Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

  Besides, if Darla was in Berkeley, she would have stayed here. The center of the hippie universe had moved to Telegraph, not the Haight.

  “Do you know her?” he asked, his voice cracking. He gripped the edge of the counter. His fingernails were bitten to the quick.

  “Not from this photo,” Pammy said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. She might’ve changed her look—”

  “Oh, she did, but we don’t got no pictures,” he said. “Her ma, she wouldn’t take pictures of Darla looking like that. She said when Darla cleaned up, then she’d get her picture taken again.”

  The locker room door clicked open. He looked over, and some part of his face shut down.

  He had seen Val. Pammy didn’t look, didn’t want to draw more attention to her.

  “What was so different about your daughter?” Pammy asked, hoping this might give her a clue as to the girl’s identity.

  He focused back on Pammy. “Her hair was in her face all the time, long, uncombed, no makeup, and those dresses, big and sack like, and all that ropy stuff hanging off her, you know, with the knots and stuff.”

  It took Pammy a moment to understand “ropy.” “Macramé, you mean?”

  “Yeah, whatever they call it. Sometimes she had some of it tied to her hair.” He shook his head. “She didn’t look like our little girl any more. But this is the only picture we have.”

  His description could’ve been one of a hundred girls Pammy had seen. “Did she say she came in here?”

  “No,” he said. “I just been going down the street from store to store, asking people if they seen her. I don’t even know what this place is.”

  “It’s a gym,” Pammy said. “For women.”

  He shook his head, then looked in Val’s direction again. His face continued to shut down whenever he looked at her.

  Pammy couldn’t see Val at all, but she didn’t hear her walk away.

  He glanced at the entire building, clearly trying to take it in.

  “I don’t understand nothing,” he said mostly to himself. Then he blinked and raised his gaze to Pammy. “But I gotta say, you been really nice. Some of these people, they won’t even talk to me. One kid, he said she probably didn’t want me to find her.”

  Pammy did her best not to nod. The idea that Darla had disappeared of her own free will was definitely a possibility.

  “I’ll tape one of your flyers to my counter,” she said. “A lot of people come through here. Maybe they’ve seen her.”

  His mouth turned up in an attempt at a smile. “Thank you, honey. Bless you.”

  He peeled one of the flyers off the stack, his fingers lingering on the missing girl’s face.

  “She doesn’t even got to come home,” he said. “We just gotta know she’s okay.”

  The pain in his voice made Pammy wince. She wondered what his daughter would think if she knew how much he cared.

  “If anyone knows anything,” Pammy said gently, “I’ll make sure they call you.”

  “Thank you.” His voice was so soft it almost sounded like a whisper. He picked up the rest of the flyers and rolled them up again. He backed away, then nodded at her, another silent thank-you, before turning, and heading out of the gym.

  She watched him go, his back hunched as if he were warding off a blow.

  She got out tape and stuck the flyer to the top of the counter. She’d show the flyer to Eagle, see if this girl was the one that Eagle had seen.

  The timing was wrong, but it wouldn’t hurt to check.

  Val approached the counter, moving almost silently in her new sneakers. She glanced at the flyer, and shrugged. Clearly she hadn’t seen the girl—or, at least, a girl who looked like that.

  “Think she ran away?” Val asked.

  “No way to know,” Pammy said. “He seems pretty broken up about it.”

  “Sometimes people just have to leave,” Val said, staring after him.

  “And sometimes people get hurt,” Pammy said, more to herself than Val.

  But Val stiffened. “You think someone hurt her?”

  “No,” Pammy said. “I think we only know a tiny tiny part of that family’s story.”

  “You’ll call him if she gets found?” Val asked.

  “If the daughter wants me to,” Pammy said. But she had a hunch she would never get to ask the missing girl what she wanted. She probably would never see the missing girl. So many kids had disappeared, usually of their own free will.

  Pammy couldn’t keep track of every poster she’d seen, every concerned relative she’d talked to.

  And she wasn’t police. She wasn’t anyone in authority. Some of her friends at the university were dealing with this all the time.

  It was pretty normal for kids to drop out of school—they’d been doing it forever. They had no idea how hard the university would be or they didn’t like it much or they preferred their newfound freedom.

  But those kids usually went home or stayed in touch with home. This silence, that was new in the past few years.

  Val looked at the door as if she could still see the man. “You’re taking this pretty seriously,” she said to Pammy.

  Pammy shrugged. “I can’t imagine anything worse than waiting for news of a missing loved one, news that might never come.”

  Val stiffened. Then she nodded, and turned slightly, her expression blank. “Is there something I need to do while we wait?”

  She had deliberately changed the topic. Pammy frowned, just a little. She’d hit some kind of chord with Val, but she didn’t know what it was, and she wasn’t going to ask.

  “Take a look around,” Pammy said, “maybe find some gloves, get familiar with the punching bags. But don’t use them. I’ll train you on them when you’re ready.”

  Val nodded and wandered away. She didn’t ask about being ready. She didn’t ask anything.

  Pammy found that a little odd. But then, the whole morning had been odd. Hell, the whole year had been odd so far.

  And horrific. No improvement over the previous year, with all the protests and assassinations.

  Pammy suppressed a sigh. She had no idea why she expected an improvement over the previous year. Or even over May. Nothing had improved at all.

  It had just gotten quieter.

  And as that man had just shown her, quieter might not be better.

  9

  Eagle

  The damn shrinks said talking was good. Eagle knew that piece of advice like she’d come up with it herself. Hell, she’d even told her boys that, mostly in Pleiku, mostly when there was nothing else to say.

  She’d heard the phrase from the dozens of shrinks she’d worked with, first in Hawaii, then in Saigon, always trying to deal with the mess that the war had created. And those years didn’t count her stint in psych wards, although she’d tried to avoid them after her hellish two-week stretch at one during nursing school.

  Talking was important, listening more important, letting the pompous shrinking assholes tell you what you already knew deep down apparently even more important.

  All morning long, Eagle had been arguing in her head with every one of the damn shrinks she had ever known. She argued with them as she showered. She argued with them as she stood in her kitchen. She argued with them as she stared at the Raisin Bran box, her baggie still stashed inside of it. A doobie would make her feel better. Or a hit from her bong. A long comfortable day on her couch, thinking of nothing—

  Or feeling fucking paranoid and worrying if the cops would come after her or the stupid asshole with the truck. Then she’d get the munchies and eat her way through everything in the apartment.

  She didn’t want to do that. She hated being this woman.

  And she hated most that talking hadn’t helped her at all. She’d told the cops, then she’d vented to Pammy, and still, the knot in Eagle’s stomach remained.

  Eagle was convinced she’d seen something criminal. Not some goddamn domestic.

  And when she woke up in the middle of the night
, cold sweat, hands shaking, it wasn’t because she had some dream about Pleiku. It was because she felt like she failed, like that girl was still out there, calling to her, like maybe she had been the last person to see that girl alive.

  Eagle had gotten out of bed then, paced the apartment, looked out the window, tried to focus her brain elsewhere. She’d been great at compartmentalizing when she’d been In Country, but since she got home (as if this was home; this America wasn’t one she recognized; hell, she didn’t recognize anything), her mind would latch onto one thing, cling to it, swirl around it, and then ratchet her emotions to a fever pitch.

  Only two things eased the fever pitch. Booze of some kind. Or pot in whatever form she could get it.

  She had headed straight for the bong at 3:00 a.m. when an image flashed across her already overheated brain.

  Her mother, lying on the piss-smelling, cat-scratched couch, in what passed for their last home, slurring her words and telling Eagle that you can’t do nothing, baby, there’s always some kinda shit comin’ at you, nobody will love you, and nobody sure as shit will unnerstand, so you just gotta take care of yourself, you know? You gotta make yourself feel better, unnerstand, baby? It’s the only way to survive.

  Eagle’s hand had pulled away from the footlocker where she’d stored her bong so fast that she nearly sprained her wrist. She had taken a shower instead of a hit, then tried to go back to bed, then found herself staring at Raisin Bran, wondering why the hell talking to Pammy hadn’t worked.

  Maybe because Eagle hadn’t punched anything, even though that had been why she had gone.

  That thought—the only thing she’d been able to latch onto in nine hours that had nothing to do with drinking, toking, the girl, or oblivion—made her grab her black little-old-lady purse and flee the apartment.

  The gym would be filled with eager students, probably housewives, all trying to be Jack LaLanne or Muhammad Ali or something completely unattainable. She’d do her best to avoid them, because she sure as shit wasn’t going to put on loose clothing and Keds and make slow-motion floral patterns with her arms.

  She almost decided right then and there to give up going to the gym that morning, but she didn’t. She forced herself.

  Because those shrinks might’ve been wrong about the way that talking could help, but they were right about one thing: when you felt the need to harm yourself, you needed to get to a new environment.

  She stopped at the door out of her building. She finally heard the thoughts that had been going through her brain, really focused on them, and the thought that caught her, the words that caught her were “the need to harm yourself.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. So that was what she’d been doing. The same goddamn slow-motion suicide that had taken her mother.

  At least Eagle had a reason, unlike her mother.

  And then Eagle caught herself again.

  Those thoughts were excuses.

  Lots of people came back to the States, bruised and battered, and led productive lives. Her life was her own goddamn fault. She was wallowing, and she wasn’t a wallower.

  Was she?

  If she stepped back, out of herself, she would have to admit, yes, she was a wallower. And worse, she was on that road which led to eating her pistol.

  She opened her eyes and put her hand against the grimy wall near the door. No one stood on the wooden staircase. For once the hallway in this busy building was empty.

  No one saw her, shaking as if she needed a drink. She didn’t need a drink.

  She needed—God, she wasn’t sure what she needed.

  She tried to step out of herself again, and think. She’d talked to a lot of soldiers who’d said they had no reason to live. The worst, the one she’d gotten in trouble for, had been six months before she left Pleiku.

  The boy—and he had been a boy, maybe twenty—had been in a three-bed “care” unit, really a supply closet that they’d made over when the casualties were too numerous to handle. The boys in that room were always the ones who needed special treatment, an extra look, just so they wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle.

  And that one boy, Reggie Something—Jesus, she couldn’t even remember his last name now, and she’d thought she’d never forget him. Two weeks before, he’d stepped into a rice paddy, tripped a mine (or a buddy had tripped a mine, no one knew exactly, since Reggie was the only survivor of the incident to ever regain consciousness), and lost both his legs. Shrapnel had hit his face, his torso, his arms, narrowly missed important organs, and stayed stuck under his skin so he didn’t bleed out. He’d lost his legs not because they were blown off, but because they’d become strings of flesh and bone, the main arteries remaining miraculously intact until his unit’s medic managed to find him, tie tourniquets around what remained of his thighs, and save his life.

  Hey, honey, Reggie had said to her that evening, his voice soft with the rhythms of his Georgia childhood. Could you do me a favor? Could you get me my kit?

  Why do you want your kit? she’d asked instead of saying no, like she should’ve.

  He’d looked away from her then, and she knew, even before he spoke, what he really wanted. Just wanted to make sure my Colt was still there.

  You don’t need your Colt, she’d said, maybe a bit harshly.

  His lower lip trembled. He closed his eyes. He said, Ah, honey, yes I do. I need it something awful.

  She’d stared at him. If he lived through that night, his life would never be the same. He’d clearly been a pretty boy once, strong and used to dealing with things. He wasn’t pretty anymore, and he needed to learn how to live in a wheelchair.

  You gonna use that gun on yourself? she asked.

  Not in here, he’d said so softly that the words were almost inaudible.

  You want to end it all? She’d asked, her tone harsh.

  He’d shrugged one shoulder.

  You know what they say depression is, don’t you, soldier? It’s anger turned inward.

  He’d opened his eyes and looked at her then, a frown pulling on the stitches that made his face look like someone had written all over him in crayon.

  Your anger doesn’t deserve to be turned inward, she said. You’re not mad at yourself.

  Oh, yeah? He’d asked loud enough to make one of the men asleep near him moan. If you’re such a fucking know-it-all, what am I mad at?

  You’re mad that you’re here, she said, and his lips had curled sideways, creasing his ruined jawline. And you didn’t put yourself here. You should direct your anger outward, Reggie.

  Oh, I am, he said. Your colleagues tell me that I’m treating them badly. Poor little souls that they are.

  She had smiled at that. Everyone had complained about Reggie, but he hadn’t been unique. She’d seen this behavior a dozen times before, the angry man who was totally out of control and flailed out in fury at everyone, and finally at himself.

  No, she had said to Reggie. I’m not telling you to continue berating my colleagues.

  Then what are you telling me, hon? he’d asked. To grab a rifle and go shoot me a few gooks?

  She shrugged. Are they the ones who put you here?

  Someone did, he said. He didn’t remember all the details of his injury. That was one of the things that had made him so angry.

  A whole lot of someones, she said. The someones who ordered you to that rice paddy, the someones who drafted you, the someones who—

  Enough, Eagle.

  She turned. Doc Fenn stood behind her. He had been one month away from the end of his tour and looked like a scarecrow. He would re-up—he didn’t want to leave the boys—and he would return, just as Eagle was leaving.

  They had grown to hate each other personally, but rely on each other in the operating theater.

  He had glared at her. He had never believed that straight talk would help the patients.

  Looks like you need a little rest, he said to her.

  For speaking truth? Reggie had asked the doctor. Because, brother, I g
otta tell you. If I could get up and walk right now, I’d take that Colt, and maybe I wouldn’t eat it. Maybe I would—

  Eagle shook away the memory. It didn’t help after all. Yeah, she’d gotten Reggie to focus his anger outward, and he never talked of suicide again. But then, she’d never checked on him either after he finally got transport out of the 71st.

  She had no idea if he was alive, no idea if he’d eaten that weapon after all.

  She glanced up the stairs at her apartment. A little oblivion would be nice. It would get rid of all the people, all the memories, marching around in her head.

  And keep her anger directed inward, where it wouldn’t explode, remove a few limbs, and send shrapnel flying.

  She swallowed hard, made herself take a deep breath, then stopped bracing herself on the wall. She wiped her hands on her jeans.

  She had to keep moving. It had worked in Nam. It had to work here.

  She shoved the building’s door open and stepped onto the street. Sound enveloped her. Laughter, conversation, cars swooshing by a few blocks away.

  Unlike the day before, the street was crowded this morning. Students carried books, heading toward campus, strolling in twos and threes. A Hare Krishna group, colorful in their orange and white robes, paraded toward the park. Some hippie girls, just as colorful with their beads and flowing tie-dye skirts, watched the Krishna walk by.

  Not too far away, someone was banging drums. Nearby, a radio blared some Hendrix, and Eagle tried not let it take her back. They’d been blaring Hendrix in the truck that took her to her first posting in Saigon. They’d been blaring Hendrix outside the 71st when she arrived.

  They’d been blaring Hendrix—

  She bent her head and plowed forward, feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, and in desperate need of something. She couldn’t even identify what that something was. It was almost as if she were crawling around inside her own skin.

  It took her a moment to identify the feeling—panic. Sheer panic. The kind she’d felt half a dozen times since she’d come home and never felt in Nam, not even when she was overwhelmed or under fire or had soldier after soldier die while she helplessly held their hands.