Chapter 33 #2
Rudy was right. The donors weren’t ordinary men; they were titans.
Hec hadn’t worked up the courage to say more than a How do you do, sir?
when he’d been ushered into the Harkness mansion on the Upper East Side.
Ned Harkness was a Wolf’s Head man, just like Hec, but that was the only thing they had in common.
Later, after he’d agreed to the mad scheme Harkness had outlined, after he’d understood the special role he was to play, he had been introduced to the other donors and the other pilgrims. All of it had seemed like a lark until now.
“It’s a quest,” Kittscher continued. “Don’t pretend you haven’t been dreaming of just such a thing since your mother was pinning up your didies.”
Nick lit his cigarette and took a long drag. “I’m not going to welch. I’ll make the trip the way I said I would. We all will.”
That’s the way. What Hec wouldn’t give for a little of that surety, but he could play the part as well as anyone else.
“Think of what’s waiting for us,” Kittscher said. “Knowledge. Revelation in its truest sense. The answer to all that is unknown.”
Again Reiter released a high, nervous laugh. “But what else is waiting for us?”
“Treasure!” boomed Hec, then realized he’d blundered. Rudy wasn’t rich like the others, but it never seemed to vex him the way it troubled Hec.
Kittscher lifted a shoulder. “If there’s gold to be had, then yes, I’ll take it. Some of us must seek our fortunes if we haven’t had them handed to us.”
Reiter squirmed and Alex remembered what Darlington had said, that he was wealthy, an American aristocrat. But Kittscher had needed to scrape his way into Yale and the societies.
“I’ll fill my pockets,” crowed Hector, better to push on. “Stuff your pockets too and carry you out of hell like a sack of potatoes.”
“See that?” Kittscher said. “Hec is ready. He fears neither demon nor man!”
“The devil hasn’t met my one-two,” Hector said, and punched the air with a swift combination.
“You talk like this is all going to be a good time,” said Nick. “I wonder if you’ll be so merry on Tuesday night.”
At that a hush fell over the room. Even Kittscher seemed uneasy. He looked down at his drink and gave the ice a shake. “They’re criminals. Vagrants. Nobody really.”
“It does seem…” Hec hesitated. “Yellow to do it that way. With poison.” The thought came clear in Alex’s head: You do this and the shine will go out of you. Ma will know. She’ll look at you sitting at her table and she’ll know you’re not her boy anymore.
“You want to pick up a knife, Hec?” Kittscher demanded. “You want to watch the lights dim?”
Nick stubbed out his cigarette. “Hec is right. We all know it. Stop pretending this won’t sit heavy.”
“It will,” admitted Kittscher. “Sacrifice always does. But these poor suckers will go easier than they’ve had it in life. They’re not the type of men to be missed.”
You don’t know that. They have mothers and fathers too.
Hec took a sip of his drink, seeking that sense of adventure and approval he’d had just moments before.
He thought of his father with his gaunt face, his unshaven cheeks.
Hec had been five when he’d come home from the Great War.
When he had left, Hec had been too young to understand and now here was a stranger in their house, tall and forbidding.
He didn’t stay tall. His father had started to stoop and shuffle, as if the weight of what he’d done on the other side of the ocean grew heavier with each day.
Every one of Hec’s endeavors, the late nights of studying, his feats on the football field, all of it had been to put distance between himself and the shambling shadow that was supposed to be his father.
He’s a hero, he tried to remind himself. But that didn’t shake loose the shame.
“Is it … necessary?” Hec asked. He didn’t want to, but he owed his father that.
Because the truth was that his father and maybe he had more in common with the men who slept in the entry to Union Station and huddled around fires in the trainyard than with Ned Harkness or the men in this room. “Is there another way to—”
“No,” Kittscher said harshly. He’d lost his easy, bored air. “You’re our soldier, but we’re all going into battle. Just like our fathers did.”
Hec struggled not to cringe. It was as if Rudy really had read his mind and he didn’t like it.
“We don’t have a Kaiser to fight,” Kittscher went on. “We only have this moment. If we aren’t willing to do the dirty work, then what are we? Cowards. Scarpers. Draft dodgers.”
Deserters. The lowest of the low.
“Big talk,” said Nick. “Pretty sure your pop was on the other side of the trenches, wasn’t he?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Kittscher asked. “You fight when you’re called to fight. If your grand old sire had been living in Mittenwald instead of New Haven, he would have been wearing German colors too.”
Hec hated this. He didn’t want to talk about the war or the way men came back from it. “We’re not our fathers.”
Kittscher sat up straighter and pointed at Hec. “That’s just right. We need to be a new kind of man. This is a different battle in a different war, but we’re fighting for our futures all the same. And if we manage it, if we do this terrible, difficult thing, we won’t just be heroes.”
“We’ll be legends,” whispered Reiter.
Kittscher grinned. “Every one of us.” He cast a rueful glance at Nick. “It won’t be easy. It won’t be pretty. But the men who die on Tuesday will be giving their lives to something bigger than all of us.”
And didn’t that mean something? Hec had heard his father crying one night.
I just want to be useful again, he’d said to Hec’s mother.
That’s all. Hec had promised himself he would be better than the man weeping in that room.
Stronger. Faster. He would be of use. He would matter.
Harkness and the other donors were giving him that chance. He wasn’t going to waste it.
At last Nick said, “I told you I wouldn’t welch. We said we’d do the job and we’ll do it.” Relief seemed to gust through the room. They could all be on the same side again.
“What happens after?” Reiter asked.
“Us sensible fellows will claim our guardians from the crucible. It’s not too late to join.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Reiter said. He was tracing his finger over the blueprints and Alex saw a gleam of blue fire follow the movements of his hand. “After we return. If we actually manage to…”
Hec didn’t want to think too much on that either.
No, he did not. He didn’t want to even brush up against the truth that some cowardly part of him hoped they would fail.
Harkness picked me to be the soldier. A man like that wouldn’t have made such a choice if he hadn’t seen something special in Hec, and that counted for something.
“If we bag our quarry?” Kittscher lifted his glass.
“If we manage this miracle, then we’ll have changed Yale and changed the world.
” High above, the Harkness bells began to chime.
“We’re the lucky ones. Remember that. We will be the ones to take the donors’ dream and make good on it.
It will be our names writ large in the history books. ”
The bells were growing louder now and with each toll, a new wave of blue fire crested into the room, a rising tide. Alex knew what was happening, but she didn’t know how to stop it. They needed to stay, to get more answers, but she was watching the past slide away.
“For God,” said Lionel Reiter, raising his glass in reply.
Nick sighed and grudgingly said, “For country.”
Hec lifted his own glass. He was the soldier and he would become a hero, a titan in his own right. No matter what it took. His voice faded into a wash of blue flame as he cried, “And for Yale!”