View Finder

by Greg Jolley

  The evening’s campfire was rebuilt, and as the sky darkened, Madera handed out the tin bottles and small, white cloths, skipping me, as usual. He stood at the edge of the field facing us, his machine gun on his shoulder, holding his own bottle and rag. I was breaking down one of the tripods and packing the cameras and film for the night, and I paused to watch Dirks. He tipped his silver bottle into his cloth, took a deep breath from it, and collapsed beside the fire with his boots on the hot stones. I walked over and pulled his boots and legs back from the flames and picked up his bottle, which lay just beyond his prone hand. I put the cap back on.

  “Camera grunt, head out,” Madera ordered.

  I stood and slung my rifle and read the bottle label. Ether-something—the rest of the word was medical gibberish.

  The others were laughing and pointing at Dirks and his “overdoing it.” I walked out onto the airstrip and took up my usual position on the hard grade close to the original location of the four flares. Sitting with my knees raised, I scanned the four ends of the airstrip. The voices from camp began their usual rise and collapse with laughter along with the chaos of their stumbling about.

  In the southwestern sky, the dense, high treetops were black, and beyond there was a man-made illumination, a skyward glow, from deep within the jungle.

  Like the past nights, I took out my transistor radio and thumbed the dial slowly along the pickets of wavering static. I had yet to get anything like a station, but two nights before, I thought I had heard a male voice, perhaps standing in automobile traffic, speaking Spanish. The batteries had nearly run down, but I thumbed the dial slowly, nonetheless. I aimed the extended antenna in all four directions before I settled to the north. Maybe it was the cloudless black sky that made the difference. I’ll never know. The dial scrolled over a man’s dry voice concluding what I thought was a newscast. As my thumb minutely adjusted the dial, his voice rose and fell within borders of static. He went silent for six seconds and was replaced by commercial music. The last note of the jingle was still ringing when a woman’s voice began speaking. “…Luxurious travel aboard Worldwide Airlines’ fleet of commercial aircraft.”

  She had a British accent, and I sucked in the deepest breath of my life.

  It was Mumm, I was certain. The unique, intelligent lilt and a crinkle, a glimmer, of humor and wit. The commercial ran nearly to the end before dissolving into static. I spent the rest of that night thumb brushing the dial, the antenna aimed north, hoping for another Worldwide Airlines commercial. I recall the view of the little radio through my goggles, which I studied throughout the night until day’s first glow. I recall the hours of ear straining, focusing on the silence.

  Dirks came for me and followed me back to camp instead of lying down as before. I was ordered to get four hours of sleep.

  Madera woke me. He had pulled a cobbled chair over to the front of my tent and sat in it as I stirred and began dressing.

  “Relax, Seabee. Clear the sleep from your brain.”

  I splashed canteen water on my head and face, rubbed them both, and pulled on my goggles, which appeared to amuse him.

  “Everybody’s having visions. Even you. With those.”

  I pulled on my boots.

  “Today is going to get interesting,” he said. “Tense, too. I need your cameras set up midway on the airfield on the east side. Place them in the brush, so they aren’t visible to us. At 1300, begin filming the mouth of that tunnel, the one I had Near carve. You’ll see me appear, and you’re to follow me. Well, film me and a new compadre as we walk along the airfield to the camp. I’ll signal you when to stop.”

  Madera gathered both teams together around the morning fire.

  “When coherent…” he told both groups, “…some of you might have a question or two about what our mission is. Here is the answer…you get no answers. This effort doesn’t need to make sense to you. Today we will place the last piece of the puzzle, but you still won’t see clearly. Never will. Aim your addled brains away from that. We will be heading home tomorrow and back inside the United States by midweek. We are on the crest. Today we will be conducting an exchange. Any questions?” he asked rhetorically, shaking his head.

  At 1100, Madera unslung his rifle, unholstered his sidearm, and pulled on a heavy backpack. He beckoned to me, and he and I walked in silence to the middle of the airstrip where I turned away to set up the cameras in the bush. He continued up the hard-packed airstrip to the bulldozed tunnel.

  At 1230, I had the 3D cameras loaded and focused in a medium shot that would track with a zoom at a walking pace. The mouth of the tunnel was centered.

  At 1258, I turned those cameras on and raised the handheld. The wind was sweeping dust spirals onto the airstrip—a bank of low, heavy clouds was coming in off the ocean to deliver midday rains. I kept my eye to the viewfinder, mindful of the change of fragrance in the air, from damp foliage to metallic. The scent made my ears ring.

  At 1301, the rains began. Madera walked from the tunnel. He was centered in the viewfinder from his belt to the foliage around his head and sweaty face and satisfied smile. I widened the frame and saw that his backpack was gone and that he had company—a blindfolded civilian in a filthy business suit. The man had a pale, reptile face and was talking fast and following in Madera’s footsteps. Madera was ignoring the man as the two walked out onto the airstrip and started for the distant camp.

  When they were twenty yards out, I shut down the handheld and moved to the 3D cameras to film a slow pan of their walk. The businessman began to rant and wave his arms and was still being ignored by Madera who turned once to my cameras and winked dramatically. The rain fell heavily from the dark cloud above. I adjusted the apertures to compensate for the gray light. I filmed Madera and the man in his dirty suit all the way along the airstrip.

  They were thirty strides from the camp when I heard the sound of a vehicle to my left. I continued to film and raised my eye from the viewfinder and looked to the tunnel mouth. Seeing nothing, I reentered the viewfinder and filmed the businessman going into a panic and looking back up the airstrip. I considered a cut and pan to the tunnel but chose to do as ordered and kept the focus on the two men.

  When Madera and the man reached the camp entrance, I heard shouts in Spanish from my left. I refocused and locked the 3D cameras and took up the handheld. I panned it to the left to the southwest tunnel while adding slow zoom.

  The vehicle was a Jeep. Soldiers in uniforms I didn’t recognize walked alongside it. There was an officer present—I could tell he was in charge by his aggressive voice and pointing. I was widening the composition and minutely dialing in to zoom when the rain and the day were torn by gunfire. The muzzle flashes were coming from the soldiers alongside the Jeep. From my camera position back in the vegetation, I filmed the officer pointing and stepping back.

  Gunfire also opened up to my right, two shots from a handgun. I panned the handheld to the camp entrance, the pan way too fast for viewing, and it filled with the spewing of bullets and tracer rounds tearing into the camp entry. I set the handheld down and took to the 3D viewfinder. My fellow Seabees and Specwars were scrambling for weapons.

  The enemies were spraying the camp with automatic fire. The cruel cracking of the 50mm gun on the Jeep started. I filmed my team rising and falling as they were overpowered and consumed by gunfire. The businessman was cut in half, vertically, and blown farther into the camp entrance. I filmed Dirks exploding backward with both his weapon and most of his head taking flight. There was a total of four muzzle flashes from the camp.

  I zoomed so that the camp entrance filled the frame. A very brave Madera crashed through the foliage from the right side of the composition. He took three steps out into the rain and the clearing, firing his machine gun into the vegetation where enemy soldiers were making a flanking attack. His weapon was still spraying when bullets destroyed his chest. He was knocked off his feet, and all gunfire stopped.

  I switched the 3D cameras off. Scrambling farther int
o the trees and overgrowth, I knelt and hid. My hands were trembling. I was gulping air in a useless attempt to calm down, my mind was a blur of violent and bloody images. There was no understanding. The madness had been so sudden, so vicious, and so deadly.

  The Jeep drove up the airstrip, and the officer entered the camp alone, his sidearm drawn. He fired the gun one time before coming back out to the Jeep. Climbing into the passenger seat, the vehicle made a U-turn and drove back up the airstrip and disappeared into the southwest tunnel.

  I remained hidden in the trees and greenery back from the cameras. I needed to check on the others in the camp but couldn’t will my legs to move. Perhaps I was in shock, I don’t know. The gunfight I had witnessed was a movie gone off its tracks like some hack director had lobbed a grenade into a love scene.

  Kneeling in the dank soil and bush, I watched the opening to the camp. There was no movement, no voices. Hours passed. The rain clouds rolled away. The hot sun sank into the trees.

  When night fell, a group of soldiers reentered the airfield from the south. Lanterns lit, they took up a position halfway to the camp chattering and laughing in Spanish.

  Somewhere in the night, a cry of anguish carried from our camp. I needed to get to whoever it was, to help in any way I could. I stood, preparing to circle to the camp through the vegetation. A lantern crossed the field followed by a rifle crack. The moaning ended.

  I was trapped in a fever for revenge mixed with the need to survive. The lantern remained in the camp moving here and there. I willed it to leave, for all the killers to return from where they had come. The hours passed. With each hour, the silence from my fellow soldiers weighed heavy on my heart.

  At sunrise, the Jeep and troops retreated. I unloaded the cameras and ran across the airstrip.

  Everyone was dead, disfigured by bullet holes. I covered the bodies of the Seabee’s and Specwars with sections of tent canvas and placed a heavy stone on each of their chests.

  I packed the film cans and a few MREs inside two shoulder duffels adding six of the phosphorus flares and my transistor radio. I spent the rest of the day hidden in the vegetation waiting for nightfall. Fitful sleep captured me for short spells in the heat and humidity under clouds of insects.

  When the moon rose, I traversed down the mountain. On the first big turn in the trail, I stepped out onto the landing. It was more like a balcony. I lit a flare and set it upright with rocks before continuing down the trail. I did the same on the next three balconies and was on the beach two hours later.

  I ate without interest, no matter how long it had been, one bland MRE after another. At the entrance to the beach from the trail, I set up a trip line. I dug a pit in the trees and lay down inside with my duffels pulled over most of my body. The rest of that night was endless and torn by images of faces and bodies hideously ripped open by bullets. Nodding off occasionally, I fought to end the movie-like stream of faces no longer young and hopeful, replaced by blood-stained cruelty.

  I woke to the sweeping of searchlights on the beach and the hushed run of dinghies onto the shore.

  Scene 10

  Instead of a survivor’s welcome, I was quickly handcuffed and whisked away in one of the dinghies out to the transport ship offshore. My goggles were confiscated, and I was ordered to shower and shave. I was given a new set of blues and boots before being placed in the brig down in the ship’s hold. The cell was a steel cage. I was fed and told I would be uncuffed and allowed to sleep after interrogation.

  The first interrogation was brief—no more than an hour of questioning. I was abandoned for a few hours but still in handcuffs. The second round of questioning was longer, and four new officers attended. Their focus was on the contents of the film cans. It was clear to me that they had developed and viewed the footage.

  The ship set sail some days later. It was hard to tell time down below. Twice a day, I was escorted to the bathroom and fed. I was also allowed a brief shower every third day.

  “Why am I being held like this?” I asked time and again.

  “For your own good,” was the common reply.

  The last time I asked, the sailor escorting me said, “You were part of something you shouldn’t have been. They’re not sure what to do with you.”

  I stopped asking.

  As best I could count, we were at sea for eighty-one days.

  When we reached land, the ship was moored in a harbor, and I was transferred to shore in a launch with two armed guards. I was moved to a military brig on the base and informed that a tribunal was being arranged. My handcuffs were removed, and my new cell had a sink and toilet and a sliding shelf from which I received my meals.

  By my count, I received the box of personal belongings ninety-four days later. Inside was my transistor radio and my goggles. Having my vision returned to me was a relief. I put the radio up on the narrow sill under the barred window and wished I had fresh batteries. Days later, I was allowed an envelope, a piece of paper, and the stub of a pencil. I wrote to Ira, asking about Pierce and Hilda. I never received a reply. I was allowed to send a letter every ten days and did so. I continued to ask Ira about my son and if there was anything he could do to secure my release.

  I remained in custody for ten months and was escorted to hearings on three occasions. There were lengthy, vague discussions and decisions made. I felt confused in the makeshift sunlit courtrooms in front of the small group of officers. I was rarely addressed directly. It came to me that I was viewed as a pawn that they were trying to place, to hide, on a much more important and complicated board.

  After a series of brain scans, the doctors started me on a regimen of psychiatric treatments. I suspect the new medications were the reason I started seeing glowing clouds around other people. In particular, about their heads. I had no choice but to abandon my goggles and set them up on the windowsill beside my transistor radio. Wearing the goggles expanded the glowing light into solid blocks around the heads of those I looked at. I was ordered to put them on a few times during neurological treatments and was questioned about my weaving walk. I explained that I was trying to avoid colliding with each person’s blockish aura.

  Living within the 2D world made my confinement a bit easier. I began to appreciate my small, gray cell and the lack of confusing colors. Even though I still couldn’t see human eyes, at least the glows were muted and not boxlike. The soldiers I saw in the halls and hearings had different hues, and it took me awhile to sort them out. Eventually, I assigned good or bad intentions and attitudes to the varying shades. Most people I encountered had a blend of colors, conflicting tints, and shades. A very small number had a smooth and calm glow of cream and gold.

  Near the end of my confinement, I returned to my cell from showering, and there stood Lieutenant Ezra Mayer waiting for me. His aura was a new and interesting blend—a sky blue with a core of pulsing purple. He gestured for me to sit beside him on my bunk. I noted the manila folder on his lap. He squeezed my shoulder as I sat, and I watched the purple expand when he removed his hand.

  A guard entered the cell through the door that had been left open for the first time. He set my satchel on the edge of the bunk and left without a word. His glow was like most—conflicted and bored. I turned to Ezra and looked straight at his nose and mouth.

  “Two items, BB. First, I’m not here. Second, the failed rescue mission never occurred. You’ve been what they’re describing as deranged. For nearly two years. If you agree to a Section 8, you’re going to be drummed out of the service.”

  There was a hazy pearl of shimmering black beginning to appear within the center of his glow.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Well?”

  “Do you agree?”

  I looked away from his head to the windowsill. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good choice. It’s going to take a few days to process you out. Quite a few more days of train trips to get you back to Hollywood.”

  I was studying my transistor radio beside my goggles.

 
“Sir,” I said. “I heard her.”

  “Who would that be, son?”

  “Mumm.”

  His head followed my gaze at the windowsill. The black pearl glow was receding, and the purple expanded. He stood and took the radio down.

  “Recently?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered. “When I was on the mountaintop. The airstrip.”

  “Oh. Yes. On your mission. That never took place. You’ve had two years of madness. I’m told you experienced many odd visions.”

  I turned to him and watched the black glow expand.

  “Does it matter that your discharge status will be…murky?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry? Oh. No, sir. That’s fine.”

  “That must have been quite a blow.”

  “Sir? Mumm’s voice was…”

  “When you took that fall.”

  He read the confusion in my expression.

  “You fell off the ladder. In Archives. You slipped and landed head first.”

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t remember, do you? That’s best.”

  His head was aimed at his hands. He pointed to the empty battery compartment on the back of the transistor radio.

  “Is it coming clear to you?” he asked. “Civilian radio reception? In a jungle two thousand miles from the States.”

  The black aura had consumed all of his head.

  “Brain damage can be mysterious and strange.”

  I looked away from him.

  “I’d like to see my son,” I said quietly.

  “You will. And soon.”

  He stood.

  “I’d say ‘so long,’ but I’m not here.” And with that, he left.

  I opened the satchel and found the clothing I had worn when I enlisted—my black suit and shoes, my white shirt and green tie. Pushed into the lower-left corner of the bag were my letters to Ira minus the postage I had been promised.