The Valley (27 page)

“Right.”

“So he goes out to Hawaii with his wife and some of his kids and the other blue hats and all
their
wives and all
their
kids, and they all have a nice little trip, right?”

“Right.”

“You know, breakfast in the hotel, ride on their tour buses and totter around on the docks and stuff, looking down in the water and payin' their respects to their old buddies thinkin' 'bout when they were all kids with no wrinkles or nothin', like we all sittin' right up here on this cliff. Nice happy little trip, everyone sheds a tear, do your hugs and get on home.”

He paused for a good drag on his cigarette.

“So when the old dude gets back to his hotel, he tells his wife and his kids that when he dies he wants his ashes brought back there to Pearl, and he says put 'em in the water.”

“Okay.”

“And, you know, his wife is kinda hurt, right? 'Cause she was thinkin' all eternity in the family plot back in Bumfuck, Nowhere, right? Like, side by side forever in the kinda shithole where I live back home.”

He chuckled.

“But his kids see it in his eyes, and she sees it, and everyone sees they can't make him change his mind. So they say, ‘Hey, you're the boss a' you,' and they all hug on it or whatever, and they all think he's a little crazy, but hey, he survived Pearl Harbor, so he gets to be crazy, right?”

He blew out a long one.

“Died that night,” he said flatly. “Didn't make it back to Bumfuck or nowhere else. Didn't get on the plane. Went to sleep in his hotel bed after the Love-You-All dinner they had that night at the Holiday Inn or wherever, and woke up dead.”

“Damn.”

“So I'm watchin' the news about this, and everyone in the news story that's hearin' about it from the Bumfuck folks is getting all teary and saying,
Oh, that's so sweet, he stayed alive to make it back and honor his friends before he died
, and all that shit. But that's bullshit.”

The first soldier looked at him quizzically.

“He didn't live no happy life,” said Hill, taking a drag. “He lived a cursed life.”

“Whatta you mean?”

Hill turned to the soldier.

“He didn't die in the ship with his buddies like he was supposed-a.”

He inhaled and blew out a long jet.

“So he was damned to walk the Earth for sixty years with his buddies haunting his life the whole time. May-a looked like he lived a happy life, but that just made it worse. The more he got in life—kids, a wife, whatever—that was just one more thing he had to chew on that his buddies never got.”

“Oh.”

“He didn't go back there to pay his respects and honor his buddies, man. He went back there to ask 'em, ‘Is sixty goddamn years enough?'”

The guard soldier was watching him like a kid at a campfire.

“And they said, ‘We're cool now, bud.'”

He surveyed the group.

“They set him free.”

No one said anything. He went on, with mischief in his voice.

“But his buddies ain't even
that
cool after all. Everybody in the news story is all charm-y and saying,
Oh, he wants his ashes to be with his buddies, how nice
, but they got that one wrong too.”

“Whatta you mean?”

“His buddies ain't even there in the water,” Hill said, shaking his head. “Coupla the big ships are there—
Arizona
, right?—but the littler ships, they ain't at the bottom of Pearl Harbor no more. They all got pulled up and scrapped after the attack.”

He chuckled darkly.

“His buddies ain't lyin' in the bottom of the sea. But that's where he's gonna lie. That's the fuckin' deal they made.”

A breeze bent the little fire.

“He ain't never gonna leave there. His wife even said it too. After she got back home the little Bumfuck newspaper did a story and came to her house and made her tell the whole story, right? And when she got to the ashes part they asked her, ‘How did you feel about the ashes?'”

“Yeah?”

“And she just looked the reporter in the eye and said, ‘In some ways I don't think Gerald ever left Pearl Harbor.' And she'd probably been sayin' that to herself her whole life, but it took that whole time for her to realize how true it was. Blew her life on a man who was damned and didn't even figure it out till practically the end.”

He blew a cloud of smoke at everyone and let them chew on that.

“What happened to her?” Black asked.

“Funny you ask, L.T.,” Hill said, with a wicked little grin. “She was a little younger than he was, right? Turns out her old high school sweetheart was still doddering around Bumfuck too. Married him six months later and called it a day.”

He laughed out loud.

“God damn,” said the first soldier, hollow-voiced.

Everyone stared at the stone slab, defeated.

“That,” said one of the snipers, “is the worst fucking happy ending I've ever heard.”

“Yep,” said Hill, still amused. “Probably thought about that dude every week her whole life but still stuck by ol' Gerald. Then Gerald says, ‘Thank yee very much for the grand life together, but I'll be sleepin' with the fishes if you don't mind.'”

Everyone lapsed into silence again. Hill eyeballed Black.

“You got a girl, there, sir?” he asked. “There someone back home waitin' around loyally on ol' Lieutenant Black?”

Black didn't return his gaze.

“Mmm-hm,” Hill said to himself, taking a nice long smoke before speaking again. When he did he addressed the group.

“Never be the last man,” he said, looking out at the mountains. “Traynor knew that. Traynor knew what he was doing. After the firefight, when everything was all over, the chief medic on the MEDEVAC bird told the investigators all about it. He said when the helo touched down and he jumped out onto the ground and ran over to where Traynor was at and he saw the poor fuckers that Traynor had dragged to the landing zone, it was just pathetic. It was obvious none of 'em was gonna make it. They were all mostly dead already. Medic grabbed Traynor by the arm and told him, ‘These wounds are not survivable, private,' and told him to bring him some other casualties that might have a chance. Traynor told him ‘Fuck you' and made him put the casualties on the bird. Told him the rest of the dudes were okay. Told him ‘We're good.'”

Hill rose from his camp chair and walked to the edge of the slab. He had a water bottle in his hand.

“So rest in peace, Jason,” he said, tipping a quantity over into infinity. “Say hi to the boys.”

He came back and sat. Everyone stared at the stone walls or the slab.

Black looked at Brydon, who stared miserably down at the rock.

“And that,” said Hill, surveying the newcomers, “is the story of Private Traynor, for all you O.P. Traynor cherries.”

He glanced at Black.

“No offense, there, sir.”

Black nodded.

“Where's the latrine?” he asked.

“Eh, we got a chem toilet if you need it, sir, but if you gotta take a whiz . . .”

He swept his arm across the vista before them.

“. . . the world's yer oyster.”

Deciding it would be unclassy to urinate on the memory of Private Traynor, Black rose and squeezed down between the boulders at the entrance to the fishbowl. He looked around himself. From there it was a short scramble up and over a spine of rocks to the back side of the mountain and a wooded area.

He unslung his rifle and went that way, hopping and scrambling from rock to rock, the heavy bulk of the mountain to his right, empty space falling away to his left as he rounded the summit mass. He had just hopped down from the last boulder and landed on the wooded backslope when hands grabbed his shoulders from behind.

“L.T.!” the voice hissed.

H
e ducked and spun, sending up an elbow to shrug his attacker free.

Danny's surprised, sweating face shone wide-eyed in a leafy shaft of moonlight.

Black charged, holding his rifle crosswise before him. His momentum, with all his gear on, drove Danny several tripping steps backward across the slope until they both fell across a log and landed hard on the slanting mountainside.

Black pushed himself up and away from Danny, backing off several feet and raising his rifle.

“No!” Danny gasped, terrified. “L.T.!”

“It's you!” Black hurled at the linguist, squaring on him. “He's you!”

“What?!”

“The servant! You're the servant!”

“L.T.! No! What?”

“Don't bullshit me, Dan—”

A crackle of leaf and twig behind him.

Five meters roughly.

He spun. A dark figure loomed before his rifle. Before any conscious thought, he squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened but the dull metallic snap of a weapon failing to fire.

He blinked. The Monk stood frozen for a moment, then glided away downslope, through the trees.

Black whirled around again to Danny, who remained motionless on the ground with his hands up. He let his rifle fall, swinging taut from a short strap D-ringed to his gear, and drew his pistol.

“L.T.!”

“Shut up.”

He looked around him and moved a few steps further away to where a log lay across the ground. He lay his pistol on its side on the log, pointing in Danny's direction, close where he could grab it. He unhooked his rifle from its strap.

“What did you do here, Danny?”

He cracked open the rifle and began to strip it, keeping one eye on his work and one eye on the frightened 'terp.

“What, did you rape a kid or something? Did you try to cut in on the chief's drug business?”

He pulled the charging handle out, freeing the bolt assembly, while Danny stammered and protested.

“I'm sick of everyone lying to me out here, Danny.”

He yanked a patrol cap from his cargo pocket by its bill, snapping it open with a flip of his wrist and setting it upside down like a dish on the log.

“So you need to tell me the truth now or I'm going to shoot you, right here on this mountain. Do you understand?”

Danny's wide eyes widened further.

“What did the chief want to tell me, before he freaked out over the heroin?”

He tossed the charging handle into the upturned patrol cap and got a fingernail underneath the loop of the retaining pin as Danny opened his mouth to respond.

“Why did he want to get me alone?”

He tugged the retaining pin free and pinched it between his teeth.

“L.T.!” Danny exclaimed, harshly. “This is what I tell you! It was not the chief!”

“What?”

He tipped the bolt carrier into his palm and nothing came out.

“It was not the chief who wanted you to talk alone,” said Danny. “It was
me,
L.T.”

There was no firing pin in his rifle.

He looked up at Danny.

“The chief did not say for Caine to leave,” Danny said. “I say that. I wanted you talk to the chief alone.”

Black looked at him uncomprehendingly. Danny went on in a gush of words.

“I make it up, L.T. Chief is talking about
Who is young officer
,
He looks like baby
, and this. I tell him Sergeant Caine makes apologies but has to go, but he can tell any problem to young lieutenant, and young lieutenant will tell his boss and bring help.”

Black's mind spun.

“I hope maybe he tell you, L.T. Tell you what happen.”

“What do you mean? What happened when?”

“On patrol,” Danny said. “Not goat patrol. Before. One week, ten days.”

“What patrol?”

Danny shook his head miserably.

“I don't know,” he said. “I don't see. I don't go on this one. Night time. They tell me, Danny you stay at Vega. They come back, something is wrong. I know something is wrong. Too much whispers, soldiers are scared.”

“Which soldiers?”

“I don't know all, but some the guys you talk to for investigation. Some these guys for sure.”

“Shannon?”

“Yeah. And Corelli. These guys on patrol.”

“The Wizard?”

“I don't know, man.”

“The sergeants?”

“Caine for sure. Merrick he stay at Vega. And lieutenant too, he goes. He looks bad when they come back. Goes to his room—your room—and stays. He knows the bad thing happens.”

“He didn't stop the bad thing?”

Danny just looked at him reproachfully and shook his head slightly.

“I don't know what happened, L.T.,” Danny said. “But everything is bad since the night. Everybody is scared. Nobody talks nobody. Then you come. I hope you help. I know chief knows story, because he is different too, every time we come to town after. I hope chief tells you the story.”

And you screwed that up.

“What are you doing out here?” Black demanded.

“After Darreh Sin, after chief, I cannot stay at Vega. You do the heroin . . .”

His hands churned the air for the word.

“Heroin square, and the chief is so mad, and the attack and the bombs. Sergeant Caine, Sergeant Merrick, they will ask me what happened with chief. I know you will not tell them, because . . .”

He peered at Black in the dark.

Because you screwed up.

“So I go,” Danny said with finality. “It is not safe for me staying at Vega. They will ask, and I'm scared if I lie and help you they will know.”

He looked at the ground.

“I don't know what they do to get me to answer.”

That hung in the air. Black picked up his pistol.

“Are you lying?

“L.T.,” Danny said sadly. “I watch you.”

Black cracked open the pistol too and began pulling it apart.

“You are man who needs the truth.”

It only took a few moments to get the simpler pistol down to its basic parts. It too had been disabled.

Black looked up at Danny wordlessly. He set the useless pistol pieces down. His thoughts circled backward until he understood.

“What else do you know?”

Danny looked at him with dark eyes.

“The valley, it . . .”

He swept his hands toward himself as though trying to contain a cloud of smoke.

“. . . gathering, L.T. No one at Vega is safe.”

“What do you mean?”

“I hear too much. All valley people says get the Devil out of the valley.”

“Are you with the Monk?”

Danny swallowed.

“I go, L.T.,” he said. “Please.”

“Are you with the Monk?”

Danny stood slowly.

“Please, I go. I help you if I can.”

“Wait.”

Black sat back on his haunches, his mind spinning.

“What else did the chief say?”

“L.T.?”

“Right when we were running out. He was saying some stuff that you didn't translate.”

He saw recognition in Danny's eyes. Danny shook his head.

“You watch out this chief, L.T. He is in a bad . . . place? With his people.”

“What was the thing he said?”

Danny nodded.

“I don't understand this part,” he said. “I mean, I hear the words, I understand the words. I don't understand what he means.”

“What were the words?”

“Well, you hear he say I should kill you all, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then the next he says, this one is no sense. He says I kill all, I kill every man of you to . . .”

He made spheres in the air with his hands.

“Earth . . ?” he said, frowning. “Ball?”

“World?”

“This, I think, L.T.,” Danny declared. “I kill every man of you from this place all the way to the . . . to your end of the world.”

Black watched Danny head downhill through the trees as he reassembled his useless weapons. When he was done he rooted deep in a cargo pocket and came up with the little heart-strewn envelope the Monk had given him back at Vega. He slumped down, sitting against the hillside, and tore it open.

A single slip of paper lay inside. He read it, then closed his eyes for a few moments, memorizing its contents. He folded it back into the envelope and returned it to his pocket.

He stared downslope a moment in the direction Danny had gone. He pulled a map from his cargo pocket and held it close to his face, squinting under the red light of his flashlight. When he was done he folded it back up and put it away.

He picked his way slowly back to the rocks that would take him up to the fishbowl where the soldiers were waiting. He was already squeezing himself back up through the last boulders before he noticed the extra voices up on the slab.

He emerged and stood. Everyone turned and looked at him.

Shannon and the two soldiers Merrick had brought on the patrol stood off to the right, near the ledge, having a smoke. Hill and the guys from the guard tower were still in their chairs.

“Hey there, sir,” came a voice from his left.

Caine sat in a camp chair next to Brydon.