Fearful Symmetries

by Thomas F Monteleone

  Reitmann explained that Snipers were specially trained “gyrenes” who spent upwards of thirty days at a clip out in the jungle, alone, playing a crazy survivalist game, eating whatever they could find, and shooting whatever moved. After a month or so like that, they would report back to their Base for a few days R & R, and then back into the “bush” for more grub-eating and beaner-popping.

  Denny smiled that half-crazy smile as he nodded. “Yeah. You see, we were special, my squad. You had to be special to be picked for the ‘Black Aces’ platoon…that’s what they called the Snipers—the Black Aces.”

  “Why?” asked Bob.

  Reitmann shrugged. “Don’t know. They just did. My sergeant had these special decks of cards. Don’t know where he got ’em, but it was a deck of nothin’ but aces of spades, you know? And when we first got to Usulutan, he passed out a deck to each of us Snipers.”

  “What for?” asked Jay.

  Reitmann smiled, chuckled a bit. “That was the neat part, man. See, each time we zapped a beaner, we were supposed to leave one of them Aces on ’em. It was like a sign that all the Sandies knew about—they all knew the snipers were real bad-asses, you know?”

  “Kind of like a calling card,” said Jay.

  “Yeah, I guess.” Reitmann was looking far off, as though reliving moments in the past. Again, that weird smile was starting to form at the corners of his mouth. “I used to use their own knives or bayonets, and stick my Aces to their chests—ain’t no way they’d miss it that way.”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “Hey, they were scared shitless of the guys in my squad! Especially after my sergeant started the ‘Ring of Truth’.”

  Denny Reitmann smiled and nodded to himself. There was a cold shine in his eyes that gave me a chill.

  “The ‘ring of truth’?” asked Jay. “What was that?”

  “Check this out,” said Denny, as he jumped limberly to his feet. His hand lifted his bulky sweater above his waist to reveal a brass ring attached to a leather harness. The harness slipped over his wide belt.

  “Here it is,” said Reitmann. The ring was perhaps four inches in diameter. It looked awkward and uncomfortable.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “What’re you talking about?”

  “We used ’em to carry our ears, man,” said Denny. “That’s how we earned early leave on our hitches.”

  “Your ears?” Bob started giggling. He was pretty drunk.

  Reitmann looked at him with cold, black eyes. “Yeah, man. You see, every time we sniped somebody, we’d cut off their right ear and put it on our ring. When we’d come back to Base every thirty days or so, we’d turn in our ears and get credits towards an early ‘out’.”

  “Kinda like savings-coupons,” said Mike. “Or green stamps…” He looked as repulsed as the rest of us, and had not been trying to be funny.

  Reitmann grinned, then chuckled. “Yeah! Yeah, I never thought of it like that! Coupons…I like that.” He paused, his ball-bearing eyes turreting about the room. “You see, with them ears, there wasn’t any bullshit about how many beaners you plinked. Great system, huh?”

  “Yeah, just great,” I said, perhaps a little too sarcastically. Some things never changed, and I wasn’t really surprised to hear the Marines were still using such incentive programs.

  Reitmann’s expression shifted as he glared at me. Teeth bared like fangs, jaw muscles taut, the flesh about his eyes all pinched inward.

  “You don’t like that, Jack?” He said tauntingly. “A little too strong for you, huh?”

  Jay cleared his throat. “Let’s face it, Denny…it’s a little strong for anybody, don’t you think?”

  “Christ,” said Mike. “How’d you keep them from rotting? Didn’t they start to stink after a while?”

  “Yeah, they stunk a little, but it wasn’t as bad you might think. After you been out in the bush for a couple weeks, everything smells like its dead.” Denny chuckled at this small jest.

  “But most of us used to carry a mess-canister of formaldehyde. I’d stick ’em in there for a couple days, then dry ’em out on a flat rock in the sun. After that, they’d usually hold up till you got back to Base anyway.”

  The conversation deteriorated from that point onward, and as the effects of the wine wore off, everybody had about enough of Denny Reitmann. I think it was right after he told us he planned to carry a .45 caliber automatic on his person for the rest of his life (so that he could “waste anybody who fucked with him”), that I announced I had to get up for an eight o’clock class.

  Everybody else picked up the suggestion and suddenly Reitmann was being escorted to the door. He paused and looked at us for a moment, then he smiled.

  “You buncha pussies think you got it good, don’t you? Well, I’m tellin’ you…your turn’s gonna come. You’ll see what it’s like to finally be a man.”

  Mike grinned. “I don’t think so, Denny. I told the Board I was a fag.”

  We all laughed, and Denny appeared insulted, perhaps a bit angered. I didn’t think it was a good idea to intimidate this poor asshole.

  “You can laugh all you want, but just remember that it’s men like me that’s protectin’ all the wimpies like you guys. That’s why I’m goin’ back…”

  “What?” I said. I couldn’t help myself. “Why?”

  Denny’s grapeshot eyes gleamed. “Cuz I got a score to settle with a couple more wet-backs…for the guys in my squad that didn’t make it?”

  “Jeez, Denny, that’s nuts,” said Bob.

  “Do you know what the Sandies did when they catch a Sniper?”

  Before any of us could answer, he continued: “They always cut his dick off and stuff it in his mouth.”

  Reitmann grinned crazily. “Yeah. That’s the way I found two of my buddies…”

  Nobody spoke for a moment, and the silence grew quickly awkward, painful.

  “Good night, Denny,” I said. “Be careful. When you go back…”

  He grinned that crazy grin for the last time that night and slapped my arm extremely hard. “You too, Jack…all of you. And who knows, when you guys get down there, I might be the guy waitin’ to greet you when you get outta the chopper!”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Jay.

  And then we shut him out into the night, into the void where our thoughts never ventured. I can remember a great sense of relief passing over me, as though I’d been told a great plague had finally ended.

  “That sucker’s stone crazy,” said Mike.

  “I feel sorry for him,” said Jay. “They’ve turned him into a monster.”

  “He’s a fucking psychopath,” I said. “I don’t ever want to see the son-of-a-bitch again. He gives me the creeps. Did you ever try looking into his eyes?”

  “Can you believe he’s going back?” asked Bob.

  “I hope he stays there,” I said. “Him and his ‘Ring of Truth’…”

  ⟡

  Five years later people were still dying in Central America, and the newest President (God, how I loathed the man!) was trying to get the country out of the whole mess “honorably.” It was a joke, but nobody was laughing.

  Especially me.

  The year I finished medical school, the Draft Lottery pulled my birthday up as Number Nine. Very, very bad. But I had already started my first year of Residency at Johns Hopkins, specializing in laser micro-surgery on the nerves and capillaries. Since this was a fairly new field, the Army decided that I could be very useful in saving severed, or partially severed, limbs.

  And so even though I was drafted, they gave me a commission, and after boot camp, shipped me off to a V.A. hospital in Philadelphia for some experience before getting a free ticket to the San Salvador Base Hospital and a chance to save a few GI’s extremities.

  We had a ward in Philly for ’Dor vets who came back in such bad shape, they’d never been able to leave. Para- and quadriplegics; the Johnny-Got-His-Gun basket cases; men with half their skulls and brains and faces bl
own away; guys with so many organs missing, they had to stay forever hooked up to a series of artificial support machines; and the Section Eights, the Funny Farmers.

  Of course, that’s where I saw Denny Reitmann again.

  It’s funny, but I had almost been expecting it on an unconscious level. I had tried to forget about the night he showed us the brass ring on his belt, but I knew it would shamble through the back-corridors of my memory forever.

  Denny Reitmann and his Ring of Truth.

  I knew, even back then, that both of them would be part of that psychic baggage I would always carry with me. And when I first entered the part of the hospital known as the “Permanent” Ward, walking down the rows of beds which contained every horror and abomination committed to human bodies you could ever imagine, I had an odd feeling pass through me. It was like those times when you can sense someone watching you, usually in a crowded, public place, and you turn around and bang, there he or she is—caught, staring right at you. I experienced a kind of psychic, pre-emptive strike as I accompanied Dr. Barahmi on his rounds. In an instant, I knew that I would see Reitmann in one of the beds up ahead. It was an unshakable certainty, an absolute knowledge, and it caused my knees to go weak for just a moment.

  Catching myself on the rail of the nearest bed, I paused and shook my head, as if to clear it. Please, I thought. Not Reitmann. Anybody but him.

  But I found myself walking past the beds, scanning the faces of the doomed souls within them, actually searching for the familiar features I knew I was going to see.

  “Jack!” Reitmann’s voice was raspy. “Jack Marchetti!”

  Turning to the right, I saw him waving his arms frantically. His complexion was pallid under the fluorescent light, his eyes like single spheres of birdshot, were sunk into his skull. There was no impish grin about to appear in the corners of his mouth, there was no pinched sneer. His face was a design for panic and fear and despair. Reitmann looked hideous to me—a specter from a past I wanted to forget.

  “Hello, Denny,” I said softly, my voice shattering.

  I reached out and shook his hand.

  “You know this man?” asked Dr. Barahmi.

  I nodded, fighting a lump in my throat. I thought I might actually faint, or maybe heave my guts out. Denny appeared anxious, as if there was a terrible fear inside, just waiting to break free. He wouldn’t let go of my hand. “You a doctor now, Jack? You come to get me out of here?”

  I could only nod, then shake my head, confused.

  Denny burst into tears as he tried to speak. “All you guys tried to forget about me…everybody wanted to forget about me…everybody but you, Jack. I knew you were different from the rest of them…”

  I swallowed with difficulty. “I’m…I’m no different, Denny.” I’m probably worse, I thought.

  Dr. Barahmi patted my shoulder, and backed away to give us a private moment. It was at that point that I noticed the absence under Denny’s sheets. Picking up the covers, I could see that he had lost both limbs just below the knee. Denny suddenly stopped his crying.

  “Mine,” he said in a terrible, raspy whisper. “Got me on my third day back, the motherfucker…”

  “You shouldn’t have gone back. You’d made it, you were safe.” He shook his head. “None of us are ever safe, Marchetti. Not even guys like you.”

  There was something about the way Reitmann intoned that last sentence which made me recall his calling us “pussies” for dodging the draft any way we could. Ducking the pain and the horror had been a double-edged sword. A part of me was of course glad I hadn’t been maimed or crippled, but there was another part of me which carried a shapeless guilt for not taking my chances like all the poor bastards in the ward which surrounded me. This was not a subject I liked to dwell upon, or even think about, but there was something about Reitmann which was bringing it to the surface.

  “You’ve been here since the last time I saw you?” I covered up the stumps of his legs, tried to look into his spooky eyes.

  “That’s the ticket, man. Right after New Year’s my legs bought the farm, and they skied me outta there. Been here ever since.”

  “Why? You look like you could have prosthetics with no problems. A little therapy and you could be walking all over the place.”

  He chuckled inappropriately. “Even with new legs, I couldn’t get away from them…”

  “What? Away from who?”

  “So I figure: why bother?”

  “Denny, what’re you talking about?”

  He looked up at me and started laughing. “Didn’t they tell you, Jack?” His throat filled with a hyena-like cackling and he threw his head back against his pillow. “I’m as crazy as a shithouse rat!”

  Dr. Barahmi appeared soundlessly by my side and tapped my shoulder. “I am sorry. You could not have possibly known. Come. Perhaps we should leave now.”

  Numb, I must have nodded my head, and allowed the Chief Surgeon to guide me to the exit from the ward, and out into the antiseptic nothingness of the central corridor. But even out there, I could hear the lunatic laughter of Denny Reitmann. As we entered the elevators, the cackling seemed to change into a wind-swept wailing, a preternatural banshee’s scream. The sound echoed in my skull even as the doors closed and we began our descent. It was at that moment that I knew I must try to help Denny Reitmann.

  Spending a few hours in the Medical Records Library told me all there was to know about him. After stepping on the mine, he lost a lot of blood before the medics could get to him. After suffering from severe shock, he lapsed into a coma for almost a month. When he woke up on the hospital ship to find his legs gone, whatever was left of his mind—whatever part the Marine Corps had not already ravaged—caved in. For the better part of the next three years, Denny exhibited all the symptoms of catatonia. Gradually he began to respond mimetically to the most routine stimuli, and, after a visit from a member of his Sniper squad, he finally started showing signs of a possible recovery.

  He made an effort to locate the others in his squad, and this desire for contact was very helpful in Denny regaining his verbal abilities. For the next two years, the entries in his file were the expected kinds of progress-notes on a recovering schizophrenic. His chemo-therapy, originally high doses of Prolyxin, had been tempered over time to include the usual spectrum of anti-hallucinogenics like Haldol, Mellaril, and finally settling on the old stand-by: Thorazine. He responded well in both group and individual therapy, and the notes on that period of his treatment were encouraging. Denny’s prognosis changed from “guarded” to outright optimistic until…

  …until he learned that the other members of his squad were dying off, one at a time, but quickly and inexorably.

  When Denny learned that the last cohort from his “Black Aces” squad had died, his condition deteriorated rapidly. His file noted increases in chlorpromazine-therapy, his repeated mentions of “visions, voices, and sounds in the night.” His hallucinations increased, and he became extremely paranoid and fearful of each coming night.

  It all sounded rather typical to me, but not having had any psychiatric work since the survey-stuff at med school, I figured the best thing to do would be to check with Denny’s therapist, Dr. Michelle Jordan.

  Her face was vaguely familiar to me when we met in her office. I guess I’d seen her walking in the halls or in the elevators but, prior to finding Reitmann, I wouldn’t have had much reason to talk to her. Dr. Jordan looked very good for a woman in her early forties, and she seemed pleased to see me take an interest in her patient. Which was fine with me. I mean some of the more insecure types feel very threatened when another doc tries to study one of their guinea pigs.

  “To be honest with you,” I said softly, “in my thoroughly unprofessional opinion, Denny didn’t seem very crazy to me.”

  Jordan fired up a Winston. On her desk lay a huge ceramic ash tray from the Occupational Therapy Shop (I recognized the mold) overflowing with butts. “No, he doesn’t show any symptoms unless you get him on
the subject of his squad.”

  “Are they all dead but him?”

  She nodded, took a deep drag.

  “How the hell did he find out?”

  “Denny became a prolific letter-hack. He had managed to keep in touch with each one—there were only eight of them, actually.”

  “And they’re all dead. Seems pretty weird, don’t you think?”

  Jordan shrugged, dragged.

  “You know how they all died?”

  She nodded. “A variety of things. A couple from diseases. The rest were accidental.”

  That struck me as very weird, very strange. “Foul play suspected in any of them?”

  Dr. Jordan smiled. “‘Foul play,’ Doctor? Do you read a lot of English mystery novels?”

  I smiled, maybe blushed a little. “What I meant was: do you think any of them might have been killed? You know—murder?”

  “You know, I’ve never really given it any thought. Why do you ask?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, really. What’s he afraid of at night?”

  “He won’t tell me,” said Dr. Jordan. “If I could find out, I could maybe help him work past it.”

  “Maybe he’ll tell me,” I said, getting up. The room was so rank from the cigarette smoke, I had to make tracks.

  ⟡

  “They want this,” said Denny as he reached into the drawer of his bed-stand, fumbling around for something.

  I had visited him just before nightfall, and had closed off the bed’s privacy curtains to suggest that we were more alone than we were. I hoped he might open up to me.

  “Who’s ‘they,’ Denny?”

  Ignoring my question, he kept rooting around in the drawerful of junk until he found the object he was looking for. He held it up for me to see.

  “This is it. You remember what it is, don’t you, Jack?”

  Even in the dim light, the brass ring seemed to glow with an eerie warmth, a power. It was a talisman of evil, a magnet which could draw the darkness to it. I felt a tightening in my throat as I looked at the ring. My eyes felt as if they might start watering.