Faces in the Night

by Thomas Conuel

  His children, in particular Maria, saved him from the bitterness and despair that enveloped him in those years. When you reached a certain age and your children became adults, their voices increasingly became the voices of authority and wisdom--functions once dispensed by you alone. Even in his case--a man who had for a number of years wielded great authority--he found himself seeking guidance from his children. He had read somewhere that this was the real sign of growing old--not the physical diminishments represented by creaky bones and muscles; not the scattering of memory; nor the retreat from sexuality, but rather the passing of the torch of confidence and decision making to one’s children.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  He’d not been recognized the first day he came to this place, or since. And that was good. That was fine. That helped with the forgetting. He had faded to a historical asterisk--a man whose place in the thickets of history was forever shaded by the giant sycamores that once towered above him, and who in turn had now been toppled by the high winds of history—Johnson, Rusk, McNamara, Nixon, Kissinger.

  He could still remember that dinner party at McNamara’s home. McNamara offered him a glass of wine and then struggled mightily to remove the cork with a winged corkscrew. The cork broke off and dropped in small, floating fragments into the dark wine. He pretended not to notice, but McNamara was upset.

  “I don’t like things to go wrong,” McNamara said and then tossed the wine bottle still full into the wastebasket where it landed with a gurgling thud. “Here,” he said. “You open the next one.” And he had.

  That first day here had been the hardest.

  He and Maria walked down past the Lincoln Memorial, its size and great whiteness surprising him, as always, like coming upon a towering snow-capped mountain in the middle of a grassy plain. Maria reached for his hand as they trod the path to the Wall, passing first by the statues of the three soldiers that stood sentinel on the grass. It was a rainy morning in early spring when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and their scent permeated the damp air. Small corkscrews of thin gray mist were rising off the grass around the memorial. Several men in their 40s were wandering nearby talking in low voices. They were veterans who visited this spot daily, Maria said. Some of them stayed through the night.

  Bouquets of flowers lay scattered along the base of the memorial among framed photographs of smiling young men, a baseball glove, a gray-canvas newspaper delivery bag with green lettering that said “Clinton Daily Item,” a paperback book of Robert Frost’s poems, a white rose in a Budweiser can, several pairs of army boots, a scattering of medals and shoulder patches, handwritten notes and poems, and a pair of black-lace panties.

  He hesitated before the first foot-high stone that began the wall. Maria touched him gently from behind. “Come on, Dad. It’s the only way. You’ve got to leave it behind. You did your best. You made some mistakes, but lots of others did, too.”

  He squared his shoulders and looked around, and then pointed at the Robert Frost book at the base of the wall and said in a mock professorial tone. “One of the most overrated poets. I’ve always maintained that. Really just a gruff old coot with a chip on his shoulder and a genius for self-promotion.”

  “You should have been a college professor, Dad,” Maria had laughed.

  “And if I had, I sure as hellfire wouldn’t be doing penance here today,” he shot back, and then together they walked the length of the 500-foot long black granite wall inscribed with 58,183 names that comprised the Vietnam War Memorial.

  After that first visit, he had been drawn back again and again until he lost count of the times he had come to the Wall. He came often, always in the spring when the juices of renewal flooded this part of the earth and when even beneath a stone cold monument one could believe in life everlasting, at least until winter. And the men who prowled the monument never hassled him. The men of the Wall understood. They didn’t know his connection to the war, and it never mattered. He was one of their own--one more living victim of a bad war.

  It was while standing at the Wall that the idea of publicly apologizing for his part in the war had come to him. Pink strands of dawn were slicing through the black sky while he stood tracing his index finger over an inscribed name, trying to imagine what the life behind the name would have been like had the young man lived. One of the men who had spent the night stood silently nearby.

  “My good friend,” the man said, pointing at the name. “We both served in country, only he never came out. And nobody’s ever said they were sorry.”

  That veteran didn’t recognize him, didn’t know who he was. He reached out and touched the former-soldier lightly on the sleeve.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and the sound of his words made him feel released, as if a thin band of high-strength steel had been snipped from his chest.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, realizing as he spoke that these were words he seldom uttered in life. It was then that the idea of making a public apology had come to him. It was the right thing to do.

  And then this morning, Maria handed him a newspaper and pointed at a news story.

  “Read this Dad,” she said. “You’ll be home in Belton come Memorial Day.”

  He put on his reading glasses and peered at the item she pointed to.

  A family’s 25 year wait to learn the fate of a son who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1969 ended with a call from the Pentagon earlier this week that said their son’s remains had been recovered and identified. Kevin Flanagan of Belton, Massachusetts was reported missing in action on April 9, 1969.

  Flanagan’s remains were recently returned from Vietnam to an Air Force base in Hawaii. A service is planned for Memorial Day in his hometown of Belton, in Central-Western Massachusetts near Quabbin Reservoir, the water supply for metropolitan Boston.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  Blake maneuvered his motorcycle through the pre-dawn streets of Washington, D.C., and parked a block up from the National Mall. Cradling his helmet, he crossed the empty street and walked down the paved path through Constitution Gardens to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. He passed the flagpole and the eight-foot bronze statue of three infantrymen and paused in front of the lowest panel of the Wall. He stood for a moment looking up at it--the black granite polished to a mirror smoothness that reflected those who stood before it, the sky above and the ground below.

  There are two walls, the east wall and the west wall, each almost 250 feet long that rise from ground level to meet in the center at 10.1 feet. Each wall has 70 panels, with names etched chronologically in the order of death. He knew where Kevin Flanagan’s name was--engraved on the Wall as one of the missing.

  Each name on the Vietnam Memorial is preceded on the west wall, or followed on the east wall, by a diamond or a cross. The diamond for a confirmed death; the cross for a soldier missing or still unaccounted for. There were about 1,150 names designated with crosses. When a soldier’s remains are returned or accounted for, the diamond symbol is then superimposed over the cross. Kevin Flanagan’s name on the west panel of the Wall was still preceded by a rare cross. That would soon change.

  Blake was standing in front of the panel that held Kevin Flanagan’s name when he looked up and recognized a figure walking slowly down the path that led to the Memorial. Lester Carlson. The man in charge in Saigon way back when. His stomach fluttered. He heard his breathing grow tense and shallow. What a strange coincidence. The one person in authority who could have helped him those many years ago was now here at the Vietnam Memorial.

  Even after all these years, Lester Carlson’s face remained familiar. The strong, square chin, the high forehead and thin nose, the thin lips and even white teeth, and the wire-rimmed glasses.

  There was a woman with him, 35 or so, pretty with long dark hair, and he could see even at a distance, flashing dark eyes. Lester Carlson wouldn’t remember their encounter in Vietnam, Blake thought. He hesitated a moment and then walked toward Lester Carlson. He want
ed to say something, but he was not sure what. He looked from Lester Carlson’s face, still as commanding and assured as it was 25 years ago, to the face of the young woman at his side. His daughter, he thought. Probably in elementary school all those long years ago when her father’s path had crossed his in Vietnam. Her dark eyes looked at him, alternately concerned and curious as he stopped in front of them.

  Blake found his voice. “You don’t remember me. Asu Valley, 25 years ago. American troops shooting everybody in this little village. My buddy tried to stop it and got shot. Everybody covered it up. I tried to tell you about it right after it happened.”

  Lester Carlson stopped abruptly and looked at him for a long moment as if he had not heard, and his expression changed from assurance to uncertainty. His daughter took her father’s hand. “I don’t understand,” Lester Carlson said finally. “I don’t know what you mean, but you look familiar.”

  “We were both in ‘Nam at the same time,” Blake said. “I tracked you down at headquarters in Saigon back then. Wanted to report a massacre by American troops. We’re talking here summer of ‘69. But nobody would listen.”

  “I think I remember you” Lester Carlson said tentatively with a hint of recognition. “I remember that day at headquarters in Saigon. There was a soldier who wanted to talk to me.”

  “That would be me,” Blake said.

  “And I walked away,” Lester Carlson said.

  “And I did to,” Blake said.

  “Whatever it was, whatever happened, tell me now.” Lester Carlson stood still his full attention focused on Blake.

  Far away and years ago Blake saw in his mind, Katherine. She was standing naked in their kitchen nibbling toast and looking over his shoulder at something he had been reading in the newspaper. They had just bought their first house together--a cottage on a pond, and were still filling in the details of their lives for each other.

  “It can’t be all that bad, Hon,” she said. “Just tell me about it.” He had tried, and Katherine had listened, but if you had never been to Vietnam, it wasn’t easy to explain.

  “I can’t,” he said, looking up at Lester Carlson, but picturing in his mind that morning with Katherine. “It’s just not that easy to talk about anymore.”

  Lester Carlson turned away. Blake realized he was turning away for the same reason that he, Blake had turned away from Katherine. It was not that easy to open up the can and pry out the moldering contents of memory; the quivering yet still preserved past that was Vietnam in 1969.

  A policeman was eyeing his motorcycle parked illegally on the grass across the street from the Memorial Wall. The policeman was pulling a pad from his pocket. A ticket and a tow. “I’ve got to go,” Blake said to Lester Carlson’s back. The daughter looked at him with big dark eyes. “I’ve gotta go,” he repeated, and ran off toward his motorcycle.

  * * *

  PART III: The Jesuit

  Chapter 8

  Father Philip DiMarco, S.J. looked out over the rolling yard in front of the Franciscan Monastery in Petersham, Massachusetts where he occupied a small office and a bedroom. A stand of gnarled, ancient hemlocks stood in a cluster to the left of the single large picture-window that dominated his office. Two simple rooms—that was all he required in the sunset of his career. He ate, prayed, and said Mass with the Franciscan brothers, and spent the rest of his time here in his office. No comparison to the offices he once occupied at Boston College where he headed the law school for a decade before venturing into politics. He was a Jesuit, but there were no other Jesuits in central Massachusetts. The home-base of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus was in Weston outside of Boston, 70 miles east of here, so he stayed with the Franciscans here in Petersham on the northern edge of Quabbin Reservoir.

  It wasn’t really an exile. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, OK. Running for and winning a seat in the US House of Representatives in 1970 while on leave from the Law School of Boston College, had, perhaps, been a mistake. Travel at the speed of invisibility, his brother, a motorcycle mechanic always said. And he’d ignored that dictum while winning election to five straight terms in the House as a Democrat from Massachusetts. Early on he became a leader in the Vietnam antiwar movement; went on to serve for ten years, made a national name for himself outside of the brotherhood of the Jesuits as a crusader for human rights, but created image problems.

  Should a priest really be a member of the United States Congress? Maybe it was OK for a priest to speak out on human rights, but to call the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, a war criminal? Well, that was a bit much. And then to be out there advocating for birth control for the poor in third-world countries? Directly opposed to Church policy on birth control. That was stepping out of line in a big way.

  So, once again: should a priest really be a member of the United States Congress?

  That was a good question; and one that the Holy Father, John Paul II, had solved by simply declaring in 1980 that no, a priest could not hold public office, and that Father Philip DiMarco was to retire from politics and devote his considerable energy and gifts to authoring a second book on the nature of evil—his first volume now considered a classic.

  He’d been out here in the boondocks since. He still missed the teaching and the camaraderie of the professors at Boston College, a school founded by the Jesuits in 1863, making it one of the oldest Jesuit, Catholic universities in the United States. He still believed in the Jesuit’s vows to dedicate their lives to the service of God and the well-being of their fellow men and women. The Jesuits, unlike many religious orders, rejected monastic life, but instead worked to change the world and “find God in all things.” It was a call to action. Use your talents, gifts, and abilities in the service of others. He still believed in that vision; he still loved Boston College; and the law, and he still loved politics. But now he served in exile. His biggest achievement in the past year: he’d been elected vice president of the Quabbin Historical Society.

  “I know you miss the law, and you love politics” Father James C. Hannigan, S.J., the head Jesuit in New England, told him often. Father Hannigan had become the Provincial of the New England Province last July 31, on the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.

  Father Hannigan and Father Philip DiMarco went back a long way—all the way back to the early days as novitiates teaching English in a slum in Santiago, Chile for two years, serving the poor and needy and learning the traditions of the Society of Jesus.

  “I’ll get you back to teaching at the law school in a year or so,” Father Hannigan told him several months ago. “Professor Emeritus. Perfect for you. They still talk about you. They still remember you at Boston College. You’re still a famous writer.”

  “Sure, sure,” Father Phil replied. “I’ve been in exile for what, 15 years now? So what’s the big hurry?”

  “Come on now,” Father Hannigan said. “You’re not really in exile. You’re doing research. You are the preeminent authority on the nature of evil in the modern world. You’re the expert. You wrote the book. That’s why the Superior General picked you to look over those old papers from the archives.”

  Father Allan J. Nickles, S.J., Superior General of the Society of Jesus, had indeed picked Father Philip DiMarco, S.J., noted scholar, former head of the Law School at Boston College, former Democratic member of the US House of Representatives, and author of the classic, “Good and Evil: Chasing the Devil Through the Portals of Time” to head a study of what the Society of Jesus was calling “a new look at the devil in the 20th century.”

  Now, a Friday morning out here in the middle of nowhere. Father Phil picked up the phone and dialed Father Hannigan’s number in Weston. The Reverend Richard Higgins, S.J., Socius, Executive Assistant picked up on the second ring.

  ‘Hey, Father Richard. Phil DiMarco here. Is Hannigan around?”

  “How have you been?” Father Higgins asked. “Is he expecting your call?”

  “He’s always expecting my
call,” Father Phil said. “I’ve been OK. How about you?”

  “Prayer can’t stop you from getting old,” Father Higgins said, sounding almost aggrieved. “If it weren’t for my colitis and high blood pressure, I’d say I was fine, and praise the Lord. Hold on. I’ll buzz Father Hannigan.”

  A moment later the familiar voice of his old friend James Hannigan came on the line.

  “Hi Phil. What’s up? How is life out there in the country?”

  “Almost as boring as I thought it might be back when they first sent me packing out here, but it does leave me lots of time for reading.”

  “You were such a star at Boston College,” Father Hannigan said. “I remember those days. No doubt about that.”

  “That was yesterday,” Father Phil said. “Yesterday is a long time ago. Hey, do you remember those papers you gave me last year. Historic stuff from the 1930s about this region, the Quabbin region out here. They were in the archives.”

  “Sure. Father Nickles wanted you to incorporate some of that stuff into your next book. The Jesuits chasing evil through the ages.”

  “I read over the archive documents last year, when you gave them to me” Father Phil said. “Lots of good primary sources that this Father Baker dug up and put together. He started way back with Sebastien Rale, a leader of the Jesuits in North America around 1713. This Father Baker collected original documents. Some of them are still in the package somebody back in the 1950s or so sent to the Smithsonian, which was good. But this Father Baker had gone through all these documents, taken notes, and left a 50-page manuscript summarizing all this stuff. ”

  “Really. Right down your ally then, Phil. You love those original sources. Make a good story to add to your next book.”