by Drew D'Amato
Curtis came back into the room and Morris handed him the money.
“Curtis, you know where to put this, and smile once in a while. These are good customers we have had for over five years. No need to try to scare them.”
“This is a new face,” Curtis said looking at Malachi.
“Curtis, all we have in our business is trust.”
“I’m not paid to trust.”
“Well I hope you’re not paid to kick my ass, cause I don’t think—” Malachi started to say and then Jericho pulled him back.
“Will you two meatheads stop,” Jericho said.
“Curtis put that money away, you are paid to listen to me,” Morris said to him.
Curtis kept his eyes on Malachi. He wasn’t flinching or even afraid. Jericho sent a quick message to Malachi via telepathy by looking dead into his eyes. [“Fuck your pride, this is a good thing we got going here with Morris.”]
The signal registered to Malachi and he nodded.
“Morris, you have a good man here. He shows no fear,” Malachi said. “We might need a man like you sometime.”
“I already got a job,” Curtis said.
“Good, you’re loyal too, another great quality for a warrior. But let me give you one piece of advice. Don’t ever underestimate an adversary.”
Malachi put out his hand. Curtis shook it. Malachi looked casual as he did it, but once Curtis grasped Malachi’s hand, he felt a jolt of pain in it as Malachi squeezed with a smile on his face. Curtis tried to fight it, but he couldn’t. Malachi looked away as if he was not doing this intentionally, it was casual. But Malachi knew what he was doing. He tended to be a prick like that.
“Nice meeting you Morris,” Malachi said, but just waved, making a point to not shake his hand.
Jericho shook hands with Morris and the two turned for the door. Morris locked the door behind them. He turned to find Curtis rubbing his sore hand.
“Will you relax with those customers?” Morris commanded. “They have never tried to fuck us.”
“I get a bad vibe from those guys, Boss,” Curtis said.
“Every customer has bad vibes, you moron. I sell guns and fake IDs. You think I do business with the fucking Boy Scouts?”
FOURTEEN
1
The night had gotten away from Pacami. He was up at 11:30, thinking about the last encounter he had with Vlad. The weight of the human world rested on the shoulders of a vampire, not his God or any god, but with an undead soul. He kept thinking about what it would mean if he never saw Vlad again. What should he do if that happened? What could he do?
Pacami rubbed his eyes with his old, callused hands. This was too much for a man to take in. He thought he had already seen the worst life could get. Before he gave his soul to the faith, he gave his ass to the corps.
2
In 1972 Anthony Pacami was a carpenter, just like Jesus himself, but he did not take the job to follow the life of his Savior. He took it because college was not for him. He did not have any feeling in him to want to go to school for another four years. His father had gotten him a job working for his uncle’s construction business. The pay was good and he was proud of his work, a wife and maybe a few kids was all he needed to complete his life, but at twenty he was in no rush for either. Life was good for him and he was happy.
It was a sunny humid day, the day he came home from work and everything changed. He walked down his street after he got off the city bus from work with the wind blowing through his full head of long black hair. He had almost enough money for a car and he remembered thinking how much better his life would be when he did. He made it up the walk to his front door and saw his nine year old little sister Jessica playing in their front yard. Young Anthony waved to her. She ran over and hugged him.
“Mommy’s been crying all day,” she said as he pulled her up into his arms.
Anthony’s face had grown stone serious. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she said innocently.
Anthony put her down. “Stay out here, I’m going to find out.”
Jessica scurried away and Anthony gripped the handle of his front door. He had a feeling, but he couldn’t have known then that this would be the day that would change his life forever.
He found his mother sitting at the end of their dining room table. She looked like she had just stopped crying for the first time in a few hours. His first thought was that his father died somehow, or someone else close to him. Why else would his mother sit at their table this sad, looking like something stressful was on her mind?
He asked her what was wrong. He remembered her pushing a white envelope toward him across the table. He walked to the table with his throat choked up in a knot waiting to read the bad news. Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In played on the TV in the background, but none of them laughed. The sun shined through the white drapes over the windows. His cat walked over his feet. People have a way of remembering these little details when they experience a moment that is going to change their life forever.
He walked over to the table and picked up the letter. He looked at it hard. The letter was opened, but he did not concentrate on that. What he concentrated on was the heading of the letter: Selective Service System. He did not have to read the rest.
The letter instructed him to present himself for an Armed Forces Physical Examination. The first step in getting drafted, destination Vietnam. He was going to war.
This explained everything. Why his mom was sad, why his happy little life was now ruined, and why he felt that his life was already over. He looked down at his mother. When she saw him read it and understand, she started to cry again. He grabbed her from her chair and hugged her, and then started to cry himself. It’s going to be okay, he told her. He was lying. All he had heard about this war in Asia for the past five years since Tet was how America should get out, how American boys were being slaughtered for no reason, and how the last thing anyone wanted was to come home to find a letter telling them that they had been drafted. For the first time he wished that he had gone to college. He would have been able to get out of it then. He was smart enough and had the money to go. He started to swear at himself for not going, but that soon stopped. That was not the problem and it could not be changed, he had to suck it up and deal.
His father was a World War II veteran, like most Italian Americans were. He felt once his father got home that would cheer him up. His father always talked to him about the battles and his old war buddies, and Anthony would get jealous. Now he would have a group like that.
When his father got home and found out the news from his wife he became silent. He walked into his bedroom and did not look at any of them. Anthony knew this was not a good sign. He followed his father into his parents’ bedroom. His father sat on the edge of his bed holding the Purple Heart in its case in his right hand. He had gotten it when he jumped through a fire to save his general’s life. He didn’t respond to Anthony’s presence. Anthony sat next to him on the bed to his left.
“This is going to be hell isn’t it?” Young Anthony asked.
John Pacami put his left hand on his son’s right knee.
“Son, everything I told you about the war were the good things, and if you noticed, I didn’t say much. The rest of it is hell. You will see death in the goriest and most horrific way the act can take place. No one there dies peacefully. You will kill so much that you will love it, and when you get back home you will miss it. The people you fight with will become closer to you than me or your mother and then they will be taken away from you quicker then us.”
“But I get to be a hero?”
“There are no heroes in war, just survivors. I’m not lying to you, war is hell.”
The phrase never before and never since had so much effect on Pacami. He looked in his father’s eyes and knew it was not bullshit. There was silence in the room and they could both hear his mother downstairs struggling to prepare a pasta dinner.
“You listen to me son, when you
get there, you listen to all your sergeants on how to survive. If they are still alive, then they know what they are talking about. Don’t get scared. It will be hard, but feeling those feelings will not help you survive. In war, the best soldier does not always live, but the luckiest one does. I was not a hero, I was lucky. If you make it back, you will be the same thing—just lucky. Don’t be afraid to pray, there are no atheists in foxholes. And if you make it out thank the Lord, because he was the only one who got you out, not you and not your army. Now let’s go downstairs and try to enjoy this dinner your mother has made for us. She’s going to take this worse than anyone.”
3
One night somewhere near the border of Laos, Pacami had gotten lost from the rest of his platoon. He only had two friends with him right then, and his gun was one of them. Salvatore Respucci, his other friend, crouched behind a bush next to him. Respucci was the only other all Italian in his platoon and the two instantly hit it off. Respucci came in after Pacami was already there for fifty days. Pacami had earned the nickname The Wop, and so Respucci was called Son of the Wop. The two would be friends ‘til the end, but the end came sooner than expected.
The platoon had secret orders to go over the border. They were instructed to take care of some action near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. On the path to the trail the group ran into an ambush from Charlie. Explosions happened on all sides of them, shrapnel fell everywhere. The men broke out in fear and ran into whichever direction seemed the safest. Pacami and Respucci along with Henry Duncan, a redneck from Mississippi, went east away from the fire. Henry got killed going over a hill a few meters back. Shot in the back running. Of course the letter to his parents would not read like that. It would read to his family that he fought bravely for his country and after all, who could say anything less?
Respucci and Pacami now hid behind a bush at the top of a little trench. Grenades and heavy fire went off on all sides of them. Neither of the two had a radio to see if the rest of the troop were still alive. If they decided to get up and run they could be killed by any of the burning shrapnel or lightning quick bullets spraying everywhere. Their plan was to just sit there and wait out the action.
It was a gray day but the feeling was more black than white. Rain clouds filled the sky waiting to release. Charlie would find them soon, but they didn’t know what else to do. Moving then would have been suicide.
“Tony, we got to get out of here,” Respucci said.
“We’re dead if we move,” Pacami replied.
“We’re dead if we stay here.”
“Where the fuck are you going to go? This fighting will die down, shut up and wait.”
The action exploded in the background. Near them it was quiet. Charlie hadn’t learned of their location yet. Then the two of them heard something.
“What was that?” Respucci asked.
“Don’t worry about that yet, it sounds like the shooting is moving back.”
The sound was heard again. It was a sound of branches breaking, or an enemy force moving toward them, or both.
“Tony, I heard that again, someone’s coming here.”
They looked through the bottom branches underneath the bush. A group of about five soldiers from the North Vietnamese Army moved slowly up the hill toward them. They may not have known about Pacami and Respucci, but in the direction they were going, they soon would.
“Okay Sal, they get any closer and we are going to have to take them out, get ready.”
Respucci perched his head and arms over the ditch and put his gun underneath the bush like Pacami was already positioned. The enemy moved slowly toward the bush with leaves on their helmet to help them dissolve into the landscape. Their camouflage was a moot point. The two GI’s knew about them. Pacami put the leader of the group into his sight. Before he could pull a trigger there was already a shot.
Respucci killed the leader of the group in one shot. Pacami killed off two in an instant after adjusting his aim when the one in his crosshairs dropped suddenly. Shots came back at them. One whizzed by Pacami’s ear and then made a dull sound like it just landed into a piece of meat. A warm liquid splashed against the back of his neck. Pacami kept telling himself it wasn’t blood, but he knew the rain hadn’t started yet. He didn’t want to turn and look, but he had to.
Pacami looked to his left and found that Respucci’s body had fallen from behind the bush down into the bottom of the ditch. He screamed out and then turned around and finished off the last two in the group with precision. He ran down the ditch, which was about ten feet deep. He picked up Respucci’s body and held it. A bullet had gone through his right temple and out his left. He died in an instant without getting to say any last words.
He drowned in the silence all around him. There were no forces getting close to him now. It didn’t matter, his only friend in the war was dead. Salvatore was as good of a shot as Pacami was. The only difference was that Pacami was lucky, just what his father had said. Luck stood above all other factors in war. He held his friends head in his lap as he sat in the ditch. The rain finally decided to start coming down, turning the dirt into mud. It didn’t bother Pacami. He had been in mud before, his best friend dying next to him was a first.
Pacami had been in for two hundred and seven days and had a hundred and fifty-eight left. Just recently he changed from counting upwards to counting down; from how many days in to how many days left. As if that meant at all that things would be getting easier.
He sat alone with action going on all around him. This was when he made the deal that would change his life. Forever after this moment he would spend his life sticking to this deal. Alone in the bottom of the ditch with his friend’s dead body and lifeless head in his lap—the rain starting to come down forming puddles underneath him and mud running down the ditch—he made his deal. Alone he got to talk to God. He asked if God got him out of this war in one piece he was going to give his life to the Lord. He would become a priest. He would hold up his end, but would the Lord hold up his?
After a few moments alone with his friend he started to hear firing coming closer to him, up from the other side of the ditch. He ran up the ditch to have a look. Eleven men from the NVA walked closer to his position. One of the men in front looked down at the bodies of their slain comrades. He looked up from the body and said something in Vietnamese to the other men. Pacami knew they had some idea about him.
He decided he had to get the first punch in. As the NVA troops started to pick up their pace to the hill with the bush in front of the ditch, Pacami started to fire at them. Only two fell. There were nine more on the move with revenge in their eyes. He fired some more shots and hit one of them in the shoulder. It didn’t stop him. He and the rest of his friends kept their chase. Pacami knew it was time to get out.
Pacami turned around and ran down the ditch. He got to the bottom and leaped over Respucci’s body. Too much fear ran through him for the event of jumping over his dead friend to have any affect on him. He got about thirty meters away from the bush when the first of the NVA troops made it to the top of the ditch. They started to fire at Pacami. The bullets hit the trees and the ground near Pacami, but they managed to avoid him.
He ran with the speed of God in him. The enemy took turns shooting and running. Pacami, who just kept running, was able to gain some ground. Sometimes fighting in the jungle was a good thing. He could have been taken out easily in the open land, but the trees and foliage helped catch some of the bullets, and helped him hide as he ran for his life.
The distance between him and the enemy got to about fifty yards. Then he heard a moan to the right of him. On the ground wounded lay Potato—Kenny from Idaho. He was hit in the left leg and could live if he was taken care of. However, he could not walk and if Pacami helped him they both might end up dead. If Pacami left him, Pacami would almost certainly make it to safety in time, but Potato would die. This was the biggest choice of Pacami’s young life, but not the biggest choice he ever would make.
Potato looked
up at him. Pacami knew he was the only one that could save Potato, and Potato could be the one that ended up killing him. To Pacami though, he had no choice. He picked up Potato and threw him over his shoulders.
“Just remember our deal God,” he said to the sky, and then took off running.
The shots started to get closer now. The enemy had gained some ground, and with Pacami carrying a wounded man the advantage had gone to the enemy. Pacami kept running, losing his breath but he could not stop. Finally a few yards ahead of him he saw his platoon setting up a small camp in a little ditch. It was only half of them, the rest probably were dead or soon would end up that way. The group stared to the west waiting for someone to come through the bushes after them. Pacami came from the south, to the side of the group. Quickly he realized, CLAYMORES. The group must have had this site rigged already. He was within shouting range.
“It’s the Wop, it’s the Wop, I got Potato!”
At first no one flinched. They kept their eyes to the west waiting for some action. Pacami yelled again. Then Old Dog, a black boy, the youngest in the group at the age of just eighteen and a month, turned his head.
“Hey guys, it’s The Wop, and he’s got Potato.”
Some of the men turned their heads. Ambrosia, the platoon leader, turned his tan, Greek head and saw where Old Dog pointed. He saw Pacami running with Potato over his shoulders. Then he saw the nine NVA coming after him about thirty yards back.
“Old Dog, grab the claymores, we’re going to need them,” Ambrosia ordered.
“What about Pacami?”
“Not for him, it’s for the friends he brought.”
