The Sentimentalists

by Johanna Skibsrud

  He shifts his neck on his pack and clears his throat again, and no one says anything. “But that’s all different now, thank Christ,” Bean tells them. “You guys are some lucky in a way, bouncing in here at the end of the war. It’s gonna be cake for you – just these last assignments, just this cleaning up, see, and then all sorts of guys, halfwits, like yourselves, with no experience, can go home like heroes for following a few fucking orders.”

  When later Napoleon is given the lousy job of sorting KIAC bags he saves some of the things that he finds for a bit of a laugh. He shoves them into his pockets, and later pulls them out for Teddy and Hill, while Teddy pounds a drum roll on his thigh.

  “Oh, that’s soft,” Hill whines. “Din you get anything else?”

  “Hold your horses,” Napoleon says.

  Other things Napoleon finds he shoves deeper into his pockets and only takes them out when he’s alone at night in the shed where he sleeps now. These are mostly small posed photographs; girls around his own age, some clipped out of newspapers. Graduation announcements, yearbook photos. Others are studio quality; these he likes best. In which whole families are gathered. He has a whole collection of them, and looks at them sometimes and tries to pick out the dead boy.

  He notices the way the families are configured, always in subtle but precise relation to each other: a standing hand on a sitting arm; a sitting arm on a kneeling shoulder. He comes to recognize the formula even and see the way that it’s repeated, over and over, in the countless photographs that he lifts, over the weeks, from the bags.

  They have given him unmistakable orders: it’s only the embarrassing articles, the porn, the dope, and any military souvenirs, that are to be removed. He sifts through the clothes, books, letters, tinned food and wrapped candy, and weeds out the girly magazines, the rubber gloves, the guns and the emptied Cong weapons. Once, he finds a wrapped-up thumb, and then in the same bag, a flat, greying ear. He buries them a little ways off and afterwards vomits over top of them, overflowing the shallow hole.

  The photographs he takes as a small reward for his work, because no one is handing out tips. He takes: one photo from each bag, a handful of wrapped-up candy, and every second bag of dope he finds.

  Later he shares these last items with the rest of the guys, but he never shares the photographs.

  He keeps them with him in a deep inside pocket. He knows them: the contours of each connecting body part. The approximate length – for example – of the forearm of a boy in order that it touch the square waist of a girl. The width of a woman’s shoulder in order that it be covered by a child’s hand.

  But sometimes Napoleon looks at the photographs and it’s just parts. Just arms and waists and bald heads – disconnected from their neat clothes and shoes, and especially from their hard, brief smiles. Just bodies, then, touching, so subtly, in so strange a formula (a gutted hand over a shot-out shoulder, a slivered yellow moon of an ear resting there) that he thinks, My God, what chance they should have fallen that way!

  Then his eyes and his mind refocus; the bodies and smiles and neat clothes return, as if just then rising in the emulsion, connecting the particulars to the whole.

  The original family is restored to him, once more, complete. And he imagines himself as the youngest son. The toothless, grinning one, his arms thrown around the shoulders of a fat man.

  2

  “Now if you want to know how fucked up it was, think about Clark,” my father said to me, on more than one occasion. “He was such a smart kid, dammit. What a waste.” He shook his head and whistled out the words.

  And though a little later he would talk to me long and enthusiastically about the adventures and misadventures that he and his buddies had had in Danang, everything that had to do with gambling and drinking, he never touched my original question that I had asked about Owen. Perhaps he didn’t know.

  Instead, when he spoke of Owen, he told me of the smallish fights they’d get into with each other, or with the other Marines; or the stories that Owen would tell as they burrowed at perpendicular angles into their foxholes at night; or how out to lunch they had felt after some especially good weed.

  One time Hill (Arthur Hill was his name) called my father up on the phone; he told me about that. This was when my father was still living out in Fargo. “Geez, it was like being shot back in time,” my father said, and he skimmed his hand across the tabletop. “Phwiiiiipp!” We were sitting inside at the kitchen table, where my father had made it out to a half-hearted meal, and his hand just nicked his beer a little as it shot along, so that the bottle turned in clunky circles on the pressed linoleum of the tabletop, and then came to rest, as if it had never been disturbed. “To hear that ol’ Hill!” my father said to me in one of his really loud outright laughs. “What a guy! What a guy! He was better than the rest of them. Didn’t want to be there: had an obsession with stock cars and really tall girls. He loved them really tall – he was a short little guy.”

  “Stock cars?”

  “Yeah. I told him, Hill, if you get out of here you be sure to get yourself a nice little office somewhere, high up in the air. In Chicago – that’s where he was from – somewhere where you don’t have to go outside. A little cafeteria in there, a barber shop. So you know you wouldn’t notice the weather. That’s honestly what seemed like would be the very best thing, the most you could ask out of life. There was a lot of shitty weather.” He sucked on his cigarette. Sometimes he made a whistling noise when he breathed in sharp like that. The air just kind of all rushed in at once. “No more of this running around on the ground, no more of this blowing shit up, and you know what?”

  My father looked up at me, his eyes bright. He was already coming up with a laugh. It was starting. “Ha – Haaa!” he said, before I could get out my own, “What?”

  “The little fucker took my advice!” He stopped to cough a little but then went on. “He calls me up and he’s in this big office building in Chicago, and he makes me guess where he is and of course I couldn’t remember saying that exactly to Hill – not then. So I couldn’t guess. I remembered when he said it though, so finally I just said, Come on Hill, I give up, just come out with it and tell me, man. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and make him feel bad, you know? Like maybe he was feeling happy, just thrilled to pieces that he finally got himself some walk-up in Detroit and here I’d be guessing a suburb in Miami … that was the kind of guy Hill was, he could have gone any which way, and then he told me. Told me about the cafeteria, and how the place connected to the train and if he didn’t want to he didn’t have to go outside at all, only for the approximately seven seconds that it took him to run the half block of the street from the train to the lobby of his building, and I thought Jeeee-sus Christ! What the hell was I telling myself in those days? I should have been saying all that shit to me! I must have not been giving myself too many directions then. Nope,” my father said. He had been speaking quickly, only pausing for brief intakes of breath, so he took a real breath then, and exhaled it slowly. “There wasn’t a fucking thought in my head,” he said. He held onto a bit of his hair with a balled-up fist, and gave his head a shake once or twice, from side to side, with his hand. “Yep, I was pretty well running on empty,” he said, and tapped his forehead, and gave out another loud hoot that was at once a laugh and a cough, so that, combined, he didn’t have to follow the one up with the other.

  “Oh, but anyway,” he said, realizing he’d derailed the story, “I said to Hill, You still wish you’d been a driver? and he said, Naaaaah! He said, I don’t even watch that shit anymore, Ha! Ha! It’s not permitted. The wife doesn’t like it. Only thing I got is Andretti coasters for my beers, and that’s it! I said, Good for you!”

  “Did you ask him if his wife was tall?”

  “You know, dammit,” my father said, “I forgot about that! I should have asked him! You little honey –” he said to me, and then he repeated my question. “Did you ask him if his wife was tall. I bet she’s a squat little thing,”
he said. “I can just see it – him having a real short wife.” Then, “He’d better!” he said, and slammed his beer on the table. “He’d better!” he said again. “Can’t have it all, the sonofabitch!”

  3

  The first thing that he does when he lands in Danang is get a ride up north to find Clark. His stomach is tight, and there’s a strange feeling in his head. A light little buzz. Not only because he’s on his way to see Clark, probably, but because he hasn’t slept in so long. Not at all on the big commercial jet, on which, for most of the journey, he flew. Not at all when they stopped to refuel; to get out, and change planes, or sit around in the light of airport waiting rooms. Not at all after shouldering his heavy bag to re-board, this time a military plane, and fly again.

  There are only one or two other enlisted guys on the first plane, out of Indianapolis. They come around and feed you orange juice if you want it, and kids draw in colouring books, and cry. So, for the first time since the beginning of his basic training, he feels like he’s just himself, pretty much alone. In uniform, he has found, he looks just like anybody, and no one can tell. That during all that time out in California there was something that set him apart, and that was him thinking, it’s only me that has this much doubt in my gut. Or who feels this stupid. Or this afraid.

  Sometimes even he couldn’t tell the difference between himself and the rest of them. He’d forget. About the dread, about everything. Only to then have it hit him again, in a rush, like someone had punched him in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him.

  But then on the airplane he doesn’t feel afraid. He is pleased it’s this nice commercial jet instead of the military plane, as if he is going on holiday like the other Americans. If he was going to leave at all, this was it: this was him doing it, and when he joined up, well, this – this exact feeling – was why.

  It was Clark, actually, the reason he’d joined. Clark who’d slapped him on the back so hard that a bit of his breath really was knocked out of him and he had to gasp before he answered the question that Clark had asked him when he’d slammed him so hard. Making him feel again, with the hit, like the little kid brother, even though he was now taller than Clark and smoked more cigarettes.

  “Why haven’t you signed up, little brother?” Clark had said.

  Being called ‘little brother’ of course didn’t help. When he got his breath back he said to Clark, “I don’t know.” He kind of mumbled it. Clark hit him again, this time on the shoulder with a balled-up fist, “Well, get knowing,” he said. “Look, there’s nothing else going on here. Look at you. What are you wasting your time with now, anyway?”

  Napoleon looked around him. They had been smoking a joint in their parents’ garage. It had been going back and forth between them, but now it was stalled, Clark hanging onto it, waiting.

  There was nothing in that garage but old cans of things, half emptied, and junked-up bikes. None of the bikes even worked any more. Both the boys took the second car downtown if they needed to go. Napoleon shrugged. “Nothing, I guess,” he said.

  After the joint, Napoleon would haul the garage door open and push the car out of it for Clark, at the wheel. Then, when the engine got going (Napoleon would have pushed the car halfway up the drive, but it was a short one) he’d jump in and Clark would gun it and they’d take off, zooming out of the drive, past the low houses of the residential street, and out to the highway.

  “Fucking right!” Clark would yell. “You ready, my brother? You fucking ready for this?!”

  Now, when this actually comes to pass, and the engine roars to life and Napoleon skips along next to the car for a jump or two before he manages to slide into place in the passenger’s seat, and Clark says, “Fucking right!” there’s a new note that Napoleon senses in his voice.

  None of his friends joined up. Some of them have even talked about going to Canada. More usually, though, they just talk about moving around. Changing addresses will do the trick, usually, and it’s not even that bad of a thing. It’s pretty cool. Like On The Road.

  But the biggest part of him just supposes that he won’t get called. It seems impossible and a little silly to him to think they have his number.

  So then, all of a sudden, he’s on this plane. Being served orange juice. This kid with a colouring book crying sometimes in the seat in front of him.

  He feels okay. But mostly that’s because he’s thinking about seeing Clark again, and kind of just showing off, like Look, I got knowing, having his brother give him that slap on the back again, only this time the breath wouldn’t get knocked out of him, this time he’d slap him right back.

  So that’s what he does when he gets off the plane, and collects his luggage. He asks around. And whenever he’s asked (once a big man comes over and says, Son, what’s your orders? much more kindly then he would have expected), instead of saying, Bravo company, First Battalion, he says the name of Clark’s unit, and it’s that easy. He gets into the back of a truck with some other guys and pretty soon they’re heading out of there. He feels good. That’s it, he feels good. That (besides the tightness that he still feels in his gut) is what that light feeling has been inside his head all along.

  The guys in the truck with him leave him alone. They’re friends. Napoleon can tell that they’ve been here awhile because they seem like they don’t even notice anything, like the heat, or the smell. Like they don’t have to watch everything like Napoleon does; his eyes wide, as though watching everything from inside a TV. Not the images, but just that feeling, the colour. Like being inside the screen. Everything bright like that, and fast.

  There’s some kids, he notices now, for example, that have been running, perhaps for some time already, beside them. And every time the truck slows, they clamber around it, and jump up and down along the side. By accident, Napoleon looks one of the kids in the eye.

  The rest of the guys are yelling something, he notices now. Shouting back at the kids, who have been yelling, too – the same thing, over and over again – as they follow behind. “Chop Chop Chop Chop,” Napoleon finally hears. “Chop, Chop, Chop,” with their arms out, so – oh, he realizes, they’re asking for something. What do they want? A ride? Some money? That’s it, he thinks. Of course. Everybody wants money. And then it’s funny to him that he could have been so dense and not notice that they were asking him for money before. He remembers with shame now how he just stared back at that boy, and didn’t shrug, or make any move at all to show that he’d noticed anything.

  But it turns out that it isn’t money but food the kids want. The American guys, imitating them, say, “Chop Chop Chop,” and pinch their noses, laughing. One of the guys rolls on the floor of the truck he’s laughing so hard.

  Napoleon wishes he could tell them to stop. Then he wishes he had a handful of American dollar bills. He would rain them down behind him if he could. He imagines himself with that much money, sending it behind him, in a storm.

  Well, at least if they would stop it, it would be better. The tightness in his stomach is worse; it’s not just his brother now.

  And then one of the guys, the one that was laughing so hard, rolling around on the floor of the truck, finds a box full of sea rations. He chucks a can over the back of the truck and yells, “Here’s your chop chop, you little ass-holes!” And as he does so the can narrowly misses another American guy’s head, who says, “Hey, fuck – man, you almost took me out!” And is about to really get sore, but then thinks better of it. The other guy, the ringleader of the little group, hasn’t noticed, and instead he picks up two of his own cans to throw. “I’ll give you chop chop, you little motherfuckers!” he says, and whips the cans, both of them, one after the other, off the back of the truck.

  The kids are screaming with delight. Running after the cans, which glint – each distinct and silver in the air before they fall. The one guy that almost got hit by the can and was angry for a minute is not angry anymore, and chucks a few. The laughing guy has gone back to laughing.

  The kids
fight over the cans behind them, and fall away. And then the fire goes out of the guys that are throwing the cans, and they lean back, calmer, and roll a few cigarettes. Napoleon is relieved. The kids continue to follow behind. They say, “Chop, Chop,” now and then, but are ignored.

  “Hey you want one, kid?” the angry guy says to Napoleon, extending a fatly rolled cigarette toward him. “You’re awful quiet. He’s awful quiet, ain’t he?” he asks the ringleader. The ringleader, though, isn’t interested in the amount of noise that Napoleon’s making. He’s smoking his cigarette as if he’s never been more satisfied by anything in his life.

  “Sure,” says Napoleon, taking the cigarette from the angry guy. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Thanks.” Then he hates himself for thanking the guy so much. One. One thank-you would have been enough.

  They bump up a narrow road and stop in front of a huge, semi-round shed. It looks like a farm machinery shed, all made out of metal. It would be a machinery shed if this were another part of the world, if this had been a weekend trip from Des Moines that they’d been on instead. He startles himself in thinking suddenly of how this place is not-Des Moines. Of how he’s dangling, his body at a weird angle from the earth, stuck out precariously on the other side of the world.

  His blood, which had seemed to be rushing all into his head; no wonder about that.

  “W’here, soldier” the laughing guy says, giving Napoleon a kick with his boot. Napoleon has to jump down out of the truck before this guy can get out. The others have leapt out over the sides, and are scattering now. But Napoleon, he just stands there, with no direction. The driver has banged out of the truck and he, too, is heading toward the low building, shouting something.

  No one is, of course, expecting Napoleon. But somewhere there’s Clark, Napoleon remembers. And with that his gut tightens again, and he heads toward the low building too.