The Grand Tour

by Adam O'Fallon Price

  The doctor had just finished examining my hand and gone to find a splint, when Lieutenant Endicott pushed through the light blue dividing curtain. He sat down by the bed on which I lay, in my camos and Donald Duck T-shirt.

  “You proud of yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  Endicott shook his remarkable head and continued to look at me. He was hatchet faced, in the sense that his face was shaped like an ax—it was narrow even at the ears, and the cheekbones angled in to the long blade of his nose, on which you could have sliced tomatoes. His lips were thin at the best of times; the displeased grimace they were now set in had virtually caused them to vanish. His branch of the family was from a small town in Massachusetts called Endurance, and he looked like what he was, one of those severe New England types with icy bloodlines running back to Cotton Mather. I picture him now on a lonely, scenic mountain homestead, performing some impossible pioneer chore like building a well, looking exactly the same as he did then, since he already looked sixty in 1971.

  “Normally, we let you idiots punch each other and take care of things yourselves, but Hawkins has a severe concussion. Throwing up and seeing double, thinks Eisenhower is president. How’s your hand?”

  I looked down at the Christmas ham in my lap and said, “Fine.”

  “Doctor said it’s broken in three different places, if I understood him properly. Joe Frazier puts on gloves first, you know. They wear them to protect their hands, not the other guy’s face. Why’d you do it?”

  “I don’t like Hawkins.”

  “I don’t like green beans,” said Endicott, “but you don’t see me beating the shit out of them. I’ve never given green beans severe head trauma.” I didn’t say anything, so he went on, “I don’t want to see you disciplined over this, but it’s out of my hands. I’m going to talk to him on your behalf, but if Hawkins decides to make a stink, it’s all on record.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “For what it’s worth, between the two of us, Lester Hawkins is a grubby little booger-eater, and I didn’t too much mind seeing him in that bed, looking like a raccoon. But I’ve still got to brig you up for this.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “One more thing.” Endicott looked down at his hands. “While you’re there, maybe you can talk to Berlinger on my behalf.”

  “I tried. He’s not talking to me.”

  “Well, try again,” said Endicott. “He’s putting me in a bad position here. I’m trying to get him to take a Section Eight discharge, and he won’t do it. Psychiatric discharge—it’s not ideal, it’ll follow him around, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s not dishonorable, and it sure as hell isn’t prison. The stubborn son of a bitch is going to force me to bring him in for a court-martial, and I don’t want to do that. But I can’t do nothing.”

  “Why not?”

  Endicott looked at me for a moment, as though I was an idiot. I was, in fact, an idiot, but what I had just said didn’t feel idiotic. “Lazar, he refused to participate in a military action under direct orders from his commanding officer. And he did so in front of twenty fellow soldiers.”

  “I know what he did.”

  “A military court might consider that aid and comfort. They might consider it treason and let him hang.”

  “Couldn’t it be ‘conscientious objection’?”

  “If he was still stateside, sure.”

  “Couldn’t you just forget it? He’s got maybe six weeks before his tour is up.”

  “Not in this political climate. Not with that mess at Kent State last month. Not with hippies burning Nixon in effigy. A Section Eight is the best I’ve got. Go and talk to him.”

  Berlinger couldn’t help but smile when the MP escorted me in, looking up from his whittling, the little soldier now almost complete in his hand: face, combat boots, tiny rifle at attention behind a tiny shoulder. I said, “I punched Hawkins.”

  “I heard,” he said. “I heard you just about killed him.”

  “You heard?”

  “Word travels.”

  I sank to the ground, back against the hot wall, holding my throbbing hand. In spite of everything, my main feeling was a sense of relief that Berlinger was speaking to me again. “So, how much longer until they drag you in front of a tribunal?”

  “Martin came by, said tomorrow.”

  “You think about pleading insanity?”

  “Not for one second.”

  “You want martyr of the year, or something? Why don’t you just take the Section Eight?”

  He stood and I hunched away from him, surprised, as always, by how goddamned big he was. “Endicott tell you to talk to me?”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  He laughed. “You realize what a joke that is? I should plead insanity, when I was the only sane one there.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It was a massacre, Lazar, you dumb fuck. That’s how.”

  “A massacre. They were VC.”

  He snorted. “Oh yeah. That old woman was VC for sure. The kid with the umbrella.”

  I could see the pink umbrella spinning around the village before, the torn fabric after. My vision seemed to darken at the edges, and my ears filled with hot water. “They were working with them, the whole village was. Command said, I heard Endicott on the radio.”

  “Oh, bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”

  I wiped my face, clearing away the image of the smoldering village. “Do you really want to go to prison over this?”

  He crouched and leaned in toward me. Our faces were close as he talked quietly. “No, I don’t. I want to provide honest testimony before a judge and God. I want Endicott to go to prison. Endicott, fucking Westmoreland. Lyndon Baines Cocksucking Johnson.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Gee, thanks.” He backed off a little.

  I said, “Look, I don’t know, maybe you’re right. Maybe it was fucked up, maybe it was a bad call. But orders are orders, all the way down. Take a Section Eight, you’ll be back in Kansas in a week. Endicott’s trying to help you here—he doesn’t want to see you court-martialed.”

  “Is that what he said? You know why Endicott wants to Section Eight me? He doesn’t want me testifying at a trial. Not that the army will do anything, but he doesn’t want my testimony on record. The word ‘massacre’ might jump out at some bored correspondent reading a transcript.”

  “It wasn’t a massacre,” I said. For a few moments we looked at each other in silence. My mind felt like a car with its back tires caught in the mud. “And what about Carbone?”

  “What about him?”

  “You forget his leg? One of those VC might’ve planted that mine.”

  Berlinger laughed again, right in my face, and I felt myself turn red with the knowledge of how far I was reaching. He said, “One might have. All of them didn’t. The village didn’t. And who gives a fuck, anyway? Did you give a fuck about Carbone? I didn’t.”

  Outside the window, some jungle bird cycled through an endless three-note song. “Okay, fine. I tried. So what’s your defense gonna be at the court-martial then?”

  He picked up the wooden figurine by the tips of its feet and head, and spun it around and around in his huge hands. “Lazar, I ever tell you about my father?”

  “No.”

  “He was a real piece of work. Got fired from every job he ever had, drank all the time, had an affair with just about every woman in Manhattan. He made my mother miserable, and he was a shitty father to me and my sister. He didn’t hit us or anything, just wasn’t ever there and could have given a shit, you know? I fucking hated him.”

  “Yeah, I have a father, too.”

  “Listen, so one night after dinner, I must have been around fifteen, I waited up for him to come home from wherever he was. Around midnight, he came in drunk as usual, and I let him have it. Told him what I thought of him. You know, ‘You’ve never been there for us,’ and blah blah. I said he’d never given me a single piece of fatherly advice I could
use. He laughed and said, ‘That’s the best advice I could ever have given you, Mitch. Figure things out for yourself, and don’t listen to what anybody tells you. Nobody knows a goddamned thing, at least I don’t walk around pretending I do.’ Berlinger moved to the window and set the figurine down on the sill and for a moment they both looked outside, at the beach and sea in what he must have realized was an absurdly dramatic pose, because he quickly shook his head and returned to the middle of the room, sitting again on the bucket of bean crud. “And he was right, you know? Rip those stripes off Endicott’s sleeve, he doesn’t know a goddamned thing. Nobody knows a thing all the way up the line, bunch of dipshits and yes-men and cowards and hacks, all the way to whoever at command sent down that fucking kill order. And I’ll be goddamned if anyone is going to tell me to take part in a massacre. You wanted to know what my defense is going to be, there it is.”

  The next day, Berlinger was led out by the MPs. He nodded back at me and was gone. I noticed that wooden soldier was still where he’d left it, standing on the windowsill, looking out. I had the strange sense, that whole day, that he’d left it as a sort of totem, a miniature version of himself standing guard—although whether over me, or the outside world, I couldn’t tell.

  ———

  Two days after that—two days of the most intense boredom and dread I’ve felt in my life, short of waiting to see the Eagles on the Hell Freezes Over tour—the Vietnamese MP waved me out. Davis Martin was there, said Hawkins was conscious and wanted to talk. If I was smart, he said, with a look suggesting he thought I probably wasn’t, I would apologize, grovel if need be. I went over to sick bay, a cinder-block cube on the edge of base, and found Hawkins on a metal bed in the corner. He really did look like a raccoon.

  “Lazar,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you I’m not pushing for a court-martial.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Why’d you hit me?”

  “It was the hat, I think.”

  He seemed to consider this, then said, “Here’s the thing. The doctor said it looks like when I fell, this little itty piece of my skull chipped off inside. Says it’s fine, no big deal, ’cept I can’t be out in combat, that a mortar concussion or something like that could cause it to kill me. They’re sending me home in a week, you believe that?”

  “No.”

  “So I called you in here to say thanks. I’ve had these nightmares ever since I’ve been in-country, slept like an hour every night for three months. Thought about shooting off my own toe, turns out all I had to do was wear that gook’s lid, and your dumb fucking ass took care of the rest.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  He said, “I bet you are. Hey, one more thing. You hear about your buddy Berlinger?” I guess the blank stare on my face informed him I hadn’t. “He got zapped on the way down to MACV for his tribunal. Tough shit, huh? No good deed, huh?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Unh-uh.” He rearranged himself on his bed with a look of satisfaction, like a man who’d just eaten a little more than he should have. “Ask around. He got ambushed on that same convoy line we rode in on when we first got here.”

  His big rubbery lips were assembling themselves into the formation of a smile as I retreated from the room. “Poor old Berlinger. I guess maybe it don’t matter much how smart you are.” He turned, grinning horribly now. “Hey, Lazar. I hope you get shot just like your buddy.” I couldn’t get out before hearing him say, “I hope some gook sniper draws a bead on your fat head. Brains for monkey dinner. You hear me? I hope you get cut wide open, you fucking son of a bitch.”

  ———

  Davis Martin confirmed the rumor at an impromptu meeting in the mess hall during lunch and told us, matter of fact, that Berlinger had been killed in transport to army headquarters in Saigon. An insurgent mortar attack, the wreckage discovered by the supply truck fifteen minutes behind it. Endicott had gone to Saigon, too, to testify at the trial, but he’d been choppered in. Martin told everyone to shut up and observe a moment of silence, bowed his fireplug head, then left the room to its questions, its inane chatter, its guilty feelings of relief that it hadn’t been them, its turkey potpies. No one seemed that bothered, and it occurred to me that most of the guys considered him a traitor.

  I walked outside. It was a gorgeous clear day. I went back to the barracks, polished off the warm dregs of a bottle of brandy, and vomited. I sat there for a very long time, sweating, watching the river of faces on the wall, watching Berlinger surface and resurface, live and drown, over and over again. I watched as the other guys came in chattering, laughing, lying down, snoring. I watched in the dark. I didn’t get up in the morning, and I didn’t get up when someone was in the door talking, surrounded by a rectangle of harsh, white light. I didn’t say anything and they went away, and then I was alone again, with the same thoughts circling in my head: It had been a massacre, Endicott had given the order, I had followed it, Berlinger hadn’t, he’d been right, and he’d died for it.

  That evening, I approached Martin in the canteen. A ceiling fan overhead seemed to beat in slow motion, and I could see the helicopter touching down, Endicott crouching under the spinning blades, getting the news from some crew-cut hack. I could see his long face, touched with sadness, and with relief at being spared the trial. Martin was drinking a beer and thumbing through a Whole Earth Catalog someone stateside must have sent him.

  “Look who it is.” He didn’t look up, kept thumbing through the pages.

  “Sir, can I ask you a question?”

  “You already did. Just ask.”

  “I was wondering if there was any more news about Berlinger.”

  “What other news could there be?”

  “I mean, is there any word about what happened?”

  “Just that the truck got hit.”

  “Did they recover the bodies?”

  He put down the catalog and gave me a look, his eyebrows screwed up. “How the fuck would I know, Lazar? And why does it matter? Either the mortar got them, or Charlie got them after. What happened to their bodies I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.”

  “Is Endicott still in Saigon?”

  “Lieutenant will be back next week. Until then, I’m your CO.” He went back to the catalog. “And I don’t give a fuck what kind of miserable state you’re in, Jack, you better be up and on duty tomorrow. Ten-hut.”

  Ten-hut. Back at barracks, I loaded my field pack with clothes, water, provisions, sidearm, and a grenade; I ate an MRE and brushed my teeth; I lay in bed and pretended to sleep, and later I walked off base.

  ———

  Deserting was surprisingly easy. I waited until the barracks were filled with the rattle and hiss of several dozen sleeping men, opened the door, and walked out. The beach side of the base was dark—no one was worried about a surprise attack by the famous NVA Navy—but the moon and the photoluminescence of the water provided enough light to see. I scurried around the edge of the base, almost to the eastern gate and its guard post, and I waited. There wasn’t really much to it—when guard shift changed over, there was usually a little lag as the guy on duty grabbed his sleeping replacement. It wasn’t how things were supposed to work, but not much here worked how it was supposed to. I waited until the guard walked over to the barracks, then ducked through the gate and into the shadows by the perimeter wall. The spotlight swept the road in front of the base, and when it passed, I ran. In what seemed like only a few seconds, I’d dashed across the road, through the open, weedy strip that buffered base from village, past the village itself—a sprawling, chaotic Tinkertown of concrete structures, colonial houses, thatched huts, and lean-tos; everyone, even a mottled terrier sleeping near a crumbling stone wall, dead asleep at three in the morning—and up a steep and sparsely wooded hummock. In a small clearing, I caught my breath and took a last look toward the sea. Spotlights on each side of the base scanned the road and moved up into the middle dark; the airstrip and distant conning tower were lit yellow and oran
ge and red, and the whole thing glowed glamorously in the night like a movie marquee. As I climbed farther, it was the last of this light that led me to the distant, indistinct scar curving through waist-high elephant grass, up the hill, and into the jungle. It was the dirt road we’d walked in on, that Berlinger had been killed on—the road to Saigon.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Outside the small, oblong airplane window, the midwestern landscape unspooled in agreeable uniformity, a drab flatness in perfect concert with his mental state, as though the entire world below was one endless five-mile loop. The only sign of real movement was the occasional clouds that sailed past and underneath the plane, a regatta of schooners and clippers and yachts and little sailboats bound for nowhere in particular. In the distance, another airplane shouldered bravely through the blue waves of the midwestern sky. The sky was the real God, but I should have been a sailor.

  He pressed the call button on his seat again. The man next to him read Business Weekly or Weekly Business or some other deadening money rag with ads every other page for gold investment and studiously avoided acknowledging Richard’s sodden presence. This was a task, as he was nearly as large as Richard, and it was all they could do not to merge amoebically together over the armrest.

  While he waited for the flight attendant to come out of hiding, he attempted to piece together the events of the previous twenty-four hours. This was also a task: his consciousness during this time was like a drowning man, briefly coming up for air and catching a momentary, frozen glimpse of the world—the surrounding ocean and a snatch of blue sky, perhaps dotted with a lone gull—before going under again. It didn’t help that he was still incredibly drunk, although less drunk than he had been, a fact manifest in his serial memory of getting on the airplane, falling into his seatmate, and annoying the stewardess. Somewhere in there, he’d vomited into a vintage barf bag with jet-set typography, which had, in turn, instantly voided its contents onto his lap. Earlier events, however, floated on their own, suspended in amber, and he closed his eyes with the effort of ordering them, at the same time wondering what difference it made. None, was probably the answer, he knew, but when you give up on making sense of anything, you’ve given up on life—he was close, but not quite there yet. So: