I’d learned what tough guys really were, and I’d learned about real consequences talking with William that summer about a war we had no business fighting. I wasn’t about to get into a random fight with a guy I had no beef with. I looked to the girlfriend and returned her smug smile.
Then I refocused on the guy. “What do you want?” I asked.
“What?” He seemed surprised by my question.
“What is it you want?”
“I told you. I want you to apologize to her.”
“Okay.” I looked to the girl. “I’m sorry if anyone said anything to you that was offensive. It shouldn’t have happened. I apologize.”
She lost the smile and squinted as if she did not understand English. Then she turned to the little tough guy, who looked equally confused but also relieved.
“Are we good?” I asked him, now ignoring the girlfriend.
He stared at me for a second, then turned to his girlfriend. Her brow furrowed like she was failing to solve a geometry problem. I cut her off before she could talk. “You asked for an apology,” I said to the guy. “I gave her one. I’m not asking her. I’m asking you. Are we good?”
I’d given him control over the situation rather than emasculate him by talking to his girlfriend. If he was smart, he’d understand. After a beat he said, “Yeah. We’re good.”
I turned to my friends. “Let’s go.”
“Brad,” the girl said.
“Get in the car, Kelly.”
I held the bucket seat for Billy to slide in. The tough guy leaned against his car, head turned, watching me. His girlfriend went around to the passenger side and got in, sulking. She slammed the door. I looked at the guy one last time, and I thought of the army recruit William had described to me that summer, the one so easily indoctrinated that he would run into a wall over and over until he knocked himself out. And when he regained consciousness, his superiors would pin a medal to his shirt and he’d wear it with great pride, or maybe frame it and put it on the mantel, and never know that thousands of other guys had the very same medal, for doing the exact same thing, but not one of them had ever succeeded in knocking down that wall.
Tough guy gave me a small nod.
I didn’t return it.
Inside the car, as we drove away, Mif said, “Why’d you shut the car door? We couldn’t get out.”
“Sorry. I didn’t think about it,” I said. “Never happened to me before.”
“We would have killed that guy,” Cap said.
“Go get Brian and Tim,” Billy said, mocking him. We laughed nervous laughter.
“Did anyone say anything?” Mif asked.
One by one, we denied it, and we rationalized that the guy had just been a South City punk trying to impress his girlfriend. We doubted he even had friends close by. We doubted he would have fought us. We doubted a lot, but what I did not doubt, what I knew for sure, was none of us stepped up to be first. In the past, my hesitancy would have eaten at my pride, but not now, not after working with William.
“Why’d you apologize?” Cap asked me.
I almost said, It wasn’t worth ruining the night over. But that would have been a lie. “Because I didn’t want to fight him,” I said in a rare moment of honesty.
After a second, Mif said, “I didn’t, either.”
“Wouldn’t have been worth it,” Billy agreed.
“No sense ruining the whole night,” Cap said.
Maybe speaking the truth was contagious.
August 1, 1968
I haven’t written much the past month. I’m too tired by the end of the day, and in the mornings, I have to get prepared to move out. More of the same anyway. We hump. We find empty villages. We lose guys to booby traps and ambushes. We get in skirmishes and coordinate our own ambushes, but for now the NVA does not stay for long.
We’ve had reinforcements flown in. FNGs getting a lot of on-the-job training. Cruz spends a lot of his time just trying to keep them alive. The FNGs bring news. A lot has happened we did not know about. War protests at home have increased in frequency and size. Robert Kennedy was assassinated after winning the California Democratic primary and campaigning with a promise to end the war. I’m sorry he got shot, but I doubt he would have ended the war. I doubt all politicians. Westmoreland has been replaced, that much we knew—but apparently LBJ denied his call for two hundred thousand more troops. Looks like it’s just us.
This morning we were given additional time to get ready. We were awaiting orders. I took the time to just sit. Mornings are strangely beautiful, at least when it doesn’t rain. The temperature is comfortable and the air clear and crisp. I sucked in each breath, savoring it like a cool drink of clean water. I could see color. The sky awakened with ribbons of red and orange, yellows, and fuchsia. The color is always welcome. It means I’m still alive. The rest of the day I’ll see gray and brown and endless green. Tunnels of green.