most of the night throwing up. We’d ended up shooting craps by the campfire.
Mike had gone into the Army straight out of high school. In 1963, he found himself in a place called Vietnam. He stepped on a land mine the day of his twenty-sixth birthday. People here always told him God gave him the greatest gift of all, life. But his eyes said differently. In them you could see both the physical pain and the psychic pain that came from losing both his legs.
Today he wore a Superman T-shirt and an angry face. He’s never had much trouble with girls. He had one of those altar-boy faces that a certain kind of woman takes to immediately. There had been one exception, the girl he’d been engaged to. She deserted him after he came home. Or maybe I was being too judgmental. Mike had always had a temper-I could remember a couple of fistfights we’d had, neither of us tough or savvy, but mad enough to put on a show for our friends-so maybe it was Mike’s fault. Maybe he’d made it impossible for her to stay with him.
“Sorry I didn’t make it to your rally the other night, McCain.”
“You didn’t miss much.”
“That’s not what I heard. I heard you and all your friends and that faggot Doran were saying shit about the troops. And that would include me.”
“Nobody said anything bad about the troops, Mike. All we said is that we don’t want any more deaths because this war isn’t worth it. We’re on your side.”
“Bullshit, you son of a bitch, you and your faggot friends aren’t on my side.” He was loud enough to attract attention. “I lose my legs over there and you’re telling me I did it for nothing? That all my buddies who died over there died for nothing?” He was shouting at me now.
I was embarrassed; but even more I was ashamed, because I didn’t have the right words to say to him. Maybe there were no right words. I felt miserable for him and the life ahead of him. And the life he’d lost on some miserable goddamn jungle trail in some miserable shithole of a country named Vietnam. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was for him and how I’d do anything I could to help him and how I hoped he would some day understand why we’d had the rally, why we believed as we did. But there were no words, not the right words, anyway, so I stood there in the blazing sun as people slowed to listen to him screaming at me, terrible words from a lost scared man some Dr. Strangelove general and some bought-and-paid-for politician had decided to send to yet another war.
I wanted to move away, but I couldn’t. Maybe I felt I had this kind of abuse coming. It was small payment, considering the payment he’d had to make.
His words came with such violence and speed that I no longer heard them. I just stared at the sad enraged face they were coming from, remembering him when we were young and the night we shot craps by the campfire and how he was always cruising the night in his ’55 black Chevy. Only to end up like this for no reason at all.
And then somebody had my hand and was tugging me away and three or four other people started shouting at me, too, joining Mike. I was several long feet away from them before I said, “Thanks.” Then I slipped my hand from hers.
“No PDA, huh?”
“What’s PDA?”
“God, Sam, somebody’s got to sit you down and explain the facts of girl life. Public Displays of Affection.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“I don’t know who I felt sorrier for, Mike or you. Both of you, I guess.”
Wendy wore a starched mauve blouse and tan walking shorts. The sandals only emphasized how small her feet were, fine delicate bones beneath the ornate clutches of the sandals.
“I stopped by your office. Jamie-is that it, Jamie?-she told me you were at the courthouse. I thought I’d find you and let you buy me a cup of coffee.”
“That’s damned nice of you.”
“I thought so too. But that seems to be my nature. Nice.”
“Uh-huh. I remember that from high school.”
“I wasn’t that stuck up.”
“The hell you weren’t.”
“Well, but then I took a sacred vow of niceness and look at me now.”
“Major improvement, I’ll give you that.”
“Oh, look. Isn’t that that little street cafe everybody likes so much?”
“You must have taken a sacred vow of subtlety, too.”
“You rarely get what you don’t ask for. I grew up with two sisters who were both better-looking and a lot smarter than I was. I only got things when I badgered my mother for them. Subtlety gets you nowhere, Sam.”
I had iced coffee, she had regular. We sat at a small table on the sidewalk under an umbrella.
Between the heat and humidity, the crowds moved slowly, as if they were under water. I watched as a meter maid put a ticket under a windshield wiper. She jerked her hand away. The windshield had been damned hot.
“I actually wanted to see you for two reasons. First, I wanted to make sure that I was going to see you tonight.”
“I’m hoping so, Wendy. I had a good time last night.”
“And second, from the little you told me at dinner about Lou Bennett and the fire and everything, I had an idea. Do you remember Doris Crachett?”
“Vaguely. She was a year ahead of us, right?”
“Two years, actually. We knew each other from summers at the country club. If you think I was a snob, you should have hung around Doris. Anyway, her father was the assistant fire chief up until a year ago. He retired then. Doris always said that Chief DePaul did too many favors for people.”
“What kind of favors?”
“Well, I remember Doris said that one of the mayor’s friends had a business that burned down. Her father thought it was obviously arson, but the chief wrote the report and called it accidental.”
“Why didn’t her father say something?”
She shrugged. “I guess he was always careful about not wanting to come on too strong-you know, with his education and his money. A lot of people made fun of him because he was a member of the country club.”
“How can an assistant fire chief afford the country club?”
“Oh, they had inherited money from her father’s side. Her dad had a college degree and no interest in anything special. Doris always said that he became a fireman by default. Probably thought it was exciting. He’s a widower now, and he lives with Doris and her husband. The husband’s a neurosurgeon in Cedar Rapids.”
“That’s good to know about DePaul. That he took a dive for somebody before Karen died.”
“So you owe me a dinner.”
“That’s how this works, huh?”
“Damn right. That’s another thing you learn when you have two older sisters who are prettier and brighter than you are. You have to keep doing favors for people so they’ll do a few for you.”
I looked at the golden down on the slender arm and then at the curve of the long neck as she turned in profile to pick up her pack of Viceroys. Then I had a brief jolt of Jane. My first brief jolt of the day, and I’d been up for several hours. The patient seems to be doing better today, Doctor.
“So, what time are you picking me up tonight? Barring unforeseen problems of course.”
“Seven.”
“What would you think about The Eyrie, that new place out on the highway? We can dance there, too.”
“You and dancing.”
“Face it, Sam. You like it too. You just have to be all boy about it and pretend you don’t. You were grinning when you were doing the Watusi.”
“I was doing the Watusi? I was just sort of jerking around.”
“That’s what everybody does when they do the Watusi.”
“Man, talk about useless information.”
She laughed. “Yes, and there’s a lot more where that came from.” Then she tapped me on the top of my hand. “You feeling any better about Mike?”
“No. And I doubt I will. He thinks we’re betraying him. It’s hard to face him. I don’t blame him for thinking
