Becky.
She is now in the air. The memory of her invades him, penetrating his heart like a sharp blade. He looks down at Hendrix, with his long snout resting on his black, velvety paws. His large eyes look up at Jack as though he, too, senses a shift in the room. Perhaps he notices the change of his master’s heartbeat, as though it is a clock of its own. Perhaps it’s in his change in breathing. The song brings him back to a time when he held Becky’s face next to his own. Her eyes—they did dazzle like kaleidoscopes. Prisms of green-and-gold light.
Even though it has been years since he has seen her face up close, he can still shut his eyes and remember every detail.
Taped on the wall of the old workbench is a piece of a faded print that Tom’s father had placed there when he first opened the shop.
Sundials can measure the hours in the day and reservoirs every drop of water. But no one has ever invented an instrument to quantify love.
For Jack, it was an immeasurable calculation.
CHAPTER 26
B?O NEVER SHARED THE REASON WHY HE HAD RUN AWAY FROMthe motherhouse. It wasn’t that the Sisters hadn’t cared for him or fed him properly. In fact, they had been kind and patient with him ever since he’d arrived. But B?o didn’t think anyone else would understand, as none of the others had been as fascinated with the electric box as he had, the one the Sisters called “the television.” He kept his reason for leaving a secret because he needed to keep his plan intact.
His desire to leave came only after he experienced the wonder of TV. The same way he had once heard voices trapped inside his father’s radio, he was now amazed to witness men and women springing to life within this special contraption. One show in particular enthralled B?o. It featured teenage twins, a boy and a girl, who were dressed in matching uniforms of deep violet and black and able to achieve incredible and mystifying feats. Once their fists interlocked, their powers intensified. Zan, the brother, could transform into any form of water, and Jayna, his sister, could morph into any animal. Together, there was nothing they couldn’t accomplish, like the warrior Giong with his iron sword and horse.So every afternoon at four o’clock, magic washed over him as he sat glued in front of the box and waited for them to appear. B?o thought that if he could somehow find these mythical spirits, they could use their powers to retrieve his parents from the ocean and bring them back to life.
The woman who had found him on the street had been so kind, he thought initially she might be taking him to meet Zan and Jayna and that perhaps she was sent by one of his ancestral spirits to help withhis plan. But she had only brought him back to a house that was cold and foreign to him. There were no fruit trees or ceremonial shrines. He scanned the house to see if he could find anything that might be familiar to him but discovered nothing. The woman too was wholly unlike the colorful spirits on TV. And her two daughters—nothing was magical about them at all.
CHAPTER 27Vietnam, 1969
THE MEN WERE ALL EAGERLY ANTICIPATINGSTANLEY’S BIRTHDAY. “PFC Coates is finally turning eighteen.” Larini grinned. “Feels like our young marine is about to grow up,” he joked with the others. “We’ve got that boy a present he’s going to remember.”
“One that’s going make him into a full-fledged man,” Flannery agreed.
Stanley stood steps away from the other men, one knee bent, the other hand digging the ground with a small shovel.
“What’s he up to over there?” one of the men asked while looking over toward him. Stanley still wore the helmet that saidKong Killer, but beneath its visor, his skin had remained oddly unburnished by the sun.
“He found a dead monkey this morning.” Chief filled them in. “Lying just steps away from his foxhole.” His gaze narrowed. “The Vietnamese believe the monkey spirit brings good luck.”
“What about a dead monkey?” Larini joked. He lit a cigarette between his lips and took a long drag.
“Not so much,” answered Chief.
The men stood in a cluster, watching Stanley bury the animal. Soon his shovel tapped the ground, and he seemed to mumble something over the small burial mound.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Flannery said with palpable disbelief. “Is he really praying over that dead monkey?”
Larini burst out laughing. “He’s going to go apeshit after he’s done with the mother of all birthday presents we got for him tonight. We’re going to surprise him with a woman.… Going to bring her inafter sundown. He’ll be sleeping in a tent tonight, not a damn foxhole, because we got Bates to take him off perimeter watch for his birthday.”
Jack had cringed when they had writtenKong Killeron Stanley’s helmet a few months back. There was something pure about this young man he wanted to protect, he seemed like the only constant in the jungle. Every morning, he could be seen hunkered over his Bible, reading a passage to himself. During any other spare moment, Jack saw him writing letters home.
“You sure he’s gonna want that?”
Flannery looked at him, perplexed. “Well, shit,Hollywood—who wouldn’t want a birthday present like that? You think maybe we should call in a bird to drop in a Carvel ice cream cake? Come on, do you think he’d like that more?”
Jack didn’t answer. The truth was he thought Stanley just might.
That night, two of Gomez’s squad snuck the pretty, young Vietnamese girl into the perimeter. Jack first caught sight of her as she passed through the barbwire, a slender form in silk pajamas, her long black hair sleek in a long ponytail that went halfway down her back.
She dipped into the tent as the other men laughed and slapped each other on the shoulder.
It wasn’t that Jack was a prude. He had been with a few girls before Becky, and even the ones he didn’t love had certainly provided him with pleasure. But even though Stanley chose to go to Vietnam to become a man, Jack strongly doubted he had even considered sex as part of the equation. After all, the kid blushed every time one of the other guys mentioned the wordtits.
Doc shared Jack’s skepticism. “I don’t like this.” He shook his head. “And I can’t help thinking that girl in there might be a child herself.”
Minutes passed and Jack continued to look over at the tent. But the tarp flap remained closed. He had to admit that he was surprised thatthe girl hadn’t been tossed out as soon as she arrived. Jack couldn’t conceive that Stanley would have accepted her offer, especially knowing it had been the result of money being exchanged. But as time passed, he looked over at Doc and shrugged.
