Sergeant Dickinson (11 page)

“It's a real horror story, Dixie,” Jeff said. “He just got back from ‘Nam and somebody threw acid in his eyes.”

“Jesus.”

“His rabbi told me. Somebody ran up to him at the airport and threw it in his face.”

“A war protester?”

“That's what the rabbi said. There was a demonstration and the guy just walked right into it. He didn't even know what was going on.”

“He must have been gone a long time not to know what was going on.”

“Two years,” the man with the bandaged eyes said.

Jeff and the door gunner and I said nothing. After a moment the man said, “Not long enough.”

We gave him time but he didn't say anything more. Finally I said, “My name's Dickinson. I'm in the bed next to yours. On your right.”

“I'm Stein. Just Stein. Nothing in front of it; not Roth-stein or Goldstein or Rosenstein. Just Stein.”

“Stein.”

“You got it.”

“Welcome to America, Stein,” said the door gunner.

In the dream I am walking with an Asian man along a wharf
where I am to board a ship that will take me back to America. We are in uniform, he in the uniform of his army, I in the uniform of mine, but the uniforms are the same. There has been much between us, and both of us feel grief at my leaving. Behind everything is this grief and, too, his resentment that I am going. As we walk I try to excuse something that I have done but this angers him. He is a powerful man with muscular wrists and forearms, and as he grows angrier I become afraid because I know that he is right about the thing I have done and my knowledge gives him greater strength, and beneath it all is the grief and the resentment.

We turn onto a dock and begin to fight. Behind me is a peasant woman carrying a marketing bag, and I shove my elbow into her to move her out of my way so that I will have room to maneuver. My friend's thumbs now are in the pit of my throat, the veins stand out in his forearms and on his face, and in my mouth is the taste of blood, and my vision is red and my breath is choked. I strangle him, too, but with only one hand, for the other has become weak as though crippled, and I cannot use it. I know that he is going to kill me and that there is nothing I can do, and the terror of this irrevocability is worse than and unlike anything I have known.

I dream this; it is the first time for this dream and I do not want to have it again, but I know that I will. It is that kind of dream.

They came in the morning, put Jeff on a cart, and took him
away. They said he would be back by noon. At noon he was not back. At two o'clock someone asked the day nurse how Jeff was doing. She disappeared, then returned and told us that Jeff was in Recovery, that everything was fine, the surgery had gone well. But she looked frightened, her facial muscles were pulled tight and I did not recognize the smile that she gave. Those of us who were ambulatory clustered around Jeff s bed.

At three o'clock Laurel came on duty. We insisted that she call Recovery. Jeff was not there; he had not been there. One of us took the telephone from Laurel and spoke to Recovery. Jeff was not there. Laurel told us to go back to our beds. We ignored her. Another nurse, one we didn't know, appeared, then two doctors. They did not come into the ward but conferred in the corridor. After a while the doctors went away.

The dinner cart arrived. Only a couple of us ate. Two doctors, different ones, came in. They told us Jeff was in Recovery. They told us to call. Somebody did; Jeff was in Recovery. Those of us who had not eaten turned to the cold dinners that had been left on our trays.

At midnight they wheeled Jeff in. He was still unconscious. He did not wake up for two days. There were no new bandages on him. Tanner told us that the anesthesiologist had overloaded Jeff again, had stopped his breathing, that for the next twelve hours the surgeons had worked only to make the blue in his lips and under his nails and then in his hands and feet go away. The surgery would be performed in another week or two when the surgeons were certain that the anesthesia had worked its way out of Jeff's system. Maybe
Jeff had become allergic to anesthetic, Tanner suggested.

They said when Stein died that his mother killed him. She was a friendly enough woman just beginning to go stout, though her weight could not disguise an acute body coordination. Every move seemed thought through, whether reaching for an ashtray or taking a sip of water or standing up from the chair she occupied when visiting Stein. Yet you could not detect a distinction between thought and action; time did not separate the two so that first you had the calculation and then the motion. Rather, you had them both together in a simple, efficient fluidity that could almost convince you of the unity of things. I told her once how much I envied her agility. “I played a lot of tennis when I was younger,” she said.

She chatted with me and others about our wounds and the progress we were making, and she was great friends with the rabbi who came to visit Stein, they might have been sister and brother, or companions who long since had defined the limits of their relationship. But once I heard her say to Stein, “You shouldn't have told that to Ben,” and she laughed with that kind of knowledge that is understood but not spoken. The rabbi had not been in for two or three days then, and I never saw him again.

I did not usually hear her and Stein talking; as far as I could tell they hardly talked at all. Occasionally one would say something and the muscles in the other's face would give away a reaction, but mostly Stein lay silently at attention
and his mother sat in a chair beside his bed and read.

Stein died in the afternoon. He convulsed only once, the jerk of his legs picking his entire body up off the bed, and then he lay still, his eyes open. All that was left was the noise of his escaping breath. The medical staff buzzed that his mother killed him, that she had admitted killing him, saying that he had asked her to do it. Myself, I did not see that it made much difference whether or not his mother killed Stein. Dead is dead, as Roy used to say, the rest doesn't matter.

The television went off. Then the lights. Cigarettes came on.

“I miss Smythe's ethnic jokes,” somebody said.

“I never can remember the punch line to a joke,” somebody else said.

“That's all I can remember,” said somebody else.

“Hey, Dixie, when are you getting out of here?”

“Fuck, I don't know.”

“You going back to the ‘Nam when you get out, Dixie?”

“Fuckin' A he's going back. He's a Green Beret.”

“Fuck the Green Berets. There's no way in hell I'd go back.”

“You don't have to. Gimps don't have to go.”

“Even so, I wouldn't go back. In the next war, man, I'll be out there in the street with all the kids, yellin' my fuckin' head off with the rest of ‘em. Me and my cane, man, I'll jam it right up some fuckin' broad's twat.”

“Goddamn, you're a gross son of a bitch. What's wrong
with this war? Why aren't you in the streets in this one?”

“Aw, I can't stand all those spoiled-rotten college kids. Bunch of spoiled bratty kids is all they are. Never can tell, though. I get horny enough I just might jump one of those female kind.”

“In the next one, the congressmen's and senators' sons should have to go, too.”

“Fuck that. In the next one the congressmen and senators themselves should have to go. They can be out front where they can give us the benefit of their expertise.”

“Hey no! Here's what we do. Say for every three months or six months or something that the war lasts we execute a senator.”

“Three months is too long. Make it every month.”

“Hell, make it every day.”

“No go, hombre. You'd just be encouraging them to use nuclear weapons so they could end the war as soon as possible.”

“Well, what the hell?”

“No way, motherfucker. The jungle's bad enough, you're not getting me into a nuclear war.”

“Okay, you don't have to go, then.”

“Thanks much.”

“Here's one: how about if we make the president of each country fight each other. Single combat to the death. Winner take all. And nobody else is allowed to fight.”

“A lot of countries don't have presidents, numbnuts.”

“President, king, dictator, what's the difference? There's always one asshole who's on top.”

“I can't see myself voting for Muhammed Ali for president.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Oh, come on!”

“I know! Let's get a bunch of freaks from the army hospitals. We could put together a carnival and go on tour, we could get Wendell to jerk off in front of a crowd, shit, he'd love that, and there's this other guy I see around sometimes, he's got a hole in his head you could fit a grapefruit into.”

“Yeah, yeah, we could get the paraplegics, man, let their piss bags overflow, what a gross-out!”

“And the burn cases, don't forget the burn cases, burns leave the best scars!”

“We could get somebody who had his cock and balls shot off, put him in a diaper, and when he draws a crowd he can drop the diaper.”

“Hell, we could select people out of the audience to feel where his jewels had been, ooh, aah.”

“And we'd get one of the zombies, man, you know, one of those guys who never blinks his eyes and who has to be led around by the arm, a real stress case.”

“We could put up signs: ‘Come one, come all. See the incessant masturbator. See him grin, see him leer, watch him come. Live show. Parental discretion advised.'”

“‘Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah. See the man who is slick up the middle. Once he was like you and me, gentlemen. Ladies get the thrill of your life. Touch him, feel him. Like nothing you've felt before. Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah. Standing room only.'”

“‘Ladies and gentlemen, may we present this most unusual of entertainments, the man who can put a grapefruit in his head. He can toss it like a seal, he can catch it like a pass receiver, he can field it like a shortstop, and all without using any part of his anatomy but his head. Do not miss this most unusual act.'”

“‘See the unwalking dead. Paraplegics. Quadraplegics. Stick pins in them. Kick them. Punch them. They feel no pain. For your entertainment.'”

“‘Living zombies! They walk, they talk, they wet their pants. They'll obey your every command. Not for sale.'”

“‘Your worst fears realized! Living horrors! Charred human flesh! Human beings scarred beyond belief! Not for the squeamish!'”

Tanner came into the ward. “You guys are disgusting.”

“Once I disgusted an entire division,” said the door gunner.

“You're fuckin' weird,” Tanner said.

“Tell us about it, Tanner.”

“Knock it off. Lights have been out for an hour. Go to sleep.”

“Hey, Tanner?”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck off.”

“I'd go back,” Jeff said. “If they'd take me, I'd go back.”

“To the ‘Nam?”

“Yeah.”

“You're crazy.”

“I'm going back,” the door gunner said. “I like it over
there.”

“I don't like it there,” the sergeant from MACV said, “but I don't like it here, either.”

“Dixie, are you going back?”

“I don't know.”

“I'd go back if I could,” Jeff said.

Coming the length of the ward toward me, she seemed only to resemble herself. She was thinner, but that wasn't it entirely. There had been an almost tangible vibrancy in her skin when I knew her. Now there was the suggestion that her body had become a weight that she would like to throw off. For an instant, before her eyes caught mine, I saw the haunted look of the insane on her face. But perhaps that was only me looking at myself.

There was still the beauty of the surface, the shining hair, the heavy breasts, the smooth, nearly perfect skin, the swell of her hips, always her hips. There was hatred in her face. But maybe that was me.

“Have I changed so much?”

“You're thinner.”

“I've been working at it. You don't look so bad yourself. I was expecting to see an invalid.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“One of my letters was returned by mistake. The envelope had the hospital as a forwarding address.”

“An accident.”

“They happen, you know. For better or worse.”

“Yes. Well. You look good. You look great.”

“Thank you. So do you.”

“You're not wearing glasses.”

“Contacts. I always wanted to be able to bat my eyes. You can't see batting eyes behind glasses.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Well. Shit.”

Elaine laughed. “You aren't nervous, are you, Ray?”

“‘Ray.' Nobody calls me that anymore.”

“What do they call you?”

“Dixie.”

“Well. Shit.”

I laughed. “Well, what are you doing here?”

“Isn't it obvious? I came to see you.”

“No. Let's not do that. What are you doing here? Why did you come to see me?”

“So soon. I didn't rehearse it this way. You've stepped outside the script. I get confused when you step outside the script.”

“You always did.”

“Yeah. Well. Can you get a pass, or something? We could have dinner on the Wharf.”

“All right. Yeah. I can get a pass, I think. Yeah. I'd like that.”

“Yeah. I would too.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“I'll do it.”

“Do it.”

Her breasts were harder than they had been.

“You're exercising.”

“Every morning. I can do sit-ups now. I do thirty every day. It kills me, but I do them.”

“Cigarette?”

“I gave them up. But yeah, I'll take one.”

“You're still nervous?”

“Yes.”

“Me too,” I said. “Did you go to Dennis' funeral?”