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"For a man with no legs, he's stepping on my toes pretty heavily," I answered – but thought about his suggestion more than I care to admit.
I had nearly decided that what I had done wasn't worth it when the only good thing of the time happened. This kid from Trick One came out of the barracks one day when the sun was pouring into my fatigues like lava, and at that dark, sun-bunded moment, had said, "Look at the little tin soldier. It walks, it talks, it's almost human." I don't suppose he intended that I hear him, but I had. Someone else had too. From the second floor above the door an invisible voice roared like the wrath of Jehovah. "Shut your wise mouth, fuckhead!" The kid jumped, looked around, then dashed back in the barracks, perhaps wondering if God hadn't spoken to him.
I glowed. I sparkled. I felt heroic for a change, instead of dumb. (I'm not ashamed: pride has turned better heads than mine.) Someone understood.
"Ah 'tis a kind voice I hear above me," I said, but only a deep laugh answered me.
But by the time my hour was over I had lost that quick lift under the sun. The sun wasn't merely in the sky, it was the sky. From horizon to zenith the heavens burned in my honor, and in my chest and back and head. And in the shattering light all clear things lost themselves. Colors faded into pale imitations of themselves and became dust.
I had come back to be alone, to find simplicity, and had found trouble, and in this trouble found I must fall back on that which I was, that which I would be, that which I had always tried not to be.
I am the eldest son of generations of eldest sons, the final moment of a proud descent of professional killers, warriors, men of strength whose only concern with virtue lay in personal honor. But I still misunderstood a bit that day, I still confused being a soldier with being a warrior. That small, mean part of me which had wanted to care about rank and security and privilege was dying, and with the death of order began the birth of something in me monstrous, ah, but so beautiful. My heritage called, and though it would be many long moons before I answered, the song had burst my cold, ordered heart and I hated in the ringing sweep of the sun, and I lived.
Historical Note 1
There are days, whole, long, lovely days in the mountains which have nothing to do with the sun. A thick damp fog drifts in, draping the peaks and the high valleys in eternal mourning, gray, misty mourning. The fog limits my view but increases my perspective (that is, I suppose, what limits are for), and though I can only see the two dripping pines and an occasional bird, I can hear the world on such days. Not that I stop staring out the windows; perhaps I hope to see a sound. On my own, of course; you know how I hate drugs. But the sounds, clean, sharp tones… they pierce the blanket. I am convinced (sadly so, according to Abigail, or perhaps she said madly; she tends toward an insecure mumble when she speaks) that the only reason I can't hear watches ticking on golfers' wrists is because of the pounding of their pulses as they stride confidently past the windows. I still live out those windows. They have become my co
But as much as I stare out those windows, I didn't see Gallard creep up while I was reading the Sunday Stars and Stripes.
"The present may be captured in those limp pages, my friend, but the past, and the future too, are out here, across this dim, gray, timeless mist," a voice tolled in the window. I started, but caught only a glimpse of a golf cap, and wondered who the hell was playing tricks on a sick man. I should have known: a doctor.
In a few minutes the voice came again, disembodied, from the hall. "Yes, the past, dim, bloody past, my poor, mad fellow." Gallard stepped in, wearing rumpled short pants, a knit shirt, crepe-soled canvas shoes, and a nifty new golfing cap. He looked half-pleased, as if he had just made a hole-in-one which no one saw, and a drowsy smile lifted the sagging skin along his jaw line. His face always seemed to me well-used: Whatever the expression, from grin to scowl, and whatever the extent of his emotion, his face had a wrinkle for it.
"Jesus shit. I thought I was having a visitation," I said.
"You are, you are," he chuckled, smiling still more. "May I come in?"
"Please do, kind spirit. I'd rather have you where I can keep an eye on you, than prowling around in the fog scaring hell out of me," I answered, folding the paper. The pages were limp at that.
"It's hell I'm scaring in, not out. Murder must pay."
"On the installment plan?"
"Don't read that crap," he said, gesturing with a large thermos bottle from behind his back. "Isn't it enough that you give life, limb and dignity to the Army? You don't have to wipe your mind with their version of the news." He took the paper out of my hands and tossed it into the trash can.
"Okay. What are you up to, besides collecting newspapers for Great Britain?"
He explained that he wouldn't gather manure for the English, claiming that they were too hesitant about commiting their troops in World War II.
"Sorry," I interrupted. "But why are you creeping about the clouds?"
"Well," he said, paused, then got up to shut the door. "I was supposed to play golf with the Base Commander but, as you can well see, we were fogged out. So I've been at the Club, crying over a dozen vodka martinis with the old man. And since he gave me some good news about you, I thought you'd want to know. So here I am. Hate golf anyway. I'll give you a drink if you promise to stay sane." He poured two small ones out of the thermos. "Cheers?"
"Cheers?"
"You should be happier than that." He seemed almost angry, and sailed his new cap into the trash.
"Why tell?"
"Because our leaders have decided not to send you to jail."
"Why not?"
"Why not? Well, mainly because I've managed, at great expense, to convince everyone from Lt. Hewitt to the Base Commander to an angry Air Police sergeant that you should be forgiven on the grounds of post-combat reaction or some other bit of jargon.
"We haven't had so many Vietnam casualties that we've gotten casual about them yet, and since one of the ones we had died under rather suspicious circumstances – a drunken doctor and the wrong shot and all that sort of stuff. So everybody has a tinge of a guilty conscience right now which they will surely soon get over quickly…"
"Thanks. Who died?"
"Nobody you know. It's always nobody nobody knows." Gallard paused, his shoulders and chest, usually puffed in a knot of intense energy, seemed to be caving in upon themselves, sucked down in the wake of a sigh like a temple falling into the waves. "He wasn't from your outfit. With the usual attempt at security, they scattered your outfit's wounded like illegitimate children all over the Pacific. There are even, I hear, three guys in a British hospital in Singapore or someplace. Security, yes."
"The bastards notified my old man that I was injured in an aircraft accident."
"The security officer hasn't gotten to you yet to swear you to silence; that's why you have a private room. Less contact with uncleared perso
"What? What about?"
"Your court martial. As soon as you are marked fit for duty, as if you ever were, you will…"
"Get shipped back to Vietnam?" I interrupted.
"Don't be silly. Of course not. A medical discharge will be drawn up, I'll sign it; you get out, plus a twenty-five percent disability which you will lose at your first reexamination. So you get away free; like you always will, I suppose."