would handling explosives be a test of your manhood? It can end your manhood in a hurry, blow your balls off.'
He knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it.
'That's why I suggest you might have approached it as a test, a challenge.'
Chris said, 'You don't stay on a job six years to prove something. You have to like it. There's risk, sure. You accept that going in and you handle it, or you get out.' Chris waited. The young doctor was hiding back there writing again, drawing conclusions, making judgments about him. Chris said, 'I don't know what attracted me. . . . There was something I've wondered about that happened in Vietnam, if it had anything to do with it. You know, like in my subconscious mind.'
The voice said, 'You were in Vietnam?'
'It doesn't seem to have a direct connection, though.'
'What doesn't?'
'See, when I was over there I was assigned to a Recon-Intelligence platoon, working with mostly a bunch of ARVNs. You know what I mean? South Vietnamese, supposedly the good guys. One of my jobs was to interrogate prisoners they'd bring in and then recommend their disposition.'
'Meaning how to dispose of them?'
'Meaning what to do with them. Let 'em go, send 'em back to Brigade . . . but that's not what I'm talking about. Well, it is and it isn't.'
There was a silence. Chris tried to think of the right words, ways to begin. One sunny day I was sitting in the R and I hootch at Khiem Hanh. . . .
'The day I'm talking about, I was sent out to question a guy the ARVNs believed was working for the Vietcong. An informer with a sack over his head had fingered the guy and they pulled him out of his village. I got there, they have this old man standing barefoot on a grenade with the pin pulled, his toes curled around to hold the lever in place and his hands tied behind his back. I never saw anybody so scared in my life. They have him behind a mud wall that used to be part of a house, in case his foot slipped off and the grenade blew. I had to talk to the guy across the wall with my interpreter hunched down behind it; he refused to stand up. The rest of them, the ARVNs, they're off about thirty meters or so having a smoke. Anyway, I ask the old guy a few questions. He doesn't know anything about the VC, he's a farmer. He's crying, he's shaking he's so scared, trying to keep his foot on the grenade. He can't even name his own kids. I tell the ARVNs the guy's clean, come on put the pin back in and let him go. By the time I cut him loose I look up, the fucking ARVNs are walking off, going home. I go after 'em partway, I'm yelling, 'Where's the goddamn pin?' They don't know. They point, it's over there somewhere, on the ground. I yell some more. 'Well, help me find the goddamn thing. We can't leave the guy like that.' One of them says, 'Tell him to pick it up and throw it away.' They didn't care. They walk off laughing, think it's funny. Some of those guys, they even knew the old man. They knew he wasn't VC, but they didn't care. They walked away.' Chris paused. Man, just thinking about it . . .
'I crawled around looking for the pin, finally gave up. The old man's crying--there was no way he could handle that grenade. The only thing I could think of, have him step off, I'd pick it up quick and throw it. But I couldn't tell him what I wanted to do, my fucking interpreter was gone. I did try, I went through the motions; but you could see he didn't understand. The poor guy couldn't think straight. The only thing I could do was walk up to him, push him aside and grab it. But I had to keep him calm. I walk up to him, I'm going, 'Don't worry, Papa. Nothing to get excited about.' I'm about as far as that door from him he can't do it anymore. He comes running at me, lunges and grabs hold, and in the five seconds we had I couldn't get the guy off me. I could not get him off. I tried to drag him out of there. . . .' Chris stared at the doctor's diploma hanging on the bare institutional wall.
'The grenade blew with the old man hanging onto me. It killed him and tore up both of my legs. I was in- country fifteen weeks and out of the army.'
There was a long silence followed by faint sounds, the serious young doctor tapping his ballpoint pen on the desk, clearing his throat.
'As you approached the old man, Sergeant Mankowski, were you aware of being afraid?'
'Was I afraid? Of course I was afraid, I was scared to death.'
'All right, but you also felt, I believe, a deep hostility toward the ARVN soldiers.'
I have to get out of here, Chris thought.
'So that, in effect, it was your intense anger that enabled you to overcome your fear.'
'That must've been it,' Chris said, 'my hostility.'
'But now, in comparable high-risk situations, your fear is no longer dampened, let's say, by acute feelings of anger. It's out in the open and you have to deal with it. A fear which you equate, specifically, with the loss of your hands.'
Chris turned in the chair, quick, and caught the sneak looking at him, saw his eyes there for a moment in round glasses.
'I'm not worried about my hands, Phyllis is.'
The doctor had his head down again, checking his notes. 'You said, quote, 'I started thinking about my hands. I'd be looking at them without even realizing I was doing it.' '
'Because of Phyllis.'
'You're looking at them right now.'
Chris put his hands in his lap, locked his fingers together and stared straight ahead at the asshole doctor's diploma. The thing to do was just answer yes or no, don't argue. Finish and get out.
There was a silence.
'I'm told a fatality occurred yesterday, a bomb exploded. What was the circumstance of the man's death?'
Chris said, 'We believe the deceased attempted to outrun a substance that explodes at the rate of fifteen thousand feet per second and didn't make it.'
There was another silence.
'You did everything you could?'
'I'll get you my Case Assigned report if you want to read it.'
The silence this time was longer. Chris began to think maybe they were finished.
'Are you aware of other fears?'
'Like what?'
'Are you afraid of animals, insects?'
Chris hesitated, giving it some thought before saying, 'I don't like spiders.' That would be safe; nobody in the world liked spiders.
The doctor said, 'Oh? That's interesting, a fear of spiders.'
'I didn't say I was afraid of spiders, I said I didn't like them.'
'Do you think you might be trying to minimize, substitute dislike for fear? I pose the question, Sergeant Mankowski, because a fear of spiders can indicate a dysfunction in the area of sexual identification. Or, more precisely, a fear of bisexuality.'
Chris stood up. He turned his chair around and sat down again, facing the doctor.
'You trying to tell me if I don't like spiders it means I go both ways?'
The young doctor looked up. For the first time his gaze in the round glasses held.
'You seem to feel threatened.'
'Look, they send me over here, it's supposed to be a routine exam. Has my job been getting to me? I feel any stress? No, I just want a transfer, on account of Phyllis. Now you're trying to tell me I have a problem.'
'I haven't suggested you have a problem.'
'Then what're you trying to do, with the spiders?'
The young doctor kept looking right at him now. 'I'm suggesting the spider is a symbol--if you want a clinical explanation--that externalizes a more threatening impulse. One that quite possibly indicates a pregenital fear of bisexual genitalia, usually in the form of a phallic wicked mother.'
Chris kept staring at the young doctor, who stared right back at him and said, 'Does that answer your question?'
Chris said, 'Yes, it does, thank you,' and felt some relief; because all the guy was doing, he was playing doctor with him, showing off. Little asshole sitting there in his lab coat with all those words in his head to dump on the dumb cop, giving him that pregenital genitalia bullshit. There was no way to compete with the guy. The best
