inside the narrow, 200-foot-long passageway of a culvert underneath the railroad, or beneath the twin tunnels of the trestle. But many of those clambering along the hills, striving to find safety, soon ran out of options; when word came through the line to open fire on them, it was McCreedy who, without any hesitation, immediately discharged his M1 after catching a small girl in his sights and, upon striking the child, exclaimed, “Got her!” And though Hollis tells himself no one was murdered by his weapon, at least not on that day, he is fully aware of having aimed his rifle — perhaps at rocks, maybe at those who were already killed — and pulling the trigger. Then what's lodged in his mind isn't so much his participation in the action, but, rather, freeze-frames of memory capturing the untested teenage cavalrymen who stood or knelt closest to him; only days previously they had entered dank Tokyo bars, fondling taxi dancers and requesting sake or beer, yet, with the passing of a week, they were gripping their weapons in Korea and shooting, for the first time in their lives, complete strangers. How quickly they had all adapted — launching mortar shells at defenseless groups of refugees, spraying machine-gun rounds into the culvert and the trestle tunnels, killing villagers even as they understood they were there to fight for them, firing simply because they were ordered to do so.
Presently, the rifles and machine guns led the soldiers from the hillsides, bringing them to where smoke enveloped that confounding terrain, the dark plumes drifting over corpses like souls ascending. Boots pushed at bodies, checking to see if anyone in the air-strike zone had lived, while, at the same time, surviving villagers were being herded together — brought from the hillsides, the surrounding fields, the tracks — and ushered slowly toward the trestle. Either weeping aloud or too stunned to make a sound, parents held their children, just as others helped the wounded ones who couldn't walk; the rifle muzzles and soldiers guided them forward — past ravaged limbs, their feet stumbling on the fallen — sending the villagers into the two cavernous tunnels beneath the bridge. But for the injured ones who had been unable to stand or move forward, they were promptly dispatched with point-blank shots, yet were fortunate enough to receive a swifter death than what would eventually befall those crowded inside the tunnels. The gunfire would sporadically echo there during the afternoon of the twenty-sixth until the morning hours of the twenty-ninth, hundreds of rounds ricocheting from the concrete walls at dusk, the heavy shelling, tracers illuminating the pitch interior at night as meteor-like bullets ripped into huddled figures.
Even after the survivors were crowded into the tunnels, McCreedy continued roaming above them near the tracks, stepping through the smoke with Schubert trailing close behind, ambling casually from corpse to corpse; when Hollis came upon the pair, they were standing on either side of an elderly woman who must have died from fright rather than injury: she lay perfectly intact among the ruin, spine against the ground, eyes fixed wide, legs straight, slender arms outstretched but with her thin fingers curled inward as if they were clutching at air. Without a trace of emotion, McCreedy leaned toward the woman — one hand gripping his rifle, the other hand gliding across her face — and, like magic, an Indian Head penny materialized on each of her eyes, covering her wide brown pupils.
Knitting his brow in bewilderment, Hollis shouldered his rifle as Schubert snickered and said, “Sleep tight.” Then he followed the pair for a while, watching the two bend down here and there, placing Indian Heads on the faces of the dead (the pennies soon dotting the eyes of dismembered children and charred men and mutilated women in what seemed, to Hollis, an irrational attempt to even out history). With the incomprehensible mass killing of the refugees not yet fully processed, it was the behavior of Schubert — enjoying himself beside fresh corpses whose faces superficially mirrored his own features, acting nothing like the shy, thoughtful young man on the transport ship — which initially mortified Hollis; it was as if he were recognizing in the kid the signs of a potent malady which had begun spreading quickly from man to man. Pausing by the blackened, fuming trunk of an acacia, Schubert snickered again while McCreedy poured more pennies out of the bulging prophylactic, replenishing their palms.
“Here you go,” McCreedy said, thrusting the condom at Hollis. “I haven't forgotten about you.”
Hollis hesitated. He half closed his eyes, which were irritated by the smoke, and, very slowly, said, “That's okay. I'll pass.”
McCreedy was stunned. Schubert snickered uncomfortably. They both stared at him with the same perplexed look; then they glanced at each other and, once more, stared at him.
“Now come on,” McCreedy told him, his voice barely masking annoyance. “You can't pass on an opportunity like this. You got an obligation here to fulfill, right? We all do. Come on.”
“It's okay, really,” Hollis said, stepping back from the condom. “I'd just rather not.”
A stern expression surfaced on McCreedy, even as he tried speaking calmly, his tone conveying the kind of urgency which was meant to change another's position: “Look, you better climb on board, son.” He reached forward, pressing a single Indian Head into Hollis's left hand, where it was kept within a fist. “You need to start seeing the bigger picture, or you might not get a place at the table, got it?”
Nothing McCreedy had said made sense, but Hollis still burned with an immense hatred for him; and when walking away to go elsewhere — upon catching the sound of both soldiers whistling beyond him in the veil of smoke, humming the old Gaelic drinking song which George A. Custer had adopted as the 7th Cavalry's marching anthem — he felt sickened by McCreedy and harbored a great sadness for those whose eyes were sealed beneath such cruel pennies. After depositing that single cent on a crooked rail track, hoping it would eventually get crushed flat, Hollis turned around, gazing back to glimpse the murky, receding figures of McCreedy and Schubert (stooping and rising, stooping and rising). Someday — he sensed it at his core but was never able to articulate it clearly to himself — there will be more of your kind than mine. Someday, he was sure, the world will be governed to accommodate the exclusive cupidity, unfounded fears, and willful inanity of people like Bill McCreedy.
Here in the backyard, the cacti now recall melting snowmen, globular and icy shapes thawing as Hollis scoops with the spade — clearing slush, tending an untenable garden which has somewhat relieved his conscience of the massacre he had witnessed: the refugees huddled beneath the railroad trestle at No Gun Ri, the men, women, and children seeking shelter there, but dying instead underneath the large twin arches, falling from bullets fired by his battalion; what horror he's conjured when sometimes shutting his eyes in the garden, like an incubus arising through memorial and continuing onward with him, a thread of regret keeping him beholden and disrupting the tranquillity of his hard-earned retirement.
And, as well, there is that other vision — the listless figures in gas masks, the stray herd of cattle — entering his sleep during the night. Upon arriving at Nine Springs, with the beginning of his newfound leisure, it had come to him more readily, more vividly, as persistent and pervasive as the cancer which had begun to spread unnoticed inside Debra. While the meaning of the cattle had always mystified him, the symbolic procession of restless souls had not: early on, he ‘d recognized them as a manifestation of his own guilt concerning No Gun Ri, a visitation from those who sought resolution or amends for their unjust deaths. Out in the garden they also started coming to him, weaving through his mind, distracting him. Yet the planting of a single cactus could stifle the recurring thoughts; when digging a new hole, when lowering the roots of barrel into the earth and patting down the soil, he saw nothing but life and creation, and, with time, the vision grew less and less troublesome, appearing infrequently at night while becoming nonexistent in his waking hours.
All the same, nobody has heard him address this grievous memory from the war — not Debra or Lon, no one he's ever met. He hasn't spoken of these crimes, of rifles fired at mothers holding babies, villagers digging under corpses as gunfire ricocheted — a wholesale slaughter issued discreetly by the 1st Cavalry Division headquarters, stating that refugees crossing the front lines should perish in case they might be the enemy hiding behind peasant clothing. Except he never saw the enemy at No Gun Ri, simply terrified bodies rushing about below him, screaming from one end of the bridge tunnel to the other, scrambling to avoid the shooting which rained through both sides — until body lay upon body, everything unmoving but blood and the faint, shallow breathing of the mortally wounded (how awful ebbing between man-made arches, how tragic greeting death where safety at last seemed palpable). Yes, he had pointed his rifle, had fired too — although, he feels certain, only the ground and the bridge supports took his bullets; even if, possibly, his bullets had ricocheted into the innocent and caused fatalities, Hollis remains proud of the fact that he didn't directly kill anyone, and, in the intervening years, he has never allowed that belief to waver.
For that matter, he is also proud of his garden, because it has become a remembrance of sorts — as thorny and forbidding, to his mind, as any reliquary. How right, then, for his skin to get punctured on occasion, his own blood dripping into places his fingers can't touch. So he is pleased with his efforts, his mornings spent planting. He doesn't shudder whenever the flesh is pricked, or curse himself; he can accept the pain easily, dutifully in fact, as a tithing offered to this soil where so many spines blossom (now more needles flourish here than bullets expended at
