“We don’t want none, if that’s what this is all about.”
“No, ma’am, it’s not. I am Bob Lee Swagger, a retired marine, calling from Crazy Horse, Idaho, on some family business. I am trying to locate my aunt, whose name was Agnes Bowman and who late in life married a Virginia man named Goodwin—”
“Aunt Agnes!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, she was a good soul, bless her heart. She married Daddy after Mother died and although I would never be one to criticize Mother, I will tell you those may have been the best years of his life. And she nursed him through to the end.”
“She was good at that.”
“Her end followed shortly after, I’m sorry to say. You were a marine?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“In nineteen sixty-six, did you come and visit Agnes? I was eleven at the time and I have a very distinct memory of a tall, handsome young man who set all the hearts aflutter. He was just back from Vietnam, where he’d won some medals. He was Agnes’s nephew, I believe. Would that be you?”
“Yes, ma’am, though I’m far from handsome these days, if I ever was. I remember that day in Oranda well. It was the last time I saw her. She helped raise me after my father died and my mother—her sister—had some problems.”
“Families in those days pitched in. That’s the way it was. It’s not much like that anymore, but in those days, families helped out.”
“Ma’am, I’m just playing out a long shot here. My father died in nineteen fifty-five, and that’s when Aunt Agnes came and stayed with us, through ’fifty-eight or ’fifty-nine. As I say, it was then my mother’s decline began. Agnes ran the house for a time. I’m trying to gather up any mementos that might remain of my father. He was a marine too, and a law officer who died young. I thought that she might have had some effects, that you might have them, that something there might somehow relate to my father, something I missed or never knew about.”
“Sounds like a man trying to recover his father’s memory.”
“It may be that, ma’am.”
“Well, I think there’s a box somewhere. I’m not sure it made the move with me. It was all such old stuff, but I hated to just throw it out. It was somebody’s life, you just can’t throw it out.”
“Do you have it?”
“If I do, it’s in the basement and I’d have to look for it.”
“Ma’am, I’d be happy to come on out there and help you.”
“Well, I don’t have much to do these days, so I may as well go look for you. You leave me your address and we’ll see what we can find.”
And so, three weeks later, three weeks he’d spent alone on his property swinging that scythe every day, cutting down the brambles and thorns, a big envelope arrived from Roanoke, Virginia.
He opened it that night.
Oh, Christ.
First thing out was a picture of himself, his mother on a rare sober day, and stern Aunt Agnes, at a picnic table somewhere, ’57, ’58. He wore a Cardinals baseball cap, a T-shirt and jeans, and had scrawny arms and legs. “Bob Lee, Erla June, and Agnes, Little Rock, June 5, 1958,” the inscription read, in fading purple ink.
It brought back nothing, nothing at all.
Then came his mother’s death certificate, some yellowed insurance forms, her driver’s license, a bank book with NULL AND VOID stamped across it, a few Christmas cards from neighbors whose names meant nothing, Erla June’s obituary from the paper up in Fort Smith, a small gold crucifix with a pin that his mother had evidently worn, a few more photographs, mostly of strangers, a few more official forms and a few letters, most of them unopened.
There were eight in all. Evidently they’d arrived over the three years Agnes had lived with Bob and Erla June, some addressed to Mrs. Swagger, some to the Widow of Sgt. Swagger, some to Erla June by name.
He opened them, one by one. A former platoon member wanted to express his sadness and talk about the time Earl had saved his life on Guadalcanal. Then there was a schoolmate of Erla June’s, inquiring as to her health and welfare and expressing gratitude. There was a tax bill from Garland County and Bob realized he had finally paid it in 1984. The daughter of Col. William O. Darby, another Arkansas war hero, famous for having led “Darby’s Rangers” in Italy before he died in France, wrote to express her sorrow and offer moral and even financial support in case of family emergencies. Boy, Bob thought, talk about class.
Then, finally, an unopened letter, postmarked Kenilworth, Illinois, October 4, 1959, on creamy stationery with expensive lettering proclaiming the sender’s name and return address, John H. Culpepper, of 156 Sheridan Road.
Gently, he opened the heavy envelope, pulled out an equally heavy, creamy piece of stationery with Culpepper’s name and address tastefully emblazoned across the top.
Dear Mrs. Swagger:
I’m very sorry this letter is so late. I only learned by chance yesterday about your husband’s tragic death four years ago. I haven’t kept up with marines from the war. But I felt I had to express my sorrow at learning of the event. Earl Swagger was a very great man and helped me on my greatest day of need.
I was a young marine captain, and by default became commanding officer of Able Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines during the battle of Iwo Jima. To say I was overmatched is to understate the situation considerably.
Things came to a head on D plus 2, as we called it, when it was my company’s turn to lead an assault on a particularly well-designed and well-defended Japanese emplacement. Left to my own devices, I would have gotten myself and more importantly my men slaughtered, because, quite frankly, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. (I had used family connections to get myself a combat command, because I just had to fight.)
In any event, Earl, who was the battalion first sergeant, was sent down from headquarters to assist me. He certainly assisted me!
I’m sure you’ve read the citation. I’m proud to say I wrote it and worked hard to get it approved. I think it was my finest accomplishment in an otherwise—between you and me—completely mediocre military career. What he did that day was beyond question one of the great feats of arms in military history. From my vantage point on the slope beneath, he was literally Superman. How many Japanese shot at him we’ll never know, but he never showed a single moment’s hesitation and managed to single-handedly destroy the emplacement. He saved the lives of a hundred men that day!
Anyway, a few days later I was hit, thus ending my adventure in combat. Because I had not been a dynamic leader, I was not the focus of a lot of attention and I was feeling pretty blue on my cot in the hospital tent awaiting evacuation. Who should walk in but the legendary first sergeant himself. I’ll never forget that day! He was a god in that battalion, and here he was coming to visit me.
He said, “Well, Captain, I see you managed to get yourself banged up a bit.”
“Yes, First Sergeant,” I said, “I jumped this way and the Jap knew exactly which way that would be. I was lucky he was in a hurry.” (It was a leg wound.)
“Sir, I wanted you to have this. You were in command that day, you headed up the assault, I was just the fellow who was left standing. So it’s yours. Maybe it’ll cheer you up.”
He handed me something wrapped in cloth, about two feet long. I quickly opened it to discover a Japanese sword, what’s called a “banzai sword,” of the sort the Jap officers carried and all too often used in combat.
He said, “Your boys gave me that when I was heading back to Battalion after the fight. It came out of the blockhouse. Someone took it off the dead Jap officer just before they burned the place out with flamethrowers. That fellow tried to comb my hair with it. I thought you might want to have it.”
I should tell you that Japanese swords were prized war trophies, especially when taken in combat. I could have sold it, and indeed, over the next few weeks many officers tried to buy it off me, one offering $500. But it was one of my treasures.
The truth, however, is that it’s not mine. I
didn’t earn it. Earl did, and it was given to me only out of his compassion for young men who’d done their best, even if the best wasn’t all that great, as in my case.
Now I think, What right do I have to have this sword? Please let me send it back to you. I understand Earl had a son. He should have it—though I should tell you, it’s very sharp and one of my own children has already cut himself with it. But it demonstrates what Earl did that day. Please let me know if you’d like me to send it on.
John H. Culpepper
Kenilworth, Ill.
Julie dropped him at the Boise airport, named for a hero of World War II, an aviator. He had a flight to Denver, then a longer one to Chicago, where he would arrive at another airport named for a World War II hero, also an aviator. He had reserved a car.
“I’ll be back tomorrow night,” he said. “Ten fifteen. Do you want me to take a cab home? I know you’ve got a rough day.”
“No, no, I’ll pick you up.” She was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, still straw-blond with some gray in her hair and possibly in her eyes. She was a nurse and now administered a clinic in East Boise, a job she loved and gave herself to. The mother of his only child, she’d taken him in years ago and given him a chance at life when the whole world had seemed set on destroying him. But it was an old marriage by now, somewhat burnished, edging more to friendship and partnership than passion.
“Okay, I’ll—”
“Bob, this isn’t turning into one of your things?” She knew him so well it was a little frightening.
“Well, I don’t think so.”
“I know you. You’re really happiest out in the bush with Donnie Fenn, hunting other men and being hunted by other men.”
She knew Donnie Fenn well; she’d been married to him when he was KIA Vietnam while going to rescue his sniper team leader, who lay with a shattered hip. That team leader was Bob.
“I’m just trying to find a sword for this Japanese gentleman. He seemed like a very decent guy, I’d like to help him. That is all.”
“Yes, but I know your obsessions. You get something in your mind and it gets bigger and bigger and pretty soon you’ve talked yourself into Vietnam again.” It had happened a few times. “Sometimes you can’t help it. Someone comes for you and you must respond. No man on earth responds better or truer.”
“Sometimes I do okay.”
“But nobody is coming for you now. This is what I don’t understand. What you’re doing for this man, it’s very decent. But it’s so much. What’s going on? Why do you feel this obligation so intensely? Why is it so big to you? This isn’t some dry drunk thing, some excuse to go off on a crusade and get crazy?”
“No. It’s something I feel I owe my father. And the Japanese father.”
“Your father’s been dead since nineteen fifty-five. And his since nineteen forty-five. It’s all so long ago. How can an obligation remain to men dead half a century ago?”
“It don’t even make sense to me, honey. I have to do this one. I just do.”
“Just don’t find a way to go to war, all right? The good life is here. You’ve earned it. Enjoy it.”
“I’m too old for war,” he said. “I just want to drink and sleep and you won’t let me drink, so I guess I just want to sleep.”
“That’ll be the day,” she said.
6
THE BIG WHITE HOUSE
He missed it on the first run through Kenilworth, which seemed to be but a mile or so long on the edge of Lake Michigan about fifteen miles north of Chicago. The houses were big, mansions really, and clearly this Kenilworth was a spot where the rich lived, and if they lived overlooking the lake, they must be even richer.
But then he found it: the reason he had missed it was that there was no house at all, only a gateway, sheathed in vines and buried in the shadows of elms. You had to look hard for the numbers 1 5 6 on the pillar. He turned in, guided the rented Prizm a few hundred feet down what seemed a tunnel in the trees, and then at last burst into light at a circular driveway and a big, fine white house, one of those legendary places with about a hundred rooms and tile floors and a six-car garage. It was the sort of place where great families lived, back in the time when there were great families.
Bob parked and knocked, and after a time was greeted by a heavy, bearded man his own age in black, mainly. He was also a drinking man. He had a glass of something brown in his hand.
“Mr. Culpepper?”
“Mr. Bob Lee Swagger, I’m guessing.”
“Yes, sir, that’s me.”
“Cool name. So southern. ‘Bob Lee.’ Come on in. You’re right on time. You said two and two it is.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He stepped into a house that was magnificent, though in a museum kind of way. It seemed to be not lived in but preserved.
“Nice place,” Bob said.
“It sure is, but try unloading it in a market like this. You don’t have six million bucks in your pocket, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“Just a thought. Anyhow, care for a drink? I’m betting you’re a drinking man.”
“I was, but good. Thanks, no, sir. One drink and I wake up three days down the pike in Shanghai with a new wife.”
“That actually happened to me! Well, almost. Anyway, I sympathize. Been divorced?”
“Once. The drinking was part of it.”
“No fun, huh? I try to stay pleasantly lubed all day, at least until all this bullshit is over. I’ll refill if you don’t mind.”
He stopped at a bar, added a slug of Maker’s Mark to his glass and another cube, then turned.
“As I said in my letter, I remember the sword. I cut myself on it pretty badly in the fifties. It was sharp. You looked at it and something started to bleed.”
“As I understand it, the war swords were just meant to kill. Otherwise they were junk. They weren’t like the fancy ones the older Japanese in the flashy bathrobes carried.”
“My arm remembers how sharp it was.”
He pushed up his left sleeve. The scar was long and cruel.
“That there’s a forty-stitch scar, pard,” he said. “My one claim to macho. People look at that and think I’ve been in a knife fight. Have you ever been in a knife fight?”
“I had to kill a man with a knife once, sorry to say.”
“I thought so. I’m not impressing you any, I see. Anyhow, as I said, Dad died some years ago. As the only kid, I inherited the house. He went into advertising after the war, and he did very well. But we were from different planets. He went his way, I went mine. Advertising wasn’t for me. I never wanted to say the word client in my life, so I went into TV. I never had to say client. Instead, I had to say sponsor. Anyhow, I’ve got to sell this place to pay for my third divorce and this one’s a mess. Why are the beautiful young ones so hard to get rid of?”
“I couldn’t tell you that, sir,” Bob said with a smile.
“It’s because they’ve never heard the word good-bye. So when you say it to them, they take it personally.” He laughed. “This one wants my spleen for lunch as well as my dad’s fortune. Amazing.”
“Sounds rough, Mr. Culpepper.”
“Listen, even a genuine tough guy like you would get a cold sweat on this mission. Anyway, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take you to the storeroom in the attic and let you be. Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s not. I honestly don’t know what happened to it. I just don’t have it in me to go through all that stuff. You understand?”
“Sure. My attic’s a mess too.”
“Now—how can I say this? If you find something, you know, private.Uh, intimate. Maybe my dad had a stash of porn or letters from some girlfriend or even a boyfriend or something like that. Somethingindiscreet? Just leave it where you find it, all right? I’m not too interested in what is called the truth. I’d like to remember him as the distant, frozen, grim cadaver he was in life, all right? I’d hate to find out he was actually human.”
“I got you.”
They reached the third floor, the end of a hall, and entered a room. “Anyhow, I’ll leave you two old marines alone. If he didn’t get rid of it, it’s probably still here. Really, help yourself, take your time. The bathroom’s down the hall. If you want a drink, want to break for dinner, anything. I’m here alone with my legal problems and trying to get in contact with a daughter who seems to have run off with somebody calling himself a documentary filmmaker. Have you noticed? They’re all documentary filmmakers these days. If you need me, just holler. It’s your sword, really, more than it’s mine and it would make the old bastard happy to know it finally went to you and then back to Japan.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Please don’t call me sir. I’m just Tom. John’s boy, Tom, son of theMr. Culpepper of Culpepper, Townsend & Mathers.”
“Loud and clear, Tom.”
“Can I call you Sarge? I always wanted to call someone ‘Sarge,’ just like in the movies.”
“Sure, but the name I answer to mostly is ‘Gunny.’ It’s from gunnery sergeant, a rank only the Marine Corps has.”
“‘Gunny.’ Oh, that is cool. Gunny, go to town!”
So Bob turned and faced what remained of the life of a man who once had commanded, however briefly, Able Company, 2/28, on a far-off place called Iwo Jima, a hell that neither his only son nor even Gunny Swagger, three-tour survivor of Vietnam, could imagine.
Back and back, the boxes took Bob through Culpepper’s life, and a biography somehow formed. Two wives, one much prettier than the other, and younger too, picked up sometime in the mid-’60s, by which time the only child, Tommy—he was evident too, a towheaded fatty, somewhat overwhelmed by his glamorous and successful dad—was in his sullen, shaggy teens.
Finally, an hour in and thirty-five boxes deep, having passed through adventures in advertising, he came to World War II. Presumably there was a box for Yale or Harvard too, wherever the guy went, but the war box held the usual junk, good conduct ribbons, battle stars, the Purple Heart, a few other trinkets, but the treasure was a marine seabook, chronicling assignments and a surpassing adequacy of performance. Bob went through it quickly and saw that yes, originally John Culpepper had been assigned to command a thirty-man marine detachment on the battleshipIowa in 1944. That was really a ticket to survival. That was saying, Rich boy, we’re looking out for you. You get to go home when it’s all over with a couple of Pacific battle stars, a captaincy, some nice stories to tell, and a leg up on all the O’Tooles and Zukowskis who were bobbing facedown in the red surf.
A Bob Lee Swagger Boxed Set Page 5