“A fox! I’ve never seen a fox in the woods.”
“You’ve got to be quiet. You just sit still and all sorts of things appear.”
“How can you be quiet with that crazy dog of yours?”
“He’ll lay still if I sit with him and scratch his ears.”
“Well then, so will I.”
“Oooh! Scratch your ears!” He laughed.
“Come and walk with you,” she giggled.
“Would you let me take you to that inn up in Towanda tonight? For a real ah, you know, birthday dinner.”
“I’d like that. Did you get a job or something?”
“No. If I want one I can. My sister-in-law can get me one with Mr. Hartley if I want to get my real estate license, and Mr. Lloyd offered me a spot selling cars at his Autoland. I can also get on at the old slat factory but ... I wouldn’t work for any of em. I keep thinking I should go back, get my degree but I ... well, you know, with this thing with McShane.”
“Are they going to arrest you?”
“I don’t think so. A few people told the police he threw the first punch. But I think he might try to have me pay the medical bills. I shouldn’t have hit him. I don’t know why I did. He was pathetic. What about you? What’d your father say?”
“He called his friend in California to see if he could get me a job with him.”
“What’d he say?”
“Just, ‘Maybe.’”
“That’d be neat. You’d get out of here.”
“I wrote to Jimmy and told him and asked him if he’d like to live in California when he came home. I also told him that we were seeing each other. That it was strictly platonic.” Again she giggled. “I said you were my buddy.”
That night he again dreamed of a ground attack on his position, of lying in ambush across the mud road from Stacy, of sensing movement under the canopy, of soldiers breaking out from the vegetation, of Joe Akins and now Montgomery McShane and Wap’s sister, Joanne, charging, sprinting, he aiming in, now on his own sister, squeezing the trigger and BAM! ROUNDS SLAMMING INTO HIS LEG, HIP, CHEST. His force withdrawing, leaving him. “DON’T ...” Then triage.
He tossed, bolted upright. The skin of his head felt tight, his nostrils pulled shut by the tension. He got up, pissed, smoked, drank half a pint of whiskey, watched the moon, the night, angrily, sadly, till dawn.
In early August Wapinski thought of telling Red his dream. He’d had it in one form or another half a dozen times in the past two weeks. And he and Red were becoming, he thought, more than just buddies. But he couldn’t tell her. So he related other stories.
“There was one incident, up on Highway One,” he said. “Up at Quang Tri.”
“I know where that is,” Red said. “Jimmy was in Quang Tri.”
“Yeah. Same place. I was up there for a short time as kind of a liaison to a Marine unit. It was incredible. Damn NVA kept blowing up the bridges over the Cua Viet River. The Marines had opened up a base up there. Small base. I don’t even think it had a name.
“I was there waiting for a bird back to Evans. I think I was going back to Evans. Maybe Eagle. I don’t remember now. At that time I was up there a lot. Sometimes Quay, my interpreter, would be with me but this time I was alone. There was a platoon of Marines on the section of the perimeter where the gate was and where the pad was. Helicopter pad. Red! Do you understand?”
“I think so. When you just said pad I didn’t.”
“Okay, anyway. There was the gate, and a guardhouse.” Wapinski leaned back and shut his eyes. He could see the base. “There’s the bunkers. I’m sitting by the pad by the gate. Comin up the road there’s a six-by. A big truck. And it’s full in back with ARVN troops. All wounded. All wounded, Red. All bad wounds. God, I can see em. I can see these two ARVN soldiers. One’s cradling the other in his arms. The one being held is a mess. A MESS! All blown to pieces. They’re all wounded. There’s got to be forty of em in the truck. I found out later that they were on a bridge that got blown up while they were on it. I think they were in another truck and it rolled over on some of em cause these guys weren’t just hit, you know, not just shrapnel. That would of been bad enough. But half of em were crushed. There was a Marine sergeant at the gate and he saw em and he brought em in. And this fucking colonel, I’m sorry but that’s the only word....”
“It’s okay.”
“This son of a bitch comes out and tells this sergeant to get that gook truck off his base. Tells this kid to send these guys back out. And the sergeant, he just stood there. I think he was in shock. But his men made the truck turn around and go back out the gate. These guys are dying. I remember now. There were two colonels on the base. One with a Marine Air Wing Group and one was battalion commander of Second of the Fourth Marines. Two-Four was the outfit on the perimeter.
“I think it was the Air Wing colonel who made them turn the ARVNs away. But he left on a bird for someplace. This sergeant, God bless him, as soon as that SOB left he brought the ARVNs back in and he must have got the other colonel’s permission, or somehow, anyway, he got two medevac birds. And they took the ARVNs out to Quang Tri hospital.
“That took guts, Red. That kid had guts. I’d of had im in my unit any day. But those ARVNs. After they got them off the truck, the truck pulled out of there. And I watched it. I was looking at it. The tailgate was down. I don’t know why I was looking at it. It lurched forward and a wave of blood just came out the back and splatted in the dirt.”
By mid-August both Red’s and Bob’s attitudes changed. Bob lightened up again. Red was hurt. She had gotten a letter from Jimmy Pellegrino answering hers where she had told him that she’d been talking to Bob. That they’d become buddies.
“He doesn’t believe me,” she said indignantly.
“I don’t blame him,” Bob said.
“Why?”
“Look what happened to me. A lot of guys over there get Dear Johns. I think if Stacy had sent me one, maybe the first month, or, I don’t know. But I think it would have been easier than walking into what I walked into.”
“But we’re not doing anything.”
“No, we’re not,” Bob agreed. He felt a tinge of guilt that he was causing this man that he didn’t know anguish over his fiancée. But he also felt, felt for the first time since the very first time Red had gotten into the car with him, that he really did want to do something. He liked Red. They got along well. He was not in love with her. He was still in love with Stacy and he knew that. But he also felt that he needed a woman and Red, engaged or not, was available. “But he doesn’t know that.”
“Would you write to him and tell him? He’d believe you.”
“I ... I’d like ... Hmm. Yeah, if you want me to. Of course....” He backed up and gave her a silly, leering grin, then arched and lowered his eyebrows.
“Bob!” She punched him in the arm, feigning offense.
They drove to Mill Creek Falls, through town and up to High Meadow. It was Red’s first time to the farm and it was Grandpa Wapinski’s birthday. The early evening was overcast, humid, the wind was sporadic as if either a thunderhead was building or a front was approaching. Josh met the car as they drove in, tail wagging most of his body.
“Hi ya, Josh,” Bob said. He hugged the dog. Josh tried to escape, pulled back, the loose skin of his neck rippling in thick folds behind his head. “Go ahead. Go get Granpa.”
“So you’re the little lady,” Pewel Wapinski began, “that’s got Bob’s eye. Well, I can see why.”
Red laughed coyly, flashed her green eyes at the old man. “Happy Birthday, Mr. Wapinski,” she said. “It’s an honor to be invited to have dinner with you.”
“You call me Pa. That mister stuff makes me feel old. I’m only eighty.”
“I told her,” Bob said, “that she could only stay for dinner if she agreed to wash the dishes.”
“I don’t know,” Pewel said. “Maybe she and I could talk some after dinner and you’ll do the dishes. Anyway, dinner will be ready in a bit. You
two can stay out here till I’m finished if you’d like.”
“I think I should come in and help,” Red said. “A man shouldn’t have to cook his own meals.”
“Red is it. You sure do have some hair there, Red. I’ve cooked for myself for fifteen years. I’m pretty good at it.”
When Grandpa left, Red said to Bob, “Oh, he’s just the sweetest old man.”
“He is,” Bob said. “He really is. But he’s really not what you think of when you think of eighty. He’s more like sixty. He’s so damn strong. I think if my grandmother were still alive he’d be even younger-looking. She was a great lady. I think of them more as my mother and father than I do my mom. I didn’t know my dad.”
They meandered to the back porch, sat on the step. The wind was a little stronger. Josh jumped up, began chasing a tiny whirlwind full of leaves. He barked at it, then jumped on it but it disappeared. Bob and Red started to laugh, and Josh rolled over, yipped, sprang up and began stalking a second dust devil. He approached it more slowly this time, then snapped his teeth into it but it just kept whirling. He stood on three legs, tried to pat it with a paw but it vanished. A third whirlwind swished up in the yard. Josh sat down, cocked his head, whined. His whole nose wrinkled in puzzlement.
Red and Bob laughed, then Bob excused himself and went in to check on dinner.
“There’s a card for you there,” his grandfather said. “Looks a little official.”
Bob picked the envelope from the desk in the living room. He sighed. He had a fair idea what it contained. Carefully he peeled the flap back, found the invitation to Stacy’s wedding and a short note in her meticulous hand.
Dear Rob,
The enclosed invitation is for you, for your information, not to invite you to the wedding. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I didn’t mean to. Jerry is a nice man. I know you’d like him if circumstances were different. You didn’t fight very hard.
Love Always,
Stacy
That night, after they made love on the back seat of Grandpa’s Chevy, Red cried. She couldn’t stop. All she would say was, “I love you” and “Please hold me.” Again and again. She could not tell him that she was crying for Jimmy. But Bob knew.
5
PHILADELPHIA, WEDNESDAY, 14 AUGUST 1968—Tony reviewed it, reheard it, relived it. The hallway, the ward, painted two-tone drab, gray above putrid green, government SOP. “I want em to cut em off the rest of the way.” Rick’s voice. An inversion layer had settled over the city, had clamped down the humidity, locked in the exhausts and odors, echoed back the cacophony of sirens and horns and trucks, trains, cars, construction, kids screeching, irate women, men, workers, mothers, and rock ’n’ roll. Inversion layer condensing it all into the gully of the hospital grounds, ramming it through the barred windows of the basement ward, barred as if a prison.
The first whiff had knocked the zeal from him, knocked the jive from his step even before he entered. His thought of singing, “I’m - A - Mag - Ni - fi - cent - Bastard: You’re - a Bas - tard - Too!” was dashed, crushed, enveloped in the humid reek before he even saw a single dressing.
How do these guys stand it? he’d thought.
The guy in the bed next to Rick’s had groaned, pain-killer-doped groan. Pisano had wanted to look, couldn’t. He’d gone to see Rick because Rick had been in 2–4, had been wounded at Dai Do. He didn’t know Rick, hadn’t known him in Nam. They’d been in different companies. Still, Rick was his combat brother. Tony felt he owed Rick the visit but he had not expected the scene, the heat, the smell, the bitterness. These wounded were different than battlefield wounded. Somehow, with just-wounded, he’d always had an image of repair, recovery. Like his own thigh. Or quick death. But these broken bodies, he’d thought, they’re dead but death forgot to take em.
Tony Pisano lay on his rack in the room he shared with Christopher Crocco at his new duty station. Assignment in Philly should have been ideal, could have been had he been given the duty to which he was assigned—section leader of the guards for the Marine Detachment at a substation near the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. But they’d made him a driver and he’d spent his first weeks in modified dress blues, dress pants with the red stripes, tropical khaki shirt and white hat, looking sharp, driving Lieutenant Kevin Mulhaney and a priest or a minister or a rabbi—the local notification team—to the homes of area Marines killed in Viet Nam. If the family chose military burial, Tony Pisano, USMC sergeant, three months shy of twenty-one, would be the NCOIC, the noncommissioned officer in charge—color guard, family assistance, peon, jerk. He’d rather have spent his last year in the Corps on KP cleaning grease traps on the giant kitchen stoves at Parris Island. He’d rather have been shot himself than have to visit Rick from 2–4.
“Rat!”
Tony’s head had snapped away from Rick to the end of the ward where the commotion was. “Shit,” Rick had grumbled. Bullshit, Tony had thought. He viewed it again as he lay on his rack. “Rat!” the man had screamed. The ward was depressing, not dirty. “Rat!” Tony’s eyes focused on the sheet covering the man, on the white dressings, on the barred windows and the view of grass and a single tree outside and two men in light blue pajamas thumping along on crutches. He reviewed it but he could not see anything of the ward except the end of Rick’s bed and the white shrouded commotion, and he again thought, “Bullshit,” but he wasn’t sure and the last thing he had was the fortitude or desire to challenge what a legless body claimed. Lying on his rack he realized there were alternatives to challenging, like exploring, but in the ward he’d been dumbfounded.
“Up to here,” Rick said. Tony looked back at him. Rick drew his hand across the crease between his abdomen and upper thigh. “That way I won’t have to carry it or feed it.” Rick turned his head away. Then he looked back. “They don’t fuckin understand, Man. They either ignore us or shut us up.”
“Maybe—” Tony tried, “maybe they can’t handle it.”
“Can’t handle what?!” Rick snapped. “Can’t handle Dai Do? Can’t handle me tellin em I shot a dozen of them fuckers and they kept fuckin comin? I killed a dozen, Man, but those motherfuckers kept comin at me and I keep killin em every night and they keep comin and my ammo runs out!”
“I know.” Tony said it quietly.
“How the fuck do you know?!” Rick’s breaths were coming hard, fast.
“I was there, Man. Remember? I was there when we ran out.”
“Well, fuck! So tell these assholes.”
Tony had hung his head. He hated this, hated being there, feared it as if it were contagious. Hated the situation because he didn’t have any more words to say. Hated himself for hating it. Hated that he couldn’t come in and cheer Rick up, cheer up the entire ward, give them back their limbs. He was not a member of this club. Not even close. A few pieces of shrapnel, a ripped quadricep, all nice and clean and mostly healed, doesn’t put one in the club with a guy with a shattered spine, no feet, begging to have his legs cut off.
“It’s dead meat.” Rick had looked back at him. “Dead fuckin meat, Pisano.”
“Fuck,” Tony had said. “What am I supposed to say? Hope it don’t rain?”
“Yer not suppose to say nothin,” Rick had said bitterly. “Just tell my fuckin Doc to cut my legs off.”
“You don’t want that, Man—” Pisano had begun.
“Tell im to cut em off here,” Rick screamed. He drew his hand across his throat.
Tony lay in uniform, eyes closed, flat on his back, his pillow on the floor, his hands side-by-side, right on his abdomen, left at the base of his sternum. His pulse beat hard, again, not fast, just hard enough to jolt his rack—DUB DUB DUB—banging steadily, hard, not hard enough to jolt his awareness away from each thought that flitted into his head. Rick, Stacy, Maxene, Annalisa, Lieutenant Mulhaney and his Welcome Back to the World Mickey Mouse horseshit, amputees, burials.
DUB DUB DUB. He tried to clear his head but had little control over thoughts bounding in, jouncing out. She kissed me, he s
aid to himself. He tried to force an image of Stacy into his imagination. He’d thought about her often during the past three weeks, about the kiss. She was beautiful, seemed to like him. He could not explain to himself why he’d fled, why he’d felt so angry at Pellegrino. Perhaps she’s just too much for me, he thought. Too classy for a bastard like me. DUB DUB. There was a village ... south of Dong Ha. Lots of children. A lovely young woman. DUB DUB. I wish I had a woman, he thought to himself. He squeezed his eyes hard, tensed his neck, shoulders, abdominals, let the muscles slowly relax. What’s happenin, Pisano, he thought. You can’t even talk to a guy from 2–4 cause he’s got no legs. Can’t even relate to him. And this burial shit and Mulhaney. I should grease that fucker. I should go back.
Crocco came in from the showers. Tony did not move, did not open his eyes. He knew it was Crocco from his breathing. “Hey, paesan, get your ass up.” Crocco banged his wall locker. “Come on. Let me buy ya a beer.”
Pisano remained still.
“Tony,” Crocco put his foot on Tony’s cot, shook it, making the steel legs vibrate on the highly polished tile floor, “what’s going on with you? You’re a good time guy. How come you’re bein so angry? Where’s this all comin from, Man? If it’s Mulhaney, fuck im. He’s an asshole. Don’t let him get to ya.”
Pisano opened his eyes without moving, without allowing any expression to reach his face.
“Hey, it’s your anniversary,” Crocco said. “Come on. I’ll buy. What’d he do now?”
Pisano sat up. “That motherfucker, Chris. He’s been riding my ass since the day I got here. I’m goina waste him.”
“FUCK Mulhaney! Man!” Chris’ arms snapped forward accenting his words. “Ya only go over three once. Don’t let him get to ya. Do I gotta tell ya that ever day?”
“That son of a bitch. You see that candyass’s uniform? One fuckin ribbon. One fuckin firewatch ribbon. He’s never been anywhere, and he aint ever goina make it anywhere. Where’s he get off given me CQ tonight?!”
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