Prayers to Broken Stones

  “Hell, no,” said Newton. “ ’Scuse me, Reverend. But they couldn’t use real slugs. Customers’d kill each other by mistake.”

  “Then how …”

  “Lasered UV pulses,” said Justin.

  “Triggered the charges under the skin,” said Newton. “Easy to reset.”

  “But the blood,” said Reverend Dewitt in the darkness. “The … the brain matter. The bone fragments …”

  “All right, already!” shouted Sayers so loudly that several of the other men shushed him. “Come on, let’s just say we got our money’s worth, okay? They can buy a lot of spare parts for that much, right?”

  “You can buy a lot of spare gooks for that much,” said Newton and there was a ripple of laughter. “Jesus,” he went on, “did you see that gook girl wiggle when Jeffries slipped it to her the first time …”

  Disantis listened for a few minutes more and then went into his room and carefully closed the sliding door.

  The morning was beautiful with tall, white clouds piling up above the sea to the east while the family had a leisurely breakfast on the restaurant terrace. Sammee and Elizabeth had eggs, toast, and cereal. Heather ordered an omelette. Disantis had coffee. Justin joined them late, cradled his head in his hands, and ordered a Bloody Mary.

  “You came in late last night, dear,” said Heather.

  Justin massaged his temples. “Yeah. Tom and some of us went to the gaming rooms and played poker ’til late.”

  “You missed the excitement this morning, Dad,” said Sammee.

  “Yeah, what?” Justin sipped at his drink and grimaced.

  “They arrested Mr. Minh this mornin’,” Sammee said happily.

  “Oh?” Justin looked at his wife.

  “It’s true, dear,” said Heather. “He was arrested this morning. Something to do with illegal contraband in his luggage.”

  “Yeah,” said Sammee, “I heard the guy downstairs tellin’ somebody that he had a rifle. You know, like ours, only real.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Justin. “Is he going to stand trial or what?”

  “No,” said Disantis. “They just asked him to leave. They shipped him out on the morning shuttle to Tokyo.”

  “There’re a lot of nuts around,” muttered Justin. He opened the menu. “I think I will have breakfast. Do we have time before the morning tour?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Heather. “The helicopters don’t leave until ten-thirty this morning. We’re going up the river somewhere. Dad says that it should be very interesting.”

  “I think all this junk is boring,” whined Elizabeth.

  “That’s ’cause you think everything’s boring, stupid,” said Sammee.

  “Be quiet, both of you,” said Heather. “We’re here for your grandfather’s benefit. Eat your cereal.”

  The twenty-eight Huey slicks moved out in single file, climbed above the line of trees, and sorted themselves into formation as they leveled off at three thousand feet. The panorama of highways and housing developments beneath them changed to rice paddies and jungle as they entered the Park. Then they were over the river and heading west. Peasants poling small craft upstream looked up and waved as shadows of the gunships passed over them.

  Disantis sat in the open door, hands hooked in the safety webbing, and let his legs dangle. On his back was Sammee’s blue backpack. Justin dozed on a cushioned bench. Elizabeth sat on Heather’s lap and complained of the heat. Sammee swung the heavy M-60 to the left and right and made machine-gun noises.

  The guide plugged his microphone into the bulkhead. “Ladies and gentlemen, today we are on a mission up the Mekong River. Our goal is twofold—to intercept illicit river traffic and to inspect any area of jungle near Highway 1 where movement of NVA regulars has been reported. Following completion of the mission, we will tour an eight-hundred-year-old Buddhist temple. Lunch will be served after the temple tour.”

  The helicopter throbbed north and westward. Elizabeth complained that she was hungry. Reverend Dewitt tried to get everyone to sing camp songs but few people were interested. Tom Newton pointed out historical landmarks to his wife. Justin awoke briefly, shot a series of images with his Nikon, and went back to sleep.

  Sometime later the guide broke the silence. “Please watch the river as we turn south. We will be searching for any small boats which look suspicious or attempt to flee at our approach. We should see the river in the next few minutes.”

  “No, we won’t,” said Disantis. He reached under his flowered shirt and removed the heavy .45 from his waistband. He aimed it at the guide’s face and held it steady. “Please ask the pilot to turn north.”

  The cabin resounded with babble and then fell silent as the guide smiled. “A joke, Mr. Disantis, but not a funny one, I am afraid. Please let me see the …”

  Disantis fired. The slug ripped through the bulkhead padding three centimeters from the guide’s face. People screamed, the guide flinched and raised his hands instinctively, and Disantis swung his legs into the cabin. “North, please,” he said. “Immediately.”

  The guide spoke quickly into his microphone, snapped two monosyllabic answers to unheard questions from the pilot, and the Huey swung out of formation and headed north.

  “Daddy,” said Heather.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Ralph?” said Justin. “Now give me that goddamn relic before someone gets …”

  “Shut up,” said Disantis.

  “Mr. Disantis,” said Reverend Dewitt, “there are women and children aboard this aircraft. If we could just talk about whatever …”

  “Put the damn gun down, Ralph,” growled Justin and began to rise from the bench.

  “Be quiet.” Disantis swung the pistol in Justin’s direction and the big man froze in mid-movement. “The next person to speak will be shot.”

  Sammee opened his mouth, looked at his grandfather’s face, and remained silent. For several minutes the only sound was the throb of the rotors and Heather’s soft weeping.

  “Take it down here,” Disantis said at last. He had been watching the jungle, making sure they were well out of the Park. “Here.”

  The guide paused and then spoke rapid-fire Vietnamese into his mike. The Huey began to descend, circling in toward the clearing Disantis had pointed to. He could see two black Saigon Security hovercraft coming quickly from the east, the downblast of their fans rippling the leaf canopy of the jungle as they roared ten meters above it.

  The Huey’s skids touched down and the high grass rippled and bent from the blast of the rotors. “Come on, kids,” said Disantis. He moved quickly, helping Elizabeth out and tugging Sammee from his perch before Heather could grab him. Disantis jumped down beside them.

  “The hell you say,” bellowed Justin and vaulted down.

  Disantis and the children had moved a few feet and were crouching in the whipping grass. Disantis half-turned and shot Justin in the left leg. The force of the blow swung the big man around. He fell back toward the open doorway as people screamed and reached for him.

  “This is real,” Disantis said softly. “Goodbye.” He fired twice past the cockpit windshield. Then he took Elizabeth by the hand and pulled her toward the jungle as the helicopter lifted off. A multitude of hands pulled Justin in the open door as the Huey swung away over the trees. Sammee hesitated, looked at the empty sky, and then stumbled after his sister and grandfather. The boy was sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Hush,” said Disantis and pulled Sammee inside the wall of vegetation. There was a narrow trail extending into the jungle darkness. Disantis removed the light backpack and took out a new clip for the automatic. He ejected the old magazine and clicked the new one in with a slap of his palm. Then he grabbed both children and moved as quickly as he could in a counter-clockwise jog around the perimeter of the clearing, always remaining concealed just within the jungle. When they stopped he pushed the children down behind a fallen tree. Elizabeth began to wail. “Hush,” Disantis said softly.

  The Hue
y gunship came in quickly, the guide leaped to the ground, and then the helicopter was spiralling upward again, clawing for altitude. A second later the first of the Saigon Security hovercrafts roared in over the treetops and settled next to the guide. The two men who jumped out wore black armorcloth and carried Uzi miniguns. The guide pointed to the spot on the opposite side of the clearing where Disantis had first entered the jungle.

  They lifted their weapons and took a step in that direction. Disantis walked out behind them, dropped to one knee when he got to within five meters, braced the pistol with both hands, and fired as they turned. He shot the first policeman in the face. The second man had time to raise his gun before he was struck twice in the chest. The bullets did not penetrate the armorcloth but the impact knocked him onto his back. Disantis stepped forward, straightened his arm, and shot the man in the left eye.

  The guide turned and ran into the jungle. Disantis fired once and then crouched next to the dead policeman as a wash of hot air struck him. The hovercraft was ten meters high and turning toward the trees when Disantis lifted the policeman’s Uzi and fired. He did not bother to aim. The minigun kicked and flared, sending two thousand fléchettes a second skyward. Disantis had a brief glimpse of the pilot’s face before the entire canopy starred and burst into white powder. The hovercraft listed heavily to the left and plowed into the forest wall. There was the heavy sound of machinery and trees breaking but no explosion.

  Disantis ran back to the jungle just as the second hovercraft appeared. It circled once and then shot straight up until it was lost in the sun. Disantis grabbed the children and urged them on, circling the edge of the clearing again until they reached the spot where the guide had entered the forest. The narrow trail led away from the light into the jungle.

  Disantis crouched for a second and then touched the high grass at the side of the trail. Drops of fresh blood were visible in the dappled light. Disantis sniffed at his fingers and looked up at the white faces of Sammee and Elizabeth. They had stopped crying.

  “It’s all right,” he said, and his voice was soft and soothing. Behind them and above them there were the sounds of rotors and engines. Gently, ever so gently, he turned the children and began leading them, unresisting, along the path into the jungle. It was darker there, quiet and cool. The way was marked with crimson. The children moved quickly to keep up with their grandfather.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered and touched their shoulders lightly to guide them down the narrowing path. “Everything’s all right. I know the way.”

  Introduction to “Iverson’s Pits”

  We Americans have a knack for turning our most beloved national shrines into something tacky and vulgar. Perhaps it’s because we’re too young to have a real sense of history; perhaps it’s because our nation—not counting the Confederacy—has never been bombed or occupied or even invaded by a foreign power (no, I don’t count the British when they burned Washington City … few Americans noticed and fewer cared), and there is little real sense of sacrifice to our shrines.

  There are, of course, a few shrines that defy our efforts to tackify them. It’s hard to stand in front of the Lincoln Memorial at night without beginning to feel like Mr. Smith just come to Washington. I had a Jimmy Stewart stammer for three days after my first midnight visit there.

  But if you stand there long enough, you can almost hear the bureaucrats conferring with the Disney Imagineers behind the marble walls; come back six months later and Old Abe will probably stand, recite his Second Inaugural in Hal Holbrook’s voice, wade the Reflecting Pool, and tapdance down Constitution Avenue.

  All in good taste, of course.

  But then there are the Civil War battlefields.

  You’ve probably visited Gettysburg. Despite the best efforts of sincere people to preserve it, the place has been littered with statues and dusted with memorials. The Park Service erected a phallic monstrosity of a tower at the highest point so that there is no escaping the intrusion of 20th Century ugliness. Computerized dioramas blink lights in the museum and you can buy souvenir t-shirts in the local shops.

  it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter.

  As with a score of less famous Civil War battlefields, Gettysburg has an almost overpowering sense of rightness about it: an almost physical effect on the visitor and a psychic impact that must be felt to be believed. It is a haunting place in every sense of the word. No castle in Scotland, no druidic circle of stones, no crypt beneath a Pharaoh’s pyramid could be eerier or could channel more voices of the dead to the ears of the living.

  And few places could be more moving or peaceful.

  For what it’s worth, this tale grew—literally—from a footnote, but every supporting detail in “Iverson’s Pits” is as accurate as I could make it. The burial pits were real. One account in Glenn Tucker’s classic High Tide at Gettysburg records:

  The unhappy spirits of the slaughtered North Carolina soldiers were reputed to abide in this section of the battlefield. Lieutenant Montgomery returned in 1898, thirty-five years after the battle, and learned from John S. Forney that a superstitious terror had long hung over the area. Farm laborers would not work there after night began to settle.

  My Colonel Iverson is a fictional construct, of course. The real Colonel Alfred Iverson, Jr., did send his regiment to slaughter and was relieved after his men—his few surviving men—refused to follow him, but there is no evidence that the real Iverson was anything other than a politically appointed military incompetent. Also, a fellow named Jessup Sheads did build a house on the site where the 97th New York had faced the 12th North Carolina. Local historians confirm that Sheads offered wine to visitors—wine from the arbors which grew so luxuriantly above Iverson’s Pits.

  Iverson’s Pits

  As a young boy, I was not afraid of the dark. As an old man, I am wiser. But it was as a boy of ten in that distant summer of 1913 that I was forced to partake of communion with that darkness which now looms so close. I remember the taste of it. Even now, three-quarters of a century later, I am unable to turn over black soil in the garden or to stand alone in the grassy silence of my grandson’s backyard after the sun has set without a hint of cold fingers on the back of my neck.

  The past is, as they say, dead and buried. But even the most buried things have their connections to the present, gnarled old roots rising to the surface, and I am one of these. Yet there is no one to connect to, no one to tell. My daughter is grown and gone, dead of cancer in 1953. My middle-aged grandson is a product of those Eisenhower years, that period of endless gestation when all the world seemed fat and confident and looking to the future. Paul has taught science at the local high school for twenty-three years and were I to tell him now about the events of that hot first day and night of July, 1913, he would think me mad. Or senile.

  My great-grandchildren, a boy and a girl in an age that finds little reason to pay attention to such petty distinctions as gender, could not conceive of a past as ancient and irretrievable as my own childhood before the Great War, much less the blood-and-leather reality of the Civil War era from which I carry my dark message. My great-grandchildren are as colorful and mindless as the guppies Paul keeps in his expensive aquarium, free from the terrors and tides of the ocean of history, smug in their almost total ignorance of everything that came before themselves, Big Macs, and MTV.

  So I sit alone on the patio in Paul’s backyard (why was it, I try to recall, that we turned our focus away from the front porch attention to the communal streets and sidewalks into the fenced isolation of our own backyards?) and I study the old photograph of a serious ten-year-old in his Boy Scout uniform.

  The boy is dressed far too warmly for such a hot summer day—his small form is almost lost under the heavy, woolen Boy Scout tunic, broad-brimmed campaign hat, baggy wool trousers, and awkward puttees laced almost to the knees. He is not smiling—a solemn, miniature doughboy four years before the term doughboy had passed into the common vocabulary. The boy is me, of course, sta
nding in front of Mr. Everett’s ice wagon on that day in June when I was about to leave on a trip much longer in time and to places much more unimaginably distant than any of us might have dreamed.

  I look at the photograph knowing that ice wagons exist now only as fading memories in aging skulls, that the house in the background has long since been torn down to be replaced by an apartment building which in turn was replaced by a shopping mall, that the wool and leather and cotton of the Boy Scout uniform have rotted away, leaving only the brass buttons and the boy himself to be lost somewhere, and that—as Paul would explain—every cell in that unsmiling ten-year-old’s body has been replaced several times. For the worse, I suspect. Paul would say that the DNA is the same, and then give an explanation which makes it sound as if the only continuity between me now and me then is some little parasite-architect, blindly sitting and smirking in each otherwise unrelated cell of the then-me and the now-me.

  Cow manure.

  I look at that thin face, those thin lips, the eyes narrowed and squinting in the light of a sun seventy-five years younger (and hotter, I know, despite the assurances of reason and the verities of Paul’s high school science) and I feel the thread of sameness which unites that unsuspecting boy of ten—so confident for one so young, so unafraid—with the old man who has learned to be afraid of the dark.

  I wish I could warn him.

  The past is dead and buried. But I know now that buried things have a way of rising to the surface when one least expects them to.

  In the summer of 1913 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania made ready for the largest invasion of military veterans the nation had ever seen. Invitations had been sent out from the War Department for a Great Reunion of Civil War veterans to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the three-day battle at Gettysburg.

  All that spring our Philadelphia newspapers were filled with details of the anticipated event. Up to 40,000 veterans were expected. By mid-May, the figure had risen to 54,000 and the General Assembly had to vote additional monies to supplement the Army’s budget. My mother’s cousin Celia wrote from Atlanta to say that the Daughters of the Confederacy and other groups affiliated with the United Confederate Veterans were doing everything in their power to send their old men North for a final invasion.