Keeping Watch (17 page)

When the Carmichael skiff was secure, Ed thrust a hand down to help the younger man climb into the
Orca Queen.
Allen balanced on his skiff's seat, but when he glanced up to check that his weight wasn't going to pull his rescuer off into the water, he found himself looking into a veritable tapestry of tattoos, the main character in which was a sinuous dragon that took up the better part of the arm from elbow to shoulder. One of the man's two long braids, brown with threads of gray shot through it, looped slowly off his shoulder to dangle over the tattoo.

Allen froze, brought up short by a weird sensation of near recognition—
never trust a kid even the babies'll kill you never walk through an open
—but when he glanced at the other arm, then farther up the man's body, the sense of familiarity faded. The other arm held no matching dragon; there was no twine necklace around the suntanned neck. This was not the Snakeman. And the smile beneath the oversized moustache was the friendliest thing Allen had seen in a long time.

“Thanks,” he told his rescuer, and clasped the oak-hard hand to pull himself up onto the
Orca Queen.

“Thanks” was all the conversation Ed seemed to require. The
Orca Queen
's master seemed interested in philosophy. Maybe
obsessed
was a better word. All the way to Lopez, a slow trip against the tide, with the skiff slewing around behind them on the tow rope and darkness settling down, Ed played his tapes of Hendrix, Joplin, and the Grateful Dead, and lectured his passenger about the history of Taoism, the Chinese philosophy based on The Way, or The Path, which seemed to be what the word “Tao” meant. Ed had discovered that “The Way” was also an early name for the movement that came to be called Christianity, and he spent some time speculating on the possible links, historical and psychological. Or something—Allen wasn't really paying much attention. One might have thought the demands of prolonged conversation would soon have had Allen eyeing the black waters off the stern, but in fact, Ed's steady stream of vocalized meditation demanded little participation from his audience. It was, in the end, very nearly restful, rather like a waterfall of words with a rock and roll accompaniment, leaving Allen free to meditate on his cave. One thing, however, did get through.

“You know,” Ed said in a voice of mild speculation—they were coming past the ferry slip on Shaw at the time, with its Franciscan attendant—“Sartre said that the only real moral decision a man makes is whether or not to commit suicide.” They went on for a while, long enough to clear the north end of Lopez, circle the polyplike Frost, and turn south again into Lopez Sound before Ed added, “Might be worth pointing out that Sartre didn't in the end commit suicide. Which either means that he couldn't make up his mind, or that he wasn't a very moral man.”

“I wasn't trying to commit suicide,” Allen told him, in the longest sentence he'd put together since May.

“Well, there's two kinds of trying. One is going after something with both hands, the other is just leaving the door open in case it decides to come after you.”

Allen watched the dark outline of the shore go by, the lights of houses and the glow from beach fires, before an answer formed itself around the buoyant shape of the internal cave. “No, I really wasn't.”
Maybe for the first time in a while.

“That's good to hear,” Ed commented. “Be a bit of a waste, seems to me, after all you've been through. I mean, hell, there's a lot of women out there, boy.”

Allen laughed—actually laughed. “Women and I, it's not a great mix. Last time I slept with my wife, I tried to kill her.”

“Oh yeah, I've known women like that myself,” Ed told him cheerfully, and then went about the business of getting them in to the Carmichael dock.

Chapter 15

Jerry set the plate on the table in front of Allen and left the room. Allen listened to his brother's retreating footsteps, and heard a door closing upstairs. He turned his attention to the macaroni and cheese, which had not benefited either from Allen's absence or from Jerry's irritation, but such was his appetite that he polished off every dried and chewy crumb. In truth, it tasted profoundly nurturing, like communion, perhaps, or a glass of cool water after a high fever. When he had finished, Allen loaded his plate and glass into the dishwasher, filled its container with soap and set the cycle going, then made some coffee. When the pot's gurgling turned to an asthmatic splutter, he poured the rich liquid into two cups, added milk to one, and carried them up the stairs. With both handles gripped in his left hand, he opened the door to Jerry's bedroom.

Jerry looked up startled from the desk where he was writing a letter, and watched wordlessly as Allen brought the coffee in and set the milky cup on the desk next to the pad of paper. Allen leaned up against the wall and sucked in a cautious swallow of the hot brew, and suddenly noticed across the top of his cup that his baby brother was in fact a man, bearded and wide-shouldered as their father. Jerry must be, what? Twenty? No, Christ—the kid had just had a birthday, and turned twenty-one.

The same age Allen had been when he'd come home from Vietnam.

“Is everything okay?” Jerry asked him, not expecting an answer.

“Jerry, why are you here?”

“So, you've decided to talk. Weintraub'll be happy. What do you mean, why am I here? I live here, in case you didn't notice.”

“I meant, aren't you supposed to be in school?”

“Allen, it's summer vacation.”

“Right,” Allen said. “Right, I knew that. And, remind me why Dad's not here? I know you told me, but . . .”

“He and his girlfriend went to Europe. Jesus, Allen, you saw the postcard he sent from France. What's wrong with you, anyway? Where have you been?” He meant that day, no doubt, but Allen heard the question behind it:
Where have you been, all these years?

“Just . . . around.”

“Al, you picked up more scars in the past year than you brought home from Vietnam. Isn't it time you got yourself together before something serious happens to you?”

“I been thinking the same thing.”

“Yeah, I've heard that before,” Jerry muttered. “What the hell
have
you been doing, anyway?”

“You don't want to know.”

Jerry's face closed down. He turned back to his desk. “Fine, I don't want to know. Thanks for the coffee.”

“Jer, I'm sorry.”

“Don't worry about it.”

“I mean it, Jerry,” Allen told his brother's back. “I am very sorry, for a lot of shit over a lot of time.”

Jerry drifted around to face him. Allen sighed, and sat down on the foot of the twin-sized bed. He and his brother had slept together in this bed a handful of times, for comfort after their mother died, by necessity a few times when the house was bursting with guests. He doubted the narrow mattress would hold them both now. Even alone, Jerry must have to curl up to keep his feet from sticking over the end.

“You do know that Lisa divorced you?” Jerry asked when Allen showed no sign of speaking.

“Yeah, I got the papers in . . . somewhere. And a really vicious letter. Who could blame her? I wouldn't have stuck by me as long as she did.” Words were hard, but becoming easier, like water finding its course through a breached dike. “Thank God we never had kids. Is she okay, have you heard? Still on the mainland?”

“She's in Florida, last I heard. Miami. I see her sister sometimes—remember Nikki?”

“The kid with the incredible hair?”

“That's her. She's seventeen, and so gorgeous it's scary.”

“Oh yeah?” Allen raised an eyebrow, a ghostly imitation of the easy relationship they'd had as kids.

“Not like that. She's got a boyfriend, this creep from Anacortes, treats her like shit. Why do girls put up with that?”

Allen looked down at his hands around the cup, the vivid feel of teeth meeting those knuckles shooting up his arm. He took a deep breath.

“Jerry,” he heard himself say, as from a great distance. “You ever hear about a place they call My Lai?”

“Of course. You weren't there.”

Jerry's sure response gave Allen pause: Jerry had been, what? thirteen at the time, yet he'd kept close enough track of his older brother to know unhesitatingly that Allen hadn't been at My Lai. “No,” he agreed. “But it wasn't the only thing like that during the war. You leave men out in the woods long enough, all on their own, eating the enemy's shit, well . . . They're not men anymore. The problem there was, the brass had decided to put on a staged battle for the press, let the folks back home see for themselves what hotshots we were, only they forgot to tell the men on the ground that the whole world was watching them. When things got out of hand, there was nothing the brass could do to hush it up. Shocked indignation all around. Calley stood trial for a lot of others. The lieutenant in charge of my platoon . . . well, he got himself blown up, or else you might've been reading about us, too. And that's all I'm going to say about it. I just wanted to tell you. And I'm not saying it excuses anything I've done, except that, when you see a thing like that—when you
do
something like that—it never leaves you. You never get over it.”

“Is that what you dream about? I hear you, sometimes,” Jerry explained, apologetic.

“I dream about a lot of things, not always when I'm sleeping. And sometimes . . .” Allen ran a hand over his hair, trying to work out how to say what needed telling, how much to reveal. “Things happen that bring it all back. I mean, bring it back so it's like I'm there again. For the most part, it's like the whole war is just walled off, and then something will happen—a smell or a sound, a face maybe—that knocks a hole in the wall and there I am, back with the jungle in my ears and nose. It takes a while to come back again, after that happens. To build up the wall again. Anyway, I'm sorry, and I appreciate how hard it is to be around me, while I'm making repairs.” He stood up to leave. “I'll let you get on with your letter.”

Jerry studied his brother's haggard face, remembering how when Allen came home—on crutches, twenty-one but already an old man—Jerry'd been almost scared to be around him. His brother's face had been without expression, only the eyes darting about, watching and wary. Allen had lost that frozen look over the years, but what lived on his face now was almost worse, a slackness and incomprehension that made him look lost and ancient. Jerry had always felt bad that he'd never found a way of telling him that it didn't matter, that he still loved him, and he couldn't think of a way to do it now, either. The only answer he could come up with was not a verbal one. Knowing full well that Allen hated to be touched, Jerry stood and went over to him, and put his arms around his brother. He was just thinking in surprise,
I didn't know I was taller than him,
when he felt a tremor go through the wasted body. Jerry tightened his arms, expecting his brother to fight free; instead, Allen's arms shot around him, wrapping down hard so that his fingers dug into Jerry's shoulders. Then Allen shuddered, and now his entire body was shaking against his brother's solid frame, shaking like a man wracked by fever. He sobbed three times, four, painful, wrenching noises gasped into the hollow of Jerry's neck, and then he did break away, shoving Jerry back hard enough to send him stumbling into the desk, fleeing out the bedroom door and down the stairs.

When Allen did not return that night, Jerry told himself in resignation,
So much for getting yourself together.
His brother was gone again, disappearing into the void as he had every time before. In a day or two, some stranger would phone to say he'd found the Carmichael skiff tied to his dock, or else Jerry would get a note in his mailbox from someone working for the ferries to say he'd let Allen ride to the mainland, and maybe Jerry could drop off the fare next time he was up at the dock. And one of these times, the phone call would be from a stranger, to say that his brother had been found dead.

However, the phone call did not come, the note did not appear. Instead, forty-six hours later the door opened and Allen came in: unshaven, limping heavily, and wearing the same clothes he'd left the house in, smelling not of booze but of clean earth and salt water, his gaze clear and even. He nodded at Jerry and a couple of their cousins who were over watching TV, went upstairs to shower and shave, and came down to fix himself a sandwich. He even sat in the room with them and watched the program, although Jerry didn't think he was taking in much of it. When the cousins left, Jerry switched off the television.

“You want a cup of coffee?” he asked Allen.

“Yeah, I would. Thanks.”

Allen followed him into the kitchen, laying the plate and glass in the sink. Jerry felt his brother's eyes on him as he spooned the grounds and poured the water; he wondered what was going on. Little point inquiring, though—he'd just get the silent treatment.

“What happened to the old percolator?” Allen asked after a while.

“Just up and died one day. Took it in to Tony to ask if he could fix it, he said it'd be cheaper to buy one of these. Makes better coffee, anyway. Where've you been?”

“Back in the womb, seeking enlightenment,” Allen answered. Jerry didn't get the joke, but figured any answer at all was a good sign.

“Did you find it?”

Now the silence came back, and with it Jerry's despair. But when he glanced over, he was surprised to see his brother's face transformed by a deep, private smile.

Allen stared bemused at the gurgling machine, caught up in his memory of long hours of dreamlike emptiness, of listening with fascination and the first tendrils of understanding to the sounds of playing children that ran through the back of his hearing. He smiled to himself at the unformed but sure feeling that the cave was a place that would welcome him, hide him, nurture him. At the simple sense of well-being he'd gained there, which was probably as close as he would ever get to understanding enlightenment, or grace. Too much nuttiness for Jerry, however, so he merely said, “Nope, no sudden nirvana, just cold feet and an empty stomach. Tell me something, Jerry; did Saigon fall or was that something I hallucinated, too?”

“God, did it ever. Like a rock. Two, three months ago. There were pictures of helicopters taking off from a roof jammed with people, thousands of them trying to get a ride away. Some of them were giving their babies away to complete strangers, can you imagine? God only knows what happened to them all.”

“I must have seen the pictures somewhere. That would have been April?”

“End of April, right. There's probably still a
Time
magazine around somewhere, if you want to see it.”

“That's okay,” Allen said, and accepted the cup of coffee. The end of April, Saigon had been overrun by the NVA, shutting down the futile crusade that had taken the lives of Streak and T-bone and Birdman and deRosa, cost Chris his surfing legs, taken from so many others their sanity and their relationships with the world. That was the end of April; it was early May, so far as he could remember, that he'd tried to pound the wife-beater into his shag carpet. He burned afresh with the humiliation and outrage that had taken hold of him when he'd looked up in some bar and seen those laden helicopters on the television screen, relived the shame at having alone survived one of God's huge, bitter jokes, all that death and torture and madness for nothing. But also, now, he could feel a trace of relief. His overreaction to the man's abuse had been at least in part a reaction to the news, not a clear sign that he was losing his mind completely. Not that it made much of a difference, but it was nice to know. Made him feel nearly human.

Time, then, to start acting like one. Conversation, he thought; it's what we humans do. He cast around for a topic, and cleared his throat. “You decided yet what you want to do, when you get out of college?”

“I'm going to be a cop.” The defiance in Jerry's voice spoke volumes: He'd clearly been over this with their father.

Allen stared at him, seeing the number of police cars he'd so carefully avoided over the years, feeling on his arms the ghostly imprint of impatient, even brutal hands, hustling his ass into the drunk tank. “A cop, huh?”

“I've got to get off this island, Al. I feel like a rock, with moss creeping up over me.”

Allen couldn't imagine his brother out of the islands. “You'll come back,” he said.

“Christ, you sound just like Dad.”

“Sorry. But really, Jer, you love this place.”

“Okay, so I love the place. That doesn't mean I'm not suffocating here. I was thinking of joining the Army for a stretch, and then finishing college. Like you did.”

Allen opened his mouth to protest:
You don't want to join up, little brother, believe me you don't want to put on a uniform and go kill a lot of small brown-skinned people who are only trying to protect their own country.
He teetered on the edge of spilling everything: deRosa, the heaped children, shame and a fatigue so great it went beyond the reach of sleep; the near-sexual release of standing with his platoon brothers and wiping out the ville; the lighter fluid boys under the bridge and the convenience store holdup (
was
it a dream?) and beating the wife-beater and everything—even that final thing, the perfect, solitary, gently rolling unpinned hand grenade—that he faced only in his dreams. But the thought of Brennan's eyes hit like a bucket of cold water on the heat of the impulse. No way he'd wish those images on a person he loved. Besides, Vietnam was over, right? The Army was out of the business of jungle warfare, for a few years anyway. And Jerry had just said he wanted to be a cop. How could he go ahead with that plan, knowing his older brother was a person who'd broken most of the laws on the books? Bad enough their father's lifetime of misdemeanors; Allen's were of a different plane entirely. Jerry would understand, Allen knew that, but he would also be torn between loyalties.