“I do say so. Now I would still like to know where those debt papers are. You got any ideas?”
“Not a one,” lied Archer because it just seemed the smart thing to do right now.
They stopped on the way back at a roadside store and got some cold cider and a bag of peanuts still in their shells.
They sat in the Nash’s front seat, which was so big it seemed capable of holding Archer’s old platoon in its entirety. They ate and drank their fill while an occasional truck or car passed by on the road. They just tossed the shells out the windows. Archer watched as a man on a mule trotted by with a burlap sack over his shoulder.
“What was the war like, Archer?”
He glanced over to see her sweeping peanut skins off the lap of her mourning dress.
“What do you think war’s supposed to be like?”
“I’ve never been to war. It’s why I’m asking. You like your questions and so do I.”
“It wasn’t a lot of fun.”
“Were you wounded?”
He finished his cold cider and laid the empty bottle on the floorboard. “I was.”
“I saw a scar on your back and another one on your leg when we were in bed. Why didn’t they send you home?”
“Because I could still fight.”
“You ever kill anyone?”
“That was sort of the point of me being over there.”
“How’d you do it?”
“What sort of question is that?”
“I’m just trying to understand you.”
“Why’s that?”
“I find you interesting.”
“Shouldn’t you be thinking about the dearly departed Hank Pittleman?”
“I already told you, I’m sorry he’s dead, but it’s not like I loved the man.”
“Do you have to give the house and car back now?”
“It’s up to Marjorie. Which means I won’t be able to keep them. But back to the killing.”
“You won’t let it go, will you?”
“Well?”
“Okay, I shot a bunch of Germans and Italians. Then I killed some with my grenades, and some with my bayonet when it came down to man-to-man slogging it out. Slit one’s throat with my knife. Killed one man with my bare hands when we both ran out of bullets. Broke his neck the way I’d been taught.”
“My God, Archer. That must’ve done something to you.”
“How do you mean?”
“You can’t kill all those people and not be affected by it.”
“It’s what I was trained to do.”
“Didn’t you feel anything?”
“Yeah, I felt damn lucky I was alive, and they weren’t.”
She put the Nash in gear. “Well, I don’t see how it couldn’t have affected you.”
“I don’t think about it much. Seems to work okay.”
“Yeah, well, one day that may not work anymore.”
“How do you know about things like that?”
“I told you I studied psychology in college, Archer. After the First World War, men came back with shellshock, or so they termed it. The human brain was not designed for war. It changes you. You weren’t a killer before you went to war, were you?”
“Never killed anything before I went across the Atlantic. Man or beast.”
“Wait a minute, you never hunted, even?”
“Not much to hunt where I’m from.”
“But then you became a killer in the war.”
“Well, I’m not in the war anymore. And I’m no killer.”
She gave him a worried look and steered the Nash onto the road back to Poca City.
Chapter 16
AFTER JACKIE DROPPED HIM OFF, Archer walked down the hall of the Derby Hotel. As he passed by Number 615, a man in his forties stepped out dressed in a wrinkled dark blue three-piece pinstriped suit, worn black leather shoes, and a solid red tie that could have done with some laundering. He was about five-ten and 160 pounds, and looked lean and wiry and tough, with a face that reminded Archer of a boxer he had once seen in the ring during an impromptu match he’d attended during the war when they’d had a brief respite from fighting. A jutting chin of granite, a nose knocked off center, two hardened lumps for cheeks, and flattened, cauliflower ears. His hair was thick, unkempt, and graying. Over his mouth was a ribbon of dark mustache. He wore a black homburg with a gray band.
Most remarkably for Archer, his eyes were twin darts of crystallized coal, or close to it. They were the calmest pair of eyes Archer had ever seen.
Those eyes now looked at Archer with interest.
“You staying here on this floor, son?” the man said.
“Who’s asking?”
The man opened his coat, revealing a silver pointy badge on his vest. “State