In the Lake of the Woods (21 page)

—Roy Wood (Court-Martial Testimony)

 

Q: Who did the shooting?
A: Almost everybody. Some of it was just by accident. My buddy Sorcerer, he just ...
Q: Who?
A: Sorcerer. He shot this old guy by accident, that's what he told me. Like a reflex, I guess.
Q: Who's Sorcerer?
A: A guy. I can't remember his actual name.
Q: Could you try?
A: I
could
⁸⁶

—Richard Thinbill (Court-Martial Testimony)

 

John! John! Oh, John!

—George Armstrong Custer

 

Q: Well, what did you see in that ditch?
A: Inside the ditch there were bodies.
Q: Do you know how many?
A: Thirty-five to fifty.
Q: What were they doing?
A: They appeared to be dead.
⁸⁷

—Ronald Grzesik (Court-Martial Testimony)

 

The place stunk, especially that ditch. Flies everywhere. They glowed in the dark. It was like the spirit world or something.
⁸⁸

—Richard Thinbill

The killing went on for four hours. It was thorough and systematic. In the morning sunlight, which shifted from pink to purple, people were shot dead and carved up with knives and raped and sodomized and bayoneted and blown into scraps. The bodies lay in piles. Around eleven, when Charlie Company broke for chow, PFC Richard Thinbill sat down with Sorcerer along a paddy dike just outside Thuan Yen. He opened a can of peaches, cocked his head. "That sound," he said, "you
hear
that?"

Sorcerer nodded. It wasn't one sound. It was many thousand sounds.

After a while Thinbill said, "Oh, man."

Later he said, "They told us there wouldn't be no civilians. Didn't they say that? No civilians?" He finished his peaches, tossed the can away, unwrapped a chocolate bar. "I guess they was Communists."

"Probably."

"How many you get?"

"Two," Sorcerer said.

Thinbill licked his lips. He was a young, good-looking kid, a full-blooded Chippewa with nervous eyes and gentle moves.
For a few seconds he looked down at his chocolate bar. "That
sound,
man."

"It'll go away."

"Bullshit it will. At least I didn't kill nobody."

"Good. That's good."

"Yeah, but ... What
happened
here?"

"The sunlight," Sorcerer said.

"Say again?"

"Eat your chocolate."

Thinbill started to say something, then stopped and pressed the palms of his hands to his ears. "Jesus, man. What I'd give for earplugs."

 

The polls had gone from bad to depressing, then to impossible, and the landslide on September 9 came as no surprise. Around nine in the evening Tony Carbo turned off the TV set. "Why wait?" he said.

John Wade went to the telephone and put in the call to Ed Durkee. It was easy. All he could feel was the cool shadow of emotion. At one point, still on the phone, he nodded at Kathy and lifted a thumb.

Ten minutes later they took an elevator down to the hotel's ballroom, where John delivered a brisk concession speech. His career was over, he knew that, but he talked about politics as a grand human experiment. He thanked Kathy and Tony and others. He waved at the crowd and took Kathy's hand, and they kissed and walked off the platform and went back up to the room and got undressed and took the phone off its cradle and turned out the lights and lay in bed and listened to the flow of traffic below their window.

After an hour they got dressed again.

John made a few calls, and took a few, then they ordered
a late dinner. Around midnight Tony Carbo knocked on the door. He had a bottle under his arm; his plump white face was beaded with sweat. "One for the road," he said.

He rinsed out a pair of glasses and sat on the bed next to Kathy.

"She's a trooper," he said to John. "I love your wife. Dearly, dearly."

Kathy smiled. She'd never looked happier.

Tony filled the two glasses, passed them out, kept the bottle for himself. The lapels of his corduroy jacket were stained with something yellow. "My God, look at me," he said, "I'm a pig." He took a swallow and wiped his mouth. "I've talked with your pal Durkee. Man signed me up—shitty hours, shitty pay."

"That was quick," John said.

"Quick and the dead."

"You're a bastard."

"It's a job. Keeps a pig busy." He glanced up at Kathy and tried to smile. "Anyhow, I'm not impressed by the guilty-Tony stuff. I asked a million times about skeletons."

"That's not what—"

"All you had to do was
say
something. Could've made it work for us. Whole different spiel." He clamped a hand to his chest. "A village is a terrible thing to waste."

"I should throw you out the fucking window."

"Yeah, you should. Way too chubby."

For a while they were silent. Very carefully, Kathy put her glass down, went into the bathroom, and locked the door.

"Ah, well," Tony said.

He studied his hands, grunted, and stood up. He didn't look well.

"There's the tough part. Your wife and me—no more
dreams.
C'est la politique.
Pity, pity. Tell her it's how the game gets played."

"Fuck you."

"Right. Fuck me." He crossed over to the bathroom door, kissed it lightly, and turned around to face John. "Breaks my heart, you know? She's a sweetheart."

"You can leave."

"In a jiff. Need a belt?"

"No."

"Old times. One belt."

"If it helps you leave."

"Oh, sure. Bingo-zingo." Tony swayed sideways, caught himself, and spilled some Scotch into John's glass. "You look like a dead man."

"Thanks."

"To dead men. Long may they live."

They drank and looked at each other. There was the sound of running water in the bathroom.

"Lady's pissed," Tony said. "That's what I presume. I do presume it. Hope you'll explain that a guy has to work. Can't live on fat alone."

"You could've waited."

"I could've. And you could've mentioned a certain fucked-up body count. Saved me some calories. Lots of could'ves zipping through the cool night air. One last nip?"

"No."

"Good for heartburn. Wakes up the dead."

"No."

Tony walked over and put his ear against the bathroom door. He listened for a moment, then sighed. "Alas, we all got peccadilloes. Indeed we do. Dirty laundry, et cetera and so on. You want to hear about mine?"

"I want you to leave."

"Sweet, sweet Kathleen. Embarrassing to admit, but I used to lie in bed at night and squish the blubber and say her name right out loud. Sad case. Lovesick. Kept thinking all I had to do was shape up, she'd run away with me. Actually went over to this gym on Lake Street. Big plans, real torture. Sweated like crazy. Eighty bucks a sit-up, didn't drop a pound."

John felt a sudden crushing fatigue. "Fine. You can take off now."

"Dreamy dreams."

"Go," John said.

Tony tucked his bottle into a side pocket and moved unsteadily toward the door. After a couple of steps he stopped. "For what it's worth, I could've jumped ship a month ago. Hung around just for the love rays. Sad situation." He wagged his head and smiled. "Poor me, poor you. All those skeletons—what a madhouse."

"Have fun with Durkee," John said.

Tony laughed lightly. "I'm a pig. It's all I know."

 

In mid-afternoon Charlie Company saddled up and headed east toward the sea.

Sorcerer kept to himself near the rear of the column. Head down, shoulders stooped, he counted his steps and tried to push away the evil. It wasn't easy. The buzz had gone into his head. Flies, he thought, but other things too. The earth and the sky and the sunlight. It all joined together.

Late in the afternoon they set up a perimeter near the coast. Off to the west, where the mountains were, the sky went to waxy red, then to violet, and soon the twilight was
animated by curious shapes and silhouettes. "The spirit world," Thinbill said, and there was a short quiet before someone said, "Fuckers just don't
die.
"

They sat in ragged groups at their foxholes, some of them silent, others putting moral spin on the day. Rusty Calley was among the talkers. Gooks were gooks, he said. They had been told to waste the place, and wasted it was, and who on God's scorched green earth could possibly give a shit? Boyce and Conti laughed at this. Thinbill glared at the lieutenant and got up and moved away.

Calley glanced over at Sorcerer. "What's Apache's problem? Not some weenie roast."

"Chippewa," Sorcerer said. "Thinbill is."

"Is he now?"

"Yes, sir."

Calley looked off into dead space. There was a conspicuous blood stench coming from his clothes and skin. "Not up on my tribes, I reckon, but you can tell him it was a slick operation. Lock an' load and do our chores."

"Yes, sir," Sorcerer said.

"Search and waste."

"Except there weren't any weapons to speak of. No incoming. Women and babies."

Calley brushed a fly off his sleeve. "Now which babies are these?"

"The ones ... You know."

"Hey,
which
babies?" Calley lifted his eyebrows at Boyce and Mitchell. "You troopers notice any VC babies back there?"

"No way," said Boyce. "Not the breathing kind."

Calley nodded. "There we are, then. Anyhow, if you ask
me, the guilty shouldn't cast no stones. Another famous Bible regulation."

In the dark someone chuckled.

Somebody else said, "Roger-dodger."

The night had come down dark and solid. Sorcerer sat listening for a while longer, then stood up and crossed the perimeter to Thinbill's foxhole. The kid was sitting alone, staring out at the paddies.

Ten or fifteen minutes went by before Thinbill said, "Lieutenant Stupid. Blow snot in his face, he'll say it's the monsoons. A killer, too."

"Not just him."

Thinbill let out a shallow, helpless sigh. "Man, I close my eyes, I can't stop seeing ... Like a butcher shop. How many you think got—?"

"I didn't count."

"Three hundred. Three hundred easy."

"Probably."

"For sure. Not probably." Thinbill lay back and looked up at the stars. After a time he made a soft noise in his throat. "And that stink, man. I can't shake it."

"We'll find a river. Wash it off."

"It's not the washable kind. I mean, how do you live with it? What the fuck do you put in your letters home?"

"I don't know," Sorcerer said. "Try to forget."

"Like how?"

"Concentrate. Think about other things."

Once again they fell silent, listening to the flies, the deep droning buzz all around them.

"Oh, wow," Thinbill said.

***

In the morning Charlie Company headed south toward a river called the Song Tra Khuc. The day was hot and empty. After a half hour the First Platoon veered off to the west and began moving up a low, gently sloping hill that rose from the paddies like some weary old beast pushing to its knees. An elephant, Maples said, but somebody else shook his head and said, No way, it was more like a mangy water buffalo, and then the argument went back and forth as they climbed the hill.

Sorcerer could not see how any of it mattered. He kept picturing an old man with a hoe, how the poor guy went skidding through the powdery red dust. How his hoe sailed up high like a baton and twinkled in the morning sunlight and came down uncaught. Forget it, he thought, but the pictures wouldn't go away.

Halfway up the hill, the column took a break while Calley and Meadlo went ahead with the mine detector. It was a dangerous piece of ground, heavily mined and booby-trapped, and the men were careful to pick out harmless-looking spots to sit or kneel. A few lit up cigarettes. Most just sat and waited. The blood smell had soaked into their skin. "Grave robbers," Conti said. He giggled and made ghost sounds until Thinbill told him to zip up.

Sorcerer tried not to listen. He rubbed his eyes and gazed out on the flat green countryside below. To the north, maybe a klick away, the village of Thuan Yen was a darkly wooded smudge against the paddies. A half-dozen hootches were still sending up smoke.

"Zombie patrol," Conti said, "that's us," and he let out a ghoulish howl, and an instant later a land mine tore off Paul Meadlo's left foot.

The explosion wasn't much. A quick, dull thud.

Sorcerer looked over his shoulder. There was a moment of indecisive silence, then rising voices, then the flies again.

 

Jiggling John, his father used to call him, even though he wasn't fat. It was the booze talking, John understood that, but he still felt baffled and ashamed.

Sometimes he wanted to cry. Sometimes he wondered why his father hated him.

More than anything else John Wade wanted to be loved, and to make his father proud, and so one day in sixth grade he secretly wrote away for a special diet he'd seen advertised in a magazine. When it arrived in the mail a few weeks later, along with a bill for thirty-eight dollars, his father brought the envelope up to John's room and dropped it in his lap. He didn't smile. He didn't act proud. "Thirty-eight bucks," he said. "That's a whole lot of bacon fat."

 

It was a relief when John finally started growing. By eighth grade he'd gone tall and slender, almost skinny, which looked good in the mirrors.

"Javelin John," his father said, chuckling a little, slapping him on the back.

The mirrors helped him get by. They were like a glass box in his head, a place to hide, and all through junior high, whenever things got bad, John would slip into the box of mirrors and disappear there. He was a daydreamer. He had few friends, none close. After school, and on most weekends, he spent his free time down in the basement, all alone, no teasing or distractions, just perfecting his magic. There was something peaceful about it, something firm and orderly; it gave him some small authority over his own life. Now and then
he'd put on fifteen-minute magic shows at school assemblies, or at birthday parties, and it was a surprise to find that the applause seemed to fill up the empty spaces inside him. People looked at him in new ways. It wasn't affection, not quite, but it was the next closest thing. He liked being up on stage. All those eyes on him, everybody paying close attention. Down inside, of course, he was still a loner, still empty, but at least the magic made it a respectable sort of emptiness.