‘I was wrong just now when I told you you’re in trouble. Fact is, you’re in shit up to your neck, boy.’
A minute or so later, as they dragged him away to their car, he had the distinct feeling that his life, as he had known it up until that moment, was over for good.
‘… of the Vietnam war. The storm continues over the publication by the New York Times of the Pentagon Papers. An appeal to the Supreme Court is planned, to uphold the injunction to cease publication…’
The imposing voice of news anchorman, Alfred Lindsay, shook him out of the restless lethargy into which he had slipped.
The corporal knew this story.
The Pentagon Papers were the outcome of a thorough investigation into the causes that had led the United States to become involved in Vietnam, an investigation set up by Defence Secretary McNamara and carried out by a group of thirty-six experts, both civilian and military, on the basis of government documents, some dating as far back as the Truman era. Like a rabbit caught in the journalists’ headlights, the Johnson administration had been shown to have consciously lied to the public about the handling of the conflict. A few days earlier the New York Times,which had somehow come into possession of the papers, had started publishing them. The consequences had been predictable.
In the end, as always happened, it would just be a battle of words. And words, whether written or spoken, never amounted to very much.
What did these people know about the war? How could they know what it meant to find yourself thousands of miles from home, fighting an invisible and incredibly determined enemy? An enemy nobody had thought would be ready to pay such a high price in return for so little. An enemy everyone in their heart of hearts respected, even though nobody would ever have the guts to admit it.
Even if there were thirty-six thousand experts, civilian or military or whatever, they still wouldn’t understand anything, or make their minds up about anything, because they’d never smelled napalm or Agent Orange. They’d never heard the tac-tac-tac-tac of machine gun fire, the muffled sound of a bullet piercing a helmet, the screams of pain of the wounded, which were so loud you ought to be able to hear them in Washington but in fact barely reached the stretcher bearers.
Good luck, Wendell…
He moved aside the sheet and sat up on the bed.
‘Go fuck yourself, Colonel Lensky. You and your fucking syndromes.’
All that was behind him now.
Chillicothe, Karen, the war, the hospital.
The river was following its course, and only its bank preserved the memory of the water that had passed.
He was twenty-four years old and he didn’t know if what was in store for him could still be called a future. But for some people that word would soon lose all meaning.
Barefoot, he walked to the TV and switched it off. The anchorman’s reassuring face was sucked into the darkness and became a little dot of light in the middle of the screen. Like all illusions, it lasted a few moments before disappearing completely.
CHAPTER 4
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to take you all the way into town?’
‘No, this is fine. Thanks a lot, Mr Terrance.’
He opened the door. The man at the wheel looked at him with a smile on his tanned face. In the light from the dashboard, he suddenly reminded him of a Don Martin character.
‘I meant thanks a lot, Lukas.’
The man gave him a thumbs-up sign. ‘That’s OK.’
They shook hands. Then the corporal removed his bag from the space behind the seats, got out of the car and closed the door. The voice of the man at the wheel reached him through the open window.
‘Whatever you’re looking for, I hope you find it. Or that it finds you.’
These last words were almost lost in the rumble of the mufflers. In an instant the vehicle in which he had arrived was nothing more than the sound of an engine fading away.
He adjusted his bag on his shoulder and started walking. He felt neither nervousness nor euphoria at this homecoming.
Only determination.
A few hours earlier, in his motel room, he had found an empty shoe box in the closet. The lid bore the trademark of Famous Flag Shoes, a mail order company. The fact that the box was still there said a lot about the care taken by the motel’s cleaners. He had removed the flaps from the lid and written CHILLICOTHE on the white background in capital letters, going over the word several times with a black felt-tip he had in his bag. He had gone down to reception with the bag on his shoulder and the sign in his hand. Behind the desk, a nondescript girl with thin arms and long straight hair and a red headband had replaced the man with the moustache and sideburns. When he had approached her to give back the key, the spaced-out Flower Power look had drained from her face and she had stared at him with a hint of fear in her dark eyes. As if he was coming towards her with the intention of attacking her. He was starting to come to terms with this attitude. And he suspected it was a judgement that would never be challenged.
Here it is, colonel, here’s my luck …
For a moment, he’d been tempted to scare her to death, to pay her back for that revulsion, that instinctive suspicion she had felt for him. But this wasn’t the time or the place to go looking for trouble.
With ostentatious gentleness, he had put the key down on the glass desktop. ‘Here’s the key. The room was disgusting.’
His calm voice, combined with his words, had startled the girl. She had looked at him in alarm.
Die, bitch.
‘I’m sorry.’
He had shaken his head imperceptibly and stared at her, letting her imagine his eyes behind his dark glasses. ‘Don’t say that. We both know you don’t give a shit.’
He had turned his back on her and left the motel.
Beyond the glass-fronted door was the little square. On his right was the service station with the orange and blue Gulf sign. A couple of cars were waiting to go into the car wash, and the pumps were busy enough to arouse hope that he’d get a ride before too long. He had walked towards the diner, over the door of which was a sign presenting it to the world as the Florence Bowl and offering home cooking and all-day breakfast.
He had slipped past the advertisements for Canada Dry and Tab and Bubble Up, and had taken up a position at the exit from the service area, so that he was clearly visible both by the cars leaving the parking lot and by those leaving the pumps after filling up.