Carry Me Home (24 page)

Wapinski ignored him. He could see the motorcyclist sliding the corners so recklessly that Bobby was thinking of emergency medical procedures he’d perform after calling in a dust-off, an ambulance. The noise changed, the cyclist downshifted as he neared the Wapinski driveway. He turned in, accelerated up the first incline actually getting the big bike airborne at the crest, touching down, downshifting into the low ess then accelerating again up the hill to the house. He braked hard, locked the rear wheel, the back end sliding and bumping, kicking up gravel. Then he revved the engine in neutral and killed it as it idled back—a clean shut-off.

Wapinski came from behind the house. Josh ran up, skidded, barked. Wap did not recognize the rider, though he saw the man was not big, was clean-cut. “Wapinski,” the rider called.

“Yeah,” Bobby answered.

“Bob Wapinski?”

“Yeah.”

“I just wanted to meet my jody.”

“What?”

“What’s that up there?” Jimmy Pellegrino pointed to a rumpled black sphere tacked to the barn wall. He kicked down the stand, got off the bike.

“That’s an old bladder ball.”

“Say again.”

“A bladder ball. A pig’s bladder. When I was a kid my grandfather’d take the pigs’ bladders and blow em up. We’d use em as balls.”

“Neat. I’d like to learn how. We’ve set up two pig farms in the provinces and that’d be great to show the kids.”

“What provinces?”

“Quang Tri. Thua Thien.”

“You Pellegrino?”

“Roger that.”

“Hey, I’m—”

“Don’t say it. You don’t gotta.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Naw. Ferget it. I was up in Boston with my cousin. Met a few ladies up there. And anyway, I’m goin back to show my kids how to make bladder balls.” He chuckled. They were now only a few feet apart. Josh sniffed at Jimmy’s leg. Jimmy bent, let Josh sniff the back of his hand, then slowly reached back and scratched Josh’s head.

“Third time, huh?”

“Third time’s a charm.” Jimmy continued caressing Josh.

“I keep thinkin about goin back. Reenlisting and going back.”

“Place changes, Man. Every tour. Wouldn’t be the same.”

“Yeah. That’s ...” Wapinski did not finish the sentence. Seeing Pellegrino made him nauseated—not because of Pellegrino but because of himself, because of what he’d done. Go back, he thought. Fuck it. End this shit. It’d be an honorable means of suicide. “Hey, really, I’m—”

“I’m serious, Man. Don’t say it. You don’t gotta say it. I played, I lost. I just came up to say somethin.”

“Come in for a beer?”

“Naw.” Jimmy shook his head. He remounted the Harley. “I just wanted to say, you know, take good care of her.”

Wap nodded. “Yeah. Roger.”

“Really. I mean it. I got other things that need doin.”

“You stay low.”

“Ha! Hey, just one more thing, Man. Never let em get to your mind.” He kick-started the Harley, rocked it forward collapsing the stand, flashed Wapinski the two-fingered V peace sign, turned slowly then roared off.

Wapinski watched him go, watched the bike and rider get airborne at the crest, accelerate out onto the road, upshift crazily, probably hitting eighty-five descending Mill Creek Road, out of sight, out of earshot.

Bobby pushed his hand through his hair. He had stolen that man’s girl. He, a soldier, doing it to a fellow combat brother. It was impossible to digest, to assimilate. Four months earlier he would have risked his life for Pellegrino. That was the commitment, the promise, of brothers-in-arms. Now he was fucking Pellegrino’s girl. He felt sick. And he felt envious of Pellegrino still being a part of it, a part of the cause. And Red ... it was as if she had proven to him that she was like all the women he’d ever known—every one of them except his grandmother.

T
HE DREAM RETURNED. HE
shifted. Josh lay against his legs. There was mud. Mud everywhere—slick, yet sticky. Above, in rain-sky, came two double-rotored Chinooks, huge cargo helicopters. But not normal Chinooks. The ships’ bodies were vertical, not horizontal, and the overlapping rotors were one on each end making the machine look like a giant spool. One passed over. He hunkered down, hugged the mud, waiting in ambush to look up the trail, the road, across to the stone wall. The second chopper passed. The rotor wash ripped the brush, whipped up the debris of previously exploded trees. He covered his head. In the wake of the second passing was a single disk of whirling light, a nebula spinning low toward the ground, searching. It found him. Lifted him. Exposed him. Thud! Hit! It began carrying him away. His face contorted. He tried to scream but words choked in his throat. The forces on his body were tremendous, racking him, twisting him, pulling him apart. He tensed, brought his knees to his chest, grasped his arms over his legs. He brought all his energy to bear on his cry. Still it came garbled. “Pleeeazzz ...” He screamed, sounding in his own ears as if he were yelling into a huge fan. “Pleeeazzz. Help us.”

Then cool. The small room. The masked people. “Next!” The voice urgent. “Next. No. Not him.”
Pleeeazzz
. The smell of fresh blood, of freshly lacerated entrails. There, on the slab below him, the body, brains flowing out.
I’m ... I’m ... I’m still alive. I’m alive ... Oh, damn you ...
The body convulsed as the masked figure probed the brain. Back-arch spasm. Tears.
Pleeeazzz
“Not him! Damn you.”
pleeazz
“Put him ...”
don’t
“in the corner and ...”
leave
“let him ...”
me
“... cool.”

They had not had sex in the eight days since Jimmy’s visit. Red passed off Bobby’s somber moods to her leaving, to her inattentiveness toward him as she bustled around preparing for the move. Then it occurred to her that it was over, that he’d made up his mind to remain on the farm but hadn’t the courage to tell her. He hadn’t told her of Jimmy’s visit but she’d heard through a friend of Jimmy’s sister, Annalisa, that they—her two men—had met and had agreed upon the
swap
. The SWAP! She did not mention it to him but it angered her that “her two men” felt they could trade her as if she were a baseball mitt or whatever men traded when they traded. Still she wanted him, wanted him to come to California, to help her, be with her.

They climbed the back trail, crossed the crags, meandered past the little shack, then through the woods over the ridge and into the sugarbush. “I’m going to miss our walks,” Red said. Bobby only grunted, still she felt pleased she’d said it. Under her jacket, under her wool shirt, she wore a silk camisole and below her corduroy pants were her laciest panties. The lingerie felt smooth and comfortable and it made her feel confident—sex or no sex—just to have it on. “I’m going to miss the smell of this place as much as the beauty.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Me too. But we’ll come back to visit my grandfather.”

“He’ll be all right, won’t he?”

“Yeah. He’s lived here, you know, without anybody.”

“I’ll miss him, too,” Red said. She turned and looked into Bobby’s eyes expecting to see hardness, withdrawnness, but instead saw questioning, hurt, warmth.

“There’s a place I haven’t shown you before,” he said. “It’s my private place where no one goes but I’d like to show it to you.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. That’s why I wanted to leave Josh in your car. He can’t make the climb. But—” Bobby laughed, “maybe you can.”

“I bet I can,” Red said surely.

“Come on, then.” Bobby led Red to the far edge of the sugarbush, through a narrow stand of mixed scrub pines, ash and beech, over thirty feet of bare rock, to the cliff edge of the gap. “Be careful.”

“Oh! This is pretty! I didn’t know ...”

“Ssshh.” He put his finger to his lips. His eyes lit with excitement. “We don’t talk at the gap.” Before them was a three-story-deep chasm eighty to one hundred feet wide. The sides were vertical as if God had descended with a giant dado blade that he’d run semicircularly through the Endless Mountains for a mile, isolating one island of old forest.

“Oh, Bobby,” Red whispered, “it’s beautiful.”

“It’s only the start. Wait till we get there.” He indicated the far side.

“How?”

“Follow me.” He sat, dropped his feet over the cliff edge.

“Ah ...” Red backed a few steps away. It flashed through her mind that this was a lover’s leap, that Bobby would grasp her legs and jump.

“It’s like a ladder. I found it when I was eight.”

“Found what?” She approached cautiously.

“It’s the only way down without ropes. I think the Lenape must have carved it hundreds of years ago.” Bob cleaned several handhold crevices on the upper lip, then rolled and slipped his waist over the edge until his toes found the first indentation.

“I’m not going down there.” The words flew from Red’s mouth.

“It’s easy. I just told you I did it when I was eight. It’s a ladder.”

“I don’t like ladders.”

“I’ll be under you. I’ll put your feet in the holes.”

“Oh God!”

“C’mon. I want you to see the Indian ring.”

“You mean we’ve got to go up ...”

“I found the ladder there, too. Come on. It’s safer than driving across country.”

Slowly they descended the cliff, Bobby guiding Red’s feet. The floor of the gap was rock ledge. Scattered trees were trying to survive in debris pockets of humus and till. In spots, water was trapped in stagnant puddles that supported toads, newts, and insects. They crossed quickly then climbed the vertical wall of the far side and entered the last of the virgin eastern hemlock forest. In less than one hundred yards they hit the old Lenape trail, an eighteen-inch-wide track worn a foot deep into the forest floor by generations of moccasined travelers, a small section still well preserved after 500 years, even after more than a century of abuse to the surrounding land. In his youth Bob had shown his grandfather the ladders and the two had silently walked the trail on dozens of Sunday mornings. It had always struck awe into him, the stillness, the trees towering to 150 feet. It still did. But now, Red, exhilarated by the climbs, shifted to high-chatter mode.

“Ssshh,” Bobby hissed.

“But this is amazing. Amazing. I’m going to really miss this. I’m still not sure if I should drive or if I should sell my Vee-doub and fly. What do you think?”

“Red, we’re in a cathedral. You’ve got to keep your voice down.”

“But Bobby, this is important. We keep acting like I’m not going. I’m going in eight days! I love this place. Really! But we’ve got to talk. I ... you’ve ... we ...” She chattered nonstop as they hiked. He tuned her out. The trail twisted, turned, stayed almost perfectly level as it meandered between hills and gorges. At one point they passed the small spur that led to the Indian fire ring. Finally they circled out toward the back of the north ridge behind the upper meadow. There the trail, the hemlocks, stopped. Again there was the gap, but here not so deep, not so steep. The virgin forest on the other side had been cut on the last logging day some fifty years earlier.

They picked up a new path just north of the ridge. Bobby led the still-gabbing Red down the east arm, across the ridge toward the small family cemetery. “If you come out,” Red was saying, “maybe you could drive the Vee-doub for me and I could fly. That’d work for us both.”

Bob was disgusted. He had been looking for a cleansing ritual, a near-religious experience like he’d had the first time he found the Indian trail, a communion with the past and with the land that he and Red could share. But the chattering! He was offended. He had taken her to his most sacred site and she’d treated it like McDonald’s. Again he was quiet, sullen, unresponsive. Red scampered to keep up, yakked to fill the space of his silence. Quietly Bobby parted the orderly pine break and walked into the cemetery. His grandfather was there, kneeling before his grandmother’s stone, planting flowers. He looked up, smiled an awkward smile, looked back down, wiped his eyes. Again he looked up, this time with a real smile.

“Well,” he said to Bobby, “are you gonna make that little lady drive that little car out or not? She must a asked you a dozen times. Answer her, won’t ya?”

“I’m ... I haven’t yet decided if I’m going anyplace, Granpa.” He turned. Red was behind, silent. “You drive it out, okay? Or sell it. Get something better.”

Late that night they made frantic love, and for the first time in weeks, as Bobby held her, as he studied her face, her eyes, he felt in love with Bea Hollands. Over the next week they made love every night, desperate, clinging love, despite all his earlier trepidations. Then on the 31st, the eve of Red’s departure, Bobby did something he had not anticipated. For three years he’d worn a silver Jumping Mary medallion, a portrait of the Virgin Mary with a parachute behind her, on a string about his neck. He was not that religious but he’d gotten the medal the day he’d earned his jump wings and had seldom removed it. He’d intended giving it to Stacy. Then, after the first time with Red, he’d decided to give it to her, but he’d held out, intending the gift for a special occasion. He had intended giving it to her at dinner earlier that evening but had decided to wait until they were in bed. After loving he decided to wait until just before she left. And when she left he decided against giving it away at all.

Turmoil. Constant, unrelenting turmoil. The morning Red left, Bobby and Josh walked the trail around the pond. While holding Josh close, Bobby cried. Whether he cried for Red or for himself he did not know, or if it was because one more person had left his life. He felt miserable at the crags, nauseated at the old shack, despondent in the high meadow. By the time he’d worked his way to the big barn he was cried out. By evening he was relieved. Within a day he was happy, within two, elated to be free, to have a thousand options open.

On the evening of the third of November 1969 he sat down before the television set in the living room of the old farmhouse and he and Grandpa watched Richard Nixon deliver to the American people his first major policy speech on Viet Nam. In the speech the president ruled out a quick withdrawal; pledged eventual withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops; emphasized Viet Namization; and stated that the U.S. would respond with strong measures if Hanoi increased battlefield activity.