“Looky here, Dan.” Joe thumped an article in the paper. “President’s economics honcho says the recession’s over and everybody ought to be in fine shape by Christmas. Says new construction’s already up thirty percent.”
“Do tell,” Dan said.
“Got all sorts of graphs in here to show how happy we oughta be.” He showed them to Dan, who glanced at the meaningless bars and arrows and then watched the man with the sign again. “Yeah, things are sure gettin’ better all over, ain’t they?” Joe nodded, answering his own cynical question. “Yessir. Too bad they forgot to tell the workman.”
“Joe, who’s that fella over there?” Dan asked. “The guy with the sign.”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t lift his gaze from the paper. “He was there when I got here. Young fella, looks to be. Hell, every man jack of us would work for food if it came to that, but we don’t wear signs advertisin’ it, do we?”
“Maybe we’re not hungry enough yet.”
“Maybe not,” Joe agreed, and then he said nothing else.
More men were arriving in their pickups and cars, some with wives who let them out and drove off. Dan recognized others he knew, like Andy Slane and Jim Neilds. They were a community of sorts, scholars in the college of hard knocks. Fourteen months ago Dan had been working on the payroll of the A&A Construction Company. Their motto had been We Build the Best for Less. Even so, the company hadn’t been strong enough to survive the bottom falling out of the building business. Dan had lost his job of five years and quickly found that nobody was hiring carpenters full-time. The first thing to go had been his house, in favor of a cheaper apartment. His savings had dwindled amazingly — and frighteningly — fast. Since his divorce in 1984 he’d been paying child support to Susan, so his bank account had never been well padded. But he’d never been a man who needed or expected luxuries, anyway. The nicest thing in his possession was his Chevy pickup — “metallic mist” was the correct name of its color, according to the salesman — which he’d bought three months prior to the crash of A&A Construction. Being behind the two payments bothered him; Mr. Jarrett was a fair man, and Dan was not one to take advantage of fairness. He was going to have to find a way to scrape some cash together.
He didn’t like looking at the man who wore the hand-lettered sign, but he couldn’t help it. He knew what trying to find a steady job was like. With all the layoffs and businesses going under, the help-wanted ads had dried up to nothing. Skilled laborers like Dan and the others who came to Death Valley were the first to feel the hurt. He didn’t like looking at the man with the desperate sign because he feared he might be seeing his own future.
Death Valley was where men who wanted to work came to wait for a “ticket.” Getting a ticket meant being picked for a job by anyone who needed labor. The contractors who were still in business knew about Death Valley, and would go there to find help when a regular crewman was sick or they needed extra hands for a day or two. Regular homeowners sometimes drove by as well, to hire somebody to do such jobs as patching a roof or building a fence. The citizens of Death Valley worked cheap.
And the hell of it, Dan had learned by talking to the others, was that places like Death Valley existed in every city. It had become clear to him that thousands of men and women lived clinging to the edge of poverty through no fault of their own but because of the times and the luck of the draw. The recession had been a beast with a cold eye, and it had wrenched families young and old from their homes and shattered their lives with equal dispassion.
“Hey, Dan! How many’d ya kill?”
Two shadows had fallen across him. He looked up and made out Steve Lynam and Curtis Nowell standing beside him with the sun at their backs. “What?” he asked.
“How many’d ya kill?” Curtis had posed the question. He was in his early thirties, had curly dark brown hair, and wore a yellow T-shirt with NUKE THE WHALES stenciled on it. “How many chinks? More than twenty or less than twenty?”
“Chinks?” Dan repeated, not quite grasping the point.
“Yeah.” Curtis dug a pack of Winstons and a lighter from his jeans pocket. “Charlies. Gooks. Whatever you dudes called ’em back then. You kill more than twenty of ’em?”
Joe pushed the brim of his cap up. “You fellas don’t have anythin’ better to do than invade a man’s privacy?”
“No,” Curtis said as he lit up. “We ain’t hurtin’ anythin’ by askin’, are we, Dan? I mean, you’re proud to be a vet, ain’t you?”
“Yes, I am.” Dan sipped his tea again. Most of the Death Valley regulars knew about his tour of duty, not because he particularly cared to crow about it but because Curtis had asked him where he’d gotten the tattoo. Curtis had a big mouth and he was on the dumb side: a bad combination. “I’m proud I served my country,” Dan said.
“Yeah, you didn’t run to Canada like them draft-dodgin’ fuckers did, huh?” Steve asked. He was a few years older than Curtis, had keen blue eyes and a chest as big as a beer keg.
“No,” Dan answered, “I did what I was told.”
“So how many?” Curtis urged. “More than twenty?”
Dan released a long, weary breath. The sun was beating down on his skull, even through the baseball cap. “Does it really matter?”
“We want to know,” Curtis said, the cigarette clenched between his teeth and his mouth leaking smoke. “You kept a body count, didn’t you?”
Dan stared straight ahead. He was looking at a chain-link fence. Beyond it was a wall of brown bricks. Sun and shadow lay worlds apart on that wall. In the air Dan could smell the burning.
“Talked to this vet once in Mobile,” Curtis plowed on. “Fella was one-legged. He said he kept a body count. Said he knew how many chinks he’d killed right to the man.”
“Jesus Christ!” Joe said. “Why don’t you two go on and pester the shit outta somebody else? Can’t you see Dan don’t want to talk about it?”
“He’s got a voice,” Steve replied. “He can say if he wants to talk about it or not.”
Dan could sense Joe was about to stand up from his chair. When Joe stood up, it was either to go after a ticket or knock the ugly out of somebody. “I didn’t keep a body count,” Dan said before Joe could leave the folding chair. “I just did my job.”
“But you can kinda figure out how many, right?” Curtis wasn’t about to give up until he’d gnawed all the meat off this particular bone. “Like more or less than twenty?”
A slow pinwheel of memories had begun to turn in Dan’s mind. These memories were never far from him, even on the best of days. In that slow pinwheel were fragments of scenes and events: mortar shells blasting dirt showers in a jungle where the sunlight was cut to a murky gloom; rice paddies shimmering in the noonday heat; helicopters circling overhead while soldiers screamed for help over their radios and sniper bullets ripped the air; the false neon joy of Saigon’s streets and bars; dark shapes unseen yet felt, and human excrement lying within the perimeter wire to mark the contempt the Cong had for Uncle Sam’s young men; rockets scrawling white and red across the twilight sky; Ann-Margret in thigh-high boots and pink hot pants, dancing the frug at a USO show; the body of a Cong soldier, a boy maybe fifteen years old, who had stepped on a mine and been blown apart and flies forming a black mask on his bloody face; a firefight in a muddy clearing, and a terrified voice yelling motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker like a strange mantra; the silver rain, drenching the trees and vines and grass, the hair and skin and eyes and not one drop of it clean; and the village.
Oh, yes. The village.
Dan’s mouth was very dry. He took another swallow of tea. The ice was almost gone. He could feel the men waiting for him to speak, and he knew they wouldn’t leave him alone until he did. “More than twenty.”
“Hot damn, I knew it!” Grinning, Curtis elbowed Steve in the ribs and held out his palm. “Cough it up, friend!”
“Okay, okay.” Steve brought out a battered wallet, opened it, and slapped a five-dollar bill into
Curtis Nowell’s hand. “I’ll get it back sooner or later.”
“You boys ain’t got trouble enough, you gotta gamble your money away?” Joe sneered.
Dan set his cup down. A hot pulse had begun beating at his temples. “You laid a bet,” he said as he lifted a wintry gaze to the two men, “on how many corpses I left in ’Nam?”
“Yeah, I bet it’d be more than twenty,” Curtis said, “and Steve bet it’d be —”
“I get the drift.” Dan stood up. It was a slow, easy movement though it hurt his knees. “You used me and what I did to win you some cash, Curtis?”
“Sure did.” It was said proudly. Curtis started to push the fiver into his pocket.
“Let me see the money.”
Still grinning. Curtis held the bill out.
Dan didn’t smile. His hand whipped forward, took the money, and had it in his grip before Curtis’s grin could drop. “Whoa!” Curtis said. “Give it here, man!”
“You used me and what I did? What I lived through? I think I deserve half of this, don’t you?” Without hesitation, Dan tore the bill in two.
“Hey, man! It’s against the fuckin’ law to tear up money!”
“Sue me. Here’s your half.”
Curtis’s face had reddened. “I oughta bust your fuckin’ head is what I oughta do!”
“Maybe you ought to. Try, at least.”
Sensing trouble, a few of the other men had started edging closer. Curtis’s grin returned, only this time it was mean. “I could take you with one hand, you skinny old bastard.”
“You might be right about that.” Dan watched the younger man’s eyes, knowing that in them he would see the punch coming before Curtis’s arm was cocked for the strike. “Might be. But before you try, I want you to know that I haven’t raised my hand in anger to a man since I left ’Nam. I wasn’t the best soldier, but I did my job and nobody could ever say I’d gone south.” Dan saw a nerve in Curtis’s left eyelid begin to tick. Curtis was close to swinging. “If you swing on me,” Dan said calmly, “you’ll have to kill me to put me down. I won’t be used or made a fool of, and I won’t have you winnin’ a bet on how many bodies I left in my footprints. Do you understand that, Curtis?”
“I think you’re full of shit,” Curtis said, but his grin had weakened. Blisters of sweat glistened on his cheeks and forehead. He glanced to the right and left, taking in the half-dozen or so onlookers, then back to Dan. “You think you’re somethin’ special ’cause you’re a vet?”
“Nothin’ special about me,” Dan answered. “I just want you to know that I learned how to kill over there. I got better at it than I wanted to be. I didn’t kill all those Cong with a gun or a knife. Some of ’em I had to use my hands. Curtis, I love peace more than any man alive, but I won’t take disrespect. So go on and swing if you want to, I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
“Man, I could break your damn neck with one punch,” Curtis said, but the way he said it told Dan he was trying to decide whether to push this thing any further.
Dan waited. The decision was not his to make.
A few seconds ticked past. Dan and Curtis stared at each other.
“Awful hot to be fightin’,” Joe said. “Grown men, I swear!”
“Hell, it’s only five dollars,” Steve added.
Curtis took a deep drag on his cigarette and exhaled smoke through his nostrils. Dan kept watching him, his gaze steady and his face placid though the pain in his skull had racheted up a notch.
“Shit,” Curtis said at last. He spat out a shred of tobacco. “Give it here, then.” He took the half that Dan offered. “Keep you from tapin’ it back together and spendin’ it, at least.”
“There ya go. Ya’ll kiss and make up,” Joe suggested.
Curtis laughed, and Dan allowed a smile. The men who’d thronged around began moving away. Dan knew that Curtis wasn’t a bad fellow; Curtis just had a bad attitude sometimes and needed a little sense knocked into him. But on this day, with the sun burning down and no breeze stirring the weeds of Death Valley, Dan was very glad push had not come to shove.
“Sorry,” Steve told him. “Guess we didn’t think it’d bother you. The bet, I mean.”
“Now you know. Let’s forget it, all right?”
Curtis and Steve moved off. Dan took the Excedrin bottle from his pocket and popped another aspirin. His palms were damp, not from fear of Curtis, but from fear of what he might have done had that particular demon been loosed.
“You okay?” Joe was watching him carefully.
“Yeah. Headache.”
“You get a lot of those, don’t you?”
“A few.”
“You seen a doctor?”
“Yeah.” Dan put the bottle away. “Says it’s migraine.”
“Is that so?”
“Uh-huh.” He knows I’m lyin’, Dan thought. There was no need to tell any of the men here about his sickness. He crunched the aspirin between his teeth and washed it down with the last of his iced tea.
“Curtis is gonna get his clock cleaned one fine day,” Joe said. “Fella don’t have no sense.”
“He hasn’t lived enough, that’s his problem.”
“Right. Not like us old relics, huh?” Joe looked up at the sky, measuring the journey of the sun. “Did you see some hell over there, Dan?”
Dan settled himself back down beside his friend’s chair. He let the question hang for a moment, and then he said, “I did. We all did.”
“I just missed gettin’ drafted. I supported you fellas all the way, though. I didn’t march in the streets or nothin’.”
“Might’ve been better if you had. We were over there way too long.”
“We could’ve won it,” Joe said. “Yessir. We could’ve swept the floor with them bastards if we’d just —”
“That’s what I used to think,” Dan interrupted quietly. “I used to think if it wasn’t for the protesters, we could’ve turned that damn country into a big asphalt parkin’ lot.” He drew his knees up to his chest. The aspirin was kicking in now, dulling the pain. “Then I went up to Washington, and I walked along that wall. You know, where the names are. Lots of names up there. Fellas I knew. Young boys, eighteen and nineteen, and what was left of ’em wouldn’t fill a bucket. I’ve thought and thought about it, but I can’t figure out what we would’ve had if we’d won. If we’d killed every Charlie to a man, if we’d marched right into Hanoi and torched it to the ground, if we’d come home the heroes like the Desert Storm boys did … what would we have won?”
“Respect, I guess,” Joe said.
“No, not even that. It was past time to get out. I knew it when I saw all those names on that black wall. When I saw mothers and fathers tracin’ their dead sons’ names on paper to take home with ’em because that’s all they had left, I knew the protesters were right. We never could’ve won it. Never.”
“Gone south,” Joe said.
“What?”
“Gone south. You told Curtis nobody could ever say you’d gone south. What’s that mean?”
Dan realized he’d used the term, but hearing it from the mouth of another man had taken him by surprise. “Somethin’ we said in ’Nam,” he explained. “Somebody screwed up — or cracked up — we said he’d gone south.”
“And you never screwed up?”
“Not enough to get myself or anybody else killed. That was all we wanted: to get out alive.”
Joe grunted. “Some life you came back to, huh?”
“Yeah,” Dan said, “some life.”
Joe lapsed into silence, and Dan offered nothing else. Vietnam was not a subject Dan willingly talked about. If anyone wanted to know and they pressed it, he might tell them hesitantly about the Snake Handlers and their exploits, the childlike bar girls of Saigon and the jungle snipers he’d been trained to hunt and kill, but never could he utter a word about two things: the village and the dirty silver rain.
The sun rose higher and the morning grew old. It was a slow day for tickets. Near ten-thir
ty a man in a white panel truck stopped at Death Valley and the call went up for two men who had experience in house-painting. Jimmy Staggs and Curtis Nowell got a ticket, and after they left in the panel truck everybody else settled down to waiting again.
Dan felt the brutal heat sapping him. He had to go sit in his truck for a while to get out of the sun. A couple of the younger bucks had brought baseball gloves and a ball, and they peeled off their wet shirts and pitched some as Dan and the older men watched. The guy with the hand-lettered sign around his neck was sitting on the curb, looking expectantly in the direction from which the ticket givers would be coming like God’s emissaries. Dan wanted to go over and tell him to take that sign off, that he shouldn’t beg, but he decided against it. You did what you had to do to get by.
Again the young man reminded Dan of someone else. Farrow was the name. It was the color of the hair and the boyish face, Dan thought. Farrow, the kid from Boston. Well, they’d all been kids back in those days, hadn’t they? But thinking about Farrow stirred up old, deep pain, and Dan shunted the haunting images aside.
Dan had been born in Shreveport on the fifth of May in 1950. His father, who had been a sergeant in the Marine Corps but who liked to be called “Major” by his fellow workers at the Pepsi bottling plant, had departed this life in 1973 by route of a revolver bullet to the roof of the mouth. Dan’s mother, never in the best of health, had gone to south Florida to live with an older sister. Dan understood she had part interest in a flower shop and was doing all right. His sister, Kathy, older than he by three years, lived in Taos, New Mexico, where she made copper-and-turquoise jewelry. Of the two of them, Kathy had been the rebel against the major’s rigid love-it-or-leave-it patriotism. She’d escaped just past her seventeenth birthday, jumping into a van with a band of folksingers — “scum of the earth,” the major had called them — and hitting the road to the golden West. Dan, the good son, had finished high school, kept his hair cut short, had become a carpenter’s apprentice, and had been driven by his father to the Marine recruiting center to do his duty as a “good American.”