Message from Nam (39 page)

She nodded, touched by the honesty of what he said. It made it easier for her to talk to him. “I hadn’t realized that was where we were going. I just went along for the ride, and the story, and then suddenly there we were, and all I could think of was …” Tears filled her eyes and she shook her head and looked away. And then she looked back at him. “Maybe you were right a long time ago. Maybe when your head is too full of someone, you get hurt, or other people do …”

“I should never have said that to you. That’s not why he died, even if I wanted to blame you. I wanted to blame you because I was so sick and tired of blaming Charlie. Charlie has killed so many good men I knew. And he did it again. It was Bill’s fault too,” he sighed. “He never should have gone down into that tunnel, and he knew it. But he was one of those people who always takes responsibility. It always had to be him, instead of someone else, and all the other times, he was just lucky. And yesterday, you just walked into it. We had a whole unit of VC just sitting there in our backyard and you walked into it. Someone would have no matter what, and we did pretty good, all things considered. But for a while there, I thought they were going to get you, and thinking about it just made me crazy.”

“Thank you,” she said with a slow smile, looking at him, “for caring.” It was easy not to care anymore. To see so much death that you no longer felt anything for anyone. Because if you did, it would kill you. “I was pretty scared, too, when I thought about it on the way home. When I was out there, with those guys, I didn’t have time to think about much before they came and got us.”

“It was pretty close,” he admitted to her. He and the lieutenant had talked about it afterward, and it could have turned into a pretty ugly story. “It could have gone either way.” It made him sick when he thought about it.

“I was lucky. I was just going upstairs to write about it, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “I had to pick up some papers at MacVee, and I thought maybe … that is … I didn’t know … you wouldn’t want to go somewhere for a cup of coffee?” She hesitated for a minute, not sure what he wanted from her, but the story could wait, and they had both been pretty shaken up by what had happened, maybe it wouldn’t hurt anything to go have a cup of coffee and make peace with him. Despite the gruff exterior, she suspected he was harmless.

“Sure. I can write the story later.” She followed him outside, and they walked a little way to a sidewalk cafe on the Tu Do. They had a front-row seat to watch all the chaos and the traffic and the street life, but they both took it for granted.

“Ralph says we shout at each other all the time,” she said with a smile, sipping her
thom xay
, and he laughed when she said it.

“Yeah. We do, don’t we?” And then he looked sheepish. “I guess it’s my fault.”

“You could say that.” She laughed at him, and he relaxed.

“I can’t help it. I have a very Italian temper.”

“Oh, that’s what it is.” She was still laughing. “Ralph says it’s because we’re both crazy.”

“That’s possible too.” He grinned at her, and she noticed that he had a great smile when he relaxed a little. “You get that way here.”

“Is that a diagnosis, or a warning?”

“Maybe both.”

Funnily enough, it was easy being with him, in spite of all the anguish they’d been through, and the pain that he had caused her.

“Are you married?” she asked conversationally. He was certainly old enough to be. In the bright sunlight, she guessed his age accurately. He was exactly seven years older than she was. He was thirty.

“No.” He shook his head. “I used to be. I got divorced before I came here. In fact …” He sighed, and decided to be honest with her. She was that kind of a person. “That’s pretty much why I came. My wife and I got married when we were eighteen. We were high school sweethearts. We had a little girl almost right away. You know, like a year later, I mean. We didn’t get married because of that,” he was careful to explain. “And she died of leukemia. It almost killed us. We just didn’t understand. She was two years old, and how could she die? How could God do that to us? You know, stuff like that.” He looked away, still pained by the memory as Paxton watched him. “And then we had a little boy.” His eyes beamed as he looked up at her. “He’s a great kid. Joey. Joe. We named him after my father. And the funny thing is, he looks just like him.” He was a million miles away when he talked about his son. And Paxton was touched as she listened. “He’s terrific. Anyway,” his face clouded as he went on, “when Joey was two, Barbara, that’s my wife, tells me she wants a divorce. That’s it. After seven years of marriage, five years before that, one kid dead, and little Joey two years old now, it’s over, she wants out. I almost died.” He looked at Paxton honestly as he said it. “I didn’t know if I wanted to kill her or myself.”

“What happened? Why? Had she just gotten bored?”

“No,” he looked at her bitterly, “or maybe the right answer is yes, she was bored with me. Whatever it was. She had fallen in love with my brother. He’s two years older than I am, and he was always the star in the family. Tommy the Wonderful. Tommy the Fantastic. Tommy who did so great at school. Me, I worked my ass off with my father, and saved his business. Tommy became an accountant and went to work in the city and then went to law school. Now he’s a lawyer. Anyway, she left me, and married him, and I decided to hell with it. Joey thought the world of him, and how do you explain to a kid that your uncle is now your father and your mother is a rotten cheat. And my parents told me not to make a big stink because it would destroy the family.” He made a helpless Italian gesture. “So I left and came here. And I haven’t been home since. And that’s the story.” He looked out at the traffic for a minute while she absorbed it.

“And you haven’t seen Joey since?” She looked stunned by what he’d told her.

Tony shook his head as he looked at her. “No. What can I say to him? That I hate his mother?”

“Do you?” she asked him honestly.

“I used to. I don’t know what I feel anymore. I used to lie in bed at night and get so pissed off I wanted to kill her. So instead I went out and killed Charlie. But the truth is … I don’t even know if I’m mad at her anymore. Maybe she did the right thing. They’ve had three more kids, she’s happy, Tommy loves her, Joey looks good in his pictures and he’s crazy about him. So who’s to say they were wrong? And you know, the truth is, sometimes I can’t even remember what she looks like.”

“It’s a funny thing about hate,” Paxton said quietly, “that’s what happens. You get so busy hating, sometimes you forget how it even started.” It had happened in Viet Nam, and other places, other lives.

“You’re an interesting woman,” he said quietly. “That was what impressed me after you left. Barbara would never have done a thing like you did for Bill, picking up your letters and stuff so his wife didn’t get them. She hit me right in the face with the fact that she was sleeping with my brother. But you came back, you went all the way out there to get those letters you’d written him, so she’d never know and you wouldn’t hurt her. And you didn’t even know her.”

“I did it for him.” But for them too. She had done it for the children.

“You loved him a lot, didn’t you?” Tony had to ask her.

She nodded. “I did.” And then, she had to ask him. “Why did you hate me so much, back then? I mean, at the beginning.”

Tony took a deep breath and tried to explain it, to himself as much as to her. “I don’t know … I think maybe I was afraid of you. That you would distract him and make him careless. I meant that. I’ve seen that happen to other guys, and they get killed because they’re staring gooney-eyed into some broad’s picture while they step on a mine and get their heads blown off. But to tell the truth, he wasn’t like that. I don’t know, maybe it just annoyed me … who knows?” He looked very Italian again. “Maybe I was jealous. Life is a lot simpler here sometimes without women.” That was true. It was easier for women sometimes without men too. But on the other hand, sometimes it was better with them.

“He thought a lot of you,” she told Tony, as a last gift to him from Bill.

“And he loved you very much,” Tony told her quietly. “I could see it in his face whenever he talked about you. Do you think he would have left his wife in the end?” he couldn’t help asking her. He had wondered about that afterward, and so had Paxton.

“Probably not,” she said honestly, stirring her drink. “I don’t think he’d really have wanted to leave his kids. It’s easy to love someone here, in the heat of the moment. It’s easier for all of us here. You don’t know if you’ll be alive next week. You don’t have to worry about if the marriage will work, if you like his job, if he likes your folks, where you want to live. You just have to stay alive long enough to spend a weekend in Vung Tau. In some ways, it’s very simple.” There was a lot of truth to what she said, and he knew it.

“How long are you here for this time?” he asked, still curious about her. But the more he knew about her, the more he liked her, even though sometimes she drove him into a frenzy. She drove him nuts with her independence, her bravery, her refusal to do what she was told, and yet at the same time she touched his heart with her decency, her warmth, her honesty, her kindness.

“I’m here for as long as I can stand it.” She smiled. “And as long as they keep printing my stuff.”

“I hear you’re good.”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I love writing.”

He laughed. “I don’t even like writing letters. I write to Joey when I can. But it’s hard. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.”

“Don’t you think you should go back and see him one of these days?”

“Maybe,” he answered her. But the truth was it scared him. “And maybe I should leave him alone. What do I have to give him now? Tommy is doing real good. And since Joey has the same name, everyone thinks he’s Tommy’s son anyway. What does he need me for?”

“You’re still his real father. What does he call you when he writes?”

Tony’s voice choked up when he answered. “Dad.” And then, after a long pause, “Maybe after this tour, I’ll go and see him.”

She nodded approvingly. “And what happened to the family business? The vegetables.” She smiled and he smiled in answer.

“My father died last year, and my mother sold the business. She did okay. And Tommy takes care of her too. She split the money between me and Tommy. When I come out, I can do something with it. But I haven’t figured that out yet. I used to think I’d go to California and buy a farm … or maybe go to the Napa Valley and buy a vineyard. Something like that. I want to do something with the earth … the land …” His eyes lit up as he said it. “… that’s the only thing I really like about Viet Nam … that rich red earth … and that incredible lush green.” He smiled at Paxton, feeling a little foolish. “I guess in my heart, I’m still a farmer. Maybe Joey would like to come out and visit if I bought a place like that one day.”

“I’m sure he would.” And something about him told her he could do it. He was a simple man in his heart, with simple ideals, and decent straightforward values. But he was bright too. He hadn’t outsmarted the VC in the tunnels of Cu Chi because he didn’t have brains. But she wondered what he was going to do with his life when he went home to the States. It was obvious that, for him, it wasn’t going to be easy. And the story about Joey was very touching.

“Have you ever been married, Paxton?” He was curious about her too, and he had just told her his entire life story.

“No, I haven’t.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three. I came here right after college.”

“Why?” She told him about Peter then, and Gabby, and her mother and George. And how alienated she had felt from all of them when she went back after Bill died.

“I don’t know what I’d do in the States anymore. And the only thing I do know is that I can’t go back yet.”

“Be careful,” he warned her as he sat back in his chair and inhaled the fumes of Saigon. “This place is addictive. Just like all the GIs you see, hooked on smack, and smoking dope,” and there were a lot of them these days, “there are people like us, hooked just as bad in our own way, and they can’t detox us.” She knew exactly what he meant, but so far she had no solution.

“I guess we just have to stay till we get it out of our system,” she said, thinking of Ralph too.

“Yeah,” Tony nodded, “or it kills us. There’s that too. You came damn close yesterday.” And he didn’t like that.

“And you haven’t? You must have come close a thousand times. I’m beginning to think the only thing that makes a difference is luck,” and they both knew that was true too. How many guys bought it the day before their DEROS, the day before they were due to go home? A lot. It just happened.

“Maybe I’m just lucky.” He shrugged. “So far anyway. I didn’t used to think so before I got here.” He was referring to his wife again, and then he pulled a snapshot out of his wallet and showed a picture of Joey to Paxton. “He was six then, but he’s seven now.”

Paxton smiled when she saw the picture. “He looks just like you.”

“Poor kid.” Tony laughed. There was a picture of Barbara in there, too, but he seldom took that out now. And there had been other women since then. Nurses. Wacs, a couple of times local girls near Cu Chi. There had been a beautiful girl when they cleared Ben Sue two years before. But he never gave a damn about any of them. He had never had what she had had with Bill or Peter. Not since Barbara. And he could hardly remember how that felt anymore. All he knew was what he saw in Bill Quinn’s eyes, a kind of light and peace there that for years now, to Tony, had meant nothing.

They walked slowly back to her hotel on the Tu Do, listening to the shouting, the bleating horns, the pedicabs race past, the bicycles with their bells, the screaming and squawking and the squealing that were Saigon, and when they reached the steps of the Caravelle, he turned to look at her with serious eyes.

“Thank you for spending the afternoon with me today, Paxton. I’m surprised you did, I’ve been such an asshole everytime I’ve seen you.” She laughed at his honesty and shook her head.