The car picked up speed. Ten minutes later, Joe pulled onto the dark street where his mother’s house was located, killing the lights and then the engine about halfway down. Texas ranch homes, each in red brick of varying shades, lined the street, but city streetlights hadn’t made it this far out yet. The street had been paved only three months earlier, and city sewage service had arrived a month before that. He swung wide into the driveway and coasted to a stop before the garage door. A few houses up, a lone window with drawn shades leaked dim light onto the front lawn. Dogs barked in the distance, quieted, barked again. Frank groaned, rolled up further, and retched down the door side.
“Ah geeez,” Joe groaned. “Let’s get him out before he heaves in here as well.” His door popped open, and he was around the car by the time I closed mine. He worked quickly, apparently unconcerned about the vomit. He slipped his arm in to catch Frank as the door opened, got under Frank’s arm, and lifted him out easily. I was amazed by how easily he handled Frank’s wobbly body, but then I realized that maybe he’d handled dozens, even hundreds, of bodies without half the life of Frank’s. Or maybe not. For me, the war was nothing more than images on the evening news, a kind of theater of the mind.
I helped Joe to get Frank to the side of the house where we lay him on the cool, damp grass. Joe squatted, his eyes darting to the street and beyond, then to the neighbor’s yard, and finally back to Frank. Frank dry-retched. Joe bounced slightly on his heels, wiping his hands dry on his jeans, and turned Frank onto his side. “Don’t want him to do a Hendrix,” he said with wink.
A breeze stirred; clothes drying on the line next door flapped softly. Joe twisted suddenly toward the road as though he’d heard something. He cocked his head slightly, then dismissed whatever he thought he’d heard. He turned back, eyes settling on the neighbor’s clothesline.
“Right back,” he said. He skirted to the corner of the neighbor’s house and peered around into the backyard. Crouching lower, he moved quietly across the yard to the clothesline. He yanked three towels off and rushed back, still crouching, head pivoting, eyes taking in everything as he moved. I pictured him racing toward jungle cover, weapon clutched and ready in his hands, helmet riding low on his brow, mouth parted slightly with fear and determination. I wondered how many men he’d killed, how many friends had died beside him. More theater of the mind.
Joe squatted beside Frank, grinning and puffing to catch his breath. “Always good to have,” he said, setting the towels down and giving them a pat. “Don’t worry. They won’t be missed. I’ll pay ’em back somehow. Besides,” he said, the grin fading, “sometimes you gotta do the wrong thing to do the right thing.” He sat down on the grass and slipped his hands under Frank’s shoulders to maneuver him up and over, Frank’s head coming to rest in Joe’s lap. Frank’s eyes opened slightly, searching without focusing, then rolled back and closed.
Joe used one of the towels to wipe Frank’s mouth and then handed me a clean one. “Wet this under the faucet.” He nodded toward the side of his mother’s house, and I saw the dark outline of a garden faucet. The faucet squeaked when I turned it. Pipes rattled under the house, and water spurted onto the towel. I turned it off, straightened, and squeezed the excess water from the towel.
Joe took the towel as I sat down opposite to him in the dim moonlight. He wiped Frank’s face with care to cleanse his mouth and eyes, under the chin, even his neck, turning the towel to a unsoiled area for each new section, then repeating the entire process to make sure he’d cleaned Frank completely. He set the towel on the grass and cradled Frank’s head in his lap.
“Joe…?”
He didn’t look up immediately, only nodded acknowledgement. When he finally looked up, he smiled, exposing a gaping hole in front where he’d lost two teeth to the butt of a rifle. Whose rifle, I don’t know.
“I was wondering…,” I said, but I didn’t know how to phrase the question.
“You want to know what it’s like?” he said, his gaze dropping again to Frank’s face.
“Yeah,” I replied softly.
He shrugged. “Buddy of mine and me were on patrol near a Buddhist shrine, maybe two kilometers ahead of our unit, and we came up on these kids. Dirty, ragged clothes, skinny as hell. War does a nasty trick on everyone, especially kids.”
Frank shifted, grunted. Joe reached for a towel, but Frank relaxed, drifting back into whatever dream stirred.
Joe looked up. “You gotta understand. We’re in their country. Sure as hell can’t blame them for their hatred, the resistance, the whole bit. But some things, no matter what, some things should not be done in war.” He let it hang for a long moment, then gave his head an almost imperceptible shake, as though he’d tried but couldn’t reconcile some point. “Here were these kids, and we ain’t got a clue if they’re okay or being used to draw us into the open.
“Al was all keyed up. He’d smoked some really bad shit—I don’t know what, but it was strong stuff—and he was thinking the enemy was behind every tree, just waiting to cut us to pieces. Then we saw the kids.”
Joe bowed his head again and drew a deep breath. “Before I knew what the hell was going on, he opened fire. Two of the kids, a boy and a girl…” Another deep breath, and his voice softened. “He damn near blew them in half. The others started screaming and running. I grabbed Al, but he threw me off and spun back at them, scared shitless, firing crazy, and there was a girl not thirty yards away, just standing there. He leveled at her, and that’s when I hit him hard and low, right in the back. He hit the ground on his side, and I was on my knees. He still had his weapon, and I saw it come up at me.”
Joe shifted under Frank’s weight. Frank grunted again, an arm flailing weakly up. Joe caught it gently at the wrist and guided it back to rest at Frank’s side. “This dumbass wants to go over there. He ain’t got a clue.” He looked up. “No one has a clue, not ’til they’ve been there.”
“Then why are you going back?”
He stared at me in silence, but I don’t think he was actually looking at me. He half-shrugged.
I still had about three years before I had to worry about the draft, but I was in the same position as Frank had been, an only child with college in mind. So it was possible that, even if the draft got me, I wouldn’t have to go ’Nam. Anti-war protests had begun to erupt on a daily basis throughout the country. National Guardsmen had shot down four students at Kent State. By all indications, the country was at a turning point.
“When he brought up the gun,” Joe said, “I shot the sonofabitch. I shot him in the belly.” His voice lowered to a near whisper. “I didn’t mean to hit him there, but… Guts spilled out, blood everywhere. And I didn’t have a damn thing on me I could use to hold him together. Nothing. I screamed like an idiot for a medic, but there was no one around except those kids. Al was staring up at me with this look that went from surprised to almost comical. Then he went blank, just staring. I ripped off my shirt and tried to use it to hold his insides in, to stop the bleeding, but it just soaked through and dripped. It was useless. If I’d had something as simple as a towel, Al might’ve made it.”
He gave a half chuckle. “Then from the corner of my eye, I saw the girl throw something. I dove and caught shrapnel in my feet and legs, but Al—that was it for him. The girl started at me to finish the job, I guess. I got to my knees and leveled my weapon at her. She froze. Her mouth came half open—I remember that most—like she was saying ‘Oh.’ And there we were, her with a grenade, me with the gun. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, just staring, waiting, but time seemed to stop.
“Then she closed her mouth, licked her lips, and turned and walked away like it was just another day. She never looked back. I doubt she was as old as you.” Joe’s eyes narrowed at me as though he was only now seeing me for what and who I was. “God, it’ll be no time and you’ll be old enough to go.” He leaned slightly toward me and whispered, “Don’t.”
In the five years I’d known Joe, I’d been nothing more than a kid to him. My life had been centered around grades and copping a feel. I’d never heard him talk about anything of substance with Frank or anyone else. Always the joker. Why he chose that night to tell me that story, I can’t say. Maybe he felt he could trust me. Maybe it was just bullshit. Who knows? Whatever it was, the theater in my mind became a little darker, a little more real.
Frank shifted, clambering toward consciousness.
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