Lizzie's War Read online

  BETWEEN LIZ’S post-tequila headache and the general sobering effect of the Petroskis’ loss, the first half of the drive home that evening passed in a subdued silence. By the time they got to Richmond, though, Kathie had the children singing again. She had had a gratifying heart-to-heart talk with Lejeune about the death of his father and was riding high. Deb-Deb was happy too, on the whole, with an array of the blue-winged angels she had made with Ramada spread across the backseat, and Angus couldn’t believe his luck: Maria had sent the bags of firecrackers home with the O’Reillys.

  In the far back of the station wagon, Danny, dressed in some of Chevy’s clothes, which were a little big on him, was quiet. He spent most of the ride home staring out the window at the darkening oak and pine forest that lined the highway, but as they crossed the James River he roused himself to add a fresh verse to “You Can’t Get to Heaven.”

  “Oh, you can’t get to heaven,” he sang, and the other children, smiling in anticipation, echoed, “You can’t get to heaven,”

  In a yellow submarine (In a yellow submarine!)

  ’Cause the Lord’s favorite color (’Cause the Lord’s favorite color!)

  Is Marine Corps green—

  The kids erupted into delighted laughter at the punch line. “Is Marine Corps green!” they echoed, and everyone chimed in jubilantly for the chorus:

  Oh, you can’t get to heaven in a yellow submarine

  ’Cause the Lord’s favorite color is Marine Corps green.

  I ain’t a-gonna grieve, my Lord, no more!

  Liz drove on, the headlights blurring ahead of her, glad for the settling darkness that hid her filling eyes. She couldn’t really imagine at this point that the Lord would have the nerve to favor anything but the humblest mourners’ black. Danny, she knew, was still wearing the ruined watch, doggedly, as if it might start ticking again at any second, despite the USMC insignia barely visible beneath the moisture fogged on the crystal face. And Larry Petroski had been sure that goddamned rabbit’s foot made him bulletproof.

  CHAPTER 4

  AUGUST 1967

  MIKE MADE HIS WAY to the 2/29 Battalion command bunker to check in after dinner, as he had every day for the past week. The CP was crowded and unusually abuzz for this late hour, including half a dozen clearly superfluous officers standing around the battalion net radios as if they were listening to the seventh game of the World Series.

  “What’s up?” Mike asked the nearest lieutenant, an eager-beaver type who looked like a GE College Bowl competitor in the standard Marine Corps–issue black horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Hotel’s getting the shit kicked out of them,” the kid said. “They got hit by at least a battalion, and they’re cut off. Hotel-Six is dead.”

  “Jesus.” Mike pictured the Hotel Company CO, a lanky Texan named Daniels. Something Daniels. He couldn’t remember the guy’s first name, which bothered him. All that came to mind was “Jack.” But he knew that wasn’t it. He’d liked the man.

  “Where are they?” he asked.

  “Nobody’s quite sure, at this point,” the lieutenant replied, a little breathlessly. “Somewhere near the Trace. They’re scattered all over the place up there. We haven’t heard a word from their First Platoon since midafternoon.”

  A pogue, Mike decided, resisting a sudden urge to throttle the guy. A rear-echelon motherfucker. Marines were dying a few kilometers to the north, and the kid couldn’t keep the high school pep band excitement out of his voice.

  “Did we send help yet?” he asked.

  “Foxtrot went out in choppers, about half an hour ago, but no one knows where they are now either. I don’t think anybody really knows what the hell is happening.”

  The radio crackled just then, a shaky second lieutenant’s voice from somewhere in the darkness east of Con Thien, pleading for something he wasn’t going to get that night. The kibitzing lieutenant perked up and returned his full attention to the drama. Mike left him there and crossed the room to the map table, a piece of plywood laid atop some empty ammo crates, where the battalion CO, Lou Whittaker, was bent over a laminated map with a grease pencil in one hand and a handset in the other, half a step away from the battalion net radio operator. Everyone else was keeping a respectful distance, as if the pain of command were contagious. With his shorn skull gleaming beneath the bunker’s single electric light, a bare bulb dangling from a wire, Whittaker looked lonely and timeless, like an anguished monk, hunched in penance.

  “Skipper,” Mike said.

  Whittaker glanced up. “Jesus, Mike, Hotel walked into a shit sandwich up there. Daniels is dead.”

  “I heard.”

  “Looks like you’ve got your company, if you want it.”

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “You want me to go now?”

  “No, fuck, it’s already dark. I just threw Foxtrot in there without enough time to set up a decent night position. Get yourself a few hours’ sleep and go in the morning.” Whittaker looked at the map, and Mike saw the weariness in the lines of his face; the man had aged ten years in the last ten hours. “Jesus. It’s gonna be a long night for those guys. I wish I could get on a chopper myself.”

  “Any idea what we’re up against?”

  “I think they must have run into the setup for a major assault before it could hit Con Thien. A battalion, at least. Maybe a regiment.” He met Mike’s eyes. “The last voice on the radio from their First Platoon was a corporal.”

  A nineteen-year-old squad leader on the platoon radio meant at least three layers of higher-ups had been incapacitated one way or another, the levels of command ripped away like skins off a damaged onion. Mike said, “I’ll get them home, Skip.”

  “Get your chopper ride lined up before you hit the sack. I want you up to the line of departure by dawn.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good luck, Mike.”

  “Thanks, Skipper,” Mike said, but Whittaker had turned to the table already and sunk back into his ruminations, staring at the scrawled grease pencil marks as if they were his own blood smeared across the map.

  The eager young lieutenant was still glued to the radio near the bunker’s exit, and Mike paused on his way out. The kid reminded him of Angus. Half the Marine Corps reminded him of Angus, at this point in his life. He was definitely getting old. He ducked out through the blackout curtain. It was pitch-black outside already; night came fast in the tropics. He wondered what Liz was doing. To the north, a single flare lit the sky and settled slowly, like a wounded star.

  from: Capt. M. F. O’Reilly

  HQ Bn., 29th Marines

  Mon 14 Aug ’67

  Phu Bai, RVN

  Dearest Lizzie,

  Quickest of quick notes—there’s literally a helicopter waiting for me and I wanted to get a note off to you before my little jaunt. Friday the 13th came on a Sunday this year for the CO of Hotel Company 2/29 (in the form of a rocket-propelled grenade yesterday) and they’re sending me up somewhere southeast of Con Thien to fill the poor guy’s shoes. Hopefully his feet are not still in them.

  The good news is that I finally got my company. The bad news is that nobody knows exactly where they are. Apparently the plan is to fly me around for a while in the general vicinity, yelling “Yoo-hoo? Yoo-hoo?” until somebody either shoots us down or tells us where to land. Your typical field-type cluster fuck. But anything’s better than watching another John Wayne movie with the reels out of sequence here in Phu Bai.

  I’ll drop you a note after we straggle in from our camping trip, to let you know my new address.

  I love you. Remember that. Don’t ever forget that. And all my love to the fearsome foursome.

  your

  Mike

  LIZ SET THE LETTER on the kitchen counter and tried to think of what in the world she should do next. The so-called good news boiled down to the fact that Mike was replacing a man who had just been killed by a grenade. Her husband’s new job, the longed-for career advancement. Company commander positions available; must be willing t
o relocate and get blown up. New openings daily. She realized that she was furious. I love you. Remember that. Don’t ever forget that. What the hell kind of thing was that to say? Why not just come out and say, Honey, I’m jumping into a helicopter and going out to die?

  Liz read the letter again, then stuck it into a junk drawer full of dead flashlights, outdated holiday party napkins, and keys to nothing in particular, and went to unbolt the back door. Maybe Maria had the right idea after all, she thought. She’d be damned if she was going to sit around like a good military wife and make iced tea when the moment came. When those two Marines pulled into the driveway, she was out of here.

  THE USUALLY PACKED dentist’s waiting room at the Oceana Naval Air Station clinic was deserted except for Liz; apparently everyone had cleared out of town for August vacations. The O’Reillys usually cleared out themselves, when Mike was in the right country. But not this year. Instead of a joyful couple of weeks at the beach, Angus was getting something like seventy-three cavities filled and Liz was eating chocolate-covered raisins, a little maniacally, one after another, and thumbing through a year-old Time magazine. The cover story asked, “Is God Dead?” Liz hoped not, but she found herself reading the article with a certain suspense. It was better than subjecting herself to the parenting magazines and the women’s journals and stewing over all the ways she was screwing up as a mother and a wife.

  It was the pretense of routine that was the hardest part, she thought. Going through the motions of ordinary life. When in reality there was nothing ordinary at all, when every instant could be the one in which the whole illusion of normality toppled like a cardboard stage set.

  As she sat skimming a sidebar on Nietzsche in Time’s consideration of God’s demise, the door to the waiting room opened and a tall man in unseasonably dark clothes entered. Liz saw that it was the assistant pastor from St. Jude’s, the gloomy one, Father Germaine. She gave him an instant to acknowledge her, but he seemed preoccupied. Maybe it was just as well. Her skin had regressed to a teenager’s nightmare, and her breasts felt massive. Mike always loved that; they’d had some of the best sex of their marriage late in the first trimester of her various pregnancies. But Liz always felt like a freak at this point, like Gina Lollobrigida with a bad complexion.

  She ducked back into the magazine as the priest went up to the receptionist’s window to check in, moving with a trace of a limp. Liz wondered whether he knew how badly his clothes fit him. The black suit looked like it had been cut from a pattern with square corners and stapled into place.

  Danny liked Germaine a lot, she knew, though she wasn’t sure why. He had always struck Liz as grim and impenetrable, an old-school priest in the bleak medieval mode, ascetic and unworldly. But maybe he lightened up for early mass. Maybe he was a morning person.

  Germaine’s conversation with the receptionist went on for a while. Apparently he was very late for his appointment. Or possibly very early. From what Liz could gather, he might even have come on the wrong day. But he and the receptionist finally worked out something detailed involving mutual patience; as the priest turned from the window and moved to sit down, the receptionist took the opportunity to roll her eyes at Liz, who smiled back sympathetically.

  Germaine settled into one of the plastic seats, his right leg begrudging the bend. Liz touched her hopelessly oily hair to try to settle it, then lowered her magazine and smiled helpfully, but again the priest refrained from recognizing her. He settled into a thousand-yard stare at the wall above and to the left of her head, where a travel poster for the Caribbean hung.

  “Hello, Father,” Liz chirped, sounding to herself like a Catholic schoolgirl and resenting that. But it was a very small waiting room and she really couldn’t stand the tension. Germaine didn’t seem like a Sports Illustrated kind of guy, and the fascination of that cruise ship poster wasn’t going to do the job for long.

  Germaine’s gaze swam laboriously back from its distance, his unkempt black eyebrows betraying genuine surprise. Liz realized that he really hadn’t recognized her. He might not even have known she was in the room. He still didn’t recognize her.

  “Liz O’Reilly, from St. Jude’s,” she supplied.

  “Of course,” Germaine said unconvincingly.

  “Danny’s mother? He’s one of your altar boys.”

  “Of course,” he repeated, in exactly the same tone, leaving her to wonder briefly whether he even knew who Danny was. But after a moment, Germaine added, “He’s…interesting.”

  “Danny?”

  “Yes.”

  Liz gave him a beat to elaborate, fruitlessly, then prompted, “Good interesting or bad interesting? I mean, a mother wants to know.”

  “Oh, interesting is always good,” Germaine assured her. “Better than good, really. Especially for a kid.”

  “Isn’t that a Chinese curse, though? ‘May you live in interesting times’?”

  The priest shrugged. “All times are interesting, in that sense. If you’re paying attention. That’s just the reality of incarnation.”

  Liz had a sense of the conversation having gotten spectacularly off track in a very short time. She wasn’t sure what they were talking about anymore. She wasn’t sure if she had known what they were talking about at any point, actually.

  Looking to recover some traction, she offered, “He told me you called Father Winters a fool.”

  Germaine looked alarmed. “Danny said I called Winters a fool?”

  “In Latin, apparently.”

  “Jesus. I really don’t recall—”

  “Oh, don’t worry. He thought it was very cool.”

  Germaine’s eyes drifted back to the travel poster. Liz began to recognize a cognitive rhythm and waited patiently, and sure enough, after a moment Germaine smiled. “Well, like I said, an interesting kid. His Latin is better than Winters’s, clearly.”

  “He just has a good ear. He spent about three hours with my old Dominican High Latin dictionary, deciphering it.”

  “I’ll have to be more careful,” Germaine said. “You get spoiled, thinking no one’s listening.”

  LINE OF DEPARTURE, lock and load, Mike thought, as the Huey crossed the unpaved track of Highway 9, just west of Cam Lo. He banged the magazine into his M-16, pulled back the bolt, and chambered a round. As an officer, he wasn’t supposed to be carrying anything heavier than a sidearm, but that was rear-echelon horseshit. Things got simpler in the field. You rode a helicopter to a strange place for someone else’s reasons and people tried to kill you and you tried to kill them back. The creed drilled into every boot Marine recruit at Parris Island finally came into its own: This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. He clicked the weapon over to full automatic—a hot landing zone was no place for the niceties of controlled fire—and checked the safety. On, soon to be off. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life.

  He had been sitting on his flak jacket—the most likely place to take a casual round on a chopper ride was up the ass—but he put the jacket on now, unbuckled his helmet and fastened the strap across the back, field-Marine-style, and shouldered his pack. Beside him, the helicopter’s only other passenger, an eighteen-year-old PFC with wide hazel eyes, who looked a little like Angus, did the same. The kid had a ravaged moonscape complexion, a stutter further distorted by a Philly accent, and some kind of Polish name with seventeen syllables and two vowels, but he would inevitably be called Ski, if he lived long enough for anyone to learn his name at all.

  It was odd to be in such an empty chopper. The light Huey gunship normally carried a squad, seven combat troops—or, depending on whether you were coming or going, three casualty litters, two sitting wounded, and a corpsman. Most of the time, if you got to ride in a helicopter with so much free space, you were dead.

  My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.

  At the Huey’s open hatch, the door gunner, impassive in a black-visored helmet, hunched over his M-60 machine gun, studying the terrain below. They were
flying at 1500 feet over the foothills of the northern Quang Tri Province. Somewhere down there, Mike knew, amid knobs and ridges swathed in elephant grass and clumps of gnarled trees, Larry Petroski had died; and the man Mike was replacing, Captain Something Daniels, had died down there the day before. It wasn’t something to spend a lot of thought on at this point. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy, who is trying to kill me.

  The pilot waved him forward, and Mike made his way up to the cockpit and squatted beside the seat. The man pointed to a grease-penciled grid on his map and then to a ridgeline about half a mile ahead of them. From 1500 feet, it didn’t look any different than all the other ridges in the area, a curved knuckle of elevation made featureless by a sea of elephant grass. Mike gestured with his hand—take it down—and the pilot, a major in an immaculate green one-piece nylon jumpsuit, shook his head.

  “No LZ!” he hollered. And, keying his radio headset, speaking to whoever was on the ground, “Hotel, this is Blue Pete. I have no visual, repeat no visual. Say again your location. Over!” He listened, circling the chopper with one hand and jotting a series of numbers onto the plastic map in grease pencil with the other. Looking over the pilot’s shoulder, trying to see exactly where it was in Vietnam that he was probably going to die, Mike couldn’t read a single one of the scrawled coordinates. He wasn’t sure he trusted this guy’s math.

  I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other.

  “Smoke!” he shouted above the engine noise, and the pilot glanced at him, inscrutable behind his mirror shades. He was clearly ready to turn the bird around and go home. Never fly with a major, Mike thought. Any chopper pilot who had lived long enough to make major was probably way too careful to be of any use to a grunt. But the guy finally keyed his headset mic and asked for a smoke grenade to mark a landing zone.