The Intruders (3 page)

“It was in II Corps,” he told Jake Grafton, “at the base camp. And the
worst of it was that the mine was one of ours. I just forgot for a
moment and walked the wrong way.”

He shrugged and grinned.

He had a good grin. Jake liked him immediately. Yet he was slightly
taken aback when Theron asked, “So are you going to marry her?” This
while his sister walked between them holding on to Jake’s arm.

Grafton recovered swiftly. “Aaah, I dunno. She’s so pushy, mighty
smart, might be more than a country boy like me could handle. If you
were me, knowing what you know about her, what would you do?”

Both men stared at Callie’s composed features. She didn’t let a muscle
twitch. Theron sighed, then spoke: “if I were you and a woman loved me
as much as this one loves you, I’d drag her barefoot to the altar. If I
were you.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“And what about you, Sis? You gonna marry him?”

“Theron, how would you like to have your throat cut?”

They ate lunch at a sports bar around the corner from the office where
Theron worked as a tax accountant. After a half hour of small talk,
Theron asked Jake, “So are you going to stay in or try life on the
outside?”

“Haven’t decided. all I’ve got is a history degree. I’d have to go
back to school.”

“Maybe you could get a flying job.”

“Maybe.”

Theron changed the subject. Before Callie could get an oar in, Theron
was asking questions about carrier aviation how the catapults worked,
the arresting gear, how the pilots knew if they were on the glide slope.
Jake drew diagrams on napkins and Theron asked more questions while
Callie sat and watched.

“God, that must be terrific,” Theron said to Jake, “landing and taking
off from an aircraft carrier. That’s something I’d love to do someday.”
He slapped his artificial legs. “Of course, I can’t now, but I can just
imagine it!”

Callie glowed with a feeling approaching euphoria. She had known that
these two would get along well: it was almost as if they were brothers.
Having a brother like Theron was hard on a girl-he was all man. When
you have a real man only a year and a half older than you are to compare
the boys against, finding one that measures up isn’t easy.

Jake Grafton did. Her cup was full to overflowing.

“Is he going to stay in the Navy?” Mrs. McKenzie asked her daughter.
They were in the kitchen cutting the cherry pie.

“He hasn’t made up his mind.”

Grafton’s indecision didn’t set well with Mrs. McKenzie.

“He probably will,” she said.

“He might,” Callie admitted.

“The military is a nice comfortable place for some people. The
government feeds and clothes and houses them, provides medical care, a
living wage. All they have to do is follow orders. Some people like
that. They don’t have to take any responsibility. The military is
safe.”

Callie concentrated on getting the pie wedges from the pan to the plates
without making a mess.

“Would he continue to fly?” Mrs. McKenzie asked. “If he stayed in?”

“I suspect so,” her daughter allowed.

Mrs. McKenzie let the silence build until it shrieked.

When Callie could stand it no longer, she said, “He hasn’t asked me to
marry him, Mom.”

“Oh, he will, he will. That’s a man working himself up to a proposal if
ever I saw one.”

Callie told her mother the truth. “If he asks, I haven’t decided what
the answer will be.”

Which was, Callie McKenzie suspected, precisely why he hadn’t asked.
Jake Grafton was nobody’s fool. Yet why she hadn’t yet made up her
mind, she didn’t know.

I love him, why am I uncertain?

Mrs. McKenzie didn’t know much about Jake Grafton, but she knew a man
in love when she saw one. “He’s an idiot if he throws his life away by
staying in the Navy,” she said perfunctorily.

“He’s a pilot, Mom. That’s what he does. He’s good at it.”

“The airlines hire pilots.”

“He’s probably considering that,” Callie said distractedly, is still
trying to pin down her emotional doubt. Had she been looking for a man
like Theron all this time? Was that wise?

Was she seeking a substitute for her brother?

Her mother was saying something. After a moment Callie began to pay
attention. “… so he’ll stay in the Navy, and some night they’ll come
tell you he’s crashed and you’re a widow. What then?”

“Mother, you just announced that some people stay in the military
because it’s safe, yet now you argue it’s too dangerous. You can’t have
it both ways. Do you want whipped cream on your pie?”

“Callie, I’m thinking of you. You know something can be physically
dangerous yet on another level appeal to people without ambition.”

Callie opened the refrigerator and stared in. Then she closed it.
“We’re out of whipped cream. Will you bring the other two plates,
please?” She picked up two of the plates and headed for the dining room.

She put one plate in front of Jake and one in front of her father. Then
she seated herself. Jake winked at her. She tried to smile at him.

Lord, if her mother only knew how close to the edge Jake lived she
wouldn’t be appalled—she would be horrified. Jake had made light of
the dangers of flying onto and off of carriers this afternoon, but
Callie knew the truth. Staying alive was the challenge.

She examined his face again. He didn’t look like Theron, but he had the
same self-assurance, the same intelligence and good sense, the same
intellectual curiosity, the same easy way with everyone. She had seen
that in him the first time they met. And like Theron, Jake Grafton had
nothing to prove to anyone. Perhaps naval aviation had given Jake that
quality-or combat had-but wherever he acquired it, he now had it in
spades. He owned the space he occupied.

He was like Tberon! She was going to have to come to grips with that
fact.

“The most serious problem our society faces,” Professor McKenzie
intoned, “is the complete absence of moral fiber in so many of our young
people.”

They had finished the pie and were sipping coffee. Jake Grafton let
that pronouncement go by without bothering to glance at his host. He
was observing Callie, trying to read her mood.

“If they had any sense of right and wrong,” the professor continued,
“young men would have never fought in that war. Until people understand
that they have the right, nay, the duty, the obligation, to resist the
illegal demands of a morany bankrupt government, we will continue to
have war. Murder, slaughter, rapine, grotesque human suffering, for
what? Just to fine the pockets of greedy men.”

After the prologue, the professor got down to cases. Jake had a sick
feeling this was coming. “What about you, Jake?

Were you drafted?”

Jake eyed the professor without turning his head. “NO.”

Something in his voice drew Callie’s gaze. She glanced at him, but his
attention was directed at her father.

“Wallace,” said MacKenzie, “perhaps we should”

“You volunteered?”

“Yes.”

“You volunteered to kill people?” the professor asked with naked
sarcasm.

“I volunteered to fight for my country.”

The professor was on firm ground here. He lunged with his rapier. “Your
country wasn’t under attack by the Vietnamese. You can’t wrap the holy
flag around yourself now, Mister, or use it to cover up what you people
did over there.”

Now the professor slashed. “You and your airborne colleagues murdered
defenseless men, women and children.

Burned them alive with napalm. Bombed them in the most contemptible,
cowardly manner that-”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Gentlemen, let’s change the subject” Mrs. McKenzie’s tone was flinty.

“No, Mary,” the professor said, leaning forward with his eyes on Jake.
“This young man-I’m being charitable here is courting our daughter. I
think I have a right to know what kind of man he is.”

“The war’s over, Mr. McKenzie,” Jake said.

“The shooting has stopped, no thanks to you. But you can’t turn your
back on all those murdered people and just walk away. I won’t allow it!
The American people won’t-”

But he was orating to Jake Grafton’s back. The pilot walked through the
doorway into the hall and his feet sounded on the stairs.

Mrs. McKenzie got up abruptly and went to the kitchen, leaving Callie
alone with her father.

“You didn’t have to do that, Dad.”

“He’s not the man for you, Callie. You couldn’t live with what he did,
he and those other criminal swine in uniform.”

Callie McKenzie tapped nervously on the table with a spoon. Finally she
put it down and scooted her chair back.

“I want to say this just right, Father. I’ve been wanting to say this
for a long time, but I’ve never known just how.

On this occasion I want to try. You think in black and white although
we live in a gray world. It’s been my experience that people who think
the dividing line between right and wrong is a brick wall are
crackpots.”

She rose and left the room with her father sitting openmouthed behind
her.

In the guest room upstairs Jake was rolling up his clothes and stuffing
them into his folding bag The nylon bag, Callie noticed listlessly, was
heavily stained. That was the bag he had with him in 01ongapo last
autumn.

“I’ve called a cab,” he told her.

She sagged into a chair. “My father … I’m sorry … why do you have
to go?”

Grafton finished stuffing the bag, looked around to make sure he hadn’t
forgotten anything, then zipped the bag closed. He lifted it from the
bed and tossed it toward the door. Only then did he turn to face her.

“The people I knew in the service were some of the finest men I ever
met. Some of those men are dead. Some are crippled for life, like your
brother. I’m proud that I served with them. We made mistakes, but we
did the best we could.

I won’t listen to vicious slander.”

“Dad and his opinions.”

“Opinions are like assholes-everybody has one. At his age your father
should know that not everyone wants to see his butt or hear his
opinion.”

“Jake, you and I . . . know what we have might grow into something
wonderful if we give it a chance. Shouldn’t we take time to talk about
this?”

“Talk about what? The Vietnam War? It’s over. All those dead men! For
what? For fucking nothing at all, that’s for whad” His voice was rising
but he didn’t notice. “Oh, I killed my share of Vietnamese-your father
got that-right.

They are dead for nothing. Now I’ve got to live with it …

every day of my life. Don’t you understand?”

He slammed his hand down on the dresser and the photo on top fell over.
“I’m not God. I don’t know if we should have gone to Vietnam or if we
should have left sooner or if the war was right or wrong, The
self-righteous assholes who stayed at home can argue about all that
until hell freezes. And it looks like they’re going to.

“I took an oath. I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United
States. So I obeyed orders. I did what I was told to the absolute best
of my ability. Just like your brother.

And what did it get us? Me and your brother? You and me? Jake and
Callie-what did it get us?”

He took a ragged breath. He was perspiring and he felt sick. Slightly
nauseated. “It isn’t your father. It’s me. I can’t just forget.”

“Jake, we must all live with the past. And walk on into the future.”

“Maybe you and I aren’t ready for the future yet.”

She didn’t reply.

“Well, maybe I’m not,” he admitted.

She was biting her lip.

“You aren’t either,” he added.

When she didn’t answer he picked up the folding bag and carry-on. “Tell
your mom thanks.” He went out the door.

She heard him descend the stairs. She heard the front door open. She
heard it close.

Then her tears came.

Almost an hour later she descended the stairs. She was at the bottom
when she heard her mother’s voice coming from the study. “You
blathering fool! I’m sick of hearing you sermonize about the war. I’m
sick of your righteousness.

I’m sick of you damning the world from the safety of your alabaster
pedestal.”

“Mary, that war was an obscenity. That war was wrong, a great wrong,
and the blind stupidity of boys like Grafton made it possible. If
Grafton and boys like him had refused to go, there wouldn’t have been a
war.”

“Boys? Jake Grafton is no boy. He’s a man!”

“He doesn’t think” Professor McKenzie said, his voice dripping contempt.
“He can’t think. I don’t call him much of a man.”

Callie sank to the steps. She had never heard her parents address each
other in such a manner. She felt drained, empty, but their voices held
her mesmerized.

“Oh, he’s a man all right,” her mother said. “He just doesn’t think
like you do. He’s got the brains and talent to fly jet aircraft in
combat. He’s got the character to be a naval officer, and I suspect
he’s a pretty good one. I know that doesn’t impress you much, but
Callie knows what he is. He’s got the maturity and character to impress
her.”

“Then she’s too easily impressed. that girl doesn’t know.”

“Enough, you fool!” said Mary McKenzie bitterly. “We’ve got a son who
did his duty as he saw it and you’ve never let him forget that you think
he’s a stupid, contemptible fascist Your only son. So he doesn’t come
here anymore.

He won’t come here. Your opinion is just your opinion, Wallace-you
can’t seem to get it through your thick head that other people can
honorably hold different opinions.

And a great many people do.”

His wife raised her voice and steamed on. “I’m going to say this just
once, Wallace, so you had better listen. Callie may marry Jake Grafton,
regardless of our wishes. In her way she’s almost as pigheaded as you
are. Jake Grafton’s every inch the man that Theron is, and he won’t put
up with your bombast and supercilious foolishness any More than Theron
does. Grafton proved that here tonight I don’t blame him.” -Callie
won’t marry that-2′ -You damned old windbag, shut up! What you know
about your daughter could be printed in foot-high letters on the head of
a Pin-”