Stephen King – Why We’re in Vietnam
WHY WE’RE IN VIETNAM
When someone dies, you think about the past. Sully had probably known this for years, but it was only on the day of Pags’s funeral that it formed in his mind as a conscious postulate.
It was twenty-six years since the helicopters took their last loads of refugees (some dangling photogenically from the landing skids) off the roof of the US embassy in Saigon and almost thirty since a Huey evacked John Sullivan, Willie Shearman and maybe a dozen others out of Dong Ha Province. Sully-John and his magically refound childhood acquaintance had been heroes that morning when the choppers fell out of the sky; they’d been something else come afternoon. Sully could remember lying there on the Huey’s throbbing floor and screaming for someone to kill him. He could remember Willie screaming as well.
I’m blind was what Willie had been screaming. Ah Jesus-fuck, I’m blind!
Eventually it had become clear to him — even with some of his guts hanging out of his belly in gray ropes and most of his balls blown off — that no one was going to do what he asked and he wasn’t going to be able to do the job on his own. Not soon enough to suit him, anyway. So he asked someone to get rid of the mamasan, they could do that much, couldn’t they? Land her or just dump her the fuck out, why not? Wasn’t she dead already? Thing was, she wouldn’t stop looking at him, and enough was enough.
By the time they swapped him and Shearman and half a dozen others — the worst ones —
to a Medevac at the rally-point everyone called Peepee City (the chopper-jockeys were probably damned glad to see them go, all that screaming), Sully had started to realize none of the others could see old mamasan squatting there in the cockpit, old white-haired mamasan in the green pants and orange top and those weird bright Chinese sneakers, the ones that looked like Chuck Taylor hightops, bright red, wow. Old mamasan had been Malenfant’s date, old Mr Card-Shark’s big date. Earlier that day Malenfant had run into the clearing along with Sully and Dieffenbaker and Sly Slocum and the others, never mind the gooks firing at them out of the bush, never mind the terrible week of mortars and snipers and ambushes, Malenfant had been hero-bound and Sully had been hero-bound too, and now oh hey look at this, Ronnie Malenfant was a murderer, the kid Sully had been so afraid of back in the old days had saved his life and been blinded, and Sully himself was lying on the floor of a helicopter with his guts waving in the breeze. As Art Linkletter always said, it just proved that people are funny.
Somebody kill me, he had screamed on that bright and terrible afternoon. Somebody shoot me, for the love of God just let me die.
But he hadn’t died, the doctors had managed to save one of his mangled testicles, and now there were even days when he felt more or less glad to be alive. Sunsets made him feel that way. He liked to go out to the back of the lot, where the cars they’d taken in trade but hadn’t yet fixed up were stored, and stand there watching the sun go down. Corny shit, granted, but it was still the good part.
In San Francisco Willie was on the same ward and visited him a lot until the Army in its wisdom sent First Lieutenant Shearman somewhere else; they had talked for hours about the old days in Harwich and people they knew in common. Once they’d even gotten their picture taken by an AP news photographer — Willie sitting on Sully’s bed, both of them laughing.
Willie’s eyes had been better by then but still not right; Willie had confided to Sully that he was afraid they never would be right. The story that went with the picture had been pretty dopey, but had it brought them letters? Holy Christ! More than either of them could read!
Sully had even gotten the crazy idea that he might hear from Carol, but of course he never did. It was the spring of 1970 and Carol Gerber was undoubtedly busy smoking pot and giving blowjobs to end-the-war hippies while her old high-school boyfriend was getting his balls blown off on the other side of the world. That’s right, Art, people are funny. Also, kids say the darndest things.