The World Played Chess (77)

We drove the El Camino Real in silence. I didn’t dare say a word. After a few minutes, William looked over at me. The pinpoint black eyes were gone, and his cheeks no longer flushed. His jaw had relaxed. He smiled as if the entire incident never happened. He’d just as quickly gone back to zero.

I felt uneasy in the car with him. After weeks working beside him every day, I felt like I didn’t know him, not really. I knew a facade, the guy William wanted me to see. He didn’t want me to see the guy clearly in pain. The guy shrinking before my eyes. He didn’t want me to see the real William.

After a few minutes, William chuckled and said, “Nice to meet you both?” I laughed with him, but inside I wasn’t laughing. It’s hard to ignore reality when reality is about to hit you like a sledgehammer.

And the reality was, had I not been there, William would have killed Eric.

I believed with all my heart that William would have taken a life, and I knew, in that moment, it would not have been the first. William had been trained to kill. That’s why he stayed alive. That’s why he sat beside me. He had survived. Because he had killed the guy trying to kill him.





December 2, 1968

I spent Thanksgiving at Da Nang, went to a strip club, drank a lot of beer, and ate turkey with dressing and mashed potatoes smothered in gravy. The meal was supposed to remind us of home. I didn’t let it. I ate the meal like it was any other. I didn’t think about the holiday, or what my parents and my siblings were doing at home.

I got a Purple Heart. Imagine that. An officer came through the hospital and awarded the Purple Heart to each of us who had been wounded. I know what the Purple Heart means, what it will mean to my mother and my father. It just doesn’t mean much to me. The officer went down the row of wounded. He even gave a medal to Abramowitz in the rack at the far end of the hall. Thing is, Abramowitz wasn’t wounded. He’s here because a Vietnamese hooker gave him a bad case of the clap. We all held it together until the officer left. Then we laughed so hard I nearly rolled out of bed. They came back a day later and took back the medal and Abramowitz got dressed down.

He’ll tell you it was worth it.

I thought so, too.

When the Thanksgiving weekend came to an end, I went back to the lab and got my Pentax camera and more canisters with my photographs. They told me I could stay in the rear and shoot dignitaries and ceremonies, but I turned them down. I turned down Captain Martinez also, at least for now. I told him I wanted to finish out with Cruz, that I’d like for the two of us to leave the bush together. He said he understood and that he’d hold the clerk position for me.

I was put on a transport back to Firebase Phoenix, and, man, was Cruz pissed when I got off the chopper. He threw a punch and swore at me, said he had called in a favor, that the war had ended for me. Then he refused to talk to me.

Rumors spread that Whippet and I had shared a foxhole together. Some of the guys also knew I’d shared a foxhole with Kenny, a.k.a. Haybale, way back when I first arrived. I was also humping just behind EZ when he stepped on the land mine, and I had switched point with Forecheck.

Word now is Shutter is bad luck, not somebody to hang around or make deals with. They say death follows me.

After taking a few hours to calm himself, Cruz spoke to me. I told him what I had told Martinez. I told him that Martinez promised to hold the clerk’s job for me. I also told Cruz what the doctor said about Longhorn’s tin maybe being good luck.

“Maybe, Shutter,” he said. “Maybe. But next time, don’t take the chance. Don’t be a hero. Just keep your head down.”

Don’t be a hero.

I could see my mother with a clarity I had not allowed myself to experience since I stepped on that bus to boot camp at PI, South Carolina. I could see her standing in front of me, her hair pulled back in a clip, wearing her maroon dress, pearls strung around her neck. I could even hear her voice for the first time since I left for Vietnam.

Don’t stand out. Just blend in. Blend in and come home.

And it hit me. What the hell did I just do?

I turned down the clerk’s job and asked to come back here? Cruz was right. The war was over for me. I had survived. I had lived.

Oh my God. I felt a rush of anxiety and desperation. What the hell had I done? What the hell did I do? What the hell did I do?

I am going to die in the bush, and I had a chance to leave it for good, alive.

I wonder if all those things—being beside Kenny and EZ and Whippet, switching point with Forecheck—I wonder if all that wasn’t bad luck but good luck. I wonder if the God I no longer believe in used Longhorn’s Tiger tin to save my life.

Did you even think of that? Did you? No. No, you didn’t.

I took Kenny and spared you.

I had EZ step on that land mine and made the shrapnel fly past you.

I took Forecheck so you could live.

I had Longhorn give you the tin to protect you from that bullet.

You’re so bitter and angry, you missed all the signs.

What did you do? You threw it back in my face.

You came back.

What have I done? Oh, God, what have I done? I have a feeling, a premonition. My luck has run out.

I want to go home. Oh, God, I want to go home.

Too late. You had your chance.

Home. I thought about it. Truly thought about it for the first time since I arrived, and the thought scared me, more than any I have had since I arrived, because of what Cruz said.