America America (25 page)

“Sir?”

He turned to regard me. “You read Upton Sinclair yet at that school of ours?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, you’ll like him when you do.” He tossed the remains of an icicle, which broke on the crusted snow. “Even if you never eat sausage again.” He chuckled, but I saw his expression change. He set one foot on the stone pillar in front of him, like a cowboy at a fence, and leaned forward, shaking his head. He did that when he noticed a view. You’d think he was just a visitor to that property rather than having lived on it all his life.

“We’re going to start bombing again,” he said suddenly. “Haiphong and Hanoi and everywhere else. We told them we wouldn’t do that.”

This didn’t become public news for a few days: he must have heard about it in the campaign. It turned out to be a prelude to the well-known Christmas bombings, which occurred later that year. The first sign of the ruthless tactics we’d use before we finally withdrew.

“Roust the North before they can mass on us,” he said. “That’s the theory, at least. They’ve got two hundred, maybe three hundred thousand soldiers on the border. We’re talking twenty divisions, ready to go. Minute we leave, they overrun the South. A big mess.” He stood up. “That’s why we’re going to do it. Only way to get the hell out of there now. Except it’s completely out of our goddamn control. Shouldn’t have ever gone in in the first place. That’s the saddest part. Everyone’s coming home now, too.” He knocked another icicle off the stone railing. “Everyone except And, that is.”

“He’s at a hospital,” I said. “Christian told me.”

“Yes, he is. Had him at one on an island base till yesterday. But now he’s going in-country. That’s all they’ll tell me. Going to be busy now.”

“Christian said you might have done that for him.”

He looked at me.

“Got him assigned to the hospital, I mean. The medical post.”

He looked away again. It occurred to me I’d overstepped.

“Point is who got him sent across in the first place.”

I turned back to the land, where the icicles I’d swept glinted in the snowbank. “Sir?”

He didn’t answer, but now, of course, I realize he was referring to the president. I’ve read the history: for months we’d been pulling our soldiers out. Troop strength had fallen from half a million in 1969 to less than a fifth of that now. But Andrew was being reassigned the other way—to an encampment near Quy Nhon, as we later found out.

“Thing is, our guy’s not even the front-runner yet,” he said. “So this is either just a warning shot or—” He stopped.

“Sir?”

He looked at me. “What I’m saying is that this could be good. A good sign, I mean. For us. A good sign for the campaign. At least we’ve got that to think of.” He grimaced. “It’s good news for the campaign.”

The moon hid again in the clouds. Everything receded—the yard, the slope, the glinting ice. Not until I’d had my own children would I understand what he must have been going through.

“I hope Andrew’s okay, Mr. Metarey.”

“So do I, Corey.”

“I think he will be.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your words.” He stepped down from the railing and looked behind us at the house. Almost all the lights were off. “You know,” he said. “You raise your kids the way you know. You take what your folks did, you try to add what you think of as your own corrections—things that hurt you, injustices, all that kind of thing—and you try to bring these blessed objects into the world so it doesn’t do them any more harm than it has to. At least not too early, anyway. And then one day you realize that they’re not all that different—I don’t know—they’re not all that different from some wild animals you could have just found out there in the woods. And you have about as much influence over them as you would over animals. One’s fierce, maybe. One’s calm. But probably because it’s frightened. One’s always got its eye on the horizon. That’s And—damn him. Then one day you realize how silly you’ve been. There’s nothing you can do but let them all go. All you can do from your end is pray. I’m not a religious man—far from it, Corey. But I pray anyway. For my children—that’s all. All parents do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know what I’m talking about?”

“I think so.”

“When I was in the service I spent a little time on a medical base myself. A forward station, up near the Nakdong River. Did you see
MASH
?”

“Elliott Gould,” I said. “Saw it when it came out.”

“That’s right. And Donald Sutherland and that TV actor—what’s his name?—Robert Duvall. He’s good. Like one of those places in
MASH
where Robert Duvall is stationed, but up front. Called it a Battalion Aid Station. BAS. For
Bad Ass Situation
. Just a mess of blood and guts in the worst way.” He turned away from me. “I’m talking about the Korean War, Corey. Same as in the movie. The
real
Korean war. The darkest part, too. Didn’t have the F-86 yet and the MiGs were doing a number on our airmen. Soldiers as crazy as Duvall. Or almost. My seventh year in the service so I wasn’t so low down in the order of things anymore, but even then, I’d see two, maybe three hundred men come through in a battle. Believe me—everyone helped. We all learned to do plenty we were never trained for. Saw things that still wake me up at night. Arms hanging the wrong way. Legs broken clean off. And burns, too. That’s where we learned how to use napalm. Most evil thing ever invented by man. Or vying for it. And not just soldiers. I’m talking about the population, too. Mothers and children. Everybody. Burned all over. Something like two million people died in that war. We did triage. You know what triage is?”

“No, sir.”

“Deciding who’s in good enough shape to even try to save. We sent those ones on to the MASH.”

“Like in the movie.”

“But it wasn’t a funny thing. Let me tell you. And it’s probably what And’s doing right now. Not funny at all. Not the kind of decisions you really want to be making about your mates, you know? Decide who gets sent on to the hospital where the real doctors are. The rest—well—what could anyone do?”

“You let them die?”

“
Let
them—that’s the word, all right. We were doing them a favor, believe me. Shot them up with morphine and sent them off to the other side, may they rest in peace. We had Chaffee tanks then, before we got the Shermans. Light tanks. Got ’em from Japan because they were close. But the other side had all these big new T-34s coming over from Russia. Couldn’t do anything against any of it for a while. Felt like you were on the losing side in a bad, bad football game. South Koreans sent their men in with the wrong-size bazooka, too. M-9s—we were the ones who gave ’em to ’em, by the way. Couldn’t scratch the paint on a Russian tank. Thing would sit there, up on a hill, firing away all afternoon. Our guys trying to hide in the trees down below. Just sit there. Firing. Reloading. Firing. Then their buddies would bring the worst ones in to us, half the time not even on stretchers. On their own backs.”

“And you would do triage.”

“One thing I’ll never forget—we called them
ping-pong
eyes. Those tanks had eighty-five-millimeter guns. That’s what gave them the name. They were T-34–85s. Big shells. Some of our boys would come in with their helmets stuck halfway through their skulls. Had to pick out the pieces just to get a look. But they weren’t even the worst. There were these others who came in looking pretty much like nothing had happened except maybe they’d been
scared
to death. They were just carried in like big sacks of rice and you couldn’t tell why. I remember the first time I saw a guy come in looking like that except for his eyes going back and forth in his head. Back and forth. Just like that. Not a scratch on him. Not moving a muscle anywhere else, either. Just lying there on the gurney with his chin up and his eyes going side to side across the tent. Like he was stunned to find himself back with other GIs and just wanted to get a polite look at every corner of the place before he said anything wrong. Or maybe he thought he was in heaven. Sent him on to the helicopter to be saved, of course. And they sent him right back. Didn’t even make it onto the pad. Eyes still going back and forth. ‘That’s
dead
,’ my MC lieutenant said. ‘Ain’t taking chopper space for
that
.’ And I said, ‘What? Look at his eyes.’”

He turned to me on the terrace, moving his gaze from side to side.

“He was dead?”

“No. But
good as
. After that I saw a few more like that. They were internal wounds. Bleeding in the brain. Body looked fine. But when the eyes were moving like that—ping-pong, ping-pong—you had to let them go. That’s one of the things I learned. Hard as it was. There was nothing else you could do for them. Morphine was our only choice.
God’s own drug
, my MC doc called it. Truth was they probably didn’t even need
that
, but you had to figure they were better off that way. Numbed up and dead.” He stood and looked off into the distance. “Ping-pong eyes,” he said. “Sounds like something funny.”

“Sounds terrible, too,” I said.

“It
was
terrible, Corey. So was letting them die. But it was the only thing we could do.”

He waited for me to say something. Now, all these years later, I think he wanted me to say that he did the right thing.

I said, “I can imagine, sir.”

He smiled at me, almost apologetically, and then a dark look came over him. He turned to the railing and was quiet. We stood there together, watching. A breeze had come up, and I could see the owl swaying a little on its high perch. I think Mr. Metarey was waiting for it to fly. From beyond the trees came the whistle of the coal train making the bridge at Saline. At last, he said, “Andrew volunteered.”

“Sir?”

“He volunteered, Corey. He wasn’t drafted—wasn’t even going to be. Same reason he never finished at Dunleavy. Didn’t think it was fair.” He leaned his head back then and looked straight up at the sky. “That breaks my heart, you know?” Then, in a firmer voice, he said, “But I’m also proud of him. And I know he can take care of himself. Always could. When he was seven he broke his arm in those woods.” He pointed. “Know what he did?”

“No, sir.”

“Made a splint from a stick and walked back home. Not a tear on his cheeks. Arm broken in three places. Tied with twigs. He came in to show us the splint.”

“I like Andrew,” I said. “I always have.”

“Everybody does, Corey. That’s his gift.”

“It’s your gift, too, Mr. Metarey.”

He looked over at me. Then he rested his hand on my shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “And yours, too. We’ve always appreciated you around here.” He looked back into the woods. “And by the way,” he said. “You don’t have to keep calling to see if there’s work. Gil says you’re calling every day when you’re home. There’s always work, as far as I’m concerned. For you, I mean, at the Metareys’. If you want it.” He paused. “Always.”

“I like to work, actually.”

“I know you do. So do I.”

“Thank you, Mr. Metarey.”

The rabbit broke from the brush again and made a darting path across the snow. I looked at the top of the oak.

“Tell you something else,” he said. “I’m with Henry Bonwiller because of every one of you kids. I’m doing this so he can end the war for
you
, too. Not just for my own son. You understand that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“For the NVA and the Viet Cong, I mean—them, too. Just like the North Koreans we treated, girls and boys, half of them. But soldiers, too. Just as long as they found their way to us. That’s also who I’m talking about—you don’t think they’re just as godawful terrified? Every single man, woman, and child in that country. Not just our friends in the South. I’m talking about every one of them out there in the jungle scared half to death. Looking up at the same moon we’re looking up at now. Every one of those kids in harm’s way.”

At that moment, the door opened and Churchill came bounding down from the porch. He ran straight to the edge of the terrace and pointed his nose into the woods, barking. I don’t know if it was the rabbit he sensed or the owl, or something else, but Liam Metarey simply walked over and placed his hand on the narrow white head, which was shining in the moonlight like ivory. The dog quieted.

“What do you see, pup?”

He stood next to him like that, his hand on the quivering head, while all of us looked out onto the land. At the top of the oak the owl turned and we saw its second pointed ear against the sky.

“Henry Bonwiller might not be perfect,” he said then. “But with some very important things he does what’s right. That’s what counts. He’s going to stop the war, for one. Doesn’t matter what else he does.” He paused. “It’s the greater good I’m talking about. A hundred thousand lives.”

“Do you think he has a chance?”

“Of winning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t know the answer to that, Corey. Used to think so. Sure. Certainly. And I’m thinking it a little more again just now. But Muskie’s going to be tough from here on out. That’s for certain. And the president’s doing all he can for McGovern, out in South Dakota. I wish our man hadn’t done a few things. But he’s done ’em, all right. But yes,” he said. “I think we can still win. Long as a few breaks roll our way.”

The owl called again—
hoo
,
hu-hu-hu
,
hoo?
—and somewhere behind the house another one answered—
hoo
,
hu-hu-hu
,
hoo-hoo
.

“I’m giving all this land away,” he said then.

“Sir?”

“My friend Bob Jenkins, over at the Nature Conservancy—he helped me do it. The place’ll be untouchable. That’s the right thing to do.” He pointed up, a short way into the distance over the first stand of oaks. “Already did it, as a matter of fact. Gave it away yesterday. Officially.” He was pointing at what later became the Shelter Brook Set-Aside, where my father and I walk now in the afternoons.

Then he went on. “Not all of it,” he said. “Not the house or the land close in. That’s for June and the girls and And, to do what they want with. Turn it into a carnival if it suits ’em.” He gestured around him. “I’m talking about all the watershed to the east. That’s my dad’s original piece, all the way down to the quarries and the mine. He walked on it till the day he died. All the oaks and the brook and the cedar swamp. All that,” he said, one hand still on Churchill’s head and the other pointing toward the hills beyond the flood berms. “Preserved till eternity when I go. I gave it all back.”