Strange Magic: A Yancy Lazarus Novel

by James Hunter

  I hadn’t wanted that, had I? Why had I left them, left my wife? Lauren with her strawberry-blond hair, clear blue eyes, and small happy smile, the one that never left her face. God, she was lovely. I could see her on the day I proposed: she was hugging me, tears running down her cheeks in tiny rivulets, a new engagement ring cuddling her finger. She was smiling so big. Except the smile had left. Left with me—I’d taken it. What a bastard.

  Shit. I hadn’t wanted the road—the decision had been forced. I couldn’t have given them anything good. I stole her smile though, made a pariah of myself, alienated myself from the boys. From leading a normal life. No nine-to-five. No retirement plan or health benefits. No cozy, white-picket home. No peace.

  When’s the last time I had peace, when I didn’t have to look over my shoulder? What the fuck was wrong with me? Who in the hell would want that? I’m alone now. A homeless man who lives by himself out of a car.

  I’m not a loser! Not a dead-beat Dad or a run out husband …

  What a bastard. I’m not … the decision had been forced—I couldn’t have given them anything good, not after … not after I’d come into my power. I’d needed to give them a fucking chance! Shit.

  You understand that, Lauren, don’t you understand?

  Where was I? Everything felt so fuzzy, my head all full of cotton balls, my thoughts jumbled … where was my body? Was that dog pee?

  Vietnam, that was it, I’d been shot. I was tired and dying.

  ELEVEN:

  The Bush

  “Son of a bitch!” I hollered, my voice lost amidst the chaos and panic filling the jungle around me. I heard the clak, clak, clak of weapon fire, the wet thunk of thick vegetation exploding, the strident shouts of NCO’s issuing commands, and the cries of injured Marines. Lots and lots of injured Marines.

  I held the pistol grip of my M-16 in one tightly clenched fist. Training demanded I start firing at the VC who had to be out in the jungle somewhere. That’s what I was supposed to do, what I’d been trained to do in this situation. But Martin was dead … everything was different now.

  “Son of a bitch! Someone help me!” I screamed again instead of firing, knowing I wouldn’t be heard—not over the clamor of battle. I didn’t know what else to do, so I kept calling out, hoping someone would hear.

  Corporal Martin was dead.

  My hip and thigh were full of heat, pinpoints of fiery light like hot coals—some the size of dimes, a few the size of quarters—covered my flesh. A part of my brain insisted I’d been shot, insisted I was dying and should give up. The rational part of my brain argued otherwise and was trying to slap the shit out of the gibbering madness in my head. I hadn’t been shot, it wasn’t that bad. Shrapnel was all, and shrapnel wouldn’t kill me. Probably. It wasn’t as bad as a bullet wound. Couldn’t be.

  I’ll be alright, I’ll be alright, I’ll be alright.

  Martin was dead though, so maybe I wouldn’t be alright.

  Shit, but it had happened so fast. The blast of light surrounding Corporal Martin, the dull pulse of sound, the whomp of air throwing me into the thick tangle of trees and foliage.

  This was Greg’s fault, that asshole.

  Here I was bleeding with a leg full of shrapnel, eight-thousand miles away from a good bar or a decent set of tunes, and for what? I didn’t want to trek through some jungle hunting for VC, weary of punji-pits, lobbing grenades and sending lead down range—I didn’t even like camping. He’d convinced me to come here. I wasn’t cut out to be a Marine, I wasn’t fit for this shit. Greg had persuaded me—he was so gung-ho, decked out in his ROTC uniform, talking the Corps up.

  I hoped he was okay. He’d been closer to the blast than me. He could be dead. He better not be dead, that asshole.

  “You’ll probably get drafted anyway, Yancy,” he’d told me matter-of-factly after we walked at high school graduation. “It’s not like you have other prospects anyway—don’t kid yourself, you’re not college bound.”

  “Doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll get drafted,” I’d told him, “there are lots of other guys that haven’t gotten snatched up and they didn’t go to college.”

  He snorted. “You’re not those guys, Yancy. You’re the most unlucky sonuvabitch I’ve ever met,” which was true. Everything bad happened to me. Bad things so improbable and absurd they could only be the stuff of high school nightmares, but weren’t. During freshman year, my locker had exploded, littering the hall with pages from my personal journal—the whole friggin’ football team got a real good laugh at all my innermost thoughts. Getting a date after that debacle? Forget about it. Took me three years to finally land a girl. Then, at senior prom, my pants had somehow spontaneously caught fire in front of the entire gymnasium. Had to rip them off to stomp out the flames.

  Me at prom, in my whitey-tighties, doing a jig on my burning pants. Mortifying. Unlucky didn’t begin to cover it.

  “Chances are,” he continued, “you’ll get drafted into some shitty Army infantry unit—probably get three weeks of basic and end up over in Nam by month’s end. No training, no friends, and unlucky as a rabbit about to lose its foot.”

  “I’m not a fighter, Greg. I don’t like the ROTC bullshit—I’d never make it in the Marines. Officers yelling. Sergeants yelling. Shit, the cooks probably yell. No thanks.”

  “That’s why we go in together, man.” He threw an arm around my shoulder. “I’ve already talked to a recruiter—we can go in on the buddy program. We’ll do basic together, go to SOI, hit the fleet in the same unit. I’ll get your back. Help you make it through the training.”

  He was probably right, with my luck I would get drafted to some shitty Army unit; probably fall into a bamboo-filled punji pit four days in-country. Greg was a good friend, we’d been buds for a long time, and I knew he’d have my back—he’d always had my back. Since freshman year, he’d been there: locker explosion, epic bullying, flaming pants, all of it. Damn good friend.

  And he was scared. Going to Nam was in his cards, and he was scared to face that game alone. He wouldn’t ever say it, he was too proud for that, but I could feel it in him. He wanted me to go in for him, as much as for me. It was a little selfish, but I didn’t hold it against him—he couldn’t ask me like a regular person. Not Greg. This was his way of reaching out. No one wants to go through something like a friggin’ war all by their lonesome.

  I didn’t have plans anyways, not really. I wasn’t going to go to college and I didn’t have a single job prospect lined up. Hell, I didn’t even know what I wanted to do for work. I liked music and cards, but those weren’t job possibilities, they were hobbies … truth be told, I was kind of a loser—exactly the type of guy that gets drafted and blown to pieces. Better to be in the Corps with Greg, than in the Army by myself.

  He convinced me, sold me the dream. And I’d bought it.

  But now I was bleeding in the Vietnam bush. If he was alive I was going to beat the tar out of him. I hoped he was alive. The thought of picking up his splintered limbs and ripped-up guts sent a few tears streaking down my face. I didn’t want him police calling pieces of my body either.

  “Son of a bitch! Someone help me! Help me!” I yelled. I didn’t want to die here, I was so young—too young—I didn’t want to end up like Martin.

  I could see the explosion all over again, replaying in my mind’s eye.

  Corporal Martin and Benson had been playing some grab-ass game off to the right, killing some time while Sergeant Thomas and the Com guy, Schneider, put in a radio call to HQ. They were laughing hard about whatever the hell they were doing, really chucking it up. The platoon was supposed to be practicing sound discipline, but no one minded—not even the Sergeant. We’d been in-country for what felt like a lifetime, about a month in actuality, and we hadn’t seen piss from the VC.

  Everyday our butter-bar lieu swore up and down that Charlie was out there—“don’t get complacent Marines, complacency kills.” Every day and every brief, the same shtick and the same sermon. Practice sound
discipline, practice light discipline. Stay sharp, stay alert, stay alive. Complacency kills, complacency kills, complacency kills. Twenty-one patrols—some during the hot of the day, others by the light of the moon—and not a bullet fired, not a single VC spotted. We’d patrolled in thick jungle, swampy bright-green rice patties, and dusty little villages with straw and tin roofs.

  A whole lot of nothing, save sore muscles and bug bites.

  God, Nam had some friggin’ bugs—Collins had woken up one night screaming, a fat black leech stuck on his tongue.

  So it was fine that Martin and Benson were screwing around a little, having a few yacks during the break. It made things easier to bear if you could laugh a little. Even without VC incoming, Nam was still a shithole: the long humps and the driving rain, the crap food, biting insects, and sleepless nights. Watch every friggin’ night. It was enough to make us all fray around the edges, and when everyone is armed with M-16s and grenades, frayed edges is bad-to-go.

  Plus, we’d been humping for three feet-numbing hours, pushing past vines and marching through knee-high grass. It was hot as balls and we were sweating oceans in the humid haze of the day. A little laughter was okay. And Sergeant Thomas was making a radio call, so we had time to kill and we deserved the break.

  Greg and I were picking at our C-rats, just a little bite to eat—he’d been leaning up against a tree and I’d been standing in the open. Shit, but everything had been hunky-dory in that moment, the platoon could’ve been on a nature walk. It wasn’t much different from the training exercises we’d done in Okinawa.

  “What do you miss most?” I’d asked Greg.

  He stared morosely at the beanie-weenies on his metal spoon. “Pizza,” he said. Yeah, I missed pizza too. We all missed regular food. Nasty-ass C-rations. Even the good ones were awful, and the whole lot of them either plugged you up or sent your running for the shit-can. At least they came with cigarettes and toilet paper.

  I picked through my ‘spaghetti.’ As if. “When I get back I’m gonna eat a fat ol’ cheeseburger and fries.” My mouth salivated at the thought. It was torturous to think about food when you were chowing down on C-rations—masochistic even—but it also made things more bearable. It helped remind us that someday we would go home, that cheeseburgers and pizza were waiting, and that Nam wasn’t forever.

  “You?” he asked. “What do you miss most?”

  “I miss Lauren and my boys,” I said without much thought. Lauren and I had been a serious item in senior year, but I hadn’t thought it would work—long-distance wasn’t my thing or hers. I’d accidentally knocked her up during boot leave, though, and everything changed. A son: little tow-headed, slobber-machine—he was a good kid. I missed him. My second son had been born right before Greg and I hit country. I’d had a week with him before deployment.

  “Don’t worry princess,” Greg said, noting the look on my face, “I’ve got your back, you’ll see ‘em—”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. Everything had been hunky-dory.

  One-step changed that.

  I could see it all again, like a movie reel playing in slow motion:

  Corporal Martin and Benson were playing some silly grab-ass game.

  Dio, Collins, and Schmidt were getting down on an impromptu game of Hold ‘Em.

  Dickens, Sottack, and Litchfield chain-smoked a round of cigarettes in the shade of a young tualang tree.

  Greg was telling me things were going to be okay.

  Then: Corporal Martin tripped a little, staggering from a patch of sunlight into the gloomy shade of a squat palm tree.

  Everything turned real slow, surreal, shrouded in haze and fog. Martin stumbled a little … a terrible light enveloped him, made his face and arms shine for a moment with radiant light. For an honest to God moment, it looked like an angel had come and scooped him up—like the rapture had happened, maybe. It scooped him up and was kind of beautiful in its way. Then the light was in him, in his arms and legs, hands and feet, face and guts—they pulled apart.

  The heat hit me like a wave and I was all caught up in the tangled undergrowth of the jungle floor. I’d never seen anything like it before, never seen death—not for real, not close up like that. The light had plucked Martin’s ass right up and tore him to pieces; it scattered chunks of him into the tualang tree that Dickens, Sottack, and Litchfield had been smoking under. Great ropy strings of gray guts hung from the overhead branches like crepe paper at a party.

  The light hadn’t killed him, I knew. It wasn’t an angel or the friggin’ rapture, it was a rigged 105 round. The VC had killed him. Then, the shooting began. I didn’t even know whether we were being fired at … shit, I wasn’t even sure there were VC up ahead. The blast had gone off and then the firing had started, but it could’ve been our side or theirs, I didn’t know. All I knew for sure was that Martin was dead and that I didn’t want to die.

  “Shit. Someone help!—” I let the scream fall away. There was something rustling in the bushes behind me, I couldn’t see, but I knew a person approached. A VC ambush, my brain shrieked. Some pajama-wearing Charlie was about to slit my friggin’ throat! Turn around, my maddened brain demanded, turn around and shoot that asshole into the next world! I fumbled for my M-16 but it was useless, my hands didn’t want to work and I couldn’t turn anyways, the pain was too much. I steeled myself for the end … Please God forgive me, please take care of my family, please let that asshole Greg live through this. Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, please-please-please-please …

  A hand fell on my shoulder and I almost let go of my bladder.

  “I got ya’, bud,” Greg said. He moved into view. Raw red and black flesh—speckled throughout with pieces of melted cammie—wrapped around his left bicep. But he was moving okay, despite the wound. Probably riding high as a kite on all the endorphins and adrenaline running through him.

  “I’m gonna get your ass out of here,” he said. “Told you I’d have your back.”

  He bent low and scooped me up with a grunt, settling my bulk around his shoulders in a classic fireman carry. My leg wanted nothing to do with it, the hot coals in my skin rekindled anew, my eyes drifted shut from pain. He started running—running—through the jungle away from the VC and back toward our last forward outpost. A little chunk of cadence drifted into my brain: Running through the jungle with my M-16, I’m a mean motherfucker I’m a U.S. Marine. Sight alignment, sight picture, right between the eyes—slow, steady squeeze and another VC dies. But if I should die in the combat zone, well box me up and ship me home.

  I saw a piece of Martin’s face, charred black, lying in a sparse dirt patch, staring at me with one glazed eye. Box me up and ship me home.

  TWELVE:

  Game Plan

  I woke up a lifetime later, flashes of Vietnam—like the brief burst of a rigged 105 round—fading into the dim, dusty vaults of memory. Martin’s charred face stared at me for a moment, but I pushed it away. Some memories were better left forgotten and buried.

  I didn’t know where I was, but I was alive. Score one for me. I knew I was alive because of the pain: the hurt was an inferno in my bones and flesh, almost alive itself. The agony lashed upward from my wounded posterior, danced around my bruised ribs, and finally did a mean-spirited jig on my busted-up chin. Pain like this is only for the living.

  But I actually felt better than I expected to. Someone—either Morse and the bikers or the Kings—had taken the time to patch me up and they’d actually done a competent job. I could feel the stiff edge of stitches running over the surface of my ass and there were squares of gauze affixed to my skin with paper tape in a variety of places, including my aching chin. My captors had even hooked me up to a portable IV (admittedly, it was hanging from a worn-down coat rack), which appeared to be pumping saline fluid and antibiotics into my veins. Nice, though I bet my co-pay was going to be hell. Gang health care is notoriously expensive in the end. Way worse than your typical HMO, though maybe not by much.

  The next thing I noticed was
that I couldn’t move, like at all. I was still feeling groggy from the lingering effects of the tranquilizing agent, but my immobility was total—way more than some left over tranq juice could account for. I’d been Saran-wrapped to a plastic, folding, banquet table, like the kind a church might use at an outdoor luncheon. I still had pants on, but my captors had stripped away every other article of clothing. The suffocating, squeaky tight plastic looped around my arms and torso in thick swathes, pulling at my body hair. My jeans masked the feeling of the wrap, but a constricting pressure—both above and below my knees—told me they too had been fastened securely in place.

  Damn, Saran-wrap was a smart move. I couldn’t risk cutting the stuff with an air construct, or I’d likely filet myself in the process. Likewise, if I tried to burn through the stuff, the whole mess would go up in flames and leave me one very crispy-critter—it’d be like getting blasted with friggin’ napalm.

  Well, at least I could move my head, even if it felt like trying to pick up a mountain. I sure hoped the fading aftereffects of the drugs would pass in time. I wasn’t too optimistic though, the damn headache throbbing behind my temples felt like it was probably going to be sticking with me for a while yet. None of that mattered though—I couldn’t afford to lay around waiting to fully recover. I could be dead by then. So, I made an effort to lift my thousand-pound noggin and take a little looksee, even though it caused a renewed wave of hurt to skip through my skull.

  If I had any hope of getting out of here, I needed to first figure out where here was. I also needed to figure out what kind of defenses I’d be going up against.

  The room wasn’t anything special—certainly not the freaky old-brick dungeon I’d envisioned in my mind: a moderate sized living room, which wouldn’t be out of place in any middle-class home. An oversized, wrap-around sofa hugged the wall to my left and disappeared behind my head. Directly in front of me sat a big flat screen, framed by a set of thick brown drapes, covering a large den window, with a reinforced front door to the left. A sparsely filled bookcase and a small table, holding car keys and assorted junk mail, off to my right.