by Dale A. Dye
“I don’t know what I think right now…and I probably won’t know tomorrow.”
“That’s only natural, Willy.” Frank Hovitz agreed. “But you got a whole hell of a lot to be proud of, and them assholes in Washington got a whole lot to be ashamed of. That’s a fact no matter how you slice it.”
“Listen to me, son. You told me one time that serving in combat was the highest time in your life, that you never felt more useful or alive. Remember? Just keep that in mind. Them guys you served with over there wouldn’t want you crawling under a rock and hiding your head. You got to show ’em what they went through means something.”
Willy Pud thought about that for a while and then he scooped change off the bar and headed for the hallway to the toilet where there was a public phone. He pulled a card out of his wallet, squinted at the small print, and then fed coins into the phone. It rang just twice.
“Schaeffer speaking.”
“Sergeant Major? It’s Pudarski.”
“Figured you might call. Where you been watching it?”
“In a bar.”
“Nice place? Or just some joint you found to get out of the shitstorm?”
“Nice place, neighborhood place…they know me here.”
“Then that’s a good place to be right now, Willy Pud. I’d recommend you stay there. If you’re gonna get tight like I am, best to be among friends.”
“Just one question, Sergeant Major...”
“That all? I got about a million questions myself.”
“All the pain and bullshit, Sergeant Major, all the guys who died or got torn up over there. Why?”
“Because we did what the country asked us to do, Willy Pud. It’s the same with this one as it’s always been in war. You do what you see as your duty. You fight to survive and so you don’t let down the guys on your left and right. It’s been that way with us warriors since the first shot was fired in anger. All the politics don’t mean anything in the end, not to us. What counts is that we did our duty and we never let the guys in our outfit down or left them hanging. That’s all any man can expect out of any war. That’s what you’ve got to hold onto at times like this.”
“I just can’t see why I’m still alive to sit here drinking beer when so many others are dead or torn up so bad they can’t even climb up on a barstool. You know what I mean, Sergeant Major?”
“I know exactly what you mean, Willy Pud. It’s called survivor guilt. And it’s another thing that’s been around since the first shot was fired. It’s really tough at times like this, but it will get more bearable down the line.”
“So what do I do now?”
“I told you...get drunk. Forget about it for a while until you can reason the whole thing out.”
“That’s it? That’s all I can do?”
“No. You can do one other thing.”
“What?”
“You can do your best not to let them down, Willy Pud. Now is the time to show the rest of the Vietnam survivors why you’re wearing that medal.”
NEW YORK
Justin Bates Halley, Colonel, United States Army, Retired, eyed a bank of buttons on his phone console and punched himself clear of the contact in Dallas. Five minutes on the line revealed all he wanted to know just now about Emory Technology’s big switch from defense-related production to commercial satellite work at the Texas plant. Things were progressing nicely. Most of the machinery built to efficiently generate communications equipment for the military would produce civilian circuitry without further costly modification.
He’d known five years ago that the boom would bust. This day would come sooner or later. One of his first efforts when he joined the firm as an Executive Vice President was to order subtle changes in research, in software, in tool and die patterns so that Emory Technology could double-clutch and shift gears ahead of the competition when the lucrative flow of Pentagon demands for high-tech military gadgets finally fizzled. Halley stared at his reflection in the broad expanse of his corner office windows. He’d made the right call, and Cleve Emory would be more than a little pleased when it came to executive bonus computing.
It was all about foresight, contacts and leverage, all assets he brought to the firm when he retired from active duty. And a guy who had the kind of old-boy network contacts that Justin Halley had could find the subtle pressure points in the Defense Department. Cash culled from those dealings allowed slick and easy conversion to a commercial-based R&D effort that was essentially paid for with government money. The latest reports from ET’s bean-counters indicated the firm was at least three years and 30 million dollars ahead of the high-tech pack.
Justin Halley had it made and rightly so, he thought. When and if he decided to retire again, it would be on a very nice cushion of cash and stock options. He had nothing pressing on his plate beyond a board meeting with Cleve Emory’s primary investors, so he picked up the New York Times and scanned the headlines. It wasn’t very interesting; all entirely predictable stories about what was happening in South Vietnam where the NVA were celebrating their victory and hunting citizens who had worked with the U.S. in any form. He’d made that call correctly, too. Got out just when the timing was right and lost no skin in that doomed effort, he thought and pressed the little signal light for his admin assistant.
Eileen Winter walked in and strolled across the thick carpeting carrying a stack of spreadsheets and fresh coffee. He thought how lucky he’d been to get rid of his wife in a fairly genteel if extremely expensive divorce two years ago. Eileen was upwardly mobile and aggressive in everything she did…including the demands he put on her as his mistress. When he’d plucked her out of a pool of struggling junior executives—mainly because she reminded him of Dolly Parton—Justine Halley made his expectation clear and she made it equally clear that she had no problem with fucking him on command, as long as she continued to have security and regular advancements at Emory Technology.
“I guess you’ve seen the paper,” she said pointing at the Times on his desk. “What do you think?” She sipped her own coffee and slid into an upholstered chair where she could give her boss a good look at a length of shapely leg. “You were over there for a while, weren’t you?”
“I was,” he said rocking back in his chair. “And unlike a bunch of others, I could see the handwriting on the wall. It was a loser all the way from the Gulf of Tonkin incident.” They sipped coffee quietly for a while. Halley was thinking about the war for the first time in a long time. He’d served mostly in Military Intelligence, so he knew the score long before Westmoreland and his successors even started to play. A communist phoenix rises from the ashes of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City after the man who craved it but did not live to lead the victory parade down Le Loi Street. So now they were completely done with it all, humiliated survivors of the Asian tar pits. Editorialists and pundits all over the world were crying the political poor-ass, trying to be the ones who told us it would fail from the start.
“If you want to go over the Dallas projections,” Eileen Winter pointed at the spreadsheets she brought, “they’re right there on the desk.”
“Maybe we’ll take them up to Montauk this weekend. We’re still on for that, right?”
“I’ll be ready by six on Friday. Anything else?”
“You might go by the gym and work out.” He grinned across the desk at her. “I’m feeling particularly robust about the weekend.”
She laughed and rose to leave. “You haven’t seen the day when you can wear me out, on the tennis court or in bed.”
When she left, Halley picked up the paper again and spread it on his desk to distract himself from the lewd visions he was having. A sidebar to the Saigon reporting caught his eye. There were thumbnail photos of two Marines who were said to be the last two Americans to die in Vietnam. Corporal Charles McMahon, Jr., and Lance Corporal Darwin Judge, killed in action by an NVA rocket while covering the withdrawal. In the photos, they beamed post-boot camp confidence, re
splendent in Marine dress blues, the same uniform they would wear in the grave.
They looked a lot like that other Marine he remembered…from Danang. What was his name? And what was a man like that doing these days? Did he even survive? Or did he get his medal and then bravely return to the fray? And then a chilling thought struck Justin Halley. What if Pudarski—that was his name—what if he got so angry over the course of events in Vietnam that he started talking about certain secret subjects? There could be official investigations re-opened, a bunch of complications he really didn’t need right now. Was that possible…or probable? And what if those two turncoats had somehow survived? The North Vietnamese would be parading them through the streets before long, and his name was on the official reports that said they never existed. He reached for his console and punched the button to summon Eileen Winter.
“Listen, Eileen, I need you to do me a favor. I need a quiet trace on a guy.” He scribbled a name on a piece of note paper and handed it to her. “I think you’ve got the number of that guy in Defense Intelligence Agency, right, the guy we used to assess the Chinese deal?”
“I think so. I’ll have to look.”
“Give him a call. Tell him low-key…a favor for me. And then call Jake Arquette at the military records office in St. Louis to see what they know about him.”
“Some details might help.”
“He was a Marine…a sergeant…from Chicago if I remember right. Got the Medal of Honor back sometime in 1970.”
“What do we want to know?”
“Is he still alive? Where he is...what’s he been doing...that kind of thing.”
“You thinking about hiring a hero?”
“Nah, he’s just a kid I met in Vietnam. I’m wondering what ever happened to him, that’s all. The stuff in the paper this morning reminded me of him. Check it out and let me know what you hear.”
CHICAGO
Willy refolded the paper and stared again at the faces staring back at him from the upper right corner of the third page. He was mildly shocked to learn that both Corporal McMahon and Lance Corporal Judge had been in elementary school when he first served in Vietnam back in 1965. And now they occupied a spot in American military history that they’d never dreamed of when those boot camp graduation photos were taken. They were now footnotes for when the official history of the war was finally written: The last two boys from the block to come home from Vietnam in a box.
He stubbed out his cigarette and slid the paper away from him, but it didn’t help. Those dark eyes staring out from under dress uniform caps kept seeking contact. “Sorry about that,” he whispered into a spring breeze blowing in through the kitchen window. “I don’t know why you had to die when it was almost over. I just don’t know shit…”
He’d been moping around the apartment for a week since that night in Hogan’s when he witnessed the fall of Saigon live and in color on TV. He just didn’t feel like going out and facing people or things or life as it was in Chicago. Likely nobody else for miles around particularly gave a shit, but Willy Pud did. He had some serious skin in the Vietnam War effort such as it was. He’d paid his dues and lost a bunch of friends over there. He just couldn’t shrug it off. It meant something more to him, something more personal than all the recriminations and finger-pointing that was being reported in the news out of Washington.
He begged off working with his Dad and Frank Hovitz and they seemed to understand, no complaints or sermons about getting on with life. Maggie Hogan stopped by occasionally to bring him meals and see how he was doing. Willy Pud postured for her and a few other concerned visitors, assuring them he was just resting from a shock. He’d be OK in a little while. But he wasn’t at all sure about that, not at all.
He was having serious night-sweats when he tried to sleep. Most nights he laid in his rumpled bed watching vivid images of war unspooling like an old film projected on the ceiling. And most nights, the final frame in that movie featured Salt and Pepper being carted around Hanoi like heroes, laughing, jeering and giving him the finger.
Drinking heavily helped a little bit, but he couldn’t stand the excruciating hangovers and stopped that after a day or two. One night when he couldn’t sleep and a warm rain swept down South Calumet Avenue, he sat down in his bedroom and began to scribble everything he could remember about Salt and Pepper and his encounter with them in the Laotian jungle. He thought about going to the press, trying to get something published about the turncoats, but it seemed like sour grapes from a sore loser. And he had no proof of anything beyond a lurid war story.
He stared at a calendar on the wall and idly noted it was the first day of May. And then he remembered that Ricky had said she was leaving somewhere along about this time. Was she still in Chicago? If he could see her one more time…just let her know he was here, he was OK, and he’d be waiting if she didn’t find what she was looking for in Africa. That would make him feel a little better, like he still had something to live for even as things deteriorated around him. That’s all a guy needed: a little hope when times were hard. Hope had carried him though so much in the past…at the Citadel in Hue City, at Khe Sanh, in the A Shau Valley, and up on that bloody hill near Quang Tri. With hope you fight harder, live a little longer.
Willy Pud showered and shaved and then went to the phone, hoping Ricky hadn’t left the city. He dialed the number for her apartment and got Lucinda Harris on the third ring. She sounded high and giggly but he pressed on with what he wanted…what he needed.
“Ricky’s here but she can’t talk right now, Mr. Marine. Maybe I’ll give her a message if you’re nice to me. She leaves in the morning.”
“Listen, Lu…I really need to see her. If she can’t come to the phone, tell her I’m coming by…just to say goodbye. I’ll be there in an hour.”
Lucinda was protesting when he hung up and grabbed for a light jacket against a drizzle of that was falling on the city. He had this one last shot and he was going to take it.
The door to their apartment was open when he ran up the stairs from the street. There was a note pinned next to the buzzer that invited him to come on in. He pushed through and noted the suitcases stacked next to the door. He’d made it just in time. Now all he had to do was tell her what he’d been planning to say on the way over here. He had to tell her that he’d be waiting, no matter what the outcome and he’d use the separation time to flush Vietnam and the military out of his system. Whatever it was she objected to, he’d get rid of that while she was away and she’d come back to the kind of thing she wanted…whatever it was. He was willing to pack up and leave for Africa if she wanted that.
There was no one around in the living room but Willy Pud could smell the strong musk of marijuana emanating from the door to Ricky’s bedroom. They were probably in there, firing up, relaxing and doing some last minute packing. Now he needed to get rid of Lu Harris and hope Ricky was straight enough to listen to him. He called out and heard Lu tell him to come on into the bedroom.
Willy Pud painted on a game face and followed his nose to the door. There was no sound, no giggling or conversation. They were probably just waiting to see what he had to say. He had plenty. He took a deep breath and pushed open the bedroom door.
Ricky was lolling on the bed, naked and clearly stoned. Lu Harris was straddling her, also naked and holding onto a Vaseline smeared vibrator. Ricky saw him but she was out of it, her eyes glazed and unfocused as she smiled and looked back up at her roommate. There was something on her belly, something that looked like a smear of cold-cream or shaving cream. Lucinda Harris pointed at it and motioned for him to look.
There were finger tracings in the white substance. The message was clear. It read Off Limits.
“You recognize that don’t you, Mr. Marine?” Lucinda was shaking and snorting with muted laughter. Ricky ignored him with a lazy doper smile and reached up for the fat joint her roommate was holding. There was more but Willy didn’t hear anything more than the slam of the door as he he
aded back out to the street and into the Chicago rain.
PART THREE:
SINKER
ST. LOUIS
The gate area of the grimy old terminal at 10th and Pine looked more like a displaced persons’ camp than a transportation hub. Willy Pud stepped off the bus into the muggy Midwest heat and breathed the exhaust-laden air. It was muggy and wet with moisture rising from the Mississippi flowing just a few blocks east. He looked around at all the passengers coming and going, the kind of people who couldn’t afford to fly, the people who traversed the country by Greyhound as required in dreary lives. There was not a smile in sight.
He was dripping sweat while he waited for his old seabag to be unloaded from the belly of the bus. The driver pointed at the stencils on the beat-up old sack that formed a record of where Willy Pud had carried it around the world.
“Been around a bit, ain’t you?”
“Just a bit,” Will said as she shouldered the seabag through a sleepy crowd toward the terminal exit. He needed a phone, and there were always phones near a bus terminal where people could call for rides to a final destination. His watch said 11:15, and St. Louis was in the same time zone as Chicago. Hogan’s would still be open at this hour. He dropped change in the slot and dialed. Hogan answered and inquired about the trip before shuffling off down the bar to find the old man.
“Vilhelm? Where are you?”
“St. Louis, Pop. Everything’s OK. I’m gonna find a hotel and get some sleep.”
“You got enough money and everything? You left in a big hurry.”
“I got what I need for now. When I get set up here, I’ll let you know.”
“I still don’t know why you’re doing this, son.”
“We’ve been all over that, Pop. I just need to get away from Chicago for a while. I need to see that guy I told you about.”