The World Played Chess (26)

“Forgive me?” I said, indignant. “For what?”

“He’s just disappointed, Vince. Don’t make this personal.”

I shook my head. “Of course it’s personal. That’s my son.”

“Our son,” she said. “And no one is saying you made the wrong decision.”

“He doesn’t know what disappointment or loss is,” I said. We had given Beau and his sister a lot more than I ever had. Vacations to Europe and places like Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and like Scottsdale, Arizona. We could afford to send Beau and Mary Beth to whatever college they chose. I lost my best friend to a heart attack at forty. I lost my dad to cancer at just seventy-six. I never even met my grandfather, and I never got the chance . . . I stopped. I’d had the chance to write, but I’d chosen money and stability instead of the dream. I couldn’t lay that at anyone’s feet but my own. “He has no idea what loss is,” I repeated.

“Did you at that age?” she asked.

I hated when she used common sense.

I did not, of course. Not before the end of that summer when I worked with William. I would get a painful lesson on loss, and a perspective that eluded most young men at eighteen years of age.





April 7, 1968

I thought the hardest part would be making it through that first night on guard duty, wondering if I would even awake to a tomorrow. I figured I’d never again be so happy to see a sunrise and the light of a new day, that bright orange ball rising above the treetops, that strip of fuchsia on the horizon, ribbons of pink and yellow painting the underside of the persistent haze. Color would mean I’d survived; I’d lived another day in-country.

Kenny had not.

Daylight has brought a harsh reality.

Kenny is dead.

Though I say the words, I don’t believe them, not fully. Kenny took a bullet in the eye that blew out the back of his head inside his helmet. A one in a million shot, Cruz said. Just bad luck. Kenny never cried out. Never made a sound. He just lay there, with his M-16 pointed toward the wire. Like he was hunting.

He was the hunted.

“Why’d he leave the foxhole?” Cruz asked.

“I don’t know,” I responded.

“Goddamn it. It’s your job to know. You’re a team. Didn’t I say don’t leave the damn foxhole. Didn’t I say that?”

“You said it.”

“Then why did he leave? You should have drug his ass back down.” Cruz swears. “Goddamn FNG.”

I wish I hadn’t called Kenny “Haybale” or thought of him as Gomer Pyle. I feel bad about it, and now it’s too late to apologize. What did my mother say about words being like arrows? Once you shoot them, you can’t take them back. Not from Kenny. Not ever.

I also can’t take back seeing Kenny dead. I’d never seen a dead man before, at least not one who was not already in a coffin and shit. My grandparents are alive. I’ve never lost an aunt or an uncle. Never lost a cousin. I’ve never lost a friend. Never really contemplated death. Never had to. I was going to live forever. Aren’t we all at eighteen?

Not Kenny.

Maybe not me. It sinks in, the reality. Maybe not me.

I didn’t know Kenny. We weren’t friends. They put us in the same foxhole. They put us together. I didn’t ask them to. I had no say in it. The blind leading the damn blind. Maybe that’s why Cruz is pissed, because he knows he fucked up and now it’s too late to do anything about it.

Cruz and the corpsman are matter-of-fact. It scares me how matter-of-fact they are about death, guys still in their early twenties. It scares me to know they’ve been through this enough to know the drill so well. To not even flinch. They went through Kenny’s pockets for things to send home. They removed one of his dog tags, bagged it, and taped it to his wrist for military records. We put Kenny in a green body bag and zipped it closed, then carried the bag to the LZ, and a helicopter carried Kenny off, along with the other two marines who died last night.

I didn’t even have the chance to get to know them.

And that was it. The helicopter lifted and Kenny was gone. And we were expected to get on with our day. “Do your jobs,” Cruz said.

Someone said Kenny was lucky, that if you had to go, better to go right away than live through this shit only to die at the end. I bet Kenny doesn’t feel the same.

He slept right beside me. I heard him snoring. The next moment, he was gone. It changes everything. I realize now, truly understand, that I could die here. I could be the guy they load in a green body bag, zip it closed, and put it on the helicopter. I wandered around the LZ taking photographs. It felt morbid, but that’s my job. Right? I’m supposed to snap photographs. That’s my job. Do your job. I find that looking through the camera lens somehow makes it seem less real. Makes it seem like maybe it’s just a movie I am shooting frame by frame—something that will be watched on a movie screen or television.

A somberness permeated the camp.

Cruz walked over to me. I lowered the camera. He said, “Growing old is a privilege, not a right, Shutter. You learn that quickly here in Nam, and the sooner the better. What happened today is over. You’re here. You still got a job to do. Comprende?”

“Comprende.”

“Take photographs. Do your job.”