“I’m sure it did,” Buddy said dryly. “Good music. Made a lot of people feel like they’d been there, even the generations after. But having someone throw himself in front of you, getting himself hurt badly for you, maybe even die for you . . . There are just no words.” His finger stole up into his glasses again; it didn’t fool Brandon any more than it had Suzanne. “Anyway, I tried to thank Jimmy a million times. Like there was a big enough thank you for that. He saw the sniper, and he just threw his body at me. He didn’t even stop to think about it. You get back from something like that, and you just want to forget it. Forget it, and everything that might remind you of it. But that ain’t so easy. I went to work in a factory at first, and there was this guy there that thought it was funny to drop pipes just to see me hit the deck.”
“Asshole,” Brandon muttered, shaking his head. Suzanne couldn’t help but be a little moved as she listened from the kitchen; he was maybe twenty—still young enough that the cruelty in the heart of man amazed him.
“Don’t you worry about him,” Buddy grinned. “He died of colon and testicular cancer; plus, I’m happy to report, he was allergic to morphine.”
“It’s things like that,” Brandon sighed happily, “which make me believe that there is a God, and He, or She, is keeping a very accurate score.”
“One day over there, on our second tour,” Buddy went on, “we got our care packages from the Red Cross. We opened ’em up, and they all had a bar of Ivory soap in them.”
Suzanne dropped the dishtowel, startled.
Ivory soap?
A distant memory tried but couldn’t quite struggle itself free from the murkiness of her mind.
Daddy had been a storyteller, for sure; there were some stories she’d heard so many times that they felt burned onto her brain, and she could tell them verbatim, including his tone, complete with gestures.
Some of the stories had been about her, and those were the worst—the time as a baby she’d pooped so loud in the grocery store that the cashiers, all the way down the row, started laughing. And the time she gotten lost in the mall and was found dancing in the Christmas display at Wilson’s leather store, or how she went through a phase of running around naked, even in front of company.
“Damned if we didn’t think she’d get to kindergarten and strip down to her starkers,” her dad would say, laughing until he was red in the face while Suzanne (who couldn’t remember the last time she’d let someone see her naked) would stand by, wanting to die of embarrassment.
What I wouldn’t give to hear one of those stories now, she thought.
Quickly, she cleared her throat and lit up a cigarette before the tears could take over.
But the Vietnam stories—she’d only heard bits and pieces of those, when she was eavesdropping or when Ava was repeating them to a friend or a relative over the phone. They were kept secret, away from her, considered either too frightening or too grown-up for her to hear.
There was something about Ivory soap and Vietnam that sent up a flare in her mind, but she couldn’t quite see it. Something about a Vietnamese lady and a knife? That didn’t make any sense . . . but she felt sure she was close, somehow.
“Anyway, Jimmy—Suzanne’s dad—sees this little Vietnamese woman chopping vegetables with this homemade-looking machete,” Buddy continued softly; in the night air, Suzanne could still see his eyes sparkle when he spoke about his best friend, and it squeezed her heart.
“A machete?” Brandon frowned. “What was she, a soldier or something?”
“No, no, no. It was actually the spoke of a wagon wheel.” Buddy grinned at Brandon’s befuddled expression. “See, the people there, they were serious recyclers. If something broke, they’d cannibalize it or find other uses for the various parts. So, when the wagon wheels would break, the Vietnamese women would sharpen one end of the spoke, jam a hunk of wood on the other, and they had themselves a veggie knife.”
“So, rather than run from the sight of a huge knife, he just went up to this lady who was slaughtering the veggies? Wow—guy wasn’t short on balls,” Brandon laughed—a bit nervously, Buddy thought. From the way he was tapping his fingers—and the yellowing stains on his fingernails—Buddy wondered if he was trying to kick the cigarette habit. Jimmy used to bounce his leg like that whenever the temporary urge to quit came over him. “Then what happened?”
“So he went up to the lady and tried to buy it from her. At first, she thought he was trying to buy something else,” Buddy laughed. “You should’ve seen it. She chased Jimmy around his Jeep with that big ugly knife while he tried to explain himself. She waved that machete around like a pro, let me tell you. But Molly’s dad—despite the language barrier—somehow got his point across. He gets out his Red Cross kit and shows her his bar of Ivory soap. And then he kneels down to the little creek right next to them, and shows her how, just like magic . . .” Buddy snapped his fingers. “The soap floats!”
“What?”
“Oh, yeah.” Buddy nodded. “You’re probably way too young to remember this, but that was a huge marketing point. Ivory, the soap that floats! It was all over the place, on commercials, billboards, magazines.”
Brandon considered Buddy’s statement. “Just out of curiosity, why is soap better if it floats, anyway?”
“Beats the hell out of me, but it sold like hotcakes because it did. So, this lady gets a load of this soap. And she’s oooh-ing and ahhh-ing . . .”
“Ah, the universal language for ‘I need that.’” Brandon had paid for his first two semesters at Vassar selling cookware in the kitchen department at Sears. “I hear you.”
Buddy nodded. “And Suzanne’s dad was a born salesman. It was in his blood. Some people are born singers or math whizzes; this guy was born to separate people from their money.” He chuckled to himself, thinking of Jimmy’s quick way with words and quicker way with his charm. “So, before you can blink, he’s got the lady trading the soap for the machete and feeling like she got the better end of the deal.”
“Cool! Do you still have it? Molly’d love to get a look at that.”
“Oh, he didn’t bring it home,” Buddy said, grinning. “No sir, he had other plans for it.”
“Oh, yeah? Such as?”
“Such as,” Buddy confided, “the next time we went to an officer’s club for a drink, he jammed that ugly thing in the back of his pack, marched up to the highest-ranking officer in the place, sat next to him, and ordered a shot of whiskey with a beer back. That was his drink till the day he, well . . .” Buddy fell silent for a moment. Brandon continued his macramé, pretending not to notice anything unusual.
“Anyway,” Buddy went on after a moment, “sooner or later, the officer would get around to asking about the big ugly knife in his knapsack.”
“Yeah, Molly says he was a real storyteller.” Brandon said admiringly. “The guy who sat in the corner at weddings with everyone gathering around him sooner or later. There’s not really anyone like that in my family. Everyone pretty much keeps to themselves, minds their own business.”
“Maybe that’s why you like to hang out with chatty old men,” Buddy observed. “Maybe you’re hoping to hear something that will let you know about the dad who left.”
Brandon was startled. “How did you know my dad left?”
Buddy smiled again. “Because you ask old men to tell you stories.”
Now, that was perception.
Brandon hadn’t met anyone that could read him that well since he’d met Molly, and he thought she’d been in a class by herself until now.
“And I’m gonna guess,” Brandon mused, “that you took a psych class or two somewhere along the way.”
“That I did, kiddo. Considered making it my major, for a while, before switching to business. More money, less headaches—well, it seemed that way at the time, at any rate.”
“Anyway,” Brandon’s voice betrayed a quiver, and Suzanne, despite her best efforts, found herself beginning to like the kid. His heart seemed to be as big
as his hair. “About Jimmy, it sounds like he was the life of the party.”
“That he was, my young friend. That he was.” Buddy stopped for a moment, his eyes wandering off to look at the river. “Jimmy wasn’t just charismatic, he was a great many other things as well—too many to cover in one conversation. Anyway, back to the story. The officer would ask Jimmy, ‘Hey, where’d you get that knife?’ and Jimmy would say, ‘This knife?’ And he’d shake his head real hard. ‘Sorry, pal, this knife ain’t for sale. A gook just tried to kill me with this. I buzzed him instead. This knife is coming home with me.’”
Brandon squirmed uncomfortably against the bench and tried to speak tactfully. “I gotta tell you . . . I just hate that word, Buddy.”
“What word?” Buddy asked innocently. “You mean ‘gook’?”
“That would be the one.” Brandon held up his hand as if to physically ward it off. “Not to be a PC asshole or anything, but I don’t think it’s right to slur people just because they’re born somewhere else and have a different look than you do.”
“You make a good point, now that you mention it. But,” he pointed out, “when someone of another race, or a lot of someones are trying to kill you . . . I gotta tell you, you don’t care a whole lot about political correctness. It gets real, real easy to start thinking in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them.’” He remembered the hate, the fear of seeing one of them—seeing the fear in their eyes that mirrored his own. At that moment, he knew that only one of them was going to walk away, and he would do anything in his power to ensure it would be him. Vietnam had been a good breeding ground for bigotry, that was for sure . . . But that was an awfully long time ago; he wasn’t the same battle-scarred, angry boy he’d once been. “Put it this way, I wouldn’t walk up to . . . to . . .” He looked at Brandon, frowning. “I’m sorry, what are we supposed to call them now?”
“Vietnamese people,” Brandon answered simply.
“Thank you,” Buddy said congenially. “So, please understand that I wouldn’t walk up to a Vietnamese person and call him that now, but those were different times, and it was a different place.” He knew his argument was futile, trying to make the kid really understand—how could he? Brandon had never been shipped off to war, so he didn’t know—couldn’t know—what it was like, and Buddy wasn’t going to waste his breath trying to explain it. To coin one of Jimmy’s phrases, Buddy knew when it was time to stop shoveling shit against the tide. “It was a different planet, believe me.”
“So,” Brandon was eager to get back to the pleasant conversation they were having before the PC lesson, “what happened then? To the knife, I mean. After Jimmy would tell the officer that someone tried to kill him with it and he was bound and determined to bring it home with him?”
“Right, right. As soon as Jimmy said, ‘This knife ain’t for sale,’ the officer’s eyes would start to gleam. Remember, a lot of these officers were seeing a lot less action and taking a lot of flack for sending boys to their deaths. There was never, ever, the kind of blatant disrespect—even flat-out hatred in some cases—for the military as there was in ’Nam. Before that, a veteran, and especially an enlisted man, was somebody to be respected, admired, looked up to. Someone who’d fought for his country against an outside evil. And officers, well, they were the smart guys of the bunch that were keeping our country safe. They were national heroes.” Buddy shrugged. “Not this time around. And these guys were just shocked. It completely confused—no, it out-and-out dazed them when things changed. When officers, or anyone in a uniform, were given the entirely unpleasant name of babykiller . . . Or worse. So, something like this knife would be a good way to shut people up.”
Brandon chuckled. “Little bit of fake proof. I get it.”
“So the officer would say, ‘I’ll give you twenty bucks for it,’ and Jimmy would say, ‘You didn’t hear me, pal. I told you, this ain’t for sale. My great-grandsons will learn what this war was really like from this knife, but no hard feelings.’ He’d give ’em a big pat on the shoulder and buy ’em a beer.”
“Liquoring up the prospect,” Brandon noted.
Suzanne finished up the folding and swept the kitchen for good measure. She cursed the fact that there were no dishes to wash, but there never were in Ava’s spotless kitchen; dishes were cleaned as soon as they were dirtied, and put away as soon as they were dried. With nothing else to busy her hands, she reluctantly descended the stairs to the courtyard.
“Let me tell you, Brandon, officers just hate hearing the word no.” Buddy chuckled. “All the more if it’s something they can’t directly or indirectly order you to do.”
“I can tell you right now, I would not do well in the army,” Brandon said, smiling and shaking his head a little.
Buddy laughed out loud at that one. “No offense, my young friend, but you’re right, you would not. Your drill sergeant would take one look at those piercings and probably give ’em a nice little yank. Although,” Buddy confided, “I gotta admit, the little diamond in your nose is starting to grow on me.”
“Yeah?” Brandon was pleased. He liked going to sleep at night knowing he’d helped to open at least one mind, just a little. “So, they couldn’t order him to sell the knife. That’s where you left off.”
“Oh, yes. Well, Jimmy and the officer would have another drink. And Jimmy would be telling the officer just how much he was going to love showing this knife to the peace freaks back home, how he was fighting to keep their asses safe and free for democracy while they screwed in the streets and got stoned. Pretty soon he’d get the officer up to a hundred, one-hundred-twenty. This was 1968, mind you. That was a lot of money in those days.”
“I’m looking at forty grand-plus in student loans by the time I’m done, more if I decide to go for my doctorate,” remarked Brandon.
Suzanne saw the approving look Buddy gave Brandon. Buddy had worked hard for every cent he ever had, and here was a young man putting himself through school, not relying on mommy and daddy to foot the bills. Yes, sir, if anyone asked, she was pretty sure that Buddy McKinley would tell them that This Brandon, face jewelry and all, was A-okay in his book.
“I hear you,” Buddy nodded. “It truly is. So, then Jimmy would say, ‘This really means that much to you?’ and then he’d go on about how the wife was expecting a baby—although Suzie didn’t come along till a few years later—and he’d hem and haw through the next few drinks about how much he needed the money. He’d get the guy up to one-hundred-fifty or so. And finally he’d say, in a voice just full of regret, ‘Well, I guess my kid’s gotta come first, so . . . Okay.’ And the officer would fork over the cash before Jimmy could change his mind, and Jimmy would give him the knife and haul ass back to camp. In a day or so, there would be a money order in the sale amount on its way to Ava . . . and they weren't even married yet.”
“Taking care of your loved ones ten thousand miles from home.” Brandon’s voice was full of admiration. “Yeah. That’s just . . . That’s what I want.”
Me too, thought Suzanne wistfully. Oh, you’d better believe, me too.
“He never stopped finding ways to take care of her,” Buddy said. His voice reflected something Suzanne couldn’t quite put her finger on. “He pulled that one six or seven times, and then his luck ran out. One time, a guy who knew a guy who’d bought a knife off Jimmy watched him sell another to a dupe. That was the end of that little scam, but then he was on to something else.”
“Something else,” Suzanne said, smiling. She reached over and clasped Buddy’s warm hand in the twilight. “He was something else, all right.”
“That he was.” Buddy bit the inside of his cheek to stem the flow of tears this time; he’d used the age old trick on occasion, and it hadn’t failed him yet.
Suzanne heard the coffee pot burbling. “I’ll be back in a second.” She leapt to her feet, grateful once again for the reprieve.
If I hang out with this kid too much longer, she thought, I’ll really start to like him, and we can’t have tha
t, can we? It’ll make castrating him so much more difficult.
She was so focused on her thoughts that she nearly missed Brandon’s next words.
“So,” he asked, in a lowered voice that was for Buddy’s ears only, “just out of curiosity, how long have you been in love with Ava?”
SEVEN
Suzanne stopped for just a millisecond, completely startled, then forced herself to keep moving up the stairs with Brandon’s question ringing in her ears.
So that’s the little thing I couldn’t put my finger on, she thought.
But Brandon had seen it, inside of a couple of hours. Great. In addition to everything else, the kid was sharp as a tack.
For several seconds after Brandon’s question, Buddy didn’t make a sound. As Suzanne hastily gathered the load of towels out of the dryer, she thought of all the comebacks that would work in his favor. Knowing Buddy, it would have to be funny—very funny, at this point. It would have to be a wise but cutting remark that would insinuate that Brandon’s observation was so off the mark, it fell into the category of the ridiculous.
Or maybe . . . maybe he’d pretend to be insulted. Ava was his best friend’s widow, after all. What kind of a man was Brandon implying he was?
“Excuse me?” Buddy asked at last. Apparently he hadn’t known which way to go either.
Brandon kept macraméing, not missing a beat.
“I could repeat myself,” he smiled, his eyes twinkling, “but I’m pretty sure you heard me.”
“Why . . . Why . . .” The sweat was really starting to trickle down Buddy’s sides now. “That’s just crazy. Why in the world would you think . . .”
It took only a few minutes to pour three cups of coffee. Suzanne sighed and cleared her throat loudly before coming to the top of the stairs.
“Hush up!” Buddy hissed. “Here comes Suzie.”
Suzanne gave her gracious hostess smiles all around, pretending not to have heard a word.
“Hey, Buddy,” she took the seat furthest from Ava’s house, to keep her cigarette smoke from wafting through an open window, “I’ve always meant to ask, who came up with the idea of O’Shenanigan’s?” She gave Brandon a casual smile. “Any word from Moll yet?”
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