Koko

Poole imagined that it would take a lot to engulf this Memorial. Pictures had not quite conveyed its scale. Its strength came from its mass. Only inches high at the tapered ends, it rose to more than twice the height of a man at its folded center. Separated from it by a foot or so of earth already sprouting little flags, letters pinned to sticks, wreaths, and photographs of the dead, a sloping path of granite blocks ran its length.

The people before this emphatic scar in the earth passed slowly before the increasingly tall panels. Now and then they paused to lean forward and touch a name. Michael saw a lot of embraces. A skinnier version of an unloved basic training sergeant was inserting a handful of small red poppies one by one into the cracks between the panels. From immediately in front of the Memorial, a large wedge-shaped crowd fanned upward into the grassy bowl. A dense impacted wave of emotion came from all of these people.

Here was what was left of the war. The Vietnam War consisted of the names etched into the Memorial and the crowd either passing back and forth before those names or standing looking at them. For Poole, the actual country of Vietnam was now just another place—Vietnam was many thousands of miles distant, with an embattled history and an idiosyncratic and inaccessible culture. Its history and culture had briefly, disastrously intersected ours. But the actual country of Vietnam was not Vietnam; that was here, in these American names and faces.

The ghost-Underhill had appeared beside Michael again, kneading one beefy shoulder with bloody fingers— bright smears of insect blood across his tanned skin. Ah, Lady Michael, they’re all good folks, they just let themselves get messed up by the war, that’s all. A dry chuckle. We didn’t do that, did we, Lady Michael? We tend to be above it all, don’t we? Tell me we do.

I thought I saw you smash in a car to get to a parking space, Poole said to this imaginary Tim Underhill.

I only smash up cars on paper.

Underhill, did you kill those people in Singapore and Bangkok? Did you put the Koko cards on their bodies?

I don’t think you’d better pin that one on me, Lady Michael.

“Airborne!” someone shouted.

“Airborne all the way!” someone else shouted back.

Poole worked his way closer to the Memorial through the mostly stationary crowd. The sergeant who looked like his old sergeant from Fort Sill was now slipping the tiny red poppies into the crack between the last two tall panels. Protruding from between the panels, the little poppies reflected twice, so that two black shadows lay behind each red dart. A big wild-haired man held up a Texas-sized flag with a waving golden fringe. Poole stepped up beside a Mexican family posted directly beside the granite walk and for the first time saw the reflection in the tall black panel. Mirrored people streamed before him. The reflections of the Mexican family, a man and a woman, a pair of teenage girls, and a small boy holding a flag, all stared at the same spot on the wall. Between them, the reflected parents held a framed photograph of a young Marine. Poole’s own uptilted head seemed, like the others, to be searching for a specific name. Then, as in an optical illusion, the real Poole saw names leap out from the black wall. Donald Z. Pavel, Melvin O. Elvan, Dwight T. Pouncefoot. He looked at the next panel. Art A. McCartney, Cyril P. Downtain, Masters J. Robinson, Billy Lee Barnhart, Paul P.J. Bedrock. Howard X. Hoppe. Bruce G. Hyssop. All the names seemed strange and familiar, in equal measure.

Someone behind him said “Alpha Papa Charlie,” and Michael turned his head, his ears tingling. Now people completely filled the shallow bowl. They covered the rise behind it. Alpha Papa Charlie. Without asking, there was no way of telling which of the men, white-haired, bald, pony-tailed, with faces clear and pockmarked, seamed and scarred, electric with feeling, had spoken. From a huddle of four or five men in jungle hats and green jackets came another, rougher voice saying “… lost him outside Da Nang.”

Da Nang. That was in I Corps, his Vietnam. For a moment or two there Poole could not move his arms or legs. Into him streamed place names he had not remembered for fourteen years—Chu Lai, Tam Ky. Poole saw a narrow dirt alleyway behind a row of huts; he smelled the clumps of drying marijuana hanging from the ceiling of a lean- to where a mama-san with the irresistible name of Si Van Vo lived and prospered. The Dragon Valley, oh God. Phu Bai, LZ Sue, Hue, Quang Tri. Alpha Papa Charlie. On the other side of a collection of thatched huts a line of water buffalos moved across a mud plain toward a mountain trail. Millions of bugs darkened the humid air. Marble Mountain. All those charming little places between the Annamese Cordillera and the South China Sea, where the dead SP4 Cotton, killed by a sniper named Elvis, had lazily spun in frothing pink water. The A Shau Valley: yea, though I walk …

Yea, though I walk through the A Shau Valley, I shall fear no evil. Michael could see M.O. Dengler bouncing along a high narrow trail, grinning over his shoulder at him, blivets and ammunition strung across his back. On the other side of Dengler’s joyous face was a green, unfolding landscape of unbelievable depth and delicacy, plunging thousands of feet into mists, shading into dozens of different shades of green and rolling on all the way to a green, heavenly infinity. You been bad? Dengler had just asked him. If you haven’t you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about. Yea, though I walk through the A Shau Valley …

Poole finally realized he was weeping.

“Polish on both sides, yeah,” said an old woman’s voice quite near him. Poole wiped his eyes, but they filled again, so quickly he saw nothing but colorful blurs. “Whole neighborhood was Polish, both sides, up and down. Tom’s father was in the Big One, but the emphysema kept him home today.” Poole took his handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it to his eyes and tried to bring his crying under control. “I said, old man, you can do what you like but nothin’ is gonna keep me away from DC, come Veteran’s Day. Don’t you worry, son, nobody here minds if you cry your eyes out.”

Poole slowly realized that this last comment had been directed at him. He lowered his handkerchief. An obese white-haired woman in her sixties was looking at him with grandmotherly concern. Next to her stood a black man in a faded Special Forces jacket, an Anzac hat astride an unruly Afro.

“Thanks,” Poole said. “This thing”—he gestured behind him at the Memorial—“finally got to me.”

The black ex-soldier nodded.

“Actually, I heard somebody say something, can’t even remember what it was now …”

“Yeah, me too,” said the black man. “I heard somebody say ‘about twenty klicks from An Khe,’ and I … my damn stomach just disappeared.”

“II Corps,” Michael said. “You were a little south of me. Name’s Michael Poole, nice to meet you.”

“Bill Pierce.” The two men shook hands. “This lady here is Florence Majeski. Her son was in my unit.”

Poole had a strong, sudden desire to put his arms around the old woman, but he knew that he would break down again if he did that. He asked the first question that came to mind: “You get that hat off an ARVN?”

Pierce grinned. “Snatched it right off, riding by in a jeep. Poor little bastard.”

Then he knew what he really wanted to ask Pierce. “How can you find the names you’re looking for, in all this crowd?”

“There’s Marines at both ends of the Memorial,” Pierce said, “and they have books with all the names and the panels they’re on. Or you could ask one of the yellow caps. They’re just here today, on account of all the extra people.” Pierce glanced at Mrs. Majeski.

“They had Tom right there in the book,” the old lady said.

“I see one over thataway,” Pierce said, pointing off to Michael’s right. “He’ll find it for you.” In the midst of a little knot of people, a tall, bearded, young white man in a yellow duckbill cap was consulting sheets in a looseleaf binder and then gesturing toward specific panels.

“God bless you, son,” said Mrs. Majeski. “If you’re ever in Ironton, Pennsylvania, I want you to stop in and pay us a visit.”

“Good luck,” Pierce said.

“Same to both of you.” He smiled and turned away.

“I mean it now!” Mrs. Majeski yelled. “You stop in and see us!”

Michael waved, and moved toward the man in the yellow cap. At least two dozen people had him circled, and all seemed to be leaning toward him. “I can only handle one at a time,” the man with the cap said in a flat Midwestern voice. “Please, okay?”

Poole thought, The others ought to be at the hotel by now. This is a ridiculous gesture.

The young man in the yellow cap consulted his pages, indicated panels, wiped moisture from his forehead. Michael soon stood before him. The volunteer was wearing blue jeans and a denim shirt unsnapped halfway down