13th Valley (20 page)

For a long time he sat at the company clerk's desk staring into the eerie light filtering through the screened windows to his side. He did not turn on the electric light nor did he light a candle. He sat in the chair behind the desk and held the letter and the newly arrived forms at arm's length.

Rufus and Lila, he thought. We were something special. How did this happen? Where did it start? It had been a fairy tale. From the moment of eye contact in the cathedral he had never doubted the specialness of their relationship. He thought of specific times, of their first walk, a stroll in Golden Gate Park through the flower show. He thought of early walks through the financial district where they window-shopped, when they discovered once again their perfect match. How could this have happened? Am I ignoring our early fight, our few bad times?

Very early, perhaps their first day together, she had told him her recent experiences with love. She had lived with a man for two and a half years, she had said. One day the man came home and said he had fallen in love with a secretary in his office. In two weeks, Lila told Rufus, the man had moved out. He hadn't let it die there. He told her that he had never really loved her though he did not know it until he felt real love. Lila said that six months after he left, her ex-man married the secretary and even sent her an invitation to the wedding. “I was really hurt when he left,” she had told Rufus, “especially with that ‘I never really loved you' stuff.”

Rufus had told Lila that he understood where the man was coming from. He had said, “I've been there. I might be there now if I were living with some lady.” She had smiled when he said that. To him, her face seemed to glow. Rufus had said, “A man needs lovin whether he's in love or not. That man probably really liked you very much but, well, that's the way it goes sometimes.” “Humph!” She had reacted yet her eyes still shone and Rufus knew he was in love. When had that been? She had been bitter about the man and that had made her all the more beautiful.

He pictured another time. A night in the park when she had sung soft blues songs and they'd kissed and he'd put his head in her lap as she sang. He could see them there now as if he were a third person watching young lovers from across the path in the park. He longed to be the man with Lila in the image in his head.

In the strange darkness Rufus thought of the days and nights in the park, at parties, after basketball games, on study breaks. He thought of the plans and the planning that surrounded their marriage and of the graduate school nights when he sequestered himself and his books in the tiny den and she'd paint or other nights when she'd have a gig and be singing at a club and he'd not be able to go because of the studies, the papers, the deadlines. He'd be furious, raging within, raging without while she was gone, jealous and fearful. Yet he'd say, “I understand. I can't hold her too tight.”

Lila was a striking woman with a beautiful face and taut body. Her dark skin had an undertone of red which she accented on her rounded cheek-bones with a touch of rouge. She'd wear her hair parted in the center, pulled tight about the crown of her head by a colorful band and then frizzling out and down to her shoulders. He could not help but love her. She was poised and intelligent, active and lovely. She painted and sang and modeled for local boutiques. Rufus loved Lila first for her beauty and then for everything else about her.

Now here in a busted shanty infantry company headquarters, Rufus asked why. As he thought, his stomach churned. Would these letters and forms affect his ability to command? And, he thought, Lila, how can I overcome Hawaii without you?

For many soldiers Vietnam was depression, despair, a valley of terror. Much of the anxiety came not from the NVA nor from the jungle. For many soldiers there was no war, they never saw any of it in the giant rear base camps and beaches. But anxiety came from being away from wives and friends and family and being totally out of control in a life where control seemed the utmost criteria for survival. It was an old story and Rufus Brooks knew it.

The story was as old as mankind, as old as war: the Dear John story. For American soldiers in Vietnam the story was probably more common than for GIs in earlier wars. The war was unpopular. Could any soldier really expect something more from his woman? The war was immoral, wasn't it?, with all the indiscriminate killing, the bombings, the napalm, the defoliants. By extension then, were not the soldiers immoral too? Could anyone expect any righteous woman to stand by a barbaric man? By 1970 it had almost become the patriotic duty of a wife or girl friend to leave her man if he went to Vietnam. Why should Lila be different? Why should she be true to a boonierat, a commander of boonierats, the operator of a death machine?

Rufus looked at the letter.

Wednesday

July 15, 1970

Rufus—

How is the soldier? I spent yesterday with my mother and sister. We went back by the old flat and around. Then my sister and I went up to the Marina to watch the sailboats and then over to GG Park for the flowers. It brought back a lot of memories of the walks you and I used to take.

Did I tell you I got a new job? It's with a small art gallery that just opened up on Union Street. The job is giving me an opportunity to really learn that end of San Francisco and also it is giving me an opportunity to see some good works and a lot of junk. I know I can do better than most of it if I just could get myself together to do it. I think I'm losing my ability to paint or to sing. Goddamn! I'm just going to let it all out. It's killing me, this, this being trapped in a marriage in which one must deny oneself in order to let it be. I have sacrificed my painting to establish a home, to establish your home and to be responsible to you and to not feel like a moocher. At times I hate myself for being what I've been in our relationship. It has not been easy for me these past months. God! I haven't seen you since Christmas—I don't know why I have a home for us at all. But I can imagine it was hard for you to return to army life too. Or was it? You can rest back on your orders. I must have misunderstood what you said in Hawaii last Christmas. You gave me the idea that you respected my feelings. You're not supposed to mess up people who care about you. If you can't care at least a little, you should just leave them alone.

Don't think I'm getting a kick out of writing this, because I'm not. I would have preferred to talk to you, but that obviously can't happen. I would rather have a reaction to what I've been saying, but with you I'm used to doing without. I always wanted to bring you into my land of fantasy and then together we could make it all real but you've denied the fantasies and have made them impossible.

Rufus, I do not want to be mean. I don't want to be bad to you, but everyday this eats at my heart. I think we must separate and go our own ways. Sometimes I lie in bed and think how nice it would be to be touched by you and I think of our early years. Then I think of that
Goddamned Army
which you joined and how it's become you and squeezed out the man I knew. I think about Hawaii and I don't want any part of it. I hated you, what you turned into, what you were in Hawaii. You and your Goddamn men. I don't know you anymore. I can't love a man I don't know.

Rufus, you're an SOB. How any man can think he's so right and be so wrong is beyond me. At one time I would have called you a real prick, but since Hawaii that doesn't seem to fit too well anymore either. You had me convinced I was completely inadequate. I'm really sick of this.

Lila

Rufus Brooks laid the letter down on the desk top, leaned forward and with his elbows on the desk and his hands in his hair, he closed his eyes. He sat there and let his mind flow sadly, not actively directing his consciousness, not inhibiting the fusillade of images and half-developed thoughts, letting his thoughts run from him and Lila. Behind the flow there was a near static image, an image of himself standing on a darkened basketball court in a very large empty gymnasium. He stood with the ball, swinging it in slow motion high over his head, high, keeping it out of the reach of a transparent defender, over his head, well behind his head with both hands, he looking for someone to pass it to, ready to snap the ball with his strong wrists, ready, except, he had no teammates.

He shifted his head to one hand. His brow was wet in the coolness of the tropical night. The vision changed. He had just returned from the Nam and she, his wife damn-it, and he were in a swank club and a group of white men began harassing them and patting Lila on the ass and rubbing her thigh. Rufus remained calm and delivered a soft warning. The white men had been drinking and words were of little use. White men never listened to black men anyway. Very calmly he rose against the boisterous group, no, groups, of whites. Three large fair-skins encircled him laughing and taunting him and a fourth sat next to Lila, next to his wife, and he put his hand on her thigh, high on her thigh. One of the whites swung a heavy fist and cursed, “Fuck off, Nigger.” Rufus ducked the swing and jabbed the biggest man in the middle of his face, in his eyes, Rufus with his large strong hands, fingers out, going into the big man's eyes, digging, hooking down and pulling out, using the momentum of the pull to propel his own body forward, kicking sideways with his right foot into the third white man's balls. Then standing still and tall as they scattered, apologizing, ‘Excuse us, Sir,' ‘Pardon me, Mr. Brooks,' and the two on the floor crying, all knowing not to mess with The Ruf and His Lady.

Brooks sat back, opened his eyes and took a deep breath. He craned his neck back and then looked back at the desk, at the letter and at the forms. He had received the letter on 3 August and had read it only once in the field. The forms arrived yesterday.

FILED July 17, 1970

SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO

IN RE THE MARRIAGE OF

PETITIONER:    Lila I. Brooks

and

RESPONDENT:    Rufus William Brooks

PETITION (MARRIAGE)

1. This petition is for:

[X] Dissolution of marriage pursuant to

[X] Civil Code Section 4506 (i)

Petitioner has been a resident of this state for at least six months and of this county for at least three months immediately preceding the filing of this petition.

2. Statistical Information:

d. There are
none
children of this marriage including the following minor children:

SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO

PLAINTIFF:    Lila I. Brooks

DEFENDANT:    Rufus William Brooks

NOTICE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF RECEIPT TO: Rufus William Brooks …

“Fuck it,” Rufus mumbled without listening to himself. “Don't mean nothin.” He did not believe his words.

In the room lighted only by the rising moon he uncovered the clerk's typewriter and inserted a sheet of paper.

Early morning,

13 August 70

Dear Lila,

We all make those little mistakes once in awhile which have far reaching repercussions, lasting sometimes, through a perverse geometric progression of events, for all our lives. Little things like signing up for ROTC way back in 1964 in order to have money for school. Little things which control one's existence far into the unseen and unknowable future. Hawaii and its repercussions have been very heavy with me since that brief interlude and I know it will affect me, both of us, all our lives. However, it need not be paramount to our every decision, it is something I believe we can cope with, can live beyond and can reduce in the future to relative insignificance. That reduction will require our mutual effort, an effort that I cannot begin until I am again back home with you. There are numerous problems that demand my immediate concern, complex problems I am obligated to address while I am here. I can do little to alleviate your distress except to say I will return soon and I love you and want you and want to make your fantasies real.

Earlier this week I spent, two days writing to the parents of several of my own men who had been wounded. I also helped the company compose a joint letter which we mimeographed for all our families. In the past several months many of my men's families have received malicious hoax calls. The calls are primarily related to false reports of death, missing in action and desertion. They cause an adverse and traumatic impact upon the unwary and the repercussions upon the man in the field finding his family thinks he's been killed and are making plans for his funeral are disastrous. My utmost immediate concern is for the welfare of these men. When I leave here I will leave that concern behind.

In your last letter you mentioned your desire for a separation. How much more separated can we be? My options are clear to me. I have 10 1/2 months of military obligation remaining. I can extend here for 5 months and arrive there a free man or I can be home in 20 days and then I must serve the 10 months on active duty in the States. I can request duty at the Presidio but the probability is low that I will be granted it. I have already set the papers in motion to return, though I have also submitted my extension request. The final decision must be made by 21 August. On this I hope to hear from you prior to that time.

Brooks paused from typing the letter. He leaned back in the chair with thoughts of a time in their marriage before the army. He had been a graduate student and the pressures on him seemed to be increasing from all sides yet he was coping, he thought, very well. It had been Lila who had … had what? He could see himself in the small kitchen of their walk-up. The sun was just rising. Rufus was reading over class notes and Lila grudgingly preparing breakfast. There was no specialness in the room.

Look, my love, Rufus had said to himself preparing it to say to Lila. Look, my love, something is going wrong between us, has gone wrong between us and I want to set it straight. That's all I would have to say, he had thought and we could return to delightful times. If only I could figure just what the problem was. No not I. We. We must do this together, he had told himself, for if I were to set upon it alone she would resent it. Resent. That's part of it. I resent her … her … her what? We aren't making love with anywhere near the frequency we did at one time. No, that's not it. I resent that but that's a symptom not a cause. She had seemed depressed at that time also. And her depression had fed his resentment. Why can't she just accept things as they are, work for them to be better but accept those things that are as neither bad nor good? He had risen and seen the sun and thought, ah, today, another day in my life and the sun is out. Then he had woken her and she'd seen the sun and acted as if she'd been betrayed. How dare you rise, her gestures seemed to say. How dare you rise before I'm ready. And she resented the sun. Or she resented the clouds. Or the getting dirty of things. Nothing is constant, he had prepared to say. Everything is flowing. Clean dishes or rooms getting dirty is part of it. He had resented what he thought was her attitude. He had resented the feeling that once done things should stay done. The more he had thought about it the more he found he resented even thinking he had to tell her these things, tell her life is flowing and not static and that the reason she was depressed and found trouble coping, wanted to hide in bed in the morning, was that she was trying to stop life. “It doesn't work that way,” he had whispered to himself. You have to ride life like a wild horse or like the wind, he prepared the statement. Enjoy life while you're in the saddle. Direct what you can. But don't try to cope with it by attempting to tame it. You can't. It will flow with you or without you and your efforts to stop the flow will only produce depression.