Irwin turned and looked at the prisoner’s small, sunlit back. There. That was what. But even he could see the problem: the back was nearly too small, too slight to believe in. Dudek’s voice was far more convincing as it shook the peaceful air: “We can see that he’s young. We have eyes in our heads—unlike Bobby Calcagno. But what kind of soldiers leave one another’s deaths unavenged? What kind of soldiers allow Washington to impose rules that leave us here to die in agony, yet forbid us the right to kill our killers? When is the last time you saw a congressman bleedin’ in this war, gentlemen? When is the last time you saw Senator Love or Senator Dove out workin’ the point on recon?”
Irwin’s head roared with the. song now: Hide it under a bushel, no! I’m gonna let it shine! He looked again at the boy. The little back was motionless—as still as a gas-soaked wooden Buddha. And Irwin loved Bobby so much, Dudek’s sermon was so fine, and the sun’s heat was so strong that even he half wished they could be saved from their dilemma by the boy’s spontaneous combustion.
“If he’s taken to prison,” Elder Dudek intoned, “he may escape. And if he escapes, he will be back!” Then the long, polished pause, during which Irwin knew the Captain’s gaze was crossing each listener’s face, demanding and receiving full complicity. And now the sharp intake of breath, and the confident, almost glib final lines: “Next month, next year, he will be back. And you can bet your butts—you can bet your sweet black an’ white asses.” (and Irwin smiled, knowing without seeing that the Captain was again holding the blue boxer shorts aloft) “that next time he will make no mistake!”
Will the congregation rise?
Damn right they will. And hear them pray: “Off the little fucker!” “He killed Bobby!” “Let’s go!” “Fuck you. Senator Dove!” “Time’s a-wastin’!” “Deal me in!”
Amen.
The music left the Captain’s voice. The song stopped in Irwin’s head. And he was only sad—not angry, not surprised—when he heard the quick, practical orders. Dudek was a good officer, conducting his war by the only set of rules that let an army be an army. It was the rules that ordered the sham release of the prisoner, the rules that handpicked the men who would escort him to the clearing with their M-16s, and the rules that added: “Remember. We never saw him, never caught him. None of this happened. This little VC just does not exist.”
Returning from the commissary, the Captain’s toothpaste in hand, Irwin saw a group of grunts gathered in the shade of the tree across from the jeep. They weren’t talking. They were just sitting there, most of them smoking, looking at the VC who just didn’t exist. Irwin glanced at his watch. 11:55, it said. He moved into the shade and sat down among them.
The prisoner was handcuffed to the bumper again, and flanked by guards. Irwin had a bad memory for names but an excellent one for faces and, oddly, states. He knew one of the guards as New York, the other as Alabama. In other words, he didn’t know them at all. But he’d expected them. Expected their bodies, anyhow: both about 6′2,″ both muscular, both jet black. Dudek had the old Confederate love of ritual. In martial ceremonies—executions, for instance—he favored height and muscular builds over squat or anemic specimens; favored what he called “two salts” or “two peppers” over what he called “mix ’n’ match;” favored chivalric-sounding times such as “dawn,” “sunset” or “high noon” over whatever hundred hours. In toothpastes, he favored Gleem. The good old Captain. Thirty-one years young and still going strong. Still wily too. He’d ordered the big picturesque peppers to guard the VC, but when Irwin glanced down toward his tent he saw that it was four salts who would escort the prisoner to the “escape route.” Never know when a pepper might up and muff it.
11:56, said Irwin’s watch.
The prisoner was so short that he was able to stand straight up despite being cuffed to the bumper. For the most part he remained motionless, but every now and then he’d twist his back in a slow circle, like a dancer or on-deck hitter loosening up. He looked tired and a little ashen, but his head had been rebandaged, perhaps to lessen his suspicion, and he no longer looked queasy from the fumes.
He did seem troubled by the men in the shade, though. He’d been caught trying to kill them, after all. He kept his head lowered, like a shy kid forced to give a report to his class at school. And he kept looking, Irwin noticed, at his left wrist, so Irwin looked at it too—and was amazed to see, right there next to the handcuff, a wristwatch. An enormous one too. One of those big black jobs that nerds and scuba divers favor—fluorescent numbers; built-in compass, maybe; made in Hong Kong or Taiwan by genuine, lifelike capitalist-satellite wage slaves. Such a deal at $9.95. Then a month after you buy it you notice it’s slow, go to reset it, and as the stem snaps off in your lily-white fingers you remember: no guarantee.
Ha. Slave’s revenge.
But why was it there at all? How had the guards missed it? Couldn’t it contain poison or something? No. You could tell it was innocuous somehow. You could tell it was just a watch. And it was there, Irwin realized, because of an oversight stemming from a very rudimentary human characteristic: no adult, even in time of war, wants to steal a toy away from a child.
So. Back to that question. Was he really just a child? Because wasn’t it important? Wasn’t it crucial? Because if they were actually dealing with a kid, shouldn’t they be doing everything differently?
I’d sure be doing it differently, Irwin thought. I’d shoot him, all right. I’d Gleem his ass with this goddamned toothpaste! WAH-HA! Take that, Mr. Tough VC War Criminal! Eat this, Mad Bomber! (Rub it in his hair, smear both cheeks, shoot it up his nose.) Quit blowin’ up my friends, ya brat! Don’t do it! You hear me? (A squirt in each ear, glop in each armpit.) BLEAH! Now look at you! Had enough? Gonna be good now? Say “Uncle Ho” then. Louder! Okay. That’s better. Now get your commie ass outta here ’fore I kick it in!
Yeah. That’d fix his little red wagon.
But nobody asked Irwin’s advice.
The heat was horrific. New York pretended to ignore the men in the shade, but his face was one big cramp of irritation. Meanwhile Alabama stared right through them, hangin’ loose, restin’ easy, lookin’ like: We got heat in ’Bama too, white muthahfucks …
But maybe, Irwin thought, still obsessed with his question, he’s much older than he looks. They’re very small people. If he’d speak, we could tell. If he’d say even one word we’d hear whether his voice had changed, and we’d know …
11:58, said his watch. And now the numbers were shaking. Now Irwin was in knots. Because he felt he was forgetting something—some kind of order, not the toothpaste but something dire, some matter of life and death. But what?
The men around him lurched and stared—and Irwin realized he’d nearly shouted his But what? Which didn’t embarrass him. He’d never been embarrassed by his own or anyone else’s honesty. But he did feel he should get away from the men in order to think. So he stood, stepped out into the sunlight—
and like dust to a vortex was sucked toward the jeep, and the little Vietcong.
The boy raised his head and looked straight at him.
Irwin stopped walking, and looked straight back.
The men in the shade watched him, watched them both, but Irwin didn’t know it: he only knew he’d made a mistake, coming this close. Because now he could see him. Could really see the rich brown of the skin; the fragile clavicle in the V of the shirt; the delta of blue veins running down the throat; the smooth backs of the hands—hands far smaller than those of his little sisters.
Then he made an even greater mistake: he looked into the boy’s eyes—right into the liquid and the shining and the life there. And he saw a spark of curiosity. At a time like this, the boy was curious about Irwin Chance! He was trying to stay poker-faced, but the brown eyes flashed as he watched the huge, bare-chested man whose face was so gentle, yet so troubled, stepping slowly toward him. He watched as though Irwin were an animal—an enormous, friendly bear, maybe—coming to help or even save him, like
in a children’s story …
Realizing that he was smiling, and maybe creating false hopes, Irwin made himself stop. But then, fearing the quick change of expression would confuse the boy, he smiled again. The boy’s face showed nothing. He just watched. We’re going to kill him, Irwin thought as he smiled. He wanted to kill us, prob’ly did kill Bobby, so we’re going to shoot him. With bullets! Good God! We’re really going to do it!
Then he made a final mistake: he began to recollect the life-and-death matter, the forgotten command. It started to fall together when his old nickname, “Iron Man,” flicked through his mind. After nine months of ’Nam there wasn’t much of this character left. But there were shards, a jumble of fragments, and in the heat by the jeep a few fragments congealed. How did it go? Whosoever shall humble himself … like? as? Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child something something, whoso shall help, or maybe receive, or anyhow shall stick up for one such child in My Name, receiveths, or sticks up for, or anyhow stands by Me.
Yeah.
Irwin knew as he conjured it that it was a terrible injunction to be recalling. It came from a lost world, a world whose rules could kill him here. But he never had been a subtle fellow. Recollecting the dead-obvious line, he promptly did the dead-obvious thing: he stepped forward. As if he’d never left the Washougal church, as if answering an Altar Call, he walked straight toward the jeep with nothing in his head but the insane Sabbath plan of throwing in his lot with the boy, of somehow “receiving” him. He was perhaps six feet away when an explosion of air stopped him. The Captain’s big peppers. They’d both snapped to. And they too had a kind of call to answer.
“Clear the fuck out!” hissed Alabama.
“He means it, fuckface,” added New York, flashing a bland, terrifying smile.
Irwin blinked at them. Obstacles! To receiveth the boy he needed a plan, some guile, a ruse. He needed Everett, was what he needed. But no time, no time! So let’s see … Rank? Pull rank? Fake an order from the Captain? Get the keys, free the boy, and run? No. Get the keys, free him, and go straight to Dudek. Yes! Straight to the Captain, onto your knees, and beg as you have never begged before. Now make it work …
He cleared his throat, stepped up to the guards, and in his best imitation of Dudek snapped, “Excuse me, gentlemen! But there’s been a slight change of—”
“Get gone, muthahfuck!” went Alabama, and spit flew with the words and landed, burning, on Irwin’s chest.
“He means it, suckbrain,” smiled New York.
Why? Why wasn’t it working? He looked down at the spit. His shirt. Without his shirt they couldn’t know he outranked them. Trying to regroup, he took a single backward step, taking care not to turn his face from the boy, who was watching him keenly now. Shout! he told himself. Everett versus Babcock! Curse and spit right back in their faces … But before he’d regained his lost step he heard murmuring in the shade behind him, heard distant footsteps, turned,
and saw Dudek and his four handpicked, armed and angry white men marching straight for them. Terror washed through him like a poison. He took another step backward. Strength gone, thoughts gone, he gawked at the boy, thinking: Lost. And the boy read it. He read Irwin’s face, gave him a look that shot across a spectrum—confusion, betrayal, hatred, despair. Then the brown eyes glazed. The light fell out of them.
Struggling to hold his ground, Irwin glanced toward the Captain, recognized fury even at a distance, then looked down at himself as if to find some talisman, some magic weapon, with which to combat the fury when it arrived. In his right hand was a tube of toothpaste. On his left wrist was a watch. Gleem, said the toothpaste. 12:01, said the watch.
Lost.
Pray then, he thought. But for what? Divine intervention? Enemy attack? Rapture? The boy’s soul? Had this kid heard of Jesus during his ten or twelve years of life in a hell zone? And if not, was it Irwin’s Christian duty to tell about Him now?
“Show’s startin’, fucknose,” New York said with the same terrible smile.
Then Alabama stepped right up to him, stabbed his bare chest with one finger, and shoved as he snarled, “Fuck off!” And as Irwin fell another step back the words bore into him, all the way in and down, where they echoed and howled and set fire to every rote-learned, impotent Sabbath School truth he’d ever learned about prayer or souls or the mechanics of salvation. Help this boy! his heart cried. Help him now, or fuck off! But everything inside him except his heart wanted to run for its life. And his heart was breaking.
Alabama and New York snapped to attention. Men appeared, standing in doorways, peering out from shaded walls, saying nothing, just wanting to watch. Camp Meeting again. Camp Meeting before a baptism. Even the song was back: I’m gonna let it shine …
Straining a little at the handcuffs now, the Cong boy peered down the road in the direction opposite the approaching men, way down beyond the snarls of concertina wire enclosing the base. The road was empty, except for a couple of little birds, yet for ten, maybe fifteen seconds the boy craned his neck and peered. Then, without warning, his mouth fell open as though his jaw had been broken. His tongue shone pink. His thin chest began to heave. The chain rattled and scraped against the bumper. Blood beaded, then dripped from his writhing wrists. Strange, strangled sobs began to rise from deep down his throat. The same sounds began to rise from Irwin. And hearing this, sensing this one man’s useless compassion, the boy looked straight into his eyes and uttered, in a language no one understood, some sentence, some final plea—
and yes, his voice was high and piping. Yes, it was a child’s voice, not even about to change.
Weeping now, but still trying to smile, Irwin said, “Good Christ! Give him courage.”
Then Dudek stood before him, red-eyed, red-faced, and so beside himself with fury that he could barely whisper, “Go!”
“But I, this Gleem!” Irwin gasped. “I can, he, let me take him, Captain! ’Cause I … for Bobby! Let me mess him up good with this tube of—”
“GO!” the Captain roared.
Out of pride—out of some ineradicable pride that must be rooted in the body alone, in the purely structural integrity of tissue and bones perhaps, for even the lowest of men, convicted child molesters, say, or mass murderers, will use it to hold their heads high when thrust on display in front of other humans—out of this unkillable kind of pride Irwin was able to take a few slow, almost leisurely paces away from the jeep, the watching men, Dudek’s fury and the boy. But the Sabbath School song had sprung up in his head again, This little light of mine … And Irwin’s Sabbath School God was the sort who saw everything. So where was there to go? Wanting distance, wanting oblivion, wanting some nonmilitary greenness or blackness to swallow him whole, he took aim at a blur of fire-stunted weeds and low vines at the farthest corner of the base. But the farther he moved from the jeep, the harder his insides strained back toward it. All the secretions of fear swirled through his brain, screaming forget! run! save me! go! But the back of his skull had thinned away into a paperlike membrane that took in every sound back around the boy, and when Dudek’s voice, puffed with righteousness, slammed against the membrane, shame flooded Irwin’s fear, turned him nauseous, and his heart and footsteps began to detonate in time to the music, left, right, systole, diastole, Hide it under a bushel, no!
You can’t fool a good song.
The blood left Irwin’s face, left his mind, left him shambling along like some boot-mangled insect. His good green target spun out of sight, changing into a khaki tent wall which he clutched, trying to right himself. Then even the khaki spurned him, bursting into some warm, impossible abomination that gushed like pus between his fingers and oozed down the back of his hand. He fell with a groan, hit the tent, then the ground, gaped again at his hand. And it really was oozing—
toothpaste.
He had crushed the Captain’s Gleem.
Lying in the dust there with his toothpaste, Irwin had finally rolled onto his belly and peered back toward the jeep.
And what he’d seen at first, back through the watery heat waves, was about what he had expected and feared:
the four salts—two with rifles, two with shovels—all of them motionless, gazing with something like hunger and something like lust at the captive;
the Captain, also motionless, and stern and martial-looking for a while; but then wincing, then wiping at sweat, then cursing outright and rubbing his boiled temples as New York fumbled interminably through a foreign ring of keys;
Alabama, not quite snorting, not even quite smirking at Dudek, but clearly thinking, Hot out here, ain’t it, white muthahfuck;
nothing but cigarette smoke moving through the crowd in under the tree …
But then New York found the right key, freed the boy’s wrists, and the salts moved in close, pausing to listen to Dudek’s last few instructions before leading him away—and during this lull Irwin realized that he had been looking, all along, at something unexpected: the prisoner too was motionless. Abandoned though he was, minuscule though he was, he stood steady as the heat now, facing the crowd, the salts and the Captain with a look almost regal for the purity of its hatred. It was then that Irwin remembered his own blurted words: Christ, give him courage. And it was then that the boy calmly reached, with a tiny brown thumb and forefinger, to his bleeding left wrist—
where he began, with just seconds to live, to wind his enormous watch.
The Brothers K Page 56