At the kitchen counter, the wife handed Eric a pen. His hands shook so violently he could hardly hold it. He wrote the check, ripped it from the checkbook, and handed it to me, as if fearful he might not get back all his fingers if he handed the check to William. His handwriting was almost illegible, but he’d paid the amount in full.
I nodded to William. “Let’s go.”
I looked at Eric and his wife, both dazed and stunned and scared, not quite sure what they had just witnessed. It had not been of this world, not behavior they could relate to. It had been pure adrenaline, coming from someone who knew the true meaning of a battle for survival. The couple huddled together in the entryway, watching us go. Again, I don’t know what possessed me. Manners. Hubris. Smart-ass. Whatever it was, I just couldn’t help myself. As I stepped from the house, still carrying the sledgehammer, I said, “Nice meeting you both.”
And I closed the door.
Outside, I threw the sledgehammer in the bed of the El Camino, pulled myself into the passenger seat, and turned to look at the house. My first thought was Eric would call his bank and cancel the check, but I quickly dismissed it. Like the woman who had flipped off William, Eric wouldn’t have the guts. He knew if he did, he’d always worry William would come back and take the house apart with that sledgehammer, blow by blow. He now knew William was capable of just about anything.
I did, too.
And it scared me, the quickness with which William had gone from zero to ten, the way Barry Hickman had gone from laughing and smiling to crazed animal.
We drove the El Camino Real in silence. I didn’t dare say a word. After a few minutes, William looked over at me. The pinpoint black eyes were gone, and his cheeks no longer flushed. His jaw had relaxed. He smiled as if the entire incident never happened. He’d just as quickly gone back to zero.
I felt uneasy in the car with him. After weeks working beside him every day, I felt like I didn’t know him, not really. I knew a facade, the guy William wanted me to see. He didn’t want me to see the guy clearly in pain. The guy shrinking before my eyes. He didn’t want me to see the real William.
After a few minutes, William chuckled and said, “Nice to meet you both?” I laughed with him, but inside I wasn’t laughing. It’s hard to ignore reality when reality is about to hit you like a sledgehammer.
And the reality was, had I not been there, William would have killed Eric.
I believed with all my heart that William would have taken a life, and I knew, in that moment, it would not have been the first. William had been trained to kill. That’s why he stayed alive. That’s why he sat beside me. He had survived. Because he had killed the guy trying to kill him.
December 2, 1968
I spent Thanksgiving at Da Nang, went to a strip club, drank a lot of beer, and ate turkey with dressing and mashed potatoes smothered in gravy. The meal was supposed to remind us of home. I didn’t let it. I ate the meal like it was any other. I didn’t think about the holiday, or what my parents and my siblings were doing at home.
I got a Purple Heart. Imagine that. An officer came through the hospital and awarded the Purple Heart to each of us who had been wounded. I know what the Purple Heart means, what it will mean to my mother and my father. It just doesn’t mean much to me. The officer went down the row of wounded. He even gave a medal to Abramowitz in the rack at the far end of the hall. Thing is, Abramowitz wasn’t wounded. He’s here because a Vietnamese hooker gave him a bad case of the clap. We all held it together until the officer left. Then we laughed so hard I nearly rolled out of bed. They came back a day later and took back the medal and Abramowitz got dressed down.
He’ll tell you it was worth it.
I thought so, too.
When the Thanksgiving weekend came to an end, I went back to the lab and got my Pentax camera and more canisters with my photographs. They told me I could stay in the rear and shoot dignitaries and ceremonies, but I turned them down. I turned down Captain Martinez also, at least for now. I told him I wanted to finish out with Cruz, that I’d like for the two of us to leave the bush together. He said he understood and that he’d hold the clerk position for me.
I was put on a transport back to Firebase Phoenix, and, man, was Cruz pissed when I got off the chopper. He threw a punch and swore at me, said he had called in a favor, that the war had ended for me. Then he refused to talk to me.
Rumors spread that Whippet and I had shared a foxhole together. Some of the guys also knew I’d shared a foxhole with Kenny, a.k.a. Haybale, way back when I first arrived. I was also humping just behind EZ when he stepped on the land mine, and I had switched point with Forecheck.