The World Played Chess (48)

“What medal?” I asked, thinking it a military medal.

The medal was now around his neck. He held it out. “Saint Jude, the saint of desperate cases and lost causes.”

I laughed. “Sounds about right for Vietnam.”

“I’m not taking any part of the Nam home with me. I’m leaving it all here. That tin brought me good luck. I hope it does the same for you.”

I thanked him, though I’ve never been superstitious. I do wear the crucifix my mother gave me, and I pull it out and kiss it whenever I get the chance. Maybe say a little prayer. I figured the tin might come in handy though. I opened it and fit my journal and my pencil inside. That’ll do, I thought.

“I kept it in the pocket of my flak jacket. Right here,” Longhorn said, putting his hand over his heart. “One more thing Charlie had to penetrate before he killed me.”

I went back to throwing the knife. Cruz came in, and I nearly impaled him with the blade. Missed his shoulder by an inch. He didn’t even flinch.

“Tomorrow,” he said to me, “we’re heading outside the wire. Search and destroy.”

I nodded. I was uncertain how I felt. I’d thought I would be happy to have something to do, but now a million thoughts were running through my head. Like that night with Haybale. Shit just got real.

“We’re going after the NVA, try to disrupt whatever they think they’re going to start.”

The NVA. I recalled Cruz’s admonition—that they won’t run. They will stand and fight.

I noticed Longhorn never looked at Cruz. Never looked at me. For him, the war was over. For me, this was just the start. I looked at the tin. I’ll slip it into the pocket of my flak jacket. One more thing Charlie has to penetrate before he can kill me.





Chapter 12


July 12, 1979

I had progressed on the job and was handling the work well. Now that Mike was working in the insurance industry, Todd and William didn’t treat me like his kid brother. They treated me like an adult and expected me to handle myself like one. I figured that was because no one had treated them like kids at eighteen, far from it.

When I left the house that morning, I noticed the sky had clouded over, or maybe it was just my mood. I was nursing a wicked hangover despite downing a tall glass of water and four Tylenol before going to bed at two a.m. I was also dog tired, and my brain was addled. I’d been out late every night of the week. As the summer progressed, my friends and I tried to compress as much fun as possible into the time we had left.

By the time I reached the jobsite, the clouds had darkened. Tendrils resembling the barren, spindly branches of winter trees reached down from the sky. It did not rain during the Burlingame summer, not that I could ever recall, but it would rain today, and from the look of those angry clouds, this would not be a mist or a sprinkle.

William knew I was hungover the moment I stepped into the garage, but he had no sympathy for my plight. “Night is your time,” William liked to say. “Come morning, your ass belongs to Todd.”

His, too.

“Brought you something.” He handed me a tool belt, an older one he said he’d had at home. He said it was his first belt, and I sensed the belt meant something to him, though he downplayed it. I told him how much I appreciated it. I wore the belt proudly, and, like the jungle boots, it gave me attitude.

“No time for that now,” he said, not with the sky about to open and no roof on the remodel, making everything on the first level susceptible to water damage. As we opened the tarps William bought that morning, he explained that when drywall gets saturated, it loses its structural integrity, making it unsalvageable, and even if salvageable, wet walls become susceptible to infectious mold. The knob and tube wiring between the walls was at risk of shorting out, and otherwise becoming damaged, and the decades-old hardwood floors could buckle and warp and would be expensive to replace.

William moved as if in battle mode. I felt like a dull knife, barely cutting through my morning fog as I tried to keep up. Twice I went around the side of the house to throw up, first my toast and more Tylenol I took. Then dry heaves. I wanted to go home and sleep it off, but I didn’t have that luxury. “Lock and load,” William kept saying. “Got a job to do.” We were in a fight, the enemy didn’t care if I was hungover, and I didn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing my battles.

“You do what has to be done, or we all suffer the consequences,” William said.

William looked at the darkening sky like it was an old acquaintance, though not a friend, come back to pay him a visit. I imagined it was. William had described the weather in Vietnam as “hot, with rain, becoming hotter with still more rain, turning to sizzling with showers, and a shitload of mosquitos.”

William and I fastened bungee cords to hold down the tarps. It was a lot of work getting the tarps over the new roof ridge. We finished, barely, just as the first showers fell.

The rain sounded like hail as it splattered against the blue tarps, and I noticed William looking up at the noise like it was something far more lethal. “I’m going up to check the tarp for leaks,” William said, leaving me in the garage.

All the rushing around and climbing up and down ladders had caused the blood to pound at my temples like the rain pounding on the tarps. The prior day Todd had had me cutting lengths of rebar for a brick barbecue we were building at another jobsite. I think it was busywork, but it was something to do and I hadn’t yet finished.