Private Screening (16 page)

“How will they do that?” Harry asked.

“Once they're big enough, folks will come chop them down for Christmas trees. We'll use the money to start you off.”

Harry didn't get it. “Everyone we know cuts their own.”

“There'll be people. John Raskin told me someone from New York City was asking after his farm. They're looking to build an electronics plant.”

“Will they buy any sheep?”

“No.” His father turned to the thicket. “We'll dig this out with a tractor and plant them in rows. Maybe five hundred.”

The trees became another job. Harry and Joey cleared the poison ivy and sumac and tore everything up by the roots. After they'd put in stakes with lines and planted the trees, his father designed a siphon method to irrigate that made Harry and Joey haul water in barrels. It worked well enough to make weeding a bitch. Pulling them that humid summer until his back ached, Harry felt the first stirrings of rebellion. Only the sight of his father inspecting the pine trees kept him silent.

But Harry didn't brood on it. Lying in his room, he preferred listening to the night sounds coming through the window screen. There was the throb of crickets and frogs thrumming in different pitches. There was every bird sound in the world—bobwhites and whippoorwills with their two- and three-beat songs ending on a rise—barking dogs and sheep bells tinkling, geese honking, and the distant ruckus of thousands of cooped-up chickens. Harry's senses got so keen that he could place the distance of summer lightning, counting a mile for each second before the thunder followed, and still catch the other sounds. The only noise which swallowed every other was the jets roaring from McGuire Air Force Base. In his early teens, these seemed to come more often.

Harry noticed that his father started watching Huntley and Brinkley after inspecting the pines. Usually, Harry senior had gotten what news he wanted from the
Reader's Digest;
now he watched the war. One evening Harry wandered into the living room, where Chet Huntley was reading the day's body count. “Looks like our boys mostly die on weekends,” Harry senior remarked.

“Why's that?”

“Nobody watches then.” His father turned. “Those pines are needing water.”

A year or so later, after they got rid of their sheep, Harry senior spoke of college.

They were hauling water to the pines. “We can't afford sheep,” his father said. “Better to try growing more tomatoes.”

“I'll miss them, though.”

Harry senior nodded. He put down the water and stood amidst the trees. The tallest came to his chin. “Didn't grow fast as I thought,” he remarked. “Two more years, maybe.”

Harry noticed iron in the black shock of hair. “Guess they need weeding.”

His father turned to him. “I can't send you next year. Not right when you graduate.”

Harry shrugged. “I never wanted to leave that much.”

“Raskin's selling his chicken farm to some company—people always need a back-up.” His father stooped to pick a weed. “Maybe the year after.”

His senior year the recruiters started calling. Harry's father watched the news but did not talk about the war. The only time his anger showed was when some law student named Kilcannon put together an antiwar rally at Princeton. “They're not against
you
going,” he snapped. “They're just scared we'll still be there when they lose their college deferments.”

Harry remembered that when the draft board called him into Princeton for a physical. They stripped him down to his underwear and shoes and walked him and the other guys through a bunch of tests that showed they still had heartbeats and could piss in jars. Fifteen at a time, they ended up standing on crosses which were taped to the floor: for some reason, Harry and some black guy were in with thirteen Princeton kids who knew one another. Three doctors in white coats made them drop their pants and bend over, and then asked anyone with a doctor's letter saying he couldn't go in to take one step forward. Thirteen white guys from Princeton stepped off the cross holding letters and were sent off to see more doctors. The black kid, who didn't know what was happening, was bounced for having one leg shorter than the other. Harry just stood on the cross.

On the way home he was depressed. But when spring came without any letter he half-forgot. Beth Winship made that easier. They were in the same class at the regional high school: she liked him, she admitted, because he got good grades. Later she liked him for what they did in his car. She had kind of soft, pushed-in features which seemed made out of clay, but right in the middle were these green eyes that lit the whole thing. After a time the eyes were all Harry saw.

The night they graduated Beth let him. “I don't want you to go,” she said afterward.

Her body felt warm. “Maybe they won't take me for a while.”

The next month he got his notice. His father didn't say much, just stared at the pines.

One night, Harry joined him at the window. “Lots of kids are going to Canada,” he said. “You can see it on the news.”

Harry senior's mouth kind of moved. “That's them.”

“Beth and I could go. We've talked about it.”

“Maybe it hasn't supported us like it should, but I did this farm for a reason. Who'd take care of it, after?”

“Joey could.”

“
No
.” When his father faced him, a vein stood out on his forehead, and his voice was thick. “Are you
scared
, Harry?”

Harry turned away.

But it was the old man who couldn't look at him when he left for the Army.

When the telephone rang, it was past ten-thirty, and Lord had finished.

“Is this Anthony Lord?”

A muffled voice—bland, without accent. “Yes.”

“You have a son named Christopher.”

Lord stood. “Who
is
this?”

The line went dead.

3

“C
ARSON,”
Shriver said, putting down Lord's notes, “is a Boy Scout.”

They sat in a house cut up into offices in a run-down part of Berkeley. Shriver's baldness, outsized earlobes, and hanging jowls made the otherwise youthful psychiatrist remind Lord of Grumpy in the Seven Dwarfs.

“Boy Scout?” he asked.

Shriver nodded. “You've got two types most prone to postwar stress. The first was scary to begin with. The second is a naive kid whose belief in authority was blown to shit in Vietnam. Like Carson, maybe.”

“How did that happen?”

“Several reasons. As with Harry Carson, the draft sent the youngest soldiers in our history to fight a war that was meaningless
and
murderous—no one could explain why they were there, and they kept getting butchered taking and abandoning the same hills. And they knew most people
weren't
there. Like you, I assume.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You can bet Carson picked that up in a nanosecond. There's an axiom: veterans only trust other veterans. He doesn't say who his friends were?”

“Maybe Damone.”

“What happened to them's critical. Which brings me to the rotation system.”

“The thirteen-month tour?”

“Right. The average grunt measured his 'Nam time like a stretch on death row—each day he survived was another foot in the escape tunnel. Short-timers didn't trust rookies because they might get them killed; rookies didn't want to invest in guys who were leaving. So kids like Carson had a few close friends, and they kept getting shoveled into bags.”

“Nice.”

Shriver's smile was sardonic. “Nicer when their officers helped shovel them. By the time Carson got there we were bailing out, so only career officers punching their ticket had any stake in it. And the only success
those
guys could measure was counting dead VC.” He gave a mock philosophical shrug. “To get some, you've gotta give some up.”

Lord reflected. “My problem is tying Vietnam to shooting Kilcannon. For a Boy Scout, Carson's not very forthcoming.”

“You make him sound like a recalcitrant witness. Truth is, what happened to him may have been so bad that he's repressed it.” Shriver leaned forward, ticking off fingers on his hand. “First, the most intense combat experiences are often so fast or so horrifying that the memory doesn't really process them. Second, some grunts were so fucked up on smack or dex that they never
will
remember—again like Carson. Finally, what they
do
remember might be too painful to talk about—'cause it's traumatic, 'cause they don't trust you, 'cause they're so ashamed they can't. And,” the smile flashed again, “because they're scared to face that it screwed them up.”

Lord frowned. “To spend time with him, Carson's clearly ‘screwed up.' But he could be howling at the moon and not come within forty miles of legal insanity. California law requires proof that
when
he shot Kilcannon he didn't know what he was doing or that it was wrong—even though he brought a loaded gun to work.”

Shriver shrugged. “They got Hinckley off.”

“That was in federal court, where the government had to prove him sane. In California, I have to prove Carson
in
sane, and after Dan White got off they changed the law to make that even tougher. Which is why the feds let DiPalma grab the case and borrow the FBI. Plus, in state court they can go for the death penalty.” Lord paused, frustrated. “Without Carson's help on Vietnam, I've got a snowball's chance in hell. And no one's going to believe he thought that Mauser was a banana.”

Shriver considered this. “In a way, I'd be more curious about shooting the camera.
I
find it hard to believe he thought he was destroying evidence.” Leaning back, he tented his hands. “The dance between real and unreal in stress cases is funny. Last year, a vet was looking out at the Oakland Hills when suddenly he flashed on Vietnam. He grabbed a gun from the house, commandeered a station wagon for his escape, and told the woman driving to go fast enough to evade the VC without getting a ticket. Finally, they ran out of gas.”

Despite himself, Lord smiled. “What happened?”

“They acquitted him of kidnapping—what he did was so pointless that it made no sense except as stress.” Shriver examined his nails. “Unfortunately, he hung himself.”

Lord hesitated before broaching the critical question. “If I plead him insane,” he began, “I'm going to need an expert.”

Shriver looked up. “I've never testified.”

“You're clean. I don't want to use some witness for hire.”

Pensive, Shriver shook his head. “It's not just that money was taken, it's that the murder itself seems planned. And that it was Kilcannon. No matter what you think of it, Carson gave you a clear reason—politics. That's the reason that
convicted
Sirhan.” His eyes met Lord's. “I'm trying to help veterans with real problems—who do what they do because they served in Vietnam. As of now, they haven't gotten much understanding from the government, the VA, even their own families. I'm not sure I want to associate them with the most notorious assassination since Robert Kennedy.”

Lord realized he was tired. “Sometimes,” he said, “I don't think Carson's very convenient.”

Shriver gave a shrug of sympathy. “He isn't.”

Lord leaned closer. “Look, in less than three months, I have to know what to plead him. And
if
he's a stress case, he's going to need more than me or a witness. He'll need treatment, or going to trial will be dangerous in more ways than one.” Lord paused, trying to keep Shriver from getting away. “Just don't give me a firm no, okay? Examine him.”

Shriver stood. “Maybe you can do some more work with him and come back. I am kind of curious about what happened in 'Nam once he got out of jail.”

“Thanks—so am I.” Lord shook his hand. “Is there a back way out? I'd like to stroll down Delaware Street.”

“End of the hall.” Shriver hesitated. “And good luck.”

Leaving, Lord emerged two blocks from his Datsun.

A half-block behind it, on the other side, was the black sedan which had followed him. Lord kept walking toward his car until he could read its license plate, and then crossed the street.

The driver rolled down his window. Casually, Lord leaned through. “Hello, Johnny.”

“How's tricks, Tony.” Johnny Moore's red beard and ruddy face made him look less like an FBI agent than a professor who enjoyed the outdoors. “Wouldn't have seen me if I'd been trying.”

Lord nodded. “What's DiPalma want?”

“We're investigating your connection to the Kilcannon killing.”

“Tell him the money's in Switzerland.”

Moore smiled. “Not finding it is making him crazed. Seeing how his career depends on winning.”

Lord shrugged. “The charm of stealing cash from a rock concert is that no one can trace it.”

“Still, he can't accept coincidence. But I expect this is meant to scare you.”

“And identify my witnesses.”

Moore glanced at his mirror. “Just keep an eye on him, Tony—and whoever else might follow you. This case isn't going to make you very popular.”

Lord slapped the hood, walked to his car, and went to see Carson.

That night, as was becoming his need, Lord transcribed more notes of what Carson had said.

In the shimmering afternoon heat, the barracks of Fort Benning stretched like a hallucination.

It had started out unreal. The Army marched two thousand newbies, hair shaved off, to a sweltering grandstand where a Catholic chaplain warned against “atheistic communism, dangerous drugs, and premarital sex.” The last got scattered applause.

Since then, Harry's platoon had got a day's sleep a week and everyone was tired and pissed. Only the letters from Beth, and being in better shape than most others, kept him going. He couldn't believe he was here.