CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Too much white bread and not enough butter, Al reflected, surveying the embassy ballroom. The bulk of the population tonight consisted of WASP senators and congressmen and their middle-aged, matronly wives. There was the occasional trophy bride or pretty young daughter, but for the most part if a man didn't have his original mate on his arm he was alone.
Al was no exception in that respect, though he did stand out rather conspicuously in another way, his dress uniform odd in the sea of black. Despite the ccrawling feeling on the back of his neck that meant people were staring, he kept his shoulders squared so that his chestful of ribbons were thrust out in testimony to a record of which he was not especially proud. He knew from experience how easily civilians were impressed by a little spit and polish. With the entire committee present at this gathering, he couldn't afford to turn down the opportunity to dazzle. After all, the stronger the impression of capable dignity he cultivated now, the easier his job would be on Monday.
So he turned on the old Calavicci charm full force and went about the unpleasant task of prostituting himself for his Project.
Al loved Starbright. He really did. Despite the daily frustrations and the drudgery and the quibbling, he loved her. There weren't many things that he was passionate about, but the Project was one of them. He'd do anything to keep her afloat, even tolerate these absurd cocktail parties. Now, Al loved a good party, but this was anything but. This was a gathering of politicians looking to further their own agendas—and their wives were worse! Political wives, as a rule, were morbidly curious. All night they plied Al with questions—both about his past and about Starbright—that he couldn't answer, taking his reticence as a personal affront.
It was around eleven, just about the time when it was becoming bitterly obvious that there weren't enough martinis in the District of Columbia to turn this into an enjoyable evening, that Al spied an Ally. Trying not to look too desperately overjoyed, Al zeroed in on the friendly face as quickly as he could. He crossed the room and grapbbed the man's arm.
"Les!" he exclaimed. "How've you been?"
The man turned, and an enormous grin spread across his face. "Calavicci!" he exclaimed. "And I thought you'd decided to blow it off!"
"The funding hearings?" Al said. "Wouldn't dream of it! Always a pleasure to see old friends and tell you all how well I'm spending your money!"
Usually you didn't put it that way to politicians. They didn't like to be reminded that things cost—and they especially hated it when you implied tha tone person held most of the spending power. Congressman Les Davies, Colorado, wasn't just any politician, though. He and Al had been in some sticky situations together. He was as close a pal as Al had in Washington, and the Naval officer knew he could trust him not to take comments like that the wrong way.
"I hope you've got impressive results," the congressman said. "There are some guys on that committee who think these research projects are a waste of tax dollars."
Al laughed. "A waste? Do you have any idea the kind of benefits this country has seen from—"
"Easy does it, Al," Les chuckled. "I didn't say that I felt that way. You're preaching to the choir. Now, I hear you found yourself a new wife!"
"Yeah, Sharon! She's great. Fantastic. I mean, she's excellent. How's Sarah?"
"Fine. Talking to Mrs. Germany over there," Les said, nodding at his buxom wife of thirty years and a statuesque blonde who was, presumably, the wife of the German ambassador. "You've been busy."
"I try," Al said. "After all, if you can't come home to a beautiful woman, why do you bother coming home at all?"
"That isn't quite what I meant," Les said. "I had a layover at the Denver airport two days ago, and what do you think I found in the terminal bookstore?"
Al's brow furrowed. "Is this a riddle?"
Les stared at him inscrutably for a minute, then grinned. "What do you say you and I tell a few stories? I'm sure all these nice folks would like to hear about our long and colorful friendship!"
Al snorted a little into his martini. "We met in the Blue Room at Briarpatch," he said softly. "You were…"
He didn't want to think about it. He shook his head. "You were in rough shape," he finished lamely.
"And you were wearing manacles and a dog collar, fresh off the truck from the Hilton," Les said. "They were trying to get answers out of me, but the second you opened your smart mouth they all focussed on you. I'll never forget that," the congressman said, his voice still silky, the lazy drawl hiding any pain this reminiscing was causing him.
"You woulda done the same thing," Al mumbled. He wasn't comfortable with this train of thought at all. Too much to forget. Too much that would never be forgotten. He drained his martini and caught the eye of one of the circulating waiters. He caught up a fresh one with ease.
"You want to tell everyone what they did?" Les asked. He caught a circulating colleague by the arm. "I'm sure Bill wants to hear."
"Oh, I don't think that's necessary," Al demurred.
"Don't be silly!" Les said. "Tell Bill. Bill, this is Al Calavicci. He and I were in 'Nam together, did you know that? First day we met he saved my sorry ass. Paid for it, too. You going to tell it, Al?"
The tone was light and pleasant, full of gratitude and admiration. Les didn't know how he was twisting the knife. He didn't understand how hard Al tried not to think about Vietnam, ever. Not to think about it, and certainly not to talk about it. Al managed a tiny smile. "No one wants to hear it," he said.
"Of course people want to hear it," Les said. "If you won't tell them, let me. Bill, they were beating on me when Al got brought in, and he started swearing a blue streak. English, Italian, Viet, anything he could throw at them. That got them distracted right away. They stripped off his prison fatigues—I guess he must've worn them for days straight—and they—"
Al mumbled some kind of clumsy excuse and slipped away. The martini glass was empty, but he found another. Poor Les. He only wanted to boast about his buddy, the hero. The trouble was that that "hero" was actually a craven coward, scared even to face the memories of those months, those years. Hiding his discomfort behind a glass and a radiant smile, Al began to circulate again.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWWMWMWMWMWashington in January was a far cry from Arizona. Al had almost forgotten what a wet cold felt like. The walk home, though in some ways cathartic, was also miserable. "Home" wasn't very cheery, either, despite the fact that he was housed in one of the best hotels within easy access of Capitol Hill. In his twefth-floor room a hot bath took some of the ague off of his chest, but the empty bed wasn't very inviting. Al hated empty beds. Fortunately the room had a mini-bar, and he helped himself to some of life's little pleasures as he worked up the courage required to turn out the light. Even after he was settled between the sheets he lay awake for a long time, thinking about his history with Les Davies.
They had been cellmates for a while: two of five men sharing a tiny dungeon in the most primitive of the V.C.'s "official" prisons. The food had been scarce, the water foul, and the hospitality brutal at best. There had been one especially bad month when everybody had come down with cholera. They had all thought that dysentery was bad, but it had nothing on cholera. In cramped and unventilated quarters, the disease was unbearable. Everyone had drawn on wells of patience that they didn't know they had, and everyone had, eventually, reached the breaking point.
Les had just about died during that epidemic, but somehow he pulled through. Al had fought harder than he'd thought he could to make the other pilot hold on. They'd come through it, all right.
The last time he'd seen Les before signing on with Starbright was The Morning. The morning when Major Quon had come to hand-pick his trophies.
Al shivered as his mind took him back, unwillingly, to that day. The heat was unbearable. No one had been given their water ration yet, and the prisoners stood in four long lines, wilting in the blazing sun. A one-eyed man in VC fatigues had come out of the Camp Commander's bungalow, surveying the captives critically.
No one had known what was going on, but it was plain that a few recognized the stranger. Al sure did. He'd met up with Quon once before, in the Highlands, just after being shot down. He wasn't the kind of guy you forgot. The others who knew him hadn't forgotten, either, and the fear that came from their knowledge aggravated the fear of the others, the fear that came from ignorance. The whole jungle had reeked of fear.
Up and down the rows Quon had walked, tilting a chin here, pinching an arm there, like a farmer surveying horses as he debated which ones to purchase. Those who knew a little Vietnamese quickly gathered at least part of what was going on. This man with the disfigured face was going to take some captives away with him. Where, no one knew, but one look at his grim visage and the scuffed but of his M-16, and there could be no doubt that you were better off with the Camp Commander and his ropes…
One by one Quon chose his men: the sick, the weak, the whole, the defiant. Five of them, herded away from the others by the guerrillas, chained hand and foot, forced to lie on their bellies in the bed of an old truck. Last of all Quon came to Al. Recognition was not one-sided. He was remembered: his defiance, his scornful mockery of the disfigurement. It probably didn't help that he sneered and greeted the soldier with scorn.
Quon beat him with the M-16. Locked in heavy irons, Al could neither run, nor fight back, nor protect himself. The blows rained down on his head, his shoulders, his back. They glanced off his kidneys and dug into his ribs. He didn't scream. He locked his jaw and didn't give Quon the satisfaction of hearing him scream.
When it was over and he was dragged to his feet Al could scarcely stand. His eyes were already swelling so that he knew by nightfall he wouldn't be able to see. Blood flowed freely down his face from his nose and his mouth. His ears were ringing. Each breath was agony. His legs shook beneath him.
They tied his arms to the handle of the passenger door. The truck started up and trundled away. Over jungle trails the battered vehicle couldn't do more than ten miles an hour, but just try running at that speed for more than a few minutes! Al didn't know how long he would have lasted in his peak physical condition, but beaten as he was he could scarcely keep pace. His feet stumbled. One sandal was lost, then the other. His knees shook. His head was bloated. His abused ribs wouldn't allow ample breath. He fell, his legs scraping the rough ground, his arms holding the whole weight of his body, dragging it along. They let him ride like this for ten minutes before they stopped and threw him in the back with the others.
His raw legs were numb, but the agony in his shoulders ate away at his sanity. The truck hit a bump and he rolled against one abused joint, and a scream of hellish torment woke him with a start. He was alone in the dark, in the empty hotel room, with Sharon and Chester and the comforts of home thousands of miles away, and all other consolations forbidden by the necessity of fidelity.
Al got onto shaking legs and stumbled across the room to the cluster of little bottles. As soon as he tried to open one he realized that the anguish in his shoulder wasn't residual memories. It was all too real. But he needed a drink. He needed the one pleasure he could have. With his teeth he gripped the cap of the little bottle of vodka. The effort of opening it with his mouth and right hand almost sent him to his knees, weakened already as he was, but in the end his tenacity paid off. He drained it. The next bottle was easier to manage. By the fourth he could use his left arm again. One by one he emptied them all, hands trembling less with each passing swallow. Grateful for the numbness, both physical and emotional, that followed the liquor's burning passage to his stomach, he crawled back to bed, curling into a tight ball and letting oblivion wash over him in waves.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWWMWMThankfully after that first night the trip got easier. He must have done something right either with the report or at the party, because the committee weren't nearly as demanding as usual. Maybe it was his style. Once upon a time when he'd been new to the game of panhandling from the government, Al had performed with all the finesse of a well-trained monkey. Now he approached hearings with a less Sophistic attitude. Oratory wasn't important. Maybe you could inspire your average bureaucratic drone with talk of Kennedy and space ships and the American Dream, but they weren't going to be awed by the beauty of quantum physics or particle acceleration. Therefore, you had to use tiny, easy words and simple analogies. The real trick was to make sure that you didn't let on, not even for a minute, that you felt like you were explaining things to a really stupid four-year-old. If ever they suspected that you thought they were thick as bricks… well, it hadn't happened to Al yet, and he was going to make damned sure that it didn't.
He was actually really good at it; not that anybody cared. He could make the senators feel like intelligent and enlightened individuals, experts in this incredibly advanced science. When a project made them feel like geniuses, completely oblivious to their true ignorance, that was when they started writing the cheques.
The worst part of the hearings was avoiding Les. He was present as a liason to Congress: the only member of the committee not from the Senate. He wanted to be friendly, to while away breaks with Al and to reminisce. Al, of course, wanted anything but reminiscing. He wanted to live in the present, and leave Hell behind. He couldn't do it himself, and when someone else was supplementing his mind's traitorous tendencies, the result was absolute wretchedness and waking nightmares. He didn't want to hurt his friend, but neither did he want to spend each night doctoring his nightmares from four-ounce bottles.
In the end charisma won out, as it always did, and Al was awarded a full renewal of funding, and even three of the seven increases he had had the almighty nerve to beg for. On the whole it was a successful mission.
Though scheduled to remain in Washington for one more day of schmoozing and socializing, Al opted to cut out early. Take the money and run: that was the way to play it. Besides, he had more pressing worries than next year's hearings. His heart in his mouth, he waited at the airport. All the long flight back to Arizona he worried, for surely the results of Stevie's tests had to be ready by now.