met James Tyrrell, wasn’t it, and Tyrrell saved his life?”
“They was on a night patrol,” said Lacy. “Jake, James, this here Bernie, and the one they called Kid, and some others. The gooks opened fire and they got cut off from the rest of their company. Everybody on that patrol got killed ’cepting them four. A sniper had Jake right between the cross hairs of his gun and James was off to one side and seen him and got off the first shot. Took ’em three days to work their way back to their company and I reckon they had some right touchous times ’fore they was safe again.”
“Touchous” was the word for it all right, thought Kate. On the whole, Jake had come home from Vietnam unscarred. By the time they met, he had buried the hellish parts of those eighteen months and seemed to remember only the camaraderie and the adolescent horsing around between battles.
Only once, when he woke up sweat-drenched from a terrifying nightmare, did he let her see some of the horror he had endured.
While a violent summer storm sent thunder and lightning crashing across the Manhattan skies, he had shivered in her arms and told of being lost in a featureless jungle, mortar fire all around them, their patrol leader blown into a hundred bloody shreds, the eerie silence when the shelling stopped, the click of the sniper’s rifle just before James’s own hastily aimed shot tore through the sniper’s shoulder, how Bernie and James had pounded that Vietcong soldier into a wet pulp while he looked on numbly and the Kid vomited in the undergrowth, of crouching in a tunnel below a ruined temple with a Cong patrol camped above them all night.
“I know they stayed friends,” said Dwight, “’cause I remember the first time Tyrrell visited down here. I was on leave from the army myself and he and Jake and the Gilbert girls and I drove over to Chapel Hill for a basketball game. But what about this Bernie and the Kid?”
Lacy shrugged. “They never come here.”
“I didn’t know them either,” said Kate. “Vietnam was long before I met Jake and he seldom talked about it. I had the impression that they’d been thrown together on that patrol by chance and that they didn’t really have much in common. The Kid was a little younger. I think he’d lied about his age to join. And this Bernie might have been something of a criminal. I seem to recall Jake said he was in trouble with the MPs later, drugs or black market.”
“The army’ll still have his fingerprints handy,” said Dwight. “Sure would help if we had a name, though.”
“If you can wait until tomorrow,” said Kate, “I could probably give you one. The movers are due in the morning and I know exactly which carton I put Jake’s things in. There was a manila envelope of Vietnam stuff. I’m almost positive there were pictures with names and dates on the back.”
Lacy continued to thumb through the loose snapshots among the album pages. “Durned if I can figure out what went with the pictures of them boys. Jake must of sent me five or six.”
“Maybe you put them somewhere else,” Dwight suggested. “When did you see them last?”
Lacy sat back in the wicker rocker and narrowed his eyes in concentration. “Let’s see. It was back right before Christmas. Mary Pat’d come over to bring me a picture she’d drawed of Aunt Susie and a Christmas tree and we got to talking about family and I pulled out the album to show her this here picture of her mammy and daddy when they got married.”
He opened to a color miniature of Patricia and Philip Carmichael’s wedding portrait—Patricia effervescent in white gauze, Philip gray at the temples and so distinguished in his morning jacket. Their happiness caught Kate off balance and blurred her eyes with momentary mist. She leaned back in the swing and gazed out across the yard to the pecan grove beyond, to watch the wind push small white clouds across the blue sky while Lacy talked.
“She wanted to see the whole
“They was on a night patrol,” said Lacy. “Jake, James, this here Bernie, and the one they called Kid, and some others. The gooks opened fire and they got cut off from the rest of their company. Everybody on that patrol got killed ’cepting them four. A sniper had Jake right between the cross hairs of his gun and James was off to one side and seen him and got off the first shot. Took ’em three days to work their way back to their company and I reckon they had some right touchous times ’fore they was safe again.”
“Touchous” was the word for it all right, thought Kate. On the whole, Jake had come home from Vietnam unscarred. By the time they met, he had buried the hellish parts of those eighteen months and seemed to remember only the camaraderie and the adolescent horsing around between battles.
Only once, when he woke up sweat-drenched from a terrifying nightmare, did he let her see some of the horror he had endured.
While a violent summer storm sent thunder and lightning crashing across the Manhattan skies, he had shivered in her arms and told of being lost in a featureless jungle, mortar fire all around them, their patrol leader blown into a hundred bloody shreds, the eerie silence when the shelling stopped, the click of the sniper’s rifle just before James’s own hastily aimed shot tore through the sniper’s shoulder, how Bernie and James had pounded that Vietcong soldier into a wet pulp while he looked on numbly and the Kid vomited in the undergrowth, of crouching in a tunnel below a ruined temple with a Cong patrol camped above them all night.
“I know they stayed friends,” said Dwight, “’cause I remember the first time Tyrrell visited down here. I was on leave from the army myself and he and Jake and the Gilbert girls and I drove over to Chapel Hill for a basketball game. But what about this Bernie and the Kid?”
Lacy shrugged. “They never come here.”
“I didn’t know them either,” said Kate. “Vietnam was long before I met Jake and he seldom talked about it. I had the impression that they’d been thrown together on that patrol by chance and that they didn’t really have much in common. The Kid was a little younger. I think he’d lied about his age to join. And this Bernie might have been something of a criminal. I seem to recall Jake said he was in trouble with the MPs later, drugs or black market.”
“The army’ll still have his fingerprints handy,” said Dwight. “Sure would help if we had a name, though.”
“If you can wait until tomorrow,” said Kate, “I could probably give you one. The movers are due in the morning and I know exactly which carton I put Jake’s things in. There was a manila envelope of Vietnam stuff. I’m almost positive there were pictures with names and dates on the back.”
Lacy continued to thumb through the loose snapshots among the album pages. “Durned if I can figure out what went with the pictures of them boys. Jake must of sent me five or six.”
“Maybe you put them somewhere else,” Dwight suggested. “When did you see them last?”
Lacy sat back in the wicker rocker and narrowed his eyes in concentration. “Let’s see. It was back right before Christmas. Mary Pat’d come over to bring me a picture she’d drawed of Aunt Susie and a Christmas tree and we got to talking about family and I pulled out the album to show her this here picture of her mammy and daddy when they got married.”
He opened to a color miniature of Patricia and Philip Carmichael’s wedding portrait—Patricia effervescent in white gauze, Philip gray at the temples and so distinguished in his morning jacket. Their happiness caught Kate off balance and blurred her eyes with momentary mist. She leaned back in the swing and gazed out across the yard to the pecan grove beyond, to watch the wind push small white clouds across the blue sky while Lacy talked.
“She wanted to see the whole
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