Across the Spectrum (35 page)

He stumbled off into the jungle. He didn’t bother choosing a
direction. Any route he took led to the same place.

∞

At some point, as he plodded along, eyes half-closed and
mind numb, the surface beneath his feet changed. He looked down. Linoleum. He
was standing on his kitchen floor.

Three muddy footprints lay between the refrigerator and the
sink. The tread marks were distinctive—the characteristic spoor of combat
boots. They came from nowhere. They led nowhere. Yet there they were.

DeWitt lifted his foot. The bottoms of his shoes contained
not a speck of mud. And he was wearing his Sunday loafers, not boots. His gun
was gone, too. And his fatigues. And the leeches.

He sighed. Moistening a sponge, he cleaned the floor. Wanda
wouldn’t want a mess waiting when she got back from the pizza parlor.

As he rinsed out the sponge, he noticed a tiny sliver of
bamboo. This he kept, taking it to the bin under his work bench. He put it
beside the photograph of Boone’s girlfriend.

The bin contained a melange of strange objects: The chain
from a set of dog tags. Four spent cartridges from an M-16. Several tins of
C-rations. Leaves from a number of tropical plants. A rabbit’s foot. An
annotated copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
. A locket containing an ersatz
daguerreotype of Smith’s girlfriend.

Sometimes, DeWitt would open the bin and sit for hours,
stroking the rabbit’s foot—that had been Johnnie’s—or sifting through
hand-written notes, memorizing the addresses, imagining that he might make use
of them again.

“Excuse me, ma’am, I have a message from your son.”

“My son died in Vietnam.”

“I know, but he gave me a message for you.”

Sometimes they believed the communication really was from
their son. Sometimes they shouted into the phone that DeWitt had better never
call again or they’d tell the cops. He never tried to explain how the duty had
fallen to him. If they asked, he said he’d carried the word for years and
neglected to pass it along.

He especially remembered Johnnie’s mother, crying in relief
to hear that Johnnie knew who his real father was, a secret that she had always
been ashamed she had never told him before he left for Vietnam.

The Purple Haze had done good things. Knowledge,
mementoes—he’d brought these things back. He could do that if he stepped in the
right places, took the right turns, and made it as far as the
LZ.
How else had he survived
the first time, if not for the luck of a step here, a turn there? One of these
days, his buddies would be as lucky as he. They’d cross the threshold, alive.
All he had to do was keep going back for them. Jesus Almighty had given him a
gift. He meant to use it.

His daddy had taught him, when he was young, a man doesn’t
abandon his people.

∞

The haze clung to the horizon as he rode to work Monday
morning. DeWitt saw a violet plume in his rear view mirror, rising from a
factory smokestack. But there was no smell of ozone, no sense of shadows
walking. DeWitt’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel, anticipating the cold
kiss of a trigger guard against the calluses.

He worked that day listening for the whine of malarial
mosquitoes. That night, Wanda’s body against him pressed with the heat of a
Southeast Asian noon. The orgasm she gave him brought only partial relief. A
summons stretched like a tripwire across his path, waiting for his blundering
foot.

By midday Tuesday, he jumped when his supervisor suddenly
appeared around the partition of his work cubicle.

“Langdon, could you come in for a minute?”

DeWitt set down a sheaf of invoices and stood up. As always,
his boss didn’t wait. DeWitt caught up with him at the threshold of the
executive suite.

“Close the door behind you.” The older man took his seat
behind the desk, and waved for his employee to sit in the guest chair.

A trickle of sweat stained the back of DeWitt’s starched
cotton shirt. If this were about daily business, his boss would have had him
lean over the desk, to view whatever material he was working on.

“Can you guess why you’re here?”

DeWitt swallowed. “Sorry, Mr. Sawyer. I’m afraid I have no
idea.”

Sawyer pulled a linen handkerchief from his pocket and wiped
his bifocals. The pale puffiness under his eyes exaggerated his owlish,
half-blind stare. His stern look was so at odds with the words that followed
that DeWitt had to repeat them in his head:

“I’ve decided to give you a promotion.”

DeWitt blinked twice. “Wh-what?”

Sawyer coughed. “I must say no one was more surprised than I
at your good work, young man.” His voice squeezed the last two words out; as if
sensing too late that to call a man near forty young was unnecessarily
dismissive.

DeWitt said nothing.

“I’m not the sort who likes to admit he’s wrong, DeWitt, but
I thought I ought to be straight with you.” Sawyer tapped his pen against his
desk blotter. “I only hired you because of affirmative action. Oh, you were
qualified, yes, but so were ten other guys. You got the job because you were
black.”

One of DeWitt’s scars itched. Not any of the ones from ’Nam.
The old scar, from childhood.

“You knew that, didn’t you?” Sawyer stated.

DeWitt flushed. “Yes.” The only surprise was that the man
was saying it out loud.

“I thought you might. I know I must not have been friendly,
at first. It was never anything personal. I just don’t like regulations telling
me who I can and cannot hire.”

“I understand,” DeWitt mumbled.

“You wouldn’t have lasted ninety days here if you hadn’t
done your job. I thought you should know that. Maybe you’ll understand how much
thought I put into this promotion. It’s strictly my idea. You’ve worked hard
for me for two years, DeWitt. That’s what counts. Not some quota bullshit.”
Finally, a smile blossomed on Sawyer’s face, bringing into view bright teeth
and grandfather smile lines. “I’d meant to do this at the end of the quarter,
but I decided to move it up a bit. Your new salary is effective with this
paycheck. Call it a wedding present.”

The acid in DeWitt’s stomach slowly changed to alcohol, as
he realized the man was not joking. “Th-thank you, Mr. Sawyer,” DeWitt
whispered.

He said other, inane things, but registered none of them in
memory. The next he knew, he was back in his office. His heartbeat was just
returning to normal. He sagged back in his chair.

And guffawed—deeply, from the diaphragm. Was it his imagination,
or had the weather turned less muggy? He sighed, unable to wipe the smile from
his lips. Too bad Wanda wouldn’t be back until evening. He wanted to call her.

He pulled a cigar out of his desk drawer—saved ever since
Tony down the hall had become a father last winter. He lit it, and let the
smoke drift lazily toward the ceiling panels.

The smoke took on a purplish tinge.

Abruptly DeWitt was on his feet. To his surprise, the smoke
changed back to blue gray and fled up into the ceiling vents.

∞

Not until Friday did the haze call him. There it was, hung
like a shower curtain across the office foyer, as he reached for his keys to
lock up—he was the last to leave, having worked late in an effort to show how
seriously he regarded his new responsibilities.

He viewed the threshold with slumped shoulders. On Tuesday,
he had been fresh, prepared. By now, he was beaten down not only by the wait,
but by the rigors of a long work week. But he made his feet cross the carpet.
He strode through, tasting the ozone.

The road, the rice paddy, the blazing sun greeted him as
always. Then his eyes narrowed in surprise. The path had shrunk to a mere fold
in the elephant grass. Not that it had ever been a prominent trail—soldiers
learned not to leave such traces. But this time the way looked neglected,
almost as if feet had never trod upon it.

DeWitt reconnoitered. Instantly he ducked into the elephant
grass and flicked off the safety of his M-16. To his left, in the distance, he
saw someone.

The figure was a teenage Vietnamese girl. Wearing a pair of
Guess jeans and a white tee shirt, she sat at a tiny stand marked
LEMONADE.

DeWitt’s scowl deepened. This was not normal. This should be
against the rules. The Purple Haze had shown him many sides of
unpredictability, but they had always made some sort of sense in context.

His head ached fiercely. Lifting the helmet, he rubbed his
forehead, all the way up to his receding hairline.

Confused, DeWitt pulled his hand away, as if stung. In 1969,
he hadn’t been the least bit bald. He stared at his palm—the creases were
deeper than they should be. Closing his eyes, he shook his head, and when he
looked again, his hands were smooth and youthful. He touched his head. The
hairline was where it was supposed to be.

“Sarge? Sarge?” whispered a voice.

DeWitt jerked his head up, recognized Boone’s whiny, nasal
tone, and said, “On my way.”

Boone was at the far side of the punji pit, with Zuniga.
DeWitt gestured for them to move ahead of him, and soon they came to the shade
of the huge teak, its trunk looped with vines. The rest of the squad waited in
the usual places.

Johnnie came forward, thumb offered. “Good to see you . . .
brother,” he said, with an odd hesitation. “Tell us about the world.”

He sounded as tired as DeWitt. In fact, he and the others
had been sounding tired for many replays now, DeWitt realized. It seemed normal
now, yet there had been a time when the whole squad had brimmed with hope and
vitality each and every time they set out.

DeWitt sat and talked for the one precious hour the Purple
Haze allowed. This time the squad sat in a circle, to the last man, listening
carefully, offering little or no comment. The words poured out of DeWitt’s
mouth, so fast he didn’t even take time for his usual half dozen cigarettes.

And again, the hour expired. Again, all too soon. As he
stood up, his knees afflicted with a strange, rheumatoid stiffness, he knew
this replay was going to end early, far short of the
LZ.
The men all had death peeking through the
membranes of their thousand yard stares.

But he led them on—through the bush, to the bamboo thicket,
to the pepper field, to the ville, to the fire zone.

∞

DeWitt tumbled across the floor of the foyer and slammed
into the glass door. Fortunately it was tempered glass, reinforced with wire—it
did not break. DeWitt sagged to the carpet.

Shit. He hadn’t ended a replay that way in years. The
grenade had landed among them, leaving him and the other two surviving
men—Morgan and Ramos, this time—barely time to recognize it for what it was.
Then the explosion hit and that was that. Instantly, he was back in 1983. The
receptionist’s clock rotated another digit. As always, he’d been gone no more
than a few seconds, as far as the present-day world was concerned.

Shaking, he retrieved his keys from the floor, locked the
offices behind him, and made his way to the parking garage. His hands were
still unsteady as the attendant waved him out and he rolled out onto the
street.

A few blocks later, as he entered a residential zone, he saw
a lemonade stand on a corner. A slim Vietnamese girl in Guess jeans and a white
tee shirt was just closing up shop for the night.

∞

DeWitt’s relatives began to arrive Saturday morning. Not
that there were many, but it didn’t take large numbers to fill DeWitt’s modest
living room. DeWitt planned to find a bigger home once the wedding was over and
Rudy had settled in at his new school.

Wanda wouldn’t let him go to the bus station to pick up
Rudy. She insisted that father and son’s reunion should be complete with all
the bells and whistles: audience, applause, a cake and balloons, good food—a
real party. DeWitt let her have her way.

And he was glad. It unnerved him to stand eye-to-eye with
his own offspring, who scarcely had a right to be so tall so soon. The
celebration and the company filled in what would have been awkward silences.

Rudy liked chocolate cake. He didn’t like coconut. Just like
DeWitt. He liked baseball, was indifferent to football. Just like DeWitt. By
the end of the meal, it was no stranger seated across the table.

“Care to sit with me for a while on the porch?” DeWitt asked
his son while the dishes were being cleared.

“Sure.”

It was August. It was muggy. But to DeWitt, no place in the
whole of the United States had as miserable a climate as what he was used to,
and he settled comfortably on the step.

“Like it here so far?” DeWitt asked. He wasn’t usually so
direct, but God knows, he’d had few chances to talk with his own flesh and
blood.

“I guess so,” Rudy said, shrugging with a teenage boy’s
classic indifference.

“Your mother used to say you’d hate to live with me.”

“Mom used to say you were crazy,” Rudy said bluntly.

DeWitt coughed. “Hell. She might’ve been right.”

“She said you were never the same after you came back from
the war. Is it true that you were the only survivor of a patrol?”

DeWitt wiped the smooth crest of his forehead, lips pursed.
“I was.”

He’d never told anyone the details of that night. But
somehow, it felt right to speak now. Slowly, with precision, rendering the
graphic parts with a steady voice and just the right sprinkling of euphemism,
he told how the squad had been isolated from the rest of the platoon. He
described how unexpected the sheer number of enemy in the vicinity had been. He
told how, one by one or in pairs, the men with him had died, and how he,
peppered by shrapnel, had crawled to the landing zone and been loaded onto a
medevac chopper.

He told the real story. He mentioned that Johnnie had
tripped a claymore, that Smith had been caught in friendly crossfire because
DeWitt was too confused to give good orders, how Boone had died cursing him for
a dumb nigger for going out instead of waiting out the day and night in the
elephant grass beside the road. Their mission had been search-and-destroy.
Well, they’d searched, and they’d been destroyed.