A Question of Manhood (4 page)

Dad sat back and looked thoughtful for a minute, and then he nodded, taking a mouthful of beer. “Okay, okay. Here's a silly one. You know how we have those books about how to raise everything from bearded dragons to pythons? Well, this one woman brought in her parrot and headed right for the books. Beautiful bird; bright green mostly—I think it was a Yellow-collared Macaw—nodding its head up and down and looking all around like it was taking everything in. She had it on her shoulder, and it was tethered to this leash she was holding, and you know our policy about having your pets on a leash being okay. So in she comes. She's saying, ‘Einstein, don't you remember being here last time? That nice young girl gave you a treat, remember?' I think she was talking about last summer, when Martha was working. You remember her, Paul?”

I nodded; I'd worked in the store for the first time last summer, and I sure remembered Martha. She was about to head off to college in the fall. Long dark hair, deep brown eyes, and a body that wouldn't quit.

“Anyway, as you know, when one of the millet packets breaks open, we hold the stuff aside for the parakeets we sell. But Martha must have given Einstein some. So Einstein is back, bringing that lady with him.” Dad chuckled at his own joke. “She marched right over to the books, looked through them for a minute, and then picked one up and opened it. She held it up to the bird. ‘What do you think, Einstein? Is this the one you wanted?' He steps back and forth on her shoulder a few times, side to side, you know? Which she took for no!” He laughed and looked at Chris.

I looked at Chris, too. He seemed for all the world to be paying attention to Dad. Any casual observer would have been fooled. And I think Dad was fooled. But I wasn't. Dad went on.

“So she says, ‘Okay, then, is this it?' And she picks another one up, and his head bobs up and down. And she says, ‘Oh, good! We've found it.' And she marches right up to the checkout counter with it!” He was laughing too hard to take a swallow from the bottle he'd raised toward his face, and he slapped his thigh. I was still watching Chris, who was doing his best to smile. Dad took a swig at last and then said, “And do you know, that book wasn't about birds at all? It was about spiders!”

Now, personally, I thought this was the funniest part of the whole story, but Dad sank back into his recliner, satisfied. He sighed, shook his head, and drank some more beer.

After a bit Chris asked for another story, and Dad rambled on about a few things. I could tell he really wanted to hear more war stories, and I could also tell Chris was struggling with something. Maybe trying not to think about the war, like he'd said. It was a relief when Mom finally announced the turkey was ready to be carved, and Dad heaved himself up and went in to do his husbandly duty. I watched Chris until he realized I was looking at him.

“You okay, kid?” he asked.

“I was gonna ask you that.”

He looked away, lifted his bottle and drank, and he didn't say anything else until we were called to the table.

Dinner was weird. That's the best word for it. Right from the start, when Mom made us all say grace. We hadn't done that since I was twelve, maybe? I was all ready to dig in, fork stabbed into a thick slice of white meat.

Her voice sounded almost eerie. “Let us bow our heads in a prayer of Thanksgiving.”

From the blank look on everyone else's face, I was guessing she took all of us by surprise. But we bowed our heads, and she went on.

“Merciful Lord, thank you so much for allowing Chris to be home with us, even for a few days. Please watch over him and protect him as he leaves us again, even as he fights to protect the freedom we all enjoy. Thank you for this family and all the comforts you have given us. Thank you for the bounty of this meal and for your love. Amen.”

We all mumbled something that sounded enough like “amen” to satisfy Mom, I guess, 'cause she was beaming this smile all around the table when I looked up. I'm sure her intentions were great, but I couldn't help feeling a little spooked. It didn't stop me from eating, but I think we all felt—I dunno, maybe constrained after that little display of religious fervor. I could tell Dad was holding himself back from what he wanted, which was to talk about the war. Chris, of course, had come to the table already in a weird mood, and maybe I had too, because of him. Mom obviously could tell something was wrong with Chris, but she didn't know what—or what to do about it. I was just trying to keep my head down. It felt like shooting of some kind was gonna happen sooner or later, at some point and for some reason I couldn't predict because I didn't know what was going on. But nothing happened.

Chris helped Mom clear the table, Dad went in the other room and turned on the TV, and I gathered the tablecloth and linen napkins together. I was on my way to the laundry room, all this cloth crumpled into my arms, when I saw Chris and Mom, alone together in the kitchen, get into this fierce hug. It was at that point that I decided the weirdness at the table must have been because Chris was leaving tomorrow, and everyone knew what that meant. It meant he had to go back to hell, and we had to stay here and worry about him. The reprieve of having him home had almost made things worse.

When I got back from the laundry room, Mom was alone in the kitchen, and no one was in with Dad. I debated: TV with Dad or cleanup duty with Mom? Wherever Chris was, I figured he'd probably come back to the kitchen. So that's where I went.

“Can I help?”

Mom didn't look at me right away; I think she was blinking tears out of her eyes. She turned a smile on me that was trying too hard to be a smile. “Sure, Paul. Why don't you help separate the things that go into the dishwasher from the things that don't? Watch out for those turkey skewers; they're vicious.”

As bad as punji sticks?

Chris was gone a long time. At one point I peeked out to see if he'd gone into the living room too quietly for me to hear, but Dad was alone in front of the boob tube, watching some cop show. Finally I couldn't stand it. “Where's Chris?”

Mom took a deep breath. “He's in your father's den, dear. He said he had to make a phone call.”

I scowled. “Who would he call?”

“Whom, Paul. Whom would he call. I'm sure I don't know. Maybe a girlfriend?” She kind of giggled; it sounded weird.

I blinked, feeling stupid. “Does he have a girlfriend?”

She stopped midway between counter and sink, her hands cupping bits of turkey she'd just wiped up. “I guess I don't know of anyone special.” Her smile wobbled. “But you know he wouldn't be likely to tell his mother!” She tried a laugh, but it wasn't very convincing.

We finished our cleanup, the machine tethered to the faucet and churning away, and I had gone with Mom into the living room, pretending to watch Dad's show but really just waiting for Chris to make an appearance—his last one before tomorrow, the day he'd leave us again. It became more and more obvious that he wasn't with us, but nobody seemed like they dared say anything about it.
Shit. His last night, and he can't spend it with us? But then if he's gonna be all morose, like he was at dinner, do I want him out here?

Yes, damn it; I did. I got up. I walked really quietly down the dark hall toward Dad's den. The door was closed and there was just a little light coming from underneath. Standing there, ears straining, I tried to figure out if Chris was talking or listening or not on the phone at all. Every so often I could hear this odd sound, almost like a sharp intake of breath, and then silence. And then there'd be a kind of strangled noise. And then silence. I lifted my hand maybe three times, wanting so much to knock or turn the handle, anything to get that door out from between us, but something held me back. Finally I tiptoed away and went back to the waiting room. I mean, living room.

I don't know what we were watching, because my eyes weren't focused on the screen and my ears were tuned to any noises behind me that weren't made by the dishwasher. It was an eternity, and in fact it was nearly ten o'clock, before Chris finally came in. He sat next to Mom on the couch, put his arm behind her shoulders, and leaned his head toward her. Nobody said anything. My throat started to get tight, and my eyes were burning. It was a minute before I recognized the signs for what they were and I focused on not crying. I wanted to look at Chris, to burn his features into my mind, but I didn't dare.

He went to bed before I did. He was gonna have to leave, as he put it, at oh-dawn-thirty tomorrow morning so he could get his transport back without being AWOL. I went upstairs maybe half an hour after him, brushed my teeth, and almost opened his door. It was all the way closed, and I wanted in. I wanted to see him, to hear him say nothing was wrong, to have him tell me he'd be back in no time at all. And I stood there maybe ten seconds before I admitted that I couldn't do that. I wasn't some eight-year-old kid needing to have his tears brushed away by big brother. I went to my room.

I lay there for a while, listening to the sounds of my folks getting into bed themselves, before I snapped off the light and turned onto my side. But I wasn't ready to fall asleep, so I turned onto my back again. Hands behind my head, I thought about jerking off, but I couldn't even work up the energy for that. It was like everything in me was focused on the room on the other side of this wall. Just beyond this very wall, the one behind my head, was Chris's bed, with Chris in it, the same Chris who might go over there and die before I ever saw him again.

Then I decided I was being morbid, and ridiculous. I nearly laughed; hell, maybe
he
was jerking off. This actually cheered me up a little, and I shifted my position so my head was closer to the wall. Again I almost laughed, because I could hear something. He was definitely doing something in there. I got onto my knees and pressed my ear to the wall.

He was crying. It sounded muffled, like he was sobbing into his pillow, but he was definitely crying. Gut-wrenching sobs. I pulled away and stared at the wall I couldn't really see in the dark.
What the fuck? Chris? The brave soldier, the guy who pulls his buddies out of punji pits, is in there sobbing like a baby?

But no; it wasn't like a baby. There was way too much pain in it for that. He wasn't crying for his bottle. It sounded like he was crying for his life.

I threw myself onto my stomach and covered my head with a pillow. I didn't want to hear this. I couldn't stand the thought of him in there, crying like that. My mind reached back over the last week, going through his stories, trying to come up with something he'd said, or something he'd left unsaid, that might account for this. He hadn't overtold anything, hadn't made himself out to be this big hero, and nothing he'd described made him sound like a coward. He'd done some heroic things, he'd done some crazy things. He'd helped his friends, they'd helped him. He'd almost made some of it sound like fun, or at least like it made for stories that would be good in years to come. It sounded like he'd made some friends who would be his friends until he died.

Until he died. Is that it? Is he afraid of dying?

Would I be? Would I lie in there sobbing the night before I had to go back to a place that was hot and muggy and full of bugs and bullets and bombs and beer and koon sa? Would I go back to a place where I didn't know whether the Vietnamese girl I'd just met wanted to cut my throat? Or, really, when what I knew was that she did? Chris didn't talk like that, he didn't tell stories where the worst part was like some dark secret that could kill you, but I'd heard them, and I knew they were true.

Why hadn't he told stories like that?

Thinking back again, none of it had that fog of not-knowing about it. None of it except maybe that comment from Mason, about when something unexpected happens and you just don't know what to do. Sometimes in Chris's stories he wasn't sure
where
the enemy was, but he always knew
who
they were. There were no shades of gray. He didn't talk to us about killing villagers, or wondering who was a spy. But I heard about that stuff, on TV and in newspapers. Why was it just occurring to me now that Chris never talked about that part of it? Maybe we were all just so glad to see him that we took whatever he gave us and accepted it, face value. Like we believed what he wanted us to believe.

And here was the proof. I was willing to bet anything that if I went into my folks' room and told them their precious first-born was in his bed crying his eyes out, they'd tell me I was full of shit and to shut the hell up! Okay, that's a little dramatic, but essentially it was right; they wouldn't believe it. Or, they would refuse to believe it.

But it was real. I could hear it, or I imagined I could, right through my pillow. It was not the Chris that Chris wanted us to see, but it was real. I turned so that my feet were near the wall, my head toward the foot of the bed. I pulled my covers around until I'd made enough of a nest that I thought maybe I could sleep that way, not hear what was happening in Chris's room, not have to know what I didn't want to know. What he didn't want me to know.

But it was no good. Before I knew my feet had hit the floor, they had carried me into the hall and stopped in front of Chris's door.
Should I knock or just go in? Should I give him a chance to get himself together or ambush him in his disgrace?

Was it disgrace?

What else could it be? I mean, my God! If I ever acted like this, and Dad heard me? Man, I don't even want to think what he'd say, how he'd make me feel. But Chris gets away with it? After making us believe what a brave grunt he is?

I didn't want to be angry with him. Really I didn't. This was his last night at home before going back to a place nobody in their right mind wanted to be, and I wanted to be nice to him. But I wanted him to be nice to me, too, and he was just holed up in there disgracing himself. Getting away with something I would catch hell for, just because nobody would believe it of Chris.