“Even if I did write it, who would want to read it? The public wants to crucify Lieutenant Galley for My Lai. They don’t understand how such a thing could have happened. You ask the man on the street what he thinks is the worst thing that could happen to him, and he’ll say ‘death’ nine times out of ten. But that’s not what he’s really most afraid of. I think what we’re most afraid of is ourselves, what we might do if we’re pushed hard enough. Guys like Galley make us nervous because we wonder if deep down in us too there isn’t a part capable of wasting a whole village.”
She looked at him a long time before speaking. Finally she said, “You’re right, of course. But if we don’t make ourselves look at it, what hope do we have of ever preventing it from happening again?” She leaned forward, gripping his hand between both of hers. She had touched him many times, in many places, but always with the cool efficient hands of a doctor. Now he knew that she was touching him in a different way, and it sent a shock through him like a high voltage current. “Write your book, Brian. It’s all here. Don’t even worry yet about who will read it. Just write it.”
Brian, gazing into her hot blue eyes, felt as if he’d been snatched off his feet by an undertow, breathless, knocked out by her passion, her overpowering will. He nodded slowly. “Maybe I will. Just maybe I will.”
Two weeks later, Brian lay in bed, needing to pee, and wondering if it was possible to die from stir-craziness. He grabbed the iron rails on either side of his bed and hauled himself up into a sitting position. He felt so weak, and even this simple effort brought pain like sharp blows from a hammer. But he’d be goddamned if he was going to lie here helpless as a newborn baby any longer. He’d piss like a man this time, standing up on his own two feet, even if it meant popping the stitches holding in his gut.
[254] “Crutches.” He hissed the word through clenched teeth.
“This is against your doctor’s advice, I want you to know.”
Rachel stood over him, arms crossed in front of her chest. She was wearing green scrubs, and sandals, her hair plaited in a single loose cable all flayed with sprung wisps. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes glittering with a mixture of apprehension and anger.
Christ, he wasn’t as bad off as all that, was he? He still had legs, even if after nearly a month on his back he quite naturally felt a little weak. He forced his legs out from under the sheet. Dismay filled him as he stared down at them, drooping over the edge of the mattress like an old lady’s stockings hung out to dry. Skin so pale it looked dead, shocking against the lightning slashes of scar tissue zigzagging up his thighs.
Jesus, I couldn’t support a package of marshmallows on these.
But he had to at least try, didn’t he?
“To hell with medical advice,” he told her. “If I fall, you can pick me up. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to have you wiping my tail like a two-year-old’s anymore.”
Rachel handed him the crutches with stiff arms, her face hard. “Well, if that’s all you’re worried about, I’ve seen more bare behinds than a men’s locker-room attendant, and there’s nothing special about yours, believe me.”
Dawson, in the next bed, lifted his black hulk onto one elbow, and rolled the one eye that wasn’t covered in thick gauze bandages. “You wanna see sumpin’ real special, you come check out what I got in my skivvies, Doc.”
“Thanks, Sergeant. I’ll keep that in mind.” She caught Brian’s gaze, and held it, hard and level as if she were looking down the barrel of an M-16. “But you guys would be better off if you did your thinking with what’s between your ears, not between your legs.”
Dawson cackled with laughter, but Brian remained grim with determination.
“Gotta get out of this bed sometime, might as well be now.”
He dragged himself to his feet, and immediately regretted his bravado. His legs buckled and shook. The latrine out back suddenly seemed as far off as Hong Kong.
He swung the crutches out, took two shuffling steps, and paused to rest.
[255] From the neck down, he was on fire, flames dancing up his middle, licking up under his collarbone. Weak, too, so damned weak. And what he saw, catching a glimpse of himself in the glass door of the med cabinet, didn’t inspire much confidence, either. Oh Jesus, is that really me? The watery reflection of a hollow-eyed skeleton looked back at him, reminding him of those pictures he’d seen of concentration camp survivors in World War II histories.
A string was all that seemed to be holding him up now, a thread of determination that stretched from his mind to his limbs. And by the time he’d scuffled halfway across the ward, it felt stretched to the breaking point. Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades. He felt like an overcooked fish you could just pluck the spine right out of.
The other men—Deke, Henson, Bucholtz, Pardo—were watching him as expectantly as if he were Whitey Ford at the top of his stretch with the bases loaded. Except for Boston over there—that wasn’t his name, just where he was from, but everyone called him that—he’d turned so he was facing the wall. Poor kid, both legs amputated at the knee. He would never walk anywhere.
I’m, one of the lucky ones, Brian thought.
But at this moment he did not feel lucky. He wanted to lie down, badly. The floor would do just fine. He was so tired he just wanted to close his eyes and sleep.
Only the image of himself lying in a puddle of piss kept him going.
Brian took four more scuffling steps, the wooden armrests of the crutches cutting excruciating grooves in the flesh under his arms. Then he glanced over his shoulder, and saw that Rachel hadn’t moved. She was still standing where he’d left her, about a dozen yards behind, glowering at him.
“Don’t look at me with those big cow eyes,” she said angrily. “You’re so hell-bent on showing me what a man you are, you go and make it the rest of the way on your own.”
“I wasn’t asking any favors,” he said, a little spurt of anger fueling him, pushing him a few more yards.
“They have a rule here; once you’re ambulatory, they ship you out on the next plane to Okinawa. I hear they have air conditioning.
And flush toilets.” There was a strange tightness in her voice.
[256] “I can hardly wait.” He felt new muscles—muscles he hadn’t used so long he’d forgotten they were there—spring to life.
To hell with Rachel, what did she care where he went? There were hundreds more where he’d come from. What was he to her, anyway, except a name and number on a dog tag? She’d saved his life, sure, but that’s what doctors are supposed to do.
After he’d dragged his dead weight along a dim tiled corridor for what felt like an eternity, a nurse pointed the way to a doorway that led out back to the latrines.
Outside, he squinched his eyes against the fierce sunlight slanting over the tops of distant trees. Filtered through the red spots that danced behind his half-closed eyelids, he saw a muddy path cutting across the barren, wire-fenced compound to a row of four whitewashed wooden cubicles with corrugated tin roofs. On one of them was tacked a crudely hand-painted sign that read: IF YOU CAN MAKE IT TO THE HEAD, YOU AIN’T DEAD.
Brian began to laugh helplessly. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he trembled on the verge of collapse. How true, he thought. If you could pee on your own two feet you were man enough to take control of your own destiny. And that’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? Taking control. Establishing some order in an existence that lately seemed to have spun out of orbit.
Every additional day he stayed on here he felt a little more of his old life slip away. Memories of home had faded like old photographs tucked away in a bottom drawer. Worse, his loyalties had become tangled, uncertain. Each day brought him closer to Rachel, and pushed him another step from Rose.
I’m a fool, Brian thought. Mistaking gratitude for—
What? Love?
No. That was ridiculous. Rachel had befriended him, that was all. He had no business turning it into something more.
The need to p
ee was suddenly so fierce it blotted out everything else.
Brian heard a noise behind him. He swiveled jerkily on his crutches, nearly losing his balance.
Rachel had followed him. She stopped a few steps behind him on the path, watching him as anxiously as a mother might watch a baby just learning to walk, but not moving forward to help. She [257] looked much smaller now that he too was up on his feet, and so young, with her hair braided like that, like a schoolgirl. He imagined slipping off the rubber band at the end, slowly unwinding the thick plaits, and fanning them loose, burying his face in all that silky-clean, lemon-smelling hair.
Damn her for making him need her so.
“I don’t need a doctor for this,” he told her stiffly. “Last time I looked all my plumbing was in working order.”
“I know that. I just wanted to say ...” Rachel stopped, and he heard something click in her throat as she swallowed. Her eyes were suddenly very bright. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”
“Can this wait?” he said, almost pleading. “I really have to—”
He stopped, horror washing through him as he realized he wasn’t going to make it. He felt something let go inside him, and a sudden rush of warm, stinging wetness spreading across the front of his thin cotton pajamas.
And suddenly it was all ... just ... just too damned much. ...
“Oh Jesus,” he moaned, and began to cry with dry, hacking sobs.
Arms enfolded him, slim and strong as cables, bracing him. Oh yes, he thought, sinking into her softness, oh yes. He rested his head against her shoulder, and let the tears come.
Then, with the hot smell of urine rising up at him, came the shame.
Christ, what am I doing? A fucking two-year-old has more control. Standing here in my own piss crying on her shoulder.
He tried to jerk away, but those strong arms only wrapped about him tighter. He felt her hair, warm with the sun, and soft, so soft, against his neck. The lemony scent of her drifting about him.
“You idiot,” she said, her voice choked with emotion, “do you think I care about that? I watched you ... and I hated you ... for being so brave. I didn’t want you to go, dammit.”
Brian was so stunned he couldn’t think what to say except “Why?”
“I love you,” she said simply. “And now you’re leaving.”
He felt dizzy, his head swimming, as if he’d been out in the sun too long. She was saying something important, he felt, yet her [258] words scattered and floated away, and he was left only with this terrible empty feeling. He thought, Oh Jesus, how can I leave her?
But he couldn’t find the words he wanted to say.
“I stink,” he said.
“You do. But I’ve smelled a lot worse.” She gave a shaky laugh. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up and into some dry things.”
She stood back a little, and gave him her arm so he wouldn’t need the crutches. She supported him easily, this whip of a woman, whose strength and tenderness would never stop surprising him.
And in that instant, he knew what he been running from.
I love her.
It was all at once so simple ... yet so impossible. He was leaving. Going home to see what pieces there were to be picked up with Rose. That was what he wanted. He’d wanted it so much and for so long, it was like a litany, a prayer whose words you keep repeating long after you’ve forgotten their meaning.
But it was Rachel he ached for now. A need deeper than mere wanting. He needed her as much somehow as he needed to breathe and sleep and eat.
But what could he promise her? How could he take her and not betray Rose? And Rose a part of him too, even deeper in a way, like the marrow of his bones.
Brian, clinging to Rachel as they slowly made their way across the yard, thought how ironic it was that of all the things he had suffered, loving her should hurt the most of all.
Two nights later she came to him.
He could see her shadowy outline pull away from the doorway, and then she was moving toward him along the latticed corridor of moonlight between the rows of beds filled with men. Men asleep and dreaming—he hoped to God—of better places than this.
She was wearing her hair loose, and it caught the moonlight, a spill of such brightness his heart snagged in his throat at the sight of it.
Then her hand, cool against his cheek, and that summery scent wrapping around him like an embrace.
“Tomorrow,” he said, pulling himself up.
[259] “I know. I came to say goodbye.”
She was so close, sitting beside him in the half-darkness, he could feel her breath on him, warm and sweet as her smell. And suddenly he wanted so badly to take her in his arms. Just once ... to be able to comfort her ... because, oh Jesus, he knew if he didn’t he would lie here all night—and probably for the rest of his life—regretting it like hell.
At the same time he felt it would be wrong. It might open up wide something that should have stayed locked. He loved her, but he couldn’t offer her anything besides that ... just the fact of it, plain and useless as a spoon without a plate of food in front of it. So maybe it was better off just left alone.
A week in Okinawa, then, with luck, he would have his medical discharge, his ticket home. Home to Rose ... if she still wanted him.
He saw her in his mind, seven years old, kneeling at the altar in her white communion dress and veil like the smallest bride in the world, so solemn, eyes scrunched shut, white-gloved hands clasped before her. A little white bride all alone. And he felt again the way he’d felt then, the longing to protect her, his poor little Rose who needed so much to be loved.
Then an ugly voice taunted him, She’s forgotten you by now. Not a single letter. She’s found someone else to look after her.
Rachel spoke, shattering his thoughts, “I suppose you’ll be going home, back to the States.”
He nodded. “If they give me a medical discharge. I’d sure as hell hate to make a U-turn in Okinawa. What’s that saying, you can trick the devil once, but not twice?”
“The devil wouldn’t like it here. Too much competition. Anyway, I’ve recommended you be discharged. You may be back on your feet but you’ve still a long way to go before you’d be ready for combat.”
“Jesus, is anyone ever ready for that?”
She was silent a moment. “Promise me something, Brian.”
“Anything you say, Doc.”
“Promise me you’ll write that book. You have a wonderful gift. And something important to say. People should know. People back home ... about this war.”
[260] People back home. He thought again of Rose. No, he couldn’t imagine telling her about it. How could she—or anyone who hadn’t been through it—possibly understand?
Rachel knows, he thought. I don’t have to explain anything to her.
“If I write it,” he said, “it’ll be just so I can understand. And I’m not sure if maybe even that isn’t asking too much.”
She touched his hand, running her fingers lightly over the knob of bone protruding from his fleshless wrist. He felt, oh, such sadness in that touch ... he wanted to open that locked door between them and find out what else was there. ...
“Make sure you eat enough,” she said. “You could use some fattening up.”
“Pizza,” he said and laughed, “till it’s coming out my ears. Jesus, I think I’d trade all the rice in this damn country for a single slice of Avenue J pizza.”
“Pastrami on rye at the Carnegie Deli, that’s what I dream about. With brown mustard and a big fat half-sour dill pickle. Will you do that for me, Brian, will you go there when you get home and have one for me?”
“All the way on crutches if I have to.”
“I’ll miss you. Brian, I don’t know how to say this but ...”
He reached up, pressed one finger lightly to her soft mouth. “You don’t have to. I know.”
“I ... I’ll miss you,” she repeated weakly, and when he leaned forward to
kiss her lightly on the cheek, he felt the wet sting of tears on his lips.
I love you, he longed to say.
But what he said was “I’ll write it. The book.” He would dedicate it to her, though he might never see her again.
“I’m glad,” she said.
In the moonlit darkness, he saw the fine, strong outline of her face, the proud tilt of her jaw, and he had never in his life regretted anything so much as what he had to say now.
“Good-bye, Rachel.”
Chapter 15
Brian accepted the pint of Glenlivet that Dan Petrie offered him. He tipped his head back in a long swallow, the whiskey burning its way down his throat. The last ten days in Okinawa had been the longest ones of his life, and he was trying—not succeeding, but sincerely trying—to get himself through one more endless day by getting royally blasted.
“Goes down cool in a hot climate,” said the cocky little Australian and laughed. “Last time I got pissed like this I was on a fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico swilling black rum with Fidel Castro. If ever there was a bloke could match me dead on, drink for drink, it was that black-bearded sonofabitch. But you’re not doing too badly, mate. Trouble is, I don’t think it’s killin’ the bug you’re after.”
Brian focused on the sandy-haired little fellow seated in the orange plastic chair across from him. Petrie reminded him of a smalltown Little League coach. The UPI correspondent was wearing a snaggly blue terry robe, his right arm in a sling, a navy bill cap pushed back showing the stubble of his crewcut. In the half hour since they’d struck up a conversation in the lounge on Two East, Brian had taken note of the cutting edge beneath Petrie’s easy banter. His sharp blue eyes looked as if they’d been bolted into his head, and he had a sly knack for appearing hardly to listen while soaking up every word that was said.
“I got the word today,” Brian said. “They’re discharging me. Less one kidney and three yards of intestine qualifies me for immediate DEROS and a Purple Heart.”
Dan tipped the bottle to his mouth, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “War’ll work wonders on your perspective, but it’s hell on the anatomy. You don’t seem too happy about it. [262] Home, I mean, not the bleedin’ Purple Heart. Which unit did you say you were in, mate?”
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