The Distant Echo of a Bright Sunny Day

by Patrick O'Brien

  After limping along for another two and a half miles under his own speed, and feeling totally fagged out, Ralph finally made it back to the barracks forty-five minutes later. The rest of the company had gone off without him, and the drill sergeant had made it clear that, injury or no injury (Ralph had twisted his ankle and skinned his hands), he had three choices: he could call a cab, crawl back, or walk back. Saying as much, he himself had rejoined the rest of the troops and gone off and left Ralph lying in the dust, literally.

  The incident itself and the ill-repressed memory of it had left a traumatic wound on Ralph’s psyche that had never quite scarred over. Through all the years since, it had become a salient reminder of failure and inadequacy. Even though, intellectually, he could rationalize it as simply irrelevant to the kind of life he really valued, a residual recollection often popped to the surface by the mere sight of a soldier walking down a Portland sidewalk or an armed forces poster touting the virtues of military life. But another incident, shortly after that, only added to the trauma.

  A week later, his platoon had gone out to the firing range. Again, the afternoon had been hot, dusty, and remorseless, the sunlight a heavy, oppressive force bearing down on him with stultifying effect. Sweat trickled from under the nylon helmet band. Already, two miles into the march, his mouth felt sticky with dryness, and the unaccustomed weight of his backpack burned into his shoulders. A full canteen, attached to his webbed belt, bounced on his hip, and he kept forgetting to hold his rifle at the proper angle against his shoulder. More than anything, he wanted to sit down, take his helmet off, and hold his face up to any cooling breeze that might come.

  The firing range itself had been a Spartan ensemble of two observation towers, a number of foot-high, sandbagged firing stations spread out along a hundred-yard stretch of sand, and a down-range view of a hilly redoubt, two hundred and fifty yards away, serving as a backstop. Between the redoubt and the firing stations, black, pop-up silhouettes, operated by remote control, had been fixed at intervals of fifty, seventy-five, a hundred, a hundred and fifty, and two hundred yards. Each sandbagged firing station had its own lane of targets, and each soldier was expected to fire within his own lane.

  Ralph had been among the first group of soldiers chosen to fire. On the one hand, he had welcomed the opportunity to get his turn in early so he could sit and relax afterwards. But on the other, being in the first group meant he did not have sufficient time to recover from the four-mile march out to the range. It meant he barely had a chance to sip from his canteen and remove his pack before being hustled off to an assigned station.

  Prior to coming out to the range, the four basic firing positions had all been demonstrated in a preparatory class; during actual combat, terrain and circumstances would dictate which one to use. For the initial exercise, to get the soldier used to firing his weapon, the emphasis had been on firing while stretched out on his belly, with his legs spread apart and his elbows resting on the ground. This position required the individual to drop to his knees, place the rifle butt in the sand, fall to his right side, roll onto his stomach, and, with his left hand gripping the fore-end of the rifle, tuck the stock into his shoulder. From a marksmanship standpoint, short of using a bipod or a prop, it probably was the most stable position. And for Ralph, for someone who hadn’t even owned a squirt gun when he was a kid, it should have eased him into an unfamiliar situation with minimal apprehension.

  It didn’t.

  As instructed, holding the M16 across his chest, he had dropped to his knees. But instead of following through with a continuous motion onto his right side and then placing the rifle butt in the sand, he lost his balance and toppled forward, bringing the elevated sight hard against his mouth. The impact had split his lip and caused it to swell.

  Standing nearby, the drill sergeant had observed everything. His response had progressed from disbelief, to a scornful grimace, to explosive anger. Within a few seconds of the incident, a small trickle of saliva had formed at each corner of his mouth, and his voice could be heard all up and down the line as he again unleashed a series of belittling epithets against a recruit he seemed to despise more on principle than for any other reason. Like opening the release cover on a vat of cherries or apples, a torrent of choice language spilled out, the least offensive being “klutz,” “nincompoop,” and “moron.” To make matters worse, a lieutenant came over and, instead of cautioning the sergeant against verbal abuse, commenced to join in with his own assault.

  By the time the two men walked away, Ralph lay motionless on his stomach, staring downrange in a state of shock. His lower lip trembled and his left eye began to twitch. As he rested his cheek against the rifle’s synthetic stock, a drop of sweat ran down the bridge of his nose and fell onto the pistol grip. A horsefly, attracted by the blood on his upper lip, buzzed onto the rear sight and only left after Ralph flicked at it with his trigger finger. He was engulfed by a sensation of being caught in a narrowed zone of awareness, as if detached from time and circumstance, and he only snapped out of it as the command to lock and load sounded over the bullhorn: “Ready on the firing line!”

  Without waiting for the second part—“Commence firing!”—he pulled the trigger, and the semi-automatic setting he had forgotten to switch over released a rapid, scattered burst of a dozen rounds. Realizing not only that he had anticipated the command but had also left the rifle in the wrong firing mode, he turned and looked helplessly at the drill sergeant.

  The drill sergeant, the lieutenant, and three other sergeants all came running over to Ralph’s station. The lieutenant yelled at him to get up, the drill sergeant snatched the rifle from him, and the others started shouting something about getting people killed. Unceremoniously, at the same time, two of the sergeants grabbed him by the arms and hustled him over to a jeep, where they practically shoved him into the backseat. Moments later, he was on his way back to the barracks.

  Three days later the paperwork had been completed and he was officially discharged from the United States Army. The day the discharge took effect, wearing civilian clothing and carrying a handbag with his personal belongings in it, he walked out of the two-story brick barracks and over to a parking lot, where his mother was waiting for him. As they left the parking lot and drove up the street, three companies of troops were coming from the other direction. His own company made up the last column, and as it passed, three or four soldiers he had made friends with in the barracks gave him a friendly, parting wave and a smile; someone called out “Good luck!” The gestures had lessened the pain then, but the memory of the failure had always remained.

  “So it’s all about proving something, then, isn’t it?” Misty said as, finishing, his voice trailed off.

  Without looking at her, he turned away.

  “It’s all right,” she told him. “I love you just the way you are. But if you feel you have to do it, well…”

  Taking a deep breath, he turned and faced her. He said, “At some point in your life you just have to face up to yourself. Once you’ve done that, you’re all right. Do you see what I mean?”

  “And you think this’ll do it?”

  “I’m not sure. And even thinking about it worries me. But I feel I have to go through with it.”

  Sitting up next to him, she crossed her legs Indian-fashion. Smiling down at him playfully, her hands resting in her lap, she said, “Would you like my blessing? Is that it?”

  “I just need to feel you’re with me.”

  “Of course I am, silly.” And bending down, she kissed him on the lips. “Just be careful.”

  “You’re not gonna come with me?”

  “Maybe I should, just to keep you safe.”

  He smiled.

  34

  For Punch McGonigle, a six-footer with a burly build, a salt-n-pepper beard, and a receding hairline, several years of living aboard an aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy, a stint with Naval Intelligence, then more time at sea had more than compensated those youthful dreams and romant
ic notions of life on the Bounding Main. He had had more than his share of adventure, camaraderie, satisfaction, sense of achievement, and good times in ports of call too numerous to remember, and he had no reason to complain. But at some point, being a sailor must have gotten to him, because upon retirement instead of opting for salt air and vast, unlimited seascapes, he had settled into the nether regions of the Montana wilderness, where the air had the pungent scent of pine needles and the lusty aroma of moist humus, and the surrounding mountains offered stark contrast to the heaving flatness of the open sea.

  Having been a sailor most of his adult life, he had situated himself in a log cabin overlooking a fast-flowing creek that tumbled over rocks and small boulders at the bottom of a wooded slope. Here, amidst the glories and sounds of unadulterated nature, he intended to live out the remainder of his days: undisturbed by the raucous hustle and bustle of cities, towns; municipalities of any sort. The prospect of trout fishing in the morning, a detective thriller in the afternoon (Nero Wolfe being his favorite), and a porch rocking chair in the evening suited him to the smallest iota of perfection. If the contentment of a man can be measured by a total lack of desire for anything more than what he already has, then in this respect, Punch had indeed achieved perfection.

  Livingston was the nearest community of any size, and it served as his supply depot. Two or three times a month he made the trip down the long, winding mountain road in his jeep to replenish whatever he needed in the way of milk, butter, eggs, and so on. Though the trip was mostly a necessity, occasionally it had a secondary function. It afforded him an opportunity not only to restock his pantry, but also allowed for a healthy dollop of social time: a couple of quiet beers in one of the bars along Main Street while chatting with the bartender or palavering with a local.

  It happened that on one such occasion he met Art Jimson. A month earlier the man had just survived a gauntlet of newspaper reporters, television cameras, and a passel of outraged animal rights activists who had followed him down the street to his car, howling and hooting their displeasure at the unconscionable acts attributed to him by the media. For the entire month after the ordeal, he had taken refuge out at his ranch, hoping that by the next time he went into Livingston, the hullabaloo would have faded. When he finally did resurface, he showed up wearing dark glasses and entered his favorite hangout through an alleyway door.

  Once inside, he had taken off his dark glasses and, along with a schooner of draft beer and a bag of pistachio nuts, had ensconced himself in a booth at the back of the room. There in the cool dark of the bar, he had sipped his beer, cracked pistachio nuts, and pondered whether life would ever again be normal, as it was before the eruption of so much antagonism. Somewhere between thinking it might be and the certainty of knowing it wouldn’t be, Punch McGonigle had walked up.

  “I’ve seen you,” he said. “You’re that guy on television, the one they were givin’ such a rough time. Right?”

  Wordlessly, looking up, Art nodded.

  “How’s it feel to be a celebrity?” Punch asked, his eyes crinkling with humorous intent.

  “Not nearly as good as you might think,” Art replied, and for the first time in a long time, had laughed.

  “Can I buy you a beer?”

  “Sure. Sit down. I could use some company.”

  The two men hit it off right from the start. The simplest explanation would be that each, in his own way, was something of a loner and for this reason welcomed the opportunity to talk. But the deeper reason had to do with shared experience. As an old Navy man, Punch had his own memories of being singled out. As a young man, fresh out of Navy boot camp, he had come under fire on two different occasions by Vietnam War protesters who had reviled him almost in the same way the animal rights activists had gone after Art. He recalled his own reaction to their ugly verbal assaults and sign-waving vehemence.

  Barely out of high school at the time, he was proud of his uniform and equally honored to be serving his country. Not fully understanding the war, but nonetheless agreeing with its alleged necessity, he felt he had been made a scapegoat for a lot of pent-up rage. He recalled the hostility that had been directed at him as though he himself were somehow responsible for the nightly scenes of bloodshed that appeared on television. And he remembered that afterwards, once away from the scene of the demonstrations, he had felt violated, even traumatized. In the years since then, the feelings had been submerged and mostly forgotten; but now, sitting here listening to this man who recently had been through something similar, they all came back.

  “Yeah, it’s the damnedest thing,” he commiserated. “You feel like you’re about to be attacked by a mob. Everybody’s yellin’ and shoutin’ and wavin’ their fists, and their faces are all screwed up with a lot of hatred…and you just wanna get the hell outta there. The only thing goin’ through your mind is ‘These sonsabitches wanna kill me.’”

  “That’s exactly it,” Art said. “And that’s exactly what I was thinking.” And the memory brought a surge of emotion he had managed to repress until now. “And it scares the hell outta ya, too, I don’t mind admitting,” he added, with a tightness in his throat. “It shakes you up bad, real bad.”

  “It makes you wanna go into hiding. I know that’s what I wanted to do.”

  “Damned if it don’t!” Art managed another laugh, relieved to be talking to a kindred soul.

  The subject of the FBI’s visit to the ranch didn’t come up until after the third round of beer. By then, the words flowed from the normally taciturn rancher’s mouth as eagerly as though he were a penitent kneeling in a confessional, wanting to unburden himself from some long-ago crime.

  For his part, Punch listened with the wide-eyed, incredulous attention of one for whom such a story seems too bizarre to fathom. He could accept the incident at the courthouse, with Art the victim of a lot of enraged, hyperventilating protesters, because he had seen it on television and could draw on his own experience for reinforcement of the image. But that a group of out-of-state protesters wanted to go after Art’s cattle to make a statement about the inviolability of wildlife—well, that verged on the hard-to-swallow.

  “You mean to tell me,” he said, when Art had finished, “that these people actually plan to do a hit-n-run style raid against your ranch…kill a bunch of your cattle?”

  “Yep. It’s what them FBI boys was tellin’ me. Came all the way out to my ranch and wanted to know if I’d cooperate.”

  “If they already know so much about the miscreants, why don’t they just arrest them? I mean, why go to all the trouble when you can just pick them up? Sounds a little odd, doesn’t it?”

  “I wondered the same thing myself.” Art laughed. “But, hell, I guess it’s because they wanna make a fine show of it. DOMESTIC TERROR GROUP FOILED, CAUGHT IN THE ACT—a big story…in all the newspapers…nationwide coverage. And sends out a message that them FBI boys are on the job. Clampin’ down on the bad guys…rootin’ them out. See what I mean?”

  Shaking his head, Punch chuckled.

  “Well, I know a little about that kind of thing myself,” he said. “I used to work in Naval Intelligence, ferreting out drug activity, internal theft, and other criminal activity. But part of the job, too, was to sniff out subversive activity in the ranks. It was the tail-end of the Vietnam War, when servicemen of all stripes were going AWOL, crossing over into Canada an’ even overseas—though some of them just went right home to Momma and said, ‘Fuck you! Come and get me!’ Most of it happened in the Army, but the Marines and the Navy saw their share of it.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Yep. I did it for five years. It was the kinda thing you never heard much about, though…bad publicity, and all that.”

  “Maybe them FBI boys’d like to talk to someone like you.”

  “I’m retired. Besides, I don’t know what they could use me for. Anyway, I might miss out on too much good fishing if I got myself involved in anything. Hell, you never can tell what’ll come of undercover w
ork, if that’s what they’d want.”

  “I hear ya there, I surely do,” Art said and sipped off a swallow of beer. “But, listen here, I’m a fly fisherman myself. Do most of it up in the Valley, in spring creeks and along the Yellowstone.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yep. I use a Lamson Velocity, a six-n-a-half ouncer. Been usin’ it for years—a real beauty.”

  “Damn! That’s what I use…”

  § § § § § §

  A week later, Punch got a call from Bill Hammerstein. He had just walked in the door with an armful of groceries when the phone rang.

  “This is Punch…”

  Bill introduced himself.

  “Understand you’re an old Navy man.”

  “Damn! I figured Art’d say something to you boys. But, yeah, I served my time, and now I enjoy the fruits of my labor. But I know you got somethin’ in mind, so let’s hear it.”

  “First you gotta tell me how you got that name of yours. Is that a real name or just a moniker you picked up along the way?”

  Punch laughed.

  “When I was a couple days old, a nurse picked me up and I hit her in the nose. It didn’t amount to anything, of course, but she told my mom and pop, and my pop liked the idea. He thought I might grow up to be a scrapper, so he decided to call me Punch.”

  “So, are you a scrapper, Mr. McGonigle?”

  “You ever heard of an old Navy man that hasn’t been involved in a few barroom scrapes?”