Jungle Rules (79 page)

While they moved at the head of the sweep, the North Vietnamese sprang their trap and attacked Schuller and his men from both sides. He never knew what hit him. The lieutenant, who insisted at walking near the point, fell first.

Nearby, that same day, a fellow first lieutenant who commanded a company in First Battalion, had his hands full with the enemy regiment that swept upon his positions. The young officer, who had seen his first combat action in Korea as a corporal, dug in his heels and despite the overwhelming force he and his men faced, suffering heavy casualties, including the death of his executive officer, turned the tide against the relentless enemy. For his valor, the young mustang lieutenant, Wes Fox, received the Medal of Honor.

That empty chair that leaned against the table haunted Terry O’Connor. It seemed to add a somber color that at first came into conflict with the original intent of the annual gathering of friends. Then it became the reason why they got together, because new chairs leaned against the table. Now, two more chairs.

So as he listened to his favorite song, Terry O’Connor cried.

“Oh no!” Cynthia Marvel sighed as she stood next to her boss’s closed door and looked back at Vibeke, Gwen, and Wayne, who had just walked in the O’Connor office reception area. “He put on that damned music again. I knew I should have had him come out here to wait for you guys. I’m so sorry. Do you want to go in there, Vibeke? Last time I did, I felt so bad seeing him like that. You know, with Mister Kirkwood and Mister Dean and all.”

“Why, they died last Christmas,” Wayne said, wrinkling his eyebrows, concerned about Terry. “He’s still grieving about it? I feel bad, too, but this is July third. It’s been seven months now.”

“I think we can sit out here and talk while he gets through this little bump,” Vibeke said, and smiled at Wayne and Gwen. “He’s always kept those pictures there in his office. I suggested that he should put them away for a while, at least until he can look at them without getting so upset. Oh, he won’t hear of it. He says that he has to see them every day.”

“Look, none of us is in any kind of hurry, Vib,” Gwen said and put her arm around O’Connor’s wife, who now took a napkin from her purse and dabbed her eyes. “Lobo and Buck, they said they would come here in a limo and take us to lunch and then out to LaGuardia, where Archie parked his plane. What is it, Wayne? A Gulfstream Three?”

“Yeah, Gwen,” Wayne said, nodding and still frowning. “Totally refitted. Looks like a pimp’s Cadillac inside now, but that’s Lobo’s style.”

Both women laughed, and Cynthia chuckled, too, as she sat in the chair across from Gwen and Vibeke.

“Mister Gunn is too funny,” she said, smiling at the ladies and then noticing that Wayne Ebberhardt smiled, too.

“We had just got back to Atlanta from Wayne visiting his mother and dad, four brothers, two sisters, and ten thousand cousins in North Carolina when we got that call that Jon and Movie Star had crashed, flying to Aspen,” Gwen said and sighed. “Yes, James Dean, the ever-powerful motion picture agent, had deals to swing at the Telluride Film Festival and made that poor pilot wait until the weather was just too bad to fly. Then our dear know-it-all and the forces be damned, Movie Star, demanded that the pilot put that plane in the air that foggy afternoon. Lucky for Katherine and the grandkids, and James’s wife, Helen, and their grandchildren that they had gone ahead to Aspen that morning. Let me tell you from experience, eveningtime in the winter in Colorado, trying to land at a place like Aspen, is pure stupidity.”

“People who had talked to those two before they flew said that Jon had expressed some serious reservations about flying because of the cloudy and foggy conditions that he heard reported on the television at the hotel,” Cynthia offered, getting up and going to Terry O’Connor’s office door and listening. “The music’s still playing, so I guess he’s in his funk.”

“Katherine Kirkwood and Helen Dean had just gotten back to Movie Star’s lodge on Woody Creek Road when they actually heard the plane crash,” Vibeke said and shook her head. “Kat told me that when she heard the loud explosion and then saw the glow toward the Aspen airport that she knew Jon and James had died just then.”

“Didn’t Katherine tell Terry that she and the boys were coming this year on Jon’s behalf?” Gwen asked, wiping a tear from her eyes, too.

“Yes, and Helen and their children, too. They have remained in Aspen the whole year,” Vibeke said, dabbing her eyes. “Now, this year’s weekend trip, we’re supposed to go to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. You know, the hotel from that movie
The Shining
? I hate to say this, but you know why Terry wants to go there?”

“Oh, I don’t know, but given Terry’s moods these days, I imagine it’s probably a creepy reason,” Gwen said and shuddered.

“Well, if you consider ghosts creepy, then yes, it is,” Vibeke said, and then leaned forward to whisper. “Terry read that the Stanley Hotel is really haunted. He thinks that Jon and Movie Star will want to contact the group, and this hotel, because of its spiritual allure for the departed, would offer the best opportunity for Jon’s and James’s spirits to make contact with us.”

“Oh, that is too creepy!” Gwen said, putting her hands over her mouth.

“Don’t you women ever get tired of dragging around the dead?” Wayne Ebberhardt growled, got up from the sofa, and walked to Terry O’Connor’s door, and knocked.

“Careful, Wayne,” Vibeke said, standing, too, and walking to the office door. “This is the first Independence Day reunion without Jon and Movie Star.”

“I know,” Wayne said, and then looked at Gwen. “Don’t forget, I was with those two in Vietnam. We were all close. I cried for a week when I got the news about Mike Schuller getting killed in action. Happy Pounds died in a car wreck in 1973, and Sergeant Amos got shot and killed by a drive-by gang-banger on the one-oh-one outside Santa Monica in ’89. Then, two years ago, I felt devastated when I learned that Derek Pride dropped dead at his desk in the Sears Tower in Chicago. The man never quit trying to get ahead and died at the ripe old age of fifty-nine. Hell, we’re all over sixty now. Pretty soon we’re all gonna start dropping like flies.”

“Hush, Wayne!” Gwen snapped, and looked at Vibeke, who raised her eyebrows at the brashness of the Atlanta-based airline lawyer.

“I’ll just step inside,” Vibeke said softly to Wayne Ebberhardt, who now went back to the sofa and sat down.

Terry O’Connor leaned over the two photographs in their polished mahogany frames, adjusting them equally distant from the small Marine Corps and U.S. flags stapled to ten-inch-long standards and mounted in a black plastic disc. He kept singing in a soft voice, even though the Rolling Stones had long ago finished “Good-bye, Ruby Tuesday.”

“Still I’m going to miss you,” he whispered as his wife put her arm around his shoulders and gave him a squeeze.

“You know, Captain O’Connor, I loved you the first moment I saw you,” Vibeke said and kissed his forehead. “I never stopped, not even after you told me that you voted for Barry Goldwater. Nor when you voted for Richard Nixon.”

“I know,” Terry said, and patted her hand where she rested it on his shoulder. “I loved you, too, in spite of you being a Communist, and having the FBI digging into everything I ever did, and talking to every person who ever knew me. I loved you very much last April, too, at the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation gala, at the Plaza Hotel, because you put your passion and your politics aside and treated Vice President Cheney so elegantly, after he made his address to our gathering and then greeted us in the crowd.”

“Well, I do have some decorum, you know,” Vibeke said, smiling at her husband. “Also, I never joined the Communist Party. I am a socialist. I believe all humanity should care for his neighbor. There should be no homeless people, nor hungry people, or old people and children without someone to care for them.”

“Well, I’m old, and I only have you to care for me,” Terry said, smiling up at the sixty-year-old woman who radiated timeless beauty and absolute grace.

“You have two sons and a daughter who will never let you need a thing,” Vibeke said, and pointed to the shelf filled with photographs of their children and six grandchildren.

Terry took the picture of the group gathered by the jeep and smiled at his wife.

“I was a handsome devil then, wasn’t I,” he said, pointing at his smiling face.

“Yes, you still are quite a handsome devil, too,” Vibeke said, and touched him on the tip of his nose with her finger.

“Sometimes I wish I could go back,” Terry said, looking at the photograph. “You know, just step through time and go back to those days. God, I miss Jon!”

“I know you do,” Vibeke said, and then put her arms around her husband, took the picture from his hands, and set it back on the shelf by the flags.

“Any word from Lobo and Buck?” Terry asked, wiping his eyes with his hand and looking back once more at the photographs of him and his buddies in Vietnam nearly thirty-seven years ago.

“The phone rang just as I came in your door, so that may be them,” Vibeke said, straightening her husband’s pale green polo shirt and giving him a quick glance to make sure he had on the right slacks to contrast with his sport jacket, and to be sure he had not sneaked out his comfortable old shoes that looked so tacky but that he always insisted on wearing because they felt so good on his feet.

“We can go downstairs,” Terry offered. “Catch them when they pull to the curb.”

“No,” Vibeke said, taking his canvas briefcase and leading him to the door. “I have my standards. I do not wait at curbs. Now, before we leave this room, you must promise me that I will not hear you arguing with any of your friends about this awful war in Iraq.”

“You mean that nitwit Carter,” Terry said, and shook his head. “He’s more fucked up than ever, now that he’s become the great Boston political activist. Those people are out to lunch, and you know it. Even you agree that we have no choice but to see this thing through in Iraq. The eggs are broken! Damn!”

“Now, you watch your language, too,” Vibeke scolded her husband. “That word you like to use, I don’t approve. It makes you appear ignorant. People who use such profanity have no imagination.

“As for the war, you and I do agree about that issue. It was wrong to go in the way we did, without more consideration about the cost in American lives as opposed to the benefit. However, as you say, the eggs were broken the day the bombs fell in Baghdad. Yes, Michael Carter and his bunch are, as you say, out to lunch.

“Now that we have those issues settled, and I hope out of your system, we will hear no more talk about it.”

“I promise, no war arguments,” Terry O’Connor said, walking out his office door and smiling at Gwen. Wayne had slouched back in the sofa and closed his eyes.

Cynthia Marvel smiled at Terry O’Connor and Vibeke. She loved how they looked together. She hoped that when she reached sixty years of age that she and her husband looked as good, and as in tune with each other.

“Of course you know my friends, Cyn,” Terry said, pointing to Wayne and Gwen.

“Well, yes, Mister O’Connor,” Cynthia said, “I met them last year and the year before that, too.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Terry said, and looked at his wife, who smiled at him.

“You’ve had your mind elsewhere,” she said, hooking her arm through his as they walked into the reception area.

“Wayne, did you know that Cynthia’s husband, Ken, is a Marine Corps Reserve pilot?” O’Connor said, looking down at his pal, who kept his eyes shut.

“I think so, yes,” Wayne answered, still slouched with his head laid back and his eyes closed.

“Do you know what his rank is?” Terry said and laughed, looking at Cynthia, who shook her head and walked back to her desk and sat on its corner.

“Oh, don’t tell me,” Wayne said and laughed, still trying not to look up. “Since his last name is Marvel, he’s got to be a captain.”

“Right!” Terry said with a laugh. “My assistant is married to none other than Captain Marvel! I love it!”

“You have a sick and twisted mind, Terry O’Connor,” Wayne Ebberhardt said, and then opened his eyes. “You know, Stanley Tufts called me yesterday.”

“No, I didn’t!” Terry said, and then looked at Gwen who shrugged and shook her head. “I haven’t heard anything about him since he left Vietnam.”

“He has a law practice in Seattle and just called me out of the blue, looking for buddies who served with him in Vietnam,” Ebberhardt said, and took a drink from a glass of tea he had sitting on the coffee table. “I told him to come to Denver and join up with us at the Hilton. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Of course!” Terry said, smiling. “Why, he wasn’t such a bad fellow. A kiss-ass, but not a bad fellow.”

“Yeah, that’s how I felt about it, so I invited him,” Wayne said and opened his eyes. “We can see if he still walks with his arms out like a seagull on a hot day.”

Terry laughed and sat down on the couch in his office’s reception area. “How did he find you?”

“Marine Corps Association,” Ebberhardt answered, and took another sip of iced tea. “He joined the MCA and got a copy of the membership directory and looked me up. I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to call you, too. You got one this year, didn’t you?”

“Sure, it’s on a shelf behind my desk,” Terry said, and pointed with his thumb toward his office door. “I never thought to look to see if Stanley or anyone else was listed in it. I guess all the people I want to know, I have their addresses and numbers in my Rolodex.”

“He told me that Dicky Doo is still with the living,” Wayne said and smiled. “Thought that would make you smile.”

“Oh, he wasn’t such an enormous asshole,” Terry said, and laughed. “Just a moderate-sized one. Don’t forget, he went to bat for Sergeant Fryer and Sergeant Wilson after the brig riot, and got the charges dropped on both of them. They spent the rest of their tours at special services, but that beat hell out of the brig and bad time on their records.”