Slowly she stood and turned.
Her face was like wreckage, but her eyes did not falter. She looked at me directly, with that old resolve. Which then disappeared, and her will collapsed, and she shrieked, "Durk!"
She came at me with abandon, the way once she came at both of us, to hurl herself into that swimming pool.
Now she hurled herself into my arms. "Durk!" She had pronounced my name only once, but in that vaulted space, the sound hung over us like a canopy. And when her weight hit me, I absorbed it and held her. I was immovable at that moment, as a tree. "Durk!" She landed against my chest. My despair by hers was nothing. I had never taken such a blow before.
Her hair was at my mouth, but before I could look at her my eyes were caught by the sight of someone else, a figure in the shadows, standing just yards away, her mouth agape. Carolyn's shriek had frightened her, even as her appearance out of nowhere had frightened me. She was, I saw at once, a Vietnamese girl, about eight years old, and she was crying.
Light from a bank of candles flickered behind her. She was an apparition.
My mind leapt to what it recognized—that naked Vietnamese girl running down the road, fleeing blindly, running at her photographer with fresh American napalm bubbling her skin the way the sun bubbles tar, running at him as if his photograph would heal her. It did not, of course. Instead it scorched me and you, a branding iron, the fiery tool that told us and everyone who we had become.
And now I understood that this girl was Carolyn's other child and that in her Michael had found an orphan of his own for whom to make a home.
NINETEEN
IT was the night of February 12, 1965. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution had passed Congress almost unanimously the previous August. Only the month before, on January 20, Lyndon Johnson began his own term as president, having won the office as the peace candidate. Less than three weeks after the inauguration, only five days ago that night, in retaliation for a bold Viet Cong attack against a U.S. Army barracks—a single barracks—Johnson ordered the first air bombardment of North Vietnam and decided to send two hundred thousand troops to the South.
But Michael was not thinking about those doomed efforts. That night his focus was narrower than the fate of Vietnam or the soul of America. As he watched the sky from the observation deck at the main terminal at JFK, he was thinking about the twenty-six children, all burn victims of napalm or white phosphorus bombs, whose plane was due in soon. This was the first attempt to bring Vietnamese victims of the war to America. It was sponsored by a Swiss humanitarian organization called Terre des Hommes which had already arranged for hospital beds and doctors' services in leading medical centers in Europe. In Vietnam doctors could do hardly more than wave flies away from the oozing skin of people unlucky enough to have been caught in a "hit" of napalm, and there were more and more "hits" every day. The gelatinous gasoline adheres to flesh absolutely and smolders indefinitely, leaving burns too deep to be treated in field hospitals and deformities too acute to be remedied without drastic and sophisticated medicine. Broken bones, ripped flesh, fractured skulls were one thing, but the little monsters with melted chins and no eyelids and charred blue skin and fused fingers were another. As the numbers of burned children increased and as more and more of them died agonizingly on the stone floors of the orphanages—cots, mats and sheets, which stuck to the wounds, only made their condition worse—even Catholic doctors took to administering merciful overdoses.
Now the Swiss had organized an effort to make that unnecessary. They hoped the initial evacuations would grow into a massive airlift of napalm victims, first of children, then of adults, to get them the treatment they needed. So, with no help from the U.S. government, Terre des Hommes was bringing its first flight of wounded children to the States on a chartered, specially fitted airplane. The Swiss organizers had gone through their Vatican contacts at Caritas International to find a coordinator of the effort in America. As you recall, Caritas was the parent organization of the Catholic Relief Service, and that was how Michael Maguire came to be standing on the deck at JFK that night.
Everything was ready. Seven ambulances were on the tarmac, nurses were standing by and units were prepared at Columbia-Presbyterian, Roosevelt and New York hospitals. Teams of some of the best surgeons in New York were scheduled to begin treatment of the children in the morning. At Michael's side were the Terre des Hommes representative in New York, a young plastic surgeon from Columbia-Presbyterian, and the former monsignor, now bishop-designate Timothy O'Shea, whom Cardinal Spellman had recently named as his auxiliary for the Military Ordinariate.
"Cold," O'Shea said. The four men stood with their shoulders bunched and their hands plunged in their coat pockets.
"What will the chill do to the kids, Doctor?"
"Same as it does to us. Nothing more."
"I'd think it would disorient them, their coming from the tropics."
"It disorients me," the doctor said, "and I'm from Jersey City." He shivered dramatically.
"They're late," the Terre des Hommes representative said. He was a Swiss diplomat, a middle-level administrator at UNICEF. "They would not be late if it was a government plane."
Michael leaned toward O'Shea. "Did you hear what Monsieur Hurot said, why the army wouldn't make a hospital plane available? The spokesman said it was inhumane to take an Asian child out of its native environment."
"Well, that spokesman should be fired," O'Shea said.
"No, just burned," the doctor said brashly, "and then taken to Vietnam so he could see what a humane environment it is."
"Worse were the airlines," the Swiss diplomat said. "If they transported burn victims, even the mildest cases, they said their other passengers would experience discomfort."
"Their paying passengers."
"Well," the doctor said, "I can see why the government wouldn't do it."
"Oh really? Why?" Monsieur Hurot asked.
"Simple. They can hardly ask the American people to support Johnson's new buildup if it's targeting children with napalm. This is their dirty little secret. They sure don't want it opened up in New York."
"Neither do we," Michael said. "If the press gets onto these children, Saigon will never let us bring out more."
"They certainly aren't targets anyway," O'Shea said.
The doctor gave O'Shea a quizzical look.
"It is not American policy to bomb civilians."
"Oh really? You think we're waiting here for military personnel, average age eleven?"
"Let's not turn these children into debating points, Doctor. They are tragic victims of war." O'Shea's voice was firm.
"I don't call it 'tragic,' Reverend. I call it criminal."
"Despite my collar," O'Shea said sharply, "I'm not quite so facile with moral judgments."
"I prefer to think of it as a medical judgment, Reverend. Napalm is medically contraindicated for human beings."
Michael interrupted them, placing an arm on each man. It was an argument he'd had his fill of. "Gentlemen, this is not the Fulbright Committee. Take it easy."
"The plane should be here," Monsieur Hurot said.
"Maybe it landed," Michael said. "Maybe it's making its way to the gate."
Monsieur Hurot turned and led the way into the terminal. The doctor followed him. As Michael started, O'Shea took his sleeve. "Why the hell is he here?"
"He pulled together the team of doctors, Tim. He's more important to this than any of us."
"He sounds like an SDS kid."
"In the operating room, his rhetoric won't offend."
"You just better hope he doesn't get quoted."
"He won't. He understands. He's in this for the long haul, Tim. He wants this flight to be repeated as much as we do."
"I'm sick and tired of our military people being maligned. Hell, you know as well as I do that Americans don't kill civilians."
Michael stopped abruptly. "No, I don't know that." He stared at O'Shea long enough for the older man to realize he was thinki
ng of the bridge across the Han River. But Michael wasn't interested in talking about that either. He said, "What I do know is that Americans don't provide hospital planes."
"There's a war going on, Father!" O'Shea blew up. His face was the color of the monsignor's tab at his collar. "And American boys are dying in it. I would expect you to appreciate what that means." He swung away from Michael and stalked toward the long spiral of terrazzo stairs.
And Michael watched him, as sadness clutched his chest.
"Hello, Father."
Michael had been standing a little apart from the others. They were out on the tarmac now, near the ambulances. The plane had landed, but had yet to taxi into view. A light, cold drizzle had begun to fall. He turned toward the voice that had greeted him. It was Nicholas Wiley. "What are you doing here?" he blurted. They'd seen each other irregularly in the past year and a half, meeting for coffee, going for long walks in the park, and Michael had always been glad to see Wiley, but not then, even though it had been months since their last encounter.
Wiley sensed Michael's displeasure, but he grinned. "Waiting for the A-train?" Wiley's hair was long now, hiding his ears. He wore a floppy leather hat and an army field jacket on which was prominently displayed the chicken-foot peace symbol. A camera case was slung over one shoulder, and over the other the familiar canvas bag.
"I'm sorry, but you can't stay."
"Why not?"
"No press."
"What does that mean, Father? Where do you think we are? Russia?"
Michael looked nervously out at the airfield. The green-and-red wing-tip lights of half a dozen taxiing planes crossed in eerie patterns, and the sharp blue runway lights glistened in the rain like lapis beads. No plane seemed to be approaching yet. He faced the young man. "Are you still with the Worker?"
"Yes. I'm the managing editor now. Dorothy likes the way I stack bundles."
"I saw your name in the Reporter also, just a few weeks ago, wasn't it?"
"Yeah, I string for NCR sometimes."
Michael nodded. "Good for you," he said, but that decided him. The obtuse and obscure Catholic Worker was one thing, but the National Catholic Reporter was an ambitious and irreverent liberal weekly that would splash this story all over the country. The project would be finished before it started. He took Wiley by the arm and led him away from the ambulances, toward a nearby hangar building. Once they were under its eaves, out of the rain, he stopped. "Look, Nicholas, you can't stay here. You simply can't. I'm telling you to leave."
Michael's tone jarred Wiley. "Hey, Father, you can't talk to me like that."
"The hell I can't! You're unauthorized out here. This is off-limits to the public."
"'Off-limits'!" A fierce expression crossed Wiley's face. "What is this, the army?"
"Yeah, it's the army, Nicholas." Michael pushed him once, firmly, toward the hangar door. "And I'm your son-of-a-bitch sergeant! Now move!" He pushed him again. In the back of his mind a voice said, This isn't the way to handle the kid; sweettalk him, take him in. But Michael was angry, at the mercy of anger. He pushed him again.
But now Wiley pushed back. "Hey! Cut it out!"
The two men were squared off, and the next move had to be blows. They stared at each other, puffs of breath steaming from their mouths and nostrils.
This was a mistake, Michael saw. He hadn't anticipated Wiley's resistance, but he should have. The kid had taken on the army, after all. Michael raised his hands, palms out. "I'm sorry. I'm out of line."
Wiley eyed him carefully.
Michael backed off. "You do have a right to be here."
Michael's surrender disarmed Wiley. "Why don't you want me?"
"Because we can't have publicity. You know what we're waiting for?"
"Vietnamese children, burn cases. I have a friend at Columbia, in the medical school. He told me. I didn't know it was your project, though."
"Nicholas, if these kids become the focus of antiwar shit, then that's it. We won't get any more out. It's that simple."
Wiley did not react.
"Do you see my point?"
"But doesn't that play into the army's hands? Doesn't it serve their purpose to keep the outrage hidden?"
"Obviously, we can't debate this here." Michael looked past Wiley toward where the others were waiting. Still no sign of the airplane. He made a show of resignation, but in fact he'd had a new idea. "How about this? You can stay and watch the arrival, but you don't ask any questions of anybody, and you don't take any pictures. Then, tomorrow, come up to my office. I'll give you a full interview, an exclusive interview, and I'll get you into the hospitals."
Wiley agreed immediately.
But Michael intended to get in touch first with Dorothy Day. She believed in the primacy of meeting simple human needs. She was a master of publicity when she wanted it, but she would understand that sometimes it was deadly. He was sure he could convince her to call Wiley off.
"There is one thing I'd like to ask you, though, Father."
"Shoot."
"What's Monsignor O'Shea doing here? Didn't the cardinal just appoint him Military Vicar?"
"Yes, he did. Why should that disqualify him from being here?"
"These children are napalm victims, right? That's the U.S. Army, Father! The V.C. don't use napalm."
"The army wasn't aiming for these kids, Nicholas. You know that. Not even the fucking marines try to burn children." Michael realized that, like a coin that had been flipped, he had just changed sides. Discussions of the war were futile and infuriating for him because he could argue—he could feel—both positions.
Wiley smiled suddenly. "I never heard a priest say 'fuck.'"
"Did I say 'fuck'?"
Wiley nodded sagely and Michael laughed.
Wiley said, "At Berkeley someone hung a banner out that said, 'Fuck Communism,' and the John Birchers didn't know whether to rip it down or make one of their own."
Michael remembered what he liked about the kid, how his earnestness was tempered by humor. His guileless vulnerability was a relief after the habitual self-protecting calculation of Michael's own kind. "How've you been, Nicholas?" he asked suddenly.
"I'm in therapy now, Father." He looked away shyly and touched his hair. He could have been a hippie; Michael realized he was a hippie. "The army shrink told me I should get some help, but it took me a long time to see it. My doctor's a good man. He says I have a problem trusting people, but that maybe I can learn to trust him." He looked sharply at Michael, and a wave of insecurity crossed his face. "You think it's okay, don't you?"
"What, therapy? Sure I do."
"Some priests think it's a cop-out. I guess Freud had his problems with the Church, eh? Dorothy thinks we should just have Spiritual Directors, and let it go at that."
"I don't agree with her, Nicholas. I've known a Spiritual Director or two who could have used a shrink." Michael slapped Wiley's shoulder in a friendly way. He was aware that the ground had shifted under them. The young man's defiance had been replaced by the old deference of a Catholic seeking the approval of his priest. "I'm glad you're taking care of yourself."
"I guess I have some stuff to deal with."
"We all do."
"Could we talk about it sometime, Father? I mean, it's been a while since we got together."
"Sure, Nicholas," Michael said quickly, the pastoral reflex. But inwardly he was backpedaling. The kid seemed needy and unstable, prone like most radicals to politicizing his own insecurities. If they'd found it impossible to become friends the previous year it was because Michael could never quite relax with Wiley. Much as he wanted to he couldn't be himself. The kid was a little strange. "Though, you should check it out with your counselor. We wouldn't want to work at cross-purposes with your therapy, would we?"
"There are some religious angles, though, that my doctor can't help me with. Like, he doesn't agree with pacifism, but I think that's because he doesn't understand about the Crucifixion. Nonviolence always leads to the Cross
. I know that. But the Cross leads to the Resurrection."
Michael looked toward the airfield. It seemed to him that one plane in particular had begun to make its way toward them, a four-engine Constellation. If so, that was it.
Wiley talked on as if he'd forgotten what they were doing there. "My therapist calls it 'passivism,' and he thinks Martin Luther King is a passive-aggressive. But, hell, so was Jesus! But what are we supposed to be, aggressive-aggressive? I mean, what's so bad about being passive-aggressive if it builds up the Kingdom of God? Or liberates God's people? Or ends the war? Gandhi says we have to be prepared to die for nonviolence, and that's what I think too."
"Nicholas..."
"But my therapist says Gandhi has nothing to do with me. That's what I mean, how can I—"
"Nicholas, I think the plane's here. We have a deal, right?"
Wiley's eyes went out of focus for a moment, strangely. Then, as if he'd snapped his own lapels, he seemed to remember where he was. He followed Michael's gaze out to the airfield, then assumed his earlier manner. "Right," he said. "No pictures."
"And don't talk to anybody."
"And I can see you tomorrow?"
"Yes, but only about the children." He resolved to call Dorothy Day, but had the feeling he should be calling the kid's doctor.
They walked out to the ambulances and joined the others. The rain was falling harder, and as the airplane closed in, the wash from its propellers swirled the ground puddles and whipped the air. The men had to hold their hats.
As Michael watched the plane porpoising slightly as it slowed and cut an exact arc behind the "Follow Me" truck, he knew very well what the moment meant. It had been more than a year and a half since his time in Vietnam, and since then the beleaguered country had become a mystical kingdom to him, a bewitched realm of the unreal with mad rulers and spiraling violence and a fairytale curse of reversals that turned every "improvement" into yet another unsolvable problem. He had been charged with relieving the suffering of Vietnamese children, and he had preached their cause with eloquence and feeling in pulpits and chanceries all over America. But in fact, however acutely he made others feel it, the suffering of those children had become a remote abstraction to him. Even the horror of napalm had until now generated a visceral reaction, but at the moral level more than the personal. It was the idea of its use that offended him, the idea of its effects that outraged him, the idea of burned children that made him afraid his country had lost its way. He could not tell you the name of any of its victims. He could not imagine what it was to hold one or love one or lose one. He was like the pilots who pressed their buttons in rarefied cockpits high above the earth. Whom the pilots injured Michael sought to heal, but from the same distance and with a like detachment. When he realized this about himself he shrank from the knowledge. Tonight, thank God, it was going to change. He wanted to take the first child he came upon into his arms, but even that image was wrong, a product of his quite American insensitivity, his sentimental abstraction, for burned flesh cannot be embraced without increasing the victim's agony infinitely. All one can do, really, for such children is to gaze upon them, find their eyes and not let them see you flinching. What they do for you, on the other hand, is obliterate your aloofness. Michael was ready for that, and he was smart enough to be afraid.
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