Friendly Fire (13 page)

The Hurleys departed together, and the Mullens and Sergeant Fitzgerald followed the hearse to Waterloo. Michael's casket was taken inside the Loomis Funeral Home, and Tom Loomis, the director, asked Gene to wait in the vestibule while the casket was opened. Sergeant Fitzgerald followed Loomis, and Gene, Mary and John stayed behind. They sat silently, patiently in the vestibule wondering whether they could be certain it was Michael, worried that his body would have been so shattered by the artillery shell's explosion that they might never be able to know. After about twenty minutes Tom Loomis called down to Gene that he could now view the body. Gene rose and glanced, stricken, at his children.

“We'll be all right, Dad. You go ahead,” John said.

Mary gave her father's hand a gentle squeeze. “We'll come up after a while.”

Gene Mullen nodded and slowly turned away. He took a few steps and paused at the doorway of the funeral parlor's viewing room. The casket was in a far corner, and he forced himself to raise his eyes to look at it. The casket's lid was up, and Gene noticed Tom Loomis standing somberly to one side. Feeling apprehensive and ill, Gene walked forward until he could see a uniformed body inside. Despairingly, haltingly, he took another step. And another. Then Gene stopped, looked reluctantly at the face and quickly away.

It was Michael, his son. There was no question about it.

Gene Mullen steeled himself, made himself move right next to the coffin, close enough to touch the cold hands so carefully folded across his son's chest. Gene examined the military tunic, the strangeness of its brass buttons, the uniform jacket's lapels with the brass infantry and U.S. insignia, the black Army tie, the starched khaki collar's points, the throat, the lower jaw, the still blue lips, the mustache—the
mustache?
Michael had a mustache! When had he grown a mustache? But it wasn't the mustache that bothered Gene. There was something else. Gene wasn't sure what; he just sensed there was something wrong. Suddenly Gene realized there wasn't a mark on his son.

Gene looked up at the funeral director in bewilderment, then back down. He noticed that Michael's face was a little puffy, his neck seemed swollen, but if it weren't for the uniform, there would be no sign that Michael had been in a war at all. In exasperation and puzzlement, Gene removed his glasses and wiped his hands across his eyes.

“Something wrong, Gene?” the funeral director asked.

“But, Tom, he was supposed to have been killed by
artil-tilery!”

“When we lifted the body up out of the casket—we had to,” Loomis explained; “because it had settled into it a little—I couldn't feel any broken bones or abrasions.…”

“Do you think he could have been killed by the concussion?”

“I couldn't say,” Loomis said. “I just couldn't tell you that. I don't know.” The funeral director leaned forward and traced his finger beneath Michael's khaki shirt collar. “There's some tape along here,” he said, “but that's where they embalmed him.”

Gene looked again at his son. For some reason Michael's coal black hair (which even when he had left was already thickly flecked with white) had now become a strange and alien brown. He noticed that his son's complexion, which had always been dark, almost mahogany-colored, seemed gray, chalky, a pallor foreign even to death. But Michael's hair and complexion were the only things that seemed wrong, and Gene kept asking himself how could Michael have been killed by an artillery burst, an explosion of burning jagged chunks of shrapnel, and still be perfectly whole? The more Gene tried to understand it, the more agitated and suspicious he became until finally, unable to tolerate it any longer, Gene asked the funeral director where Sergeant Fitzgerald had gone.

“I'm right here, Mr. Mullen,” Fitzgerald said. The sergeant had been standing out of the way at the back of the room. He now came forward.

Gene scowled at the sergeant. “Now I want to know
how
-my-son-
died!
I want a death certificate. I want a death certificate stating how my son was killed!”

While Gene waited impatiently, Sergeant Fitzgerald opened an accordion-pleated manila file folder. He fiddled through the papers while Gene grew angrier and angrier, and when the sergeant pulled a sheet of paper from the folder, it was the same paper from which he had read the official casualty message to the Mullens. Fitzgerald simply began to cover it again: “… died while at a night defensive position when artillery fire from friendly forces—”

“That's not it! You know that isn't it!” Gene interrupted indignantly. “Look at him! Look at his body! There isn't a mark on him. Now let's get down to the bottom of that stack of papers and find out. I want to know—I want a death certificate. I want this confirmed before I bury that boy, or I'm going to have that body held.”

The sergeant began leafing through the folder again. “I don't have a death certificate, Mr. Mullen. All I have is the original message I read to you … that and the notes I made when I received the information over the phone. That's this, here.…” Sergeant Fitzgerald resignedly handed Gene a piece of white typing paper upon which he'd handwritten the message: “Sgt. Michael E. Mullen, son of Oscar and Margaret Mullen, RFD #3, La Porte City, Iowa. Killed 18 Feb 70 near the village of Chu Lai. Nonbattle.”

Gene studied the page for a long moment, and then, in a howl that compressed all the rage and confusion and pain he felt into one anguished question, he asked, “What does this mean:
‘Nonbattle'?
”

“It means a casualty not the result of action by hostile forces,” Sergeant Fitzgerald replied.

When Gene Mullen returned to the farm that night, Peg's first question was: “Is it Michael?”

“Yes,” he said and dashed the one desperate remaining hope she had been nurturing all along.

Early Monday morning Gene drove back to the Loomis Funeral Home with Peg and Patricia. They had wanted to be alone with Michael's body and were surprised to find that a number of people were already there. Some were elderly friends of Michael's grandparents, some were Peg's friends—people she had met through her work on the County Democratic Committee—some were families who had sons currently serving in Vietnam, some were from John's high school class at Don Bosco, and others were families who too had lost sons in Vietnam. In all, about 145 persons signed the register. They had come because they had heard on the radio that Michael's body was to be brought back to the Mullen farm that afternoon, and not wanting to intrude on the family, they had nevertheless wanted to pay their respects. Peg particularly remembered the parents whose sons had died in the war. Their anguish was so real, they were so clearly reliving their own personal tragedies, that Peg felt they were the only people who really understood the despair that she and Gene felt.

When Gene and Peg Mullen and their daughter Patricia entered the funeral home, Captain Pringle met them at the vestibule. He reached inside his brief case and lifted out a small satin-covered box which he started to present to Gene. Thinking the box contained Michael's Army medals, Gene pushed the captain's hand away before Pringle could speak.

“We don't want them now,” Gene said. “Maybe in time we'll change our opinion, but we don't want them now.”

The box contained not medals but a small gold star symbolic of their son's death.

At first, more than anything else, Peg was upset by Michael's hair. She had heard that the malaria pills the boys took in Vietnam and the sun and water affected coloring; but now she saw that Michael had no white hair at all. She wondered whether the Army had been embarrassed to show the Mullens that their son's hair had turned whiter, whether some well-meaning mortician hadn't dyed it. Peg couldn't stand its strange “taffy” color. But, other than that, as Gene had reported, Michael looked absolutely natural. There wasn't a mark on him.

Peg was suddenly overwhelmed by anger. The depth of her anger, of her outrage, its force and fury, stunned her. Gripping the velvet-draped platform upon which Michael's casket rested, Peg began to shiver. Her trembling transmitted itself down her shoulders, through her arms to the platform, so that it, too, vibrated slightly and the aluminum and brass-fitted handles on the casket began inexcusably to rattle—a thin, high, metallic pinging like a moored sailboat's rigging in a wind. Peg, unable at first to identify the source of the sound, glanced in amazement at the coffin and next at her hands, her arms until she realized that she herself was responsible for that outrageous noise. She jerked her hands off the platform as though burned.

“Mother?” Patricia put her arm around Peg. “You all right?”

Peg clamped her hands beneath her upper arms to still the trembling and bit her lip.

“Are you all right?” Patricia repeated, and Peg's look, when she turned to her daughter, was that of a frightened child.

“Daddy!” Patricia called. Gene hurried over and, sensing that Peg was for the first time about to break down, seized her other arm.

“Get me to the car, quick!” Peg said urgently. Her voice was a thin, compressed whisper. Gene and Patricia hurried Peg past the others in the funeral home, through the vestibule, where Captain Pringle called out, “Mr. Mullen, I need your—”

“Not now, wait. Be back,” Gene answered over his shoulder.

Once outside Peg inhaled great gulps of air. She reached their car without stumbling, got in, and Patricia slid in next to her. Gene remained standing by the open door.

“Gene, you go ahead,” Peg told him. “Go see what Pringle wants. I'll be all right now.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“I'm all right,” Peg repeated. “Patricia will stay with me. I just need to sit for a while.”

Gene, leaning down so he could see Peg's face, nodded reluctantly and closed the car door. He walked back toward the funeral home entrance, paused at the stairs to look once more at the car. Peg gave him a little wave. Gene waved back and continued on in.

“You feel better now?” Patricia asked worriedly. “Is there anything I can get you? Some water?”

Peg shook her head no. She reached into her purse and pulled out a handkerchief.

“Are you sure?” Patricia said. “Isn't there anything you want?”

Peg continued to sit there in silence. After a moment, with obvious difficulty, she started to talk. She did not look up. Instead, she stared down at the plain white cotton handkerchief she had twisted into little knots in her hand.

“When … I … saw … Michael … whole.… When I saw Michael without a mark on him, I wanted—I don't know what I wanted, but I don't think … I don't think.…” Peg paused to clear her mind. “I don't think I wanted to see him …
whole
, you know? I got so angry … so furious because he … Mikey doesn't look as if he … as if he.…” Peg shook her head and took a deep breath. She faced Patricia, and for a moment, her voice became very matter-of-fact. “I don't think I wanted him whole, see? Because I've got to believe that he died in a war—and I can't. I can't believe it. And that's why I sort of went to pieces in there, do you understand?”

Patricia nodded. “I think so.”

Peg studied her daughter, noted her worry, her concern, Patricia's strength. Peg's face softened, the whiteness around her lips started to fade, and she spoke quietly. “I do think I wanted him to have been blown to bits.”

Because it was the first time she had let herself relax, become vulnerable, Peg suddenly began to cry. Not since she had learned of Michael's death had she displayed any emotion but anger. “I do think I wanted him to have been blown to bits … I do!… I know I did,” she said, and anguish flooded her face as she wept. “He was
all whole! All whole!
… Oh-h-h, why?… Why couldn't he have been blown to bits? So I could believe he … died … in … a …
war?”

Inside the funeral home, Captain Pringle was signing the release papers that gave Gene Mullen and Tom Loomis final possession of Michael's body; in turn, Captain Pringle took Michael's Army dog tags.

Gene had wanted to keep the dog tags, but the captain explained that they were part of Michael's military equipment and, as such, were retained for record by the United States Army. Gene made up his mind that from that moment on he owed no more allegiance to the cause that had taken his son. He had had it with the Army, with the Vietnam War and with the U.S. government.

Peg never did understand why Michael's dog tags meant so much to Gene nor why he had saved his own dog tags from World War II. But Gene knew the expression, “If you can't make it in the Army, you won't make it on the outside,” and dog tags represented not so much a souvenir of war with an enemy (the Army gives men medals for that), but war with oneself. To Gene Mullen, Michael's dog tags were a symbol that when called upon to accept and perform his responsibilities as a man among his fellowmen, his son had done his duty.

Tom Loomis was saying, “Gene, I understand you've decided not to have a military funeral.”

“That's right,” Gene answered, looking straight at Captain Pringle.

“When the coffin is brought to your home this afternoon, will you be wanting a flag draped across it?”

Gene thought for a moment. “Yes.… Yes, I want a flag.”

“Flag to be on casket,” Tom Loomis said. He made a little entry in his notebook. “And, let's see, we plan to have the coffin out to your house around noon. Will that be suitable?”

“Noon will be fine,” Gene said.

“And the funeral mass is scheduled for ten o'clock at the Sacred Heart in La Porte City?”

Gene nodded. “Michael is to be buried in the family plot at Mount Carmel in Eagle Center.”

“Mr. Mullen, pardon me?” Captain Pringle said. “I can come to the service—I
have
to be there,” Pringle corrected himself, “but I mean, well, I can come to the service in civilian clothing, if you'd like.…”