by John Hart
Nathaniel Washington saw things the same way. In a truck almost as old as he was, he led us down the narrow streets; and when we reached public housing, he parked and met us on the curb. His face was seamed with deep, dark lines, and he couldn’t hide the worry. “You still want to do this?”
“It’s important.”
He studied me with yellowed eyes. “And if my son can’t help?”
I didn’t answer because I had no answer. He frowned but nodded. “We don’t see a lot of white folks in here unless they’re cops, so be cool. There’re good folks in the village, but they’re not all good. If someone hassles us, let me do the talking. And maybe don’t mention that your daddy’s a cop.”
He had a point about my father. Black Panthers and the Organization of Afro-American Unity both operated out of Earle Village. That meant surveillance, harassment, resentment. I understood the pattern.
“All right, then.” A frown appeared on his leathery face. “Let’s go find my Darzell.”
He led us down a block of sidewalk, then into one of the public units. On the second level, he stopped at a blank door, and knocked. “Darzell. It’s your father.” The door opened to the length of its chain, and a dark, distrusting face appeared. “Relax, Russell. They’re with me.”
Nothing in the eyes changed. Pure hostility. “Darzell’s at the Cue.”
The Friendly Cue was a pool joint two blocks down. We caught a lot of unhappy stares on the walk there, but no one said a word. Inside the pool hall, it was smoky and dark, and Darzell stood alone at a table, a big man over green felt. We watched him run three balls off the table. When he missed the nine, he straightened and met his old man’s eyes. “Middle of the day, Pops. Who’s minding the grill?”
“Your mother’s watching things.”
“Sweet Lord, help us all.”
Darzell had unflinching eyes, five-inch hair, and no smile for us as the old man made the introductions. “Good kids, son, and looking for help. They’re here on account of Jason.”
“Jason French? Is that right?”
“He’s my brother.”
“I don’t doubt that. You look exactly like him. Come on. Let’s sit. You, too, sweetness.” He winked at Becky, and we followed him past the bar, and into a booth, Becky sitting beside me with Darzell and his father across the table. “You want to talk about Jason, huh? What is it you want to know?”
His eyes had the same cool dispassion I saw sometimes in Jason. Maybe it was a soldier thing or a war thing. “Your mother told us you and Jason trained together.”
“We did.”
“Have you stayed in touch?”
“Your brother’s not really a stay in touch kind of guy.” Darzell flashed four fingers at the bar, and the bartender nodded back.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“After the ’Nam and before he went to prison. Three years, maybe.”
“Nothing since?”
“Just what’s in the news. I don’t think he killed that girl, though. Don’t get me wrong now. If Jason had cause, he could kill every man in this joint, kill him and him and him.” Darzell stretched an arm across the back of the booth, pointing at random strangers. “But they’d be good, clean kills, and done for cause, nothing like what the papers are saying. Shit…” The big man shook his head, a difficult expression on his face. “Jason mother-effin’ French…”
“You sound angry.”
“Angry? Nah, life’s too short. But the motherfucker should pick up a phone once in a while.” The bartender came with a pitcher of beer and four glasses. Darzell took the pitcher, and started pouring. “Don’t get me wrong, I still love the guy. Hell, worship the guy.” Darzell lifted an eyebrow, and slid a glass of beer to Becky. “You know about the rattlesnake?”
“Your mother told us.”
“Well, that’s a story, and a story’s just words.” He filled two more glasses, passing them around. “You know how hard it is to carry a grown man for three miles, up all those hills and back down, half the time in deep sand? And not some little man, either, but one my size. Three full miles at a dead run. You think on that.” He gave us a few seconds for his words to sink in. “Did my mother tell you why he did it? Because he was my friend, and those other grunts weren’t. You want to understand my feelings for your brother, then you need to feel that.”
He drained his glass, and poured another. “Why are you asking about Jason, anyway? He’s your brother. You know him better than I do.”
I shook my head. “Not since Vietnam.”
“Hey, if Vietnam is the great divide, sign up for the war. It was still there last time I looked.”
“You mentioned the girl in the papers.”
“I did, yeah. And that was some cold, cruel shit.”
“I think Jason knows who killed her. He won’t tell the cops, though. I’m trying to understand why.”
“You want to help him, is that it?” Darzell lit a cigarette, and snapped the lighter shut. “Ride in like the cavalry, all junior G-man and shit?”
“Something like that. I’d think you’d want the same thing.”
“First of all, Jason French has never needed the cavalry, but let’s say this time he does, and that you, little man, and you, sweetness”—he pointed a cigarette at Becky—“you’re the ones on horseback riding to his rescue. What is it you need from me?”
I wasn’t exactly sure what I needed. “To understand him, I guess. He won’t go to the cops, and I can’t get my head around that. I guess I want to know how he’s changed, and why it happened. If I knew that, then maybe I could talk to him.”
“You want his stories. I get it. You want to know about war, and what it does to a man. All right, let me break this down.” Darzell pointed again with the cigarette. “War is personal, kid. You’re surrounded by other soldiers, but you’re fundamentally alone. Every combat soldier will tell you the same. You pull the trigger, and a man dies. You paint a tree with his brains or spill his guts out in the mud. The how of it don’t signify, except in the nightmares, maybe, or what you see in the mirror first time you find the courage to look. ’Cause the truth of it is this: whether you’re a good soldier or not, a coward or right as the rain, you own the bullet and the guts; and that’s just the way of it: who you kill or don’t kill, what buddy goes chickenshit and runs, or steps wrong and blows off his leg. Stories, motherfucker! That’s what the people want—reporters and draft dodgers and rich, white college boys. And yeah, maybe I’d be talking about you if this weren’t about your brother. But you got to be there. You dig? You got to be in the shit to understand the shit. ’Cause that was my friend, lost his leg, and me who carried the fucker out, choking on his blood, trying to keep him from bleeding out. You know how long it takes a busted femoral to squirt a body dry? Stories, man! That’s the problem, because the stories are mine, and they’re personal. Maybe I share them and maybe I don’t, but that’s on me, too. Now I have to ask myself if Jason’s any different, if he wants me telling his stories?”
Darzell ground out the cigarette, and leaned close. “You’re of a mind that Vietnam changed your brother, and you’re right, it changed us all. If you want to understand how, then you go fight the fucking war. And if it’s Jason’s stories you want, then you should talk to him.”
“Son, please…”
“Take it easy, Pops. We’re just talking this through.” His stare had grown hard, and his back was flat against the back of the booth.
“Listen, Darzell.” Becky reached for his hand, and what I saw in her face was real understanding and true compassion, as if the war, for her, had never been made so personal. “We’re trying to help. That’s all.”
“And you think he knows who killed this girl?”
“We do.”
“And that there is your problem.” Darzell withdrew his hand, but was gentle about it. “The man likes his secrets. That’s not on me.”
“It’s on me,” I said. “He’s doing it for me.”
“Why?”
“He’s protecting me, I think. Bad people, he told me. Inside the prison, or outside, I don’t know. He said they’d hurt me to get to him.”
“You don’t know much,” Darzell said.
“I know the DA wants to execute the man who saved your life.”
Becky said, “Please, Darzell.”
But Darzell kept his eyes on mine.
“One brother died in the war,” I told him. “Jason is all I have left. That means I am in the shit.”
Unsmiling, Darzell drummed his fingers. Eventually, he looked at his father, who nodded. “It’s the right thing, son.”
“All right,” Darzell said. “I’ll tell you what I know. It’ll take a while, and I need to do it in my own way. So don’t interrupt. Don’t ask questions. We can circle back later, but this isn’t something I want to do.” Darzell settled into the decision, not happy about it but willing enough to loosen up as he lit a second cigarette. “Jason is a hero, all right, and any marine that knows his story will tell you the same. Two full tours and most of a third. But it ended badly. Military prison, dishonorable discharge. That’s all most people see, so I’m going to start there, and then we’ll go back for the rest of it. Cool?”
“Very.”
Darzell nodded, satisfied. “You ever hear of My Lai?”
“You mean the massacre?”
“The slaughter, yeah.”
He looked at Becky, but she knew about My Lai, too. Most everyone did. In 1968, a company of U.S. soldiers murdered five hundred villagers in what, even now, was considered the worst atrocity of the war. There’d been no reason for the killings—they’d found no VC in the village, met no resistance—but over the course of that day, a company of U.S. soldiers systematically slaughtered innocent men, women, and children, blowing them up with grenades and rocket launchers, lining them in ditches and gunning them to death. Infants. Pregnant women. Anything that moved, breathed, or crawled. There’d been a massive cover-up followed by congressional hearings, a trial, national outrage …
Darzell had been clear about questions, but I couldn’t help myself. “My Lai was U.S. Army. Jason was a marine.”
“All very true, but Vietnam is a big, out-of-control, great, ugly mess of a war.” Darzell blew smoke, and stared me down with those hard, brown, soldier eyes. “You think My Lai is the only place bad shit happened?”
30
Darzell was right about one thing. Telling the story took time, and in the warm sunlight of after, I felt disjointed, cold, and overawed. Thoughts of my brother, the things he’d done …
“How about I drive this time?”
Becky took the keys, and I looked back at the pool hall, squinting in the bright light. Darzell was still inside, but his father stood in the open door, giving me a long look and a somber wave before stepping back into the gloom.
“Come on, handsome.”
Becky got me back to the car, and inside. Even behind the wheel, she left me alone; as if she understood the kind of processing I needed to do in order to understand the many pieces and all the complicated ways they fit.
“It’s not fair,” I finally said.
“No, it’s not.”
“I don’t know him at all. I don’t think anyone does.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I ran the movie Darzell had put in my head, a silent reel of bodies in a blood-soaked river, of all the people dead, and all the ones not dead. “Why didn’t Jason tell me? Jesus, Becky. Why didn’t he tell any of us?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did.”
“It makes sense, though. The drugs. The way he is.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“That I know the truth? I don’t know. I feel like my head is going to explode.”
“Just breathe, okay? In and out, nice and deep.”
I closed my eyes, and did as she asked. When I opened them again, I had no idea where we were. “Wait. Where are we going?”
“You trust me, right?”
“I do.”
“So trust me.”
She showed cool eyes and a slender smile, so I watched the city pass, thinking of cops, reporters, and prosecutors, thinking, They don’t know him, either, none of them do …
Ten minutes later, I knew where we were. The abandoned hardware store. A tumbledown and familiar house. “We’re going to your place?”
She flashed another slender smile, but drove past her street, turning at the next one, and pulling to the curb at an empty lot with old, small houses on either side. “Come with me.”
She took me into the vacant lot, and we clambered through the foundations of a long-gone house, then out the other side, and down a steep bank, wading through waist-deep kudzu until trees appeared and the vines grew up and over. She pulled me deeper into the forest, and when we reached the creek, she turned along the bank, parting vines until the same pool of deep, clear water appeared.
“You remember our swim?” She slipped off her shoes, entirely serious. “How about a real one this time?”
When her shirt came off, the bra came with it. She blushed only a little, and I thought of all the times I’d seen her at the quarry, browned by the sun and sleek as a seal. She helped me out of my shirt, and kissed me. Her breasts flattened on my chest, and I felt them there, small and warm, a brush of skin before she stepped back and removed the rest of her clothes. The blush was still there, but she turned for the pool, crooked a finger, and tossed off a knowing smile. “Are you coming or not?”
I undressed and followed her into the pool, moving close until there were mere inches between us. “Why now?” I wanted to know.
“Because I was watching your face, and not Darzell’s.” She moved closer until we were touching. “Did you know that you were crying?”
“Only at the end.”
“I thought it was beautiful.”
“Why?”
“Because he made you believe in what you were doing.”
“I already believed.”
“But there’s a difference between duty and love. You wanted to help Jason because he’s your brother—that’s the duty. Darzell made you love him.”
It was true. She was right.
“Kiss me,” she said, and that’s what I did.
Softly.
Adoringly.
“Now, love me,” she said, and I did that, too.
Later, with Becky stretched beside me on a bed of ferns and moss, I thought for the millionth time that the day was barely real: the touch of our bodies, the foundations of childhood we’d burned down together. Even now the lines of her were like forgings on my skin: one leg across my own, her fingers twined into mine.
“Regrets?” she asked. In response, I held her tighter. “Can we do it again, then?”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
It was becoming my favorite question.
Much later, we dressed self-consciously, the awkwardness passing only when Becky caught my eye, and grinned. “The clothes came off a lot easier.”
After that, it was familiar and easy, her hand in mine as we made our way uphill through the old trees hung with ivy and kudzu. At the car, Becky pushed her hands into her pockets, shoulders rising as she measured me in a knowing, still-amused way. “Was that your first time?” I blushed furiously before she took pity. “It was pretty awesome.”
“The second time was better,” I said.
“Really? I thought, the third…”
She grinned again, and I kissed the curving lips, one hand on hot denim and the other on hot metal. Only the breeze was cool, and that’s because it was getting dark.
“So…?”
She broke the kiss as if dusk on the street ended more than the day. Sadly, I felt the same truth: that time may have stopped for a while, but only in the place we’d been. “This has been good,” I said.
“Good, but real.”
“Next-level stuff,” I agreed.
“So…?”
She
said it again, but this time it was about Jason rather than us, the shadow of the day. “I’ll go home, I suppose. Talk to my father.”
“Will you tell him what we learned?”
“About Jason?”
“Maybe it will help.”
I nodded, but had my doubts. I was still so angry.
Even if my father believed …
Or if he already knew …
Becky took me home in Dana’s car, and the quiet between us was a comfortable one. We said goodbye at the bottom of my parents’ driveway, and what I saw in her eyes was like a jewel to carry in my pocket, and take out if the night got long. After she left, I stayed outside to watch stars come alive as purple light was drawn off like a veil. The air was heavy with the perfume of my mother’s garden, a blend of climbing rose and camellia, of Princess Blush and heliotrope, hibiscus and Plum Mist, hydrangea and dogwood and daffodil—a glut of plants and vine I was embarrassed to know as well as I did.
Turning, at last, I walked up the long drive and found my car parked near the garage. My father must have brought it from the impound lot. Inside the house, it seemed every light was burning, the rooms so bright I couldn’t find a shadow if I tried. I closed the door gently, wary of hushed-voice sounds that carried from the kitchen. In the years since Robert’s death, caution like that came to me as naturally as breathing. Fights. Tears. Hysteria. I’d walked in on every scene imaginable.
This time, it was quiet but tense, my mother looking wan as my father knelt at her side, speaking with the kind of calm assurance that had become, I’d often thought, the thread that held her together.
“He’s fine, sweetheart. I promise.”
“But we don’t know … we haven’t heard…”
“I’m sure he’ll be home soon.”
“But Chance said…”
“Chance said Gibby was fine, honey. He said not to worry.”