Gods Go Begging (20 page)

“Meanwhile, up at Plymouth Rock our boy Cortez has landed and in his push westward runs smack dab into the five tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy. Now, these folks are certainly not the Aztecs. They don’t have a king who makes Hamlet look decisive, and they don’t have a mythology that says that white gods with beards will appear from out of the east. The Spaniards would never have lulled the Iroquois Nation into complacency with Bible studies and false pacifism. There would have been beaucoup shit coming down.”

“Them Iroquois are cold,” said Jim-Earl the Shoshone, his voice filled with deep respect.

“Damn right,” said Jesse. “The way I figure it, five or six divisions of Iroquois regulars told old Powhatan to get out of the way, then they wiped Cortez out.”

“But not before sodomizing him,” said a Cherokee voice.

“Coño! En las nalgas,
” said Mendez with a jerk of his hips.

Jesse laughed. The padre blinked his eyes in confusion. His seminary training and his doctorate in divinity had not prepared him for this sort of discussion.

“The Indians would have been put on notice as to the true intentions of the Europeans. Jamestown would have never happened. Lung cancer would have to be invented somewhere else.”

“The Kola would’ve had their war ponies decades earlier,” said an excited Indian voice.

“With those horses, their cavalry could have repelled the Dutch merchants and the French Jesuits, and the entire Huron Nation would still be alive today. North America would be Russian-Indian and French-Indian today,” concluded Jesse.

“Why wouldn’t they kill off the Russians and the French?” asked the chaplain, who was surprised by his own question, asked in earnest. For a moment he had forgotten about the war that raged around him. This “supposing” stuff actually worked, he thought to himself.

“Because they came for the pelts, for the furs,” said Jesse. “They didn’t take away the Indians’ land and their livelihoods. A lot of them took Indian wives. Indians can understand lustiness, it’s self-deprivation that confounds them. Today everything west of the Mississippi and north of Texas would be called Russo-Aztlán; everything east would be called Kola-Quebec. It is my supposition, after the benefit of much marijuana, that Mexico would have the same name as today because it’s derived from the word Mejica, the Aztec name for themselves.”

Jesse smiled. He loved these speculations. Thoughts like these were always bubbling up in his overactive mind. He often used historical scenarios such as these to help himself fall asleep when marijuana didn’t work. It didn’t matter that no two scenarios ever had the same result.

“Say, man,” said Cornelius, suddenly caught up in the fantasy, “there wouldn’t be no slavery in Russo-Aztlán and Kola -Quebec, because there wouldn’t be no Spaniards and no Englishmen!”

“Right on,” said a twelve-string voice from Mississippi.

“No fucking missionaries in Hawaii,” spat Spam Boy.

“That’s right,” said Jesse, “and old Moctezoma, down in Mexico, would have learned of the defeat of Cortez and eventually realized that the bearded people were not gods. He would have seen the necessity of preparing for future invasions from Europe. Having first-hand knowledge of the insanity of the English—remember, the Puritans are camped out on the Island of Dullards—he would have sought help from the mortal enemies of both the English and the Spaniards.

“I think he would have sent his royal emissaries to Dublin and Edinburgh to speak to all of the clan chieftains of the Irish and the Scots. Other Aztec emissaries would have gone off to Paris. All of indigenous America would have been spared Moctezoma’s imperial foolishness and his terrible defeat at the hands of Hernán Cortez.”

Jesse took a deep drag off another joint that had been shoved into his face by an unknown grunt. Now his entire brain was bathed in warmth. This daydream felt good.

“Alexander Graham Bell and James Watt would have been born in Cuernavaca. Their fathers would have married Mixtec women. The Industrial Revolution would have begun in the wide streets of Tenochtitlán City. And listen to this….” Jesse grinned with glee. “In the seventeenth century, thirty thousand Aztec soldiers would have joined the Irish for an invasion of England. Oliver Cromwell would have been soundly defeated at the great Battle of the Isle of Man. An Aztec soldier would have torn Cromwell’s heart from his body.”

“
Andale pues!”
said Lopez excitedly.
“Qué madre!
Corn, beef fa jitas, and cabbage!”

“England would finally have some decent food,” said the padre, “and no gold bullion coming in from Mexico would have meant the end of the Inquisition in Spain. Without the Inquisition, Spain might have experienced the Renaissance. Who knows, maybe Gen eralissimo Franco would never have existed.”

“Now you’ve got it, padre!” said Jesse enthusiastically.

“And we wouldn’t be standing here in Indian country,” spat Jim-Earl, completely aware of the irony in his words. The Seminoles were out there, huddling and skulking beyond the berm. The long knives, having run out of Indians and elbow room in North America, had crossed the Pacific Ocean.

“What about me and my family?” It was the Midwestern voice.

“Your name is Dutch, isn’t it?” asked Jesse. “That would make you a Dutch Kola-Quebequois, unless your family managed to get across the big river.”

“That’s way better than honky,” said the Mississippi voice.

“You would have a real culture. White don’t mean any more than black does,” added the Creole sergeant.

“You could be crossing the Rio Grande at night, trying to get work in Mexico,” said Lopez.

Abruptly, the sound of inbound choppers in the far distance brought a sudden end to the dreaming and to the discussion. The conversation would begin again, somewhere else in another province, in another ville, in another calm moment after great turbulence.

The sergeant had already gone to organize the removal of the bodies and the wounded who hadn’t been airlifted earlier. As the trio of helicopters came closer to the small landing zone behind the radio dishes, a stream of red tracers rose up from the forest darkness to meet them. Some North Vietnamese were still out there. A lot of them were still out there.

The single gunship peeled off to return fire, while the slick ships kept coming, the saucers of their rotors almost touching. From the high pitch of the blades, it was clear that the Hueys were empty. Even as they set down in a swirling cloud of dust, the tracer rounds followed them down. The young, gum-chewing warrant officers at their controls moved deliberately, almost slowly, and with unearthly courage despite the deadly rain of bullets piercing the skin of their ship. Within their huge headsets was a torrent of words, controlled jargon in a cold monotone, practiced words hovering at the very edge of sheer panic.

Without saying a thing, the chaplain got up and ran at full speed to the top of the hill, falling three or four times before he reached the landing zone. Behind him, Julio Lopez was calling after him, crying out that death was coming for him and that he needed to make one last confession. The chaplain heard Julio’s voice but kept running. He hurriedly helped someone place the Russian boy’s bag into a chopper. Two wounded boys needed help climbing in.

One of them, a traumatic amputee, was hit again as he was lifted up. The bullet slammed into his remaining leg. It had flown toward his body at over three thousand feet per second and the dark spray it created filled the air inside the helicopter. Everyone inside was breathing pieces of a friend. A chopper on the pad was an easy target

The legless boy’s screams went unheard as the chaplain climbed in with him and crouched down near the transmission housing. He covered his own contorted face with his hands as rounds tore into the chopper’s body. As he did so, the door gunner noticed that the padre was not getting out and said something into his radio. The copilot looked back toward the hellhole area of his ship to survey the chaplain hiding there.

For an instant there was eye contact between the two. Without a word he turned his head toward his console and the chopper lifted from the pad. The air was cooling and thick and so the rotors had bite. Climbing would be easy, even with an extra man aboard. In mere seconds the firing stopped and the chaplain glanced cautiously through the door. The hill was gone.

“Sit down, lieutenant. Can I get you a stiff drink? I’ve got whiskey, vodka, and some tequila. I’ve got it all, and there are some real ice cubes in that refrigerator over there. Maybe you want a cigarette? Winston? Camels?”

The younger man shook his head, no. As he did so, beads of sweat poured from his forehead and his matted hairline. He had been standing in a posture that only slightly resembled attention, his field cap in his hand. There was darkened blood caked into the folds of his knuckles. The whites of his eyes were crimson. Now and again his body would be racked by a seismic quivering that would be punctuated by a small whimper.

“Go ahead, sit down. Take a few deep breaths, and for God’s sake, try to pull yourself together.”

The older, taller man lit a cigarette, exhaled, and coughed. His free hand was gesturing toward a chair. Even as he made the gesture, the colonel was appreciating the ancient, symbolic nature of the open hand, palm up, and the placid extension of wrist. He winced inwardly as he noticed the purplish line on his ring finger. He hoped that the lieutenant hadn’t noticed the missing wedding band. The colonel above the extended palm considered his own sin something less than adultery if his wedding ring was not present during the act.

The eyes above the palm never left those of the junior officer, whose own frenzied eyes never seemed to settle anywhere. The younger man did not even look down to see the chair as he lowered himself into it. He had, however, seen the missing ring.

The colonel closed his hand. He had seen the symptoms before, back in Korea and now here. Wild eyes, uncontrollable sweating, and soiled trousers were the classic signs that the flight response had triumphed over the will to stand and fight. We are fighters in every sense of the word, thought the pensive colonel, though we are technically noncombatants. The senior officer at the desk opened a manila file and began to peruse the contents.

On the wall behind his head were photographs of Lyndon Johnson and Generals Westmoreland and Ky. The only color photo on the wall was a poster of Anita Bryant in a bathing suit. On a contiguous wall was a huge, faded reproduction of the Florentine artist Andrea Mantegna’s painting
TheAgony in theGarden
.

“I know you had a special relationship with Captain Gregory, but right now he’s on R and R, somewhere in the wilds of Sydney or Melbourne. He’s probably getting himself a little round-eyed nookie even as we speak.” The colonel winked a naughty little wink. “He’s a fine chaplain. I’m holding down the fort while he’s gone. Oh, by the way, my name is Colonel Urban—Kelvin Urban Junior, or Urban the Second as the boys in seminary used to say, and 1 hope you can speak with me with as much comfort and confidence as you spoke to Captain Gregory. By the way, did you hear the big news?” He smiled, then reached behind himself to grab a water glass and a bottle of whiskey.

“That colored preacher got his today. Some guy went and gunned down that Martin Luther King character. Imagine—a Negro fellow named after Martin Luther! I really can’t say I’m sorry that it happened.” He grinned while lifting his glass in a mocking toast. “I can’t stand how them colored Southern Baptists hand out those doctorates of divinity like they were free tickets to a Saturday movie. Only problem is, everybody’s real worried that the colored soldiers won’t fight when they hear about it. Hell, if the colored grunts refuse to fight, the Mexicans might follow, then the goddamn Indians.

“Now, let’s see, it says here that your place of birth is unknown. Your ethnic origin seems to be a bit muddled. Now, let’s see the bottom line—you’re a Unitarian?”

The lieutenant nodded his head slowly in the affirmative as the interval between sobs grew a bit longer with each passing moment.

“So you’re formally noncommittal.” The colonel laughed. It was an old joke in the chaplains’ corps. “What are you really? Or shall I put it this way, what were you before you decided to become a Unitarian?”

“I was a Catholic, sir,” said the lieutenant in a voice that was barely audible. It was a lie, but it was an old, established lie, and it was better than the truth. “I was a Catholic, sir,” said the lieutenant once more, completely unaware that he had just repeated himself. Even after he said the words, his lips kept forming them over and over again, a physical echo. His boiling mind was elsewhere, racing far behind and far ahead of both the question and the answer.

“I was a Catholic, sir.”

“Well,” said the colonel, “I must admit that I do consider the Unitarians to be a step up from the Roman Catholics. It’s a small prejudice that I guess most Lutherans share.” There was a small, insincere smile that flickered and died on the colonel’s face. “It says here you have master’s degrees in theology and history. Is there any period that you favor?”

“The Crusades,” whispered the young chaplain, whose face had fallen forward and was now being cradled by his dirty, shaking hands. “The Middle Ages and the Crusades,” he repeated, but the words had been inaudible. He had spoken them into his palms, into the deltas formed by the intersection of his life lines and his heart lines.

“A glorious period!” exclaimed the colonel, his voice rising with enthusiasm. “I so love the era of the Christian soldier. The era of worldwide mobilization against the infidel. No ifs, ands, or buts back then. No protestors, no flag burnings, no Jane Fondas.”

He dropped a single ice cube into a water glass, then poured two fingers of amber whiskey over the cube. “Personally, I love to read about the Middle Ages before the Crusades. Now, there was a period of piety. The entire world was the City of God. Back then there was no real difference between a colonel and a bishop.”

The colonel sighed wistfully.

“But this is all beside the point, isn’t it? Now, let’s get down to those proverbial brass tacks, lieutenant. While I was praying in chapel this morning, I was informed of something that I found to be quite disturbing. I was told that one of our most promising chaplains had abandoned his field post, not to mention his flock, and high-tailed it on home without orders and without communicating with a superior officer. Now, I know the job’s a bitch, but this is something we just can’t have.”