The Hummingbird War

by Joan Shott

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A web of fine dust covered the family photos on Lilly’s table like a shroud. I studied a snapshot of Matthew and his two brothers as young children, standing arrow-straight in front of their father in his uniform. His father’s eyes were hidden by the brim of his hat, but the apprehension in his sons’ eyes and the fear in their bodies sent a chill up my arms. The path of photos rode through the years, but stopped when the older sons had gone off to battle, dress uniforms giving way to the jungle fatigues and the low-slung rifles of their own war. An undertow of loss tugged at me while I sat with Matthew and Lilly in her living room after we’d returned from her doctor’s appointment. I thought of excuses to make myself scarce.

  “Do you really think I should be here?” I asked. “I don’t want to intrude. You haven’t seen each other in a long time and…”

  “Diane, don’t let him scare you,” Lilly said. She was sitting with her feet on an ottoman, her legs covered with a knitted throw. “He’s just a man in a fancy uniform. Remember those uniforms. God, I hope he doesn’t wear that tonight. I think you should make a fire, Matthew. Diane looks chilled.”

  But before anyone could make a move to pick up kindling or matches, the doorbell rang. The blood drained from my face. It swirled down through my stomach and settled in my feet like lead.

  Matthew’s steps echoed in the hall, the door squeaked open, “Sir, yes, sir,” he said.

  A man’s voice bellowed from around the corner, “At ease, son. I see you finally cut that goddamned hair. I expect you’re completely recovered now from your little scuffle at the hands of…a woman? Right grunt? Where’s your mother?”

  When he marched through the doorway, I felt the sensation of the air being sucked out of the room.

  “My dear, Lillian, how are you?” he said, as he bent down and kissed her cheek.

  “Surviving, David,” Lilly said.

  He looked across the room at me and I froze.

  Matthew put his arm around my shoulder. “Dad, this is Diane Hayes. Diane, my father, General David Bluestone.”

  I was relieved his father had worn a sweater and a sports jacket instead of a million medals and ribbons, even if there was not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle to be seen. He was silver-haired, his posture perfect, as handsome as his son. I stared at the gold watch on his wrist; a bigger and fancier version of the one Matthew wore. “It’s good to meet you,” I said.

  His handshake was strong and practiced, and my hand felt like a child’s in his. I looked down and saw that his shoes had been shined to within an inch of their lives.

  “Ah, young lady. I understand from Lillian that you and my son are close.”

  I nodded, but said nothing. What could I say? I totally dig him. Yes, we’re sleeping together. He wants to marry me, but that’s old hat for me. By the way, I’m a widow.

  “I love Diane and I’m going to marry her,” Matthew said.

  “Love?” the general said with a huff. “That’s a sentiment I’d not thought of in quite some time.” He sat down in a chair close to Lilly and studied her profile. “Lillian, what is this I hear about your being ill?”

  “I just got back from one of my endless doctor visits. They’ve diagnosed liver disease. I was hoping they’d find the reason for my illness to be your impending visit, but it seems you don’t have that much power over me anymore.” A flicker of a smile crossed her lips.

  “Is there anything I can do?” He put his hand on her arm.

  “Do you have any connections in the Pentagon who could make this all go away?” she said. A short laugh mixed with a sigh hung in the air.

  “Ah, the love of my life, how you do try to get under my skin after all these years. I miss those times even if…” He turned to Matthew. “Get me a scotch on the rocks.”

  “Sir, there’s no alcohol in the house, sir.”

  His father shook his head as if his son were to blame and then glanced at Lilly. “Come on, grunt. We’ll speak somewhere private where we can discuss the trip.”

  “What’s to discuss?” Matthew asked.

  “Oh, has nothing changed with you?” He looked at Lilly as if she would agree with him, but she returned his look with her own puzzled expression. “Still pigheaded, aren’t you? There are a number of important details to go over. It’s not as simple as running some hippie office to promote anarchy.”

  “You mean when I’m going, who I’ll meet with, and who will be my support from the Departments of State and Defense? I’m taking off for Saigon the day after tomorrow.”

  His father nodded his head dismissively. “There’s more to it than that. Don’t be so cavalier about all this. That attitude is why we’re having this conversation in the first place. Your actions…”

  “David,” Lilly snapped. She gripped the arms of her chair; shot her ex-husband a look of rebuke. I could have sworn I heard a low growl from her.

  “All right,” the general said. He clenched his fists, narrowed his eyes at Matthew. “But, we have to discuss the Security Cooperation Activity procedures, go over my list for your clearance from the Department of Defense. There are papers to sign.”

  “I’ve done nothing but think about this and plan every move for over a year. I know what I’m doing. I’ve already signed every form I’ve been sent. I have my clearance…sir.” Matthew paced in the small space between his father and me as he spoke.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing. Do you hear me?” The general pounded his closed fist on the table; photographs fell on their faces and the water swayed over the edge of a vase. “I can’t let you put your life in danger or threaten my reputation. Following orders will save your life in a place like that. There’ll be security units, and I’ll be with you.”

  “I don’t want any security detail, and the Vietnamese don’t want it either. I’m scheduled to meet a neutral party in Saigon who will get me where I need to be for the transfer. It’ll be made in Cambodia.”

  Cambodia. That was a place I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I hadn’t even known exactly where it was when they told me Bobby’s plane had gone down there. I’d once held the atlas open in my shaking hands and traced the outline of the country, tried to memorize the odd names of the cities and rivers that ran along the border with Vietnam. At first I thought them to be poetic, but I grew to distrust the sound of them. Khum Cham, An Nhom, Svay Rieng, all places where Bobby could have died. Places where his shattered and broken body might still lie. I shivered and clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. With Bobby on my mind and the anger pulsing through the air between Matthew and his father, there was no fire in the world warm enough to drive the cold inside me away.

  “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said,” his father said. “Still the grunt. Both of us must be there. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir, but I can do it on my own.” Mathew said.

  “If they have your brother, your reckless actions could put his life at risk.”

  Lilly broke in, “Can you tell us anything, David?”

  “The North Vietnamese have agreed to release a prisoner they’ve been holding without notice. I have to assume they’re dealing with me because it’s Maxwell. They won’t guarantee anything, but it’s worth the chance.” He was frustrated, obviously used to getting his way without argument.

  “David, let Matthew do this his way, but stay close to him. Matthew, let your father accompany you to the meeting place. I want you both safe.” Her diplomatic statement in this case seemed final, and I got the feeling she had a great deal of practice at this kind of negotiation.

  The general’s eyes looked up at the ceiling. He held his breath, let it out with a groan, forced a smile, and turned back to Lilly. “Since I’m in town I’d like to take you out to dinner, my dear. Do you still love Italian food?”

  “I do, but I’m afraid I’m not up for an evening out. Take Matthew and Diane. It’s time you got to know her and spent some time with your son.”

/>   “As you wish, Lillian. Matthew?”

  Matthew looked at me. “Diane?”

  “I’d love to,” I said through my teeth.

  The general bent down by Lilly’s side and whispered in her ear. She smiled.

  “It’s,” he checked his watch, “nineteen hundred hours. Shall we? My driver is waiting.”

  *****

  “The Army still needs educated men like you, son.”

  “You must be joking. I’m on the other side of the war now.”

  “If you’re talking about that SDS bullshit, the protestors at the convention were more militant than the North Vietnamese.”

  From the serving of the antipasto until the cannoli, I tried to tune in on the complex relationship between Matthew and his father. They were soldiers on opposing sides of their own war. His father was authoritative and arrogant, and Matthew was defensive and reactionary. When his father volleyed one abusive challenge after another at him, rather than ignore it, Matthew argued and disputed each point. It was like watching a fencing match atop the dinner table.

  I spent the evening tucked into the corner of the upholstered booth. Once or twice the general asked me well-mannered, impersonal questions, but he didn’t seem to listen to the answers. It was as if he couldn’t talk to people who didn’t provide immediate action.

  “So, young lady, Lillian says you’re still a student. What are you studying?”

  “I’m studying ornithology, but I’m considering taking a minor in photography.”

  “Ah, yes, very nice, oceanography. And where did you say you were studying?”

  “The U-dub.” I’d used the slang name for the school the students and the locals knew it by.

  “The what? Do you mean the state school?” emphasizing state, as if it were a poor choice of wine.

  Well, he’d squashed any friendly chat we could have had, so I slumped back into my corner and waited for the evening to end. He was a difficult person, unyielding in his opinions and tightfisted with his affection. He could have been made of stone, but he was Matthew’s father, and I couldn’t pretend he didn’t exist.

  “Sir, one more thing, sir,” Matthew said, as we were leaving the restaurant. “We’d like to take you on a little sightseeing trip tomorrow. Meet some admirers of yours at a VFW in Oak Harbor.”

  “I have a dinner meeting in LA. I’m flying down tomorrow night before the flight to Saigon on Sunday. What’s your planning directive?”

  “I say we hop in the car tomorrow, oh around 0900, drive up to Whidbey Island for a speech to the troops, and come back in time for you to catch an afternoon flight. I’ll give you my polar coordinates once I have proper clearance from my superior officer — that would be Diane.” He winked at me.

  His father shook his head in exasperation. “Be at my hotel at 0800. It’ll give me a chance to spend more time with you to discuss the trip, hey, grunt? I’ll ask the barber to make a special visit to my suite to give you a proper haircut — Army regulation.”

  He had his driver drop us at Lilly’s where Matthew’s car was parked. As soon as his father’s car was out of sight, Matthew slapped the steering wheel with both hands.

  “Damn, the older he gets, the bigger his ego. Someday his head will just explode.” He laughed but I sat rigid in my seat and kept my hands folded together. We drove in silence for a few blocks.

  “Do you think you’re actually going to pull off a visit to my father’s VFW?” I asked.

  “Don’t sweat it. I’m going to drive up, honk the horn, and when your dad and his buddies converge on my old man, like he was some goddamned movie star, he’ll eat it up like he always does. It’s so simple, it’s beautiful.”

  “I hope this doesn’t backfire on you, because if we get my father’s hopes up and then he’s disappointed, I might as well move to, well, Chicago.”

  “We could have a nice life there,” Matthew said, looking pensively through the windshield at a stop sign.

  We turned up a hill and braked at a red light. I coughed into my fist, “I think I’ll stay at my place tonight. You can pick me up in the morning.”

  “What? Come back to my apartment. It’s the holiday weekend. Are you upset about something? Meeting my old man too much?”

  “It’s you, not him.”

  “Me? If this is about what I told you the other night about Vietnam and my brother…”

  “It’s about tonight. You talk about your father as if you were a spoiled child. You’re disrespectful. You’re angry.” I thought of the times he’d seemed on the verge of losing his temper, the look in his eyes at the airport in Chicago with the soldier and the protestor, how years ago he’d beaten the boy in his front yard and broken his arm.

  “Disrespectful? He fucking makes me call him sir and salute him when what I want to do is punch him in the face.” The car lurched to the side of the road, and he turned off the engine, caught his breath. After what seemed like too long a pause, he said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. But Diane, how could you understand what it’s like? You weren’t there when he brought down the roof if we didn’t make the honor roll, or if I didn’t make varsity football, even though he never once threw a ball with me when I was growing up. You weren’t there when he locked the front door on me and let the neighborhood bully try to beat me up. You weren’t there for all the birthdays and Christmases he missed, because he was bound by his duty and honor to stay in Washington, an hour’s drive from home.”

  “No, I wasn’t there but I’m here now, and the way you treat him is wrong. You both behave like little boys. He pushes you and you shove him back. You push each other away and neither of you know how to stop. I don’t want to live in the middle of another war. You need to be the better person.”

  “The better person? It’s not hard to be better than him. He doesn’t give a damn about us. Called every one of his sons grunts until we were commissioned as officers. It’s the Army, the Army, the Army …”

  “He must care about Lilly and you, even if he can’t show it. He must be suffering, too, after everything that’s happened. You have to try to find a way to get along with him.”

  “Tell me why,” he said, staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles were white.

  How could I tell him what I didn’t completely understand myself? When I’d heard Matthew laugh at his father, I’d felt a pang of shame in a place I couldn’t point to. Although I’d tried to push it all on Matthew, I knew it would be my family problem, too — if we got married.

  “How you treat your father is important,” I said. “Children learn respect from what they see within their family.” He was looking at me, seemed to be listening, even if the muscles in his jaw were flexing under pressure.

  I kept pushing at the subject, running my fingers across my thoughts as they came to me like Braille. “My mother once said something to my father when they didn’t know I was listening. She said if the people in a family didn’t love and respect each other, how could they expect a child…” I stopped as my mind closed with disbelief, as if a door hadn’t opened with my memories, but had been shut. My mother hadn’t been talking about some theoretical situation. She’d been talking about them — my father and her.

  “What, Diane, what did she say?”

  “Nothing. I meant to say you have to respect your parents, even if you disagree with them. They’re only human. Like us.” I was trying not to fall into the precarious hole I’d dug with my story. Love and respect? My mother had been saying they didn’t have it for each other, or at least, she didn’t have it for my father. I’d had to criticize Matthew’s relationship with his father to finally see the fault in my own family. I wiped a tear from my face with the back of my gloved hand.

  “You think I’m hurting our chances for a happy family if I can’t…be respectful…to my father?” He sounded out the last of his question slowly, as if he were dissecting the idea.

  “This has nothing to do with saluting him. It has to
do with finding the good in him. Think about it, please.”

  “You still want me to take you home?”

  “Yes,” I forced the answer out of my mouth. I didn’t want to spend the night without him, but I needed to think about what I’d said as much as he did.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  With the sun behind her, outlining her long, lean silhouette, Nancy walked into the kitchen, her hair pulled to the top of her head in a ponytail. She was wearing a man’s oversized tee-shirt and, I was pretty sure, nothing else. She poured herself some coffee and sat at the table.

  “He should have been here an hour ago,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Matthew. We’re taking his father up to my father’s VFW meeting to give a speech.”

  “Far out. I’d like to get a load of that scene.”

  “Maybe he’s angry with me, and he’s standing me up.”

  “You guys have a fight last night? That’s a drag. What happened?” She sipped at her coffee, then pulled the band from her ponytail and let her hair fall over her shoulders.

  “Well, not exactly a fight. What would you do if…” I started to say just as a car pulled into the driveway. A minute later Matthew opened the kitchen door. “You’re late.” I was relieved to see him, angry he hadn’t called.

  “I picked up my father, and we had breakfast together,” Matthew said. His father, dressed in his full uniform, walked in behind him. Someone I suspected to be my roommate’s latest boyfriend, shuffled down the hallway, yawning and scratching his head with one hand and indiscreetly reaching into his boxers with the other. The tall, gangly boy ducked under the doorway and stepped into the room. I hadn’t expected either his father or an overnight visitor to be standing in our kitchen. I was worried if the day started this way — how would it end?

  “This is my roommate, Nancy, and…”

  “Ben,” Nancy offered.

  “This is Matthew’s father, General Bluestone,” I said. Poor Ben was dumbstruck, probably thinking he was still dreaming. He pulled his hand out of his shorts and thought twice about extending it for a handshake. He did a half-baked salute instead, while the general’s stood stock still, his hat clenched tightly under his arm.