Cormier - Heroes

After the First Death

Beyond the Chocolate War

The Bumblebee Flies Anyway

The Chocolate War

Eight Plus One

Fade

Frenchtown Summer

Heroes

I Am the Cheese

In the Middle of the Night

The Rag and Bone Shop

Tenderness

Tunes for Bears to Dance To

We All Fall Down

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Text copyright 1998 by Robert Cormier

Cover illustration copyright by Eric Dinyer

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eISBN: 978-0-307-53081-3

RL: 5.7

v3.1

To George Nicholson and Craig Virden
With thanks

Show me a hero and I will
write you a tragedy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

M y name is Francis Joseph Cassavant and I have just returned to Frenchtown in Monument and the war is over and I have no face.

Oh, I have eyes because I can see and eardrums because I can hear but no ears to speak of, just bits of dangling flesh. But thats fine, like Dr. Abrams says, because its sight and hearing that count and I was not handsome to begin with. He was joking, of course. He was always trying to make me laugh.

If anything bothers me, its my nose. Or rather, the absence of my nose. My nostrils are like two small caves and they sometimes get blocked and I have to breathe through my mouth. This dries up my throat and makes it hard for me to swallow. I also become hoarse and cough a lot. My teeth are gone but my jaw is intact and my gums are firm, which makes it possible for me to wear dentures. In the past few weeks, my gums began to shrink, however, and the dentures have become loose and they click when I talk and slip around inside my mouth.

I have no eyebrows, but eyebrows are minor, really. I do have cheeks. Sort of. I mean, the skin that forms my cheeks was grafted from my thighs and has taken a long time to heal. My thighs sting when my pants rub against them. Dr. Abrams says that all my skin will heal in time and my cheeks will someday be as smooth as a babys arse. Thats the way he pronounced it: arse. In the meantime, he said, dont expect anybody to select you for a dance when its Girls Choice at the canteen.

Dont take him wrong, please.

He has a great sense of humor and has been trying to get me to develop one.

I have been trying to do just that.

But not having much success.

I wear a scarf that covers the lower part of my face. The scarf is white and silk like the aviators wore in their airplanes during the First World War over the battlefields and trenches of Europe. I like to think that it flows behind me in the wind when I walk but I guess it doesnt.

Theres a Red Sox cap on my head and I tilt the cap forward so that the visor keeps the upper part of my face in shadow. I walk with my head down as if I have lost money on the sidewalk and am looking for it.

I keep a bandage on the space where my nose used to be. The bandage reaches the back of my head and is kept in place with a safety pin.

There are problems, of course.

My nose, or I should say my caves, run a lot. I dont know why this should happen and even the doctors cant figure it out but its like I have a cold that never goes away. The bandage gets wet and I have to change it often and its hard closing the safety pin at the back of my head.

I am wearing my old army fatigue jacket.

So, I am well covered up, face and body, although I dont know what I am going to do when summer comes and the weather gets hot. Right now, its March, cold and rainy, and I will worry about summer when it gets here and if I am still around.

Anyway, this gives you an idea of what I look like when I walk down the street. People glance at me in surprise and look away quickly or cross the street when they see me coming.

I dont blame them.

I have plenty of money.

I received all this back pay when I was discharged from Fort Delta. The back pay accumulated during the time I spent in battle in France, and then in the hospitals, first in France, then in England.

My money is in cash. Hundred-dollar bills and twenties and tens. The smaller bills I keep in my wallet but the rest of the money is stashed in my duffel bag, which is always with me, slung over my shoulder. I am like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, my face like a gargoyle and the duffel bag like a lump on my back.

I am staying in the attic tenement in Mrs. Belanders three-decker on Fourth Street. She finally answered the door after I had been knocking for a while, and regarded me with suspicion, not recognizing me. This was the proof that the scarf and the bandage were working in two ways: not only to hide the ugliness of what used to be my face but to hide my identity.

As her small black eyes inspected me from head to toe, I said: Hello, Mrs. Belander. A further test.

She didnt respond to my greeting and I realized that she didnt recognize my voice, either. My larynx, which Dr. Abrams called my organ of voice, had also been damaged by the grenade and although I can speak, my voice is much lower now and hoarse, as if I have a permanent sore throat.

I remembered what Enrico Rucelli in the last hospital had said about how money talks and I began to draw out my wallet when she said:

Veteran?

I nodded, and her face softened:

Poor boy.

I followed her up the four flights of stairs, the blue veins in her legs bulging like worms beneath her skin.

The tenement is small, with low slanted ceilings. Two rooms, kitchen and bedroom. The bed, only a cot, really. But everything very neat, windows sparkling, the floor gleaming with wax, the black stove shining with polish.

I glanced out the kitchen window at the steeples of St. Judes Church. Craning my neck, I caught a glimpse, between the three-deckers of the neighborhood, of the slanted roof of the Wreck Center. I ought of Nicole Renard, realizing I had not thought of her for, oh, maybe two hours.

I turned to find Mrs. Belander with her hand out, pink palm turned upward.

In advance, she said.

She was always generous when I did her errands, and her tips paid for my ten-cent movie tickets at the Plymouth on Saturday afternoons. She baked me a cake for my thirteenth birthday. That was five years ago and it seems like a very long time. Anyway, I paid her a months rent and she wrote out a receipt on the kitchen table. The table was covered with a red-and-white-checkered oilcloth like the ones we had at home until the bad times arrived. My caves moistened and I groped for my handkerchief.