the Onion Field (1973)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  It had been disappointing to sell the piano for bagpipes, especially since she had started Ian on the piano at the age of four, and Chrissie had had a few of the passing dreams that mothers of young musicians have. The piano was the perfect instrument to help instill culture and discipline. The pipes were another matter, a wild, almost willful instrument which undeniably stirred your blood, but with a key (if you could call it that) which could never be duplicated on piano, so that she wondered what all the years of piano had really done for him except to win him a contest he cared nothing about, where he played Rachmaninoff so well.

  But if he wouldn't be a piano playing doctor, at least he'd be a doctor, that was certain. And what a physician he would be! Chrissie imagined him ten years hence, a tall, curly haired intern like the one she married, but taller, even more intelligent, and sensitive, with a resolute mouth and classic jaw, one of the finest she had ever seen, and of which he was totally unaware. And that was another source of her great but secret pride-he was not aware of his considerable attractiveness. As though all teenage boys adored history and philosophy, had a wall full of serious books and read them over and over. As though all teenage boys had season's tickets to the Philharmonic Concert Series.

  And there was the other thing, she thought even more important. His natural facility with people. Quiet and nonaggressive, an impractical boy, but with strength other boys seemed to sense.

  For five years she had guarded against the possibility of a fatherless only child becoming a mother's boy. So she had always tried to conceal most of her pride in him.

  Then she thought she heard the skirl of pipes in the distance and she listened and imagined the smell of tar from the pits. Chrissie placed her palms on her cheeks and slid her fingers under her glasses and rubbed her eyes for a moment. She smoothed back the dark hair just starting to gray, and waited for the solitary piper to march through the darkness.

  Ian Campbell was disturbed when the Communists swept south of the 38th parallel, but he was not as disturbed as Chrissie. He wasn't quite nineteen then, a dangerous age for decision making. As always he and Chrissie talked about what was bothering him. He was in the Naval Reserve at this time and was making uncertain plans for his college education. The more he talked about what was happening in exotic places like Pyongyang, Taejon, and Taegu, the more secretly frightened she became. There was the Massacre at Hill 303, then Inchon, and Chrissie knew further argument would be pointless. Everyone who ever knew him well knew that when he finally decided a personal issue, further discussion was futile.

  Some time later, on a freezing winter night in the Punchbowl, north of the 38th parallel, a bleary eyed marine corporal burst into a warming tent where a tall young marine radio operator sat reading an old stateside newspaper, drinking beer, and worrying the stem of a large curved pipe for which he could not seem to acquire a taste.

  "Scotty, did you hear about the Scotchmen?" asked the corporal shaking the snow off his shoulders. "What?"

  "You know, those Argyll guys."

  "The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders?"

  "Yeah. Well I heard they took a direct hit on their equipment trucks. I heard it was a mortar attack. Guess what? You probably got the only set of bagpipes left in Korea now. Whatcha think, Scotty?"

  Ian raised the bottle of beer and drained it in three gulps. He had drunk several bottles already.

  "Well, Scotty, you gonna let the friggin gooks get away with it?"

  "Is it really true?"

  "Hell, I don't know, but let's show them mothers they ain't friggin well gonna get away with it. Get your friggin pipes. For once I wanna hear em."

  "Okay," said Ian, feeling light headed when he stood. Twenty minutes later the burly corporal, carrying half a bottle of bitter rice wine and an M-i rifle, and Ian Campbell, carrying only his pipes, were less than two hundred meters from no man's land on a moon- flooded rise of ground, marching a twelve-foot square in the snow.

  "It's a bloody shame for a Scottish regiment to go into battle without their piper out front," said Ian, surprised at the thickness of his words.

  "That's tellin em, Scotty," said the corporal, and tossed Ian the wine which was brackish but warm.

  Ian deeply breathed the five below zero air and raised the bottle, the glass clicking against his teeth. Then he blew the first blast of a quick march, "Scotland Is My Ain Hame." It deafened the corporal for a moment. Then they both marched the square while Ian played "Campbells Are Coming," and soon Ian was sitting in the snow, shivering so hard he couldn't play. Then they heard Red bugles, and following the bugles, sporadic small-arms fire.

  "Let's get the hell outta here, Scotty!" yelled the corporal.

  "Right!" said Ian, scrambling to his feet and they ran back to camp, the corporal falling drunkenly every ten meters or so. The next day the story of the pipe and bugle war spread through the battalion and Ian's company commander told him to knock off agitating the gooks with his pipes.

  Chrissie's favorite marine pictures of Ian were those he sent from Hawaii, one where he was standing in the center of an open, grass roofed PX. Young marines-shirtless, dungaree clad-were sitting around playing cards, gesturing wildly in exuberant youthful conversation. In the center of the picture and the pandemonium was Ian -tall, broad shouldered and bony in his dungarees-eyes closed, oblivious to it all, playing the pipes serenely, while no one listened.

  Ian decided not to take his pipes the second time he volunteered to go overseas, but finally after many weeks, at the conclusion of a letter, was the line: "And Mother, could you please send me my pipes?"

  A bug-eyed ketch, the folly Roger, twin masted, shining in the sunlight. The Pacific, calm and blue. The horizon fiery. Knifing through the glossy isthmus under full sail, the crew of the tiny thirty-five footer was excited and happy.

  The captain, Earl Schultz, a new friend, was a salty ex-merchant seaman, who looked like Popeye, a man partially crippled from a fall down a cargo hatch. The two crewmen were younger men, childhood friends: Wayne Ferber, the smaller one, eyes deep and close set, sharp chin, ears and mind. The other, a tall, twenty-five year old student of zoology and pre-med, a Korean vet, his short curly hair flashing auburn in the white sunlight. He was atop the bowsprit piping in celebration whenever the ketch tacked or changed course, each successful maneuver calling for a drink of wine from the goatskin bag they dragged behind the boat in the cold water.

  And when they approached the harbor that fourth of July weekend, knowing Avalon would be jammed with tourists, the piper shouted: "Let's go in first class!"

  And no schooner crew ever passed the isthmus more proudly than this scaled down bug-eyed ketch with the young man on the bowsprit piping "Campbells Are Coming."

  "Ian's having a whale of a time up there," said Wayne to the captain, who was letting him steer the little boat. "When he first came back from Korea he just wanted to sit around the apartment and play the bagpipe chanter. His mom would needle him a little and say, 'Drowning in your own sorrow again, Ian?' Finally he snapped out of it.

  "It's been a great outing for us," Wayne continued. "It's like our kid adventures, when we rode bikes clear to Lake Elsinore, and when we used to ride the Red Car to Santa Monica pier, or bicycle to Griffith Park and hike up to the observatory. I guess you could call us dreamers with these crazy schemes we've got to build our own boat and sail to Australia."

  Ian piped them into Catalina grandly and they had to anchor loose. The ketch had no radio, no engine. Schultz called her "a real seafarin boat." The three of them swam off the dinghy that day and hiked over the island, then joined a yacht club party at the harbor, almost sinking the dinghy on the way back. Ian piped in the hangovers the next morning. They considered it a real South Sea sailor's holiday.

  It was at the yacht club party that Ian heard the story of the shark. A portly suntanned yachtsman in a navy, gold-buttoned jacket and immaculate white trousers was telling about it over a wet martini. "They're stupid creatures you know," he said, sucki
ng a stuffed olive off a green plastic toothpick and shifting it from one side of his mouth to the other. "They're incredibly stupid. You gut one and throw him overboard on the starboard side of the boat. And then throw the guts on the port side, and he'll swim around following the spoor and bite at his own guts. Savage and disgusting!"

  "They have no nervous system," said Ian quietly. He had been standing away from a group of yachtsmen listening. It was unusual for him to volunteer an opinion in a group of strangers, and he reddened when they turned.

  "No nervous system, you say?" said the yachtsman.

  "That's right, sir," said Ian. "They're missing something that we havS. A nervous system. They don't die of shock. They're not necessarily stupid or savage, they just lack something that we have."

  "Well, you can empathize with sharks if you want to," said the yachtsman. "I say they're disgusting beasts who eat themselves for sheer savagery."

  The squeal of tires. A skidding black and white police car. Two blue-uniformed policemen held a struggling, handcuffed man. He was moaning grotesquely, not like the physically wounded. Ian watched as he stood outside Unit Three, at Los Angeles County General Hospital with his friend Ray Sinatra and waited for Art Petoyan, who was an intern in Psychiatric Admitting. When the police left they entered.

  "Doctor Petoyan, I presume," said Ian to the dark young doctor with the Armenian nose and the sensual jovial mouth.

  "Welcome to the snakepit, gentlemen." Art smiled. "Glad you could come tonight." Then they put on the white jackets Art borrowed for them and headed for the open ward to await incoming patients and administer perfunctory physical exams. Between exams there would be time for coffee, cigarettes, and lots of talk, mostly of medicine and music, Ian's and Art's common interests.

  "Why an Armenian bagpiper, Art?" Ray asked, knowing about it from stories Ian had told of the old days when Art and Ian were novice pipers.

  "I got interested several years ago when I was an undergraduate and Ian was still in high school. I thought I was going to the University of Edinburgh Medical School but I ended up at USC."

  "So all that piping was wasted."

  "Wasted! Are you kidding, Ray? Listen, you just stick around Ian and me and we'll make a believer out of you. If an Armenian can be a bagpipe aficionado, so can an Italian. You have hairy knees? I've got hairy knees. That's the sign of a good piper. You should see me in kilts and a glengarry cap. And you should've seen Ian and me competing in the Highland Games. Here was this tall, straight, shiny kid, the epitome of Jack Armstrong, and here I was, a greasy slouchy little camel driver. Now who would you have picked?"

  "Let's talk about medicine," said Ian. "That's what I'm supposed to be going to college for."

  "Did Ian tell you about my pipes, Ray?" Art persisted. "They're from India. Good ivory and ebony, but Pipe Major Aitken, our old teacher, wouldn't go for them. They had to be Peter Henderson pipes, like Ian's. You see, in Scotland, after they drill the holes they point the pipes toward the Orkney Islands and let the cold wind blow through them for three years."

  "Ye cannot have the hot winds of Pakistan blowin through yer pipes, can ye, laddies?" Ian said, and he and Art smiled at the old memory.

  "Why didn't you get the Scottish pipes?" Ray asked.

  "Two hundred good reasons," Art said.

  "Scotsmen aren't the only ones who know the value of a buck," said Ian. "Armenians shop around a bit. Tell Ray about all the money you're making now that you're a big shot doctor."

  "Oh yeah," said Art dropping easily into another subject. "Know what they pay interns? Seventy bucks a month. Know what the rent is? Seventy-five a month. Know how I support a wife? Selling blood and gastric juices."

  "What?" said Ray, and Ian chuckled.

  "First I sell my blood like a common skid row derelict, but that's nothing. Every Saturday morning I sell my gastric juices with the rest of the starving interns. I just go in there for about three hours, insert a hose through my nose right down into my stomach and shoot them the juice. I used to almost faint when I did it, now I just drop that old hose right down there. In fact, I got more gastric juice than anyone."

  "He's rather proud of it," said Ian.

  "They give it to some old geezer who's about ready to croak," Art explained. "For a few days he feels real good. The medicines he's taking orally get absorbed and he gets more nourishment from food. He feels pretty much in the pink before he checks out. I get fifteen bucks for about three hours' work."

  "Oh my . . . Oh, God," said Ray dropping his head to his folded arms.

  "Even thought about selling my seminal fluid," said Art. "But I chickened out. I figured sure as hell, soon as I go into practice, some broad would come in for a checkup with a little Armenian kid and I'd start feeling responsible without knowing for sure."

  Then Art's animated conversation was interrupted by another pair of uniformed policemen entering with a handcuffed man. He was a young man, blondish, very pale, wet beads over the lip and around his temples, the sideburns shaggy, plastered to his scalp by the moisture. He seemed passive enough.

  The young man was checked in by a nurse and given a glance or two by the uniformed deputy sheriff on duty. It was Art's job to treat such patients for any obvious organic ailments before they entered the psychiatric wards.

  "It's a ruthless type of medicine," Art apologized to Ian as they were getting the patient ready for the exam. "It's trench warfare. Do you have any idea how many patients they bring in here each night? Most or all of them indigent? The hospital can't possibly treat or commit anyone unless he's stark staring nuts, and only then if he's an imminent threat to himself or somebody else. If they've got alcoholic breath or a history of d. T.'s, pow! We kick them out the door tomorrow. Just don't be disillusioned. This isn't the way I'll practice medicine when I finally get out in the world."

  "I won't be disillusioned," Ian said as they entered the examining room.

  The patient looked up from a chair and started to stand.

  "That's all right. Sit down," said Art. "We're just going to have a look and see if you're all right."

  "I'm okay," said the young man, looking from Art to Ian. To Ray. Back to Art.

  "I'm sure you are," said Art sitting down beside the patient, attaching the sphygmomanometer to a very rigid and muscular arm.

  "This is just to test your blood pressure," said Art reassuringly, noticing that the sweating was becoming excessive.

  As soon as the first slight pressure was applied to the bulb, the man moved. Without warning he screamed in terror and Art was on the floor and the sphygmomanometer was smashed against the wall, and the uniformed deputy was vaulting into the room on top of the pile of shouting thrashing bodies on the floor.

  The young man was quite strong, and almost impossible to control. He threw them off, all the time shrieking for release from his private demons. Finally sufficient help came and he was controlled and led weeping through the double doors.

  Art accompanied the patient while Ian and Ray drank coffee and rested, regaining their composure.

  "I was talking to the resident shrink back there," Art said when he returned moments later. "He knows that kid. Said what happened to him here was homosexual panic. That's when the awareness of his condition suddenly bursts forth in a repressed homosexual."

  "Incredible," said Ray. "I never saw anything like it."

  "You can write a textbook after you're here a couple of nights!' said Art wearily.

  "Poor guy," said Ian. "I really felt sorry for him when they led him away crying."

  "Keep studying. We really need some idealism in this racket," said Art smiling, but without irony.

  One of Ian's friends, a floundering Ph. D. candidate in psychology at UCLA, warned Ian he'd never finish college. "Ian, it's an anthropology class!" said Grog Tollefson. "You're supposed to provide a short definition of Homo erectus. The text says he lived half a million years ago in cave communities and was a cannibal. Why go off the subject and spend your time wi
th Kant or Santayana and try to relate them to your course in anthropology? You'll never get through undergraduate school at that rate."

  "I appreciate the advice." Ian shrugged. "But grades bore me. And I like philosophy. What am I going to do?"

  "Damn, I've already proved my academic instability by dropping out of two colleges, and being on probation here. But psych majors are supposed to be flaky and insecure. I always thought you were too much in control. As much in control as I'm out of it. Now I'll bet youre going to drop out first."

  "You're psychoanalyzing again, Grog."

  "So what? It's a psych major's prerogative. Now let me help you a little bit. What the hell was your social studies test all about?"

  "Don't think I know for sure." Ian grinned. "There was an essay on bigotry."

  "Good, did you say something to the point for once?"

  "I meant to, but then I got to wondering how a great composer like Wagner could have been such a narrow anti-Semite and I ended up writing about Wagner's music."

  "You're hopeless, Ian," said Grog disgustedly. "I think your big problem is your glands are calling and you want to marry Adah. I don't give you another semester."

  And Grog was right. Ian suddenly quit, and impulsively joined the Los Angeles Police Department, and married Adah.

  Art Petoyan was to say to a fellow piper, "I was shocked to hear that Ian dropped out of college. To become a cop! I just couldn't believe it. And it's changing him fast. He isn't the same guy. Maybe not embittered, but he's at least becoming cynical. Those idealistic dreams of bettering society by being a physician are gone forever, I'm afraid. Police work is changing him. He knows he isn't improving society now. It's just a holding action, he says. I'm sure he's become aware of evil-believes for the first time that it can touch him."