Final Answers Read online

I’m running a longevity simulation when something occurs to me. “A is for absurd,” I say, thinking aloud. “The name on the wall can’t be mine.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, if it is, it means I was recorded as killed in action.”

  “I guess,” she says, wondering where I’m headed.

  “Wouldn’t my parents have been notified?”

  “Uh-huh, but they weren’t.”

  I nod, then, after thinking about it for a moment, I hear myself saying, “Maybe they were.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Suppose I was listed as KIA, and they were so relieved when they found out it was a mistake, they never said anything? You know those old ‘Southies’ and their superstitions.” I reach to the nightstand and lift the phone.

  “You’re going to call them?”

  “Why not? I mean, if they were notified, it’d put an end to all this, wouldn’t it?”

  Nancy nods, and I start dialing.

  “Dad, it’s Cal.” I hear the television in the background and picture him in the living room of his house in South Boston engrossed in a basketball game.

  “Hi. You did pretty well today. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. How do you know?”

  “C-Span. I’d like to tell that committee a thing or two.”

  “Instead of complaining, why don’t you—”

  “Write my congressman? I did. You really think they pay attention to old farts like me who—”

  “Dad? Dad, I have a question for you.”

  .”Oh, sure. Sorry.”

  “I know this is going to sound weird, but when I was in Vietnam, were you and Mom ever notified that I was killed in action?”

  “Killed?” he says after a long pause. “No. God forbid.”

  “You’re sure. The Army didn’t make a mistake or anything?”

  “Positive. That’s not the sort of thing a parent would forget.”

  “I guess not.”

  “We were notified that you’d been wounded. That was more than enough to handle, believe me. What’s this all about, anyway?”

  “Nothing important, really.” His voice has taken on an emotional timbre and I realize being forced to relive those moments has unsettled him. “By the way, you see that game Bird played yesterday?” I ask, purposely changing the subject. Dad gets right into it, and we spend the next ten minutes arguing the chances of the Celtics winning the playoffs.

  “Sounds like he got upset,” Nancy prompts when I hang up.

  “A little. He’ll be all right.”

  “What about you?”

  “Number one, babe,” I say. It’s military slang for the best, terrific. Guys who went home alive were number one, and it became a little thing between us after my return from Vietnam.

  Nancy smiles knowingly, realizing that what’s really bothering me about my name being on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is not being listed as dead, but that being listed is an honor I, fortunately, haven’t earned.

  “Cal,” she says thoughtfully, adjusting her position in the bed to face me. “I think we should find out one way or the other, don’t you?”

  I let out a long breath at the thought of having to deal with the bureaucracy and nod. I go back to the laptop, exit the simulation, and pull up my schedule. “Jammed solid. I’ve got meetings all day tomorrow.”

  “I don’t.”

  “What about Georgetown? I thought you were taking a tour?”

  Nancy shrugs. “Maybe I’ll have time to do both. If not, it’ll still be here next time.”

  “Thanks,” I reply softly, pleased she’s taking it on. Over the years, I’ve realized that whoever said “If you need something done fast, ask a busy person to do it” had Nancy in mind. She’s the most meticulously prepared and tenacious advocate, or adversary, as school boards, politicians, and charities in our community well know.

  “Feeling better?” she prompts, hearing the relief in my voice.

  “Sure am, babe.” I roll over onto my stomach and begin nuzzling her. “Where you going to start?”

  “With your serial number.”

  “Good idea,” I say, slipping my fingers beneath her nightgown. “Somebody’s got to have a list of them.”

  “You remember it?” she asks, pinning my hand against the smooth flesh of her abdomen so it can move neither up nor down.

  “One one six three zero one seven four three,” I recite, without missing a beat.

  “Not bad.” She releases her grip on my hand in reward. “It’s either the same serial number as the name on the wall or it isn’t.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And if it is?”

  “Who cares?” I whisper with the false bravado that so often accompanies these moments.

  3

  One one six three zero one seven four three,” Nancy says, as she pulls off her gloves and slides onto the chair opposite me.

  We’re in Kramer’s, a bookstore on Connecticut Avenue just north of Dupont Circle. Some friends told us about the place and we decided to meet here at the end of the day. As it turns out Kramer’s is a hangout for the District’s intellectuals; and on this below freezing afternoon, they seem more interested in the steaming cups of espresso and cappuccino served in the café than the broad selection of printed matter on the stacks that tower over us.

  “You’re positive it was my serial number?”

  Nancy nods solemnly. “I’m sorry, I was hoping to be able to tell you it wasn’t. I saw it on the computer next to your name.”

  I let out a long breath, coping with the knowledge that the name on the Vietnam Memorial is undoubtedly mine. I drain my coffee, hoping it will forestall the hollow feeling that’s growing in the pit of my stomach, then flag a passing waiter for a refill. Nancy orders a hot chocolate.

  “Where?” I finally ask her. “Where’d you find this out?”

  “From the people who built the Memorial.” She hands me a pamphlet titled Friends of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

  An introductory paragraph explains the FVVM is an independent, nonprofit organization that helps veterans and the families of deceased or missing vets find each other, and raises funds that are used to maintain the Memorial.

  “They were in the phone book,” Nancy continues. “I figured if anyone had a list of the people on the wall, they would.”

  “How’d you know about them?”

  “We get a fund-raising thing in the mail every year.”

  “We do?”

  “Yes. I always send something.”

  I smile and shake my head in amazement. With characteristic resourcefulness, Nancy has managed to get the information without dealing with the government bureaucracy. “What’d they say when you told them it was a mistake?”

  “Well, the clerk who was helping me didn’t get rattled, if that’s what you mean. Matter of fact—” Nancy pauses before delivering the punch line and removes a notebook from her briefcase—"he said you weren’t alone.”

  “I’m not?” I ask, somewhat astonished.

  She shakes her head no, opens the notebook, and hands it to me. At the bottom of a page of hastily written notes are three names: Robert Bedeker, Willard Craig, and Darrell Lausch.

  “These guys are on the wall too?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And they’re all alive and well, and living in the U.S.A.?”

  “That’s what he said. He took it right off the computer. Evidently their data base includes every man who’s listed on the wall.”

  “He say if he had any idea how this sort of thing could happen?”

  “Yes. As far as he knew all three were data entry errors made in the field.”

  “You mean they were recorded as killed in action instead of wounded.”

  “Right. He said somebody probably wrote KIA instead of WIA.”

  “Hell, even just a guy with sloppy handwriting’d account for it.”

  “Yes, he was surprised that mistakes weren’t made more often. He mention
ed something about—I think he called them collection points. It wasn’t clear. I got the feeling he didn’t want to get into it.”

  Who could blame him? Collection points were jungle-based checkout counters where the price of war was tallied; the place where dead GIs were brought to be processed by graves registration personnel; where the rubberized canvas bags that contained their bodies were stacked like cords of firewood next to the portable refrigeration units that were always filled beyond capacity; where the stench of death, not cappuccino, hung in the air. I can smell it now; an acrid, stomach-turning odor that suddenly fills my head, unleashing a burst of lightning-fast flashbacks: the village, the hutch, the window, the explosion, the blinding pain, my guys dragging me through elephant grass, the voices of medics, the sting of needles, the shouts of “Chopper coming in, chopper coming in!” drowned out by the whomp of rotors and sharp chatter of machine-gun fire, enemy rounds whizzing past, punching holes in metal and flesh as frightened eighteen-year-olds lifted me into the hovering slick, and then—through a morphine haze—the earthy rhythms of “Dock of the Bay,” and a white flash that I eventually realized was a smile.

  “Looking good, soldier,” a comely nurse at the field hospital said.

  “This is the WLW?” I asked weakly, assuming the worst.

  “No fucking way,” she replied, assuring me that I wasn’t in what we called the white lie ward, where hopeless cases were housed until they died. “I wouldn’t plan on auditioning for the Rockettes,” she joked, “but the guys in OR did a hell of a job patching up those gams.”

  “Buy them a couple of Party Packs for me, will you?” I asked. A Party Pack contained ten joints of high-grade Cambodian Red that were machine rolled just like cigarettes, filters and all. “Hell, shoot the works, make them hundreds.” The hundreds were longer than a standard cigarette and had been soaked in opium. “Ten for ten,” the Mommasans who sold them would call out, and worth every penny of it.

  “Sure. Who should I say they’re from?”

  “Cal Morgan, Sergeant, G Company Rangers,” I replied, reciting my serial number. “Why do you ask?”

  “You came in without any ID; not even dog tags. Bet they were in your boots, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, you didn’t have them, either. Medics must’ve yanked ’em during triage before you were vacked out. One of these days they’ll put the boots on the gurneys like they’re supposed to.” She gave me another shot of morphine, and suddenly everything was gone.

  * * *

  I’m staring numbly at the reflection of the overhead lighting grid in my espresso when Nancy’s voice pulls me out of it.

  “Cal, you okay?” she asks, seeing how my expression has darkened. “Cal, what is it?”

  “My boots,” I mutter in reply.

  “Your boots? What do they have to do with a clerical mistake?”

  “It wasn’t a clerical mistake,” I say, suddenly seeing it all very clearly.

  “Why not?”

  “Three reasons. For openers, after talking to Dad last night, we can be pretty sure that I wasn’t listed as killed in action by mistake like these guys.”

  “And the other two?”

  “My dog tags.”

  It’s been twenty-four years since I told her about the incident at the field hospital, but I can tell from the way her eyes widen that she remembers it.

  “I had leg wounds; they removed my boots and my pants. My tags and ID probably went with ’em.”

  “You think somebody else ended up with them?”

  “Uh-huh. Only he wasn’t lucky like me. He didn’t make it.”

  “But what about his dog tags and ID? I mean, I remember your ID had your photograph. Wouldn’t that have tipped them off?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “I also remember you telling me dog tags weren’t the only thing they used to make identifications.”

  “You mean fingerprints, dental charts?”

  Nancy nods uncomfortably and tilts her head toward the next table where a man seems to be eavesdropping on our conversation from behind a newspaper.

  “When they could,” I say in a detached tone that hasn’t come out of me in years. “You know how many bodies I saw without hands, without heads? Every time a grunt tripped a VC booby trap, the guys who weren’t blown to bits spent the next couple of hours collecting the body parts; then they got to decide which ones belonged to who, and bagged ’em. Finally, a chopper dumped ’em at a collection point where a graves registration guy, putting in fourteen-hour days, is slogging his way through a pile of body bags that never gets smaller. In one of ’em he finds a mangled torso, a couple of limbs, maybe a pulped hand, some bloody fatigues, and a loose pair of boots with dog tags dangling from the laces.”

  “I understand.”

  “If I’m right, whoever that poor bastard was—” I pause and swallow back the bile rising in my throat—"it’s his name, not mine, that belongs on that wall.”

  4

  Names. An entire wall of dead GIs’ names.

  I don’t know a whole lot about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but I do know that Jan Scruggs, the veteran who started it all, was into the names. I remember reading that he woke up in the middle of the night terrified they’d all be forgotten. He tried to drown his fears in a bottle of whiskey, and when that didn’t work, he decided he was going to put the name of every GI who was killed in Vietnam on a memorial to make sure they weren’t. He pulled it off.

  But one name is missing.

  Now, the mystical force that was driving him seems to be driving me. It kept me up half the night.

  The travel alarm reads 6:21.

  Nancy is still sleeping. I slip out of bed and cross to the window of our hotel room. The Washington Monument is shrouded in mist, its red warning beacon winking eerily in the darkness. Below, a few people bundled against the cold are crossing Lafayette Square on two long paths that converge on the White House.

  I can’t help thinking about the decisions that were made there, decisions made by four Presidents to send young Americans into battle, decisions responsible for those fifty-eight thousand names and for my frustrating case of insomnia. I don’t know how long I’ve been standing at the window when I feel Nancy beside me.

  She wraps her arms around my waist and hugs me in silence. “It’s really gotten hold of you again, hasn’t it?” she finally whispers.

  I let out a long breath and nod. “The guy died for his country, babe. His name should be on the Memorial. I just can’t get it out of my head.”

  “I think you need to get home,” she says, knowing that just being in the modern, light-filled house built on a hilltop in the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu always brightens my mood.

  “Maybe,” I say with a solemn shrug. “I’m sorry, I just can’t help wondering about him, you know? Was he an FNG, a lifer? Black, white, brown? Married? Did he have kids, a cat and a dog? Parents? The questions just keep coming. I mean, if my parents weren’t notified, who was? What happened to his body? Who was it sent to for burial?”

  “I don’t know, Cal,” Nancy says, almost mouthing the words. She has a look in her eyes that I haven’t seen in years; a look of poignant sadness, bordering on fear, that tells me she’s concerned I’m being dragged back into the past, into the ugliness I worked so hard to overcome. “Are you sure they’re your questions to answer?”

  “No. No, I’m not. But it’s my name. So who else if not me?”

  “Well, yesterday the clerk said he was going to report it to the Army. They made the mistake; maybe you should let them handle it.”

  “You’re right. I probably should,” I reply defensively. “Trouble is it doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m feeling. I mean, I just have this . . . this . . . compulsion to find out who he was myself.”

  Though I don’t have the answers, I don’t have to run a probability analysis on my computer to know that if another soldier ended up with my dog tags, he was most likely ki
lled on the same day and in the same province where I was wounded. In descending order of probability, he was a member of my squad, platoon, or company, or other units deployed in the area. It’s a basic data analysis problem: assemble a complete roster of names, eliminate those on the wall and those who’d survived, narrowing the list to a few men, preferably one who somehow wasn’t officially accounted for.

  “You have the name of the clerk?” I ask, deciding the Friends of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial data base would be as good a place as any to start.

  “Our flight leaves at eleven,” she cautions as she fetches her notebook.

  It’s our last day in Washington. I’d forgotten. It’ll be hours before FVVM offices open. I spend the time entering Nancy’s data into my laptop, then list as many names of GIs in my company as I can remember. At 8:45 I go downstairs to get a taxi. Nancy stays at the hotel to pack our things.

  Friends of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial headquarters is on M St. NW about a mile and half east of the Hay Adams in a four-story brownstone converted into office space. The small staff works in simply furnished surroundings where an almost churchlike quiet prevails.

  The clerk, a soft-spoken man in his early forties with thinning hair, seems uncomfortable at being face-to-face with the latest member of the group I’ve crudely nicknamed The Living Dead. I brief him on my time/place parameters and ask if he has any ideas how I might go about identifying the soldier.

  “Well, I’ve notified the Army Casualty Office,” he replies, confirming what he told Nancy. “By the way, in case you’re wondering about having your name taken off the wall, we looked into it when we found out about the others. Must’ve been three, maybe four years ago. But nobody’s been able to figure out a way to do it without defacing the Memorial or replacing the panels.”

  “I’m more interested in adding one,” I say a little too sharply, shifting into management mode. “I need to find out which guys in my company were killed on a certain day and in a certain province, but I don’t have very many names. Are you programmed to do multitarget searches?”

  “Sure are. Company, date, and province is all I need. I can check every company that was in the province on that day, if you like.”