Shouldn’t he be blue? Alice thought with grim humor. Stop it. Not tonight. No ghosts tonight.
She entered through the bar, which was filled except for a few stools at one end next to a large packing case that was nailed to the floor. Three steps brought her down into the restaurant area, where a chubby girl in her twenties showed Alice to a small corner table next to the coffee station. Alice drank a Manhattan on the rocks, and scanned the menu ravenously, ordering oysters on the half shell, clam chowder, and a medium-rare filet with a side of spaghetti. She had had far better meals at least twice a week in the city, but thought that it was the most delicious she’d ever tasted. When she’d finished, she was delighted to find that the bar stocked Dry Sack, and ordered a glass, feeling at peace with herself, with Tim Reardon, with Merridale and the world in general.
The sherry was almost gone, warming her stomach with its gentle fire, when she heard the voice raised through the fisherman’s netting that separated the dining room from the bar.
CHAPTER 17
They were both, they felt, men betrayed: by themselves, a long time before; by their women, only recently. It was sorrow and anger and self-pity and self-disgust that drove them to the Anchor bar, to find in liquor and a thick, smoky atmosphere what they could not find in their own homes.
Jim Callendar was the first of the pair to arrive. After Beth had driven away, he had roamed the house like a caged animal, feeling the house’s emptiness the same way he had in the first week after his son had died. Only then Beth had been there. Now there was no one, and he thought he might go mad. His life had shattered like a mirror when the bus had wrecked, and one by one the pieces had fallen away until even Beth was gone, and only one sharp-edged shard remained, small enough to reflect back only his own tired, sad face and nothing, no one else.
Around five o’clock it had begun to snow, slow, heavy lumps of cold that seemed to explode as they landed, like bubbles of tar under hot sun. He wanted a drink, wanted many drinks, wanted to drink and drink until he was insensible, incapable of remembering. But he was also afraid, because if liquor could not push him into oblivion, he did not know what else he could do. At last he decided to try it, but by that time being alone was unbearable, so he got into the ’72 Mustang Beth had left, and drove to the Anchor through the dark December evening.
There were only a few seats at the bar, and he took one near the door, where the chill wind swept past him from the entryway whenever a patron came in or left. He ordered scotches neat with a water chaser, and drank, and nibbled peanuts, and once got up to go to the bathroom. No one spoke to him but the bartender, but on the other hand no one paid him the kind of negative attention he had come to expect before the specters had appeared. It seemed there were weightier concerns in Merridale than a several-year-old accident.
Jim Callendar drank, and drank more, looking about edgily at times, so that the bartender wondered if he was meeting someone he didn’t particularly look forward to seeing. Expected or not, the man soon came.
Brad Meyers took a more circuitous route to the Anchor than did Jim Callendar. The first thing he did when he had finished with Christine was to get in his car and drive to the town park. He took the basketball that he always carried in his trunk, walked through the foot-deep snow to the outdoor courts, and began shooting baskets. It was something he did from time to time during better weather, though he wasn’t very good at it, sinking only one out of three shots. But he enjoyed it, playing alone, declining any suggestions to go one on one. He had never played in the snow before, but Chris had never cheated on him before.
The nets were down, but the hoops remained, and the ball stayed where it fell, lodged in white pockets. He could not dribble, only shoot, and he did so over and over again until his shoes were filled with snow and the legs of his jeans were soaked through to the skin. Passing cars slowed, including one police car, which Brad gave only a fleeting glance. Playing basketball in the snow was not illegal.
Finally he stopped, panting for breath. Despite the cold, he could feel wet warmth under his arms as the perspiration sank through his T-shirt into his wool sweater. He plodded back to the car and drove the fifteen miles to Lansford, where he ate at a McDonald’s and went to see movies in a mall with five mini-theaters. It made no difference to him what they were. He simply paid, sat down, watched one to its close, and moved on to the next.
By the time he left the third film, it was dark, and the snow had begun. He stood for a long time under the mercury-vapor lights in the mall’s parking lot, letting the wet flakes fall on his forehead as if they could ease the pain he felt. He thought about Christine, about himself, about Vietnam, about promises, about honor.
It was about honor, he thought, all about honor. Doing the right thing, the ethical thing. He had tried to live with that thought foremost in his mind his whole life, and he had failed at times. But everyone fails, he knew that. Everyone cheats or lies or even worse, and they accept it and live with it. But Brad had within him the soul of a time in which you didn’t lie, in which you tried to ferret out lies and show them for what they were, and in his eyes his sins loomed far greater than they might have to others, and the sins of others were magnified as well.
Truth still lived in him. Honor rode his back, spurred his ribs, reminding him, always reminding him that he had sold his soul for life in a thick, wet jungle, had spilled blood and worse to keep his own blood in his veins. He had yielded his manhood in order to be a man.
I didn’t have to eat the heart.…
The thought came unbidden, and he pressed it back, tears forming. It came seldom, but when it did, it was lightning fast and deadly, like a snake coiled in his brain. Twice only had he put it into words, once many years ago to Bonnie, who had not heard him.
The second time was after Frankie died in the accident. He had thought that he might go insane then. He had loved the boy deeply, despite the sudden flarings of cruelty that he could not seem to control. He didn’t take full advantage of his visitation rights because it hurt too much when the boy left to go back to his mother. When the accident occurred, he was devastated. This initial grief was followed by a hot anger toward Jim Callendar, which was intensified by Callendar’s behavior at the hearing. Brad had quite simply wanted to kill Jim Callendar, and one night sat in his car outside the Callendars’ house watching as lights and shadows moved behind the curtains and the house finally went dark, figuring where the bedroom was, thinking that since he didn’t care if they caught him, he could let the wife live.
The next day he called the Veterans Administration and asked to be referred to a psychiatrist, something that Bonnie had often urged him to do, but which he had always angrily dismissed. This time was different. He had never wanted to kill anyone before, and it frightened him. The psychiatrist he was assigned was stationed at Fort Susquehanna, a cluster of yellow frame buildings that over the years had housed horse cavalry, World War II enlistees, Cuban refugees, and National Guardsmen.
Dr. Danvers was tall and fortyish, with a boyish face aged only slightly by a bushy moustache. “What bunch were you with?” was the first thing he said when the office door closed.
“Pardon?”
“In ’Nam, right?” Brad nodded. “What division?”
“Ninth Infantry.”
“No kidding. Me too. Cobra Gunship. You want to sit down?”
“No couch?”
“That’s for the movies and Park Avenue. What brings you here?”
Brad sat in a cushioned chair next to Danvers’s desk. “I’ve been worried about myself lately.”
“Worried.”
“Yeah, I, uh”—Brad gave a half laugh—”I think I’m in danger of becoming a cliché.” Danvers said nothing, so Brad went on. “I mean, I look at myself in the mirror and I see this character from central casting. Your typical whacked-out Vietnam vet. You know … uh … long hair, beard, old fatigue jacket.”
Danvers smiled. “Do you have a jacket that says, ‘When I die I’m
going to heaven ’cause I spent my time in hell’?”
“I’m not that far gone yet.”
“Have any other Hollywood symptoms?”
“Kind of. I’ve been feeling … inclined to violence lately.”
“How so?”
“I get angry fast. My temper’s been pretty shiny ever since I got back from ’Nam.”
“Outbursts?”
“Sometimes.”
“Ever feel like carving people up?”
Brad laughed uncomfortably. “I get pretty mad.”
“Any run-ins with the law?”
“A few.”
“You enjoy it? Having hassles with the cops?”
“Are you asking if I hate authority?”
“I asked what I asked, that’s all. You don’t have to read anything into it.”
“No, I don’t enjoy it.”
Danvers sat quietly for a moment before he spoke again. “So you’re afraid of becoming a TV movie villain, then.” Brad didn’t respond. “Is that right?”
“I guess so.”
“What specifically brought you in here? The last straw that made you pick up the phone.”
Brad told Danvers about the accident, Frankie’s death, waiting outside Jim Callendar’s house. “I wanted to kill him,” he said. “Maybe he’s not at fault at all, but I wanted to kill him just the same.”
“That’s not unnatural. You feel he’s responsible for your son’s death.”
“He is responsible! If you’d seen him … you’d have known. He had guilt written all over him! And I know about guilt,” he rattled on. “I know all about guilt.”
“Maybe so,” said Danvers quietly. “Listen, Brad. That cliché … about the wild-eyed Vietnam vet taking potshots at people. A cliché is all it is, just like Archie Bunker is a cliché of the working class, or Sanford and Son were clichés of American blacks. Sure, there are people like that, but most Vietnam vets are good guys. They’ve gotten back into the mainstream of American life, they’ve got jobs and families they don’t beat, they pay their taxes and vote and go to church, and not one in a million skewers babies on bayonets.”
“Then why the hell don’t they show that in the movies?”
“Because that wouldn’t sell tickets. Look, I admit, Vietnam was not pleasant for anybody, and for a lot of us it was goddamn ugly, and I can’t pretend that there haven’t been some guys who did go off the deep end—over a third have been arrested for one thing or another, and that’s much higher than the general population. But that means that there are two thirds who’ve lived exemplary lives. And so can you. You don’t have to live a worn-out image of what nonvets expect of you.” Danvers sat back, tapped his desk top with a pen. “I think there’s a lot of rage bottled up in you, but if you want me to, I think I can help you get rid of it. I’m sure that there’s nothing that you brought back from ’Nam that you can’t escape from.”
“That’s what you think, is it?” Brad’s voice was cold, reptilian, and Danvers tensed slightly, as though expecting an attack.
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“There are some things you do,” Brad said, “that you can’t forget. Not ever.”
“Maybe you can’t forget them, but you can come to terms with them.”
“Accept them? No. Maybe somebody else could. Not me. Maybe if you don’t know any better, maybe then. But I knew better. I’d been to college. I’d read the wise men. I knew wrong from right. Maybe the others didn’t—but that’s an excuse I can’t use.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“No.”
“Why did you come, then?”
“It wouldn’t do any good.”
“It’s not for me to judge, Brad. I’m a doctor. You can afford to ignore this uniform. I don’t care what you did ten, twelve, years ago. If you fragged your CO, barbecued a village of civilians, it doesn’t leave this room.”
Brad looked steadily at Danvers. “You swear?”
“Absolutely. I’ve heard things from counselees that strain the bounds of credulity, but I’ve never told a living soul. Don’t worry. You can’t tell me anything worse than what I’ve already heard.”
“I don’t know if I can. I don’t know how to start.”
“Close your eyes. Pretend I’m not even here, that you’re talking to yourself.”
Brad closed his eyes, let his head fall.
“Now, just remember it. Talk about it. As slow as you like. Start when you were drafted, in training, when you saw your first combat, any place that’s easy to slip into.”
Danvers’s voice was slow, soothing, hypnotic, and Brad began to relax under its ministrations, began to let the pictures come into his head. “I … didn’t like the Army,” he began tentatively. “Hated basic. I really didn’t get along too well with anybody. More my own fault than anyone else’s, I guess. I was scared, so I put a chip on my shoulder, without really daring anyone to knock it off. But I got through it, got sent to ’Nam. We saw lots of action in the Ninth, but I never killed anyone that I know of. We fought Cong. I never saw a woman or kid get killed, just those little guys in their black pajamas. No … atrocities, not yet. But still, I hated it. I was scared of being killed, ending up on those damn pongee stakes, or stepping on a mine, or half a hundred other ways to catch it. And I was a loner. Didn’t see any point in making friends with guys who might be dead the next day.
“Well, one time on stand-down our company was called together. Some loony told us that there was an opening in an interrogation team and asked for volunteers. Nobody stepped forward. Nobody. Not one in a hundred and fifty guys who knew they were gonna have to go back into the jungle in two days and play peek-a-boo with the monkeys again. And I thought, shit, interrogation, how tough can that be, and I stepped forward.
“It was like stepping off a fucking cliff, though I didn’t know it at the time. I mean, I wasn’t thinking. At least that’s what I try and tell myself. I just wanted to get out of combat. But because I really didn’t talk to my buddies, I just didn’t realize.
“They asked me questions, whether I had any experience, and I just bullshit—said I thought it sounded interesting and all. I didn’t think they’d take me, but they did. My squad leader probably told them I was sullen, a loner, maybe a crazy, and that’s what they needed, all right.
“Christ, instead of getting out of the jungle, I just got deeper into it. Later, I could’ve kicked myself. In comparison, we were fighting a clean war. Your typical NCO was Audie Murphy compared to Kriger.
“That was his name, Lieutenant Kriger. He was in charge of the team. Tall guy. Barely thirty, but he’d lost a lot of his hair. Face like a hawk. The others’ names I hardly remember. It doesn’t matter. Kriger was all of them anyway. There were five all told, six with me. The guy I replaced had suicided, I learned later. The others adapted, but he couldn’t. Maybe he was the lucky one.
“We lived in a cave. It was tunneled into a cliff face, went back for about ten feet and turned, and there was a big room there, maybe thirty feet square. The way the thing was set up, you could have light back in there and nobody by the entrance would see it, not even at night. Hell, the brush was so thick that the odds of finding the entrance at all were slim. Even the Special Forces guys who took me back had trouble remembering the way.
“The cave was perfect, though. Aesthetically right, like a modem Sawney Beane. Kriger and his men came out to meet me, and I thought right away I was in for it. They looked like animals—dirty, ragged clothes, scraggly beards, looked like they hadn’t washed in months and smelled awful. All except for Kriger. He was as neat and clean as if he was expecting a visit from Westmoreland. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said first thing. ‘The animals here are for show. Scares the shit right out of the Cong.’ And filthy or not, they all seemed friendly enough, and their teeth smiled nice and white at me.
“I think Kriger was crazy even before he came to Vietnam. ’Nam was just … sort of a proving ground for his ideas, his theories. He explained
them to me real fast. ‘We get secrets,’ he said. ‘When nobody else can get the little bastards to talk, we can. We do it by being mean and being a little bit crazy. Nobody cares what we do back here.’ I asked him how his squad got started, and he said it was his own idea, that he volunteered to try it on the condition that nobody messed with him, looked into his methods. And nobody had. Then he smiled at me and said, out of the clear blue sky, ‘You ever eat steak tartare?’ I said no, and he said that they ate their meat uncooked because they couldn’t risk lighting too many fires. He asked if I thought I could handle that, and I said I thought I could. So one of the guys brought me a chunk of pinkish gray meat, raw, like they’d said. It smelled okay, pretty fresh, and I asked what it was. Beef, they said, and I cut off a small piece and put it in my mouth. I wanted to gag, but I wouldn’t let myself. So I chewed and chewed and chewed and finally got it down. They all smiled at each other, and I kind of laughed and asked if they didn’t ever get any k rations. ‘We like this better,’ Kriger said, and they all laughed. Then we went into the back chamber of the cave.”
Brad stopped talking.
“Yes?” Danvers said. “Go on.”
“I saw… I saw a body hanging upside down. There was a metal stake jammed through its ankles. It was naked, and parts of it were missing. And they all grinned and Kriger said, ‘They grow good beef in this jungle.’
“I fell down and vomited, and then I just lay there, wanting to die. Kriger knelt down next to me and pushed my hair back, wiped my forehead with a handkerchief like my mother would have done. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You’ve done it. You’re one of us now.’ Then I cried. But he told me that they all had acted like that at the beginning, and each one of them nodded. But it had to be done, he said. There had to be some way to get the information from the Cong. ‘You’ll see,’ he told me: ‘It works. In a few days you’ll see.’
“The next days were nightmares. They cut pieces off the body and ate them raw. I couldn’t. I ate canned fruits and vegetables. They didn’t try to force me to eat the meat. They seemed to know that it would take time for me to become what they were.
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