by Paul Levine
He shifted the knife to an icepick grip, took two steps forward, slashed left, slashed right, then went overhead and brought it down from the top. I could have tried a fancy move to either side, but there comes a time when you stand your ground. There is a concept in martial arts known as harmony. Don't oppose the force of your opponent. Harmonize with it. Where your opponent is strong, yield to him, and as he overextends or goes off balance use your strength against his weakness. It is the yin. Then, where your opponent is weak, overpower him with your strength. The yang.
In the gym you practice the harmony and study diagrams of stick figures using motion and misdirection and leverage to throw opponents around. Here, staring at the glinting blade coming down, I didn't know yin from yang. I just shot two hands up on either side of the descending arm and caught his wrist in a figure-four armlock. He was pushing down, using all his triceps, taking advantage of the angle, but I was bigger and stronger and had two hands against his one and was pushing the knife back toward his ear. Which meant his left hand was free. Just when I was wondering where it was, he plowed a short hook into my rib cage. I heard a crack and felt the pain, and the knife came two inches closer until I steadied myself and pushed right back. He was winding up for a bigger punch, so I just tucked my chin onto my chest and exploded straight up with a burst from the legs, my skull smashing him under the jaw. He yelped and staggered back, his mouth spurting blood where he had bitten cleanly through his lip. My head was ringing, Pam was screaming something at me, and little black flashes were lighting up my eyes. The knife was somewhere on the floor.
As he tumbled backward I came at him, shoulders square, legs pumping, head up, a decent linebacker making a tackle. My legs were a little shaky and I didn't have enough drive. I hit him too high, and he refused to fall, but I drove him backward until we both hit a wall, Japanese prints clattering to the floor. I had him wrapped up, and we danced that way a moment, his blood smearing my face. Then he brought a boot up high and crashed it down into my left instep where my hundred-percent-wool sweat sock did little to cushion the blow. I tottered backward, hopping on one foot, cursing, the pain closing my eyes. I lost my balance just before I hit the tearoom wall. If you're going to crash through a wall, ass over elbows, a paper wall is best. It didn't hurt a bit, my foot and head and ribs hogging all the headlines in the pain department.
I was lying on the low-slung tea table amid rice cakes and bamboo mats when Carruthers appeared, poking his head through the hole I had carved in the wall. I didn't know if I could stand up. He just looked at me.
"Milk or lemon?" I asked.
He growled like one of his large, furry forest friends and stepped through the wall toward me. I rolled off the table into a crouching position and told myself I was just getting warmed up. I wanted to hit him on the side of the neck just below and slightly to the front of the ear. If I could smash the jugular vein, the carotid artery, or the vagus nerve, I could put him into shock. But I couldn't put any weight on my left foot and didn't know how I'd get anything behind the punch.
He just stood there bleeding onto his buckskin, bent at the waist with hands on hips, sucking great gulps of air. "Hunters have rights," he said.
"What?"
"And trappers too."
I thought about it. "Man is the hunter. Right, Carruthers?"
"Right."
"You hunt them for the beauty of their skins."
"That, and for food."
"Food?"
"You animal-rights nuts have gone too far," he said, still huffing. "First furs, then what, beef and chicken?"
"What are you—"
A gunshot inside a small apartment makes a terrible racket. Especially when the bullet connects with a large Oriental vase. Carruthers hustled out of the tearoom. I limped to the opening. "If you two boys have finished your macho game, perhaps we could have a little talk," said Lady Chattery, her two hands gripping my blue steel revolver, a perfectly furious look on her beautiful face.
***
There was no use putting the sneakers back on. Galoshes wouldn't fit over my swollen left foot. My ribs were throbbing, my head was on fire, and my ego was under siege.
"Apologize? Apologize for what?" I asked.
"For attacking Mr. Carruthers. Just as you attacked poor Clive and Francis. I'm beginning to think your hostility has its basis in a true psychosis, Jake."
Carruthers sat on the sofa, smiling, if that's what it was, under a towel of ice cubes fastened to his mouth. I surveyed the damage. Shards of ceramic pottery covered the floor, ink prints dangled at crazy angles on the living-room wall, and the tearoom was a shambles of splintered wood and ripped walls. In about three minutes, we had transformed Cindy's townhouse from Oriental Moderne to post-Apocalypse.
"I was trying to save your life. I thought Davy Crockett here—"
"You thought! You might have killed him."
"Sorry, I'm not used to seeing strange men brandish knives at my lady friends."
"Humghfeeldauhdeer," came a sound from under the icy towel.
"What?"
"He was showing me how to field-dress a deer," Pam explained helpfully.
"Is that different than city-dressing one?" I asked.
Carruthers dropped the towel. His face was not a pretty sight. "I was advising against making the incision between the hind legs. Cut into the sternum and go back toward the pelvis. It's not a bad job if you don't mind being up to your ears in blood and offal." His voice was thickened by a swollen tongue.
Pam said, "And I told him how barbarous and cruel it was, hunting those fine animals. And then you came in and...and pounced."
I turned to Carruthers. "What the hell were you doing here?"
"I was in town and stopped over to see Cindy. The door was open, so I—"
"You know Cindy?"
"Sure. Barely Legal. We don't go out that often, what with her import-export friend and my living so far away. But she's the first down-to-earth woman I've met in Mia-muh town."
"Cindy? My Cindy?"
CHAPTER 31
Mercy
My foot was propped on the phone directory and swaddled in ice. Elevation and cold. Every team trainer worth his smelling salts knows that.
My ribs were swathed in Ace wrap. They only hurt when I breathed.
My head was bobbing on ocean swells. Two Darvons and a grapefruit juice with Finlandia, a linebacker's Sunday-night beddy-bye cocktail.
I was dreaming of sunny days and force-four winds, watching a nine-foot sliver of fiberglass jumping three-foot chop. I looked around inside the dream and couldn't find Pam Maxson or anyone else. A lousy, no-bikini dream. I looked at the sailboard, but I wasn't there. It was a board without a sailor, skimming the waves, darting on a broad reach along a rocky coast. The board jibed, its inside rail digging hard, the tail shooting a plume of water. Then, like a riderless horse, it sped toward open sea.
Someone called my name.
It didn't sound like Pam.
I reached across the bed. Empty. The sheets cool.
"She ain't here, Jake."
Funny how dreams can seem so real. I smelled a cigarette and I don't smoke.
I opened my eyes. The paddle fan clocked its slow turns above my head. A toxic green glow filled the room, my neighbor's mercury-vapor, anticrime light, seeping through open shutters, mixing with the smoke. So I was in my bed in my house. All alone. Except for the voice.
"Got trouble keeping them in bed, do you, Jakie?"
I tried lifting my head. It weighed a ton. Someone was standing by the window, looking out, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. I saw him in silhouette, a strong, bulky shadow in the noxious haze. "Nick?"
"Who'd you expect? Felix Frankfurter?"
I lifted myself to an elbow. "What'd you do to her, Nick?"
"Her?"
"Pam. She doesn't know anything. You didn't have to—"
"Easy, Jake. You've had a hard night." He exhaled a trail of smoke, iridescent and willowy in the ga
seous light. "You know, I made a real mistake appointing you."
"Yeah. I saw right through you."
He inhaled and the red ash of cigarette flared. "No. You fucked everything up."
I tried to sit up straight, but the pain kept me stretched out. "What do you want?"
"To take back something of mine. Something you stole. Breaking and entering, Jake. Trespassing. Larceny. Maybe obstruction of justice, too. I got good neighbors, Jake. One of them spots a guy get out of an old convertible and go into my garage the hard way."
I kept quiet. He could be wired.
Nick continued. "When I get to the house, only thing missing is an old memory." He watched me, waiting for a response.
Despite my better judgment, I opened my mouth. "Why not cut the bullshit? You're not going to press charges. You can't stand the heat. If the papers got hold of what's in the log, you'd—"
"What is in the log?"
I knew the important stuff by heart:
1330—VC ambush on dike. Gallardi, Boyer, dogwood 6.
Rosen, Williams, Colgan, Miciak, dogwood 8.
1800—Dak Sut. Firefight. 3 VC greased. Zippo approx.
20 hooches. Phuong MIA. Lt. E. Ferguson. Rest in peace.
May the Lord have mercy.
"Evan Ferguson wasn't killed on the dike. He was killed in the village after the sniper attack. In your own words, Nick."
"So what? What's it prove?"
I didn't know so what, and he knew I didn't know so what.
He dropped the stub of his cigarette into the neck of a half-empty beer bottle on the dresser. "Do you want me to tell you what happened on a rainy, shit-eating, bloodsucking day in-country in 1968?"
Not if it's going to get me killed, I thought. "Sure, Nick, tell me all—"
"I was fighting for my country, Jakie. What were you doing that day—getting a hand job from some pom-pom girl under the bleachers?"
"Most likely a majorette," I said. "Great hands."
"My men were exhausted, wet, cold, hungry, and scared of being scared. Some of them were popping pills and smoking weed like there was no tomorrow. 'Cause maybe there wasn't. But most of all they were mean and angry. There were two ways to get to our objective, Dak Sut, where there was supposed to be VC activity. They didn't want to go either way. They didn't want to meet the enemy or do anything but go home. The long way was through forest. Some danger of snipers, but there was cover, too. Evan wanted to go that route with his platoon, but I talked him out of it."
WHO GAVE THE ORDERS TO WALK ALONG THE DIKE PRIOR TO ENTERING THE VILLAGE OF DAK SUT?
"We went across the paddies, the men sinking into the mud, cursing the war, cursing LBJ, cursing me. Some of them were sick, three later came down with malaria. We took the men onto the dikes that run through the paddies, Evan's platoon and ours, moving parallel. Evan didn't like it, out in the open like that. There was cover maybe three hundred meters away. Evan thought Charley could be laying low there, waiting for us to come up on the dikes."
"Was he right?"
"Yeah. But first, just like I told you, some naked kid comes up out of the mud with an AK-47 on Evan's dike. At the same time, an RPD opens up from the cover. I lose Gallardi and Boyer, plus four wounded. Evan's men kill the sniper. The machine-gun fire stops, probably a fifteen-year-old with a hundred rounds total, and we're lying there, facedown in the mud, pissing our pants."
"So Evan wasn't killed?"
He lit another cigarette, inhaled once, then dropped it in the beer bottle. "No. Never touched. We radio for a dust-off, evacuation of the dead and wounded by slick. By the time we gather and get to Dak Sut, it's just after dark, and the men are jumpy, mean, and trigger-happy."
AFTER THE MEDIC AND RADIOMAN WERE KILLED, WHAT WAS THE STATE OF DISCIPLINE OF YOUR MEN?
"Like I told you before, Charley owns the night. The place is deserted except for three old ladies, some babies, and a few water buffalo. There's no moon and it's the blackest night you've ever seen. It's raining and it's cold. People in the world didn't realize how cold it got there. The men, both Evan's and mine, are near mutiny. They get Phuong, our translator, to interrogate the old women. 'Yankees numbah one, VC numbah ten.' The usual bullshit. So one of my men hits the old lady with his rifle butt. Really bashed her. Opened a gash in her forehead that bled like a son of a bitch."
WERE THE VILLAGERS ARMED, AND IF SO, DID THEY THREATEN YOUR PLATOON?
"Phuong gets upset. Starts chattering in Vietnamese and the women start running. They didn't get twenty yards."
WERE ANY VILLAGERS WOUNDED OR KILLED BY YOUR MEN?
"Who shot them?"
"Who cares who? A farm kid from Indiana who a year before played high-school basketball, a street kid from the Bronx who enlisted for the GI benefits. Red-blooded American boys with M-16s who were tired and scared and a little crazy and would have shot Westy and LBJ and me, too, if they had the chance. So instead they shot three old women."
"So your log is false. There was no firefight in the village. There was no enemy in Dak Sut."
He sat down on the bed and leaned his elbows on his knees. Somewhere in Coconut Grove, a police siren wailed, then grew softer. Inside the house, the only sound was the gentle whir of the paddle fan. "No enemy? Who was the enemy? The old women hated us, maybe fed breakfast to the poor son of a bitch who spent all day in the mud waiting for us."
"And your translator wasn't kidnapped?"
"Not by the enemy," Nick said softly.
I waited. He was staring at the wall. He lit another cigarette. "Haven't smoked since I was discharged." He inhaled, sucking it in, holding it, then emptied his lungs. "Phuong knew. The second she saw the women shot, she knew. She turned to me. Her eyes were pleading. A corporal who had twelve days left in-country called to the others, 'Let's get the gook cunt.'"
WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR TRANSLATOR?
"Phuong started running. He chased her, tackled her, dragged her off. Four or five others followed him. When they were done with her, they each shot her. They'd made a pact. Then a few others started a Zippo raid, burning down every hooch. A few other women scrambled out, girls really. My men, Evan's men, went after them. Got them."
"You were in command. You could have stopped them."
He laughed. There was no pleasure in the sound. Outside, a neighborhood wren sang its early-morning song in a Poinciana tree. "You think it's like a football team, Jake. The coach blows the whistle, everybody listens up, slaps each other's ass."
He turned and looked straight at me. "They would have killed me. My own men. Evan's men. I saw it in their eyes. A sergeant comes up to me and says, 'Stay out of this, sir.' He didn't do any of the killing, but he knew when to turn his head."
"And Evan?"
"He was outraged. You'd have to know him. Eagle Scout, Sunday School Evan. Straight as an arrow, tough as nails. I admired him. Hell, I loved him, and if you'd have been in combat instead of playing ball, you'd know what that means. It's the purest, deepest kinship, something you can't have with a woman."
THE LAST TIME YOU SAW LIEUTENANT FERGUSON ALIVE, WAS HE
"Was he trying to stop the raping and the burning and the killing?"
"He ordered his men to drop their weapons. They laughed at him. One of my grunts raised his rifle. Evan drew his sidearm. He tried to arrest them. He looked to me for help."
Nick Fox was silent again.
"But you turned away," I said. "You let them kill your best friend."
He dropped his head between his knees.
"Nick?"
His broad shoulders quaked and he stared at the floor.
"Nick? What happened to Evan Ferguson?"
When he finally lifted his head, the eyes were blank and his voice was choked. "I pulled my .45, and I told Evan to forget it, to look the other way, that we could file reports that would dovetail and no one would ever know. 'I'll know,' he said. I argued with him, begged him. We stood there in the dark with the rain coming down, and I was shivering and scared a
nd crying, because I knew what I had to do."
He stopped, but now I knew, too. I knew the secret he carried for so long. I knew the darkest part of Nick Fox's soul, the shining life built on a lie. Behind the medals, the hero was worse than a coward. He had committed the most unpardonable sin.
"You pulled the trigger," I said. "You joined the pact. Because you were afraid they'd frag you and say you stepped on a mine or got it in a firefight. You didn't even try to stop them."
"They were going to kill Evan, and they wouldn't trust me to keep quiet. I had to do it. It was the only way to get out of there. Evan was a dead man either way."
"Keep telling yourself that and maybe you can live with it."
"I shot him in the chest. It knocked him down. I stood over him, and he looked at me, just looked at me, this incredible hurt in his eyes. I shot him twice more, and there isn't a day that's gone by since that I haven't seen that face, that look. It's there when I sleep and when I wake. It's always there."
Lt. E. Ferguson. Rest in peace. May the Lord have mercy.
Now it all made sense. May the Lord have mercy, Nick Fox prayed, on his own godforsaken soul.
CHAPTER 32
Shades of Gray
An orange glow from the east summoned a new day. During the night the wind had shifted. In the summer our weather comes from the southeast, light breezes carrying the heat and moisture from the Caribbean. But sometime during the night the wind clocked around— southwest, northwest, north, finally northeast—at a steady fifteen knots. An unusual front for this time of year, a breath of air nearly cool.