A Question of Manhood Read online

  As bad as punji sticks?

  Chris was gone a long time. At one point I peeked out to see if he’d gone into the living room too quietly for me to hear, but Dad was alone in front of the boob tube, watching some cop show. Finally I couldn’t stand it. “Where’s Chris?”

  Mom took a deep breath. “He’s in your father’s den, dear. He said he had to make a phone call.”

  I scowled. “Who would he call?”

  “Whom, Paul. Whom would he call. I’m sure I don’t know. Maybe a girlfriend?” She kind of giggled; it sounded weird.

  I blinked, feeling stupid. “Does he have a girlfriend?”

  She stopped midway between counter and sink, her hands cupping bits of turkey she’d just wiped up. “I guess I don’t know of anyone special.” Her smile wobbled. “But you know he wouldn’t be likely to tell his mother!” She tried a laugh, but it wasn’t very convincing.

  We finished our cleanup, the machine tethered to the faucet and churning away, and I had gone with Mom into the living room, pretending to watch Dad’s show but really just waiting for Chris to make an appearance—his last one before tomorrow, the day he’d leave us again. It became more and more obvious that he wasn’t with us, but nobody seemed like they dared say anything about it. Shit. His last night, and he can’t spend it with us? But then if he’s gonna be all morose, like he was at dinner, do I want him out here?

  Yes, damn it; I did. I got up. I walked really quietly down the dark hall toward Dad’s den. The door was closed and there was just a little light coming from underneath. Standing there, ears straining, I tried to figure out if Chris was talking or listening or not on the phone at all. Every so often I could hear this odd sound, almost like a sharp intake of breath, and then silence. And then there’d be a kind of strangled noise. And then silence. I lifted my hand maybe three times, wanting so much to knock or turn the handle, anything to get that door out from between us, but something held me back. Finally I tiptoed away and went back to the waiting room. I mean, living room.

  I don’t know what we were watching, because my eyes weren’t focused on the screen and my ears were tuned to any noises behind me that weren’t made by the dishwasher. It was an eternity, and in fact it was nearly ten o’clock, before Chris finally came in. He sat next to Mom on the couch, put his arm behind her shoulders, and leaned his head toward her. Nobody said anything. My throat started to get tight, and my eyes were burning. It was a minute before I recognized the signs for what they were and I focused on not crying. I wanted to look at Chris, to burn his features into my mind, but I didn’t dare.

  He went to bed before I did. He was gonna have to leave, as he put it, at oh-dawn-thirty tomorrow morning so he could get his transport back without being AWOL. I went upstairs maybe half an hour after him, brushed my teeth, and almost opened his door. It was all the way closed, and I wanted in. I wanted to see him, to hear him say nothing was wrong, to have him tell me he’d be back in no time at all. And I stood there maybe ten seconds before I admitted that I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t some eight-year-old kid needing to have his tears brushed away by big brother. I went to my room.

  I lay there for a while, listening to the sounds of my folks getting into bed themselves, before I snapped off the light and turned onto my side. But I wasn’t ready to fall asleep, so I turned onto my back again. Hands behind my head, I thought about jerking off, but I couldn’t even work up the energy for that. It was like everything in me was focused on the room on the other side of this wall. Just beyond this very wall, the one behind my head, was Chris’s bed, with Chris in it, the same Chris who might go over there and die before I ever saw him again.

  Then I decided I was being morbid, and ridiculous. I nearly laughed; hell, maybe he was jerking off. This actually cheered me up a little, and I shifted my position so my head was closer to the wall. Again I almost laughed, because I could hear something. He was definitely doing something in there. I got onto my knees and pressed my ear to the wall.

  He was crying. It sounded muffled, like he was sobbing into his pillow, but he was definitely crying. Gut-wrenching sobs. I pulled away and stared at the wall I couldn’t really see in the dark. What the fuck? Chris? The brave soldier, the guy who pulls his buddies out of punji pits, is in there sobbing like a baby?

  But no; it wasn’t like a baby. There was way too much pain in it for that. He wasn’t crying for his bottle. It sounded like he was crying for his life.

  I threw myself onto my stomach and covered my head with a pillow. I didn’t want to hear this. I couldn’t stand the thought of him in there, crying like that. My mind reached back over the last week, going through his stories, trying to come up with something he’d said, or something he’d left unsaid, that might account for this. He hadn’t overtold anything, hadn’t made himself out to be this big hero, and nothing he’d described made him sound like a coward. He’d done some heroic things, he’d done some crazy things. He’d helped his friends, they’d helped him. He’d almost made some of it sound like fun, or at least like it made for stories that would be good in years to come. It sounded like he’d made some friends who would be his friends until he died.

  Until he died. Is that it? Is he afraid of dying?

  Would I be? Would I lie in there sobbing the night before I had to go back to a place that was hot and muggy and full of bugs and bullets and bombs and beer and koon sa? Would I go back to a place where I didn’t know whether the Vietnamese girl I’d just met wanted to cut my throat? Or, really, when what I knew was that she did? Chris didn’t talk like that, he didn’t tell stories where the worst part was like some dark secret that could kill you, but I’d heard them, and I knew they were true.

  Why hadn’t he told stories like that?

  Thinking back again, none of it had that fog of not-knowing about it. None of it except maybe that comment from Mason, about when something unexpected happens and you just don’t know what to do. Sometimes in Chris’s stories he wasn’t sure where the enemy was, but he always knew who they were. There were no shades of gray. He didn’t talk to us about killing villagers, or wondering who was a spy. But I heard about that stuff, on TV and in newspapers. Why was it just occurring to me now that Chris never talked about that part of it? Maybe we were all just so glad to see him that we took whatever he gave us and accepted it, face value. Like we believed what he wanted us to believe.

  And here was the proof. I was willing to bet anything that if I went into my folks’ room and told them their precious first-born was in his bed crying his eyes out, they’d tell me I was full of shit and to shut the hell up! Okay, that’s a little dramatic, but essentially it was right; they wouldn’t believe it. Or, they would refuse to believe it.

  But it was real. I could hear it, or I imagined I could, right through my pillow. It was not the Chris that Chris wanted us to see, but it was real. I turned so that my feet were near the wall, my head toward the foot of the bed. I pulled my covers around until I’d made enough of a nest that I thought maybe I could sleep that way, not hear what was happening in Chris’s room, not have to know what I didn’t want to know. What he didn’t want me to know.

  But it was no good. Before I knew my feet had hit the floor, they had carried me into the hall and stopped in front of Chris’s door. Should I knock or just go in? Should I give him a chance to get himself together or ambush him in his disgrace?

  Was it disgrace?

  What else could it be? I mean, my God! If I ever acted like this, and Dad heard me? Man, I don’t even want to think what he’d say, how he’d make me feel. But Chris gets away with it? After making us believe what a brave grunt he is?

  I didn’t want to be angry with him. Really I didn’t. This was his last night at home before going back to a place nobody in their right mind wanted to be, and I wanted to be nice to him. But I wanted him to be nice to me, too, and he was just holed up in there disgracing himself. Getting away with something I would catch hell for, just because nobody would believe it of Chris.
<
br />   I opened the door and stepped in.

  Then I shut it behind me quickly, afraid the sounds would get out. In my heart of hearts, I really didn’t want to expose Chris, to do anything that would tarnish his image. I loved his image. Hell, I worshipped his image, and that’s partly why I was angry. He was destroying it.

  He didn’t even know I was there. The light from the backyard spotlight Dad insists on leaving on all night was just enough to let me see that Chris was huddled under the covers, and just as I had imagined, his head was under a pillow. His arms were clamped down on either side; it’s a wonder he could breathe. I stood there as long as I could tolerate it, listening to something ugly and painful working its way up through his body until it came out in the vicinity of his face, and then I called his name.

  “Chris?” It was softer than I’d expected, and he didn’t hear me. I tried again.

  I heard a gasp. His body jerked, and he lifted onto his elbows. He made another gasping noise. It was like he couldn’t speak.

  Now that I’m here, what am I gonna do about it? What can I say? What do I want him to say? I almost turned to leave.

  He was breathing oddly, like you do when you’ve been crying so hard you can’t breathe normally, but he managed to say, “Paul?”

  “What is it?” It was all I could think of.

  He worked his way into a sitting position and ran the fingers of one hand into his hair. I reached over to flick the bedside lamp on. He rasped, “No! No. Don’t.”

  Now what? But he hadn’t asked me to leave. So I felt my way across to where I knew his desk was, and I lifted the chair and walked it over near the bed. I sat down.

  “What the hell’s wrong?” I tried again, in a whisper. He ran a hand over his face and groped for the tissue box, blowing his nose as quietly as possible. I added, “I mean, besides the fact that you have to go back. Is that it?” I don’t know what I was hoping. In the silence I thought, did I want that to be “it”? What would it mean, if that were it? And did I want to know what else it could be?

  Finally he whispered, “No.”

  But then nothing. I felt a need to fill the gap. “So it’s not that you’re thinking the odds are stacking up against you? It isn’t that the longer you’re over there, the more likely something is to happen?” It was what I’d been thinking.

  I could barely see him shaking his head. He snuffled a few times and then said, “No. That’s not the way it works. It’s not like the real world, the world where real people live. We aren’t normal human beings over there. We live in the jungle, we go into the villages, and we kill people. Normal human beings don’t do that. Normal human beings die over there. They’re the ones in body bags.” He snuffled almost violently.

  “So you’re not human anymore? Is that it?” I sounded sarcastic to my own ears. It wasn’t what I wanted, but what the hell was he getting at?

  “I thought I wasn’t. I thought I was gonna make it.” He took a deep breath, and it shook his whole body. “So, I guess you’re partly right. Because I’m scared, Paul. I’ve been scared ever since I signed up, but tonight I’m scared shitless. I have nothing”—and his voice tightened so much it trailed away for a few seconds before he went on—“nothing to keep me alive anymore.”

  I shook my head at him. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  His whisper was angry, sharp. “I’m saying it’s over! I’ve got nothing! There’s nothing to hold on to anymore! And when that happens to you, you either lose your mind or your life or both. I’ve seen it happen, over and over.”

  “What’s over? Nothing’s changed, has it? The place is still there, the war’s still going on, your squad is still…” I stopped when I heard him gasp again, like he was trying not to sob. “What? Will you tell me what you’re talking about?”

  He took a minute to recover. “You don’t want to know.”

  I stood up, hovering over him. “Will you knock it off? You’re in here sobbing like a baby, and now you’re telling me you have nothing to live for, and I don’t want to know?” I felt like suddenly our roles were reversed. He was the kid brother, and I was the one who had the right to make him account for himself. He covered his face with his hands, and I waited. I stood there, half bending over him, my eyes boring holes into his head so that maybe I could see what the fuck was going on in there.

  But he didn’t speak. I realized that probably he couldn’t; the way he was breathing made it seem like if he spoke, he’d scream. So I sat down again.

  What’s changed? If something really has changed, wouldn’t it have to be sudden? Recent? I said, “Who were you talking to? In the den? Who’d you call?”

  He started breathing in and out really quickly, like he was hyperventilating. God, there was something really, really wrong. This was so not Chris. I was getting worried now. I got up and sat beside him on the bed, and when I put my hand on his shoulder he trembled, shuddering all through.

  He said, “He’s gone. He’s gone, and I’m alone.”

  “Who? Who’s gone?”

  It was like he could barely say the name. “Mason.”

  “Mason, the guy in your squad?”

  Chris pulled away from me and reached for more tissues. He grabbed a handful of them and held them over his face. He took several deep breaths and then said, “I loved him.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant—loved, past tense. “He’s dead?”

  Chris nodded. “It was his parents I called. He had asked me to, while I was stateside, and I put it off until tonight. And when I called them, they said”—and he had to get his breath under control again—“he’d been killed. While I’ve been home. He’s gone.”

  Shit. Well, this would put the fear of God into a guy. But—Chris’s reaction was still confusing me. All I could think of to say was, “That sucks.”

  We sat there for nearly a minute, me desperate to think of something helpful to say, him still trying to get himself in hand and not doing very well. Then, again, he said, “I loved him.”

  “You said that. I get it.”

  “I don’t think you do.”

  Now I was getting angry again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Paul, I loved him. I mean, I really loved him. And he loved me. We—I’m…gay.”

  I didn’t know I stood up. All I knew was I wasn’t on the bed anymore. The three feet between us turned into thirty. My voice hoarse, I said, “You’re shittin’ me!” I wheeled away from him, paced across the room and back two, three times, I’m not sure. I was giving him time, time to take it back, time to say he was kidding, time to do anything that would undo what he’d just told me. I stopped in front of him, looked at the wall somewhere over his head, and asked, “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

  It wasn’t a question for him. It wasn’t a question he could answer. It was for me, but I couldn’t answer it, either. I don’t know where he was looking; I couldn’t look at him. He took a ragged breath and said, “You hate me.”

  I backed up, nearly knocking the chair over. Do I hate him? Do I hate Chris, my hero, my big brother? Do I hate the guy who’s been the buffer between me and my dad’s disappointment that I’m not like Chris?

  I walked toward the door. I wanted to get out, and I couldn’t leave. Finally I leaned against the frame with both hands. Wasn’t it just the other night I was lying in my room, wishing I could think of something bad Chris had done so I could be mad at him? Be careful what you wish for; isn’t that how the warning goes? Well, here it was. Wasn’t Chris asking me to hate him, really? Wasn’t he giving me reasons with both hands? On one, there was the fact that he was sobbing and moaning in fear, and on the other was the fact that he—I couldn’t even bring myself to think the word. But did I hate him? With something like fury, I realized I was about to cry. Me! I kept the tears at bay with words. I turned toward him.

  “All my life, you’ve been the one. The good son. The shining boy. The one I was supposed to look up to. I’ve always come in second,
always asking myself, ‘Why can’t I be more like Chris?’ Should I be like you now? Should I want boys?”

  “Stop it!”

  I didn’t want to stop it. I felt like I was on a roll, like I was about to say everything I’d wanted to say all my life, and finally he’d given me permission. Or at least an excuse. “I won’t stop it. You’re supposed to be the perfect son. And now I find out that not only are you a frightened sissy, but you’re a queer! This is what I’m supposed to look up to? You? My God!”

  I had walked away from the door toward the window, and what light there was shone on his face. For some reason I still don’t understand, my knees buckled, and I fell onto the floor. And then I felt Chris’s arms around me. Half of me didn’t want him touching me. The other half, the half that won, reached my arms around him, too. But almost immediately, by some silent agreement, we let go. We sat cross-legged on the floor with him leaning his back against my shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. I can’t help it.”

  “It’s okay,” I lied, wanting it to be true, knowing it wasn’t.

  We sat for a while in silence, and then he said, “Paul? I need to ask you…I need…Please, Paul. Please. Don’t tell anyone.”

  I knew what he meant. I nodded. “Do you think you ever will? Tell?”

  “I won’t get a chance.”

  “What? Why not?”

  About twenty heartbeats went by. “I don’t think I’ll be coming back.”

  “Bullshit. Bullshit, Chris. Goddamn it, don’t talk like that. Just because Mason…” My voice trailed off. “Somebody else dying has nothing to do with whether you’re coming back. You’ve lost other friends, right? Maybe they didn’t mean the same to you, but lots of guys have died. That doesn’t mean you will. Lots of other guys come home.”

  He didn’t answer. And I didn’t know what else to say. We sat there like that, maybe five more minutes. Then he said, “You’ve got school tomorrow.”

  “Fuck school.”

  “If you get a chance to do this, if the war’s still going on? Don’t join. Don’t go. Do anything you have to do, but don’t go over there.” He pulled away and turned toward me. “Do you hear? And don’t let Dad push you. Don’t let his own frustrated ambitions force you into something like this. Don’t try to live his life for him. Are you hearing me, Paul?”