Dawn of a New Day (18 page)

Slowly he opened his eyes and saw that he was in a hospital. There was no mistaking the stark bareness of the room, the single bed that he lay on, and the sterile, shiny white walls and ceiling. Memory came to him, and he muttered, “They must've had a holiday kicking me.” He took a breath, and as he did the pain came back again. He lay there for a moment, then saw the cord with the buzzer looped around the aluminum rails. Reaching out very carefully, he punched the button, then let the arm fall back. Almost at once the door opened, and a short, heavy young man of about twenty-five moved across the room and looked down at him. “Well,” he said, “you're back with us. How do you feel?”

“Like I was hit by a truck.”

“That might have been better.” A grin touched the chubby face, and the speaker's blue eyes considered Mark. He reached over, took his pulse, then leaned over and peered into his eyes carefully. “Well, you're lucky,” he said. “No broken bones, and no concussion, it looks like. But you do have some ribs that are sprung and cracked pretty bad.”

“How long have I been here?” Mark licked his lips, which were dry, and tried to sit up.

“Better not try that,” the nurse said. “I'll crank you up a little bit.” As he manipulated the controls, Mark slowly came to a half-sitting position. He said, “They brought you in about six hours ago. I was in the ER, and you were in bad shape! You want some water?”

“Yes, please.”

Mark gulped down the water, some of it spilling down his chin, and the nurse chattered on happily, giving a list of Mark's injuries, which were not encouraging. Even as he spoke, the door opened, and Jake Taylor walked into the room, his face tense with worry. “How is he?” he asked the short nurse.

“Going to live, but he's not going to be much good for anything for a couple weeks.” He turned and left the room, saying, “I'll be back to give you some medication after your visit.”

Jake shook his head. “Well, this wasn't the best idea we ever had, was it?”

“No, it wasn't. If I had kept my mouth shut, it would never have happened.” He recounted how he had gotten into such a condition and said, “I guess I'm not much of an investigative reporter.”

“You're coming home with us. Stephanie's got something for what ails you. She always feeds us chicken soup, no matter what kind of sickness we have.”

Mark was glad that he would not have to stay in the hospital. That afternoon he went home with Taylor, and for the next week he moved slowly and carefully. As usual, he enjoyed Betsy and Forest, and he spent hours playing board games with them.

It was on the fifth day of his stay at Stephanie's that Jake came home with a small package of letters in a rubber band. “I stopped by and picked up your mail. These came for you at the office,” he said, tossing them on the table. He sat down and began to recount the affairs at the paper, paying only scant attention to Mark. Finally, however, he looked up and saw that Mark was staring at a single sheet of paper, his face pale. He had discarded all the bandages, but there was still puffiness and discoloration on his right temple. Jake did not like to pry, but Mark was so obviously shaken that he asked, “What is it, partner? Bad news?”

When Mark looked up, his eyes were filled with grief. “My best friend in high school, John Tyler. He's been killed in Vietnam.” His voice was tense. “This letter's from his mother; she's a widow. John was her only son.” He was silent for a moment, then he dropped the paper and clasped his hands together. “John was a good guy,” he said. “He played tight end at the University of Arkansas on a scholarship. I was going with him—that was always the plan, but I decided to do something else. I–I hadn't even heard that John had joined up.”

Taylor sat there, understanding some of the pain in the younger man. He had lost a good friend himself in Vietnam, and finally after a time he said, “This war! It's chopping our men to pieces.”

Mark appeared not to hear. “He always loved dogs,” he said. “Every stray dog in the world that he found, he would take 'em home. His mother was so aggravated with him, but he never gave her a minute's trouble.” He lifted his eyes and stared out the window for a moment, then murmured, “And now he's dead. It's all over. He'll never get married, never have those kids he should have had.”

Taylor sat there for a while, but he saw that Mark did not want to talk. He moved into the kitchen and told Stephanie the news. She stood there with compassion in her eyes. “The poor boy,” she said. “And Mark's taking it hard, you say?”

His brow furrowed and he shook his head. “He's not going to shake this off so easy.”

Jake Taylor was right. Mark could not shake off the death of John Tyler. He stayed at Jake's for another two days, saying little, and he was glum and lifeless. Mark knew he was casting a pall on the place. Thanking Jake and Stephanie, he moved back to his apartment, but he found no peace there either.

One night he stopped at Prue's apartment after he'd been walking the streets. She was surprised when she opened the door. “What are you doing out at this time of night, Mark?”

“I've got to talk to you, Prue.” Mark stepped inside as she invited him in, and sitting on the couch, he began to speak of what had happened. Prue took her seat beside him, her eyes filled with compassion. He ended by saying, “I've decided to join the Marines, Prue.”

Shock ran through Prue Deforge, and a wave of fear followed. She could not speak for a moment, so disturbed his statement had made her, then she said, “Mark, don't do anything rash.”

“I've got to do something. Oh, I know it's foolish, and I won't change anything, but I've got to do
something
.”

Prue had a swift thought. “Let's go home. You can talk to your dad. He was a fighting man in the last war. He can give you some good counsel.”

Mark looked up with surprise. “And you'd go with me?”

“Of course I would. I'd like to get away and rest for a while anyway.”

Mark's parents were surprised to see them, for they had not announced they were coming. Prue whispered, “Come to my house after you have talked to your father,” and Mark agreed.

Mark said nothing for the first day of his visit, but late the next afternoon he drew his father aside outside and said, “I've got to talk to you, Dad.” The two of them walked slowly down the path that led to the lower pasture, and Mark poured out his problems to his father. He finished by saying, “I'm joining the Corps, Dad, if you think it's right.”

Les Stevens stared at this tall son of his, and memories of combat came rushing back to him. It had always been his fervent hope that his son would never have to face death the way he had. Now he saw, however, that the dreaded moment had come. He began to speak, talking about the country and the bad things that had happened; then he added, “I guess you know my line about things like this.”

“You mean what Stephen Decatur said?”

Les nodded. “That's right. To our country may it always be right—but right or wrong our country.” He reached out and put his hand on his son's shoulders. “You're a man now, Mark, and you have to make your own decision, just like I did. Just like every man does. I'm ashamed of the decisions that some young men I know, men from this town, have made. I hate like blazes to see you go, but if you do, I'll be right behind you. And proud of you too.”

Mark felt a warmth flow through him, and he said huskily, “Thanks, Dad—I guess I needed to hear that.”

“We'll have to tell your mother. She'll take it hard.”

They went inside the house, and it was difficult. Mark left half an hour later, his head down. His mother said little, but he saw the pain in her eyes. Crossing the highway, he made his way down the Deforge driveway and found Prue sitting on the front porch. It was late afternoon, and shadows were growing long. She came down and said, “Did you tell them?”

“Yes. It wasn't easy.”

“Let's take a walk, Mark,” Prue suggested. They moved down the path to the stream where they had had so many walks before, and when they got to the creek, they stood for a long time, letting the silence of the place sink into them. The swifts were doing their acrobatic dance in the air, turning and rolling, and for a while they watched them.

Finally Prue whispered, “We had so many good times here, didn't we, Mark?”

“We'll have them again.”

“No, I don't think we can ever be that happy.” Prue shook her head. “That's strange, because I had an unhappy childhood, always too tall, always doing so poorly in school.” She turned to him, and the fragrance of her hair was like a drug to him. Her face was lifted, and she said quietly, “You helped me through some hard times, Mark. Even though you were always going with other girls, and so popular, and I was a nobody, you always had time for me.”

“You're not a nobody now.” Mark studied her face, her dark eyes and dark hair. There was such character in her face, in the full lips and the deep-set eyes that observed him with such warmth. Her figure was the envy of so many girls now, and he thought of the angular leanness that had been hers when she was growing up. Something took him then, coming to him as almost a revelation. He said quietly, “You've grown up, Prue. I've been thinking of you for so long as the girl I grew up with. All arms and legs, and always sort of sad.”

“That's what I was. I guess I still am.”

“Not now,” Mark said. The summer heat lay across the land, but it had grown cool now. From far off came the sounds of cattle lowing, and the cry of a night bird was a melodious melody that came to them as they stood there.

Prudence looked up at Mark, and a longing came to her. All of her life, it seemed, she had been alone except for her parents—and for this young man that stood looking down at her. She had known for a long time that she was in love with Mark Stevens, but it had been a hopeless love. One that she never thought would be returned. He had always been the popular one, the one all the girls wanted to go with, the star quarterback, the hero, and she had been just Prue Deforge, an object of ridicule for so much of her life.

Now, however, as she stood there breathing the fragrance of the land and looking up into his face, she knew that he might never come home again, and a great pity came to her. She suddenly knew the hungers that come to a lonely woman and recognized that she had put childhood and adolescence behind her. With a boldness that slightly shocked her, she reached up, put her arms around his neck, and placed herself against him. She felt the shock run through him as her soft curves flattened out, and she pulled his head down and whispered, “Kiss me, Mark.”

Mark put his arms around her and lowered his head. Her lips were soft and yearning and willing under his. There was an innocence in them, but at the same time the fullness of a woman's passion. She held him tightly, and the touch of her lips and the clasp of her arms stirred him as he had never been stirred before. He clung to her, pressing her closer still, and as he did, the old hungers revived and seized him. He lifted his head and whispered, “Oh, Prue, there's such a sweetness in you.”

“Is there, Mark?” She looked up, and he saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

“Why are you crying?” he asked.

“I can't help it.” Her voice was almost inaudible, and she did not move back but seemed to cling to him for strength. She held him for a moment longer, then said, “Oh, Mark, be careful!”

He looked down at her and kissed her again, this time gently, then he simply held her as she put her head on his shoulder. They clung together without speaking for a long time, both of them knowing that this might be the last time anything like this would ever take place in their lives.

M
ark Stevens' introduction to the Marine Corps began with a sergeant whose rich, blasphemous oath shocked him to the core. He was a man of middle age with a pot belly that spoiled his posture. He wore the Marine dress blues and over this a regulation, tight-fitting overcoat of forest green. As the sergeant spoke, Mark had the thought that blue and green were the two colors his mother told him did not match, but the Marines had decreed otherwise, and later on, the gaudy dark and light blue of the Marine dress seemed to blend in well with the soothing green.

“When you get to Parris Island,” the sergeant was saying, “forget you ever had any other life. You will anyway by the time they get through with you over there. You're going to hate them,” he said. “Your sergeants, your officers, and maybe even each other. You'll think the officers are the stupidest, rottenest bunch of men who ever lived, but if you want to save yourselves a headache, listen to me—do what they tell you and keep your big mouths shut!”

Mark was to remember the sergeant's words. He remained silent all the way on the trip to Parris Island, joined by Marine recruits from all over the country. They were crammed into passenger cars pulled by a diesel, and comfort was left behind in Washington. As the train moved through the darkness to the clickety clack of the wheels over the joinings of the rails, Mark realized that somehow this business of becoming a marine was already having a vital impact on him. He had heard of boot camp and knew that the Marines believed in the toughest of all training, and the man who had it the roughest was the most admired.

When they arrived at Parris Island, they tumbled off the train, became a training platoon, were assigned a number, and given into the cruel hands of the drill instructor, who began bellowing at them instantly.

Mark felt his ears blistered by the profanity, and he studied the sergeant carefully, for he knew that his fate would be in his hands. He whispered to the man next to him, “He's not as big as a freight car—but he's not a whole lot smaller either.”

Sergeant Tippit's voice was as big as his body. It seemed to reach out and physically embrace the squad, and Mark felt the rough sound of it down into his very bones. He loved drills, Sergeant Tippit did, and Mark forever carried a picture in his mind of the sergeant striding a few feet apart from his men, arms stretched out, hands clenched, head canted back, and his whole body ceaselessly bellowing out the drill.

Mark quickly learned that a naked man has no pride, no identity, no past, and no future. When he was stripped at the quartermaster's, defenseless and not knowing what was coming next, he somehow lost his character with his clothing. The quartermaster swarmed over the recruits with a tape measure, and then the clothes seemed to be thrown at him from all angles: caps, gloves, socks, shoes, underwear, shirts, belts, pants. Mark emerged with a number, surrounded by sixty other human beings, but somehow the parts seemed to have no meaning except in the context of a whole. Glancing around he saw they all looked alike, and when they passed through the barbers and emerged with their heads as naked as marbles, they had lost one other portion of their identity.

Constantly they were screamed at and told that they were half baked, that they were no longer civilians, that they would never make Marines and would probably die during the training.

When they were not being screamed at, drawn up at attention, they were marching. Everywhere, always marching. To the sick bay, to the water racks, to the marching grounds. Mark grew accustomed to the sound of thousands of feet slapping the packed earth, grinding to a halt, rifle butts clashing. He seemed to have the sound of Sergeant Tippit's voice in a small tape recorder that had been implanted in his skull. “Right—right shoulder ahms!” Slap! Slap! “Start your pieces, hear me? Start your pieces, you hear? I want noise, blood! Present ahms!”

No one cared about anything but discipline, or so it seemed to Mark. He had expected talk of the war, of how to survive in Vietnam, but they heard no fiery lectures about killing the gooks. The drill instructors were like sensualists, who feel that if a thing cannot be eaten, or drunk, or taken to bed, it does not exist, and all Sergeant Tippit cared for was drill, drill, drill. Once he marched Mark's platoon straight into the ocean, and when some men faltered, his screams could be heard a mile away. “Who told you to halt! I give the orders here! Nobody halts until I tell them to!”

Mark, fortunately, had continued marching until the water was up to his chest, and when he was directed to about-face found it very difficult to do underwater. Nevertheless, he and a few others who had continued marching straight into the sea thought they saw a glint of approval in the eyes of the gigantic sergeant.

As the training went on, Mark found that he could endure the hardship of marches, the obstacle field, the blistering sun, the screaming constantly in his ear. What he found most difficult of all was the lack of privacy. There was no such thing as privacy. Everything was done in front of a hundred or more men. Rising, waking, writing letters, making beds, washing, shaving, bathroom functions—all were done in full view of a thousand eyes. Mark had vague memories of those times when he would be by himself for hours, and days, and if he missed any part of civilian life, this was the element that he most longed for.

Mark's finest hour came on the firing range. He had always been an expert shot, and he seemed to have a natural flare for it. With the gunner instructor at his elbow, he shot bull's-eye after bull's-eye and qualified without difficulty for an Expert Rifleman's Badge, which added five dollars a month to his twenty-one-dollar regular pay. After five weeks of basic, Mark Stevens had been made over. The change had taken place. He was a veteran. One day he passed a group of incoming recruits still in civilian clothes looking cheap, shoddy, and unkempt, and he had joined the squad, who cried with one voice, “You'll be sorreee!”

When they were ready for the second phase of their training, the members of the squad were classified. The enlisted man who interviewed Mark was bored out of his skull, obviously. He asked questions rapidly—name, serial number, rifle number—and then asked, “What did you do in civilian life?”

“Newspaper reporter.”

“Okay, you're in the First Marine Division. Go out and tell the sergeant.”

“Some aptitude test.” Mark grinned at Speed Carswell, a tall, lanky Kentuckian who was also an expert rifleman.

“I guess being a newspaper reporter qualifies you to kill VCs,” Carswell replied.

Mark and Carswell joined a few others from the squad as they moved to the second phase of their training. Along with Carswell, he formed a friendship with several more. All the time, during this period, his company became like a clan, or a tribe, of which the squad was the important unit of a family group. Each squad differed from the other because the members were so different. Mark noticed that they had no “inner conflict,” as the phrase goes. They knew soon that they would be in the jungles, and that their lives would be in each other's hands.
This
, Mark thought,
tends to make a man want to get close to his buddies.

The days sped by, and Mark trained, and drilled, and learned to read maps, and listened to lectures. He wrote letters home now, and received some too, living for them. He got more than most and wrote more than most. While the others were going into town partying, getting drunk, and chasing the young women who inhabited the saloons and dives, he kept a journal and used his tape recorder, for he knew that one day forgetfulness would come and wipe the things out of his mind that he was experiencing. He sent the tapes home to Prue, asking her to file them but not listen to them, for some of the things were rough, and he knew she would be shocked. He determined to keep a journal, as one man had done in World War II;
Guadalcanal Diary
had revealed the heart of a young warrior better than a thousand stories could.

He wrote down not only what happened outwardly but what was happening on the inside: how he was being made into a killer, which he hated, but which was necessary. You could not fight the Vietcong with a law book, or a medical diploma, or a typewriter. They had to be stopped with the weapons forged by war, and as the weeks dragged on Mark felt himself becoming that kind of individual who could be trained to point a rifle at an enemy and blow his brains out.

At long last, almost imperceptibly, the day came, and Mark found himself with thousands of other men on board a troop carrier. He recorded the instances and experiences of the voyage, and when he first set foot in that far country where men were dying every day, something closed about his heart like a fist, and a coldness swept over him. He looked at the faces of the veterans waiting to take the transport back and saw a stark despair; he wondered if he would come back in this condition—if he, in fact, came back at all.

He moved forward as the officers barked commands, and as they moved toward the dark green jungles that lay just off the beach, his thoughts were of his home, of his parents, and of Prudence Deforge. And then, as a man folds a treasure up, puts it in a strongbox, and locks it, he put these memories away, and holding his rifle advanced toward the crucible of battle.

For a long time Prudence stood before the painting that she had been working on for weeks, staring at it with a hopeless droop to her shoulders. “It's just not right,” she said, staring at the half-done painting. The painting itself was a scene from her past, a picnic out by the Buffalo River, where she had gone with her Sunday school class. There had been a baptizing connected with it from her church, and she had seen the pastor, Brother Crabtree, waist deep in the bubbling waters of the river, his hand resting on the back of a young girl's head and holding her folded hands with his other. She had wanted to catch the immediacy of that moment, for it remained in her mind as clearly as if it were a picture. The young girl about to be baptized was her friend, Amy McPherson, who had been converted at a revival meeting at the church. Amy had been frightened of water all her life, and she had confided to Prue that “I'll just die! I know I will! He'll let me drown!”

Prudence could almost hear Amy's voice after all these years, and she had hoped to catch something of that fear in the young girl's face, but it had proved impossible. Even the scene itself did not seem exactly right. The water did not express the rushing flow of the spring torrents that the Buffalo had. The canoe in the background with the two fishermen looked stilted and artificial, like a picture on a calendar in a funeral home somehow. With a sigh she shook her head, took the painting down, and moved across the room. Other students were there now, and one of them, a short, well-shaped young girl from Ohio named Kim Kelly, said, “No luck, eh?”

“Just couldn't do it.”

“It goes that way sometimes.” Kim shrugged. She herself had absolutely no talent and had been at the Institute for three years. No one could ever convince her, and she had withstood the most blistering lectures from her instructors with apparently no effect. Now she continued to smear paint recklessly on the canvas, and Prue could barely identify the subject, which appeared to be a thick-legged horse out in a pasture with grass that was blue-green with touches of yellow.

Prue tried to think of something pleasant to say, and said, “That's an interesting color, that grass, Kim.” Then she moved on, having made the young woman happy, for she got few compliments.

It was almost four o'clock, and the fingers of her right hand were stiff, but no more stiff than her emotions. She was tired inside as well as out, and after cleaning up, she pulled her coat from the rack and headed for the door. “You're leaving early.” She turned to find Kent Maxwell standing there, his eyes showing disapproval. “Let me see the picture.”

“It's not worth looking at!”

“I'll decide that,” he said coolly. He stared at her so straightly that she shrugged and said, “All right, but you won't like it.” She moved back through the room, Kim giving Maxwell a brilliant smile as he passed and asking, “How do you like this, Mr. Maxwell?”

“It's terrible. Is that supposed to be a horse, or a moose, or an elephant?”

Kim laughed and said, “Anything you want it to be.”

“Fool girl!” Maxwell muttered under his breath as they arrived at Prue's painting. When she put it on an easel and stepped back with resignation, he stared at it. “Why don't you like it?”

“It doesn't do what I wanted it to do.”

“It's not bad,” Kent said. “Just not up to your usual standard.” He began to make a few critical comments and then turned to face her. “You know what I think?” he asked.

“What?”

“I think you're tired. Remember, I told you once that you could get too much art? That you need to come to it fresh instead of as a chore that has to be done? Well, I think you've reached that point.”