“Not a bad idea.”
“We thought it had promise, especially with so many of his classmates getting drafted. Any rate, he got his press credentials and his passport. He flew from Hong Kong to Saigon and from there to Pleiku. For a while, he was fine, hitching rides on military transports, any place they’d take him. To give him credit, I think he might have turned into a hell of a journalist. He had a way with words, but he lacked experience.”
“How long was he there?”
“Couple months is all. He heard about some action in a place called Ia Drang. I guess he pulled strings—maybe his old man again or just his personal charm. It was a hell of a battle, some say the worst of the war. After that came LZ Albany: something like three hundred fellas killed in the space of four days. Must have found himself caught in the thick of it with no way out. We heard later he was hit, but we never got a sense of how serious it was.”
“And then what?”
Yount paused to extinguish his cigarette. He missed the ashtray altogether and stubbed out the burning ember on the bar. “That’s as much as I know. He’s supposed to be medevacked out, but he never made it back. Chopper took off with a bellyful of body bags and a handful of casualties. Landed forty minutes later with no Duncan aboard. His daddy raised hell, got some high Pentagon official to launch an investigation, but it never came to much.”
“And that’s it?”
“I’m afraid so. You hungry? Ask me, it’s time to eat.”
“Fine with me,” I said.
Porter gestured to the bartender, who ambled back in our direction. “Tell Patsy to put together couple of Hot Browns.”
“Good enough,” the man said. He set his towel aside, came out from behind the bar, and headed for a door I assumed led to Patsy in the kitchen.
Yount said, “Bet you never ate one.”
“What’s a Hot Brown?”
“Invented at the Brown Hotel. Wait and see. Now, where was I?”
“Trying to figure out the fate of Duncan Oaks,” I said.
“He’s dead.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s never been heard from since.”
“Isn’t it possible he panicked and took off on foot?”
“Absence of a body, anything’s possible, I guess.”
“But not likely?”
“I’d say not. The way we heard it later, the NVA were everywhere, scourin’ the area for wounded, killing them for sport. Duncan had no training. He probably couldn’t get a hundred yards on his own.”
“I wonder if you’d look at something.” I hauled up my bag from its place near my feet. I removed the snapshot, the press pass, and the dog tags embossed with Duncan’s name.
Yount tucked his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, examining the items through a plume of smoke. “Same things Magruder showed me. How’d he come by them?”
“A guy named Benny Quintero had them. You know him?”
“Name doesn’t sound familiar.”
“That’s him in the picture. I’m assuming this is Duncan.”
“That’s him. When’s this taken?”
“Quintero’s brother thinks Ia Drang. Benny was wounded November seventeenth.”
“Same as Duncan,” he said. “This’d have to be one of the last pictures of Duncan ever taken.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but probably so.”
Yount returned the snapshot, which I tucked in my bag.
“Benny’s another Louisville boy. He died in Santa Teresa in 1972: probably a homicide, though there was never an arrest.” I took a few minutes to detail the story of Benny’s death. “Mickey didn’t mention this?”
“Never said a word. How’s Quintero tie in?”
“I can give you the superficial answer. His brother says he went to Manual; I’m guessing, at the same time Duncan went to Male. It seems curious he’d end up with Duncan’s personal possessions.”
Porter shook his head. “Wonder why he kept them?”
“Not a clue,” I said. “They were in a lockbox in his room. His brother came across them maybe six months back. He brought them to California.” I thought about it for a moment, and then I said, “What’s Duncan doing with a set of dog tags if he was never in the service?”
“He had them made up himself. Appealed to his sense of theater. One more example of how he liked to operate: looking like a soldier was as good as being one. I’m surprised he didn’t hang out in uniform, but I guess that’d be pushing it. Don’t get me wrong. I liked Duncan, but he’s a fella with shabby standards.”
A woman, probably Patsy, appeared from the kitchen with a steaming ramekin in each of her oven-mitted hands. She put a dish in front of each of us and handed us two sets of flatware rolled in paper napkins. Yount murmured “thanks” and she said, “You’re entirely welcome.
I stared at the dish, which looked like a lake of piping-hot yellow sludge, with a dusting of paprika and something lumpy underneath. “What is this?”
“Eat and find out.”
I picked up my fork and tried a tiny bite. A Hot Brown turned out to be an open-faced sliced turkey sandwich, complete with bacon and tomatoes, baked with the most divine cheese sauce I ever set to my lips. I mewed like a kitten.
“Told you so,” he said, with satisfaction.
When I was finished, I wiped my mouth and took a sip of beer. “What about Duncan’s parents? Does he still have family in the area?”
Yount shook his head. “Revel died of a heart attack a few years back: 1974, if memory serves. His mother died three years later of a stroke.”
“Siblings, cousins?”
“Not a one,” he said. “Duncan was an only child, and his daddy was too. I doubt you’d find anyone left on his mother’s side of the family either. Her people were from Pike County, over on the West Virginia border. Dirt poor. Once she married Revel, she cut all ties with them.”
He glanced at his watch. It was close to 8 P.M. “Time for me get home. My program’s coming on in two minutes.”
“I appreciate your time. Can I buy your dinner?”
Yount gave me a look. “Obvious you haven’t spent any time in the South. Lady doesn’t buy dinner for a gent. That’s his prerogative.” He reached in his pocket, pulled out a wad of bills, and tossed several on the bar.
At his suggestion, I spent the night at the Leisure Inn on Broadway. I might have tried the Brown Hotel, but it looked way too fancy for the likes of me. The Leisure Inn was plain, a sensible establishment of Formica, nylon carpet, foam rubber pillows, and a layer of crackling plastic laid under the bottom sheet in case I wet the bed. I put a call through to the airline and discussed the options for my return. The first (and only) seat available was on a 3 P.M. flight the next day. I snagged it, wondering what I was going to do with myself until then. I considered a side visit to Louisville Male High, where Duncan had graduated with the class of 1961. Secretly, I doubted there was much to learn. Porter Yount had painted an unappealing portrait of the young Duncan Oaks. To me, he sounded shallow, spoiled, and manipulative. On the other hand, he was just a kid when he died: twenty-two, twenty-three years old at the outside. I suspect most of us are completely self-involved at that age. At twenty-two, I’d already been married and divorced. By twenty-three, I was not only married to Daniel but I’d left the police department and was totally adrift. I’d thought I was mature, but I was foolish and unenlightened. My judgment was faulty and my perception was flawed. So who was I to judge Duncan? He might have become a good man if he’d lived long enough. Thinking about it, I felt a curious secondhand sorrow for all the chances he’d missed, the lessons he never learned, the dreams he’d had to forfeit with his early death. Whoever he was and whatever he’d been, I could at least pay my respects.
At ten the next morning, I parked my rental car on a side street not far from Louisville Male High School, at the corner of Brook Street and Breckinridge. The building was three stories tall, constructed of dark red brick with white concrete
trim. The surrounding neighborhood consisted of narrow red-brick houses with narrow walkways between. Many looked as if the interiors would smell peculiar. I went up the concrete stairs. Above the entrance, two gnomelike scholars were nestled in matching niches, reading plaques of some kind. The dates 1914 and 1915 were chiseled in stone, indicating, I supposed, the year the building had gone up. I pushed through the front door and went in.
The interior was defined by gray marble wainscoting, with gray-painted walls above. The foyer floor was speckled gray marble with inexplicable cracks here and there. In the auditorium, dead ahead, I could see descending banks of curved wooden seats and tiers of wooden flooring, faintly buckled with age. Classes must have been in session, because the corridors were empty and there was little traffic on the stairs. I went into the school office. The windows were tall. Long planks of fluorescent lighting hung from ceilings covered with acoustical tile. I asked for the school library and was directed to the third floor.
The school librarian, Mrs. Calloway, was a sturdy-looking soul in a calf-length denim skirt and a pair of indestructible walking shoes. Her iron-gray hair was chopped off in a fuss-free style she’d probably worn for years. Close to retirement, she looked like a woman who’d favor muesli, yoga, liniments, SAVE THE WHALES bumper stickers, polar-bear swims, and lengthy bicycle tours of foreign countries. When I asked to see a copy of the ’61 yearbook, she gave me a look but refrained from comment. She handed me the Bulldog and I took a seat at an empty table. She returned to her desk and busied herself, though I could tell she intended to keep an eye on me.
I spent a few minutes leafing through the Bulldog, looking at the black-and-white portraits of the senior class. I didn’t check for Duncan’s name. I simply absorbed the whole, trying to get a feel for the era, which predated mine by six years. The school had originally been all male, but it had turned coed somewhere along the way. Senior pictures showed the boys wearing coats and ties, their hair in brush cuts that emphasized their big ears and oddly shaped heads. Many wore glasses with heavy black frames. The girls tended toward short hair and dark gray or black crew-neck sweaters. Each wore a simple strand of pearls, probably a necklace provided by the photographer for uniformity. By 1967, the year I graduated, the hairstyles were bouffant, as stiffly lacquered as wigs, with flipped ends sticking out. The boys had all turned into Elvis Presley clones. Here, in candid class photos, most students wore penny loafers and white crew socks, and the girls were decked out in straight or pleated skirts that hit them at the knee.
I breezed by the Good News Club, the Speech Club, the Art Club, the Pep Club, and the Chess Club. In views of classes devoted to industrial arts, home ec, and world science, students were clumped together pointing at wall maps or gathered around the teacher’s desk, smiling and pretending to look interested. The teachers all appeared to be fifty-five and as dull as dust.
At Thanksgiving of that year, the fall of 1960, the annual Male—Manual game was played. Male High was victorious by a score of 20—6. “MALE BEATS MANUAL 20 TO 6, CLINCHES CITY & AAA CROWNS,” the article said. “A neat, well-deserved licking of the duPont Manual Rams.” Co-captains were Walter Morris and Joe Blankenship. The rivalry between the two high schools had been long and fierce, beginning in 1893 and doubtless continuing to the present. At that time, the record showed 39 wins for Male, 19 for Manual, and 5 games tied. At the bottom of the page, in the accompanying photograph of the Manual offense, I found a halfback named Quintero, weighing 162.
I went back to the first page and started through again. Duncan Oaks showed up in a number of photographs, dark-haired and handsome. He’d been elected vice president, prom king, and class photographer. His name and face seemed to crop up in many guises: the senior play, Quill and Scroll, Glee Club. He was a Youth Speaks delegate, office aide, and library assistant.
He hadn’t garnered academic honors, but he had played football. I found a picture of him on the Male High team, a 160-pound halfback. Now that was interesting: Duncan Oaks and Benny Quintero had played the same position on opposing teams. They must have known each other, by reputation if nothing else. I thought about Porter Yount’s comment that these were Duncan’s glory years, that his life after this never approached the same heights. That might have been true for Quintero as well. In retrospect, it seemed touching that their paths had crossed again in Vietnam.
I turned to the front of the book and studied the picture of Duncan as prom king. He was wearing a tuxedo: shorn, clean-shaven, with a white boutonniere tucked into his lapel. I turned the page and studied the prom queen, wondering if they were boyfriend/girlfriend or simply elected separately and honored on the same occasion. Darlene LaDestro. Well, this was a type I’d known well. Long blond hair pulled up in a swirl on top, a strong nose, patrician air. She looked classy, familiar, like girls in my high school who came from big-time money. Though not conventionally pretty, Darlene was the kind of girl who’d age with style. She’d come back to class reunions having married her social equal, still thin as a rail, hair streaked tastefully with gray. Darlene LaDestro, what a name. You’d think she’d have dumped it the first chance she got, called herself Dodie or Dessie or—
A chill swept through me, and I made an involuntary bark of astonishment. Mrs. Calloway looked up, and I shook my head to indicate that I was fine … though I wasn’t. No wonder Darlene looked familiar. She was currently Laddie Bethel, alive and well and living in Santa Teresa.
25
I postponed my return, moving the reservation from Wednesday afternoon to a morning flight on Thursday to give myself time to compile some information. I’d combed copies of the 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, and 1962 yearbooks for reference to Mark Bethel but had found no mention of him. If Laddie’d known him in those days, it wasn’t because he’d attended Louisville Male High. I made copious copies of the yearbook pages where Laddie and Duncan were featured, both together and separately, going all the way back to their freshman year. In many candid class pictures, the two were standing side by side.
I placed the stack of yearbooks on Mrs. Calloway’s desk. I left the high school, driving through the area until I found a drugstore, where I bought a pack of index cards and a city map to supplement the simple sheet map I’d acquired from Frugal Rents. In the rental car again, I circled back to the public library, which was not far away. I inquired at the desk and was directed to the reference department. Then I got down to work. By cross-checking past city directories with past telephone books, I found one LaDestro and made a note of the address. The 1959, 1960, and 1961 business directories indicated that Laddie’s father, Harold LaDestro, had owned a machine shop on Market and listed his occupation as precision machinist and inventor. Because of Laddie’s poise, her elegance, and her aristocratic airs, I’d assumed she came from money, but perhaps I was wrong. In those years, her father was a tradesman, and there was no hint whatever that his business interests extended beyond the obvious. From the yearbook, I knew she’d graduated with honors, but the list of her achievements made no mention of college plans. She might have enrolled at the University of Louisville, which was probably not expensive for local residents. It was also possible she’d attended a nearby business college, taking a secretarial course so she could work for her dad. That was the sort of thing a conscientious daughter might have done in those days.
But where had she met Mark? On a whim, I pulled out the 1961 phone book, where I found listings for twenty-one families with the last name of Bethel and four with the last name Oaks. There was only one Revel Oaks, and I made a note of that address. As for Bethels, I had another idea how to pin down Mark’s family. I ran off copies of the phone book listings and pages from the relevant city directories, adding them to the copies I’d made of the yearbook information. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but why not follow my nose? I’d already spent the money for plane fare to get here. I was stuck until flight time the next morning. What else was there to do?
I fired up the rental car and did a quick driving to
ur, starting with the Oaks family home on Fourth Street, still in the downtown area. The house was impressive: an immense three-story structure of stucco and stone, probably built in the late 1800s. The style fell midway between Renaissance and Baroque, with cornices, fluted columns, curved buttresses, a balustrade, and arched windows. The exterior color was uncommon: a dusky pink, washed with brown, as if the facade had been glazed by age to this mournful shade. From the sign on the lawn, the building was now occupied by two law firms, a court reporting firm, and a CPA. The property was large, the surrounding stone wall still visible, as well as the original gateposts. Two majestic oak trees shaded the formal gardens in the rear, and I could see a carriage house at the end of a cobbled driveway.
The LaDestros’ address was less than two miles away, within a block of the university on a narrow side street. I checked for the number, but the house was gone, evidently razed to make way for expanding campus facilities. The remaining houses on the street tended to be elongated one-story boxes sheathed in dark red asphalt siding. Depressing. I couldn’t imagine how Laddie’d been catapulted from these grim beginnings to her current wealth. Had she been married before? In those days, a rich husband was the obvious means by which a woman could elevate her social standing and improve her prospects. She certainly must have been eager to bail herself out of this.
While I was still in range of the central city, I located the Jefferson County clerk’s office in the courthouse between Fifth and Sixth Streets on West Jefferson. The fellow at the desk couldn’t have been more helpful when I told him what I needed: the marriage certificate for Darlene LaDestro and Mark Bethel, who I believed had been married in the summer of 1965. I couldn’t give him the exact date, but I was remembering the line I’d picked up from Mark’s secretary, Judy, who told me he’d enlisted in the army right after his college graduation. What would have been more natural than to marry Laddie that summer, before he went overseas? I was also operating on the theory that Laddie (aka Darlene LaDestro) was an obvious choice for one of Duncan’s interviews. She was young, she was lovely, she was local. She would have been easy to approach, since they lived in the same town and he’d known her for years. Duncan’s press credentials were dated September 10, 1965. If he’d talked to Laddie at all, it was probably sometime between her marriage, Mark’s departure, and his own flight to Vietnam soon afterward.