Captain Alfreds Affair

Drey Alfred and his wife Lucy crossed their home's threshold with relief. Shoulders heavy with exhaustion, they slouched as they removed their coats. Lucy's thin, almost superfluous coat was selected because it was necessitated by genteel society and not by the frigid weather. All she had wrapped around her smooth plump shoulders was a modest shawl half covering her beautifully sequined blue dress whose weight billowed beneath her as her legs kicked her shoes off. Drey, in his officer's dress uniform complete with a greatcoat, labored out of his wool and pinched off Lucy's shawl as she walked to the den, hoping to find their accustomed babysitter. She was usually found there whenever they came home at two o'clock in the morning.

The TV's volume was less intrusive than the flashing blue glow of the kitchen appliance informercial that replaced original programming probably sometime after the teenager passed out on the couch. Lucy studied the screen, briefly taken in by the allure until she realized the chattel was far too specialized and would overcome any reasonably sized kitchen. And besides, what did she need time savers for? They had cooks who worried about that. She knelt in front of the sitter, gently nudging her arm until she awoke. The teenaged girl's eyes blinked hard, a single tear streaking down her chubby cheek. It was a long night and so she made sure to tip the young girl twice as much. Her eyes glowed excitedly at seeing such an amount.

Though the Alfred's were the only family she baby-sat for who reported her income to the Internal Revenue Service, their generosity made up for that three fold. After all, Lucy remembered being in High School once herself and always paid enough to delight them—but she was not about to bilk the IRS. She showed the neighborhood babysitter out and, careful not to step on her dress and fall up the stairs, she pulled the mid-thigh portion up to her waist and stepped to the second floor. She found Drey peeking into the dark room of their eldest daughter Maria. Though only 12 she had developed a furious snore that would have to be surgically corrected when she got a suitor. Lucy stood and watched as he stepped opposite and cracked open the bedroom door of their youngest daughter Laura.

"Mommy?" Lucy vaguely heard a soft voice ask from the other side of the door. Drey walked inside his youngest's bedroom, followed shortly by Lucy.

"Yeah, we're home. You should be in bed..." he whispered as he nervously examined the dark floor, careful not to step on her toys and dolls.

"I am in bed."

"I meant to say 'asleep', and you know it," he smiled at his baby daughter's clever back talk.

"But Daddy, you said you'd be back sooner," she said with a yawn that made her high delicate child's voice all the more incomprehensible.

"I know but we had to stay longer and, even if we didn't, it would still be past your bedtime," he reasoned with her. "Do you forgive us?" he asked as he kneeled to the side of her bed. The moon glinted in her moist eyes ready for tears of exhaustion but not of abandonment. Lucy looked on from he doorway and leaned her head against the doorjamb as Laura's adoring father kissed her small forehead.

"Yes..." she dozed.

They ascended the staircase to their third floor bedroom. With the lights on they swiftly stripped to beat their weariness that nearly made them collapse onto the floor. Lucy's dress was complicated and once it was off, her soft white skin and long hair ached with relief. As she walked to the bathroom and flicked on the light, Drey swore he could already recognize a low hanging paunch. Since she did not brush her teeth in preparation for any sex they were too tired for, she tickled the porcelain and exited the bathroom, giving the eager Drey a chance at the door. After passing her, he turned, catching her from behind. He wrapped his arm around her belly and embraced the nook of her neck with loving kiss.

"I honestly think you're showing more now than you did when you rode me this morning," he mused with his eyes half closed. She laughed to herself knowing full well that was impossible; she was barely three months pregnant. Earlier that morning Drey had raved and raved about her bulging belly as they made enough love to, as he claimed, "knock [her] up again." Taking it as a sign of manhood, something any good military officer appreciates, he relished her pregnancies as she became more docile and her skin and hair radiated. He loved seeing people's eyes look to her portly stomach, allowing the composed artillery officer to, however vicariously, experience exhibitionism. She patted his head that had long since lost most of its hair. Turning around in his embrace, she kissed him on his thin lips and they turned the last light out before hopping into bed and spooning like a pair of teenagers.

Drey was awakened by the gentle rocking of his youngest. "Daddy," she whispered, "there are some men downstairs who want to talk to you." Drey groaned at the interruption of sleep but thanked his pajamaed daughter and reminded her not to answer the door herself but to get Maria or himself first. This was more for appearances sake because their home was near an officer's camp and plenty safe. "I tried Maria but she was snoring so loud I couldn't!" she laughed quietly, conscientious of her blissfully sleeping mother. He climbed out of bed and put his robe on, binding it to his wiry frame as he descended the stairs.

"Go to bed sweetie, I'll talk with these men," he pointed to her room. Like all good little girls before they became teenagers, she nodded once but dragged her feet to her bedroom. As an officer it was not uncommon to be paid late night visits but whatever they needed to see him about must have been brand new as well as important. Anyone with enough pull to wake him at this hour would have been at the ball he left not two hours ago. But when he saw them, he knew these men were not the typical callers. Captain Reich, known to everyone as "Captain Henry," stood with his hat clutched and broad chest bearing the innumerable medals that thankfully distracted eyes from his jowls which spilled over his high tight collar. Next was Colonel Peter D. Clam, a competent officer in the Secretary of War's office. And next to him was—Drey had to shake his head and squint harder to be certain—the Secretary of War himself, August Mercier! With the exception of Captain Henry whom Drey rightfully outranked with seniority and class, his visitors were the cream of the crop in the army.

"What's wrong, sirs?" he asked with mounting concern. Captain Henry raised a questioning eyebrow as if wishing to note his implicit exclusion from the question.

"Why, IS something wrong, Captain Alfred?" he asked ambiguously. As a professional courtesy, Drey was not willing to remind Henry, amidst such distinguished officers at least, that they were in his home at four in the morning, so he held his tongue and waited for them to speak. "I have here," he said reaching for papers inside his thick coat, "a warrant to search your premises and place you, Drey F.S. Alfred, under arrest under charges for conspiring with the enemies of the United States." Henry handed the paper to Drey who quickly looked it over.

"This is a joke, right?" he looked up from the paper and laughed nervously.

"Spying is no joke, Captain Alfred," the Secretary of War replied. "Captain Henry will escort you and give you a few moments to gather some clothes. Leave your uniform, you won't be needing it until the trial."

"You're serious about this, aren't you?"

"Very."

Drey shrugged his shoulders and walked up to his bedroom with Henry behind him. His cool facade almost broke when he actually had to argue that Henry not enter the bedroom where his wife slept blissfully unaware. Closing the door behind him, he stepped cautiously to her side and stroked her soft skin to wake her.

"There's been a misunderstanding, I need you to get dressed. They're going to search the house and take me to the barracks." She nodded dreamily. Both knew these types of searches were common for officers like himself and in the back of their minds knew it would come eventually. But of course like all inevitable tragedies, it still came as a surprise. They dressed but decided not to wake the kids until the officers needed to look in those rooms too. In the street outside were a half dozen Military Police vehicles filled with officers awaiting orders to search for sensitive materials. Between Colonel Clam and Secretary Mercier, he was escorted to a running Roles Royce, probably the Secretary's private conveyance, and driven to the barracks at the nearby base. He covered a yawn, confident the matter would be settled in a few days time when they found he had nothing to hide.

Even as he sat in his cell he kept his faith. The so called evidence, at least from what he was told, was as accurate and specific as a horoscope in the daily paper at best, circumstantial at worst. They could just as easily apply to anybody, therefore applying to no one. The situation worsened when the President whom Drey had voted for) citing Jefferson as precedence, the first and only US president to do this, wrote a proclamation of guilt. Despite that his family lawyer, who voted for the other guy last election, agreed to take the case and competently dismantled the prosecution. A note, supposedly written by Drey, implicated him with spying through a foreign attaché. The prosecution supplied a hand writing analyst who confirmed it was Drey's but this was refuted by three more, two of which testified to the tribunal that the prosecution had approached them first but rejected their analysis. In defense of his profession, the prosecution's analyst claimed handwriting can be changed deliberately.

"So now you're saying my client changed his handwriting?"

"Correct."

"Earlier you said that, with some minor discrepancies, that it wholly matched," he went on with a superior smirk. "It sounds to me that your belief my client wrote the note is sending the prosecution's principle, that is to say, ONLY reputable evidence into the realm of second guessing. What is it? Did he, knowing there was risk of capture, change his handwriting enough to disguise it but not enough to look like someone else's or does it match? You can't have it both ways."

Lucy smiled to her adoring husband each time their lawyer struck a blow. The press, not privied to the minutes from military courts, could only speculate regarding what happened within the court room's oak walls. In the month he was in jail awaiting the tribunal, the nation had divided on his guilt or innocence. The newspapers that declared his guilt with total conviction, roughly 80 percent, were filled propaganda lifted straight from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Granted a few of such papers in his cell, Drey dismissed the talk as meaningless since he was only half Jewish and non-practicing at that. After just nine days of the actual proceedings, Drey and Lucy were confident of his acquittal and even made dinner plans.

"Guilty on all counts, life on the Isle of Hades," said the first judge. The north half of the courtroom, filled with military officers and politicians, thundered with elation and rose several feet as the old men stood and jumped like a 40 year olds. The south side meanwhile, filled with Drey and Lucy's relatives, sat hunched, their mouths aghast. A few murmurs emerged but André, Lucy's second cousin phrased it the loudest and the best.

"Were they at the same trial?" This sparked a powder keg and just as excitedly as the north side, but with malice to all, his supporters stood and protested to the judges in great shouts. Lucy ran to husband, tears streaming down her face, but the bailiffs restrained her. Drey merely sat, back perfectly straight, and eyes staring unblinkingly ahead even as the bailiffs lifted him and escorted him out. Lucy's horrible cries were but a distant echo amidst a revel of inarticulate others.

In the grassy common of Veterans' Square stood a parade of officers in dress blues under the warm afternoon sun. Their pants were pressed to a crease that could cut one's flesh better than the ceremonial swords in their belted holsters. Their coats, bearing their medals for bravery amidst three columns of gold buttons that would never be used unless the solders were disgraced and fell upon hard times, were cinched at their waists and resembled a plumed mini skirt. Weapons aimed to the sky, they fired shots to signify Drey's death before the eyes of his countrymen. An older officer, his mouth obscured by a bushy walrus mustache, walked up to Drey, also in dress blues, and withdrew the disgraced officer's sword. Grabbing opposite ends of the sword with each virginal white gloved hand, he smashed the broad end against his thigh, shattering it, and threw it upon the soft grass. Drey proudly kept a calm face and did not shed a single tear.

His treatment after this was horrendous—they stripped him naked and gave him a plain cotton shirt and sturdy hemp slacks, shackled him, and loaded him onto an airplane—and it was the exact treatment Drey hoped all traitors received. During the 22 hour flight, he racked his brain, reviewing every minute of the trial, searching for any missed evidence of treason.

His record in serving his nation was flawless. He saw combat at three of the United States' brush fire wars and, when not doing those, been a devoted desk officer often punching in six day weeks. He loved his country and had gone above and beyond the call of duty enough times to warrant every medal the US army had to offer save the Congressional Medal and, thankfully for him, the Purple Heart. The plane landed on a modest runway presumably in American Somoa, the closest significant naval base near Hades' Island. The air was humid and weighed upon his shamefully heavy shoulders. A car awaited them, took him to a speedboat, and after one hour ensconced in the sparkling blue water of the South Pacific, he saw the hunk of rock that was to be his home.

Hades' Island, known as the "Isle of Hades" according to its stationery, was a federal wall-less prison for those convicted of high treason. To keep prisoners from hiding, all trees were culled but one solitary palm every fifty feet in the cardinal directions, giving the island the appearance of a grid if flown over. The boat came to the narrow plank dock and officers lifted his weary bound body to a ramshackle hut whose stucco, ill suited for the climate, was rotting and chipping away onto the white sand beaches at the feet of a small spectacled officer awaiting them They plopped him onto an army issue cot and unchained him as the smallish man read the rules of the island. "1. Don't talk to or touch the guards. 2. Don't come to the guards' barracks. 3. Don't escape." The rest read like an itinerary for Summer Camp. Meal times, lights out, exercise, etc. This itinerary however would not change from day to day and included nothing about archery or arts and crafts. He laid on his side as the guard's exited and slammed the ill fitted and rotten wooden door behind them. His body curled into the fetal position, he finally lost his composure and cried, his tears soaking the dirty cot until he fell asleep.

For the first weeks of his stay, he rarely left his shack even for meals. They tasted like ash in his mouth anyhow, but he still needed food to survive and await the inevitable redemption. Occupying himself with the collection of 50 battered books they supplied, he started reading those great classics he had never quite gotten around to in the course of his officer's training and career. After a month, he took to small ventures into the culled forest and the small island's white sand. Like looking down a long corridor of trees, he could see to the other end of the island just three kilometers away. He discovered that, for as much as the island was played up in the media and how many people were supposedly sent there, it was astonishingly empty. The barracks, coated in chipped white paint, stood like a sentinel with binoculared guards atop the roof monitoring his every move. One, he noticed, looked to the opposite end of the island to another shack like his own. Rather than risk their vengeance, he did not walk to it.

Most of the time however it was far too sunny and hot to walk barefoot (he had no shoes) so he merely rested himself on the floor against the doorway as the Sun was above or behind his ramshackle. With the shutters and door wide open, the warm gentle wind circulated and cooled the sweaty beads from his brow as the steady splashes of the ocean tide seemed to rock him gently while he dozed or read. Often he would pace the planked floor. Daily he would write a letter to Lucy, professing his innocence and his faith in the American system that did not prosecute innocents.

On one cool day, he ventured to the center of the island, careful to keep a reasonable distance from himself and the barracks on the East coast. Hearing a rustling in the bush, he ran to investigate hoping to find the first sign of terran wild life in his months of residence. But instead of finding a quadruped, he found a kneeling woman on the ground collecting red berries from a small bush. Startled by his footsteps, she rose to her feet and turned to face him, her long skirt twirling to catch up. She was well tanned and had the accustomed paunch and love handles of a woman in her forties but her eyes, a glowing blue, looked like those of an innocent teenager.

"Oh, you must be the new guy," she said relievedly as she placed her hands upon her wide hips. "I thought you were a guard and I did something wrong!" she laughed with a hoarse voice probably crafted from decades of cigarettes. These were the first words anyone had spoke to him since he arrived. But just as he opened his mouth to reply, he stopped upon recognizing her. That voluptuous figure, those sultry eyes, and that massive freckled bosom were common in many American women but also of a particular one who would inhabit this particular island.

"You're Kitty Keeler!" he pointed. Her smile faded and her shoulders slouched in disappointment.

"I was hoping you wouldn't recognize me. It'd be nice to make a friend," she said with deserving self pity.

"Of course I'd remember you! Little kids hope to find you on the street just so they can spit on you! Kitty Keeler, 'the traitorous spy'!"

"I wasn't spying!" she shouted to the sky, arms outstretched. Catherine "Kitty" Keeler had made quite a scene eight years ago when a commission investigating a terrorist act discovered she had slept with one of the accused plotters and a leading colonel in charge of city defense. Since them, her name, or nickname rather, had become synonymous with promiscuity and treachery. Some historians claimed her unabashed sexuality had set the sexual revolution back fifty years since hem lines lowered and courtship, thought buried with Queen Victoria, hit a resurgence of popularity after the media blitz. The nation had not seen anything like that since President Clinton but unlike the woman he slept with, this one was a spy.

"The thought that my countrymen would place me with the likes of you is appalling!" he shouted as he doubled backed away from her, kicking up sand as he stomped off.

"Please don't go!" she cried and ran after him, dropping her berries. "I haven't talked to anyone but the wall for seven years! Talk to me, speak to me, anything please! Don't go! I'm innocent!" she tried catching up but her thicker legs could not keep pace with the spry officer. He escaped to his shack, closed the shutters, and cowered onto his bed, expecting her knock upon his door, but it never came.

"I'm not like her. I'm innocent. They'll see that soon..." he repeated as he rocked his body in place.