The Unwilling(95)

The man stood, his eyes damp, flat and gray. He pressed the gun to Chance’s neck, and manipulated the cuffs one-handed. One wrist. The second. He sat again, and the room tilted.

This can’t be real …

But the man was right there, dry-skinned and pale, with those street-puddle eyes. “I need a favor,” he said. “A phone call. You have a friend, Gibson French.” Chance nodded; felt drool at the corner of his mouth. “Is it Gibby or Gibson?”

Chance blinked slowly. “Gibby.”

“I’d like to meet him. Now. This morning. I’d like him to come here, and I want you to make that happen.”



* * *



I heard my father’s footsteps long before he knocked on the door. I’d not really slept. That kind of night.

“Gibson?”

Another knock would come—no stopping it. I could all but predict the timing.

Five, four, three …

“Come on in, Dad.”

He looked as sleep-deprived as I felt. Same clothes as last night. Same red eyes and stubble. “Good morning. Did you sleep?”

“Like a baby,” I said.

“Yeah, me, too.”

That’s how the day started, with a pair of matching lies. He sat on the bed, and had trouble with my eyes. His big hands looked useless, too. I didn’t know what he wanted, but words gathered in my mouth, as if they had plans of their own. “I know why the Marine Corps kicked Jason out.”

It’s not what he’d expected to hear. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Have you been in my office?”

“I have not.”

“Where did you get that information?”

“Does it really matter?” He said nothing, and the silence told me everything I needed to know. “You know the reasons, too, don’t you? Why they sent him home with a dishonorable discharge?” He did; I could tell that, too. “Do you know about the medals?”

My father moved toward the window, looking as if he’d kicked over a box marked VENOMOUS REPTILES, and was in fear of whatever creature might crawl out first. “I do,” he said.

“And the massacre?”

“Jesus Christ, son.” He palmed his eyes, paler than usual. “That’s classified information.”

“They say that without Jason, it might have been another My Lai.”

“You did break into my desk. You read the damn file, the DOD file on your brother.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” But I had considered it. “I’m right, though. Aren’t I?”

“It’s not a fair comparison. American soldiers slaughtered five hundred villagers at My Lai, civilians, every one of them, women and children, even infants. This wasn’t like that.”

“It could have been, though. They say Jason saved an entire village.”

“Few things in war are so black and white.”

“This was. His actions were.”

I saw in my father’s eyes a deep and abiding pain, and understood why he might feel that way. In the church of Don’t Be Like Your Brother, he was a high priest. But what I’d learned from Darzell changed everything I’d once believed about Jason. Three years after the massacre at My Lai, a platoon of U.S. Marines went as war-mad as Charlie Company had at that small village in the S?n Tinh District of South Vietnam. The village was smaller than My Lai, little more than a clutch of huts gathered along a tributary of the B?n H?i River.

Darzell didn’t know what triggered the slaughter, but Jason and his crew were five miles out of the DMZ when the first body appeared, faceup in the river: a young girl, according to Darzell, a tiny thing, shot four times through the chest. By the time Jason’s gunboat arrived at the village, that platoon of marines had already spread thirty-three bodies along the muddy banks, or left them bobbing like corks in the reeds along the river’s edge. The ARVN troops used the gunboat to carry off what survivors they could find, but for Jason and the master chief, that wasn’t enough. Guns were still firing, people screaming; so they went in alone to stand down an entire platoon of red-eyed, raging marines. Jason took three bullets before the madness broke, and even then beat the commanding lieutenant within an inch of his life.

“We never listened to him,” I said.

“What are you talking about, son?”

“He saved three hundred people that day…”

“A remarkable thing, I know.”

“You didn’t let me finish. He did that remarkable thing, and when he came home hurting, we never listened.”

“Jason didn’t want to talk about the war, not any of it.”

“We didn’t make it easy, though, did we? Mom, like an eggshell ready to break, and you so certain of right and wrong.”

“We did some things wrong, yes. But your brother’s no saint. You can trust me on that.”

“You mean the drugs.” I laughed harshly. “Of course you mean the drugs.”

“Heroin is tearing the city apart. I see it every day. Whatever your brother did in Vietnam, he ended up a user, maybe even a dealer. I can’t condone that. And I can’t have you near it.”

“Whatever your brother did in Vietnam.” I threw the words back. “You talk about a DOD file. Did it include the terms of Jason’s discharge?”