The Best Alternate History Stories Of The Twentieth Century Part 9

Al lurched onto his feet, his face red. Peanuts scattered across the table. I swept them back into the bowl. Didn't think Al would take on Father Klein. He was wearing his collar, for one thing. For another, he'd always been able to punch out anyone in our outfit.

"I wanted us to win," Al said. The fight drained out of him. "You know what happens when you retreat. Remember what we'd have got if they'd caught us in Korea? Tiger cages and bamboo under our fingernails. This isn't going to be a retreat. It's a G.o.dd.a.m.n rout. Who's holding the fort while everyone's pulling out? You mark my words, it's going to be a bloodbath."

"It's okay, Al," Father Klein said. "Joey and I'll walk you back to your room and you can stick your head in the john."

Pro-war or peacenik, we all went sort of crazy that spring. The atlas from our Britannica fell open at the mark of Southeast Asia as I showed Margaret just where our men were pulling back from.

"It's so green. Can't they just jump out?" Our dining room is white and gold: formal, Margaret calls it. If she likes it, fine, I'm happy. It seemed weird to be talking about weapons and jungles as we sat at a table covered by a cloth, eating off real silver.

"McGovern won't let us burn off the jungle. It's a no-no. Like DDT. d.a.m.n! It's all tunnels underneath. The VC can pop out of a tunnel, strike from behind, then disappear. Or hide in a village. You can't tell VC from rice farmers. And there's no good aerial cover."

"I don't want to talk about this at dinner," she said, and closed the atlas. She didn't ever want to talk about it. Well, she wasn't a vet. G.o.d forbid we ever use our women like that, though those nurses... you've really got to hand it to them. They've got guts. Day after day, nurses flew out with their patients. The big, silent planes flew out too, with the flags and the coffins. But the news wasn't showing them much anymore.

McGovern called it peace with honor. Withdrawal with honor, someone had tried to call it at a press conference; the reporters had cracked up. They'd had to fade to black real fast. Besides, you couldn't say that around the kids. McGovern still had them in the palm of his hand. They had a lot of influence, and they wanted our boys out. McGovern always had a bunch of them following him around, as interns or admirers or something. They were beginning to look a little frantic.

It was Father Klein who called it the long defeat. We were fighting to lose. It reminded me of something. Once I had to help the Bear with his history homework, and I read this thing about a Children's Crusade. They wanted to do what their elders couldn't-free the Holy Land, miracles, that sort of thing. So they left home and went on Crusade. And none of 'em ever made it back.

Every time the phone rang, I dreaded it. Sometimes it was Steff. She'd turned expert, like all the kids. We talked over the withdrawal, and she said the exotic names in tones I hadn't heard for years. Sometimes it was relief operations. Everyone wanted a check. Once it was Steff's school-some lady from development a.s.suring us that no, the school wasn't planning to close down as it had in 1970 so everyone could go do relief work. Oddly enough, I don't think I'd have minded if it had. Let the college kids do their share. But while she had me on the phone, could she possibly convince me to donate...

Yeah, sure.

Al never called. After a while that sort of worried me, I picked up the phone one evening at a decent hour and called him. Got his Mrs. And the cold shoulder, too, till I explained. Al was resting, she said. He'd been working too hard lately. No, he couldn't come to the phone.

Drying out, I thought. Not all the casualties of a war happen in combat.

Used to be, letters from the Bear were a surprise-a treat to top off a good deal or a reward to make up for a lousy one. Now, I started calling home about the time the mail usually came. "Any news?" I'd ask. Usually, there wasn't. If there was, Margaret would read Bear's letters to me. Steffie said he was still writing her, but she didn't offer.

Don't know when he had time. He said he was helping out when he was off-duty in one of the orphanages. Run by French nuns. Didn't know he'd learned some French, too. Maybe he wouldn't mind if his dad stuck his nose into his business when he came back and suggested going to college on a GI bill. There had to be a GI bill or something, didn't there? I mean, we owe those boys a lot.

Well, he always had been good with kids. He sent us one snapshot. There he was, all spit and polish, with these cute little round-faced kids with their bright eyes crawling all over him, scuffing up those patent shoes.

At least he got to keep clean and dry. I remembered how your feet felt like they'd rot off if you couldn't get them out of those stinking boots. In the jungle, you get mold on everything, it's so damp. I didn't like it when the Bear would complain that he had it soft, compared to most of the men. I was scared he'd try to transfer out. But I guess someone talked to him, and he thought of what he owed to his mom and sister, because after a while, he didn't talk about that anymore.

And meanwhile, those G.o.dd.a.m.n VC were getting closer to Saigon. The whole f.u.c.king-sorry, I never swear like that, must be thinking back to my army days-country was falling apart. Hated to admit it, but Al was right. As long as we came on like Curtis Le May and threatened, at least, to bomb 'em back to the Stone Age, they'd at least respected what we could do to them if we really set our minds to it. Now, "paper tiger" was the kindest name they had for us.

President McGovern began to look haunted. He'd be a one-term president, that was for sure. And when he came down with cardiac arrhythmia, some of us wondered if he'd even manage that. The kids who surrounded his staff looked pretty grim, too. Like the kids who get caught stealing cars and suddenly realize that things are not going to be much fun anymore.

The anchormen on the evening news sounded like preachers at a funeral. I'm not making this up; it happened at Da Nang. You saw a plane ready for takeoff. Three hundred people crowded in, trampling on women and children, they were so panicky. Then the crew wanted to close the doors and get out of there, but the people wouldn't get off the runway, clear the stairs. They pulled some off the wheels and took off anyway. And you could see little black specks as people fell off where they'd hung on to the rear stairway.

Did McGovern say anything? Sure. "We must put the past behind us. Tragic as these days are, they are the final throes of a war we never should have entered. In the hard days to come, I call upon the American people to emulate the discipline and courage of our fine service-men who are withdrawing in good order from Vietnam."

I'd of spat, but Margaret was watching the news with me. We couldn't not watch. Funny, neither of us had ever liked horror films, but we had to watch the news.

Some people waded into the sea, the mothers holding their babies over their heads. They overloaded fishing boats, and the Navy found them floating. Or maybe the boats hadn't overloaded. Those people mostly hadn't much, but it wouldn't have been hard to take what they had, hit them on the head, and throw them overboard.

Refugees were flooding Saigon. The Bear's French orphanage was mobbed, and the grounds of all the emba.s.sies were full. Would the VC respect the emba.s.sies? How could they? Human life means nothing to them, or else they wouldn't treat their own people the way they do. And Cambodia's even worse, no matter what Steffie's poli-sci profs say.

In a letter I didn't show my wife, Barry told me he could hear the cl.u.s.ter bombs drop. The North Viets were at Xuanloc, thirty-five miles northwest of Saigon, on the way to Bien Hoa airfield, heading south, always heading south.

"If our allies had fought as well as they did at Xuanloc, maybe we wouldn't be in this fix, Dad," Barry wrote me. "It doesn't look good. Don't tell Mom. But the Navy's got ships standing offsh.o.r.e in the Gulf of Thailand and a fleet of choppers to fly us out to them. I hope..."

I crumpled the letter in my hand. Later, I smoothed it out and made myself read it, though. My son was out in that green h.e.l.l, and I was scared to read his letter? That wasn't how I'd want to greet him when the choppers finally brought him out. He'd be one of the last to leave, I knew that. Probably pushing the amba.s.sador ahead of him.

I wrote I was proud of him. I didn't say the half of what I meant. I don't know if he got the letter.

Then one morning Mary-Lynn met me at the door of my office, and she'd been crying.

She wouldn't let me inside. "Mrs. Black called. You have to go home, she says. Right away. Oh, Mr. Black, I'm so sorry!" She wiped at her nose. I was in shock. I pulled my handkerchief from my suit jacket and handed it to her.

She put her hands out as if I was going to pa.s.s out. "There's a... there's a car out there..."

"Not..." I couldn't say the word. It would make it real. My boy. Never coming home? I couldn't make myself believe it.

"They've got a car there and Marines-oh, your wife says please, please come straight home..."

The spring sun hit my shoulders like something I'd never felt before. What right did the sun have to shine here? The trees in Crandall Park were fresh and green, and the gardens at the big corner house where they always spent a mint on flowers looked like something out of the first day of the world. How did they dare? My boy had been shot. Other men's sons had been shot in a green h.e.l.l they should have burnt down to ash.

A voice broke in on the radio.

"...the American Emba.s.sy has closed its gates, and the Amba.s.sador... Amba.s.sador Bunker has refused evacuation..."

He'd have been there, my son. Firing into the enemy, not wanting to fire, I knew that, but there'd be a wall of Marines between the VC and the panicked crowd and the diplomats they had sworn to protect....

I had people to protect too. I put my foot hard on the gas, peeled round a slowpoke station wagon with three kids and their mom in it, and roared up Fifth Avenue.

"...We interrupt this program... there is a rumor that Amba.s.sador Bunker has been shot.... We repeat, this is a rumor, no one has seen his body..."

Sweet suffering Christ! d.a.m.n that red light, no one was around, so it wouldn't matter if I crashed it. Didn't want to smear myself all over the landscape before I got home; Margaret would never forgive me if I got myself killed coming home to her now, of all times.

G.o.dd.a.m.n siren! I thought of giving the cop a run for his money, but you don't do that in Youngstown. Not ever, and especially not if you're a lawyer.

The man who got out of the car recognized me. "Hey, Counselor, what you think you're doing? You were going seventy and you crashed that light..." He sniffed at my breath, then pulled out his pad. "You know better than that. Now I wish I could let you off with a warning..."

A fist was squeezing my throat. Finally, it let up long enough for me to breathe. "It's my boy..." I said. Then I laid my head down on the steering wheel.

A hand came in over my shoulder and took the keys. "I'm driving you home. The way you're driving, you could get yourself... Come on, Counselor."

I made him let me off up the street. No telling what Margaret would have thought if she'd seen a cop car roll up to the door. The Marine car was in the drive. The men got out of the car and followed me. I made it up the front walk, feeling like I was walking off a three-day binge. Toni Carlson opened the door. She was crying, but Margaret wasn't. Sure enough, the living room and kitchen were full of women with their covered dishes.

"I called Steffie's school," Margaret said before I could even get to her. She had Barry's service photo out like they do in the newspapers. His face grinned under his hat. G.o.d, he was a good-looking boy. "Her plane gets in this afternoon."

"I'm going to pick her up," said a voice from behind me.

"Sir," began one of the Marines. A fine young man. I had... I have... a son like him.

He shook my hand and bravely said the things they're supposed to say. "Sir, the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense have asked me to inform you that your son..." The boy's voice faltered, and he went on in his own words.

Missing. Presumed dead. My son was... is... a hero. But presumed dead. After Amba.s.sador Bunker died (that wasn't supposed to get out yet, but he supposed I had a right to know), the surviving Marines were supposed to withdraw. But Barry gave his seat to a local woman and a child.

"Probably knew them from the orphanage," I muttered.

"No doubt, sir," said the Marine. It wasn't his business to comment. He'd be glad to get out, even if he had more families' hearts to break that day. Lord, I wished I could.

At least he didn't have a d.a.m.n flag. As long as you don't get the flag, you can still hope.

Her school sent Steffie home, the way these schools do when there's been a death in the family. Pinkos they may be, but I've got to admit each of her professors and the college president wrote us nice letters. Take as much time as you need before coming back to cla.s.s, they told Steff. Better than she got from some of her friends. Once or twice, when she thought I wasn't looking, I saw her throw out letters. And I heard her shouting on the phone at someone, then hang up with a bang. All she ever said was, "You never know who's really your friend."

I thought she'd do better to stick out the term, but she decided to take the semester off. Seeing how Margaret brightened at that news, I didn't insist she go back. And when my wife threw a major fit and screamed, "I can't bear to lose both the men in our family!" at the dinner table and practically ordered me to get an EKG, I kept the appointment with our doctor that she'd made.

Oddly enough, now that the worst had happened, I slept like a baby right through the next time the phone rang at 3:00A .M.

Steffie came into our room. She spoke to Margaret. "It's from Frankfurt. West Germany."

Why would she be getting a call from West Germany of all places?

Margaret got up and threw on a robe. "It's in, then?"

My daughter nodded. I stared at both women. Beyond family resemblance, their faces wore the same expression: guilt, fear, and a weird kind of antic.i.p.ation under the sorrow that had put circles under their eyes.

Like the d.a.m.n fool husbands on TV, I waited for my womenfolk to explain what was going on. It didn't much matter. After all, when your country's lost a war and a son, what else can happen?

"We have to talk," Margaret said in that tone of voice. "I'll make us some coffee."

So at three in the morning, we sat down to a family conference. Margaret poured coffee. To my surprise, she looked imploringly at Steffie.

"The call from Frankfurt came through on my line," she said.

That stupid Princess phone!

"That's where they evacuate the refugees and process them."

My hand closed on the spoon till it hurt. How did that rate a transatlantic phone call?

Stephanie took a deep, deep breath and drew herself up. For a moment, I thought I could see her brother, making up his mind at the Emba.s.sy to give up his place to a woman and a child.

Our eyes met. She'd been thinking of Barry too.

"You know that woman and kid Barry pushed onto the helicopter in his place?"

"The ones he knew from the orphanage?"

"Where'd you get that idea?" Margaret broke in.

"Mom, he did meet Nguyen at the orphanage."

"Now wait a d.a.m.n minute, both of you. Maybe it's too early, but no one's making sense!"

Margaret set down her coffee cup. "Joe, please listen."

"Dad, about a year ago, Barry wrote me. He'd met a girl who worked at the French Emba.s.sy. She's from Saigon and her name is Nguyen."

I held up a hand. I wanted to be stupid. I wanted to be Ward Cleaver and have this episode end. Margaret would switch off the TV set, the show would be over, we could all go back to bed, and none of this, none of the whole past miserable year would have happened.

So my boy had sacrificed himself for a friend....

"She's his wife, Daddy. And the child..."

When you're on the front lines and you get hit bad, it doesn't hurt at first. You go into shock.

"You knew about this?" I asked Margaret. She looked down, ashamed.

"And didn't tell me?" Both women looked down.

"My son married -how do we know it's true?-he says he married this G.o.dd.a.m.n gook! Her people killed him, and you have the nerve to say..."

"If you say that word, I'll never speak to you again!" Stephanie was on her feet, her big flannel nightgown billowing in flowers and hearts about her. "Nguyen's not a bar girl. Barry said she's a lady. She worked at the French Emba.s.sy. She speaks French and Vietnamese... some English."

"They seem to have communicated just fine without it!" I snapped, hating myself.

They'd hidden this from me! Barry had written to Stephanie, and all those calls when she'd said, "I need to talk to Mom," they were talking about this unknown girl. This gook girl. Who my son had planned to bring home. I could just see Ronnie the Racist's face.

They'd hidden this from me.

"Oh Mom, I'm making such a mess of this!" Steffie cried. "I didn't really believe he'd take it like this..."

"Give him some time, darling," said my wife. "We were caught by surprise, too."

"You give him some time," my daughter burst into tears. "The only grandkid he may ever have, and all he can think of is to ask, 'Are they really married?' and call the mother a gook and a bar girl! I haven't got time for this! I have to pack and go to Washington to meet Nguyen, and then I have to go..."

I reached up and grasped my daughter's wrist.

"Just where do you think you're going?"

That little bit of a thing faced me down. "I'm joining the Red Cross relief effort." She laughed, shakily. "I wish I'd listened to you and become a nurse after all. It's a h.e.l.l of a lot more useful than a poli-sci major for what I need to do. We're going over there."

"That h.e.l.lhole's already swallowed one of my kids!"

"That's right. So I'm going over there to look for him."

I shook my head at her. Just one small girl in the middle of a war zone. What did she think she could do?

"Daddy, you know I've always looked after my brother. No matter how big he got. Except with this... this mess about the war. I did what I thought was right, and see how it worked out." She wiped at her eyes.