We Were Beautiful Once (3 page)

“What for?  Is it Anna or something?” Julie asked.

“No, the Army.”

“The Army?  It's been thirty years since you were in the Army.”

“Might be the past, but it never stops. It's tracking right behind me all the time.  That's the thing.”

“What thing?”

“It ain't important.”

Jack and Julie sat in a silence broken only by the dog barking from across the street and little girls giggling and jumping rope under the street lamp.  
Cinderella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to kiss a fella, by mistake she kissed a snake, how many doctors did it take, 1, 2, 3...  .  
 

Suddenly, everything went silent and Julie changed her focus from Jack to a name lost in the vacuum of war thirty years ago.
 
Then and there she decided to call in sick to work, something she rarely did, and follow Jack to court.

“What time do you have to be there?”

“At ten down on Lafayette, at the federal court over there.”

“I'd like to go.”

“What's that?”

“I'm going with you.”

“I don't need you there; it ain't important.  Sorry I mentioned it.”

With Julie next to him now, Jack's headache began to subside, but an unbridled palsy took hold of his hand, arrhythmic palpations took hold of his heart, a storm of low pressure shuddered through his body, the thought of the subpoena, its consequences, pushing everything else aside.  He licked his lips, tasting the ghost of a stiff shot that might still quell the thought that Julie could bear witness to what had happened to Roger Girardin—a man lost in a winter of mayhem, a man whose fate he had withheld from her, a man about whom she filled a three-decade long diary of solitary conversations.  A man, for all intents and purposes, present but invisible.

 

1981–1983

 

 

NICK CASTALANO RAN WHAT THE LOCAL WHITE-SHOE firms called a one-lung law practice, a two-room office over Zorba's Luncheonette, where he could set his watch by the smells that wafted up the ventilation shaft, where the only items he actually owned were a few law books, a chess set and a phone with an extension that sat on the secretary's desk.  Everything else, the desks, the credenza, a side chair and a gray steel filing cabinet was leased.  Over the past few years he had done contract work for the VA, defending the agency when it had turned down claims and veterans sued.  That work had dried up, so Nick resorted to advertising divorce, DUI and debt collection.  Most days he stayed holed up in his office, working on cases, reading and playing chess with a few luncheonette regulars he had gotten to know, but on Fridays, to get away from the smell of fried fish, he left the office early and walked two blocks to the American Legion Club.  One particular Friday, while Nick sat at the bar watching a Yankee shutout, Art Girardin, an infrequent patron, took up the stool next to him, ordered a beer and began to tell him a wild tale about his brother Roger, last seen twenty-seven years ago in a North Korean POW camp along the Manchurian border.

Art told Nick about the day a letter came from the Army notifying the family that it listed Roger as MIA, somewhere in North Korea.  Four years later another letter arrived, indicating that the Army entered a presumed finding of death, based upon having received no further reports.  Art never believed that his brother could simply have vanished. And years later, when families were raising issues about Vietnam MIAs, he began his own investigation by perusing declassified Army records.  He told Nick he believed that Roger was then, and now, a POW.  Art, picking up on Nick's curiosity, excused himself, went to his car and returned with a battered briefcase full of “evidence” gathered over the years.  Intrigued by what little he had read—an International Red Cross report listing Roger Girardin as a POW, and a later, official Army letter stating Girardin was MIA, presumed dead—Nick invited Art back to his office to make a better assessment of Art's collection.  More than curiosity, though, Nick's instinct told him that this could be one hell of an opportunity for his struggling practice.

Art Girardin, slightly overweight, early-fifties, had worked in the Department of Transportation for the past nineteen years, spending most of that time inspecting roads throughout Connecticut.  He had a ruddy complexion and thick muscular hands that did not go with the image of a guy who had painstakingly rifled through the arcane records of a complicated war.  Now seated in Nick's office, he started from the beginning.  

“Yeah, this old bastard at the National Archives told me I was wastin' my time.  But I said to this little prick, get the goddamn records out, an' let me decide.  That was the middle of, no, beginning of '77 when I first went to D.C.  The fucking Army was, well, they were worse than the guy at the Archives.”

Nick perused one document after another while Art briefed him and let off steam.

“For almost three goddamn years I went back and forth to the Archives, running down leads going nowhere, others pointing to people who vaguely remembered a Girardin, writing admirals, generals, staffers at the Department of Defense, the U.N. Military Armistice Commission and the CIA.  Then the minute I found a guy, out in California, who definitely could place Roger in Camp 13 in '52, he turns up dead two weeks later.  It was like either collective amnesia, or the thing was hexed.”

Nick tried to size up this man, who had worked himself into a lather, to make sure he wasn't some whacko on a crusade.

“Yeah, useless politicians mostly humored me. Promised more than they delivered,” Art continued sullenly.  “And depending on who was in, they talked to one or more of these asshole bureaucrats in the Defense Department.”

“Which ones did you contact?” Nick asked.

“Oh, Goodsmith, from Georgia, Walkovich, Welsh, Connecticut.  Yeah, these suckers have short-term attention.  They read from a patriotic script and eventually move on.  But, I never let them forget me, what it means to find some poor foot soldier, the gullible kid who drank the Kool aide and enlisted. And who now may be living in hell somewhere.”

“Have you been in touch lately?  With the politicians?”

Art threw his arms in the air.  “No, these jerks all called it quits after a little publicity.” Art looked at his puffy hands.  “I wished I had a crystal ball, so I could see what goes on in those bureaucracies.”

“They hide a lot, Art, they hide,”  Nick commiserated.

Bemoaning, Art continued, “Now, well, the Pentagon dropped us.  Like a sack of shit.  They don't even take my calls.”  He slammed a fist into his palm. “Goddamn it, I want my day in court.  This is my last chance.  We gotta get them to listen, Nick.  Can you do that?” he was pleading now.

“Art, before I say yes, I need to know what you're trying to do.  I mean, your brother's been gone thirty years.  A lot of boys didn't come back.  What is it, Art?”  Nick looked deep into the man's eyes.

“Listen, Nick, on my dad's sixty-fifth birthday, I made him a promise that I'd find out what happened to Roger.  My brother, dead or alive is over there, unclaimed.  I've come to bring him home, the only way I know how.”

Nick had a military habit of standing ruler-straight in his 5'11”, one-hundred and fifty pound frame, which as of late shouldered the gathering disappointments of life.  But tonight he rose from his chair, shoulders curved and an unmistakable weariness in his eyes adding ten years to his already advancing forty.  He had grown up not far from the town center in a working-class family; his father had hammered home the idea that hard work built character.  Yes, he knew about fathers, the heavy burden of expectations, the hopes unrealized, and the torment of those that lose or come close to losing their sons altogether.  Drifting to the window overlooking West Street, he saw that the stores were dark, and his eyes focused on the reflection of his face—sunk behind a five o'clock shadow.  At street level, people scurried for home.  He took a deep breath.

 

1981

 

 

NICK PUT THE KEY IN THE BACK DOOR OF THE SPLIT RANCH that sat isolated at the cul-de-sac of Coswell Street, feeling that what might appear to be the wrong move to the rest of the world might turn out to be the right move after all.  He'd decided to take the case, despite having represented the government's interests against veterans, despite Art's inability to pay but more than a fraction of what it would cost to prosecute the claim.  Nick told Diane his decision after dinner, when she and the children—Trish, seven, and Jamie, fifteen—were all seated on the tall chairs that surrounded the kitchen bar.  The conversation turned to an obligatory appearance at the Bennetts' next Saturday evening, to his son's petition for new sneakers and his daughter's recitation of the day's playground politics.  Finally, left alone with dirty dishes and over the endless murmur of the television in the corner, his rationale to Diane was that his practice needed a boost, and one of the things he knew well was the ins and outs of veteran claims.  As she dried the pots, she nodded her head—more a sign that she was listening, rather than approving.  Nick said he thought representing veterans rather than fighting them had a better business upside.  What he had not shared with Diane was his curiosity about the apparent dismissive treatment Art got from the Army, especially in light of the reports of his brother's sighting in Camp 13.   

Later on, when the children were in bed, Nick peeked into Jamie's room to listen to him breathing, something he did every night since nearly losing the boy to an asthma attack as a baby.  Nick recalled the hours spent watching Jamie sleep in a clear bubbled hospital croup tent, a speck in the Universe tenaciously clinging to life.  Three days and three nights he had stared through the tent enveloping this human lump of flesh, whom he had only known for a few days but for whose life he would have traded places.  He left Jamie's door open a crack as he walked towards his study, mulling over his reasons for taking the case.  Reasons beyond those he had given Diane, and not simply because he had developed a soft spot for veterans.  Reasons to do with that image Art painted of his dad, how he had lost the will to live when the government marked the death of his son in a registered letter.  Recalling how he had nearly lost Jamie and experienced an uncertainty no father should, Nick knew his reasons had to do with a man's grief, a son unclaimed.  Nick knew about feeling helpless and hopeful at the same time as he watched Jamie's doctor pull an all-nighter—his stethoscope to the boy's chest, palpating, peering deep into the body; running blood to the lab, scribbling on charts, searching for the pathogen destroying his son's lungs.  Jamie survived.  This, he knew, was what drove him to undertake the quest for Roger, because he, like Jamie's physician, was now linked to a son's fate.

***

Five weeks later, Nick filed suit in Federal Court.  The government responded by assigning Bertram Harris, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, a seasoned lawyer that oozed oily success and a smug confidence in his ability to play the game, making him an ideal advocate for the army litigation machine.  When after nearly six months, Nick had obtained a court order obligating the Army to turn over its declassified files, Harris, playing for time, made high-sounding arguments that the records were scattered between Washington and Seoul, and it would take an army to reassemble them.  After several court hearings, Federal Judge Joe Lindquist observed that the Army was, after all, “an army” and told the government's lead defense attorney that if they did not produce, “some Army record's custodian is going to be hauled into my court to face contempt.”  But, the best evidence would be kept from Nick under the heading of “national security.”

 

 

 

THE YEAR 1982 WAS COMING TO A CLOSE, AND NICK was up against a fast approaching trial scheduled for the summer of '83.  He had made little progress tracking down and talking to potential witnesses.  This was caused partly by government stonewalling, partly by a lack of funds and partly by lack of help.  Nick reached out to the local law school and found Kathy Rutherford and Mitch LeBeau willing to work for a stipend. They helped him painstakingly sift through a redacted CIA list of Camp 13 POWs that he had hoped might shed light on what happened to Roger.  Kathy, a stout woman with a Norman Rockwell face, had celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday the week before Nick hired her.  She dressed thirty-something and behaved forty-something, with a speech pattern shaped by a blue-blooded Yankee upbringing.  Mitch, with hair banded in a short ponytail, proudly wore thick glasses that lended credence to a New York lefty, skeptic persona that forced Nick to justify his every out-of-the-mainstream machination.

Nick took his first really deep breath in late January 1983 when, in one of a mere handful of files submitted by the army, he discovered Roger Girardin mentioned in an Army Intelligence memo about an operation called Little Switch in April 1953.  Entitled “
Missing in Action
”, it read:
Several sources in Camp No. 13 report date Girardin last known alive: February 1953
.  

Nick did not need witnesses to confirm what had happened in the fall of 1950, between October 26 and December 11, when the North Koreans and Chinese Communists had captured tens of thousands of Americans, but he did need someone who could talk about what had happened to the men, and Roger in particular, from when they were captured until the Armistice in mid-1953.  

“I need one or more of those guys who saw Roger in the camp,” he said, “then we could possibly win a reclassification.  Go back over the Army intelligence reports from Panmunjom to see who else might have slipped through the crack.”  Though Mitch and Kathy were diligent, they were coming up with a big fat zero.  Nobody remembered Roger Girardin.