they needed then. His own war record gave him the credibility among the younger men that he needed to document their contribution to the war effort. He was only in his forties and, while not stupendously fit, was still slender and alert. The call came late one night while he was watching Johnny Carson. Carson was interviewing Dick Cavett, and their comic timing and quick repartee had him and Mabel in stitches.
‘This is Reuters calling. We need you there. You up for it?’
‘My bags have been packed since the Tet Offensive.’
‘Good man. Leave in the morning?’
‘Morning? Why wait? How about now?’
In an hour he was transported to Saigon, where an elephant took him to Saul’s base in three minutes while Nepalese Sherpas carried the luggage. The colonel in charge shot Sheldon a thumbs-up, and Donny winked back. It was good to be on the line again, out among the men. How young they were now! Not like in his day. Was he ever this young? Of course not. Korea was fought by men, and not just any men. Men with better taste in music.
All the guys gave a ‘hoo-ah!’ when the old Marine walked into the barracks. Despite rank, they all saluted him, and he returned it. Just this once, of course. Respecting the old guard. They knew he was one of them, and not some chump from
Donny tossed his duffle bag on the upper bunk and swung up. He’d need to get a good night’s sleep, because tomorrow he was getting on the boat with his son. And he didn’t want to make him look bad in front of the guys.
Before drifting off, he whispered, ‘Hey, Herman? You up?’
‘Yeah, Donny. What’s up?’
‘Why do they call the Captain “the Monk”?’
‘Oh, yeah. That. He doesn’t want to be here.’
‘Who does?’
‘No, I mean, he
The Oslo fjord runs gently under the hull of the jon boat, and the twenty-horse-power motor pushes them steadily south-west. Sheldon is seated on the white plastic bench near the stern, with his hand on the tiller. He wears the stolen Gore-Tex shell, and has put on the aviator sunglasses he found in the pocket. Paul sits on the third bench closest to the prow. Sheldon wonders if the boy has ever been in a boat before.
The Lonely Planet has a map of the Oslo fjord, and Sheldon uses it to navigate. Rather than follow the wider channel to the north, where the Danish ferries and cruise ships run — and could run over him — he passes through the sound between Hovedoya and Bleikoya islands, and then between Lindoya and Gressholmen, all the time hoping that Norwegians don’t have an overly nervous coast guard that asks too many questions.
Their boat is not the only one making the summer run south. There are ketches, kayaks, and catamarans; skiffs, scows, and even catboats. People wave to Sheldon and Paul. From the calm of splendid anonymity, Sheldon waves back.
Most of the smaller leisure craft seem to be headed out past Nesoddtangen at the tip of a massive peninsula and then south. Slow and steady, staying as close to land as possible, Sheldon follows them like driftwood. He and the boat and the boy putter on together, out into the water, away from the horrors of yesterday and into a blue- and-green world that knows nothing of who they are or where they came from.
Against the gentle wind and glimmering waves, Sheldon and Paul make their escape. As the tension of the city recedes, along with the harbour, the Opera, and City Hall, silence returns and brings with it the unheeded cries of the morning and all the mornings before it.
From inside the closet, Sheldon had heard her gasping for air. He had heard her being choked, her arms losing purpose, grace, and fight, flailing and clawing for any purchase on life. He had heard the hate that possessed the hands of the killer. He imagined her eyes growing wide as the terror overcame her, robbing her of any chance to save herself.
Looking at Paul sitting on the prow of the boat, leaning over to touch the water passing under its shallow draught, he wonders what the boy imagined as the tortured sounds of his mother’s life settled into stillness. He hopes that the boy’s own imagination is not as horribly refined as his own, which inevitably returns to the journey upriver in Vietnam.
She didn’t understand. She had other anchors to steady her. But he wanted to correct her, all the same.
‘How demented is it to have the past rush up to meet us just before the end? Isn’t that the final act of the rational mind as it struggles to comprehend its step into the darkness? The last push for coherence before the great unravelling? Is that so mad?’
‘We should be in and out in about three or four hours,’ Herman said to the team. ‘An F-4 went down about seven clicks from here, and HQ thinks the pilot bailed. So we’re to go recover his skinny little arse before he has to do any actual soldiering.’
The Monk was speechless, as usual, as the other men put the supplies on the boat. It was raining, and everyone was still a little hung over from a three-day bender in honour of Saul rejoining the Navy for a second tour and getting back to the boat.
Saul didn’t talk to his father very much. Just normal stuff. ‘Pass me that rope,’ or ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ Sometimes, ‘How’s it goin’?’ Sheldon didn’t mind that. He watched what the boys were doing as carefully as he could. He didn’t want to get in the way. But in this vision — in this memory of a place he has never been — he was terrified of losing even a single moment. He felt that Jewish compulsion to document. To remember. To hold onto every last ray of the day and ensure that others would know that it has been seen. What once existed and no longer does.
The Monk was a careful pilot. Sheldon photographed his hands on the wheel and took the Monk’s portrait when the sun was over his shoulder, and all you could see of his face and body was the dark edges and stance against the river.
There was a darkness to his demeanour. A hidden pain. A plan of some kind. Sheldon, through the lens, saw it all.
He then photographed Herman’s slender and delicate black fingers that could have been trained to repair a watch, had they all been born on a different planet.
He watched Trevor clean his rifle with the care one would give to a hunting weapon inherited from a grandfather.
He photographed Ritchie and his smile, and wondered why people so often resemble their own names.
It was good on the boat. Since Sheldon had started taking this ride regularly in 1975, he seldom worried about Saul, despite knowing the end of the story. He didn’t watch his son with the plaintive gaze of a father or even a war buddy. He just went along for the ride. Taking it in. Being there. Basking in the warmth of camaraderie and life.
He enjoyed watching his son as a man. This is what he wanted, Sheldon reminded himself. Right? For his son to be a man? To become an American soldier.
The F-4 Phantom had been shot down with a Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missile. The pilot, as everyone knew, was utterly blameless. But airmen had it easy, and everyone knew that, too. They sat in their air-conditioned tents, filing their precious nails, sipping tonic, playing gin, and jerking off to new and unsoiled magazines. Then, when a dinner bell was rung, they would don their spiffy gear that made all the girls swoon, get in the cockpits of their shiny planes — that some lackey had just cleaned and polished for them — and for fifteen minutes they’d drop napalm on people, and cattle, and open fields, and whatever else. Then, once their thumbs got tired, they’d go back to base, wipe a single drop of sweat from their foreheads as the press took their photos, and then resume their so rudely interrupted card hands as Red Cross girls named Heather or Nicky massaged their exhausted shoulders while the pilots flooded their ears with stories of derring-do.
