Warm Wuinter's Garden (34 page)

Peter drew back from his thoughts when two
small men, no bigger than children, tried to make their way through
the restaurant’s narrow screen door. The door was pushed to the
limits of its hinges and banged repeatedly against the greasy wall
as the two men, each with a leg amputated, maneuvered their
crutches to get inside the doorway. They were so engrossed in
talking that they seemed oblivious to the commotion they were
making.

Peter forced himself to breathe. He tried to
turn his eyes away from the men as they made their erratic way
among the closely placed tables and chairs. He felt the muscles in
his neck and shoulders draw themselves into knots. His hand
tightened around the chopsticks until he thought they might break.
Each time a crutch caught on the leg of a chair, each time a patron
bent forward from his chair to make more room, each time a brick
colored rubber tip fought for purchase on the greasy chessboard of
the floor, he expected that all patience, all suffering, all
acceptance would end. He would watch a small calloused hand hold
hard to something solid. He would watch an uninjured leg plant
itself for support. He would hear a rising moan of frustration keen
up from a chicken ribbed chest until it burst forth as a scream
that would mingle with the scared shouts and the crash of
shattering glass as first one crutch and then a second flailed back
and forth and up and down against the heads and shoulders, platters
and bowls, glasses and bottles that were always in their way.
Brightly colored bits of basil and carrot and coriander would fly
through the air. Spumes of pale yellow soup would wash across the
distended tendons of the hands of jabbering men as they pushed
themselves out of the way of danger. The long black hair of the two
women seated just there would shine from droplets of oil which
would have splashed on them. The rail of the crutch would hit the
thin bridge of the tiny nose of the old mottle skinned woman
chattering there with her toothless mouth. The sound of cantaloupes
dropping to the floor would dun his ears as the crutches thonked
against the heads of those too stunned or slow to move.

The men reached a table, pulled out chairs
with the tips of their crutches, clumsily sat down and clattered
their crutches into the corner behind them.

Peter’s chest hurt. Vietnam had been filled
with cripples. Feet and legs and hands and arms and eyes and ears
had been but a partial harvest of the war.

Memories burst from buried places.

A one legged woman, her good leg tied to a
bicycle pedal with a harness of cloth so that she could both push
and pull, making erratic Ss as she rode from side to side up a
narrow climbing road. An old man with a black plastic sleeve of PVC
pipe fitted over a stump making a trail of footprint, circle,
footprint, circle trail in the dusty road. A smiling black eyed boy
straining noodles from a big pot with a long handled wire strainer
attached to a piece of wood that was strapped to a stump that ended
just below his elbow. Bits and pieces of people had been left
throughout the country, so, to go on about their business, the
wounded took up other bits and pieces of the materiel of war and
fashioned arms and legs and lives.

As he had.

As he had not.

He didn’t know which was the answer.

Had he been crippled or only injured? Or was
it one and he thought the other? Or, was the jury still out?

Within days of landing in Viet Nam he had
begun to wonder why the whole country did not just explode in a
huge tantrum of frustration and anger. What force kept people
meekly tending rice paddies and spreading feed to fowl while bombs
burst and fires burned and strangers careened past their homes in a
frenzy of destruction? Each additional day he had felt the trigger
drawn tighter. He had thought each mortar shell, each bursting
flare, each whistling missile and unseen passing plane, each jeep
bouncing its white hot beams of accusation along a sleeping village
road must be the final, critical erg that would cause the whole
country to explode in indignation at the discounting and disruption
of its lives. He would see a cripple and a second and a third in a
ten minute walk and know their unfurling fury soon must smother
him. He had tried to stay drunk. The alcohol held some, most of the
fear in abeyance, kept it just at the perimeter of his defenses, a
murky, jerking movement not quite beyond the edge of vision.

Until Ray died. Then, he stopped drinking and
the fear slid in. And he knew he was going to join Ray. He knew
that not drinking was not enough to break the grip of fate. He was
caged. Fear banged its cup along the bars. So, he smoked. A haze of
dope. But, fear wreathed round his face while his eyes dilated in
vigilance and streamed with complex tears. He smoked until each hit
brought nothing but more panic.

Then, he stopped and counted days. And half
and quarter days. Until he knew that counting days, too, only
courted fate. So, he had pushed the numbers away. Instead, he
worked. And prayed. He worked. And read. And folded and refolded
his mouldering clothes. And worked. And packed and repacked his
kit.

And then…

Peter paid his bill, looked a final time at
the cripples in the corner as they shoveled noodles toward their
laughing mouths before he hurried through the doorway.

Peter walked quickly and decisively without
knowing where he was going. He raced through the bread and coffee
smells of Little Italy. He turned east and hop-scotched the bodies
of the drunks and junkies and sleeping slow-wits on the sunny side
of Avenue A. He pushed his way through crowds milling in front of
butcher shops and barricaded windows filled with underwear. He
didn’t slow to the importuning of the homeless thieves who sold
their improbable booty in a makeshift market along a block of
abandoned buildings. He careened in and out of unceasing foot
traffic. There were victims everywhere he walked. Of this or that.
Of him or her or it or them or, mostly, self. He hurried past the
armless and legless. The jobless. The sightless. The useless. The
childless. The thoughtless. The heartless. The lifeless.

His feet throbbed as the pavement pounded
back against his soles. He was exhausted, shaky. He had the urge to
lie down and rest his cheek against the warm oily sheen of the
sidewalk, but, instead, he broke into a hobbled run toward his car.
Afternoon traffic was heavy as he left the city and drivers’
actions bespoke their wounds.

Peter parked the car just past the sign
designating the weedy area as land held by the Clarke’s Cove
Homeowners’ Association. He slowly made his way out onto the sandy
spit until he look down the shore to his parents’ dock and picnic
house.

He had been flown back wrapped in plaster. An
arm and collarbone. Peter found a small comfort in staring at the
silver gray hulk of the picnic table a thousand feet away, even
though it was not the same one that he had eaten from when he first
had come home. He had been told in the Philippines that his
injuries weren’t serious. Nothing complicated. Just a bad
concussion, contusions and two shattered bones.

Peter felt the force, which had propelled him
from Provincetown and along New York’s aching streets, well back up
in him.

Broken bones and bad memories and worse
dreams. And the mucilage of remorse.

Go on.

He couldn’t.

He thought of Bett in a darkened room.
Deciding whether to fight or give in. Deciding whether to leave her
leg on an operating table so she could get on with the rest of her
life. Sorting out and sorting through. Measuring out and measuring
up. Adding.

And subtracting.

As he had done. Subtract Ray. As he had done.
But, he really hadn’t. Ray was long gone but he had kept him in the
equation. Every day he had ciphered through what was past and what
would come. But, he hadn’t solved the problem. He had only made it
worse. He had been so sure he could figure out what it meant. Why
Ray was gone and he was left.

In the days of jungle, he had become so
caught up in the meaning, knowing that it must have meaning, that
he had come to know it as a bowl of portents. Ray had gone so that
he could stay. If he could read the signs and be careful.

And he had been. After the counting of the
days and hours and after the packing and repacking of his kit, he
had spent his time working and being aware. Keeping a vigil for his
return to safety. He had watched children and known their hate soon
must outgrow their small frames. He had fixed cripples with a
desperate stare knowing they waited patiently for a lax moment to
scuttle close on hollowed limbs filled full with the powder of
revenge. Death waited, waited patiently for a second’s
inattention.

Brennan said see the sky. He looked. A child
ran from a brown dog in the ditch. He twisted the wheel. Smashed
through the threat. Went in the ditch. Rolled the jeep.

And…

Broke his arm and collar bone.

And…

He looked down.

Peter looked down the shore for strength.

And…

Broke Brennan’s neck.

And…

Severed the boy’s leg.

And…

Peter sat on the beach with his fingers
plowing small furrows in the sand. Was the boy dead now, or
sleeping on a sidewalk, or forcing open restaurant doors to take a
favorite seat? Where were Brennan’s folks? How had a moment’s
inattention changed their path? Where was Adele? What had Ray’s
death done to her?

Brennan had lost his life and the boy a leg
and he his life and wife and family. Years and years. And, then,
each day, as cameras showed bombs hunt for prey, and khaki colored
soldiers spoke of duty and prayed for peace, as life and death and
danger and safety wove their random plaids on the sere backdrop of
desert dun, as errant missiles killed civilians and soldiers slept
secure, as friendly fire abruptly subtracted lives and made
lingering victims of those who fired, haunting things had come
back.

Peter saw a small figure make its hobbling
way past the picnic table and out to the end of the dock.

Heat rolled up out of his stomach.

How could the crippled laugh? He had watched
them in fear, had known with a twenty year old knowledge that they
must strike out. Had known a hurt that big must swing free. Had
known with surety that a second’s more passing of that pain and
they must clear the tables with their crutches.

But, they hadn’t. They had laughed and talked
and eaten gobs of steaming noodles.

Peter stared at his mother leaning against
the last piling of the dock. His chest heaved a dozen times, huge
soundless strangling hiccoughs, breaths too sharp to hold. Ray had
died. A bad luck dance. Ray had died. Fear had found him ten
thousand miles from home. An unspeakable anger had wound through
his fear. Mistakes had been made. Terrible mistakes. Brennan was
gone and a boy’s leg and Gaby and five, six, seven thousand days.
And seven thousand nights. Of holding tight. Staying on the path.
No more mistakes. Tires strictly straight. No more mistakes. No
looking at the sky. No looking out at all. Just down. At boiling
pots and grease skittering skillets and smooth sheathed tomatoes
and the slick skinned legs of butchered chickens. Throughout it
all, he had kept his eyes down and his voice calm and had hoped,
with an energy sapping hope, that his anger wouldn’t kill yet
another man nor his remorse kill himself. He had hoped and held on.
He had lashed the things of a normal life wife, children, home and
job onto his own inexplicable life and had hoped the grafts would
take. They hadn’t. Not really. But, their strange fruit had helped
to hold things off. For a while. For a long while. Until Gaby left
and took the boys. And friends and customers slow motioned their
AID-ed way out toward Ray. With just as little meaning and almost
as much regret. And a victim’s disease grafted itself onto his
mother. And held her tight. Despite her goodness and all her
courage and her life long magical inoculation against mistakes. And
hot smart bombs flew down Iraqi chimneys and brought the most
surprising gifts.

Peter ground sand crusted knuckles into his
eyes. His throat made a soft sound, but he couldn’t tell what it
was trying to say.

It was dark and his mother was gone before
his noises ceased. Something was gone and in its place was a
flickering image of a frail screen door held open by a crutch and
two sallow skinned, gaunt faced men pushing clumsily, noisily,
laughingly through the door.

Peter limped along the sand and then drove
down the ill lighted lane to his old home.

Driving south on Route 95, past Attleboro and
into Rhode Island, past the fusty sprawl of Pawtucket and through
the writhing curves that bisected Providence, Nita kept being
surprised at how relaxed she was. That morning, as she cleaned up
office details, she had warned herself to be alert to her own
recriminations. Without frequent monitoring and admonishments, she
had expected to be in frequent disputes with herself for leaving
work. Now, alone in the speeding car, sixty miles south of her
office, she was pleasantly surprised at her own
self-graciousness.

It was mid-afternoon on a Wednesday in early
spring. As air was sucked into the slightly opened window, Nita
thought it felt as warm and smelled as good as June. Along the
highway many of the grasses were already bright green. In the
lowlands the willows’ cold weather dun was lightened with the
palest tinge of new leaf yellow. Winter’s lowering leaden sky had
arched its back and re-painted itself a deep blue. The sky was so
high Nita thought gravity itself must have weakened. After months
of being mashed down and cowering under winter’s low, dark ceiling,
having a huge open vault about her exhilarated her.