He took a little mock bow.
Elton came over to check it out. “What was that shit?”
“You liked it?”
“Let me do the next one.”
Deb yelled at them to be careful, and they yelled back Sure, sure. It felt good to ignore her, the two of them in silent agreement because this was what women did, they were natural killjoys. Ray showed him how to load the shell. “Now back off, give it room and watch yourself when it comes down. Jeez, your mom’ll scalp me if you get hurt.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Elton too excited, getting too close when he lit the thing and Ray had to yank him back, WOOSH.
This one was red and white and blue, a spray of glitter and sparks high overhead. Oh say can you see. Fourth of July just an excuse for some good old sky magic. Doors slammed. Neighbors came out to see what the hell was going on. A mild cheering. Everybody liking the show. The Triple Break, three separate BANGETY-BANG white waterfalls. They shot off some smaller bottle rockets and percussive pieces, a cluster of booming and popping white lights. The air had a gunpowder smell. Smoke drifted along the ground.
“What’s this one?” Elton demanded, and Ray said he didn’t exactly know, but there was a way to find out. It turned out to be a flare that shot up, whizzbang, and landed in the yard behind theirs, a little too close to the house for comfort. Nobody was home so it didn’t matter. Then the loading tube fell over sideways when they lit the next shell and that might have turned out bad, then the fuse fizzled. Tricky shit but no harm done and that’s what counted.
“Where’d you get this stuff?” Elton, impressed in spite of himself, forgetting his fat-boy coolness.
“Ah, downtown.” Same guy he bought his pot from. There was no reason to advertise that. He felt for the joint in his shirt pocket. It was criminal not to be under the influence.
Dark enough now that Deb couldn’t see him from the back porch. He fired the joint with his back turned to Elton, a feeble attempt at hiding, then he thought that was stupid, and because they were having such a good time being guys together, the way they almost never did, he passed it over to Elton, who sucked it down like a champ.
Ray dawdled a little, letting the pot do its thing. He was loose, expansive, peaceful, ready to appreciate the full potential and possibilities of this here beautiful light show. That magic holy high, the pure mindlessness of it. Him and Elton both with a case of the stoned giggles. Slaphappy, trying to get the launcher positioned exactly right.
“I got it,” Ray told him, and he did, he could handle it, it was nothing new. Plenty of times back in the good old war, they’d light up all kinds of shit while lit up. Ordnance, tracer rounds, phosphorous grenades. Every day a twisted Fourth of July, or some big stoned carnival, with the other side getting prizes for knocking you over. Some guys, the most serious burnouts, were way way into speed, had eyes like fried eggs, skin that had stopped sweating, skin like chalk. Some guys smoked heroin packed into cigarettes. He tried that once but it just made him fall asleep. He never saw one goddamn Vietcong. It was just ready, aim, fire, miss everything. Big whomping rockets shook the ground. You couldn’t tell who launched them, your side or theirs, but if one of them hit you, made you go up in the air and come down like snow, what the hell did it matter?
He didn’t like to admit it, but aside from the getting-shot-at part, and the whole obscenity of the war itself, he’d actually kind of liked the army. It was the closest he’d come to a tribe.
They got the fuse going and the rocket fizzed and whizzed, climbed and broke open into the biggest brightest sizzling silver star he’d ever seen. A little murmer of ooh and aah came from the people watching, but then they were silent. The star broke apart into long tails of white shimmer, drifting down and down, bright, perfect, gone.
Then they started running out of luck. He didn’t notice right away. Still lost in the admiration of it all.
“Sir? Sir?”
Elton? But he was gone. Sidling away all casual toward the house and then, total chickenshit that he was, probably right out the front door. Nope, this was the Man, strolling up the driveway like he was an invited guest.
“Sir? I need to talk to you.”
Ray put on a smile, though it was too dark for the officer of the law to see it. But a smile rearranged your posture, made it less likely you’d get punched out or arrested or some other bad shit. You were just a harmless, well-meaning citizen, lacking any criminal intent. That was when he realized he was holding his lighter in one hand and a big ass rocket in the other.
The cop sounded pissed off. You could tell he was tired of chasing down a bunch of stupid fireworks. “All right. You want to give me the rest of your toys?”
“Ah . . .” Ray looked at the rocket in his hand, frowning, trying to suggest that the hand was an independent agent or third party, nothing he was responsible for. “Yeah, sure.”
“All of them, smart guy.”
“This is all that’s left.” Could he smell the pot on him? He could see the headlines now. Police hero busts drugs and explosives ring. Fuck it. Really.
The cop took the rocket, shone a flashlight around the yard, looking. Nothing but the peeled and charred paper scraps, leftover wrappings, and his stupid, slug-infested garden.
“You want to tell me where this came from?”
“Some guy, guy on a corner selling it.”
“Let’s take a hike, you and me.”
He stopped to light a cigarette, hoping it would cover up the pot smell, and followed the cop down the driveway to the street. Deb was watching from the kitchen and he tried to make his walk slow and uncaring. Gave her a little wave, a tip of his imaginary hat. He heard the back door shut.
The cop had his squad car pulled up to the curb, idling, parking lights on. He opened the front passenger door. “Get in.”
He dropped the cigarette to the curb. Front seat probably meant he was going to get a ticket or a fine, not a trip downtown. No big deal. He took in the leather seat, polished by a generation of cop butts, the ample legroom, the green dashboard light illuminating the blocky looking dash and gearshift and the cop radio making its static noises. Plymouth Gran Fury, he guessed, a 360 with a two-barrel carb.
The cop opened his door, got in, and switched the dome light on. He had a heavy, gray face, an old dude who’d seen it all and didn’t like any of it.
“ID.”
He raised up off the seat to get to the wallet in his back pocket, extracted his driver’s license and handed it over. “Iowa,” the cop said. “You’re a long way from home.”
“That’s a fact.” Getting busted for kiddie shit. How stupid was that. So-and-so could screw up a wet dream, people used to say about somebody or other who never did anything right.
“What brings you all the way out here?” The cop was holding his license with one hand while he wrote with the other. It was just a question, but with judgment held in reserve, as if not staying in Iowa was some kind of suspicious circumstance.
“Ah, no good reason. Got out of the army, wanted to see the world. Nice town, Seattle. The three or four days a year it doesn’t rain.” This was pretty much the truth. He didn’t have too many good reasons for anything.
The cop either had no opinion about this or couldn’t be bothered to answer. “I got drafted,” Ray offered. “‘Greetings.’ I always thought I had a heart murmur, but the army doctor didn’t find it. So I was a lucky guy, huh?”
He wanted another cigarette. The street was quiet now that the fun was over. A steep slope climbed to the big intersection two blocks away, and the little houses gave the impression of struggling to keep from sliding downward. What was he doing here, anyway?
“Lucky,” the cop said. Conversation over.
“Yeah, guess the army has to have you a hundred percent healthy before they kill you off.”
The cop finished writing. He tore off a perforated card and handed it back with Ray’s license. “This is your citation. You’ll be notified of your court date in t
he mail.”
“Seriously?”
“Call the clerk of court in ten days, see if it gets dismissed. The only reason I’m not taking you in is I don’t feel like driving out of my way. If you were old enough to be in the service, you’re old enough not to shoot off illegal explosives. And don’t give me any reason to come out here again. No more stupid stuff. You understand me?”
He guessed that meant the pot. “Yes, officer. Thank you.” Prick. He’d almost rather get arrested than have to kiss up.
The cop radio came to life, a woman’s garbled voice transmitting instructions to somebody answering back. Ray said quickly, “Hey, is it all right if I sit here a minute more, give the wife a chance to cool down?” He didn’t know why he said wife, except it sounded more convincing.
He could see the cop trying to decide, irritated again, like this went on all the time, people wanting one thing or another: a break, a favor, let this one slide. “You can sit here while I finish my log.”
“Thanks. Cigarette?” He shook one loose from his pack, held it out.
“You can sit but you can’t smoke.”
He put the pack away. He wondered if Deb was watching from the house. Probably not. Nothing he did, good or bad, made any difference to her anymore.
“Wish I’d never started. Two packs a day, that’s a real ball and chain.” He knew he should just keep quiet, he should always keep quiet, but he never did. “Didn’t hardly smoke at all before the army got its hooks in me. They shouldn’t make cigs so cheap at the PX. Bad policy. Healthwise.”
He waited for the cop to say something about that, yes or no or who gives a rip. The cop just kept writing. Ray laughed just so the echo of his voice wouldn’t be left hanging out there. “Yeah, then they ship your ass to the war and it’s a very, very funky place, and the last thing you want to do is give up on your cig habit and get the shaky nerves.”
In the house behind him, a light went on in the bathroom, then off again. It wasn’t his house. He was just living there for a while.
“Saigon,” he said, trying to make the word last in his mouth, taste it again. It tasted like a flower dipped in hot smoke. “Good old Saigon, now, that was like you died and went to sin heaven. Parties going on day and night. Pretty ladies. Card games, hootchy-kootchy, all the gin in the world.” He’d only been there once and he’d got sick drunk. In his memory, rooms, faces, revolved around him like a kaleidoscope.
“Yes indeedy,” he said, continuing his one-side conversation. It pissed him off that the cop was so good at ignoring people. A little interest, a little attention, was that so much to ask? Nobody wanted to hear about Vietnam anymore. It was as if it had happened to some different, humiliated country. Nobody wanted to believe it was guys like him who’d worn the uniform, carried weapons, stood posts, took fire.
“Saw a guy once, the jungle rot got into his tongue and burned a hole in it. He used to put chopsticks through it, wave ’em around. Another guy, this lieutenant, he ejected from his F-4 and broke all the bones in both feet, and by the time somebody found him, the bones had set wrong and his feet were all deformed. They looked like crabs. You’d see weird shit like that all the time.”
You did and you didn’t. Some things he had seen himself, others had been related to him by somebody who’d seen them, and other stories were regarded as a kind of community property. Nobody believed anything that really happened there because somebody else always came up with a better story.
“I was with a commando unit. Not Green Berets. Shadow Warriors. We ate Green Berets for breakfast. Very small, five-man teams. We were used for stealth missions. Times they needed somebody to go into Uncle Ho’s backyard, do reconnaissance or retrieve personnel or ‘handle with extreme prejudice.’ That’s what they called assassinations. Supposed to be top secret but hell, the war’s over. Or it was the last time I looked.”
He needed a smoke so bad, his brain itched. All he had to do was get out of the cop car. All he had to do was stop talking, keep from burning a hole in his tongue. “You had to do things. War things. We caught this spy. Double agent. He’d messed with my lieutenant. The man took it personal. Guys like him, it was always personal. His nickname was Skull. That tells you something.”
The war was over. Everybody lost. “Things didn’t work out so good for Mr. Spy. Skull set up a meeting with him. Little shack, middle of nowhere. He thought it was just him and Skull until the rest of us showed up. You could say, five on one, not much of a fair fight. But it wasn’t a fight, it was punishment. A warning to every other scumbag spy out there. And it was a chain-of-command thing. ‘Ours not to question why, ours but to do or die.’” He couldn’t remember where that came from, where he’d heard it.
You’d like to think if it was you, you wouldn’t beg for your life. You’d be some hero. Hero. What was the opposite of hero, villain? Words nobody used, except maybe in comic books.
“We had a roll of razor wire. Wrapped it around him. Head to toe and everything in between. Had some wood skewers about yay long. Long enough to go in through the nose and out the eye. I think that’s what killed him. Least, I think he was dead. I didn’t stick around to find out.”
The cop had stopped writing. His pen made a blot of ink where he’d left off. “Get out,” he said. “And get your nut-job self back to Iowa. Bunch of goddamn animals. They should keep you in cages.”
Ray stepped out onto the curb and watched the cop car move away, slow at first, then fast enough so the big smooth engine displaced the air with a stinging sound.
The front door was unlocked and he let himself in and bolted it behind him. The bedroom was dark. Deb wasn’t asleep but she was hoping he’d think she was. He knew that and he was just as glad. He got a cigarette going and walked through the kitchen, where the dinner dishes were just as they’d left them, food hardening on the plates, a mess in the sink.
The back door was stubborn about opening and closing, some complaint in the hinges that he should have got around to fixing by now but hadn’t. He forced it open and stepped out into the yard. A scrim of low cloud was moving across the stars. It was always either raining here, or was about to rain, or had just finished raining. It was a stupid soggy miserable place to be.
He used the hoe to chop down every worthless cornstalk, laying them all flat, then he pulled the tomatoes and pepper plants up by the roots and hacked at them with the blade until there was nothing left but a heap of wilting trash.
It had been either Idaho or Montana, one of those big brown states, in a field next to the highway. Skull wanted to prop the guy up against a fence so people driving past would see him. A lesson to any other smart operator. A cold night. The layer of sweat underneath his clothes turning cold. They were all tired. It was numbing, stupid, hard work, the effort required to reduce a human body to this state. Sound buzzed in his head, went away, roared back. Skull said Hurry the fuck up, did they want somebody coming by, stopping? It was understood that Skull had a particular effect in mind, a display, a tableau, and they were screwing it up with their lack of diligence and speed. But so much skin had been removed that nothing was easy to manage, and Skull got impatient and said to go get a goddamn rope
and then a piece was missing, blotted out or lost, because he was running, with an idiot’s clumsiness, something coming out of his mouth, noise? blood?
and then he was on his back in the middle of a field with a twig working its way inside his shirt and something thick caked under his nose and a pale, dusty sky overhead and nobody else there, except a circling blackbird on lazy wings high, high up. He was alive. He was alone. Wherever you went, it was Indian country.
Iowa
OCTOBER 1979
“Big boy bed.”
“That’s right. Matthew has his very own big boy bed, and he stays in it all night long.”
He wasn’t convinced. He didn’t trust her. His face bunched into a sorrowful knob.
“Do you need to go potty, sweetheart? You sure? Look, Pooh Bear’s sleepy. L
et’s turn off the light so he can sleep.”
“Car light!”
“You want the car light?” Anita reached up and switched it on. This was a night-light in the shape of a race car, glowing red and yellow, with oversize tires and fins. The room was decorated in a car motif. The sheets and coverlet were dark blue with a parade of antique cars. The curtains showed dogs driving sporty convertibles. The dogs’ ears were outstretched, to indicate speed. Their mouths were open and their tongues extended, to signify enjoyment.
Matthew didn’t want Pooh Bear. He said he wanted Daddy. Anita pointed out that he had already said good-night to Daddy. Matthew shoved his knuckles into his eyes. He wanted Daddy Daddy Daddy.
“All right. But then it’s night-night time, mister. No more excuses.”
Anita used both hands to lift herself up from the low mattress. Sometimes she lay down with Matthew and they both fell asleep together. She was starved for sleep. It was as real as any other hunger.
Jeff was watching football in the den. He’d mixed himself a drink and it rested on a coaster within reach of his hand. The footrest of the La-Z-Boy was up and his legs were extended straight out. There was something stupid and self-satisfied about his comfort. She stood to one side of the television. “Matthew wants you.”
“He’s supposed to be in bed by now.”
“He’s in bed and he wants you to tuck him in.”
“Huh.”
She waited. The football game reached some point of great drama, and Jeff leaned forward to watch it. The television made its excited noise.
The Year We Left Home: A Novel Page 7