"No, I'll get it. You--you know, tell him what's cooking."
"Yes, sir."
Bonson left the two younger men alone.
"Look, Fenn, I'm the bad cop. I'm here to give you the bad news. I've got photos of you smoking grass with Crowe, okay? Man, they can really nail you with them. I mean big time. I told you this guy Bonson was cold. He is beaucoup cold, you know? So give him what he wants, which is another bad boy's scalp to hang up on his lodge Dole. He's sent a bunch to the "Nam, and he wants to send more. I don't know why, what he is driving at, but I know this: he will rotate your ass back to the Land of Bad Things and not ever even think about it again. He's got you cold. It's you or it's Crowe. Man, don't throw your life away for nothing, dig?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good man, Fenn. Knew you'd see it our way."
At 2300, Donny just walked out the front door of the barracks. Who was there to stop him? Some corporal in first platoon had duty NCO that night and he was scribbling in the duty logs in the first sergeant's office as Donny passed.
Donny walked to the main gate and waved at the sentry there, who waved him past. Technically, the boy was to look for liberty papers, but in the aftermath of an alert, such niceties of the Marine way had fallen aside. Donny just walked, crossed I Street, headed down the way, took a left, and there found, un bothered his 1963 Impala. He climbed in, turned the key and drove away.
It didn't take him long to reach Potomac Park, site of the recently abandoned May Tribe. A few tents still stood, a few fires still burned. He left his car along the side of the road and walked into the encampment, asked a few questions and soon found the tent.
"Julie?" he called.
But it was Peter who came out.
"She's sleeping," he said.
"Well, I need to see her."
"It would be better if she slept. I'm watching out for her."
The two faced each other, both wore jeans and tennis shoes. Jack Purcells. But Donny's were white, as he washed them every week. Peter's didn't look as though he had washed them since the fifties. Donny wore a madras short-sleeved button-down shirt, Peter had some kind of tie-dyed T-shirt on, baggy as a parachute, going almost to his knees. Donny's hair was short to the point of neuroticism, with a little pie up top, Peter's was long to the point of neuroticism, a mass of curly sprigs and tendrils.
Donny's face was lean and pure, Peter's wore a bristle of scraggly red beard and a headband.
"That's very cool," said Donny.
"But I have to see her.
I need her."
"I need her too."
"Well, she hasn't given you anything. She's given me her love."
"I want her to give me her love."
"Well, you'll have to wait awhile."
"I'm tired of waiting."
"Look, this is ridiculous. Go away or something."
"I won't leave her unguarded."
"Who do you think I am, some kind of rapist or killer?
I'm her fiance. I'm going to marry her."
"Peter," said Julie, coming out of the tent, "it's all right. Really, it's all right."
"Are you sure?"
Julie looked tired, still, she was a beautiful young woman, with hair the color of straw and a body as lean and straight as an arrow, and brilliance showing behind her bright blue eyes. Both boys looked at her and recommitted to her love again.
"Are you okay?" Donny asked.
"I was in the lockup at the Coliseum."
"Oh, Christ."
"It was fine, it wasn't anything bad."
"You killed a girl," said Peter.
"We didn't kill anyone. You killed her, by telling her being on that bridge mattered and that we were rapists and murderers. You made her panic, you made her jump.
We tried to save her."
"You fucking asshole, you killed her. Now, you're a big tough guy and you can kick the shit out of me, but you killed her!"
"Stop screaming. I never killed anyone who didn't have a rifle and wasn't trying to kill me or a buddy."
"Peter, it's okay. You have to leave us alone."
"Christ, Julie."
"You have to leave us."
"Ahhh ... all right. But don't say--anyhow, you're a lucky guy, Fenn. You really are."
He stormed away in the darkness.
"I never saw him so brave," said Julie.
"He loves you. So much."
"He's just a friend."
"I'm sorry I didn't get here earlier. We were on alert.
There was a lot of shit because of Amy. I'm very sorry about Amy, but we didn't have a thing to do with it."
"Oh, Donny."
"I want to marry you. I love you. I miss you."
"Then let's get married."
"There's this thing," Donny said.
"This thing?"
"Yeah. By the way, I've technically deserted. I'm UA. Unauthorized absence. I'll be reported tomorrow at morning muster. They'll do something to me probably.
But I had to see you."
"Donny?"
"Let me tell you about this thing."
And so he told it: from his recruitment to his attempts to enter into a duplicitous friendship with Crowe to his arrival at the party to his strange behavior that night until, finally, the action on the bridge, Crowe's arrest and tomorrow's responsibilities.
"Oh, God, Donny, I'm so sorry. It's so awful." She went to him and in her warmth for just a second he lost all his problems and was Donny Fenn of Pima County all over again, the football hero, the big guy that everybody thought so highly of, who could do a 40 in four-seven, and bench press 250, yet take pride in his high SATs and the fact that he was decent to his high school's lowliest creeps and toads and never was mean to anybody, because that wasn't his way. But then he blinked, and he was back in the dark in the park, and it was only Julie, her warmth, her smell, her sweetness, and when he left her embrace, it was all back again.
"Donny, haven't you done enough for them? I mean, you got shot, you lay in that horrible hospital for six months, you came back and did exactly what they said.
When does it end?"
"It ends when you get out. I don't hate the Corps. It's not a Corps thing. It's these Navy guys, these super-patriots, who have it all figured out."
"Oh, Donny. It's so awful."
"I don't work that way. I don't like that stuff at all.
That's not me. Not any of it."
"Can't you talk to somebody? Can't you talk to a chaplain or a lawyer or something? Do they even have the right to put you through that?"
"Well, as I understand it, it's not an illegal order. It's a legitimate order. It's not like being asked to do something that's technically wrong, like shoot kids in a ditch. I don't know who I could talk to who wouldn't say. Just do your duty."
"And they'll send you back to Vietnam if you don't testify."
"That's the gist of it, yeah."
"Oh, God," she said.
She turned from him and walked a step or two away.
Across the way, she could see the Potomac and the dark far shore that was Virginia. Above it, a tapestry of stars unscrolled, dense and deep.
"Donny," she finally said, "there's only one answer."
"Yeah, I know."
"Go back. Do it. That's what you have to do to save yourself."
"But it's not like I know he's guilty. Maybe he doesn't deserve to get his life ruined just because--" "Donny. Just do it. You said yourself, this Crowe is not worth a single thing."
"You're right," Donny finally said.
"I'll go back, I'll do it, I'll get it over. I'm eleven and days, I'll get out inside a year with an early out, and we can have our life. That's all there is to it. That's fine, that's cool. I've made up my mind."
"No, you haven't," she said.
"I can tell when you're lying. You're not lying to me, you never have. But you're lying to yourself."
"I should talk to someone. I need help on this one."
"And I'm no
t good enough?"
"If you love me, and I hope and pray you do, then your judgment is clouded."
"All right, who, then?"
Who,indeed?
There was only one answer, really. Not the chaplain or a JAG lawyer, not Platoon Sergeant Case or the first sergeant or the sergeant major or the colonel or even the Commandant, USMC.
"Trig. Trig will know. We'll go see Trig."
Bitterly, from afar, Peter watched them. They embraced, they talked, they appeared to fight. She broke away. He went after her. It killed him to sense the intimacy they shared. It was everything he hated in the world--the strong, the handsome, the blond, the confident, just taking what was theirs and leaving nothing behind.
He watched them, finally, go toward Donny's old car and climb in, his mind raging with anger and counterplots, his energy unbearably high.
Without willing it, he raced to the VW Larry Frankel had lent him. He turned the key, jacked the car into gear and sped after them. He didn't know why, he didn't think it would matter, but he also knew he could not help but follow them.
CHAPTER seven.
Peter almost missed them. He had just cleared a crest when he saw the lights of the other car illuminate a hill and a dirt road beyond a gate, then flash off. His own lights were off, but there was enough moonlight to make out the road ahead. He pulled up to the gate and saw nothing that bore any signal of meaning, except a mailbox, painted white with the name wilson scribbled on it in black. He was on Route
35, about five miles north of Germantown.
What the hell were they up to? What did they know?
What was going on?
He decided to pull back a hundred yards, and just wait for a while. Suppose they ran in there, and turned around and collided with him on the road? That would be a total humiliation.
Instead, he decided just to watch and wait.
At the top of the hill, they turned the engine off. Below lay a farm of no particular distinction, a nondescript house, a yard, a barn. Propane tanks and old tractors, rusted out, lay in the yard, there was no sound of animals.
The farm, in fact, looked like a Dust Bowl relic.
Yet something was going on.
Twin beams illuminated the yard, and Donny, with his unusually good eyesight, could make out a van with its lights on, a shroud of dust, and two men who were in the process of moving heavy packages of some sort out from the barn into the van by the light of the headlamps.
"I think that's Trig," Donny said.
"I don't know who the other guy is."
"Shall we go down?"
Donny was suddenly unsure.
"I don't know," he said.
"I can't figure out what the hell is going on."
"He's helping his friend load up."
"At this hour?"
"Well, he's an irregular guy. The clock doesn't mean much to him."
That was true, Trig wasn't your nine-to-fiver by any interpretation.
"All right," said Donny.
"We'll walk down there. But you hang back. Let me check this out. Don't let them see you until we figure what's happening. I'll call you in, okay? I'm just not feeling good about this, okay?"
"You sound a little paranoid."
He did. Some hint of danger filled the air, but he wasn't sure what it was, what it meant, where it came from. Possibly, it was the mere strangeness of everything, the way nothing really made any sense. Possibly it was his own fatigue, raw after the many hours on alert.
They headed down the hill, and Donny detoured them around the house, until at last they came upon the two men from the rear. Donny could see them better now, both working in jeans and denim shirts. They were loading by wheelbarrow immensely awkward sacks of fertilizer into the van, packing it very full. ammonium nitrate, the sacks said. Dust that the wheelbarrow tires ripped up from the ground filled the air, floating in large, shimmering clouds, which shifted through the beams of the truck lights and in the yellower light that blazed from the barn door. It lit wherever it could, coating the truck, the men, everything. Both Trig and the other man wore red bandannas around their faces.
Pushing Julie back into the dark, Donny stepped out and approached, coughing at the stuff in the air as it filled his mouth and throat with grit. He stepped farther, nobody noticed him.
"Trig?" he called.
Trig turned instantly at his name, but it was the other man who reacted much faster, turning exactly to Donny, his dark eyes devouring him. He had a full, tangled web of blond hair, much thicker than Trig's, and was large and powerful next to Trig's delicacy. They looked like a poet and a stevedore standing next to each other.
"Trig, it's me, Donny. Donny Fenn." He stepped forward a little hesitantly.
"Donny, Jesus Christ, I didn't expect you."
"Well, you said to come on out."
"I did, yeah. Come on in. Donny, meet Robert Fitzpat-rick, my old friend at Oxford."
"Halloo," said Robert, pulling off his own bandanna to show a smile that itself showed a mouthful of porcelain spades, a movie star's gleam of a smile.
"So you're the war hero, eh? We've hopes for you, that we do! Need boyos like you for the movement. We'll stop this bloody thing and get the west field covered in horse shit and ammonium nitrate, if I'm a judge of things. Roll up your sleeves, boy, and get to work. We could use some back. The goddamned pickup broke down and I'm stuck with this piece of shit to git the stuff out to the spreader. We're doing it at night to beat the heat."
"Robert, he's been on some kind of alert for seventy-two hours. He can't do manual labor," Trig said.
"No, I--" "No, we're almost done. It doesn't matter."
"You left so suddenly."
"Ah, one more demonstration. I was worn out. What did it prove? I've lost my will for the movement."
"You'll get your will back, boyo," said the giant Fitzpatrick heartily.
"I'll go get us a beer for the recharge.
You wait here, Donny Fenn."
"No, no, I just had a thing I wanted to talk over with Trig."
"Oh, Trig'll steer you right, no doubt about it," he said, his voice light with laughter.
"It's a drink I'll be gittin', Trig. You lads talk."
With that he turned to the house and headed in.
"So what is it, Donny?"
"It's Crowe .. . they arrested him. Violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I'm supposed to testify against him in"--he looked at his watch--"about seven hours."
"I see."
"Maybe you don't. I was asked to spy on him. That was my job. That's why I got close to him. I was supposed to report to them on his off-base activities and try and put him with known members of the peace groups. That's why I was with him at the party that night, that's why I came to your party. I was ordered to spy."
Trig stared at him for a while, then his face broke into the oddest thing: a smile.
"Oh, that's your big secret? Man, that's if?" He laughed now, really hard.
"Donny, wise up. You work for them. They can ask you to do that. If they say so, that's your duty. That's the game in Washington these days. Everybody's watching everybody. Everybody's got an agenda, a plan, an idea they're trying to push or sell. I don't give a damn."
"It's worse. They have some idea you were Weather Underground and you planned the whole thing. I mean, can you imagine anything so stupid? He was feeding you deployment intelligence so the May Tribe could humiliate the Corps."
"Boy, their imagination never fails to amaze me!"
"So what should I do, Trig? That's what I'm here to ask. About Crowe. Should I testify?"
"What happens if you don't?"
"They've got some pictures of me smoking dope.
Funny, I don't smoke dope anymore, but I did to get in with him. They could send me to Portsmouth. Or, more likely, the "Nam. They could ship me back for a last go-round, even though I'm short."
"They're really assholes, aren't they?"
"Yeah."
&
nbsp; "But that's neither here nor there, is it? This isn't about them. We know who they are. This is about you.
Well, then it's easy."
"Easy?"
"Easy. Testify. For one reason, you can't let them get you killed. What would that prove? Who benefits from the death of Lochinvar? Who wins when Lancelot is slain?"
"I'm just a guy, Trig."
"You can't give yourself up to it. Somebody's got to come out on the other side and say how it was."
"I'm just .. . I'm just a guy."
People were always insisting to Donny that he was somehow more than he really was, that he represented something. He'd never gotten it. It was just because he happened to be good-looking, but underneath he was just as scared, just as ineffective, just as simple as anyone else, no matter what Trig said.
"I don't know," said Donny.
"Is he guilty? That would matter."
"It doesn't matter. What matters is: you or him?
That's the world you have to deal with. You or him? I vote him. Any day of the week, I vote him."
"But is he guilty?"
"I'm no longer in the inner circle. I'm sort of a roaming ambassador. So I really don't know."
"Oh, you'd know. You'd know. Is he guilty?"
Trig paused.
Finally he said, "Well, I wish I could lie to you. But, goddammit, no, no, he's not guilty. There is some weird kind of intelligence they have at the top, I just get glimmerings of it. But I don't think it's Crowe. But I'm telling you the truth: that doesn't matter. You should dump him and get on with your life. If he's not guilty of that, he's guilty of lots of other stuff."
Donny looked at Trig for a bit. Trig was leaning against the fender of the van. He lifted a milk carton and poured it over his head, and water gushed out, scraping rivulets in the dust that adhered to his handsome face. Trig shook his wet hair, and the droplets flew away. Then he turned back.
"Donny, for Christ's sake. Save your own life!"
reter was no good at waiting. He got out of the car and walked along the shoulder of the road. It was completely dark and silent, unfamiliar sensations to a young man who'd spent so much time OCS--on city streets. Now and then he heard the chirp of a cricket, up above, the stars towered and pinwheeled, but he was not into stars or insects, so he noticed neither of these realities. Instead, he reached the gate, paused a moment, and climbed over. He saw before him a faint rise in the land, almost a small hill, and the dirt road that climbed it. He knew if a car came over the hill and he were standing on that road, he'd be dead-cold caught in the lights. So he walked a distance from the road, then turned to head up the hill, figuring he could then drop to the ground if Donny and Julie returned.
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