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October 4th

“What can I do to make you happy?”

My fingers moved across the black and white keys, making melodies among the calamity of war. The absence on my face and in the notes was clear, but I had no energy or desire to hide it. Despite my lack of enthusiasm, the twenty or so soldiers in the room applauded as I finished the song.

As the last note faded, I let my hands fall into my lap and stared at them, wishing I could go to bed. I was exhausted by the daily routine at the huge house-turned-lookout.

Someone approached, and I looked up into Commander Adaire’s hazel eyes. I had learned not to fear him – nothing he could do could trump the things he had already done, and he never appeared to get angry with me. “Would you come with me, Sam?” he said, and the men behind him booed.

I picked up the cane leaning against the piano and used it to help myself up. Adaire had shot me in the ankle a few days before, and I could only walk with the cane. Slowly, we left the room and headed for the bedroom we shared, which was also Adaire’s office.

Inside the room, I sat on the sofa I had spent the past few nights on. Adaire closed the door and sat behind his desk, putting his feet up. “Will you talk to me?” he said.

“Why would I want to talk to you?” I replied. “You’ll probably shoot me again if I say the wrong thing.”

He patted his sides. “I’m not armed right now.”

“There’s a gun in the top drawer,” I reminded him.

Sighing, he stood and sat beside me on the sofa. “Will you talk to me now?”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.” I shook my head. “You don’t deserve to hear it anyway.”

A few minutes passed in silence, and I knew that if Adaire was anyone else, he would’ve hit me after my comment. Instead, he stared at me – I felt his eyes on the side of my face. “What can I do to make you happy?”

“Nothing,” I said bitterly. “You’ve already done enough.”

“Please, Sam.” He reached out to touch my arm, but took his hand back.

I met his eyes. “Take me back a week so I never go into that bar again. Then I wouldn’t be here, and fifty people would be alive right now.”

“Fifty would have died somewhere else,” Adaire pointed out.

“I don’t care.” I stood and looked down at him, trying to keep my weight off my injured leg. “They would be someone else’s fifty – not mine. I played in that bar six nights a week for seven years. I knew every one of those people you shot. Bring them back, and I’ll be happy. Bring my niece back from wherever you shipped her off to, and I’ll be happy. Until then, just fuck off and leave me alone.”

Adaire watched me sympathetically for another moment, then smiled. “You’re spunky.” He stood up and motioned to the sofa. “Sit down, please. I don’t need you hurting your other foot.”

I sat. “I didn’t hurt the first one.”

His smiled widened as his eyes dropped to my foot and his hand went to his side as if he were touching his weapon. His hands seemed to do that often, seemed to move more than they had to in order to to prove a point or in the ghosts of memories such as the one of his weapon.

Then his eyes snapped back to mine and he shook his finger at me as if he were thinking of something else to do to me. “I might have something for you.” He crossed the rustic carpet to the bookcase behind his desk. “When I don’t feel like talking about stuff – which is often, mind you – I find that it’s easier to write it down. I don’t know who used to live here, but they have about a dozen blank journals. You should take one.” With a leather-bound book in his hand, he returned to the sofa and handed it to me.

“It won’t do any good – you’ll read it no matter what I put in it.” The book felt light in my hands despite the hundred or so blank pages in it. There were gold embellishments on the cover, a frame of leaves and ivy around a blank line.

“Tomorrow,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “I’ll have my men clear out one of the rooms for you. Injured the way you are, you won’t be going anywhere fast.”

I glared sideways at him. “No thanks to you.”

“Let me get you a pencil.” Adaire went to his desk again and returned a second later with a sharpened pencil. “You can write whatever you want. No one will ever see it.”

“You know what I want?” I clasped the book in my hands. “To sleep. Just fall asleep and not wake up. I’m so exhausted, I could probably do it. But no, you’ll have me up at six tomorrow, following your every whim, and I’ll be in the same place I am now.”

Adaire stood and folded his arms across his chest, sighing as if I were an annoying child. “Goodnight, Samuel,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.” With that, he walked out of the room, closing the door behind himself.

I waited a moment, then opened the journal in my hands and dated the page before writing, Somebody save me. The words still fresh, I closed the book and slid the pencil in the space beneath the spine. Then I slid the book beneath my pillow and lay back on the sofa.