Born in Salt, page 6
“Thanks.”
“You know,” he said, “music is the measure of a man’s soul.”
Not a typical comment. “What are you getting at?”
“Your songs show you care. How angry you are about the injustice in the world.”
“They’re just songs. I ain’t doing anything that’ll get me sent to a prison camp.”
The James brothers came up and rescued me. They thanked and flattered everyone in the band, then came back to me and slapped me on the back.
“You ought to play full time,” Alvin said. “Put out records and get on the radio.”
I shrugged. We’d talked about putting a demo tape together, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore.
“Trouble is,” Paul said, eying the James brothers too, “the government is strict about what airs. Bible thumping and fake news mostly.”
Sarah smirked. “And Sousa marches.”
John Philip Sousa was the National Composer, even though he was long dead. Pop loved him. I hated him with a passion and had told Sarah one day I’d dig up his bones and nail them to an upside-down cross alongside the highway.
What happened to Rachel? She was normally 110% reliable. “I gotta go,” I said.
My bandmates stared at me like I was nuts.
“Party’s just gettin’ started,” Ash said.
“Have to check on Rachel. She said she was coming.”
Sarah frowned. “I don’t know why you’re so surprised. This isn’t her scene.”
I went outside to my battered truck and hopped in, sliding my guitar case across the bench seat. I glanced back at the barn and spotted Sarah under the floodlights, arms crossed. I waved to let her know everything was cool.
* * *
I pulled the truck up to the Tolson house. None of the inside lights were on. It was close to midnight, though. The family van sat in front, white paint shaded sickly yellow under the streetlights.
Red and blue flashed in the rearview mirror. The hell? Bright floods daylighted the cab interior. I turned the ignition off and waited.
A city cop swaggered up to the driver’s window. I recognized him beneath the dark blue uniform. Officer Lance Ferguson, a bully from birth. Like most of the twenty-strong city police, he’d bleached his hair Aryan blond and cropped it close to his skull, then followed with enough weightlifting to bulk his muscles up to freak status.
“Well if it isn’t Benjamin Adamson,” he said. “We never did get to see you wearing that thief sign.”
Not only did they kick me out of school for stealing band equipment, even though it was old surplus, the district attorney’s office pressed charges. Being needed on the farm, I avoided work camp, but the judge sentenced me to a public lashing, then made me wear a sign with “THIEF” on it for six months. I took it off as soon as I left his sight and never put it back on.
“I was busy at the farm,” I told Bully-Boy Ferguson. “Had no cause to come into town.”
“A shame. Maybe we should brand it on your forehead. Once a thief, always a thief. You casing out a place to rob, huh?”
My fists clenched, but striking an officer would get me ten years.
He smirked and thrust out his chest. “Hah, whatcha gonna do? Huh? Maybe you need another lashing. They went light on you.”
Rachel, showing why she deserved my worship more than any stymie-eyed Old Man in the Sky, had sold some of her clothes and bribed the whip man to go easy on me. Probably a flutter of those eyelashes was enough.
“I’m not casing anything.” I pointed at the Tolson house. “They’re family, sort of.”
“Hoping to watch one of them girls take their clothes off? Is that what you’re up to?”
Ferguson probably peeped all over town. “Of course not,” I said. “Can I go now?”
“I can arrest you for loitering, but I’m in a good mood. Twenty-dollar fee for a warning.”
The cops were the biggest thieves in town. “I don’t have twenty, but you can have what I’ve got.”
I reached into my back pocket. He whipped out his gun, a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, probably with exploding bullets that would turn my organs to jelly.
“Whoah. Just getting my wallet.” I tossed it to him.
He pulled out the cash—four dollars, two quarters, and a dime—my take from the night’s show. His nostrils flared like a bull’s. “Is that all you’ve got?”
“Everything I’ve earned since my brother died.” I hoped he wouldn’t take the guitar lying next to me.
“Yeah, your brother was the good one.” He pocketed my money and threw back the wallet. “Get the hell out of here, you dirt-poor dumb-ass hick. If I see you around again after dark, you’re going to jail, no question.”
I turned the ignition key and drove home in a rage.
Chapter Six
In a neat hotel room, Rachel unzips her dress, eyes smiling with anticipation. It falls to the floor. A white lacy bra and panties frame a willowy but nicely curved figure and creamy smooth skin. She unhooks the bra, revealing small, upturned breasts, drops it on top of the dress on the floor.
I fumble to catch up, shed my shoes, shirt, pants, and underwear, toss them aside. Rachel slips her panties off. We embrace. Kiss, rub tongues together. Lie on the creaky bed, arms and legs intertwined. I hook fingers between her perfect thighs and she moans.
I am outside myself, outside the pleasure, seeing Rachel on top of me, rocking her pelvis back and forth.
It isn’t me. It’s Jake. I try to turn away but can’t.
Rachel’s gone. The hotel room’s gone. I’m marching behind Jake, slogging up a steep hill through thick forest. I’m weighed down by something heavy. Not sure what it is. The ground is wet and slippery, the air like steam after a hot shower. Insects buzz and trill from somewhere behind the leaves. They notice that I notice and the noise grows deafening.
Jake’s boots and olive drab pants are spattered with mud. He carries an M1969 .30 caliber automatic rifle, muzzle pointed down and to the left. He doesn’t acknowledge me. Others are behind me but their faces are blurry.
Our battalion is on a Seek and Obliterate mission. I can’t see far. Our squad is alone. I read in a letter that each squad has its own territory to cover. Call in backup if we find anything.
Jake’s on point. He’s a hunter so he has to go first. I’m a better hunter than Jake. Why aren’t I in front?
Birds were singing but now it’s quiet. Something’s wrong. Ahead, figures move through the undergrowth, dark green phantoms. Jake stops; he sees them too.
Loud crack behind me, some moron stepping on a stick. Muzzles flash lightning and thunder at us. Leaves fly off. Bullets thud into wood and dirt.
I’m going to die. But I can’t move. Just stand there, an easy target.
Jake kneels and shoots back with his rifle. I have some kind of weapon on my back but can’t reach it.
Explosions on all sides. Hillside shakes. Can’t see anything but smoke. Hear trees splintering and crashing to the ground and screams of people in mortal pain. One sounds like mom.
My heart. My heart will stop. I’m going to die! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!
* * *
Thuds. Banging. Knocking against wood.
My door. I’d been dreaming about one of the battles Jake wrote about, the one where most of his squad was killed.
“What?” I shouted.
“Phone call for you.” Pop’s voice, gruff and loud.
“Who is it?”
“Rachel. Time you were up, anyway.”
I threw on jeans and hurried down the stairs to the kitchen. “Hello?”
“Meet me at Jake’s grave in an hour.” She spoke the words fast.
“What? Why?”
“Just come, okay? It’s important.” She hung up.
The morning was chilly, although not cold enough for fleece yet. My camo jacket would do. I took the truck to the New Bethany Baptist Cemetery, a savanna of oak trees and mowed turf grass just south of town.
We’d buried Jake with the other Adamsons, next to my ma and sister. Besides the casket, the Army had bought him a rounded marble headstone. It was flanked by little American flags, but someone had taken the flowers away, which would have been unsightly by now.
Rachel stood by the headstone, draped in a black wool coat. Next to her, a man in olive drab Army dress uniform leaned on a polished wood cane. He wore black-framed glasses and looked a year or two older than me. His sleeves had yellow corporal stripes.
He offered a hand as I approached. “Seth Bowen.” He had a crisp accent, like a newscaster.
I shook his hand. “Ben Adamson. What brings you here?”
He glanced at Rachel, who looked tired. “Miss Tolson called me. “I served with your brother in Cuba. He was a good man.”
My face spasmed, like I’d break into tears.
“I’m so sorry I missed your show, Ben,” Rachel said. “Corporal Bowen’s bus arrived at five. We got to talking and then I was too upset to go anywhere.” Her eyes moistened.
I held her hands in solidarity. They were cold. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I wanted to come to the funeral,” Bowen said. “But I was still in the hospital. Least I could do was see his grave and share what I know.”
Rachel stared at the headstone. “The others Jake knew are either still in Cuba or dead. Most of them dead.”
“Did you see my brother die?” I asked Bowen.
“No, they transferred him out of the company. Then I took a bullet in the knee and they flew me back to the States. I’m waiting for a metal kneecap, but at least I can walk now, sort of. Then it’s back home to Connecticut.”
Rachel caught his attention. “Tell Ben what you told me last night. Start with the boy.”
“You sure?”
“Jake’s brother needs to know everything, same as me.”
Corporal Bowen exhaled and settled more of his weight on the cane.
“Jake had already been in Cuba a while when I got there. I was a know-nothing private and Sergeant Armstead, our squad leader at the time, yelled at me a lot. But Jake told me everything I needed to know, like company procedures and how to deal with the heat.”
Bowen glanced at the ground, then up at the sky.
“My first field op, they flew our battalion into the Santa Rosa Valley to preempt a rebel attack on one of the sugar mills.”
“Jake wrote about that,” I said.
“Where do you want me to start, then?”
“The parts that were blacked out,” Rachel said.
Bowen flicked dead leaves with his cane. “Captain Tannin interrogated some of the field workers. We made them kneel so they couldn’t run off. But one of the boys—maybe ten or eleven—leapt to his feet and bolted for the nearest uncut cane. The captain shouted, ‘Don’t let him escape—shoot!’
“We looked at Sergeant Armstead. He pointed at Jake, told him to carry out the orders.”
“Shoot a ten-year-old kid?” I said. “Who would do that? Why tell Jake to do it?”
“He was the best shot. He lifted his rifle and aimed, but didn’t pull the trigger, at least—”
“Of course not,” I said, then noticed Rachel’s clenched face.
Bowen lowered his voice. “At least at first, I was trying to say. But Captain Tannin said, ‘Shoot that runner, Corporal. That’s an order.’
“The kid was just a few paces from the cane but Jake hit him with a three round burst and dropped him. Plastic-tipped hollow points, so he died pretty quick.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, not convincing myself at all.
Bowen stared at me. “I was there. That’s what happened.”
I turned to Rachel. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. A crow called from one of the browning tree tops, ah ah ah.
“You’re trained to follow orders,” Bowen said. “You don’t question them. And they told us over and over, if it runs, shoot it.”
‘It,’ not ‘him’ or ‘her.’
“We were going to have kids,” Rachel said in a low voice. “I’ve been thinking about it since yesterday and it still doesn’t make sense.”
Bowen clasped his hands and looked down. “He wouldn’t talk about it afterward. Wouldn’t talk about much of anything for days. Then Captain Tannin had a heart to heart with him, told him the kid was probably a spy for the insurgents and he did the right thing.”
He opened his hands. “Jake told me he hated dealing with civilians. Hated searching houses, hated watching people intimidated and tortured and executed on the spot.”
At least he didn’t enjoy it. Didn’t turn into a monster. Or did intentions even matter? Wasn’t it actions that counted?
“I hated it too,” Bowen added.
The crow lurched into the air from its hidden perch and beat its dark wings against the bleak sky, abandoning us.
I had to know more. “There was this battle on a hillside where most of Jake’s squad was killed.”
“Yeah. It was more a mountain than a hill, at least that’s how it seemed to me.”
“He hid under a pile of logs,” I said, “and wrote that he felt like a coward afterward.”
“Corporal Bowen told me last night their own side caused most of the deaths,” Rachel said. “That was edited out of the letters.”
Bowen nodded. “Me and Jake and Lowe, who was a PFC at the time, were the only ones in the squad not killed or wounded. Mostly from friendly fire. Shouldn’t have called artillery in danger range. Then our radio took a piece of shrapnel and we couldn’t adjust.
“Jake really hit the rum and marimba—what they call marijuana there—after that. Thought he failed everyone, and like you said, survived by being a coward.”
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “Did his best, then tried to stay alive. Adamsons aren’t cowards.”
He nodded again. “He was too hard on himself. Everyone hit the ground when they heard those 155 shells come in. ’Course what we didn’t think about was an avalanche of trees coming down on our heads.”
“Jake was up for promotion anyway,” he continued, “so they fast-tracked it and gave him sergeant stripes and command of the squad. He asked if he could visit home but the company commander told him to wait for his scheduled leave and get the new batch of recruits up to speed.”
That was unfair. We never got to see him.
“About the same time,” he continued, “our platoon commander, Lieutenant Higgins—young guy, never seemed sure of himself—had this breakdown. Lined us all up and started bawling, saying he was sorry we were all going to die and for no reason. The MP’s took him away and we never saw him again.” Bowen shifted on his cane again. “Soon after that, Uncle Fritz arrived.”
“Who?”
“The Hauptsturmführer. Jake called him Uncle Fritz. Behind his back, of course. Adviser from the German SS sent to work with Captain Tannin, one of hundreds they loaned out. No one knows how to pacify resistance like Nazis, supposedly.
“Our new squad sat in Camp Santa Clara for a while. There were some bombings of bars and whorehouses in nearby towns that killed some of the men. After that, the division commander confined us to base. You’ve never known boredom till you’re stuck on base, huddled in ponchos in rain that never ends.”
He paused. “Then it was Jake’s turn to crack.”
“What?”
“At least that’s what the officers claimed. Really, it was one of the only sane moments of my tour.”
I met Rachel’s eyes. She half smiled and straightened her shoulders. “Tell Ben the whole story.”
Bowen focused on the dry grass and fidgeted. “Lieutenant Wheeler, our new platoon commander, told us to prep for battle. Wouldn’t say where we were going until right before boarding the ’copters. They gathered the company in one of the ready rooms, wheeled in the bulletin board, and pinned up aerial photos of this village, San Isidore. Small, nothing special.
“Captain Tannin gave the briefing, Uncle Fritz by his side. Told us it was the home town of one of the rebel commanders, and an insurgency stronghold. We were going to make an example. Our orders were to follow an air strike and make sure no one escaped.”
“As in kill them?” I asked. “Kill everyone in the town?”
“Just the men. Women and children would be relocated to a work camp. Hostages, I think. But it was a moot point. The Vipers—they’re ground support jets—firebombed the shit out of the village, then our gunships finished the job. They killed every last person.”
Bowen covered his mouth with the ball of a fist, like he was about to cough. He blinked, then lowered his hand. “Lieutenant Wheeler told the platoon we were on head staking detail. Uncle Fritz’s idea.”
Head staking?
Bowen pointed a finger at me. “Jake gave him that exact same look, like he’d given an order in Russian. The LT went into specifics, told us to cut off every head we found and stake it outside the village.
“We’d never done anything like that. It was something maybe the Mongols did a thousand years ago, but not the U.S. Army. Jake told him it was barbaric. The LT gave this look like Jake had slapped him across the face. He went into a tirade.”
“So he did it?” I asked.
Rachel replied first. “Just let him finish.”
Bowen made a fist and gripped it with his other hand. His eyes fixed on the horizon. “Nothing much remained of the village when we got there. The buildings had all collapsed and there were burned bodies everywhere, especially inside the church ruins. None were armed that I saw, and most were women and children.
“Jake took out his knife and knelt by one of the children, or what used to be a child. He muttered something like, ‘Forgive me, Mom,’ and threw up. Then he turned to us and said, ‘Not my squad.’ He called the men together and said we were going to bury the dead and the chaplain would give last rites.”
A breath escaped me, replaced by pride in my brother.
“Lieutenant Wheeler,” Bowen continued, “marched over as soon as we started digging new holes in the village graveyard. He wanted to know what the hell we were doing. Jake told him we were burying the dead.
