and you tell me it‟s different! That‟s the understatement of the year.”
“It‟s only a problem if I make it a problem.”
“You‟ve already made it a problem, putz! What in the flick do you call a problem if this isn‟t one?”
“Dunetown. There‟s a problem.”
I finished dressing and ate another piece of soggy toast.
“Okay,” I blurted, “it‟s a problem. She‟s rooted too deep, man. I haven‟t been able to get her out of
my mind for twenty years. I keep thinking it was the best shot I ever had. I want another crack at it.
I‟m stuck on what could have been instead of what is.”
“Aren‟t we all,” Stick said, with surprising bitterness. There was another pause before he added, “I
think I missed something. The part about the price you have to pay. Or did you leave that out?”
“I don‟t know the price. That‟s the big question.”
“I don‟t know what could have been,” Stick said. “Want to run that by me?”
Now there was a rueful occupation—thinking about what could have been. But if I couldn‟t trust
Stick, who the hell could I trust? Suddenly I heard myself laying it all out for him, starting from the
day Teddy and I became football roommates at Georgia and ending on the day I got the kiss-off from
Chief. I didn‟t leave out anything I threw it all in—heart, soul, anger, hurt, all the feelings that my
returning to Dunetown had dredged up from the past.
“Jesus, man, these people really fucked you over!” was his response.
“I‟ve never quite admitted that to myself,” I said. “I look at Raines, I think, that could have been me. I
look at Donleavy, I think, if Teddy were still alive, that could be me. Every time I turn around the past
kicks me in the ass.”
“You‟re one of the ones that can‟t stay disconnected,” he said seriously. “It‟s not your nature. But
you‟ve been at it so long you can‟t break training, you‟re afraid to take a chance. Like in Nam, when
you‟re afraid to get too close to the guy next to you because you know he may not be around an hour
later. It‟s an easy way to avoid the guilt that comes later, being disconnected is.”
“Is that all it is, Stick? Guilt?”
“Like I told you the other day, it‟s guilt that gets you in the end. Shit, you‟re overloading your circuits
with it. You got guilt over the girl, you got guilt because you want to pin something on her husband,
guilt because you‟re losing your sense of objectivity, guilt because of her brother. What is it about
Teddy? You keep circling that issue. You talk about him all the time, but you never pin it down.”
I finally told him the story. It was easy to talk to him; he‟d been there, he knew about the madness, he
understood the way of things.
There were days when time dulled the sharp image of that night, but they were rare. A lot of images
were still with me, but that one was the most vivid of all. It was a three-dimensional nightmare, as
persistent as my memories of Doe had been. The truth of it was that Teddy Findley didn‟t die in
combat or anywhere near it. He might have. There you have it again, what might have been. Teddy
and I didn‟t have a very rough time in Nam until a few weeks before we were scheduled to come back
to the World. Until „Tet, when the whole country blew up under us. Hundreds of guerrilla raids at
once. Pure madness They pulled us out into Indian country and for the next six weeks we found out
what Nam was all about, We got out of it as whole as you can get out of it and finally got back to
Saigon. Teddy was a little screwy. He scored a couple of dozen Thai sticks and stayed stoned for days
on end. He started talking about the black hats and the white hats.
“I got this war all figured out, Junior,” he said one night. “What it is, see, we‟ve always been the
white hats before. We‟re supposed to be the good guys. But over here, nobody‟s figured out what we
are yet. Are we the white hats or the black hats?” He said it the way the good witch in The Wizard of
Oz said, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
There was this compound in Saigon run by the military. They called it Dodge City because the man in
charge was a major named Dillon. It looked like Dodge City, a hell-raisers‟ paradise, a place to blow
off steam; a couple of blocks of whorehouses and bars controlled by the military for our protection.
But the MP‟s couldn‟t be everywhere. Sometimes things went a little sour. One night we smoked
enough dope to get paralysed and we headed down to Dodge and we ended up in a whorehouse. It
was nothing but a hooch divided up by screens. You could hear GI‟s humping all over the place.
“Let‟s get about five or six of „em,” Teddy said. “Have a little gang bang.” It wasn‟t for me. I wasn‟t
that stoned and I still had a little Catholic left in me. So he went behind one screen and went into the
next stall. He started kidding me; it was like being in the same room.
“How‟s the foreplay going, Junior?”
“Will you shut up!”
“Having a problem?”
“Yeah, you!”
He started to laugh and then the laugh turned into a scream and the scream turned into a muffled cry
that sounded as though he were underwater. I jumped up and smashed through the screen.
The girl was gone already. It was a fairly common trick. She had a single-edge razor blade held
between her teeth when she kissed him, cut off his tongue with the razor and, while he was gagging in
his own blood, slit his throat for closers. He died in my arms before I could even yell for help. I don‟t
remember what the girl looked like; all I remember is that it could have just as easily been me instead
of Teddy.
“I knew what it would do to Doe and Chief Findley, finding out he died like that,” I told Stick,
finishing the story. “I forged a set of records saying he was killed in action and I forged a
recommendation for a Silver Star and the Purple Heart for him. The captain didn‟t give a shit. He
acted like he didn‟t even notice
it.
“Then I wrote the letter telling them how Teddy had died in action, that it was quick, no pain. I don‟t
know which is worse anymore, Teddy‟s death or the lie. Reducing it all down to a fucking piece of
paper like that.”
Stick sat there for a long time after I finished, smoking and staring at his feet. It was not a shocker;
that kind of thing was common. Just another day in paradise.
Finally he started shaking his head. “Man, you have really done a number on yourself, haven‟t you?
What‟s the big issue here? You told a lie and made your best friend a hero. Big fuckin‟ deal.”
“It‟s what it represents. Somehow Nam should be more important than that.”
“Nam was a fuck-up. It‟s like a scar on your belly. You cover it up and forget it; you don‟t paint it
red, white, and blue. You‟re one of those steel-covered marshmallows, Kilmer old buddy. You‟re a
sitting duck for the vultures. You know what I say? Forget the lie part. Stick to the story; nobody
wants to bear the truth anyway. Shit, pal, I say fuck the obstacles, go for it. Could be your last
chance.”
He lit a cigarette and went back to his newspaper, and then threw in, “Just put her old man in the joint,
that‟ll solve all your problems.”
“That‟s a shit thing to say.”
He dropped the paper on the floor and looked up at me. I‟m just being honest. The perfect solution for
you is to have Raines turn out to be the brains behind the killing and Nance the actual shooter. That
way you nail „em both in one whack. You get even and you get the girl. It‟s the perfect ending.”