A Question of Manhood Read online

  Chris said the trouble with this plan was that the driver was so far above ground that unless he landed in water, he was probably gonna get hurt pretty bad. So, as Chris put it, it took a special kind of guy to drive the thing. Chris walked behind the truck one day and in front for two days, and they never saw any snipers. But he said the driver was always stoned. I guess you’d kind of have to be.

  Mom didn’t like that story, because it worried her that someone Chris might have to depend on was high. In more ways than one! So the only stories he could really tell her were about life in base camp or when they were away on a mission but weren’t fighting, and even then he could talk about only the most benign stuff. Nothing about what they did to get beer, or koon sa, and sure as hell nothing about girls.

  But when she wasn’t around, or if us guys were hanging out in the backyard trying to pretend it wasn’t cold, Dad wouldn’t let him get away without at least some of the gory details. He’d ask, “How many men did you lose in that encounter?” or “How bad were that man’s wounds? Did he make it?” And always Dad wanted to know, “Did you hold?”

  Did they hold the ground. Was Chris King of the Mountain. And how many friends did he lose.

  One story was about when they were on their way someplace—I forget where—in this big truck. They were driving along this road that was typical, all dirt and not very wide, going through an area of rice paddies with farmers working in them. The farmers had tools and baskets and sometimes hats that they would set on the ridges between the paddies when they weren’t using them. But then about a mile farther Chris said they noticed that the tools and baskets were there, but no farmers. Chris said no one ever left things like that; tools were too scarce. So the farmers had to have left because something was very wrong.

  As it turned out, the VC had mortared the area to frighten people who lived in a nearby village. Chris’s group didn’t figure this out, though, until they got to the village, where they noticed mortar holes in the ground, and there was one old man there who hadn’t fled. He told them the attack had happened about half an hour ago.

  Chris said his friend Mason would sometimes point out how the spookiest part of being in a situation like that was that no one really knew what to do. The guy driving the truck didn’t know any more about what might be wrong than the guys he was driving, didn’t know what it might mean to them, or what to do about it. They had no guidance, so all they could do was look to the ranking officer and pray like hell that he had a good head on his shoulders.

  My favorite stories were the ones where Chris and one or more of the other guys took care of each other. Made sure everyone was okay, that they all got out of whatever they were in. Chris told a few of these stories, and they usually included his friend Mason.

  There was this one story he told Dad and me on Sunday afternoon. Mom was home putting dinner together, and the three of us drove off to this fishing spot on Parson’s Lake, where we’d go in the summer. It was too cold to sit outside, so we stayed in the car. Dad cracked his window so he could smoke his pipe, and I was in the backseat straining to watch Chris’s face while he talked. I couldn’t see much more than a silhouette, there was so much light coming through the windshield from across the water. His voice was flat, and from what I could see of his face he wasn’t allowing much expression to show there, either. He was looking almost but not quite at Dad, his gaze falling someplace off to the side of the car.

  “We were away from base on a mission. It was night, and we’d made camp. There was jungle on one side of us and rice paddies on the other, and just as we were getting ready to turn in we heard the shrill sound of incoming. A whistle, then boom. And the boom was really close. But we couldn’t tell where it was coming from. So all we could do was wait. And then there was another. It landed just past the edge of our camp. This time we could tell it came from the direction of the rice paddies, so we grabbed what we could and headed for the jungle.

  “We hadn’t come this way, we’d come up the road, so we had no idea how bad this section of jungle would be. Booby traps, mines, that kind of thing. It’s hard enough to watch for trip wires even in the daylight. And from the sounds around us, I could tell some of our guys were setting off traps. There’s booms and screams and shouts, the place is a hellhole. We figured out later, those who survived, that the VC must have set the place up and then fired on us to scare us into this patch. They never came across the rice paddies. They didn’t come anywhere near the trap.

  “But we didn’t know this yet. So I’m crawling, feeling with my hands. Mason is with me, but he has this thing about snakes and won’t crawl unless he’s ordered to. So he’s sort of bent over, following next to me. Both of us are trying to use the light from mortars and rockets to watch ahead, make sure we aren’t touching anything we shouldn’t. And suddenly I see something right ahead of me, something I wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t been crawling, that tells me there’s been activity right there. I freeze.

  “Just then, someone not twenty feet from us trips a wire. There’s a flash, and a scream, and he’s down and silent. Mason sort of jumps, and I grab his ankle, but his other foot goes right into the area ahead, where I know there’s something waiting. I just grit my teeth and hang on.

  “He falls, but somehow he falls toward me and lands right next to me, but he’s sliding away at the same time. It’s a pit, and I know there’ll be a punji stick at the bottom, probably covered with shit to make sure whoever lands on it gets thoroughly infected. ‘Grab my clothes!’ I yell at him. He hangs on, and I’m pulling back with everything I’ve got. We scramble, clawing at the ground, and by the time I’ve pulled him up next to me the shelling has stopped.

  “We’ll never know whether it was necessary to run for cover, ’cause we never found out how many VC were there. Too many guys had been killed or wounded to return an attack, so the radio guy called for a dustoff, which means Hueys would come in to take out the wounded. Mason and I found our way to the edge of the jungle with the other guys who made it, ready to provide some cover from the VC across the paddies if we needed to. We took cover by the side of the road while a couple of Hueys landed behind us. One of them was just lifting off when we heard this grinding, scraping noise. Mason and I wheeled around, not knowing what the hell might be happening, and we saw the rotor blades had come off one of the Hueys; the Jesus nut had let go.”

  This was too much for Dad. He didn’t often interrupt Chris, but he asked, “What the hell’s a Jesus nut?”

  “It holds the whole rotor mechanism to the top of the helicopter. If it comes off when you’re in flight, only Jesus can help you. But the copter had just started to lift off, so the guys inside weren’t hurt badly—except for the ones they were supposed to be carrying off, of course. Anyway, the blades had been moving, so they had some momentum, and when they went sliding off they were still going around. The blade piece rose into the air a little, drifted sideways and came down like a twirly toy. Then it hit this guy and took his head right off.”

  We were all silent for several seconds. Then Chris said, “Thank God it was dark.” I knew what he meant; he wouldn’t have wanted to see that too clearly.

  Chris turned in the seat so he was facing out the other way. I couldn’t see his face now. We sat there, maybe a minute, and then Chris got out of the car. As soon as his door slammed I started to open mine.

  “Paul.” Dad’s voice was sharp. “Let your brother have a minute.”

  Sometimes after one of these stories I’d go someplace by myself. Maybe my room, or if I didn’t want to be found, into a corner of the basement near the furnace, where it was warm enough to hang out for a while. In my mind I’d go over some of the scenes Chris had painted.

  Chris had gotten an air rifle one Christmas, I think when he was ten, and although I never got one of my own he gave me his when he got tired of it. I found it and took it into the furnace corner, trying to imagine what it would be like to stalk through jungle, watching for trip wires and disturbed brus
h, anything that might give away the location of a mine or a booby trap or a pit with a punji stick in it. The air rifle became a machine gun.

  Chris had told us that a machine gun isn’t a rifle. You don’t really take aim with it, and when you fire it’s a burst of five rounds at once in the general direction of where you think your target is. There’s this arc of light when you shoot, because every fifth round has magnesium on it, and it burns real bright so you can see where the rounds are going, even in daylight. The thing is, you want to pelt the area with as many bullets as possible.

  In country, Chris said you often couldn’t really see the enemy, you just sort of knew where they probably were. And they weren’t likely to sit still while you fired at them. So this technique of raining bullets over a whole area, creating a sort of death zone where nothing could survive, was supposed to have more effect.

  But Chris said you’d never know it was effective from the number of VC they kept seeing. It was like when you shot one, several more sprang up out of the ground. So one evening I sat there, pointing the old gun across to the other side of the basement, and I imagined what it would be like to fire hundreds of bullets in a few minutes at an enemy that kept growing in number. And every time I fired, there were more and more enemies swarming toward me.

  I didn’t last very long. I started shaking, dropped the gun, and backed farther into the corner.

  I guessed Chris must have lost quite a few friends by now, trying to hold this ground.

  Mom made an executive decision about Chris’s time with us. Maybe she couldn’t stop him leaving when he was supposed to, but she could move Thanksgiving if she wanted to. He’d arrived home on Wednesday, and he had to leave on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. So Monday night was Thanksgiving in our house.

  Mom declared that I was staying home from school, and she tried to get Dad to close the store, but he wouldn’t. He said too many people were contemplating giving pets at Christmas, and lots of them started shopping early for all the stuff that went with the animals, or buying books to figure out what pet they wanted to buy.

  It was fun, actually. Mom let Chris and me do some of the cooking. I cut up the stuffing bread and the onions and things that go into stuffing, while Chris made the pie. He’d always been good at pies, and Mom could never figure it out. “I didn’t teach him much,” she’d say. “If I had, my crust would be as flaky as his!”

  It felt a little like old times. I always liked this best, when it was just the three of us. When I was younger, I used to imagine that Chris was my dad, and he and Mom were married. They always got along so well, you know? Laughing and making silly jokes. Chris always laughed at Mom’s jokes, and she made more of them when Dad wasn’t there.

  I hope this doesn’t sound like my folks didn’t get along. They were fine, for the most part. It’s just that when Dad wasn’t around and Chris was, Mom was almost like a girl. She was fun and silly and giggly, and Chris was somewhere between her best friend and her boyfriend. And when they teased me, which was their way of including me since I couldn’t always keep up with their joking, it felt good.

  So we put dinner together, the three of us. We took our time, since Dad had said he wouldn’t be home any earlier than a usual work night. But he surprised us and showed up at three-thirty. He’d asked his assistant manager, Carol Burns, to come in on her day off so he could spend more time with Chris.

  “Where’s this turkey dinner you promised me?” he bellowed, and he pretended he’d told us to expect him early when he knew he hadn’t, and he strutted around despite his limp, acting like he was annoyed and making silly faces. Mom put him to work polishing glasses and setting the table. He refused to iron the tablecloth, so Chris did that. Then Mom shooed us all into the living room while she finished things up.

  “How about another one of your war stories, son?” he asked Chris, handing him a beer. I was thinking we’d probably heard enough of those, but obviously Dad wanted more.

  Chris sat on the floor, his back to the sofa, and took a swallow. “You know, I have to go back there tomorrow. I’d rather not think about it. I’d much rather hear one of your stories. Something crazy somebody bought for their dog or their cat.”

  Dad sat back and looked thoughtful for a minute, and then he nodded, taking a mouthful of beer. “Okay, okay. Here’s a silly one. You know how we have those books about how to raise everything from bearded dragons to pythons? Well, this one woman brought in her parrot and headed right for the books. Beautiful bird; bright green mostly—I think it was a Yellow-collared Macaw—nodding its head up and down and looking all around like it was taking everything in. She had it on her shoulder, and it was tethered to this leash she was holding, and you know our policy about having your pets on a leash being okay. So in she comes. She’s saying, ‘Einstein, don’t you remember being here last time? That nice young girl gave you a treat, remember?’ I think she was talking about last summer, when Martha was working. You remember her, Paul?”

  I nodded; I’d worked in the store for the first time last summer, and I sure remembered Martha. She was about to head off to college in the fall. Long dark hair, deep brown eyes, and a body that wouldn’t quit.

  “Anyway, as you know, when one of the millet packets breaks open, we hold the stuff aside for the parakeets we sell. But Martha must have given Einstein some. So Einstein is back, bringing that lady with him.” Dad chuckled at his own joke. “She marched right over to the books, looked through them for a minute, and then picked one up and opened it. She held it up to the bird. ‘What do you think, Einstein? Is this the one you wanted?’ He steps back and forth on her shoulder a few times, side to side, you know? Which she took for no!” He laughed and looked at Chris.

  I looked at Chris, too. He seemed for all the world to be paying attention to Dad. Any casual observer would have been fooled. And I think Dad was fooled. But I wasn’t. Dad went on.

  “So she says, ‘Okay, then, is this it?’ And she picks another one up, and his head bobs up and down. And she says, ‘Oh, good! We’ve found it.’ And she marches right up to the checkout counter with it!” He was laughing too hard to take a swallow from the bottle he’d raised toward his face, and he slapped his thigh. I was still watching Chris, who was doing his best to smile. Dad took a swig at last and then said, “And do you know, that book wasn’t about birds at all? It was about spiders!”

  Now, personally, I thought this was the funniest part of the whole story, but Dad sank back into his recliner, satisfied. He sighed, shook his head, and drank some more beer.

  After a bit Chris asked for another story, and Dad rambled on about a few things. I could tell he really wanted to hear more war stories, and I could also tell Chris was struggling with something. Maybe trying not to think about the war, like he’d said. It was a relief when Mom finally announced the turkey was ready to be carved, and Dad heaved himself up and went in to do his husbandly duty. I watched Chris until he realized I was looking at him.

  “You okay, kid?” he asked.

  “I was gonna ask you that.”

  He looked away, lifted his bottle and drank, and he didn’t say anything else until we were called to the table.

  Dinner was weird. That’s the best word for it. Right from the start, when Mom made us all say grace. We hadn’t done that since I was twelve, maybe? I was all ready to dig in, fork stabbed into a thick slice of white meat.

  Her voice sounded almost eerie. “Let us bow our heads in a prayer of Thanksgiving.”

  From the blank look on everyone else’s face, I was guessing she took all of us by surprise. But we bowed our heads, and she went on.

  “Merciful Lord, thank you so much for allowing Chris to be home with us, even for a few days. Please watch over him and protect him as he leaves us again, even as he fights to protect the freedom we all enjoy. Thank you for this family and all the comforts you have given us. Thank you for the bounty of this meal and for your love. Amen.”

  We all mumbled something that sounded eno
ugh like “amen” to satisfy Mom, I guess, ’cause she was beaming this smile all around the table when I looked up. I’m sure her intentions were great, but I couldn’t help feeling a little spooked. It didn’t stop me from eating, but I think we all felt—I dunno, maybe constrained after that little display of religious fervor. I could tell Dad was holding himself back from what he wanted, which was to talk about the war. Chris, of course, had come to the table already in a weird mood, and maybe I had too, because of him. Mom obviously could tell something was wrong with Chris, but she didn’t know what—or what to do about it. I was just trying to keep my head down. It felt like shooting of some kind was gonna happen sooner or later, at some point and for some reason I couldn’t predict because I didn’t know what was going on. But nothing happened.

  Chris helped Mom clear the table, Dad went in the other room and turned on the TV, and I gathered the tablecloth and linen napkins together. I was on my way to the laundry room, all this cloth crumpled into my arms, when I saw Chris and Mom, alone together in the kitchen, get into this fierce hug. It was at that point that I decided the weirdness at the table must have been because Chris was leaving tomorrow, and everyone knew what that meant. It meant he had to go back to hell, and we had to stay here and worry about him. The reprieve of having him home had almost made things worse.

  When I got back from the laundry room, Mom was alone in the kitchen, and no one was in with Dad. I debated: TV with Dad or cleanup duty with Mom? Wherever Chris was, I figured he’d probably come back to the kitchen. So that’s where I went.

  “Can I help?”

  Mom didn’t look at me right away; I think she was blinking tears out of her eyes. She turned a smile on me that was trying too hard to be a smile. “Sure, Paul. Why don’t you help separate the things that go into the dishwasher from the things that don’t? Watch out for those turkey skewers; they’re vicious.”