by Mitch Cullin
And there, finally, there: her father huddled with tougher-looking men—marines—on a beach somewhere, crouching together, posing like a football team above the opposing dead. What breathless shock seized Debra then, as if she'd stumbled into frigid water but was unable to cry out, when contemplating a Japanese soldier's severed head clutched by her own father's hand, a hand which had held her hands and had stroked her hair; the boyish soldier's face was savaged on the left side, a rent eyelid hanging over a hollow Asian socket, the black hair coiled around the same fingers which had gently patted her shoulders. “This didn't happen,” she said, abruptly tearing the picture in half. “We didn't see this.” How could Hollis have told her such human desecration was commonplace for the victors of battle—that he, too, had also stood above the fallen, his rifle aimed toward the lifeless? Instead, he kept quiet as the picture was torn again and again—the bits fluttering, sprinkling about the floor. Better, then, for her to collect the pieces without hesitation, depositing them in the trash—better returning that particular box to the highest closet shelf, shutting the door, and not dwelling anymore on what she couldn't fathom. “We didn't see that,” she repeated, and, as her father had also done, never spoke of it further.
But while Debra refrained from disagreeing with her mother's or younger sister's postmortem resentment concerning T.J.'s alcoholism, in time she concluded that it was her father's right to have anesthetized those assaulting memories; he earned the privilege, and none of them should have expressed reproof for his indolent excursions out of the living room—bare feet shuffling along the floorboards, taking slow, deliberate steps toward the kitchen, going to where another cold Lone Star could be fetched. In hindsight, she wished she had shown deference as he had ambled past her like a purposeful sleepwalker, understanding him as one in need of forgetting so thoroughly he'd rather drink himself to death than remember. Even so, she ‘d always loved him very much—she whispered this to herself at his funeral and knew it was true. She had grown into an adult alongside his calm intemperance, had gone from his little girl to Hollis's wife while he inhabited the sagging couch; she had accepted his vague presence since childhood, had maybe sensed his days melding into the manifold of dreams—where his decades of casual dying, to her now, somehow felt like a cloud's broad shadow winding across an unbearable terrain, dissipating by degrees until at long last it was nothing more.
Debra was next to him, propped up in bed, as Hollis lay there with his hands folded behind his neck. Her eyes were blankly staring forward, the bottle of cherry oil held below her nostrils. He was looking at the yellow ceiling, squinting, while discerning something else altogether: that big hilltop house on the West Texas plains—an ominous, creaking silhouette rising high beneath moonlight, a black hole shaken by itinerant winds, doors and windows boarded, panes shattered—abandoned and, at last, truly haunted since Ida had died, his mother-in-law succumbing to pneumonia some ten years ago.
“Come to think of it,” he said, turning his head to her, “I'm not so sure your dad would've liked Nine Springs. I mean, I suspect he wasn't meant to leave Texas, don't you?”
Debra glanced at him with an expression of such melancholy on her tired face that Hollis thought tears were imminent, but she was only readying herself for a yawn. “Who can really say,” she said, her mouth gaping. “You could be right, I guess.”
“Oh, what do I know anyway. It isn't like I think about him all that often these days.”
Hollis had never imagined he would find himself off in an exclusive desert community recalling the life of his late father-in-law, or remembering the solitary Victorian house which had remained standing after the majority of its former residents were deceased. Yet whenever pondering his own life, however briefly, he had assumed his demise would come well ahead of Debra's end—although he hadn't given much thought to how she would survive without him. There were, of course, stock investments, his life insurance, and their considerable savings. The vague supposition lurking somewhere deep in his mind was that she would be able to take care of herself, just like her widowed mother did following T.J.'s passing. In any case, it seemed, for him, the natural order of things: wives rarely preceded their husbands to the cemetery. His mother, too, had buried two husbands by her seventy-third birthday, spending her final years in a Critchfield retirement home while keeping herself busy with bingo and origami. And where Debra had grown up, the men were always inclined to go before-hand—from drinking, heart failure, mental decline, hard living—and, existing beyond their spouses, the widows banded together, becoming attentive to their friendships and Jesus. Rugged cowboys and stoic farmers aside, West Texas was, in truth, a land governed by strong, independent women. But then again, he ‘d reminded himself, ovarian cancer wasn't part of Debra's gene pool; her disease was a fluke, the sole exception to the rule, and he couldn't have foreseen or ever conceded the possibility that he might now outlive her.
She tightened the cherry oil's lid, setting the bottle on the bedside table, and, without hesitation, picked a different aromatherapy bottle, shaking it for a few seconds before unscrewing the top. Then, as she began inhaling from the bottle, it was sleep-improving lavender replacing the lingering scent of cherry. “What about Bill?” she suddenly asked, between sniffs.
Hollis rested his right hand against his forehead. “Who?” he said, glancing furtively at her.
“Bill McCreedy. Do you think about him at all anymore?”
For a time nothing was said. Debra kept inhaling and exhaling, and he stared at her, taken aback by the question. His expression was so unlike his usual attempts to force a smile that he seemed like a separate person. “I don't know,” he said, his voice almost a gasp. “I don't.”
“You don't know? Really?”
He nodded, a look of utter consternation on his face: “I suppose I think of him. What about you?”
“Not so often,” she answered, frankly. “Only sometimes.”
“Me, too,” he lied. “Not so often.”
And that was that. Debra put her hand to her mouth and yawned once more. Presently the room would fall dark—the pillows adjusted, the lavender scent then diminishing with the increasing tenor of Debra's snoring, the sheets bunched around her shoulders. But sleep would elude Hollis for a while. Instead, he tried to picture what it was Debra saw whenever her memory invoked McCreedy—but, despite his best efforts, little was revealed to him. How many years had it been—he found himself wondering—since they had last spoke of Creed? Ten, fifteen years? And why were the long dead recurring to her now? Gripped with anxiety, Hollis gazed into the pitch of the room until the darkness surrounding him made his body shudder and eyes close. A distant scent came to him there, a pleasant mingling of odors which weren't within reach or distilled in bedside bottles of oil—apples and pears and muddy earth and tall, fragrant reeds, transporting him elsewhere, sending him far from where he lay with his wife; and, too, while aware of her sonorous breathing, he was observing a broad river coursing near groves of apple and pear trees. He was, in those tugging moments just prior to sleep, somewhere else—somewhere he had never wanted to visit again, a valley where the rushing, shifting water now symbolized only loss and the transience of living.
13
There was, on that quiet August night, no light save for what came from the stars above, or from the sporadic bursting of flares discharged into the sky. The moon didn't rise over the craggy Sobaek Mountains to cast its reflective glimmer across the brown waters of the Naktong River. Yet crickets were heard among the meadows and reeds, and the river made a low, continuous murmur as it moved between fruit groves, elevated pastures, crooked hillsides (winding toward the sea, cutting a two-hundred-foot-wide scar which halved South Korea into eastern and western portions). In a nearby apple orchard, the rows of shadowy trees were—when viewed at the magic hour of dusk—like a postcard image from home, a welcome sight for American soldiers who had grown sick of seeing rice paddy after rice paddy after rice paddy.
Earl
ier Hollis had wandered beyond the orchard and away from the two-man listening post he was supposed to share with Bill McCreedy, holding his M1 in front of him while patrolling the eastern shore. He continued down a narrow dirt path until arriving at the high grass and tall reeds which grew abundantly by the water's edge—then he pushed inside the dense overgrowth, his encroachment silencing the crickets around him. A few feet past the screen of reeds the currents burbled and the other side of the river appeared blacker than the heavens. He crouched, letting the overgrowth envelop him. As the crickets resumed trilling, he kept his body still while slowly pivoting his head this way and that, resisting any urge to stand up, or urinate, or stretch his arms. Sweat began dripping from his helmet, wetting his ears and eyes and mouth, tasted by his tongue. Shortly he felt tired, and, eventually, very tired. However, he managed to stay awake and didn't move himself an inch, listening for the slightest alteration of sound, blindly peering out—at the path which had brought him there, at the field of rice stalks behind him, mostly in the direction of the terrain across the river—certain all the while that unseen enemy counterparts were doing the exact same thing on the western shoreline of the Naktong.
Before long Hollis knew sunlight would breach the darkness, allowing him to emerge through the reeds. He would trek back along the dirt path, regrouping with the rest of the night patrols and scouts; the weary, nervous men glancing about—the river, the paddies, the brightening hillsides—rifles gripped as they returned to the defensive line which had been dug along the Naktong's eastern banks, crawling into foxholes, briefly finding much-needed sleep beside or within the illusory tranquillity of the apple orchard. But, for now, the night remained present, and while his body was rigid—his senses on high alert—his thoughts strayed restlessly during his watch, defying what he had chosen as his own personal combat mantra: let memories fade, let instinct take over. Yet how effortless it was for a willful thought of not thinking to become deposed by more potent thoughts somehow born of themselves, flashing his mind elsewhere, manifesting recent scenes which already seemed like fragments from a previous lifetime.
Thirteen days, Hollis calculated, since they retreated from No Gun Ri in summer rain and fog, soon pursued like bandits by North Korean tanks. Thirteen days, almost fourteen, during which mortar fire struck along slippery roads, and mud guided jeeps and ambulances toward ditches; the cavalrymen fled southward on foot or in trucks, exchanging rounds with advancing enemy units, setting fire to every village or hut they happened upon, carrying the wounded and, sometimes, leaving their dead to spoil. Thirteen days of constant fear and persistent inhumanity, distinguished by hills and valleys strewn with the corpses of strangers and fellow soldiers—by vultures descending through swarms of flies to pick at rotting flesh. Only such repeated carnage could distance No Gun Ri, surpassing those who were killed beneath the bridge and temporarily absolving those who had killed them so flagrantly. And why, he wondered, should it have mattered anymore? Why did he care? For the score had been quickly settled in the duration of thirteen miserable days, thirteen uneasy nights.
But on this peaceful, moonless night nothing hinted at what the troops had endured to reach the provisional safety of the Naktong, having crossed the river more than a week ago, demoralized and fatigued—machine gunners, riflemen, recoilless riflemen, mortarmen, scouts, clerks—digging in for the final battle which was drawing closer by the hour. There would be no more pulling back in daylight, no more cowering behind the veil of nightfall while flares erupted in the skies like meager red, white, and green fireworks, and artillery shells exploded the ground and men from out of nowhere, and the North Koreans raced after them as if they were easy game. The horrors which had recently befallen the regiment had, at some point, ceased to unnerve Hollis; betraying a casualness now and a detachment whenever stepping through the configurations of mortally wounded, he scarcely noticed the irretrievable forms marking the earth. His long legs maneuvered forward without reservation; his once darting, blinking eyes had turned into a squinting, encompassing gaze—as if he had been fighting in Korea for years instead of weeks. Then, for Hollis, the greatest horror of all was how mundane death ultimately began to feel—becoming an almost non-event, a commonplace occurrence which was less unique than simply picking apples off an apple tree.
He was not alone in this regard. Few, if any, among the survivors had made it to the Naktong lacking a hard, remorseless thousand-mile stare. Each soldier had witnessed his share of the unimaginable, each man contained a mental catalog of both heroic and repugnant deeds. They had all been left frozen at the sight of familiar faces torn apart, riflemen or gunners or medics speaking aloud and then, a second later, having no head or chest or recognizable shape. But they had also heard tales of exceptional bravery: the three F Company men who had taken cover on a railroad embankment, using four rocket shells and a single bazooka to destroy a North Korean tank—or the solitary H Company commander who, following the annihilation of his platoon, stayed put under fire and single-handedly phoned in the artillery coordinates of approaching tanks.
Yet valiant and nightmarish acts were often the same. When Private Mark Neiman was fatally wounded by an incoming mortar round but continued writhing hopelessly in shock—fingers trembling toward the mangled, grisly stumps where legs had been—it was McCreedy who ran to him and eliminated the private's agony, doing what a nearby officer couldn't bring himself to do, mercifully pressing his rifle barrel against Neiman's forehead, squeezing the trigger. Afterward, McCreedy frowned at the private, as if annoyed by him. He straddled Neiman's remains, stooping to claim a dog tag before feeling inside pockets containing no more than half a pack of cigarettes and matches. While another mortar round sent men scrambling, McCreedy finished lighting up one of Neiman's cigarettes, savoring it for himself. Unharmed by the ensuing explosion—the mortar having overshot its intended targets, striking a rice field to their rear—he slowly walked away, tapping the ground with the butt of his rifle as he went. “Smokes left for the still breathing,” would then become his maxim, although only he was willing to risk life or limb to pat down bloody uniforms, procuring cigarettes from just-killed comrades: those kids who had never once expected the sudden civil war which would soon end their lives, or who had never really known anything about the divided country where their limp, ragged bodies would be lifted onto stretchers and shipped home in coffins.
Like the rest, Hollis had known little concerning the history of Korea and its people, yet in spite of that, he believed he understood the fiber of the country too well. It was, to him, an ambiguous land, a contrary region which accommodated the absurdities of war. Nowhere else could he imagine birthday gifts being delivered by the army postal service to besieged foxholes—chocolate cakes with cherries, handmade cards, corn whiskey masked by mason jars which also contained preserved fruits, all sent from the States, somehow arriving even when needed supplies couldn't reach the front—or white-garbed refugees rushing toward the Americans who were there to help them and, depending on the moment, either would be allowed safe passage or get gunned down. So what was then gleaned seemed nonsensical, devoid of clear reason other than a kind of tactical logic he didn't always comprehend.
But the intensely surreal two weeks at war did teach him an undeniable lesson regarding the spurious nature of first impressions: the serenest-looking valley or flower-rich hillside might possibly be the most dangerous area to cross through, harboring enemy snipers or probes. And, too, he had caught the distant shrill of birds, had angled his gaze upward, spotting four sparrow hawks gliding far above him which, upon second glance, had transformed into air force jets flying northwest on a four-plane mission. He had loitered along the edge of a grassy field at dawn, surveying endless clumps of clothing and discarded belongings left behind by refugees, and with morning's expanding sunlight was amazed when the clothing began shuddering to life—the disheartened men and women, the old people, the hungry children gradually rising from the thick grass like phantoms, here and ther
e, before resuming the southward journey as a mass procession of white.
That lesson, however, had gone unrealized for many refugees, the unfortunate ones who—rather than submit to a violent, opposing army of their own kind—perished while counting on the benevolence of their mercurial American protectors. Had the moon graced the sky, Hollis could have stared downstream from where he hid, making out the contorted outlines of girders, a heap of mangled steel which had formed a bridge over the river but was destroyed after the U.S. Army had reached the Naktong's eastern shore, blown up with charges in order to prevent the North Korean troops from coming across; in an instant the blasts had jolted the bridge, flipping it sideways, twisting girders and propelling lengths of steel through the air. Now the skeletal ruins littered the banks yet bore no traces of the human toll accompanying its destruction—the refugees who had packed the bridge from one end to the other, unaware of the charges set on the supports and roadway, never expecting the deafening explosions which would then swallow their bodies and oxen and luggage, hurling them all to the passive waters below. A bridge, after all, was supposed to be a bridge.
Let memories fade, let instinct take over.
