“You talk the same as Billy,” Manny said. “I notice that you don’t like to use gook or other derogatory slang to describe the other side.”
“It wasn’t their fault, they were jacked into a bunch of bullshit, just like we were. At least we had some idea of what was going on. They were mostly uneducated and continually brainwashed. At least we only had to go through that shit in boot camp. Once you got to Vietnam, it was every man for himself, and like I said before, you learned to loath your side more, knowing what you did.”
“Do you think that many of those ARVIN you talked about, eventually got here, to the states I mean?” asked Manny.
“Oh, I’d imagine a lot of them did. They were the smart ones, looking out for themselves. I don’t blame them either. I figure that if they’re lucky enough, they can come here and then do the best they can, more power to them.” Tainer looked at Manny for a moment, then asked. “So what happened to Palmer? What’s got you so interested in us old sniper dudes?”
“Oh, the more I find out about you guys, the madder I get at myself,” Manny answered.
“You’re pissed about something?” Tainer questioned. “You mentioned that a woman came between you guys. What did you do to Palmer that you’re regretting now?”
“A lot of things I guess. Billy and I were great friends since we were in grade school. He was a great kid. We had a lot of fun, I can remember so many things now.”
“What happened?”
“He went to Vietnam, I stayed home.
“How come?”
“Oh, Billy took off right out of high school. We were at a party one night and there was a Life Magazine with a pictorial about the war. A bunch of us were looking at it and Billy made some comment about it looked interesting, or something like that. Anyway, somebody, I can’t remember who, called him on the comment and Billy said, “Oh yeah” and next thing we know, he’s volunteered for the draft. It was only two years that way and Billy said he had no interest in staying in the military any longer than he had to. After he passed his physical, they said he could have his choice of the Army, or the Marines because he had volunteered. I remember him laughing about how it was February and Army boot camp was in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and the Marine boot camp was in San Diego. He made his choice based on the weather alone. He said he was standing on yellow footprints, at attention, with some nasty little bastard yelling in his face, before he realized he should have thought it through better.”
“That was a shock all right,” Mark laughed. “I was right there with him. We went through boot camp and then the Vietnam thing together. I can remember Billy getting into all kinds of trouble for laughing. This little DI would stand right in front of him staring up, giving him a line of shit. I mean this little guy was really tough, but funnier than hell. He’d pick on Billy, until Billy would smirk or something, and then Palmer would end up doing squat thrusts. I think that DI got a kick out of Palmer. The day we graduated that DI put his hand on Billy’s shoulder and told him to be careful and pay attention, that the war was no joke.
“How did you guys end up snipers?” Manny asked.
“When we got over there, they were looking at our records and we both scored high on the rifle range and they asked us if we were interested in going to sniper school. One of the Marines advised us that the regular ground pounders was not the way to go and we took it. I can’t tell you how many times I was grateful that we did what we did. I felt sorry for those regular grunts, man they had it rough. They were tired, dirty, scared, humping all day, then digging in, standing watch half the night. It all adds up to being numb, that’s the only way to continue. It went on day after day and there was nothing they could do about it. It could be a booby trap, a couple of shots by a sniper, a mortar round thrown in, but it’s all the same. A chopper comes and does its thing, takes somebody away. Sometimes it’s someone you know, sometimes not. Worst is when you’re close to someone. Getting close only takes a couple of hours because the guys talk about what they miss the most, what’s dear to them. You want to hear about anybody’s home, the ‘World’, as we called it, and it doesn’t matter who’s version you get. It is where you want to be instead of where you are. That’s about as close as you can get to someone in a short time.”
“Sometimes it can happen two, three, four times in a single day.” Tainer continued, sadness in his vice. “It all happens so fast, a body bag laying there was minutes ago some guy you were just talking to. It’s strange, but your heart doesn’t ache for that guy, but for the family back in the States that you know is going to get some shitty news in the next few hours. That’s where your thoughts go. To them because they had nothing to do with this, but they’re going to pay. The more they loved that guy, the worse it’s going to be.”
Tainer paused, looked out the window, and then continued. “I hated it when we had to go with the line companies. I mean talk about stupid shit. When we were in the jungle, just a couple of us, or maybe four or five sometimes, it was so much better.”
“I would think it would be dangerous, just a small number of guys?” Manny commented.
“No, like I told you, we moved without them knowing where we were, or if we were there at all. Shit, we were so good that we snuck up on a tiger one time.”
“No shit!”
“No shit! Sucker jumped about five feet straight up in the air, turned and vanished. I doubt if that cat had ever seen humans in the bush before. Really surprised his ass!” Tainer looked at Manny. “Now that I’ve told you about Billy and Vietnam, you tell me why you’re here?”
“I told you Billy died last month,” Manny answered.
“Yeah, and?”
“He didn’t have it so good after Vietnam,” Manny said sadly.
“Many of the guys had it rough, not just Billy. I know a few guys that never fit in after they were back. They’re still out there, wondering around, unstable as hell. The war was their only chance to shine and they’d do it again, in a flash. Many of them came from small towns just like Billy, and the military was their only cosmopolitan experience. After the service, they went back to the small town, and the training they got wasn’t exactly something they could use to assimilate.”
“Makes sense, I could see where that could happen,” Manny agreed. “You know some of these guys, keep in touch?”
“I know they’re out there. You have something you want to get off your chest?” Tainer asked.
“How did you know that?”
“I’m a smart guy, that’s how I got through the war without a scratch, I might add.”
“Billy was wounded,” Manny said.
“Yeah, more than once.”
“How did it happen?”
“You tell me what’s on your mind first, and I’ll decide if you’re worth any more of my time,” Mark Tainer answered.
“Fair enough.”
Chapter 8
“Billy and I were friends since seventh grade,” Manny explained. “He moved from someplace on the East coast that summer, the one between seventh and eighth grades. I met him at the golf course, he was a good player and so was I. The golf course was a hangout, most of my friends parents belonged, like mine did. Billy’s didn’t, but he hung around there to caddie. He was a good player and the golf pro let him play. We pretty much lived at the course in the summer because they also had a swimming pool and tennis courts. Everyone liked Billy because he was fun. The girls liked him too because he was nice to them, kind of like a brother, or a confidant. Billy was sort of daring, not beyond pulling stunts. If you were looking for something to do, he was the guy. He was sort of a loner too. I mean, you couldn’t talk him into doing anything he didn’t want to do and he didn’t push himself on you, but the good stuff just seemed to happen around Billy. I mean, I could sit here for hours and tell you about some funny stuff. He could screw around in school and most of the time the teachers would get a laugh out of it. He never did something that got anybody else in trouble, and if any trouble came our way
, he would cop to it, even if he wasn’t the one, and it would blow over. Oh, he wasn’t an angel or anything like that because there were something’s that we could have gotten into real trouble over, but we were lucky, I guess.”
“One of our big things was throwing snow balls at cars and it got a little out of control. They had this husband and wife golf tourney every summer, kind of crazy golf, and they had this big sling-shot to fire the golf balls on one hole. We got a hold of it and used it to fire ice balls at cars because it would shoot a whole block. We pummeled the three cop cars in town one night for about half an hour from the back of a nursery. One of the cops got pissed and started shooting his pistol at us, so we scrammed. We saved the slingshot and put it back, so the cops never figured it out.
“There was this Hood, that’s what we called the tough guys then, Wyscouski, and he used to beat everyone up. We set a trap for him one night. We hit Wyscouski’s car with snow balls and when he got out, Billy let Wyscouski see him so he would chase him. Billy drew him into this back yard with a high fence and we were all waiting. Man, did we knock the shit out of Wacko, that was his nick name. Anyway, he tried to run out the other side gate, but we had iced down the sidewalk and stretched a blackened rope across the open gate and Wyscouski caught it right in the running lights. We thought we had killed him, knocked him out cold. Billy and I carried him across the street and put him on Billy’s girlfriend’s porch and rang the doorbell. He never figured out who it was until years later. He would have killed us then, I’m sure. He suspected Billy, but I think he kind of liked Billy, cause he never did anything to him.”
“We used to work together and Billy was kind of over me. It wasn’t official, or anything, but he was just more dependable than I was, and better with the customers. The boss, old man McPherson, knew it and kind of took advantage of Billy because Billy would take care of anything that came up and the old man counted on it. He never gave Billy anything extra, but he used to compliment him a lot. ‘Pump sunshine up my skirt,’ as Billy used to say. Billy used to cover for me and Andy McPherson, the boss’s son. Andy was a real fuck-up, but his dad let him get away with a lot and Billy picked up the slack, so Andy didn’t look so bad. I can remember one time I got Billy fired. It was all my fault. We were working Saturday and I came in late. I had, had a rough night.” Manny sat thinking, reflecting back.
“Geez Manny, you stink! How much you drink last night? Billy asked me when I got in.”
“I told him, ‘Way too much man and I feel like shit. I don’t know if I can do this. Oh my head!’”
“‘Shit,’ advised Billy, ‘we’re the only two this morning, you’ve got to stick it out,’”
“I told him I didn’t know if I could, that throwing up on customers was a real possibility.”
“Billy laughed and said, ‘Well don’t barf on somebody important. Old Man McPherson will fire us both. He’s already pissed.’”
“I wanted to know if McPherson had been in yet and Billy said, ‘Yeah, he’s down at the diner getting breakfast.’ Billy covered for me and told the old man I was having car trouble, but was on my way.”
“Billy told me, ‘It’ll blow over, just don’t figure on going home until he’s gone for the day.’”
“I was so sick, I was wondering if I was green or anything?”
“No,’ Billy said, ‘but you smell like a friggin brewery, so just stay in back, I’ll take care of out front.’”
“‘Okay, but if I get any sicker,’ I told him, ‘I don’t know what will happen?’”
“‘No problemo,’ Billy told me, ‘but you’re going to have to stay close, going home right now is not an option.’”
“Anyway, I gargled with some mouthwash and when old man McPherson came back, I guess I passed all right because he just gave me a sort of snitty look, but didn’t say anything. He went off to play golf about noon and I went and laid down in the back room and fell asleep for a while.”
“Andy came in, he was supposed to work the afternoon shift, but he had been drinking already to kill the hangover he had. Billy was supposed to get off at two, but Andy was in no shape to relieve him and I was still feeling bad so Billy said he would close up for us and we took off.
That stupid Andy forgot to throw his beer cans away and Old man McPherson came back just after closing and found them. Billy had everything finished and was going home and I had come back to make it look like I had been there all day. I brought a couple beers and Billy and I were going to share one. McPherson came storming out into the parking lot, and there’s Billy with the beer. He hadn’t even taken a drink. McPherson fired him on the spot and didn’t say a word to me until Billy left, then McPherson asked me if I knew that Billy was drinking on the job and I said I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think so. Billy had to beg for his job back. That’s when the old man accused him of stealing. There was always money missing, not much, but I guess enough for the old man to notice. We knew it was Andy all along, but we never ratted on him. McPherson made Billy work for two weeks for nothing, otherwise he wouldn’t give him his job back. Red Pine was a small town and that job was about the only one that was decent, so Billy didn’t have any choice. He put up with a lot, especially Andy and I screwing around all the time.”
“While Billy was away in Vietnam, McPherson built a brand new store, about five times bigger; a real full service operation. When Billy got back, it was by far the best job within fifty miles. Billy came back to work, but while he was gone, I was made assistant manager in charge of the Sporting Goods and Andy had taken over the Hardware Dept. Billy ended up working for us and we weren’t very nice to him. I mean, looking back, we were still kind of fuck ups, not as bad as high school, but Andy was still skimming a few bucks and I didn’t work as hard as I could have. I’m finding out now that in the two years Billy was gone; he matured and did incredible things, while we just enjoyed life.
“The worst thing that happened to Billy,” Manny continued, “was the Tri-town Golf Tournament. After Billy quit working at the store because he got tired of our bullshit so he went to work at the golf course. He worked on the maintenance crew and the course superintendent loved him. He started working in the spring and worked on his golf game all that summer. I don’t think he had played for a couple of years because of the Marines, but he got his game back fast and was playing really well and on Labor Day week, there is a Tri-town Tourney.”
“Billy, Andy McPherson and I were in the championship flight. I had won my second match, and was to play the winner of the match between Billy and Andy. Andy was the crowd favorite, but I didn’t think he had a chance. I knew I could beat Andy, but didn’t think I could beat Billy, so I was pulling for Andy too. The whole town was at that tourney, watching that match and we were such snobs, no one even offered to caddie for Billy. Andy was pulling the match out of his butt because he chipped in three times and sunk two long putts and they came to the eighteenth even. Andy hit a bad drive into the rough on the left side and Billy hit a great shot up the right, into this open spot just in the rough. From there it was an easy shot to the green. One of Andy’s friends was standing right where Billy’s ball stopped and he picked it up and put it in his pocket. It was just this little group of Andy’s friends standing there when Billy came up to find his ball. No one copped to what had happened and Billy had to take a two shot penalty for a lost ball and lost the match right there. I found out what happened a little later, but I didn’t say anything because Billy had already left the course. Billy left town about a week later, and no one saw him again for, oh I don’t know, probably twenty years. I guess he came back once, just to look around.”
Manny turned away, quiet for a moment. “He got thrown in jail because of us.” Manny told Mark the story, admitting to the whole thing. He also showed Mark the trial transcript.
“That son-of-a-bitch had the balls to do this?” Mark raised his voice, holding the transcript up to Manny, shaking it.
“Pretty sad, huh? It gets even worse. Cassey
Miller was his girlfriend. Cassey and Billy had been together since freshman in high school. She was really beautiful, intelligent, and kind. I was a little jealous, but Andy, Bueler and some of the other guys were really infatuated with her. While Billy was in Vietnam, we used to bring up the baby killing and all that. Anything we could to make the soldiers look bad, to make her forget Billy. I don’t know what worked, but after Billy had been gone for about three months, just after he got wounded the first time, Cassey started hanging around me and I was thrilled. I was floating on top of the world and I started dreading Billy coming back because I thought it would be over with Cassey. We got close and a couple of months before Billy came home, we were lovers, and Cassey just stuck with me. I was terrified that she would dump me and go back to Billy, but he didn’t seem all that upset when he found out, and Cassey figured that he didn’t care about her enough, so I ended up with the girl.”
“Were you proud of yourself?”
“Hell no! Look, I don’t know how I felt. I was scared shitless though. Andy McPherson said Billy was just waiting for the right time to cut my throat, to get Cassey back.”
“What made you think you were worth his time?”
“Oh, after a while I stopped worrying, but when you’re in love it’s really important to you at the time.”
“So for a little fling, you stabbed your best friend in the back.”
“Look, I know what you’re thinking, but in my defense Cassey came to me first and she is a wonderful lady. I’m still married to her today.”
“Well, that is a touching story. How does this Cassey feel about what you’re doing?”
“Well, like she told me, she became a good wife and mother. According to her it was her duty, ergo, no fault of hers what happened to Billy, but she sympathizes and supports my mission.”
“Your mission, is that some kind of attempt to impress me, the military talk?”
“Oh no, Geez, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass. I don’t know why I said that. I guess it does feels like a mission though, trying to find out what made Billy’s life fail.”