The ceiling was white, but for the man lying on the couch it was full of images and mirrors. The images were the same ones that had been haunting him every night for months. The mirrors were those of reality and memory, in which he continued to see his face reflected.
The face he had now, the face he used to have.
Two different faces, the tragic spell of a transformation, two pawns that in their journey had marked the beginning and end of that long parlour game called war. Many people had played that one, too many. Some had had to stay out of the game for one turn, others for ever.
Nobody had won. Nobody, on either side.
But in spite of everything, he had made it back. He had kept his life and the ability to look, but had lost for ever the desire to be looked at. Now, for him, the world didn’t go beyond the limits of his own shadow.
Behind him, Colonel Lensky, the army psychiatrist, was seated in a leather armchair, a friendly presence in a defensive position. It had been months, maybe years, in fact centuries, that they had been meeting in this room that couldn’t erase from the air the slight smell of rust you always found on military premises. Even though this wasn’t a barracks, but a hospital.
The colonel was a man with sparse brown hair and a calm voice. At first sight, you’d think he was a chaplain rather than a soldier. Sometimes he was in uniform, but mostly he wore civilian clothes. Quiet clothes in neutral colours. A nondescript face, one of those people who you meet and immediately forget.
Who want to be immediately forgotten.
But in all that time, he had listened to his voice more than he had looked at his face.
‘So, tomorrow you’ll be leaving us.’
Those words meant many things: a final discharge, boundless relief, inescapable solitude.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you feel ready?’
No! he would have liked to scream. I’m not ready, anymore than I was ready when all this started. I’m not readynow and I’ll never be ready. Not after seeing what I saw andfeeling what I felt, not after my body and face …
‘I’m ready.’
His voice had been firm. Or at least it had seemed firm to him as he uttered that sentence that condemned him to the world. And even if it hadn’t been, Colonel Lensky clearly preferred to think that it was. As a man and as a doctor, he had chosen to believe that his job was over, rather than admit that he’d failed. That was why he was prepared to lie to him.
‘That’s good. I’ve already signed the papers.’
He heard the creak of the armchair and the rustle of cotton pants as the colonel stood up. Corporal Wendell Johnson sat up on the couch and for a moment did not move but looked out through the open window at the grounds, where green treetops framed a patch of blue sky. From that position, he could not see what he would certainly have seen if he had gone to the window. Sitting on benches or propped in the hostile relief of a wheelchair, standing under the trees or attempting those few faltering movements that some called self-sufficiency, were men just like him.
When they had left they were called soldiers.
Now they were veterans.
A word without glory, which attracted not attention but silence.
A word that meant that they had survived, that they had come out alive from the hellish pit of Vietnam, where nobody knew what sin he had to atone for even though everything around him showed him how to atone for it. They were veterans and each of them bore, more or less visibly, the burden of his personal redemption, which began and ended within the confines of a military hospital.
Colonel Lensky waited for him to stand and turn before he approached him. He held out his hand and looked him in the eye. Corporal Johnson sensed the effort the colonel was making to stop his gaze turning away from the scars that disfigured his face.
‘Good luck, Wendell.’
It was the first time he had ever addressed him by his first name.
A name doesn’t mean a person,he thought.
There were so many names around, carved on white crosses arranged in rows with military precision. That changed nothing. Nothing would help to bring those young men back to life, to remove from their lifeless chests the numbers they kept pinned to them like medals in honour of lost wars. He would always be merely one of the many. He had known lots like him, soldiers who moved and laughed and smoked joints and shot up with heroin to forget that they were constant targets. The only difference between them lay in the fact that he was still alive, even though, to all intents and purposes, he felt as if he was one of those crosses. He was still alive, but the price he had paid for this negligible difference had been a leap into the grotesque void of monstrousness.
‘Thank you, sir.’
He turned and walked to the door. He felt the doctor’s eyes on the back of his neck. It was some time since he had last been expected to give a military salute. It wasn’t required of those who were being reconstructed piece by piece in body and mind with the sole purpose of allowing them to remember for the rest of their lives. And the rest of the mission had been accomplished.
Good luck, Wendell.
Which actually meant: Fuck off, corporal.
He walked along the light green corridor. The dim light that filtered through the small skylight reminded him of rainy days in the forest, when the leaves were so shiny they were like mirrors and the hidden part seemed made of shadow. A shadow from which the barrel of a rifle could emerge at any moment.
He left the building.
Outside was the sun and the blue sky and different trees. Trees easy to accept and forget. They weren’t scrub pines or bamboo or mangrove or aquatic stretches of paddy fields.
This wasn’t Dat-nuoc.
The word echoed in his head, in its correct, slightly guttural pronunciation. In the spoken language of Vietnam it meant country, although the literal translation was land-water, an extremely realistic way to express the essence of the place. It was a happy image for some, provided you didn’t have to work there with your back stooped, or walk with a pack on your back and an M16 slung over your shoulder.
Now the vegetation he had around him meant home. Although he didn’t know exactly what place to call by that name.
The corporal smiled because he could find no other way to express his bitterness. He smiled because smiling didn’t hurt any more. The morphine and the needles under the skin were almost faded memories. Not the pain, no, that would remain a yellow stain in his memory every time he undressed in front of a mirror or tried in vain to pass a hand through his hair and found only the rough texture of burn scars.
He set off along the path, hearing the gravel crunch beneath his feet, leaving Colonel Lensky and everything he stood for behind him. He reached the strip of asphalt that was the main thoroughfare and turned left, heading unhurriedly towards one of the white buildings that stood out in the middle of the grounds.
There was all the irony of the beginning and the end, in this place.
The story was coming to an end where it had begun. A few dozen miles from here was Fort Polk, the camp for advanced training before shipping out for Vietnam. When they arrived, they’d been a group of boys that someone had dragged away from their normal lives and claimed to be able to turn into soldiers. Most of them had never left the state they lived in, some not even the county where they were born.
Ask not what your country can do for you …
None of them did ask that, but none of them were ready to confront what their country would ask of them.
In the southern part of the fort, a typical Vietnamese village had been reconstructed, down to the last detail. Straw roofs, wood, bamboo reeds, rattan. Strange tools and utensils, oriental-looking instructors who were in fact more American than he was. None of the materials and objects was familiar to them. And yet in these buildings, this idealized version of a place thousands of miles away, there was both a threat and something ordinary, everyday.
This is what Charlie’s house looks like,the sergeant had told them.
Charlie was the nickname thay gave the enemy. The training had begun and ended. They had learned everything there was to know. But they had done it in a hurry and without too much conviction, because there wasn’t much conviction around in those days. Everyone would have to fend for himself, especially when it came to figuring out, among the many identical faces they saw around them, who was Vietcong and who a friendly South Vietnamese citizen. The smiles on their faces were the same, but what they were carrying might be completely different. A hand grenade, for example.
The black man who was coming toward him, propelling his wheelchair forward with sturdy arms, was a good example of what could happen. Among the veterans admitted to the hospital for reconstruction, he was the only one Wendell had become friendly with.
Jeff B. Anderson, from Atlanta. He had been the victim of a bomb attack as he was leaving a Saigon brothel. Unlike his companions he had survived, but was paralysed from the waist down. No glory, no medal. Just medical care and embarrassment. But in Vietnam glory was a chance occurrence, and medals sometimes weren’t worth the metal they were made of.
Jeff brought the wheelchair to a halt by placing his hands flat on the wheels. ‘Hi, corporal,’ he said. ‘They’re saying some strange things about you.’
‘In this place, a lot of the things people say turn out to be true.’
‘So they’re right. You’re going home.’
‘Yup, I’m going home.’
The next question came after a fraction of a second, a brief but interminable pause: it was surely a question Jeff had asked himself many times.
‘Will you make it?’
‘How about you?’
They both preferred not to answer that, but to leave it to each other’s imagination.
‘I don’t know if I should envy you or not.’
‘For what it’s worth, neither do I.’
Jeff’s jaw contracted, and his voice emerged as if broken by a belated, pointless anger. ‘If only they’d bombed those fucking dikes…’
He left the sentence hanging. His words evoked ghosts that they had both tried many times to exorcize in vain.
Corporal Wendell Johnson shook his head.
Despite the massive bombardment to which North Vietnam had been subjected, despite the fact that three times the number of bombs had been dropped than in the Second World War, nobody had ever given the order to hit the dikes on the Red River. Many thought it would have been a decisive move. The water would have flooded the valleys, and the world would have branded as a war crime what in all probability would have been close to genocide. But maybe the conflict would have had a different outcome.
Maybe.
‘Hundreds of thousands of people would have died, Jeff.’
Jeff looked up. There was something indefinable in his eyes. Maybe it was an ultimate plea for mercy, a mixture of regret and remorse for what he was thinking. Then he turned his head and looked out at some point beyond the treetops.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘there are times when I get to thinking, and I put my hands on the armrests and try to stand. Then I remember the state I’m in and I curse myself.’
He took a deep breath, as if he needed a lot of air to say what he was about to say.
‘I curse myself because I’m like this, but most of all because I’d give the lives of millions of those people just to have my legs back.’
He looked him in the eyes again.
‘What happened, Wen? More than that, why did it happen?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think anyone will ever know, not really.’
Jeff placed his hands on the wheels and moved the chair back and forth a little, as if that gesture was enough to remind him that he was still alive. Or maybe it was just a moment of distraction, one of those moments when he thought he could stand up and walk away. He was pursuing his own thoughts and it took a while before they became words.
‘They used to say the Communists ate children.’
As he spoke, he looked at Wendell without seeing him, as if he was visualizing the image those words evoked.
‘We fought the Communists. Maybe that’s why they didn’t eat us.’
He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was a whisper.
‘Only chewed us up and spat us out.’
He pulled himself together and held out his hand. Wendell shook it: Jeff had a firm grip.
‘Good luck, Jeff.’
‘Now fuck off, Wen. And go quickly. I hate crying in front of a white man. On my skin, even the tears look black.’
Wendell walked away, with the distinct feeling that he was losing something. That both of them were losing something. He had only taken a few steps when Jeff’s voice forced him to stop.
‘Hey, Wen.’
He turned and saw him, the silhouette of a man and a machine against the sunset.
‘Get laid for me,’ Jeff said, making an unambiguous gesture with his hand.
Wendell smiled in reply. ‘OK. When I do, it’ll be in your name.’
Corporal Wendell Johnson walked away, his eyes fixed straight ahead, his walk still, in spite of himself, a soldier’s walk. He reached the accommodation block without greeting or talking to anyone else. He entered his quarters. The bathroom door was closed. He always kept it closed, because the mirror faced the main door and he preferred to avoid his face being the first image to greet him.
He forced himself to remember that from the next day onwards he would have to get used to it. There were no charitable mirrors, only surfaces that reflected exactly what they saw. Without pity, and with the involuntary cruelty of indifference.
He took off his shirt and threw it on a chair, away from the masochistic spell of the other mirror, the one inside the wall closet. He took off his shoes and lay down on the bed with his hands behind his head, rough skin against rough skin, a sensation he was used to.
Through the half-open windows, like an emanation of the darkening sky, came the rhythmic hammering of a woodpecker hidden somewhere in the trees.
tupa-tupa-tupa-tupa … tupa-tupa-tupa-tupa …
Memory turned in its vicious circle, and the sound became the muted splutter of an AK-47 and then a tangle of voices and images.
‘Matt, where the fuck are those bastards? Where are theyfiring from?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t see a thing.’
‘Hey, you with the M-79, throw a grenade into thosebushes on the right.’
‘What happened to Corsini?’
Farrell’s voice, stained with earth and fear, came fromsome point on their right. ‘Corsini’s gone. Mac, too
tupa-tupa-tupa-tupa …
And Farrell’s voice, too, dissolved into the air.
‘Come on. Wen, let’s get our asses out of here. They’retearing us to pieces.’
tupa-tupa-tupa-tupa … tupa-tupa-tupa-tupa …
‘No, not that way. There’s no cover.’
‘Holy shit, they’re everywhere.’
He opened his eyes again and let the things around him return. The closet, the chair, the table, the bed, the windows with the unusually clean panes. And here, too, a smell of rust and disinfectant. This room had been his one landmark for months, after all the time spent in a ward, with doctors and nurses bustling around him trying to alleviate the pain of his burns. It was there that he had let his mind, almost intact, back into his ravaged body, and had made himself a promise.
The woodpecker conceded a truce to the tree it had been torturing. It seemed like a good omen, the end of hostilities, a part of the past that he could somehow leave behind him.
That he had to leave behind him.
The next day he would be leaving.
He didn’t know what kind of world he would find beyond the walls of the hospital, nor did he know how that world would greet him. In fact, neither of those two things mattered. All that mattered was the long journey he had ahead of him, because at the end of that journey an encounter with two men awaited him. They would look at him with eyes full of fear and astonishment. Then he would talk, to that fear and that astonishment.
And finally he would kill them.
A smile, again devoid of pain. Without realizing it, he drifted into sleep. That night, he slept without hearing voices, and for the first time didn’t dream about rubber trees.
What surprised him during the journey was the corn.
As he rode north, getting closer and closer to home, stretches of it started to appear at the sides of the road, meek in the shadow of the Greyhound bus. The ripples of the wind and the shadows of the clouds made it come alive. He remembered how resistant it felt when you ran your hand through it. An unexpected travelling companion, the colour of cold beer, the warm shelter of the hayloft.
He knew that sensation.
And he remembered how, with other hands, he had run his fingers through Karen’s hair and breathed in her scent, which smelled like nothing else in the world. He had felt it like a painful spasm when he had left after being at home on leave for a month, a fleeting illusion of invulnerability the army granted everyone before they shipped out. They had been offered thirty days of paradise and possible dreams, before the Army Terminal at Oakland became Hawaii and finally turned into Bien-Hoa, the troop selection centre twenty miles from Saigon.
And then Xuan-Loc, the place where everything had started, where he had found his own small plot of hell.
He took his eyes away from the road and lowered the peak of his baseball cap. He wore sunglasses held on with an elastic band because he had practically no ears left to rest the arms of the glasses on. He closed his eyes and hid himself in that tenuous semi-darkness. All he got in return were more images.
There was no corn in Vietnam.
There were no blondes. Just a few nurses at the hospital, but by then he had almost no feeling left in his fingers or any desire to touch their hair. Above all, he was sure no woman would ever again want to be touched by him.
Ever again.
A long-haired young man in a flowered shirt, who had been sleeping across the aisle from him, to his right, woke up. He rubbed his eyes and allowed himself a yawn that smelled of sweat and sleep and pot. He turned and started to look in a canvas bag he had placed on the free seat beside him. He took out a portable radio and switched it on. After some searching he found a station, and the strains of The Iron Maiden by Barclay James Harvest joined the noise of the wheels.
Instinctively, the corporal turned to look at him. When the young man, who must have been about his own age, noticed him and saw his face, the reaction was the usual one: the one he saw every time on other people’s faces. The young man dived back into his bag, pretending to look for something. Then he turned to sit with his back to him, listening to the music and looking out the window on his side.
The corporal put his head against the window pane.
They passed billboards, some of them advertising products he didn’t know. Speeding cars overtook the bus, and some were models he’d never seen. A 66 Ford Fairlane convertible coming in the opposite direction was the one image that was at all familiar. Time, short as it had been, had moved on. And so had life.
Two years had passed. The blinking of an eye, an indecipherable tick on the stopwatch of eternity. And yet they had sufficed to wipe out everything. Now, if he looked ahead of him, all he saw was a smooth wall, and only resentment was urging him to climb it. In all those months he had cultivated that resentment, fed it, let it grow until it was pure hate.
And now he was going home.
There would be no open arms, no speeches or fanfares, no hero’s welcome. Nobody would ever call him a hero, and anyway everyone thought the hero was dead.
He had left from Louisiana, where an army vehicle had dropped him off unceremoniously outside the bus station. He had found himself alone. Around him he no longer had the anonymous but reassuring walls of the hospital. As he waited in line to get his ticket, he had felt as if this was a casting call for the Tod Browning movie Freaks. This thought had made him smile, the only choice he had if he didn’t want to do what he had done for nights on end, and what he had sworn never to do again: cry.
Good luck, Wendell…
‘Sixteen dollars.’
Suddenly Colonel Lensky’s words of farewell had become the voice of a clerk putting down the ticket for the first stretch of the journey. Hidden behind his window, the man had not looked at that part of his face that the corporal granted to the world, but instead had showed him the indifference due to any anonymous passenger – which was just what he wanted.
But when he had pushed the banknotes across the counter with a hand covered in a light cotton glove, the clerk, a slight man with not much hair and thin lips and lightless eyes, had looked up. He had lingered for a moment on his face and then lowered his head again.
‘Vietnam?’
The corporal had waited a moment before replying. ‘Yes.’
The ticket clerk had given him back his money.
He had ignored Wendell’s surprise. Maybe he had taken it for granted. He had simply said a few words to smooth things over. Words that, for both of them, said everything there was to say.
‘I lost my son there, two years ago tomorrow. You keep that. I think you need it more than the company.’
The corporal had walked away, feeling the same thing he’d felt when he’d turned his back on Jeff Anderson. Two men alone for ever, one in his wheelchair and the other in his ticket office, in a twilight that seemed destined to become endless.
He had stopped in third-class motels, sleeping little and badly, with his teeth clenched and his jaws tensed, dreaming recurring dreams. Post-traumatic stress syndrome, someone had called it. Science always found a way to turn the destruction of a flesh-and-blood person into a statistic. But the corporal had learned the hard way that the body never completely gets used to pain. Only the mind sometimes manages to accustom itself to horror. And soon there would be a way to show certain people exactly what he himself had been through.
Mile after mile, Mississippi had become Tennessee, which had then turned into Kentucky. Soon, he was promised the familiar landscape of Ohio. Around him, and in his mind, the different panoramas fell into place, a succession of strange locations, a line traced by a coloured pencil across the map of an unknown territory. Beside the road ran electricity and telephone wires, carrying energy and words above his head. There were houses and people, and the people were like puppets in a toy theatre, and the wires helped them to move, gave them the illusion of being alive.
From time to time, he had asked himself what energy and what words he needed right now. Maybe, while he was lying on Colonel Lensky’s couch, all the words had been said and all the forces evoked and invoked. It had been a surgical liturgy, which his reason had rejected the way a believer rejects a pagan practice. The doctor had celebrated that liturgy in vain, while he, the corporal, had hidden what little faith he had, his faith in nothingness, in a safe place in his mind, a place where nothing could hurt him or destroy him.
What had been couldn’t be changed or forgotten.
Only repaid.
The slight lurch forward of the bus as it slowed down brought him back to where he was. The time was now, and there was no escaping it. The place, according to a sign, was called Florence. Judging by the outskirts, the town was like a lot of others, and laid no claim to being anything like its Italian namesake. One night, lying with Karen on the bed in his room, he had looked at a travel brochure.
France, Spain, Italy…
And it had been Florence, the one in Italy, that had most drawn their attention. Karen had told him things he didn’t know about the place and made him dream things he had never imagined he could dream. That was a time when he still believed that hope cost nothing, before he’d learned that it could cost a lot.
It could even cost you your life.
By the inexhaustible irony of existence, he had finally come to a place called Florence. But nothing was the way it should have been. He remembered words he’d heard spoken by Ben, the man who had been closest to a father figure for him.
Time is like a shipwreck and only what really matters staysafloat…
His own time had turned out to be a question of clinging to a raft, trying to find a desperate foothold in reality after being cast out of his own private utopia.
The driver drove obediently to the bus station. The bus jolted to a halt next to a rust-eaten shelter covered in faded signs.
He stayed in his seat, waiting for all the other passengers to get off first. Nobody moved to help a Mexican woman who was struggling with a sleeping little girl in her arms and a suitcase in her free hand. The young man across the aisle from the corporal couldn’t resist throwing him a last glance as he picked up his bag.
The corporal had decided he wanted to reach Chillicothe around sundown, so it was best to stop here before crossing the state line. Florence was a place like any other, which made it the right place. Any place was the right place, right now. From here, he would try to hitch-hike the rest of the way to his destination, in spite of the complications that choice was likely to involve. He didn’t think it was going to be easy to get a ride.
People usually thought physical disfigurement meant a nasty character. It never seemed to occur to them that evil, in order to flourish, had to be seductive. It had to attract the world with a winning smile and the promise of beauty. Whereas he felt like the last sticker needed to complete an album of monsters.
The driver glanced in the mirror to check the inside of the bus. Immediately, he turned his head. The corporal didn’t bother to ask himself if the man was urging him to get off or looking to see if the image in the mirror corresponded to the truth. Either way, he had to take the initiative. He stood up and took his bag down from the rack. He loaded it on his shoulder, taking care to hold the canvas strap with his gloved hand in order to avoid abrasions.
As he walked down the aisle, the driver, who bore a curious resemblance to Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers pitcher, seemed all of a sudden to be strangely fascinated by the dashboard.
The corporal descended those few interminable steps and found himself again alone in a small square.
He took a look around.
On the other side of the square, divided in two by the road, was a Gulf service station and a diner with a parking lot that it shared with the Open Inn, a shabby-looking motel promising vacant rooms and golden dreams.
He adjusted his bag on his shoulder and headed in that direction, prepared to buy himself a little hospitality without arguing about the price.
As long as it lasted, he would be a citizen of Florence, Kentucky.
The motel didn’t live up to the promise of its sign. It was just the usual cheap and nasty kind of place, where everything was strictly utilitarian and lacking in taste. The receptionist, a short, plump, prematurely bald man who made up for the little hair he had left with a big moustache and long sideburns, hadn’t had any visible reaction when asked for a room. Except that he wouldn’t hand over the key until the corporal had put the money down on the desk. He wasn’t sure if this was normal practice or treatment reserved exclusively for him. He didn’t care much, either way.
The room smelled damp, the furniture was nothing special, and the shoddy carpet was stained in several places. The shower he took, hidden from prying eyes behind a plastic curtain, alternated hot and cold unpredictably. The TV set worked intermittently, and he had finally decided to leave it tuned to the local channel, where the images and sound were clearer. They were showing an old episode of The Green Hornet.
Now he was lying naked on the bed with his eyes closed. The words of the two masked heroes, fighting crime with their clothes always immaculate, were a distant hum. He had removed the bedspread and put the sheet over him, so he wouldn’t have to endure the sight of his own body when he opened his eyes again.
He was always tempted to pull the sheet up all the way over his head, like they did with corpses. He had seen so many corpses lying on the ground like that, with bloodstained sheets thrown over them not out of pity, but to spare the survivors a clear vision of what could happen to any of them at any moment. He had seen so many dead people, and now he was one himself even though he was still alive. The war had taught him to kill, had given him permission to kill, and because he wore a uniform he knew nobody would blame him and he didn’t have to feel any guilt. Now all that remained of that uniform was a green cotton jacket at the bottom of a bag.
Without realizing it, the men who had sent him to face the war and its tribal rituals had given him something he’d previously only had the illusion of possessing: freedom.
Including the freedom to kill again.
He smiled at the idea, and lay there for a long time in that bed that had unceremoniously welcomed dozens of bodies. In those sleepless hours he went back in time to when, also at night…
… he had been sleeping soundly, as only young men do after a day’s work. A muffled noise had woken him suddenly, and immediately afterwards the door of the room had burst wide open, and he had felt a draught on his face and seen a light shining straight at him and, through the light, the burnished threat of a gun barrel hovering a few inches from his face. There were shadows behind that light.
One of the shadows had become a voice, harsh and clear.
‘Don’t move, punk, or it’ll be the last thing you do.’
Rough hands had turned him face down on the bed. His arms had been pulled unceremoniously behind his back, and he had heard the metallic click of the handcuffs. From that moment on, his movements and his life had stopped belonging to him.
‘You’ve been in reformatory. You know all that shit about your rights?’
‘Yes.’
He had breathed that monosyllable with difficulty, his mouth still furry.
‘Then just imagine we read them to you.’
The voice then addressed the other shadow in the room in a commanding tone. ‘Take a look around, Will.’
With his face still pressed to the pillow, he heard the sounds of a search. Drawers being opened and closed, objects falling, the rustle of clothes. The few things he had were being handled expertly, but far from gently.
Finally another voice, with a hint of excitement in it. ‘Well, well, chief, what do we have here?’
He heard footsteps approaching and the pressure on his back lessened. Then four rough hands pulled him up until he was in a sitting position on the bed. In front of his eyes, the light played over a transparent plastic bag full of grass.
‘So, we roll ourselves a little joint from time to time, huh? And maybe we sell this shit, too. Seems to me you’re in big trouble, boy.’
At that moment, the light in the room was switched on. There in front of him was Sheriff Duane Westlake. Behind him, gaunt and spindle legged, with a touch of beard on his pockmarked cheeks, was Will Farland, one of his deputies. The mocking smile on his lips was a joyless grimace that underlined the malicious gleam in his eyes.
He managed to stammer only a few perfunctory words, hating himself for it. ‘That isn’t my stuff.’
The sheriff raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, it isn’t yours. Whose is it then? Is this place magic? Does the tooth fairy bring you marijuana?’
He raised his head and looked at them with a resolute air they both took to be defiance. ‘You put it there yourselves, you bastards.’
The backhander arrived quickly and violently. The sheriff was big and had a heavy hand. It seemed hardly possible that he could be so fast. He felt the sickly-sweet taste of blood in his mouth. And the corrosive taste of anger. Instinctively, he jerked forward, trying to headbutt the sheriff’s stomach. Maybe it was a predictable move, or maybe the sheriff was endowed with an agility unusual for a man of his bulk. He found himself lying on the floor, the frustration of having achieved nothing now adding to his anger.
He heard more words of mockery above him.
‘Our young friend here is hot blooded, Will. He wants to play the hero. Maybe he needs a sedative.’
The two pulled him unceremoniously to his feet. Then, while Farland held him still, the sheriff punched him in the stomach. He fell heavily on the dishevelled bed, feeling he’d never be able to breathe again.
The sheriff addressed his deputy in a patronising tone. ‘Will, are you sure you found everything there was to find?’
‘Maybe not, chief. I’d better take another look at this dump.’
Farland slipped his hand into his jacket and took out an object wrapped in transparent plastic. Not taking his eyes off him, he said to the sheriff, his mocking grin wider than ever, ‘Look what I found, chief. Don’t you think that looks suspicious?’
‘What is it?’
‘At first sight I’d say a knife.’
‘Let me see.’
The sheriff took a pair of leather gloves from his pocket and put them on. Then he took the object his deputy was holding out and started to unwrap it. The rustle of the plastic gradually revealed the gleam of a long knife with a black plastic handle.
‘That’s a fucking sword, Will. Reckon a blade like that could have been used on those two fucking hippies, the other night by the river.’
‘Yeah. Sure could.’
Lying on the bed, he had started to understand. And he had shivered, as if the temperature in the room had suddenly plunged. As far as his voice, still winded by the punch, would let him, he attempted a feeble protest.
He didn’t yet know how pointless that was.
‘It isn’t mine. I’ve never seen it.’
The sheriff looked at him with an expression of ostentatious surprise. ‘Is that so? Then how come it has your prints all over it?’
The two of them approached and turned him over on his stomach. Holding the knife by the blade, the sheriff forced him to grasp the handle. Duane Westlake’s voice was calm as he pronounced sentence.
‘I was wrong just now when I told you you’re in trouble. Fact is, you’re in shit up to your neck, boy.’
A minute or so later, as they dragged him away to their car, he had the distinct feeling that his life, as he had known it up until that moment, was over for good.
‘… of the Vietnam war. The storm continues over the publication by the New York Times of the Pentagon Papers. An appeal to the Supreme Court is planned, to uphold the injunction to cease publication…’
The imposing voice of news anchorman, Alfred Lindsay, shook him out of the restless lethargy into which he had slipped.
The corporal knew this story.
The Pentagon Papers were the outcome of a thorough investigation into the causes that had led the United States to become involved in Vietnam, an investigation set up by Defence Secretary McNamara and carried out by a group of thirty-six experts, both civilian and military, on the basis of government documents, some dating as far back as the Truman era. Like a rabbit caught in the journalists’ headlights, the Johnson administration had been shown to have consciously lied to the public about the handling of the conflict. A few days earlier the New York Times,which had somehow come into possession of the papers, had started publishing them. The consequences had been predictable.
In the end, as always happened, it would just be a battle of words. And words, whether written or spoken, never amounted to very much.
What did these people know about the war? How could they know what it meant to find yourself thousands of miles from home, fighting an invisible and incredibly determined enemy? An enemy nobody had thought would be ready to pay such a high price in return for so little. An enemy everyone in their heart of hearts respected, even though nobody would ever have the guts to admit it.
Even if there were thirty-six thousand experts, civilian or military or whatever, they still wouldn’t understand anything, or make their minds up about anything, because they’d never smelled napalm or Agent Orange. They’d never heard the tac-tac-tac-tac of machine gun fire, the muffled sound of a bullet piercing a helmet, the screams of pain of the wounded, which were so loud you ought to be able to hear them in Washington but in fact barely reached the stretcher bearers.
Good luck, Wendell…
He moved aside the sheet and sat up on the bed.
‘Go fuck yourself, Colonel Lensky. You and your fucking syndromes.’
All that was behind him now.
Chillicothe, Karen, the war, the hospital.
The river was following its course, and only its bank preserved the memory of the water that had passed.
He was twenty-four years old and he didn’t know if what was in store for him could still be called a future. But for some people that word would soon lose all meaning.
Barefoot, he walked to the TV and switched it off. The anchorman’s reassuring face was sucked into the darkness and became a little dot of light in the middle of the screen. Like all illusions, it lasted a few moments before disappearing completely.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to take you all the way into town?’
‘No, this is fine. Thanks a lot, Mr Terrance.’
He opened the door. The man at the wheel looked at him with a smile on his tanned face. In the light from the dashboard, he suddenly reminded him of a Don Martin character.
‘I meant thanks a lot, Lukas.’
The man gave him a thumbs-up sign. ‘That’s OK.’
They shook hands. Then the corporal removed his bag from the space behind the seats, got out of the car and closed the door. The voice of the man at the wheel reached him through the open window.
‘Whatever you’re looking for, I hope you find it. Or that it finds you.’
These last words were almost lost in the rumble of the mufflers. In an instant the vehicle in which he had arrived was nothing more than the sound of an engine fading away.
He adjusted his bag on his shoulder and started walking. He felt neither nervousness nor euphoria at this homecoming.
Only determination.
A few hours earlier, in his motel room, he had found an empty shoe box in the closet. The lid bore the trademark of Famous Flag Shoes, a mail order company. The fact that the box was still there said a lot about the care taken by the motel’s cleaners. He had removed the flaps from the lid and written CHILLICOTHE on the white background in capital letters, going over the word several times with a black felt-tip he had in his bag. He had gone down to reception with the bag on his shoulder and the sign in his hand. Behind the desk, a nondescript girl with thin arms and long straight hair and a red headband had replaced the man with the moustache and sideburns. When he had approached her to give back the key, the spaced-out Flower Power look had drained from her face and she had stared at him with a hint of fear in her dark eyes. As if he was coming towards her with the intention of attacking her. He was starting to come to terms with this attitude. And he suspected it was a judgement that would never be challenged.
Here it is, colonel, here’s my luck …
For a moment, he’d been tempted to scare her to death, to pay her back for that revulsion, that instinctive suspicion she had felt for him. But this wasn’t the time or the place to go looking for trouble.
With ostentatious gentleness, he had put the key down on the glass desktop. ‘Here’s the key. The room was disgusting.’
His calm voice, combined with his words, had startled the girl. She had looked at him in alarm.
Die, bitch.
‘I’m sorry.’
He had shaken his head imperceptibly and stared at her, letting her imagine his eyes behind his dark glasses. ‘Don’t say that. We both know you don’t give a shit.’
He had turned his back on her and left the motel.
Beyond the glass-fronted door was the little square. On his right was the service station with the orange and blue Gulf sign. A couple of cars were waiting to go into the car wash, and the pumps were busy enough to arouse hope that he’d get a ride before too long. He had walked towards the diner, over the door of which was a sign presenting it to the world as the Florence Bowl and offering home cooking and all-day breakfast.
He had slipped past the advertisements for Canada Dry and Tab and Bubble Up, and had taken up a position at the exit from the service area, so that he was clearly visible both by the cars leaving the parking lot and by those leaving the pumps after filling up.
He had thrown his bag on the ground, sat down on it, and held out his arm, trying to make sure that it was as conspicuous as possible.
And he had waited.
A few cars had slowed down. One had actually stopped, but when he had stood up to go and the driver had seen his face, he had set off again as if he had seen the devil.
He was still sitting on the bag, holding out his pathetic sign, when a man’s shadow fell on the asphalt in front of him. He had looked up to see a guy wearing black coveralls with red inserts. On his chest and his sleeves, he had a sponsor’s colourful trademark.
‘You think you’re going to get all the way to Chillicothe?’
He had attempted a smile. ‘If things carry on like this, I guess not.’
The man was tall, about forty, with a slender build and a ginger beard and hair. He had looked at him a moment, then lowered his voice, as if to downplay what he was about to say.
‘I don’t know who messed you up that way and it’s none of my business. I’m going to ask you one thing. And if you don’t tell me the truth, I’ll know it.’
He had allowed himself a pause. To weigh his words. Or maybe to give them more weight.
‘Are you in trouble with the law?’
He had taken off his cap and sunglasses and looked at him. ‘No, sir.’
In spite of himself, the tone of that ‘No, sir’ had identified him beyond any doubt.
‘Are you a soldier?’
His expression was confirmation enough. The word Vietnam wasn’t spoken, but hovered in the air.
‘Drafted?’
He had shaken his head. ‘Volunteer.’
Instinctively, he had bowed his head as he uttered this word, almost as if it was something to feel guilty about. And he had immediately regretted it. He had looked up again and looked the other man full in the eyes.
‘What’s your name, boy?’
The question had caught him off guard.
Noticing his hesitation, the man had shrugged his shoulders. ‘One name’s as good as another. It’s only so I know what to call you. I’m Lukas Terrance.’
He had stood up and shook the hand the man held out to him. ‘Wendell Johnson.’
Lukas Terrance had not shown any surprise at the cotton gloves. He had nodded towards a large black and red pick-up. It was standing by a pump behind them, and a attendant was filling it up. Attached to the back of it was a tow-cart carrying a single-seater car for dirt track races. It was a strange vehicle, with open wheels and a driving compartment that looked as if it could barely contain even one man. He had once seen a similar one on the cover of Hot Rod magazine.
Terrance had explained his situation.
‘I’m going north, to the Mid-Ohio Speedway near Cleveland. Chillicothe isn’t really on my way, but I guess I can make a little detour. If you don’t mind travelling slowly and without air conditioning, I’d be happy to give you a ride.’
He had responded to the offer with a question. ‘Are you a racing driver, Mr Terrance?’
The man had started laughing. On his tanned face, a spider’s web of lines had formed at the sides of his eyes. ‘Oh, no. I’m only a kind of handyman. Jack of all trades. Mechanic, chauffeur, cook.’
He had made a gesture with his hands, a gesture that seemed to say: That’s life.
‘Jason Bridges, my driver, is travelling all nice and cosy on a plane right now. We mechanics do the work, the drivers get the glory. Though to be honest, there isn’t all that much glory. As a driver he’s crap. But he keeps going. That’s how it is, when you have a father with a fat wallet. Money can buy you cars; it can’t buy you balls.’
The attendant had finished filling up the pick-up and turned around to look for the driver. When he spotted him, he had gestured eloquently towards the line of waiting cars. Terrance had clapped his hands, as if to bring their conversation to a conclusion.
‘OK, shall we go? If the answer’s yes, from now on you can call me Lukas.’
The corporal had picked up the bag from the ground and followed him.
The driver’s cab was a chaos of road maps, crossword magazines and issues of Mad and Playboy. Terrance had made space for him on the passenger seat by shifting a packet of Oreos and an empty can of Wink.
‘Sorry about the mess. We don’t get many passengers in this old wreck.’
He had calmly left the service station behind him, and then Florence, and finally Kentucky. Soon, those days and those places would be only memories. The good ones, the real ones, the ones that would stay with him all his life, like cats to be taken on his lap and stroked, those he was about to create for himself.
It had been a pleasant journey.
He had listened to Terrance’s anecdotes about the racing world and especially about the driver he worked for. Terrance was a good man, a bachelor, practically without fixed abode, who had always been involved with races, though never the really important ones like NASCAR or the Indy. He mentioned the names of famous drivers, people like Richard Petty or Parnelli Jones or A. J. Foyt, as if he knew them personally. Maybe he did. Anyhow, he seemed to enjoy thinking he did, and they were both fine with that.
Not even once had he mentioned the war. Once over the state line, the pick-up with its racing pod in tow, had taken Route 50, which led straight to Chillicothe. Sitting on his seat with the window open, listening to Terrance’s stories, he had seen the sunset, with that tenacious, persistent luminosity typical of summer evenings. All at once, the places had become familiar, until at last a sign appeared saying Welcometo Ross County.
He was home.
Or rather, he was where he wanted to be.
A couple of miles after Slate Mills, he had asked his surprised companion to stop. He had left him to his bewilderment and the rest of his journey, and now he was walking like a ghost in open country. Only the lights of a group of houses in the distance, which on the maps went by the name of North Folk Village, showed him the way. And every step seemed much more tiring than any he had trodden in the mud of Nam.
He finally reached what had been his goal ever since he had left Louisiana. Just under a mile from the village, he turned left onto a dirt path and after a few hundred yards came to a building surrounded by a metal fence. In the back there was an open space lit by three lampposts where, between stacks of tubes for scaffolding, an eight-wheel tow truck, a Volkswagen van and a Mountaineer dump truck with a snow shovel were parked.
This was where he’d lived. And it would be his base for the last night he would ever spend there.
There was no light inside the building.
Before continuing, he made sure there was nobody around. Then he moved forward, following the fence on his right until he reached the side that was more shadowy. He came to a clump of bushes that hid him from view. He put his bag down and took out a pair of wirecutters he had bought in a general store. He cut the fence just enough to allow him to enter. He imagined the sturdy figure of Ben Shepard standing in front of that breach, heard the sibilant voice he remembered lambasting ‘those fucking sons of bitches who don’t respectother people’s property’.
As soon as he was inside, he headed straight for a small iron door, next to a blue-painted sliding door that allowed access to vehicles. Above it was a big white sign with blue lettering, telling anyone who was interested that these were the premises of Ben Shepard – Demolition RenovationConstruction. He didn’t have a key any more, but he knew where his former employer kept a spare one.
He opened the glass door that protected the fire extinguisher. Just behind the extinguisher itself was the key he was looking for. With a smile on his tortured lips, he took it out and went and opened the door. It slid inwards without squeaking.
One step and he was inside.
The small amount of light coming in from outside, through the high windows on all four sides, revealed a space full of tools and machinery. Hard hats, coveralls hanging on hooks, two cement mixers of differing capacities. On his left, a long counter filled with tools for use with wood and iron.
The damp heat and the semi-darkness were familiar to him, as were the smells. Iron, cement, wood, lime, plasterboard, lubricant. The vague odour of sweaty bodies from the hanging coveralls. But the taste he had in his mouth was completely new. It was the sour taste of enforced separation, a sudden awareness of all that had been taken away from him. Everyday life, affection, love. The little of it that he had known when Karen had taught him what truly deserved that name.
He advanced in the semi-darkness, taking care where he put his feet, towards the door on the right-hand side. Making an effort not to think about the fact that this place full of rough surfaces and sharp corners had meant everything to him.
Beyond that doorway, clinging to the wall of the building like a mollusc to a rock, there was one large room with a single window protected by an iron grille. A kitchen area and a bathroom on opposite sides completed the layout of his old home.
He reached the door and pushed it.
And stood there, open mouthed in surprise.
Here the shapes were more distinct. The light through the window from the lampposts in the parking lot sent almost all the shadows scuttling into the corners.
The room was perfectly tidy, as if he had left it hours rather than years before. No dust hung in the air, and it was obvious that it had been cleaned often and carefully. Only the bed was covered with a sheet of transparent plastic.
He was about to take another step into his old home when he suddenly felt something knock against him and slide quickly between his legs. Immediately afterwards, a dark shape jumped on the bed, making the plastic rustle.
He closed the door, went to the night table and lit the bedside lamp. In the dim light, the nose of a big black cat emerged, and two huge green eyes looking at him.
‘Waltz. Holy Christ, you’re still here.’
Without any fear the animal approached, walking slightly lopsidedly, and sniffed him. He reached out his hand to grab it and it let itself be picked up. He sat down on the bed and pulled it on to his knees. He started to scratch it gently under the chin, and the cat immediately started purring, as he knew it would.
‘You still like that, huh? You’re still as much of an old softie as ever.’
He stroked it with one hand, and with the other reached the place where the right back leg should have been.
‘I see it never grew back.’
There was a strange story behind the cat’s name. Ben had sent him to do some repairs at the clinic of Dr Peterson, the vet. A couple had showed up carrying a kitten wrapped in a bloodstained blanket. A large cat had come into their garden and bitten their kitten, maybe just to punish it for existing. The kitten had been examined and immediately operated on, but it had not been possible to save its leg. When the vet had come out of the operating room and told the owners, the man and the woman had looked at each other in embarrassment.
Then the woman, asked the vet in an uncertain voice, ‘Without a leg, you say?’ She had turned to the man beside her for confirmation. ‘What do you think, Sam?’
The man had made a vague gesture. ‘Well, of course, the poor little beast would suffer, with a leg missing. It would be maimed for life. I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to…’ He had left the sentence hanging.
Dr Peterson had looked at him questioningly, then finished his sentence for him. ‘Put him to sleep?’
The two had looked at each other with eyes full of relief. They couldn’t believe they had found a way out: they could pass off as a suggestion from an authoritative source what they had in fact already decided.
‘I see you agree, doctor. Do it, then. He won’t suffer, will he?’
‘No, he won’t suffer,’ the vet replied. Her voice was icy, and so were her blue eyes. But the two were in too much of a hurry to leave to even notice.
They had paid, and gone out the door with more haste than might have been considered necessary in the circumstances. Then the sound of a car starting up outside had confirmed that the final verdict had been pronounced on the poor animal.
He had witnessed the whole scene. But when they had gone he put down the pail in which he was mixing plaster and approached Dr Peterson.
‘Don’t kill him, doctor. I’ll take him.’
She had looked at him without speaking. Her eyes searched his for a long time before replying. Then she had said just two words.
‘All right.’
She had turned and gone back into her clinic, leaving him alone as the new owner of a cat with three legs. That was what had given rise to its name. Growing up, its way of walking had reminded him of waltz time: one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three…
And Waltz it had become.
He was about to move the cat, which was continuing to purr blissfully beside him on the bed, when suddenly the door was kicked open. Waltz took fright, jumped down nimbly on his three paws and hid under the bed. A commanding voice filled the room.
‘Whoever you are, you’d better come out with your hands up. Don’t make any sudden movements. I have a shotgun and I’m prepared to use it.’
For a moment, he did not move.
Then, without saying a word, he stood up and walked calmly towards the door. Just before placing himself in the doorway, he raised his arms in the air. That was the only movement that still caused him a little pain.
And a flood of memories.
Ben Shepard moved behind one of the cement mixers, trying to find the best position from which to keep the door in his sights. A bead of sweat running down the side of his face reminded him how hot and damp the building was. For a moment he was tempted to wipe it off, but he preferred not to take his hands off his Remington pump-action shotgun. Whoever was in that room, he didn’t know how he would react to the order to come out. Above all, he didn’t know if he was armed or not. Anyhow, the man had been warned. He was holding a shotgun, and he never said anything he didn’t mean. He had fought in Korea. If the guy or guys in there didn’t believe he was prepared to use it, they were making a big mistake.
Nothing happened.
He had preferred not to switch on any lights. In the semidarkness, time seemed like something personal between him and the beating of his heart. He waited for seconds that seemed an eternity.
It was pure chance that he was here at this hour.
He had been on his way back after an evening spent bowling with the team he played for. He was driving along Western Avenue and had just passed North Folk Village when the oil gauge had lit up on the dashboard of his old van. If he kept going, the engine might seize up. A few dozen yards up ahead was the track that led to the his construction company. Rather than be forced to brake, he had quickly done a wide turn onto the other lane and then onto the track, immediately afterwards switching off the engine and putting it in neutral to take advantage of the momentum and get as far as the gate.
As he approached the building, hearing the loose stones under the tyres roll with an ever deeper sound as he lost speed, he’d had the fleeting impression that there was a dim light visible through the windows.
He had immediately stopped the van, taken the Remington from behind the seats, and checked it was loaded. He had got out without slamming the door and had approached, walking on the grassy verge in order to avoid making a noise with his heavy shoes. When he had gone out, a couple of hours earlier, he might have forgotten to switch off the light.
That must have been it.
But in any case he had preferred to make sure by being at the right end of a shotgun barrel. As his father used to say, nobody had ever died from being too careful.
He had kept on, hugging the fence until he came to the point where it had been cut. Then he noticed that a light was on in the room in back, and saw a silhouette passing the window.
His hands on the grip of the Remington had started to get damper than they should. He had quickly looked around.
He hadn’t seen any cars parked in the vicinity, which he found puzzling. The building was full of materials and tools. They weren’t worth a great deal, but they might still tempt a thief. They were all quite heavy, though. It seemed strange that someone would come here on foot if they planned to clean him out.
He had gone through the hole in the fence, and reached the door next to the vehicle entrance. When he had pushed the door, he had found it open. Groping with his hands, he had felt the key in the keyhole, and in the dim light from the lampposts reflected off the clear wall he had seen that the little window in front of the fire extinguisher was half open.
Strange. Very strange.
Only he knew of the existence of that spare key.
Curious and cautious in equal measure, he had gone inside, woven in and out of the equipment heaped up there, and kicked the door of the backroom wide open.
Now he was holding his shotgun aimed at the open door.
A man appeared in the doorway with his hands up. He took a couple of steps and stopped. Ben moved accordingly, so that he was still protected by the squat, ungainly mass of the cement mixer. From here, he could keep the man’s legs in his sights, and if he made even one abrupt movement he would shorten his height by ten inches.
‘Are you alone?’
The answer had come immediately. Calm, steady, apparently genuine. ‘Yes.’
‘OK, I’m coming out. If you or any friend you have with you are planning any nasty tricks, I’ll blow a hole in your stomach as big as a railroad tunnel.’
He waited a moment and then came cautiously out into the open. He held the shotgun at his side, firmly aimed at the man’s stomach. He took a couple of steps towards him, until he could see his face clearly.
And what he saw sent a shudder through him. The man’s face and head were completely disfigured by what looked like terrible burn scars. From his face, they continued down his neck and disappeared inside the open collar of his shirt. His right ear was completely missing while all that remained of the other was only a fragment, attached like a joke to the cranium, where coarse healed skin had replaced hair.
Only the area around the eyes was intact. And now those eyes were following him as he approached, more ironic than worried.
‘Who the hell are you?’
The man smiled. If what appeared on his face when he moved his mouth could be called a smile.
‘Thanks, Ben. At least you didn’t ask me what I am.’
Without asking permission, the man lowered his arm. It was only then that Ben realized he was wearing gloves of some light material.
‘I know I’m not easy to recognize. I was hoping at least my voice had stayed the same.’
Ben Shepard opened his eyes wide. Involuntarily, he lowered the barrel of his shotgun, as if his arms had suddenly become too flabby to hold it up. Then the words arrived, as if he hadn’t had the gift of speech before now.
‘Christ almighty, Little Boss. It’s you. We all thought you were…’
The sentence was left hanging.
The other man made a vague gesture with his hand. ‘Dead?’ The next sentence came from his lips like a thought spoken aloud and a long-buried hope. ‘What makes you think I’m not?’
Ben suddenly felt old. And he realized that the person in front of him felt much older than he. Still confused by this unexpected encounter, without really knowing what to do or say, he went to the wall and reached his hand out to a switch. A dim emergency light came on. When he made to switch on another light, Little Boss stopped him with a gesture.
‘Let it be. I guarantee I don’t look any better in the light.’
Ben realized his eyes were moist. He felt useless and stupid. Finally he did the one thing that instinct dictated. He put the Remington down on a pile of crates, approached this soldier and gently embraced him.
‘Hell, Little Boss, it’s good to know you’re alive.’
He felt the boy’s arms go around his shoulders.
‘There is no Little Boss any more, Ben. But it’s good to be here with you.’
They stood there for a moment, out of an affection that was like that between a father and a son. With the absurd hope that when they separated it would be some ordinary day in the past, with everything normal and Ben Shepard, staying late to give instructions to his worker for the next day.
They separated. Ben made a sign with his head. ‘Come this way. There should still be a few beers. If you want one.’
The young man smiled and replied, with some of the old familiarity, ‘Never refuse a beer from Ben Shepard. He might get mad. And that sure ain’t a pleasant sight.’
They moved into the back room. Little Boss went and sat down on the bed. He called out, and Waltz immediately came out from his hiding place and jumped onto his lap.
‘You left everything the way it was. Why?’
Ben walked to the refrigerator, pleased that Little Boss couldn’t see his face as he replied. ‘Call it a premonition, call it an old man’s stubborn hope. Call it what you like.’
He closed the door and turned with two beers in his hand. With the neck of one of the bottles he indicated the cat, which had accepted, with its usual feline sense of entitlement, to be stroked on the head and neck.
‘I had your room cleaned occasionally. And every day I fed that critter you have there.’
He handed the young man his beer. Then he went to a chair and sat down, and for a while they drank in silence. Both knew they were full of questions that were going to be difficult to answer.
Ben realized he had to be the first.
Forcing himself not to look away, he asked, ‘What happened? Who did that to you?’
The boy took his time before replying. ‘It’s a long story, Ben. And it’s an ugly story. Are you sure you want to hear it?’
Ben leaned back in his chair and tilted it until it rested against the wall.
‘I have time. All the time in the world…’
‘… and all the men we need, soldier. Until you and your comrades realize you’re going to be defeated in this country.’
He was sitting on the ground, up against a branchless tree stump whose roots clutched uselessly at the ground, hands tied behind his back. In front of him, dawn was rising. Behind him he felt the presence of his buddy, who was similarly immobilized. He hadn’t spoken or moved for a while now. Maybe he’d managed to fall asleep. Maybe he was dead. Both theories were plausible. They had been in this place for two days. Two days of not much food, of sleep broken by spasms in his wrists and cramps in his ass. Now he was thirsty and hungry and his clothes were stuck to his skin with sweat and dirt. The man in the red headband leaned over him and dangled their dogtags in front of his face, letting them sway from side to side with an almost hypnotic effect. Then he turned them towards himself, as if he wanted to check their names, even though he remembered them perfectly well.
‘Wendell Johnson and Matt Corey. What are two nice American boys doing here in the middle of these paddy fields? Didn’t you have anything better to do at home?’
Of course I did, you fucking piece of shit.
He screamed those words in his head. He had learned the hard way what these people did when you expressed what you felt.
The guerrilla was a skinny guy, of indefinable age, with deep-set small eyes. Slightly above average height. He spoke good English spoiled only by a guttural accent. Time had passed
how much time?
since his platoon had been wiped out by a sudden Vietcong attack. They had all died, except the two of them. And immediately afterwards, their calvary had started: constantly being moved from place to place, harried by mosquitoes, forced to keep marching, forcing themselves to keep going through sheer will, one more step, one more step, one more step…
And getting the crap beaten out of them.
Every now and again they had come across other groups of fighters. Men with identical faces who carried arms and supplies by bicycle along almost invisible paths amid the vegetation.
These had been their only moments of relief
Where are they taking us, Matt?
I don’t know.
Any idea where we are?
No, but we’ll make it, Wen, don’t worry.
and rest.
Water, blessed water, was here a piece of paradise on earth, and their jailers seemed to dispense it with a sadistic pleasure.
His jailer didn’t wait for a reply. He knew it wouldn’t come. ‘I’m really sorry your other comrades died.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ he blurted out, and immediately tensed the muscles of his neck, expecting a slap by way of reply.
Instead of which, a smile appeared on the man’s face, a smile made cruel by the sardonic gleam in his eyes. Silently, he lit a cigarette, then replied in a neutral voice that sounded strangely sincere, ‘You’re wrong. I really would have liked to have you alive. All of you.’
The same tone of voice he’d used after the attack when he’d said
‘Don’t worry, corporal. We’re going to take care ofyou …’
and immediately afterwards had gone up to Sid Margolin, who was lying on the ground complaining of the wound in his shoulder, and blown his brains out.
From somewhere behind him came the caterwauling of a radio. Then another guerrilla, a much younger man, walked up to the commander. The two men exchanged a hasty dialogue, in the incomprehensible language of a country he would never understand.
Then the chief addressed him again.
‘This looks like it’s turning into quite an amusing day.’
He bent his knees and crouched in front of him, so that he could look at him straight in the face.
‘There’s going to be an air raid. There are raids every day. But the next one will be in this area.’
That was when he understood. There were men who went to war because they were forced to go. Others who felt they had to go. The man in the red headband was there because he liked it. When the war was over, he would probably invent another one, maybe just for himself, so he could continue to fight.
And to kill.
That thought put an expression on his face that the other man misunderstood. ‘What’s the matter, soldier? Are you surprised? Didn’t you think the yellow monkeys Charlie, as you call us, were capable of mounting intelligence operations?’
He gave him a pat on the cheek with the palm of his hand, all the more mocking in that it was as light as a caress.
‘Well, we are. And today you’ll get a chance to find out who you’re fighting for.’
He leaped to his feet and gave a signal. Immediately, four men armed with AK-47s and rifles came running and surrounded them, weapons aimed straight at them. A fifth man approached and untied their wrists. With an abrupt gesture he motioned them to stand up.
The commander pointed to the path in front of them. ‘That way. Quickly and silently, please.’
He pushed them unceremoniously in the direction indicated. After a few minutes’ quick march, they emerged onto a vast, sandy clearing, flanked on the right by what looked like a plantation of rubber trees, placed at such regular distances as to seem a perversity of nature amid so much chaotic vegetation.
They were separated and tied to two trunks almost at opposite ends of the clearing, with a line of trees between them. No sooner did he feel the ropes on his wrists than a gag was stretched over his mouth.
The same fate befell his buddy, whose show of resistance was rewarded with a blow with a rifle butt in the small of his back.
The man in the red headband approached with his usual sly air.
‘You people who use napalm so easily ought to know what effect it has. My people have known it for some time now…’
He indicated a vague point in the sky in front of him.
‘The planes will be coming from that direction, American soldier.’
He put the dogtags back around their necks. Then he turned his back on them and left, followed by his men. They were alone now, looking at each other from a distance. Then, from that point beyond the trees, in the sky in front of them, came the noise of an engine. The Cessna L-19 Bird Dog appeared as if by magic over the rim of the vegetation. It was on a reconnaissance mission and was flying low. It had almost passed them when suddenly the pilot made a turn, bringing the plane even lower. So low that they could clearly see the figures of the two men inside the cockpit. Soon afterwards the aircraft returned to the sky from which it had come. Time passed in silence. Then a whirr, and a pair of Phantoms arrived at a speed that in their fear they saw as a series of still images. With them came a roar like thunder. Only after that, by some strange quirk, the lightning flash. He saw that light grow and grow and become a line of fire that advanced on them, like some kind of dance, devouring everything in its path until it reached them and hit…
‘… my buddy full on, Ben. He was incinerated. I was a bit farther away, so I was just hit by a wave of heat that reduced me to this state. I don’t know how I survived. And I don’t know how long I was there before the rescue team arrived. My memories are very confused. I know I woke up in a hospital, covered in bandages and with needles stuck in my veins. And I think most men would take a lifetime to feel the pain I felt in those few months.’
The boy paused. Ben understood that it was to let him absorb what he had just told him. Or to prepare him for what he said next.
‘The Vietcong used us as human shields. And the men on the reconnaissance plane saw us. They knew we were there. And they attacked all the same.’
Ben looked at the tips of his shoes. Anything he said would have been pointless.
He decided to go back to the present, and the suspicion nagging at him. ‘What are you planning to do now?’
Little Boss shrugged nonchalantly. ‘All I need is somewhere to use as a base for a few hours. There’s a couple of people I have to see. Then I’ll come fetch Waltz and leave.’
The cat, as indifferent as all cats, got up from its owner’s knees and arranged its three legs in a more comfortable position on the bed.
Ben moved the chair away from the wall and let it drop to the floor. ‘I get the feeling you’re going to get in trouble.’
The boy shook his head, hiding behind his non-smile. ‘I can’t get in trouble.’
He took off his cotton gloves and held his hands out to Ben. They were covered in scars.
‘See? No fingerprints. Wiped out. Whatever I touch, I don’t leave any trace.’
He seemed to think for a moment, as if he’d finally found the right name for himself.
‘I don’t exist any more. I’m a ghost.’
He looked at him with eyes that asked a lot even though they were ready to concede little.
‘Ben, give me your word you won’t tell anyone I was here.’
‘Not even-?’
He interrupted him curtly, before he’d even had time to finish the sentence. ‘I said nobody. Ever.’
‘Or else?’
A moment’s silence. Then from his tortured mouth there emerged words as cold as those of the dead.
‘I’ll kill you.’
Ben Shepard realized that the world didn’t exist any more for the young man. A shiver went down his spine. Little Boss had left to fight a war against other men he had been ordered to hate and kill. After what had happened, the roles had been reversed.
He had come home, and now he was the enemy.
He was sitting in the dark, waiting.
He had been waiting so long for this moment and now that it had come, he didn’t feel any nervousness, any sense of hurry. It seemed to him that his presence in this place was totally normal, planned, thought through.
Resting on his knees was a Colt M1911, the army’s regulation weapon. Good old Jeff Anderson, who might have lost his legs but hadn’t lost his talent for pulling strings, had got him that pistol, without asking any questions. And, perhaps for the first time in his life, he hadn’t asked him for anything in return. He had kept it in his bag, wrapped in a cloth, throughout the journey.
The only light thing he had with him.
The room he was in was a living room with a couch and two armchairs in the middle, arranged in a horseshoe around a TV set against the wall. Clearly a place where one man lived on his own. A few mediocre paintings on the walls, a carpet that didn’t look very clean, dirty plates in the sink. And the smell of cigarettes.
In front of him, on the right, the door to the kitchen. On the left, another door leading to a little lobby and then the door out to the garden. Behind him, hidden by part of the wall, the stairs that led to the upper floor. When he had arrived and realized that the house was empty, he had forced the back door and quickly searched the interior.
As he did so, he had the voice of the drill sergeant at Fort Polk in his ears.
Before anything else, reconnoitre the area.
After familiarizing himself with the layout of the rooms, he had chosen to wait in the living room because from there he could keep an eye on both the main door and the back door.
Choose a strategic position.
He had sat down on the couch and released the safety catch on his gun. The click sounded as dry as his throat.
Check the condition of your weapons.
And while he was waiting, his thoughts had returned to Ben.
He could still see his expression when he had threatened him. No trace of fear, only disappointment. He had tried in vain to wipe out the effect of those few words by changing the subject, asking what he actually would have liked to ask from the start.
‘How’s Karen?’
‘Fine. She had the kid. She wrote you about it. Why didn’t you get in touch with her?’ Ben had paused, and then lowered his voice. ‘When they told her you were dead, she cried all the tears she had in her.’
There was a hint of reproach in the words and in the tone of voice.
He had got quickly to his feet, pointing at himself with both hands. ‘Do you see me, Ben? You see these scars on my face? They’re all over my body.’
‘She loved you,’ Ben had said, then immediately corrected himself. ‘She loves you.’
He had shaken his head, as if to brush away a troublesome thought. ‘She loves a man who doesn’t exist any more.’
‘I’m sure she-’
He had stopped him with a gesture of his hand. ‘Nothing’s sure in this world. The few things that are, are all bad.’
He had turned to the window, so that Ben couldn’t see his face. But above all so as not to see Ben’s face.
‘Oh yes, I know what’d happen if I went to see her. She’d throw her arms around me. But for how long?’
He turned again towards Ben. If his first instinct had been to hide, now he knew he had to look reality in the face – and make sure reality looked him in the face.
‘Even if all the other problems between us were solved, her father and all the rest, how long would it last? I’ve been asking myself that over and over since the first time they let me look at myself in a mirror and I saw what I’d become.’
Ben had seen tears welling in his eyes. Diamonds of little price, the only ones he could afford on a soldier’s pay. And he realized Little Boss must already have repeated these words in his head hundreds of times.
‘Can you imagine what it would be like for her to wake up in the morning and the first thing she sees is my face? How long would it last, Ben? How long?’
He hadn’t waited for a reply. Not because he didn’t want to know it, but because he already knew it.
They both knew it.
He had changed the subject again. ‘Do you know why I volunteered for Vietnam?’
‘No. I never figured that out.’
He had sat down again on the bed and stroked Waltz. Then he had told him everything that had happened. Ben had listened in silence. As he spoke, Ben had looked him in the face, letting his eyes move over his tortured skin.
When he had finished, Ben had covered his face with his hands, and his voice had filtered through the bars of his fingers. ‘But don’t you think Karen-’
Little Boss had stood up again quickly and approached the chair where his old employer was sitting. As if to emphasize his words.
‘I thought I made myself clear. She doesn’t know I’m alive and she mustn’t know.’
At that point Ben had stood up and in silence had hugged him again, more tightly this time. But Little Boss hadn’t been able to return the embrace, just stood there with his arms down by his sides.
‘There are things that nobody ought to feel in life, son,’ Ben had said, finally letting go of him. ‘I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. For you, for Karen, for the child. But as far as I’m concerned, I never saw you.’
He had left, and Ben had stood by the door, watching him go. He hadn’t asked him where he was going or what he was going to do. But in his eyes there was the bitter conviction that he would know soon enough. And the knowledge that he was his accomplice.
At that moment, there were only two things certain, for both of them.
The first was that Ben wouldn’t betray him.
The second was that they would never see each other again.
He had crossed the town on foot towards his destination: the house at the end of Mechanic Street. He preferred to walk a few miles rather than borrow a car from Ben. He wanted to avoid involving him in this nasty business any more than he had to. And he hadn’t the slightest intention of getting caught trying to steal a car.
As he walked, Chillicothe had unravelled around him, motionless and as unaware of him as it always had been. It was only an ordinary town, where he’d had to make do with a shred of hope when many young men had moved unconcernedly, surrounded by things they could be sure of.
He had walked down many streets, avoiding people, dodging lights, and every step had been a thought and every thought…
The sound of a car coming along the street jolted him out of his momentary distraction. He got up from the couch and went to the window. He moved aside a dusty curtain and looked out. A Plymouth Barracuda had parked, the front of it facing the shutter of the garage. The headlights died on the concrete, and Duane Westlake and Will Farland got out of the car.
They were both in uniform.
The sheriff was a little paunchier than the last time he’d seen him. Too much food and too much beer, maybe. Maybe even more full of shit than before. The deputy was just as thin and lanky and repulsive as he remembered him.
The two men walked to the front door.
He couldn’t believe his luck.
He had assumed he would have to pay two visits tonight. Now chance was offering him, on a silver platter, the possibility of avoiding one. And of making sure they both knew…
The door opened, and before light filled the room he was able to see the silhouettes of the two men framed in the rectangle of light cast on the floor from outside.
He moved towards the stairs and for a few moments leaned against the wall listening to their voices.
Westlake: ‘What did you do with those boys we picked up? Who are they?’
Farland: ‘Four vagrants. Usual type. Long hair and guitars. No priors, as far as we know, but we’re running checks. Meantime, they can spend tonight in the cooler.’
Pause.
Farland again: ‘I told Rabowsky to put them in a cell with some hard guy, if you know what I mean.’
He heard a little laugh that sounded like the squeaking of a mouse, and had surely come from the deputy sheriff’s thin lips.
Farland again: ‘Tonight, they’ll make war, not love.’
Westlake: ‘Maybe they’ll decide to cut their hair and look for a job.’
In his hiding place, he smiled, though with a nasty taste in his mouth.
A leopard never changes its spots.
Except these guys weren’t leopards. They were vultures, of the worst kind.
He leaned out cautiously, protected by the wall. The sheriff went and switched on the TV, threw his hat on the table and sank into an armchair.
There was the sound of a baseball commentary.
‘Christ, it’s almost over. And we’re losing. I knew that playing in California wouldn’t work out for us.’ He turned to his deputy. ‘If you want a beer, there’s some in the fridge. Get me one, too, while you’re there.’
The sheriff was the boss and he made sure his deputy knew it, even when it came to hospitality. He wondered if he’d have behaved the same way if Judge Swanson had been in the room instead of Deputy Farland.
He decided that now was the moment. He emerged from his hiding place with his gun aimed at the two men.
‘The beer can wait. Put your hands up.’
At the sound of his voice Will Farland, gave a start. And when he saw him, he went white in the face.
Westlake had turned his head abruptly. Seeing him, he was stunned for a moment. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
Wrong question, sheriff. Are you sure you want to know?
‘That doesn’t matter right now. Get up and stand in the middle of the room. And you: go stand next to him.’
While the two men moved as he had ordered them, Farland tried to slide his hand down towards his holster.
All very predictable.
He took a couple of rapid steps to the side so as to have Farland completely in his sights and shook his head. ‘Don’t even think about it. I know how to use this gun. Want to take my word for that, or would you like a demonstration?’
The sheriff had raised his hands in a gesture that was meant to be placatory. ‘Listen, friend, let’s all try to keep calm. I don’t know who you are, but let me remind you, you’re committing an offence just being here. Apart from that, you’re threatening two law enforcement officers with a firearm. Don’t you think your situation is serious enough already? Before you do anything else stupid, I’d advise you-’
‘Your advice ain’t worth shit, Sheriff Westlake.’
Surprised at hearing his name spoken, the sheriff frowned and tilted his head slightly to the side. ‘Do we know each other?’
‘Let’s leave the introductions till later. Now, Will, sit down on the floor.’
Farland was too surprised to be curious. He turned to his chief, not sure what to do. The voice he heard coming at him wiped out any doubts.
‘He doesn’t give the orders now, asshole. I do. If you’d rather be lying on the floor dead, I can oblige.’
The deputy bent his long legs and eased himself down, with the help of one hand laid flat on the floor.
Once he was down, their visitor pointed to him with the barrel of his gun and said to the sheriff, ‘Now, slowly and without making any sudden movements, take your handcuffs from your belt and tie his hands behind his back.’
Westlake did as he was told, going red in the face with the effort of bending. The sharp click of the handcuffs closing marked the beginning of the Deputy Sheriff captivity.
‘Now take yours and put it on your right wrist. Then turn around holding your arms behind your back.’
There was anger in the sheriff’s eyes. But there was also a gun in front of his face, so again he did as he was told, and a moment later a confident hand locked the handcuffs on his free wrist.
‘Now sit down next to him.’
The sheriff couldn’t help himself down with his hands. He bent his knees and dropped clumsily to the floor, his bulk falling heavily against Farland’s shoulder. The two of them almost ended up sprawled on the floor.
‘Who are you?’
‘Names come and go, sheriff. All that’s left is memories.’
He disappeared for a moment behind the wall that hid the stairs. When he came back he was holding in his hand a jerrycan full of gasoline. During his inspection of the house he had found it in the garage, next to a lawnmower. This trivial discovery had given him an idea, one that made him very happy.
He slipped his gun in his belt and approached the two men. Calmly, he started pouring the contents of the jerrycan over them. Their clothes were soon covered in dark stains. The oily, acrid smell of the gasoline spread through the room.
Will Farland moved aside instinctively to avoid getting the liquid on his face and accidentally headbutted the sheriff in the temple. Westlake did not even react. The pain had been anaesthetized by the panic that was starting to appear in his eyes.
‘What do you want? Money? I don’t have a lot in the house, but in the bank-’
‘I have money, too,’ the deputy interrupted his chief, his voice shrill with fear. ‘Almost twenty thousand dollars. You can have it all.’
What are two nice American boys doing here in the middleof all these paddy fields?
As he continued pouring the liquid from the jerrycan over the two men, it pleased him to think that it wasn’t only the gasoline fumes that were bringing the tears to their eyes. He spoke in the reassuring tone he’d once been taught.
Don’t worry, corporal. We’re going to take care of you …
‘Yes. Maybe we can come to an arrangement.’
A flash of hope appeared on the sheriff’s face, and in his words. ‘Sure we can. Come with us to the bank tomorrow morning and take whatever you want.’
‘Yes, we could do that…’ His voice changed abruptly. ‘But we won’t.’
With what was left of the gasoline in the jerrycan, he marked a line on the floor as far as the door. Then he put his hand in his pocket and took out a Zippo. A nauseating odour joined the pungent smell that already filled the room. Farland had relieved himself in his pants.
‘No, I beg you, don’t do it, don’t do it, for-’
‘Shut your fucking mouth!’
It was Westlake who had interrupted his deputy’s pointless snivelling. The strength of his hate and curiosity had given him back a little pride.
‘Who are you, scumbag?’
The young man who had been a soldier looked at him for a moment in silence.
The planes will come from that direction …
Then he said his name.
The sheriff opened his eyes wide.
‘That isn’t possible. You’re dead.’
He clicked the Zippo. The two men stared at the flame in terror.
He smiled, and for once was pleased that his smile was a grimace. ‘No, you sons of bitches. You’re dead.’
He opened his hand more than necessary and let the Zippo fall to the floor. He didn’t know how long the fall of the lighter would last for the two men. But he knew from experience how long such a short journey could be.
No thunder, for them.
Only the metallic noise of the Zippo hitting the floor. Then a hot bright whoosh, followed by a tongue of flame that advanced on them.
He stood listening to them scream and watching them squirm and burn until the smell of roasting flesh spread through the room. He breathed it in, savouring the fact that this time the flesh wasn’t his.
Then he opened the door and went out on the street. He started walking, leaving the house behind him, the screams accompanying him like a blessing as he moved away.
Soon afterwards, when the screams stopped, he knew that the captivity of Sheriff Duane Westlake and his deputy Will Farland was over.