And so Herman told Saul, and Saul just shrugged and kept on going. After a few moments, though, he became pensive and stopped. For the first time on the trip, he turned and addressed his father directly.
‘What are you doing, Dad?’
‘I want us to go home. I want you to grow up.’
‘You should have thought of that before suggesting I come here.’
‘You’re right, and I’m sorry. But I never said you should go back. This second tour was all your idea.’
‘You don’t remember our conversation very well, do you?’
‘I might have said something about America being at war. But if I did, I didn’t mean you had to go back. You did your duty. More than most people.’
‘It was your idea to join me here. I can’t go back. I can’t write a report saying that Bill Harmon appeared in the woods and had the inside scoop on the pilot’s whereabouts.’
‘You loved Bill.’
‘Still do. But he’s hardly a quotable source, is he?’
‘This is madness!’
‘Your madness. So what’s it going to be? You heading back, or do you want to watch this play out?’
‘I want to be with you.’
‘Well, come on then. And be quiet. There are VC around here.’
And so they walked on, leaving Bill behind.
In what seemed like no time at all, they arrived at the plane. It hadn’t crashed straight down or managed a controlled landing. It had its bits shot off in mid-air, and it had fallen to the ground with the graceless tumble of a meteor.
The cockpit was somewhat intact, because that is how randomness works. Sheldon took a picture.
Saul, on some impulse, said, ‘Herman? Go check the cockpit. I’m gonna see about that parachute.’
Saul then turned to his father and said, ‘Well? You coming or staying?’
‘I want to be with you.’
What Saul wanted was to bring his shithead brother pilot home. That’s what he’d been sent to do, that’s what he had been trained to do, and that’s what he wanted to do. Because an American shouldn’t be rotting in some green pile of Asian compost. He should be home with his family.
The parachute was hanging from a very tall tree just at the end of the marshland that Saul and Sheldon had to cross in order to reach it. The pilot was black, which surprised both of them. You didn’t see many black pilots in 1974. And the pilot, like Bill had said, was dead. The poor bastard hadn’t even been given a chance to land. The Vietnamese didn’t understand the blacks. They had never seen anyone from Africa before. They thought they were white men dyed black as camouflage. There were documented cases of the VC using steel brushes on these men, trying to get their blackness off.
‘Right, that’s it. Let’s go,’ said Sheldon.
‘We’ve got to get him down.’
‘No we don’t.’
‘Yes we do.’
‘No. We damn well don’t!’
‘You carried Mario home. You told his parents. His father hugged you and cried.’
‘I was on a secure beach. You’re in the jungle alone. This poor man here…’
‘Come on. Help me cut him down.’
‘Saul, be reasonable. The VC know you’re coming for the pilot. They know it, and there’s a 50-50 chance they got here before you.’
‘Then why not shoot me?’
‘Because an injured man needs to be carried, and that way they immobilise two or three men and not only one.’
‘Why not capture me?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
And then Saul got enraged, and everything came to a head. ‘There’s a negro hanging from a tree. A negro who is an American soldier. How do I let him stay there? How do I walk away from that man? Explain to me how I can walk away from him and still be your son, and I’ll do it. I swear I will.’
And, at this precious moment, Sheldon had nothing to say. Nothing at all.
So Saul swung his rifle across his chest like a bow, and started climbing the tree.
When he was high enough, he grabbed a branch, and used his service knife to slice away at the cords and silk of the parachute. The pilot’s feet were just over six feet from the ground. It wasn’t a long fall. Somehow, though, it felt like a slow one. A certain nausea came over Sheldon when the man tumbled to the ground.
As Sheldon watched, the first waves of resignation passed through him. He’d been here ‘on assignment’ so many times, watched this event so many times, that he knew both when and how terror comes. It would all happen soon now. In just a moment, Saul would start off down the only path towards the plane, just as Herman came up the same path — having burned some maps and papers to deprive the enemy of intelligence.
He knew what would come. Still, just in this moment, it had not happened yet. He was between the knowledge and the reality of what was to come — just where Cassandra found herself before it drove her mad. It
During this moment — as Saul dropped from the tree and put his knife away, and took off the pilot’s dog tags and put them in the upper-left pocket of his own shirt — Sheldon watched as his son became a man.
It was not a grand moment. There were no witnesses to it. There were no heroics. It was merely a small gesture of dignity and respect between one man and another. And in that, for Sheldon, the possibility of a better world was created. All we had accomplished thus far — as little as it may have been — took place in the unseen and forgotten efforts of Corporal Saul Horowitz recovering the mortal remains of Lt Eli Johnson.
And so, before the end, there was a moment of grace.
In that moment, Sheldon raised the camera to his eye and took their picture.
The release of the shutter freed time to carry onward. Sheldon watched Saul step on the trip wire that set off the explosion that would kill his only child. He watched from a position in front of Saul and Eli Johnson, just off the footpath to their left.
When it happened, Herman came running up behind him and towards Saul.
The VC had packed the bombs with nails and ball bearings and — perversely — casings from American rifles they’d picked up off the ground from a previous battle.
All these items tore through Saul’s legs, his groin, and his lower torso.
Before the pain registered on his face he collapsed, because there were no longer bones, muscles, or ligaments to hold him up. Lt Johnson’s body came down on the side of the path, and would not be recovered by the team. Only his dog tags, in Saul’s pocket, would make it back to the US, his parents, and the coffin they would be buried in.
Herman screamed and started to cry almost immediately. He grabbed Saul by the lapels of his shirt and, with the strength of the terrified, hoisted him onto his back, much as Saul had carried Johnson, and Donny had carried Mario, and men throughout history have carried one another.
The shooting began as soon as Herman started running.
No one looked at Sheldon any more. No one paid him any heed at all. Even Bill was gone.
Herman ran a full click through the jungle, into the tiny village, out to the boat. Ritchie was manning the M60 and firing wildly into the woods to provide covering fire, but he didn’t know if there was even anyone there.
Trevor was still poised on the bench behind the Monk.
As soon as they were aboard, the boat started moving, and soon they were free of the land.
But it wasn’t over.
The Monk turned the boat around so they could open it up heading downstream, and put more distance between themselves and whatever was in the bushes.
Herman stuck a morphine syringe into Saul’s carotid artery and then stuck two pads on the femoral arteries of his legs.
This field dressing would keep Saul alive for three more days once the boat made it back to the port, but he
