Long Range Patrol: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 1)

by Dennis Foley

  “Sure … why not? I only have to dance, not drive,” she said as she waved at the bartender for another round.

  Hollister caught the expression of disgust in the eyes of a young, collegiate-looking customer sitting on the short end of the L. He seemed to be in the middle of trying to grow long hair and a beard. The beard was spotty and the long hair was at that awkward in-between length. It also looked as if it hadn’t been washed in several days. From his expression it was clear that he had no use for Hollister.

  Hollister wasn’t sure what the guy’s attitude problem was, but decided to keep an eye on him. The dancer followed Hollister’s eye line and spotted the other customer. She turned back to Hollister.

  “Ignore him. He’s one of those college fucks that come in here, get drunk, pat us all on the ass, and then leave without thinkin’ about leaving a tip.”

  “He doesn’t seem to like me.”

  “None of those peace fucks like guys like you, General.”

  He chuckled. “Well, I just came back from where folks really don’t like me. Wonder what I did to him?”

  She flipped the ash from her cigarette and looked down at the other guy. “You didn’t whine, man. That’s what pisses him off the most, I guess.”

  The guy got up and pushed his glass away from him in disgust. Turning, he walked out the door without looking back. On the bar he had left the correct change for the drink.

  Walking up the manicured path made Hollister feel uncomfortable. He was anticipating meeting Lucas’s grieving family. He had to guess that they’d try to be pleasant to him since they had asked that he escort their son’s body home. Still, he knew that meeting them would be very awkward.

  Looking up from the path, he finally took in the house itself, a new and very expensive A-frame. He had never pictured Lucas living in anything like it. A layer of new snow barely covered the great carpet of leaves that had fallen from trees that some landscape architect had deliberately spaced across the gently rolling estate.

  On one side of the house the driveway looped through a section of the lawn. Hollister could see that there were several visitors, from the number of expensive cars parked in the driveway. He stopped at the front door, rang the doorbell and swallowed to clear his throat. Remembering that he still had his overseas cap on, he pulled it off and folded it in one hand.

  There was no answer. He rang the doorbell again. Waiting for someone to answer, he suddenly felt self-conscious. He smoothed the skirt on his blouse and reached up to check the centering of his necktie. He had rehearsed his words of condolence twenty times in the car on the way up from the city. He quickly went over it again in his head.

  “Who is it?” a man’s voice asked from behind the door. It opened before Hollister had a chance to reply. The man was a twenty-five-year-older twin of Lucas. He had the same face, eyes, and strong jawline. At one time he had probably had his son’s smile too.

  “Sir, I’m Jim Hollister … I …”

  “Hollister, oh yes, Lieutenant Hollister. Please, come in.”

  Mr. Lucas didn’t look directly at Hollister. He only turned and led him into the foyer.

  Inside, several grieving members of the family were fussing around Mrs. Lucas. She turned to see who had arrived. Spotting Hollister, she stopped talking and stared at him.

  Hollister was not sure if she was upset by her loss or somehow disturbed by his arrival. He just waited for someone else to make the first move.

  “Margaret, this is Lieutenant Hollister from—”

  Mrs. Lucas stood up, dropping her Kleenex. She reached out to take his hand, still staring into Hollister’s eyes. “I know. Thank you for coming, Lieutenant.”

  “Jim, ma’am. It’s just Jim, please,” Hollister said.

  “Of course it is. We have heard so much about you.”

  Not sure what to do with his hands, Hollister awkwardly fumbled with his cap. “Ah, ma’am … I’m terribly sorry about your loss. We were good friends and I, ah … I—”

  She helped him through the moment. “Please sit down here, next to me.”

  Mrs. Lucas moved over and sat back down. He shuffled sideways around the low coffee table and sat next to her. There was not another sound in the room, even though twelve mourners were there with the Lucas family. All of them looked at Hollister as if he were from another planet.

  “Will you have a drink?” Mr. Lucas asked.

  Hollister nodded, feeling that every word was being recorded.

  A pinch-nosed woman wearing black clacked her china coffee cup into its saucer and broke the silence. “Did you go to West Point, too, dear?”

  “No, no ma’am, I didn’t go there.”

  When he didn’t offer some reasonable alternative, such as having gone through ROTC at Harvard, the woman wrinkled up her nose as if she smelled something offensive. “Oh. I see.”

  Mrs. Lucas abruptly shifted the subject. “Were you with him when it happened?”

  He’d been afraid of that kind of question. “No, ma’am. I wasn’t.”

  “He was our only son, you know. We had very big plans for him after he got this army thing out of his system.”

  There was a note of disapproval in the woman’s voice. Lucas had never mentioned to Hollister that his mother disapproved of him being an Airborne-Ranger infantry officer.

  She fumbled for another tissue to wipe the tears from her eyes. “I’ll never understand why this country ever got into such a mess in Vietnam. If Jack Kennedy were still alive …”

  Mr. Lucas handed Hollister a bourbon. The diversion made it possible to avoid commenting on her remark. He raised the drink to his lips and tasted the expensive liquor.

  All around him the conversations touched on every topic except Lucas’s death. He was not included in any of the discussions and felt very awkward. So he simply tried to smile and be polite. Time moved very slowly.

  At the grave, Hollister braced himself against the cold air and listened to the minister who stood at the head of the polished coffin. He spoke as if he were in a large church, projecting his voice against the spitting snow and constant wind.

  As he listened, Hollister thought it was odd that the minister didn’t mention Lucas’s sacrifice or his unselfishness to volunteer to go to Vietnam. It was as if he was just dead and Vietnam had nothing to do with it. It seemed to Hollister that the minister was using an invocation that fit almost all of his funerals, with Lucas’s name plugged in at the appropriate place.

  The family had refused a military burial detail. And it didn’t seem right to Hollister that a soldier like Lucas would be buried in a Connecticut cemetery with no recognition of his service or how he had died. Standing there in the cold, he wondered why they even asked for him to escort the body.

  He looked over the coffin at Lucas’s parents. They were meticulously dressed, ramrod stiff, and very reserved. They had treated him politely, but without warmth or any recognition that he and Lucas had been very close friends. He’d never known people with money. They weren’t anything like their son. They were cold.

  Later there was a reception at the Briarwood Country Club. It was a larger version of the family get-together at the Lucas house before the burial.

  That was the first time he got to talk to Cindy—Lucas’s girlfriend. At the grave she had stood apart from the Lucas family.

  Cindy was every bit as pretty as Lucas had described her. Blond, petite, and a shade on the brassy side—she wasn’t cut from the same cloth as the people at the country club. There was no stiffness or distance in her voice. Hollister thought she was perfect for Lucas.

  “We had lots of plans. I guess they’re all up for grabs now,” Cindy said as she let Hollister light the cigarette she had pulled from her purse.

  He tried to avoid anything painful for her. “Have you had time to decide?”

  Cindy took another glass of champagne from the tray a waiter was carrying around. “I’m still going to Africa.”

  “Africa?” Hollister asked.


  “Yeah, Luke and I were going to join the Peace Corps after he got out.”

  “Peace Corps? I didn’t have any idea that he was even planning on getting out of the army.”

  “He thought that people in the army might hold it against him if he let them know that he was not going to extend. He still had a year and a half before he was even eligible to get out, so we just kept the plans in the family.”

  “Looking forward to it, huh?” Hollister asked.

  “Sure, we were, but his folks were dead set against it. They blamed me for putting the idea in his head. They still weren’t over being angry about Luke volunteering to go to Vietnam when they found out about our Peace Corps plans.”

  Hollister looked at her, surprised.

  “Vietnam was a huge inconvenience to them. Now it’s killed their son and they are white-hot about it.”

  “I got a feeling that they were unhappy. They didn’t say that much to me,” Hollister said.

  “You? Didn’t you get the picture about you?”

  “Me? What about me? I thought they wanted me to escort his body back because we were friends.”

  Cindy laughed. Her third champagne was starting to take effect. “They had to look for your name in his letters. They asked for you because the old man was in the navy during World War Two and he figured that Luke’s body would get special treatment if there was an officer escort with it.”

  CHAPTER 13

  SUSAN RETURNED FROM WORK to find Hollister sitting in the near dark on her doorstep with a bouquet of red roses in his hand. It had been a long day for her and she appreciated his gesture. Seeing him, she ran up and kissed him several times on the nose and lips. Then, looping her arm through his, they walked up the three nights to her place.

  “Is it over?” she asked.

  “Over?”

  “With your friend? Do you have to do anything more with the family?” Susan asked.

  Hollister was about to tell Susan about Lucas’s family but he stopped himself. What good would it do? “Yeah, it’s over. I don’t have to go back there. Mind if we just don’t talk about it anymore?”

  Susan studied his face for some sign of what was bothering him, but couldn’t find it. “So, what’s next? And don’t tell me that you have to leave right away. I’d rather not hear it, if that’s all you have to tell me.”

  As they reached her landing, Hollister took her keys and opened the door to her apartment. “I told you that I have to go back.”

  She closed the door and looked at him expectantly. “Well?”

  “I have to leave tomorrow night on a late flight out of La Guardia.” He looked at his watch and quickly calculated. “But we still have about twenty-six hours before I have to go.”

  “And then it’s straight back to Vietnam?”

  “No, I get a one-day layover in Kansas City. I’ll be able to see my family.”

  “That’s good, Jimmy. I’m sure they’ll be so excited.” She thought for a second. “So … what do you want to do with our time?”

  “Can you take tomorrow off?”

  “Count on it! … So, what do you want to do?”

  With a lecherous grin on his face, Hollister reached up and slipped his tie to one side, loosening the knot.

  Susan smiled and teased. “You are really an animal. Just like something out of the wild.”

  “That mean you aren’t interested in what I have in mind?” Susan stepped closer to Hollister and reached up to unbutton his shirt. He dropped his tie and started on her blouse.

  “You hungry?”

  Susan rolled over on her side to look at Hollister. Sweat pooled in the hollow of his throat. She took her hand and ran it over his chest, wiping the perspiration off. “James Hollister, Vietnam has knocked some weight off of you, but it sure hasn’t slowed you down.”

  They laughed as he pulled her to his side.

  “Is that yes or is that no?” Hollister teased.

  Susan slipped from his grasp and jumped up from the bed. She stood naked, her hands on her hips. She let him look at her for a long time.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She was young and fresh and beautiful. He wanted to burn her picture into his memory for the times that he would again spend thinking about her—his remaining nights in Vietnam.

  “We’re going out. Get your lazy butt up, Hollister!”

  “Where? Where are we going? I want to know before I make any move that stops me from soaking you up.”

  Susan playfully grabbed a pillow and hit him with it. She fell across his body and they embraced. He held her—it was a different embrace. It was filled with the fear that he would lose her, or that he would not be able to come home and pick up where they would leave off, or that he would come home like Lucas. He tried not to let her feel his fears, but he couldn’t conceal his anxieties from her.

  They held hands as they walked down the streets, of Greenwich Village. Dinner was simple—Italian food and lots of cheap Chi-anti at the Grand Ticino. For dessert they went to Thirty-fourth Street to the Tivoli restaurant for coffee and New York cheesecake. They laughed and played like teenagers. By the early morning hours they were finally comfortable again.

  Neither of them had admitted that they’d been awkward with one another for the first two days Hollister was home. In spite of their intimacy and sleeping together, it wasn’t until the third day that the distance their separation created had contracted. But the hours were growing short for them.

  Susan went along to sit with him while he waited to board his plane. She was sad that he was leaving her again, angry that he had to go, and worried about what might happen to him back in Vietnam. She was also conscious of her self-centered emotions, and that bothered her too. But the one emotion she was not uncomfortable with was her desire to never let him go.

  She looked up and saw Hollister returning from somewhere in the crowd with coffee in flimsy paper cups.

  Susan took a sip. “It’s hot, but hardly coffee,” she said, striking out at the coffee rather than at him.

  He understood. He too was confused and angry at the parting. For a moment he wondered how many times they would have to do this. He hadn’t decided about staying in the army, and he hadn’t made a move to make their relationship anything more permanent than the unspoken commitment that they had. He put his cup down and took hers from her hands.

  Susan wasn’t sure what he was doing, but she didn’t object.

  “I’ve been trying to find the right time, and there just isn’t one.” Hollister couldn’t seem to form his thoughts into the right words.

  “Go on, Jimmy.”

  “Okay, here goes. I don’t have any idea what the future holds for me. I just know that I want you to be part of it. I haven’t decided a lot of things, and I’m not even sure if you would even consider—”

  “Yes, Jimmy. Yes,” Susan said, trying to rush the moment and not let him talk himself out of it.

  “Yes?!”

  She smiled and reached up, taking his face in her hands. “Yes, I will marry you.”

  All of a sudden twenty people in the waiting area cheered and applauded.

  Susan and Hollister realized where they were and laughed at the onlookers who were eavesdropping and cheering them on.

  “There’s one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You have to promise me that we’ll stop living our lives in airports and bus terminals.”

  Hollister laughed and took her in his arms. As he stood up, he pulled her to her feet and then lifted her off the floor. The crowd cheered louder.

  Hollister boarded the plane with the sinking feeling that only comes when a man leaves the woman he loves. It weighed on him.

  The stewardess was perky and a bit too much like a cheerleader. But he needed a drink. So when she came by, Hollister ordered a scotch and some ice.

  He had picked a seat adjacent to the tiny jet galley. It was a trick that most soldiers quickly learned. The proximity made th
em the first and last stop for stewardesses going to and from the galley. And it also gave them a chance to chat and flirt with the pretty stewardesses who usually killed time there when not occupied with the other passengers’ needs.

  Her chrome name tag read Tammy. Hollister watched her as she made the drinks. She was tiny and very pretty. She had a terrific ass, even though the airline had tried to conceal it in a rather matronly-looking uniform.

  Hollister thought he’d been discovered when she turned around with the drink tray and caught his eye. If she had noticed that he was looking at her, she didn’t say anything. But she had that something in her eye—that flirty twinkle women get when they know they’re being appreciated and aren’t upset about it.

  “Vietnam?”

  “What?” Hollister asked as she placed the drink on his tray table.

  “Going to Vietnam?”

  “Oh, yes. Going back. I was just home for a few days,” Hollister said. He saw no reason to go into details.

  “In that case you just let me know when you need a refill. It’s on the house.”

  “This airline policy?”

  “Nope, just mine,” she said. She smiled at him, then walked down the aisle to serve the others.

  He watched her walk away as he sipped his drink. Her great legs pulled his thoughts back to Susan. Months of longing to be with her had only been partially satisfied by the hours that they stole from his escort duty. He hadn’t thought to tell her, but he appreciated how hard she tried to take his mind away from Lucas and his platoon and Vietnam.

  She had said little about it when he awoke bathed in sweat from a particularly horrible dream about a night patrol that went wrong. As they sat in the dark talking about it, Susan tried to console him by telling him that she considered his preoccupation with Vietnam a sign of his responsibility.

  She told Hollister that she would think less of him if he could simply clear his mind of Vietnam and his platoon just because he was in New York with her. She held him in her arms for the longest time that night. Neither of them knew how many more nights like that were ahead of them.

  The stewardess brought Hollister a second drink and took away the little bottle from the first one. He was glad that she did; it had always bothered him to see businessmen on flights with several empties scattered on their trays. To Hollister that was a certain sign of a problem.