I had heard explosions in the distance, which I had attributed to thunder.
When the speaker in a major’s uniform — his name tag read Grope — appeared from behind a bush, I recognized him (allowing for the alterations of aging) as my childhood friend, Lenny.
We had a brief reunion before returning to the business at hand.
“You better get out of here pronto, Honcho,” he said, pulling me over to the side of the road — the bushes dense with troop life. “I’m under explicit orders to take no prisoners.”
“Which way should I go?” I asked.
He thought about it, surveyed the scene in all directions.
“With all this random rocket action going on, there’s no absolutely safe place to go. You may be best off hanging out in the bushes with the rest of us.” At that moment, a missile exploded about twenty feet from the brush where the major’s troops were hunkered down.
“Is that live ammo?” I asked.
“War is serious business, Honcho. You can’t train one way and fight another. If you don’t use live ammo, if you just go through the motions, the troops will think war is some kind of pussy picnic. You see what I’m saying. You got to practice the same way you play the real game. Don’t worry about us — we’re punishing the enemy shitloads more than he’s punishing us.”
I decided to go on. “Good to see you, “ I said.
“Watch your ass,” he said, hugging me while looking over my shoulder. “Believe me, the other side will not be as gentle with you if you get in their way.”
I headed in a direction that with any luck would circumvent the troop activity of the other side.
A helicopter seemed to follow overhead and occasionally dumped what looked like sandwich wrappers in my direction. They were actually notes, warning me to move somewhere else unless I had no objection to being strafed in the next 10 minutes.
The notes offered no specific information as to the appropriate direction to go so I continued where I was heading though at a somewhat brisker pace.
At some point, a jeep cut me off and someone coming up behind me shouted “hostage,” which is how I got taken prisoner by what I thought of at that point as the enemy.
I was frisked, blindfolded, my hands tied behind me, and dumped into the back of the jeep. “Where are you hiding your weapon?” someone asked.
“I’m a civilian,” I protested.
“There are no civilians in war,” another someone said, though it might have been the same voice.
I was briefly imprisoned in what smelled like a latrine — they let me out when someone of consequence insisted on coming in — then delivered me, my blindfold slipping over one eye, to what I assumed was the command tent.
The commanding officer, Colonel Field, looked on as his Adjutant interviewed me. Before the questions came, my blindfold was removed, my hands untied and I was offered my choice of coffee or tea.
I appreciated their kindness and asked if the coffee was fresh brewed before accepting the tea.
“We’re the good guys,” the Adjutant said, to which the Colonel nodded his approval, “but we’re losing the war and we had to do something that we might otherwise disapprove of to increase our leverage. So by democratic vote among the senior officers, we decided to take a hostage from the other side to pressure them to release the officer class soldiers of ours they’re holding prisoner as leverage against us. When our men saw you they knew right away from the way you were dressed — no ordinary person walks around in clothes as blatantly ratty as yours — that you were someone of consequence among the enemy. We hope that you’ll be as frank with us and I have been with you. Who is it we have in our possession?”
“I’m a civilian,” I said.
“The Colonel told me you would say exactly that,” he said.
“I can understand your not wanting to betray your side, but what we’re doing here is trying to end the bloodshed, not extend it. So by helping us, you would also be helping your friends. Our only goal is to establish a fair and lasting truce. Is that something you oppose?”
“Of course not,” I said, “but…”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “You look like a civilized man. We’re not asking for information on our enemy’s troop movements, which you would be in your rights to deny us. All we want from you, in effect, is your name and rank.”
I repeated my claim, told them that I had been walking in the woods and stumbled on their dress-rehearsal maneuver.
“So you say,” the Adjutant said. “What if I told you that several of our men saw you embrace Major Grope, who is reputed to be second in command on the other side? Do you also want to deny that you embraced Major Grope?”
After that, I saw that there was nothing I could say to change their minds about me. “Look,” I said, “you can tell Major Grope that you have his childhood friend, Honcho, in custody.”
The Colonel and Adjutant shared knowing looks whose implications passed over my head. Before I was escorted from the command tent, the Adjutant thanked me for my cooperation and shook my hand.
For much of the next day, I was kept prisoner under armed guard in an adjoining tent.
I should mention that while this questioning was going on we were under almost continuous bombardment, most of the missiles exploding at a relatively safe distance.
I was using the latrine when a bomb fell just outside my box, shit flying about in the next few minutes as if it had wings.
When I let myself out — the door to the box had already fallen off — I discovered that my armed escort had been killed, half his head blown away. Also, the tent I had been staying in was a few flapping shreds of its former self.
Explosions lit up the sky and I saw through the trees perhaps a half mile away the gleam of paved roads. It may have been a mirage but I lowered my head (to make myself a smaller target) and ran a jagged path toward freedom. There was no point continuing in my role as useful hostage while the side that had captured me was being wiped out.
Along the way, I stumbled over what might have been the mangled body of the Adjutant — there was no time for mournful thoughts — as I hurried through the woods toward the paved roads of civilization.
99th Night
At long last, I was out of the woods, moving along the collar of a wide two-lane road with a snaky double line at its center. As a car neared, I would hold up my thumb half-heartedly in time-honored gesture. Repeated rejection soured my mood.
It was only after I decided not to raise my thumb that I got my first ride. It was from a middle-aged couple — a long married couple it seemed — in the throes of what might have been a twenty-year argument.
I didn’t know how tired I was until the moment my rump met the back seat and I drifted off.
Even asleep, the voices of contention penetrated my cocoon and joined forces with whatever fragmentary dreams were playing on the same wave length.
“How far are you going?” the wife, who was in the driver’s seat, asked whoever she thought she was talking to.
I might have answered but if I did it was with intention rather than speech. “As far as you’re willing to take me,” I might have said. I was in the business of creating distance between myself and the circumstantial domestic compromise I had taken pains to escape. When the game is escape, distance is the measure of accomplishment.
While accumulating distance, I felt oppressed by the ongoing dispute in the front seat that was my responsibility to resolve. They had chosen me as their audience and I had fallen asleep on the job. Couldn’t I do anything right?
“When you can forgive yourselves,” I said to their stand-ins in my dream, “you will be able to forgive each other.” I was of course talking to myself.