Souvenir (9 page)

“You’re going to be fine, kid, you did swell, hang on,” Clay said, chanting the lies into his ear. He jammed a syrette into the kid’s thigh and then cut open his pants so he could get at the skin for a second dose, holding down the quivering leg as he did it.

“Medics are coming, kid, hang on, you’ll be okay, medics are coming.” The second syrette was done and the leg stopped shaking so hard. Clay watched his eyes, saw the morphine work, wondered if he should give him another, put him under good and let him die with his eyes closed. The eyes locked onto Clay’s, stayed with him, and Clay couldn’t look away, didn’t look away until the last movements ceased and the replacement stared, straight up, through him, beyond him.

Jake was up as soon as the plane cleared the trees, watching Clay, seeing the other replacement in pieces at the side of the road. The third kid, who had been standing in the middle, was untouched. His rifle was on the ground, but other than that he hadn’t moved, still standing in the same spot as he had with his buddies. Their boot prints in the snow were on either side of him. He was covered in blood, and Jake checked him, looking for a wound, waiting for him to collapse into the road. He didn’t, didn’t say anything, he just stood there, one side of him flecked with blood like a fine spray, the other soaked in deepening red. Jake stood in front of him, looked him straight in the eye.

“What’s your name?”

The replacement said nothing.

“What’s your name? Tell me your name.”

The replacement squinted, as if Jake were a mile off. He looked at his arms like he just discovered them, just noticed the blood all around him.

“Oh—” He fell to his knees. “Oh.” It wasn’t much, not even a real word, but he seemed to be out of his trance. Jake took the replacement’s helmet off, tossed it to Tuck.

“Clean this off.”

“Huh?” The replacement looked at Jake, trying to form a question. Jake saw him lose his thought, start to drift away, fear and shock pulling him under to some deep safe place.

“Get up,” Jake said with as much harshness as he could muster. “Get up!” 
He slapped him, trying to shock him back to here, now, to the reality of what had just happened. It was terrible, but it was the real world, the only one Jake knew, the place they all had to be right now. It was either here or maybe so deep inside the kid would never find his way back. He pulled him up and dragged him by the collar off the road, away from the blood, into fresh white snow. He thrust the replacement down to his knees, pushed his face into the snow, working it back and forth, cleaning the blood away, praying for the cold to shock the kid’s brain into letting go, letting him come back to now. He pulled him out of the snow, grasping him by his hair. Snow slid off his face, pink riveluts running down his temple. He gasped, spitting out snow, choking and spitting. Good.

“What’s your name?” Jake asked again, yelling into the kid’s face.

“Cooper, sir.”

“Do I look like a fucking officer to you?” Jake studied the face in front of him, looked into the brown eyes and saw the freckles dotting his cheeks. The kid didn’t think Jake was an officer, he was just a kid who had been brought up to say sir and ma’am. Jake was twenty-two but probably looked like a real grown up man to this kid.

“No, no.” He was afraid. Everything had gone wrong and now he was covered in blood and this guy was yelling at him.

“Okay, Coop. Relax. I’m Jake. C’mon, we gotta get outta here.” He took him by the elbow and helped him up. Big Ned and Miller were behind him. Miller had Cooper’s M1 and had snow cleaned it too. Tuck trotted up, Cooper’s helmet in hand, clean and glistening wet. Shorty had an overcoat slung over his arm, taken off a G.I. who got hit in the back of the skull as he lay in the snow. There was not a mark on it. They all gathered around Cooper, undid his web belt and took off his pack. Miller unbuttoned the overcoat and Big Ned grabbed it by the shoulders and pulled it off, throwing it into the snow. Cooper’s mittens came off too, replaced by a dead man’s pair. They dressed him, like five mothers sending a first grader out in a snowstorm, even buttoning his coat back up and buckling the web belt. Cooper let them do everything, relief at being alive showing on his face, a stunned half-smile leaving him looking delirious. Jake watched Cooper’s eyes dart about as he tried to take in what was happening, to enjoy this attention that had seemed improbable when he first got down off the truck. Everyone heard stories of guys up on the line ignoring replacements, not learning their names, sending them out on point, giving them all the dirty jobs, using them to save their own lives. This wasn’t anything like that. Cooper had been transformed before their eyes, from hapless replacement to impervious survivor. When they were done, Tuck stood in front of Cooper with his helmet, put it on his head, and patted it. Then Shorty stepped in front of him and gave it a pat, then Big Ned, Jake, Miller last. They all wanted a touch of Cooper’s luck, the guy who stood there, men on either side of him mangled and killed, and stayed on his feet.

“Where’s Clay?” Jake looked around. Except for medics tending the wounded and a few G.I.s helping the less seriously hurt down the road, they were almost alone. Up ahead, two halftracks burned, mortar rounds exploding as they heated up. The trail end of the column disappeared as the road descended into another patch of woods. Jake saw Clay, unmoving, kneeling over the dead replacement. His head was bowed, and he held his rifle by the stock, butt on the ground, and was slowly hitting it against his helmet. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap….

Tuck and Shorty led Cooper down the road, and Big Ned stood behind him to block the view in case he turned around. Jake wasn’t sure if he had seen his buddies up close, but there was no need to, no need to lose your cherry over guys you knew. They had all seen bodies ripped open, the mysterious workings of the inner sanctum laid bare, organs, intestines, bones, flesh, thick veins and arteries, all steaming in the cold, the last bits of human warmth drifting off into cold air. Jake and the rest of them knew too that if Cooper was indeed a lucky charm, and managed to live for weeks or just a couple of days, he’d see his share, puke his guts out the first time he saw a man, G.I. or Kraut, alive enough to beg to be shot as he watched his intestines slide out of his gut, a shrapnel wound dissecting him like a scalpel, opening him up for inspection without inflicting a mortal wound, or at least an immediate one. If he were really lucky, he’d live long enough not to puke the next time, and get to decide if it was a crime or a mortal sin or a good deed to kill a guy like that. Then, if Cooper really were pure gold, a walking rabbit’s foot, he’d still be around one day when he’d walk by a wounded guy and not give a shit. Shoot him in the head, or ignore him, let his pleading and crying bounce off his back, it wouldn’t matter, not one fucking bit. Killing and indifference, one and the same.

If he were really lucky.

Chapter Five

1964

Wind blew rain against the window as Clay pressed his hand to it, feeling the coolness bleed into his palm. He wiped the condensation from the glass, rubbing his fingers over the red reversed letters that spelled out the Jake in Jake’s Tavern. It was after three o’clock and Chris should have been here by now.

“Where the hell is he?” Clay said, low and quiet. He turned away from the window and straightened the chairs around the two round tables pushed up next to it. Some folks liked to sit there, watch the cars drive by, wave to people on the sidewalk, be seen drinking their Schlitz or Seven and Seven. Others liked to take up position at the bar, right behind the two tables, where they could hook their heels around the wooden stool legs and study their drinks.

“Give the kid a break, Clay,” said Brick, wiping down the bar, dumping ashtrays as he went. “Maybe he’s got a girl.”

Clay moved to the half dozen booths lining the opposite wall. Coat racks rose like flagpoles between the varnished oak backrests. Folks liked the booths too, a good place for conversation or serious drinking not on display for the neighborhood to see. Off duty cops from up the street liked the rear booths best, where they had a view of the whole room and an exit at their backs. So did Clay.

He picked up the ashtrays from the tables, empting them as he went, knocking them on the inside of the metal trashcan he carried in one hand. Then he changed course, wiping down the heavy glass ashtrays with a damp rag and setting them back in the center of each table, until he reached the front of the room. He viewed his work, liking the neat cleanness of the ashtrays set dead center, exactly the same on each empty table. A rainy mid-afternoon was the best time to clean up, no customers to get in the way of a clean sweep. He stepped up to the window again, looking up and down the street and shaking his head.

“Not girls I’m worried about.” He spoke to the glass. Brick had already moved off to the kitchen in back of the bar, a galley space really, hardly wide enough for two people not to get in each other’s way. Clay could hear him scraping grease from the small grill where they cooked up hamburgers for the lunch crowd. The grease trap would have to be cleaned out soon, not a job Clay wanted to do himself, or would give to Brick. It was just the job for a teenage kid earning a few bucks under the table working after school. But lately he couldn’t get Chris to do anything he wanted him to do. Everything was a struggle and a fight, and an overdue grease trap was going to be no exception. Now Chris was late, and Clay didn’t know if he should react like a boss or a father, or both, or exactly what the difference was supposed to be. What if Chris turned up his nose at cleaning out the trap, what was he supposed to do, fire him and then say see you later at the house?

He shook his head, wondering how things had gotten so complicated. Last week, he’d blown up at Chris when he found him going through his cigar box. The one he kept in the small drawer in his dresser, crammed with tie clips and a few old cuff links. Chris had said he was looking for a tie clip, but he’d never put on a tie after that. It was the memories he was after. He had the small cigar box open, flicking the dried out Zippo, little sparks flying from the flint. A photograph, folded and creased, worn at the edges, had fallen to the floor. Clay winced inwardly as he remembered his reaction. He yelled, pointed at Chris to get out, stop pawing through his stuff.

“But who are these guys, Dad? Is one of them you?” Chris scooped up the photo from the floor, holding it close to his face, squinting. It was faded colors of white and gray, snow and seven men, cradling M1s and wearing their helmets like crowns.

Clay had grabbed it away so quickly he’d been afraid it would rip.

“It doesn’t matter,” he’d said to his son, and pushed him out of the bedroom, leaving the door open while he put everything back where it had been, carefully sliding the little drawer shut.

A car came down the street, too fast, braking to a stop in front of the tavern, the sound jolting Clay from his thoughts. Chris got out of the back seat and sprinted to the door, his open jacket flapping behind him. Clay felt the irritation rise up, filling his mind, driving everything else out. That was a good fall waterproof jacket Addy had picked out for Chris at the start of school. Didn’t the kid have enough sense to zip it up in the rain?

“Dad!” Chris said, before he was halfway through the door. “Brick! Take a look at Tony’s new car!”

“What is it, kid?” Brick said, drying his hands as he walked around the bar.

“A ’56 Dodge Coronet, two-tone. V-8. Look at those fins!”

The car was black on the roof, hood and tail fenders. The rest was yellow, the colors demarcated by shining chrome. A thread of rust ran along the bottom by the rear wheel, and the exhaust showed blue smoke as the car sat in the road, jammed with teenagers. Tony rolled down the driver’s window, lifted his head hello to Chris’ father, and took off with enough acceleration to show the power under the hood but not enough to leave rubber. That would have been too blatant, insulting to the parent of a friend. Instead, Clay heard the squealing of tires on wet pavement after the car vanished from sight, up the hill, closer to the police station, which showed daring as well as consideration, not to mention deniability.

“Where were you?” Clay said, pronouncing each word hard, stressing the importance of location, time, and relation, willing Chris to understand why each of them, or even only one of them, was important.

“Out with Tony and the guys. He bought the car from a guy in Wallingford, we had to go get it.”

“You,” said Clay, “were supposed to be here, at three. To work.”

“Jeez, Dad, it’s only twenty after, don’t blow a gasket.”

Chris turned away from his father, taking his jacket off and walking towards the back room.

“Where’re your books?” Clay said to his back.

“No homework tonight.” Chris kept walking.

“Wouldn’t kill you to study some,” Clay said, raising his voice, going for the last word even as he knew it wouldn’t be. Talking with Chris was like boxing with a tar baby, every time you thought you landed a good one you only got more stuck, unable to make a clean break.

“For what?” Chris opened the door to the back room, got rid of his jacket, and took a wooden push broom from against the wall. He started sweeping up in the bar, pushing dust, matches, cellophane from the tops of cigarette packs, crumpled bits of paper and the other debris of drinkers into a central pile.