Faces in the Night Read online

  Blake listened to the on-air caller who was replying to Katherine’s question about foreplay, or the lack thereof. “Well, Claudia said my idea of foreplay was to pull out my penis and have her admire it.”

  “Now, where have I heard that one before,” Katherine said. “Forrest, have you been telling Jim here about your own prizewinning techniques?”

  “Hey, I’ll tell you,” Forrest shot back, leaning into his microphone next to Katherine, “You ask any of my girlfriends, and I always have at least three different ones going at any one time, or about one hundred other lovely ladies, and they’ll tell you when it comes to foreplay, I’m the master.”

  Blake smiled. Katherine had told him that Forrest and his wife seldom made love anymore. She was too busy with real estate and children. Forrest was contemplating an affair, but had no idea how to start one, or with whom.

  “What do you think?” the male caller asked Katherine.

  “I think you’re being challenged by Claudia,” Katherine said. “I think that maybe if you move beyond being so penis centered, so self-satisfied, and open up a bit to her you’ll find she’s the best lover you ever had.”

  “How about it, some of you women out there,” Forrest cut in smoothly. “Is your husband or boyfriend good at foreplay? Or does he have hands like an ox? We’re taking a short newsbreak, and we’ll be right back. Call us at 889-9999, and talk sex.”

  Katherine slipped her headphones off and came out into the hall. She was wearing green slacks and a pink-patterned sweater that set off her blue eyes and golden hair. Blake watched her and thought with a pang that it had been a month at least since they had made love.

  “What’s up?” Katherine asked, an edge of concern in her voice. He didn’t usually visit the station. “I thought you were going to work on the house.”

  “I’ve gotta go off for a bit,” Blake said. “Something came up. They found Kevin Flanagans’s body. I need to go to the memorial service and say goodbye.”

  Katherine’s eyes immediately filled up. “Oh, Honey,” she said. “Not again.”

  “I know,” Blake said, “it sucks. Trust me just this one more time, babe. This is the end. No more after this.”

  “Kevin’s gone and that massacre was 25 years ago.” Katherine said.

  “I know,” Blake said. “I know.”

  “You tried to tell them once. What more could you do?” Katherine looked at him, her eyes filled with tears. “Honey, you didn’t kill him,” she said finally. “Keep that in mind. OK.” And then in a low voice, “I still love you. Remember that. Please. Come back, OK?”

  Blake nodded. Forrest was waving frantically at her, pointing to the clock. Katherine took his hand and held it tight for a moment looking into his eyes, and then turned and reentered the glass booth without looking back. Blake watched her as she sat and expertly adjusted her headset and microphone. Forrest’s voice was blazing out over the airwaves pumping with excitement.

  “And now we’re back for part two of the country’s number one rated adult talk show. Here she is, the Baroness of the Bedroom, the Countess of Coupling, the Duchess of Desire, the Empress of Erotica.” Forrest’s voice had reached a fever pitch as he spilled out his alliterative sequences--”live on WEET, the First Lady of Sex, our very own Bridget Monroe.”

  “Hello Forrest,” Katherine’s well-modulated voice contrasted with Forrest’s overwrought huffing. “Who do we have next?”

  “We’ve got Linda from Akron on line one wondering why all her husband seems interested in is oral sex,” Forrest paused meaningfully, “for him, that is, not for her.”

  “Hi Linda,” Katherine said. “You know the old saying, don’t you?’ The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.’ That’s what your mother taught you, right? Well she was wrong. It’s about eight inches lower down.”

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  People in movies and on television were always saying how something terrible remained as vivid today as the day it happened years ago. What bull!

  Blake shook his head from side to side in frustration. He was forever carrying on this inner dialog. Trying to explain to imaginary characters what bad memories were really like. The years changed even the worst nightmares into a jumble of puzzle pieces tossed together in a cardboard box. What you learned was not to open that box or try and piece the contents together again. It had been 25 years ago that his nightmare had happened and he had learned to live with it; put it aside, not respond when the inner voices started howling.

  Not respond, that is, until something like the story of Kevin Flanagan’s body finally coming home reawakened his demons.

  His memory of the day?

  It was nowhere near as terrible or vivid as it had once been, but like a bad tooth, it never stopped hurting. It had been in the spring of 1969. He and Kevin had been flying the rescue choppers together for 6 months and were stars; almost legends. Once, maybe a month or so before that terrible day, a wounded Marine had fallen from their chopper as it rose in a cloud of dust near Con Thien, a group of three hills in Quang Tri Province near the border of North Vietnam. This was the Hill of Angels, called that by the Marines because so many of their buddies had died there. Kevin had never hesitated when the wounded Marine tumbled out just as they lifted off. He swung the chopper sharply around and dropped back into the landing zone, a dangerous maneuver giving enemy gunners a second chance at a big target.

  “Fucking A, they’re coming back,” one of the ground troops had pointed at the helicopter and yelled above the sound of the chopper blades as the helicopter settled down nearby. A Marine on a 50-caliber machine gun opened up on the woods to the north where moments before enemy fire had rattled forth, and three Marines scuttled about and loaded the wounded Marine once more onto the chopper. They waved at Kevin who responded with a fist up gesture. “Onward,” he yelled down.

  “That’s one cool mother-fucking hard- assed Marine dude,” somebody said on the ground.

  “Fucking A, lucky too. Who are they?”

  “Ain’t no fucking luck; that’s Flanagan and Blake,” somebody yelled over the noise of the rising helicopter. “The best. Guys with real balls. Stones the size of tennis balls.”

  He remembered that day, one of the good ones. He and Kevin, well, mostly Kevin, were almost royalty to the ground troops they came to rescue.

  But now, he mostly remembered that one bad day. He’d always keep that memory. The searing physical intensity of it had faded into quirky old freeze-frame photographs that his mind could reassemble and manage, but he still remembered the heat on the ground blasting up at him as Kevin Flanagan landed the helicopter. Kevin jumped right out and charged into the blast furnace turning just that once to look back at him: “Come on Blake, we gotta stop this shit.” He had lingered by the open door of the helicopter and that had saved his life.

  Memories?

  There had been lots of memories since then, some good ones even, especially with Katherine, skinny dipping with her almost every day one long summer in the green hills of Vermont before they got married, that was a good one, but somehow the memory that lingered, the only one that seemed to matter in the end, the only one that kept repeating itself like a clock striking 12 twice a day, was the memory he had of standing frozen in place by that helicopter door while Kevin Flanagan ran off to try and stop a massacre.

  The rain began shortly before nightfall, large soft drops that pinged off his helmet and dripped over his plastic faceplate. Some bikers didn’t like to ride in the rain, but he had never minded. It did reduce visibility, but he liked the feeling of separation and aloneness it brought--the motorcycle, the rain, the open road all combined into one sharply etched solitary moment. He did his best thinking on his motorcycle, and he had been doing a lot of thinking recently. He had been thinking about Vietnam, thinking about it for the first time in years, thinking about it even before the story about Kevin Flanagan in this morning’s paper.

  It was 440 miles from Columbus, Ohio
to Washington, D.C. He took the Pennsylvania Turnpike and cruised in the fast lane, riding through the night, outrunning the big trailer rigs jockeying for position in the middle and right lanes and throwing up clouds of gray road spray. Rest stops were a small problem, but he wasn’t drinking beer, at least for now, and stopped only once to relieve himself off an exit road.

  He drove down the exit ramp and pulled to the right into a small grove of trees fronting the road. Across from the exit ramp about 100 yards away, a combination gas station, convenience store lit up the dark rainy night sky with a large neon sign. Three young men were standing outside the store laughing and drinking from tall cans—probably 16-ouncers of beer.

  Blake relieved himself, zipped up, and then stood for several minutes stretching. The rain had lessened and the sky was clearing. The three young guys didn’t notice him across the road separated by a stretch of scrubby bushes growing along a stone culvert.

  Which made what happened next more inexplicable.

  Blake stretched for a third and then fourth time and looked across at the brightly lit store and the young guys out front. And then he noticed a blue light bobbing about in the culvert and moving toward him. At first he thought it had to be one of the young guys in the parking lot playing with a flashlight, throwing the beam into the brushy culvert area. But when he looked, the three men were oblivious to him. And there was something odd about the blue light. It was hovering several feet off the ground in the middle of the dark culvert area, but moving toward him, floating it seemed on the wind. The blue light bumped up over the culvert at the edge of the access road and then stopped.

  Blake stood transfixed for several seconds. He looked again at the store and the men in front. They were laughing and drinking and one of them was opening another large can of beer. They had nothing to do with the blue light. Blake looked again toward the road and culvert. He drew a deep breath. The blue light floating on the other side of the road was an eye. Most definitely—a large blue floating eye, the size of a tennis ball. Blake froze and then felt it. The blue light was checking him out—examining him closely.

  No way. Blake shook his head and slowly closed and then opened his eyes.

  No way.

  He looked again. The blue light rose several feet in the air and started to move slowly along the brushy area near the culvert, as if looking for a place to cross over to Blake’s side of the road. Blake backed up and instinctually reached behind him to locate his motorcycle. The Harley had taken him away from trouble on more than one occasion. He touched the handlebars and was preparing to swing into the seat. But then, out of nowhere, a strong wind rose and for a moment blew a spray of rain across the darkened access road. The blue blight bobbed once or twice in the wind and spray and then vanished, spinning away into the dark.

  Blake stood for several minutes waiting to see if it reappeared, but it didn’t. He climbed back on his trusty Harley and drove slowly by the convenience store up the access road and back onto the highway.

  Dawn was just breaking when he rode through the streets of the Capital. He had been to the Wall yearly for the past decade and knew his way through the grid of streets near Capitol Hill.

  Washington was just waking up. A street sweeper truck chugged along near the curb, a young black woman waited patiently for a bus, and all around gnarled cherry trees dangled lacy clusters of white flowers.

  The street sweeper reminded him of his foggy past. There had been a night, perhaps 15 years ago, when--drunk on Wild Turkey bourbon--he had tried to drive home in his pickup truck and encountered a street sweeper. The driver of the bulky orange machine had seen him coming, weaving from side to side on the quiet suburban street, and tried to take evasive action, which had only confused Blake in his intoxicated state.

  The street sweeper had waddled to the left side of the street and Blake had tried to correct to the right. He was going slowly, fortunately. He over-corrected and then spun the wheel back veering sharply to the left. The street sweeper did a slow-motion weave to the right. Blake swerved back from the curb on his left lurching to his right.

  For one hundred yards they had danced this pre-dawn minuet. At the last moment, just as Blake veered his truck one more time across the center lane, the street sweeper lurched off the road onto a suburban lawn. Blake sailed past, narrowly missing the truck. He had looked back to see the enraged driver leaning as far out of the cab as possible, his middle finger thrust high in the air. Before he’d met Katherine there had been too many nights like that, too many nights he’d rather forget.

  * * *

  PART II: The Wall

  Chapter 5

  Flanagan? That was the name.

  In Washington, D.C., Lester Carlson stood lost in thought. That name. So familiar after all these years. When he’d read the name in the newspaper, it brought an immediate clang of recognition. Had to be the same name and the same incident. Twenty five years ago, and the name pops back into his memory just like that.

  A group of young girls wandered by, short skirts, giggles, snatches of conversation about boys and cool clothing. He was annoyed at the intrusion, the casual indulgence in trivia, the lack of respect for the place. Then, one of the girls turned to a friend and said, “Wow! Did all these guys really get killed? What for?”

  What for? That simple question from the teenager said it all.

  “What for?”

  That was the question he asked himself every morning when he awoke.

  There had been a lot of controversy when this memorial had been created. Was it appropriate? Was it dignified? Nobody argued those points anymore.

  He was drawn here. Did his best thinking here. In the early spring, he would come weekly to stand among the men who prowled silently back and forth. The last tourists of the day had gone by then, and the chance of his being recognized greatly diminished. He had started coming at the insistence of his youngest child, Maria. He hadn’t wanted to. The past was so painful; his penance never ending. “What if somebody recognizes me?” he said to Maria, sounding he realized, plaintive and defeated.

  “Oh, Dad,” she replied, “it’s not like that at all. It’s a very peaceful place. It’s all about forgiving, but not forgetting. It’ll be like that for you too.” And she had been right.

  He stood by the center of the black wall and peered at the names etched in the polished granite; a cascade of loss spilling over the stone surface; a river of truncated lives, of unspoken wedding vows and unborn children. Twenty-five years since he resigned--defeated and weary broken by the tide of loss these names represented. And that incident at the end. If he had only stood up to the generals and his Pentagon minions. That final confrontation--the soldier in the headquarters tent telling the captain that he wanted to report a massacre by American troops.

  “You saw how many civilians actually shot by American troops that day? I need an exact figure, please.” the captain had barked. “None! Right? You saw no United States soldiers actually shooting Vietnamese villagers that morning because you stayed in your helicopter while your friend went off to fight. Am I not correct in that statement, soldier?” The captain managing to deliver the word “soldier” with an inflection that made it sound as if he was saying “scumbag.”

  Lester Carlson still remembered the soldier’s face.

  “I know what happened that morning, sir,” the helicopter pilot said. “I know what went down.”

  “But let’s be sure.” The captain said with elaborate civility, changing his tone. “You saw bodies. Bodies of innocent women and children. On the ground. Dead. But how? You’re not sure. Possibly killed by Vietcong before our troops even got to that village. Could that not be a correct scenario?”

  The captain had paused and looked hard at the helicopter pilot. “You didn’t actually see anybody get shot. Correct?”

  The helicopter pilot turned and looked at Lester Carlson, standing 15 feet away, paused in a doorway watching the confrontation. A look of appeal from the pilot. “Come on help me out
here. You know what is going on here,” the look said.

  Lester Carlson had turned away. They had told him to expect this--soldiers in the field trying to bypass the chain of command and get his ear. But there was policy to maintain. American troops did not commit atrocities. Lieutenant William Calley was much in the news at this time. There had been a massacre at a village called My Lai. There was an investigation going on. Big headlines in the newspapers and solemn reports on television. Criminal charges and a trial were expected. Not good. But Lieutenant William Calley was an aberration.

  “There will be no more My Lai’s. I’ll guarantee that,” a general at Marine headquarters in Saigon had told him that very morning. And then, that afternoon, the helicopter pilot standing in the reception area of headquarters, asking to speak to him.

  “I want to talk to the top civilian guy,” the pilot said. “You know. The Under Secretary of State for Southeast Asia, or whatever.” That was as far as the pilot got. There would be no more massacres reported. Lester Carlson had locked eyes with the helicopter pilot for a moment and then turned away, but he heard the final exchange between the pilot and the captain in the reception area of headquarters.

  “What was your buddy’s name?” the captain asked in the same falsely-polite voice he had adopted the minute Lester Carlson appeared. “Your buddy that maybe got shot by Charlie when he jumped out of your helicopter.”

  “Flanagan,” the pilot said. “Kevin Flanagan.”

  Lester Carlson still remembered that name. Remembered it after all these years and thousands of names known and forgotten. He’d resigned after that incident. Oh, not right away. He was, as always, cautious and careful. He wanted his next job lined up. He was still Mr. Caution. Regretted that too.