The Agony of Lt. Macaluso:
A Short Story and Meditation
Copyright by Domer/Gipper
Across the darkened expanse of their conjugal bed, he reached and touched her back. The smooth, inviting skin reassured him.
He had lain sleepless and tormented, as he often did. Disquiet was his lot in life. His wife Veronica was his gift from heaven of the humanity he had lost. She was his chance at life in the aftermath.
The story unfolded virtually every night as it did now. The waking remembrances were harrowing; the nightmares of sleep were worse. He had recalled those terrible dreams this night, while lying awake. He was being chased by a crowd of townspeople. Their derisive hoots and shouts brought a shiver to his body. He could not face them. He ran, stumbling and scratching along. They did not overtake him; rather, they herded him with flanking movements. He came to a pit. He recoiled, sensing that the end was near. He turned to the crowd, lit by torches in the early night, and looked for solace. He found nothing but scorn. There was no chance of forgiveness. He cried out, “What can I do? How can I make up for it? Anything ….†His voice trailed off. His thoughts became clear. The fog of pursuit gave way to the recognition that comes with face-to-face confrontation. He understood their anger, indeed their hatred. He turned and looked in the pit, a pool of warm tar.
The tar was not bubbling but steaming slightly. He turned and looked at the crowd again. Each and every one of them had turned, giving him their backs. He could not bear it. He slumped and slid down the bank, into the pit. Embraced in the blackness, head above the pool, he found his skin crawling at the molasses touch of the tar. He yearned for human contact, some signal of human or divine concern. There was none. He cried out again, “Is it so final? Must I sacrifice myself and my soul?â€
The rim of the pit became filled with eyes refracting torchlight. The figures looked skeletal. The gazes, he could only imagine, were as harsh the world could offer. He dipped under the surface, breathing as deeply as he could to clog his lungs. He did not die. He became suspended in the infernal muck. Somehow through the tormenting medium, he seemed to see a bright light. It was a bonfire. There was a party, celebrating his descent into the pit. Whatever wild hope he may have harbored now was gone. He knew there was no escape from that lodging. The light eventually went out; the sounds died out. He was suspended in tar on the verge of death for all eternity.
This recurrent dream passed through his mind in seconds. He reached to Veronica, still sleeping, for the comfort of loving contact. It was enough of an antidote to get him away from memories of the nightmarish black hole, but not enough to ward off the waking-time recriminations. These were his constant companions. He could not escape them; they always came back. His wife was the surest and most effective remedy for this affliction, but not always. Her tender ministrations had to yield to the demands of her life beyond Macaluso, like sleeping. So much of the time he was left with an obsessive fascination for his own evilness, a malady that resisted treatment. The therapist said that he seemed, mostly, to be on a “self-destruct.†He concurred, of course, because he hated himself in crucial ways.
So there he was, freed of a nightmare memory so he could dutifully ponder his dark obsession: combing through the details of the “event,†as he called it, to see where he had gone wrong and whether there was any comfort in that knowledge. There never was.
When he graduated from West Point with honors, Macaluso was only a somewhat typical soldier. Tough and athletic, he also had a decidedly gentle side, his “sweet side,†as his comrades called it. Pursuant to this nature, he would rumble through situations looking for a happy resolution. This was admirable, his friends thought, but a tad dysfunctional for a combat-officer-to-be, who would be expected to make snap judgments where lives were in the balance, and to continue the mission in the face of loss and mistake. Much more often than not, his classmates knew, service as a soldier resulted in the better of two evils prevailing: taking the hill, for example, but losing three men. Yet, Macaluso, more a free than disciplined thinker, would find his mind roaming to the need to attack at all. He would not hesitate to follow an order, of course, but the ensuing carnage would lead him to analyze the situation over and over again to see if he could save his hypothetical three men. He stopped his ruminations there. But, yes, left to his own instincts, he would think of enemy soldiers lost, the compulsions under which they fought, the families they left behind, the irresponsible politicians who had brought us to this pass.
Cadet Knowles once approached his roommate Macaluso with a problem from Knowles’s “Morals and the Military†class. Under examination was President Harry S Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, twice. It was just before evening mess. Macaluso had just returned from football practice, somewhat bruised as a running back in a live scrimmage, and Knowles was fresh from a run-through of Friday night’s upcoming debate with Penn.
Knowles said, “Without reducing this to absolute numbers, Frank, do you think Truman’s decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was moral? Further, in light of either answer, was it a sound political and military act?â€
Macaluso answered, “I can’t divorce morality from efficacy. For a military act to be efficacious, it must also be moral. The rub lies in the definition of morality.â€
“Well, is it ever moral to kill children, for example?†Knowles said. “Almost every bombing campaign in an urban area claims minors. Is that moral, or simply an unavoidable consequence of legitimately pursuing the aims of a just war, assuming it is, moral for that reason or simply falling into some ‘neutral’ category?â€
Macaluso smiled at his friend. “We’d better go to mess. After all, when the time comes to act – or to go to dinner – we act!â€
They went off in much lighter conversation about the young woman from Vassar that Macaluso had recently met. Yet, later that night as they lay in their room, Macaluso returned to the “debate,†which he cast as a grand intellectual exercise, yet costing him sleep, but had more the tone of an emotional journey. He did fall asleep fairly quickly, however.
Macaluso stared over at Veronica in the breaking light. West Point, despite the joys of her arms, was a happier time, a more innocent time. When they met at that cotillion, he in his dress uniform, she in her beautiful gown, each was equally smitten. Her tall, slender but full figure fit perfectly into her dress that hung and clung like silk on Venus. Her dark hair was atop her head, and her open, thoughtful face was as happy as a pup at playtime. Her eyes shone, washed by her ample lashes, her eyebrows gave hope like the curve on a carousel. She was lovely, dazzling, and Macaluso had to meet her.
For his part, the cadet stood proud and strong in his uniform. His chiseled, athletic body moved gracefully, almost like a panther, and his face, handsome but intense, burst forth in a broad smile at the sight of this wondrous maiden. They danced. He was good, she was better, but they clicked immediately in patterns and steps reminiscent of canopies in the wind.
