Now, as they all drank beer in Stanley’s honor, Jack realized the squad had lost something that had made them unique from the others. They had lost their innocent. The purity of Stanley was gone.
CHAPTER 30Long Island, 1979
BUDDY, AN ONLY CHILD, HAD SPENT COUNTLESS HOURS WONDERINGwhat it would be like to have a band of brothers to bond with. He glorified the masculine energy he searched for in hisSoldiers of Fortunemagazines, the war movies he absorbed on the television.
So, four days after school had ended, while most of the families in Bellegrove were spending their summer days ferrying their children into their spacious American cars to the beaches or pool clubs, toting picnic baskets packed with tuna fish and egg salad sandwiches and thermoses of sweetened iced tea, Buddy began seeking other ways to pass time. He found himself up to no good, stealing pen knives and packages of gum, even the odd cigarette pack from the five-and-dime store next to Kepler’s Market. His partner in crime was Clayton Mavis, Bellegrove’s new kid, who had arrived mid–school year from East Texas after his father was transferred for his job in the oil business and found East Coast suburban life just as stifling as Buddy did. Although Clayton had regaled him with stories of shooting beer cans and squirrels with a hunting rifle, Buddy had piqued his new friend’s interest by suggesting they build a fortress-style bunker in the old woods near the reservoir, an idea that he had been contemplating for some time.
Just the thought of it enthralled Buddy. A place to call his own, one constructed with his two bare hands. A refuge far away from his overbearing mother. He first imagined it one afternoon as he lay in his bedroom. The sound of his mother vacuuming downstairs, the motorchurning as she thrust all her energy into long angry strokes against the carpet. Adele had caught him eating potato chips in the living room and had unleashed a torrent of fury on him. “We eat in the kitchen in this house, young man! WE EAT IN THE KITCHEN!” Appearances were everything to his mother. She had lost her brother in the war, but she would now make her parents proud by being the pinnacle of perfection. Adele maintained the polished appearance of every room in the house with enviable vigor. From the moment his mother woke up each day, she had a rigid order she adhered to: she put on her makeup, zipped herself into a freshly washed dress (she loathed those women who spent the morning in their bathrobes), made breakfast for her husband and son, and then set out to make sure her home on Byron Lane gleamed from the inside out. Even the flowerpots by the front door were bursting with a rotation of flowers during the different seasons, and the porch swing was painted a sunny yellow.
Buddy often wondered what her friends at her church meetings would think about his mother if they saw how she transformed from her paper doll perfection into a tomato red–faced harpy who screamed at him behind closed doors. The sound of Adele’s shrill voice radiated in his ears, and Buddy often felt a rage boil inside of him that he had to struggle to control. When he was little, she was always quick to defend him in public, but once she returned home, her maternal affection vanished. She never hit him. But she often said things that he knew would shock her close-knit circle of friends. His father, who traveled most of the week and was rarely at home, seemed to enjoy the tight ship his mother maintained.
That afternoon, when the idea of the fort first came to him, she had berated him over and over again, her eyes bulging from her head, her hand shaking the vacuum hose in his direction as if it were a dangerous weapon. Buddy escaped her ire by storming up the stairs to his bedroom. He slammed the door shut and flung himself on his bed.
Even his room didn’t feel like his own. Adele had entered it while he had been out with Clayton and “sanitized” it, as she liked to say whenever she routinely invaded his space. She went through his desk drawers, collected all the stray pencils, and lined them up in neat little rows. She had taken his past issues ofSoldier of Fortunemagazine and stacked them in tall piles all in chronological order. She had even made his bed when he purposefully had left it unmade.
It even smelled differently. The scent of lemony disinfectant floated through the air, an aroma that he despised. He didn’t understand why she hated the smell of gym socks so much; to him it was a comforting odor, like his favorite bologna-and-American-cheese sandwiches.
Buddy flipped off his shoes and let each one fall to the ground with a thud. He reached over, turned the radio on the loudest volume, and stared at the ceiling.
The idea of the fort came to him instinctively. He hated being alone in the house with his mother. Within seconds he had devised a plan. He would tell his mother he was at Clayton’s so he could spend a few hours each day constructing the fort. He was sure his new friend would relish the opportunity. Still new to the town, Clayton was disappointed none of the kids owned a gun in Bellegrove and bemoaned how his recreational activities had become severely diminished.
Buddy was drawn to the outlaw-like quality of his new pal, and now he at least had someone to hang out with after school. The fortress would be a project they could labor over together and work up a real man’s sweat for. He imagined it might have been something his uncle had even done in Vietnam, constructing a camouflaged hideout from which to scope out the enemy.
The woods behind the reservoir were thick with tall pine and balsam trees, pin oaks and juniper bushes. He and Clayton would harvest fallen sticks and branches and create a foundation they would build upward, layer by layer. They would use whatever they could find. Theywould use ingenuity and strength, just like hisSoldiers of Fortunemagazines touted on their covers. He felt the idea was a way of channeling his uncle, a man who he had never met, but to whom every pewter framed portrait in his home was buffed and polished lovingly by his mother. Dressed in his uniform, his face staring nobly from behind the glass.
CHAPTER 31Vietnam, 1969
JACK WAS AT BASE CAMP WHEN THE TELEGRAM FROM THEREDCross arrived. It had been a difficult few days since Stanley’s death and most of the men couldn’t believe he wasn’t still with them, hiding out somewhere clasping his Bible or begrudgingly putting on his helmet with the offensive words scrawled on front.
But that morning Jack was resting for a few minutes outside the exterior of his hooch, his utility shirt drying on the clothesline, a dark green towel wrapped around his neck. He welcomed the beating sun, after that fateful patrol where the rain had been relentless and the leeches had been even worse than usual. The men had long since discovered that the thirsty bloodsuckers would crawl up their pant legs and attach themselves to their chest and limbs, any place they could reach. Jack’s entire body was now a constellation of painful, open, slow-healing, red sores, the only way to get the bastards off their skin was to burn them with the end of a lit cigarette, cover them with salt, or douse them with insect repellant. The men almost always opted for the torch of a cigarette.
He still considered himself more fortunate than some of the others. Chief, who had carried Stanley’s body the whole way without any help, looked exhausted. His eyes saddled with bags, his shoulders slumped.
He had not expected to suddenly see Lieutenant Bates standing in front of him.
“Lance Corporal Grady …” His voice, which had always been clipped and devoid of emotion, sounded strangely different in Jack’s ears. He held a thin envelope in his hand.
Years later, when Jack would think back on how he had first heard the news, he would recognize the unfamiliar tenor in Bates’s voice to actually have been kindness.
Jack stood up. Half-naked, his pants low on his hips, his dog tags flat against his bare chest.
“This just came for you.” Bates handed over the telegram to Jack. Printed on featherlight paper, the envelope fell out of his hand like a stone.
Jack took the telegram and pulled out the message.
We regret to inform you of the death of your mother, Eleanor Grady.… The death was reported this morning at 0700 hours. Transportation back home will be arranged by the Red Cross.… Two weeks’ bereavement leave has been approved.…
It took Jack several seconds to make sense of the words. He kept thinking he had misread them.
“My condolences, Lance Corporal Grady.” Bates reached to squeeze Jack’s shoulder.
For months, Jack had been living in a world that was full of discomfort and danger. He’d experienced the white-knuckle terror of rockets and grenades exploding just feet away from him and witnessed the senselessness of young men in body bags, their lives cut tragically short. But the one thing that Jack counted on was the knowledge that the two people he loved most were safe back at home.
After all, that was the natural order of things.
How many times had he imagined his mother receiving word of his own death? As soon as he learned he was drafted, Jack had envisioned two officers dressed in their military uniforms walking up the porch steps, solemnly saluting his mother, before offering her a neatly folded flag just as they did in the movies. It was a scene he had memorized because it was plausible under the circumstances.
But Jack had never imagined that he would be the one reading the telegram of his mother’s passing. It was supposed to happen the other way around.
