Pieces of You (6 page)

The few ‘hootches’ set into the hillside were all empty on this gloriously sunny day.

Every single resident of those thatched peasant dwellings who was not away serving in the North Vietnamese Army was standing within the circle; a ring of broken hearts.

The villagers, from newborn to weather-worn, stood facing the casket of one of its own; a young father of two, a man revered by the whole community.

Their faces were in stark contrast to the day’s radiance. The anguish on each face
;
the despair in the eyes of the young widow; the piteous cries of the young children and old grandmother all signaled their unwillingness to let go of this precious youth whose only, fatal, mistake was in having been a dutiful soldier.

If the mourners could see into the casket, their eyes and hearts would have been forever mutilated by the image: the ravages of a death by black powder and explosive materials. What they would have seen were the torn pieces of a body which, until three days ago, had kissed and caressed; had handled tools more adeptly than weapons, sung songs and breathed prayers.

Mark, invisible to everyone but his traveling companion, Zachri, watched over the shoulders of two of the diminutive Vietnamese adults. As it dawned on him who was in that box in the ground, a terrible pain gripped his heart and raced upward; every heartbeat seeming to strike in his head with the force of a sledgehammer. He looked over at Zachri.

“It feels like shards of glass in my skull and my heart but why? Wasn’t this was one of the dinks stationed in the war zone where I almost died? What are you doing to me?”

“You were taught to believe the enemy is less than human.

“
Now, for the first time, you are identifying with the very human pain of the relatives of a dead enemy.”

“You said you’d help me.  Do you really think striking my heart is helping me; or them? I think it’s cruel.”

“This is real, Mark. I am just showing you what happened beyond your field of vision.”

“I wasn’t responsible for this! If that squad of dinks had not been killed, many more American military would have met his fate; so how do you expect me to respond? Fall on my knees and beg forgiveness for doing my job?”

“In your military training, you exchanged your civilian role for that of a killing machine. You were programmed to attack and destroy whoever and whatever was branded as the enemy of the American people. Am I right, Mark?”

“You bet you’re right! All our training exercises started and ended with the refrain: ‘Kill or be killed, kill or be killed’.”

“Please do not think you’re being vilified. This could be your liberation. Guilt has been wreaking havoc within your body ever since you killed your first Vietnamese.

“
After all, you were taught the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ when your parents took you to Sunday school.”

“That’s not fair! That
c
ommandment is about murder, not self-defense or defending a legitimate cause. Don’t you know I was shot, too?”

“God heard you when you pleaded for relief from the horror of what you had been through
,
but you have not let it go. Corpses still roam freely through your nightmares most nights.”

“Stop it! How can you possibly know what’s in my dreams?”

“Mark, shall I disclose what you’ve been repeating to yourself for years? It goes something like this:

‘I didn’t enjoy serving in Vietnam, crawling through the jungle,
parched
; having dysentery, being lonely, getting shot up and nearly dying.

‘
I was only defending my country and my men. I tried to protect even civilian Vietnamese although it was always a challenge to separate the innocent from the Vietcong’.

“It seems you can read minds as easily as I read books, Zachri. Yes, that’s what I told myself, almost daily, during the first few years after I came home.”

With Mark’s admission, an image of a family gathering came back to him in vivid detail. His family had thrown a party to welcome him home. His mom and dad had even talked him into wearing his uniform and the Silver Star he had been awarded for his part in rescuing captured soldiers. When he arrived at the hall, his cousins, who had already been drinking, had started in on him immediately:

“Thank you for keeping America safe but did it require killing babies?”

The shock of discovering that his own flesh and blood could show such disrespect for his sacrifice had enraged him. He frantically wanted to shut them up, but without a weapon his only option had been retreat.

Running the three miles home, almost out of his mind with the horror of his own reaction, Mark had made two decisions.

He would lock his Silver Star away and give the key to his mother
,
and during the rest of his life he would never discuss his navy experiences.

When Mark came out of his reverie, the look on Zachri’s face told him that he’d been followed and his expression made Mark want to disclose other memories too; the stuff of his recurring nightmares.
             

“What would the world have become if Communist rule had swept through all of Southeast Asia and then on into North America? What else could we have done?”

“I am not your defense attorney, and I won’t answer that. Instead, I am here to listen to whatever you’re ready to share. But first, let me take you to an old friend.”

Mark and Zachri moved from the site of the burial ceremony to a little hill near where Mark had sustained serious injuries.

There, they were joined by someone who had often walked or crawled with him during his tour of duty and had been a regular nocturnal presence. Bob hadn’t made it out of Vietnam breathing. Yet here he stood, looking just as Mark remembered him the day they had landed in Vietnam.

Astonishment and fear left Mark speechless. When Bob spoke, Mark recognized his distinctive baritone voice.

“Mark, it’s me.” He flashed a shy grin and added:

“I’m delighted to see you.”

“It can’t be! You’re dead, Bob. I saw you die.”

“I knew this would be hard for you to believe so I asked C.S. Lewis for help—he was good at expressing things in human terms. We agreed that his poem, ‘Death in Battle’, was a pretty fair explanation of the gateway to my current address.

By the way, he sends his greetings and gratitude for being a loyal fan.”

Mark knew that Lewis had died forty-five years before, on the same day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

“How, how could….”

“Just listen, Mark:

‘Open the gates for me!

Sorely pressed have I been

And driven and hurt beyond bearing this summer day,

But the heat and the pain together suddenly fall away,

All’s cool and green.

But a moment agone,

Among men cursing in fight and toiling, blinded I
             
fought,

But the labour passed on a sudden, even as a passing thought,

And now—alone!

Ah, to be ever alone,

In flowery valleys among the mountains and silent wastes untrod,

In the dewy upland places, in the garden of God,

This would atone!’

“
This is what happened to me, Mark. Lewis had it right, except for being alone in the ‘garden of God.’ Zachri and Lewis are among my innumerable friends.”

“Bob, I don’t understand this at all but it really seems to be you, although I never heard you quote C.S. Lewis before.

“
Am I supposed to believe you conversed in heaven before you dropped in on me? Just when I was beginning to believe in Zachri! My imagination is much more powerful than I ever received credit for.”

“My presence is as real as your last visit to your lady friend. You may even decide it’s just as significant.” Bob said with a mischievous grin.

As Mark listened to Bob he was thinking: ‘Maybe now I’ll be able to erase the image of your body being blown apart. Hell could not be worse than that.

You were gone, between one second and the next and I could only watch from where I lay, just a few feet away.’ He said:

“So often I’ve wished for the chance to see you again, to tell you I tried to save you. I would have given my life in exchange for yours.”

“I knew that, Mark. My spirit picked up your thoughts even as it left my body. I can assure you I’m in a better place, far better than humanly imaginable. Someday you’ll know.”

“So, have you become an angel?”

“No, Mark, humans don’t become angels and angels don’t become human
…
except in movies.

Enough questions; it’s time to follow Zachri into the Vietnam that I left in July of ‘69.”

***

The sounds were more reminiscent of a computer game than a war zone. In between the crack of sporadic gunfire and the screams of the wounded, the whirring of a helicopter’s rotor wings seemed out of place.

Gun-shouldering Vietnamese soldiers could be seen marching, single file, on narrow humps of land protruding like the backs of alligators rising from the marshes.

As Mark and two of his military buddies were moving through the higher grasses of the interior, parallel to the marching lines, they saw what the enemy soldiers could not: a single crawling body.

It looked more like a rat than a man from their vantage point, a human rat, dragging something along with him. Taking binoculars from his backpack, Bob adjusted them so that Mark could clearly see the crawler’s face. The man’s features were too indistinct to deduce more than his nationality—Vietnamese.

“What is he dragging, Bob?” The paramount but unspoken question was: ‘Are our guys in imminent danger? ‘

“I can’t tell. The bundle is covered with leaves and dirt
,
” Bob reported.

“Let’s get him.”

The shots rang out at Mark’s command and the crawler sprawled. Running to the place where he lay, Mark looked him over and then fell to his knees.

Their target had been pulling some sort of homemade sled. From under the leafy covering poked the charred arms of a small child. A very faint whimper revealed that the dead man’s last trip had been a desperate trek to get help for the child.

“How can we continue this obscene battling when we can’t discern evil from honorable behavior? What do we do now?”

Bob and Lorenzo, another member of their team, both stared at Mark.

Their faces reflected confusion, guilt and revulsion, although in different proportions.

Mark immediately pulled out his walkie-talkie and, using his code name, called the helicopter’s pilot.

“We have a stricken child here; please give an approximate time for pick up.”

A few minutes later they heard the whirring of the helicopter’s rotor blades over a compact clearing, the closest landing spot. While waiting for touchdown, Mark couldn’t help but wonder if the tiny child would survive. If so, would she ever learn the circumstances of her rescue? Would she grow up hating Americans?

Mark silently prayed for her survival as the helicopter rose and moved beyond their view.

Action didn’t stop for a child down and Mark’s team moved stealthily in the direction of the fighting.

Just a few minutes later more shots rang out, dispersing the funereal pall over the trio. As Bob was turning toward his friends, he suddenly collapsed into the mud and the water below him changed to crimson.

One long scream, a sound of unspeakable agony pierced the air and he fell silent.

A long drawn out “No!” was all Mark and Lorenzo could utter as they dropped to the ground to dodge the hail of bullets. As he made his way over to Bob’s body, Mark placed another emergency helicopter call.