Finding Sgt. Kent

by Raymond Hutson

  “You are tress . . . passing.”

  “I know I’m trespassing. We need to talk.” I lifted my head a few inches. “I think we’re related.”

  He stood near the tree line, fifty feet away, empty-handed. “You can stand up and do your talking right there. I ain’t gonna shoot you or nothin’.” Dressed in a worn work shirt and denim jacket, a messianic mop of gray hair and beard. Sunglasses.

  “I’m Robby Kent. Your brother was my father. I think.”

  He crept forward a few steps, his arms undulating in exaggerated wonder, but he was already flanking me a little, and I turned to stay face-on. “That so?” He stepped closer, leaning forward, searching for detail in my buttons, or scent, then stepped back and viewed me as a whole. “I guess there’s some resemblance.”

  The wind shifted abruptly, and I smelled him—cigarettes, wood smoke, diesel and body odor—and began to have doubts. There was sarcasm in his voice, in his body language, but I decided some people just used that as a defense, confronted by strangers.

  “My father was Andrew Kent. He was—”

  “I know who he was. Killed in Nam.” He stepped beside me and touched me on the elbow. “Why don’t you and I head on up to the house, talk about this.” He walked next to me, which felt evenhanded.

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “So you were born in ’72?”

  “Yeah. July 30th.” We entered the woods. “Your brother met my mom in high school.”

  “That so?”

  His arm swung, a metallic blur. The base of my skull exploded.

  –––

  I vomited when I woke up and he rolled me to one side. “Don’t want you choking on your puke. Just yet.”

  My neck and scalp felt scalded, pressed against cold, moist sand, the sun in a halo behind his head as he breathed down. I was lying in a shallow grave, wrists and ankles bound.

  He twirled a roll of duct tape over my head. “Good thing I didn’t tape your mouth.” He cleared his throat, spat close to my head. “I knowed who you were when you come in. Watched you the whole time.” He squatted halfway, swinging an arm to the horizon. “I knowed exactly who you were.” He knelt closer, snapped my VIC card under my nose. “You’re from the government!”

  I realized then I couldn’t feel my wallet under my butt cheek anymore. “That’s my veteran’s card, you dumb fuck!”

  He swayed back and stood up. “Don’t talk dirty to me now.”

  I wriggled, trying to pull my ankles up near my wrists.

  He smiled, sardonic. “I got your little knife, too.” He waved the Gerber and gave it a toss. “You talk dirty. Gonna pay.” Straddle-legged, unzipping his pants, moments later he urinated in my face, my eyes, nose, some went into my throat and I coughed. He zipped up and squatted again. “We’re going to be respectful, aren’t we?”

  I didn’t answer, dumbstruck.

  “Say it! We’re going to be respectful.”

  My throat stung of urine and I answered hoarsely. “I can’t fucking believe I spent fifteen years of my life fighting for crazy assholes like you to piss on people.”

  “Don’t tell me about that. Nooooo, don’t you dare. My brother—” And he began to turn in circles, pursuing some equation of circular logic. “My brother.” He pointed at me. “My brother gave everything. Everything. Everything!” And he circled more intently, stomping, chanting, “My brother! My brother! My brother! I have bowed down in mourning as one who bewhailith his mother!” He stopped, his face full of creative enlightenment, amazed that he had rhymed something. He squatted again. “You going to be respectful?”

  “Sure.”

  “For I am beneath the Lord and you are beneath me and you shall tell, for thy days”—and he looked at his watch and snorted—”shit, for thy minutes are numbered.”

  I spat more urine-sand out of my mouth. “I’m not going to tell.”

  He froze, eyes whipping nervously. “But it’s my duty to wrest forth the truth. My duty to the others.” He paused again, looked into the brush in several directions with cautious concern that he had betrayed some secret.

  “Who are the others, Danny?” I didn’t really care at that point, but I seemed to have touched a nerve.

  He looked down at me as if he’d momentarily forgotten I was there. “How clever is the beast.” He made a fist, hovered over me, picking a target, then crushed the left side of my jaw.

  Blood erupted in my mouth and I pushed a tooth back in place with my tongue. “Shit! Break my jaw I’m not going to be able to tell you shit!”

  “Shit?” He quieted. “Shit?” He stood and turned, dropped his denims.

  I lurched away as he farted forcefully, runny yellow stool dripping into the sand where my head had been.

  He turned, a little crestfallen. “That’s not like me.” He reached in my shirt pocket, took the napkin and card and wiped himself. “You see”—he pulled his pants up—”my brother an’ me, we both had our cords cut, you know. In Seattle. I remember ’cuz I was eighteen and that’s an important year. Andy, he was twenty. So he never had any fuckin’ kids.” He stood, circled the hole, kicked sand. “So you’re a fuckin’ liar.” He grew more agitated and stomped around the hole in a kind of war dance, greasy hair flopping, beard swinging, then stopped, breathless. “You were sent here, weren’t you? And now you’re going to tell me all about them.” And he pointed skyward. A dark blue tattoo of a cross adorned his left forearm; it looked self-inflicted.

  He hopped away. Behind us I saw a shed—his house, I supposed—and he ducked inside. When I opened my eyes after a long blink he was there again, a large serrated survival knife in his hands, cheap China steel, and he fell on me, knees in my shoulders, the knife downturned, the point of it, smeared with some mucoid residue, scraping my chest.

  “You will be buried in this hole. Do you not recognize it?” His breath as foul as the dribble of stool he’d released. “I am of the Shining Path.” He drew the blade across my left arm, lightly, and a red plume unfolded like a flower.

  I gritted my teeth. “You’re not in the Shining Path. They’re communists, Danny. Don’t you know?” And suddenly we were speaking the same language, landed in the same zone.

  He backed away, newly incensed, his entire theatric disrupted. “I’m not a communist,” he said. He tugged at my feet, lifted them.

  “Of course not. You’re the brother of a patriot.”

  And he was dragging me. At the base of his steps I saw a wasp nest, covered with wasps, above his doorway. With each tug, the doorframe shook and the nest wiggled, and I was very concerned, briefly, that it was going to fall on my face.

  Inside was cool. He left me on the floor for a few minutes while he caught his breath, broad ribcage heaving under thin skin where his shirt had come out, the place above his collar bones sucking in. He stood finally and, grasping beneath my arms, pulled me into a chair, leveling a finger.

  “Now. You are going to tell me.” He pulled a pair of pliers from his hip pocket and leaned forward.

  I started to say “Wha—”

  He grabbed my jaw, shit-stained fingers on my tongue. I think he was going to pull my teeth.

  I bit him, then broke his nose with my forehead.

  He screamed and dropped the pliers. I lunged forward, our combined weight crumpling his chair. I lurched and slammed and tried to roll, hit him with my head again, but my feet were over him and so I slammed—wham, wham—heels anywhere they could go, aiming for throat. Eventually I hit his chest and felt ribs crack. I stopped and looked at him. His face was bloody and I’d broken his sunglasses; saw his eyes, bleached blue, little rings of gray around pinpoint pupils. Gasping, a shark dragged onto the beach. He tried to sit up and I inch-wormed away, pushing my back up the wall. The knife lay on the arm of a sofa. I sat, back to it, and grasped, cutting the tape around my ankles.

  He tried to sit, then rose to an unsteady stand. I side-kicked his knee and he went down with a scream. A few mo
re manipulations of the knife eventually nicked the tape on my wrist enough to tear it loose.

  “You broke my goddamned knee.”

  “Should have thought of that before you pissed on my face.” My wallet lay on the table, all of my cards laid out like solitaire. I gathered those and inventoried the room, limping around, flies rising in clouds around me. Cartons of cigarettes crammed in an open cabinet, canned soup and chili and cases of beer occupied almost all remaining storage. The table was littered with small pieces of burnt foil, a mini-torch, a couple of asthma inhalers, baggies with white residue hugging the seams, and a Bible open to Deuteronomy, a glass pipe lying in the fold. I looked in the cover of the Bible, thinking it might have a family tree, but there were no markings. An old Fender guitar was wedged between his mattress and the wall, several strings gone. I tugged it loose.

  “You play this?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “You should get some strings. Would be good for you.”

  I looked in his bathroom and decided it might be better to piss outside. An AK-47 stood next to the door, another behind the drapery at the end of the couch. An AR-15 in the closet, a couple thousand rounds of ammunition, 7.62x39, .223, and 7.62x25. “Where’s the pistol, Danny?”

  “You broke my knee.” He looked at the nightstand.

  “It’s just a ligament.”

  I opened the drawer at the bedside, picked out a Tokarev and shoved it in my belt. Beneath it, a badly scratched picture of my father in uniform, the same photo I’d grown up with.

  I held it up. “I have this picture too.” Nothing registered on his face; I’m not sure he could even identify it.

  I rummaged in the drawer and found a spare magazine. Too much to carry. I popped the dust cover off one AK, pulled the piston out, then repeated it on the other. I dropped the bolt from the AR. All of them were thick with fouling. “These aren’t very clean, Danny.” I looked over. “Of course, neither are you. Tempting to burn this whole place down, you in it.”

  Outside, I located the Gerber and marched toward where I thought I’d parked, head still pounding, urine on my breath.

  No keys. I had left them in the ignition, I was sure, in case I needed to leave quickly. I tossed the gun parts on the seat and trudged back to the house, trying to guess where along the path he’d hit me with the rifle butt. He wasn’t a very strong guy, too short of breath there at the end. Must have used a wheelbarrow. Might even have some kind of protocol set up for visitors.

  He had pulled himself into a sitting position by the sofa but was unarmed, still winded. “Forget somethin’?”

  “Where are the keys, Danny?”

  “Eat my dick.”

  “No thank you.” I was dry all the way to my gut. I turned on his faucet and stuck my head under, rinsing off the stink, taking big mouthfuls, gargling, spitting. An eight-quart saucepan sat next to the sink and I was going to shower myself, but it was crusted with chili. I dried my face on a towel and asked him again. Same response.

  “Fine.” I took a bench from his table, grabbed the axe and knocked the legs off one end. “We did it your way. Now we’ll do it mine.” I grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him screaming to the bench, pulled his feet up on the high end, and duct-taped them in place. He tried to roll off and I rolled him back and punched him once to get his attention, then taped over his throat and around the bench. “Last chance, Danny Kent.”

  “Fuck you.”

  I’d only seen films, was never asked to do this in the field. But I was there, in the field, and it felt good. I took his beard. “What the hell is this anyway? Some ZZ-Top wannabe?” I pulled hard. “You Talee-bhan? He? Nah? Hez bi-Islam?” I felt some of the old energy come back. Bring it on. “Mah kaw, Maut Mock, Kah wah!”

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes; this could get so out of hand, and it occurred to me that I might like it that way—something big rising in my chest, so wonderful, monstrous and grand, I wanted to set it loose; I hadn’t controlled anything in my world in months, and now I wanted to control everything, rip out his fucking heart and paint the walls with it. I bit my lip and leaned forward. It felt wonderful.

  “Where are the keys?”

  “You gonna kill me now?”

  “You’ll wish I had. Where are the fucking keys?”

  “Up your asshole.” He giggled and frothed a little blood.

  “Have it your way.” I filled the chili pot with cold water, scum still floating on the surface, dropped the towel over his face and poured. He screamed, gurgled, and I lay on his arms as he tried to flail, slowly emptying the pot. I wrapped the rest of the tape around him and refilled. I poured again and he gurgled, convulsed, tried to raise his head against the tape. We did this twice more, the water soaking the legs of my BDUs, spreading out over the worn, sandy floorboards, disappearing in the cracks. I sat cross-legged a few minutes and looked at him breathing, every gasp a triumph, then reached over and pulled the rag off. “The keys.”

  “Steps.” He coughed. “Under the steps.”

  I retrieved the keys, came back, opened the Gerber and cut the tape around his neck, then his arms. I considered the feet but thought better. I sat by his head.

  “What was it you were going to ask me to tell? What was so goddamn important, before you tore out my teeth?”

  He groaned, pointed at the open cabin door.

  “Outside?”

  He wheezed and coughed. I held one of the inhalers to his lips. He inhaled deep, groaned again and raised his arm. “The sky. What are they?”

  I went over and looked up. “The jet trails?”

  He grinned, spat more blood. “Poison. What kind of poison?”

  “They’re just fuckin’ jet trails, man. Water vapor.”

  –––

  Sun was setting over the mountains above his little part of the valley, the path back to the road almost erased by blue shadow. My face was swelling, my left eye starting to close, but I drove through the deep grass, made it to the hole in the fence before darkness fell. Once on the gravel, I accelerated, rolled down the windows and smelled mountain pines. About a mile down the road I hurled the AK pistons out the window, then the AR bolt. I considered the pistol but put it in the glove box. If I’d continued searching, I wonder now if I’d have found the decapitation photo. I could have spent another couple of hours there, but at that point just getting away was all-consuming. The place stunk.

  So, the parents were drunks; not hard to justify with two kids like that. Or was it the other way around? Vasectomy at eighteen. What kind of parent allows something like that? What kind of brother lets that happen? Maybe it was a court order, statutory rape. They used to do that. He was only two years younger—not four. Must have flunked a couple of grades. If any kind of truth had passed between the two of us that afternoon, it was his little declaration, maybe one of the few truths he knew; he wasn’t my uncle, and Andrew Kent wasn’t my father. Not the kind of closure I’d set myself up to come home with.

  My last little thread to the legendary Andy Kent was severed. Maybe Mom wasn’t really Mom either. I wasn’t related, at all, to people that no sane person would want to be related to anyway. I wasn’t related to anybody. And Zilker thought this would be therapeutic. I began to laugh, laughing like a seizure, couldn’t stop; fifteen years in the most hostile regions of the planet, looking for a fight, and I damn near get killed by one emphysematous old hermit in the woods, not far from Glacier National Park.

  –––

  I’d filled the car the day before and had enough fuel to get back to Spokane. I drove through Whitefish, wanting to stop for water or a Mountain Dew, knowing I looked, smelled like a baboon, and fearing that I’d giggle again, do something absurd in public, draw attention. Too dirty to check into a motel, might even attract police, and so I watched the lights fade in the rearview and went on down Highway 93. I turned on the radio and the Stones’ “Shattered” blasted forth, distorted, a favorite of Mrs. Dunham when she cleaned house, turned up
loud as she ran the vacuum, and she’d voiceover—”rats in the kitchen, bedbugs, upstairs”—as she dragged the Hoover up to our rooms.

  The cool air felt good on the back of my head and slowly the scald there dissipated. The adrenaline that circulates after battle crackled through me like electricity, through my fingers, my feet, the accelerator. There’s an exhilaration after battle not because you’ve killed men, but because they were trying to kill you and failed; every faceoff is like being forced to leap from the roof of one skyscraper to another, fast, five, ten times in a row, so that when you’re done you just want to wallow in life like a dog in stink, you’re just so fucking blessed to be alive.

  It was almost midnight when I passed an exit to Plains and, putting my hand in my pocket, remembered what became of Cheryl’s card. Rain struck the windshield, one huge drop, then another, until it hammered the hood, the glass, the roof like a load of ball bearings. I pulled onto the shoulder and got out, face skyward, drenched, still laughing, pissed on by God himself and laughing, rain streaming down my arms, mouth filling with rain in the dark. Must have stood there until it blew over, until only silence and Montana wind surrounded me. Not another car passed.

  Back in my seat again, pulling off my clothes, turning up the heat, I sensed loss, my mood plummeting, some vast deceleration of the soul. On through the night for hours, every drop of light leaked away by the time I pulled into a parking lot, reclined my seat and fell asleep. A while later I awakened briefly and chuckled again. In the right circumstances, waterboarding worked very well.

  7

  I woke up at 0534 hours, morning filtering through my lids and a visceral sense of increased traffic on the highway, the growl of the big rigs and the wake that followed them. Eyes open. Eyes left. Eyes right. Firenze Café, Florence, Montana, sunrise splintering off the sign. I climbed out of the car, stretched my legs, desperately needing to piss. Café was locked. I couldn’t remember turning off the highway or parking the car. I stood by the front fender of my little Corolla, wishing for the moment I’d bought a pickup, and left a wet spot in the sand, brushing gravel over it with the side of my boot. Map flattened on the roof of the car, I had crossed I-90 last night without noticing and was now fifteen or twenty miles south of Missoula.