The Grand Tour (18 page)

There was no Vietcong presence that I could see. Davis Martin waved us back off the edge, and we jogged behind him to where Endicott and the rest of the platoon had stopped. Martin and Endicott conferred, and then Endicott motioned for us to follow him back thirty yards or so down the ridge, to a small stone outcropping that provided shade from the rapidly rising sun. We gathered as close as we could, and listened as he spoke in a low tone, although there was no way anyone down there could have heard him talk.

“Listen up. We're gonna park it here until the VC make an appearance. We'll take shifts surveilling. When they do show up, we're going to get back in formation and blast the hell out of them. Martin will give firing orders, we clear?”

“No, sir.” Berlinger stared at Endicott, or past him, as though he was seeing something out in the dense green foliage.

“Pardon me?”

“I said, ‘No, sir.' ” Some of the guys groaned.

“Berlinger,” Endicott began, but Berlinger had unslung his rifle and handed it to Endicott butt first. The lieutenant took it uncertainly, for a moment balancing it on its barrel and looking like an old man with a walking stick.

Berlinger said, “Lieutenant, I hereby surrender my weapon and myself to this platoon as a noncombatant, or an objector, or deserter, or whatever the fuck the terminology is. I lay down arms.” He pointed to the ridge over the village. “I am not doing this.”

“You don't have a choice.” Endicott tried to hand him back the gun, but Berlinger wouldn't take it.

“Respectfully, sir, there's always a choice.”

“Pick up your weapon, soldier.”

“No.”

Endicott paused, and when he spoke, he spoke slowly. “You understand you can be court-martialed for this. And you understand that can mean a dishonorable discharge, maybe years in prison.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damn.” Endicott sighed. “Goddamn it, fine.” He handed Martin the rifle. Martin went over to Berlinger and confiscated his field pack. Standing there empty-handed, Berlinger looked like a little kid who'd shown up late to a playground full of kids playing soldier. He walked away and sat next to a small rock with his hands between his legs. I wanted to go over there and beat his fuckwad prima-donna head in.

Forty minutes later the guy who'd drawn first watch, a PFC named Tilghman, turned around and gestured wildly. Davis Martin jogged over with his gun in firing position, dropped to his belly, and looked over. He waved at us to follow him, motioning with his palm flat to the ground. We spread out in a predetermined line and moved up the crest of the hill, crab-walking the last ten feet to the edge.

The Vietcong were down there, identifiable by their trademark loose-fitting uniforms, as well as by the rifles slung over their shoulders. They squatted around holding tin cups of something, green tea maybe, carrying on conversations in clusters. We were too far away to hear what they were saying and, of course, we wouldn't have understood it anyway, but the general atmosphere of the scene struck me as one of convivial relaxation after a hard night's work. It was, after all, still morning. One of the Vietcong laughed, a hoarse bark. I was reminded of the time before shipping out that I'd stayed up all night with my buddies in Knoxville, cracking a final beer as the sun came up, relishing the delay of sleep another ten minutes, another five. I reminded myself that if the soldiers below us had pulled an all-nighter, they'd done so creeping through the surrounding forest, the same as they had done in my nightmares over the last three months. Setting claymores and bouncing betties, rigging booby traps with sharpened punji sticks, hoping to wound, maim, impale me—hoping to shear the flesh from my legs.

The tree line across from us was covered with black birds, I didn't know what kind. Were there crows in Vietnam? They perched in their own clusters, occasionally flapping from one frond to another. It looked like the birds were spying on the VC, the same way we were. There was something comic about the situation, a horrible dramatic irony, and a kind of giddiness overtook me—it reminded me of playing hide-and-seek with my cousins all over their big farmhouse. Looking at their legs through the slats in a closet door. I had to bite on the stiff sleeve of my jacket to keep from giggling out loud.

My attention at that moment landed on someone carrying a sun-faded pink umbrella. From our downward angle, I couldn't see who they were or what they were doing, just a pair of feet now and then. They moved in a circle around the fire pit, now close to the Vietcong. One of the VC looked up and said something, and, seemingly rebuffed, the umbrella floated away. The umbrella and its bright color were fantastic in the middle of all the black and brown and olive green.

The soldier next to me made a fist with his right hand, and I did the same as I looked up the line to my right. At the top, Sergeant Martin held his hand clenched in the air, and if I'd forgotten my field signal training by that point, his meaning when he pointed his M-14 down at the encampment was unambiguous. All the guns pointed down into the little valley, safeties off. One VC got up and wandered behind a lean-to, where he pissed with his hand against a tree. Martin raised his hand again. I sighted my target, a VC wiping out what looked like a large pan with a white rag. Like a party balloon popping in the thick air, a lonely shot sounded, a trigger accidentally pulled by a nervous eighteen-year-old finger from Nebraska or Vermont or Mississippi. The VC stopped talking and looked around. The pink umbrella paused near the tree line.

Then Martin's hand dropped and we were all firing. I shot my VC several times in quick succession, and the last shot pinged off the pan he was holding. The bodies of the men below us flailed as though participating in a lively, impromptu dance. More merriment. The guy taking a piss fell over holding his dick. The people in the lean-tos appeared to sleep through the whole thing. I cannot express to you the pleasure I felt firing my gun, killing those fuckers. After almost an entire year of doubt, of imagining myself running away, or covering my head and pissing myself, there I was, squeezing the trigger over and over, sighting targets and blasting them with casual accuracy the way we'd been shown in Basic. Someone in black ran toward the western tree line and I took the back of his head off with one shot. Then I shot him again to make sure.

With the visible clusters of VC dead or dying on the ground, the field of fire expanded like a hungry blob looking for more things to eat. Someone—probably this guy Harriman who'd played backup QB on his Oklahoma high school football team—pitched an arching grenade the entire distance, an absurdly long throw that blew one of the houses off its supports. The explosion initiated a wave of gunning and fragging that was aimed at the huts and lean-tos. A wounded man limped out carrying something and was shot three times before he hit the dirt. The old person I'd noticed before had fallen next to their bowl of food, carelessly spilled beside them. A snatch of fabric from the pink umbrella, caught in the trees, fluttered as if in surrender.

One thing I remember thinking was how strangely similar it was to scenes in movies when people get shot. If you had asked me before, I might have guessed that there would be some telling difference, however small. It would have to be a small detail, in fact, a key visual detail that Sam Peckinpah or Walter Hill might have imagined wrong, and something that would falsify the corpus of movie mayhem in experienced eyes. But what I saw, two hundred yards away, looked just like something from a film: the noise, the smoke, the dust, bodies jerking and falling, some blood, though not an unrealistic amount. Then eventually silence.

What had happened had taken maybe twenty seconds, probably less. The smoke took another thirty seconds or so to clear, then Sergeant Martin stood and we all followed suit. We walked down the ridge behind him like a line of ducklings following their mother. As we walked slowly among the corpses in the field, everyone had approximately the same look of childish astonishment on his face, disbelief that he could be partly responsible for such a thing. Most of the VC had fallen face-first, but two near me had fallen next to each other on their backs, with their heads nearly touching, as though they were a fond couple sky-gazing, or perhaps two kids making snow angels.

I wonder if the following realization is universal to everyone who's just killed someone: that you are now, and always will be, a killer. It is a very clear line, and once you've crossed it, there's no going back. You can't unkill someone, no matter how much you'd like to, and you can't unkiller yourself. For the rest of your life, you have the honor of being in the select group of human beings who have ended another human being's life. It is no small thing. I looked at my fellow soldiers and thought how all of us—Endicott and Martin, and dumbfuck Lester Hawkins walking around trying not to smile, and even that zit-faced kid from Illinois or Indiana who'd cried over a picture of his sister's high school prom, and even me, even me—were killers now.

But Berlinger wasn't. I turned and looked, and there he was, escorted by Endicott. Just visible over the crest of the ridge, shielding his eyes from the harsh sunlight with his bladed hand, surveying our work.

Richard thanked the audience and began taking questions. Cindy pushed through the exit and walked through the entrance hall, past enormous arching windows providing a grand view of the parking deck across the street. She was on the verge of crying, a fact that upset her far more than the chapter she had just heard. Her father hadn't made her cry since she was fifteen, when she found out he was getting remarried, to that awful woman whose name Cindy couldn't remember right at this moment. Carole, with an
e,
a spelling that had always infuriated her. She'd cried after he'd told her on the phone, locked herself in her room, and ignored her mother's murmured entreaties from the hall. But later she felt a powerful wave of relief, secure in the knowledge that this would be the last time he would wield this power over her.

Which had been true until just now. The reading had been an unwelcome reminder that he was an actual person, not merely the collection of timeworn seriocomic flaws—the drunk, penniless bungler from whom she coldly tolerated a biannual phone call—to which she'd successfully reduced him over the years. She barged into the bathroom and cupped water onto her face until the wave of childish self-pity subsided. She dried off with paper towels and flashed a false, gruesome smile in the mirror. But she hadn't cried.

She entered the corner stall and sat for a minute, gathering herself. The laminated metal of the door and walls was a pleasing color of dull mustard yellow, and she wouldn't have minded staying in there forever; something about the close space and neutral color made her mind go blank. For a moment she was no longer worried about her life: the money Mikhail was demanding, her job, her debt, her spiraling prescription drug usage, her miserable love life, the impact of the dry desert air on her skin, the funny clunking noise her car was making, her shitty father and his fucking book.

Just one hair, two, and, with a contented sigh, she rose.

She walked out of the bathroom as Richard walked out of the auditorium. He was surrounded by a coterie of older men in a tableau that resembled some ghastly parody of teen idolatry. He saw her and raised his hand, and she involuntarily raised hers. She started to the exit doors, then stopped and sat in one of the iron stairwells that led to the upper rooms, waiting until the crowd dispersed. He walked slowly over, with the strenuous nonchalance of someone trying not to frighten away a small animal.

“Hi, Cin,” he said.

“Hey.”

A young guy walked up from behind, another fan, Cindy thought, except he didn't say anything to Richard and stood about four feet to the side. A stalker, then, she thought, perversely imagining the guy pulling out a gun and blowing her father's head off. The thought, surprisingly, didn't make her entirely happy.

“This is Vance, my driver,” said Richard, pointing backward with his thumb.

“Your driver.”

“And valet. Vance, stop being weird and meet my daughter, Cindy.”

Vance came forward and stuck out his hand, as though he were presenting her with a piece of questionable fruit for her perusal. She took it. It was large and limp, and as she shook it, she realized she had never fully understood the precise sense-meaning of the word “clammy” until this very moment.

“Nice to meet you,” said Vance.

“Uh-huh,” she said, taking a better look at the kid. He was younger than she'd originally thought, maybe still a teenager. His high, intelligent forehead was rendered idiotic by the makeshift Prince Valiant perched on top of it. Large hazel eyes swam distorted and fearful and goonishly large inside the twin aquarium tanks of his glasses. His Adam's apple and mouth protruded in tandem, but his lips were curled inward, which gave him a reticent aspect. One cheek was bruised and swollen, and an unluxurious beard pushed through the dusting of acne on his cheeks like industrious weeds in a raspberry patch. He was a fucking mess.

“The thing already happened,” said Richard.

“I saw it,” Cindy said.

“Oh.”

“It was good.”

“Thanks. I know you wouldn't say so if you didn't mean it.”

She stood. “And it was good to see you. Good luck with the rest of the tour.”

“Don't you want to get lunch or something at least?”

“No.”

“Come on. Why not?”

“I told you to call, Dad. You said you would call.” Her voice sounded childish and repellent in her ears.

“I did call.”

“Oh bullshit.”

“I called last night. Check your phone. It went straight to voicemail.”