Fields of Fire

by James Webb

  “Look. I just need a couple weeks. O.K.? I really appreciate what you did. Really. It was—nice. But I just can't handle it yet.”

  His mother leaned forward, anxious and confused. “Would you like a glass of Cola?”

  “No. Listen. I'm really screwed up.” He eyed them almost facetiously, rubbing his left leg where the stump joined the prosthesis. “If I was a horse they'd shoot me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure of what?”

  “That you wouldn't like something to drink?”

  “Oh, God.” He remembered that the best way to calm her was to set her into reasonably productive motion. “Do you have tea?”

  His mother contemplated it, her bagged face serious. “Well, let me see.”

  “Oh, never mind. I'll take a Coke.”

  “No. I have tea.” She bit her lip, somewhat ashamed that she was nervous about having him home again. “I'll have to make it, though.”

  “I'll just take a Coke, Mom.”

  “No.” She rose almost relievedly. “No, I can make tea. It's no bother. You just talk to your father, William. I'll be back in a moment.”

  She exited quickly toward the kitchen, and there were brief clangings, then all was quiet again. The parakeet scraped along the floor of his cage. Goodrich found himself grinning to his father, shaking his head in amusement at his mother's antics. He hummed a few bars from the George Burns and Gracie Allen theme song, their secret code for joking about his mother's tendency to become flighty under pressure. His father grinned back, nodding.

  Goodrich relaxed, lighting another cigarette. “How's work?”

  His father shook his head, which was wide and fleshy, an older model of Goodrich's own. “Oh, the same old stuff, Will. Old wine in new bottles.” He grinned amusedly. “One thing about being a lawyer—you gain an appreciation of the ability of the average human to twist and turn the rules of society to his own advantage, in the most unique and remarkable ways.”

  He and Goodrich grinned identical grins. Under the numb of pillbuzz, Goodrich found himself deeply relaxed. His father's acerbic, humorous drone was like the stroking of a warm hand that comforted him. His father scrutinized him. “Well, I'm glad it's over for you, Son. It must have been terrible.”

  “It'll never be over, Dad. Most of it hasn't even happened yet.” He noticed the pained reaction on his father's face. “I'm sorry. But coming back here, seeing the house and everything, it's like coming out of shock. Nothing hurts when you're in shock. You're just numb. But when you come out of it, every nerve-end aches.”

  His father rubbed stubby, wrinkled hands over his face and hair. “Well, if I thought it would do any good, I'd say I'll never understand why the hell you did it anyway. It was crazy.” He suddenly looked much older than his sixty-odd years. “But we're beyond that now, aren't we?”

  “I have some good memories.” Goodrich smoked pensively. “I have some bad memories. But I do have some good ones, I even miss it, in a way. I can't explain that. But the hard part is now.” He stared closely at his father, watching him come into focus and then drift back out. “I've got to get my head screwed back on. It's like I'm running loose inside it. No, really. I look at you and it's like I'm watching myself look at you, from deep inside somewhere.” He shrugged absently. “It's the pills. It's like I'm standing in an empty room and looking out a window at myself, only every time I talk it echoes back inside the room. Hey, Dad. I'm all fucked up.”

  “You'll be all right. You will. You will,” his father mumbled in a litany, as if the mere repetition would make it so. “You need to go back to school. Once you get back to school it'll work itself out. You'll be all right.”

  “Yeah. I suppose.”

  His mother returned with the tea and served it ceremoniously to him, dropping a napkin to his lap and then sitting the saucer and teacup on it. He sipped the tea quietly, draining the cup, then set it on the coffee table.

  “I'd just like to sit around the house for a while. Maybe read a few books. Watch TV. Stuff like that. I don't want to see anybody. Anybody. I need some time to sort things out, to get used to all this. Would you put out the word? I just need a few weeks, that's all.”

  His father nodded. “Take all the time you need, Son. School doesn't start for another two months.”

  Goodrich gained his crutches, wincing as he climbed to his feet. He stared for a long moment at them, his face sagging. “I just don't want to be weak about this.”

  • • •

  HE spent a strange, numb week inside the cloister of his bedroom. Outside the trees wept withered, spent leaves on the brown grass but he did not see them. The curtains were drawn, the lights were off. In the shadows and the lonely dark, surrounded often by dull artificial warmth from pills, he sought to find his head.

  Or, perhaps, merely to avoid himself. He searched all the laughs and rages of his past, playing old songs on his stereo, reading and rereading old school annuals, savoring spent moments. Surprisingly, he found himself most often inside the pages of his Vietnam scrap book. He had put it together in the hospital, spending whole dull days sorting out the stacks of Instamatic photos, placing them in their proper chronology, identifying grinning, youthful faces and writing names underneath the photos. There, captured in the wonderglow, sterilized and motionless, were all the things that had ravaged him and finally left him lame. The pocked, rent earth. Hootches blown to bits. Shaved-headed babysans, mixed with grins and frowns. And the friends. Yes, friends.

  And on every page he saw himself. Or what he used to be. Or maybe never was. Page after page of foolish grins or stubborn frowns, the unathletic body shrinking and acquiring gook sores, thinner with every page. The eyes growing bright from fear and lack of sleep. The body finally browned and scarred.

  And them. He would gaze at the pictures of them, noting all the penned-in names of dead men, lamenting their loss and so lamenting himself. Senator. Yeah. It was a kick, all right. Sharing cigarettes and dreams, fighting holes and ammo. They gave me a hard time, but that was all a part of it. And now the dreams are dead. And he would sigh and pop another Darvon.

  ANOTHER empty night. He dozed, absently watching a re-run on the television his father had moved into his bedroom, and his window rattled with urgent knocks. He stared at the drawn curtains, curious, and the knocks came again, quick and bunched, as if in urgency. He searched out his crutches, leaving the artificial leg on the floor beside his bed, and made his way to the window, opening the curtains hesitantly. Below his window, a frantically waving figure.

  Mark. No. It can't be. Mark's in Canada, for the rest of his life. But yeah. Mark. Goodrich grinned hugely and began to open the window and Mark placed his finger in front of his mouth, indicating that Goodrich should be silent. Goodrich laughed, wondering at his own sudden good humor. Then he opened the window six inches and called to Mark in a loud hoarse whisper.

  “Go to the kitchen door!”

  He made his way quickly down the hall and through the kitchen, chuckling privately to himself. He opened the back door and then Mark was inside, his red hair wild and thick, like a flaming bush, smelling of the frost and faintly of a recent bowl of pipe tobacco. They were both laughing and he found himself leaning forward on his crutches, slapping Mark on the shoulders of his thick parka, then grasping him and shaking him.

  They stared fondly at each other, remembering simpler days of unclouded idealism. Goodrich shook his head. “Solomon, you son of a bitch! What are you doing here?”

  Mark smiled exasperatedly, almost defensively. “I've been lonely for my family. Then I heard you were back. That did it. I came down. Don't ask me how. I can't tell you.” The secrecy seemed to make Mark uncomfortable. “I just spent a night with my parents at a motel near the campus. It was a good place. There were a lot of students and I didn't stick out. And I know they're watching my home.”

  “Who?”

  Mark darkened. “The pigs.”

  There were brushings on the living room ca
rpet, faint clacks on the kitchen floor, and Goodrich's mother appeared. She peered at Mark as if he were a visiting ghoul from some earlier life. “My word!”

  Mark grinned feebly, taking off his glasses and wiping them on his scarf.

  “Hello, Mrs. Goodrich.”

  “Mark?”

  “How are you?”

  “Oh.” She looked to Goodrich, confused, and grasped the kitchen counter. She pondered it a moment, gray and somewhat matronly, apparently as embarrassed at being seen in her robe as at viewing Mark. “Can I get you something?”

  Mark rubbed his hands together. “I could use something hot.”

  She brightened a bit. “I could make some tea.”

  “Good, Mom. Why don't you make us a pot. We'll be in my bedroom.”

  Mark followed Goodrich into the bedroom and Goodrich reached the bed and flopped on it, his left trouser leg dangling empty over the side. Mark shook his head bitterly.

  “I look at you and feel so old, Will. It's been a hundred years of misery, all this. I feel ancient.”

  Goodrich sought to brighten him, falling back on their old pattern of challenge and retort as naturally as if it were two years before. “You are ancient, Mark. The suffering Jew.” He laughed, chiding his old roommate. “Duty-bound to suffer over wrongs. Perceived or otherwise.”

  Mark shook his head, looking at Goodrich. “Is it painful for you?”

  Goodrich held up a bag of brightly colored pain pills. “Inside this bag is the god of Numb. I worship him with great regularity.” He tossed down a Darvon, demonstrating, and smiled. “Care for one? They're quite good.”

  Mark declined, obviously upset. Goodrich shrugged, putting the pills back into his pocket. “Are you still waiting tables?”

  “The best waiter in Toronto. Can you imagine it? Seven-seventies on my College Boards and I'm a waiter.” Mark allowed himself a smile. “It's been good for me, in a way. I always had this—arrogance—toward waiters until I became one. I see it in others, too. The ones I wait on. Everyone feels superior to a waiter, until they've been one.”

  Mrs. Goodrich knocked and entered carrying a tray with a teapot, two cups, sugar and cream. She looked nervously at both of them, her eyes flitting over Mark as if a close stare would burn out the retinas.

  Mark was gracious. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Goodrich. You're so kind.”

  She still avoided his eyes. “Why, you're welcome. Now—” She looked at her son and then down to his artificial leg, which lay brazenly between him and Mark—“let me know if you want more tea.” She exited quickly.

  Mark had shed his coat. Goodrich poked his midsection with a crutch. “You've put on weight.”

  “I work in a restaurant. What do you expect?”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “What?”

  “Everything. School, friends, family. You must miss it.”

  “You know what makes me the maddest?” Mark seemed confused and somewhat sullen. He took out his pipe and began to pack it from a leather pouch. “That I have to act like a criminal. Like a MURDERER, for God's sake! I have to sneak around and hide and always fear I'll be discovered, every time I cross the magic boundary line between sanctity and rabidity. I have to act like a MURDERER just because I refused to participate in MURDER. You tell me the sense in that!” He lit his pipe. It seemed to calm him. “But, yes. I do get lonely. I miss my family. I'd like to be able to come over to your house like this and visit you every day, without having to sneak back and bang on your window.”

  “You should surrender, Mark.” Goodrich said it absently, without rancor or evangelism. “If you'd just gone to jail before, you'd be out right now. You'd be free to do those things. It would be over for you.” He shrugged. “No one would resent you if you did that.”

  Mark had obviously contemplated it and rejected it. He was livid. “And why should I go to jail? Am I a criminal? Have I hurt anyone? Am I bad?” He puffed angrily on his pipe. “Why does the law create such absurdities?” He snorted. “The law. The law is an ass. Someone famous said that, once. Dickens, I think.” He looked up to Goodrich. “And it is. It doesn't respond anymore. It's a straitjacket. What kind of coercion is it when your alternatives are to kill or to go to jail?”

  Faint memories of arguments with Snake crept steadily through Goodrich's blanket of numbness and he found himself smiling ironically, as if he had just discovered a deep secret. He listened to his voice as it spoke, an echo from another room. “You might not believe this, Mark, but you sound a lot like some of the Marines I served with. On the opposite ends, but on the same wavelength. They used to ask, what kind of law is it that allows a person who doesn't understand your motivations to say you're right or wrong? They never said it that way, but it was the same. And they came out the same. When the rules didn't fit, they ignored them. Only they were pissed off because the law harnessed them, while you're complaining it coerces you.”

  Mark puffed his pipe, studying Goodrich. “What about you, Will? Has it affected you?” He nodded toward the empty trouser leg. “Other than physically? I guess that's a dumb question, really. But you were always such a give-a-shit.”

  Goodrich smiled resignedly. “I don't know, Mark. I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know how it's affected me.” He eyed Mark mischievously. “I guess it's made me a more dedicated give-a-shit.” He leaned back on his bed. “But I suppose I can say that because I've already lost. I don't know. It can't coerce me any more, and I never had the kind of animal in me that needed to be held back. I guess it's all just become irrelevant.”

  “Big Brother is never irrelevant.”

  “You've gone paranoid, Mark.”

  “That which you call paranoia should be the natural state of man.”

  Goodrich sat back up and eyed Mark seriously. “Is there anything I can ever do to make you believe again?”

  Mark ran a hand through wild red locks and contemplated Goodrich's artificial leg. “After what it's done to you, how can you still believe? For what did you give your leg eight thousand miles away? Because if you didn't let them line you up like a duck in a shooting gallery they would throw you into jail? What kind of belief is that?”

  For the first time, Goodrich felt the itches of unreasoned anger. “Now what the hell do you know about it? What standing do you have to tell me how or why I lost a leg? How many—”

  Goodrich's father entered the bedroom without knocking. He stood solemnly, slightly disheveled after his habit of absently massaging his scalp when in deep or troubled thought, and nodded to Mark. “Hello, Mark. How are you?” His voice had the low warblings of an aging man, the troubled flatness of an unsure judge.

  Mark rose, mildly startled, and extended his delicate hand toward him.

  “Mister Goodrich. How are you, sir?”

  “I'm fine, Mark.” Mr. Goodrich gestured toward the door. “I want to talk with you. Would you come with me into the living room?”

  Mark glanced at Goodrich, then back to his father. “Sure, Mister Goodrich. Sure.”

  Goodrich peered curiously at his father. “Come on in, Dad. Have a seat. Talk as long as you like.”

  “No.” His father avoided his eyes. “I have something to say to Mark that can't be said in front of you, Will. Now.” Mr. Goodrich gestured to the door. “Would you come to the living room with me, Mark?”

  “The living room. All right, Mister Goodrich.” As Mark left the room he raised his eyebrows and shrugged to Goodrich.

  Goodrich lit a cigarette, lying across his bed. He sensed that his father wanted to berate Mark for evading the draft, and to question his right to come into their home so blatantly when he was a fugitive. His father, he mused, was like that: the last of the old-time moral-purist lawyers. But it irritated him that his father thought he should confront Mark in private. What the hell does he think I've become—a hunk of Jell-O that can't take part in a debate like that? Who the hell got burnt in Vietnam? That's my debate.

  There were no voices from the livi
ng room that would indicate a debate. A few low-toned exchanges had reached the isolation of his bedroom, but that was all. Goodrich became impatient, and climbed onto his crutches.

  I'm not going to sit back here like a schoolboy.

  Outside, a car door slammed. Its engine started, racing angrily, then faded with the car's departure. The noise of the car, just in front of their house, caused Goodrich's blood to pulse in anticipation. Something was happening.

  In the living room Goodrich's father sat in a large chair across from the sofa, motionless. He appeared very tired. His mother stood nervously behind the chair, obviously dreading his entrance into the room. She had clothed herself, even at near-midnight, and brushed her platinum hair.

  “Where's Mark?”

  His father eyed him tiredly. “He's gone.”

  His mother kneaded the fabric of the chair in both her hands. “Oh, you have to tell him, Peter. You can't just say that.”

  “All right.” His father stared straight ahead for another long moment, precisely into nothing with his opaque, aged eyes. “The police took him away.”

  “The police?” Goodrich leaned forward on his crutches. “In here?” He remembered the car that had raced off a moment before. “They came inside to get him?” His father nodded. “I didn't hear a thing. Not even a shout.”

  “He didn't fight it. What could he do?” His father's voice took on just the slightest acerbic edge. “He isn't a fighter anyway. He's a runner.”

  Goodrich eyed his parents with growing awareness. “How did the police find him?”

  “I called them.”

  They peered into each other's faces for a long, mute moment, Goodrich pondering absently that he was looking into a mirror that reflected how he himself would appear in another forty years, if he somehow managed to survive the insanity that Vietnam had brought him and live that long.