by Alfredo Vea
The chaplain was nodding his head knowingly and giggling hysterically as he walked.
“Where are you going from here, Jesse? What are you going to do now?”
“Supposing I get out of here in one piece, padre,” Jesse answered through clenched, chattering teeth and a seething breath. “Supposing I don’t lose my fucking mind like you did, I’m going to live in France … in Marseille. I’ll go and live in France, where the women wear no pants. I’ve never been there, but someone back in Da Nang told me that it’s real nice. A friend told me it was where I should go. I don’t belong back home anymore. I don’t ever want to go back there. I’m gonna sit in a café in Marseille and think crazy, fucked-up thoughts and write bad poems. I want to drink coffee and read my bad stanzas out loud.”
Suddenly the full implication of the padre’s revelation sank in even deeper.
“We were a decoy, padre? Cornelius and Sarge and Roosky were fucking decoys? The Indians were a decoy?” Jesse fell silent for a long moment. His eyes scanned the death at his feet and the burned ground that stretched out for half a mile.
“I suppose what I really want is some justice, padre. Fuck all these lifers and their fucking war. Fuck the domino theory! There must be some fucking place on this earth where the right thing gets done, where there’s no bullshit. I just want some justice.”
Jesse suddenly stopped walking. His bleary gaze settled upon the NVA head that he had kicked. The spinal cord was still pink and glistening at the center of the charcoal rubble that had been the neck. The head looked like a geode cracked open to expose the blazing rose crystal within. Jesse walked a few steps toward the head, then bent down when he noticed that something had fallen out of the dead mouth. He picked the object up. It was a piece of green jade. He moved to a second charred body and probed in the dead mouth with his finger. Another sliver of jade fell out.
He moved from body to body, checking for the presence of the strange stone. No other bodies contained the jade. Somehow Jesse noticed that the two bodies where he had found the green stones had been smaller than all the rest.
“They eat jade, padre!” he said in a voice that was a mixture of pain and mystery. “Why the fuck do they eat jade?”
“‘Be careful, Jesse, too much thinking will make you crazy.”
The padre had not heard Jesse’s question. “I’ve seen it in you, in those weird daydreams and supposings of yours. Just look at me,” the padre raved. “It’s made me crazy. It stole my faith. How many times in one life can a faith be stolen?”
The padre was thirty yards away now and yelling.
“This cruel place could seduce you, Jesse. It’s so damned seductive! It could make you believe that ice is fire.” The chaplain was laughing now, a sharp, hideous cackle. The padre used both arms in a sweeping gesture, from horizon to horizon.
“This place can steal your soul as well as your life. Someday a long time from now, you could find yourself loving these moments of horror, embracing them. You could begin to believe that this is true life, that everything slower than three hundred miles an hour is a lie. Furta sacra, Jesse. Furta sacra.”
The padre continued speaking as he walked, though no one heard his words. He mumbled on about sacred theft as he walked, the sacking of Jerusalem, the burning of Byzantium, the sacking of the Dome of the Rock by the crusaders, the craven act of thievery in the holy name of God—the act of stealing the youth from a boy’s skin and marrow, the act of stealing the thoughts from his mind and the pulse from right out of his arm. He walked away with tides of bitterness breaking beneath his sullen tongue.
Making invisible Catholic crosses with his Unitarian right hand, he spoke into the ear of dead Cornelius as he walked. He blessed those limp, sleepy hands of his, and those large, plum-colored, expressive lips that were almost feminine. He blessed the Baptist soul of the tall Creole sergeant whose hair was wispy and nut brown at the temples. He blessed the dear sergeant’s wife, wherever she was and wherever her life took her.
He blessed poor, innocent Julio Lopez, who always seemed more comfortable moving sideways. His wide, pigeon-toed feet should have been straightened while he was still an infant back in Juarez. He finished his belated, failed blessings, then passed silently through the outer perimeter and was walking by the decimated bunkers of the enemy when the boys on the hill lost sight of him.
The padre, with his last sane thought, supposed that he would never again bother his own God with a prayer. He would never again pretend to interpret the ineffable. What good was prayer anyway? The priests of Baal had gone back to the drawing board and returned with F-14s and laser-guided bombs.
“What mean ye,” he cried out in the words of the prophets to the scorched trees above his head, “what mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces?”
If only he had turned back to look upward at the blistered hill, he might have kept some small hope sequestered within. He might have clung to the other reality a few days more. Above him were boys stunned by great pain yet gathering together again to smoke dope and to suppose an alternate world.
“Suppose men did not kill the things they love.”
Above him was a young Chicano sergeant, who, in his own moment of madness, was placing a piece of jade on his tongue.
Above him were boys cut open by hatred, cleansed by fire, stitched shut by grief; boys at world’s end probing that fearful perimeter for a single fleeting sight of love divine.
In the end, only Tiburcio Mendez strained his eyes for a final glimpse of the padre. He wondered how far he would make it. Would he die in the Mekong Delta? If, by some miracle, the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese regulars didn’t kill him, he would probably drown in the Mekong River or the South China Sea. He had no chance of survival. When the chaplain disappeared into the distance, Mendez rubbed his crucifix and once again turned his eyes to the heavens.
Far above all of their heads, far above both the living and the dead, miles above the airless ionosphere in the cold silence of space, a Scotch-Irish and Mexican satellite spun its way between the stars.
7
on tourette’s hill
Bruce McMurtry, the bailiff in Superior Court department 23, put away his girlie magazine and signaled emphatically to Jesse Pasadoble as the lawyer entered the empty courtroom. In his meaty hand, uplifted triumphantly, the bailiff held a single sheet of folded paper. It had to be a note from the jury. Jesse read the note quickly, then shook his head slowly. Bruce smiled as he watched for a reaction in Jesse’s face.
Of course, the bailiff already knew what the jury was going to do. Every time he had entered the jury room to take them to lunch, he had snagged some juicy snippets of their conversations, the tail end of a heated exchange, and even the total, tearful collapse of a once resolute will to resist. He enjoyed watching the worried lawyers squirming over issues and questions that had, long ago, been resolved in the minds of all but one or two jurors. This particular note indicated that the foreman wanted the judge to reinstruct them on the definition of malice aforethought, and on premeditation and deliberation.
“They asked for sandwiches and cold drinks. They want to work right through lunch on the People of the State of California versus Bao Vung.” Bruce smiled sadistically. “They’re real close.” He knew how hard this time was for the lawyers, and he loved to witness it. He reached behind his desk and produced the suit that Bao had worn throughout the trial.
“I called in Hong Ha, the Vietnamese interpreter. He’ll be here in a minute. I brought the defendant down from the jail and I’m putting the suit on him right now,” said Bruce. “They’re real close.”
“They’re stuck between first- and second-degree,” said a voice from the doorway. It was Peter Cling, the prosecutor.
Jesse concurred with a nod. It was Friday and the jury had decided against going to a nearby restaurant for a leisurely, convivial lunch. The thrill of being thrown into a windowless room with eleven complete strangers had long since worn off. The warm glow of mutual human
ity and exploration in the trial phase had been snuffed out by the time deliberations began, blown away by sudden exposure to the harsh light of buried bias and entrenched opinion, by the power of cherished prejudice. They were hard at it now. The honeymoon had ended the moment a foreperson had been chosen. The clock on the wall was moving toward the end of the workday. Five o‘clock on Friday was always a bad time for defense lawyers.
The prosecutor’s analysis was probably right, but still, there was the smallest of possibilities that they were discarding first-degree murder, then moving on to choose between second-degree murder and manslaughter, a killing while in the heat of passion or during a sudden quarrel. The question could have been sent out to appease a single juror who was holding out for first-degree. There was also the remote possibility that the jury could be deadlocked on the issue of premeditation: whether the intent to kill was turned over in Bao Vung’s mind before he acted. The whole case might have to be tried again. That would be a win for the defense.
“Has the judge seen this? ”Jesse asked the district attorney.
“He wants to see both of us in chambers,” said Cling.
Peter Cling was a curly-haired, square-jawed Irishman. Despite himself, Jesse liked him. He was tough and tenacious, and he took losing the same way he took winning: he walked out of the courtroom and got ready for the next case. He had won too many murder trials to care what the jurors or anyone else thought about him after the case was through.
When other, less experienced prosecutors gloated over their own imagined prowess after a victory, he understood how high the deck was stacked against the defendant and his lawyer. Despite the burden of proof: beyond a reasonable doubt, most potential jurors walked into the courtroom absolutely convinced of their own impartiality, but in their hidden hearts they came prepared to convict, and both Peter and Jesse knew it well.
The two men walked together into the chambers of the Honor-able Judge Harris Taback. The judge was seated behind his desk, a look of sheer rapture on his face. It was lunchtime and the moon of a face that surrounded his wire-rimmed spectacles was in perpetual motion; from forehead to mandible, every muscle above the neck was hard at work. His fingers, pink and cherubic, were clustered in front of his face. His pinkie ring was smeared with condiments. The judge looked like a black-robed praying mantis mauling an aphid. He was devouring a huge pastrami sandwich, two pounds of spiced meat flanked by mere suggestions of bread. His lap was littered with crumbs of rye and dollops of horseradish.
“I had this flown in just this morning from Cantor’s down on Fairfax Boulevard in Los Angeles. My hand to God, this is the original manna.”
He took another bite.
“You can keep the Carnegie Deli. You can have Saul’s and Shensen’s. That Eric Safire and what‘s-his-face, Marvin Rous both like that Shensen’s drek, but what do they know? They’re sephardim! What do they know from kosher? They’re Jaime-come-latelys to the West Coast. Don’t even mention Brother’s Restaurant in Redwood City or wherever. They’ve got Korean cooks! Did you hear me? Koreans! Next to this, it’s all trayf.”
The judge smiled and spoke while he ate, the tan mash of masticated meat and bread was a shapeless, speckled mass of putty on his tongue and teeth. In between his sentences, like an excited, preoccupied child, he hummed a senseless, repetitive refrain. Now and again he would retrieve a scrap of food from his lap and stick it back into the sandwich as though it were a folded prayer shoved into a crack in the Wailing Wall.
“And Jesus Christ, the Atomic horseradish they got down there is the best on the entire goddamn earth. The stuff will grow hair, I swear to God, the E‘mes. Atomic horseradish is better than Ro gaine.” He removed one hand from his sandwich just long enough to point to the bald spot on the top of his head. “This is what you get from wearing a yarmulke for forty years.”
Once again his smile dove into the business end of the sandwich. Jesse noticed that when the judge bit into the pastrami, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, just like a shark’s. From the other end of the sandwich, through the pores of the rye bread and between the slices of spiced, oily meat, and finally, from the spaces between his slick, stubby fingers, muffled words nonetheless emerged.
“Come to think of it, they made a helluva pastrami at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach. A helluva sandwich! Jesus, my father took me there as a child to see Louis Prima and Keely Smith in the Mediterranean Lounge. Can you believe it, they had to play the lounge? A class act like that had to play the small room!”
A small, wistful shadow of sadness passed across the judge’s face for a fleeting instant. He had once had a powerful boyhood crush on Keely Smith. In fact, his overwhelming feelings for the woman had required six years of postadolescent therapy to straighten out. To this day he demanded that his wife Lavon dye her hair raven black and wear a pixie cut. Even as he lapsed momentarily into a familiar, lifelong love for Keely, his lips moved silently to the words of her hit song “Sweet and Lovely.”
“What does the jury want this time?” he said, bursting from his precious revery. “A bunch of kvetching yekls, I swear to God. Somebody read me the damn note already.”
Peter Cling obliged. After hearing the contents of the note, the judge swigged down a bottle of Cel-Ray and announced that he would send the pertinent instructions directly into the jury room and they could read about premeditation for themselves.
“I should have to drag them out here and read it to them again? The first time they didn’t hear it? Sorry to say this, Pasadoble, but a verdict they should’ve come back with two days ago. Your boy is a shmuck, Jesse. And this was a slam-dunk for you, Peter. Shame on you! I tell you, it’s that guy in the first row wearing the Birkenstocks and white socks; you never should have left him on the jury. He’s a fashion catastrophe! He’s a goddamn artichoke, a momzer! The rest are nuchshleppers, goyim … present company excepted, of course. God, such a panel they sent us! Half of them have been victims of violent crimes and the other two-thirds were molested by a parent. Now look here.”
He signaled with both grease covered hands that the two lawyers should move closer.
“Approach the bimmeh, my friends. Both of you guys are pros Enough said about that. You both know that it’s never too late to settle this case. Enough said?” He lowered his voice to intensify the air of sincerity. “Jesse, would your client take a voluntary manslaughter if Peter offered it right now, this very moment? We all know that this jury could hang up. You could be exposed to a homicide all over again.”
“Peter is never going to offer a voluntary,” said Jesse, looking at the prosecutor, who said nothing but who fully concurred by his silence. “Besides, the only plea bargain my client would take is a full apology from the state and a free taxi ride home.”
“Bruce!” The judge yelled out to his bailiff, who appeared in the doorway almost instantaneously. He had been on his way into chambers when he was called.
“We have an instruction to send into the jury room,” said Judge Taback. “I’ve written my comments on the bottom,” he said while pointing with the remnants of his sandwich.
“Too late,” said Bruce with a wide smile, “they have a verdict.”
“Oh, Jesus!” said Jesse. No matter how many trials he had done, those words always sent a chill down his spine. Reflexively, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his key chain. Instead of a fob. the chain held two dog tags side by side. One of them was his own. He ran his thumb over the raised letters of the two tags, feeling the letters and words that had been burned into his mind for decades. The tags calmed him. They reminded him that there were far worse things on this earth than jury trials and verdicts. No matter how difficult this experience was, it was only an asshole pucker factor of three, maybe four.
The judge smiled broadly. He could go home early today. He really needed a deep massage and a double martini. There was a new masseuse at the club Concordia Argonaut, a raven-haired Sephardi from Morocco who had the strongest fingers in San Francisco.
The judge’s shoulder muscles twitched at the thought. His pet name for her was Keely.
The prosecutor’s only visible reaction was to grind his teeth nervously beneath his ruddy cheeks. The defendant had made it easy for him, but anything could happen in a court of law and he knew it. He knew from experience. Sympathy or anger could send a jury reeling sideways into completely illogical verdicts. They could hate the judge’s dandruff or be disgusted by an attorney’s choice of tie. If they didn’t like the way you looked, they ignored what you had to say.
A working-class jury despised anyone wearing expensive Italian suits. Well-to-do jurors sneered at the audacity and pretense of someone wearing the same Italian suits. Every jury hated any sign of smugness in a district attorney. They didn’t mind it in a defense lawyer. Defense attorneys were expected to have transformed their desperation into poise and polish and into the ability to do the unexpected. Jurors wanted to be entertained by defense lawyers, but if by chance they were, they felt sure that they had somehow been tricked, defrauded.
Jesse waited nervously in the back hallway while his client finished putting on the baggy, wrinkled blue suit. He had changed into his jail clothing when the jury had begun its deliberations. The defendant did a pathetic job tying his tie, but Jesse let it go. Bao Vung could use the sympathy. When they walked into the courtroom, the jury had already been seated and everything was silent and tense. Only Bruce the bailiff was smiling.
Jesse looked into the faces of the jurors. No one returned his inquisitive stare. They were looking everywhere but at one another or at the defense table. It was a bad sign. They felt guilty about rushing their verdict. He moved his eyes from one juror to the next. Still no response, not even from the young, progressive lesbian in the second row.
