Echo House by Ward Just Page A

certain that he wanted to know what it was. Yet he leaned closer, waiting. His father had turned gray and was rubbing his back again, staring bleakly at the glass of whiskey.
    "You'll hear stories," Axel said sharply.
    "What kind of stories?"
    "Stories!" he said loudly, speaking to the room. "About me, what the war did." Axel scratched his cheek and sighed. There were limits to how much you told a boy who was barely out of short pants, even a boy with an even temper and an inquiring intelligence and good values and the rest. He had already said too much at great length and Alec hadn't understood half of it, and he'd never know which half. When he was telling the story, he had forgotten where he was and whom he was talking to and why. God, Sylvia was a bitch.
    Alec nodded, blinking.
    "That I was so badly hurt that your mother and I were unable to have a normal life together," he said at last, looking sternly at his son, who turned away in embarrassment and confusion. "Don't believe the stories." And they were false, at least in the commonly retailed version that had him kin to Jake Barnes. It was only that his body had been so badly torn, long lumps of scar tissue, bits of iron under the skin, the flesh raw and discolored. He was frightful to look at, his body repulsive; and things were no better with the lights off.
    "I haven't heard any stories," the boy said.
    And perhaps that was the truth; they were a closed community and looked after one another. There were the normal rivalries and disagreements because there were only so many nests at the top of the tree. But they were a closed circle. When there was menace from the outside, they closed ranks in a phalanx of denials or evasions; and if someone had made a public error of judgment, he was allowed a plea of nolo contendere, an acknowledgment that whatever the mistake, the situation was in hand and the error, if that was what it was, was inadvertent and would not be repeated. If there was an event that related to work in the war, that was off limits absolutely.
Omertà
about war-related events, injuries or indiscretions; that was the rule, the only exception being cowardice.
    Everyone had a loyalty to the work of the nation, and the personal side of things was only that—personal and of no relevance or consequence unless it interfered with good judgment, as it sometimes did. The pressure of public service was tremendous, and it took good, close friends to identify the tiny cracks that became fissures that turned into great fault lines that could be clearly seen by enemies who were waiting to exploit any sign of weakness or disarray. You discussed the personal lives of friends only with other friends and never, ever with outsiders, the better to further the work of the nation. It was essential that confidence be maintained, that steady hands be on the wheel. Everyone needed elbow room, and too much scrutiny was worse than none at all.
    "She said you hit her," the boy said softly.
    "Never," his father said quickly. "She said that? When did she say that?"
    The boy nodded miserably. "Before she left."
    "What did she say exactly?"
    The boy shrugged and turned away.
    "She'll say anything," Axel said.
    "That was what she
said,
" the boy insisted.
    "Did you believe her?"
    "No, sir," the boy said.
    "Did she say this to anyone else?"
    "I guess it was just me," Alec said, his voice almost inaudible. Then, "I'm sure she wouldn't have told."
    Axel nodded. He believed that his wife meant to destroy him, in her terms a kind of poetic justice, a strophe for Axel. But he knew equally that she would not succeed. Sylvia was not a subtle woman and would not know how to go about a campaign of character assassination, a plot that required Florentine patience and skill. Not that she wouldn't try; if she had told Alec, she had told others, Billie Peralta certainly, probably the wretched and mischievous Mrs. Pfister as well. Sylvia understood the difference between public and private, what