Bill Sulla declined to harbor any thought that cowardice was a factor. He liked Reuben too much to indulge any such suspicion. Reuben’s permanence in Saigon was just the luck of the draw, Bill told himself.
Eventually the day came to disassemble the PDO—not enough U.S. soldiers were coming in to South Vietnam any more to justify a continuation of the personnel unit. Those who arrived could be deployed by a computer operating out of Hawaii. And so Reuben and Bill found themselves sharing with two other officers a tiny cabin on the SS Helmsley, bound for Honolulu. Nobody, by the beginning of 1972, was clamoring for combat duty. Not in Saigon, not at the Pentagon.
CHAPTER 25
At Sea, February 1972
Lieutenant Castle reported to the adjutant later in the afternoon that he would avail himself of the offer to expedite his travel schedule so that he could fly to his father’s funeral.
By the end of the day, he had in hand a schedule and a flight authorization form. He would disembark from the Helmsley with the landing crew. An army car would take him to Hickam Air Force Base. The flight voucher, on presentation to the dispatch office at the airfield, would qualify him to board the next transport bound for a stateside base. From there, he would have to make his own arrangements to get to Fargo, North Dakota.
The sergeant who handed him the papers blew smoke into his large typewriter. “It’s the best we can do, Lieutenant, and not bad. We’ll be in Honolulu Wednesday, 1000. You should be flying by noon, make it in four, five hours to California. Or who knows; maybe there’ll be a flight going to Seattle. That would make it easier for you, since your destination is North Dakota.”
“That’s right, Sergeant.”
“Anyway, you’ve got a ten-day leave before you’re due to report for your discharge. You might want to do that someplace closer to—”
“Fargo.”
“Fargo. Maybe Rock Island? That’s near Chicago. Up to you, Lieutenant.”
Reuben nodded, took his papers, and joined up with Bill Sulla for chow at 1745.
Bill said he was disconcerted that the balance of the trip would be without the company of Reuben.
“We’ll stay in touch, Bill.”
“Yes, and we have something to celebrate—the end of our war.”
It wasn’t easy to secure privacy on the great ship with a thousand men aboard. But resourceful men of war always knew how to do it, and as the sun was going down, on February 10, 1972, the ship easing into the western hemisphere, Bill and Reuben were shielded from view by a longboat’s protective shadow. Bill brought out the flask and the two paper cups.
“This is good stuff,” Sulla said, his eyes alight. “Cognac. French. We’ll drink the whole pint. Don’t worry, Reuben, don’t worry. I’ll resupply in Honolulu. Here’s to your father, Reuben.”
“It’s been great to…to be your friend, Bill.”
Twenty-four hours later Castle plopped his seabag on his shoulder, made his way through the busy lobby of the air base north of the city, and paused at the bank of telephones. He thought to telephone Mrs. Walker, a family friend, who had taken the initiative in getting the word to Reuben of his father’s death.
On the other hand, what would he say?
The hell with it. He had told the adjutant on the Helmsley that he had gotten through to Fargo on the shipboard telephone, released for emergency use, and learned that since there was a possibility Joachim Castle’s son would be there, the funeral was being put back two days. In fact Reuben hadn’t made the call, and he had no intention of traveling to Fargo in midwinter.
He had quickly decided, on learning that the aircraft he was placed on would land in San Francisco, to stay there, spend the week in town. Reuben was always thinking of something to do, some challenge to meet. He had met the challenge of “fighting” in Vietnam, met the challenge—he smiled inwardly—of surviving the bloodshed. Now he was in a glamorous city of the world with no scheduled obligations, other than to report for discharge in ten days at any U.S. army center. And then? And then resume his normal life, discerning a challenge, meeting it, excelling at whatever he did, and reminding destiny that he was back in town.
What now, golden boy? World conqueror! Editor in chief! Student Council chairman! North Central Chairman of Students for Peace Now!
But for now he allowed his thinking to focus on simple pleasures he had forgone, in parts of the world he had only just tasted. He had what he thought of as big money in his pockets: he hadn’t sent any home while in the service, and his winnings at poker exceeded his expenses in Saigon. He would just look around a bit.
On his way to Vietnam he had spent two nights in San Francisco, so he knew to point the taxi toward the lively Mexican bar on Fresno Street. There he had spent carefree hours, waking up late in one of the rooms upstairs. Maybe Angelina was still there? He was everything he had been fifteen months ago, plus, now, a war hero. He had been irresistible in 1970; he would be all the more so in 1972. He just needed a little time to rise and shine.
Walking into the bar, his service ribbons resplendent, the silver bar on his shirt collar glistening, he managed a little smile for the short, olive-skinned Mexican who took his bag into the lobby, the door to the bar left open, letting in the bouncy notes of the welcoming music, ¡Al fin! ¡Al fin! Ya llegaste, mi amor.
CHAPTER 26
South Bend, Indiana, February 1989
The spring term of freshman year at Notre Dame was full for Justin Durban, Class of 1992. He was enrolled in the requisite five academic courses. He was competing to join the staff of the student newspaper, The Observer. And for ten hours every week, he waited on tables. The system at Notre Dame was straightforward: bursary students would work for ten hours a week (in freshman year this always meant work in the dining hall) in exchange for their meals—twenty-one meals a week.
A fair enough bargain, Justin thought, but add to it the three or four hours required every day at The Observer, and this meant an hour or two chopped away from sleep time.
But it was exciting to Justin, and he thrived on devising stories about campus news, interviewing visiting celebrities, conspiring in fun and fancies, and learning to type without looking down at the keyboard. The accepted attitude toward the senior editors was a balance between servility and independence. Some competitors, he thought, traded openly on their affability, but Justin was naturally forthright. On one occasion he told the managing editor that he did not wish to follow a certain visiting politician around when he came to campus. “I’ve read up on Senator Castle in the morgue, and I heard him speak a couple of years ago in Boulder. No thanks.”
It was not unheard of for a competitor to ask for a substitute assignment, and the managing editor, Mark Howard, gave the Castle story to another freshman. But at ten that night, as copy was making its way to the editors’ desks, Mark looked up at Justin, who was at hand with the story he had taken on. “What’s this about Senator Castle? He’s a very hot number on the political scene. You got a personal problem there?”
“Yes,” Justin said. “At least I think so.”
Mark said nothing more. He took Justin’s story and put it on the pile of copy he had to read, correct, and send down to the printer before the one A.M. deadline. “Okay, Justin. Just curious.”
Late in the afternoon on election day at The Observer, the student candidates were lined up in the production room. Justin’s election as an assistant editor was announced, along with that of ten other competitors, six of them girls. Their rankings were made public on the bulletin board, and Justin had come in first. “That means,” said Janet Rudo, who ranked second, “that you’d have to buy the beer tonight. If we could get beer. And if we were allowed to drink it.”
Although he prided himself on his skills as a reporter, Justin would not have been able to report what exactly had happened in the three hours after dinner. What emphatically happened after that was that he woke at six with a hangover, and the breakfast platters of sausages he had to serve out in the dining hall made
him swear that he would never again willingly look at a sausage. But at eight-fifty, just before the hour on classical civilization with Professor Pfansteil, he made it to a public telephone and rang his mother’s number, collect.
She said she was very very proud of him.
CHAPTER 27
Urbana, Illinois, February 1973
Reuben attended class at law school irregularly. As always, he was able to cope. Here, doing so required a combination of tactical reading before the exams, carefully tuned collaboration with fellow students when papers were due, and a certain reliance on his continuing power to make friends. There was the exception of the starchy dean, who called him in twice to complain about his poor class attendance. “You have a place in our law school, Mr. Castle, coveted by a great many applicants. We gave you special consideration because you are a veteran—”
“Yes, I appreciate that, Dean. And I am very eager to do well at the University of Illinois Law School. I will certainly pay greater attention to class attendance—”
“Yes. I trust you will. No doubt you have heard it said that while it is difficult to get into our law school, it is also difficult to fail once admitted. But you are a man”—the dean looked down at a document headed, “CASTLE, Reuben Hardwick”—“who appears to have broken many records in the past, as a student at the University of North Dakota, and as an unharmed officer in Vietnam.”
That was the first session with Dean Blankenship. The second was more perfunctory, and more threatening.
“If you don’t do better in the exams in May, you should not count on entering second-year studies in September.”
Reuben nodded. Yes, sir, he understood. Yes, sir, he would do something about those late papers and poor exams.
But he didn’t, and in May he was given a probationary grade. He would be entitled to register for his second year, but only after submitting to examinations to make up for work not completed in his first year. He would be entitled to take these examinations twice if necessary, on dates arranged with the dean.
There was also the problem of money. The GI Bill looked after tuition and most of the cost of room and board, but it left Reuben with nothing for casual expenses, and he did not relish living with the intrusions of financial concerns. Restless, he answered a summons from Henry Walford, chairman of the Illinois State Democratic Party. Word had gotten through to Walford, from the party head in Bismarck, North Dakota, that young Castle had been, sure, something of a hell-raiser as an undergraduate at UND—“one of those continuous rebels. But he swept the opposition away in everything he got into, and he is a fine speaker. I’ve invited him to speak at this year’s state Democratic convention in Fargo. We’re nursing our wounds since the McGovern collapse last fall, and we need a little spirit from young people. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
It went very well. Reuben was cautious in his references to the Vietnam War. He made certain that the state chairman knew to introduce him as a veteran of the war, with twenty months of active duty. It was not yet time, he sensed, to speak routinely of the “disastrous war,” or of the “Republican war.” Too many citizens of different ages had invested in the war, directly and indirectly. “There was a lot that some good people were fighting for—some South Vietnamese are still fighting for, ladies and gentlemen. The president of South Vietnam couldn’t pass a political hygiene test in the state of North Dakota, but he wants something better than the South Vietnamese would get from the Vietcong.”
He spoke of the need for American Democrats to press “the war against corruption in our own government” and predicted, no less, that President Nixon would be impeached.
“He got an uproarious cheer,” the North Dakota Democratic leader reported to his Illinois counterpart. “That Watergate business is moving very fast, Henry.”
“I’m not sure we want this young man going around at Democratic meetings in Illinois calling for the impeachment of the president,” Walford replied. “But I’ll get in touch with him.”
It proved to be an immediately productive association. Reuben’s appearance at the Democratic Labor Day rally was cheered a full four minutes before the speaker was let go. Henry Walford’s desk was deluged with invitations from organizations wanting young Castle to speak. They were mostly political at first but, after a few months, not confined to Democratic Party events.
It was after the speech to the Young Presidents Club in Chicago that Reuben thought to approach his situation with strategic attention. He told Walford that he hadn’t yet decided whether he was going back to law school in September 1974. Meanwhile, he would be willing to work formally with the Democratic Party organization, or informally with Walford and his law associates in Urbana and Chicago, and see what came of it.
In six months, Reuben had emerged as the voice of young progressive America in the northern part of the state: a voice unconstricted by Republican cynicism, unburdened by responsibility for the dissolution of democracy in Vietnam, eager to foster opportunities for young Americans and “long comfortable lives for older Americans.” A few weeks after opening his own office in Springfield, he traveled to Denver as a speaker for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He was escorted to the head table by Priscilla Avery, a local girl who one year earlier had been crowned Miss America.
His speech, centering on the great mission of the United States in the latter part of the century, was warmly received, and when he returned to his seat at the table, Miss America gave him a kiss, which he returned ardently, bringing on cheers from many of the 300 diners.
CHAPTER 28
Boulder/South Bend, September 1989
Justin had to be ready for Gunnar, the senior at Notre Dame who had twice offered him a ride, Boulder–South Bend, in return for twenty-five dollars toward expenses and shared duty at the wheel. There had been a delay in Justin’s getting his driver’s license, but Henri was satisfied finally by what the ophthalmologist said: the astigmatism had leveled off. Justin would continue to need glasses to read, and could try contact lenses if he wanted to. But in any case, he had vision good enough to drive.
Gunnar was on time, at the distressing hour of nine P.M. He liked to drive all night, and Henri had not devised a means of slowing down this track star who treated twenty hours of driving, starting after dark, as simply one more 100-meter dash. She helped Justin pile his bags into Gunnar’s hearty Oldsmobile, and kissed both young men good-bye.
They arrived at South Bend late on Thursday afternoon. Gunnar stopped the car outside Dillon Hall and helped Justin get his bags out of the car and onto the grass alongside. Justin would manage on his own to get them up to his room.
Back in May, The Observer had reported that the Student Council was protesting Notre Dame’s arbitrary procedures for roommate assignments. But reforms at Notre Dame took a long time, and Justin had known nothing more, when he left South Bend in June, than that he would have a different roommate in the fall. The young man he had been sharing quarters with was quitting school. “I’ll probably regret it beginning in October,” Jesse Baker had said, “but I just can’t turn down this offer in Silicon Valley. If I make out, I’ll build a wing at Notre Dame just for you, Justin, and you won’t have any more roommates to worry about.”
Checking in now with the dormitory office, Justin learned that his new roommate would be someone called Allard de Minveille, the son of the Canadian ambassador to the United States. Allard was new at Notre Dame. His first year of college studies had been done at Cambridge, his father then serving in London as deputy high commissioner.
Justin would miss Jesse, but Allard, born and raised in Quebec, gave promise of being not without interest.
Justin arrived breathless at the second floor, lugging his two heavy bags. He found the spacious room he would share with Allard all but filled with bags and books and sporting equipment, including a set of golf clubs. Allard was not there, but his belongings were everywhere. Justin made his way across the room and started stuffing his own gea
r into the shelves on the right side of the closet. (“One of us has to get the right side; why not me?”) He put books and shoes on the lower bed—let M. Allard occupy the upper bunk. After all, Justin had some seniority, having been at Notre Dame for a full year.
“Espèce de con!” Justin heard the thud and then the voice. He turned around and saw a young man, dressed in polo shirt and chinos, struggling to lift himself up from the floor. Books tucked under both arms, he had fallen over one of Justin’s emptied suitcases.
His hands on the floor, he looked up. His smile made its way through the tousled hair.
Justin, also speaking in French, said, “You must be Allard. Welcome to Notre Dame. But watch your language, or they won’t let you on the golf course. This is a religious school!”
Allard broke into a smile. Continuing in French he said, “I’m Allard de Minveille. Please take me to where I can get something decent to eat.”
“I know a nice place. It’s about a thousand miles from here.”
They had dinner at McDonald’s and made friends.
CHAPTER 29
Washington/Urbana, April 1990
The defeat of candidate Michael Dukakis in November 1988 had rattled the Democratic establishment, but the defeat itself wasn’t entirely surprising. The party elders had hoped that the popularity of Ronald Reagan would fall finally into the abyss of unreality and confusion and resentment which, informed Americans agreed, was there, waiting to swallow up the memory of Reaganomics and the evil empire.
But in fact President Reagan and Reaganism were not run out of Washington in disgrace. He was an old man, as the wise man Walter Lippmann would have pointed out—let him just go home. Then too, Governor Dukakis was not a commanding figure and did not succeed in mobilizing the sleepy masses of the oppressed and forgotten. Finally, Vice President George H. W. Bush was a politician of striking decency, and his weltanschauung was manifestly free of Reaganite voodoo accretions. So? It would take a little while before the political restitution could be effected. Next time out.
The Rake Page 10
