Trinity Fields (44 page)

Sensing that something was wrong, Kip refused to ask why. He had another spoonful of the tomato aspic at his lips, but laid it down and simply turned to look at his colleague. Wagner ignored him. Kip, by turn, ignored him and finished eating.

The festivities continued. A gift of an amulet for protection in the field was given to Kip by Kha Yang. A silver necklace with a dark stone image of the Buddha set in a triangular silver base.

—I don't wear jewelry, said Kip.

—You wear this all times, you never will get hit, said Kha.

—What happens if they shoot straight and true, right at the plane? Kip asked.

—The bullets will not find it.

—What happens if they hold the gun right here in front of you and shoot? he asked, a little high from the
lao lao
. He held an imaginary gun and pointed it at Kha Yang's heart.

—The bullet will go around, yes.

From where they looked out into the evening that now came over Alternate the karsts at the northern periphery gathered violet light so that they seemed to glow, like two enormous tapered bulbs, and the milieu radiated a quality of home, a contentment that Kip hadn't experienced since early childhood, perhaps not even then. What strange sweetness, he thought, expecting it to leave him, but it did not pass away. He held the amulet before him in the dusk, saw that the Buddha did not reveal himself, and then slipped the amulet necklace over his head. As the heavens purpled and captured black so that the first stars began to pulse, Kip imagined forward to when the war would be over, projected himself toward an evening much like this when the advisors began to be gone, the USAID workers were on their way, the field officers, the ambassador down in the concrete bunker war room in Vientiane, the hundreds of thousands of protestors who had come to Washington back in October to signal the beginning of the end of our commitments here were finally going home too, the North Vietnamese Army who would soon enough begin their annual fall offensive and the negotiators in Paris now began to be gone, the irregular forces out in temporary bunkers under the emerging stars, the capitalists and Communists, hawks, doves, all of them would be gone from where they were now. As he willed them home it was as if all of them seemed just to float away into the ionized ether of dusk light. Kha Yang asked Kip, —You want ball play?

—With the children? Kip asked.

—No. We football, play.

Wagner said something in Lao, and asked Kip if he knew how to play soccer. —Not really, said Kip.

—Neither do I, but I guess we're about to find out.

By the light of two bonfires on a field down near the airstrip, a group of men ran back and forth. The green body bags that were laid out in a nearby morgue, delivered earlier in the afternoon from out in the mountains in order that their contents be identified if possible before burial, were for the briefest moment forgotten. Wives, daughters, widows sat along the edges of the field and watched all the other stars come out, and fed the bonfires, and dared to talk contentedly among themselves while the men played on.

The next day Kip finally asked Wagner, —Okay, so what was in that tomato aspic?

—What tomato aspic? Wagner retorted.

—Come on, man, said Kip.

—I don't know what you're talking about, Calder.

—The aspic, you said it was good for me?

—Oh, that. I never told you that was tomato aspic, did I?

—Wagner, said Kip.

—Congealed water buffalo blood, said Wagner, after a pause. —Hey, don't worry. I like it, too.

Once I knew in my heart Kip was never coming back, my burdened view of Jessica was free to change. He was gone now, and he was going to be gone if not forever at least long enough that Jessica's heart—were she to save it from being broken—would have to learn to elude him.

The danger for me in all this was less that Kip might return to make some new bid for her and the child, than that Jessica would keep on loving him in the way people have of coveting absent lovers. But I could see at once that this was not how Jess was going to behave in the wake of Kip's desertion—desertion, yes, to call a spade a spade since it was as much an abandonment as a being pushed out—no, in fact, it appeared she was going to act in quite the opposite way.

—Everyone has the freedom to make whatever choices they want. I couldn't expect him to try to be somebody he's not.

—That's a pretty generous outlook, I said.

She said, —So, I'm generous.

—I mean it, though. You aren't angry with him?

—I was, but I don't see what the point would be to stay angry anymore.

—It's not a matter of whether there's a point or purpose or something, I just meant—well,
I'm
angry at Kip.

—Why?

—Because—

—Because he isn't doing what you want him to do?

—It's not that.

—If it's not that, it's something close to that.

—Maybe so, I said.

—Kip has the right to run away. You yourself said it that night when we told each other our worst traits. Being mad at Kip, when you take a couple of steps back and look at it objectively, or fairly, being mad at him for running would be like being mad at a bird for flying or a rabbit for hopping.

—You still love him, don't you.

—I don't see why I shouldn't. But it doesn't mean that I have to throw myself and Ariel away just because he's doing what he's got to do.

—I like you, Jess.

—I don't know why.

—You're a good person. That's why.

—No, I'm not, she said. —I'm just trying to be a sane person.

Our domesticity reestablished itself with an easiness that should probably have alarmed us. Or at least alarmed me. I liked Jessica, I loved Jessica. Bird meant to fly, rabbit meant to hop, Kip meant to run, I was, I thought, meant to love her. What was new was that I didn't much care whether she wanted me to love her, didn't want me to love her, whether she was indifferent to my loving her, or any other configuration. I just lost whatever self-consciousness had plagued me before; a lesson taught me by Jessica herself—and if she didn't care to love me in return, who was I to reproach her? who to presume more?

And my love for Ariel grew so spontaneously and fully that there were moments when, I believe, if Kip were here again and asked me if I were her father, I would have to ponder hard for an accurate answer. I forgot with such thorough, unhurried forgetfulness, that Ariel did become my true daughter and I her true father. Day and week and month, Ariel was my girl. I played with her, I read to her, sometimes I even overcame Jessica's jokes about my voice and sang to her: —Froggy went a-courtin', he did ride, to which Jess rejoined, —When Brice starts a-croakin', even froggies hide. And while the process may have been slow, and so many of its individual details lost on me, Jessica learned to love me, too. Our incipient family, always hitherto on the brink, always
almost
, subtly branched into fulfillment. I do, in fact, remember.

It came in an embrace. Both of us standing, me and Jess. We were on the street.

A nothing day. Nothing romantic, neither serene sunshine, nor evocative rain, nor a pretty snowfall around us. Overcast, drab. Ariel was with a baby-sitter and Jess and I had decided to take a long walk somewhere, no particular place in mind. She was wearing a dark blue velvet djellabah-like dress with a wide Navajo belt strung with silver suns around her narrow waist. She smelled of lilacs.

I forget why it was we embraced, but we did. We held each other with impassioned strength and my hand moved up her back until it reached her neck whose flesh was so warm. My cheek was against hers, my fingers tangled in her fine hair, I reveled in that flowery smell of her with one deep breath after another, and without another thought we were kissing.

We slept together that night and most every night ever since.

Wagner had a little book whose Sanskrit title was, more or less,
Ka-ka Chareetra.
It was a tract on the behavior of ravens and crows, and a lexicon of their language, the language of ravens. In the foreword, the translator mentions that there are “expressions in the language and behaviour of ravens and crows which accurately convey messages and portents. These can be interpreted, if observed and understood correctly.” It was a guidebook to the cawing of ravens, a map to the meanings conveyed by these black, intelligent, and, according to the book, helpful creatures. Wagner loaned the tract to Kip. One night, without preamble, he put it in Kip's hands with the words, —Here, check this out.

Kip read the book by flashlight that night. Wagner was one weird puppy, he thought; maybe a genius, maybe just plain nuts. But the book was fascinating—itself genius, itself nuts—translated by one Mahapandita Dhanasheela at Yalung Thangpoche Monastery in the province of U in the late eighth century. It was very small, unlike the birds it hoped to interpret.

It said, There are Brahmin ravens, Kshatriya ravens, and there are Vaishya and Sudra ravens. Those that like yoghurt tend to be Brahmin, the red-eyed ones are Kshatriya, the stocky ones Vaishya, and the lean-bodied who sup on leavings, like ordure and carnage, refuse and trash, are the Sudra. Mentioned here are the utterances in the language of the ravens that hold equally true for all householders. Then there was a colon. And then Kip turned the page and entered into the language of the ravens.

When a raven caws in the early morning, just at first light, and his sound comes from the south, it means friends are on their way. When the cry comes from the southeast—just the opposite. It means your enemy is coming for you. If the bird makes its noise at midday and from the northwest, a king will be dethroned. From the northeast, a quarrel will take place. In the afternoon, should the raven caw from the west, you will know that a woman is coming to you. And if from the northeast, something will be burnt by fire. If the raven makes its cackle directly over your head, you will find the means to please the king. In the late afternoon, it is often best not to hear the raven. If he is overhead, hunger and famine are in your future. If his cry comes from the west, a storm is brewing, and if from the east, there is something greatly to be feared. Similarly, at sunset, ravens might best be avoided, for if you hear one cawing in the east, it indicates that enemies are on their way, and approach you from the road. Southeast—you will suffer a wretched loss. South—death from disease. And almost as frightening, if the raven flies overhead in the evening and calls out to you, you will attain whatever you have in mind.

Kip put the book down more than once and extinguished the feeble light, to think. His mind would race and ramble, and then he would turn on the light again and read more.

The next morning Kip was preparing to fly. He stood by the left wing of his plane while two Hmong attached a white phosphorous rocket to its underside. The book was in his flight jacket pocket, there with his pointee-talkee. Wagner came up behind him.

—Caw caw, he said.

Kip turned to him, looked up at the sun, calculated direction, and said, —Praise and raise in status will be received.

Wagner walked away, smiling. Said, —Have a good day, soldier.

Life broadened and narrowed. I was finally admitted to the bar after two years of hassling with the conduct committee. Admission was anticlimactic after all the legal maneuverings, the delays, obfuscations, petty grievances. After working with the civil liberties lawyer for a time, I served as a judge's clerk to make ends meet. During all this, I'd made friends with a couple of young fellow lawyers whose beliefs were parallel to mine, and so once I was allowed to practice law, we naturally drifted together, shared a part-time secretary and a downtown office space, cramped and with windows looking across an airshaft to a wall of darkened brick and other windows in which people not unlike ourselves labored away in their own small cubicles lit by bald fluorescents. Yet for all its lowly lack of charm, I was content to be content, and took every case that came my way that could be deemed socially responsible. Our collective was modestly successful and soon enough we formed a firm.

Ariel was growing. Jessica was a good mother, more protective than I might have imagined, nurturing and reliable. Kip was dimming on a daily basis from our lives. One year we three took a vacation as a family, went out to Montauk to escape the city.

We walked down along the sea and I took Ariel into the sizzling waves for her first experience with the ocean. Jessica was worried that I was carrying her out too far, and called from the shore to come back in, to watch out for the undertow. I swung Ariel around and we bobbed upward with incoming surges, and her face was radiant with fearlessness. Seeing that she was unafraid, I waded her back toward the long beach.

During the train ride back, Ariel had fallen asleep in my arms, and I turned to Jessica and asked her to marry me. I told her we were already kin, why not make that final step.

She said, —I love you, Brice. You know that, I think, by now. But I can't marry you.

—We love each other, Jess. You want to be with me, don't you?

—Of course I do.

—Then why not let's get married?

—I don't have anything more to say about it. I just can't do that, not now anyway.

—Then when?

—Brice.

—But someday?

—Maybe someday.

Then we were both quiet and the question and its reply passed like a little rain shower.

There is a term I have always liked:
bundling
. It comes from colonial times when men and women slept together, side by side, in the most intimate of circumstances—there is little more intimate than falling asleep in the same bed with another person, sex itself can be less intimate—but bundled up, each in his own bedclothes, untouching and not touchable. One night, later that same fall, we were bundled together in a bed laden with many blankets. The window to the bedroom was open to allow the cool night air in. I was fast asleep, peaceful, when Jessica woke me up and said, —Brice? Will you marry me?