Tonight Richard waved feebly as he went through the gate, unable to come out from under the weight of the events in Gaston. The priest was one thing, but what he could not get out of his mind were the slanted, wet eyes of the little Vietnamese girl in the poster, eyes which had been pleading up at him just as he kicked it. The feeling was, he had kicked her.
He slowed down as he entered the tree-lined enclave of Generals' Row. Once an AP had pulled him over for speeding right in front of the vice chief's quarters. In the military such infractions were bumped up to the perpetrator's commanding officer, and in the case of dependents, like Richard, they were bumped to the father's commanding officer. It was an army brat's nightmare to get his father reprimanded. Richard would never forget the night his father had come home steaming after being called on the carpet by the secretary of defense himself. Richard realized later that the secretary had intended the sham rebuke over the traffic ticket as a joke, but it had been no joke at Quarters 64.
"64. Lt. Gen. Sean Dillon." The tidy sign caught Richard's eye as he approached the house. The sight soothed his rough feelings some. The house was exactly like a dozen others on the Row, and though it had seemed a mansion to Richard when he was growing up, he knew now it was nothing compared to the real mansions on Foxhall Road or in Georgetown. Still, it was the only place he remembered living in, and despite his complicated feelings about the base, he could not arrive at the house itself without a sense of relief. He pulled in behind a long black Olds. He knew that Olds, but it took him a moment to place it as the archbishop's. "Crap," he said, and his impulse was to turn right around and go back.
Coming here tonight was to have been like tagging-up. A quick touch of the bag was all he wanted, a glimpse of his father, the sharp crush of his mother's arms. With the friendly but formal archbishop here, Richard would have to sit down. He'd have to answer questions about his courses. At some point he'd have to reply to the archbishop's sly hint that he consider the seminary after Georgetown.
He opened the door as quietly as he could. Voices in the dining room. He went into the kitchen, and when he saw Sergeant Mack he put his forefinger to his lips. Sarge grinned at him silently while Richard tiptoed across the kitchen. They slugged each other's shoulders, an old ritual of greeting.
"Hey, Rich. How are you?" Mack's raspy whisper made Richard think of Louis Armstrong. The stocky Negro was built solid as a fist. It was easy to believe that twenty years before he'd been an all-army boxer. He'd started out a mess hall cook, but now he'd been with the Dillons for nearly nine years, three full tours, which indicated how they prized him. Sean Dillon liked Mack because of his rough-edged manliness. Cass liked him because he neither ingratiated nor resented. She did not want a servant who seemed like one. She also liked him, though nothing was ever made of this, for being a practicing Catholic. Richard liked Mack for no reason, and had since he was fourteen. Sergeant Mack had taught him how to drive.
Those hours, his first at the wheel of the baby-blue convertible, which at the time was still his mother's car, formed the center of a set of cherished memories. With a kibitzing Mack at his side, he had bombed up and down unused stretches of runway at the naval air station adjoining Boiling, less a learner than a make-believe Sterling Moss. Mack had made him feel almost instantly, not that driving was easy, but that he, Richard, had a natural gift for it. For highway experience they took long drives out to Mount Vernon or upriver to Great Falls. Once, cruising aimlessly in the Virginia countryside near Leesburg, Richard had asked Mack how it happened that he was Catholic. The top was down and they'd had to speak loudly. Mack had shrugged and said his people, Kentucky farmers, had always been Catholic. When he'd sensed Richard's surprise—Negroes were Baptists, weren't they?—Mack had added easily, as if stating the most obvious and natural fact of all, "The people who owned us were Catholics."
"The people who what?"
"Owned us."
Richard felt the lumbering auto veer, and the sudden sense that he was going to crash the car frightened him. It took a moment for him to feel in control again. When he looked over, Mack was watching the corn fields pass, apparently expecting no reply.
"I'm fine, Sarge," he said now in a whisper of his own, and he had an impulse to tell him about the girl whom Cooney had called "colored."
"They don't know you're coming, do they?"
"No. The arch is here?"
"And Father Simms."
The archbishop's secretary, an effete priest who used too much cologne. It gave Richard the creeps to shake hands with him. Richard's theory was that the archbishop liked having Father Simms around because, by comparison, he looked like Joe DiMaggio.
"Who else is here?"
"Just the two."
"And my dad? He made it home?"
"Late, of course, which is why they're still at the table." The sarge picked up the coffee tray he had just prepared and offered it to Richard. "Surprise your mother."
Richard took his windbreaker off and crossed quickly to the orderly's closet to don a white waiter's jacket, then came back. "Right you are, Sarge."
Laden, he backed through the swinging door.
"Coffee, madame?" he intoned.
His mother sent up a shriek of pleasure. "Rich!"
She was the only one of the four to get to her feet, and he hated to turn her aside. "Careful, milady." He placed the tray on the sideboard. Then, with a young prince's panache, he gave her the hug she deserved, covering the pleasure he took in getting his with a hammy "Hi ya, Mom! How ya doing!"
The grave mood in which he'd driven across Washington seemed to have evaporated, so that when he turned to the others, his Joe College good humor had already brightened their faces. He shook hands with his father hungrily, glad for the unmistakable flash of the affection that bound them. Father Simms was as limp-wristed as ever, but he too seemed glad to see Richard. The archbishop clapped both his hands over Richard's, his way of deflecting the traditional kissing of his ring, not that Richard needed to be deflected. "My spiritual consanguino!" the prelate said, an old joke between them, referring to the mystical relationship supposed to exist between a priest and those he'd baptized.
Sergeant Mack appeared from the kitchen carrying a place setting which included a cup and a plate of the cake the others had finished. Cass patted the table, a place next to her. "Sit here."
Richard helped Mack serve the coffee before he did.
"To what do we owe this honor?" his father asked from the far end of the table. The question was put casually, but his father wanted to know. With a host's complete authority he had just laid aside whatever else they'd been discussing.
Richard sensed the intensity of his father's gaze. They hadn't seen each other in more than two months. Though Richard had come home for Easter dinner, General Dillon had been on an inspection trip; to Japan, Cass had said, but now Richard wondered, Had it been Vietnam?
"I needed a book." Richard smiled at Archbishop Barry. It surprised him, the pleasure to be had in a smooth, automatic lie in the prelate's very face. What a total shit I am, he thought happily.
"What book?" his father asked.
"Tertullian," Richard answered, on a roll.
"Ah, the Fathers of the Church," Father Simms put in. "Don't believe all that those Jesuits say about the Fathers." He winked. "They'll try to make you think Ignatius was one of them."
But his own father was not playing. Richard's nonchalance about schoolwork had long been a sore point with him. "You're not taking patristics this semester. You're not taking any theology course, are you?"
As if the word itself were a trap door falling open under him, Richard grabbed at it. "Theology?"
"Are you?"
"No, sir."
His father, staring at him coldly now, had cut right through the wall of counterfeit cheer behind which Richard had quite deliberately taken cover. A sledgehammer smashing through plaster would not have jolted him more, as he saw how close he'd come to pulling the sham off, home for an
hour's cake and happy-talk, then heading out into the night and its secret, a true liar.
His father's eyes conveyed implicitly the command to come to the point, and perversely the image that flashed before Richard was that of Father Gavin staring at him across the stretch of Gaston Hall, like God.
"I came home..." he began, then faltered. Groping, he looked at the priest sitting next to him, then across at the archbishop. The crimson tab at the prelate's Adam's apple caught his eye, then the gold cord curving across his chest, the cross hidden inside his black coat. The clerical garb struck Richard for the first time as a uniform, just like his father's. He glanced along the table, three men in uniform; he saw his father's silver stars. "The world in uniform"—the line from Gatsby popped into his head—"and at a kind of moral attention forever."
His mother wanted none of this. She was happy just to have him home for a minute, no questions asked. He let his gaze rest on her. "I came home because I had some questions."
"What about?" she asked, but so sweetly and so full of womanly concern that he realized she'd misunderstood. He had told her on the phone the week before that there was a girl he wanted her to meet, and he sensed now that she thought that was what had brought him home. He wanted to reach to her and touch the wisps of reddish gray hair that floated by her ear. No, Mom, he wanted to say, not the girl. He knew how worried she was for him, that he get it right with girls, but that was because she thought he had inherited his father's perfect inhibition. Girls had as little to do with this as fucking Tertullian.
"What, darling?" she prompted.
"I don't think this is a good time..." It maddened him, how he had so preempted their concern. Was his need so obvious, so pathetic? They were waiting for him to explain. They were looking at him as if he were a hurt child. He was filled with loathing for himself.
His father said, "What's up, Rich?"
At last he turned toward him, but Richard saw a different image of his father. In his senior year at St. Anselm's, he had looked up from the mud of their opponent's end zone to see him—in that blue uniform, those silver stars—leaning against the fender of his staff car, smoking. His father had made it to the game after all! Had seen him score! The driver had pulled the car right onto the cinder track in front of the stands, the only car there. It didn't matter that when Richard looked over again a moment later—now from the huddle before the point-after play—his father was gone. That disappearance was part of what made the memory wonderful.
"Dad," he began, "I wanted to ask..."
His father's expression now, as at St. Anselm's field that day, was supremely self-satisfied, a manifestation to Richard not only of his father's absolute inviolability, but of his confidence that his son could simply never disappoint him.
"...about Vietnam."
"What about it?"
For a moment Richard saw his father not as calm but as smug. If this is so easy for you, why is it so hard for me? To his surprise, what he felt again, as earlier toward the Jesuit, was anger.
"I want to ask you about intelligence officers and what they do to get their information."
"Well, I'm the man to ask."
His father's tone, if anything, was even more controlled, which made Richard feel crazy. Then, when he saw Archbishop Barry reach a sympathetic hand across to cover his mother's hand, he almost reached over to push it away.
"I'm talking about Vietnam."
"I know you are."
"Do intelligence officers try to make the Vietcong prisoners talk?"
"Sure." Sean Dillon nodded, still relaxed, but was there a faint charge in the way he reached for the sterling silver cigarette box? He tapped a Camel once, then put it in his mouth.
"Do they sometimes do things they shouldn't do?"
"Like what?" Sean Dillon snapped the lighter and took the flame.
"Pushing them out of helicopters."
"Helicopters?" Sean narrowed his eyes, perhaps because of the smoke. "You mean helicopters in the air? Airborne?"
"Yes."
"Don't be ridiculous, Richard."
"Do they use electric wires on people?"
"Electric wires?"
"Yes. Attached to their bodies."
"You mean torture?" Sean's breath rasped out of him, and it was clear that despite his earlier air of paternal omniscience, his son had stunned him.
"I guess so, yes. Torture." Now Richard was finding his own balance, and words which moments before had been literally unspeakable came out in a rush. "Do your people in Vietnam torture prisoners? That's my question. Do our soldiers kill women and children? Do our airplanes bomb schools and hospitals?"
"Richard!" Cass pulled her hand back from the archbishop's. "What do you—"
"Let him finish," Sean said.
"I am finished. You have to tell me, Dad."
The silence settled on the room, a vacuum. Their oxygen had been sucked away, especially the general's. He had been completely blind-sided, and now was finding it impossible to pretend otherwise. The two clergymen had folded their hands on the table, mirroring each other. They sat now with bowed heads, pious and invisible. Cass glanced once at the door to the kitchen, afraid that Mack might have heard.
"You're right, Rich," Sean said finally. "I do have to tell you." His face was flushed. Though he tapped his cigarette as if pronouncing on the White Sox pennant chances, his voice had become tight and cold. "I'm glad you came home with this. I'm glad you came to me. Obviously some of the wrong people have been telling you—"
"A priest told me these things, and a lot besides. A priest!" Richard heard the note of triumph in his own voice, and underscored it by looking toward the archbishop. "A moral theologian! He said the escalation in Vietnam is immoral."
"On what grounds?" the archbishop asked sharply.
"The Just War Theory."
Sean Dillon waved his hand dismissively. "I can apply the Just War principles as well as anyone." He plunged into the argument with relief. Argument he could handle, discourse, dissertation. "It is immoral not to resist an unprovoked act of aggression. In order to apply moral principles, Richard, you have to start with accurate factual information. That's where these antiwar polemicists go wrong every time, including your so-called theologian. Where does he get his information?"
"He had letters from GIs. Letters they wrote home, letters to parents and girlfriends, describing terrible things. These were eyewitnesses. They said that intelligence officers—"
Sean shook his head so vigorously that Richard stopped.
"Terrible things happen in war, son. Some few soldiers disgrace themselves and bring shame on their country, but that in no way—"
"That's what I said, Dad. I defended you!"
"Not me, Rich. You didn't defend me. I don't need defending on this score. My people don't commit murder and they don't torture."
Shame? It shamed Richard to realize that having defended his father, he had just accused him. My people don't commit murder! It shamed Richard to have required such a statement from his father.
Son and father. Father and son. They sat frozen, locked together by what they were seeing in each other's eyes.
Finally Sean said, "I know all about those letters, Richard. The famous letters home. They are lies. They are fabrications. Some were written to congressmen, the gullible ones. They use information supplied by the Communists as part of their propaganda blitz. I've had to testify about it on the Hill."
"The letters are lies?"
"Where did the priest say he got them?"
"He didn't."
"Has your priest been to Vietnam himself?"
"No. I mean, not that—"
"DIA has charge of intelligence for this war, Richard."
"I know. That's why I—"
"And if murder or torture were committed by men in my command, do you think I would know it?"
"Yes."
"And what do you think would happen?"
"You would court-martial them."
"
That's right. We interrogate prisoners, Richard. We don't coddle them. What armies learn from the men they capture saves lives. Do you understand that?"
"Yes."
"But there are rules. Strict rules. Rules set at Geneva. Rules we abide by absolutely. Do you think the other side abides by them?"
"I don't—"
"They do not. The Vietminh have murdered fifteen thousand village elders in the last year. The GIs who have been captured have been routinely tortured. The Reds torture our boys to death, Richard. They are a vicious, evil enemy. They are Communists. They have no morality. Saigon had just begun to make headway against them when the North Vietnamese came to the Vietminh rescue. Now there are tens of thousands of North Vietnamese regulars, fully equipped and heavily armed, in South Vietnam. What is the moral thing for us to do? Walk away? Pretend we don't know? Send flowers? Let the Iron Curtain close around another country? The South Vietnamese are people who have thrown off the Japanese and the French because of their love for freedom. Are we supporters of that freedom or not? You loved President Kennedy. So did I. What did he say?"
"He said we would support freedom."
"And that's what we're doing. We are supporting the South Vietnamese. The U.S. soldiers who are there are only guards at our bases. We don't send GIs or marines on offensive operations. Do you know that? And as for the air force, you mentioned hospitals and schools as our targets. That's slander, Richard, and it saddens me terribly to hear you repeat it. Pilots of ours, men only a little older than you, have died in antiaircraft fire they could have easily avoided if they hadn't been trying to make sure their bombs fell on military targets, and not on schools and hospitals. I know about this, Richard. Do you hear me? I—"
Richard said nothing. His father saddened? What Richard saw was his reined fury. His father had checked himself, but Richard knew what he'd been about to say: I know what targets our bombers hit because I help to pick them.
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