Fields of Fire (45 page)

42

GOODRICH:
The only meaning was the thing itself. And what does it get me to know that?

I

Autumn, 1969

“Suffering,” he had told them, with a stone-faced attempt at nobility, “is inherently undignified when shared.”

They had been sitting in an expectant circle in his parents’ living room, his brother and sister and their families, five grade-school children between them, two high-school friends, and his parents. They had even collaborated on a bed-sheet poster, his mother coughing up an old sheet, and the gathering of uncomfortable misery mates venting their uneasiness with each other on great swirls of letters from old cans of house paint stored for years out in the garage. The sheet had hung limply over the outside door like a bleak, windless sail on a ship marooned in Nowhere. WELCOME HOME WILL! the sign announced in large letters painted garage-wall green and shutters-brown.

He had exited painfully from the car, backing out of the door, babying the still unpredictable artificial leg, then groping into the back seat for his crutches, and had finally faced the sign, absorbing it through the pillwarmth that surrounded him, protected him from what he had become.

“Oh, God,” he had mumbled. “Oh, no.” He then turned to his father. “Do you really have people in there?”

His father had smiled faintly, hopefully, firmly believing that this was exactly what Will needed, lamenting, even daring to be angry at the fact that there were so few welcoming procedures for Vietnam casualties, and remembering the gala welcome-homes of World War II. This is the least we can do, his father had reasoned, upset. I won't have him walk into an empty house, as if no one cares what's happened to him.

His father had swung the seabag over his own shoulder and then smiled slightly again, patting Goodrich on the back. “Come on. Go on in!”

And he had worked his way on crutches underneath the welcoming entranceway, daintily mounting the one step from the sidewalk to the porch, and the other from the porch inside. He was unable to grasp the left crutch properly because of the nerve damage that had atrophied and numbed his left arm. And the artificial leg rode uncomfortably, threatening to leave him.

His mother had opened the door for him and embraced him warmly, a deep hug that lasted two full seconds longer than it rightfully should have, and then stepped back, revealing the living room filled with hushed, painfully smiling faces. For several seconds he merely stared at them, they coming in and out of focus like rocking, misty visions. He had attempted to examine his own emotions, but found that they were so blanketed by pillbuzz that his core was almost numb, that if he had wanted to cry he would not have had a difficult time, since his most easily achieved emotion of late had become a sort of pathos, but he dismissed the temptation. He still clung to the subconscious delusion that his state was temporary, that the proper penance, just the right amount of suffering, would purge his pain and misery and he would Win, Prevail, triumph over adversity and once again be whole.

So he had stood solemnly and delivered his little speech about suffering, fretting even as he spoke that he was being a bit melodramatic about it all, and rude as well. After all. He was even tempted to end it with a joke that would set them all at ease, but was unable to concentrate long enough or hard enough to come up with an appropriate abnegation. Finally, as they realized that he was indeed serious, and began to file uncomfortably out the door, each person mumbling some inane encouragement to him, as if he were the center figure in a receiving line following a ceremony, he managed a weak joke. He smiled mournfully and rubbed his face, catching his older brother as he opened the door.

“I'm sorry, Pete. If I'd known you were going to be here I would have figured out a way to lighten this up a little. Maybe I could have stolen a stick of morphine and let you all watch me shoot up, or something.” He hated himself as soon as he uttered the comment.

Finally they were all gone and he dropped to the sofa, his crutches clacking to the floor, and lit a cigarette, shaking his head. He grinned gamely to his parents. “I feel like I've just had a glimpse of my own wake.” The house was empty now, dreadfully silent except for the scratchings of his mother's parakeet, one room away. He smoked his cigarette pensively, leaning back on the sofa, and absently popped a Darvon and a Valium, long past needing water. Finally he shook his head again. He forced out another mournful smile and gazed at his parents, who sat silently across from him, still slightly shocked that he had ordered his welcome party out of the house.

“Look. I just need a couple weeks. O.K.? I really appreciate what you did. Really. It was—nice. But I just can't handle it yet.”

His mother leaned forward, anxious and confused. “Would you like a glass of Cola?”

“No. Listen. I'm really screwed up.” He eyed them almost facetiously, rubbing his left leg where the stump joined the prosthesis. “If I was a horse they'd shoot me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure of what?”

“That you wouldn't like something to drink?”

“Oh, God.” He remembered that the best way to calm her was to set her into reasonably productive motion. “Do you have tea?”

His mother contemplated it, her bagged face serious. “Well, let me see.”

“Oh, never mind. I'll take a Coke.”

“No. I have tea.” She bit her lip, somewhat ashamed that she was nervous about having him home again. “I'll have to make it, though.”

“I'll just take a Coke, Mom.”

“No.” She rose almost relievedly. “No, I can make tea. It's no bother. You just talk to your father, William. I'll be back in a moment.”

She exited quickly toward the kitchen, and there were brief clangings, then all was quiet again. The parakeet scraped along the floor of his cage. Goodrich found himself grinning to his father, shaking his head in amusement at his mother's antics. He hummed a few bars from the George Burns and Gracie Allen theme song, their secret code for joking about his mother's tendency to become flighty under pressure. His father grinned back, nodding.

Goodrich relaxed, lighting another cigarette. “How's work?”

His father shook his head, which was wide and fleshy, an older model of Goodrich's own. “Oh, the same old stuff, Will. Old wine in new bottles.” He grinned amusedly. “One thing about being a lawyer—you gain an appreciation of the ability of the average human to twist and turn the rules of society to his own advantage, in the most unique and remarkable ways.”

He and Goodrich grinned identical grins. Under the numb of pillbuzz, Goodrich found himself deeply relaxed. His father's acerbic, humorous drone was like the stroking of a warm hand that comforted him. His father scrutinized him. “Well, I'm glad it's over for you, Son. It must have been terrible.”

“It'll never be over, Dad. Most of it hasn't even happened yet.” He noticed the pained reaction on his father's face. “I'm sorry. But coming back here, seeing the house and everything, it's like coming out of shock. Nothing hurts when you're in shock. You're just numb. But when you come out of it, every nerve-end aches.”

His father rubbed stubby, wrinkled hands over his face and hair. “Well, if I thought it would do any good, I'd say I'll never understand why the hell you did it anyway. It was crazy.” He suddenly looked much older than his sixty-odd years. “But we're beyond that now, aren't we?”

“I have some good memories.” Goodrich smoked pensively. “I have some bad memories. But I do have some good ones, I even miss it, in a way. I can't explain that. But the hard part is now.” He stared closely at his father, watching him come into focus and then drift back out. “I've got to get my head screwed back on. It's like I'm running loose inside it. No, really. I look at you and it's like I'm watching myself look at you, from deep inside somewhere.” He shrugged absently. “It's the pills. It's like I'm standing in an empty room and looking out a window at myself, only every time I talk it echoes back inside the room. Hey, Dad. I'm all fucked up.”

“You'll be all right. You will. You will,” his father mumbled in a litany, as if the mere repetition would make it so. “You need to go back to school. Once you get back to school it'll work itself out. You'll be all right.”

“Yeah. I suppose.”

His mother returned with the tea and served it ceremoniously to him, dropping a napkin to his lap and then sitting the saucer and teacup on it. He sipped the tea quietly, draining the cup, then set it on the coffee table.

“I'd just like to sit around the house for a while. Maybe read a few books. Watch TV. Stuff like that. I don't want to see anybody. Anybody. I need some time to sort things out, to get used to all this. Would you put out the word? I just need a few weeks, that's all.”

His father nodded. “Take all the time you need, Son. School doesn't start for another two months.”

Goodrich gained his crutches, wincing as he climbed to his feet. He stared for a long moment at them, his face sagging. “I just don't want to be weak about this.”

•     •     •

HE spent a strange, numb week inside the cloister of his bedroom. Outside the trees wept withered, spent leaves on the brown grass but he did not see them. The curtains were drawn, the lights were off. In the shadows and the lonely dark, surrounded often by dull artificial warmth from pills, he sought to find his head.

Or, perhaps, merely to avoid himself. He searched all the laughs and rages of his past, playing old songs on his stereo, reading and rereading old school annuals, savoring spent moments. Surprisingly, he found himself most often inside the pages of his Vietnam scrap book. He had put it together in the hospital, spending whole dull days sorting out the stacks of Instamatic photos, placing them in their proper chronology, identifying grinning, youthful faces and writing names underneath the photos. There, captured in the wonderglow, sterilized and motionless, were all the things that had ravaged him and finally left him lame. The pocked, rent earth. Hootches blown to bits. Shaved-headed babysans, mixed with grins and frowns. And the friends. Yes, friends.

And on every page he saw himself. Or what he used to be. Or maybe never was. Page after page of foolish grins or stubborn frowns, the unathletic body shrinking and acquiring gook sores, thinner with every page. The eyes growing bright from fear and lack of sleep. The body finally browned and scarred.

And them. He would gaze at the pictures of them, noting all the penned-in names of dead men, lamenting their loss and so lamenting himself. Senator. Yeah. It was a kick, all right. Sharing cigarettes and dreams, fighting holes and ammo. They gave me a hard time, but that was all a part of it. And now the dreams are dead. And he would sigh and pop another Darvon.

ANOTHER empty night. He dozed, absently watching a re-run on the television his father had moved into his bedroom, and his window rattled with urgent knocks. He stared at the drawn curtains, curious, and the knocks came again, quick and bunched, as if in urgency. He searched out his crutches, leaving the artificial leg on the floor beside his bed, and made his way to the window, opening the curtains hesitantly. Below his window, a frantically waving figure.

Mark. No. It can't be. Mark's in Canada, for the rest of his life. But yeah. Mark. Goodrich grinned hugely and began to open the window and Mark placed his finger in front of his mouth, indicating that Goodrich should be silent. Goodrich laughed, wondering at his own sudden good humor. Then he opened the window six inches and called to Mark in a loud hoarse whisper.

“Go to the kitchen door!”

He made his way quickly down the hall and through the kitchen, chuckling privately to himself. He opened the back door and then Mark was inside, his red hair wild and thick, like a flaming bush, smelling of the frost and faintly of a recent bowl of pipe tobacco. They were both laughing and he found himself leaning forward on his crutches, slapping Mark on the shoulders of his thick parka, then grasping him and shaking him.

They stared fondly at each other, remembering simpler days of unclouded idealism. Goodrich shook his head. “Solomon, you son of a bitch! What are you doing here?”

Mark smiled exasperatedly, almost defensively. “I've been lonely for my family. Then I heard you were back. That did it. I came down. Don't ask me how. I can't tell you.” The secrecy seemed to make Mark uncomfortable. “I just spent a night with my parents at a motel near the campus. It was a good place. There were a lot of students and I didn't stick out. And I know they're watching my home.”

“Who?”

Mark darkened. “The pigs.”

There were brushings on the living room carpet, faint clacks on the kitchen floor, and Goodrich's mother appeared. She peered at Mark as if he were a visiting ghoul from some earlier life. “My word!”

Mark grinned feebly, taking off his glasses and wiping them on his scarf.

“Hello, Mrs. Goodrich.”

“Mark?”

“How are you?”

“Oh.” She looked to Goodrich, confused, and grasped the kitchen counter. She pondered it a moment, gray and somewhat matronly, apparently as embarrassed at being seen in her robe as at viewing Mark. “Can I get you something?”

Mark rubbed his hands together. “I could use something hot.”

She brightened a bit. “I could make some tea.”

“Good, Mom. Why don't you make us a pot. We'll be in my bedroom.”

Mark followed Goodrich into the bedroom and Goodrich reached the bed and flopped on it, his left trouser leg dangling empty over the side. Mark shook his head bitterly.

“I look at you and feel so old, Will. It's been a hundred years of misery, all this. I feel ancient.”

Goodrich sought to brighten him, falling back on their old pattern of challenge and retort as naturally as if it were two years before. “You are ancient, Mark. The suffering Jew.” He laughed, chiding his old roommate. “Duty-bound to suffer over wrongs. Perceived or otherwise.”

Mark shook his head, looking at Goodrich. “Is it painful for you?”

Goodrich held up a bag of brightly colored pain pills. “Inside this bag is the god of Numb. I worship him with great regularity.” He tossed down a Darvon, demonstrating, and smiled. “Care for one? They're quite good.”