And how we trudged through the stink of the wet ground, the smell of rotten leaves and branches, and gazed up at dinosaur-sized vegetation, the dinosaur sounds of the jungle, the muck and weirdness of it all, humping through ferns and trees dipping and curling with the weight of water like great green curtains that no one parted because the hush of death lay waiting behind them. Where are we? We all wondered. Where are we waiting or walking? Why here? Rats in our bags. Snakes in our bags. Clouds and clouds and clouds of bugs in our eyes and clothes and hair.
We never understood our orders or where we were going. Even when the destination was clear, like when the transport carried us north and landed without stopping, only slowing, and they asked us to roll right out into a field already riddled with tracer fire, bullets through the reeds and the grass, bullets through the leaves and the trees, bullets in the mud and in the ground. We crawled around with the whistle of mortars overhead.
We spent nights with our backs up against the sandbag walls in trenches, clutching our knees, screaming. We dug our foxholes and stationed ourselves there overnight, and we picked up activity with our infrared. Then the tonnage and tonnage of mortar rained down through the night, and the trenches were breached and overrun and a river of bodies in hand-to-hand combat. A grenade went off and we were thrown against the wall and the noise of the battle around, the screams, the yelling, the god-awful staccato fire of the AKs, the squelch of mud and the moaning all wove into one sound in our ears, and our hands were slick with our own blood as we called out for help, but we couldn’t hear ourselves, because everything rang us into deafness and it was dark and we couldn’t see through the pain, but Charlie dragged us out and into a deeper ditch and the fighting went on around us until the first light of morning, when all the wounded were brought out to wait for the helicopters, and we’d thought he’d waited there with us all night, but he hadn’t, because he’d gone out and pulled down Jack Powers, Matt Washington, and others, too. There were fires in the villages, burning huts, burning shacks, trees and plants wet with fire, and God knows what else around us. Smoke in the mud. Smoke in the reeds. Smoke in the trees and the leaves. The war was in us, our bodies, our coffins holding nothing but the whispers of death in the breath of our bones. The jungle skulking our minds.
CHAPTER 10
ALL ROADS LEAD TO ST. LOUIS
When the Raconteur finished, he lifted the bottle of Basil Hayden’s, eyed the level of liquid in it, hesitated, then poured another glass. “Hell of a time,” he said before taking another sip. “God-awful hell.”
Gpa had listened to the Raconteur’s stories and nodded occasionally in agreement, but his face had stayed expressionless and somber. He’d remained still in his chair, only stooping to scratch the back of Old Humper’s neck. But when I got back from a trip to the bathroom, the Raconteur sipped at his bourbon, and Gpa leaned forward, grumbling. “I don’t know why that’s the stuff I have to remember so clearly. There’s all this other stuff I want to remember and I can’t. Then there’s stuff like that, and I’m sorry, Lou, but I want to forget it. I can still hear them, the bullets all around, clear as if they’re out there now. You never lose that sense of being keyed up. Oh, Jesus, the bodies. I want to forget the bodies, Lou, but I can’t.”
“Well, I can’t either,” the Raconteur said. “And who can I talk to, who wants to hear about any of this who wasn’t there with us? Everybody comes back from war having died a little. We’re lucky it didn’t get the whole of us.”
“Oh, man,” Corrina said. She leaned against me, just lightly. My hands were on the countertop. I leaned back against the bar and she simply placed one hand on mine and left it there. In my gut I felt a snap like a flag in the breeze as I felt the soft and sad breathing of Corrina’s body next to mine.
“So many stories,” the Raconteur said.
“They call you the Raconteur,” I said to him. “How about one about Betty? For Gpa.”
Gpa looked up at me and smiled. I think there were words in his mouth, but he left them there as he tried to control whatever else was in him. His eyes fluttered. Old Humper nudged him and rubbed his head against Gpa’s leg. Gpa sat back in his chair and I knew he was savoring whatever other small memories he could piece together in the moment.
“It’s true,” the Raconteur said to Gpa. He wheeled one side of his chair back and forth as he lifted and adjusted himself in it. “You had someone to come home to. Someones.”
And just like that, my father was in the room with us. There were Gpa and Betty and disaster averted, a family back together, despite the odds; and pulled right out of the past and into the living moment through story was Dead Dad, too. And I’m pretty sure this is what those ancient cultures mean when they talk about the power of story and the meaning of myth. This is what they mean when they talk about mythic time, when the past lives right there in the present.
“Did you know my father?” I asked.
“Not that well,” Gpa said before the Raconteur answered. “I mean, who did? Right, Lou?”
The Raconteur looked at Gpa and then back at me.
There was a hush in the room, and like I was all too used to in the Great Empty Blue, the silence filled with the ghost of Dead Dad, drifting in like an invisible mist, reminding us he would not be forgotten—that he’d followed us on this trip too.
The Raconteur spoke first. “What are you hoping to find back east?” he asked.
“Betty,” Gpa said.
I let that sit for a second, just to be sure he didn’t say more, that he didn’t go on and say something really strange, as if he thought, suddenly, that she was still there, and Dead Dad, too, that maybe he was twenty-nine again, traveling across the country, with another vet, their duffel bags tucked under their seats on the bus from San Francisco to New York, the long road home from the war after they’d survived Vietnam.
“Teddy’s taking me home,” Gpa continued.
“That’s right,” I said.
“And I have to drive the speed limit,” Corrina said. “Which slows things down too.” She picked up her can of beer, but it was empty. She took a sip from mine.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, and Gpa’s registered. We’re only supposed to have him out for three days—including today.”
The Raconteur pounded one fist in the other hand. “Damnit, you haven’t gone through any tolls, have you?”
“No,” Corrina said.
“Good,” the Raconteur said. He spun past us, knocked back the rest of the glass of bourbon he’d left by the hutch, and began typing on one of the keyboards by the armchair near Gpa. “You sure?” he grumbled, not looking at us.
“Yup,” Corrina said. “We didn’t take those roads.”
She still had my beer, and I wondered if I should take it back, but it seemed so natural in her hands, like she was all too used to sitting back easy against a bar top, talking about the road and places to go and how this giant world was meant to be lived in and roamed around and explored and seen and heard and smelled and touched and tasted.
Gpa looked over the Raconteur’s shoulder at a small screen on the bookshelf. “You haven’t changed,” he said. “Same old conspiracy theorist.”
“It’s not a theory of conspiracy if it’s actually happening, Charlie.”
“Yeah, yeah. What do you have there?” Gpa said, leaning closer.
“Look,” the Raconteur said. He pointed to the much larger screen he had placed on the floor beside the armchair, which was angled so that we could see it from the bar. “It’s a map of all the major highways and interstates in the country where they have cameras reading your license plate.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“What the fuck?” Corrina said.
“Exactly,” the Raconteur said. “This is real. Tollbooths are the easiest places, obviously, but they have cameras set up along many highways. Luckily, Uncle Sam can’t get away with this without some of us paying attention.”
“Which roads?” I asked. “All of them?�
�
“Can’t know for sure, but you might as well assume them all, because so many of them do,” the Raconteur said. “Depends on the state, of course. But forget Chicago and the whole state of New Jersey. Avoid them entirely.”
“Chicago? That’s our route.”
“Forget it. Zap zone. They’ll have your car and a picture of who’s in it uploaded as soon as you get somewhere within a couple of miles outside of Peoria. Don’t go there.”
Corrina jumped off the counter and hunched down closer to the screen. “They’re everywhere,” she said.
“How do you know about the license plate trackers?” I asked.
“Look.” The Raconteur wheeled around in a tight circle to face us. “Many of us do these rallies. Mostly motorcycles, but some of us have to drive cars or sit in sidecars. We do these rallies all through the desert, or the mountains, hitting town after town, just a little reminder that we’re here. It’s all perfectly legal, nothing to worry about, the cops are with us, this isn’t 1968, no one gives a vet a hard time anymore, but a few guys had outstanding tickets, and here we are crossing state lines and we’re at a rest stop outside of Denver and a couple of cops are shaking their heads, sticking notices on the windshields of a couple of the cars and one of the bikes, and they didn’t even run the damn plates—they were just notified over their radios and given the plate numbers. The officers didn’t want to do it, but they’d gotten the call so they couldn’t ignore it.”
The Raconteur tapped Corrina on the shoulder and she stood and got out of his way. He grabbed his bottle, poured more into his glass, slugged it, and slammed the bottle down on his leg. “Look, it’s my job to make sure the servers don’t crash at Boulder Station,” he continued. “That’s about all they want from me. But information isn’t a little piece of paper in a dusty old cabinet anymore. It’s an invisible thread of ones and zeros that extends infinitely into the ether. The information superhighway, they used to call it.” He looked up at me. “That’s a highway I can navigate quickly. I’m in a wheelchair, but I’m not blind. When I go places I’m not supposed to, I look closely.” He paused and pointed at me. “You tell anyone, I’ll make a new version of prairie oysters out of yours. You follow me?”
I did and I wouldn’t and I nodded so he knew. “Well, there must be some roads that aren’t tracked?” I asked.
“Of course.” He wheeled back over to the keyboard. “Plenty, but you need to be aware.”
“We can’t go through Denver?” I said. “We were driving from here to Denver and straight across to Chicago.”
The Raconteur enlarged the map and pointed at it with his hand still holding the empty glass. “You go south, through Flagstaff, follow the old spine of what used to be Route 66 and slowly bend north. You can’t go the southern route because you’ll get screwed when you’re coming up north through DC, and it’s taking you too far out of your way. This is your road.”
I followed his finger as he dragged it across the screen. “All roads seem to lead us through St. Louis,” I said.
“That’s right,” the Raconteur said. He looked at me. “You okay with that?”
“If it’s the right route. Of course,” I said.
The Raconteur looked at Gpa, who shook his head.
“What?” I said. “What’s in St. Louis?”
“No, nothing,” the Raconteur said. He looked away and waved his hand in the air beside his head. “I just get all caught up with things I remember from here and there. Please, ignore me.”
“All right,” Gpa said. “Enough.”
The Raconteur began to wheel away, but I got up and stood in his path. “What’s in St. Louis?”
“Lou,” Gpa warned. “This isn’t the time.”
The awkward moment of silence began to fill the room. I could feel the sweat on my forehead. “Gpa,” I said as calmly as I could. I didn’t want to get him too agitated. “What aren’t you telling me?” More silence. “Is this about my dad?”
Gpa looked away, clammed up like he always did when I asked about Dead Dad, but the Raconteur raised his eyebrows at Gpa and gave it all away. I couldn’t contain myself. “He died in a river outside of Ithaca!” I shouted. “That’s all I know. But there’s more to the story, isn’t there? Gpa?”
The Raconteur looked back at Gpa. “There’s no reason not to tell the boy that’s where she lives,” he said.
“Goddamnit, Lou!”
“He said it himself,” the Raconteur said. “You’re going through St. Louis no matter what.”
“Who?” I said. “Who is she?”
“Lou.” Gpa grabbed the Raconteur by the shoulder.
“It’s the only way,” the Raconteur said. He wheeled out of Gpa’s grip and into the middle of the room. “And for God’s sake, Charlie. He’s not a boy anymore.”
“I made a promise,” Gpa said to him.
“Oh, go on, Charlie. Jesus, you’re the one who doesn’t change.”
“I’m trying to teach the boy about promises. What they mean.”
“I know,” the Raconteur said. “I know you are.”
“Listen,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
“Ah, ask your grandfather,” the Raconteur said. He wheeled past us around the bar and into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and pulled out his last can of the Beast.
“Goddamnit, Lou,” Gpa said. “You don’t ever know when to shut up, do you?”
The Raconteur looked down at the can of beer and then tossed it to me across the kitchen. “Your father died in a car crash in Ithaca, yes—on his way to see the woman he was having an affair with. But she no longer lives in Ithaca, Teddy. She lives outside of St. Louis now. Small town called Troy, Illinois. You’re going to drive right by her.”
Gpa shook his head.
I took a deep breath as I realized how the story of my father’s death existed in so many other minds, in so many other possible conversations. It sounds stupid, but for some reason I’d only thought of how it all related to me and Mom and Gpa, and it hadn’t occurred to me that his name would be passed from person to person, that he hadn’t slipped away into the great big nothingness entirely, rather that his name still existed on the lips of others, maybe not in the way he hoped, but there, alive in the present, a man who lived and breathed, and a man who’d obviously fucked up.
Gpa walked across the room, laid his hand on my shoulder, and looked at me through his wet eyes, as if he was about to say something, but he didn’t. He leaned back against the bar. He put his arm around me again and I put mine around him. “My son was a smart boy,” he said into the room, to no one in particular, staring more at the floor, or the space between Corrina and us. “But selfish.” His voice wavered. “He sure was.”
“He couldn’t have been all bad,” Corrina said. She smiled at Gpa. “Look where he came from.” She was so much stronger than me. My throat felt dried out and wordless.
“No. No, he wasn’t.” Gpa shook his head.
He held on to me as his voice faded out, and I held him as tightly as I could. “Look,” the Raconteur said behind us, from the kitchen. He was searching the cabinets, opening and closing them with a thud. “You know damn well the world is more complicated than that.”
He was talking to Gpa, but I agreed. When my father died I’d been too young to have really known him. My memories were spotty and probably made up, little pieces of what I wanted him to be, more than what he actually was. But whether he was alive or dead, he was still my father, and there’s a strange feeling when you’re a kid and you know your parent is wrong. Not just wrong about some dumb fact you might have learned in school, like the faster way to memorize multiplication tables, but really wrong, wrong in some deep and fundamental way, like knowing the difference between a truth and a lie, and you, not he, know what’s right. It made me think about my mom, too, and how betrayal, not only loneliness, had probably pushed her deep into the arms of Brenner, Stoddard & Pell. At one time, she was something else. Maybe she was more like a m
other. Maybe she still was.
“Mom,” I said out loud, as if to conjure her into the space too.
Gpa hung heavy on me now, and I walked him back to the armchair. Corrina helped me get him into the chair. “I’m tired,” he said.
“Yeah,” Corrina said. “And we should eat.”
The Raconteur seemed to find what he was looking for in the cupboards, and he wheeled back into the room holding a glass with a drink that had a slice of lime in it. “Pizza?” he asked. His eyes were bloodshot.
“Yes,” Corrina said. “And make me one of whatever you’re having. I don’t think we’re going anywhere.”
She was right. Gpa already looked distant and half asleep or disoriented in the chair, and the sunlight that had once crept around the corners of the shades was now gone. I peeked out one window and saw that it was already night. There was no point in driving now anyway, because we had a new route.
CHAPTER 11
WHERE WE’RE FROM
There were more war stories, and then Gpa fell asleep in the chair and the Raconteur fell asleep in his, and Old Humper remained curled up at Gpa’s feet, but Corrina and I were wide awake. “Want to see if we can find our way to the roof?” she asked.
We unlocked the back door in the kitchen and found the shed attached to the house that must have contained the Raconteur’s generator. We climbed up and hoisted ourselves onto the Raconteur’s flat roof. We walked over to the front and hung our feet over the edge. Across the street, the Raconteur’s neighbors had built a wall out of cinder blocks around their yard, but from the roof, we could see over it, and it contained a small primary-colored plastic jungle gym and slide.
“It’s weird,” Corrina said pointing to it. “Thinking about growing up somewhere else. Imagine if you grew up here.”
“I’d have been a cowboy, riding into the hills at sunrise and back just after sunset,” I said, pointing to the shadowy blue-and-purple mountains in the distance. I knew they were miles and miles away, but they seemed right there, as if they rose out of the ground at the other end of the neighborhood.
The Last True Love Story Page 8