by Tim O'Brien
The dismounted troopers then ran downhill and slid into the ravine where their bodies were found ... [T]hey must have felt helplessly exposed and rushed toward the one place that might protect them. Yet the moment they skidded into the gully they were trapped. All they could do was hug the sides or crouch among the bushes, looking fearfully upward, and wait. A few tried to scramble up the south wall because the earth showed boot marks and furrows probably gouged by their fingers, but none of these tracks reached the surface.61
—Evan S. Connell (Son of the Morning Star)
Q: Can you describe them?
A: They was women and little kids.
Q: What were they doing?
A: They were lying on the ground, bleeding from all over. They was dead.62
—Rennard Doines (Court-Martial Testimony)
Q: Did you have any conversation with Lieutenant Calley at that ditch?
A: Yes.
Q: What did he say?
A: He asked me to use my machine gun.
Q: At the ditch?
A: Yes.
Q: What did you say?
A: I refused.63
—Robert Maples (Court-Martial Testimony)
Q: Did you ever open your pants in front of a woman in the village of My Lai?
A: No.
Q: Isn't it a fact that you were going through My Lai that day looking for women?
A: No.
Q: Didn't you carry a woman half-nude on your shoulders and throw her down and say that she was too dirty to rape? You did that, didn't you?
A: Oh, yeah, but it wasn't at My Lai.64
—Dennis Conti (Court-Martial Testimony)
Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away ... Man is bound to lie about himself.65
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Notes from Underground)
Married veterans or guys who married when they got back had difficulties, too. Waking up with your hands around your wife's throat is frightening to the vet and to the wife. Is he crazy? Does he hate me? What the hell's going on?66
—Patience H. C. Mason (Recovering from the War)
Like I told you, he used to yell things in his sleep. Bad things. Kathy thought he needed help.
—Patricia S. Hood
Something was wrong with the guy. No shit, I could almost smell it.
—Vincent R. (Vinny) Pearson
... the crimes visited on the inhabitants of Son My Village included individual and group acts of murder, rape, sodomy, maiming, assault on noncombatants, and the mistreatment and killing of detainees.67
—Colonel William V. Wilson (U.S. Army Investigator)
17. The Nature of Politics
In late November of 1968 John Wade extended his tour for an extra year. He had no meaningful choice. After what happened at Thuan Yen, he'd lost touch with some defining part of himself. He couldn't extricate himself from the slime. "It's a personal decision," he wrote Kathy. "Maybe someday I'll be able to explain it, but right now I can't leave this place. I have to take care of a few things, otherwise I won't ever get home. Not the right way."
Kathy's response, when it finally came, was enigmatic. She loved him. She hoped it wasn't a career move.
Over the next months John Wade did his best to apply the trick of forgetfulness. He paid attention to his soldiering. He was promoted twice, first to spec four, then to buck sergeant, and in time he learned to comport himself with modest dignity under fire. It wasn't valor, but it was a start. In the first week of December he received a nasty flesh wound in the mountains west of Chu Lai. A month later he took a half pound of shrapnel in the lower back and thighs. He needed the pain. He needed to reclaim his own virtue. At times he went out of his way to confront hazard, walking point or leading night patrols, which were acts of erasure, a means of burying one great horror under the weight of many smaller horrors.
Sometimes the trick almost worked. Sometimes he almost forgot.
In November of 1969 John Wade returned home with a great many decorations. Five months later he married Kathy in an outdoor ceremony, pink and white balloons bobbing from the trees, and just before Easter they moved into the apartment in Minneapolis. "We'll be happy," Kathy said, "I know it."
John laughed and carried her inside.
They decorated the place with hanging plants and printed fabrics stretched over wooden frames. They had fun shopping together, picking out cheap furniture and rugs and a portable television; they used the floor for lovemaking until Kathy found a decent secondhand bed.
"There, you see?" she said. "I was right."
John began law school that fall, which was part of the plan, and in late August of 1973 he passed the bar on his first try. A week later he went to work as an assistant legislative counsel with the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party. It was nuts-and-bolts work, with a salary next to nothing, but he was prepared to bear the sacrifices. For more than three years he herded legislation through the statehouse, where he discharged favors and tucked away IOUs for future redemption. The war seemed light-years away.
On the morning of their fifth anniversary, John carried Kathy's breakfast into the bedroom on a plastic tray. He caused five red roses to appear under cover of a dish towel.
"It's funny," she said, "you seem different somehow. More relaxed or content or something."
"You think so?"
"Yes. And I'm glad."
John nodded at her. He showed his empty hands, made a move, and displayed a pair of glass earrings. He caused a pair of new white tennis shoes to appear; on the insteps he had written JOHN + KATH, encircling this combination with hearts. All the tricks were working. In the early spring of 1976 he announced his candidacy for the Minnesota State Senate.
"You want to win?" Tony Carbo said. "Obviously."
"I'm talking real wanting. Stomach-wanting."
"It's there," Wade said. "Exactly there, in the stomach."
Tony nodded and pinched a roll of flesh at his chin. They were not close friends, and never would be, but there was a compatibility between them, a precise matching of opposites. Lock and key, Tony called it. They'd met at a party fundraiser two years earlier. A few dinners, a few lunches, and afterward things were assumed.
"Well, beautiful," Tony said. "You're hungry, that's a start. Nothing beats a healthy appetite."
He stared dubiously at one of Kathy's wall hangings, then deposited himself on the couch and looked up at John with a pair of small slanted eyes. As a human specimen he wasn't much. Obese and jowly and yellow-skinned. Now, as always, he wore his standard green corduroy suit and stained red tie. His breath came in shallow gusts.
"So how about it?" John said. "On board?"
"Oh, sure." Tony grinned and glanced over at Kathy. He lit up a cigarette. "Handsome candidate. Spectacular wife."
"I'm not running on handsome."
"Oh, my," Tony said. "Woe is us."
Kathy looked at him with distaste. Tony beamed at her. "So what's the pitch? War hero?"
"No heroics," John said. "Straight issues."
"Oh, I see." Tony leaned back heavily and aimed a smile at Kathy through the smoke. "Well, listen, we've got a problem then, a big one, because you won't find this Mister Issue listed on the ballot. Other guys, sure, but not him." He chuckled. "Thought you wanted to win."
"Not like that," Kathy said.
"Beg pardon?"
"John wants to do things. Accomplish things. That's the point of it."
Tony was still grinning at her. "Spectacular. Didn't I say that? And I appreciate the input, except in the real world you don't accomplish zip without winning. Losers just lose." He rearranged his weight on the sofa. For a few seconds he seemed to be considering a number of amusing options. "This whole game—politics
—it's like hustling a woman. Same principle more or less."
Kathy rolled her eyes but said nothing.
"Wrap your mind around it," Tony said. "You're at a party, say. You spot this hot looker across the room, this real babe, so you wander over and start politicking. Nice firm handshake, look her in the eye. Talk about every damn thing under the sun. Talk about Aristotle and Gandhi, how these guys affected you on a deep personal level, how they changed your life forever. Tell about your merit badges, that terrible experience you had with polio, what a sensitive human being you are, and then after a while, real polite, you invite this broad to dinner. Blow a month's pay, shovel out the oysters and caviar. Pretty soon she starts to owe you. It's never said like that, not direct, but this little pumpkin knows the rules, she knows how the deal works. Code of commerce, so to speak. Anyhow, the whole time you keep talking up your qualifications, how you're nuts about public TV, et cetera, ad shitum. The spiel's important, right? Wining and dining, all the courtship stuff, you got to do it. Because this girl's human just like you and me. She's got an ego. She's got her dignity. I mean, she's a living, breathing piece of ass and you got to respect that."
Tony's gaze slid along the floor toward Kathy.
"A metaphor," he said.
John Wade spent six years in the state senate. Tony ran the campaigns, which were slick and expensive, but the numbers increased nicely over the years, the margins almost tripling between 1976 and 1980.
Among his colleagues in the statehouse, John was regarded as a comer. He knew how to get along with people, how to twist arms without causing fractures. Compromise, he came to realize, was the motor that made government move, and while an idealist in many ways—a Humphrey progressive, a believer in the fundamental human equities—he found his greatest pleasure in the daily routine of legislative politics, the give and take, the maneuvering. Almost by instinct, he knew when to yield and what to require in return. He was smart and discreet. People liked him. Early on, with practice, he cultivated an aspect of shyness in his public demeanor, a boyish quality that inspired trust, and by the end of his first term, in 1980, this and numerous other virtues had been noted in important places. The papers rated him as one of the hot young stars; there was talk about a future at higher levels. John's attitude toward all this was straightforward. He had humane instincts. He genuinely wanted to do good in the world. In certain private moments, without ever pondering it too deeply, he was struck by the dim notion of politics as a medium of apology, a way of salvaging something in himself and in the world.
Still, Tony Carbo was right. Politics was his profession, and there was nothing dishonorable about presenting himself as a winner. He wore expensive suits, watched his weight, nursed friendships where friendships mattered. Slender and sandy-haired, bony in the face, he photographed well, especially with Kathy at his side, and as a public figure he had the sort of presence that made people pay attention. On the dinner circuit he was modest and articulate, but it was never the sort of smoothness that could be mistaken for insincerity. This, too, was something he cultivated—sincerity. He worked on his posture, his gestures, his trademark style. Manipulation, that was still the fun of it.
The state senate ate up huge chunks of time, including weekends and most holidays, and as a consequence his life with Kathy sometimes suffered. They were happy, of course, but it was a happiness directed toward the future. They deferred things. Vacations and children and a house of their own. At night, sometimes, they would pore through a stack of travel brochures, making lists of resorts and fancy hotels, but in the end there was always the next campaign to pay for, the next election, and money was always a problem. They cut back on luxuries. They learned to be versatile with credit cards. In his off hours, and when the legislature was out of session, John supplemented his income with work for a St. Paul law firm, and in the autumn of 1981 Kathy took a full-time job in the admissions office at the University of Minnesota, which helped cover the bills. But even then they felt some strain. At times it seemed as if they were making their way up a huge white mountain, always struggling, sometimes just hanging on, and for both of them the trick was to remain patient, to keep their eyes fixed on the summit where all the prizes were. They tried to be optimistic, but on occasion it was hard to keep believing. They didn't go out much. They didn't have real friends. They rarely found the energy to make love.
"It's strange," Kathy said one evening. "Back in college, we'd just screw and screw, a couple of rabbits. Now it feels sort of—" She bit down as if to check herself. "I don't know. Sometimes it feels like I'm living with this door. I keep trying to get in, I keep pushing, but the damn thing's stuck shut and I just can't budge it."
"I'm not a door," John said. "And I'm not stuck."
"It feels that way."
"Then I'm sorry. We'll fix it."
She looked straight at him. Maybe it was the light, he thought, but her eyes had a strange silvery cast.
"John, listen. I don't know if anything's really sacred to you. Final and sacred."
"Us," he said. "Your tongue, my mouth. No one else's. Forever."
"You aren't keeping anything from me?"
"That's ridiculous."
"Is it?"
"Yes," he said. "Totally."
She glanced away for a second, then sighed and looked back at him. "Except you wouldn't ever tell, would you? I mean, if there were secrets, you wouldn't ever let on?"
John took her in his arms. He feigned a teasing laugh, a clear conscience. He was terrified of losing her, and always had been, but he did not say that.
"Nonsense," he said. "I love you, Kath. We're aces."
"You are clean?" Tony Carbo said.
"I am."
"No ghosts?"
"None."
"But like if there's something in your closet, some deep dark shit with little girls ..."
"Nothing."
"For sure?"
John smiled and said, "Positive."
"Well, let's hope so," Tony said, "because you damn well better be. There's any snot up your nose, somebody'll dig it out and squish the stuff right up against your forehead. Sooner or later, man, it's bound to happen. That means for sure. Small-time politics, you can hide the boogers. Not in the big leagues."
"I understand."
"So you're safe?"
John looked away for a moment. A red ditch flashed across his field of vision.
"Right," he said. "Safe."
Tony nodded and picked up a notepad. "What about religion? You've got religion, I hope to Christ."
"I'll find it."
"Lutheran."
"Fine with me."
"Terrific. Church once a week, ten o'clock sharp." Tony flicked his eyebrows. "I got this feeling we're gonna have a god-fearing Lutheran for lieutenant governor."
Again, John Wade won big, by more than 60,000 votes, then spent the next four years cutting ribbons. Predictably, the lieutenant governorship was a do-nothing job, worse than tedious, but from the beginning he viewed it as little more than a stop along the way. He ran errands, paid attention to his party work, kept his face in the papers. If a Kiwanis club up in Duluth needed a luncheon speaker, he'd make the drive and tell a few jokes over chicken fricassee and give off a winner's golden glow. Already he had his sights locked on the U.S. Senate. The future seemed sweet; he could smell it. In July of 1982 Kathy told him she was pregnant.
In bed that night John held her close. They were young, he told her. Plenty of time. They were near the top of that mountain they'd been climbing, almost there, one last push and then they'd rustle up a whole houseful of kids.
In the morning John made a phone call.
Forms were signed.
A freckled young doctor explained things, then sent them out to the waiting room. Kathy paged through magazines while John tried to concentrate on a framed print of grazing cattle.
When the nurse called her, Kathy smoothed out her skirt and stood up.
"Well," she said. "Keep an eye
on my purse."
John watched a swinging door compress the air behind her. And then for an indeterminate period of time he sat appraising the grazing cattle. Curiously, he felt the beginnings of sorrow, which perplexed him, and it required effort to direct his thoughts elsewhere. A few phone calls, maybe. Check in with Tony. He looked around for a telephone, half rising, but then some strange force seemed to press him back into the chair. The room wasn't quite solid. Very wobbly, it seemed. And suddenly, as though caught in a box of mirrors, John looked up to see his own image reflected on the clinic's walls and ceiling. Fun-house reflections: deformations and odd angles. He saw a little boy doing magic. He saw a college spy, madly in love. He saw a soldier and a husband and a seeker of public office. He saw himself from inside out and upside down, the organic chemistry, the twisted chromosomes, and for a second it occurred to him that his own stability was at issue.
At supper that night he tried to describe the experience to Kathy. Except it was hopeless. He couldn't find the words. Kathy's eyes went skipping across the surfaces of things.
At one point he suggested taking a drive.
"Drive?" she said.
"If you're up to it."
Kathy regarded him without expression. Her hair was blond and curly, thinning slightly, the corners of her eyes worn by their years together.
"All right," he said, "no drive."
They sat in silence. It was mid-July, warm and humid, and for a long while there was only the sound of knives and forks.
"Kath," he finally said. Then he stopped and said, "We did the right thing."