by Mark Gimenez
Jacko smiled like he was remembering his last birthday party.
“You lived for those days.”
Junior said, “What’d you do with the other gook?”
“Oh, we threw him out, too. Five-hundred-foot dive into a rice paddy.”
Jacko now had a faraway look on his face, like Sylvia when she talked of her old country.
“Best years of my life. Hell, killing, drinking, and fucking—to an Okie from Henryetta, Vietnam wasn’t no war, it was a goddamned vacation.” He shook his head. “Politicians fucked up a pretty good war.”
They were sitting in a McDonald’s drive-through waiting for their order. Gracie was listening. Junior was wide-eyed.
“Gosh, I love to hear them stories,” he said.
Jacko said, “Course, when McNamara and Johnson sent in the draftees and the war became a goddamn TV show back home, I knew my Oriental vacation was coming to an end. But I didn’t know my Army career was coming to an end when Viper team humped into the Quang Tri province that day in ’68 or when we humped out that night. I just followed the major in and followed the major out and in between we wasted some gooks. Just another day in paradise. But the Army sacrificed Viper team to the mob.” He sucked on his cigarette, blew out smoke, and said, “Because Lieutenant Ben Brice couldn’t keep his fuckin’ mouth shut.”
“Why didn’t the major kill Brice after he ratted you out?”
“After the court-martial, CIA hired us to greenback in Cambodia—CIA, they don’t give a shit about politics.” He chuckled. “With SOG, the major reported to the president. With the CIA, he reported to no one. Anyway, Brice, he was a native by then, living in the zoo with the Yards. After the war, he just disappeared.”
Junior handed a white bag back to Gracie. She had ordered a Big Mac, fries, and milk. Mother never let her eat fast food.
Jacko said back to her: “Where’s your grandpa been living?”
Gracie thought that if she told the truth, maybe they’d turn around and drive to Taos, which would be better than wherever they were going now. And she knew Ben wasn’t at the cabin anyway.
“Taos.”
“The hell’s he doing in Taos?”
“He makes furniture—rocking chairs, tables, desks. They’re awesome. Movie stars buy his stuff.”
Jacko thought that was funny. “Green Beret making rocking chairs for movie stars.”
“Like who?” Junior asked.
Gracie didn’t answer him. Instead, she said, “Let’s go to Taos. I’ll take you to his cabin.”
Jacko snorted. “I think I’ll wait for him to come to me.”
“Scared, huh? You know, you guys ought to pull over and let me out before he catches up with you.”
“Shut up, you little whore!”
Gracie wasn’t sure what that word meant, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t a compliment. Before she could defend herself, Junior did.
“Don’t call her that! She ain’t no whore!”
Junior was giving Jacko a real mean face, like Ronnie down the street that day she had beaten him up.
“She started it! Tell her to shut up! You want a woman in your life, that’s what you get—a fuckin’ mouth won’t stop!”
Gracie removed her lunch from the bag and began singing: “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be morons …”
Jacko pointed a French fry back at her and said, “See? See what I mean?”
Gracie pulled the milk out of the bag and saw her picture on the carton under MISSING CHILD.
11:47 A.M.
The off-road tires gripped the dirt-and-rock trail and the V-8 engine muscled the Land Rover up the steep incline while the plush leather seats cushioned the occupants as they bounced about, albeit less than one would expect due to the electronic air suspension system. For your off-roading needs, no other SUV measured up to a Range Rover product. John’s Range Rover back home was a sporty red job with four-wheel-drive, a neat feature even though the thought of actually taking a $75,000 vehicle off road had never entered John Brice’s mind. So when they crested the hill, John exhaled with great relief and his white-knuckled hands released their death grip on the steering wheel as he braked the Land Rover to a stop in front of a small cabin.
It was almost noon on the seventh day Gracie was gone.
A dog was on Ben before he had de-Rovered. Ben knelt and petted the dog; the beast licked his face like an ice cream cone. “How ya doin’, Buddy?” If a dog can cry, Buddy was. Ben stood and walked inside the cabin. Man’s best friend then greeted John, slobbering all over his jeans and Nike cross-trainers.
“Get away from me, you freaking mutt!”
John was not comfortable around dogs; he had had a dog for a while as a boy, but the dang beast had bit him every chance it could. Fido finally abandoned his attack on John when it spotted some kind of rat creature and gave chase into the brush bordering the cabin. John dehosed his jeans and checked out Ben’s cabin; it was smaller than the four-car garage at Six Magnolia Lane, but it was a neat log home just the same.
On both sides of the steps leading up to the porch were gardens; little sprigs stuck up out of uniform rows of black dirt. The porch floor was built of wood planks. Cacti in colorful pots, odd-shaped rocks, and painted wood carvings of coyotes and horses lined the porch rail. John followed the porch around the cabin and gazed out on the brown terrain that stretched to the distant mountains whose white tops were a stark contrast against the deep blue sky. As far as he could see, there was not another human being, not another house, not another anything. This was not an exclusive gated community constructed to keep the masses out. This was not a master-planned subdivision with an active homeowners’ association. This was not a place you came to for social engineering. This was where you came to leave the rest of the world behind.
On the west side of the porch were two wooden rocking chairs; one was half-sized with GRACIE carved in the seat back. John sat in her chair and imagined Ben and Gracie sitting there and talking, and he wondered what she had said about her father. He sighed. He should have come with her, as she had always begged him to, and sat in a rocker with JOHN carved into the seat back and talked to his father. But he had always been so brain-damaged about the past—a father not there to protect Little Johnny Brice from the bullies—and so focused on the future—an IPO that would make John R. Brice’s life perfect—that he had never found the reason or the time to forgive or forget.
He hoped Gracie had forgiven her father.
He stood and walked around back. Behind the cabin were a vegetable garden and a smaller structure accessible via a stone path. The door creaked as John entered Ben’s workshop; unfinished furniture and tools occupied the floor and walls. A rocking chair caught John’s eye. He ran his hands along the graceful wood armrests and down the curved back. He sat in the chair and leaned his head back. John had assumed the least about his father, that his woodwork would be crude creations, not works of art like this chair. Just as he had assumed a drunk would live like a drunk, sloppy and dirty. But the cabin and grounds and this workshop were meticulously maintained, as if Ben had a Sylvia Milanevic on the payroll.
John Brice didn’t know his own father.
“That’s for some movie star in Santa Fe.”
Ben was standing in the door.
“I’m going into town to pick up supplies,” he said. “There’s food inside if you get hungry. We’ll load up and hit the road as soon as I get back.” He held out an open hand. “Since you traded in my POS Jeep, I need to borrow your vehicle.”
John tossed the keys to Ben. “It’s yours.”
12:19 P.M.
After the Land Rover had disappeared down the hill, John went inside the cabin. He was starving; all he had eaten that day was his normal breakfast of a dozen Oreos crushed in a glass of milk and the black coffee on the flight.
He walked over to the kitchen at one end of the main room and got a potent whiff of whiskey. Five empty whiskey bottles were sitting upside down in th
e sink. Looking at the bottles, John felt sure he was following a drunk on a wild goose chase; but there was no running home to Elizabeth now. He took the bottles outside to the recycling bin.
When he returned, he searched the cabinets for something decent to eat, but all he found were organic granola bars, organic oatmeal, organic pasta, organic peanut butter, vitamins, and health supplements. A drunk who takes care of himself? He opened the refrigerator: grapefruit juice, orange juice, yogurt, fruit, cheese, and a bag of bean tamales. Nothing worth eating. Which was just as well, because when he shut the door and saw Gracie’s photos stuck there with magnets, he lost his appetite.
He wandered around the main room and found a stack of newspaper and magazine clippings about BriceWare.com and its genius founder on a desk in the corner. On a table next to an old leather recliner by the fireplace was the Fortune magazine with John’s picture on the cover, opened to the Brice family photo and Gracie’s bright smile. Ben had kept up with his son all this time. But his son had never returned his calls or come to visit, convinced that at his age he no longer needed a father.
He was wrong.
The cabin had two small bedrooms, each with a tiny bathroom. One was Gracie’s bedroom: her clothes in the closet, her stuff around the room, an Indian headdress on the bed, a colorful totem pole in the corner, and a wooden headboard with Gracie carved in a neat script. He walked around the room and touched her things.
The other bedroom was Spartan, only a bed, a wooden chest in the corner, and a nightstand. The bed was neatly made; the ends of the blanket were tucked in tightly. It was an Army bed just like the bed John had slept in until the day he had left for MIT. He had never made his bed again.
Hanging in the small closet were jeans, corduroy and flannel shirts, a winter coat, and in a clear bag, the dress uniform of a full colonel in the United States Army. On the floor were jogging shoes and boots. On the shelf above were several hats and caps and a green beret wrapped in plastic.
On the nightstand were an old rotary dial telephone, a gooseneck lamp, a small framed photo of Mom, and a stack of letters from Gracie. An old phone, snail-mail letters, no computer in the cabin: his father was living in the past in every way possible. John picked up the top envelope; Gracie had drawn little happy faces around the edges. John sat on the bed and stared at the happy faces; he saw Gracie’s happy face. Could she really be alive?
So everyone back home thought she was dead.
Gracie wondered if they would have a funeral Mass for her like the one for the little boy two blocks over who had died a year ago from some disease he had been born with. The altar would be decorated with pretty flowers, Father Randy would be wearing his fancy vestments, and the choir would be singing “Amazing Grace.” Mom would look beautiful in a black dress and Dad would look … Did he even own a black suit?
Picturing the two of them together at her funeral, the beauty and the geek, Gracie found herself wondering again how they had ever gotten together … and if they loved each other. Dad loved Mom, that was like, obvious. He was a puppy dog around her, always licking her shoes. But did she love him? Gracie didn’t think so. She had asked Nanna one time, but Nanna said, “Of course she does, but sometimes grownups have issues that keep them apart.” She asked Nanna what issues were keeping her and Ben apart, but Nanna started crying so she never asked again.
But back to the funeral. Everyone would file into the church, old ladies would be crying, kids would be messing with each other, and their parents would be telling them to hush; Mass would start and Father Randy and the altar girls would walk up the center aisle to where her empty white casket—yeah, she wanted a white casket—would be sitting just in front of the altar and on top would be a picture of her in her soccer uniform because everyone wanted to remember her that way.
Gosh, it would be a great funeral. Everyone in town would be there, Mom and Dad, Nanna and Sam, Sylvia and Hilda, her teammates, Coach Wally, kids from school—they’d probably let school out that day—her teachers, and the principal; everyone would be crying and praying for the little dead girl. It sounded so neat, she almost wished she could be there. But she wouldn’t be there, and neither would Ben.
Because she wasn’t dead, and he was coming to save her.
Colonel, you saved my life. Lying in that cell at San Bie, I knew I would never see my wife or children again, but you gave my wife her husband back and my children their father. I owe you my life. God bless you.
John had found the boxes in the wooden chest; in the first box he had found dozens more letters, but these letters weren’t from Gracie. These letters were from military pilots pledging their lives to John’s father.
He did not know his own father.
He returned the letters to the first box. Then he opened the second box. He removed Ben’s framed West Point diploma, Army certificates, and a display case containing a hero’s medals: eight Purple Hearts; five Silver Stars with an empty spot for a sixth one; four Bronze Stars; two Soldier’s Medals; a Distinguished Service Cross; the Legion of Merit; and in a special case, the Medal of Honor, a round gold medal with an eagle over the word valor and a gold star with a Roman Centurion engraved in the center. John touched the medal with a reverence he had never before felt. He had never looked upon Ben as a hero. John R. Brice’s heroes were Tim Paterson, who invented DOS, Ray Tomlinson, who invented e-mail, and Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the HTML, HTTP, and URL conventions that powered the World Wide Web, brilliant men who made Internet shopping possible, not men who fought a war forty years ago that nobody cared about.
What was Ben like back then, when he was young and robust? What were his dreams? What life had he and Mom hoped for? Were they ever happy? What made him a drunk?
John found the answers in the third box. Inside were photos: Ben’s formal West Point graduation portrait in his high-necked dress uniform above the Academy motto—Duty, Honor, Country; Ben and Kate, him in a white uniform and Mom in a wedding dress, outside a church, ducking under an arch of sabers held out by other soldiers in white uniforms; and other wedding photos with a best man and maid of honor whose images struck John. The woman, with her curly black hair and a certain frailty about her, seemed oddly familiar to John. In another photo, the same man was standing next to the same woman in a hospital bed holding a baby; Kate and Ben were leaning in from behind. Everyone was smiling like their IPO had just hit the street.
John dug deeper and found more photos: Ben and the other man just arrived in Vietnam, looking young and eager in crisp uniforms; a team photo, both of them with other soldiers and handwritten along the bottom the words SOG team Viper, 2 Dec 68; Ben sitting in a stirrup and dangling from a rope under a helicopter flying above a dense jungle; Ben lying on the ground, his pants ripped open and an Army medic wrapping his bloody leg; Ben in a hospital bed, a pretty nurse in a white uniform on one side, and on the other side, a general pinning a Purple Heart to Ben’s pillow; Ben, in the jungle, holding a long black rifle with a scope, his boot on a dead Asian soldier wearing black pajamas, 1000 meters written along the bottom; Ben, his smile gone now, replaced by a hardness John had never seen on his father’s face, camouflage greasepaint, his uniform no longer crisp but instead dirty and worn with the sleeves cut off, revealing his muscular arms and that tattoo. He was standing among Indians.
He was not the same man.
John realized he knew next to nothing about his father. Ben Brice had been a hero, he knew that, but Ben had never talked about the war and John had never asked. His father was a loser. A drunk. That was all he had ever really known about Ben Brice.
John returned the photos to the box, one by one, but his eyes lingered on the hospital photo of the man and woman with the baby. This same man was in the early photos with Ben but in none of the later ones. Looking at this man and this woman, something strange stirred inside John, like one of those déjà vu moments. He touched the image of the woman gently. John didn’t know how long he had been staring at the photo when he looked up t
o see Ben standing over him. John held up the photo.
“Who are these people?” he asked.
Ben was quiet for a time. He ran his hands over his face and through his hair. Then he said, “Your mother and father.”
1:43 P.M.
“My dad says life is random,” Gracie said.
“What?” Jacko said without turning his head back.
“Random. You know, things happen for no particular reason. He says life doesn’t make sense and isn’t supposed to. My mom says life is fucked up, but she has some issues.”
“The hell you talking about?”
His words and smoke came out of his mouth at the same time. She sighed. “What I’m talking about is, you two lamebrains kidnap me not even knowing Ben is my grandpa, and a long time ago during Ben’s war you did something bad and Ben told on you and you got in trouble.”
“How do you know we did something bad?”
“Because I know Ben didn’t. And now Ben’s coming after me and he’s going to find out you took me, the same guy he told on. I mean, what are the odds of that? Now my dad—he’s a math genius—he’d say that’s just random, what normal people call coincidence or luck. But I don’t think so. I think it’s meant to be.”
“Destiny?”
“God’s plan. See, Nanna—she’s my grandmother—she goes to Mass like, almost every day. She’s always saying, ‘God has a plan for you, Gracie Ann Brice. God has a plan for all of us.’ She says there’s no such thing as coincidence or luck, that everything that happens in our lives is supposed to happen because it’s all part of God’s plan. So you kidnapping me and Ben coming to get me, that’s not a coincidence. That’s part of God’s plan.”
Jacko exhaled smoke through both nostrils.
“Well, sweet cheeks, I don’t know about God’s plan, but my plan is to gut your grandpa.”