Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning

by Susan Fanetti

  Since neither of them was an idiot, she thought they were both engaged in some quite strenuous strategic blindness, but she left them to their fantasy. Until it was time to live with Brian, Mo had no desire to live elsewhere, so she abided by their rules.

  She knew a few couples who’d moved in together without getting married, but Mo had enough good Catholic girl in her not to want that. She wanted to be married. To this man with his arm around her.

  She rested her head on his shoulder and snuggled close. “Aunt Bridie is so pleased with her car. You and Robby really made it sparkle. Even the tires.”

  “I like doing that stuff. And I like that it’s something I can do and be of use, without having somebody breathin’ down my neck all the time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged under her head. “Nothin’. Just some shit at work. I’d love to be my own boss someday, and just do the work I like without some asshole on my back because I didn’t dot an i on a form. Such inconsequential bullshit.”

  Mo said nothing, because he was merely blowing off steam and she knew it. More to the point, she was focused on just a few words of his rant. I’d love to be my own boss someday. That was a thought of the future. It had escaped the shadows, and she caught it and held fast. But she kept it to herself. If she pointed out what he’d said, it would slip away back to the dark.

  Instead, she wrapped her arms around his waist and drew even closer. She said the only thing that mattered. “I love you.”

  “I love you, Irish. So goddamn much,” he answered.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The kitchen was in its usual early-morning chaos when Brian came in. Kristy was in Faye’s arms screaming her little head off. Jamie was in his high chair, fighting with his father over the oatmeal he didn’t want, and Paul hunched over his own bowl with his hands over his ears.

  Just like any other weekday morning in the Kemper household.

  Faye was trying to put Lenny and Brian’s lunch boxes together with a four-month-old shrieking in her ear, so Brian went there first, even before his coffee.

  “Here, I got her.”

  Faye gave the baby over willingly, and Kristy quieted at once, dwindling to gasping sputters like she’d run out of gas.

  Brian’s sister gave him a cross look. “I hate that, you know.”

  “What, the peace and quiet?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He did—Kristy always quieted for him, and screamed most emphatically with her mom. It had to be hard to deal with.

  He made a gentle joke before Faye got too caught up in that bad feeling. She was having trouble handling three kids alone all day, and things were getting a little bit tense since the baby was born.

  “I got a way with the ladies, what can I say?” He kissed Faye’s cheek. “There a bottle or something she needs?”

  “In the warmer.” Faye went back to making lunch for the men of the house.

  Brian got the warm bottle out, plugged up his niece, poured himself a cup of coffee, tucked a slightly-too-ripe banana under his arm—he didn’t like oatmeal, either—wedged the bottom of the bottle under his chin, picked up his cup, and made his way to the table.

  The morning paper was at Lenny’s side, as usual, but it didn’t seem to have been opened yet. A big splat of oatmeal covered half the front page, including the photo. Apparently, this morning was more chaotic than usual. Lenny’s coffee cup was still full.

  “Morning,” Brian said as he got himself and the baby set up comfortably and plucked a paper napkin from the holder at the center of the table. He’d mastered holding her bottle with the hand attached to the arm she rested in.

  He reached for the paper. “You mind if I get it started?”

  “Brian, don’t,” Lenny said—and dropped his hand heavily on top of the paper, not caring that he’d gotten a palmful of oatmeal.

  At the same time, from the kitchen counter, Faye called, “No!”

  Brian paused with the napkin hanging over the paper. In his left arm, Kristy suckled her bottle, humming happily with each swallow. “What? What’s wrong?”

  Lenny’s eyes dropped to the paper—it was only a second, barely more than a bounce, before he was meeting Brian’s eyes again. “It’s nothing. Just more stuff from over there. Just wait until later, okay?”

  Almost exactly two years to the day that he’d been shot, nearly two years since he’d shipped home, the war was still alive in Brian’s head and heart. But never before had his family tried to stop him from keeping up with the news about it. They followed his lead, knew he didn’t like television news and preferred the newspaper, where he could process the information in his way, on his own time. Never had they told him not to read.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  Lenny glanced across the table at Paul but didn’t comment on Brian’s language. He looked back at Brian, and they sat there at an impasse while Brian’s heart thudded noisily in his ears. Suddenly all the chaos of their normal morning had ground to a halt.

  “Brian,” Faye said. Just his name, but it was a plea. She came over and took the baby from him.

  He had to know what the fuck had them so worried. If he didn’t know now, his head would build nightmares all damn day. When he tugged on the paper again, Lenny let it go.

  Brian wiped the rest of the oatmeal off.

  The front-page photo wasn’t anything unusually upsetting. Just a typical snap of soldiers with their guns on their shoulders.

  It was the headline of the story beneath it, showing just above the fold. Once Brian saw that, he knew it was the source of his family’s worry. Lieutenant Accused of Murdering 109 Civilians. The byline was a reporter Brian didn’t know, not one of the paper’s staff: Seymour M. Hersh.

  ~oOo~

  At work that day, with My Lai bludgeoning his brain, Brian made it only about two hours before he just couldn’t take it anymore. Then he simply walked away from the job he was on. Lenny had driven that day, as usual, but Brian didn’t care. He kept walking.

  He walked the six miles back to the house and got his bike. He didn’t go into the house to see Faye and the kids. He mounted up and rode off. Where he was going, he didn’t know, but he had to ride.

  The article about Lieutenant Calley hadn’t been very long, or very detailed, but he knew. He’d never done anything as horrible as what Calley was accused of, or seen anything so horrible, but he knew.

  What he’d seen, what he’d done, it was close enough to know. Two steps off from My Lai. Maybe only one. Innocents had died. Women and children. Not with his intention, but at his hand. He’d seen the bodies, and he knew. Innocent death was the price of war.

  My Lai was the interest paid.

  He knew how close he’d been, how close all his fellows had been, every last one of them, to taking those last two steps. That last one step. The fight got in your blood, filled you with poison, turned every shadow, every sound in the dark, every flash of movement in the bush, into a bitter enemy. When any stranger might be an enemy, every stranger was one. When a woman might offer a basket of food to passing soldiers who’d later find the bomb at the bottom when it blew their buddy into red mist, when a child might signal VC lying in wait, even women and children were threats.

  My Lai was not that, My Lai was an atrocity, an abomination, a foul thing, but it was born of war. Of this war in particular.

  He knew exactly how Calley had done what he’d done, and he knew damn well the man hadn’t acted alone, and that the casualty count was thus likely much higher. He knew exactly how and why men could turn into nightmare beasts.

  He could see that scene. Hear it, smell it, feel it, taste it.

  The taste of friends’ blood, the feel of it congealing on the skin, mixing with the mud and filth and sweat into an indeterminate gunk, the stench of the entrails of men you loved, men you’d have died for if they hadn’t died for you first—it turned that poison in the blood to a foaming froth of hatred and vengeful need. Living unde
r a constant barrage of bullets and bombs, carrying buddies off field after field in bags, killed while they’d taken meaningless hills again and again to no discernible purpose, the fucking awful mundanity of it all, reduced a warrior to his most primal directive: kill or die.

  War made monsters of men.

  A war like this, with no righteous purpose, when everything they’d been told had been a lie? When they were fighting on the wrong side? That left nothing good to feel at all.

  Only the strongest men could hold the monster at bay, keep their fist around their humanity and come out of the jungle and be human again. Only men truly experienced, thoroughly trained in combat and the prosecution of war could stave off that ferocious need.

  These boys plucked unwillingly out of their regular lives by the draft, given a scant few weeks of training, barely enough to show them which end of the gun to point, and dropped into an alien hellscape none of them had ever begun to imagine before, under the leadership of men barely more experienced than them—or so far up their own careerist asses they didn’t even know what war they were fighting? These boys who were still practically children? They were monsters because they’d been stripped of all they knew and hadn’t been taught to be anything else. They’d been trained not to see human beings at the other end of their M16s.

  Gooks, dinks, slopes—that was what they saw. Not men, women, children.

  It was in their drills, their cadence, even their orders.

  THINKING IS NOT YOUR JOB! WHAT IS YOUR JOB, SOLDIER?

  KILL GOOKS SIR!

  What these men needed was somebody who knew who they were, and what they fought against. Who recognized the enemy inside them. The fear and the need. They needed someone who could walk with them and lead them true.

  D was halfway to where he was going before he realized what he meant to do.

  ~oOo~

  Mo answered the door. Her welcoming smile stalled at about half-staff when she got a good look at him. “Ach, you cut your hair!” The smile picked up and finished its trip, became a smirk. “If you’re tryin’ to impress my uncle, I think you’ve already done all you can do there.”

  He stepped into the house, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her. Now that he was with her, doubts and fears tumbled over themselves, and he held her as close as he could get her, kissed her as deeply as he could have her.

  “Mmm. Lovely. Is there something special comin’ up?” she asked, smiling up at him, when they stopped for a breath. Her hands came up and brushed at his newly tight-clipped sides. “Special enough to sacrifice your pretty locks?”

  “I didn’t see Bridie’s car in the garage.” He’d checked the windows in the overhead door on his way to the house; he’d wanted to know exactly what he’d face.

  “No, Robby’s getting braces today, remember? And Maggie’s got cheerleading practice. Everybody’s going to be late tonight. I meant to study, but this is much better.”

  He dropped his head to her shoulder and squeezed her even tighter. What had he done? Fuck, what had he done?

  She smoothed her hands over his head, a soothing caress. “What’s wrong, love?”

  “I love you.”

  “And I you. Brian, you’re scaring me now.” She pushed him back and peered hard at him, worried. “What is it?”

  “Did you read the paper this morning? Or see the news?”

  Understanding dawned. “Aye, it’s awful. Oh, love.” She drew him back into her arms. “What can I do?”

  “I’m going back.”

  The words didn’t make an impression. Her arms closed around his neck and she asked, “What?”

  “To ‘Nam. I’m going back.”

  Now, there was impact. Mo went rigid as stone. The effect was so sudden and complete, the air all around them seemed to freeze with her. They were still standing in the front hall, right in front of the door, and he’d meant to ease her into this. But it was all he could think. There were no other words he could say.

  “What?” she asked again. This time her tone was full of knowing—and of pain, and fear, and betrayal. She pushed away from him and showed him a face full of all the same. “What? But—they can’t make you go back! You gave them two years! You almost died! They can’t do that!”

  He’d done four years, in fact, enlisting in 1963. He’d ended his regular active duty with two combat tours, but he’d done two years before that, mainly in Okinawa, before the 173rd Airborne was deployed as one of the first combat battalions in Vietnam. He hadn’t been a draftee. He’d chosen the Army, and he’d been highly trained when he’d first seen war.

  “They can recall me whenever they want, but that’s not—they didn’t—” He stopped and took the breath he needed to fuel enough courage to tell her the rest. “I re-upped. I told the Army I wanted back in.”

  “Well, take it back!”

  “It’s too late, sweetheart. I signed the papers. I leave next week.”

  She screamed and slapped him. Full palm, dominant hand, and every ounce of strength she had. His head rocked to the side, and he had to jig a step to keep his feet. Then she bolted, running deeper into the house.

  “Mo!” He ran after her and found her in the living room, at the far corner, facing the wall, like she’d gone looking for a place to hide and had been aiming for the drapes. “Please, Irish, please understand.”

  She spun. Her gorgeous hair flew like a cape around her. “Understand?! You want me to understand? You hate this war! You hate what it’s done to you! You say it made you a monster! And now there’s this horrible story about women and babies being massacred on purpose, proving you were right—it is a monstrous war. And you want to go back?”

  As she’d shouted, her emotions had boiled over, and she was sobbing by the end, her fear and fury twisting her face. He felt the blow of her distress far more violently than the slap.

  He went to her, but she shrank back against the wall, so he stopped halfway through the room. “Mo, please. Please listen. My Lai is why I need to go back. What Calley needed, what his men needed, was someone they trusted to hold them back. There’s too many children fighting this war. Too many kids who don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “And you’re going to change all that. What a big lad you are, changing the course of a whole war on your own.” She sneered every word through tears.

  His heart thumped wildly in his ears. He could lose her over this, he saw it now. She’d told him he could never lose her love, but this would do it. He’d made a decision in a flash of instinct, and now he would lose this best, truest thing in his life.

  It was too late to turn back now.

  “No.” He crossed the rest of the room, ignoring the way she drew back. “But I need to go back. I need to do my part.”

  “You already did your part, and more besides. Don’t use that as an excuse. You want to go back.”

  He couldn’t answer that, because there was a part of him, a deep terrible part of him, where it was true. He hated the war. It had twisted him until he’d broken. He hated the horrors that had happened, were happening. He hated that his side wasn’t the good guys.

  But he had known himself over there. It was exactly that which made him so good in the field. He hadn’t been stripped of his identity in war. He’d found it. He’d been able to control his monster there because it was truly part of him, and it belonged there. He was a warrior.

  When he didn’t respond, Mo, tears streaming like salty rivers, her face an elaborate knot of grief, slammed her hands on his chest and shoved him back. “I guess you’re just a baby-killer like the rest of them.”

  White-hot rage exploded in his head, and his hand was swinging before he knew what he was doing. He caught himself just as Mo cringed in anticipation of the blow. Furious at her, horrified at himself, he roared and spun, letting his fist fly at the nearest inanimate object—a fancy lamp. He punched the shade—Jesus Christ, he’d made a fist, he’d almost punched her—and the lamp went flying off the table. It hit the television co
nsole and shattered noisily.

  The outburst broke the fire between them, and they stood there, both of them panting, Mo’s sobs ebbing. Time slowed, and they stood while the November afternoon aged and the room dimmed.

  His mind was nothing now but howling white noise.

  The first thought that formed in that static was of Mo.

  “I’m sorry, Irish,” he finally said, and turned back to her. “I love you so goddamn much, and I’m sorrier than I can say, but I have to go back.”

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “I don’t understand.”

  He clawed through his mind, trying to find words that would help her. He found a few, a way he thought of it himself sometimes. He remembered the first time it had occurred to him, fixing Faye’s clothesline on a warm spring day.

  “I’m like a stripped screw, grinding a hole I can’t fit in. I can’t get a grip on this life. I can’t figure out who I am here. I only know who I am when I’m fighting. You know that, Mo. You see that.”

  She shook her head frantically. “No! Not with me! You’re not like that with me! I make you calm! You say that all the time! So stay with me!”

  Her tears were flowing again, her emotions boiling, and Brian didn’t want to fight with her anymore. He needed her to understand. He needed her here for him, waiting. He needed to know she was waiting.

  He grabbed her clenched hands and held them. “I’m leaning on you, sweetheart. I can’t stand up on my own, and I can’t be that man. That’s no man at all. Let me go and finish what I started.”

  “No. Please no! How will going back to the place that broke you fix what you think is broken?”

  “I don’t think I’ll find the fix anywhere else.”

  New sobs took her over. These were quiet, hopeless, and far more painful to witness than those of her anger. Her knees gave out, and she dropped to the floor in a bundle. Still holding her hands, he followed her down.