we got to talking about home.
She was a Midwesterner too, from Nebraska, and had joined to get out of Nebraska and to be near her brother, who had been up at Phu Bai until he was injured. She was dating several guys, but she didn't elaborate, except in general terms. I gathered maybe she wasn't supposed to talk about that. I told her about Duncan, repeating some of his stories, and about my family. But somehow the conversation would always drift back to what had happened after my fight with Krupman.
I wasn't trying to lie, but I didn't want to talk about the amulet, nor did I want to be obviously withholding anything. So I told her about the villagers, okay, but I down played the injuries and upgraded the available equipment slightly. We had been talking for two weeks before we ever got past the ambush. I started telling her about what happened afterward, what Hennessey had said.
'Wait a minute, wait a minute,' she said. 'You trying to tell me that the general tried to talk these men into killing you? You have witnesses?' She looked a little like a pointer who found a scent just then.
'Well, yeah, like I told you, William Johnson was there, but he got there after the general said most of that stuff. And Zits and Maryjane but-no real names.' I shrugged helplessly and stared down at my sheet.
'Wait a minute. There was the radioman. A black guy. His name tag said Brown. He'd tell you.'
'I'll check on it,' she said ruefully. 'There's probably only a couple thousand men named Brown in the area.'
She stood up abruptly, flipped back the curtain, and stood at the foot of my bed. I heard the click of her lighter, saw her shadow take three short steps one way, three short steps the other, back and forth.
She and Sergeant Llewellyn, the ward master, struck up quite a friendship while I was there. He had mentioned once when he was handing me an emesis basin that Janice had been with me most of the week I was out with my fever. They'd gotten well acquainted at that time, I supposed. I heard him ask her if she wanted a cup of coffee and she ducked her head in and said, 'Kitty, I'm going to the nurses' station for coffee. Want a cup?'
I shook my head. later I heard whispers from the station and then voices raised in argument. I caught the words 'your career' in a male voice and then 'about as subversive as you are' in Janice's clarion tones, followed by 'my career' and mumbles of grudging agreement.
Before day shift ended that day, Llewellyn, a lanky, rawboned 91Charlie who had Cherokee cheekbones and a Tennessee accent, lingered by my bed after picking up my supper tray. His aura was a rather muddied mauve, the healing rose overlaid with anxious gray violet just at the moment, belying his casual tone.
'Well, how are you this evening, ma'am?'
I sighed and tried to smile, but the smile drained away before it got to my mouth. 'I'll do.'
'Yeah, well, it sure is exciting having you around here, y'know that?
All these visitors and such. Why, it's the most excitement we've had in this place since the My Lai thing and all those newsmen and investigators all over the place. Sergeant Mitchell was on that one, too, but I didn't know her then. Noticed her, though. I don't know how you folks felt up there, but we thought ol' Calley sort of took a fall for somebody higher up. Gotta hand it to General Hennessey, though, he was right in there cryin' atrocity with everybody else, even though I met this fellow used to work in the general's mess?' His voice rose in the Southern interrogatory that means 'you know?' but puts in the question mark and leaves out the words. 'He said Hennessey was in favor of wipin' out the entire population. Not that that's an unusual idea.
But it's commonly held that if it takes wipin' out all of us to wipe out all of them, he's gonna be right in there wavin' the flag and talkin'
about the domino theory. Between you and me, the man ain't fishin' with a baited hook. He's been around a couple of times to pass out medals and he's downright rude to the female personnel. Why, I remember last spring one lieutenant got raped by a troop under Hennessey's command and she had to go to the I.G. and have her mama write her congressman to keep from being thrown out of the service for bein' a loose woman.
Useful thing, the I.G. I believe General Torelli, same officer that was in charge when Lieutenant LaVeau had her trouble, is still OIC. Between you and me, I think he might like to get somethin' on that bastard.'
My brain was not working at rapid speed, but the man had practically drawn me a picture. I had been too harassed and too out of it to wonder, but suddenly I realized I had had no letters, no calls, no solicitousness of any kind from home since my return. Nothing forwarded. I wondered what my family had been told.
'Well, I'd write home,' I said wearily, 'but I suppose it would be intercepted.'
'It might be-unless you found a way around it. I think you better try, ma'am.'
I did, because I knew he was taking a risk, and Janice was taking a risk, to try to help me. I didn't care all that much by then. It didn't seem to matter what I told anyone, they put their own connotations on it. I had always been a 'gook lover,' back on the ward.
All my coworkers said so, the interrogators told me. I had no feelings for the GIs. And when had I learned good enough Vietnamese to see me through my alleged ordeal? I was sick of it, but no sicker than I was of everything else, and I was getting used to being sick of things.
Having an easy time of it, having people in power be reasonable, being allowed to get well and go back to my job began to seem like a naive dream of Disneyland proportions.
But from what Llewellyn said, Hennessey was even more of a crazy man than I thought, and could do a great deal more damage to a great many more people. So I wrote some more letters and filled out more papers and eventually answered more questions. An official inquiry was conducted, one that included other high-ranking people than General Hennessey. Janice told me they located Brown in Quang Ngai, just before he was medevaced to Japan for removal of half his radio from his back.
Words were bandied, more papers filled out. William had been reassigned to I'll Corps, she said. They were still looking for him. The possibility of a court-martial hearing for me was discussed.
In the meantime I received a letter from home. My mother was so glad to hear from me. She'd sent an inquiry through the Red Cross when I stopped writing, but hadn't had an answer as yet.
Then gradually the interrogators, even Janice, stopped coming by, except to ask the odd, enigmatic question here and there. The silence made me more anxious than their presence had. I thought this was never going to end. I was never going to be allowed to go home.
One morning the head nurse, Major Hanson, personally took my vital signs and tenderly took me in a wheelchair to the shower, straightened my bed, and helped me into a clean patient gown. I had been walking to the shower and changing my own bed for about a week, so I knew something official was going on. I wondered if my last meal was going to show up on the breakfast cart, and I about knocked myself out in the shower trying to pick up the soap, which kept slipping out of my unreliable hands.
General Hennessey, a bird colonel, and a major proceeded down the aisle of the ward and stopped at my bed. The major ruffled a document and handed the general a box. The general opened the box and extracted something.
'Lieutenant McCulley, in honor of your . . .
I didn't hear the rest of what he said. I was too busy flinching backward when I saw the pin he was aiming at my infected breast.
Meanwhile, he was less saying the words than sputtering them, and started waving the pin around. The bird colonel, who wore insignia from the inspector general's office, took the object away from him and laid it on my pillow. My Purple Heart, I thought, without looking at it. Big fucking deal. Instead of court-martialing me, they were giving me a medal. An hour and a half later I boarded an orange Braniff freedom bird, back to the world.
The airplane ride back was like a big, long, raucous party, but I Teurled up in my seat and pretended to sleep. I didn't have any money on me when I got to Fort Lewis, and I was wandering around trying to think what to do when a warrant officer tapped me on the shoulder. A woman who looked about to explode was standing nearby, watching, trying to restrain two boys about eight and five.
'You lost, Lieutenant? The real world's that way.' He pointed to the doors. I looked at him and saw Tony,
