Jungle Rules

by Charles W. Henderson

  “Okay, I’ll look for it,” Wayne Ebberhardt said, sitting in the front seat of the jeep while Movie Star piled on top of the baggage in the back. Then as George Mason backed the vehicle from the group and pulled into the street to get his passengers to the freedom bird, the captain shouted to his friends, “Denver, guys! Don’t forget! The Hilton Hotel bar, July Fourth at five o’clock. Be there or you better be dead!”

  Terry O’Connor waved as the jeep rolled slowly down the block, and sang with his loudest voice: “Good-bye, Ruby Tuesday. Who could hang a name on you? When you change with every new day. Still I’m gonna miss you!”

  Chapter 23

  “GOOD-BYE, RUBY TUESDAY”

  A GREEN FERN flowed over the sides of a wicker-covered planter that hung by wires from the ceiling in front of one of three massive plate-glass windows in Terry O’Connor’s corner office on the fifteenth floor of the Third Avenue high-rise business complex owned by the law firm where he now worked as one of its senior partners. In the nearly thirty-seven years since the brig riot, the Philadelphia Irishman had lost a good third of the hair on his head, only to have it replaced by mysterious stray fibers that grew from his back, making him look like the part-human fly monster in the old 1950s horror movie. Now, whatever once rusty-red foliage that had graced his crown in those bygone years had in the recent past turned silvery-white.

  He hated looking in a mirror these days, because the youthful kid with dimples and twinkling eyes and magnetic smile now stared back at him with furrows for dimples and sagging jaws where the smile went. The eyes still sparkled, though, when he told his jokes, and his voice sounded much the same. Just a little deeper, and he had to clear his throat quite often these days, too.

  “Got to see a doctor about that scratchy feeling down the gullet,” he told himself as he put his fingers between the blinds and looked down at the corner of Fifty-fourth Street and Third Avenue, on Manhattan’s East

  Side, where he hoped to see his pals Wayne Ebberhardt and Gwen emerge from a taxi at any minute.

  He married Vibeke Ahlquist three months after he got home from Vietnam. He had no job then, nor did he have any prospects of finding one soon. However, Vibeke was happy to live in Philadelphia with Terry’s mom and dad. She and the old man talked politics most evenings and weekends. They had it all figured out. Eliminate state sovereignty and put everything into a centralized federal government that ensured that all people’s needs found equal and sufficient fulfillment. Terry thanked God that he belonged to the Republican Party.

  The couple celebrated thirty-six years together on March 17, 2005. That’s right, St. Patrick’s Day. Any good Irishman would do likewise. Terry had surprised himself when he asked her to marry him, Christmas morning, 1968. Just home from the war a few days, and suddenly very much in love with the Swedish girl who tortured his Republican nerves with her left-wing social conscience. He didn’t want to wait for November 10, the Marine Corps birthday, the other date that seemed appropriate. Besides, with Vibeke’s attitude about the American military at the time, St. Patrick’s Day worked best all the way round.

  Terrence Otto O’Connor came to live on planet Earth May 28, 1970, and owed his name to each of his grandfathers. Then Jonathan Wayne O’Connor joined his big brother at play on the fourth day of June 1971. After his second son’s birth, Terry loved to joke with people that he was John Wayne’s dad.

  Six years later, Christiana Marie O’Connor came to live at their house, and the two boys had to clean up their acts so their baby sister did not grow up a hooligan like them.

  Each of Terry’s and Vibeke’s children had two offspring of their own now, and Grandpa, as the little ones now called him, had that to think about as he looked at his gray hair and ever more ruddy, wrinkled complexion.

  His dad died in March 2000, well in his eighties. Prostate cancer had claimed him in a heartbreaking battle. Terry promised his pop that he would never neglect seeing the doctor at least once a year, and getting checked. Last October, as the doctor had the third joint of his right hand’s middle finger planted deep in the lawyer’s ass, the joking Irishman asked the physician, “Which is worse, getting it or giving it?”

  When the doctor finished and yanked off the rubber glove, he laughed. “Thanks for asking,” he said, tossing the K-Y-drenched surgical mitt in the trash. “Giving the prostate exam is much worse.”

  Terry O’Connor laughed, thinking about his friend Doctor Ken Silver-man, who had his office in the medical tower two blocks down the street. Then he saw the taxi stop and three people got out: Wayne, Gwen, and Vibeke. They carried bags from Bloomingdale’s.

  “That explains it,” he said to himself as he walked to the sitting area in the corner of his office and picked up his canvas briefcase and checked to be sure he had packed all the folders he needed to keep up with the work he had to complete before the middle of next week.

  Corporate contracts had paid him well. It afforded him a spacious Third Avenue condominium six blocks uptown from his office, and a Long Island summer cottage near the beach at Southampton. After he left the Marine Corps, he never defended another criminal case. Contract litigation and negotiations kept him at peace with himself.

  “Mister O’Connor,” the voice of Cynthia Marvel, his personal assistant, said on the intercom. “Your wife and friends have just cleared security and should be up in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks, Cyn,” he answered, and lay his briefcase on the corner of his desk. “Any word from Mister Gunn or Mister Taylor?”

  “Nothing yet,” Cynthia answered, and clicked off the speaker.

  Terry sat down in his brown leather swivel chair and swung around toward the black walnut credenza and hutch that stood against the wall behind his desk. He took from the shelf the framed picture of him and his buddies at First MAW Law that George Mason had snapped the day Wayne and Movie Star had flown home from Vietnam, and laid it in his lap. A tear splashed on the glass, and he wiped it away with his thumb.

  He did that every time he looked at the photograph now.

  A black, compact-disc player sat on the middle shelf, above his Vietnam pictures and memorabilia. He leaned forward in his chair and pushed the center button on the machine. Instantly Mick Jagger’s young voice came flowing through the speakers that sat in all four corners of his office.

  “She would never say where she came from,” Terry sang with Mick, setting the group photograph next to the miniature Marine Corps and American flags that stood in the small stand by a shadow box of his medals. Then he picked up the picture of him, Tommy McKay, and Jon Kirkwood that the wing photographer had snapped of the three Marines just after they had pinned on their awards for valor.

  “Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone,” he sang, looking at the smiling faces of two of the best men he had ever known in his life.

  “While the sun is bright,” Terry sang through a broken voice, and tears came again. “Or in the darkest night. No one knows. She comes and goes.”

  “Good-bye, Ruby Tuesday. Who could hang a name on you? When you change with every new day,” the music drifted from the four speakers.

  “Still I’m gonna miss you!” O’Connor choked, and then broke down and sobbed, looking at the two photographs.

  He cried because he thought of the empty seats at this year’s reunion. Two new ones because of a tragic plane crash at Aspen this past Christmas.

  The first vacant chair that he and his buddies leaned against the table before an undrunk glass of beer belonged to First Lieutenant Michael Schuller. It was their inaugural get-together in Denver on July 4, 1969.

  On January 20, 1969, Colonel Robert Barrow launched all three battalions of his Ninth Marine Regiment against the North Vietnamese Army ensconced deep in the A Shau Valley, in the western mountains of northern I Corps, near the combat outpost that Marines knew as Khe Sanh. The Marines called the massive strike Operation Dewey Canyon. It lasted until March 18, 1969, and it exacted a heavy toll on the Ninth Marine Regiment, nearly
decimating its First Battalion, nicknamed the Walking Dead.

  Midway through the operation, while February snows blew down the streets of Philadelphia, Lieutenant Colonel Hembee led his battalion on a sweep, trying to push the enemy into the other two battalions, which waited in ambush. Mike Schuller, now selected as captain, led his company at the point of the assault.

  While they moved at the head of the sweep, the North Vietnamese sprang their trap and attacked Schuller and his men from both sides. He never knew what hit him. The lieutenant, who insisted at walking near the point, fell first.

  Nearby, that same day, a fellow first lieutenant who commanded a company in First Battalion, had his hands full with the enemy regiment that swept upon his positions. The young officer, who had seen his first combat action in Korea as a corporal, dug in his heels and despite the overwhelming force he and his men faced, suffering heavy casualties, including the death of his executive officer, turned the tide against the relentless enemy. For his valor, the young mustang lieutenant, Wes Fox, received the Medal of Honor.

  That empty chair that leaned against the table haunted Terry O’Connor. It seemed to add a somber color that at first came into conflict with the original intent of the annual gathering of friends. Then it became the reason why they got together, because new chairs leaned against the table. Now, two more chairs.

  So as he listened to his favorite song, Terry O’Connor cried.

  “Oh no!” Cynthia Marvel sighed as she stood next to her boss’s closed door and looked back at Vibeke, Gwen, and Wayne, who had just walked in the O’Connor office reception area. “He put on that damned music again. I knew I should have had him come out here to wait for you guys. I’m so sorry. Do you want to go in there, Vibeke? Last time I did, I felt so bad seeing him like that. You know, with Mister Kirkwood and Mister Dean and all.”

  “Why, they died last Christmas,” Wayne said, wrinkling his eyebrows, concerned about Terry. “He’s still grieving about it? I feel bad, too, but this is July third. It’s been seven months now.”

  “I think we can sit out here and talk while he gets through this little bump,” Vibeke said, and smiled at Wayne and Gwen. “He’s always kept those pictures there in his office. I suggested that he should put them away for a while, at least until he can look at them without getting so upset. Oh, he won’t hear of it. He says that he has to see them every day.”

  “Look, none of us is in any kind of hurry, Vib,” Gwen said and put her arm around O’Connor’s wife, who now took a napkin from her purse and dabbed her eyes. “Lobo and Buck, they said they would come here in a limo and take us to lunch and then out to LaGuardia, where Archie parked his plane. What is it, Wayne? A Gulfstream Three?”

  “Yeah, Gwen,” Wayne said, nodding and still frowning. “Totally refitted. Looks like a pimp’s Cadillac inside now, but that’s Lobo’s style.”

  Both women laughed, and Cynthia chuckled, too, as she sat in the chair across from Gwen and Vibeke.

  “Mister Gunn is too funny,” she said, smiling at the ladies and then noticing that Wayne Ebberhardt smiled, too.

  “We had just got back to Atlanta from Wayne visiting his mother and dad, four brothers, two sisters, and ten thousand cousins in North Carolina when we got that call that Jon and Movie Star had crashed, flying to Aspen,” Gwen said and sighed. “Yes, James Dean, the ever-powerful motion picture agent, had deals to swing at the Telluride Film Festival and made that poor pilot wait until the weather was just too bad to fly. Then our dear know-it-all and the forces be damned, Movie Star, demanded that the pilot put that plane in the air that foggy afternoon. Lucky for Katherine and the grandkids, and James’s wife, Helen, and their grandchildren that they had gone ahead to Aspen that morning. Let me tell you from experience, eveningtime in the winter in Colorado, trying to land at a place like Aspen, is pure stupidity.”

  “People who had talked to those two before they flew said that Jon had expressed some serious reservations about flying because of the cloudy and foggy conditions that he heard reported on the television at the hotel,” Cynthia offered, getting up and going to Terry O’Connor’s office door and listening. “The music’s still playing, so I guess he’s in his funk.”

  “Katherine Kirkwood and Helen Dean had just gotten back to Movie Star’s lodge on Woody Creek Road when they actually heard the plane crash,” Vibeke said and shook her head. “Kat told me that when she heard the loud explosion and then saw the glow toward the Aspen airport that she knew Jon and James had died just then.”

  “Didn’t Katherine tell Terry that she and the boys were coming this year on Jon’s behalf?” Gwen asked, wiping a tear from her eyes, too.

  “Yes, and Helen and their children, too. They have remained in Aspen the whole year,” Vibeke said, dabbing her eyes. “Now, this year’s weekend trip, we’re supposed to go to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. You know, the hotel from that movie The Shining? I hate to say this, but you know why Terry wants to go there?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, but given Terry’s moods these days, I imagine it’s probably a creepy reason,” Gwen said and shuddered.

  “Well, if you consider ghosts creepy, then yes, it is,” Vibeke said, and then leaned forward to whisper. “Terry read that the Stanley Hotel is really haunted. He thinks that Jon and Movie Star will want to contact the group, and this hotel, because of its spiritual allure for the departed, would offer the best opportunity for Jon’s and James’s spirits to make contact with us.”

  “Oh, that is too creepy!” Gwen said, putting her hands over her mouth.

  “Don’t you women ever get tired of dragging around the dead?” Wayne Ebberhardt growled, got up from the sofa, and walked to Terry O’Connor’s door, and knocked.

  “Careful, Wayne,” Vibeke said, standing, too, and walking to the office door. “This is the first Independence Day reunion without Jon and Movie Star.”

  “I know,” Wayne said, and then looked at Gwen. “Don’t forget, I was with those two in Vietnam. We were all close. I cried for a week when I got the news about Mike Schuller getting killed in action. Happy Pounds died in a car wreck in 1973, and Sergeant Amos got shot and killed by a drive-by gang-banger on the one-oh-one outside Santa Monica in ’89. Then, two years ago, I felt devastated when I learned that Derek Pride dropped dead at his desk in the Sears Tower in Chicago. The man never quit trying to get ahead and died at the ripe old age of fifty-nine. Hell, we’re all over sixty now. Pretty soon we’re all gonna start dropping like flies.”

  “Hush, Wayne!” Gwen snapped, and looked at Vibeke, who raised her eyebrows at the brashness of the Atlanta-based airline lawyer.

  “I’ll just step inside,” Vibeke said softly to Wayne Ebberhardt, who now went back to the sofa and sat down.

  Terry O’Connor leaned over the two photographs in their polished mahogany frames, adjusting them equally distant from the small Marine Corps and U.S. flags stapled to ten-inch-long standards and mounted in a black plastic disc. He kept singing in a soft voice, even though the Rolling Stones had long ago finished “Good-bye, Ruby Tuesday.”

  “Still I’m going to miss you,” he whispered as his wife put her arm around his shoulders and gave him a squeeze.

  “You know, Captain O’Connor, I loved you the first moment I saw you,” Vibeke said and kissed his forehead. “I never stopped, not even after you told me that you voted for Barry Goldwater. Nor when you voted for Richard Nixon.”

  “I know,” Terry said, and patted her hand where she rested it on his shoulder. “I loved you, too, in spite of you being a Communist, and having the FBI digging into everything I ever did, and talking to every person who ever knew me. I loved you very much last April, too, at the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation gala, at the Plaza Hotel, because you put your passion and your politics aside and treated Vice President Cheney so elegantly, after he made his address to our gathering and then greeted us in the crowd.”

  “Well, I do have some decorum, you know,” Vibeke said, smiling at her husband. �
��Also, I never joined the Communist Party. I am a socialist. I believe all humanity should care for his neighbor. There should be no homeless people, nor hungry people, or old people and children without someone to care for them.”

  “Well, I’m old, and I only have you to care for me,” Terry said, smiling up at the sixty-year-old woman who radiated timeless beauty and absolute grace.

  “You have two sons and a daughter who will never let you need a thing,” Vibeke said, and pointed to the shelf filled with photographs of their children and six grandchildren.

  Terry took the picture of the group gathered by the jeep and smiled at his wife.

  “I was a handsome devil then, wasn’t I,” he said, pointing at his smiling face.

  “Yes, you still are quite a handsome devil, too,” Vibeke said, and touched him on the tip of his nose with her finger.

  “Sometimes I wish I could go back,” Terry said, looking at the photograph. “You know, just step through time and go back to those days. God, I miss Jon!”

  “I know you do,” Vibeke said, and then put her arms around her husband, took the picture from his hands, and set it back on the shelf by the flags.

  “Any word from Lobo and Buck?” Terry asked, wiping his eyes with his hand and looking back once more at the photographs of him and his buddies in Vietnam nearly thirty-seven years ago.

  “The phone rang just as I came in your door, so that may be them,” Vibeke said, straightening her husband’s pale green polo shirt and giving him a quick glance to make sure he had on the right slacks to contrast with his sport jacket, and to be sure he had not sneaked out his comfortable old shoes that looked so tacky but that he always insisted on wearing because they felt so good on his feet.

  “We can go downstairs,” Terry offered. “Catch them when they pull to the curb.”

  “No,” Vibeke said, taking his canvas briefcase and leading him to the door. “I have my standards. I do not wait at curbs. Now, before we leave this room, you must promise me that I will not hear you arguing with any of your friends about this awful war in Iraq.”