by Chris Lynch
I already know I want to subscribe when I am back in Vietnam.
Page five, there is a two-column feature called “Grunt Speaks Out,” with four individual, unattributed pieces all ringed in together by cartoon barbed wire. One of the blocks of text is circled in green crayon, beside which Beck has written, This is me!
OUR LATEST OFFER
Step up, step up, Navies and Rentalmen, and listen to this latest and greatest offer on the table for all you in-country long-timers, short-timers, and out-of-timers.
Now and for a limited time only — who are we kidding, it’s ALL limited time now — the officer class of the United States Armed Forces is offering an out-of-this-world, never-before-available alternative to absolutely every other option you have previously considered for getting your sorry government-issued self out of this stinking cesspit of a once verdant and vibrant land and back to your own cozy and familiar cesspit BACK HOME!
It’s informally known as the Ho Chi Minh Discharge — and hold on, it’s not one of those hideous conditions you’ve already caught over here but a legitimate(ish), tried and tested, foolproof (proven by actual, honest-to-goodness fools under laboratory conditions) method for being politely but firmly asked to (you’ll need the John Wayne voice here, bless his leathery hide) get outta here, ya big monkey, and don’t come back.
And it’s even fun. All you have to do is get under the skin and up the nose and in the face and on the back of the next know-nothing, care-nothing, risk-nothing officer or NCO who tries to get you to do one more homicidal and/or suicidal absurdity in the name of duty to God and Country and to Mickey Mouse and especially to those hardworking peace negotiators who keep breaking off talks because they don’t like their lab partner or the shape of the table or whether the doughnuts are filled with jelly or Boston cream, which isn’t really cream in the first place.
So, friends, hurry to claim your very own Ho Chi Minh Discharge by rocking that boat, busting those chops, straightening down and flying wrong, or doing whatever else you can think of to do your part in pulling it all apart.
Because somehow they finally figured out that rather than have the malcontents gumming up the works here, it would be better to ship them back to those seats of wickedness like Stanford, or Boston University, or the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and see how they like it.
And remember, kids, if anyone says the word dishonorable, you just smile and salute and shout out, “Thank you, sir, may I have another!”
I am shaking my head as I finish this perplexing unsigned thing and hoping that the other piece is going to be the “funny” one he referred to.
Then I flip to page twenty-three of the twenty-four-page magazine, where the entire page is one article and on it is written, again in green crayon, This is me! This one has a byline, though.
The Ghostwriter.
I know right away this is not the humor piece.
There is hardly a single person here with a gun who has not thought about using it on somebody he is not supposed to.
To kill.
But — to kill only part of that somebody.
To kill the part that is unrecognizable and wrong and new.
The part that is hateful and living like the river leech off the good and sweetest nature.
The part that was born in the conflict here in Vietnam and by all rights should die here….
There’s more. I read it through to the end, and by the end I am reading with the magazine pressed flat to the wall just to hold it steady enough to read it at all.
Then I crunch it up in my fist and run out the door. And run.
I knock and knock and knock to convince myself to go through with it. I am scared enough to wet myself as I stand on this old familiar porch and knock until somebody comes out here and deals with me.
“Morris!” Caesar says, sticking his big man hand right out and shaking my spindly one.
“Is he here?” I croak.
“Nope.”
I am relieved and disappointed in equal, heaping measures.
“Where is he? How is he?”
Caesar whispers his answer heavily at me. “Starting with how, man, I don’t think he is good in any way.”
“I kinda figured that,” I say. “Kinda feared it. So then, the where part?”
“New Hampshire. The shack. He’s gone hunting.”
“Ah, jeez,” I say, feeling my slumping shoulders trying to drag me down to the porch and under it.
“Yeah,” Caesar says. “I don’t like it at all. I was thinking of driving up there. Whatcha think, you wanna come?”
I look up at Caesar’s strong, young, eager, and familiar face.
“Sure,” I say, “why not? Like I haven’t been shot at enough already, right?”
“You are a funny guy, at a good time,” Caesar says, punching my chest and sending me back a few steps across this porch in a way that makes me nostalgic.
“You sure you don’t want to see my folks before we head out?” he asks as he pulls his car out of the driveway.
“I’m very sure. I mean, I would love to see them, but not ’til I see your brother. I just can’t.”
“That’s cool,” he says. “I get that.”
As Caesar’s very seasoned old Rambler Classic station wagon opens it up on Route 93, a blast of black smoke trails behind us, making it look like we are a spy car trying to lose a pursuer. I’m not sure we are going to make it to the New Hampshire state line, never mind the hunting cabin another three hours beyond that.
“This machine going to make it?” I ask.
He laughs. “I’ll trust the machine, and you trust me.”
“That’ll work, I suppose. I remember when this car was your brother’s.”
“I remember when it was my parents’.”
“I remember before that, when it belonged to the priest who died. I think it was still brown, before the paint faded.”
I’m looking at the upholstery, the split down the middle and the tape failing to cover up all the white stuffing. The rotting floorboards look like they are just reinforced cardboard.
“Was it friendly fire, Morris?”
I nearly slip through the floor to the road speeding past below.
I don’t know if I could speak if I wanted to. I know I don’t want to. I stare in the driver’s direction, and he looks at the road as he talks.
“You were there. And Beck was there. Rudi died in your hands. Ivan wasn’t there? The sniper? He was there, and then he wasn’t there? And now he’s —”
“Ivan wasn’t there,” I say with a lot less horsepower than the brownish, smoky Rambler.
Caesar nods, pulls his lips tight.
“I love him anyway. I love him no matter what, and I’ll love him forever.”
It’s a very long and very quiet journey the rest of the way. I could recite the entire Grunt Free Press from memory by the time we stop on the dirt track that leads to the little cabin with the big man in it.
I am so terrified of sneaking up and setting off bad things that I start calling his name out when we are still several hundred yards out. When we are seventy-five yards out, I get a response.
Bang!
A bullet cracks into a thin silver birch tree nearby, and I freeze where I am. I look to my side and see that if I reach out my right hand I can touch the wounded tree. I note as well that the slug hole is exactly at my eye level.
I turn around to face Caesar about five yards back.
“Think he meant to hit me?” I ask.
“Since he does still have one eye and you are still standing, I have to say no.”
I walk back to him and say as big-brotherly and Ivanishly as I can muster, “I want to go in first by myself. We can’t argue about it. He and I both need you to wait here. Please, Caesar. If I’m dead, then he’s all yours.”
Caesar is a good kid, and better trained at the concept of taking orders than probably anybody his age in the entire United States at this moment in our history. He rema
ins rooted to the spot while I proceed toward the shack.
I am within thirty yards of the door when I step through the last thicket of trees, emerging from a natural doorway of two more silver birches.
Bang! Bang!
“You know full well how scared I already am without all that, Ivan,” I call. “You could just clap your hands and achieve the same thing. Unless you just really hate birch trees.”
His voice comes from inside the shack. “Did you come here to help me turn myself in, Morris, man?”
Did I?
“I still haven’t exactly concluded for myself what I came for, Ivan. But that might be it, yeah.”
“What if I resist?”
“Well, I don’t believe you will shoot me. I don’t believe you will shoot anybody today.”
There is a long silence, but I don’t have any pressing plans or functioning legs.
“What if I resist without shooting you?”
“Then I’ll fight you, Ivan,” I say.
I hear a big-bear theatrical laugh echo from the shack. I believe I might even hear a smaller one come from a short distance behind me.
“I will,” I say with some force.
“I know you will, pal. You’d fight anybody in the world if you thought it was for the good. Problem is, with Rudi gone there’s nobody left in the world you could beat.”
“Maybe you’re wrong,” I say, just to say something.
He lets out a smaller version of that laugh, then the front door of the place opens, and there he is. He is unarmed as he stands in the doorframe and waves me over.
There he is, and his eye isn’t. His cheek is messed up, misshapen and discolored. He has a large bandage visible on the neck and shoulder area.
“Hiya, handsome,” I say.
“Hiya, muscles,” he says.
“Caesar is with me,” I tell him.
“I know. I smelled the car about twenty minutes ago.”
“Of course you did, hunter. Listen, I brought something else. I brought a message from …” My voice cracks as I pull the magazine out of my back pocket.
“An old friend?” he says, drawing the same magazine out of his.
Ivan walks right up to me, right up to me, and leans close with his magnificent mangled mug.
His forehead bumps mine, and it is only this instant that I can completely rule out the life-threatening headbutt.
“I’ll be behind you, no matter what,” I say. “We’ll all be with you, no matter what.”
He nods. And nods and nods and nods into my head, woodpecker communication, beyond words.
… and your old hero Patton is here, and he says you’re okay. Says maybe just a good savage beating would have done the trick, but shooting was effective, too. I needed something.
He says he forgives you. Your hero forgives you.
I forgive you, too. I forgive my hero.
And I’ll be with you wherever it takes us, no matter what.
Love beats guns. Pals are pals.
And if war has an opposite, it’s friendship.
Chris Lynch is the author of numerous acclaimed books for middle-grade and teen readers, including the Cyberia series, the World War II series, and the National Book Award finalist Inexcusable. He teaches in the Lesley University creative writing MFA program, and divides his time between Massachusetts and Scotland.
Chris Lynch sets his sights on World War II.
“All the sizzle, chaos, noise and scariness of war is clay in the hands of ace storyteller Lynch.” — Kirkus Reviews
“A powerful taste of war on a personal level.” — Publishers Weekly
Read on for a sneak preview of the new series.
There are six teams today in the Eastern Shore Baseball League. Tomorrow there will be none.
The war is changing everything. And we’re not even in it yet. We will be. We should be. If the big boys asked me, we’d be all the way in already. As of yet, nobody’s asked me.
Sure feels like the shift is on, though, from peacetime to wartime. And today has a definite feeling of change about it.
The Sudlersville band is marching around and making noise for us, for the fans, for baseball, for John Philip Sousa, for our way of life, for freedom. Here they come now, right past the dugout, and every man is standing at attention as they go by. They are from Jimmie Foxx’s hometown and Jimmie Foxx’s hometown is right down the road and they’re playing for Jimmie Foxx, who used to play in this very league, if not for this exact team, the Centreville Red Sox. He plays for those other Red Sox now, a little ways north of here. Jimmie Foxx, for crying out loud.
The Sudlersville band is playing for all this and more because today is the last day of the Eastern Shore League season, and this season is the last one until who knows when.
Bigger fish to fry tomorrow. But that’s tomorrow. Today, there is no bigger fish than baseball.
The Nazis hate baseball. This I know. And I hate the Nazis. So it is in their honor that I am going to play as hard as I can today, and beat the stuffing out of the Federalsburg A’s.
Actually, that’s probably the one completely unchanged thing about today. I always want to beat the stuffing out of the A’s.
I’m sitting in the dugout with Eddie Popowski, who everybody calls “Pop,” which is kind of a riot since he’s five foot four and he looks young enough that half the guys on the team could be his old man. He’ll never make it to The Show with that physique. He must have used every trick there is to even get to D-League, which is probably why he has such a sharp eye for every detail of the game. Which is why I sit next to him every chance I get.
“Look at those two guys,” Pop says, and with just a little flick of his head I know who he’s talking about. The McCallum brothers, who play shortstop and second base for the A’s.
“Yeah, Pop, I see them.”
“Yeah, you see them. But did you ever see anything like them?”
“Maybe,” I say coolly, perhaps even childishly.
Pop knows just what I’m up to. He leans away from me and gives me the slicing sideways stare. “Maybe? Roman, you maybe saw the likes of these two before? No, sir, you did not. Look at them.”
I am looking. They are taking infield practice right now and turning double plays with the kind of effortless grace that makes the batter not even bother running.
“They are like one organism out there,” Pop says. “They are a two-headed beast of baseball beauty.”
Now I give him the sideways stare.
“I hate those guys,” I finally confess.
“Yeah?” Pop says, laughing. “Well, you better plan to hate them more, because those guys are going to The Show.”
And because Pop is a kind person, he leaves out the “… and you’re not” part.
But, really, I’m okay with that. I was always borderline as a prospect, anyway, and since I tore up my ankle last season and lost a step or three that I never got back, it’s not even a question.
So I’m not quite quick enough for pro ball, but I’m plenty quick enough for the Army. And since it’s going to be the United States Army and friends who save the world for baseball, and for every other aspect of the American Dream, I kind of consider this a promotion.
I’d take The Dream over The Show every time.
Mel Parnell comes and sits next to me on the bench. Mel is the tall and jug-eared talent who is pitching for us today. The conversation with Pop hasn’t managed to make me any more mature or gracious.
“Mel, would ya be a pal and bean both of the McCallums for me today?”
Mel first grins broadly then drops all serious on me. “What is it about those guys that gets you so riled up?”
“You know what it is?” I say. “No guts. Y’know, they fly around like it’s ballet or something, make routine plays look hard. They hotdog it. The shortstop, what’s his name …”
“Theo,” Pop says.
“Yeah, well, he’s all spikes when he slides into the bases, but when somebody tries to
take out the other jamoke, what’s his name …”
“Hank,” Pop says.
“Yeah. You try and take him out with a hard slide that isn’t even illegal, jeez, you gotta chase the guy into center field before you can even touch him.”
They are both laughing at me now. It’s not entirely clear if they agree with me or if they’re just enjoying my outrage, but I know I’m right. And Pop, anyway, would say something if he disagreed because he doesn’t like it any better than I do when guys don’t play the game right.
“And that’s why you want me to hit ’em,” Mel says.
“Yes, please.”
“Both of them.”
“Yes, please.”
Pop slaps me on the back, adds in a little massage thing, too, on my neck muscles like I’m some kind of nut who needs pacifying. “You don’t take no prisoners, do ya, kid?”
“No, I don’t. And I never will, either. Fight for right. That’s the way I look at it. Fight for the things that are right. Otherwise you lose them.”
Mel stands all lanky, stretches a bit, starts out of the dugout toward the bull pen. “I gotta go warm up,” he says.
“So you’ll hit ’em, yeah?”
“No. C’mon, Roman. I’m not one of those guys. I pitch inside when I have to, to keep ’em honest, but I don’t throw at nobody on purpose.”
“But you’re a lefty. Anything can happen with a lefty. They’ll just think you went all goofy for a few minutes.”
“No,” he says, emphatic but not nasty. “But I do admire your passion, Roman, I’ll give you that.”
“Then give me this. If they crowd the plate, you’ll send ’em a message pitch, high and inside. A little chin music is all I ask, for a pal, for the grand old game, for the final day of the Eastern Shore League, and for doing things right.”
He turns and starts toward the bull pen. “Well, they do tend to hog the plate. Especially that Theo …”
Baseball is a tough game. It’s an honor game. It’s a beautiful game, and this is going to be a beautiful baseball day.