by Anthology
Bisk was still stretched out in total invitation, Mari Selander was still stroking her military columns of nipples.
“That’s clear enough,” Greg Selander said. “You claim you’re a mindless transmitting belt, want to transmit everything unselectively. Meaning, you’re with the rioters, ready to make things harder still for our boys dying overseas.”
“You’re a transmitting belt, you transmit helicopter parts mindlessly, unselectively.”
“To save our boys, not kill them.”
“You transmit slogans like a mindless belt, too.”
“That’s not slogan, that’s fact.”
“Not fact, press release. Look, if you defend your right to be an automaton, don’t take a dim view of other automatons trying to do their job.”
“Covers are off, Mr. Arborow. What’s in sight is a man wants to give aid and comfort to his country’s enemies.”
Blake stood, feeling his drinks.
“Try stripping yourself,” he said. “You know what might come in sight, to eyes trained by two minutes of history? One of the country’s worst enemies, maybe. What aids and abets enemies like you is keeping back our rich footage on strategic cremating.”
At this, Mari Selander did something peculiar. She’d been lost to the conversation, patting the dog as she went through two more Martinis. Now she jumped up to all her leggy, fragile height, long feet spread in challenge of everything and all.
“No more lies!” she said fever fast. “All automatons! So be it! Out from under the Balenciaga napalms! Everybody! I’ll start!” She reached inside her dress with both hands, fumbled, brought the hands out again, each holding a rubber cup. “Cards on the table! All varieties of falsies! Strip, everybody! Out from under the covers! Automatons, right! All a la mode lies on the transmitting belt!” She tossed the rubber cups high in the air, a flower girl strewing modern formfast flowers. They were well aimed, they fell into the fireplace, into the fire big enough for pigs, and instantly were sprouting consequential blue flames. “Not a minute too soon! See! Blobs of lies on everybody! About to burn! Now who else’s going to peel off his napalm!”
Greg Selander walked to her and said, “What are you suffering from, Mari? For once, can you say?”
Mari Selander said, “Body contact. From those I view dimly. Burns.”
Blake set his glass down.
“You were right about one thing,” he said to Greg Selander. “Not all wars are the same. Bodies can burn and run in ways I haven’t seen. After this, attack your attackers, not strangers. And don’t dress it up with politics. Thanks for the drinks and slogans.”
The last picture on his eyes, breaking into him, pulling at him, was of Mistress Meager standing in the middle of the room, hands cradling sham-shorn breasts, legs planted wide in taunt more than invitation, and Bisk still on her back, legs still lax, staggered that when her dear one finally threw something it would not be tasty things to her.
Far from sleepy, Blake took a long drive, to Malibu and then on to Trancas. Twice he stopped at waterfront places for a drink, a third time to eat a hamburger. When he got back home it was well after midnight.
The light in the living room showed him objects on the floor that didn’t belong there. A pair of flowered, belled slacks, woman’s. Jacket, woman’s. A blouse. A bra. Panties.
He heard a sound in the bedroom, more assault, beckoning.
He went there and flicked on the light to find Mari Selander stretched out on his bed, naked. No, not precisely stretched out, though precisely naked. When the light cracked on her hands elevated floppily to touch in the air over small, valiant breasts, legs bent as knees separated to the pelvis’ limit of give. She waggled asking hands, stretched her mouth to make a dog’s chugging sound.
“How’s this for a body count.”
“More casualties around here than meet the eye.”
“Let’s have a meeting of more than eyes, Mr. Arborow.”
“Mine are meeting each other. You’re an unexpected eagle in my bed.”
“Know a better spread for it?”
“Spread any more and there’ll be two of you.”
“Animal kingdom’s all botched. How come dogs are the ones to spread-eagle.”
“How do other men’s wives come to be doing it on my bed?”
“Easy, you’ve got a window in the back not nailed down.”
It was a body not to be believed. Such a long, satiny stretch, no massy bulges but, oh, yes, slimmed shadowings, subtler concavities, the potential of a greyhound speediness, the promise of twine in the never-ending legs. Such a gangly want and over-readiness.
“You’ve got a husband across the street not nailed down.”
“Don’t you worry about husbands. Don’t you worry. Nights I go for drives, Greg goes to bed. I parked the car two streets over and sneaked back on foot over the firebreak. Know something? There’s a firebreak ends in your backyard. I take that to mean we can bring our bodies together for as long as we want and not worry about danger of brush fires. Fires we don’t make by our own brushing. You come here and give me all the best bisquits. I’ve been long without.”
“What gave you the idea of breaking in here?”
“I was looking at Greg after the people went home, which was fast. When he’s boiling he doesn’t say anything, just sits with a red face. I was looking at that fat football face and a thought came, I wanted somebody inside me but not him, never him, you, decidedly you. Not because politics makes bedfellows. Because fucking makes bedfellows. Come inside me, you.”
“I don’t think this will get Greg Selander out of the helicopter business. I think, further, you don’t give a shit what business he’s in.”
“Who wants your opinions? You’re no opinion man. You’re the reporter. Report to your brain what’s craving all over your eyes from all over your bed. Be my lavish bisquit man.”
“Your war I haven’t been to before. All in it casualties and all casualties wearing the same dogtag.”
“Don’t analyze it, you correspondent, cover it.”
Which, feeling somewhat tampered with, somewhat hauled, he did. Those endless legs closed, on him, all urge, going like the legs of the napalmed.
She left he didn’t know when. He thought for one minute about her climbing back up the firebreak, sleek legs, product of some strong generational taffy pull, cracking the dead spines of chaparral, then he was in the sleep of the drugged. When he opened his eyes it was after ten and he was in trouble. He shaved-showered fast, dressed without the morning swim, skipped breakfast except for a can of Snap-E-Tom Bloody Mary Mix for the tang of the tomato.
Backing down his drive, he heard sounds of running and barking. In a moment Mari developed from the crowded birches across the way, Bisk all over her heels. She made a comic hitchhiker’s sign, he pulled over.
“Sleep all right?” she said.
“You’ll have to ask somebody who was there.”
“See how good I am for you? I slept, too, oh, did I. Like a sack of sawdust. That’s better than a log. Logs sleep better when they’re pulverized. Oh, how you pulverized me—”
“I can’t discuss insomnia and the lumber industry, I’m late—”
“Where you going, Blake?”
“Mojave, up past Palmdale. They’re putting on a napalm show.”
“Take me with you, Blake? Please?”
“You’d throw stinkbombs.”
“Won’t, honest, Blake. Please. I get migraines when I’m alone all day and Greg’s gone to Vandenburg Base for three days. To talk with the brass about chopper parts. The man of helicopter parts. Let me come, Blake. One more in your crew won’t be noticed.”
“There’ll be some Taybott men.”
“They won’t know me or I them. Greg’s kept me away from Taybott people for fear I’d break out picket signs. Take me and I’ll tell you all about your non-helicopter parts.”
“You won’t get on a soapbox?”
“Or my high horse, or a low hor
se, or even Bisk. Bisk? Where are you girl?”
Bisk came prancing back from the driveway. She’d retrieved Blake’s morning paper and was carrying it proudly in her grin. Mari accepted the paper from her.
“Can Bisk come, Blake? Please? She gets migraines when I leave her alone all day.”
He waved them in.
They talked not at all on the San Diego Freeway cutting across San Fernando Valley. At moments Mari even read the paper. This was all right with Blake. He didn’t want to hear about what was, or wasn’t, between this woman and her husband. As for what might or might not be between her and himself, he didn’t want to get into that, either, it would be a tiny pendant from what was, or wasn’t, with the husband. As his brushes with women generally were.
On the run you ran into married women who were attracted to the image of man with itinerary, man just passing through, then felt martyred by the first signs of travel preparations.
As they cornered east out of Newhall, for Antelope Valley, Mari said from her paper, “VC’s out to win with least human cost, too. Here’s an item about their finishing off a village called Dakson, with flamethrowers.”
“Cost accounting can’t be the monopoly of one side.”
“Double entry bookkeeping’s the game on both sides. Listen. The simple Montagnards of Dakson had only recently learned how to use matches, and flamethrowers were beyond their imagination. Then, in one horrifying hour, flame throwers wielded by Communist troops wreaked death and destruction . . . ‘They threw fire at us’ was how survivors described the attack . . . 60 thatched-roof houses razed . . . Ashes Hew across carcasses of water buffalo . . . Rows of bodies of women and children . . . Tiny brother and sister, still clinging to each other . . . 63 bodies dragged from bunkers—”
“You save lives any way you can. Don’t read any more.”
They were well into the desert when Mari left off scratching Bisk’s unreservedly available neck to say thoughtfully, “They’re not going to let you tell it like it is, not a chance.”
“The Vietnam footage, you mean?”
“They won’t let you put those shots in, will they, Blake?”
“How many close-ups of the skin and bone aftermath of Hiroshima have you seen, 23 years after?”
“If they hold you back, what’ll you do?”
“Tell it as it isn’t, or is only in propagandistically safe part, the bloodless, faceless, skinless part.”
“That good enough?”
“No.”
“Isn’t there an alternative?”
“No.”
“There’s got to be.”
“There’s one, get a staff job on Hanoi Radio. I’d run into the same problems there, maybe worse. There’s no place where they want the whole footage.”
“Don’t you want to hit somebody?”
“You did it for me. Your husband. More ways than one. I’m not sure he’s the one to hit, but as long as you enjoy it.”
“He’s the one enjoys it, Blake. A good wife doesn’t deprive her mate of his intensest pleasures.”
“I thought you were enjoying yourself somewhat.”
“In your bed I was.”
“Long before.”
“Don’t make a big thing of how I took off after Greg, Blake, I was drunk, that’s all.”
“Think about this, drunk comes in four parts, jocose, morose, bellicose, comatose. You start on bellicose and end on bellicose. You’re fixated on fight even when much less than drunk. Your private war is peculiar, each shooting the other to make him happy.”
“Public wars may involve some of that altruism, too. Was I bellicose with you?”
“You’re a smart enough strategist not to start offensives on two fronts at once. Remember Hitler.”
“Tomorrow the world. Today there’s you.”
“Today there’s the Taybott people, don’t try to make them happy, all right?”
This was a proving ground for some types of field and air ordnance. Deep in the desert a Mekong Delta jungle hamlet had been reproduced, a cluster of huts, camouflaged underground hideouts, ammunition dumps, snipers’ perches under thatched roofs and in trees. Taybott technicians and Marine Corps officers, Air Cavalry men, were on hand to explain how the insurgents’ installations had to be got at, to cut their deadly fire, when our troops moved into such hostile areas.
Technicians and officers explained that no hostile personnel would be indicated here, not by mannequins, not by dummies, not by cutouts. The reason for this was, today’s mission was to show things being destroyed, not, primarily, people, so our troops could move in without bitter casualties. The emphasis, for purposes of this demonstration, was on things, not people. The implications, though, had much to do with people, ours. If things designated as military targets could be knocked out, caves, dumps, perches, many American lives would be saved, Asian ones, too, in the longer view. The point was that traditional weapons were of little use against the guerrilla refuges, since they couldn’t be seen and located. Therefore the invention and use of napalm. Today’s show would point up how vital to our overall goal of saving lives the new anti-guerrilla weapon, napalm, was. The technicians and officers hoped Blake, as anchorman of this news team, would see the logic in this emphasis on things, with the overtone of vastly lowered casualty lists, meaning, people.
Blake said he saw the logic. He wondered, all the same, if such a show was entirely realistic without a hint, through the use of dummies, or cutouts, that a hamlet of this type was inhabited by people, noncombatants who might be in the line of fire.
The officer in charge, Colonel Halbors, said there were no villagers shown precisely because the targets of napalm missions were things, along, of course, with whatever hostile troops might be manning the things, and to show villagers would shift the emphasis from things to people. He hoped Blake appreciated the logic behind featuring the military mission and not dwelling on incidental casualties among civilians, which had been wildly exaggerated, especially by the enemy and those naive about military exigencies. This being, it should be kept in mind, war.
Blake said he appreciated it, yes. He just felt that as a reporter he ought always to be looking for the whole picture.
As he spoke he was watching Mari, who stood to one side holding Bisk tight by the leash. She was chewing on her lips, her eyes were fixed, but she kept her mouth shut.
The cameramen left for shielded blinds from which they could shoot at a variety of angles. Blake, Mari, and the rest of the crew were led to the concrete bunker a distance from the mock-up village, a structure mostly underground but with a viewing slot some two-feet wide, protected by a wide concrete overhang. Colonel Halbors came with them, to explain the operation step by step. There was the rouping of unseen helicopters from some part of the sky.
After some minutes Colonel Halbors signaled through an intercom that stage one, the approach, could start. At the same time he pressed a button on his control panel. Instantly large glare-orange arrow markers swung into sight in and around the village, pointing to the hidden installations which were the targets in this mission, rather than people.
Certain things, not people, had to be sought out and destroyed, Colonel Halbors said. Artillery and air-to-ground missiles could not do the job. The idea was to watch how napalm got in there and did the job, to save lives, as well as rout the enemy and deal him a costly blow.
The thrum from the sky had been getting louder, now three helicopters came into sight, approaching from the black, broken-spined mountains. Mari was still biting on her lips. Suddenly, she stood.
“Colonel,” she said, “did you happen to read the paper today?”
“Yes, yes, I did,” Colonel Halbors said, surprised. “Why do you ask?”
“Did you happen to read the item about VC’s knocking out the whole village of Daksun with flamethrowers, people along with things?”
Blake was waving to her to sit down, she remained standing.
“I did. What is your point?”
“My point is, the VC doesn’t attack mock-up villages, it attacks real villages, as we do. In these attacks they don’t pretend to separate people from things, they say people are things, that’s what war is, and that’s how we act in war too, when we go into villages not mock-up but inhabited. The VC’s honest, at least, they say there are no people in war, can’t be, there’re only things, except a lot of them walk around on two legs—”
Colonel Halbors’ face was hard. He said, “Are you trying to say we annihilate whole local populations as the enemy does, purely and simply for the sake—”
“Colonel, when you drop napalm on a whole village, and the village is full of people, not mannequins, not mock-ups—”
