Bayview Heights Trilogy (19 page)

“Mr. Battaglia.”

“Here to see your brother?”

“Yes.”

“He’s in with an emergency.”

“You can wait in his office, Captain
Lansing,” said a familiar-looking nurse behind the receptionist
desk.

“Thank you.” Mitch turned to the young woman
next to him. “Nice meeting you, Ms. Mancini.” He walked through the
door, conscious of two pairs of dark eyes on his back.

Johnny felt a slight hand on his arm. “He
doesn’t seem like such a monster.”

A monster? Johnny remembered the captain’s
strange behavior this week. Because Johnny didn’t want to think
about Cassie’s class and what they were studying, he looked away
from the door. He felt his heart turn over at the tender concern in
Ms. Mancini’s eyes.

“Looks can be deceiving,” he said, winking.
“Take me, for instance. I look like a punk. You’d never know I was
so smart.”

Mary Margaret smiled. “You look like Andy
Garcia. My favorite actor.”

“Your favorite, huh?”

She rolled her eyes. “Uh-oh. I can see I
shouldn’t have told you that.”

“Why?”

“My mother warned me about guys like
you.”

“Why, Mary Margaret, are you flirting with
me?”

“Maybe.”

As she headed into the clinic, he grasped the
back of her sweater. “Wait a second. I want to ask you something.”
He tugged her to the far corner of the entry area. “Let me take you
home tonight.”

Her brown eyes widened. “I don’t think so,
Johnny.”

“Why?”

“I...” She blushed, and turned half away from
him. “I’m not like most other girls...I’m...”

“You’re a good girl, I know that. I like
that.”

“You do?”

“Sure, and I’ll respect it.”

Her smile was million-watt, brightening up
the dreary room. “All right. You can take me home.”

Johnny stared after her as she left to go to
work. Intending to follow, he poured a cup of coffee first. Just as
he was leaving the entry, the front door opened and a figure
stumbled through it.

It was Zorro. His face was pale, his eyes
glazed. The nurse behind the desk asked, “Are you in need of
assistance, sir?”

He shook his head, his eyes locking on
Johnny. “I came to see my buddy.” Zorro stood erect, toughing out
whatever had happened. To anyone else, he looked fairly normal.
Johnny could tell he was in pain. “Can we talk someplace?”

Quickly, Johnny dragged his friend back into
the clinic to an empty examining room.

“What’s going on, man?” Johnny asked when
they were alone.

Zorro sank onto a chair. His face was stark
white and his hands shook as he unzipped his Blisters jacket and
pulled down the sleeve. On his arm, Johnny saw red seeping onto a
grungy T-shirt.

“You’re hurt.”

“Just a little scratch. You gotta fix me up,
buddy.”

“I’ll call the doctor.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It’s from a gun.”

“A gun?”

“Yeah. Had a little encounter with the
Fifty-Second Street gang that I hadn’t planned on. The bastards
were armed.”

“Zorro, gunshot wounds have to be
reported.”

“I know, man. That why I came here. You can
fix it.” He glanced around the room. “You got all the stuff
here.”

“Zorro, I could lose my job if I take care of
you.”

“Hey, Tonto, it’s me. Your best friend. Ain’t
nobody else gotta know.” Zorro grimaced with pain. “The bullet’s
out. Just clean it up, patch it back together, and nobody’ll
know.”

That was true. Kurt would be with Mitch for a
while. Dr. Sloan wouldn’t be here until seven when Kurt got
off.

He looked at Zorro’s pale face and was
transported back to another time Zorro’s face had been pale.

Johnny had been thirteen, Zorro a year older.
A big lug had tackled Johnny and was pummeling him. Zorro had
jumped on the bully’s back and had been brutally beaten until two
of the Blisters knocked the other guy out....

“Why’d ya do it?” Johnny had asked.

“He was hurtin’ my main man,” Zorro had told
him, with blood oozing from his lips. “I gotta help my bro....”

Now Johnny took in Zorro’s chalk white
complexion and closed eyes as he battled the pain. Aw, hell, he
really didn’t have any choice. Not when his buddy needed him.

Slowly, Johnny walked to the supplies
cabinet.

o0o

ON THURSDAY OF THE following week, Mitch
watched Cassie’s eyes twinkle as she passed out pictures to each
student and to him. Despite the strain she was feeling, her
demeanor in class gave no clue to the turmoil inside her.

She’s so good at hiding her
feelings.

It takes one to know one.

“I want you all to pretend you’re five years
old.” She grinned and Mitch’s stomach clenched. “For some of you,
that won’t be too hard.”

Good-natured boos sounded around the room.
From everyone except Battaglia. As the unit progressed, he’d become
more and more withdrawn. Today, he wouldn’t meet Cassie’s eyes;
instead, he stared blankly at the picture or the wall or his desk.
His posture was ready-to-snap tense.

“I’ve given you each a toy,” she continued.
“Think about what you—as a five-year-old—would do with it.”

She gave them a minute of thinking time.

“Okay, Tara, you first.”

Tara grinned. “I got a gun and holster. I’m
gonna strap it on and shoot my boyfriend, Dave, between the eyes
for teasing me about my outfit today.” She indicated her totally
black shoes, stockings, skirt and blouse, accented by black
lipstick.

Laughter around the room.

Mitch hadn’t looked at his toy.

“Joe?”

DeFazio raised mutinous eyes to her. “I got a
tomahawk. I’d like to split somebody’s skull open.”

Preferably mine
, Mitch thought.

Ignoring the innuendo, Cassie moved on.
“Johnny?”

“I pass.”

Cassie hesitated. “Okay, what’s your toy so
we can do it, anyway?”

“GI. Joe.”

Arga blurted out, “I know, Ms. Smith. I’ll
dress Johnny’s doll with my camouflage outfit and he can crawl
through the jungle shootin’ at people.”

Mitch twisted the picture in his hands.

Cassie went through an array of toys: a
battleship, an army tank, bows and arrows, a machine gun. Then she
called on Mitch.

He stared down at the lifelike toy. “A
grenade.” For a minute, he was somewhere else. It was hot. Humid.
Stinking.

The grenade felt heavy in his hand. He
grasped it lightly, counted to ten, pulled the pin and threw it
fifty feet.

“Captain?”

His throat was dry and his hands clammy.
“Ah...I...I’d throw it at the enemy.”

Cassie stared at him for a minute. He looked
away.

“All right, everybody, what’s the point of
all this?”

Jen said, “These toys are all war toys.”

“There’s only one way to play with them,
isn’t there?” Cassie asked. “How? To do what?”

“To hurt somebody else,” said Amy.

Youngblood shook his head. “Yeah, but there
ain’t no harm in ‘em. We all played with these as kids.”

“Well, let’s see,” Cassie answered. “I’ve got
a short movie that takes a stand on that issue. “It’s called
Toys
. It’s only eight minutes long. Let’s watch it and see
what you think. Make sure you consider it in the context of our war
unit.”

She turned the lights off, then started the
DVD. On the screen appeared several small children—about the age of
seven. They were in a store, watching a display of toys that
revolved on a turnstile. The kids were oohing and ahhing over the
antics of the toys: a lion that roared, a clown that jiggled,
Barbies and Kens posed side by side.

After the opening, the children’s attention
was drawn to another display. Army toys. War toys. G.I. Joes in
uniform, tanks, guns, an ambulance, medical equipment, spotlights,
helicopters. The kids in the movie stared at them.

Suddenly the action froze. The sound stopped.
The lights in the store dimmed to nighttime.

And the toys came alive.

Mitch watched as one Joe, on his belly,
inched his way up a hill. Another army doll waved flags for an
incoming helicopter, which landed right on the scene. Explosions
went off, and the unforgettable sound of discharging guns echoed
around them. There was the shriek of a siren. A scream. One Joe was
suddenly blown apart by a grenade. Another was stuck in the neck
with a toy bayonet. At that point, the students in Cassie’s class
flinched and a couple groaned.

These are toys
, Mitch told himself.
Not soldiers. Not real men. Not his buddies. Still, when a chopper
flew over the dolls’ heads, Mitch grabbed the edge of the desk to
keep himself from diving to the floor for cover.

He tried to concentrate on the screen. A
blast of machine-gun fire ripped through the air; several toys went
down. The camera focused on one plastic body turning over in a
puddle. The water would be slimy, Mitch knew. It was tepid. It
tasted rank.

He swallowed hard and licked his lips.

A quiet descended, the camera panned the
entire, demolished area.

Then it was over.

The camera went back to the kids in the toy
store. The music resumed, and the children stared at fully intact
toys, exactly as they’d been before the freeze frame. The battle
had happened only in the minds of little kids. It had happened only
in their imagination.

But to Mitch, the toys’ war was as real as if
it had happened yesterday.

o0o

TWELVE HOURS LATER, the war was even more
real. Mitch was on his belly, in the jungle, making his way through
five-inch-deep water. He could feel the sweat trickling down his
back. Something was biting him in the ankle, but he had to stay
calm. Separated from his squad when it had been attacked, he needed
to find his way quietly. It was dark. The U.S. had the advantage
during the day with their advanced equipment, but the Viet Cong
ruled the night. They knew this land in the dark, and he didn’t.
Gulping for air, he inched along. It was then that he heard it--the
unmistakable click of a semiautomatic behind him. Mitch turned and
screamed,
No, No, No
...

He sat up in bed with a start, waking from
the nightmare that he’d lived twenty-five years ago in a jungle in
Asia. His breath came in gasps and he was dripping with sweat. “No,
no, no...” he said aloud several times before it sunk in where he
was.

He looked down. His hands were fisted in the
sheet. The rest of the bed was a tangled mess. He hadn’t had the
dream in months. Damn, he thought he had this under control. It was
the freakin’ war unit in class these two weeks that had gotten to
him. Of all the rotten luck. Why had he ever consented to work with
Cassie Smith and her dirty dozen?

He yanked on the sheet. Pulling both hands in
opposite directions, it ripped solidly down the middle. He stared
at the shreds dangling in his hands.

Cassie would say this was symbolic. And it
was. His life had been ripped apart by the war and had been in
shreds for years afterward.

And he’d be damned if he let it go back to
that.

He was leaving Cassie’s class.

For good.

o0o

THE NEXT DAY, she handed out the novel
Fallen Angels
.

“You guys will love this book,” she told
them. “It’s from the viewpoint of a kid just like you who enlists
and ends up in Nam.”

Taking his copy from Som, Mitch stared down
at the picture on the cover and thought he might be sick. As Cassie
told the kids about Richie, the main character, Mitch stared at the
young, innocent faces of the men on the cover. They could have been
his buddies. One looked like Silverstein, one a little like Thomas.
The two black guys could have been twins for Markham and Stone. Of
his entire squad, only Mitch had returned on two feet. Slowly, he
traced the outline of one of the boy’s faces. Mitch’s chest
constricted and his vision blurred. Sweat broke out on his brow. He
had to turn the book over. For distraction, he glanced around the
room, trying to focus on something else. His gaze landed on
Battaglia. The boy was mesmerized by the picture. His hand also
traced the face of one of the characters. Mitch stared at Johnny,
watching his absorption. Empathizing with it. Why?

“Okay, let’s read the first chapter now and
then talk about it,” Cassie said to the kids. She noticed Johnny
was absorbed in the book’s cover. Just as Mitch had been.

Taking a seat on the floor next to Som, she
opened her book and tried to read. What was going on with Mitch and
Johnny? It wasn’t the gang thing—at least not just that. She
decided to talk to both of them. Mitch had told her he wanted to
see her after class, anyway, so she’d ask him then.

It took about thirty minutes for everyone to
finish the chapter. When they were done, she posed the question,
“Why did Richie join the service?”

Mike Youngblood, whom Cassie knew was giving
careful thought to joining the marines when he graduated, said, “He
didn’t have nothing better. He wanted to go to college, but he
didn’t have no dough. Enlisting gave him food and a place to
stay.”

“And helped his mama and brother,” Som put
in.

Cassie listened to the kids, encouraging
their discussion. They were seated in a circle on the floor. Mitch
had taken the chair in back of them, but hadn’t said a word.

“I think he’s a sicko. You gotta be crazy to
join up.” This came from DeFazio, who, since a week ago Monday, had
found every possible way to disrupt Cassie’s class.

She was about to defuse his hostility when
Johnny stood. His hands fisted at his sides and his eyes were black
and blazing. “You got it backward, you dumb jerk. They aren’t crazy
when they join, they’re crazy when they come back.”

DeFazio stood, too. “Yeah, what makes you
such an expert? I’m sick of you, Battaglia. You think you know
everything.”