“I’m hit. I’m hit.” The voice coming from my right sounded disbelieving and angry. “Corpsman!” I recognized Whippet’s voice, but heavy and persistent machine gun fire prevented our corpsman from moving up, and we couldn’t provide enough suppression.
I forgot everything my mother told me about not being a hero, about blending in. I guess I reacted on instinct, the way a parent wouldn’t hesitate if his kid got hit. I moved to the sound of Whippet’s voice, firing as I went, and found Mr. Gung Ho, Mr. “I’m going to kill me some Cong,” screaming like his leg was blown off. Not his leg, but a portion of his right boot. I grabbed him and drug him back through the bush. It happened in an instant. The blink of an eye. Before you could snap your fingers. It felt like someone shoved my shoulder and knocked me backward, off my feet. I tumbled down a slope and me and Whippet fell. The bullet probably saved my life. I didn’t even know I’d been hit. It must have been the shock. I got up, went to Whippet, and finished dragging him behind the log.
The corpsman made his way over and I was shocked when he stuck me, not Whippet, with a needle of morphine. That’s when I realized I’d been hit.
Cruz helped to remove my vest. He was kneeling over me, putting pressure on my shoulder until the corpsman could stuff the wound with gauze and put a field dressing on it. The way Cruz was looking at me, I was sure I was going to die.
“You and me have a date in Little Havana, Shutter.”
“Don’t talk about home,” I told him. Strange thing. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t afraid. I felt an odd sense of peace.
“We’re going to dance all night, Shutter. The Puerto Rican girls are going to love you.”
Cruz felt the pockets of my vest. He looked puzzled, then looked at me like he’d just found a bar of gold. He pulled out the Tiger Chewing Tobacco tin. The one Longhorn gave me. The one I kept in the upper left pocket of my flak jacket, and in which I kept this journal and this nub of pencil. One more thing Charlie had to penetrate to kill me.
Only he couldn’t.
Cruz fell back against the log laughing and showed me the tin. He ran a finger over the dented corner. Then he laughed again. “Longhorn saved your life, Shutter. He saved your life. The bullet hit the corner of the tin and deflected just enough. It missed your heart and hit just below your collarbone, in the meat of your shoulder.”
“It went through clean,” the corpsman agreed.
Cruz said it again, this time to himself, as if not believing, as if he needed to hear it said out loud to believe it. “It deflected and went clean through. You are one lucky son of a bitch.”
But I didn’t feel lucky. I didn’t feel a thing.
I stayed behind that log until the fighting ended and the NVA melted back into the bush. The morphine wore off and I felt a searing pain. They called in a dust off, loaded me and Whippet and the rest of the injured, and flew us out.
The doctor who treated my wound also said I was lucky. I showed him the dent in the tin can and told him what had happened, that I’d kept the tin in my vest pocket and it had deflected the bullet just enough to knock it off target. He smiled, but he wouldn’t say for sure my theory was correct, not without the bullet.
“Although,” he added before leaving my bedside, “the wound does have an upward trajectory, which would indicate you may be right, about the tin deflecting it.”
I didn’t know if he was serious or just humoring me. Maybe he figured there was nothing wrong with a marine believing he had a lucky talisman. I’d seen grunts with anything from rabbit’s feet on chains to a necklace of VC ears. And each swore it was good luck, at least up until the day he died or, like Longhorn, his DEROS came up and he made it home.
The doctor likely figured, Let him believe what he wants.
What’s the harm?
Chapter 20
April 17, 2016
Elizabeth and I both sensed that since Chris’s death, Beau was searching for something, his own identity, perhaps. He had become more open to leaving the Bay Area to go to college, and he had applied to LA schools and schools on the East Coast. Elizabeth wasn’t happy about it. She kept asking Beau why he wanted to go back east with so many wonderful schools in the Bay Area.
Beau said he just did.
Elizabeth also did not want Beau to play football, but Beau had looked into attending football camps, including two in Los Angeles. I told her in private to let Beau go through the process. I rationalized that football could get Beau into a school that might otherwise be a reach, but that it was unlikely he would get on the field his freshman year anyway. He could then quit but stay in school and get his degree. Schools used student-athletes all the time. Student-athletes could also use schools. If the school didn’t like it, too bad.