By twilight Daley once again believed in Lady Luck. They had made it through another day without mishap. They were both hungry and they were running out of fresh water, but they were both in one piece.
As the trees thinned and the setting sun’s shafts of golden light poured onto the path they were following, Daley breathed a sigh of relief and quickened his pace. On the other side of this goddamn forest should be the rear echelon. And help, food, shelter, and medical attention for Nick.
Daley was almost running as he broke through a waist-high glut of green vegetation. He stopped abruptly, his breath coming in huffs, and Nick ran into this back. “Well, there it is, Nick. We made it.” Nick came around to Daley’s side. A mile away down a rutted, dusty road was an encampment perched on a slight rise of the land, surrounded by rows of concertina wire.
The two brothers turned away from the sight to watch an army jeep coming toward them, bumping and joggling out of a dust cloud that hung on its tail like a trailing tornado.
“Well, look at this. We got ourselves a ride home.”
Just as the last word left Daley’s mouth a tremendous blast rocked the jeep onto its side. It looked like a child’s toy careening off the road, skidding through weeds, and finally tumbling to its top in a crunch of bending metal.
“Fucking land mine!” Daley shouted. He hurried off for the destroyed heap.
Nick stayed behind, hands at his side, eyes unblinking, steady on the wreck. “Seth did it,” he explained to no one. He spit in the direction of the jeep.
Daley skirted the hollow the explosion had made in the road and rushed to the overturned vehicle.
“Anybody alive in there? Hey, are you hurt?”
He fell to his knees and peered inside while the rear wheels of the jeep whirled madly. The driver was dead.
The arm facing Daley was missing and only a beautiful ivory socket bone showed its white eye. The steering wheel was smashed in two, pressing like an unyielding pillow into the man’s stomach. He was bleeding from the mouth, ears, and eyes.
Daley heard someone groaning and scrambled into the weeds toward the south.
“Hey, man, let me help you.”
A young lieutenant sprawled on his pack, an ugly gash on his forehead bleeding profusely.
“Heh, heh.” The lieutenant pretended to laugh. “The cocksuckers got us, didn’t they?” Another jeep screeched to a halt as four men jumped to the road. Ignoring Nick, they split up, two of them going to the overturned jeep and two, rifles aimed, going to where Daley sat holding the lieutenant’s head in his lap, his hand over the cut.
“It’s Tidwell. Son of a bitch!” one of the men said.
Daley gently lifted the cradled head and let the men carry the wounded soldier to the jeep.
“That one’s a goner,” he called to the men searching the wreckage.
They turned and came toward Daley, their M-14s glinting from the last rays of the sun.
“Where the fuck did you come from? And your buddy over there.” The soldier was upset, he was scared, and he was suspicious.
“We got separated from our platoon near Quang Ngai,” Daley said as he stood up.
“And you made it back?” The solider was incredulous.
“Yeah, we made it back.”
The two men looked with disbelief first at Daley and then across the road to the silent, waiting Nick.
“Him.” The man indicated Nick with his rifle. “He’s got something on him. What’d he do, fall into a shit pond?”
“It’s blood. He needs help. He’s my brother, Nick. Nick Ringer. He…” Daley’s voice faltered, but the look on his face expressed a hidden truth.
“Cracked?” the soldier asked sympathetically.
Daley nodded and started across the road.
The second jeep had made a U-turn and slowed for the two soldiers who had been talking to Daley to jump aboard.
The driver yelled, “We gotta get this man to the medics. Start walking and we’ll be back to pick you up.” Daley lifted a weary hand in acknowledgment. As he neared Nick he heard his brother mumbling. “It’s all over now, Nick,” Daley said, taking his brother by the arm. “The whole goddamn shooting match is over for you. But I want you to remember. Hey…” He shook Nick’s arm to get his attention. “Listen to me. You’re going to be all right. Do you hear me? The killing’s over. That garrote…” Daley touched Nick’s buttoned-up shirt with his fingertips.
“I want you to give it to me. We don’t have to tell them everything.”
“You can’t have it.”
“Now Nick, I’m not screwing around with you. I want you to hand that thing over. I’ll take care of it,” Daley promised.
“What about the demons? They..."
“You can’t kill them with a wire, can you?” Daley interrupted. “Well, can you?” He heard himself shouting and flinched.
Nick lowered his head. Daley looked at the blond, matted hair and remembered the droplets of blood shining in the light of the cigarette lighter. “Give it to me,” he repeated.
Nick undid two buttons and slowly reached inside his shirt. He brought out the garrote and held it before his eyes, mesmerized by its gentle rhythmic swinging.
Daley took the wire from Nick’s fingers and stuffed it into his own shirtfront. He patted Nick on the back and guided him back to the road.
“You killed them with the .45,” Daley said. “Say it.”
“I killed them with the .45.”
“That’s good, Nick. You’re going to be fine.”
“We’re both okay,” Nick said, nodding his head repeatedly.
“Right.”
“Daley?”
“Yeah?” The jeep was nearing, dust swirling in its path.
“Can you make Seth leave me alone?”
“I don’t think so, Nick, but by God, I’ll try my damnedest.”
Nick was working on a tentative smile when the jeep stopped for them. He spit once on the way into the camp. No one seemed to notice or care, except his brother.
CHAPTER 4
Tacoma, Washington
Veterans Administration Medical Center
1975
NICK SAT in the vocational therapy room, the inner workings of a small lamp spread before him on a wobbly card table. They had expected him to make something. He balked at the beginning, and said such idiotic therapy should be reserved for men with paralytic brains. It was no wonder that returning veterans were unemployable, be thought, shuffling the pieces around. What kind of work could a basket weaver, lamp maker, ashtray designer do on the outside anyway?
Shakey was talking to him. He sat to Nick’s right, gluing together Popsicle sticks into the shape of an Apache village. He claimed he was Apache, although no one knew what an Apache village was supposed to look like.
Shakey talked for hours nonstop, flitting from subject to obscure subject. Nick often tuned him out.
“Neutron stars have a density comparable to our sun’s, but their radius is only a few kilometers. Imagine one of them falling on us. Pow! Our tiny planet would be instantly vaporized." Shakey obviously was excited at the prospect.
Nick rolled the lamp socket in his hands, clicking the black button switch on and off. Neutron stars. Now it was a lesson in celestial phenomena. Shakey's knowledge had no end.
Nick studied the older man's face. Heavy jowls, pendulous full lips, hooded salamander eyes that seldom blinked. Shakey had been in Pearl Harbor when the bombs fell. When they retrieved him from the water, he was shaking like an old palsied man. The shaking never stopped. Shakey's tremors sometimes quieted, permitting him to enter the mainstream of life outside the V.A. hospital. When they returned, interfering with whatever job he was able to secure, Shakey would admit himself for a two month stay.
It scorned highly unlikely to Nick that the man would ever get the Popsicle sticks to stand teepee fashion.
Every third one slipped from tremulous fingers and clattered to the floor. There were more sticks around his feet than in the Indian
village.
"Where do you learn all that stuff?" Nick asked.
"Encyclopedias," Shakey said. "Where else?"
"Do you learn everything in the encyclopedias?"
"Not everything. That's not realistic. I know quite a lot though," Shame admitted.
"Why bother? What good’s it gonna do you?"
"Well, knowing things is good for you. Take a neutron star, for instance…”
"You already told me about the neutron star," Nick interrupted.
"Oh, yes, of course. Then what about pre-Columbian art? I can tell you about the classic Maya period. There's a fresco at Bonampak, Mexico..."
“Never mind that. Tell me something else. What are my chances of getting out of here this month? My brother’s coming in from Nam.”
"Pardon me while I consult my crystal ball."
"Come on, Shakey, I mean it. What's the scuttlebutt? You’ve been coming here for years, You know all the shrinks. You can probably predict the release date for any man in this room."
Shakey looked pleased. He slowly scanned the room's occupants. It was true. He did know those things.
"Well? Any guess?" Nick pressed.
"A psycho stays put awhile around here, but I think you're fooling them with true psychopathic ease."
Shakey sounded very sure of himself.
"Cut the doctor talk. I was in combat."
"Nevertheless...you are fooling them." The older man tried to balance two halves of a teepee together.
Nick took them from Shakey's quivering hands and fitted them evenly. He began to glue the Popsicle sticks into a conical shape.
"What makes you think I'm trying to fool anyone?" Nick had dropped his voice to a whisper.
"I spend more time with you than the doctors, Nick. I've been around a long time."
"You think I'm crazy," Nick said flatly.
"Not bad crazy. You're like me. It comes and goes. Mostly it comes. You can't blame combat forever."
"You think I'll get out?" Nick asked again.
"You'll get out."
Nick had been holding the teepee so that it would dry, but suddenly he let it fall. Shakey picked lip the two sections and tried once again.
"That's what I had to know. They wouldn't tell me. I want to go home."
"Where's home?" Shakey asked as the Popsicle sticks flew apart. Discouraged, he swept them from he table,
"Houston."
"You be careful in Houston."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Nick glared, but Shakey was too busy filling a cigar box with the leftover sticks to notice.
“Your disease won’t let you go even if the hospital does. I've seen your kind before. Different problems but all of them sleeping under the same blanket.” Shakey nodded to himself sagely, pursing his lips like a strict schoolmarm.
“What disease?”
"There is an infinite variety of names and categories but it all comes down to plain old insanity. Rather out-of-date, that word, but pertinent." The old man rose from his chair, his great bulk squeezing aside the card table.
Who cares what you think?" Nick caught lamp parts as they rolled near the table's edge. "You know books. You don't know me."
Shakey gave one long blink as he stared down at Nick. An arrogant smile twisted his lips. "I know everything," he claimed, sounding more pontifical than ever. "I especially understand you, Nick. How else would I know you liked beheading those Vietnamese?"
Instantly Nick was on his feet and swinging, but the fat, trembling man was out of range. Nick's fists punched ineffectively at the air.
"How do you know those things? You don't know anything," he shouted at Shakey’s retreating back. ''I don't need you, you know that?" Nick was yelling now and couldn't stop himself. He saw the other men in the room staring and suddenly sat down. He grabbed the lamp wire and wound it around his left hand so tightly his fingertips turned blue. He sat at the card table until he was gently tapped on the shoulder and told to put away his things, therapy was over.
That evening when Nick had some time to himself, Shakey’s accusations returned to haunt him. Had he really enjoyed killing the Vietnamese that night? But he was not a soldier, he was a boy. He was just a boy and...suddenly an old memory stirred in his mind.
At the very back of she property line of the house in Bloomington, Texas, stood a weeping willow, its tentacle-like branches brushing the earth. Nick thought the willow was his secret hideaway where he could brood or daydream or, on his particular day, jerk off. Daley spread apart the branches and discovered his brother lying on his back locked in the throes of a sexual odyssey. Daley left as quickly and quietly as he could.
“Daley! Come back here!” Nick called.
When the willow curtain parted a second time, Nick was sitting up trying to adjust his jeans. “You tell and I’ll beat you to a pulp,” he warned.
Daley’s gaze wandered everywhere but to his brother. “I won’t tell,” he promised.
“I bet you do it too. Come sit with me.”
Daley shook his head, clearly embarrassed. Nick gestured impatiently until Daley sat opposite him, studying his grubby fingernails.
“Don’t lie to me, Daley Ringer. Ain’t nobody your age who ain’t done it. It’s nothing dirty, you know. It’s natural.”
Daley refused to admit he too was no stranger to the joys of masturbation.
“What do you think about when you do it? You think about girls?” Nick asked.
Daley turned his head and watched the green limbs sway in the wind. He had not admitted a thing, but Nick clearly knew anyway.
“Sometimes,” Daley finally said.
“I don’t.”
Daley looked at his older brother in surprise.
“Nah, who cares about sticking it in girls? I think about doing it to a…a goat, sometimes.” Nick’s voice began to falter as he saw from Daley’s face that what he was confessing appalled his brother. A sense of shame engulfed him, and he felt dirty, ugly. “Don’t look at me that way, Daley! I was just joking around. God! Just to see what you’d say, that’s all. Who would want to do it with an animal anyway? I read about it in one of Dad’s books. One of those stupid nasty books. People can’t really do it with goats, I was lying,”
Daley got up slowly. He looked old beyond his years.
“Hey, let’s make a deal, huh?” Nick quickly stood up and tucked in his shirt. "This will be my place and you keep other kids away from it. Okay? You find a place and I'll guard it for you. Good idea, you think?"
"Sure, Nick. That’s a good idea." Daley looked listless and vacant. The two boys ducked beneath the willow curtain and into the June sunshine.
Later that evening a depression had fallen over Nick like dense fog. His confession to his brother could not be erased. It nagged at him and his mood darkened. Self-pity plunged him into despair and he hated everyone. Daley tried to cheer him up by offering to spend his savings of fifty-two cents downtown, to play baseball, to go scouting for treasure in the town dump. Nick kicked the dusty ground with his feet and shook his head at all the suggestions. Finally Daley gave up and went indoors to read comic books.
Nick disappeared for an hour. When he returned home, the depression had lifted. He smiled at his brother sprawled on the floor and sat down beside him to look over the comics.
Daley was acting funny, jerking his head toward the kitchen. Nick tried to read the silent message. "What is it?" he asked. Daley did not have time to answer.
Their mother burst into the room, her face livid and bruised-looking from crying. Suddenly Nick understood his brother’s anxiety.
"Mrs. Gardner called. I'm going to send you off, Nicholas Ringer. Do you hear me? You keep pushing me and by God, I'll send you away from here!” she screamed.
Nick got to his feet, a sullen look creeping into his eyes. So that was it. He had been caught.
"I don’t care what you do," he said defiantly. He was fourteen and taller than his gray-haired mother. She was no threat.
; Daley was standing too. “Ma, please.”
"You shut up. What help are you anyway?” Mary Ringer demanded.
"He didn't mean it, Ma."
"Always taking up for your no good brother. You're supposed to watch him. Your own father left us because of this...this...Nick! Are you listening to me?"
Nick met her stare.
"I should slap your smart-aleck face. Why do you do things like this? I can send you off to a home for juvenile delinquents, you know that, don't you?"
Nick held her stare. Daley touched his mother’s arm, trying to divert her attention.
"You get away from me," she shouted at the younger boy. "I told you to watch him. Now he goes off and gets caught strangling Mrs. Gardner’s dog! You think she's going to overlook it? Why do you do it? Are you just out of your mind?" Her face was turning purple with rage.
Nick saw she was losing control a split second before she raised her hand to him. He was quick as he caught her wrist.
"Don't ever hit me again," he said, growling from deep within his throat.
Their arms trembled for a moment, Nick pitting his new-found strength against his mother. Suddenly she broke his grip and, flinging Daley aside, rushed from the room crying.
"Oh, Nick." Daley sank to the floor. He rolled a comic in his hands, then threw it across the room.
"Don't 'Oh, Nick' me. I don't owe her nothing."
"You wanna get sent sway?”
"She can't do that. She's bluffing. Don't worry about it.” He scooped a Superman comic from the floor and flipped through the pages. Daley did not have to know how relieved he was. "She can't do anything to me. No one can."
#
"No one can," Nick mumbled into his crisp white hospital pillowcase as he squirmed on the bed, remembering that day. His fists were balled, his fingers growing numb. He flung one arm over his eyes. He had been so brave that day. But before that confrontation and during all the years of his childhood he had not been able to defend himself against injustice. There had been so many times when his mother deliberately hurt him one way or another.
He would not think about it. He would not dredge up the old, rotten, sick memories. He would not allow himself to remember that evening Mary Ringer...that evening she… And he was only five, how could she have despised him even then, how could she...?
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