Bobby's Girl (24 page)

‘Is it as bad as they say over there?' Bobby sat beside them.

‘As I don't know what they're saying I can't answer that.'

Eric was so offhand she said, ‘Eric was telling me he has to visit his buddy's wife.'

‘You have a message for her?' Bobby lifted his guitar from the grass on to his lap.

‘The kind no one wants to deliver.' Eric flipped open a pack of cigarettes and pushed one between his teeth. ‘He gave me his last letter.'

‘He was killed?'

‘Drowned along with everyone in our platoon, except me. We were in a waterlogged paddy field for a week. There was nothing to cling to. Lost six the last day. The lucky ones went sooner. I watched them go under. When they fished me out they thought I'd gone the same way as the others. But,' he grimaced, ‘as you see, I made it.'

She was too shocked to say a word.

‘Where does your buddy's wife live?'

‘About sixty miles from here. Figure I'll be spending most of tomorrow hitch-hiking there and back.'

‘I'll give you a lift. But it would have to be early. I have to be in town at two o'clock for work.'

Eric narrowed his eyes. ‘Why would you do that?'

Bobby shrugged. ‘Giving you a ride is no big deal.'

‘You want to watch her pain?'

‘I'm not a voyeur.'

‘Then it's guilt. You won't be going to 'Nam yourself.'

‘Do you want the ride or not?' Bobby countered.

‘Hell, yes. I'm not too proud to take it and not dumb enough to turn you down. Pick me up here at seven.'

‘I'll be here.'

‘Bring your girlfriend, she talks real pretty.' Eric took another swig from the bottle in the brown paper bag before passing it to Bobby.

‘No thanks,' Bobby refused. ‘I have to drive in a couple of hours.' 

Dawn had broken; the light was grey and clear when Penny and Bobby left the Beach House early the next morning and drove through the town. Assistants from the twenty-four-hour bars and restaurants were cleaning windows and clearing litter from outside their premises. Store workers were sweeping the sidewalks in front of their doors and hauling out their stands.

Eric was waiting for them. He dropped his bag into the back seat of the car, climbed over the side and sat beside it.

Bobby turned his head and said, ‘Good morning, Eric.'

‘Morning,' Eric growled, as taciturn as he'd been the night before.

‘I'm happy to drive you but I'd like to know where we're going.'

Eric delved into the pocket of his jeans and produced
a crumpled piece of paper. He handed it to Bobby.

Bobby looked at it. ‘I know the town. Can you direct me from the centre?'

‘Never been there. Gerry told me if you enter from the south side and head up Main Street towards the shopping mall, turn right at the mall and follow the road for five miles, you'll come to his house on the left. He said you can't miss it. It's the only house on that road for two miles and it's painted yellow.'

‘Gerry gave you directions to his house while you were in Vietnam?' she asked in surprise.

‘We talked about home.' Eric pulled his cap down even lower and closed his eyes, ending the conversation.

After they left the interstate, their progress was slow because they were frequently delayed by slow-moving agricultural vehicles. The directions Eric had given Bobby were good, but when they reached the house, she suspected Eric's buddy hadn't really looked at his home in years. The only evidence of yellow paint was in the shreds of faded colour under the eaves and the shards below the rotting window frames.

The house was massive, its clapboard walls weathered a dull grey. Three storeys high, the dozen windows at the front were hung with curtains so faded it was impossible to determine their original colour. All were laced with cobwebs. The building and barn behind it were marooned in an undulating sea of scrap metal. Abandoned cars, refrigerators with their doors removed, broken stoves, battered kitchen appliances and pieces of rusting agricultural machinery were piled high, spilling over on to what might have once been a drive.

A woman dressed in a calico overall was pegging washing, one-handed, on to a line while cradling a baby in the other. Her face was lined, her grey-streaked black hair tied back with twine. Two toddlers were playing in the dirt at her feet. She watched the car approach. As soon as Bobby parked in the road, Eric picked up his bag and climbed out of the back.

‘Mrs Buckley? Mrs Gerry Buckley?'

She dropped the washing she was holding back into her basket and moved tentatively forward. ‘You're Eric, Gerry's buddy from 'Nam.'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘Gerry sent me a photograph. There were six of you in a bar.'

‘Gerry gave me a letter. He asked me to give it to you if anything happened to him.'

‘And you brought it all this way. That is kind.' She remembered her manners and dropped the peg she was holding into her pocket. She wiped her free hand on her overall, shifted her baby and held out her right hand to Eric. He shook it.

‘Bring your friends inside. I'll put coffee on.'

Bobby left the car and stretched. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Buckley. I'm Bobby, this is my friend Penny. We'd like to walk around for ten minutes or so after being cooped up driving.'

‘We'll see you later, Bobby, Penny. Come on, kids, let's go in the house.' She pushed open the side door and revealed a room as chaotic as the yard, with dirty dishes heaped on every surface and trash scattered over the floor.

Bobby looked beyond the yard. ‘Pretty countryside around here.'

‘As long as you don't look in the direction of the cemetery.' She left the car and joined him.

‘What cemetery?'

She pointed to the wall that ran alongside the side yard of the house. The head and wing tips of a marble angel were visible above a mountain of rusting ploughs.

‘Let's go and read the epitaphs. There should be some good ones. Place like that should be at least a century old and a hundred years in America is equivalent to a thousand years in Europe.'

‘And after you've completed your masters in Oxford you'll return here and start a course in medieval American history,' she joked.

‘Now that's an idea I can take to my old Harvard professors. I even have an examination question. Compare the colonisation of the American West by white settlers to William the Conqueror's invasion of England.'

They walked to a gate set in the wall that separated the cemetery from the road. Bobby opened it and they entered. The marble angel dominated what looked like the oldest part of the cemetery. It was laid out in large plots, each bearing the name of a single family. The most startling thing was how well kept the graves were, even the old ones. The stonework was scrubbed, although the letters carved on some of the monuments were too weather-worn to be decipherable.

A path separated the cemetery into two halves.
At the back on the right, in a large area partitioned from the main part by a low hedge, identically sized tombstones were set out, twelve to a row. The ones at the front were white marble that glittered and gleamed in the sunlight, those behind them, weather-beaten stone. An old man was scrubbing a marble headstone halfway along the front row. He saw them, sat back on his heels and eyed them warily from beneath bushy grey eyebrows.

‘You come to gawp?' he challenged as they drew close.

‘No, sir,' Bobby replied.

‘We've had nothing but goddamned reporters and news people here. Turning our boys' deaths and our grief into entertainment—'

‘We're not reporters, sir,' Bobby broke in.

‘Then you're pacifists, damn you to hell. Taking pictures of the graves. Making propaganda out of our boys' sacrifice—'

‘We're not pacifists, sir. We're here to visit a local family. The Buckleys,' Penny interrupted.

‘You are, are you?' The old man's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

‘We've brought a friend of their son Gerry to visit them,' Bobby explained.

‘Gerry Buckley Junior is dead.' The old man moved slightly so she and Bobby could read the name on the headstone. It was Gerry Buckley.

‘We know, sir. Eric …' she faltered when she realised she didn't know Eric's surname. ‘Eric served with Gerry in Vietnam.'

‘Why didn't you say so earlier?' the old man snapped.

She was tempted to say because they hadn't been able to get a word in edgeways.

‘These graves are beautifully kept, sir,' Bobby observed.

‘Least a town can do is look after those who died for their country.' The old man indicated the back row of stones. ‘Those are from the War of Independence, although the lettering on most is so worn you can't read the names. But they're all recorded in a book in the town library. In front of them are the graves of the boys who fell in the Mexican War. Then there are fifty boys from hereabouts who died in the Civil War. Most from the town that got killed in any war, until now, although some believe that number will be overtaken by those killed in 'Nam. After them come the boys who were killed in the Spanish American War, then there's those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the First and Second World Wars. Between those and the Vietnam dead are those who died in Korea. I've heard people say that wasn't a real war, although it felt like it to those who fought there. I can say that because I was one of them.' He struggled to rise but fell back on his knees.

Bobby extended his hand to help the old man up. The man checked his fingers were clean before taking Bobby's.

‘There are twenty-two young men here who died in Vietnam and there'll be four more headstones by the end of the week. The first four belong to kids from the class
of '64 who volunteered the day after they graduated from high school. There's not much in the way of work around here and the army promised them college scholarships. They were killed in '65. Alongside them are boys from the class of 1965. Five were killed in '66, three in '67 and two this year. Then there's the class of '66, eight killed so far, one of them Gerry. The four new headstones will be for boys from the class of '67. Gerry's commanding officer wrote Gerry's wife and said Gerry was officially posted missing presumed dead and there was no hope. She wouldn't believe it and didn't until Eric Moran wrote and said he'd watched Gerry drown in a paddy field along with the rest of Gerry's platoon. Pam had to give up hope then.'

‘I'm so sorry, Mr Buckley.' The words sounded trite but she couldn't think of anything else to say.

‘I'm Gerry Buckley senior, Gerry junior's father. I know he's not in that grave, but the town decided back during the War of Independence that every soldier in this parish who died fighting for his country deserved a grave, even if the body couldn't be shipped home. Town's seen no reason to change that decision since. Over half of the military graves here are empty but it gives folks somewhere to come and pay their respects and do their mourning.' He picked up his tin bucket and threw in the sponge and brush he'd been using to clean the graves.

‘See that grave over there,' he pointed to a freshly dug mound covered with flowers. ‘That's my Mayleen, Gerry junior's Mom. She died last week. Doctor said it was pneumonia but Pam and me know different.
Gerry was our only boy, and after we had the news from Eric that he'd gone she gave up. Simply didn't want to live anymore. Not even for Gerry's babies. We had two girls as well as Gerry but they couldn't wait to get out of here. They're somewhere in New York. Hardly bothered to visit after they left; now Mayleen's gone don't suppose I'll see hide or hair of them again. Gerry's passing's been hard on all of us. But it's hardest on Pam. Girl her age shouldn't be shut up here with an old man and three babies. She should be out enjoying herself.

‘How old is Pam?' she asked.

‘Nineteen last birthday.'

She was shocked. She'd assumed Pam Buckley was at least forty.

‘Pam and Gerry were childhood sweethearts. They married after Gerry received his draft papers. Mayleen and me tried to talk them out of it but you know what kids are. What am I saying? You two are kids.'

‘We promised Pam we'd be back for coffee in ten minutes,' Bobby reminded her. ‘It must be more than that now.'

‘I'll walk with you.' The old man led the way to the gate. He opened it, watched them walk through, then leant on it for a moment.

‘The military graves are beautifully kept.' Bobby looked back at the section.

‘As I said, the least a town can do is look after the last resting place of its heroes,' the old man said gruffly.

Eric was sitting on a rough wooden bench outside the kitchen door, holding the baby. The other two small children were sitting at his feet, grubby fingers in mouths, staring up at him.

‘Any good with kids?' Eric didn't wait for Penny to answer. He thrust the baby into her arms as soon as she and Bobby joined him.

‘I've had some practice with my nieces and nephews.' She sat down and settled the baby into the crook of her arm. ‘What's his name?'

‘Mayleen. It's a girl.' Pam carried four mugs out of the kitchen. ‘Never got round to buying girls' clothes. Seemed a waste with the boys' things going begging. Besides, even without a father, with two older brothers she's bound to grow up a tomboy.' She handed out the mugs, giving the last one to Gerry. ‘Here you are, Dad, I'll get another for myself.'

Despite the warmth and sunshine the day took on a grey tinge. The tragedy of Gerry's early death cast a long shadow and Penny was grateful when Eric left the bench and picked up his bag.

‘We have to leave if we're going to get back to the Cape in time for you and Penny to work your shift.'

Pam took the baby from her. ‘Thank you for coming, Eric. I appreciate it.'

‘It was good of you to spend time with us that you could have given to your folks,' Gerry senior allowed.

‘I could spare it. They gave me a month's leave. Gerry and me were closer than brothers. But that's what it's like in 'Nam. Everyone looks out for his buddies. It's what we fight for.'

‘Where are your family?' Gerry walked with them as they picked their way through the scrap to the road.

‘Boston. But I'm heading for Mexico City. My girlfriend's a nurse there.' Eric turned left at the road. ‘I'll pay my respects, Bobby. See you at the car in a couple of minutes.'

Penny turned to Pam. She wanted to give her something that would give her hope for the future but she couldn't think of a single thing to say. As for practical help, she had little money and she sensed Gerry and Pamela would regard it as an insult if she gave them any. She opened her purse and took out three of the Kennedy half dollars she'd been collecting to give to her own nieces and nephews as souvenirs of her trip. She handed them to the oldest boy. ‘For your money box.'

He looked up at his mother. ‘Can I, Mom?'

Pamela nodded. ‘What do you say?'

‘Thank you, lady,' he murmured shyly.

‘Sorry we had to meet like this.' She kissed Pam's cheek.

‘Thank you for bringing Eric.'

‘If we hadn't he would have hitch-hiked.' Bobby opened the car door.

‘Way out here, it would have taken him a long time.' Gerry senior waved his hand and returned up the drive. ‘You take care,' he shouted before disappearing into the house.

Penny and Bobby sat in the car. Pam returned to her washing basket and continued to peg clothes on the line.