The Brothers K (68 page)

So I just hang there. I just hang in the water there, watching him drift and drift, blind now, I realize, since with one hand he’s still clutching at a shoreline an easy quarter mile away. And he never did
drown, Kade. He never did quit clutching. And the Mekong is huge. It took him forever to disappear.

It took him so long that by the time he was gone, everything had changed. I didn’t hurt anymore, didn’t feel like hiding anymore, wasn’t scared anymore. Because I wasn’t anything anymore. Not anything I love or know or care about. Because thou shalt not kill, Kade.
Thou shalt not kill
. With all my heart I believed this. And I killed. So what am I now? And why should I live? How am I even alive? Because if this is what our lives are—if doing this to others before they do it unto us is all our lives are—we’re already dead. Honest to God I feel it, Kade. I’m dead. The hell with me.

I crawled back to my rifle because it was the one thing on earth I knew where to find. Then I threw it as far as I could out into the Mekong. That left nothing. Which suited me fine. I sat back down, closed my poncho round a piece of river, started listening again to the zuzz. Then, you know me, I tried praying too, asking Christ to do things like bless and save the guy I’d killed and damn me to hell instead if need be. But then that Sabbath School song, “Zaccheus,” got stuck in my head, so I bagged the prayers and started singing it instead. And when I heard the words coming out of me I saw clear as day that Christ already
had
saved him. He’d saved the Cong I killed, then jammed the song in my head to show He doesn’t need shitheads like me to tell Him His business. Because remember?

So the rain is falling and the river is zuzzing and
Zaccheus!
I’m singing, or blubbering really, you came down, but He’s going to your house today! when
What
the
fuck
are
you
doing
Felker is all of a sudden wondering out of the bushes. Singing Zaccheus, I tell him. Where’s your rifle? he wonders. I nod at the river. Why? he wonders. Defective, I tell him, and so am I defective, and so are you, and so are all of us and this idiot war and our country for fighting it and on and on goes my list of defectives till I sound like Everett almost, so that it’s no surprise when Felker jumps out and slugs me. He was just eating his Vietnamese lunch up there, I tell him. Shuttup, he whispers, and slugs me. I killed Zaccheus, I tell him, bawling loud enough now to wake the whole Delta, so shuttup shuttup shuttup, poor Felker goes,
punching me, and I’m spitting blood back in his face and don’t care if we live and won’t move and keep sobbing, and if he didn’t pound me good I’d be there still. So I warn you, Kade, my face is a bit different. The nose mostly. But don’t be a fool. Don’t blame Felker. He risked the shit out of his life for me. Gelman says he’s even trying to wangle me a transfer to a place besides a brig or asylum where my lack of M-16 won’t stick out so bad.

But listen, Kade. Please listen. Don’t you
ever
come here. Study yourself blind like Pete, lop off a toe like Papa, hightail it like Everett, go to jail, do what you have to. But don’t you come here no matter what. Because it’ll kill you, this place. If the Cong don’t, your own heart will.

Can’t sign off. Don’t know what to call me. Don’t scare Linda or the twins with this, okay?

A
fter Natasha had performed, by vanishing, a kind of quack bisection of Everett’s heart and wittingly or unwittingly taken the happy half with her; after the winter rains kept pouring and the memory of his lovely new continent sank like a stone and the landscape sagged back into its prehistoric greens and grays and even Chekhov née Booger seemed to grow a little depressed or confused after he’d munched through the cedar shingles and clear into the two-by-fours on the corners of several vacation homes, to find that no longer would anyone come rushing out to thwack him;

after Everett had stood for six hours in the rain in Shyashyakook’s vandal-savaged but only phone booth spending his once-great faith in telephones and his last dime chasing down his beloved’s old boyfriends and girlfriends and registrars and priest and faculty to learn only that she’d dropped out of her master’s program at Washington in order to maybe visit her mother in Arizona (address unknown) or father in New York (address unknown) or some daft draft-dodger up in Canada (“Yeah, I knew him once,” said Everett);

after he’d driven to Victoria to hawk most of his clothes, all of his fishing tackle, his wristwatch, his Russian literature and accessories, his beloved stereo, his even more beloved rock-’n’-roll record collection and even the tire iron, jack and spare tire from the trunk of his car, merely to win another sodden day in the ravaged phone booth calling random people
with the last name of Lee in Phoenix, Brooklyn, Knoxville, Tucson, the Bronx, Chattanooga and so on, only to ask, in a voice clogged by mucus née boogers from the terrible cold he’d caught, questions like “Is this the Lee with the niece or daughter named Laurel or Natasha? No? No obscure branch of the family tree with one small Laurel on it? You’re sure? Then is this by chance a psychic Lee, or a detective Lee, or a Ouija Lee who can help find my missing Laurel? It’s not. I wonder, then, if—no, ma’am, not drunk, just cold, and I—please! One last favor! Just look out your window, it’s not asking much, and tell me whether you see her right now—she’d be the beautiful one, auburn-haired, green-eyed, old jeans that fit like ballet tights, with the little red thing that looks like raw hamburger pinned like a brooch to her blouse—that’s half my heart, that thing. So if you
do
see her, I beg you to—hello? hello?”;

after Chief Yulie and Corey finally trudged out to the phone booth, fetched him back to the Muskrat, fed him a burger ’n’ chips, stood him a pitcher of draft, then another, then another, then another, and Roon and Jeddy drove him back home and dumped him in bed, Everett, or what was left of him, awoke in the meaningless gray morning to find his mind, his possessions and half his heart still irretrievably gone. But for some reason his body still seemed to be hanging uselessly but noticeably down off his neck there. So meeting the body’s feeble demands, morning after morning, became his feeble new purpose in life.

This
A.M
. bodily maintenance project was soon dubbed “the ABCDE.” His mind was so adrift that the acronym’s meaning would change now and then, but generally it stood for something like “Another Brainless Clone’s Diet Effort” or “Amorphous Blob Cooks Detritus for Everett.” What didn’t change much was the ritual itself: the ABCDE began with three boiled eggs, cooked sometimes too soft, sometimes too hard, almost never just right. Everett loathed overly soft eggs and he loathed overly hard ones, but since his
A.M
. mind couldn’t keep track of time without its morning coffee, and since coffee gave him heartburn on an empty stomach, he had to eat the eggs before he could drink the coffee. So every morning he mistimed, miscooked, and disliked them. He’d tried fried eggs for a while. But whenever he’d burnt them (which had been almost daily) he went through hell trying to clean his cast-iron skillet afterward. With boiled eggs, if the shells didn’t break (or what the heck, even if they did), the hot water for his coffee was ready just as soon as he spooned the eggs out, and the pan was as good as clean as soon as the coffee got poured out into his cup. Clever. For an Amorphous Blob.

Everett drank drip coffee only. Percolated, cowboy or instant gave him
even worse heartburn than drip, adding milk didn’t help, and Canadians hadn’t yet discovered cappuccino and the like, so black drip it was. He also tried fixing toast to accompany the eggs now and then. Since he had no toaster he had to use his gas oven, and since he used it in the midst of his pre-coffee stupor, he usually burnt the toast to cinders. Even if he didn’t burn it he seldom ate it, because he didn’t like toast unless it was hot and served with coffee and he couldn’t have it with coffee yet, because his eggs were still boiling in his coffee water, and by the time he got the eggs shelled and salted and peppered the toast was stone cold. But he liked to make toast anyway, if only because by operating the gas oven in the midst of his pre-coffee stupor he daily stood a very real chance of dying.

Death. By all sorts of means. This was a topic Everett contemplated long, hard and none too carefully on these dank, gray-hued late-winter mornings. Stumbling round the kitchen, not comprehending time, he would fix and consume his preposterous breakfast till the eggy coffee did its work and his literacy kicked in. Then he’d start to read whatever printed words or numbers his eyes lit upon. Not Russian novels; not books; not even magazines or newspapers. Thought, literature, informative writing of all kinds—these were for suckers. Because they all tried to give life meaning. But once your life had acquired meaning, all it really meant was that you’d doomed yourself to hurt like a twice-hammered thumb once Unmeaning came along, as it always does, and knocked the teeth, brains and stuffing out of your puny meaning. All Everett required each morning, thank you, were some random household objects with a few meaningless words printed on them to add a little fuel to his contemplations of death …

The 1943 tide table Scotch-taped to the side of the rusty, perennially empty napkin dispenser, for instance. “Sept. 10, 1943,” it warned. “High Water: 11:34 & 11:16; Feet: 7.4 and 8.4; Low Water: 5:00 & 5:13; Feet: −0.8 and 0.8.” Or the side of the corroded half-full can of Ronsonol lighter fluid under the kitchen sink. “DO NOT USE NEAR FIRE OR FLAME,” it threatened. “N.Y.F.D.C. of A. No 731. ALWAYS CLOSE SPOUT AFTER USE. Wipe lighter and hands dry before igniting. If swallowed do not induce vomiting. Call physician immediately.” Then he’d sip more coffee, and more, till he could picture himself floating facedown in an 8.4 high tide, or slipping on kelp, cracking his skull and drowning in a tide puddle on a −0.8 low, or immolating or poisoning or exploding himself due to some failure to “dry” or “CLOSE” or “induce” or “call” someone or something or other. And then of course up would
stroll Natasha, just in time to toss the unseeable flower, or the now unreadable note that explained everything, or just the other half of his heart into the puddle or fire or gutter where he lay, and just in time to say, “I’m sorry, I really did love you” or “I’m sorry, I never did,” what’s the difference, really? Then out of the cottage he’d stroll, and up to the alder woodlot to weep or cut firewood, what’s the difference, really?, or down the driveway to fix the flood-ruts with a shovel, or all the way to town for supplies and mail and, when it was raining, a good camouflaged cry over the beautiful letter of apology she had once again not written. Then back to his home or his homelessness, to sleep or not sleep till morning, when he’d open his eyes to the sight of the same old body, hanging sad and silly as a turkey wattle from his neck. So out would come the saucepan, in would go the water, up would leap the blue flame. And he’d boil another three eggs.

Dear Mama,

Sorry to worry you with a thing like this, but this letter’s for Nash when he’s old enough to wonder who I was, in case I don’t come back. I’d of sent it to Linda, but didn’t want to scare her. And if I don’t come back I figure her life could get crazy enough she might lose this before Nash ever saw it. Whereas knowing you, you’ll read it and hate it, but still take good care of it. So I thank you in advance. Okay? XOOX.

Dear Nash.

It’s weird to write somebody you love but have never met a big long letter you hope they’ll never read. But if you are reading this it means you won’t be seeing me, and I’d rather write a weird letter than leave you wondering your whole life whether I ever thought about you. I’m writing to say that I think about you and your mother every day and night, and that I love you both so much that one of the hardest things in my life now is trying not to hate myself for being fool enough to come here. How I did come, what forced me to leave, is not easy to explain. But for you I want to try. And if it just sounds dumb when I’m finished, maybe your uncles and aunts can fill in some of the holes.

Once upon a time then, as far as I can understand it, there was this place, Vietnam, where a bunch of farmers, mostly Buddhists I guess, were happily and unhappily living and farming and marrying and making babies who grew up to be unhappy and happy farmers like themselves, when politicians from their cities, then from whole other countries, started fighting over whose flag should fly over their farms. The fighting became a war, and there was money and power and beliefs and revenge involved, and though I’ll never understand it, one thing led to another till several different nations including the most powerful one in the world, our nation, Nash, had sent men and tanks and jets and bombers into this quiet place, and they roared and poured out over the farmers’ farmland, and they blew each other and the farms and the crops and the animals and farmers, women and children included, Nash, kids no bigger than you, and just as sweet, into a million burnt and bloody pieces. Can you believe it? I hate to even tell you such a horrible story. I’m only doing it because, as I write this, it’s still happening. What’s worse, I’m one of that most powerful nation’s men.

So why in hell’s name am I here, you must wonder. Because your granddad and uncles warned me, Nash. They told me exactly what was happening here and said go to jail or Canada instead. What I thought about their warnings may sound strange to you, but it’s the truth: what I thought was how much Jesus loved me. I had so much faith I just
knew
He’d protect me here, and help me help and maybe even save others, till He brought me back home safely to Linda and you. And this wasn’t wrong of me, Nash, it’s good to trust Jesus. But when it came to a subject like ’Nam it wasn’t very imaginative of me either. The thing was, I grew up hearing over and over how Jesus loved the little children of the world, and to me the word “love” meant He must take care of them, He must watch out for them. So I simply couldn’t imagine an actual place on earth, not even when I saw it in black and white in the magazine pictures Everett sent me, where the broiling bodies of Christ’s little loved ones really were lying in pools of fire in their own backyards and playgrounds and gardens, and that my country was the one dropping the fire. I looked right at those pictures, but couldn’t see them. To me they were trick photography or something, and by coming here I figured I’d be able to straighten out the tricks and maybe keep Mama and Everett from going at each other’s throats.