Koko. Peter Straub
are completely childish.’
‘At least they’re that mature,’ said Pat Caldwell. This conversation too was conducted over the telephone. ‘Sometimes I’m afraid that Harry’s are just infantile.’
‘Michael still believes in the army. He’d deny that, but it’s the truth. He takes that boy’s game as the real thing. He loved being part of a group.’
‘Harry had the time of his life in Vietnam,’ Pat said.
‘The point is that Michael is going back. He wants to be in the army again. He wants to be part of a unit.’
‘I think Harry just wants something to do.’
‘Something to do? He could get a job! He could start acting like a lawyer again!’
‘Hmm, well, perhaps.’
‘Are you aware that Michael wants to sell his share of the practice? That he wants to move out of Westerholm and work in a slum? He thinks he isn’t doing enough. I mean, he has a little tiny point, you have to be a doctor in a place like this to find out how really political it is, you wouldn’t believe how much infighting goes on, but that’s life, that’s all it is.’
‘So he’s using the trip to give himself time to think about it,’ Pat suggested.
‘He’s using the trip to play army,’ Judy said. ‘Let’s not even mention how he’s guilt-tripping himself about Ia Thuc.’
‘Oh, I think Harry was always proud of Ia Thuc,’ Pat said. ‘Some day, I ought to show you the letters he wrote me.’
3
The night before he flew to Singapore, Michael dreamed that he was walking at night along a mountain trail toward a group of uniformed men sitting around a small fire. When he gets nearer, he sees that they are ghosts, not men – flames show dimly through the bodies in front of the fire. The ghosts turn to watch him approach. Their uniforms are ragged and stiff with dirt. In his dream Michael simply assumes that he had served with these men. Then one of the ghosts, Melvin O. Elvan, stands and steps forward. Don’t mess with Underhill, Elvan says. The world is full of hurt.
On the same night, Tina Pumo dreams that he is lying on his bed while Maggie Lah paces around the bedroom. (In real life, Maggie disappeared again as soon as his face had begun to heal.) You can’t win a catastrophe, Maggie says. You just have to try to keep your head above water. Consider the elephant, his grace and gravity, his innate nobility. Burn down the restaurant and start over.
The shutters of the bungalow were closed against the heat. A film of condensation lay over the pink stucco walls, and the air in the room was warm, moist, and pink dark. There was a strong, dark brown smell of excrement. The man in the first of the two heavy chairs now and then grunted and stirred, or pushed his arms against the ropes. The woman did not move, because the woman was dead. Koko was invisible, but the man followed him with his eyes. When you knew you were going to die, you could see the invisible.
If you were in a village, say –
If the smoke from the cookfire wavered and rose straight into the air again. If the chicken lifted one foot and froze. If the sow cocked her head. If you saw these things. If you saw a leaf shaking, if you saw dust hovering –
Then you might see the vein jumping in Koko’s neck. You might see Koko leaning against a hootch, the vein jumping in his neck.
This is one thing Koko knew: there are always empty places. In cities where people sleep on the pavement, in cities so crowded people take shifts in bed, cities so crowded no one single person is ever truly quiet. In these cities especially there are always hollow realms, eternal places, places forgotten. Rich people leave the empty places behind, or the city itself leaves them behind.
The rich people move everything out and forget, and at night eternity quietly breaks in with Koko.
His father had been sitting in one of the two heavy chairs the rich people had left behind. We use everything, his father said. We waste no part of the animal.
We do not waste the chairs.
There was one memory he had seen in the cave, and in memory no part of the animal is wasted.
This is one thing Koko knew: they thought the chairs weren’t good enough for them. Wherever they went had better chairs.
The woman didn’t count, Roberto Ortiz had just brought her along. There weren’t even enough cards for the ones that counted, much less the ones they brought along. When they answered the letters they were supposed to come alone, but the ones like Roberto Ortiz thought where they were going was nothing, who they were going to see was nobody, and it would all be over in ten minutes…They never thought about the cards, no one had leaned over them at night and said: We waste no part of the animal. The woman was half-Indian, half-Chinese, something like that, maybe just a Eurasian, someone Roberto Ortiz had picked up, someone Roberto Ortiz was planning to fuck the way Pumo the Puma fucked the whore Dawn Cucchio in Sydney, Australia, just someone dead in a chair, just someone who wouldn’t even get a card.
In his right jacket pocket he had all five Rearing Elephant cards, all the regimental cards he had left, with the names written lightly, penciled lightly, on four of them. Beevers, Poole, Pumo, Linklater. These were for when he went to America.
In his left jacket pocket he had an ordinary pack of Orchid Boy playing cards, made in Taiwan.
When he had opened the door wearing the big Tim Underhill smile, the hey baby how’s it shakin’ smile, and seen the woman standing next to Roberto Ortiz wearing her own hello don’t mind me! smile, he had understood why there were two chairs.
In the cave there had been no chairs, no chairs for the lords of the earth. The cave made Koko shake, his father and the devil made him shake.
‘Of course it’s okay,’ he had said. ‘There’s not much here, but you have a chair apiece, so come in and sit you down, sit you down, don’t mind that the place is so bare, we’re making changes all the time, I don’t actually work here…’
Oh, I pray here.
But they took the chairs anyhow. Yes, Mr Roberto Ortiz had brought all his documentation, he brought it out, smiling, just beginning to look curious, beginning to notice the dust. The emptiness.
When Koko took the documents from the man’s hand, he switched on the invisibility switch.
It was the same letter for all of them.
Dear (name),
I have decided that it is no longer possible for me to remain silent about the truth of the events which occurred in the I Corps village of Ia Thuc in 1968. Justice must finally be done. You will understand that I myself cannot be the one to bring the truth of these events to the world’s eyes and ears. I was a participant in them, and have besides turned my horror at these events to account in works of fiction. As a representative, past or present, of the world press, as one who visited the scene of a great unknown crime and saw it at first-hand, would you care to discuss this matter further? I myself have no interest whatever in the profits that might be made from publishing the true story of Ia Thuc. You may write to me at (address) if you are interested in coming East to pursue this matter. I ask only, for reasons of my own security, that you refrain from discussing this matter with, or even mentioning it to, anyone until we have had an initial meeting, that you make no notes or diary entries pertaining to myself or Ia Thuc until we meet, and that you come to our first meeting with the following proofs of identity: a) passport, and b) copies of all stories and articles you wrote or to which you contributed, concerning the American action in the I Corps village of Ia Thuc. In my opinion, you will find our meeting more than