We Were Beautiful Once

by Joseph Carvalko

  “Yes, sir! Be right back, sir.” He ran out as if he had been ordered by the warden himself.

  Harris twiddled his pencil. “Who stayed behind?”

  The prisoner put his hand to his forehead to wipe away the sweat. “I only know from my hut. I had names for everybody, Waltz, I called ’im Missouri Waltz, was a guy I called Jamestown Races, real name Jameston, and Jack-Be-Nimble—can’t remember his whole name—real nut bag, never stopped rhymin’ and countin’. Don’t remember his last name, ’cept that’s what I called him.” Montoya hesitated, “Wait, now, wait, no, not Jack-Be-Nimble, cause he was a sick fuck, disappeared sometime before it got warm. There was another couple ’a guys, ain’t good at remembering names.”

  “Why were they left behind?”

  He raised his hands in the air. “Couldn’t be sure, maybe brainwashed, signed papers. You know?”

  “Remember the men you went with?”

  “Don’t remember but a few.”

  “Did Girardin go?”

  “No, he went on a detail in... oh, winter maybe. Never came back.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Do you recall if there were any officers with you when you shifted camps?”

  “Yes and no. I think the first louey went, and maybe one more.”

  “Why did you remember him?” Harris glanced across at Foster, but could read nothing from his expression.

  “Cause when I was captured, I was sent to the dayroom for grilling.”

  “Was the officer there?”

  “Yeah, he translated. He was comfy with the Chinese."

  “What’d you mean translated?”

  “Spoke Chinese, like I said, so if the chinks wanted to talk, they used him.”

  “Tell me about the day they came and got you.”

  He shrugged. “When they came an’ got us, we didn’t know what they were up to. But it wasn’t unusual that they’d line us up, bring us to this big opened area an’ try an’ brainwash us.”

  “Any other details come to mind?”

  The guard put a pitcher of water on the table. Foster poured three glasses. Harris continued, “Any rumors what they’d planned?”

  “Nope, they rounded us up, four, five hundred guys.”

  “Where’d the rest of the men come from?”

  “When we fell out in the yard, there was lines of men. It was humid, dark, nobody shootin’ the shit.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Nothing. We waited. Couple hours, hot... humid like I said. Marched us out of camp four across.” He walked his fingers on the table.

  Harris felt the sweat dripping off his back. “When’d you reach your destination?”

  “Half-day, maybe five, six hours.”

  Harris inhaled, slowly letting his breath out again. He looked at Foster, wondering what to make of the story. “You say you never saw Girardin again?”

  “Never. Positive.”

  “Did you imagine he died?”

  The room went silent for about thirty seconds.

  Montoya asked, “What time you got, Mister?”

  “You going someplace?” Harris ribbed.

  Catching on, Montoya countered, laughing. “Yeah, wanna join me for lunch?”

  “You imagine he died?” Harris asked again, straight faced.

  Montoya’s smirk vanished. “Man, I ain’t never ’magined about nobody.”

  “So you never saw Roger Girardin after the winter?”

  “Nope.”

  “What’d you think the move was for?” Harris asked, returning to the mass exodus.

  “You mean to the Death Valley?”

  “Death Valley? What’s that?”

  “That’s the name we gave the camp we was marched to.”

  “How long did everyone stay in this Death Valley? ’Til the switch in August?”

  “Don’t know really. After about three weeks, I slipped out one night. Ran about twenty miles. Stayed close to shore.”

  “So you escaped?”

  “Uh-huh, then got caught.”

  Harris seemed respectful of Montoya’s moxie. “How long were you gone?”

  “A week. Couldn’t find no food so—look at me, I could pass for gook, right?” Montoya chuckled. “So, I got closer to the villages to get food and got caught.”

  “By whom?”

  “NKs. Took me back to Camp 13. Put me in a hole. By then it was near August. One day a guard just let me out, out of the hole. Went to my old hut. What a fucking homecoming.”

  “Who was there?”

  “Guy I called “Fartin’ Arsen” and another guy. Can’t remember names. Just the three of us now.”

  Montoya looked at the guard: he had his eyes shut. “Ay, cabron! Es too mucha work! Needa break!” He starting laughing and then coughing.

  “Do you remember what he looked like?” asked Harris, annoyed with the banter.

  “No, can’t say.”

  “And, I take it you stayed till Big Switch?”

  “Yeah, first came Little Switch in April, and we figured that the wounded would finally get home. A lot of guys left in bad shape. I had no idea if they was going to let the rest of us go.”

  “And you? When’d you leave Camp 13?”

  “Late August, put us on trucks, drove us outside of Panmunjom.”

  “Did you see the guys from Death Valley?”

  “Nope, not one, but then all the POWs weren’t in Panmunjom at the same time.”

  “Did anyone question where they were?”

  “No. No one knew where these other guys were, and... ”

  “When did you realize these guys didn’t come back?”

  “Wasn’t till you and me talked and you told me you were looking for Girardin.”

  “You didn’t try to find any of these guys after the war?”

  Sounding a note of regret, Montoya explained, “Look man, we was young. When I got out in ’53, was twenty-two.” He looked down at his hands. “I came back here to New Mexico to get my life started. I was pretty fucked up. Drank, smoked everything I could get my lips on, weed, peyote. No, never tried to get in touch. Tried to forget, figured they did too.”

  Foster rose from his chair, took out a hanky, wiped the sweat off his face. Montoya cackled, “Hey, homie, make ya cry?”

  Putting his hands on the table, Foster asked, “I’d like to ask a few questions.”

  “Fire away, Harry,” encouraged the senior lawyer.

  Foster looked at Montoya wryly. “Sir, tell me, the man you refer to as Roger, could his last name have been Garden or Jorden?”

  “Well, hard to remember now.”

  “But, pardon me for asking, is your first language English or Mexican?’

  “English.”

  “You have a very thick Mexican accent.”

  Montoya laughed. “No shit, college boy, we spoke Spanish when I was a kid.”

  “Well isn’t it possible that what now you think is Girardin could have been Jorden, Garden, or even Gardin—like the flower without the “ya” at the end?”

  “Or Geronimo?” Montoya giggled. “Maybe, could ’a been. I got it right.”

  “Can you spell it for me, I mean Roger’s last name. The one you knew.”

  “I ain’t no good a speller.”

  Foster insisted in a low, mocking voice, “Try.”

  “F-U-C--” laughed Montoya.

  ***

  Back in Washington, Harris and Foster headed for the Pentagon to debrief John Russell. Sloppily dressed in a short sleeved white shirt and shiny red tie, Russell—all 5’5”—stood in his office doorway eyeing Harris through washed-out gray eyes. He breathed heavily through a globular ruddy nose, “Come in, have a seat.” He moved behind his oak desk, flopped his wide ass on a soft chair. Behind him, Old Glory and the Army Flag drooped to the floor; to the right a picture of President Reagan looked past the men. He dispensed with small talk.

  “Gentlemen, what’d you find in New Mexi
co?”

  “Sir,” Harris began, “There was a suggestion that Girardin was in Camp 13 and likely disappeared after some detail, sometime in the winter.” He followed with his analysis of something more troubling—at least to Harris and Foster. “Mr. Secretary, if Montoya is telling the truth, there is a strong indication that a war crime was committed. We have more than one returning POW mentioning in the Panmunjom reports that the last time they saw so-and-so was June ’53 and never returned. I’ll bet we have counted a few hundred guys that went unaccounted for. This is over and above the guys that died throughout ’51, and the ones we accounted for that likely died in Camp 13.”

  “Well, Harris, ‘war crime’ is pretty strong. Why, what those bastards did in not caring for the sick and wounded in that camp was a war crime. We lost maybe 3,000 men.”

  “I realize that, but it looks to me like a couple hundred men disappeared, most sent to a place called Death Valley. Disappeared off the face of the Earth.”

  “Yeah, and one of our officers may know more about this,” Foster added. “May have been involved in the transfer of prisoners to this place.”

  Russell looked at Foster annoyed. “What are you saying, Counselor?”

  “I’m saying that Montoya keeps bringing up some officer that spoke Chinese. Thought he was ‘comfy with the Chinese’ were his words. Closest I could trace it was to a lieutenant by the name of Hamilton.”

  Russell shot back, “For Christ’s sake, get off that. Trent Hamilton is no more a collaborator than I am.”

  Shrugging his shoulders sheepishly, Foster replied, “Just telling you what I heard.”

  “Well knock it off, you hear, knock it off, that kind of talk isn’t helpful.”

  Russell had a scowl on his face. “Gentlemen it looks to me like Montoya’s recollection only leads to more speculation and only a suggestion Girardin was even in Camp 13.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s about right,” Harris added. “The guy seemed pretty flip about all this.”

  “How credible is he, anyway?”

  “He’s a convict,” Harris said forcefully.

  Russell looked at his overfed hands. “Yeah, yeah, suppose he wouldn’t make the best witness.”

  Harris supported Russell’s instincts, “No, sir, he could do damage if he continued to only have a vague recollection.” The men fell silent, and Harris used the pause to make his departure.

  But Russell had one last question. “What about this Montoya guy? Can the other side get to him?”

  “Well our questioning will be protected; we don’t have to turn it over.”

  “I mean, can they question him?”

  “Sure, if they can find him.”

  “Well let’s see what we all can do to make sure they can’t,” Russell said, in what Harris thought sounded an unmistakably sinister tone. The men were quiet. Then Russell asked, “Who is this Nick Castalano anyway? An ambulance chaser?”

  “I’ve known him for some time. He used to work as a Veteran Affairs contract lawyer, handling their Agent Orange defenses. You know, the Vietnam vets would make a claim for disability based on Agent Orange, the VA’d deny them, and they’d send the cases to this guy if the vets appealed.”

  “What the hell would he take a case like this, if he’s a defense lawyer—against veterans to boot?”

  “The VA stopped sending him cases about a year ago because the vets started a class action suit, and they hired some big firm. He lost the work.”

  “Was he good? Did the VA win on his watch?”

  “Yea, old Nick had no mercy. Won twenty-five out of twenty-five, as I can tell. He’s no tree hugger.”

  “Can we make him a deal?”

  “It’s possible. Anything’s possible.”

  Harris and Foster were halfway down the hall before when Russell yelled out, “Harris, come back here a minute. Not you Foster, just Harris.”

  “Sir?”

  “Step in. This is for your ears only. For reason’s I can’t go into, we have a record indicating Girardin and another soldier were wanted by CID and the CIA. We need to be careful. Under no uncertain terms is any ‘so-called’ order to apprehend this man to come out.”

  Russell put up his hand to stall the questions he saw in Harris’ expression. “That’s all I’m permitted to say at this point. Let’s just dispose of this case in the most efficient way possible.”

  Amber Waves of Grain

  1983

  ON THE MORNING OF JULY 28, 1983, Julie rose from a restless night in her brother’s spare bedroom. Jack had already left the house—probably he was on his way to court to answer the subpoena. She phoned Jack’s wife Anna to tell her what had transpired the night before, and they talked about whether Jack was on his medication and how they could get him back into the VA to see the psych doctor. They hung up without a plan. She then phoned the hospital where she worked as a nurse and called in sick before slipping into a plain white cotton outfit she’d found in the closet. She made no attempt to hide the puffy bags beneath her large, round eyes with makeup. Passing by the hallway mirror she adjusted a small-brimmed reddish hat she found in the closet and walked to the bus stop.

  She saw Father Ryan—two dark olive eyes on each side of a pugilist’s nose staring back. He patted the empty seat next to him. In his rough Irish brogue, he bid her good morning and returned his attention to his newspaper. But after a few stops, he folded it in his lap and started a conversation, one which Julie found hard to follow. It wasn’t the first time the gray haired Jesuit looked into her lime-green eyes and mused about the unfathomable—this time how life flowed, sometimes fluctuating slowly, sometimes going “bang bang,” outside our control.

  “All things happen for a reason, Julie. Happenings are really signs.”

  “Father, I take things as they unfold, don’t question much, maybe don’t even see the signs.” She fiddled with her hat, wondering if it smelled musty, like the bedroom where it had laid untouched for years.

  The priest rolled the newspaper into a hollow tube, tapping it on his palm, putting it to his eye, and looking through it like a telescope.

  “From the time you were a little girl at St. Pat’s Grammar, you charted your own course.”

  She could not tell if he was teasing or serious. She clutched her purse and squeezed her knees tight to avoid touching him. Then she looked over and smiled without cracking her lips. “I can’t put no finer point on it than that, Father. Guess I learned early in life not to reach for the next moment when it wasn’t time.”

  Julie looked out the window. “But I wonder, wonder if the Lord always gives us a sign. You know, that it’s coming.” She heard the buzzer signaling the driver to pull over at the next stop. The bus changed lanes and slowed down.

  Ryan twisted the rolled up newspaper with both hands. “He always gives us a sign, Julie. Sometimes like a message inside a bottle bobbing its way to shore, and sometimes it comes like the ocean itself, pounding the rocks in the throes of a storm. We have to want to see the sign.”

  Julie rose grabbing the overhead strap as the bus crawled to her stop. She smiled at the priest, this time showing the fullness of her perfectly straight teeth. “You’ve made me self-conscious of the bus pulling on me while it slows.”

  “Yes,” he said waving goodbye (or giving benediction? she wondered). “We go through life mostly unaware of what’s happening to us, but if we have faith, we’ll surely see the signs.”

  Julie gingerly stepped from the bus one foot at a time and walked to the courthouse, where the doors were still locked. She sat on a bench in a courtyard lined with zinnias and black-eyed Susans. It reminded her of a secret garden she’d once had. She pulled her diary from her purse and wrote:

  Father Ryan thinks hidden forces move us through the simplest and most complex parts of life, birth canals, hospital beds, graves, purgatory and maybe hell. These are signs. Maybe today’s bus takes me to the place where those hidden forces connect the part of me left behind to the part of me that I s
ee in the mirror every day.

  Julie waited until a Federal Marshal unlocked the outer glass doors. “Sir, can you tell me where the trials are held?” she asked. The Marshal lifted his thick arm and pointed down an empty hall. She walked down the wide granite corridor, her low heels making a sharp, tapping sound that echoed off the walls. She stopped at a brown cork bulletin board next to the clerk’s office. And she gasped when she saw his name: Roger Girardin versus the U.S. Army—Courtroom 6, 10:00 a.m. She hadn’t seen it typed out since she saw the notice from the Army in the Girardin family living room thirty-three years ago. It was eerie to see the name posted, impersonal, not like she saw it, written out in his handwriting on Christmas or birthday cards, on letters tucked into the shoe box she had kept in the back of her closet in a bed of silvery dust balls. In that same place, she kept her high school graduation pumps, next to the galoshes she wore to the beach the day she and Roger whispered goodbyes, the week after he unbuttoned her dress in a New Haven hotel, the same dress hanging over the collection of footwear.

  Another Bite at the Apple

  WITH NO EYEWITNESS TO GIRARDIN’S ULTIMATE disappearance, Nick had little choice but to reconstruct, through three or four witnesses, the events that took place from 1951 through 1953, in POW Camp 13. Together, he and Kathy were putting the final touches on the brief that would support Art’s claim for damages while Mitch organized and copied the exhibits Nick would introduce into evidence. It was close to quitting time and Nick and Mitch were wrapping it up for the week, but Kathy, with her elbows planted on the desk opposite Nick, wasn’t quite ready to leave.

  “Nick, what’s our approach anyway? How do you think you can overturn the Army Board’s decision that Roger was MIA.”

  “Good question. We know that the Board has jurisdiction in these cases, but no agency can just wave their hand like some Omnipotent, and without the slightest attempt to carry out their Constitutional mandate— you know due process and all that— proclaim such and such without some legitimate basis.”

  “But they didn’t Nick. Girardin petitioned, gave them what he had, the Army investigated and the Board decided that the record didn’t support a finding that the man was a POW. Case closed. Sounds like he got his day in court.”