Midnight Sammy stands, bids us farewell and walks off, his air tank in tow.
“I’d like to lie down,” Grandma says.
“That can be arranged,” Harry responds.
I look at the chain around Harry’s neck.
“Grandma?”
“I’m right here.”
“Do you remember how you first heard about Pearl Harbor?”
“I listened to a news report on a black radio.”
“That’s a very specific memory, Grandma.”
“If you say so.”
I stand.
“Had enough of a beating?” Betty Lou asks.
I nod. Time to go.
I really want to spend a few more minutes in the moment, playing word games, untroubled by the past or the future. But I have an idea.
Chapter 59
I’m thinking of a short, ornery man I saw a few days earlier for a few fleeting seconds. He was walking out of the pretend dental offices. He wore a jeans jacket with a patch: “Khe Sahn.”
I call Directory Assistance. I ask for the main number for the Veterans Administration Hospital. I’m transferred to it, wind my way through an automated phone tree, get a live operator, and ask if there’s a Khe Sahn survivor organization, or club, office, anything of that general description.
There indeed is such a place. It’s in the Mission neighborhood, at Twenty-fourth and Valencia.
America’s greatest tensions play out in the Mission, in the form of a battle over the proper ingredients for a taco.
For many years, the neighborhood was a center of Mexican-American culture and a refuge for low-income residents huddling in the shadow of gentrification. The place was dotted with taquerias that served tortillas stuffed with rice, beans, and your choice of chicken, pork, or beef.
Then along came the organic tofu-crumble taco joints.
They and their brethren — the Bohemian brunch spots with meat substitutes and martini bars with elderberry-flavored vodka lite drinks — are the mainstays of the hipsters moving into the gentrifying neighborhood.
Their parents experimented with drugs and sex, but the hipsters are playing out their discontent by inventing new combinations of omelet ingredients using farm fresh produce and biotechnology.
In a way, the two cultures need each other. The low-income renters give the hipsters Bohemian legitimacy and flare, the hipster entrepreneurs hire the renters to serve the gluten-free wheat cakes — but the co-existence can’t last long. The cost of living is destined to drive out both and leave the rest of us with alternating Chili’s and Verizon outlets.
Certainly, there won’t long be room for the likes of 455 Twenty-fourth Street, the worn-down storefront that is home to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Mission District Center. It is a decidedly narrow property sandwiched between a pawnshop and Ike’s Ironic Organic Yogurt Creamery. (A sign reads: “Ike Taylor Green Tea Tofugurt packs a wallop!”)
The man sitting behind the computer at the Veterans Center looks like he might pack one too.
I recognize him from the dental offices — a compact fellow wound tight with unkempt facial hair and a bent-over posture that went out of style 800,000 years ago.
He does not look up when I walk in.
I approach his desk tentatively.
“What,” he demands, without looking up.
My own onboard computer almost crashes trying to process this creature’s multitude of medical issues. The bottom of his right ear is missing, I’m guessing from a war wound. A scar on his neck suggests tracheotomy, or shrapnel or puncture wound. His right hand, the one gliding the mouse, shakes. Doesn’t feel like Parkinson’s, so the movement probably speaks to side effects from an antidepressant.
“I’m Nat Idle. I’m a writer interested in the Human Memory Crusade.” “Writer” sounds exotic, “journalist” threatening.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“It’s the program on your computer that lets you talk about your memories.”
He smirks. “My memories stink.”
“I heard about the technology from Chuck Taylor, one of the higher-ups from DOD who’s helping design the software.”
“I don’t use it anymore. They took the computer and gave me a faster one.”
I step closer so I’m standing next to the desk. His computer is a new-model HP. On the screen is an image of a woman wearing a cheerleading skirt and she’s topless.
“Did they let you keep the transcripts of your conversations with the computer?” I ask.
“I don’t know about that.” He crosses his arms, defiant and irritated, finally looking at me.
“My grandfather served in the Pacific in World War II.”
Just after I say it, I feel my teeth clench. He’s watching his own reaction. My grandfather Harry. Too weird.
“So.”
“Maybe he should tell the computer about it.”
He shrugs. My efforts to bait him into a conversation are failing.
On the wall next to the desk hangs a calendar. The picture of the month is a sexy woman wearing a bikini and tortoiseshell reading glasses and reading a copy of Stars and Stripes. She sits on a tank.
“I’ve got a random question,” I offer.
“I’m shipping out soon.”
“It’ll be quick. I was wondering what kind of car your father drives?”
He looks up at me. His eyes are snake holes, dark and deep.
“A van. What the fuck do you care? You’re writing about cars now?”
Snake alert.
“My grandfather drove a Chevrolet.” The other grandfather, Irving.
“Good for him.”
From what I can tell, this guy is not programmed like Grandma. He’s an uncooperative tinderbox, and maybe he doesn’t know a damn thing anyway.
“Where?” I ask.
“What?”
“Where are you shipping off to?”
“Trip to China.”
“China?”
His eyes glance down at the desk. I follow the gaze to a brochure for the Pan-Asian Games. It looks to be some kind of quasi-Olympic athletic competition held in Beijing, just like the actual Olympics but with a lot less TV coverage.
“They say everything’s changed over there. I’d like to see that with my own eyes. I sure would like to see things different over there.”
He looks back at me, his eyes softer.
“In 1970 or 1971, I got interviewed by Rolling Stone. They were doing a story about a band that was popular with the guys coming back. I spent two hours talking to the writer. And you know what? He used one sentence of mine and it didn’t sound like me at all. It sounded like some asshole who was pissed off at the world.”
“I’m not going to do that to you.”
“Exactly. Because I’m asking you to leave me alone. Please.”
The way he says “please” makes the word sound aggressive. Like he might feel justified giving me a hand through the plate glass window.
Another dead end.
My next stop is Noe Valley, and Chuck’s house. It’s raining — hard. It would be a desultory and depressing moment but I’ve just spent a blog item’s worth of income on a quadruple shot from Starbucks and I feel like I’m wired enough to fly by flapping my arms.
I pull up to his house, and I’m thinking about what strategy to employ, or what I hope to accomplish, when Chuck walks outside under an umbrella. He sees me. He nods. He puts up a finger, asking me to wait a minute. He goes back into the house and returns a few moments later. This time he carries a manila folder under his arm.
He opens the passenger door, then closes the umbrella, slides in and sits in one smooth motion.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Why?”
“I figured you’d want this.”
He starts to hand me the folder, then pauses. “You can look, but you can’t take.”