Black Maps (3 page)

Elizabeth's mother said, “I've tried everything, but I can't get her to budge. She can be very stubborn, you know.”

Larry opened the door and said, “Elizabeth. It's time for you to go home.” She stopped singing for a second and looked at him, then opened her purse a crack and peeked in. Then she smiled and started singing again.

Her mother shook her head. “Who knows what all she's got in that purse this time. Yesterday I found my missing bottle of perfume in there, and her toothbrush, and a pair of socks. I'd been looking for that perfume for a week.”

Larry turned to her. “When was the last time you took her somewhere? You know, on a trip.”

“Oh, once in a while I take her with me to the grocery store. And every other Sunday we go to church. But otherwise—well, you can see how much trouble she can be, and I'm not strong enough to make her behave.”

“Yes,” Larry said, “I can see that.” Then he looked in at Elizabeth and said, “Where're you headed today?” Elizabeth babbled excitedly and clapped her hands. “No kidding?” Larry said. “Me, too.” Then he climbed into the front seat and took the wheel in his hands.

“Mr. Watkins?” the old lady said, clasping the collar of her dress with a bony hand.

“Don't worry,” he answered. “I'll have her back before lunchtime.”

Every morning after that, Elizabeth spent a few hours in the car, and each day her purse got a little fuller until finally she couldn't close it anymore. Eventually, Larry began to get up before she did, and he'd be waiting in the limo when she crossed the street, chattering and waggling her arms. She'd sit in the back and he'd sit behind the wheel, watching her in the rearview mirror as she bounced up and down on the seat and pointed out the window at the world passing by. For hours at a time, he didn't think about Karen or Randy or the threatening letters from the bank and the electric company. He was not happy, but he was not unhappy either. He was Elizabeth's chauffeur, nothing more, and he just sat there, his mind empty. And it wasn't until after they'd finished their drive and he'd helped her across the street to her house that he would come back to who and where he was. When that happened, he'd stand there a minute, in her yard or in the street or on his steps, before he could bear to enter his empty house.

Toward the middle of August, a man came to serve divorce papers on Larry. He started up the walk, then heard strange noises coming from the garage. Crossing the yard to the driveway, he saw the rear end of a car sticking out of the garage. As he reached the door, he saw that the car had been sawn in half and there were two people sitting in it. “What the hell?” he said. Then he called out Larry's name, but Larry didn't seem to notice; he just kept looking out the windshield at the garage wall. He was silent, but the woman in the back seat was jabbering in some strange language the process server couldn't understand. But Larry seemed to understand. He nodded as she spoke, said something back to her, then turned the wheel carefully to the left, as if rounding a dangerous curve.

At first Freeze Harris thought Nam was a crazy nightmare, an upside-down place where you were supposed to do everything that was forbidden back in the world, but after a while it was the world that seemed unreal. Cutting ears off dead NVA had become routine; stocking shelves at Kroger's seemed something he'd only dreamed. Then, on a mission in the Iron Triangle, Freeze stepped on a Bouncing Betty that didn't go off and nothing seemed real anymore. It was like he'd stepped out of Nam when he stepped on the mine. And now he wasn't anywhere.

The day after Freeze stepped on the mine, the new brown-bar reported for duty. His name was Reynolds, and from the moment he arrived at Lai Khe, he had it in for Freeze. Freeze had just come in off the line that morning, and he was stumbling drunk outside the bunny club, wearing only his bush hat, sunglasses, and Jockey shorts. He had a bottle of Carling Black Label in one hand and a fragmentation grenade in the other. He was standing there, swaying back and forth, when Reynolds came up to him, his jungle fatigues starched and razor-creased, and stuck his square, government-issue jaw into Freeze's face. “What the fuck are you doing, soldier?”

Freeze looked at the brown bar on Reynolds' collar and saluted with the grenade. “Drinking, sir. Beer, sir.”

“I'm not blind, Private. I'm talking about the frag.”

Freeze looked at the grenade. He had pulled the pin after his first six-pack. If he let go of the firing lever, he'd have only four and a half seconds to make out his will.
I, Mick Harris, being of unsound mind and body
… He laughed.

There were red blotches on the lieutenant's white face now. “What's so funny, hand job?”

Freeze laughed again. He closed his eyes, woozy, and shrugged his shoulders. “You,” he said. “Me.”

Reynolds stiffened. “I'm ordering you to dispose of that frag immediately and safely.”

“Can't,” Freeze said. “Beer tastes like piss without it.” He raised the bottle to his lips.

When he lowered it, the lieutenant had disappeared. Freeze looked around but didn't see him anywhere. Maybe he'd never been there. Maybe he'd imagined it all. He took another long drink from the bottle, concentrating on his sweaty fingers gripping the firing lever. His hand was starting to go numb. It was almost like it was dissolving, disappearing. When he finished his drink, he looked at his hand. It was still there.

As he tilted the bottle back to take another drink, he heard someone say, “Here's the son of a bitch.” He squinted toward the voice. The brown-bar was back, a sneer on his face. There was another face too, but this one was grinning. It was an MP. He had a harelip that made his grin look like it was splitting his face. Freeze imagined his face cracking like an egg and laughed.

Then the MP lunged at Freeze, grabbing his hand and twisting it behind his back. The sudden pain made Freeze groan and drop the beer in his other hand. While he looked down at the bottle foaming on the red dirt, the MP pried his fingers open. Then the pain was gone and Freeze looked up. The MP stuck the grenade in Freeze's face and grinned. “My turn to play with this,” he said.

Reynolds said, “Cut that shit. Just toss the frag out on the perimeter, then take this soldier to the stockade and let him sleep it off. I'll deal with him in the morning.” Then he turned and strode away.

Frigging brown-bar
, Freeze thought, and imagined him stepping on a mine and blowing into a hundred pieces.

Only later, after the harelip had hauled him to the stockade and asked him his name, company, platoon, and squad, did Freeze find out that the brown-bar was his new platoon leader. “Your ass is gonna be grass come morning,” the MP said, laughing. “Reynolds, he's your new LT.” But Freeze didn't care. What could the bastard do to him? Send him to Nam? All he wanted to do was sleep. Sleep and dream. When he woke up, everything would be clear again, everything would be back to normal.

But the next morning he felt worse. He'd been dreaming about a mummy he'd seen in a museum when he was a kid. The mummy was the color of caramel, and in his dream he'd broken off one of its toes and taken a bite. Then a gum-chewing guard woke him, and for a moment he thought the guard had taken a bite too. “Feeling all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning, Private?” another voice said, and Freeze turned toward it: Reynolds, grinning.

The lieutenant tossed some wrinkled fatigues onto Freeze's cot. “Get up and get dressed,” he said. “You've got a party to go to, and you're the guest of honor.” Then he told Freeze that he and Konieczny were to report to the privies by 0700 for shit-burning detail.

Freeze sat up slowly, his head heavy and aching. “
Konieczny
?” he said.

Konieczny was the big, red-haired recruit just off the bus from Bien Hoa. It was bad enough to put him in the stockade, but to treat him like that twink Konieczny … He'd spent ten months in-country—
ten fucking months
—and he'd walked point for the first three. Nobody in his company had walked point that long, and they gave him a badge just for having survived. And now this new brown-bar was treating him like a goddamn twink.

“That's right. Since he's a new recruit, I thought you could teach him some of the finer points of shit-burning. Now chop-chop,” Reynolds said, then turned and left.

“You heard the man,” the guard said, then went back to chewing his gum.

Freeze watched the guard chew.
Eat death
, he thought, and smiled to himself.
Chew that gristle down
.

He tried to stand then, but his head was pounding so hard he sat back on the cot with a moan. He stayed there, dizzy, for a moment, then stood slowly and dressed. Each movement made his head throb.

When Freeze finished tying his boots, the guard escorted him back to barracks. Though it was still early, it was already so hot that Freeze's shirt had soaked through by the time they got there. The guard said, “Enjoy your party,” and left. Freeze opened the screen door and went inside. It wasn't much cooler in the hootch. All the men were shirtless, but their chests were still wet with sweat. Some of them had pulled their footlockers out into the middle of the wooden plank floor and were sitting on them playing cards and drinking Cokes or smoking joints. A few were lying on their racks reading magazines or letters. Others were talking and laughing about some photograph they were passing around. When they looked up and saw Freeze, they went quiet for a moment. Then Jackson put down his cards and said, “You okay, man?”

That's what he'd said after Freeze had stepped on the mine. He'd come up to him, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, “Hey man, you okay?” Over and over, “You okay?” When Freeze had finally been able to answer, he told Jackson to fuck off, he was all right, leave him alone. But Jackson didn't back off. None of them did. For the rest of the patrol, they all stayed close to him, thinking they were safe if they were around him. He had the magic, they said, the luck. He wasn't going to get greased. The mine had proved that. So they stuck close to Freeze until finally he turned his M-16 on them and said he'd shoot the next mother who came near.

Now Freeze looked at Jackson, then at the others. Once he had been closer to these guys than to anybody in his whole life. But ever since he'd stepped on the mine they had seemed like strangers. He felt like he'd walked into someone else's barracks, someone else's life.

“Yeah,” he said to Jackson. “I'm okay.” Then he crossed over to his rack and pulled off his drenched shirt. Kneeling down, he started to dig through his bamboo footlocker.

“I hear you and Konieczny are going to a party,” Clean Machine said, then laughed. “Some people have all the luck.”

Freeze looked at him, but he didn't say anything.

Duckwalk sat down on Freeze's rack. “I hope you're doing all right,” he said. “We been worried about you, bro.”

Freeze didn't answer. He was trying to remember what he was looking for in his footlocker. Then it came to him: cotton. He found some in the neck of an aspirin bottle and tore off two chunks. Then he stood and turned to Konieczny, who was waiting in front of his rack, smiling uneasily. “What're you laughing at, twink?” he said. Konieczny just stood there, looking confused.

“Ain't nobody laughing,” Boswell said, and pushed his Stetson back on his head. “Ain't nothing funny here.” Then he looked at Jackson. “You want to finish this hand, pardner? ‘Cause if you don't I'll be plenty happy to pick up that pot.”

Jackson looked at Freeze, his forehead creased. “You still with us?” he asked.

“What's it to you?” Freeze said.

Jackson looked down and shook his head, then he picked up his cards and turned back to the game.

Freeze went outside then and stood in the heat, his head pounding. He wanted to go back to sleep. Maybe when he woke up he would be Mick again, not Freeze, and the mine would be just a bad dream.

In a moment, Konieczny joined him and they marched in silence up the hill to the latrine, each of them humping a can of diesel fuel. When they got there, Freeze stuffed the cotton up his nostrils, glaring at Konieczny all the while. Then they lifted the shelter off its blocks, exposing the fifty-five gallon drums cut in half, and started to soak the shit with fuel.

“Jesus,” Konieczny said. “This is number ten.”

Freeze didn't say anything; he was thinking how much he hated Reynolds for making him do this. If the son of a bitch was here right now, he'd throw him into the shit barbecue. Lieutenant Crispy Critter. He smiled as he poured the fuel into the latrine.

“Make that ten thousand,” Konieczny said, his hand over his nose and mouth.

Though it was still early, the day was so hot and humid that the air seemed too thick to breathe. Freeze was breathing through his open mouth because of the cotton in his nose, and it felt like he was suffocating. His head throbbed and his stomach felt queasy. Then the smell of the diesel fumes and the shit suddenly penetrated the cotton and made him drop to his knees. With a noise like a bark, he vomited onto the red dirt between his trembling palms.

“You all right?” Konieczny asked, leaning over him.

Freeze wiped his mouth and looked up at Konieczny's face, its freckles and peachfuzz and acne. The twink would be lucky if he lasted a week in the bush. Freeze could see him tripping a mine and blowing into the air, his body cut in half. He remembered how Perkins had looked after he triggered a Bouncing Betty. He'd had his wet intestines in his hands, and he was trying to put them back in. Or had Freeze just dreamed that?

He looked away, squinting in the sun. “Fuck you,” he answered.

“Just trying to help,” the kid said. He shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the work.

Freeze stood, his legs quivering. He thought about saying he was sorry, but then he'd have to explain and he didn't know how to explain or even what to explain. So they finished soaking the shit without talking, then dropped matches on it. Black smoke curdled out of the pit, and the stench made them gag. Standing there beside the blaze, his eyes burning, head swimming, Freeze almost threw up again. And later, back in the hootch, he lay on his rack, the stink of the burning shit still thick in his nostrils, and heaved his guts into a C-rats can. His heart was beating fast, like it did when they were in a fire fight. What had happened? He'd been a strack soldier for ten months, an assistant squad leader—leader of the first fire team—for the past four, ever since C.B. got zapped. And now he was a shit-burner. God, how he hated that frigging brown-bar.