Pass the Buck

from the Probability Spinner by Regan


After all he had been through, Morton couldn’t believe that he would be seen as the villain. It was the easiest thing in the world: Maeve was crazy. Given their thirty years together and how offbeat his choice had been, his family understood. When he came out of the situation, as they called his marriage, they understood that everyone makes mistakes, in the same way they understood both that everyone is going to Heaven when they die and that certain people are in fact going to Hell. They had been waiting a very long time to hear his selective version of the truth.
He said Maeve had insisted they get married after knowing him only a few months and writing letters long-distance, because she did not want him to get drafted. Married men did not get drafted. After the wedding, before which she cried and implored her father to carry her off to an undisclosed location, she postponed college in order to work to pay his tuition through school. He stayed in higher education for several residencies, undecided as to his course, until the university demanded he commit to a program, at which point he pursued a doctorate. For eight long years, she worked for the most horrible men who chased her around their offices and held unemployment over her head. Morton believed she was overly dramatic until she became pregnant, when he suddenly accused her of infidelity. She pleaded with him for nine months to stay.
He did not tell his family that his come-uppance was to beat her, nightly, with the buckle on his belt. At the end of a long day, he felt heavy inside, a weight not at all physical. He ate little and responded with an edginess others found charming. Arriving at home, he surveyed the surroundings and found it not to his liking. They lived in the city, so there was always something about which he might complain: trash, beggars, train noise, radiator heat, police sirens, fire sirens, drunks, neighbors. He didn’t accept the current circumstances until the President changed his mind. That year, deep within a war, the President had decided to change the draft. Now, married men could be enlisted, unless they were the sole provider in their family. He still did not want to go home, but he accepted that he must.
The day his son was born, Morton was taking exams. He felt a sinister stab in his left eyeball, and he grasped his head with both hands. His fellows looked askance at him, and the administrator excused him, calling his disturbance inappropriate. He would have to retake the exam in two months. Bitter, Morton stomped out of the hall and ran into a wheelchair-bound veteran, a few years younger than him. The vet toppled down the steps of an Ionic columned building and was taken to an emergency room. Morton was ambushed in a citizens’ arrest by a band of unwashed musicians and turned over to the authorities, who booked him for assault. Maeve screamed out in terror as her body was permanently severed, and Morton was released into a boot camp for anger management, effectively drafted. There, he read postcards and glanced at photos of the child whose emergence had caused all this strife.