Charlie Johnson in the Flames Read Online Free PDF Page A

her a sense that the world would always be steady under their feet, until the Sunday morning when Mika found him by the work-bench, every spanner, wrench and screwdriver still in its place on the wall, lying on the garage floor, dead of a heart attack at sixty-three. If Charlie thought about it now, Frank’s passing was the beginning of the bad period, for Mika had nestled like a bird in Frank’s arms for forty years. When he was no longer there, she soon ceased to be there either, which was why their son, Charles Johnson, who had gone to war like his father and trusted to his strength as much as she had, sat in Etta’s office and found himself swallowing his tears.
    You could explain their being in the hotel together, he thought, by this history of confession, except that you wouldn’t want to exaggerate. Apart from that one time, talking about the death of both of his parents, there hadn’t been all that much confessing.
    There was a lot she did not know, like, for example, why he had called her, and not his wife, when the Navy hospital had discharged him. He didn’t either. So that made two of them. They were there in the hotel, waiting until the reason became obvious to both of them, and he would either return to his life or blow it up.
    â€˜You are in the rootcellar, Charlie,’ she said.
    The squad didn’t come through the door, not then anyway. The half-track moved on slowly with its treads making a clinking sound like hot coals slipping down in a grate. Nobody moved, not in the cellar, not in the house above. It was like that for hours. They did nothing but sit there, once moving over to the pile of onions to piss, which left them stuck with the smell of their urine and the onions mixing together in the dirt.
    A man could die of restlessness. If you believed you had to take charge of all the waiting – that was the way to get yourself wasted. That day he learned from Jacek how to wait: to go into a special Polish Catholic zone of attentive motionlessness, waiting for the sun to make its transit of the dirty window, watching the blades of grass flame as the sun went through them.
    But the people in the house went out. From the cellar window, Charlie couldn’t see more than an old man and the woman, who must have been his daughter, working in the vegetable patch. The patrol came by twice. If the old man and the woman were hiding the presence of the strangers in their rootcellar, they were doing a terrific job. If they were about to betray them, they were also doing a terrific job. Charlie had no idea what was going to happen.
    The light was fading, and the cover of a possible escape was coming up rapidly when Benny flicked on the radio and whispered his call sign. Jacek leaned his head against the cellar wall and closed his eyes. ‘Idiot,’ he whispered. Exactly. As if the patrols weren’t monitoring every band. Then there was a scratchy reply, low but distinct. So now they had to move, because the patrols would be back, zeroing in on where Benny’s signal came from.
    Benny went first, beckoning them up from the cellar and giving them the run sign, and they hurtled down the short passage to the light, clearing the village track and blundering into the trees the other side. When they reached the woods, Charlie turned and looked back: there were eyes watching him from the window of the house.
    â€˜We shouldn’t have left them.’
    â€˜It happened too fast,’ she said.
    She was not there to pronounce absolution. But then it occurred to him it wasn’t she who was interested in absolution. It was him.
    Benny hadn’t been that wrong, just five hundred yards wrong, and they found the rebel command post on the first ridge among the pines, within sight of the house. Except that ‘command post’ was ridiculous for just a dugout so well hidden that it might have been a trap for animals. There were three of them, village boys, absurdly young and