watched with relief as the two professors left the pub. “David, I’m going to tell you something that most people don’t know, and we’ve never discussed. Until one month ago, poison gas was the most humane weapon in the world.”
“What?”
“It’s the truth. Despite the agony of burns and the horror of chemical weapons, ninety-four 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