Saving Room for Dessert (17 page)

“No, I think that’s absolutely logical. ’Cause he told me, Jukey, straight out, he said arguin’ with those civil rights kids,
when they started trashin’ him to his face, that distracted him. Made him forget where he was—just long enough to get hurt—I
mean he said he forgot that he was in Mississippi and there were people there wanted to hurt him just as much as if he was
in Nam. But it would’ve never happened to him in Nam, ’cause he expected Victor Charlie to be anywhere and everywhere. He’d’ve
been in Nam he would’ve smelled that cracker comin’ fifty meters away, believe it.”

“How do you explain that the man in the truck singled him out? You don’t think that was random? Why didn’t he crash his truck
into all of them while they were arguing?”

“You’d have to ask him. So okay, 1 guess, alright, you could make the case that was bad luck. But I keep tellin’ you, I couldn’t
let myself think like that. I would never have been able to move if I’d let my mind get full of thoughts like that. I saw
guys, I mean, they’d get under a mortar attack, be fine for a while, then just stand up, start screamin’. Guaranteed dust-off
time, physical or mental, one or the other. And you can’t tell me one’s any better than the other. They’re just different,
that’s all.”

“Psychological death is the same as physical death?”

“Hey, I went to see this guy in the VA hospital in Pittsburgh, you know, the one off Washington Boulevard there?”

“I know where it is. Three days a week, I work there.”

“Oh. Well, anyway, I heard this guy was there. He was a good guy. I got to know him better than most, maybe ’cause he was
from Pittsburgh. But he was an okay dude. Funny. Reliable. Always did what he was supposed to. Nobody had to tell him anything
twice— for about eleven months. Then he got short. Thirty days. All of a sudden, he just couldn’t stand the thought that he’d
get dusted off when he was that close to goin’ home. I mean, he just got that thought in his mind, and, man, he was finished.
Paralyzed. I mean literally. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t brush his teeth, couldn’t do anything. Finally, I didn’t have any choice,
I had to take him to the aid station, and the dude just wigged out there, man. Went after a medic with a scalpel. We finally
got him in a jacket, they shot him full of morphine, MPs put him on a plane back. And he’s been in the hospital ever since.
When I went to see him, he didn’t know me from a cheeseburger. His mind was alphabet soup. He’s never gonna get outta there.”

“And you equate that with being dead?”

“He’s breathin’, but if you call that livin’, forget it.”

“And you think this is because he let himself think wrong.”

“No question. Why was he fine for eleven months? Suddenly he gets short, I mean, hey, if you last long enough to get short,
you’re gonna get the short-timer’s attitude. Everybody does. I had it too. But it just exaggerated everything I knew, just
made me double my concentration on what I was doin’ and how I had to do it. Jukey used to say, emotion starts with a thought,
and fear starts with a wrong thought. I refused to let myself think wrong.”

“Yet you came out of your vehicle and used your baton like a lance. Rammed it into a man’s kidney without identifying yourself
as a police officer, without—according to the report I read—without so much as one word of warning.”

“Uh … you got me there, what can I say?”

“I don’t want to have you anywhere, James. I want you to tell me, and I especially want you to tell yourself—what you were
thinking at that moment—that’s why you’re here. This is the wall we run into every time we get to this point. How many times
have we been over this, is that your question? How many times have you been here? And how many times have you refused to answer
when I ask you why you didn’t identify yourself?”

“I wanted him … I wanted him to know… I was thinking I wanted him to know what it felt like to be on the receiving end of
that.”

“Oh come on, James, you aren’t Superman, it’s not your job to go around avenging injustice, delivering retribution on behalf
of the downtrodden. Life is not a comic book. You took an oath to serve and protect. You took all the courses, passed all
the tests, passed your probationary period with exemplary behavior, got outstanding fitness reports from all your teachers,
all your training partners. I’ve read your records a dozen times. Then suddenly you see a father beating a son, and you forget
how to speak? Suddenly you can’t summon the brainpower to identify yourself as a police officer? Suddenly you can’t remember
the word
freeze?
Suddenly you find yourself with only one possible option to stop this beating? Suddenly the only way you know how to stop
this beating is to take your baton and, without one word of warning, ram it into this man’s back and rupture his kidney? Are
you seriously asking me to believe that’s what happened here? This, from a man who endured twelve months in Vietnam under
the extreme stress of guerrilla warfare, who survived that warfare by controlling his mind, by refusing to allow himself to
think a wrong thought? This man—you—you’re trying to tell me now, that when you put your hands on that baton, that was your
thought process?”

“Pretty stupid, huh?”

“No, James. Not stupid. Intelligence is not the issue here. Evasion is the issue here.”

“You tellin’ me I’m supposed to know why I was thinkin’ that way? I thought you were the one supposed to do that.”

“James, please, everything you’ve told me so far tells me you cal culate everything you do. We’ve been going at this now for
how many months? Eleven?”

“Yeah. Next report I write for Balzic will be number eleven.”

“And how many times have we been over what you learned from Jukey Johnson?”

“I don’t know, fourth, fifth, it’s all startin’ to, uh, blend in, run together, one session sounds, looks, I don’t know, like
the rest.”

“You think this is the fourth or fifth time? Are you serious?”

“I don’t know, I said.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, please, James—stop whining and think! We’ve been going over this since the third month. Comes
up at least once every session. And how many times have I asked you, for example, how old you were when you made the decision
to be a soldier?”

“Four, five, I’m not sure exactly.”

“Well I ask you again: how old? Do you remember?”

“Not exactly, no. Pretty young though.”

“And I ask you again, do you remember what prompted it?”

“Yeah. What I told you before. What I keep tellin’ you. Probably just took a beatin’ from one of the Guinnans. Or all of ’em.”

“Well what was your thinking like then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well did you just say to yourself, for example, that when I grow up I’m going to be a priest, so I can hear the Guinnans’
confession? So I can give them absolution, so they won’t have to feel guilty for tormenting me—is that what you were thinking?”

“You kiddin’ me? Priest?! Hear their—get out. Say their funeral mass maybe.”

“Well if you weren’t thinking that, perhaps you were thinking you might grow up to be a soldier? Were you thinking, if I become
a soldier I can learn how to defend myself against my enemies, so when these Guinnans pull this crap, I’ll be able to defeat
them, did you think something like that?”

“I doubt that’s what I was thinkin’. But it might’ve been some-thin’ like that. Maybe it was, I’m not sure.”

“And do you remember what you answer when I ask if you were influenced to make that decision by watching war movies? Or war
shows on TV? Or reading about war?”

“And I’m telling’ you again, for the umpteenth time, whatever, I don’t know. Maybe. But if I was, it wasn’t anything specific.
Nothin’ I can remember anyway.”

“Please. Stop with this nonsense about the umpteenth time. That’s ridiculous. I just told you how many times we’ve discussed
this issue.”

“Alright, alright.”

“And what do you answer when I ask if you were influenced by a relative? Your father perhaps, or an uncle? What do you say?”

“I say no. Because I wasn’t.”

“Because your father was not a soldier, correct? He’d never been a soldier. And you had no uncles or cousins or siblings,
no one in your family, correct? Who was a soldier?”

“Correct.”

“So who does that leave, James, tell me.”

“What do you mean who does that leave?”

“Oh James, James, after your mentor Johnson—you’re the second most calculating soldier in Vietnam—with whom did you equate
the VC, the NVA? Who, James?”

“Uh, the Guinnans?”

“Alleluia, alleluia, the man has spoken. He recognizes, finally, that it was all about the Guinnans.”

“Well … yeah … I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Okay. So I don’t guess. Sure. Those pricks … man, every morning, last thing I did before I left our house, I took a leak.
And the last thing before I left school too, I made sure I didn’t have any piss left in me. ’Cause the last thing I wanted
was to let ’em see me piss my pants ’cause of how scared I was.”

“And, uh, nobody defended you, nobody came to your defense?”

“Nah. My mother, you know, she tried. She went to their house coupla times, when I’d come home with my clothes messed up.
They’d lay off for a couple weeks. Then they’d start in again.”

“And your father? What about him?”

“My father, I told you, he had a heart condition. Congestive heart failure. He was lucky he could walk, you know, lucky he
could still, you know, still be able to go to work. Had an office job. With the railroad. Down the repair yards. Then he died.”

“And you were how old?”

“When he died? Fourteen.”

“And what about your siblings? Did you have brothers?”

“No. Why you askin’ me? You know I had two sisters. Both older. Fact, when he died, Lorraine, she was already married. Wasn’t
livin’ at home anymore. And Louise, she was goin’ to business school. Then she went to work for the state. For the Revenue
Department. She still lives at home. Me too.”

“Got a girl?”

“Had one.”

“What happened?”

“She married this guy when I was in, uh, in Nam. My mother sent me the announcement … outta the paper, you know?”

“Never told you herself?”

“Nah. Apparently that, uh, that must’ve slipped her mind.”

“How’d that affect you?”

“Not much. We weren’t that close. Least I wasn’t. Obviously she wasn’t either.”

“Was that another thing you refused to allow to affect you?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. Pissed me off for a while, but, uh … not for that long. I said we weren’t that close.”

“You wouldn’t let it?”

“Yeah. Exactly, I had more important things on my mind right then. Fact, that was right in the middle of Tet. You know, the
big NVA offensive? They were supposed to push us into the sea. With the whole population, they were supposed to rise up, kick
our asses outta there. Load of shit that was.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, you know, every time somebody mentions Tet, they call it the Tet Offensive, you know, with the big capital
O
, like oh wow, the VC and the NVA, they put on this big offensive, they kicked our ass, changed the course of the war and
all that. But that’s bullshit. I mean, in our area, where I was, Tet was nothin’ special. Around Saigon and Hue now, couple
other cities, I guess it was, I don’t know, but, hey, every book I’ve read since I’ve been back, they all say the same thing—after
Tet, the VC was no longer an effective force. They got hammered during Tet. Now maybe the books I’m readin’, maybe they’re
bullshit propaganda, I don’t know. But everybody I talked to comin’ home, and the whole year after I was back, when I was
down Fort Jackson, everybody who’d been in the southeast in Nam there, and everything I’ve read, it wasn’t us got our asses
kicked during Tet, it was the VC.”

“For somebody who insists he was nothing but a soldier, who was never interested in the politics, you’re pretty vehement about
the outcome.”

“Nah. Well. Okay, I guess, yeah. But I don’t like people who weren’t there talkin’ when they don’t know anything about anything.”

“Well I assure you, James, the Tet Offensive made quite an impression here. Whether it was a real victory or a propaganda
victory, I’m not wise enough to say, but it certainly made an impression, all those TV images of Saigon practically under
siege. I mean after all, that was the capital.”

“So what? It was a civil war. During the Civil War here? I mean, where was Washington, huh? Right in the middle of enemy territory
the whole war—I mean, wasn’t it?”

“Yes of course, but it was never brought under siege the way Saigon was—”

“Well maybe Robert E. Lee shoulda thought about it. Maybe old Giap, maybe he didn’t read Lee’s memoirs—or if he did, maybe
he didn’t pay attention to them.”

“For somebody who keeps insisting he doesn’t know anything about the politics of war, you’ve certainly got strong opinions.”

“Aw hell, that doesn’t mean I know anything. The books I read, they’re out there for anybody wants to read ’em. Just put what
I read up against what I did and where I was, that’s all.”

“Let’s get back to your father.”

“What about him?”

“Did it bother you that he couldn’t defend you? From the Guinnans?”

“Maybe. But I don’t think so. I knew he couldn’t do much in the way of physical stuff. So, no, I don’t think that bothered
me.”

“So did that influence your thinking? About wanting to be a soldier—and not just wanting to be a soldier, but wanting to learn
how to be the best soldier you could be?”

“I don’t think it had anything to do with it.”

“Don’t you think you saw yourself at that time as being totally helpless? According to what you’ve said before, you were fourteen
when your father died, so you were what, in ninth grade?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“C’mon, James, no probablies. You had to endure all or some of the Guinnans’ torment for three or three and a half more years—
after your father’s death, right?”

“Yeah. Sounds right.”

“Why are you being so hesitant? You know it’s right, it doesn’t just sound right.”