“Dear Christ,” my pop said.
We did not run to her across the shit-filled field. We stepped like people not in a hurry to get where we had to go.
It wasn’t that we didn’t want to comfort her, to tell her it was again all right, but, really, like everyone who traces their steps and so themselves, we moved slowly, hoping to somehow awake. So “repeat,” then, is pain. A sort of SEAL Sam assembly line that never shuts down and just sucks out your life. We stood around her, and Mom and Pop began cooing to her between their tears. I had never seen Bethany rip herself so utterly and completely before. For a second I could see her beneath the scabs and empty patches, where her amazing hair had been, and her half-open eyes seemed only reflected, like a sunken moon under the blue ocean.
She had stiffened into her pose and didn’t hear my parents. Sun had hardened and seared her wounds. Her quiet, like quiet will, filled the awful field. I watched her behind Pop. I studied her and in studying became removed from the subject. This is really the only way to push off the world of the people you love and save yourself. She stayed stiff and burned.
Mom kept whispering cheerily about her friends and church, and Pop talked baseball. She didn’t move. That deep inside stillness, the perfect stillness her voice demanded, formed her against the staked tomatoes. Staked herself. Standing so close to him then, I could not imagine my pop ever having thrown the no-hitter in ’53 or hit those four home runs against the Warwick Despots in ’61. All that he was filled the small space between himself and his darling Bethany. I might have hated her right then. I guess I’m not sure.
“It’s no good, Bethany,” I said. “I can see the air going in and out of your nose. I can see your nostrils going.”
“Shhhh!” Mom whispered angrily.
“It’s true, Mom. Look. Everything else is perfect, but that’s not. Not her nose. It’s no good. She might as well quit it now. It’s no good, Bethany.”
The only thing that my folks could see was that I was not with them. I did not coo with them. I did not whisper a life lie with them.
“Why don’t you wait in the car,” Pop said.
“Pop, she’s—”
“Right,” Bethany sighed from the deepest part of her chest. “You’re right. You’re right. You’re right.”
I reached up and brought her extended arm down onto my shoulder, and I kissed her disfigured cheek.
“I want!” she cried. “I want . . . I want . . .”
I scooped her up, one scarecrow picking up another, and began walking back to the church and our car.
“I want . . .”
“I know, Bethany. I know.”
We took her back to Bradley Hospital in the morning. Pop thought we should drive directly there from Rockville, but Mom held her tight in the backseat and would not hear of it.
That night I went to bed early. I could hear Mom rocking in the chair next to Bethany in my sister’s room. She was singing “In Dublin’s Fair City,” and she was singing it as slow as she could. I imagined she stroked Bethany’s hair and wondered how something this familiar seemed so unfamiliar. I felt as though the things I had here weren’t mine anymore, or that I didn’t want them. I suppose I was going away then, and not waiting for the bus to Fort Dix to make it official.
27
The rain had gone the other way, east from where I had come, and the roll-down—out of Pennsylvania, into Maryland, and on up through West Virginia—was warm and dry. My little road map showed Route 50 to be the longest somewhat-connected smaller road that eventually dropped into the Los Angeles area, so I followed Route 11 until I picked it up.
Plans just happen, I have found out. I was someone who’d never had a plan, so it shook me up to see how simple they were to make and how often they just made themselves. First I found myself checking my tires every fifty or so miles, and then I realized I was essentially eating the same thing all the time and actually taking Father Benny’s stress tablets, and finally, each evening after I set my tent off the road, I would read some Iggy. Maybe that’s not a plan, maybe that’s a habit. Whatever—it was comfortable and gave me a feeling I sort of knew what I was doing.
I finished Iggy in Hoagland, Ohio, eight days after I left the Gettysburg Motel. I had a wonderful day on the road. It was easier, a lot easier, for me to ride, and I had what I call a “Shad Factory feeling.” A kind of tingle to get going every morning. The only difference, really, was, I’d known that the pickerel and perch were in their riffs waiting for me at Shad, and now I didn’t know anything, which was, like I said, wonderful. Every morning I had an orange and a banana, then a big tuna sandwich for lunch, and more apples and bananas for dinner.
Anyway, Iggy. So good I was sorry I finished it. It was his whole life right until he was an old black man eating an apple under a Colorado cottonwood. Everybody would think that he was just another old black man, but all of us who had read the book knew that he was a giant. A great man at the end of his life. It was a tender kind of a secret, and I loved knowing it.
In Hoagland that night, it thundered and flashed enough to light the cornfield that my little tent was nestled against. I finished Iggy just as it started to rain. I brought my saddlebags into the tent, then stretched out and listened to the rain ping all around me. I began to think, and I guess the thoughts took me away. I was thinking about Norma, and in my head I kissed her and felt her hands go around my back, and it was a powerful squeeze. We kept our lips together, and I returned her squeeze and picked her out of that chair and lay down with her in the long, warm, dewy grass of Ohio. I guess it was a love dream, or thought, and I don’t have many of them. A dream, maybe a hope, I don’t know.
And I don’t know about other things. Whenever I’d felt a thought or something like an idea or a desire creeping through my ice-cold Narragansett beers and tall screwdrivers, I could always turn on the television and get away from me. In Scouts, before the beers and the seventy channels on the TV, I’d lie in my tent, awake all night with hopes of happy grapefruit breasts and worries about tomorrow. They’re here again. The breasts, the worries, the hopefulness. How strange it is to feel a child’s feelings again. This man full of holes. This bicycle-pushing, knapsacked old man. I felt my face, the thickness of my beard. I traced the lines of it over my cheeks and lips. Maybe I could trim this. Maybe I could shave my neck. Maybe if I combed this high hair back. Maybe the dog that’s howling outside in the rain is hurt. Maybe it’s laughing or crying. But that was a country howl there in the dark. A big mutt, somewhere. God, I love those big, sloppy mutts. Why don’t I have one? A big, sloppy friend who would shake himself apart for me. He howls again, and I am satisfied it’s a good howl and he’s not hurt. But this is how I think, away from the tall drinks and remote control.
28
I weighed 121 pounds when I stood for my induction physical. A marine doctor was doing the examining at the draft center and was convinced I had tried to starve myself to avoid the war.
“Not gonna work, little man,” he snarled.
“What’s not gonna work?”
“I’m just gonna write down one hundred thirty-one pounds. Got a problem with that, little man?”
Anyway, here it is. I did basic training at Fort Dix, went to Quartermaster School, Fort Lee—that’s Virginia—and after eight weeks I had demonstrated I could pass out supplies and mark ten sheets of paper each time I did. Then they sent me to Vietnam in the infantry. I replaced a guy who was killed in advanced infantry training. During some exercise he had wandered onto the mortar range. I didn’t know any of the guys, and really I only got to know Bill Butler pretty good because he had the bunk under me. Everybody called me “Slim.” I didn’t tell anybody it was Smithy.
One night after dinner, we were reading the posted orders. Our company was going to the war. We were told to get our shit “short, straight, and clean,” which meant pack up neat. They lifted us up from Fort Lewis in Washington (state), and before we knew anything, we were in the Alpha Base about twenty-fi
ve miles from Saigon and maybe one mile from a village called Hee Ho. This was sort of our village, where Alpha would spend time and drink and stuff. And, as I said, there were a lot of prostitutes. In America, from what I’ve seen in movies and magazines, it’s not hard to tell an American prostitute. They have a certain way, a certain talk, like that. In-country prostitutes were like any of the other women. Also, you didn’t get a sense that the other women blamed them. For ten months of my eleven-month tour, I did not see—let alone shoot at—any enemy troops, so my real memories are of Hee Ho and especially the three times I was with a woman. And, of course, of Bill Butler, who knew my name and saved my life.
Bill was the blackest human I had ever seen. His skin was like a ripe eggplant. He had the slightest mustache and short, flat hair. He was a little taller than me, maybe six foot, and was a really muscular 180, 190 pounds. He was very mature for being only a year older than me, and he called himself “hep to the jive.” Everybody liked him. He was cool and tough in the way some people are cool and tough and never have to prove it.
“Ya understand the shit I am laying down?” he said under his sunglasses, relaxing on his cot.
“Sure,” I said.
“Ya understand, see, that the women have the need, too. You see the muthafucks say, ‘Shit, jack, bitch don’t need shit!’ See that? Oh, she need shit—she don’t need your shit.”
Bill threw back his square head and laughed and laughed. Bill loved to laugh at himself, at how funny he could make the world look.
“Now you, Slim man, you got to pop it here or you may never. I say Bill find you some fine young thing. I’m saying we all probably gonna die.”
I laughed. Some of the other guys laughed. Anybody could die but us. Orlando Cepeda laughed. From our tent we could hear music drifting over the tall grass from Hee Ho. The music was Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Every now and then Bill threw back his head and sang a high accompanying scream. We laughed. It was beyond hot outside, and we pulled our tent flap down tight to escape a breeze that was actually hotter than the stilled air. Even in the heat, Bill jumped up and danced with the backbeat. Sweat popped and dribbled and pressed through his olive T-shirt.
“Got to move. We got to move, baby. Bill gonna find all the fine young things.”
Bill glided across the plywood-hinged flooring with an imaginary girl we could almost see. He smiled at her tenderly.
“You with Bill now, baby. There we go. Oooooh, look at how pretty you look. You fine, baby. You Bill’s fine girl.”
The music stopped, and Bill lay back down, sweating, on his cot. I was writing to my family, only I had nothing to say. I knew they were worried, and it bothered me. So I kept writing them pretty much the same thing. I was fine. I was safe. What an interesting jungle this was.
We would go on perimeter patrols about every third day. We’d go for about three hours. Most of the time, we’d stay in the tent or play softball. At night we’d walk over to Hee Ho. That’s where I had my early beers and vodka, only it never tasted perfect until after Bethany had gone and I discovered the pretzels and fresh orange juice. The village was filled with bars. Our noncoms all had a piece of one bar or another, so they were pretty much the same except for the Sandy Beach and the East St. Louis. The Sandy Beach was a bar where the Vietnamese women were really men. A lot of soldiers went there. Bill and I never did.
“It’s their thing,” Bill would say, “it’s their thing, that’s all. But Jeeeee-sus. Man. Shit.”
The East St. Louis was a black bar. There was a sign outside—two signs, actually—and they both said NO WHITES ALLOWED. If I was with Bill, which I usually was, I would wait outside while he went in.
“Got to see the brothers.”
“Oh, sure.”
“Ya know.”
“Sure.”
“See what goin’ down.”
“Sure.”
“Uh-huh.”
One night—I remember it was a cool night—Bill and I went to this bar, and we were standing in a corner drinking something, because the place was packed and the seats were taken. I was kind of unsteady.
“You swayin’,” Bill laughed.
“I don’t know,” I laughed.
“You one drunk muthafucka.”
A very little girl came over and nuzzled Bill. She was maybe eighteen or twenty, but she was so little her face didn’t go with the rest of her.
“How you doin’, baby? Smith man, this is Faye. Don’t she look like Faye Dunaway?”
She looked over to me and smiled. I couldn’t tell who she looked like. I smiled back. I made a stupid face, and she giggled.
“Hello, Faye,” I said.
“This is my man, Slim.”
“Hello, my man Slim,” she said in imitation of Bill.
“Faye’s gonna come to America one day. Be an actress.”
“That’s great.”
“She’s gonna be a big star.”
“That’s great.”
“San Diego,” Faye said.
“I’ve never been there,” I said stupidly.
“San Diego,” she said again.
Bill slipped his hand onto her shoulder and gave her a squeeze.
“So, Faye, want to pop Slim’s cherry?”
“Oh, sure.” Faye smiled at me. “Sucky, fucky. Come on.”
She grabbed my arm and started to pull me toward the door. I looked at Bill, and I knew my face was ridiculous because he laughed and shook his head. Outside were empty oil drums stacked two high, arranged to create a maze of little rooms. Each room was covered with canvas or oilcloth. You could hear other people in other rooms, their voices and noises made louder by the hollow metal walls. An echo chamber where private sounds bounced around the barrels. The floor was packed dirt, but there were sleeping bags spread around it. Faye pulled her little brown dress over her head, and she was naked except for her sneakers.
“This is a . . . a . . . interesting room,” I said.
“Pussy,” she said pointing to herself.
“It’s very . . . pretty. . . . We don’t . . .”
Faye unbuttoned my belt and pulled down my pants in one motion. She pulled down my shorts. My penis was shrinking. It wasn’t Faye’s fault. It was actually going back up inside me. I was afraid it would just disappear.
“Where cock go?” she asked me, concerned.
“Well, I never . . .”
Faye took my hands and put them over her breasts. “Tits,” she said.
Now, you know what’s clear about this time? This first time? Clear enough so I can recall it exactly? Nipples. They went from brown, wide, and flat to pointy little erasers. It was wonderful to feel them change under my hands.
“Ooooh,” she said. “Mr. Cock come back.”
And okay, it was silly and only lasted about a minute, and afterward, when I paid her, she had that look of nausea or something at having been with me—hate, too. But I still see it clear. Me and Faye Dunaway under the oil barrels.
There’s a girl on the Goddard assembly line, working doll-eyes quality control. She looks like Faye. She’s little, too, and her hair is the same, but she speaks perfect English and might be Japanese. I just don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve seen her working and chatting with her friends and laughing out loud when one of the guys tells a joke, and I wish I had been shot before I used a girl that looked like her. The way we did. I did. Money being what it was.
I just don’t know.
29
I had never heard of Lovella Loveland, which wasn’t a surprise, because Iggy was the first book I’d read in years. But there were her books arranged on a spin rack at a little grocery store on the Ohio-Indiana border. She’d written a lot. I counted forty titles. Savage and Silk, Señor Sundown, Orbs and Opus. Like that. Each cover had a drawing of a beautiful woman, her full breasts ripping and pushing to escape her shirt fabric, and standing over her was a man, a bulging, hearty sort of man. In the picture, it was clear, the woman was going to be okay. The co
ver of one particular book had a woman kind of sprawled on the ground with a lot of her bottom showing, a big V of flesh between her enormous breasts, and Norma’s face. Hair, too. It was called The Incidental Iconoclast and—I’m not kidding—the girl looked like red-haired, high-cheeked, dark-eyed Norma, right down to that defiant face she makes. I didn’t look like the Iconoclast or whatever standing over her, but I put the book with my bananas and grapes and water and bought it.
The sun was out after four full days and nights of rain, so I was very careful to spread my sunblock thick and wear my hat. My clothes also seemed to be stretching from all the moisture in the air, because they seemed too big, and my neat Father Benny’s shorts slipped down when I walked.
I pedaled an easy rhythm over flat country that day. I made real progress and, for the first time ever, didn’t stop for lunch. I had my bananas and water while I rode. I had some crackers. I sang some songs I remembered from Yawgoog, the Boy Scout camp. I talked to myself. I saw Bethany under a huge tree and on top of a horse trailer. I saw her on the water of a small pond and in the shape of a cloud. “Hook’s here,” I would say. “Hook’s coming.” And I would say those things without sadness, because I was not sad with the poses she showed me and the long smiles she threw.
Between Hartford and Dillsboro, Indiana, I slowed and stopped. It was getting night, and I hadn’t even noticed. It was my best bike day yet. I thought of Norma and wished I’d called her earlier, because there was no phone around, only a huge field of sunflowers. All the flowers faced the setting sun. All the rows of flowers waved in a warm breeze. I had never slept in a flower field before, and I said out loud, “What a lucky man Hook is.”
That’s when Carl Greenleaf’s pickup truck hit me from behind.
30
Bill Butler was the only person—besides my family, the doctors, and Norma—I’d told about Bethany. My Aunt Paula knew, of course, and Count and Bea and our priest at Grace Episcopal, but I never talked to them about her. I mean, I wasn’t ashamed, but a person couldn’t explain it—and even if a person could explain it, it would probably come out as some kind of apology or something. I didn’t have to apologize for my sister.