Every time we stop for the night, Cruz instructs us to pull off our boots and socks to let our feet air out. So far, I do not have the jungle rot, though the rains will come, and when they do, Cruz says the rot is inevitable. We got another taste of the rain yesterday afternoon. The winds blew down from the mountains and clouds rolled in so fast I almost didn’t have time to slip on my poncho. Within minutes Vietnam pissed all over us, a wicked downpour of such intensity you could hear only the water pinging against our ponchos and helmets. Just as quickly as they came, the clouds blew past, and the temperature is pleasant for the first time in weeks. It won’t last.
I am often so tired I can’t find the strength to chew, let alone take pictures, but Cruz also makes me eat. He won’t let me sleep until I have eaten. He jabbers at me as the stragglers come in. “We aren’t going to be like them, Shutter. We aren’t going to quit. We aren’t going to give up. Not here. Not in this shithole. We’re going to hump. We’re going to be grunts. We’re going to be marines. Then we’re going home.”
“Don’t talk about home.”
“You’re going to come to Spanish Harlem, Shutter. You’re going to come to my house. My mother is going to cook empanadillas and pasteles and we’re going to eat until we’re sick and throw up. Then we’re going to eat more, just like the Romans.” He cackles. “No more of these fucking C-rats, Shutter. We’re going to eat real food. Then we’re going to go out to the clubs and I’m going to find you a Puerto Rican girl. You have never seen women so beautiful.”
“You think a Puerto Rican girl is going to want a gringo like me?” I say, humoring him. I no longer look like a gringo. My skin has gone from white to red to dark brown. I remember my first day at the firebase when Cruz said none of us were senators’ sons, that we were all men of color. He was right.
“When you’re with me, you are no gringo,” Cruz says. “You are mi hermano. My brother. We’ll drink and dance until the sun comes up. You wait. You’ll see.”
“Don’t talk about home,” I say again.
I sleep two hours. The third hour I’m on guard duty. I’m lucky to get four or five hours of sleep a night. When awake, I stare into a darkness so complete it is as if someone has taken a brush and painted everything black—the stars and the moon, the bush, the ground. But I no longer fear the darkness. I welcome it. In the darkness I, too, am hidden. I crave a cigarette, a nicotine perk to keep me awake, but in this painting, Charlie will see the flare of the match and the glow of the cigarette for miles.
So I paint it black. I paint it black and I stay hidden. And I wait.
I wait for Charlie.
Chapter 16
July 16, 1979
As the summer progressed, William talked more about Vietnam. Perhaps I had become William’s confidant, the closest thing he had to a confessor. I don’t mean to beat my chest as some hero; I was far from it. I didn’t know enough about life, or the world, to have any meaningful or knowledgeable opinions about anyone or anything, which I believe is why William talked to me. He didn’t have to maintain his pride or protect his image. I wasn’t his parent or his priest, so he had no obligation to confess. I didn’t judge him, so he had no reason to be defensive. I didn’t expect him to be anyone, so he had no reason to be anyone but himself. He just needed to get those stories out, to purge an evil spirit. And I just happened to be there to listen, without asking a lot of questions, without condemning or trying to console, without approving or disapproving, without trying to minimize what had happened or what William had been through. I was the blank pages of a journal William could fill with the stories cluttering his mind, the ones that became the nightmares that haunted his sleep and led him to the bottle and the drugs. He could fill those pages honestly, without worrying about any commentary or requests for clarifications, without me judging him. He could just get the stories out and, maybe, I don’t know, maybe feel a little better.
I liked to believe so.
Because, man, it was hard to listen to many of those stories.
“I made a mistake,” he said one afternoon in the garage as the drywall was being installed in the remodel. “I gave up in school. After I lost my scholarships. I gave up, and I paid for it.”
“Vietnam?” I said.
He nodded. “I could have gone to college.”
“I know,” I said.
“I don’t mean the schoolwork. Hell, I could have done the schoolwork in my sleep. I mean, I could have paid for it. Like you. I told myself I couldn’t, but that was just an excuse. It would have been difficult; my parents didn’t have a lot of money with six kids, but I could have worked and taken classes at the community college for two years and then transferred to a university.”