Ash Wednesday (36 page)

"A few."

"You enjoy it? Having hassles with the cops?"

"Are you asking if I hate authority?"

"I asked what I asked, that's all. You don't have to read anything into it."

"No, I don't enjoy it."

Danvers sat quietly for a moment before he spoke again. "So you're afraid of becoming a TV movie villain, then." Brad didn't respond. "Is that right?"

"I guess so."

"What specifically brought you in here? The last straw that made you pick up the phone."

Brad told Danvers about the accident, Frankie's death, waiting outside Jim
Callendar's
house. "I wanted to kill him," he said. "Maybe he's not at fault at all, but I wanted to kill him just the same."

"That's not unnatural. You feel he's responsible for your son's death."

"He
is
responsible! If you'd seen him . . .
you'd
have known. He had guilt written all over him! And I know about guilt," he rattled on. "I know
all
about guilt."

"Maybe so," said Danvers quietly. "Listen, Brad. That cliché . . . about the wild-eyed Vietnam vet taking potshots at people. A cliché is all it is, just like Archie Bunker is a cliché of the working class, or Sanford and Son were clichés of American blacks. Sure, there are people like that, but most Vietnam vets are good guys. They've gotten back into the mainstream of American life, they've got jobs and families they don't beat, they pay their taxes and vote and go to church, and not one in a million skewers babies on bayonets."

"Then why the hell don't they show
that
in the movies?"

"Because that wouldn't sell tickets. Look, I admit, Vietnam was not pleasant for anybody, and for a lot of us it was goddamn ugly, and I can't pretend that there haven't been some guys who
did
go off the deep end—over a third have been arrested for one thing or another, and that's much higher than the general population. But that means that there are
two
thirds who've lived exemplary lives. And so can you. You don't have to live a worn-out image of what
nonvets
expect of you." Danvers sat back, tapped his desk top with a pen. "I think there's a lot of rage bottled up in you, but if you want me to, I think I can help you get rid of it. I'm sure that there's nothing that you brought back from 'Nam that you can't escape from."

"That's what you think, is it?" Brad's voice was cold, reptilian, and Danvers tensed slightly, as though expecting an attack.

"Yes. Don't you?"

"There are some things you do," Brad said, "that you
can't
forget. Not ever."

"Maybe you can't forget them, but you can come to terms with them."

"Accept them? No. Maybe somebody else could. Not me. Maybe if you don't know any better, maybe then. But I knew better. I'd been to college. I'd read the wise men. I knew wrong from right. Maybe the others didn't—but that's an excuse I can't use."

"You want to tell me about it?"

"No."

"Why did you come, then?"

"It wouldn't do any good."

"It's not for me to judge, Brad. I'm a doctor. You can afford to ignore this uniform. I don't care what you did ten, twelve, years ago. If you
fragged
your CO, barbecued a village of civilians, it doesn't leave this room."

Brad looked steadily at Danvers. "You swear?"

"Absolutely. I've heard things from counselees that strain the bounds of credulity, but I've never told a living soul. Don't worry. You can't tell me anything worse than what I've already heard."

"I don't know if I can. I don't know how to start.”

“Close your eyes. Pretend I'm not even here, that you're talking to yourself."

Brad closed his eyes, let his head fall.

"Now, just remember it. Talk about it. As slow as you like. Start when you were drafted, in training, when you saw your first combat, any place that's easy to slip into."

Danvers's voice was slow, soothing, hypnotic, and Brad began to relax under its ministrations, began to let the pictures come into his head. "I . . . didn't like the Army," he began tentatively. "Hated basic. I really didn't get along too well with anybody. More my own fault than anyone else's, I guess. I was scared, so I put a chip on my shoulder, without really daring anyone to knock it off. But I got through it, got sent to 'Nam. We saw lots of action in the Ninth, but I never killed anyone that I know of. We fought Cong. I never saw a woman or kid get killed, just those little guys in their black pajamas. No . . . atrocities, not yet. But still, I hated it. I was scared of being killed, ending up on those damn pongee stakes, or stepping on a mine, or half a hundred other ways to catch it. And I was a loner. Didn't see any point in making friends with guys who might be dead the next day.

"Well, one time on stand-down our company was called together. Some loony told us that there was an opening in an interrogation team and asked for volunteers. Nobody stepped forward. Nobody. Not one in a hundred and fifty guys who knew they were gonna have to go back into the jungle in two days and play peek-a-boo with the monkeys again. And I thought, shit, interrogation, how tough can that be, and I stepped forward.

"It was like stepping off a fucking cliff, though I didn't know it at the time. I mean, I wasn't
thinking
. At least that's what I try and tell myself. I just wanted to get out of combat. But because I really didn't
talk
to my buddies, I just didn't realize.

"They asked me questions, whether I had any experience, and I just bullshit—said I thought it sounded interesting and all. I didn't think they'd take me, but they did. My squad leader probably told them I was sullen, a loner, maybe a crazy, and that's what they needed, all right.

"Christ, instead of getting
out
of the jungle, I just got deeper
into
it. Later, I could've kicked myself. In comparison, we were fighting a clean war. Your typical NCO was
Audie
Murphy compared to
Kriger
.

"That was his name, Lieutenant
Kriger
. He was in charge of the team. Tall guy. Barely thirty, but he'd lost a lot of his hair. Face like a hawk. The others' names I hardly remember. It doesn't matter.
Kriger
was all of them anyway. There were five all told, six with me. The guy I replaced had
suicided
, I learned later. The others adapted, but he couldn't. Maybe he was the lucky one.

"We lived in a cave. It was tunneled into a cliff face, went back for about ten feet and turned, and there was a big room there, maybe thirty feet square. The way the thing was set up, you could have light back in there and nobody by the entrance would see it, not even at night. Hell, the brush was so thick that the odds of finding the entrance at all were slim. Even the Special Forces guys who took me back had trouble remembering the way.

"The cave was perfect, though. Aesthetically right, like a modem
Sawney
Beane
.
Kriger
and his men came out to meet me, and I thought right away I was in for it. They looked like animals—dirty, ragged clothes, scraggly beards, looked like they hadn't washed in months and smelled awful. All except for
Kriger
. He was as neat and clean as if he was expecting a visit from Westmoreland. `Don't worry,' he said first thing. 'The animals here are for show. Scares the shit right out of the Cong.' And filthy or not, they all seemed friendly enough, and their teeth smiled nice and white at me.

"I think
Kriger
was crazy even before he came to Vietnam. 'Nam was just . . . sort of a proving ground for his ideas, his theories. He explained them to me real fast. 'We get secrets,' he said. 'When nobody else can get the little bastards to talk,
we
can. We do it by being mean and being a little bit crazy. Nobody cares what we do back here.' I asked him how his squad got started, and he said it was his own idea, that he volunteered to try it on the condition that nobody messed with him, looked into his methods. And nobody had. Then he smiled at me and said, out of the clear blue sky, 'You ever eat steak
tartare
?' I said no, and he said that they ate their meat uncooked because they couldn't risk lighting too many fires. He asked if I thought I could handle that, and I said I thought I could. So one of the guys brought me a chunk of pinkish gray meat, raw, like they'd said. It smelled okay, pretty fresh, and I asked what it was. Beef, they said, and I cut off a small piece and put it in my mouth. I wanted to gag, but I wouldn't let myself. So I chewed and chewed and chewed and finally got it down. They all smiled at each other, and I kind of laughed and asked if they didn't ever get any k rations. 'We like this better,'
Kriger
said, and they all laughed. Then we went into the back chamber of the cave."

Brad stopped talking.

"Yes?" Danvers said. "Go on."

"I saw. . . I saw a body hanging upside down. There was a metal stake jammed through its ankles. It was naked, and parts of it were missing. And they all grinned and
Kriger
said, 'They grow good beef in this jungle.'

"I fell down and vomited, and then I just lay there, wanting to die.
Kriger
knelt down next to me and pushed my hair back, wiped my forehead with a handkerchief like my mother would have done. 'It's all right,' he said. 'You've done it. You're one of us now.' Then I cried. But he told me that they all had acted like that at the beginning, and each one of them nodded. But it had to be done, he said. There had to be some way to get the information from the Cong. 'You'll see,' he told me: 'It works. In a few days you'll see.'

"The next days were nightmares. They cut pieces off the body and ate them raw. I couldn't. I ate canned fruits and vegetables. They didn't try to force me to eat the meat. They seemed to know that it would take time for me to become what they were.

"The third night I was there,
Kriger
had a long talk with me. 'Anthropophagi,' he said, and sounded proud. He told me it was all in what society approves, nothing more. Then he talked about tribes in Australia where devouring dead relatives was thought to be the most respectful way to treat their bodies, and about tribes in Africa, South America, New Guinea, you name it, who ate the bodies of their enemies, as much for ceremonial purposes as for any food value.

" 'But we're
Americans
,' I said, and he just smiled at me. `So were the
Hametzen
,' he said, but he didn't tell me who they were. Not then. I told him I didn't know if I could do it. He said that no one would force me, but he wanted me to play the role. When I asked what that meant, he told me he wanted me to look like the rest, to pretend to be as savage as I could. 'We're brothers,' he said. 'Will you swear to be our brother?' I didn't answer right away, and he said, 'It's either us or them,' and he gestured to the jungle. So I said I'd be their brother.

"He gathered them all together then, and they each cut the heel of their hand and let a few drops of blood fall into a tin cup. I cut mine too, and then
Kriger
told me to drink it. I must have looked as sick as I felt, so he said, 'It's only a few drops.' And I drank it.

"Two days later four Special Forces guys brought two Cong. One was maybe in his thirties, the other much younger, thirteen or fourteen. Their faces were set like stone, even though they were bruised and cut up pretty badly. The Berets took
Kriger
off to talk while the four others and I watched the Cong. I think I was more scared than the prisoners, but I tried to look as mean as the others. It was tough to do. What they did went beyond playing a role. They lived it. The Cong looked a little worried, but still sullen, secretive.

"The Special Forces left then, and
Kriger
spoke to us in English, told us they were father and son. Both knew a lot, but the father knew more. He went up to the father and spoke to him in Vietnamese. I couldn't tell what he said, but the Cong barked something back, and then spat on
Kriger's
shirt.
Kriger
just smiled and said, 'Take them back. You know what to do.' We dragged the two into the back chamber. The body was gone, but the spikes were still there.
Kriger
drew me aside. 'Just watch,' he whispered.