by Tim O'Brien
“I rescued you, Thomas. Crying like a baby in my backyard. You were totally lost.”
“True,” I said, and slipped my arm free. “And I am prepared to offer a reward of sorts. Tampa. The two of us.” Winning smile. “Expenses to be shared, of course.”
Mrs. Kooshof regarded me with suspicion.
She sat up, lit a cigarette, dispatched three or four smoke rings toward the heavens.
“Tampa,” she said. “What’s in it for me?”
“Sun and sea.”
“Big deal. That’s it?”
“Manly companionship.”
“What else, Thomas?”
“Coppertone tan,” I said. “Payback lessons. I am, after all, an educator.”
Here I must digress—a tactical transgression, perhaps, but I urge forbearance. The shortest distance between two points may well be a straight line, but one must remember that efficiency is not the only narrative virtue. Texture is another. Accuracy still another. Our universe does not operate on purely linear principles.
Bear in mind, too, the story of your own botched life, its circularities and meanderings, how your thoughts sometimes slide back to that dismal afternoon when you introduced your husband to a lanky young redhead named Suzanne or Sandra or Sarah—let us settle on Sandra—and how you watched the two of them chat over coffee, and how at one point it occurred to you that they might be getting along rather too well—Sandra’s saucy eyes, your husband’s laughter—but how you said nothing, how you did nothing, and how as a consequence you now wake up screaming the word Fiji.
A well-placed digression, though interruptive, can often prove progressive in its effects. We move forward by looping briefly backward.
Thus: the year 1969.
Thus: Vietnam.
I was always an inert young man, the reactive type, a tardy and somewhat petulant respondent to the world, almost never an initiator. Events dictated. I complied. By this process, the war sucked me in, and in January of 1969 I found myself filling sandbags at a forward firebase in the mountains of Quang Ngai Province. It was, by any measure, a stressful twelve months. Although my tour involved no formal combat, nothing dangerous, I admit to having had trouble appreciating the wholesome, outdoorsy rigors of warfare. There were no beds. No books. The food was called chow—a word that speaks volumes. The days seemed to stretch out toward infinity, blank and humid, without purpose, and at night I was kept awake by the endless drone of mosquitoes and helicopters. (Why wars must be contested under such conditions I shall never understand. Is not death sufficient?)
The year 1969, to put it politely, was not my happiest. I felt marooned; my health deteriorated.
Surrounded by bunkers and barbed wire, sealed off from the real war, I spent that year as an awards clerk in a battalion adjutant’s office, where my primary chore was to compose and process citations for gallantry in action—Silver Stars, Bronze Stars, Purple Hearts, et cetera. In the beginning, I suppose, I rather enjoyed manufacturing these scenarios of human valor. I was good with machine gun nests. I imagined young lieutenants leaping upon land mines, shielding their charges, miraculously limping away with mild contusions to the extremities. (Extremity, in fact, was a favorite word. I milked it mercilessly.) Still, after a couple of months, I exhausted both my thesaurus and my creativity, and I soon viewed my agency as the purest hackwork.
Why, then, was I there? Certainly not out of moral conviction. Nor to seek adventure, nor to test my masculinity. (Never a problem. I am amply hormonal, a fact upon which clever women often comment.) So why? The brief answer—the silly answer—is that I was conscripted. Yet I did nothing to avoid this fate. When the draft notice arrived, in my first year of graduate school, I chuckled and promptly returned to my books.
Imagine my surprise, therefore, when our country’s claim upon my person turned out to be in earnest.
Passively, inert to the end, I capitulated with scarcely a snarl. I watched myself plod through the humiliations of a physical examination, then basic training, then clerk’s school at a dismal installation in rural Kentucky. (My sole fond memory from this period is of a rubbery little Appalachian number by the name of June. Acrobatic tongue. Tooth decay. Illiterate in everything but love.)
Then off to war.
Vietnam itself came as a relatively minor insult to prior injury, almost entirely uneventful. Only a single episode deserves attention, yet this incident goes far to explain the human being I have since become.
To wit: Near the end of my tour, not a month before rotating back to the States, I was called upon to join six compatriots* in manning a listening post several kilometers outside the firebase. Our orders were to move by foot into the mountains, position ourselves along a designated trail, dig in deep, then spend the next four days (and nights) lying low, listening for enemy movement.
None of this was my cup of tea.
Though it is awkward to acknowledge personal inadequacies, I must concede that I was not cut out for the grim business of soldiering. I am a tall, somewhat gawky man. Athletically disinclined. A distinctive stride—pelvis forward, elbows sideward—an intellectual’s abstract tilt to the jaw.
So, yes, with all this, the new assignment came as a shock.
I received my orders at noon. Thirty minutes later I was reporting to a young, dull-faced captain at the front gate, who issued me a military radio, rations, ammunition for my thoroughly rusted M-16. “Won’t be too bad,” the captain said, and gestured at the mountains. “Like Cub Scouts. Pretend it’s a weenie roast.”
My comrades waited outside the gate: six tough, tired, soiled faces. They spoke not a word to me, just exchanged glances and moved out single file toward the mountains.
For more than five hours we plodded straight west, then briefly northward, then began climbing through deep, dripping rain forest. The greenery was massive. Triple canopy, foliage stacked upon foliage. This was machete country. Snake country, too, and creatures I dared not imagine. Although I had ridded myself of unessential burdens—a Webster’s Collegiate, a complete Chaucer—I soon passed into a state far beyond exhaustion. I could smell death in my bones.
At last, in late afternoon, we halted at a trail junction overlooking a wide river below. Immediately, I collapsed beneath a tree. The universe had gone limp along its margins—no definition, therefore no meaning—and it was all I could do to watch the others set up a perimeter and clear fields of fire. Even then, my six ghostly comrades spoke not a word. Soberly, as dusk came on, they ate their rations and rolled out their ponchos for the night. I was aware, of course, that field discipline was critical, yet the muteness of these sour gentlemen seemed extreme.
When dark threatened, I saw no alternative but to approach one of these savage mutes. I chose the smallest, a wiry kid with bad breath and bad posture. Politely, even sheepishly, I tapped his arm and requested information regarding the evening’s activities.
The boy stared over my shoulder. Hard to be certain, for his lips did not move, but I believe he eventually murmured the word shit.
“My own thought,” said I. (Here was progress.) “So look, if you don’t mind, I’m new at this. What do I do?”
“Do?”
“You know. Do.”
There was a pause that lasted half the night. The boy spat, closed his eyes, chewed thoughtfully on a wad of gum, then repeated his almost inaudible ventriloquist’s act. “The usual,” he seemed to whisper.
I nodded vigorously. “The usual. Very good.”
“Same-same.”
“Got it,” I said. “Same-same. Many thanks.”
I began to edge away, but with a silky little motion the boy reached out and caught me by an ear.
“Listen!” he hissed.
“Hey, I’m trying.”
“Fuckin’ idiot.”
“That stings,” I said, “and I very much wish—”
He gave my ear a twist. “Fuckin’ listening post. So fuckin’ listen.”
I spent the remainder of the night alone
in a clump of bushes. I did not sleep. I listened. And the nighttime sounds were nothing if not compelling: monkeys, tigers, sappers, parrots, fish, Herbie, Lorna Sue, my whole sad history. I heard water evaporating. I heard the tick of my own biology. At one appalling point, near dawn, I detected what seemed to be the sound of a nail entering human flesh.
At daybreak I was alone.
They were gone—all six of them. The radio, too, and any sign of human presence.
I searched all morning.
I waited all afternoon.
It occurred to me, as the sun sank low, that this had to be a bizarre practical joke. At any instant they would come creeping up on me—jumping out, whooping—but that richly imagined instant never arrived. When dark settled, I retreated to my clump of bushes. Jungle, I kept thinking. The word itself seemed haunted, and even now, decades later, those two syllables signify betrayal and panic and helplessness, far beyond anything listed in your standard Roget’s.
The next morning I set off for the firebase, a vague optimism pushing me along. South, I thought—down the mountain.
Patiently, trying to encourage myself, I took inventory of all the reasons not to panic. I had my weapon. I had rations and ammunition. I had three canteens of water. And common sense. Plenty of it.
In twenty minutes I was thoroughly lost.
Everything had become everything else: trees blending into more trees. To go down I had to go up. But I could not find up.
At midday I crossed an unfamiliar footbridge. Hours later, in a clearing, I came upon an abandoned stone pagoda. I made camp there for the night, a long, drizzly, foggy night, then resumed my march just after daybreak. No left or right, no direction to things, just the dense green jungle kaleidoscoping into deeper jungle, and for the entire day I followed a narrow dirt trail that wound through the mountains without pattern or purpose. This was wilderness. High, green, shaggy country. Quiet country. Lush country. Landfalls of botany, mountains growing out of mountains. Greenhouse country. Huge palms and banana trees, wildflowers, waist-high grasses, vines and wet thickets and humidity. Enemy country too. Hostile in the most fundamental sense.
Terror kept me going.
All day, as I trudged along, my thoughts were wired to an internal transformer of despair and rage. I yelled at the jungle. I envisioned scenarios of revenge, how someday I would acquire the means to retaliate against my six so-called comrades. Napalm strikes. Grenades rolling into foxholes. I smiled at these thoughts, then found myself trembling.
Perhaps it was fatigue, perhaps madness, but I suddenly allowed myself to collapse in the middle of the trail. I watched the sky; I did not move. Even at dusk, as a wet fog settled in, I lay there paralyzed, wrapped up in my poncho, listening to sounds that should never be listened to. Voices in the fog, other voices inside me.
Lost, I thought. Lost as lost gets.
At this point, as promised, our digressive loop becomes progressive. We circle forward to the present.
Lost then, lost now.
Needless to say, I am a survivor. I found my way out of that spooky jungle, which is a tale I must set aside for the appropriate moment. Here it is sufficient to underscore three salient consequences of the whole experience: my sensitivity to people leaving me, my terror of betrayal, my lifelong propensity for exacting vengeance.
It should be clear, too, that I am not without backbone.
The timid scholar inside me perished forever in those mountains. Stung by treachery, I learned how to respond. And in Tampa, abetted by Mrs. Robert Kooshof, I would soon be bringing some extremely serious shit to bear.
* I was later to learn that these six filthy gentlemen referred to themselves as “Greenies,” an abbreviation for “Green Berets,” itself an abbreviation for a rare condition of mental and spiritual gangrene.
Mrs. Robert Kooshof accepted my no-frills travel offer,* and late the next afternoon I made our reservations for Florida. Afterward, we raised a toast, had supper à la buff, made spicy love, then dressed and strolled down the street to Lorna Sue’s big yellow house. Here, at last, was what had brought me back to Owago. To face the foe. To survey defenses and gather crucial intelligence.
Given my history, the Zylstra homestead had always seemed vaguely threatening, at times edging up on eerie, and as we approached the front door I felt my heart doing little somersaults. For an instant I nearly turned away. Courageously, however, I made a fist, risked my knuckles, and was soon rewarded by a loud grinding noise within, succeeded by metallic squeaks, succeeded by a voice yelling, “Jesus Christ, just wait a minute, for Chrissake!” A moment later I was gazing down upon a wizened old lady in a wheelchair: Lorna Sue’s paternal grandmother—Earleen Zylstra by name—a creature riddled to the core with spite and mental illness. We had not encountered each other since my wedding day, but the old woman cocked her head in recognition. “You,” she said. “I thought you was ancient history.”
“Alas,” I said, “I weren’t.”
(Such grammar brings out the animal in me.)
Mrs. Kooshof whispered the word condescension, digging a sharp Dutch elbow into my ribs. It seemed prudent to withhold further venom; I forced a smile, extended a hand, and informed Earleen that she was looking fit.
The old woman’s beady eyes glistened. “Fuck fit. You want in?”
“Splendid,” said I.
“Well, Jesus Christ,” Earleen grunted.
She spun around in her wheelchair and led us down a filthy hallway, through air that smelled of stewed underwear. In the living room a large TV set boomed out at full blather, six or seven brutish relatives camped before it in various states of stupefaction. A few I recognized, among them Lorna Sue’s mother and father—Ned and Velva. But no one rose. No one glanced up. Hesitantly, I stepped forward, but at the same instant an ill-shaven old nun—an aunt, I believe—swiveled and made a slicing motion across her throat. “Wait’ll it’s over!” she snapped. “Jesus Christ.”
Amazing, I thought.
It was to these garbled chromosomes, this biological catastrophe that I had once cast my marital fortunes.
After a few seconds had ticked by, Mrs. Kooshof and I took seats on the soiled carpet, where with the rest of the household we witnessed the concluding minutes of a program that featured homemade videotapes of people falling off curbs and chairs and bicycles. The slack-jawed Zylstra assemblage found these mishaps hypnotic. For a moment I nearly forgave Lorna Sue and Herbie their considerable sins. After all, what else could one expect from this puddle of baboon genes? (During my years of marriage I had done everything possible to avoid the whole loathsome clan, often inventing excuses to explain my absence at family gatherings. One Christmas I was diagnosed with lupus; the following summer I received a rare summons to the Vatican.) Naturally enough, my hands-off policy had caused domestic turmoil between Lorna Sue and me. Antisocial, she claimed. A compulsive liar. The word pathological had popped up. In truth, I will admit, I do at times incline toward exaggeration, especially in self-defense, but Lorna Sue’s charges were essentially without substance. Prevarication comes in many shades. Mine was true-blue. I loved her. Yes, I did—more than anything—and she should not have left me over a couple of snow-white lies, a few embarrassing documents beneath a mattress.
Thus I sat tumbling inside myself, grieving again, full of remorse and self-hatred. My senses were temporarily impaired, and I failed to notice that the television had gone silent, that the room had mostly emptied of relatives, and that Lorna Sue’s bovine genitors were now studying me from the sofa. Velva munched on candied popcorn. Ned blinked and massaged his belly. Both parents had reached their mid-seventies, yet they seemed to have aged not at all. Bloated faces, dyed hair, pasty white skin. “All right, so get off the floor,” Ned finally muttered. “Can’t you even sit in a chair like a normal person?”
I shrugged. “Perfectly comfortable.”
“What the hell you want?”
“No wanting in the least,” I said. “A courtesy call. In th
e neighborhood, as it were.”
“And there goes the fuckin’ neighborhood,” Ned stupidly responded. (A former Jesuit, of all things. A divinity school dropout, now a foulmouthed peddler of clichés.)
Shrill laughter came from the wheelchair across the room, where Earleen sat stroking a large gray cat. The old lady wiggled her tongue at me, almost flirtatiously, then winked and kissed her cat. (I was at a loss as to what any of this might have signified. Dementia, perhaps—a household virus. More on this later.)
“Anyhow, face it,” Ned was saying. “You’re not even family no more. Barely ever was.” He squinted at his wife. “Divorced, aren’t they? Abe and Lorna Sue?”
“They sure as heck are,” said Velva.
“Bingo,” Ned said. “Exactly what I thought.”
Mrs. Kooshof nudged me. “Who’s Abe?”
“That, I’m afraid, would be I.”
“You told me—”
“A family nickname,” I said brusquely. “Primate wordplay.”
Mrs. Kooshof grinned. “Abe! I like that!”
The topic wearied me. Though discomposed, I managed a pleasant sigh and then turned and inquired about Lorna Sue’s well-being.
“Fine, I guess,” said Velva. “Happy as a clam.” The woman’s articulation, never the best, was now flawed by a mouthful of candied popcorn. “Never saw her happier, not ever, and as long as you keep away from—”
“And her new husband? The name escapes me.”
“Yeah, sure, he’s fine too. Rich and handsome.” She swallowed and refilled. “What’s it to you?”
“Compassion,” said I.
“Com-what?”
“Passion, Velva. Lorna Sue and I were once locked in holy matrimony. Cuckold and wife.”
Velva stopped chewing to sort this out. She was a large, square individual, almost certainly female. “Well, okay,” she finally said, “but you never had no compassion about none of us. Zilch. Never even showed up for a single Christmas.”
“Untrue,” I replied. “One, I believe.”
Velva ingested another mouthful of popcorn, glared at me, then stood up and waddled out of the room. The atmosphere, I noted, had gone sour.
