The Heart You Carry Home (23 page)

“Your man Arne Tased me,” Ben said.

“Because you spoke with a civilian, which is forbidden. I agreed to let those women in out of respect for Jeanine for first bringing King to me. But they have agreed to follow my rules.”

“I'm looking for King.” Ben pressed on. “And his daughter, Becca. Just tell me where they are and I'll leave.”

“Well, I don't know about the girl, but King is on his way.”

Ben's heart paused. “When will he get here?” he asked.

The CO looked toward the windows. In profile, the man's face was classically handsome. It conjured up images of gladiators and swords. “It seems,” he said, still absorbed in the darkness beyond the glass, “that you now have a reason to stay with us awhile.”

Ben shook his head. “I'll go back across the river and wait for her.”

“Son.” The CO sighed and looked squarely at Ben. “Will you please do me the courtesy of sitting down? You're making me nervous.”

Cautiously, Ben pulled up the wooden chair and sat with his body arched over his knees. A ready position. He wanted to be ready—to run or to attack. Whatever was necessary.

“Nobody comes here by accident,” the CO said.

“I told you why I came.”

The CO smiled, exposing large gray teeth. “Becca.” He nodded. “Yes, but that is merely the surface reason. The deeper reason is that you are sick. Your mind is a prison. You are desperate for rest and can find none. The people closest to you are strangers. Your Becca, perhaps?” The CO scanned Ben's face. Ben tried to remain impassive despite feeling increasingly uncomfortable. “Deep down, soldier, you know that you cannot function out there anymore.” The CO looked at the center of Ben's forehead, as though tunneling directly into his brain. “You are here, son, because you have nowhere else to go.”

“You don't know me,” Ben said.

“It's true. And
you
don't know
me
either, which is why we should get acquainted. I was King's staff sergeant in Vietnam, as you may know. I started this place in order to help my brothers . . . and”—the CO nodded—“my sons.”

I'm not your son,
Ben thought. He said, “I don't want your help.”

“Of course not.” There was the gray smile again. “Soldiers help themselves. But left to your own devices, you're a threat to yourself and those close to you. The pain comes out, eventually. And if that energy isn't released properly, people get hurt. Loved ones, for example.”

Ben felt his face redden. “You're just saying all of this because you know where I spent the last fifteen months.” Ben sat up straight now and folded his arms across his chest. This was Becca's favorite defensive stance, and it made him miss her even more.

“Well, I'm
guessing
you've tried the army's remedies and they've done nothing for you,” the CO said, losing some of his composure. “How many meds did they prescribe you? How many shrinks passed you around, playing hot potato with your head?”

Ben felt a burning in his chest. So what if the CO knew these things? His situation wasn't exactly unique.

“Out here, son, we're not interested in therapists and pills. You may not be aware, but the Greek generals did not fail their soldiers the way ours failed us. They did not see grief as shameful. They respected the unspeakable pain of warriors for their dead. What is the funeral pyre if not a public confession that where there is death, there is agony?”

Now the CO was just babbling nonsense. He was off the deep end. And since Ben was feeling fairly secure in his physical safety, he wanted to be alone. He needed to think through his strategy for Becca's arrival—and for how to get her home.

Home. He'd hated that place since he'd been back: the too-soft bed, the new pajamas she'd bought him, her attempts to make him comfortable, as if comfort were a sensation he could still access. But it was time to get on with his life. To be normal again.

The CO pulled a bag of weed from his pocket and packed a pipe. He offered the pipe to his guest. Ben had always enjoyed a couple of hits during late-night picking circles. There was nothing quite like playing old-timey fiddle tunes—those glorious musical merry-go-rounds—on a high. But since Ben didn't trust the CO, he certainly didn't trust the CO's drugs. Now, as the CO pulled and exhaled, the room began to fill with smoke. It filled quickly, with great billows. The smoke did not smell like marijuana, and Ben thought about the hydroponic plants growing underground. What in the hell had he stumbled into?

Through the haze, the CO's beard seemed to be composed of smoke itself, the tendrils curling from his face into the air. Ben's lungs felt warm and there was a soft ringing in his ears. He began to relax back into the chair, but something nagged at him. Becca, he remembered. Becca was coming. He sat up, opening his eyes wide against the fog, but his eyelids felt heavy.

The CO said, “I'd like to tell you a story about how I came to be here and why I think you should stay with us.”

Becca,
Ben thought, and tried to speak her name. But his tongue was numb. He could not even open his mouth. The CO leaned forward, and for a moment, Ben saw the man's neck and chest as a snake's body, a shimmering cobra that stretched through the air and hissed.

“Relax,” said the CO as his forked tongue flicked Ben's cheek. “It's going to be a little while before your girl arrives, and anyhow, what do you have to lose?”

December 13, 1980

Dear Willy,

We sat on the plateau overlooking the decimated village of Li Sing for hours. Reno was still passed out. You and Lai talked and the sound of her language was like a screeching jungle bird. I pulled a can of peaches from my pack and ate them, facing Li Sing. It was the one pleasure I'd allowed myself on the trip. Instead of our usual C rations, we'd been sent out with long-range rations, or long rats, the kind of lightweight, just-add-water slop that Special Forces guys carried. But that was where the similarities between us and the real Special Forces ended. They were men trained for months before being sent out on this kind of mission. And us? King was twenty-one. Reno was only nineteen. And though I'd been in longer and had more experience, I was secretly petrified. All of you depended on me.

A dull pink color washed over the rubble and made Durga glow, as though the statue pulsed with an internal light. I had the strange thought that if I touched the gray stone, it would feel warm, even alive. I felt unaccountably sad, like I missed things I couldn't name and people I'd never met. I carried my peaches over to you and asked what you were talking about. You said Lai was explaining Durga's prophecy.

“The statue's prophetic?” I asked.

“It's not a statue, Proudfoot. It's a goddess.”

“You mean a statue of a goddess,” I said. “So what does this goddess prophesize? Can she tell me the next time I'm gonna get laid?” This crack sounded juvenile even to my own ears, and you pretended not to have heard.

“Lai says that Durga foretold Li Sing's destruction.”

“And according to her, who or what was responsible?”

“The forces of the universe.”

“She can't be any more specific?” I licked the last of the peach juice off my spoon and put the can back into my pack. Some guys would just throw it into the jungle, but I wasn't convinced there weren't VC hanging around, and I didn't want to leave behind traces.

“According to the prophecy,” you continued, “when the village was destroyed, only a single person would survive. And that person would become the Carrier—I think that's how it translates—the one who emerges unscathed to carry forward Durga's legacy. To embody her.”

“You're saying that Lai here thinks she's a goddess?”

“More like a steward.”

The light was fading and the pink glow had disappeared from Durga's hard skin. “That's a hunk of stone,” I said. “It's not a prophet or a goddess. And neither is she.”

“He's right,” King said, looking up from the letter he was writing. “If the bombs missed the statue, it's only because the air force's got shitty aim.”

Lai spoke quickly to you, her eyes wild. She seized your arm, and her touch sent a visible tremor through your bony frame. “She's the Carrier! It's the truth. You have to believe, Proudfoot!” You were pleading with us.

“Willy! Hey!” I said. “Snap out of it. She's out of her mind. Anyone can see that.”

But Lai was talking faster now, digging her nails into your arm. This woman wasn't just crazy, I thought. She was Fucking Nam Crazy.

“If she's the Carrier,” King said, “then what's she carrying?”

“Durga's heart.”

“And how did she get it?” I demanded. “Did she scale the statue? Pull out some hunk of stone from inside Durga's chest?”

“She says it's a real heart.”

“A muscle full of blood? I'd like to see it.”

You said something to Lai, but she shook her head. “You can't,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because she put Durga's heart in her stomach.”

Before this statement could register with any of us, Lai pulled up her tunic. To the left of her bellybutton was a patch of shiny pink flesh. Running through the center of the damaged skin was a scar. It was scraggly and white, about five inches long. It looked as though someone had dragged a blunt knife across her belly.

“Jesus,” King whispered.

I squatted down for a closer look. Suddenly, Lai grabbed my wrist. She pressed my palm flat over the scar, held it there with an iron grip. I was frozen and speechless. I couldn't do a thing. Because I felt something. Something alive, pulsing inside of her. I pulled my hand back.

“What is it?” you whispered, your face close to mine. “What did you feel?”

I stood up and backed away. “Soon as Reno wakes up, we're out of here.”

“You felt something,” you called behind me. “You felt the heart.”

I turned to see you putting your hand flat against Lai's stomach, gently touching around the scar like a doctor listening with his stethoscope.

“You felt something,” you said, frantic. “You did!”

“Those cheek bits you got splattered with really messed you up, Willy,” King said.

You stared at King like you didn't understand what he was talking about. You seemed not to notice that Lai had gently removed your hand from her abdomen.

“You don't belong out here,” King snapped, angry out of nowhere. “The army never should have sent you.”

“Proudfoot felt something!”

Fuck this,
I thought and walked into the trees.

That night, I lay in the dark, staring at the sky through a net of overhanging leaves. Out in the jungle, the cicadas screamed. The sky was very black; the stars no more than pinpricks. Reno slept beside me, snoring, which I took to be a good sign. A few hours before, he'd finally woken up and groggily had some water. Then he'd passed out again. Lai mixed a new batch of paste, forced some of it down his throat, and spread the rest over his body. Then she disappeared inside her shelter. “We'll take turns guarding her for the night,” I said. “First thing tomorrow, we're moving out.”

Unable to sleep, lying on my roll, I prayed for something to take me far away from this place, from myself. I'd done this simple thing—touched a woman's belly—and it had filled my body with so much fear, I thought I might explode. And how could I explain that? How could I let in confusion and fear when my life and the lives of my men depended on just the opposite? I thought about borrowing a section of your
Iliad
. Maybe a story could help me relax.

But I must have fallen asleep eventually, because when I opened my eyes again, it was morning.

I rolled over to see Reno shaking King, asking why the fuck he was covered in mud. King groaned and sat up.

“You feel okay?” I said.

“I feel like shit.”

King offered the canteen to Reno, and Reno drank without trouble.

“What's out there?” Reno asked, nodding toward the ridge. Fog hung thick in the gully, obscuring the village. I could just make out Durga's head through the mist, floating as though disembodied.

King explained about Lai and her mad-ass prophecy. He told Reno about the woman's scar. He conveniently left out the part about Lai seizing my hand.

“I missed all that?” Reno shook his head. “Sounds like the most fun we've had in weeks.”

“Let's get Willy and get out of here,” I said.

“Willy!” Reno shouted. “Wake the fuck up!”

“Willy's sleeping?” King and I were on our feet in a flash and running over to where you lay by Lai's hut. Sure enough, you were curled up in a fetal position, cradling your gun like it was a baby. “Hey, kid!” Reno called out. “You dead?” Reno jabbed at you with the toe of his boot and you bolted upright. “Who's dead?”