He tried to say something reassuring to the Marines, like, Latch on anywhere, guys, it all hurts like hell anyway. Or even, Just leave me here, I’m a waste of fucking time at this point. But his mouth wasn’t forming sentences, and all he could get out was, “’sokay…’sokay.”
The Marines, still tentative, steeled themselves to pick him up, and suddenly Stinson was there, seizing Mike under the armpits, and the other men took the hint and grabbed one leg each.
Everyone was in urgent motion now. Several Marines had grabbed the other casualties; Mike saw at least two bodies, both limp and broken, flopping in the heedless acquiescence of the dead. Another man stopped to pick up the bottom part of someone’s leg, the boot still on it; he set it gently on the stomach of one of the bodies they were carrying. Mike glanced down at his own body, almost idly curious: both legs still attached, he noted, pleased in spite of himself. A fucking miracle.
They set off for the brush line, everyone staying as low as they could. Mike could hear explosions now with his left ear, muted to dull thuds as if through layers of quilting. Every jounce and jerk hurt, his flesh sawing against steel in a hundred places; he was laced with burning razors. They’d have been better off just leaving him in the open to bleed out undisturbed. There was nowhere to go now but into the pain; he was flanked, surrounded, overrun.
They made the trees and found low cover, and the Marines set Mike down so gently he wanted to cry, then grabbed their rifles and found firing positions. Well trained, Mike thought. Good men. Parker was on the radio, calling for another dust-off, for artillery and air, and Stinson was kneeling beside Mike now, cradling his head and hollering, “Corpsman! Corpsman!” in that keening, outraged way the men screamed when it was too late for a medic to do anything anyway and the call for help was just the first wail of grieving. Mike was touched by his radioman’s distress. Poor guy, so urgent and so solicitous, and it was such a waste. There was nothing to do now but die, and Mike just wanted a bit of quiet to get on with it.
“Did Krzykrewski get out okay?” he asked, or tried to ask, but the words came out as ruined as his body. Stinson bent closer, trying to understand, his face pained and tender, and Mike tried again, “Ski…okay?”
“Yeah, Skip,” Stinson said. “He’s on his way home.”
Belanger, the corpsman, scurried up. He flinched when he saw Mike, confirming Mike’s sense that he was fucked. It took a hell of a mess to make a battle-seasoned corpsman flinch. The kid started sorting through the gore, looking for the main holes. Mike wanted to tell him not to bother, to tend to the other wounded. But it was important to go through the motions. Belanger had shown a tendency early on to be excessively frank about the severity of people’s wounds, and it had taken Mike a while to impress upon the corpsman the essential truth of battlefield diagnosis, which was that no wound was fatal. Everyone was going to make it. Period.
“Who…else?” he asked Stinson. “Hit?”
“Consalvo and Seretti are dead.”
“Smitty?”
“He was standing between you and the shell,” Stinson said. There were tears running down his face. He said to the corpsman, “Give him some morphine, for Christ’s sake.”
“He’d go into shock, and we’d lose him for sure,” Belanger said.
“Already in shock,” Mike said, and the two men looked at him, startled. “Joke,” he said. “Ha-ha.”
“You’re a crack-up, Skipper,” Stinson said. “You hang on. Chopper’s coming.”
A 105mm shell shrieked overhead just then, and Stinson and Belanger ducked instinctively. But it was outgoing fire from Charlie Battery at Khe Sanh, the artillery strike Parker was calling on the mortar position. Mike listened contentedly to the familiar rhythm of the Marine reply: one shot to find the range, tweak the coordinates, another on the money, and fire for effect. Within seconds, a dozen more howitzer shells screamed over them and a wave of explosions rippled across the face of the neighboring hill.
“Fry, you bastards,” Stinson said.
Mike said, “Get…Parker.”
“Sir, you don’t need to be worrying about—”
“Just get him, goddammit.”
“Aye, sir.” Stinson laid Mike’s head back gently and moved off to fetch the lieutenant. Mike looked at the corpsman, who had a handful of battle dressings out now but seemed at a loss as to which hole to plug first.
“All the king’s horses—” Mike said.
“You’re gonna be fine, Skipper,” the kid said, and Mike smiled because it was exactly what Mike had trained him to say. It was, Mike realized now, a policy more for the living than for the dying. It kept the survivors focused on saving what could be saved and doing what they had to do. But he actually felt a little irritated by all these people pretending he wasn’t toast.
Parker appeared at his side, with Stinson shadowing him. The lieutenant’s face clouded, but he said, lightly enough, “Skipper, how ya doing?”
“Been better,” Mike said. “Sitrep?”
“I think we got the sniper and the mortar. I’ve got a couple of fast-movers coming in with napalm. And there’s a chopper on the way for you.”
Mike tried to look at his watch, but his left arm wouldn’t move. Parker, attending closely, looked baffled. Mike said, “Time?”
Parker, clearly humoring him, took his left hand gently, wavered, then wiped the blood off the face of the watch on Mike’s wrist. The crystal was shattered, but the hands were discernible: twelve minutes after one in the afternoon. 1312 hours.
“Your company, now,” Mike said. “Thirteen hundred hours.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Just…get them home. No hero shit.”
“Copy that, Skipper. I’ll get everyone back.” Parker smiled. “I had a pretty good teacher.”
“I stand relieved,” Mike said. He closed his eyes and was instantly far away, somewhere cool and dark and quiet, as if the burning in his body were a bonfire on a beach and he had walked off into the night, as he and Liz had once sneaked away from a beach party with a blanket and made slow love on the dunes, then left their clothes in a heap on the sand and slipped together into the sea. Mike remembered the coolness of the water and the warmth of Lizzie’s perfect body against his, and he thought of Major Ngai, dying on the litter north of Gio Linh. He knew now why the Vietnamese CO had seemed so bafflingly peaceful. You did what you could, and then you let it go. And there was such sweet relief in the letting go, and such unforeseen beauty.
When he opened his eyes again, Stinson was still with him, covered with blood now himself, holding Mike’s head, weeping unashamedly. Fifty yards away, purple smoke billowed in the flattened elephant grass, marking the LZ for the dust-off; the chopper was coming in. Belanger had an IV bag out and was feeling around gingerly in the mess that was Mike’s left arm, looking for a place to put the needle.
“Save it for someone else, Andy,” Mike said. The corpsman looked startled, then chagrined: he’d been thinking the same thing himself, but he’d been determined to go through the motions. Mike met his eyes and smiled. “Just this once,” he said.
Belanger managed a rueful smile in return. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said. “God be with you, Captain.”
Four Marines grabbed the corners of the stretcher, and they ran for the chopper, keeping low, though no one seemed to be shooting at them for the moment. Stinson stayed beside Mike all the way, holding his hand now, not letting go until they raised the litter to slide it into the Huey. Mike met his radioman’s eyes and tried to give him a wink, but his face wasn’t working that well and it felt more like a grimace.
They slid him into the bay with the three dead bodies, and the last thing he saw as the chopper lifted away was Stinson’s grieving face, the two clean lines of tears running straight down through the mud and blood, and then that was gone and duty was done and Mike closed his eyes and thought of the sea on a summer night. He was out beyond the breakers now, and he could see moonlight on the vastness of the water beyond him a
nd hear the soft waves crumpling like memories on the beach, and he could feel the warm nakedness of Liz’s body, sleek as a dolphin’s against his own, the two of them floating together quietly, looking back at the distant flicker of the bonfire.
THE SEDAN PULLED into the driveway just after the kids had gotten home from school on a Wednesday afternoon, and so its arrival went unnoticed until the doorbell rang. Liz thought it was probably Linnell Washington coming to pick up Temperance, who had taken the bus home from school with Kathie. She opened the door to find the two Marines standing there in their dark green winter dress uniforms and promptly slammed it shut.
She stood for a moment with her shoulder against the door, holding her breath. As a child, she had believed that if she held her breath she was invisible. She was furious with herself for answering the bell so casually, as if she’d somehow allowed the evil in by letting her guard down. She had also cut off most of her options for active denial. Plan A had long been to bolt without even answering the ring, but the children were in the kitchen, happily rummaging for snacks; she would have to get past them to get out the back door. Liz considered running upstairs and locking herself in the bathroom, but she knew Danny would answer the door then and she didn’t want that. So she just stood there holding her breath until the Marines knocked again, and then a moment longer, feeling the blood in her face and her heart in her chest. At last, though, she was forced to let the held air out in a whoosh and gasp a fresh lungful. That was the catch, she remembered from childhood; eventually you had to breathe.
She opened the door a second time. Her initial wave of sustaining rage had already passed, and she felt empty and fragile, helpless as a soap bubble. All she could think of was the first time she had seen Mike’s naked body, on their wedding night. Theirs had been an autumn-winter-colder-than-usual-spring Catholic courtship, movies and hamburgers, blues and jazz in Georgetown dives, chilly walks along the Potomac and through Rock Creek Park in layers of sweaters and coats, and reading Yeats and Synge on the floor beside the radiator, in lieu of a fireplace, in the apartment Mike shared with three other guys. No trips to the beach, and they’d never gotten past second base in the back of his old Chevy sedan; she’d never seen Mike with his shirt off. She’d never even seen his bare legs. When they finally shed their clothes, absurdly tentative in the sacred shyness of their first night together, Liz had been thrilled to discover that she loved her new husband’s body; it was like unwrapping a mystery party gift that turned out to be a winner. Mike had a slim, mild physique, the shoulders strong but undaunting, the chest covered lushly in soft black hair, the delicious belly still Marine flat. The thought of that beloved body violated now, savaged, possibly even destroyed, made Liz feel as if her own belly had been torn open.
“Is he dead?” she demanded of the nearest Marine, a major. The other one was a first lieutenant. Both men stood at parade rest, their hands clasped in front of them and their covers under their arms, the left breasts of their uniform jackets gaudy with ribbons, including the yellow and red one for Vietnam service. They both had Purple Hearts too, Liz noted: initiates in the blood brotherhood. She wondered whether Marines had come to their wives’ doors. She wondered what the hell their wives had done.
The major looked distressed. There was a script for these things. “Ma’am, maybe we should sit down and—”
“Just tell me whether my husband is dead or not, goddammit.”
The major glanced pointedly at the lieutenant; rank had its privileges. The lieutenant, clearly unprepared for frankness, blurted, “No, ma’am, he’s not dead. He’s hit pretty bad, though.”
Liz sat down on the floor, just plopped, before either of them could move to support her. In the hallway behind her, the kids had gathered, alerted somehow. Kathie was already crying. Angus, a beat slower, asked plaintively, “What happened? What’s going on?”
“Shut up, birdbrain,” Danny told him. “Dad got shot.”
[ PART FIVE ]
Oh now, in you, no more in myself only
And God, I partly live, and seem to have died,
So given up, entered and entering wholly
(To cross the threshold is to be inside),
And wonder if at last, each through each far dispersed,
We shall die easily who loved this dying first.
E. J. SCOVELL
CHAPTER 17
NOVEMBER 1967
CHARLIE MED, THE Khe Sanh field hospital, was a bloody zoo. One of the companies of 3/26 had run into trouble near Hill 881S, and several helicopters loaded with casualties had arrived not long before the Hotel Company chopper came in. An informal triage was taking place in the medical tent, with the dead laid in a row along the far wall and those with minor wounds left more or less to their own devices, while the seriously wounded were hurried to the tables to be worked on. Mike returned to consciousness to find himself among the dead.
He didn’t mind that; he’d figured as much himself. No sense moving his body twice. But if he was going to die, he’d had plenty of time to do so; and if he was going to confound God, the Fates, and the Marine Corps and live, it was probably time to start getting some actual attention.
He tried to raise his head and managed only to tilt his face slightly to the right. But everyone to his right was dead: Consalvo, Seretti, something mangled that was probably what was left of Smitty, and several other Marines he didn’t know. Mike tried to get a good look at the other bodies, to see if they were from Hotel Company too, hoping nothing else had happened, something he didn’t know about. But he didn’t recognize any of the faces. And he didn’t see Krzykrewski, which was a good sign.
Mike rested for a while with his head flopped to the right, watching the huge, metallic green blowflies landing indiscriminately on the faces of the dead men and on his own face. Everything hurt; everything. It was going to be a long road back. But he was pretty sure now that he was going to live, he hated those damned flies so much.
IN THE END, Liz served the Marines coffee. She was appalled at herself; it was humiliating. She had felt superior for so long, contemptuous of all those well-behaved Marine wives keeping stiff upper lips at the expense of their real feelings, taking devastation in docile stride. But she understood now. It had nothing to do with strength or weakness of character, with denial or truth or depth of feeling, with right or wrong or meaning or sacrifice or nobility. You just did what you did, when it came down to it. Two men came to the door to tell you that your husband had been blown up, and you collapsed on the floor for a little while, and then you got up and seated them in the living room and asked if they wanted cream or sugar. Because the children were there, wide-eyed, desperate for clues as to how shattered they should be. Because there were calls to be made, to Mike’s sister, to his parents. Because the phone was going to start ringing soon, as word spread through the amazingly efficient tribal system of other Marine wives. Life went on. It seemed wrong, that it did; it seemed impossible, that it could. It even seemed outrageous. But it did.
Linnell Washington showed up like an angel about ten minutes after the Marines. It was she who actually made the coffee, after she had shepherded the kids upstairs to their rooms. Liz went into the kitchen to try to help, but Temperance’s mother waved her off.
“You just take care of your own self, honey.”
“I don’t even know what that means right now,” Liz said, but she leaned back against the counter gratefully.
Linnell opened one cupboard, then a second and a third, before she found the coffee cups. Liz watched her, thinking, I know where the coffee cups are. But by the time her brain caught up with what was going on, Linnell had found the cups and gone through all of the lower cupboards to come up with a tray.
I know where the trays are, Liz thought.
“I suppose them Marines drink it black,” Linnell said, opening the refrigerator to consider the limited milk options.
“Mike does,” Liz said, and she began to cry. She didn’t want to; she was afraid
she was never going to stop. Linnell put her arms around her.
“It’s gonna be all right, Lizzie,” she said, which only made Liz cry harder. Temperance’s mother had never called her by her first name before, and in the subtlety and naturalness of the shift, Liz glimpsed the depths of her own secret arrogance. The barrier had been hers, not Linnell’s. She had been working so hard to be benevolent, helpful, and generous in the friendship, as if from on high. As if she could afford to, as if the bad things, the real-life things, happened to other people.
“He’s not dead,” she said, when she could breathe again without sobbing.
Linnell patted her back. “Maybe he’ll get to come home now,” she said.
The thought had not occurred to Liz yet, and it cheered her instantly. She straightened to reach for the sugar bowl and placed it on the coffee tray, then took a deep breath, tore off a paper towel to wipe her face, and met Linnell’s eyes.
“Would you mind going up and seeing how the kids are?” she said. “And hold their hands a bit. The girls, in particular. Tell them I’ll be up there soon. And if you could possibly stick around for a while—?”
“Of course,” Linnell said. Liz touched her arm, then picked up the coffee tray and went back into the living room. The Marines were sitting bolt upright on the sofa, side by side. They rose in unison as she came into the room, standing alertly, with identical glum, determined, sympathetic faces. She felt a surge of compassion for them, they were so obviously resigned to any emotional extravagance on her part and so plainly eager to be done with it.
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