Major Jarlid
5.
 Arthur went through the same solitary, forlorn routine as every other day. He shut down his accounting program and turned off the computer. He put on his heavy, dark wool coat, gray felt Homburg, and paisley scarf. He picked up his black umbrella with the lacquered walnut handle, turned out the lights, and locked up his private fourth-floor office. The dark lumber and sagging bricks of his building had monkish smells—floor polish, dead candles, and endless tisking and head-shaking, where no child could find happiness, and no bright spirit wanted to tarry.
The hallway was cramped and musty, with bare brick walls visible by the light of a single sickly-weak, bare light bulb. Arthur peeked from an upper window and saw the long black limousine waiting by the curb. Its amber parking lights glowed under fresh snow, and exhaust came in a cloud from its tailpipe.
Arthur trudged down the narrow wooden stairs, past the third floor administrative offices, and down to the second floor bookkeeping department. The corridor here was a bit more modern, but still worn and plain with green linoleum floors and scratched aluminum doors. Arthur set alarms as he went. He owned the building, and it rustled familiarly around him. He strode through the marble-floored main lobby with its circle of dark mahogany teller cages. It was an old bank, and by day the tellers stood behind black iron bars topped with gilded scrollwork, as bank tellers should, so Arthur felt rather strongly. He resisted all entreaties to modernize, to expand, to make the staff more comfortable. Besides, all that cost money.
Outside, the snow had let up a bit. The wind had blown knee-deep drifts against the bank building. Now it whirled feather-like flakes about, which had landed on the drifts but not yet become part of them.
Arthur clutched his umbrella close with one elbow and hung on to his hat and scarf as he leaned into the wind.
A minute later, he was in the warmth of Jarlid’s limousine. He peeled off his scarf in the dry heat. The two men shook hands. Jarlid’s grip was still strong, but he looked jaundiced and emaciated. The once robust features were gaunt, the fiery eyes sunken and hollowed, the skin sallow and gray. Arthur didn’t express his shock, but Jarlid had become a rack of bones, wearing a plaid green shirt and baggy jeans.
Jarlid grinned, showing large yellow teeth edged with gray. “I don’t eat well these days. I’m afraid my stomach doesn’t tolerate much any more. I contracted something strange in the distant wars. I was forced me to retire, and to seek what little help and hope I might find to live another year or two.”
Arthur voiced concern as they prowled down streets blinded by snow whirling around street lamps. The occasional pedestrian disappeared here in a doorway, there into a car to go home for the holiday. Arthur had lost track of Jarlid, until an unexpected phone call a few days earlier. Jarlid had reintroduced himself after many years, and offered a fabulous clock. “In which war was it that you found this thing?”
“It was the Mesopotamian War.”
“Oh, which one of the many?” Arthur asked.
“One of the more recent ones.” Jarlid leaned forward and regarded Arthur with haunted eyes. “I was still in good health then, a vigorous man with a long future ahead. One night, I was driving from a town on the Tigris to a town on the Euphrates with a small infantry convoy. It was one of those moonlit nights when the desert seems to glow, and a chilly wind sweeps down from the north. We were attacked, and the two men I was riding with in an armored car tried to make a run across a field. A mine exploded, overturning the car, and the other two were killed. I managed to stagger to my feet. I fell repeatedly, which saved my hide. With gun in hand, I kept moving along. I could hear the enemy converging on the burning car behind me, and that drew their attention away while I crawled away through a muddy ditch. I continued on, running and staggering, until I fell down in a dead faint.
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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