War Without End, Amen: A Vietnam Story

Part I

See the DMZ in your APC

America is asking you to die

Unknown

Christmas was dead.

So were Martinez and Doc, Senger and Snake Eyes, and Rosy and Ruby Love.

They humped across mountains, streambeds and elephant grass fields under the yoke of rucksacks, weapons and radios until backs and legs turned to hard mush that ached in a mindless pain.

And all the while, they knew, everyone knew, that time and distance, ticks and steps, were finite.

When the time and distance and ticks and steps ran out, at the crest of a hill, behind a tree, in a jungle clearing’s bull’s eye, or outside the village whose name no one knew, they cried like spring lambs when destiny greeted them poorly.

That was life – and death – in Vietnam, their rendezvous with a destiny they wanted no part of. It had nothing to do with toughness or bravery.

They were dead, all, the fortunate among them being scooped up, zipped up, cleaned up and boxed up for a hurried-up trip back to The World.

Just boys, they were, spring lambs slaughtered in what they knew was a screwed-up war.

Better Dead than Red was the song of Cold War politicians, who harmonized lyrics about falling dominoes and faraway threats, marching in slow, steady cadence toward America’s shores.

Forever boys they remained – recipients of posthumous Purple Hearts, names etched on a granite wall, characters inked on the pages of new-millennium history that said they’d died to keep their country free.

Died to keep their country free. It was a myth of the Nam they rued.

Forty years they were dead. Murphy and the Jackal were not.

And Murphy, like an old dog that has been kicked hard and could not forget it, never got past it all.

Chapter 1

Saying Chicago was hot on August 16 was like saying the Cubs were middling. They were terrible, 17 1/2 games out of first and going nowhere at the speed of a runaway el train. Chicago's heat was wicked, a broken thermostat stuck past 100 as the pink platter sun slipped behind the western suburbs, and Murphy waded three blocks through Loop caverns to the subway’s summer vacuum.

Hell, however, wasn't in the heat. That arrived, settled and stayed with the air, or what passed for it – a torpid brew of sucked out-breath, fumes and sweat simmering for a week now in a windless stew that was killing people, mostly old and poor. Sirens wailed day and night as mortuaries bulged with an overflow of business too blessed, the mayor's office scurried to stamp out further dying with air-conditioned city services, tempers popped like firecrackers and Murphy's newspaper struggled to get the beat on the story.

But the heat and the story weren't on his mind as the el, dotted with homebound stragglers and a potpourri of urban fixtures of various hues, tongues and wardrobes, groaned through its turns away from Downtown and screeched to a slow stop at a North Side station after a 10-minute ride.

Murphy’s peculiar hell was D Day, the Dreaded Day. August 16 was the anniversary of a violent climax to a lost week that defined his life 40 years ago in Thua Thien Province, I Corps, Republic of Vietnam. There, the lowlands buckled against the mountain foothills probably no more than 50 klicks southwest of Camp Evans.

Murphy dug into his pocket for loose coins and stuffed them into the clawed hand of a panhandler, almost before the man could make his case, then curled through the turnstile and down the steps for the four-block walk to St. Michael's.

The pilgrimage was an annual rite of cleansing that really didn't work, but was as much a part of his existence as riding the commuter train, reading his newspaper or barking out orders to reporters. St. Michael’s extended, as always, its awesome red-brick welcome. He entered through the back sacristy door at the end of the blacktop parking lot where the shrill of a stickball game was quelled in the darkness and reduced to the alto good-nights of boys yet unblemished by life.

Inside, the smell was timeless from flickering votive candles and the sweet residue of incense from Benedictions, solemn High Masses and other rubrics of Murphy’s boyhood. From the Gothic sanctuary, with its high-spire altar, vaulted ceiling and pulpit with a winding, nearly one-story staircase, rows of empty mahogany pews marched from behind the Communion rail nearly a half-block to the vestibule. Saints and sinners were silent and dusky black in magnificent stained glass windows that lined the walls above Stations of the Cross and behind the grand pipe organ in the choir loft. The altar itself was dark, save the single burning candle that signified the Savior’s presence in the tabernacle behind a white satin veil. A lone ceiling lantern cast a dim glow on the nearest confessional below the 10th Station, Jesus is Stripped of His Garments. The green light blinked above the middle door, showing the priest was there for business.

Murphy entered the closet confessional and knelt on the unpadded kneeler as the panel from the adjoining priest's compartment opened with a soft slam. It startled him with the realization that yet another year had passed, and he was back again, facing off with the monster of his own making that gnawed at his life particularly viciously on anniversary day.

God bless you, Paul. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit …

Hello, Brendan … Uh …

Paulie …

Yeah … Yes … Bren … Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been …Yeah … a year since my, uh, last confession. Time flies when … he muttered, his voice trailing off in a vapor of emptiness, then picked up again. I have committed the following sins.

And so he began the ritual, part sacrament, part pop psychiatry and every bit an act of desperation, just as he tried to do every August 16 for the past 40 years.

It was an odd ritual. Murphy could not dare hope it would make him whole again. His despair was belief that God’s justice was more exacting than his mercy, no matter what Brendan McNeel, ordained priest and boyhood seminary classmate, tried to tell him. No matter what the grammar school nuns and priest professors pounded into malleable minds – that the just God was a forgiving God to sinners who confessed and repented.

His chance at wholeness had been ripped from him in those days near the base of the Annamite Mountains before he’d even become a man, the virginity of his boyhood lost forever. Being incomplete was the best he could bargain for. He’d become a man programmed to function but not quite live, a man who was incapable of love, a man who confessed to a God he could not really believe in.

Father, it’s the village … the killing …

It’s always that, isn’t it?

Yeah. Always that.

The voice behind the confessional screen cleared itself of a throaty rattle. It’s not a sin …

Mostly, it doesn’t matter a damn to me whether it was a sin or not.

Then why are you here?

C’mon, Bren. You know. It’s been killing me for years. Being here helps chase it away, at least in the short term.

In the confessional box, Murphy ran his hand over his hair, trimmed and only beginning to show sprinkles of silver through the black on his temples and sideburns. He sometimes was told he looked 10 years his junior, unwrinkled, trim to the edge of gauntness thanks to a passion for basketball over the lunch hour several times a week and slightly stooped from years at hammering away over computer keyboards. His face was narrow, the bridge of his nose lifting in a hump after too many smacks from opponents’ elbows, angling down toward a blunt, dimpled chin. An easy smile, when he did so, belied his past and its effect on his present. Behind his back, some of the women at the office called him Blue Eyes for the obvious reason. He was flattered, but pretended not to hear it.

The priest cleared his throat again. Murphy smelled cigarette smoke pasted over Brendan McNeel’s skin and clothing and mixed with a potion of bad after-shave. The priest spoke softly. I know it’s been killing you. I see it every year we’ve been through this. I’m glad to do it, but you know, all I can do is listen …

That’s all I’m asking …

Even if you believed it was a sin while the people were dying, you’ve confessed it many times over. God has forgiven you. But think about it, Paul. Try to put an end to it this time, once and for all. Four decades. It’s a terrible new world.

Don’t get me started on the cesspools in Iraq and Afghanistan, the multiple deployments, the physical and mental wounds from unwinnable wars, lives and treasure wasted. Haven’t these damn politicians learned anything from history?

Apparently not. But you can’t control that, Paulie, at least not now. And the Army didn’t hold you responsible for those deaths back in 1970. You came home a hero – a Silver Star.

Murphy laughed sadly. That’s another matter entirely … a farce.

You’ve got to learn to forgive yourself.

Murphy heard none of it. "I see these people every day, the guys in my platoon, my friends, innocent villagers, they're always there … It was war. I can accept that. But I was responsible."

Brendan McNeel listened to his friend and penitent. There was little, if anything, new Murphy could tell him about the events that unfolded like flags shrouding the caskets of his buddies he never saw buried – a sorry story of what converged, sizzled, ignited and exploded in the village whose name no one knew.

I don’t know how we could have gotten so turned around, he was rambling, not confessing.

Paulie, the priest said finally and softly. Let’s head over to the rectory for a beer. Do you have time for that?

I get kind of carried away. I’ve got the emotional maturity of a teenager. If only my sex life were at that level.

That one’s way out of my league. Not for discussion here, buddy. But over a beer, we can talk.

Thanks, Bren, not this time. I’ve got to be back in the office early. This heat story won’t go away. Anyway, except for today it keeps my mind off this. Thanks for listening.

Sure. Next year?

For these and all my sins, I am heartily sorry ...

The train ride home on the Metra that night was a blur. It was nearly 10 when the South Side rail yards, the gutted ghosts of public housing and businesses showing doors and windows latticed with accordion steel protection ended and turned to rows of brick Chicago bungalows. Impeccable, they stood impassively in the yellow glow of Mayor Daley’s – the old man’s, not the son’s – crime-prevention street lights.

Gresham … Brainerd, the conductor’s voice crackled in the speaker system.

Then came Beverly Hills and the hillside brick and stone mansions built by railroad barons after the Chicago fire, mingling with the less ostentatious but still elegant houses all inhabited in the neighborhood’s caste system by doctors, lawyers, politicians and city payrollers. The top cop lived here, so did the mayor’s brother and, of course, the alderman.

Longwood 91st … 95th … 99th.

103rd … Murphy’s station.

He stepped off the last steep step of the train car and into a nighttime assault of the heat wave he’d dropped into the back of his mind during the cool ride home. Home. It was a three-story burnt-brick fortress apartment building, a block from the station. He’d lived there more than 25 years, selling the house on Bell after he and Sylvia split.

A cold beer would be a soothing tonic.

Another hour and August 16 would be past.

Chapter 2

The last person Murphy expected to see waiting in his living room was Myron I. Senger, the best point man in the second platoon and briefly his radio operator.

What made his presence completely improbable was that Senger, of course, was dead – taking a bullet or shrapnel to the chest outside the no-name village. But sure as Murphy was standing at his door with his mouth agape in stupor, Myron Senger was there. He sat on the time-washed couch, it had been blue once, waiting for his former platoon sergeant.

Murphy had unlatched the deadbolt lock and flipped on the ceiling light with the switch to his right next to the door. Immediately he saw the top of a camouflage-covered steel pot cresting above the back of his once overstuffed, now slouching, couch. He stopped abruptly. At first, he wondered what he might have placed there on this day of penitential pity as he left that morning for his walk to the train station. But he quickly knew it was not his doing. For one thing, he’d not owned a stitch of camouflage anything since leaving the Army. For another, the sight of a steel pot was something he’d not forget. This was the real deal, all right, with an M16 magazine above the wearer’s right ear and a plastic bottle of mosquito repellent above the left, both held snugly by the elastic band that circled the helmet’s perimeter to contain the camouflage cover. The pot, or the head under it, didn’t move.

Murphy thought briefly about backing out of the door, quickly and quietly locking it. But that wouldn’t solve his problem. He’d have to come back some time. What would he do? Call the cops on his helmeted visitor? The coppers would probably come, find no one, and think he was some sort of nut case. Besides, curiosity was killing him. And this was probably a dream, a weird variation of those sleep-time dramas stored in the back of his brain and wafting into his subconscious like smoke from hooches burning in the no-name village.

He stepped forward on the hardwood floor as if he were walking in the jungle. Slowly. Silently. From the side by the lamp table that was strewn with a pile of newspapers and magazines, he crouched and looked into the face of the still motionless intruder.

Holy shit. Wanna, is that you?

Currahee, Sergeant Murphy, the young soldier answered in a post-adolescent voice with the old 101st Airborne Division’s 506th Infantry salutation. He smiled sweetly, just as Murphy remembered, dimples puckering on his smooth, brown cheeks. On the helmet, a calendar of faded dates, some crossed out, were inked with ballpoint pen. Thirty-two days and a wake-up left in the Nam on the day he’d laid down his life for his country – coughing a drowning man’s cough in the dawn and spitting up gobs of blood as Doc wrapped his chest in a compress and assured him he wouldn’t die.

The soldier didn’t stand, and Murphy made no motion to shake his hand or embrace him.

Wanna! Murphy gasped.

Everyone called Myron Senger Wanna, short for Wannaremf, because he had wanted in the worst way, especially since he’d become a short-timer, to get out of the field and safely become a remf. The word was an acronym for rear echelon motherfucker. Most every grunt scorned hardcore remfs. But most at one time or another would have sold their OD souls to be one.

This can’t really be you. I have to be dreaming this. You’re dead.

It’s me. And you’re right. I’m dead. The smile vanished, walnut eyes narrowed and he looked at his Seiko with its broad leather band strapped to his wrist. It was just past 11, still the 16th.

So what are you doing here? How’d you get here?

You know what day it is, Sergeant Murphy?

The older man nodded. Of course, I do.

Forty years ago today. I’ve been dead for 40 years, or so I’ve been told by someone. And I’ve never left the Nam, except for now that is. By the way, Sergeant Murphy, where am I?

Chicago.

Wow, man. I’ve never been in Chicago. I was never out of North Dakota until I got drafted.

Wannaremf’s jungle fatigues were wrinkled but clean – showing no sign of the sucking chest wound that killed him. His boots, part leather and with olive drab canvas at the sides for foot breathing that provided jungle rot protection, were scuffled and smeared with rusty mud of the mountains. Laced in them for noise discipline were tarnished dog tags.

Always the squared-away soldier, Murphy thought.Mostly always.

He wore no rank, Specialist 4th Class, because no one fond of living wore rank in the field, especially the officers and NCOs. Jungle fatigues weren’t personal belongings anyway. They were dropped on LZs in bales along with fresh water, mail and cans of C-rations by resupply birds whose pilots and door gunners were anxious to fly the hell out of there before their Hueys began taking rounds. The Screaming Eagle patch was sewn on his left shoulder. Not black and olive drab like for units farther South – the Big Red One, First Cavalry and the snake-bit Americal – but an insignia woven in vivid black, white, gold and red, so the NVA could spot Currahees with the naked eye from a hilltop bunker 100 meters away, easy. The official line was that the garrison colors were worn in combat because the gooks were terrified of the Screaming Eagles – screaming chickens, they called them because they had no word for eagle – and were often afraid to fight them. That, in Murphy and Myron Senger’s experience, was what was known as lifer bullshit. No self-respecting gook they’d ever encountered seemed afraid of the Screaming Eagle.

Murphy, almost never at a loss for words, a trait he’d inherited from his father the politician, wrestled to begin speaking. But Wannaremf began first, in the clipped North Dakota accent that Murphy had not heard for these 40 years.

Who killed me, Sergeant Murphy? I remember Doc trying to stop me bleeding. I remember the shooting and the explosions and everything going to hell. And I remember everything before it happened – the village, the chief, getting hit by the NVA. But I don’t know who killed me. Was it the gooks, or the gunships?

Wannaremf’s eyes were wet and innocent. His voice had a soft, flat-line plea to it. But he wasn’t crying. Maybe, Murphy thought, dead boys couldn’t cry.

I think it would help me a lot if I knew who killed me.

Murphy studied his friend, in fatigues and steel pot, and almost forgot he was dead. Murphy’s fear – no, it had not been that but was a dark sense of other-worldly bizarre – had left as quickly as a summer thunderstorm.

Wanna, do you want to take off that pot? No one’s shooting at you now.

The dead man shook his head, declining, but otherwise didn’t move. Who killed me, Sergeant Murphy? If you know, I want you to tell me.

I don’t know. I think it was the gooks. But no one could be sure. The gunships were awfully close. They were firing on our position. He paused for a moment, feeling a wash of emotion come over him. He cleared his throat and rubbed his forearm across his eyes. It was crazy out there, everyone firing in the dark, us and the gooks and the gunships. I knew you were hit. Doc was working on you. But I don’t know who killed you, Myron. I wish I did. I wish I could give you some peace.

He paused to shore up his memory, cleared his throat again and continued. Then it was quiet, except for the moans, and it seemed like about an hour before it was light. We, the Jackal and I, just sat there.

I know.

How could you possibly know? You were already dead. There was an edge in Murphy’s voice. It was as if Myron Senger had somehow gotten off easily because he was already dead. It was absurd, and Murphy backed off quickly.

I know I was dead. That’s when I began to see everything. But I just don’t know who killed me. So tell me, Sergeant Murphy. Was I brave?

Brave?

Did I die like a man? Would my dad be proud of me? Were you proud of me?

Murphy didn’t want to tell Senger that he’d cried and pleaded with Doc not to let him die.

You died like a man, Wanna. Your dad would have been proud of you. I was proud of you.

The two, the dead boy soldier and the man at the long end of middle age, held their ground for minutes that screamed with silence. Wannaremf, head bowed but helmet firmly in place, studied his boots as if trying to read his laced-up dog tags – name, serial number, blood type and religion. He raised his head slowly, looked at Murphy standing next to him, then scanned the living room, its unadorned walls, cluttered end table and small TV. Murphy didn’t move and didn’t speak until he sat down on the hard chair across from the couch. Then his journalist’s instincts took over and he leveled the question – he was certain some time later that no reporter had ever asked of anyone. The query wasn’t clean and assertive, asked with a veteran’s assurance of First Amendment moral authority. It was right enough itself, but was spelled out with the temerity of a rookie’s first hard question to a self-righteous City Hall politician.

Wanna … what’s it like … to be dead?

Wannaremf smiled but not with joy. It’s not like being dead. When I got hit – I wish I knew who killed me – it wasn’t like you hear all the time, the bright light at the end of the tunnel, and an angel or St. Peter taking you by the hand and leading you to the light. I didn’t feel holy, or happy that I was going to see my grandpa, or Jesus. It wasn’t like that at all. I just woke up and saw it all – you guys at the no-name village – and then I was back where I started. I was back in the Nam, with a bunch of guys I didn’t know from all kinds of different units. I’ll tell you about it sometime. I never left, Sergeant Murphy, not until I came to Chicago. I think I’ve been in hell. I got us into it all, screwing up with the prick 25, he said referring to the PRC 25 radio he’d been carrying. If I’d gotten a new battery when we were re-supplied at Eagle Beach, none of this would ever have happened. We’d have linked back up with Assassin, and never would have found Phong and gone to the village. Everyone would be alive, and there wouldn’t be all those dead gooks, I mean civilian gooks. Jesus, I think about it all the time.

You’re not in hell, Wanna. Murphy reached to touch his friend, pulled back his hand for an instant then reached to touch his shoulder. But the hand felt nothing but a slice of air as it cut through his shoulder and down through the Combat Infantryman’s Badge above his pocket and down through his rib cage. As certain as Father Brendan McNeel had knelt in the box to hear his confession that evening, the ghost of Myron I. Senger was sitting next to him, talking about being dead and thinking he’d been in hell.

There’s plenty of blame to go around, Murphy said, retracting his hand from Wannaremf’s chest. I was platoon sergeant, and it was my job to check the equipment before the birds flew us out to the field. It was my fault, too.

This is my punishment for screwing up, Sergeant Murphy – never getting out of the Nam.

You’re out now, Wanna. The war’s been over for nearly 40 years. You’re in Chicago.

Chicago is heaven?

Maybe you were just in purgatory.

Murphy then weighed his next question on the scale of propriety, maybe even sanity. He looked away from Wannaremf, leaning his head into the palm of his hand as his elbow propped up against the arm-rest of the hard wooden chair. He bit his lower lip. Then he asked it. Myron, have you ever seen God?

God? In the Nam? You gotta be yankin’ my chain. Wannaremf shot a look at his old platoon sergeant, the same stern, swift look he showed as a point man when hearing or seeing the unexpected. He laughed grimly at what both knew was the dumbest question he’d heard in his 40 years since dying.

All I’ve seen is the guys I’m with. And I see the gooks. We hunt them down and kill them, Sergeant Murphy.

Do you like to do that, killing gooks?

Wannaremf’s lips creased in the same joyless death smile. Just like we were, you know, the Second Platoon. Killing is what we’re there for.

Murphy realized the dead soldier had come into his living room fully equipped. His rucksack had been there all along and he could have tripped over it. But Murphy saw it for the first time on the floor propped behind, and almost under, the end-table next to the couch where the soldier sat. The rucksack was full with the radio, its antenna sticking out from beneath the canvas cover and the rubberized poncho draped on top of it. The pack’s remainder contained his machete and entrenching tool. Both lay horizontally on top of the radio, protruding from both sides under the poncho cover. Inside the rucksack was probably a fresh supply of C-rations and his waterproof ammo can filled with stationery, letters from friends and family, pens, photos and other personal items. Murphy remembered Wanna carefully poring over his wares at night defensive perimeters after the point-man/radioman had meticulously dug in. Strewn on top of the ruck was his pistol belt with canteen, partly unbuttoned and showing condensation sweat from the water inside. It was hooked to one side of the belt. Several ammo pouches filled with magazines were hooked to other parts where they were easily accessible. A couple of frags shaped like limes were fastened there, too, and Murphy could see their pins splayed at right angles for safety.

Next to it all was Wanna’s M16, finely lubricated, tenderly cared for as always. Its plastic stock rested on the floor. Murphy remembered how much the soldier had loved his weapon, an uncanny union of man and machine – almost as much as Rosy, the machine gunner, loved his pig. And he was struck, as if seeing one for the first time more than 40 years ago, how much the weapon looked like a toy. But it wasn’t. The ammo magazine was firmly in place behind the trigger guard, and Murphy could see that the safety lever was clicked to the automatic position. With a single squeeze of the trigger, the M16 was good for maybe 10 deadly rounds per second.

Damn, Wanna. You’re locked and loaded."

Wannaremf had pulled a C-ration pack of Lucky Strikes from his breast fatigue jacket pocket. He ignited his Zippo, its silver housing adorned with a Screaming Eagle, in a single thumb flick. An inch-high flame sprang up with a muted whoosh, and snaked into the soldier’s Lucky, which glowed with the jerky inhale. Do you want one of these, Sergeant Murphy? he asked, extending the cardboard pack. They taste like crap. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a decent butt."

Murphy, still zeroed in on the weapon, ignored the offer.

Is that thing loaded, the safety off?

Sure. Whadja think? Wannaremf pulled long on his cigarette, and then it hit him. Oh, sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’m not used to being in The World. He stood up, reedy tall like Murphy remembered and, with the cigarette dangling from his mouth, reached down and flicked the M16’s lever from fully automatic, to semi-automatic and over to safety. He looked at his host for approval, the ash beginning to droop, and plopped back onto the sunken couch.

Murphy reached into a waste basket and produced an empty Coke can. He handed it to his friend. I don’t keep ashtrays anymore. I haven’t had one of those for 20 years, he said, but felt the sudden urge to have one again as Wannaremf flicked the drooping ash into the can.

The choirboy look remained there, sculpted cheekbones and light dusting of fuzz on what would never grow into whiskers, but it was a sad look that began to shade the innocence of a young man not yet 19. The NVA or the gunships had killed him before the guilt and the doubt and the recriminations could suck the boyhood out of him far faster than the years could erode it. At least Myron I. Senger had been spared the kind of cancer that had metastasized into Murphy’s soul. Maybe he was the lucky one. Neither the man nor the boy spoke.

Wanna drew a final nervous drag from the Lucky, exhaled a plume of bluish smoke and dropped the butt into the can. It sizzled then stopped. It’s the lieutenant, he said finally, breaking the standoff silence.

Murphy looked at him harder. What?

Lieutenant Pokorny, the Jackal. He’s in bad shape.

That’s what you’ve come to tell me about?

I don’t know how I’m here or why I’m here, but I know the Jackal’s in trouble and I’m telling you about it, Wannaremf said matter-of-factly.

Murphy looked at the soldier, fully equipped and locked and loaded except that his weapon at least was now on the safety position. He looked at his steel pot with the calendar scratched in ballpoint ink on the camouflage covering, at the Screaming Eagle patch on his left shoulder, at his jungle boots smeared with dried, red mud, and at the innocence lost on the dead boy’s face.

"The Jackal pretty much built a career on the Nam, on the Silver Star he got there. Did you know he’s Mayor Pokorny now? He’s been the mayor of some Nebraska town for at least the last 10 years. The much-loved war hero who’s come home to his people."

Wannaremf nodded.

What kind of trouble is he in?

It’s the same as you, Sergeant Murphy, only worse. Wannaremf reached at his fatigue pocket for the C-ration pack of cigarettes then withdrew his hand as if he’d thought the better of it. Murphy watched the process. He wondered if the dead boy was trying to cut down, or if he restrained himself out of deference to being in Beverly, on the South Side of Chicago, in his friend’s living room, not on some jungle trail. Not on a convoy of birds being flown to another LZ, wondering, half scared to death if it would be hot with gooks waiting to shoot at them. Not back at Eagle Beach drinking his brains out before yet another foray in the field. The latter is what started these troubles. You know how on the anniversary date, August 16, the Nam, all of the guys, the gooks, are about all you can think about?

It was more than that, but Murphy silently acknowledged that, yes, he knew.

"Well, the Jackal’s like that every day. It’s been more than a year now but gotten beaucoup worse the last couple months now. He doesn’t go to work. He doesn’t see anybody. He doesn’t eat much, and I don’t think he sleeps. It’s like all of this, the Nam, us and the gooks, finally caught up with him. I don’t think he can live like this."

"Look at us," Murphy said with an edge that he immediately regretted.

"Look at me!" Wannaremf fired back, his voice for the first time sounding more than a lifeless monotone.

I used to keep in touch with the Jackal, but I haven’t for years. I went to his wedding, it’s got to be nearly 30 years ago. He’s come here to conventions, and we get together in the Loop near the paper or at whatever hotel he stayed at. Just dinner and a few drinks. We never talked about what happened over there, not even about the crazy times. It was mostly about him and what he was doing and what he planned to do. He had some serious political ambitions. He owned some sort of business back there – I think it was insurance – and made a lot of money. He had a lot of plans. And he talked about his kid, a boy, must be well into his twenties. A real smart kid, he said, and he had big plans for him too.

I know.

Look, would you like a beer or something. Something to eat.

Wannaremf dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. No thanks.

I think I’ll grab a cold one. Murphy stood up and away from the uncomfortable chair, stretched a bit and limped slightly into the kitchen. One of his legs had fallen asleep and it tingled now with the rush of blood. I think the kid went to an Ivy League school, he said loudly from the kitchen, just down the hall and to the right, as he reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a can of beer. He popped it, and it sprayed lightly over the counter top as well as on the breakfast dishes that sat unwashed in his sink. I don’t know what the kid’s doing now. I met him, probably when he was in high school, when he came with his dad to a convention here. Murphy wiped the counter and the bottom of the beer can with a paper napkin and then walked back into the living room. The Jackal’s wife was a different deal. Nice, but quiet. Very quiet. Sort of …

Murphy didn’t finish the sentence. The room was empty, washed of presence as if a wave had swept through it and carried away all life, or what passed for it. The dead soldier was gone. The rucksack filled with the radio and covered with the poncho was gone, the M16 along with it. The couch looked no more rumpled than always. The end table was cluttered with magazines as it had been. The Coke can containing Wannaremf’s cigarette butt was gone too.

Like Lot’s wife now standing frozen in a pillar of salt, Murphy stood silent and speechless for he didn’t know how long. Finally, he looked at his watch.

It was 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, August 17.

Chapter 3

As he did on every August 17, Murphy shoved, stuffed, crammed and pounded the aftermath of D Day into the back of his mind. Jamming the baggage into the rear of his psyche was harder this day than in the past because of Myron I. Senger’s unexpected visit. But when Murphy arose shortly after 6 a.m. and staggered toward his bathroom, he looked around the corner into his living room to see if his dead friend had left a remnant, accidentally or not. The room was as he’d left it.

Murphy had sat there for 15 minutes pondering their conversation as he’d sipped a can of beer just past midnight after Senger’s departure. Had he really been there, the young soldier 40 years dead to the day on August 16? Or had it all been a dream, concocted, fermented and digested in a simmering recipe of guilt and a beer on an empty stomach? Murphy looked at his living room again, picked up the empty beer can on the end table next to where Senger had sat, his weapon and rucksack below him, and decided – safely – it was the latter.

The headline across the top and just under the flag of his newspaper screamed:

DEATHS SPIKE TO TRIPLE DIGITS

And the drop head beneath it:

City Heat Wave Claims 105th with No Chill in Sight

The six-column photo showed coroner’s office workers wheeling one of the victims, 84-year-old Daisy Irene Washington out of her brick three-flat on Garfield Boulevard, just east of Ashland, as neighbors stared in the background with vacant looks. It was a good photo, not great, Murphy thought, as he picked up the paper outside his door. The lead on Jim Belshaw’s story read, As the mercury bubbled past 100 for the ninth consecutive day, 33 more elderly Chicagoans were found dead in their stifling homes on the South and West Sides. The geography at the end of the sentence was code for black and poor. Next to the main story was a sidebar, with a two-column photo of the mayor barking answers at a news briefing, vowing to stamp out the deaths. A floor fan for every needy senior citizen who refused to take refuge in city relief centers. The remedy, Murphy thought, was like increasing the blower capacity of a furnace.

Murphy stuffed two quarters in the news box at the 103rd Street Metra station and pulled out the tabloid Sun’s first edition. It was terse, as always, in huge, bold type:

111 DEAD

Rising Tally Expected

He had been at his desk in his glass façade office at the News no more than five minutes, scanning through an endless queue of emails when his telephone rang.

Murphy, he answered briskly.

Murphy, what are you guys doing running sensationalist photos on your front page? I thought the News was above that sort of crap?

He recognized the voice immediately, scratchy from too many cigarettes, whiney from too many shameless exhortations. The message was a one of the kind, from the mayor’s chief flak, party hack, sycophant and flunky, Martin Rosenbloom, a worm, shameless in pursuit of Hizonner’s best interests. But Murphy liked him in an odd sort of way. He could be useful.

What’s the matter, Marty? Feeling a little heat, so to speak? And since when do we stop reporting the news just because City Hall might not like it?

Rosenbloom hated being called Marty, thinking it sounded beneath his station. You know you’re just trying to sell newspapers by running photos like that.

Murphy looked at this phone with a quizzical squint as if he were seeing Rosenbloom in the frumpy flesh. That’s what it’s all about, Martin, selling newspapers. How much does the mayor pay you to figure out stuff like that?

Rosenbloom exhaled a theatrical sigh, a grainy grunt that scratched through the receiver. Not enough when I have to deal with shit like you dish out.

Murphy glanced at his watch, then at the clock on the newsroom pillar, showing five minutes until the day’s first news meeting. In it, he would issue marching orders to profile the victims. I know you didn’t call just to chat. So what’s on your mind, Martin?

We were hoping you could be a little more positive in your coverage. The mayor’s office has been working round the clock to put an end to this thing.

To end the heat wave? If you guys figure out how to do that, you’ll get plenty of ink.

Unfortunately, even the mayor can’t do that. But we’re working to get these people out of the heat. We’ve got Health Department personnel, Fire, cops, hell, Streets and San, even some of our own staffers, knocking on doors, block by block, alerting these people – the elderly – that they can get relief from the heat in the shelters we’re providing. It’s a slow process, and it’s not easy. Some people just don’t want to leave.

Why’s that?

Lots of reasons, I suppose. They’re proud. They don’t want to accept help. Some stranger comes around and knocks on their door and tells them they can get out of the heat by leaving their apartment and going to some community center. I don’t know … Would you leave?

If the heat is killing me, damn right. These people are all, or most, on some sort of assistance, I’m sure. So I don’t want to sound hard, but it’s not because they don’t want to accept a handout. They’ve been doing that for years, accepting handouts. They’re scared?

I’m sure that’s part of it. The mayor’s got a press conference at three this afternoon.

And … ? Murphy drew out the question slowly but didn’t get an answer. Why should we be there?

He’s announcing stepped up efforts to take care of the citizens. And Murphy, Rosenbloom paused and cleared his throat. You guys might want to check out the mortuaries. After the bodies are being held at county for awhile and no one claims them, we’re sending them out to private funeral homes to be disposed of. The coroner can’t hold them indefinitely because it doesn’t have the room. We’re starting to get the neighborhood undertakers’ bills at City Hall. They seem awful high. You might want to look into it.

Will the mayor be talking about that?

Not today.

And is anyone else tracking this angle?

Not from us.

Of course, we’ll be at the news conference.

And you’ll give it some play?

We’ll give it the best we can.

Murphy offered no thanks for the tip and received none from the mayor’s man. Quid pro quo was a Chicago game played in many arenas – give and take, you scratch mine and I’ll scratch yours in return. Most of Martin Rosenbloom’s tips panned out, either in stories or in background that led to them. He got what he wanted. The News would break the story, and the scrappy competing newspaper the Sun, the TV news stations and the wires would scratch and claw, bully and badger, lie and steal to match and advance it. Rosenbloom would relish the blood sport and revel in the bottom line – that the gouging bastards in black suits and pointy shoes, with slick hair, unctuous smiles and heavenly white hearses had better not fuck with City Hall.

The ghost of Myron I. Senger dissipated in Murphy’s mind.

August 17, the day that marked the beginning of the rest of his year, was in full swing.

At 1:30, after the early afternoon edition stories cleared slot, Murphy and some of the other editors headed out of the newsroom for lunch. Annie Vrdolyak, the newsroom’s de facto office manager, was waiting for him at a table inside Fredo’s, sipping her glass of iced tea. Not that she’d needed to scrounge for a table. The lunch crowd had largely cleared out of the restaurant, a pleasant hole on the ground floor of a squat building scrunched between a pair of skyscrapers about two blocks south of the News. It served mostly the nearby working crowd. A smattering of News people dotted the inside tables, while the handful of tables on the simmering sidewalk along Wacker Drive were empty. Murphy’s collar was wet, and the underarms of his pale white shirt were ringed unavoidably. The heat was a killer, unlike any he’d endured since returning to The World.

Welcome back, Annie said.

He sat in the chair facing her and was struck, as always, by her loveliness. She’d turned 50 this spring but looked at least 10 years younger, with a trace of silver lining hair that had been the color of dark, baked brick. Her eyes were brown, turning almost black when something pricked her Irish temper, and her fair skin was dotted with traces of girlhood freckles and lightly creased with some lines now, tell-tale lines of sorrow in her life to those who knew her. Her smile was easy and often, and voice soothing. Murphy was fond of her deeply, not love, he always told himself. Love was out of the question.

Thanks, he said. It’s good to be sort of back.

You don’t have much time to dwell on the past, not with this heat story, she said. What’s the latest?

A-hundred-fifty-two dead, so far. I’m afraid that might just be the tip of it.

How did it go last night? she got back to her original theme. The server had come and they ordered, light. It was cool inside, but overall too oppressive to eat much of anything.

You’re going to think I’m crazy.

Try me, she said, then took a bite of salad.

He studied her fine face. What Murphy did as much as anything is trusted Annie Vrdolyak.

After I saw Brendan and went home, you’re not going to believe this, but a guy from our platoon, Myron Senger, he grinned sheepishly, shaking his head in disbelief but still trying to convince her, was waiting for me in my apartment.

You’re right. I think you’re crazy, she said matter-of-factly. She stared at him sadly then poked at the edge of her salad.

True. Senger was in my apartment.

She knew the name of Myron Senger, knew everyone had called him Wanna-something, knew he’d been dead for 40 years. Paul, this whole thing is going to kill you. Or it’s going to kill me listening to you. Or it’s going to kill us both.

Murphy held up his hands, facing them abruptly to her to make his point. Maybe it was a dream. I think it probably was. It had to be. But Annie, it was more real than any dream I’ve had.

Or maybe I’ll just kill you. She tried to keep it light, smiling with a feigned sweetness. Murphy did not acknowledge her attempt.

I can go through the entire conversation – the exact time he was there. I can tell you what he looked like. What he was wearing, what his mannerisms were. God, in the newsroom I’d put Vietnam out of my mind. You know, the heat story. Being back on the job. But the more I think about it, it wasn’t a dream. Myron Senger was in my apartment last night.

Annie wasn’t eating. The saccharine smile was gone. She looked at Murphy with the blank look of someone seeing a ghost, as if it were she seeing Senger.

She had known tragedy, too, in her life. She had known about death, not Murphy’s wholesale, wanton kind, but death that had stabbed her squarely and tried to rip out her heart. It nearly succeeded. Seventeen years ago, she’d had a husband, Mike, a Loop lawyer on track for becoming a partner and more money than they’d ever need, and infant daughter, Erin, the most beautiful baby she’d ever laid eyes on. Her baby. She was wildly, almost unbelievably, happy, putting her rising career in the ad agency aside to become a stay-at-home mom. They had it all, their love, family, friends, their home in Evanston with its gnarly, old trees and a four-block walk to the lakefront. And then it ended. It was a Sunday afternoon, a quick trip to the drug store to pick up some baby formula. She sometimes struggled with her mother’s milk. Erin was fussy. In the car, Annie wore her seatbelt as she cradled the infant in her arms, Mike driving, and she singing softly, Hush, my little baby, don’t you cry … The end came no more than three minutes from home, the first major intersection, when a teen-ager in a big car sped through the red light as Mike started to pull through it, striking him in the driver’s side door. She never saw it coming and would never know if Mike had. The force ripped Erin from her arms, slamming her beautiful baby into the corner of the passenger door and the dashboard. Mike and Erin died instantly, while the boy who’d killed them got out of his car in a daze, walked around theirs to see what he had done, finally opening her door and saying that God, he was sorry.

She never returned home, not even to collect her treasures, her pictures. She moved her broken life in with her widowed mother back in Rogers Park. Her mother took care of all that, eventually having the house sold a couple of years later while Annie struggled with her own demons of guilt for not strapping Erin into the car seat in back and wondered only marginally what ever happened to that teenage boy.

It took nearly 10 years before the wounds began to heal, leaving zigzag scars that would never go away completely. She made her return step by agonizing step. She slowly relearned how to laugh. The laughter was in increments and intervals that shortened over time. It was painful, almost as if the muscles in her full face had constricted in some sort of sorrowful atrophy during her years of mourning.

She never returned to the ad agency. Instead, a friend told her about the job at the News. She got it, and she liked it. Liked the people, the tension, the rush of deadlines and being on the periphery of something exciting. Her bosses liked her, too, and her responsibilities quickly increased. Like the Army clerk who runs the company, she did it all from pulling the strings to orchestrating the assembly, making the parts into the whole and becoming the person with the answer for every administrative question. Annie Vrdolyak was back. At the News, she was pretty much indispensable.

She moved out of her mother’s house and put a down payment on her condo in Lincoln Park, a short walk to the lakefront, bus ride to the News and the Loop, the symphony and the museums and everything she loved about living in her hometown. Life was different, but it was good, mostly, for Annie Vrdolyak. Her biggest problem, which she’d come to realize a few years ago, was that she’d fallen in love again, with Paul Murphy.

She put her foot down. "Paul, Myron Senger was