A River in May

by Edward Wilson

  The body of a dead boy was sprawled in the center of a small clearing, the only casualty. He was wearing black shorts and a white shirt, and seemed too young to be a soldier. None of the CIDG had been hurt. The clearing was about twenty meters in diameter; there was a cooking fire and two bamboo lean-to’s with rusty corrugated metal roofs. Lopez asked if there were any captured weapons. There weren’t any. The dead boy was unarmed: he had been left behind by the others to rig booby traps, but hadn’t had enough time to conceal the trip wires. The CIDG had easily discovered the two booby traps he had set. One was made from a captured American fragmentation grenade slipped inside a Coca-Cola can, which was fastened to a stick hidden in the undergrowth. A trip wire had been attached to the grenade so that if someone caught the wire across his instep it would be yanked out and explode.

  The soldier who had dismantled the booby trap was looking for a piece of wire narrow enough to replace the missing safety pin. He found himself in a dilemma – he had a live grenade in his hand, but no means to make it safe other than the pressure of his grip on the spring-loaded handle. The other CIDG were laughing at him.

  Afterwards, Lopez realized he ought to have told him to fasten the handle with rubber bands or surgical tape. But at the time he had been too busy arguing with Trung Uy Tho. Most of the CIDG were strung out in assault formation on either side of the clearing. It seemed logical to sweep further up into the foothills in pursuit of the survivors, but Trung Uy Tho was using his veto. He was angry and would only speak to Lopez through the interpreter. Ly tried to explain and mediate. ‘Trung Uy Tho says there are too many mines up there, and he thinks we might get trapped in an ambush as well. Please, Lieutenant, don’t make him lose face.’

  Dusty said, ‘Tell the little…’ but an explosion cut him short. Lopez threw himself on the ground. He lay there for a while checking for pain or the sickening wetness of blood. When he realized that he hadn’t been hurt he got up to see what had happened. The soldier who had found the grenade was lying on the ground and steaming. Half his face had been torn off, and part of his shirt had been burned away and was mottled with dark blood and pieces of burned flesh. He wasn’t making any noise, but his body was quivering.

  The CIDG had tried to get rid of the live grenade by throwing it into the undergrowth. He didn’t know that booby-trapped grenades sometimes had their fuses altered so they exploded immediately instead of after a three-and-a-half-second time delay.

  The LLDB medic was kneeling over the wounded CIDG. The soldier was still alive, but the medic confined his treatment to a useless show of straightening the casualty’s legs and covering him with a poncho. It was the medic’s first patrol and he had received little training in first aid, he had never seen a field casualty before. He looked sickened by it all and completely confused. Dusty opened a tin containing a bottle of serum albumin for intravenous injection and placed it in the medic’s hand. He started searching for a vein in the CIDG’s remaining arm. The medic inserted the needle several times, but his hands were shaking too much to have any success.

  Sporadic small arms fire had begun to rattle somewhere up on the hillside. The soldier’s rib cage was shuddering with ugly sucking spasms. His face was a mess – most of the jaw was missing. Dusty grabbed the medic by the arm and tried to show him what he needed to do. He took the medic’s hand and tried to make him put his fingers down the wounded man’s throat. The air passage was blocked by pieces of tongue, teeth and flesh – it needed clearing. The medic jerked his hand away, his eyes were glazed. He started crying, then he began to throw up. Dusty pushed him hard in the back, so hard that he fell into his own vomit. There was quite a lot of firing by this time.

  Lopez started picking the obstructions out of the casualty’s throat, but couldn’t get his finger far enough past what remained of the tongue to clear an airway. The missing part of the man’s face had so filled with blood-swollen tissue that it looked like a slab of raw liver. Dusty searched the medic’s satchel for a forceps, but the bag was stuffed with bandages and useless bottles of pills and ointment. A squad of CIDG were lying on the edge of the clearing and firing bursts into the trees. Dusty finally found what he thought was a tracheal tube – it had been used as a spool for winding loose bandage. He unwound the bandage and tried to push the tube down the CIDG’s throat. It wouldn’t go any further than Lopez’s finger had. Dusty handed Lopez a pocket-knife and put his finger on a spot just above the casualty’s Adam apple. Lopez pushed the blade in between the cartilage rings – he was surprised that it went in so easily – and noticed that he was wearing a rosary around his neck: another Catholic. He thought it peculiar that the explosion hadn’t blown the rosary away.

  The plastic tube still wouldn’t go in, so Lopez rotated the blade to widen the opening. While he was doing so the soldier jerked his stump upwards and scratched Lopez’s face with the jagged ends of charred and splintered bone. Lopez pushed the scorched stump away, but it popped back and scratched his face again. At first it seemed a reflex action, but then Lopez realized the dying soldier was doing it for some purpose. Lopez pushed the arm away again and fitted the tracheal tube into the windpipe.

  The popping sound of bullets passing close overhead had become intense. Lopez placed his finger over the end of the tube, but it wasn’t drawing breath. Dusty saw the problem; he leaned over, put his mouth to the open end of the tracheal tube and sucked out a small mouthful of blood and mucus. He spat. ‘Salty,’ he said. Lopez was doing the cardiac massage – cruel rib cracking thumps. Dusty checked the tube and said the soldier was breathing. Lopez put his finger on the opening of the tube; there was a slight suction, like the breath of a wounded bird.

  During a lull in the firing they dragged the casualty out of the clearing and into the cover of the wood. Lopez had to crawl so close to the dead enemy soldier that their faces were only inches apart. He was only about fourteen years old; one of his eyes had been shot away, but the other stared dully. There was no more adrenaline rush, only a dead boy wearing clear plastic sandals and a pair of shorts with the sort of sewn-in elastic waistband you see in children’s clothing.

  When they were a safe distance from the clearing, they called in artillery support and rigged a litter for the wounded soldier, but by this time his respiration was marginal and his pulse undetectable. A few minutes later he was dead, but every so often a ghostly wheeze of trapped air escaped from the blood-stained plastic tube. Lopez looked at Dusty. ‘What a waste of time! Why did we bother?

  ‘Because he wanted us to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he needed time to confess his sins.’

  Lopez didn’t believe any more. Rome had only been the faith of childhood. But for a second it all came back: the whole ghastly horrible awe of being a Catholic. That no matter how much you fuck up your own life and the lives of others, it’s always there, glowing and sparkling: forgiveness and redemption.

  Lopez found that, if he put his hands under the pillow and away from his face, the smell of blood was fainter. That way he could sleep. The morphine helped too. He had started with the synthetic tablets that the medic had recommended for a cold and a bad cough; they weren’t a cure, but they stopped him from making noise on night ambushes. He continued taking the tablets even after the cold had gone, and then started to experiment with the injectable syrettes.

  The morphine also helped him deal with what had happened to her. Everything was his fault, and there could be no redemption from that sin because there was no penance searing enough to burn it away. The image would always be there: Ianthe sprawled naked on a rumpled bed in a seedy New York hotel, the sheets and the insides of her thighs smeared with blood. He had known that the guy was weird, even for a back street abortionist. One of the pre-med students had suggested him, told Lopez the guy was a final year medical student at Columbia, so he thought he’d know at least how to do the job. He didn’t think he’d turn out to be a sick and incompetent pervert.

  On the way to the hotel Ianth
e had said, ‘I’m not sure I want to do this. It’s a sin; it’s killing a baby.’

  Lopez didn’t say anything. He just looked out of the rain-smeared cab window at the greasy bleakness of Manhattan. At the time, he was annoyed at her last minute vacillation. She must, he thought, have known.

  She leaned on his shoulder. ‘But I can’t back out now. Let’s get it over with.’

  If only, if only – the bitterest stupidest words in the language. He could have told the driver to turn around, could have taken Ianthe in his arms, told her to forget Angel, to have the baby – the child would have been Ianthe and Peter and Tom and Rosie too. But he’d killed them all; he’d wiped out the line. Why? Because he was jealous, that was the simple shameful truth. Maybe, thought Lopez, that was why it had been so easy that day on the mountain path – he had murdered before.

  The hotel was vile, a place where no one would choose to stay the night. The abortionist was a young man dressed in black with a pale white face and long greasy black hair. He looked more like a piano tuner than a medic and spoke with a lisping New York accent. He explained to Ianthe that wouldn’t be able to complete the abortion – he could only start it – and that she would have to go to a hospital for a dilation and curettage where they would scrape out the rest of her child. Then he turned to Lopez. ‘Do you mind,’ he said, ‘if you leave us alone? I can’t work with anyone watching.’

  Ianthe had already taken off her skirt and underpants, and was sitting on the edge of the bed covering her nakedness with a blanket. She looked at Lopez, her eyes seeming to say, ‘Don’t go. Please stay. I need you here.’ But Lopez left anyway. Later, in the ambulance, she told him what had happened.

  ‘Why did you leave me alone with him?’

  He was holding her hand in both of his, too shocked and frightened even to cry. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to go. He frightened me. And when you walked out the door, you didn’t even turn around to smile and wish me luck. All I saw was your back.’ She freed her hand and tugged at his sleeve. ‘This old gray sweater – so many holes – and black hair over your collar. I thought how much you needed looking after since you left home – and you seemed so crumpled and furtive when you went through that door.’

  The paramedic looked at the blood pressure gauge, then said something to the driver. The ambulance lurched forward.

  ‘When you’d gone, he took my face in his hands and told me not to be afraid. I didn’t want him to look at me, I didn’t even want him to touch me. Then he started to examine me. He took a long time. I just wanted him to get on with it, but he just kept talking, telling me how pretty I was, how sad it all was. He put his arms around me and tried to kiss me. I pushed him, and I shouted for you but you weren’t there – you weren’t anywhere. Then he put his hand over my mouth, it was dirty and it smelled of stale cigarettes. I flipped and I started hitting him, then he started saying, “Look I’m sorry, I won’t try anything – I’m sorry, OK.” I could tell he was scared. He said, “Please don’t scream. I promise I won’t hurt you.” He took his hand away, he was shaking. He put a towel under me and laid out his instruments. It hurt a little to start with, and then a whole lot more – it was unbearable. Then he put the towel in between my legs. And he said, “I’m sorry, I have to go now” and he just ran out of the room. I started screaming.. .” Lopez remembered the plump black woman with a red wig, a prostitute at the end of her working days, who had called the ambulance, following the stretcher into the street and saying, “God bless you” as they closed the ambulance door. God wasn’t listening.

  The trip to the hospital seemed to take forever. Ianthe stopped talking. Her hands felt so cold. The towel between her legs was soaked with blood; Lopez wondered why the ambulance crew hadn’t started a blood transfusion. She had stopped moving, and looked so pale and washed-out that Lopez tried to hold her, to make contact with her. When they got to the hospital, she opened her eyes again and said ‘Why?’, and they wheeled her away. Lopez tried to come with her, but they wouldn’t let him. He started to push past, but a huge black porter blocked his way. ‘Sorry, man, it’s staff only can go in there.’

  ‘You can’t stop me.’

  He felt Ianthe’s fingers touch his wrist, faintly as a butterfly’s wing. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Please, don’t.’

  He just looked at her. He reached for words, but they weren’t there. He watched her being taken away, through the double doors.

  Lopez remembered walking the streets all night trying to find him. He bought a kitchen knife in all-night grocery. He planned to kill him North African fashion – his organ shoved down his throat. He wanted him to die real slow. Once Lopez saw someone who resembled him. He shouted, ‘Hey you, you fucking bastard!’ and chased him half way across Central Park – it was two in the morning – before he finally caught the guy by his coat collar and threw him down on the grass. It wasn’t him. Lopez apologized and started to cry and ask forgiveness. He remembered the way his victim started to run away, then looked back and shouted, ‘Hey, man, you’re sick, you’re crazy. You need to see a doctor.’

  The only other people on the street seemed to be dangerous addicts in torn leather jackets and sneakers stained black by gutter grime. Occasionally a figure would slide out of the shadows and call him ‘chico’ or ‘hombre’ and say something in Spanish that Lopez – even more deracinated than they – couldn’t understand.

  When dawn came he threw the knife in the East River and checked into a hotel full of car salesmen who were having a convention. He showered, shaved and tried to fall asleep, but it was no good – he just lay in the bed staring at the ceiling. He dressed and went back to the hospital. He arrived on her ward just before noon and asked a nurse if he could see her. The nurse gave him a cold starchy look and disappeared. Five minutes later she came back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re not allowed to see her.’

  ‘Can you just tell me how she is?’

  ‘We’re only allowed to give information on a patient’s condition to the next of kin.’

  ‘I am the next of kin.’

  Lopez felt the nurse’s eyes on his brown face. ‘Somehow, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Fuck you, I’m going in there now.’

  The nurse put her hand on his arm. ‘Hey, listen, I’m going to have to ring for security. And that’s just going to make things real bad.’

  Two huge dark shadows had already appeared. Lopez knew that it was all over, that he had destroyed everything. He asked if he could leave her a note. The nurse gave him a funny look, then said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ It was a simple message: he loved her and it was all his fault and everything he had done was selfish and wrong. The nurse folded the paper and promised to give it to her.

  Lopez needed to be with someone, anyone. His nearest acquaintance was an advertising copywriter named Andrea whose daddy had bought her an apartment on 12th Street. They had once had a one-night stand after a drunken party on Beacon Hill. Andrea gave Lopez a drink, but said she had to go out that evening with a doctor from Belle Vue. At that moment, Lopez was full of hate for all medics, real as well as fake. He asked her date’s name, then grabbed her address book, looked up his number and started dialing. She grabbed the phone and told Lopez he was an asshole. He started crying. Andrea rang the doctor and cancelled the date herself.

  Then they started to have sex. They had sex over and over again that night and the next morning. Lopez needed to pour all his anger, hate and self-loathing into someone, and also to forget. He emptied his mind of everything but a writhing orgy of erotic images that fantasized him into orgasm after orgasm inside Andrea. That evening they went to see an arty Italian film about a beautiful young woman who killed off her wealthy businessman husband by constantly demanding her conjugal rights. Lopez bought a half-bottle of whiskey and carried it into the cinema in a paper bag. He started to drink himself into oblivion while Andrea sucked him off.

  The next afternoon he bought some books and flowers and went ba
ck to the hospital. The starchy nurse had been replaced by a sympathetic young nurse with acne. When Lopez explained why he was there, the nurse asked him to come with her. She led him to an interview room and asked him to sit down. ‘I’m so sorry, but it’s very bad news. She died of hemorrhaging two hours after she was admitted. Her folks were here this morning.’ Lopez turned white and started crying. The nurse brought him a glass of water and put her arm around him. She seemed to know everything.

  Lopez wandered the streets all afternoon and all night. At midnight, he woke up his roommate at Harvard with a telephone call and told him to take whatever he wanted of his books, clothes and belongings and to give the rest away. In the morning he found a recruiting office and signed up as soon as the doors opened. There was no other place to go. He just wanted to disappear and not have to face anyone or answer any questions. The army gave him that. No one knew who he was or what he had done. And, although it could never be penance enough, the US Army of the sixties still provided routes to those dark places where repentance and suffering were possible.

  WHEN LOPEZ was in the basic training barracks at Fort Dix the recruit in the upper bunk was a Christian fundamentalist named Jethroe, who came from a remote hamlet in the mountains of Tennessee, the sort of place that few people other than oral historians doing dialect recordings for the Appalachian Project imagined could exist in twentieth-century America. From time to time Jethroe tried to impress upon his bunkmate the importance of scriptural revelation until Lopez lost his patience. ‘Shut the fuck up, Jethroe, there isn’t any God – only cretins like you believe in Him.’