The Ninth Configuration (11 page)

Fairbanks had returned to live with his parents in Plainville, Kansas, where he helped to run his father’s granary business and then took it over when his father died several months later. He settled in peacefully to look after his widowed mother and his two younger sisters, aged ten and thirteen. He would sit on his porch and read the news from Vietnam.

Reno, whose family was very wealthy, went back to New York and attempted an acting career without success. Then he took up “serious figure skating” every day in the Central Park rink. While skating one day, he met a young nurse who worked in the cancer ward at Fordham Hospital.

“This is like Portrait of Jenny,” he told her. “Don’t grow up or we’re doomed.” She laughed and they dated and after a reticent courtship they married. Reno’s parents strongly objected: the girl, Maria, was Puerto Rican, a spawn of the slums. Reno was working on a play and they lived on her salary; his parents would not help. As it happened, Maria spent much of her salary on gifts for the patients in the ward: all of them were children, and of destitute parents. Reno thought it wonderful that she did so. One day Reno’s mother caught sight of Reno and Maria scavenging the sidewalks for cigarette butts, which they would cannibalize and use to roll their own. She had just come out of Bergdorf Goodman, and pretended not to see them. But after that his parents began to help.

Fromme merely drifted for a time, sleeping late while his wife, a Las Vegas casino cashier, provided their sole support, except for Fromme’s disability check. In the night he would awaken from sleep with a shout, unable to remember what it was that had frightened him in his dreams. His wife divorced him and married an air-conditioning salesman. Fromme was now working as a dealer at one of the major casinos on the strip. He was often criticized for being too friendly with the players.

One year after their discharge, both Nammack and Gomez attempted to reenlist but were rejected. Now Nammack tended bar on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Gomez had returned to civilian life to find that his fiancée had married. On the night of his rejection for reenlistment, Gomez became extremely and belligerently drunk and shot the former girlfriend’s husband on the doorstep of their home with his service .45. He was presently awaiting trial.

Bennish was director of public relations for a university in Los Angeles and was living quietly in the San Fernando Valley with a wife and one child, who was very precocious.

Krebs returned to the neurology staff of Sepulveda Veterans Hospital, where he had worked for several years until his assignment at the center. Christian married and left the corps. Groper had requested a combat assignment. It was granted. On the tenth of November, 1969, he was killed in action. He had deliberately thrown himself on top of a live grenade to prevent it from killing two young privates who were standing near it in a state of shock. He received the Congressional Medal of Honor, which was given to his mother in Pulaski, New York. She put it in a box with Groper’s letters.