governed by strong, independent women. But then again, he ‘d reminded himself, ovarian cancer wasn't part of Debra's gene pool; her disease was a fluke, the sole exception to the rule, and he couldn't have foreseen or ever conceded the possibility that he might now outlive her.
She tightened the cherry oil's lid, setting the bottle on the bedside table, and, without hesitation, picked a different aromatherapy bottle, shaking it for a few seconds before unscrewing the top. Then, as she began inhaling from the bottle, it was sleep-improving lavender replacing the lingering scent of cherry. “What about Bill?” she suddenly asked, between sniffs.
Hollis rested his right hand against his forehead. “Who?” he said, glancing furtively at her.
“Bill McCreedy. Do you think about him at all anymore?”
For a time nothing was said. Debra kept inhaling and exhaling, and he stared at her, taken aback by the question. His expression was so unlike his usual attempts to force a smile that he seemed like a separate person. “I don't know,” he said, his voice almost a gasp. “I don't.”
“You don't know? Really?”
He nodded, a look of utter consternation on his face: “I suppose I think of him. What about you?”
“Not so often,” she answered, frankly. “Only sometimes.”
“Me, too,” he lied. “Not so often.”
And that was that. Debra put her hand to her mouth and yawned once more. Presently the room would fall dark — the pillows adjusted, the lavender scent then diminishing with the increasing tenor of Debra's snoring, the sheets bunched around her shoulders. But sleep would elude Hollis for a while. Instead, he tried to picture what it was Debra saw whenever her memory invoked McCreedy — but, despite his best efforts, little was revealed to him. How many years had it been — he found himself wondering — since they had last spoke of Creed? Ten, fifteen years? And why were the long dead recurring to her now? Gripped with anxiety, Hollis gazed into the pitch of the room until the darkness surrounding him made his body shudder and eyes close. A distant scent came to him there, a pleasant mingling of odors which weren't within reach or distilled in bedside bottles of oil — apples and pears and muddy earth and tall, fragrant reeds, transporting him elsewhere, sending him far from where he lay with his wife; and, too, while aware of her sonorous breathing, he was observing a broad river coursing near groves of apple and pear trees. He was, in those tugging moments just prior to sleep, somewhere else — somewhere he had never wanted to visit again, a valley where the rushing, shifting water now symbolized only loss and the transience of living.
13
There was, on that quiet August night, no light save for what came from the stars above, or from the sporadic bursting of flares discharged into the sky. The moon didn't rise over the craggy Sobaek Mountains to cast its reflective glimmer across the brown waters of the Naktong River. Yet crickets were heard among the meadows and reeds, and the river made a low, continuous murmur as it moved between fruit groves, elevated pastures, crooked hillsides (winding toward the sea, cutting a two-hundred-foot-wide scar which halved South Korea into eastern and western portions). In a nearby apple orchard, the rows of shadowy trees were — when viewed at the magic hour of dusk — like a postcard image from home, a welcome sight for American soldiers who had grown sick of seeing rice paddy after rice paddy after rice paddy.
Earlier Hollis had wandered beyond the orchard and away from the two-man listening post he was supposed to share with Bill McCreedy, holding his M1 in front of him while patrolling the eastern shore. He continued down a narrow dirt path until arriving at the high grass and tall reeds which grew abundantly by the water's edge — then he pushed inside the dense overgrowth, his encroachment silencing the crickets around him. A few feet past the screen of reeds the currents burbled and the other side of the river appeared blacker than the heavens. He crouched, letting the overgrowth envelop him. As the crickets resumed trilling, he kept his body still while slowly pivoting his head this way and that, resisting any urge to stand up, or urinate, or stretch his arms. Sweat began dripping from his helmet, wetting his ears and eyes and mouth, tasted by his tongue. Shortly he felt tired, and, eventually, very tired. However, he managed to stay awake and didn't move himself an inch, listening for the slightest alteration of sound, blindly peering out — at the path which had brought him there, at the field of rice stalks behind him, mostly in the direction of the terrain across the river — certain all the while that unseen enemy counterparts were doing the exact same thing on the western shoreline of the Naktong.
Before long Hollis knew sunlight would breach the darkness, allowing him to emerge through the reeds. He would trek back along the dirt path, regrouping with the rest of the night patrols and scouts; the weary, nervous men glancing about — the river, the paddies, the brightening hillsides — rifles gripped as they returned to the defensive line which had been dug along the Naktong's eastern banks, crawling into foxholes, briefly finding much- needed sleep beside or within the illusory tranquillity of the apple orchard. But, for now, the night remained present, and while his body was rigid — his senses on high alert — his thoughts strayed restlessly during his watch, defying what he had chosen as his own personal combat mantra: let memories fade, let instinct take over. Yet how effortless it was for a willful thought of not thinking to become deposed by more potent thoughts somehow born of themselves, flashing his mind elsewhere, manifesting recent scenes which already seemed like fragments from a previous lifetime.
Thirteen days, Hollis calculated, since they retreated from No Gun Ri in summer rain and fog, soon pursued like bandits by North Korean tanks. Thirteen days, almost fourteen, during which mortar fire struck along slippery roads, and mud guided jeeps and ambulances toward ditches; the cavalrymen fled southward on foot or in trucks, exchanging rounds with advancing enemy units, setting fire to every village or hut they happened upon, carrying the wounded and, sometimes, leaving their dead to spoil. Thirteen days of constant fear and persistent inhumanity, distinguished by hills and valleys strewn with the corpses of strangers and fellow soldiers — by vultures descending through swarms of flies to pick at rotting flesh. Only such repeated carnage could distance No Gun Ri, surpassing those who were killed beneath the bridge and temporarily absolving those who had killed them so flagrantly. And why, he wondered, should it have mattered anymore? Why did he care? For the score had been quickly settled in the duration of thirteen miserable days, thirteen uneasy nights.
But on this peaceful, moonless night nothing hinted at what the troops had endured to reach the provisional safety of the Naktong, having crossed the river more than a week ago, demoralized and fatigued — machine gunners, riflemen, recoilless riflemen, mortarmen, scouts, clerks — digging in for the final battle which was drawing closer by the hour. There would be no more pulling back in daylight, no more cowering behind the veil of nightfall while flares erupted in the skies like meager red, white, and green fireworks, and artillery shells exploded the ground and men from out of nowhere, and the North Koreans raced after them as if they were easy game. The horrors which had recently befallen the regiment had, at some point, ceased to unnerve Hollis; betraying a casualness now and a detachment whenever stepping through the configurations of mortally wounded, he scarcely noticed the irretrievable forms marking the earth. His long legs maneuvered forward without reservation; his once darting, blinking eyes had turned into a squinting, encompassing gaze — as if he had been fighting in Korea for years instead of weeks. Then, for Hollis, the greatest horror of all was how mundane death ultimately began to feel — becoming an almost non-event, a commonplace occurrence which was less unique than simply picking apples off an apple tree.
He was not alone in this regard. Few, if any, among the survivors had made it to the Naktong lacking a hard, remorseless thousand-mile stare. Each soldier had witnessed his share of the unimaginable, each man contained a mental catalog of both heroic and repugnant deeds. They had all been left frozen at the sight of familiar faces torn apart, riflemen or gunners or medics speaking aloud and then, a second later, having no head or chest or recognizable shape. But they had also heard tales of exceptional bravery: the three F Company men who had taken cover on a railroad embankment, using four rocket shells and a single bazooka to destroy a North Korean tank — or the solitary H Company commander who, following the annihilation of his platoon, stayed put under fire and single- handedly phoned in the artillery coordinates of approaching tanks.
Yet valiant and nightmarish acts were often the same. When Private Mark Neiman was fatally wounded by an incoming mortar round but continued writhing hopelessly in shock — fingers trembling toward the mangled, grisly stumps where legs had been — it was McCreedy who ran to him and eliminated the private's agony, doing what a nearby officer couldn't bring himself to do, mercifully pressing his rifle barrel against Neiman's forehead, squeezing
