Her dad would spend hours with it, her older brother too, but no-one would ever let Mary play with the machine. She was six, almost six and a half years old, and had scarcely ever glimpsed it.
There were too many oaths and vows imposed on her brother for him to surrender anything but the most tormenting of details, passing as many pledges to her including such that would prevent her from ever asking her father anything about the machine.
Every day she checked the door to her father’s study, which until her seventh year had always been locked. She had come home sick from school, after her father had left and before he returned, taking her medicine, helping with chores, then opening the door. At the earliest opportunity she searched the room and found nothing but a drawer which wouldn’t budge and a key which wouldn’t fit.
Still determined, though frustrated, she would pretend to be sick in order to be sent home and more often than not the door would be open. She would search the room again and again, looking for anything that might be the machine. It had to look scary and strange or perhaps it had a flower growing out of it making it pretty. It had to be fantastic.
Having nearly given up on solving mysteries completely, she took to waiting with her dollhouse in the living room, until her father and brother next left her alone. Waiting until the door was shut behind them, she tucked her dolly safe inside its bed and followed them. She went up to that great wooden door and stared through the keyhole, shifting about and seeing almost nothing. She almost ran back when they looked as though ready to leave, but saw her father put another key inside a tall vase. The vase on his table! She would need two chairs, but she would have it soon.
She brought her dolly with her on the first expedition, ‘sick’ again from school, whilst her mother was taking a break from playing and worrying. Mary climbed up an arrangement of chairs and almost fell, but didn’t scream. She pushed her hand into the vase, and took it out again – she’d found the key! Mary jammed the key into the lock of the drawer that wouldn’t budge, opened it up and saw the machine.
The first time she only looked at it, put everything back as it was, then ran away scared that perhaps her father would see her.
The second day she touched it slightly, just for a second, and in that moment felt as though she was with her father and her brother and the machine and noone else was allowed in. Every time she was afraid, running back again but the next time would be different.
She picked a day her Gran would be there and pretended to be ill as soon as she woke up, and had the whole morning as a result. Her Gran would stay in the living room, only searching for her sometimes, and probably didn’t know that she wasn’t allowed in the study. She took the chance and found her way in again, treading carefully so as not to make any noise. She got the key, opened the door and stared in wonder at the machine.
She took a first good hold on it, when before fearing a footstep or a shifting of the light she’d only touch it and scurry back away. It was hers now. Hers, in her hand.
She wrapped her fingers all around it, remembering forever the feel of it, of metal on skin. She weighed it in her palm, bit her lip.
Her searching fingers pulled the trigger down, then spread apart upon the floor.
It wouldn’t become easier to piece together what happened. Too quick, such a shock, she’d say. The order of things became more and more confused with time. A scream – her mothers, then hers – the machine on the floor, her own blood, herself, pouring out of her shoulder and into clothes and carpet fibre. She hadn’t understood at all just then that it was the machine which had hurt her.
Months later, Mary knew what it was and knew well what it was for, and precisely what the machine had done to her. Although the gun had been taken away still every day she checked the drawer, mostly terrified but needing to see, partly somehow still wanting to feel. It was never there – gone, but somehow always in the room: in the fights her parents would have about my daughter and your gun; in her arm, sometimes, when she moved it; in the carpet fibres, her memory and theirs. As the years passed, every day it wasn’t there she felt more certain that the time was closer when she would feel it again.
She would hear it again, in another country. The sound of a gunshot froze her until she dropped to the ground and pulled the trigger back. Mary heard a scream, but not her scream. Another one dead, fallen to the floor before Mary the Machine. She fired again. Another –
“What is this? Is there still someone up there? It’s hot, clear!”
Mary and Thompson jumped back.
California threw a grenade just ahead, into the war. They charged into the building, guns ahead.
“He was lying right there – he’s gone. Where is he?”
“Too many rooms to the right and left.”
More gunshots, returned.
“Watch your face!”
“RPG ready to go. Ready to move right there?”
The press never called for a resignation, never certain whose to call upon.
The first enquiries into the war blamed everyone equally, not distinguishing between the soldier who pulled the trigger, the General who sent the soldier, the public who paid the General and the people who stood in the way.