Windchill Summer

by Norris Church Mailer

  “I just wish I could have seen him one more time to say good-bye. The last time I saw him, he was so mad and hurt he wouldn’t even speak to me. I tried to get him to talk to me, but he just turned away, got in the car, and drove on off to go enlist. I never even got to say good-bye when he went in the service. The last thing I saw of him was the back of his head and his taillights.”

  Baby put her arm around Carlene and let her sob. Held her and smoothed down her hair, like she did her little sisters’ when they were hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” Carlene said. She sat back up and pressed her fingers into her eyes, hard. “I’ve got to get ahold of myself. This is silly. It’s just that I had already given up on Jerry, and then he started writing to me and I got my hopes back up. But he’s gone forever, and I’ve got to think about Kevin now. I have to figure out a way to make a better life for him. I don’t always want to be just a waitress, us living out in that old trailer house with Mama, Kevin not even having his own bed.”

  “Maybe you could go part-time to DuVall. Get some kind of a degree. What would you like to do if you could do anything you wanted to?”

  Carlene pulled a crumpled pack of Camels out of her pocket and offered one to Baby. They lit up.

  “If I could do anything I wanted to? Don’t laugh. I’d like to be an actress. A movie star. Move out to L.A. and get me one of those little pink houses on a curved street with palm trees in the yard. Swimming pool out in the back. Take Kevin and Mama out there, so she could get out of that stinking chicken plant. Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Not if that’s what you want to do more than anything in the world. A lot of girls make it in the movies, and most of them didn’t come from money or anything. Look at Marilyn Monroe. She was an orphan. You’re good-looking enough, that’s for sure. You have one of those cute little turned-up noses that a lot of girls pay good money to get—except theirs never look real. And you sure have the body for it. In fact, you’re built a little bit like Marilyn. I bet you would make it.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I really think so.”

  “It would be nice to be close to the ocean, wouldn’t it? Just lay out on the sand in a bathing suit and wait for a producer to discover you.” She took a long drag on the cigarette; flicked off the ash. “Did you ever see the ocean, Baby?”

  “I was born on the ocean, in the Philippines, but I don’t remember too much about it. They never let me go in swimming. Lula—my grandmother—was scared I’d drown, or afraid the Aswang mermaid would get me.” She gave a half laugh.

  “What’s an Aswang mermaid? Is that how you say it?”

  “I think so. Aswangs are like a vampire. It’s been a long time since I heard the stories, but there’s two kinds, one that lives in the banana trees and flies through the air and one that lives in the ocean and is a mermaid. I don’t know the name of the one that flies, but I think the mermaid one is called Seriena. She would come out every year at Lent, as the priest led the procession for the Stations of the Cross through the streets at twilight. Everyone in the village held a candle and walked along the seashore to the church for mass.”

  Baby saw that Carlene was listening, so she went on as she remembered her grandmother doing.

  “The Seriena, who could grow legs instead of fins when she came on land, would join the procession as it passed by the edge of the sea near her lair. She was the most beautiful thing you ever saw, with long, flowing black hair, opalescent skin that shone in the moonlight like mother-of-pearl. She would come out of the sea, bone-dry, wearing a black silk dress, with her hair and face covered by a fine lace mantilla, so nobody could see the sea-green glow of her eyes and know she was a creature of the water.

  “Grandmothers always warned their granddaughters never to lag behind in the procession, because the Seriena would find a girl who was alone and walk along beside her, singing with the most incredibly lovely, haunting voice, until the girl practically swooned with the beauty of the song and got weak enough for the Seriena to put her arm around her. Then she would lift her veil and hypnotize the girl with the green pulsating light of her eyes, turn, and walk into the sea, and the girl—her will completely gone—would follow out into the deep water, where she would drown, and the Seriena would take her and swim with her to the bottom and drink her blood from a goblet made from a seashell.”

  Carlene shivered. “Great bedtime stories your grandma told.”

  “Yeah. I had nightmares for years.”

  Carlene picked up Baby’s hand and looked at the ring she always wore, an elaborate cameo carved into a shell. “Is this little pink ring made out of a seashell?”

  “It sure is. In fact, it was a present from Lula that she sent me for my thirteenth birthday. She’s still over there, but I never saw her after we left the Philippines. I can’t say I really knew her. She doesn’t speak English, so we don’t really even write. Isn’t that weird? I don’t remember the language, but I do remember her stories.”

  “That is weird. I never knew my grandmas, either one of them, because they died young. I wish I had known them.”

  “What about your daddy? You never talk about him.”

  “Me and him didn’t get along. He used to call me Ida Red, just to aggravate me. He took off and left us one day, and I can’t say I miss him much.”

  Carlene gazed out over the river, and Baby knew not to ask any more questions.

  “Here, you want to try this ring on?” Baby twisted the ring off her middle finger and handed it to Carlene, who tried but couldn’t get it on her ring finger. She put it on the little one.

  “You sure do have small fingers. It only fits my pinkie.”

  Carlene admired the seashell ring a minute more, then took it off and handed it back to Baby.

  “That’s a real pretty ring. I can see you diving to the bottom of the sea and breaking it off a big seashell, sticking out your tongue at that old Aswang. No Aswang would dare mess with you.”

  Baby took the ring, put it back on. She had worn it for so long that it had left a pale groove around her finger. Carlene glanced at it one more time.

  “Maybe I can get me one like that when I get to the beach in California. Give me a reason to quit biting my nails.”

  The sun had gone down, and a fingernail moon hung right over Sweet Rock, high above the river, in a Maxfield Parrish sky. The trees were cool and green in the dusk. A catfish, or something big, splashed on the other side of the sandbar. They could see a dark tail flick out of the water, then disappear.

  “Whoa! Looky at that, would you!” Carlene said. “There you go! The mermaid!”

  “You don’t think there might really be such a thing as a mermaid, do you?” Baby tried to act like she was kidding, but she half thought there might be.

  “Sure there are. The river’s full of them. Real bloodsuckers. But around here they call them water moccasins.” They laughed, too loud. Like they were trying to find something—anything—funny. Baby gathered up the cups and uneaten rolls.

  “Maybe I should go on back in. Rita might need some help. Will you be all right?”

  “I’ll go with you. I think I can work now. Thanks, Baby. You’re the best friend I ever had. I mean that.” They hugged, and Baby started down the path. If she was the best friend Carlene ever had, she thought, that was a sad fact.

  “Baby? Can I ask you to do something for me?” Baby turned around and walked the few steps back to where Carlene was standing.

  “Sure. If I can.”

  “I have a whole stack of letters from Jerry that he sent me from Vietnam. Some of them are pretty rough—you know, about the fighting and all.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “If anything was ever to happen to me, I wish you’d get hold of those letters and not let my mama read them. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t read them, either. Just put them in the fire or something, okay? Would you?”

  “Well, sure, Carlene. You can trust me. But you are going live to be an old woman with fi
fty grandkids and still have those letters to read, so stop all of this. You’re making me nervous.”

  “Thank you, Baby.”

  “He really told you a lot of bad stuff that was going on, huh? Like what?”

  “Baby—you have no idea. There’s no way I could describe it.”

  “That bad?”

  Carlene looked Baby in the eyes. There was something in her gaze that was ancient; raw and frightening, like a high, piercing wind was blowing through her head. The look almost made Baby stagger.

  “It blows your mind, Baby. It really blows your mind.”

  Carlene put her arm around Baby, and the moment passed. She must have been imagining things. After all, what could Jerry have said that was that bad? They went back into the Water Witch with their arms around each other’s waists. Carlene would be all right. She had no choice.

  But even though she would pretend she was fine, Carlene knew she would never get over Jerry. He was a part of her. He would never age, and he would forever be her love. No matter what happened.

  30.Vietnam

  Dear Carlene,

  We’re here. Vietnam at last. I hate to brag, but the honor of being the advance party for the 11thBrigade went to none other than our own Charlie Company. I think that means we were the best in the 1/20th.

  Vietnam is, in a lot of ways, nothing like I thought but everything I was afraid it might be. You are going to think I’m crazy, but it’s funny—the closer I got to coming, the more I really wanted to get here. I had heard so much about it, been trained so long in what to do—how to kill, really—that I wasn’t scared at all. In fact, I was afraid I’d draw some dumb office job and spend my days typing orders or something, and never get to see the action. I can’t believe how ignorant I was.

  The action started from the minute we got near the country in the airplane. We came in at Quang Ngai province, up in the northern part of South Vietnam. Looking down, you fly in over the South China Sea, a stretch of blue that has the prettiest white sandy beaches you ever saw. Then to the west you see the deep green of the Annam Mountains. Most of Vietnam is jungle or green rice paddies, and real pretty. At least from the air. The plane we were on had stewardesses and everything, and there were some nurses with us, all dressed in their class-A uniforms, tight skirts, high heels and stockings, like they were going to a party or something. We were having a high old time until we started to land, and the pilot announced, kind of casually, that there was some incoming and we would circle for a while. I mean, right down below us, there was a firefight going on! We could see the smoke and hear the gunfire. It didn’t seem real, like it was a movie or something. This was a big base. It was supposed to be secure. I didn’t realize then that there was no secure place in the whole country, not even down at Saigon.

  Before we landed, they handed out flak jackets and told us to hit the ground running. One of the nurses said, “How the h*** am I supposed to run in these high heels?” The army is so stupid, sometimes. If they send women to where there is fighting, they should at least give them the right gear.

  The stewardesses stood by the door crying as we got off the plane. They had made this run a lot of times before, both ways. They knew already, better than us, what we were getting into. I heard one of them say to another one, “We bring in boys and take back old men.” Not the greatest thing to hear as you arrive, that’s for sure.

  Anyhow, we jumped out the door, and all of us took off running across the field, our heads hunkered down into our shoulders, like that would do any good, bullets whizzing all around us. Only one guy took a bad hit, in the leg. I figure that was it for him—forty-five seconds in-country, and then turn around back home. Still, I was glad it wasn’t me.

  The nurses all made it, but they looked kind of funny running, taking short, hobbled steps in the tight skirts, their little heels going Tic! Tic! Tic! Tic! on the tarmac. They were cussing like sailors, every step they took. I bet that is the last time they wear that outfit if they can help it.

  We all ran into this building made out of tin, and collapsed, exhausted, just from that short run. Even coming from Hawaii, where it is hot and humid, the heat of Nam literally slaps you in the face and saps your strength. The minute I got out of the plane, my uniform was soaked to the skin. Whether it was from fear or the heat, I couldn’t say.

  The smell of Vietnam is like no other place in the world—at times it smells like hothouse flowers and at times it is worse than old Stink Creek that the pickle plant drains into. It is a mix of this pungent fish sauce they eat on everything, called nuoc mam, and fuel and gas and latrines and a sweetish, rotten smell—death, I guess. That was our welcome to Nam.

  The very next day, our first assignment was to gather and burn the bodies from the firefight. I think they did it to us on purpose, because we’re the FNGs (that’s f***ing new guys, you fill in the blanks) and we should get a taste in a hurry of what death was like. Break us in right away, so to speak, almost like a fraternity initiation.

  This was the famous body count we had heard so much about. Before, back in the world, you didn’t think about it much, it was just numbers: high was good and low was bad. But when you saw it, you realized the body count was real actual dead bodies—a bunch of VC laying on the ground and hanging on the perimeter fence, already bloated and stinking in the heat. I couldn’t imagine how anybody would be so crazy as to try to get through the barb wire and fight a force that had all the firepower we do, but they do it all the time, and they somehow manage to get through the wire and kill a few GIs before they buy it themselves. I guess that’s why they have lasted so long—sheer crazy determination.

  We had to drag them and throw them into a pile, like cordwood, pour gasoline over them, and set them on fire. They used to just throw the bodies in the river, but the ship captains complained that they were getting tangled up in the propellers, so they started burning them.

  At first, when we got out there, we just stood gaping. None of us wanted to touch them, but we had no choice. Some of the bodies were in pieces, and we gathered up arms and legs and tossed them on the pile; feet with calluses on the bottom like slabs of butterscotch, heads with white bones sticking out of the necks. All of us were throwing up, but we had to do it anyhow. After a while, we didn’t have anything in our stomachs, so we drank water, just to have something to throw up besides bile.

  The sky turned black with greasy smoke from those burning bodies. I still can’t get the smell out of my nose. I can hold my breath and the smell comes right out of my head, like it’s lodged up in the far corners of my brain.

  It is so weird to watch a face burn. First it gets black and the eyes go dead white, like boiled eggs, before they pop open, and then black stuff runs out. Then the face looks like it’s grinning, but it’s just the skin shrinking back and burning off the teeth. I tried not to look at the faces, but for some reason I couldn’t help myself. I still see them in my nightmares.

  The old-timers (some of whom had been here a whole month or more) laughed at us and thought it was the biggest joke. Yeah. Some joke. I can’t wait to get our assignment and get the heck out of here. Wherever it is, it can’t be any worse than this is. But even if it is, I am determined to be a man, do what I have to do, and get through it.

  Write and tell me how you are, how the baby is, and what is happening in Sweet Valley. It seems very far away from this place.

  Your friend,

  Jerry

  P.S. If you don’t want me to tell you all this stuff, just let me know. I don’t want to sugarcoat anything, but I know it is kind of rough, so I will do what you say. Needless to say, if you see my mother or father, don’t say anything to them about what I have told you. Somehow, it does help if I can tell somebody about it, though. Maybe just to get it down on paper takes some of the curse away. Let me know. J.

  31.Carlene

  Dear Jerry,

  You can tell me anything you want to. I am not in the least bit squeamish, and I would like to know the truth of wh
at is happening over there. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to see so many dead bodies like that. I saw one once, and will never forget it. It does stay with you, all the time. I hope you get to a nicer place soon. But please don’t think you have to keep anything from me. You could always tell me anything and it would go no further, you know that. Or I hope you do. I’m the close-mouth type, as you ought to know.

  I am fine, working at the Water Witch a lot. Kevin is walking now, and getting into everything. He toddled over and put his little hand on the stove before I could stop him, and burned blisters on the palm. Thank goodness we had a pitcher of ice tea in the fridge, and stuck his hand in that until he quit screaming. Tea is the best thing for burns, did you know that? Don’t ever use butter, because that just fries it. If you get a burn, grab you a tea bag, wet it, and wrap it over an ice cube, then put it on the burn and hold it there. It will stop the pain right away, I guarantee. It works with sunburn, too. Kevin was playing not thirty minutes after he did it. But he’s getting to be a handful. You have to watch him every minute. We went right out then and there and got some of those folding gates to put around the stove. My mother keeps him at night while I work, and I stay with him in the daytime. It works out fine for both of us. She loves him like he is her own.

  The Water Witch is a pretty good place to waitress. Baby Moreno has been working there since the summer, but now because school started, she’s just there on the weekends. We have gotten to be pretty good friends. I always thought she was the nicest one of the girls from our class, not stuck-up and self-centered like some of them. Her boyfriend, Bean Boggs, is over there in Vietnam, too, I think someplace called Cu Chi. Is that near you? Do you ever get a chance to see each other? Ricky Don Sweet is there also, but I’m not sure where. I’ll ask Baby. She might know. Wouldn’t it be neat if all of y’all ran into each other?

  It may be too soon to get into anything like this, but I want to be aboveboard from the beginning if we are going to keep on writing to each other. I won’t ask you for an answer right now, but when you get back home, do you think we might get together, face to face, and just sit down and talk? I owe you a lot of explaining, I know, and I have a lot to tell you. Maybe it won’t make it all right, but at least you will know the truth. I have held things bottled up inside of me for so long that it is going to be hard to tell anybody, even you. But maybe by the time you get back, I will be ready. Think about it. I will understand if you don’t want to see me in person. Take care of yourself, Jerry.