Going After Cacciato (19 page)

He turned into a brick street that led to a younger, richer part of the city.

A residential area. Shade trees, broad green lawns, wooden shingles imprinted in English with names and addresses. The houses were modern and neatly painted. It was all familiar. Sundays in summer—his mother tending the garden up to her elbows, sprinklers and birdbaths and stone patios and trimmed hedges, a lawn mower buzzing in someone’s backyard.

Home, he thought.

Beyond the houses was a wooden park. Beyond the park were tenements, and beyond the tenements were the shanties.

He did not go to the shanties.

It was late afternoon when he got back to the hotel. Jolly Chand and the lieutenant sat alone in the garden. He did not disturb them. At the desk was a note from Sarkin Aung Wan. It was composed in clean block letters and said: “Spec Four Darling. Went shopping for soap and creams. Others on ghastly bus tour. What ails Americans?”

He felt sad. He couldn’t understand it.

He went to the room and showered and then lay on the bed. Home, he kept thinking. It seemed a long way off. He wondered if they would understand. It wasn’t running away. Not exactly. It was more than that. He thought about his father building houses, and his mother, and the town. He thought about how young he was.

I
n August, after two months in the bush, the platoon returned to Chu Lai for a week’s stand-down.

They swam, played mini-golf in the sand, drank and wrote letters and slept late in the mornings. At night there were floor shows. There was singing and stripteasing and dancing, and afterward there was homesickness. It was neither a good time nor a bad time. The war was all around them.

On the final day, Oscar and Eddie and Doc and Paul Berlin hiked down to the 82nd Commo Detachment. Recently the outfit had installed a radio-telephone hookup with the States.

“It’s called MARS,” said a young PFC at the reception desk. “Stands for Military Affiliate Radio System.” He was a friendly, deeply tanned redhead without freckles. On each wrist was a gold watch, and the boy kept glancing at them as if to correlate time. He seemed a little nervous.

While they waited to place their calls, the PFC explained how the system worked. A series of radio relays fed the signal across the
Pacific to a telephone exchange in downtown Honolulu, where it was sent by regular undersea cable to San Francisco and from there to any telephone in America. “Real wizardry,” the boy said. “Depends a lot on the weather, but wow, sometimes it’s like talkin’ to the guy next door. You’d swear you was there in the same room.”

They waited nearly an hour. Relay problems, the PFC explained. He grinned and gestured at Oscar’s boots. “You guys are legs, I guess. Grunts.”

“I guess so,” Oscar said.

The boy nodded solemnly. He started to say something but then shook his head. “Legs,” he murmured.

Eddie’s call went through first.

The PFC led him into a small soundproof booth and had him sit behind a console equipped with speakers and a microphone and two pairs of headsets. Paul Berlin watched through a plastic window. For a time nothing happened. Then a red light blinked on and the PFC handed Eddie one of the headsets. Eddie began rocking in his chair. He held the microphone with one hand, squeezing it, leaning slightly forward. It was hard to see his eyes.

He was in the booth a long time. When he came out his face was bright red. He sat beside Oscar. He yawned, then immediately covered his eyes, rubbed them, then stretched and blinked and lit a cigarette.

“Jeez,” he said softly.

Then he laughed. It was a strange, scratchy laugh. He cleared his throat and smiled and kept blinking. He pulled viciously on the cigarette.

“Jeez,” he said.

“What—”

Eddie giggled. “It was … You shoulda heard her. ‘Who?’ she goes. Like that—‘
Who
?’ just like that.”

He took out a handkerchief, blew his nose, shook his head. His eyes were shiny.

“Just like that—‘
Who
?’ ‘Eddie,’ I say, and Ma says, ‘Eddie who?’ and I say, ‘Who do you think Eddie?’ She almost passes out. Almost
falls down or something. She gets this call from Nam and thinks maybe I been shot. ‘Where you at?’ she says, like maybe I’m callin’ from Graves Registration or something, and—”

“That’s great,” Doc said. “That’s really great, man.”

“Yeah. It’s—”

“Really great.”

Eddie shook his head as though trying to clear stopped-up ears. He was quiet a time. Then he laughed.

“Honest, you had to hear it. ‘Who?’ she keeps saying. ‘
Who
?’ Real clear. Like in the next … And Petie! He’s in fuckin high school, you believe that? My brother. Can’t even call him Petie no more. ‘Pete,’ he says. Real deep voice, just like that guy on Lawrence Welk—‘Pete, not Petie,’ he goes. You believe that?”

“It’s terrific,” Doc said. “It really is.”

“And clear? Man! I could hear Ma’s fuckin cuckoo clock,
that
clear.”

“Technology.”

“Yeah,” Eddie grinned. “Real technology. I say, ‘Hey, Ma,’ and what’s she say? ‘Who’s this?’ Real scared-soundin’, you know? Man, I coulda just—”

“It’s great, Eddie.”

Doc was next, then Oscar. Both of them came out looking a little funny, not quite choked up but trying hard not to be. Very quiet at first, then laughing, then talking fast, then turning quiet again. It made Paul Berlin feel warm to watch them. Even Oscar seemed happy.

“Technology,” Doc said. “You can’t beat technology.”

“No shit. My old man, all he could say was ‘Over.’ Nothin’ else—‘Weather’s fine,’ he’d say, ‘Over,’ “Oscar wagged his head. His father had been an RTO in Italy. “You believe that? All he says is ‘Over,’ and ‘Roger that.’ Crazy.”

They would turn pensive. Then one of them would chuckle or grin.

“Pirates are out of it this year. Not a prayer, Petie says.”

“I bleed.”

“Yeah, but Petie, he goes nuts over the Pirates. It’s all he knows. Thinks we’re over here fightin’ the Russians. The Pirates, that’s
all
he knows.”

“Crazy,” Oscar said. He kept wagging his head. “Over an’ out.”

It made Paul Berlin feel good. Like buddies. Genuine war buddies, he felt close to all of them. When they laughed, he laughed.

Then the PFC tapped him on the shoulder.

He felt giddy. Everything inside the booth was painted white. Sitting down, he grinned and squeezed his fingers together. He saw Doc wave at him through the plastic window.

“Ease up,” the PFC said. “Pretend it’s a local call.”

The boy helped him with the headset. There was a crisp clicking sound, then a long electric hum like a vacuum cleaner. He remembered how his mother always used the old Hoover on Saturdays. The smell of carpets, a fine powdery dust rising in the yellow window light. An uncluttered house. Things neatly in place.

He felt himself smiling. He pressed the headset tight. What day was it? Sunday, he hoped. His father liked to putz on Sundays. Putzing, he called it, which meant tinkering and dreaming and touching things with his hands, fixing them or building them or tearing them down, studying things. Putzing … He hoped it was Sunday. What would they be doing? What month was it? He pictured the telephone. It was there in the kitchen, to the left of the sink. It was black. Black, because his father hated pastels on his telephones. Then he imagined the ring. He remembered it clearly, both how it sounded in the kitchen and in the basement, where his father had rigged up an extra bell, much louder-sounding against the cement. He pictured the basement. He pictured the living room and den and kitchen. Pink Formica on the counters and speckled pink and white walls. His father always …

The PFC touched his arm. “Speak real clear,” he said. “And after each time you talk you got to say ‘Over,’ it’s in the regs, and the same for your loved ones. Got it?”

Paul Berlin nodded. Immediately the headphones buzzed with a different sort of sound.

He tried to think of something meaningful to say. Nothing forced: easy and natural, but still loving. Maybe start by saying he was getting along. Tell them things weren’t really so bad. Then ask how his father’s business was. Don’t let on about being afraid. Don’t make them worry—that was Doc Peret’s advice. Make it sound like a vacation, talk about the swell beaches, tell them how you’re getting this spectacular tan. Tell them … hell, tell them you’re getting skin cancer from all the sun, all the booze, a Miami holiday. That was Doc’s advice. Tell them … The PFC swiveled the microphone so that it was facing him. The boy checked his two wristwatches, smiled, whispered something. The kitchen, Paul Berlin thought. He could see it now. The old walnut dining table that his mother had inherited from an aunt in Minnesota. And the big white stove, the refrigerator, stainless-steel cabinets over the sink, the black telephone, the windows looking out on Mrs. Stone’s immaculate backyard. She was nuts, that Mrs. Stone. Something to ask his father about: Was the old lady still out there in winter, using her broom to sweep away the snow, even in blizzards, sweeping and sweeping, and in the autumn was she still sweeping leaves from her yard, and in summer was she sweeping away the dandelion fuzz? Sure! He’d get his father to talk about her. Something fun and cheerful. The time old Mrs. Stone was out there in the rain, sweeping the water off her lawn as fast as it fell, all day long, sweeping it out to the gutter and then sweeping it up the street, but how the street was at a slight angle so that the rainwater kept flowing back down on her, and, Lord, how Mrs. Stone was out there until midnight, ankle-deep, trying to beat gravity with her broom. Lord, his father always said, shaking his head. Neighbors. That was one thing to talk about. And then he’d ask his mother if she’d stopped smoking. There was a joke about that. She’d say, “Sure, I’ve stopped four times this week,” which was a line she’d picked up on TV or someplace. Or she’d say, “No, but at least I’m not smoking tulips anymore, just Luckies.” They’d laugh. He wouldn’t let on how afraid he was; he wouldn’t mention Billy Boy or Frenchie or what happened to Bernie Lynn and the others. Yes, they’d laugh,
and afterward, near the end of the conversation, maybe then he’d tell them he loved them. He couldn’t remember ever telling them that, except at the bottom of letters, but this time maybe … The line buzzed again, then clicked, then there was the digital pause that always comes as a connection is completed, then he heard the first ring. He recognized it. Hollow, washed out by distance, but it was still the old ring. He’d heard it ten thousand times. He listened to the ring as he would listen to family voices, his father’s voice and his mother’s voice, older now and changed by what time does to voices, but still the same voice. He stopped thinking of things to say. He concentrated on the ringing. He saw the black phone, heard it ringing. The PFC held up a thumb but Paul Berlin barely noticed, he was smiling to the sound of the ringing.

“Tough luck,” Doc said afterward.

Oscar and Eddie clapped him on the back, and the PFC shrugged and said it happened sometimes.

“What can you do?” Oscar said.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe … Who knows? Maybe they was out takin’ a drive or something. Buying groceries. The world don’ stop.”

T
hen they went to the mountains.

First, though, Sidney Martin said there would be no malingering. They would march fast and hard. They would do their jobs; if a man fell out he would be left where he fell.

“Trouble,” Oscar Johnson said before the choppers took them to the foot of the mountains. “The man always looks for more trouble. He want it? Is that the story—do the man
want
trouble?”

Then they went to the mountains.

The road was red. It climbed the mountain at a bad angle for the march, not winding with the mountain’s natural contours but instead going straight up. For hiking or strolling it would have been a good road. The view was magnificent, and along the road grew many forms of tropical foliage, and everywhere it was wild country and pure. It would have been a fine road for a botany field trip, or for a painter to paint, but it was not such a good road for the march.

There had been no rain. The road was cracked like clay pottery,
and the grass alongside it was brittle. If the wind had been blowing, the grass would have rustled like straw brooms against an oak floor, but there was no wind and the afternoon was too hot even for birds. There were the sounds of the march. There were the sounds of boots against the red road, the metallic sounds of ammunition and matériel on the move, soldierly sounds. Altogether thirty-eight soldiers marched up the road, plus one native scout who was a boy of thirteen.

The thirty-eight soldiers and the boy marched with their heads down. They leaned forward against the day and the road and the side of the mountain. They were tired. Their thoughts were in their legs and feet. Some of the soldiers wore handkerchiefs tied about their necks. Several of them carried military radios with spindly aluminum antennas that bobbed and sparkled as they marched; others carried transistor radios. The strongest among them carried the machine guns, balancing the big guns on their shoulders and gripping the barrels with one hand while using the other for leverage against the grade. All of the soldiers carried fragmentation grenades and mosquito repellent and machine-gun ammunition slung in long belts over their shoulders. All of them carried canteens. Nearly all of them wore bush hats in place of helmets. Their helmets and armored vests were tied to their rucksacks, for it was late August and the battle was still far off. Straggled out along the red clay road, they formed a column that ran from the base of the mountain, where the Third Squad had just begun the ascent, to the top of the mountain, where the First Squad moved plastically along a plateau and toward the west and toward the much higher mountains where the battle was being fought. Most of the soldiers were shirtless. Those who had been longest in the war had the best tans. The most recent arrivals were pasty-skinned, burnt at the shoulder blades and neck; their boots were not yet red with the clay, and they walked more carefully than the rest, and they looked most vulnerable; no one knew their names, for they had been hurried to the war for the battle in the mountains.