A Requiem for Crows: A Novel of Vietnam

by Dennis Foley

  Scotty mugged a serious face. “Okay. Okay, what’s your pleasure, then?”

  “Same thing.”

  A high school girl in short shorts, a small knit top and a paper hat matching the color scheme of the Dairy Queen with the letters DQ on it stepped off the curb and leaned down to make eye contact with Scotty. “What would you like, sir?”

  Scotty gave her the order and then once she got out of hearing distance he turned to Eileen. “Did she call me ‘sir?’ Me?”

  Eileen teased him. “Well, you probably looked real old to her.”

  “Oh, great. This isn’t exactly what I expected coming home. But none of it has been.” He then felt as if he’d brought the tone of the conversation down. He rubbed his fingers together and changed the subject. “I must have gotten grease on this steering wheel today. I’ll be right back.”

  Inside the cramped restroom Scotty washed his hands and peered at his image in the scratched mirror mounted above the sink. It hadn’t seen a good cleaning in many hours of use. Bending and tilting a bit, he was able to find the best image, but he shrugged. It wasn’t as if he needed to check his hair or could do anything with hair so short. It was just habit.

  He washed then dried his hands with the last paper towel in the dispenser and found himself again taking a controlling breath. He looked at his nails to make sure he’d not picked up any more of the grease from Kitty’s car and recalled the days in training when his nails were mostly broken and never clean.

  What was it about Eileen making him feel so good and so nervous at the same time? After all, it wasn’t like he’d never been on a date before, or like he was a virgin or something. He went into a half-squat and looked through the louvered window near the sink. He could see only parts of Eileen sitting in the front seat of the car. The sun visor cut off the top half of her face and the dash hid everything from the middle of her torso down. Her throat and jaw were brightly lit by the car sitting across the service island, lights on to signal the car hop.

  Scotty enjoyed the moment free to admire her long and elegant neck without her knowing he was looking. She appeared to be watching a carload of teenagers who had just pulled in across the island and were searching their pockets for money. The kitty had been set up on the hood of the Chevy and was becoming a pile of change and crumpled bills.

  Scotty felt an immediate sensation of attraction tempered by a trace of anxiety each time he looked at Eileen. There he was, out with someone who could be the girl of his dreams, but he was going to Vietnam and she was spoken for. Still, he stole an extra moment to look at her.

  The door burst open and a teenager staggered into the single stall, desperate to reach the commode before erupting. He dropped to his knees and encircled the bowl with his arms. Scotty knew what was coming and left before the vomiting began.

  Outside the restroom, Scotty found himself straightening his back, tucking in the back of his shirt and walking back toward the car assuming he was being watched. He concentrated on walking confidently so he wouldn’t look like he was in a hurry to get back to the car to be with Eileen.

  He had to reach through the window to open the door because the outside handle had stopped working years earlier. But instead of grasping finding the handle surrounded by frayed upholstery he felt Eileen’s hand.

  She twisted the lever releasing the latch. She must have watched him approach the car. He liked the feeling. “Thanks,” he said. “Another thing I’ve got to fix on this on this rolling wreck.”

  Inside, Scotty settled in behind the steering wheel, wiped it down with the damp paper towel from the restroom and searched for some way to start up the conversation again.

  But it was Eileen who took the initiative. “Good to be home?”

  The car seat was locked all the way forward making him feel crowded and a little uncomfortable for them to talk. “Your Kitty’s sure got short legs.” He searched the front and then the side of his seat until he found the control lever, yanked it to the rear and they both slid back with a thunk.

  “So, isn’t it?” she repeated.

  “Everything I used to hate about Belton in school is just great now. I guess you have to leave a place to really appreciate it.”

  “The Army’s bad, huh?” she said.

  “No. It’s not that. Sure, it’s hard, but it’s not bad. You never have any time to yourself and forget about any privacy. It’s just nothing like going to school in Belton. It’s all guys all the time and just so completely army.” He felt the flush of color flooding his cheeks, as he listened to himself stammer and grab for words, not finding the ones he wanted, the ones to impress her. He sounded like an idiot. He searched her face to see if she thought so, too.

  She bailed him out. “I understand. I can’t imagine all the regimentation.” She paused and then asked, “And overseas is how long?”

  “A year.”

  “God, a year seems so long,” she said twisting slightly to put her back half on the seat and half against the passenger door. “There’s fighting going on, isn’t there? I don’t keep up much on Asia. It seems so far away.”

  Her knee brushed against his leg on the bench seat. Scotty felt a small electric pulse run up the side of his leg, or at least he thought he did. “Yeah, there’s some fighting going on. Guerillas are trying to overthrow the South Vietnamese government. Anyway, I’ve never been out of the country. So I’m sure it’s going to be an experience.” He didn’t want to imply some heroism was in his future or gush with bravado or even suggest he felt the fighting was not a concern and didn’t know how to get himself out of the corner he’d talked himself into. “I only know what I heard in training. And I really don’t know what my job’s going to be. That’ll make all the difference in whether I get near the shooting, I think.”

  “Are you worried?” she asked. “I mean, about getting a job where the fighting is?”

  “You know, I’m mostly worried about doing things right wherever they send me.” He shook his head, himself amazed. “I’ve been through a whole lot of training since I left here and I wonder if I’ll be able to do all those things right. Training’s one thing, but on a real battlefield, I just don’t know if I’m up to it.”

  “Don’t you do what soldiers do if you get shot at? I mean, shoot back.”

  Scotty smiled. “Yeah, that’s what I thought when I left Belton. But it’s much more complicated than just ducking and shooting. I guess I saw too many movies as a kid. The Army trains you for all sorts of situations. The expect you to be able to handle all of them. Combat, sure, but they also expect me to do things like calling in artillery and Air Force air strikes or performing pretty complicated medical life saving procedures. Then there was a lot of cross training in communications and language training and even classes in civic actions they put me through.”

  “Civic actions?”

  “They call it winning hearts and minds. It’s a little like public relations mixed with psychological operations. We’re expected to advise the Vietnamese Army and help them do what armies do. But, to top it off, we help the local civilians build roads and bridges, improve their crops, put in sewer systems, dig wells, open schools and set up medical clinics.”

  She leaned toward him, surprised. “You know how to do all those things?”

  “That’s my whole point. I lay awake wondering if I can do all those things right.”

  “Surely, they wouldn’t send you if they didn’t think you were ready, would they?” she asked.

  “I wish it were that easy. I’m worried about doing everything in a strange country with people from another culture mostly in another language I’ve only had twelve weeks of training in.”

  “They expect you to speak their language too?” she asked.

  “Hey, I wasn’t much of a language student in high school Spanish. Believe me, Vietnamese is a whole other thing.”

  Eileen laughed and touched his arm with her fingertips for a fleeting moment. “I’m sure you’ll do fine over there, Scotty.”
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  “You don’t know how much I hope you’re right.”

  Out of the corner of his eye he caught the car hop approaching with a tray piled high with their order. He rolled the window up an inch to give her something to anchor the feet of the tray on and reached into his pocket for some cash.

  “How dangerous?”

  Scotty peeled off a five and put the rest in his pockets. “What?”

  “Some Americans are getting killed over there. Right? Or is it just the Vietnamese and the communists doing the shooting?” She turned her palms up. “I’m confused,” Eileen said.

  The car hop squatted a bit, dropped the rubber-tipped support arm on the bottom of the tray and parked the loaded tray on the door. “Here’s your order, y’all. Anything else?”

  “No. I think we’re okay for now.” Scotty craned his neck to check the tray and passed Eileen’s order to her side of the car starting with her shake.

  “Whoa!”

  He turned to see that even though he wasn’t even through passing food across, Eileen’s hands were already filled with food. He reached across her to pop the glove compartment open. With the flair of a salesman he pointed at the flat surface the door offered. “Your dining table, Miss.”

  Eileen giggled at his impression and put her burger and fries on the glove compartment door, then took the drink he passed her. “You didn’t answer me.”

  “About?”

  “About the danger.”

  Scotty unwrapped his burger only enough to eat it, careful not to let the contents slip onto his lap. He gestured with the burger as if pointing off to an imaginary distance. “Depends on whether they send me to a job out in the field—as an advisor to a combat unit—or if I stay in one of the big cities like Saigon or DaNang at some headquarters job.”

  “But wait. Didn’t I read they bomb the big cities too?”

  “No. The Viet Cong don’t have an air force, but they do rocket and mortar cities sometimes.”

  She grimaces, as if in pain. “I hope they give you a job deep in the basement of a building, a big thick one, made of concrete.”

  Scotty laughed. “What the heck would I be doing down there?”

  “Filing something. You know, all the military triplicate copy stuff.”

  “It’d sure would be a waste of all the training they gave me.”

  “I still think filing and clerical work would be best,” Eileen said from the corner of her mouth, her lips around the straw in her soft drink.

  “I’ll tell them how you feel when I get to Personnel. That will convince them to give me some job like that, so you won’t have to worry.”

  “Well, I mean, even if there wasn’t shooting going on, that’s a long way off and it must be a pretty strange place. And I know Kitty’s going to be worried sick until you come back.”

  Scotty put his burger back on the tray and reached for his cherry Coke. “I guess I’m just going to have to convince her I’m going to be okay and she doesn’t have to worry about me.”

  Scotty pulled up to the curb in front of Eileen’s house, killed the engine and the lights. “You need to go in now?” He tapped the small dash-mounted clock only to see the hour hand swing free and pendulum on either side of the six. “I mean it’s late and I’m sure you’ve had a very long day —”

  “No. I don’t have to be anywhere until late tomorrow morning. So if you want to talk some more, we can. Anyway, you’re the one on vacation, so if you want to spend some more time…”

  Scotty was confused by the signals. Eileen was beautiful; they had a small history together; they had things in common; she was certainly open to him and appeared to enjoy being with him, but what did she expect? He swallowed and turned to look Eileen in the eyes. “Can I ask you something? Listen, if it’s none of my business. Just say so.”

  “Sure. What? This sounds so serious.”

  “The guy you were with in high school… your boyfriend or fiancé, or whatever he is, what happened to him? He still around?”

  “Who are you talking about? What boyfriend?”

  “Aren’t you going steady with some guy?

  “No. No, I’m not.” She broke eye contact with Scotty and looked out the windshield at nothing in particular. “What made you think I was seeing someone?”

  Scotty was surprised by her answer. “Well, we all thought you were going steady or engaged or something. You never seemed to be anywhere around in our senior year. We just assumed you had something hot and heavy going outside of school.”

  “Oh, Scotty, I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry? Sorry for what?”

  She seemed to brace herself for a confession of sorts then continued. “I lied. Well, maybe I didn’t really lie, but I misled you and, I guess, everyone else. Same as a lie. Truth is there was no boyfriend. I was never with anyone in school. I never dated anyone. Not at all.”

  She turned and looked Scotty in the eyes again. “And I’ve never been to the Dairy Queen with anyone before, either.”

  To Scotty the news was what he’d hoped but not at all what he’d expected. “What about the big class ring you wore? And wasn’t there a letter jacket you wore too? We all just assumed—”

  “Yes, I know. I wanted everyone to think I was going with someone.”

  “What? Didn’t you want to date or hang out with the rest of us?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “I don’t understand,” Scotty said.

  She took another small breath and looked down at nothing in particular, staring at a spot somewhere below the dash. “It was my father. He’s a drunk. No, he’s worse than a drunk. He’s an ugly, ugly drunk. When I was in Junior High, in West Palm Beach, before we moved to Belton, I tried to hang out with school friends, but every time he’d make it a problem for me.”

  “He wouldn’t let you date?” Scotty asked.

  “No, but he was so drunk so often I couldn’t invite anyone to the house. And I couldn’t ever tell when he’d let me go places I wanted to go or see people I wanted to see only to have him explode over something petty and then tell me I wasn’t going anywhere.”

  Scotty put on an even more serious face. “He doesn’t hurt you, does he?”

  “No, but he hit my mom and he trashed the house and broke things when he got drunk, which was about every night.”

  Scotty looked out the window at Eileen’s small house. “Why do you stay there? You’re out of school now.”

  “He’s gone now. He left my mom about a year ago after she called the cops on him again. They told him they were tired of coming to the house and if they had to come again he was going to jail. Last I heard he was in New Mexico.”

  “Great. I mean, it’s great he’s gone and you don’t have to put up with him any more.”

  Eileen looked back at her front door and smiled. “My mom and I have never been closer. Before he left I couldn’t remember the last time she’d ever relaxed or had a good time. We lived in fear of him coming home each night. Some nights he’d come home drunk and tired and just go to bed and pass out. Other nights he’d come home drunk and angry and take everything out on us. And we never knew how he was going to act.”

  “And he’s why you wanted us to think you were going with someone else?” Scotty asked.

  “Sure. When I tried to have a real life anyway, he wouldn’t let it alone. If a guy came to the house my father would either go overboard as the concerned father or puke in the middle of the living room rug. I couldn’t explain this to anyone—why I couldn’t go out with them. So I invented a boyfriend. But I never had one.”

  “Not at all? Not all the way through high school?’ Scotty asked.

  She shook her head. “No. Never.”

  They sat quietly for a moment. She searched the pockets in her uniform and found a wadded up Kleenex she touched to the corner of her eye.

  Scotty broke the silence. “Is your father why you didn’t want to go get a drink earlier? I’m sorry if I —”

  “No. I’m not a
prude or a teetotaler or anything. I just don’t have any good memories about drinking or drinkers. And what if I’m like my father? What if I’m going to have trouble with alcohol?”

  “Can you inherit it?” Scotty asked.

  “I don’t know. But just in case, I’ll stay away from it. Drinking makes people ugly. And I don’t ever want to be part of that crowd.”

  He turned back toward her. “I can’t imagine you ever being unpleasant,” Scotty said.

  Eileen sighed as if relieved to have someone know the truth. “You know, I think it is getting late. Thanks for dinner and the laughs. Mostly the laughs.”

  He almost ran around the back of the car to get the door for her. They walked up the short sidewalk to her porch, he about half a head taller than she. And he liked the feeling. Scotty gently touched the small of her back again as they walked. She smelled so good and he wanted to get closer. He wanted to touch her more.

  He looked down at his shoes. “I’m not going to be here very long and if you say no I’ll understand. But, ah… “ He tried to find the words to ask her but still walk away with some dignity if she said no. They didn’t come easily, so he looked back into her eyes and just plunged ahead. “Well… would it be okay if I called you… I mean could we go out again?” He started to search for a way to end his questions and not sound so pathetic or so unsure of himself. “Could we do things?”

  Eileen stopped him. She reached down and curled her small fingers inside his, gently, tenderly. “I’d like that a lot, Scotty.” She then popped up on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the lips.”

  “Well, great!” he said. “I will. I’ll call you. Or talk to you when you come around to see Kitty.” He realized he was rambling again and tried to end it, but all he could spill from his lips was, “Bye, now.”

  Scotty got into his car, started it with relief and looked back at Eileen standing on the porch. “‘Bye, now.’ What the hell’s wrong with me?”

  He waved, not sure if she could see him in the darkened car and drove off. His timing couldn’t be worse. He already knew he would miss her while in Vietnam. Of that much, he was sure.