Vince looked at me.
“You remember how the system worked? After induction you did two months basic training, and then you got to find out what classification they’d assigned you. The one no one wanted was Eleven Bravo. That meant you did two more months training as a rifleman, then got shipped to Nam to replace the guys who were coming home in body bags. But there were eight support personnel for every man at the front, so if you had any kind of qualifications or education your chances of avoiding combat were pretty good.”
“Like Sam,” I prompted.
“Yeah. Except Sam volunteered.”
Vince nodded.
“Doesn’t make sense, right? Anyone that crazy to see action had already joined up, and they’d mostly all been in ROTC at college and were into all that military bullshit. But for someone to wait to get drafted and then deliberately lay his life on the line when he could walk away with a job as a filing clerk! And a guy like Sam!”
I shook my head.
“I don’t get it.”
“Me neither. But that’s what he did, and he spent his whole tour of duty under fire. The company he was in took eighty percent casualties in one firefight. He was out there the full year, and he came back without a scratch on him.”
“You met him, then?”
“He wrote me. We talked about getting together, but nothing ever came of it.”
We chatted some more about this and that, and then my flight was called. Vince and I hurriedly exchanged addresses, phone numbers and formulaic promises to keep in touch. By the time my plane was airborne, the whole encounter seemed unreal. I didn’t bother to mention it to Rachael when I got home.
It must have been almost a year after that when Sam called me at home one evening. It was not a good moment. David had recently developed chronic asthma, and although the medication normally kept the symptoms in check, he was still liable to have periodic crises. This was one. He had caught a heavy cold the week before, and this had precipitated an asthma attack which kept him-and us-awake for hours every night while he coughed and cried and struggled for breath.
As a result, Rachael and I were both ragged from lack of sleep, and oppressed not just with a rational anxiety for our son’s health but with something neither of us could mention, even to each other-a sense of failure, of inadequacy, of what I might once have called “bad karma.” However much you reject the idea rationally, a child becomes a symbol of the relationship which brought it into being. Any congenital weakness in the former inevitably reflects on the latter.
As well as nursing David, Rachael and I had our jobs to deal with. Her work for the Children’s Protective Service continually brought her into contact with stressful situations involving, as she once said, people who shouldn’t be allowed to keep a cat, never mind a child. There was no solution to the problems she dealt with, only damage control and the least harmful option. Sometimes, as that evening, this knowledge left her feeling depressed and vulnerable.
When the phone rang, she was telling me about the case she was currently working on, a ghastly affair involving systematic physical abuse over a period of years. Just hearing about it brought me down-I was exhausted myself, and had my own, less dramatic problems at work-but I knew that sharing these horrors with me was therapeutic for her, and forced myself to listen. David was running around screaming his head off in a desperate attempt to attract our attention. Before us loomed another sleepless night.
So I may have sounded slightly abrupt when I answered the phone. I thought it might be someone trying to sell me a home improvement scam or a carpet-cleaning service. This was the time they usually called. Instead, I heard a hazily familiar voice.
“Phil? How you doing, man? This is Sam. Remember me?”
It took me a moment to work it out.
“Oh, hi,” I replied flatly. “How are you?”
“Good! Vince wrote me with your number. So what are you doing?”
“I’m a teacher.”
Sam’s laugh made him real for me again. How often I had heard it ring out as we cracked up helplessly over some nonsense which tickled our drug-fused synapses!
“No, man! Like what are you doing
“Tonight?”
I frowned.
“Where are you calling from, Sam?”
“Right here in town.”
“In St. Paul?”
“Other side of the river. Where are you at? Vince gave me the street address. Maplewood, right? Can I get a cab out there?”
There was no way I wanted Sam to come to our modest tract house, identical to all the others in our neat, convenient suburb. The distance between my present lifestyle and the one I had shared with Sam and the others could not be measured in years. I had become the kind of person we all despised then, myself included. I was faithful to my wife, my strongest drug was whisky, and although some of my rock albums were still lined up beneath the stereo, I never played them any more. But part of my new persona was a concern for the feelings of others, and although I had no desire to see Sam again, neither did I want to seem rude. So after conferring with Rachael, I eventually agreed to meet him for a drink.
My choice of venue was Shaunessey’s, a self-styled “Irish pub” located in a new shopping precinct in downtown Minneapolis. It was snowing lightly, and I drove with care. The Mississippi was frozen over, as bleak and bare as the concrete freeway. I left our sensible Chevy Nova in a multilevel parking garage and walked the three blocks to the bar, trying to figure out how to fill a decent amount of time with someone I would never have chosen to see again. Still, it was no big deal. A couple of hours, a couple of drinks, and Sam would be history.
The first thing that struck me was how relaxed he seemed, how serene. Unlike Vince, or for that matter me, he didn’t seem to have changed one iota from the person I remembered. He had aged, of course, but his lean, bony frame and ferrety features had taken it well, merely tautening up a little, shrinking to a sinewy, leathery essence. His straight mousy hair was as long as ever, tied back in a ponytail, and his clothes-jeans, denim jacket, checked shirt and boots-epitomized the no-bullshit, low-maintenance look we all used to strive for. By comparison, I felt staid and conventional in my V-neck sweater, tweed slacks and moccasin-style loafers bought at sale prices from a department store in our local mall.
Sam didn’t seem to notice, though, or maybe didn’t care. In fact he showed almost no interest in me at all. He didn’t ask any questions about my life, and when I mentioned a few details he didn’t bother to conceal his indifference. References to my work, my marriage and my child elicited only a nod, a grunt and a slightly contemptuous smile. It was as if all that was irrelevant, and he was faintly amused that I hadn’t realized this.
Nor was he any more forthcoming about his own life. He didn’t volunteer any information, and when I asked what he’d been doing the smug smile stayed right in place.
“I’ve been through a lot of changes, man.”
There was no hint of irony in his voice. I nodded warily.
“We all have.”
Sam’s smile grew broader than ever.
“Some more than others.”
I was beginning to get annoyed. This kind of supercilious, cooler-than-thou posturing had been standard operating procedure in our former life, but it had not worn well.
“So where are you living?” I asked shortly.
He hesitated before answering, as though this was a difficult question. At the time I dismissed this as just another mannerism, an attempt to make himself look deep and mysterious.
“Out on the coast,” he said eventually.
“Any particular coast?”
I was no longer bothering to hide my irritation. But he wouldn’t be drawn.
