Now They Call Me Gunner

by Thom Whalen

  * * *

  From Monk’s garage, we rode straight back to Oak Falls. Following Randal down the highway, I couldn’t chat with him, but I knew what he was planning. It was mid-afternoon and he was going to check out the Snakes’ clubhouse. Either someone would be there and we would have another tense chat with other members of the club or it would be empty and we would get the lay of the land in preparation for tonight’s encounter.

  I was hoping that we wouldn’t find anyone there. I don’t know what Randal was hoping.

  He stopped back at the service station where we’d gassed up earlier and asked for directions to Route One.

  The attendant pointed down the road and we were off again.

  Oak Falls is smaller even than Wemsley, so it didn’t take much effort to find the turn onto Route One.

  Kenny Mill was identified by a faded sign hanging from a post beside the road. There was a dirt driveway winding back into the trees. A rotting wooden gate was hanging open. It looked like it hadn’t been closed in decades. The top hinge was hanging loose and the bottom rail was sinking into the dirt.

  Randal wasn’t shy about riding down the driveway despite another faded sign warning us that this we were entering private property and advising us not to trespass.

  I guess we had a right to be here. Monk had invited us. In a way.

  When Randal hit the dirt, I started choking on his dust and had to accelerate to get beside him. My bike fishtailed a bit but I managed to hang on without dumping it. I was getting good at this.

  The driveway was long, maybe a quarter mile. As we passed through the overhanging trees ­– oaks, I think – I heard a dog barking frantically, growing louder as we drew nearer.

  I hoped that it was chained. Then the barking resolved into two voices. Then a third dog joined the first two. There was a pack at the end of the driveway.

  I had no desire to be torn apart by dogs. If they weren’t chained or penned, then I wasn’t stopping my bike. I’d face a motorcycle gang for Randal, but not a pack of dogs.

  When we emerged from the trees, I was struck by the decay of a fine Victorian-era house. White paint was peeling from the gingerbread along the eaves. The shingles on the roof were curling with age. Unruly bushes grew along the sun-faded blue walls, reaching past the windows to filter the light that tried to enter. A board was missing from one of the front steps.

  Unless remedial measures were taken soon, the deterioration would be irreversible.

  The barking was coming from three German shepherds locked in a chain-link pen set back behind the house on one side. Unlike the house, the chain-link was shiny new.

  A garage sat next to the dog pen, big enough to hold three cars, at least. I was pretty sure that it had stabled horses when it was built.

  Randal killed his engine and I followed suit. The dogs barked all the louder.

  He looked at me. “May as well knock, but nobody’s going to be home.”

  I wasn’t sure that he was right about that. The dogs would have alerted anyone in the house, but the windows were so overgrown, we wouldn’t know if eyes were peering out of them.

  “Mind the step,” he said as he hopped over the missing board.

  As predicted, nobody answered his knock.

  We walked around the back of the house and saw why it was called Kenny Mill. A small stone foundation rested beside a fast flowing stream. The mill had been placed to take power from the flow. I don’t know what it had milled, maybe it had ground grain to flour or cut lumber. I was pretty sure that some old sawmills were this small.

  Though we were out of sight, the dogs were still barking. They were getting on my nerves.

  Randal showed little interest in the ruins. History did not grip him. Instead, he sat on the edge of the foundation and looked back toward the two buildings that were still standing. “House or garage?”

  “What?”

  “Which do you think is the Road Snakes’ clubhouse? The house or the garage?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Party or ambush?”

  “I don’t know.” The word ambush made me nervous. The last time Randal had used that word, he had been flipping out on me. It was the Viet Cong, not the Road Snakes, that he had been fighting on the highway a few days ago.

  “We better be ready for both,” he said. “Hope for a party but be set for an ambush.”

  “How do we get ready for an ambush?” I asked.

  “Not by walking into it blind, that’s for sure.” He looked a little like Eastwood when he squinted into the sun. “Knowing the terrain is important but knowing your enemy is critical. That’s the problem in ‘Nam. We went in before we knew the enemy and we never got up to speed. They surprise us every day. Damn command sitting in their air-conditioned trailers never looked Charlie in the eye. They think they can plot strategy when they got no way to measure Charlie’s grit or brains. I’ve looked Charlie in the eye and I’ve looked our own brass in the eye and I know one thing as sure as I’m standing here. We’re not going to win. Our boys are going to keep dying in the jungle until the President admits that America’s getting its ass kicked and gets the hell out of there.”

  I didn’t like hearing anyone saying that we were getting our ass kicked. America is the greatest country in the world. The greatest military force in history. “But for every American they kill, we kill ten of theirs. They can’t keep it up.”

  He barked a bitter laugh. “Don’t you believe it, kid. You heard of My Lai? You think that’s the only time we killed old men, women, and children? A soldier shoots an old woman in the back of the head when she’s kneeling in a rice paddy and the American command is going to swear that she was Viet Cong and add her body to the tally. And you know the funny part? She’s South Vietnamese. She was our ally until we wasted her. The real score, the soldier-for-soldier score in firefights where the so-called enemy is shooting back, is nowhere near what command claims. North Vietnamese babies are being born and growing into men faster than we can kill them. They can keep fighting this war forever. If we stay there for a thousand years, they’ll still keep fighting. They have no choice They live there. They have nowhere else to go.”

  I stared at him. I’d never heard anyone talk about the war like this.

  “We aren’t the first, you know. Before us, they were fighting the French and, during World War Two, the Japanese. They’ve been fighting foreigners for as long as any of them can remember. It’s their way of life. They wouldn’t know what to do if they didn’t have foreigners to kill.” Randal shook his head. “Kid, you get your student deferment and you hope to hell that we realize that we’ve already lost the war before your number comes up. You don’t want to go to ‘Nam, ever.”

  I looked at the house and garage and thought about the Road Snakes. I didn’t want to be here, either.

  “Come on,” he said. “We gotta get into position.”

  I followed him back out to the front yard. When he kicked his bike to life and roared back out the driveway, I hoped that we were going to give up and ride back to Wemsley.

  No such luck.

  A half-mile down the road, Randal pulled off into a wide space and killed his engine. “We park the bikes here.” He peered into the brush.

  Where he was looking might have been an abandoned driveway or maybe just a game trail, but it was flat enough to push the bikes back so that they were out of sight.

  Randal pulled a piece of bamboo from somewhere under of his denim jacket. When he pulled it apart, I saw that it was a knife. A long, grooved blade was secured into a bamboo handle. The longer section of the bamboo was the sheath. He hacked a few small branches off a tree and then re-sheathed the blade and returned the knife to some inner pocket.

  I had no idea that he came armed. It gave me no comfort.

  He laid the branches across the bikes to further hide them from anyone driving down the road. Then I followed him on foot back down the driveway toward Kenny Mill.

  Though the big knife was
out of sight, I couldn’t stop thinking about it while we walked.

  Billy had been stabbed to death. According to Chief Albertson, multiple stab wounds had turned his guts to hamburger. There was no question in my mind that Randal’s knife could do a job like that. It looked like it had been made for exactly that purpose.

  I only had Randal’s word that he had not killed Billy. And Randal was crazy. Certifiable crazy. Not firmly connected to reality. He might have come upon Billy out in the bush around Smoke Pond and decided that he was back in ‘Nam and Billy was a Viet Cong.

  Randal left the driveway and pushed into the bush. “Well, come on,” he called back when I was slow to move.

  I scrambled to catch up to him. If he flipped out, it would be safer to be with him like one of his own squad than thrashing around in the bush somewhere nearby like Charley.