Faces in the Night

by Thomas Conuel

  And then one weekend when he was out cruising, snaking his way through north-central Massachusetts, he had come to Belton. Something was different here. Quabbin Reservoir dominated the landscape. He saw it for the first time near evening as he drove on the highway leading into Belton--an immense blue lake below the highway spreading over the distant land. For the first time a passion entered his life. He returned and found a job.

  After his job interview, he’d gone to the Belton library. “There is a lot of history underneath those waters,” the librarian told him. She was an older woman, almost ancient, but still tall and erect. She knew everything about the reservoir. “Four towns were inundated in the 1930s to build Quabbin Reservoir,” she said. “And there are still people living here in town that lived in those lost towns and remember them every day.”

  Quabbin became his anchor, his connection, his past. He changed, stopped being a recluse, joined the Quabbin Historical Society, met people, and even ran for a town office. He began to read and study every aspect of the reservoir and of the area’s pre-reservoir history. He collected maps, books, and even taped interviews with some of the old folks who had lived there prior to the construction of the reservoir in the 1930s—the Quabbin survivors, they were called. He began to hike its many old roads and pathways. He met the Jesuit priest, Father Phil, who everybody called “the map master,” in this way. Father Phil was vice-president of the historical society and owned a copy of just about every map ever produced in the Quabbin region. He could point to a spot on one of his maps and then in a slow deep voice talk about events that occurred there years ago and that most people had long since forgotten. But he didn’t like Father Phil. He couldn’t say why. Father Phil scared him. Father Phil looked at him sometimes in a peculiar searching way. And every time he met and talked with Father Phil, the entity would vanish from his life for days or even weeks. The entity did not like Father Phil either.

  The entity was fully into his life by then and often joined him on his Quabbin rambles showing him insights into the past before the reservoir was built that nobody could know. It was like a video playing in his head—he would feel the entity’s presence and then a blue light that looked a bit like an eyeball would float in the air nearby, and then the pictures would start streaming through his mind—he would close his eyes briefly to heighten the affect. The scene would play out and end and then the entity would be gone. But the entity had great knowledge of the Quabbin landscape and past.

  It had taken a few years before he realized the connection to the entity’s special knowledge. The entity had once lived here.

  * * *

  Chapter 13

  His office was his favorite place. Much more welcoming than his one-bedroom condo over in the Boltwood development.

  His walk down Old Enfield Road had done him good, but now it was back to work. Most of the original Quabbin histories were out of print, though there were a few good reprints. He owned both—some rare originals and all the modern reprints that described the Swift River Valley before it became Quabbin Reservoir. He knew these books by heart. Just flipping through them soothed him in times of stress.

  The entity was agitated, though—had been since this morning. The entity was sending visions that roiled through his mind—faces of people he didn’t know and had never seen. The man in the trailer; the sleeping woman, and now a helicopter pilot crying and dazed as he flew his chopper through thick smoke.

  Problems and interference. He didn’t yet see a connection. But the entity would guide him and show him how to deal with these issues.

  The bones of Kevin Flanagan killed in Vietnam many years ago were coming to Belton and needed special attention. He was pretty sure he knew the connection, but just to be sure he skimmed through an old-leather bound volume.

  There it was. Flanagan. Same name as the missing-in-action soldier. He had read this family’s history before and knew the whole story.

  He turned on his office computer and connected to the Internet for a search. The Internet was still growing and adding connections here in 1994. He seemed to be one of the first to really use it and understand its potential. He found a government Web site listing combat units that had served in Vietnam and then typed in the name Flanagan, the name of his military unit, and the approximate date of his last mission--the day Kevin Flanagan went missing-in-action.

  The unit’s number displayed several additional Web sites. He clicked on the site for Unit History. A quick skim there and he read of a 22-year old Kevin Flanagan, missing–in-action after a search and rescue mission near the Asu Valley of Vietnam. The history reported that Flanagan’s co-pilot had survived and been awarded a silver medal for flying out a wounded man. It gave both men’s names.

  He typed the co-pilot’s name and unit. The system churned away and in a moment displayed the last known address, a motel in Ohio.

  No problem. The guy didn’t want to be known. But there were ways.

  Another search. Real estate listings for Ohio. Millions of names in this database. He typed dates spanning a period of five years from the last known address, the motel in Ohio, and then the name. He waited. If the helicopter pilot was typical, at some point he would have married and bought a house. The system displayed two dozen similar names.

  No problem.

  He typed each name into a searchable database that contained street listing and census information. Again the system churned away, displaying data for each name it found.

  A couple of the names were for older people--men in their 60s, several of the names were for women with a first name of Roberta. He was getting frustrated. Maybe this helicopter pilot was going to be impossible to find.

  But then, Bingo. There it was--a listing in Columbus, Ohio for a man in his mid-40s--just the right age. He jotted down the address.

  Moving on, he returned to the site listing names of various units. The wounded man who had been flown out by the helicopter pilot was listed with his unit. He had apparently never returned to service, probably a pretty bad wound. But he had a current address listed. Not far away either, one of the neighboring hill towns here in Massachusetts. Worthington.

  He wrote that address down too and then shut down his computer. He would need to travel. Tomorrow night there was a Town Meeting. That would go to 11 p.m. or so before they either finished the Warrant or lost a quorum. He would attend Town Meeting tomorrow night and then travel.

  The entity would guide him and show him what needed to be done.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and hefted his Buck knife.

  He was ready.

  * * *

  PART V: The Visitor

  Chapter 14

  Blake loved the sound of his Harley out on the open road. The 1200cc engine roared to life at a touch of the accelerator, but underneath that rumble of power, it hummed with an almost violin-like clarity. He had ridden for 10 straight hours—at first slowly weaving his way out of the morning traffic clogging the Capital and the Beltway, and now picking up speed on the open road north to New England.

  He had no plans except to visit James Bradley.

  James Bradley had been a sergeant with the ground troops that day in Vietnam, and had originally tried to stop the shooting before someone on his own side fragged him—popped him in the leg with a 50-caliber round that tore off the leg at the knee and left Bradley bleeding, dazed, and near death. He had been lying there almost beside the chopper when Blake and Kevin Flanagan landed. As Kevin Flanagan ran off to stop the shooting, Blake dragged Bradley into the chopper and bandaged his wound. And then he simply huddled there until the firing stopped and an Army captain walked over to the chopper.

  “We should frag him and blow the chopper, Cap,” one of the ground soldiers said to the officer while pointing at Blake. The captain, a short, slight man with misty glasses, stood for a moment cradling an M-60 machine gun and considering his options. His shoulders twitched, and he kept looking back at the ruined village where bodies sprawled in the mud. />
  “You didn’t see anything,” he said finally to Blake, pushing his face up close. “Fly that man of mine to base,” and he had pointed to the injured James Bradley. “Get him fixed up, and keep your own big mouth shut. And you tell him the same when he comes around. Neither of you saw a fucking thing today.”

  The captain’s mouth was a slit almost touching Blake’s face. Blake could see silver fillings in his teeth. But it was those eyes that he still remembered. The captain’s brown eyes gleamed with dazed anger behind his misty glasses as he pushed his face into Blake’s. Anger directed at Blake for being there; anger at himself for letting this happen; and anger at the twists of fate that had brought him to this village in Vietnam as an agent of death.

  It was a face that Blake would never forget.

  The captain stepped back from Blake, and answered Blake’s unasked question. “Your buddy took a hit. He shouldn’t have tried to interfere. He won’t be flying out of here with you. Now get the fuck out of here, and keep your mouth shut.”

  And that was what Blake had done, but those moments huddled inside the helicopter as American troops fired wildly at any human who moved in that village had seared him with a fear that never went away. And then the final fear, the captain and his men up close; his own muscles shaking uncontrollably; the realization that he had no control over his own body or his own fate.

  For many years after that day, he would awaken at night in a cold sweat seeing the captain’s face up close to his own, the mouth moving but silent, spitting out the words: “You didn’t see anything.” These were the visions that he had never been able to explain to Katherine, or to anybody. How to explain that indeed he had not seen anything. He had been huddled in a helicopter afraid for his life.

  He and James Bradley had stayed in touch sporadically over the years—the only two survivors from that day who were willing to talk about what had really happened to the little village in the Asu Valley whose name they had never even known.

  After his encounter with Lester Carlson at the Vietnam Memorial, he had motored north from Washington and stopped at a roadside McDonalds to call James Bradley. James Bradley answered on the seventh ring. He was surprised to hear from Blake, but welcoming. James Bradley was living alone in a trailer in the hills of western Massachusetts, and he gave Blake precise directions.

  Blake left the Massachusetts turnpike at Lenox and guided his Harley through the center of Lee, a medium-size town with a still lively main street and then north to Pittsfield, the hub of the Berkshires, but now much faded. North Street, the city’s main street, was a shell of what had once been a thriving downtown. Grand brick and marble building that once housed banks and big department stores sat partially empty, their fronts subdivided into a medley of record shops, donut stores, and hair salons. The city’s great old movie theaters—The Palace and The Capitol—displayed dark interiors; their neon signs broken and jagged.

  Blake pulled over to the curb to watch the people on the street. Two teenage girls in platform shoes and shiny nylon windbreakers immediately crossed the road and came over to the bike. Motorcycles had that effect on women—especially young women.

  “So cool,” said one of the girls, a tall, willowy blonde with flawless skin but a distracting nose ring. “We knew a guy in a real biker’s gang who had naked women painted on the side of his bike.”

  “Ray,” the other girl chimed in, a stout girl with deep set dark eyes. “His name was Ray, and he was head of like this really awesome motorcycle gang.”

  “Lots of guys paint their bikes,” Blake said. “You go to the big rally in Sturgis, South Dakota in August; you’ll see some real fine art on the tanks of the Harley’s.”

  “What’s Sturgis?” the stout girl asked.

  “World’s biggest Harley-Davidson motorcycle rally. You own a Harley you want to get to Sturgis.”

  “You go there a lot?” the blonde asked

  “Couple of times, few years back.”

  “What’s it like,” the shorter girl asked.

  “Rowdy time. Lots of great Harleys. Lots of fine women.”

  “Well take us this summer,” the blonde said, smiling impishly.

  “You’re too young for me,” Blake laughed. “I got a wife that wants to go first.”

  The blonde wrinkled her nose and the stout girl grimaced at the news of a wife and both turned away. Blake eased the Harley back onto North Street.

  “Hey,” he called to the girls, “How far to Worthington?”

  “Twenty miles or so,” the stout girl yelled back. “There are signs at the end of North Street.”

  The signs were easy to follow, but James Bradley difficult to find.

  “I like it that way,” he said to Blake over an hour later as he limped out to greet him. “You came up Windsor Mountain OK and then turned on Old Route 9?”

  “But then I kept going and ended up in the center of this little town.”

  “Worthington. One of the Hill Towns--really pretty place. My official address is Worthington.”

  “So I turned around and came back but rode by your road again. It looks like a long dirt driveway from the highway.”

  “You gotta wanta find me to find me,” James Bradley said quietly and then smiled. He was thinner than Blake remembered him from last time, which had been five years ago at a Vietnam Veterans rally in Washington, D.C. Thinner, and somehow more defeated and vacant, his hair thin and scraggly, his smile now gapped with missing teeth.

  “How’s the leg?” Blake asked.

  “Always the same. Plastic below the knee don’t bother me. It’s every place else on the leg that hurts.”

  “Carol split for good?” Blake asked.

  “Right about the last time we saw each other in D.C.”

  “Whatta you doing for work?” Blake asked.

  “Stuff. They hired some temporary school janitors for Pittsfield and I did that all last fall. How ‘bout you?”

  “Same, only less. I was teaching at the Audubon sanctuary, but first we ran out of funding then I took a leave of absence. Katherine works. Has her own radio show. Doesn’t mind paying the bills, only I’ve gotta help her out. I’ve been down too long.”

  James Bradley nodded and without a word opened his refrigerator and brought out two cold beers.

  Blake hesitated, searching for a way to refuse, and then took the proffered beer and opened it.

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  Blake sipped his beer slowly and was still nursing it an hour later. James Bradley was on his fourth beer by then and starting to talk about the past.

  “But whatta want to do?” he asked for the fourth or fifth time.

  “I don’t know. I just have this feeling that somehow, before they bury Kevin Flanagan’s bones, somebody has got to speak up and say he was killed by his own guys for the sin of trying to stop them from shooting up a whole village.”

  James Bradley shook his head and hobbled to the refrigerator. “You ready for another?” he asked Blake.

  Blake shook his head no.

  “You go talking ‘bout it and it just opens up all the old wounds. Twenty-five fucking years ago. Wasn’t anything either of us could do that day. Things went down. Shit happens. We’re still here, your buddy’s gone. Life goes on. Life ain’t fucking fair. Most of those other guys who shot up the village that day never made it out of ‘Nam. The unit was ambushed couple days later and took heavy casualties.”

  “I know, I know,” Blake said. “I’m not even thinking of trying to bring those guys to justice. They gotta live with what they gotta live with. I just think that somebody, this Lester Carlson maybe, should acknowledge that there was a massacre that day, and that it happened all the time. And that Kevin Flanagan got killed trying to stop one of those massacres. Shot by his own guys.”

  James Bradley popped open the beer he had been holding and took a long, thoughtful swallow. “Sure you won’t have another?” he asked. Blake shook his head no and sat looking out the small dusty
picture window of the trailer home that James Bradley had lived in for over a decade. It was an old green trailer home that was still comfortable inside--three tiny bedrooms, a bathroom, and small kitchen and living room. He had done so much better with his house--though really that was Katherine’s doing, not his. He had been lucky in his choice of a woman to share his life with. James Bradley, less so.

  “You guys,” James Bradley said, taking a big gulp of beer from the can, “you fucking helicopter rescue guys, strutting around base camp wearing those big ten-gallon cowboy hats. Black. Always black, like you were the fucking original Texas Rangers or something.”

  “And everybody hated our fucking guts, until we had to come and get them,” Blake laughed, remembering for the first time in years the brotherhood of the chopper pilots and gunners—the deep rescue crews. “Yup. We were cantankerous sons-of-bitches who thought we owned the world, and hell, on some days, we did.”

  “Yup,” James Bradley said, “yup, on some fucking days you sure did.” He paused, and took a slow swallow of his beer. “Nobody in my old unit was happy about that day. Nobody going around piss proud of what they did that day. Guy who fragged me came to me a week later in tears while I was in sick bay. He bought it a month later. Stepped on a booby trapped mortar shell. But before that, when he came to see me, he said he was sorry and then just cried. Bawled his eyes out like a baby. About everything—not just about fucking me over.”

  “Yeah,” Blake said, “lot of us never got over that day.”

  “I ain’t hassling brother,” James Bradley said, “I’m just trying to establish some facts for the record. You’re thinking you’re going to go up there and talk to this Lester Carlson again and then everybody’s going to feel better. Nah. Nope. Nada. No fucking way. Ain’t going to happen. Ain’t going to even come close to happening that way.”