Heart Stealers

by Patricia McLinn

  “Because?”

  “I beat the crap out of him one time when he was on me about getting my act together.”

  Johnny’s brows rose.

  “Abuse happens.”

  “Why?”

  “A few reasons, I’d guess. First, you’re trained to be violent. And you do it. You do all of it. Unspeakable things.”

  Johnny just stared at him.

  “Then you see it done by others all the time. Or worse, you experience it firsthand.”

  “You ever get captured?”

  “No. Did your father?”

  “Yeah. For six months.”

  “I’m sure it was hell, Johnny. When you have that kind of experience, your mind snaps. Mine did when...”

  “When?”

  Mitch shook his head. “There are some things I still can’t talk about.”

  Johnny watched him for a minute. A reluctant grin tugged at his lips. “Yeah, then don’t let Cassie know that. She’ll dog you until you tell her.”

  Mitch smiled at how well Johnny knew her. “That why you never told her about your father?”

  He nodded. “Like you said, it’s tough to talk about.”

  “Anyway, the violence doesn’t go away as soon as you return to the world. It’s always there, barely controlled. I couldn’t have conquered it unless I’d had help. And sometimes, I go back when I feel my control slipping.”

  Johnny drummed restless fingertips on the table. “My dad? You think, if he’d had help, he would’ve been better?”

  A secret and silly wish that he had been this boy’s father washed over Mitch with the force of a monsoon. He reached across and squeezed Johnny’s arm. “I think he would have. Maybe you need to hold on to that.”

  The door to Pepper’s blew open before Johnny could respond. In walked three guys—all wearing Blisters jackets. They paid no attention to the few late morning patrons in the restaurant.

  Mitch saw Pepper stiffen when he turned from the counter and spotted them.

  “Hey, old man.”

  Pepper said nothing.

  “Get us some Cokes.”

  “Or some coke.” They laughed at the pun.

  “I told you guys I don’t want you hanging out here.”

  “Yeah, well Zorro sent us to give you a message.”

  The boy whipped out a can of spray paint from his jacket pocket and shook it up and down. “Know what this is, dirtbag?”

  Pepper stepped back.

  Mitch sprang out of the booth and strode to the counter.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Heads swiveled toward him. “What the hell—”

  “I’m a police officer.” He whipped out his star and looked pointedly at the can of paint. “You got something for Pepper?”

  The boys stood stock-still.

  Then the spokesperson mumbled, “No, man. We just came in for somethin’ to drink.”

  “What’s that for?”

  Holding up the can, the boy shrugged. “This? Oh, this is for a school project. Art class.”

  The others laughed. “Yeah. We doin’ some paintin’.”

  Mitch stared down the gang members. “Get out of here. If I catch you in Pepper’s again, I’ll take you in.”

  “What for?”

  Mitch lurched forward and grabbed the wise guy by the collar. “Loitering. Being a menace to society.” He yanked hard. “Got it, kid?”

  The gang member swallowed hard but said nothing.

  Mitch tightened his grip. “I said, Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  He let go. With belligerent looks, the trio sauntered out of Pepper’s.

  Mitch turned to see Johnny, leaning against a booth, staring at him.

  * * *

  On Friday morning, Cassie wrote in her journal that she was worried about Johnny. And about Mitch. When she started to get into painful areas concerning Captain Lansing, she put her pen down and sat back to wait for the kids to finish up. Glancing around the room, she noted that no one was absent but Joe DeFazio—who had come to school with glazed eyes and reeking of marijuana. Cassie had immediately called the nurse and Carolyn Spearman, one of the vice principals, who came and escorted the boy out. DeFazio’s absence lightened the classroom atmosphere considerably; his hostility over the last two weeks had affected everyone.

  She watched Johnny. He’d propped himself up against the wall, knees bent, writing furiously. She had no idea what had happened yesterday when he’d stormed out of her room. Zoe told her that Mitch had returned to school at noon with Johnny in tow, taken Johnny to Zoe and explained—in vague terms—why he’d missed her class. Mitch left without seeing Cassie at all. Johnny had stopped by after lunch to apologize for disrupting her class. When she’d asked what happened, he didn’t want to talk about it. He looked totally drained, so she didn’t press him.

  Now Mitch was settled in one of the beanbag chairs, writing also. For the first time in school, he was dressed casually in a navy blue sweater. He still wore dress slacks, but had on loafers. He looked so good Cassie wanted to curl up on his lap and cuddle into him.

  Shaking herself from the mood, she glanced at the clock. “All right, who’d like to share first?”

  She waited.

  And waited.

  Finally, Nikki Parelli raised her head and said, “I will.” Cassie was shocked to see tears in the girl’s hazel eyes. She read from her journal. “Everybody’s talked about their experiences with the war but me. Because I’m ashamed. My father was in Vietnam, too.” Nikki stopped reading to swipe at her cheeks. Mitch, who was sitting behind her, put a hand on her shoulder, squeezed it gently and gave her a handkerchief.

  Wiping her eyes, Nikki continued, “He came back messed up. He’s still messed up. I don’t know how to deal with him, especially now that he doesn’t live with us. He smokes dope and drinks all the time. He...”

  Then she started to cry hard. Cassie started to get up to go to the girl, but before she could, Johnny reached Nikki. Putting his arm around her, he said, “You want me to read the rest?”

  Nikki nodded and handed him her journal.

  Johnny read, “He used to hit me and my little brother, which is why my mother finally kicked him out. Why would he do that?”

  Slowly Johnny lowered the book and lifted his eyes to Mitch. Something passed between the two men that Cassie didn’t understand.

  “Nikki,” Johnny said. “Not everybody came clean. My father was there, too.”

  Cassie was taken aback. She’d had no idea. But the look on Mitch’s face revealed that he had known.

  “He came back messed up, too,” Johnny continued. “And he hit me, too.”

  Nikki stared at Johnny with soulful eyes. “Why? Why do they do that? We didn’t do anything to them. I don’t understand.”

  Johnny looked up at Mitch again. This time Mitch’s expression was strained. His jaw was clenched and his brow furrowed. One hand gripped his journal and the other fisted at his side. After a few seconds, he said quietly, “They don’t understand why they do those things either, Nikki.”

  Frowning, the young girl circled around to face him. “What do you mean?”

  “Vietnam messed a lot of people up. Some vets came back crazy and did crazy things in the world.” He drew in a deep breath. “We don’t always know why we do them.”

  The room went still. Soft laughter came from across the hall, and somebody’s heels clicked loudly on the linoleum tile outside their door. But there wasn’t a sound in room 401.

  Jen Diaz finally said, “We?”

  Mitch nodded. “I was in Vietnam.”

  Cassie sank back on her knees. Again, she hadn’t a clue. Again, she could see Johnny had known. Yesterday fell into place.

  After a prolonged silence, Austyn Jones came up on his knees. “Can we ask you some questions?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good—” Cassie began but Mitch cut her off.

  “No, it’s okay, Cassie.” He gave her a long look an
d turned to Austyn. “You can ask me questions, but I might not answer some of them.”

  Again no one moved.

  Mitch smiled. “And start with the easy ones, would you?”

  Jones grinned. “How long you there?”

  “Just a little under two years. I was among the last wave sent.”

  “You drafted?”

  Mitch shook his head. “I enlisted.” He held up the book. “Just like Richie...”

  “Why?” Mike Youngblood asked.

  Mitch stared at him. “Because I really believed it was the right thing to do.” He glanced around and took another deep breath. “It wasn’t.”

  Again no one spoke. Then Tara asked, “Why, Captain?”

  “Because fifty-eight thousand men came back in body bags in ten years. I’m not sure anything can justify that.”

  Brenda Uter raised her hand. “But we had to protect them from communism, didn’t we?”

  Mitch shook his head. “We moved in on a bunch of farmers who just wanted to farm. We had no right to do it, and in the end, we lost, anyway.”

  “Captain, you ever get wounded?” Arga wanted to know.

  “Yeah, twice.”

  “How?”

  Mitch reached up and rubbed his shoulder. “A cherry didn’t follow orders?”

  “A cherry?”

  Mitch reddened. “Ah, a new guy. A rookie who’d just gotten there.”

  “Hey,” Arga said. “Did they call ‘em cherries because they were virg—”

  “Yes, that’s why.” Mitch smiled. “Anyway, we were laying low in the field, waiting out Charlie. It was dusk. There was a noise fifty yards away—the VC did that intentionally to draw us out—and the new guy opened fire. He gave away our position and several men were wounded. I was evac-ed out for a shoulder injury and came back in a month.”

  “Hey, meet any bad women in the hospital?” Don Peterson, the lady’s man, asked.

  Mitch smiled weakly at Peterson. “Yeah, a few pretty nurses.”

  The tension eased somewhat at the joking, though Cassie was still holding her breath.

  “How about the other time?” Tara asked.

  “I got some bad burns.”

  “How?”

  Mitch rolled his eyes. “Because I was stupid.”

  “What happened?” Amy asked.

  All the kids had straightened up and were hanging on to Mitch’s words.

  “We were burning brush with gasoline. I was in charge. Again, a new guy couldn’t get it to catch, so I got p— I got mad and took a can of gasoline, wet down the area. Just as I did, I spied a spark out of the corner of my eye. I dived out, but it was too late.”

  Cassie listened in awe and in horror as Mitch told about the extensive burns he’d gotten as a result of the blowup, which eventually sent him home. “Japan was the burn center for all of Southeast Asia. They bandaged me up in the field. But by the time we got to Japan, the bandages had stuck to what was left of my skin. The doctor told me he’d remove them, or I could do it myself. It took four hours for me to get them off in the shower. By the end of it, I was literally banging my head against the wall. I wanted to die.”

  Cassie shivered. Somehow people back home now only thought about the mental and emotional ramifications of that era. She looked at his hands. “Did you get skin grafts?”

  “No. The skin grew back.”

  “You ever kill anybody?” Jen asked.

  He nodded.

  “How many?”

  “Too many.”

  “You ever save anybody?” Nikki looked at him with youthful hope and optimism in her eyes.

  It was the first time Mitch smiled. “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was October ‘74. We were crossing a two-foot-high, dried-up rice paddy. The VC open fired on us, and my whole squad dived back for the jungle. All but five of us made it. The Captain asked for volunteers to go out into the paddy to see where the missing men were, if they were alive.”

  “Why didn’t you guys just run?” Som asked. She’d been withdrawn and quiet during a lot of this unit. Cassie had discussed her feelings about Vietnam before the unit started, and Som had seemed okay with it, but Cassie worried about her.

  “We didn’t leave our buddies.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, I volunteered to go. I crawled out on my belly with an M-16 on my back and a revolver in my boot. I found the men two-thirds of the way out in a small ravine.”

  “Anybody dead?” Youngblood asked.

  “No, all five were alive. But the oddest thing had happened. One guy had his helmet on and a stray bullet had hit the helmet, circled around inside the lining on the rim and came out the other side.”

  “Nah, that ain’t true,” Arga said.

  “It is. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

  “Finish the story, Mitch,” Cassie said, anxious to hear something good. “What happened with the rescue?”

  “The guys were alive, but two had sunken chest wounds, which are the worst you can get—it means the lungs are collapsed. I crawled back to the squad to tell the captain. While he called for a chopper, I got temporary medical supplies and went back out. I doctored ‘em up as much as I could, then came back, waited for the rescue team to arrive and led them out to get the men.”

  Peterson shook his head. “You went out and back three times?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Under fire?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You nuts?”

  Brenda said, “No, stupid. He’s a hero.”

  Mitch shook his head. “No, Brenda, I’m not. I did horrible things.”

  Again the silence. And the stillness. No one asked him what horrible things he’d done.

  “You get any medals?” Amy Anderson asked, breaking the tension.

  “I got the Silver Star for that rescue.”

  “Any others?”

  “A Purple Heart for the first injury.”

  “Captain?” Jen asked. “Would you bring them in so we could see ‘em?”

  “I, ah, don’t have them. Once, in a fit of rage, I threw them in the garbage. My brother tried to salvage them. I stopped him.”

  Eleven faces studied Mitch.

  “But back to Nikki’s dad,” he said. “He probably had these experiences, too.”

  Nikki nodded. “He has a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star Medal.”

  “So he did good things over there. Coming back, though, it was different. Sometimes it was impossible to live with the horror you’d seen—or done.”

  “How do you live with it?” Cassie asked.

  Mitch started to speak when the door from Zoe’s classroom opened. “Sorry, Cassie, this mod has been over for five minutes. Your students are supposed to come to me for science and you get my tenth-graders now.”

  “No fair.”

  “We wanna stay.”

  “I wanna know more.”

  All the kids voiced their disapproval.

  Cassie stood. “Sorry guys, it’s time to go. Besides, I think Captain Lansing could use a break.”

  “You be back next week?” Som asked.

  “Yeah, I will.”

  Jones went over and held out his hand. “Good to know you, Captain,” he said.

  Mitch smiled and shook hands. A couple of other boys followed suit.

  Nikki was the last to face him. In her quiet, soft way, she looked up at him and touched his arm. Mitch smiled back and squeezed her shoulder. Cassie’s eyes stung.

  When the class was gone and the tenth-graders were writing in their journals, she walked Mitch out into the hall. “Wow,” she said, peering up at him. There were lines of pain and fatigue etched on his forehead and bracketing his mouth. “That’s quite a secret you’ve been keeping.”

  Mitch leaned against the wall. “Johnny, too.”

  “Yeah. All these years, I never knew.”

  “He’s a complicated kid.”

  “And you’re
a complicated man.” She reached up and laid her palm on his cheek. “A special one.”

  He leaned into it for a minute. “I’ll let you go.”

  “Mitch, I—”

  He put his fingers to her lips. “Shh, don’t say anything now. I...just don’t.” He reached over and smoothed back her hair. “I’m all right.”

  With that, he was gone.

  * * *

  Friday night, Cassie stood on the doorstep of Mitch’s town house. She shifted the package she carried and managed to ring the bell. Nervous, she remembered that last Friday night, she’d rejected him outright. Would he do the same to her tonight? It didn’t matter. She couldn’t stay away.

  After the fifth ring, she turned on the stoop and saw him jogging up the walk. “Mitch.”

  He was dressed in a nylon sweat suit, and his hair was disheveled, his cheeks ruddy. His eyes were bleak. He stopped a foot away from her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I brought you supper,” she said, holding up the bag.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Have you eaten today?”

  “I don’t want to eat.”

  She scanned his tense, uncompromising stance. “It’s too cold to be running outside.”

  “What are you? My mother?”

  Startled at his tone, her eyes widened.

  He ran a restless hand through his hair. “Look, I didn’t mean to snap at you. But I don’t want company.”

  He circled around her, went to his door, unlocked and opened it. Uninvited, she followed him in and closed the door.

  Pivoting in the large foyer, he faced her squarely. “Cassie, this isn’t a good time for me. I don’t want you here. I don’t want anybody here.” She didn’t budge. “Besides, I’m going to work out.”

  Stubbornly, she set the heavy bag on a table next to the staircase. “Go ahead, work out. I’ll get supper ready.” She smiled. “It’s homemade spaghetti sauce, salad and garlic bread.”

  Mitch’s frown turned into a scowl. “I don’t want you here.”

  Placing her hands on her hips, she stared him down. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m always like this after I...” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “After I talk about it. Leave now, Cassie.”

  “You’re always like what?”

  He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Morose. Seething. Volatile.”