The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (69 page)

Trigg interviewed the job applicants himself. Trigg had noticed the big guy before. The staff members said street people called him Rambo. Trigg had looked him over without looking him in the eyes. The combat boots and the camouflage T-shirt made the guy “Rambo.” Trigg had to laugh to himself at the moron standing in front of him. But when Trigg finally looked into Rambo’s eyes, he saw something that had chilled him; after that, Trigg believed Rambo
had
been to Vietnam. Trigg had enjoyed Rambo’s military posture and the way Rambo would almost salute before he left the room.

Trigg had never regretted the money he had paid Rambo—fifty cents a head for a donor who returned at least twice. Rambo didn’t get
paid until the donor had returned the second time. Trigg couldn’t lose. Rambo had showed up riding a really nice ten-speed bicycle one day, and after that Rambo had pulled in plasma donors he found in the unemployment-office parking lots and in the food stamp lines and at the government free-cheese lines. At first Rambo had not enjoyed riding the bicycle because he had been afraid of the cars. He had not been afraid the cars were going to hit or kill him; he had been afraid of the people inside the cars and what they might be thinking about him. He had vowed to always wear some article of clothing—combat boots or jacket and of course the green beret—to remind all of them of Vietnam and where he and a million others had been. He had to laugh. Americans got paralyzed with fear every time they saw a Vietnam veteran still wearing combat clothes; Rambo enjoyed the advantage this gave him. Army surplus stores had resupplied him when his last pair of combat boots wore out. On the road or living on the street, Rambo had found the green beret and combat boots did the trick; even cops and railyard bulls had been strangely transfixed by the green beret. They could not stop staring at the Silver Star and Purple Hearts pinned on the beret. But Rambo refused to discuss his medals or what he had done in the war. If people still pressed, Rambo simply told them the past was history and no longer mattered, and even the strangers had always walked away more relaxed. Rambo did not spend money on much, but he was careful to always have the beret dry-cleaned, and not at one of those dinky one-hour places either.

Rambo had tried going without wearing the green beret; the wool in the green beret did not make the top of his head any hotter in Tucson than it had in Thailand. A little sweat, a little discomfort, was necessary to give men the fighting edge. That had been one of the primary lessons at the Special Forces training school in Florida. The wool acted as an insulator against the heat as well as the cold. He had been sent home before the others in the Special Forces unit. When Rambo had awakened in the hospital, he had thought he was wearing his beret; he could feel the beret on his head, though somehow in his sleep the pillow had pulled the beret far down over his ears. But when Rambo had tried to reach up, he had not been able to get his arms loose from the mass of bandages that were somehow tangled with the bed sheet. He had bellowed and grunted a long time before one of the other patients in the ward had repeatedly hit the nurse-station button. Rambo had asked them what day it was, and where he was. Wednesday, and somehow he had ended up in Manila. He had demanded to know where the rest of his unit was,
and they had told him that all the rest of his unit had gone home. They had already gone? They had left him? When was this? The nurse had been apologetic. He would have to wait until the following day and ask the doctor. The nurse said she was new; she had been rotated up from Australia and was headed back home herself.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get home too. If you want something, you can have a pill to help you sleep.” He had asked her about his beret. She had repeated the word, dumbstruck. “Beret?”

“Beret! Beret! Green beret! You know, you fucking cunt! My goddamn green beret!”

The following day the doctors had come. Rambo noticed immediately they were afraid of him because they had all approached his bed in a tight group, pretending they were merely crowding around to look at his medical chart. Rambo could see immediately the young doctors in their starched and pressed khakis were not real military because they did not wear their caps with the scrambled eggs—the gold braid army doctors got with rank. The war was over so they thought the men would not detect civilians in uniforms. He did not see why the military had tried to deceive wounded veterans.

Roy was a special name because it meant “king” in French. His mother had always loved the romantic sound of French, and she had never let him forget his name was special. After Vietnam, they had not got along. She had not liked the “vulgarity” of Roy’s vocabulary and the repetition of four-letter words; she had objected to the loud
klomp!
of his combat boots on her hardwood floors.

The young doctor had explained slowly and carefully that what Roy felt around his head were bandages, not a hat.

“Beret!” Roy bellowed. “My green beret!”

“Yes, of course,” the young doctor had said, smiling apologetically. It was not a hat on his head that he felt. The doctors had even showed him, pointing in a shaving mirror. That was him with a cone of bandages on his head. Of course then he had been called Roy, not the nickname Rambo. He had not even liked the movie because none of it was real or true. But the nickname Rambo had stuck with the younger men in the homeless camp. They had seen all the Vietnam War movies.

For a long time the doctors had not understood where Roy’s injury had been. He had not minded the bandages around his head, but he certainly had no wound on his head. That had been the most absurd notion the doctors had; Roy had screamed at them.

“Head!
My head? You stupid cocksuckers! I never got hit in the
head!” He got control of himself again after that outburst because he wanted the doctors to think he respected their military rank, when, in fact, he had guessed their charade. One of the other doctors had tried to trick him by saying that it was shrapnel, not a bullet. Of course he knew it was shrapnel! he screamed at them. But why did they have his head wrapped up? The army was always making mistakes. Here was another one. His head and arms all wrapped up and both legs bare. Roy had told him he did not understand it. They could see the scars on the leg where the wound had already healed. Why had they flown him to the Philippines with bandages around his head?

Roy had been happy when he had got the nickname Rambo because that meant the homeless men along the river had decided to let him in. Because at first they had all been certain Roy was an undercover cop in jungle fatigues and green beret. They had lost his green beret in the hospital in Manila. Because Rambo knew the pictures his parents had taken of him walking off the transport plane by himself showed him
without
his green beret. He had been wearing the bandages on his head, which they had finally forced him to admit were necessary. Bandages on his head were necessary. That was all he allowed to be said about the bandages. He had no head wounds. The beret had been stolen by custodians who scrubbed the floors of the wards. At the time Rambo had felt a great deal of hatred in his heart for the filthy gook who stole his green beret. The green beret had protected him from harm. Roy had never let on to the others, but he thought the Rambo movies were full of shit because Sylvester Stallone would have been blown to bits eight million times in his first week in combat in Vietnam.

Roy had worked the longest with the doctor who wanted to find out more about the killing of Sylvester Stallone. Finally Roy had had to tell the doctor it was no use. If the shrink did not know why Stallone had to die, then the doctor ought to give up psychiatry. Right after that, Roy had been wandering near the train station in Albuquerque and had seen the green berets in the front window of the army surplus store. The new combat boots had cost a lot too, so Roy had to cash in the remainder of his bus ticket. Wearing the green beret again all the time greatly changed the sort of thoughts Roy had. If he had still been talking to that shrink, he would have been happy to inform the doctor that he never gave Sylvester Stallone a second thought these days. He would have said, “Doc, unbelievable, but I never even think of him when the guys call me Rambo. Stallone the actor, who is he anyway? In a way I am more Rambo than Stallone is because I have a Silver Star and three
Purple Hearts, and where was Stallone in the war years? Prancing naked in porno movies.”

No, Roy knew who he was. With the beret on his head, Roy’s thoughts had been crystal clear; it had been as if steam or condensation had been wiped off a window inside his head, behind his eyes. Too many of them had made money off the Vietnam War. Not just the actors, the Holly-weirdos, but all the giant corporations—Dow and Du Pont, Remington and Colt, General Motors and General Dynamics—the fat cats glutted with blood. Someday his army would arrive at their doorsteps; Rambo would lead his ragged army against the government. When he wore the green beret, all of the future became clear to him.

Rambo ate only peanut butter and the macaroni and cheese the homeless shelters fed the men year-round in Tucson. He had not been able to eat meat or fish or anything that had once wiggled or had blood. Someday he would show the fat cats blood, but the blood would be theirs. The fat cats had helped Roy’s thinking clear. He now thought of himself as Roy who was also known as Rambo. Communism had killed itself. Now the United States faced a far greater threat—the danger from within—government and police owned by the fat cats. Roy had seen for himself women and children hungry, and sleeping on the streets. This was not democracy. Police beating homeless old men was not the United States of America. Something had to be done, and Rambo and his army would do it.

The green beret made anyone—a man or a woman—look strong and clean. Roy’s beret had kept him alive on the helicopter ride to the hospital.

ROY SAID IT WAS HIS LUCK; he had spent two blistering years in Thailand crossing borders back and forth fighting the secret war. Television news had never mentioned it. Roy thought it was funny; his parents had not believed their own son when he told them he had been
fighting in Thailand. His parents had believed what they had been told by television. What do you think of that? Your
own
folks don’t even believe you. They believe the TV.”

Trigg smiled and nodded. This Rambo guy would be perfect for the job; another certifiable nut case on the payroll. There might even be some kind of government money or a tax break for hiring a veteran. If the guy went nuts later, whose fault was it? “Independent contractor” like the rest of them, that was what Trigg had always had his attorney tell the police and the prosecutors. Unfortunate occurrences, tragic misunderstandings, and fatal injuries abounded in the world; when your time comes your time comes. Trigg had actually enjoyed listening to his attorney sweet-talk and seduce a jury. Trigg liked the lawyer’s philosophy: juries consisted of the leftovers who never watched the news or read newspapers because the world had left them behind years ago. Juries came from the bottom of the barrel; juries secretly resented their lowly position but also secretly believed they deserved the bottom. The lawyer believed it was important to talk directly to the jury about chance, fate, and luck.

Roy and Trigg get along fine. Roy’s job is to hand out leaflets to homeless people. He gets fifty cents for every new plasma donor he brings in. Avoid the ones with scabby arms and legs from needles, and don’t bother with the ones with runny noses or runny eyes. After a week or two, Roy had learned his job. Trigg hired him as a night watchman at the main cold-storage unit.

His secret was, Rambo knew how much the bastards wanted to be like him. He had listened for years, and he had got so he knew which ones had really been to war and which ones only talked. Rambo was most interested in the guys who’d actually gone. Sleeping in dry washes or rolled up in cardboard under mesquite trees above the river, they would be ready when he called. It was simple arithmetic. The punks would have been in diapers the first time Rambo had gone to ’Nam. The younger generations were weird. What they wanted most of all was to have been somewhere so they’d have a place to start from. Let them take whatever they needed, because the only legacy the U.S. had given them was as worthless as the string of dingy foster homes they had endured. Only a great and terrible war could explain how so many could find themselves sleeping in the street. They had lost fathers and brothers they could not remember to that war. That had been how Rambo explained their attraction to him. A few had had the stories down right.
So a few of the young drifters had heard stories about the real thing from Vietnam vets along the way. The past could never be pinned down. Each person remembered a moment differently. Rambo had seen photographers and journalists in the combat zone. If that was how history got written, then the punks’ lies made no difference either.

“This is the issue,” Rambo had told the first few men. “Look where we are.” Rambo had paused so the men could look around. They were in a dry arroyo that ran parallel to the Southern Pacific tracks. Rambo had calculated all the distances: they were 850 yards east-southeast of the Tucson Police Department headquarters downtown and 840 yards due north from the university branch of the blood plasma donor center. Some of the men had seemed dazed by raising their heads high enough to see beyond the bank of the dry arroyo.