We Were Beautiful Once

by Joseph Carvalko

  Hamilton’s beefy hand opened his briefcase, grabbed and laid before the men engineering plans for an optical guidance system that could aim handheld missiles at low flying targets. It was about the size of a large camera: ten pounds. How Tat Wah would use the device, Hamilton could only guess. A forerunner of the product had been used to pan cameras in U-2 spy planes that photographed Cuban missile sites. It had remained classified, and, understandably, the U.S. was reluctant to license it for export. Russell knew how to get things done, however, and four weeks earlier, he had given Hamilton the green light to meet with his foreign connections.

  The matter of interpreting drawings was left to the Indian engineers. Tat Wah and Hamilton went outside. Taking a long drag on his cigarette, Hamilton said, “Look around— isn’t this a despicable place?”

  “Yes, though no fault of ours.”

  “It’s a good place to do business,” Trent breathed confidently.

  “Yes, labor is economical.” Tat Wah tapped his cane, scanned the neighborhood. “As far as Calcutta’s misery goes, we play no part in it.”

  Nearly two hours had passed before the Indians went in search of the two men, and reconvening, the engineers affirmed the integrity of the drawings. Tat Wah picked up the phone and called Hong Kong. Hamilton heard him wire $2,000,000 into a Swiss bank account with a designated account number. After lunch, the men returned to the cubbyhole, where Hamilton called the Disraeli Bank, which confirmed the deposit.

  “Well, Tat Wah, as always, well... not always.” The two men smiled reservedly in the way men familiar, but distant, do.

  “Excellent seeing you, Trent,” the Chinese smiled warmly, adding, “We are survivors, are we not?”

  “That we are, Tat Wah. See you when I have something.”

  The American empty handed, pockets full, and the Chinese, plans in hand, bowed toward one another and went separate ways—one east, one west along the side street.

  Prequel to Reckoning

  WHEN JACK LEFT THE COURTHOUSE after his interview with Nick, he had a five-day beard, pants soiled at the knees and a torn shirt. On the bus ride home he squirmed, obsessing about his jail time, past and possibly the future. He arrived home close to four, jumped in the shower, then wolfed down a peanut butter sandwich he found in the refrigerator. With a full belly and body scraped of three days grit, he laid down on the couch, beer in hand, closed his eyes and like all other attempts at sleeping lately, he thrashed, mumbling about his upcoming court appearance and what he failed to tell Nick. He had his own theory of what the map symbols meant, because he knew where he had seen them before. The lawyer did not need to know what he knew about marks on a pad in a Progressive day room when he dealt with a Chinese interrogator.

  The next morning the sun beamed into his window partly shaded by the hundred-year-old oak in the backyard. He walked to the Silver Streak for a cup of joe. After downing two cups, reading the local headlines and avoiding eye contact with Mol the flirty waitress, he walked to the rectory to see Father Ryan. He knew the priest was an early riser because he served the six o’clock mass. He rang the bell. A haggard looking nun with a thin, sharp nose answered. Pulling her black cardigan taut over a starched, white blouse, she asked, “Can I help you, young man?”

  “Sister, is Father Ryan in?”

  “No, my boy, earlier he went over to the veteran’s home to give last rites.”

  Jack twisted his lips and then walked past St. Patrick to the green park bench with a brass plaque that read: Purity, Innocence, Sympathy. PIS he mumbled to himself as he surveyed the stone rectory. At six, the church bell announced the recitation of the Angelus. He closed his eyes, bowed his head and put his hands over his ears. Eventually the bell stopped clanging, the noise giving way to screeching black birds sitting on the telephone wires across the street. He walked to the granite stairs into the basilica where a mildly obese priest shuffled up the left side on his way to the confessional. The first in line for confession was a woman with beagle-like, flaccid cheeks wearing a red pullover sweater and blue scarf. Next were two old men, one flour white, the other a jaundiced yellow. When the last of the penitents departed, Jack opened the curtain, kneeled before the shuttered wire separating him from God’s ear and said, “Father, the noise has returned.”

  “What’s that, my son?”

  “The ringing, screeching it’s come back.”

  “My son, it’s completely silent here. Perhaps you need to see a doctor?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Proceed, then.”

  “Bless me, father, for I have sinned, it’s been two weeks since my last confession.”

  On Jack’s walk home he noticed a strange car parked beyond his house, smoke pouring from its exhaust. He looked out the front window several times to see if it had left, and eventually dismissed his concern.

  Starring An Eye Witness

  WHEN THE CLOCK OVER THE JURY BOX struck 10 a.m. Lindquist assumed the center of the judicial prefecture he’d command for the next several hours. In his usual way, he glared at the crowd through the drugstore half-glasses resting over his spacious nostrils. He rubbed his neck below his jaw nodding to Nick, “Counselor, call your next witness.”

  Again, the already sweltering courtroom had no vacancies. Julie, and now Anna, Jack’s estranged wife, eyes front, sat quietly, dressed in the black dress she had worn to the half-dozen funerals she had attended, including her son’s. Like her sister-in-law, she wore little makeup, her expression calling her out among the reporters as not simply a woman with little to do, but someone with an interest in the proceedings.

  “Your Honor, plaintiff calls Mr. Jack Prado O’Conner to the stand.” Jack was sitting between Julie and Anna. Gaunt, cheek swollen, lower lip puffy, a knob on the back of his head, he brushed past Julie and the other spectators, each moving their legs sideways. As he made his way down the center aisle, the crowd observed a narrow, six-foot-tall man tucking his shirt into wrinkled pinstriped pants. He felt hundreds of eyes tracking him across the well, his heart pounded, his hands trembled as he imagined how his personal history would unfold before strangers, while someone out there was watching his every move. He regretted that he had refused to go south.

  In a hushed voice the clerk instructed him. “Stand here, in front of the witness box.” He felt the judge take his measure, and wondered what he thought about his bruises. He stared ahead, mouth agape, so that Amy Dusseldorf, the reporter from the local paper, would note: “A man who stands tall, weathered... looks like he’s spent years drinking... cheap whisky... and last night got the shit beat out of him.”

  “Please raise your right hand, sir,” shouted the clerk in his soprano voice, chin jutted forward.

  Jack had the urge to throw up. He raised his unsteady hand.

  “Mr. O’Conner, state your full name and address for the record.”

  “Jack Prado O’Conner, 320 Willa Street, Bridgeport.”

  “Be seated.”

  Nick began with a lilt to his voice. “Good morning, sir. Is it Mr. Prado or Mr. O’Conner?”

  “I prefer Prado. It was my grandfather’s name. I go by that name.”

  The stenographer, who since the trial started had changed her hair color from gray to brown, spoke in an official capacity for the first time. “Sir, you’ll have to speak up, or get closer to the microphone. I can’t hear you.”

  “Mr. Prado, you’re here under a subpoena, correct?”

  When Jack leaned into the microphone the spectators heard the barreled voice of a heavy smoker. “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you married, sir?”

  “Yes,” Jack answered, a slight quiver in his voice.

  In the split second that it took Nick to get to the next question, Jack blinked rapidly and made eye contact with the two darkest pools of light in the room: Anna’s deeply-set perfectly round eyes. He had looked into them hundreds of times, telling her she was the only one who could save him, like the time he practically poisoned himself drinking a
fifth of scotch following their son Will’s death. Hyperventilating, he breathed heavily.

  “What’s your wife’s name?”

  “Anna.” Jack’s eyes turned dewy.

  “Does she reside at your address?”

  Jack’s eyes shifted. “No, we’re separated.”

  “Sir, can you repeat that, I could not hear you,” squeaked the stenographer.

  Regaining his composure, Jack muttered, “We’re separated now.” He saw Anna avoiding his glance.

  “Sir, you enlisted in the army in May 1950, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you enlist alone or with a group?”

  “Well, I graduated college as an ROTC officer and had to serve a term of enlistment.”

  “Did you enlist with others from your class?”

  “Yes.”

  “Local boys?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember their names?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell us who, if you remember?”

  “A friend, a guy named Trent Hamilton.”

  The name Hamilton stopped Nick in his tracks. He looked down at his yellow pad. Sirens from a fire truck going by outside the courtroom let Nick take time to regain his composure.

  “Where do you work, sir?”

  “I’m unemployed. Used to be a manufacturing manager for companies around town.”

  “What companies were they?”

  “Well, the last company full-time was HH, I mean Hamilton Helicopters. Until ’72, then, after that I consulted for... ”

  Harris, exasperated, interjected. “Your Honor, I object to Mr. Castalano’s line of questioning. I fail to understand the relevance.”

  Lindquist exhaled audibly. “I assume this is introductory, but Counsel, please move along.”

  Nick nodded in deference to the judge. “Well yes, your Honor, I think I’ll tie this up if I’m permitted some latitude.”

  “Very well, Mr. Castalano, but before the evidence is closed you’ll have shown us its relevance.”

  “Mr. Prado, please provide a brief summary of your involvement with Hamilton Helicopters.”

  Jack grabbed the pitcher and poured a glass of water, which he drank. He then rested his hands on the witness box and rested his head on his chest, thinking about where to begin.

  ***

  The week after he returned from overseas he called Trent, and they exchanged what had transpired since they had last seen each other during the war. Trent told Jack that he had a job waiting at HH, but made no overture to meet socially. It wasn’t until six months later when Jack started work at HH that he and Trent met up. Again, neither of them spoke about Korea, or old girlfriends, keeping the discussion to what Jack would be doing in the Assistant Plant Manager role, a nice place to start a career.

  Jack understood Trent better than any man he knew—perhaps with the exception of his own father. And, he knew Korea would only open a wider circle of misgivings for both of them. Not to mention that the new job also paralleled Jack’s new relationship with Anna and neither man needed to go there, either.

  ***

  What Jack knew was that one January in ’55 he spotted Anna walking among a crowd of window-shoppers near Walgreen’s Drug Store. He yelled out, waving his arms. Through a breathy condensation he saw her cross the street with a big smile on her face. They talked over coffee. She asked him about Trent. He said he’d spoken to him by phone, but hadn’t seen him and as to Tracy he’d not seen her since he’d left for Korea. She told him that she wasn’t married, but had a son, William, who was about to turn four. The reunion led to a phone call the day after that in-turn led to coffee the following week. The day before Ash Wednesday, they went on their first date to a movie and afterward, to a local pizza joint, where a man with a goatee put a nickel in the juke and pushed, “Wanted” by Perry Como.

  “Jack, that’s my favorite song.” She watched for his reaction. Jack showed none. She made small talk: why her hips had broadened, why she’d let her hair grow over her shoulders, what she wanted out of life. Jack was skinnier than she’d remembered, thin faced, quieter. His hair glistened black and she thought him especially handsome, but he’d lost that Montgomery Cliff innocence the girls once teased him about, retaining, she thought, the actor’s shyness.

  After that first date they saw each other regularly. Easter came in early April that year and after mass, the couple went behind the church to take pictures of Will in his three-piece suit, brown fedora, scarf blowing in a light breeze under a full sun. Anna, with one hand, held the top of her blue wide-brimmed hat that had rested on the bun of her hair, and with the other hand motioned to Jack to stand next to the boy. Flicking aside her bangs, she focused the Brownie on a man and boy each missing part of themselves, snapping pictures that showed a child, chest out, a man his arm around the boy’s narrow shoulders. The couple sat on the bench near the rose garden while Will ran after pigeons pecking left over rice from a wedding. She snuggled close to Jack, her big-brim folding against his head. “You know, when Will was born his father wouldn’t come forward.” She paused. “It was Trent.”

  “I figured,” he said coldly.

  “Jack, I never told him.”

  “Somebody must’ve... but it’s none of my business.”

  “I knew he would’ve never accepted he was the father. I moved on.”

  Jack grabbed the knot in his tie. “Anna, let’s not talk about it.”

  She removed her hat, unfastened her bun, letting her hair fall over her shoulders. He rested his hand on her thigh and kissed her cheek.

  “A guy kisses a girl, but it doesn’t mean anything,” she said.

  Jack pulled out a cigarette, lit it, throwing the spent matchbook in front of them.

  “Anna, give me your hand.” Jack squeezed it tight. He blinked rapidly as he looked ahead.

  ***

  “Mr. Prado, did you understand the question?”

  “My first assignment at Hamilton was to assist the Plant Manager. I was assigned to production control, the department that schedules operations along the manufacturing line. The job entailed planning and distribution of materials and methods at different points and times.”

  “Mr. Prado, when you say Hamilton Helicopters, does it have any relation to Trent Hamilton, the man you enlisted with?”

  “Yes, his family owned the company. He got me the job.”

  ***

  If the entire story were relevant, which to the court it hardly was, Jack had a good job which abruptly ended in 1972 for reasons he did not have to account for in court. And he did not have to account for the details of the life he led after work—some might say the authentic one. When Anna and Jack had married in ’55, they moved into a cold-water flat across the street from the South End River. Every six hours, low tide exposed its tar stained banks and blanketed the air with the smell of bunker fuel and dead fish. For Jack, having recently spent three-plus years in a POW camp, it was home sweet home. For Anna, it was a starting place, and if Jack could make his way with a little help from Trent, she would get to where she felt she was always headed: Fairview. For now, on the other side of the river was the Hamilton Helicopters’ flight line and at any given hour—even deep into the night—they could hear the chop, chop, chop of the whirling blades, discomforting sounds if one focused on them. In decades to come, that same sound would haunt the memory of the men who left their youth in a Vietnamese rice paddy. One such ship would one day crash and in a significant way would lead to Jack’s quitting Hamilton Helicopters and all it represented.

  By now Nick had raised in Jack all those memories from when he had returned in ’54, and he worried that Nick might delve into the cloud of suspicion under which he returned. Even though the charge of commie sympathizer was never an issue between Trent and him, he couldn’t immediately work at HH until his discharge status was upgraded. So Trent’s family pulled out the stops for the eventual security clearance that followed, for reasons which J
ack could only speculate: past friendship, moral debts unpaid, for obligations assumed, for secrets kept.

  In all respects, Jack and Anna’s life hadn’t been different from the lives of other young families in the urban east from the mid-fifties forward. In ’57 Mona was born. By ’58 the couple had saved enough to buy a small six-room colonial on the west side of town. A ’49 Chevy sedan got Jack back and forth to work. During the day, Anna worked at a small variety store a block from home. Anna and Mona spent time together at Girl Scouts. During the summer Jack and Will would throw a baseball before supper. Winters, the two of them hibernated in the cellar, working on a massive toy train village. Jack watched his son’s mind work through his hands, moving from boyhood into adolescence. He watched him use the drill press to slowly bore its way through wood or sheets of steel on its way to making a soapbox racer. The days he and Jack spent in these places spoke volumes about the closeness between the man and the boy standing in peace on the solid ground called home.

  ***

  Nick proceeded to take Jack through the preliminaries of when he enlisted, the units he was assigned to, where he fought in the fall of ’50 and where he ended up at the beginning of ’51.

  “Mr. Jaeger testified that you and another man saved his life on or about November 27, 1950. He testified that he’d been on a scouting mission and, in the course of trying to kill an enemy soldier, he did not realize he himself was a target. He testified that a man with a name sounding something like yours came to his rescue. Do you not recall such an event?”

  “No, sir, never saved anybody’s life scouting.”

  Harris, muttered under his breath loud enough for Townsend to hear, “Goddamn it.” Lindquist raised his head and looked over at defense table. Harris avoided eye contact.

  “Mr. Prado, do you recall November 24 or 25, 1950, for any reason?”

  “Yes. Was with a rifle company, patrolling the north shore of the Ch’ongch’on River, maybe 50 miles south of the Yalu, near a little town called Unsan. Maybe west of it, actually. Snowed all day. Shortly before dark—this is late fall, it gets dark early—and just before it got dark, the Chinese struck.”