Margo approached the corner of the workshop. The familiar stirring of excitement tugged on her senses. But just as she rounded the corner, Vinnie charged from behind her and grabbed her. “No. I can’t let you go in there. He could hurt you.” His breath came in gasps as he physically set her away from the workshop. “Stay here.”
Before Margo could reason with him, he headed for the door.
Quickly Margo grasped his arm. “Vinnie…”
He turned and shoved her back before slamming the glass door shut. Margo grasped the handle, but it was too late. The lock clicked into place.
“Let me in!” Drat! Vinnie was going to make a real mess of the situation now.
***
Zane clenched his fists against the urge to throw down the block of partly carved wood he was working on. Why didn’t they leave him alone? Hadn’t he made it clear he wanted them to butt out?
“Go home, Vinnie. Get her out of here. I don’t want her around me.”
“Maybe you don’t want her, but she’s needed.”
Anger flared and Zane welcomed it. Better the temper than the pain.
“It’s time, Zane. I’ve tried to be patient. Lord knows, I’ve prayed you’d work this out on your own.” Vinnie moved through the shafts of sunlight pouring into the room. “It’s been months since you’ve been back home. Months of heartache and worry and guilt.”
“Guilt?” The word tore through him. His defenses immediately rose another notch.
“You’re hiding from us. We don’t know what we’ve done.”
Zane slammed his fist on the workbench. The force jarred up his arm and settled into the knotted muscle of his shoulder. They didn’t understand. They never would. “Just stop it, Vinnie. Go on home to your family – your job. You’ve got everything you want. You don’t need me.”
“It’s your home too. Your family. Your job. We can…”
“I don’t want any part of it!”
His shout brought a halt to Vinnie’s progress. Zane saw the raw emotion flash in his brother’s eyes: anger, impatience, even hate. He’d never seen that before. Suddenly he was afraid. Vinnie was his only link to the world. His fear formed a lump in his throat. He tried to swallow.
Vinnie’s chest heaved as he tried to leash his feelings, but he had lost the battle. Zane struggled not to recoil when Vinnie started shouting.
“We don’t deserve this Zane! We were close. We did things as a family. Now you treat us like we’re a plague. It’s enough.”
Plague? Didn’t Vinnie know that he was the disease? Not them. Zane shut his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see the agony on his brother’s face. It mirrored his own.
The banging on the window didn’t help. He could hear her determined pleas to unlock the door. He blocked out the sound. He didn’t need doors opened – he needed them slammed shut.
“Listen to me. You need help. Devaull is good. You’re going to work with her starting today.”
Zane’s eyes shot open and he glared with the hardness it had taken him years to perfect. “Orders, Vinnie?” His words were measured and slow, which should have been a warning. But Vinnie ignored it.
“Someone needs to give them. I’m sick to here” – he shoved his fist under his chin – “with your cowardice and yellow-belly hiding from yourself. Face up to it. Be a man.”
A low growl started in Zane’s throat and erupted into a shout that matched the explosion in his head. He charged. Vinnie took the full force of his weight as they tumbled on the floor.
Wood chips scattered with the impact. Vinnie rolled Zane off his body and they smashed against the workbench. Pieces of wood, chisels, and other tools clattered to the floor around them. A hammer landed on Zane’s shoulder, but he hardly noticed. His emotions were filled with rage – pent-up rage that hadn’t been released in years; rage he didn’t realize he still had.
Fists flew and pain shot through Zane’s skull as several punches connected. His knuckles began to numb. If only his brain would too.
Time suspended, yet it raced. The room echoed with grunts of pain and the thuds of flesh making contact with flesh. Each swing brought release. Zane wanted more. Vinnie’s fists came at him. Zane tried to dodge, but the quick movement brought his head up against the corner of a shelf. Vinnie’s knuckles sank into his jaw.
Zane groaned as blackness began to engulf him. A dark hole yawned and he started toward it. What bliss to fall into oblivion.
“Zane!” Vinnie slapped Zane on the cheek. The sharp pains threw bright lights into his nightmare. “Zane. You all right? Answer me.”
Carefully, Zane opened his eyes. The room spun in crazy circles. Vinnie, blurred and fuzzy, knelt before him. Again, he slapped Zane’s face.
“Enough,” Zane managed to gasp. If only Vinnie would let him be, he could close his eyes and sink into the velvet sleep where nothing existed – no memories, no guilt, no pain.
“Don’t cop out on me.” Vinnie grabbed a handful of Zane’s T-shirt and yanked him into a sitting position. “You’re going to listen to me for once. I’m not taking any more of this.”
Zane didn’t answer but took gulps of breath that matched his brother’s. They stared across inches of charged space. Vinnie’s resistance surprised him. Zane had the advantage of years and experience. When it came to a battle of wills, he’d always won. But Vinnie wasn’t backing down. Without moving, he stared into Zane’s eyes, watchful, alert, and not giving an inch.
“What happened to the boat was not your fault. No lives were lost. So what’s eating at you?”
Zane stared at Vinnie. It wasn’t the incident with the fishing boat he’d sent out against his better judgment. He knew a storm was sitting off the coast, but Vinnie and the captain insisted on sending the boat out. The storm had been hovering for days. They couldn’t afford to sit around waiting for it to decide what to do. He’d conceded and they’d lost the boat. Fortunately the Coast Guard had been near and they’d saved the men.
“I came out here to recoup from that, Vinnie. But it’s not why I stayed.”
“What is it then?”
“Who knows? Maybe that shrink is right.” He saw Margo trying to pry the door open with a metal bar. Persistent woman. He was too drained to even care. “Maybe it started in Nam.”
“I know it was no picnic in Nam. I know it took something out of you, but…”
Zane growled. “You know nothing.”
He started to back out of Vinnie’s grasp, but his brother tightened his hold. Zane glared, but the accusation and condemnation in Vinnie’s eyes cut through his defenses. He looked instead at the corded muscles of Vinnie’s arms as he clenched Zane’s shirt.
“That’s right. Blame me because I didn’t go.” Vinnie shoved with his fists, making Zane’s head snap. “Is that what’s eating you? Trying to make me feel guilty? The big martyr role because you suffered while I stayed at home?”
Vinnie pushed again until Zane reached up and clenched Vinnie’s wrists. Vinnie froze for endless seconds. His face turned red as anguish flared from his glare. Suddenly he took a deep breath and shouted, “Stop punishing me!”
Pain tore through Zane as Vinnie’s cry echoed in the room. Zane pressed on the undersides of Vinnie’s wrists until he was released. Zane shoved, expecting Vinnie to resist, but he didn’t. His brother’s expression crumbled as he toppled backward on the floor where he sat, shoulders slumped and head bowed. To Zane’s horror, Vinnie began to cry.
“Don’t do this to me,” Zane murmured as helpless agony crippled his will.
“I can’t take it anymore,” Vinnie sobbed. “I can’t stand to go home and see the haunted look in Ma’s eyes. I can’t stand to return from every trip and see her hope turn into sorrow because you aren’t with me.”
Stop it! Don’t say it! His mind screamed as he tried to block out the truth. He wouldn’t listen. He couldn’t afford to.
“She doesn’t understand, Zane. She torments herself, thinking she did something to drive you away.”
>
God, help me. Zane closed his eyes. Ragged breaths tore at his lungs as he tried to block out Vinnie’s words. They tortured him. He wanted to go back. Didn’t they know that? But if any of them found out what he’d done that horrible day in the jungles of Nam…
Sweat poured off his brow and into his eyes, blinding him as he tore through the tangled jungle growth. His arms burned with the heavy burden he carried. But he ignored the pain. Fear drove him onward.
“It’s no use, Zanelli. Put me down. You can make a run for it on your own.”
“Shut up,” he growled between gulps of the humid and fetid air.
Suddenly his feet sank into the boggy mud. He cursed as he tried to break the fall. From the dark slime, he peered around. They were trapped. The swamp ahead was too deep. Behind him he could hear the crashing noise and the high-pitched chatter of the Vietcong as they closed in around the chopper. He clutched Al’s wounded body against his chest, fighting off the waves of despair that threatened to cave him in.
“I hear ‘em.” Panic showed in the eyes of the injured man. “I’m scared.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Zane shifted uneasily as he tried to think of where they could hide.
“They don’t take wounded prisoners.” He yanked on Zane’s sweat-stained jungle fatigues.
Zane looked down at the broken fingers and the wild desperation in his friend’s expression.
“You know what they’ll do.”
Unwanted memories focused. He and Al had run across the remains. American soldiers staked out, skinned alive, and left to die a slow, torturous death. He tightened his hold and struggled to stand.
“I’ll get us out of here, Al. I promise.”
His words were hardly uttered when he stumbled again. “God help me,” Zane cried against fate.
Zane shook his head to clear it of past ghosts. With effort he focused on Vinnie’s words. Although they hurt, the accusations were better than the images.
“What did we do, Zane? Did Ma say something? Did I?” Vinnie swiped at the moisture coursing down his face. “We love you, Zane. You’ve got to come home.”
Zane scarcely whispered, “I can’t.”
Vinnie swore.
“It’s not you. Or Ma.” Zane almost choked on the word. “It’s nothing she said. Tell her that, Vinnie. Tell her…”
“No. You tell her!” Vinnie shouted. “I’m not going to give her any more lies or cover up with any more excuses. You do it. Leave me out of it.”
“It won’t work.”
Vinnie scrambled to his knees and pierced Zane with his stare. “How do you know that? You haven’t even tried. Give Devaull a chance. If not for yourself, do it for Ma. She needs you, Zane.”
A moan filled the room. In a vague part of his mind, Zane knew it was his own voice that cried out. The sound of it sent shivers down his spine. He’d heard it before, in the fetid jungles of Nam and here in the redwoods, at night in his dreams. Maybe Margo Devaull could put an end to it. Maybe there was hope.
“She’s good, Zane. She’s worked with stress.”
He qualified for that category.
Vinnie paused. Zane could feel the stare boring into him. He remained still, implacable until Vinnie’s shout stiffened his slumped back.
“Are you listening to me? Have you heard a word I’ve said?” Vinnie struggled to his feet where he swayed from his emotions. “This is it, Zane. You accept help or you’re on your own. I’m not coming up here anymore.”
Again fear curled. Vinnie had never delivered ultimatums before; not to him, anyway. He knew it would be better for Vinnie and Ma if he cut the last tie. But he wasn’t sure he could.
Zane stood, fighting the shakes that were creeping upward. His voice was hardly a hoarse whisper when he finally managed to gasp, “Go home, Vinnie.”
Vinnie stiffened, but there was a sad light in his eyes. “I’ll go back to the cabin and wait. You stay here and consider what this means. You think careful and hard – about Ma, me, Sara, and the kids. Then you come tell me if you want me to go home.”
For endless seconds Vinnie stared. Zane read the hurt, the pleading, the pain. It took effort not to shut it out and pretend it didn’t exist. That’s what he’d done all these years: pretend, hide, take the easy way out.
Zane reached his hands toward his brother, but Vinnie backed away. The tracks of Vinnie’s tears still traced across his face and Zane knew the hurt would never go away.
Slowly Vinnie turned and walked toward the door. Come back, Zane wanted to shout, but he remained silent as he watched his brother disappear.
Abruptly Zane swung toward his workbench, clenching his fists against unwanted memories. It didn’t help. Vinnie’s words haunted him as he pounded on the unfinished wood until thoughts of Margo Devaull replaced the bitter exchange. She was calm and patient. Maybe she could relieve the ache that tore at his insides. A sigh of hope rustled through the cobwebs of despair.
***
Vinnie, with shirt torn, sweat pouring down his skin, paused before he brushed past Margo.
She reached for him and halted his progress. “What was that all about? You need ice?” She studied the cut across his swollen eye and decided it wasn’t as bad as it looked.
Before Vinnie could answer, she went on. “Does Zane look as bad as you? I’ll take him…”
“No. Don’t. He’s not hurt. Physically anyway.”
Vinnie took a shaky breath. “We had it out. Said a lot of things.”
His pause dragged on until she became impatient, and finally asked, “And?”
“I gave him an ultimatum. Told him I wasn’t coming back unless he accepted your help.”
“Vinnie,” she sighed, dismayed and disappointed. An ultimatum was the worst thing he could have done in a situation like this. She refrained from telling him so because it was obvious he sensed his mistake. His shoulders were slumped and defeated-looking. It was tempting to give him reassurance, but she didn’t have time. “You go back to the cabin and wait for us. I’ll go talk to him.”
If Vinnie hadn’t locked her out of the workshop neither one of them would be in such bad shape now.
Vinnie stared across the meadow for several minutes and then turned suddenly to face her. “What am I going to do if he refuses?”
“Miracles do happen,” she murmured more to herself than Vinnie.
“I’m praying because it’s going to take one.”
Margo supposed Vinnie had his own brand of miracle making. She’d mentioned the possibility, but only as a figure of speech. Miracles hadn’t saved her father. They wouldn’t help Zane. Action, therapy, and counseling were needed and Margo grew more and more determined that Zane would get them – not just for his sake, she realized, but for his family too.
Vinnie headed for the cabin and Margo went to the door of the workshop and stepped inside. Sunlight filtered in shafts as it reflected off the dust motes stirred up by the fight. Zane slumped on the floor against the workbench, his feet sprawled out in front of him.
Margo walked slowly, observing features that were drained of all emotion. Her heart responded to the weary expression. When he didn’t react to her presence, she eased herself on the floor and sat beside him.
She took a deep, calming breath and modulated her voice into a soothing tone. “You know I did my internship at the Veteran’s Administration in Palo Alto. I worked with many victims of stress. And what I saw back there in the kitchen just now were strong indications of stress disorder.”
He shifted and she knew he was going to protest. She lifted her hand and halted his words. “I know you don’t think so, but…”
“The war was twenty years ago. It’s forgotten.”
“Is it?”
His features stiffened as he shut his eyes tight. She could feel the resistance in him.
“Can we just talk about it? For a few minutes.”
“Like your last fifteen-minute discussion?”
She inwardly cheered. He
was regaining his spirit.
“You said you were in the Marines, didn’t you?”
He nodded.
“What was your M.O.S.?”
“Oh-three-three-one.”
“Infantry. Machine guns. Were you a gunner on a helicopter?”
“A CH-46. You must’ve seen my file.”
“Just your discharge papers. They don’t say much.” It always surprised patients that she could speak military lingo. She’d made a point of learning it. At times, like now, her credibility gave her an edge. “Where’d you train? Camp Pendleton?”
“Followed by Camp Le Jung in North Carolina and on to Okinawa for helicopter training.”
“You mentioned you were in Nam in sixty-seven.”
“That’s right,” he agreed.
“During the Tet Offensive. Were you based at Da Nang?”
She could feel his stare and returned it. New respect reflected in his eyes that she accepted without comment. Often veterans felt bitter toward help from people who had no idea where they were coming from. While working at the V.A., she’d made it a point to learn everything she could about the war. It had paid off like it was doing now. The tension was beginning to ease from Zane.
“I was attached to M.A.W. Helicopter Squadron in Da Nang but stationed in Phu Bai.”
He had obviously seen plenty of action and was more than likely in the middle of the Tet Offensive. Margo made a mental note of it. “The men who flew on helicopters suffered extreme stress.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but the records show helicopter personnel suffered more than most. You were flying under fire. Every time you went out, you knew it could be your last trip.”
He stiffened again. She was hitting a sensitive area. She went on. “You saw mangled bodies. Some of them died in the chopper. You probably got to the point where you didn’t even want to know their names. You were shot at. And you knew your odds of coming back worsened each trip you made.”
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