The World Played Chess (49)

Cutting metal rebar is done by switching out the wood-cutting blade on a Skilsaw for a black carbon fiber blade that cuts metal. I’d watched William and Todd change out the blade a number of times, and I’d watched them prop the rebar over the toe of their boot to get one end off the ground when they cut.

Still moving like a dullard, I changed out the blade, plugged in the Skilsaw, put on protective goggles, measured a piece of rebar, and put it over my boot. The blade whined and screeched and threw sparks when it hit the rebar. I hesitated, thinking I should put on leather gloves, then dismissed the thought.

I was bent over, the metal blade spinning, sparks flying, when William came into the garage and shouted over the whine of the blade.

“Stop!”

I turned and looked up at him through the goggles. He put a hand to his throat and made a violent slashing motion, then reached out as if to grab me, but pulled back before he touched me. With the gray light behind him and the fingers of his hand spread wide, he looked like the ghost of Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol. I released the trigger, and when the noise of the saw faded, William stepped forward, his arm still outstretched.

“Drop the rebar,” he said, his voice calm but adamant. It sounded like he was telling me not to move, as if I had just stepped on one of the land mines he had described in Vietnam. I let the rebar drop. It pinged twice against the concrete, the sound tempered by the puddle of water in which I stood.

The dull blade of my mind sharpened. The cloudy haze fogging my common sense lifted, and my frontal cortex made the connection. I had gripped a metal bar in one bare hand. In the other hand I held a saw plugged into a compromised electrical outlet, while standing in a puddle of water. I flashed to my childhood, to being in a crawl space over the kitchen with my dad while he repaired a stove fan. My father had looked at me and said, “If I start to shake. Don’t touch me.”

I’d never been so scared.

I stepped back. William let out a held breath. He looked pale, his pupils enlarged dark circles in a sea of white. William had been scared for me. Now he was angry.

“Do you have a death wish?” He asked the question with such intensity, such brutal honesty, such piercing practicality, that I felt compelled to answer, though I knew his question to be rhetorical.

“No,” I said.

He shook his head, like a father disappointed with a child. “You’re standing in a puddle of water with an electric power tool and holding a piece of metal.” He punctuated every other word with a profanity. “You’re supposed to be smart.” He pointed to his temple, a quick, decisive gesture. “Think.”

Then he turned and left the garage, but not before he brought the heels of his hands to his eyes.

I looked at the tool belt William had given to me that morning and realized I had just thrown away what respect I had earned in one dull moment of stupidity.

I imagined William had experienced too many of those senseless moments and the resulting consequences, moments that could never be taken back, never changed, never forgotten. Guys were there one moment and gone the next.

If William mentioned the incident to Todd when he arrived later in the day, Todd never said anything about it. He never called me an idiot or a moron or asked how I had such a wanton lack of common sense. He never fired me.

Still, William hardly talked the remainder of the day, and after work he didn’t squat in the garage to smoke a cigarette and drink a beer. He gathered his red cooler, put it in the bed of his El Camino, and drove off. I knew William had experienced far too much death for a man who had just turned thirty, and I knew I had brought him back to a place he had tried hard, though unsuccessfully, to forget. I’d brought him back to the bush.

Perhaps I was just too naive to understand that death did not discriminate because of age, and that I could die, in an instant and without any warning.

William and Todd were not that naive.

They were never given the chance.

Over the weeks of work, I’d come to learn certain other things about them. Similarities. Neither seemed to have much of a plan for their future. They both lived from one paycheck to the next. And when each day ended, they routinely grabbed a beer from the cooler. And they didn’t stop at one. I knew what a hangover looked and felt like. I’d gotten that down to a science. Their tired eyes and lethargic movements as they sipped cups of black coffee like it was a tonic every morning came from too little sleep and too much alcohol. I doubted they drank to socialize, as I did. I doubted they drank to celebrate the future.

I suspected they drank to ward off demons, unforeseen enemies who haunted their sleep. It left them feeling like shit come morning, and yet they seemed to do it habitually. Their demons, I surmised, were far worse than the hangover. I could only imagine from the stories William had already told me what persistent nightmares haunted him and led him to desensitize himself, just so he could sleep.

His belt was a gesture of friendship, as much as anything, and I had almost repaid his gesture by electrocuting myself and leaving William to care for my dead body.

“You don’t make friends,” William’s corporal, Victor Cruz, had told him. Because someday you might be putting that friend in a body bag.

So selfish. So stupid.





May 6, 1968

I’m in my bunker, getting my pack ready to go outside the wire. We expect to be out several weeks.

Cruz gave me a list of what to take, and it’s a lot of shit. A poncho, poncho liner, two pairs of socks, two towels, and toiletries. I’ll be wearing a war belt, which is like a belt with suspenders. You can hang your canteen off the back and your fourteen-inch Ka-Bar off the left strap. I have an entrenching tool for digging my foxhole at night, and gun oil, bore cleaner, and a cleaning kit for my rifle; I have bug juice without any scent, iodine packets, a smoke grenade to mark positions for air support or firepower. The mortar unit can’t carry everything, so mortars are spread out among the platoon. Cruz handed me a 60 mm that weighed about two and a half pounds. The 81s are almost four pounds. I will also be carrying a claymore mine filled with BBs and a communication wire to put a charge in it. Cruz gave me a bag of Willie Peter (white phosphorus used in mortar shells). The bag is waterproof, which will come in handy. He also handed me packs of black condoms. I looked at him like he’d lost his mind.