'I heard of Shelf,' says the man in the open coat. His face suddenly looks different. As he walked toward the man on the corner, it looked as if it belonged on Fifth Avenue. Now it doesn't. 'Never met him, though.'
'Toward the end of my run, we didn't see anyone with much rank, sir.'
'If you came out of the A Shau Valley, I'm not surprised. Are we on the same page here, soldier?'
'Yes, sir. There wasn't much command structure left by the time we hit Dong Ha. I pretty much rolled things along with another lieutenant. His name was Dieffenbaker.'
The man in the red ski sweater is nodding slowly. 'You boys were there when those helicopters came down, if I've got this placed right.'
'That's affirmative, sir.'
'Then you must have been there later, when . . . '
Blind Willie does not help him finish. He can smell Wheelock's cologne, though, stronger than ever, and the man is practically panting in his ear, sounding like a horny kid at the end of a hot date. Wheelock has never bought his act, and although Blind Willie pays for the privilege of being left alone on this corner, and quite handsomely by going rates, he knows that part of Wheelock is still cop enough to hope he'll fuck up. Part of Wheelock is actively rooting for that. But the Wheelocks of the world never understand that what looks fake isn't always fake. Sometimes the issues are a little more complicated than they appear at first glance. That was something else Vietnam had to teach him, back in the years before it became a political joke and a crutch for hack filmwriters.
' 'Sixty-nine and seventy were the hard years,' the graying man says. He speaks in a slow, heavy voice. 'I was at Hamburger Hill with the 3/187, so I know the A Shau and Tam Boi. Do you remember Route 922?'
'Ah, yes, sir, Glory Road,' Blind Willie says. 'I lost two friends there.'
'Glory Road,' the man in the open coat says, and all at once he looks a thousand years old, the bright red ski sweater an obscenity, like something hung on a museum mummy by cut-up kids who believe they are exhibiting a sense of humor. His eyes are off over a hundred horizons. Then they come back here, to this street where a nearby carillon is playing the one that goes I hear those sleighbells jingling, ring-ting-tingling too. He sets his bags down between his expensive shoes and takes a pigskin wallet out from an inner pocket. He opens it, riffles through a neat thickness of bills.
'Son all right, Garfield?' he asks. 'Making good grades?'
'Yes, sir.'
'How old?'
'Fifteen, sir.'
'Public school?'
'Parochial, sir.'
'Excellent. And God willing, he'll never see Glory Fuckin Road.' The man in the open topcoat takes a bill out of his wallet. Blind Willie feels as well as hears Wheelock's little gasp and hardly has to look at the bill to know it is a hundred.
'Yes, sir, that's affirmative, God willing.'
The man in the topcoat touches Willie's hand with the bill, looks surprised when the gloved hand pulls back, as if it were bare and had been touched by something hot.
'Put it in my case, or my ball-glove, sir, if you would,' Blind Willie says. The man in the topcoat looks at him for a moment, eyebrows raised, frowning slightly, then seems to understand. He stoops, puts the bill in the ancient oiled pocket of the glove with GARFIELD printed in blue ink on the side, then reaches into his front pocket and brings out a small handful of change. This he scatters across the face of old Ben Franklin, in order to hold the bill down. Then he stands up. His eyes are wet and bloodshot.
'Do you any good to give you my card?' he asks Blind Willie. 'I can put you in touch with several veterans' organizations.'
'Thank you, sir, I'm sure you could, but I must respectfully decline.'
'Tried most of them?'
'Tried some, yes, sir.'
'Where'd you VA?'
