His brass catches a ray of sunlight, and the glare renders his face a shadow. Marvin does not hear the words; his attention is on the aluminum casket resting on a gurney. The captain finishes his speech and asks if he can offer something more in the way of help. Marvin clears his throat and looks at the officer. From the corner of his eye he sees Buster Carter and his sons. He reaches in his pocket and touches his fingers to the pear. He pulls it out. “Here,” he says. “It’s for you.”

  The officer takes the pear and examines it. “Thank you, sir. Is there something more I can do?”

  Marvin realizes Buster and his sons, grown men now, are approaching. He looks at Katherine, who holds the flag to her breast. Marvin wants to hear words about his son, nothing abstract. He wants to know how his boy spent his last days, if he felt terror or thought of home at that last moment. But the captain can’t provide them. Who can? He’ll bury bones, but no hole is deep enough for memories.

  The taste of acid is strong in his mouth. His knees are rubbery. He can’t move. There is much to do. The footers for the cottage and the berry bush must come out, a sapling must be planted to replace the one struck by lightning, the boy must be buried and grass planted over the grave, and Marvin must call the minister to say some words to sanctify the moment. But how can he when he can barely move his tongue?

  “No,” he answers. It is a rigid no, spoken without malice.

  Plateau Lands

  Glenn sits up on the edge of the chaise, closes his book and rubs his eyes. He’s not sure what awakened him. Perhaps the sudden drop in temperature; perhaps the thunder, or an elusive dream. He watches lightning march in columns from the west and breathes in the air, pungent but fresh. The hot August air in the Phoenix basin invites such storms, powerful, thundering storms and warm winds, then icy rain.

  An insistent ring, ring filters through. He hurries inside to grab the receiver and shouts, “Hello.” He’s about to cradle it when a voice says, “Kaiser Roll?”

  Glenn’s throat goes dry. It’s Mel. He sees him as he last saw him, the prosthesis leaning against a chair, Mel rolling a sock off to rub his stub, pink and violet and granulated. Glenn remembers the recent news brief, Mel on the small screen limping to a podium, ready to deliver a speech.

  “We’ve got to talk. You, me, Dodrey, Mullen. Went through some heavy things, didn’t we?” Mel says.

  “Talk?”

  “Remember Dickerson?”

  Glenn pictures Dickerson seated on a boulder, arms folded over his chest, his face fearful but determined in its defiance. What, he wonders, would have happened had Dickerson taken the point with no argument when Steinbrenner told him to.

  “Guess he never got it together when he came back. A street person in New Orleans—imagine,” Mel adds. “Got cancer. He’s dying. Made wild statements about ’Nam. Delusions of a homeless black man gone sanctimonious. Know what I mean, ol’ buddy?”

  “Statements?”

  Glenn imagines what Dickerson is avowing. And the others? If tracked down, what might they say? He feels like a high-wire artist watching the dismantling of his safety net several stories below.

  Mel says, “I’m flying in to see you, into Sky Harbor.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m running for office. I’ve got a lot invested here, and I’m in a position to help guys like us.”

  Glenn wonders why so much ambition in one family?

  “Mel,” he says, “I’m a family man.”

  “We’re all family men. I need your help.”

  Glenn hesitates. He wishes he could hang up, wishes he’d not picked up the phone. “Mel, it was a long time ago.”

  “Are you hearing me, Glenn? I’m the one who lost a leg. You came home without a scratch.”

  Before Glenn can speak he hears Mel lay down the receiver and tell one of his campaigners to handle the details. A woman’s cigarette-deepened voice comes on the line and tells Glenn what flight he is to meet. “Mel’s eager to see you. He’s not too busy for an old friend. Were you there when he won the Silver Star?”

  “I was.”

  She offers a pleasant good-bye and hangs up.

  Outside, the threadlike paloverde leaves whip fiercely against the block fence. A breeze ruffles the curtains. He wishes the storm away. It reminds him of the closetlike rain forests. Rain splatters forcefully off the tiled roof as it had in Quang Ngai Province, where the sky smothered the ground—no lightning, no thunder, just rain—plateau lands smelling of decay, infernal heel-sucking mud, the tedious thip, thip of rain on a poncho hood. The land had seemed in a state of continual oxidation and the clay beneath his feet like rust.

  Glenn doesn’t bother with a light, just lowers the receiver, sinks into the recliner, and stares at the phone as if at a box of serpents. After so many years ghosts come out. The walls take on a flat, doughy hue as the room darkens.

  ▪

  From the first, Mel’s life was some sort of mission. Glenn met him during ROTC class at Stephen F. Austin High in El Paso. Mel was the only freshman to earn stripes. The boys crammed into a basement room to watch films of World War II and Korea. Peabody, the sergeant in charge, would light up a cigarette and tell the boys to smoke if they had them, but to keep their yaps shut about it.

  With blue smoke floating through the projector light, they watched grainy films of a series called The Big Picture. Often as not, the projector or the film would break and they’d have a bull session, Peabody’s favorite subjects being the torturing of prisoners of war and gonorrhea. He’d tell grisly stories about how even the bravest and toughest gave in to their captors in Korea. “How’d you like to have some Commie shove a glass tube up your dick and then break it?” None of the boys liked the idea. It scared the bejesus out of Glenn.

  At other times they’d clean M-1 Garands while sitting on

  bleachers as the school band rehearsed in the stadium, or they’d march about practicing left diagonal turns or right flank turns and some fancy twirling of their rifles.

  Mel was gaining a résumé. His junior year saw him elected FHA sweetheart and most popular boy. Though a fair shortstop, he put baseball aside his senior year to become commander of the corps of cadets at Austin High. Glenn found the corps too rah-rah and quit after one semester.

  Following graduation, Glenn had an argument with his father. Determined to make it on his own, he washed dishes at Luby’s Cafeteria and survived on tamales, tortillas, and Coke, and the half-price meal he ate at Luby’s five days a week. He rented a room in a ramshackle house in Sunset Heights and enrolled at UTEP as a part-time student. It was a glum existence with no light on the horizon.

  Two weeks after his nineteenth birthday Glenn received his draft summons. He wasn’t surprised. That was the way things were going. He went with a few friends to a bar in Juárez. Mr. Haughman, his high school history teacher, showed up at El Sub-marino and bought the first round.

  Mel happened to be there with two frat brothers from the university in Austin. Mr. Haughman mentioned a rumor about Mel’s father being involved in a scandal, bad business from top to bottom, connected somehow to rezoning and illegal land purchases.

  During the evening Mel swung onto the seat next to Glenn and set a fresh Carta Blanca in front of him. “Hear you’re goin’ to ’Nam,” he said.

  “Not if I flunk the physical,” Glenn answered, though it was unlikely he wouldn’t pass.

  Mel shook Glenn’s hand. “Good luck, Kaiser Roll.” He used the nickname Glenn had picked up his freshman year at Austin High because his mom insisted on making sandwiches with Kaiser rolls instead of sliced bread. As Mel and his frat brothers passed by, Mel didn’t acknowledge Glenn.

  The morning he took his physical Glenn picked up the Sun off the front steps. Under the front-page headline was a photo of Dr. John Patrick McPherson and two columns of copy detailing his admitted crimes. Asserting that his conscience wouldn’t allow him to take any other course of action, the dentist had turned on his affiliates and become a federal witness. Glenn noticed that his own dad had taken the picture.

  A second photo of Dr. McPherson and his former associates coming out of the El Paso Federal Courthouse, their faces hidden behind copies of the indictments, was circulated in newspapers nationwide. Glenn called home to say he knew Dr. McPherson’s son. Glenn’s dad asked if the two of them were friends. “No,” Glenn said, “he’s popular.” Glenn wasn’t jealous; it was just a fact.

  Mel called unexpectedly that evening to ask if Glenn wanted to join the Army on the buddy plan. Though they’d never been friendly, Mel acted as if they had been. He talked for some time and seemed to have a command of the history of Indochina. He also had a knack of inspiring belief in America’s position. Hadn’t Kennedy seen the need to preserve democracy there? It was the only war they had and would define their generation. What Mel described was all obscure to Glenn, but by the hour’s end he was agreeing with most everything Mel contended and said that since he had to go anyhow, serving with a friend sounded like a good idea. Half convinced that they’d been buddies all along, Glenn hung up. Mel never once mentioned his father. At the time Glenn saw no irony in this, but later he would.

  ▪

  Glenn doesn’t hear Angeline call out, is unaware she’s home until she steps into the family room on her way to get a mop to sponge up the rain that dripped from her coat and umbrella. She shuts the sliding door and closes the drapes.

  “Why’re you sitting in the dark?”

  He squints into the light. “Daydreaming.”

  She flips on the lamp and sits on the ottoman by his feet, looks at him for a moment before bending forward to kiss him. Her arms rest around his neck as she lays her cheek against his throat. She runs her finger around his ear. “You need to trim the hairs,” she says. “Beautiful storm.” She pulls away to look at him. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look so fine. There’s nothing like a storm in the desert. It’s magical.”

  “McPherson’s coming in.”

  “The McPherson?”

  “Mel McPherson.”

  “He didn’t come to our wedding. I wondered why. At the class reunion he said you’d joined the Army together.”

  Glenn shakes his head. “I never mailed his invitation.”

  “Oh.”

  He wishes the conversation would return to small talk, more about desert storms, but it doesn’t. She asks about Mel’s limp, a subject Glenn doesn’t care to think about, though he thinks about it daily and has for almost thirty years. He sees Mel fall to the ground, gripping his leg, blood spurting from the wound. The others of the platoon, who are firing, stop. Everything stops. That is what Glenn remembers—the moment of silence that preceded Mel’s scream.

  “He lost his leg from the knee down.”

  “Was he a hero?”

  Glenn feels a pinch in the back of his neck. “Depends on who tells it, I guess.” He wishes there was a concrete answer, some absolute account he could give her. “He was awarded a Silver Star.”

  She remains silent, studying him. They know each other too well for this. He can’t look her in the eye for fear she may see into him. And what would she see first? A half-truth? Fear? To escape her gaze he walks to the door and spreads the drapes with his fingers.

  “Where’s Cory?” he asks. Cory, all boy, rough and loud, Cory who just this year came to regard him as the best stepfather he could have hoped for.

  “Rollerblading. What does McPherson want?”

  “In this rain?” Glenn feels her blue-eyed gaze as he watches water drip from the eaves.

  “Not now. He was. Why are you changing the subject?” she asks. “What did he want?”

  He extracts his fingers from the drapes. “A guy we served with is dying of cancer.”

  “I’m sorry. What’s his name?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Names matter,” she says.

  He knows she’s waiting for him to say something else, but he doesn’t. In time, she sighs and goes to the wet bar, where she pours two jiggers of schnapps into two glasses and squirts lime into each—a drink she calls a Schlime. She motions Glenn over.

  “Sometimes a guy’ll talk to a bartender.”

  He’d used this line the night he proposed, told her to fix them drinks—which she did—and then he explained that a friend of his was in love with a woman with a nine-year-old boy who hated him, but the friend wanted to marry her, which might make the boy miserable and probably himself as well. After weighing this, she’d told him to tell the boy man to man what was on his mind.

  “Nothing to tell a bartender,” he says.

  Her eyes settle on his collar. With a flick of her fingers she brushes away a piece of lint. “I see,” she says and sips her drink. “Cory wants to go to the arcade later.”

  “Okay.”

  He looks out at the storm. She waits patiently as he stares out. Finally, she swallows her drink, says they need some lights on, and heads to the broom closet. When she returns, Glenn’s standing in the same spot.

  “His name’s Dickerson,” he says. “In a sense, Mel saved his life.” He offers a trace of a smile, which she ignores.

  After she leaves, he flips on a second lamp and picks up the book with every intention of reading, reading if for no other reason than to forget. But he can’t concentrate. He keeps seeing Mel kneading that grotesque stub. Glenn feels his fingers twitch. He remembers Professor Cloverdale saying there was no relative truth regarding a fact, and nothing was at stake but the truth when the truth needed to be told. But no philosophy professors took their ethics classes in Vietnam, where the polar facts were firepower and body bags. Everything in between was as relative as the next breath or the next heartbeat.

  ▪

  For five soft days they’d bivouacked in Quang Ngai City, swum in the South China Sea, smoked dope, romped in the whorehouses, and bellyached about losing Povel, who’d matriculated. Gone. Pov, who’d looked the other way when they smoked dope or got drunk, who’d held the hands of their wounded, who’d played to their strengths. He’d done a year, made it—both legs, both arms. That was two weeks earlier.

  The new platoon leader tramped into camp, gear slung over his shoulder, and caught them standing around shirtless and unshaven. He called a platoon meeting. Before he’d unloaded his gear or loaded his M-16, he told them they’d have to square away or face Article Fifteens. The Army had rules. He intended to follow them. Things would change.

  After that, rumors flourished. They were operating the plateau lands of Quang Ngai Province east of Ha Tanh, a twenty-klick belt of rice paddies and hamlets, which they called villes, a lot of Local Force Charleys, snipers, and dirty. Timmons in the first squad insisted Steinbrenner had volunteered them to recon the foothills, said he’d overheard the radio message. Arbors, a spec four from another squad, said they were tethered goats, bait to draw out a division of NVA that was supposed to be in the area. Though Mel urged the squad to give Steinbrenner a chance, the men didn’t trust him.

  The rain started—four days, no sky. Then Dodrey, whom the lieutenant had used at point the day before and two days before that, was sent out a third day. It was someone else’s turn, but Steinbrenner insisted Dodrey go up there, almost as if he wanted him to die.

  To the man, the platoon liked Dodrey. The day he arrived, he’d tossed his gear outside Mullen’s tent and had lain down, hands behind his head. Mullen, the bullish AR-man, came upon him resting beside the tent as if he owned Vietnam. Provoked by Dodrey’s insolence, Mullen had lifted him to his feet. “Listen up, Powder Face. Get yore gear and yore mangy ass outta hea’, ’less you want me to kick yore butt all the way up to yore neck,” he said, gave him a look that, if it had been chemical, would’ve defoliated an acre of forest, then let go with a shove.

  Dodrey had grinned as he threw his backpack over his shoulder. “I’ll get back to you on that. Need some time to think about it,” he said and walked away.

  A smile blossomed on Mullen’s face. “Get yore ass back here,” he had said.

  Soon they were inseparable. Mullen laughed at the mere thought of one of Dodrey’s many pranks—like the time he smeared his lips and cheeks with lipstick and walked into Sergeant Gonzalvo’s tent to tell him he was in love with him. Gonzalvo looked up and told Dodrey he wasn’t getting a discharge no matter. Dodrey said, “In that case, will you marry me?” Mullen told the story to anyone who’d listen.

  Saying he got first go at the ladies, Dodrey took point. He was on a berm when a Bouncing Betty shot up and landed benignly on the ground as if a dud. He looked back and winked at the miracle. But the miracle was merely a delayed fuse. The explosion tossed him into knee-high water in the rice paddy, where he floated belly-up, an incredulous, almost amused, expression cemented on his face.

  ▪

  Angeline eats quietly while Cory, excited over having found a new friend, a boy name Oliver who can rollerblade as fast going backward as forward, talks at a demon’s pace. Glenn, glad for Cory’s chatter, encourages him to describe the various tricks Oliver performed. “Jumped over a banister and cleared six stairs,” Cory says.

  “Six steps,” Angeline corrects. “And I don’t want you jumping obstacles. We had an agreement when I bought those. I won’t have it.”

  Cory says he didn’t jump anything. Silence falls over the table until she drops her napkin and leaves.

  “What’d I do?” Cory asks.

  “Nothing.”

  After dinner he drives Cory to the arcade. They take the Dreamy Draw to Thirty-second Street. The cliffs are wet and shiny. They roll down their windows and let the moist air cool the car. They are silent. They play a few games on a rocket simulator until Cory’s friends arrive. Glenn watches. Cory’s fingers are efficient and detached. As he manipulates the joystick, two friends stand with their hands on his shoulders encouraging him. Their open affection for one another amazes Glenn. When he finally loses his turn, Cory glances back and gives Glenn a look that says, This is for kids only.

  Glenn absentmindedly shoots undersized basketballs at an undersized hoop. A cacophony of children’s voices blends with the buzz and whine of computerized games. What, Glenn wonders, has happened to his boyhood friends? He clearly remembers those from ’Nam—McPherson and the others—but the boys he played marbles and Ping-Pong with have been wiped from his memory.