe an hour, two at the most. GIs won’t even wear their standard gas masks in combat now, just because of a little discomfort. They could never take a defended beach in full body suits.
“So what are you saying? We’re whipped, let’s lie down and wait until we’re all eating Wiener Schnitzel?”
“No. Look, if Sarin is a German gas, Hitler has yet to use it. Maybe he won’t. I’m saying I won’t be the man that makes Armageddon possible. Someone else can have that job.”
David blinked his eyes several times, trying to focus on his watch. “Look,” he said, “I think I’m going to drive back up to Deenethorpe tonight.”
Mark reached across the table and squeezed his brother’s arm. “Don’t do that, David. I should never have brought this up.”
“It’s not that. It’s just … I’m so tired of the whole goddamn thing. All the guys I knew that never came back from raids. I stopped making friends two months ago, Mac. It isn’t worth it.”
Mark saw then that the bourbon had finally taken effect.
“I think about you a lot, you know,” David said softly. “When I feel those bombs drop out of Shady Lady’s belly, when the flak’s hammering the walls, I think, at least my brother doesn’t have to see this. At least he’s gonna make it back home. He deserves it. Always trying to do the right thing, to be the good son, faithful to the wife. Now I find out you’re dealing with this stuff …” David looked down, as if trying to perceive something very small at the center of the table. “I try not to think about Dad too much. But you really are just like him. In the good ways too, I mean. Maybe you’re right. Maybe he was right, too. I just don’t want to think about it anymore tonight. And if I’m here, there’s no way not to think about it.”
“I understand.”
Mark tipped the bartender as they left the pub, an act that always brought a wry smile from a man unused to the custom. David carefully tucked his nearly-empty bourbon bottle inside his leather jacket, then paused on the corner of George Street. “You’ll do the right thing in the end,” he said. “You always do. But I don’t want to hear another word about any forward surgical unit. You’re a real asshole sometimes. You must be the only guy in this war trying to think of ways to get closer to the fighting instead of away from it.”
“Except
