Tiger the Lurp Dog: A Novel (3 page)

All through Basic Training and Advanced Infantry Training, Wolverine strove to follow this advice. When the drill instructors spoke, he listened and tried to memorize everything they said. At night during his stint of firewatch in the barracks, he would pace up and down between the racks of sleeping men, practicing his drawl, repeating memorable phrases, and checking his posture from time to time in the reflection of the barrack’s window.

When the other trainees sat around talking about women and cars and home, Wolverine always stayed on the edge of the conversation. He nodded when the others nodded and laughed when they laughed, but he tried to keep his mouth shut and his ears open, just as the recruiter had suggested. It wasn’t until he got on the bus that would take him to Fort Benning to qualify as a paratrooper that he felt confident enough to join in laughing and shouting and badmouthing back and forth with the other guys. He had purged the last vestiges of evangelistic hyperbole from his speech, he no longer had to worry about sounding like a preacher’s kid, and he was determined to leave his Full Gospel past behind him.

It wasn’t until the morning of his fifth parachute jump that the past caught up with him for the first time. He was “Scrolling his parachute on the Drop Zone, and feeling high and happy and excited to have that last, qualifying, jump behind him, when a tall, bald chaplain, a major, drove up in a jeep and checked the roster number on his helmet against a list on the top of his clipboard.

“Excuse me, son, are you Private Wolverton?” the chaplain asked, his voice genial with Christian fellowship and the assurance of rank.

There was no use in lying, so Wolverine just nodded, mumbled an unhappy “Yessir,” and finished rolling his chute.

“And is your father the Reverend Doctor Matthew Wolverton of the Living Message of God Full Gospel Church’s Roving Outreach Mission Bus?”

Again there was nothing to do but nod and mumble another “Yessir.”

The chaplain opened his zippered notebook and took out a sheet of orders.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news, son,” the chaplain said, and Wolverine—worried that he was about to be thrown out of the Army for illegal enlistment on the very day he qualified as a paratrooper—turned away to hide the tears of frustration that had welled up so suddenly in his eyes.

“There’s been an accident, son,” the chaplain said, looking down solemnly at his clipboard and notebook. “A very bad accident. Both your parents are in the hospital in Washington State. Here, these are emergency leave orders. It took a while for us to track you down, but I had them cut as soon as I found you. Hop in, you can turn your chute in for a shakedown and I’ll give you a lift back to the barracks.”

Against his wishes, Wolverine got in the jeep and, after turning in his parachute, rode with the chaplain all the way back to the barracks, trying his damndest not to smile, or whistle, or let on how he felt. The chaplain had said nothing about a discharge.

By six that evening Wolverine was on a plane bound for Seattle, and by noon the next day he was sitting in a chair by the window in his mother’s hospital room, looking out at the green lawns and the mountains beyond. His father was in surgery, and his mother was busy praying. When she finished her prayers, she cleared her throat and reached over to touch the copy of
Peyton Place
on her nightstand. She pulled her hand back as if it had been burned, then turned her pale blue eyes’ on her son.

“Trash!” she hissed, unable to rail in her full church voice because of her broken ribs, but still capable of the righteous venom that had made her the ideal wife for the Reverend Doctor Wolverton.

“Pornography! Ungodliness! Unclean profanity!” She struggled until she was sitting half upright and could point at the paperback detective novel she’d thrown to the floor. Wolverine rather liked the blonde on the cover, but he didn’t feel combative enough to say so.

“Crime!” she said. “Immorality!” She paused to gather her strength before flinging her hand toward the book on the chair next to the door.

“The Ugly American
! I know what that’s about! Treason! Godless Communism! Race-mixing! Oh! The things they print these days!”

“You read it, Ma?”

“Never! Praise the Lord!” She patted the Bible on the bed next to her pillow. “I have my book here. I have the Good Book, the Word of God!” Her eyes narrowed and she glanced suspiciously at the doorway.

“I’m watching these people here,” she whispered. “I’ve got my eye on these doctors and nurses, and that woman—that shameless woman with the book cart. They can hide from each other, but I know, and the Lord knows, what—what obscurity they deal in!”

Wolverine sighed and turned his gaze back to the window. He’d learned years before that it was useless to correct her English. As long as he could remember, “obscure” had meant “obscene,” “trivial” had meant “travail,” and “fellowship” had been a verb—something that good, decent, God-fearing Christian people did when they got together over churchyard potluck suppers.

“The Christian people in this country ought to get together and put a stop to this sort of thing!” She patted her Bible again, closed her eyes while she recited a passage from the first letter of Paul to Timothy, and then after wheezing and coughing and sputtering into a Kleenex, she went back on the offensive.

“There has to be a way to find out who reads this sort of trash. We need an organization of Christian librarians to keep an eye on people for their own sake—for the sake of their souls.”

Wolverine stood up to excuse himself.

“Listen, Ma, I got to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

“Sure—go on. Do whatever you want. Walk out on your mother, just like you did before. Go on. Your father—God preserve him!—is still in the operating room, but you can’t sit still long enough to find out if he’s dead or alive. You have to be on your way. Back to your disgraceful ways—sinning, and drinking strong drink, and Heaven knows what else! Someday—someday you’ll wake with your internal soul lost forever, and you’ll cry out to Jesus. But it’ll be too late. Go on! Walk out on your dying mother—I’ll pray the Lord to forgive you!”

“Ma! I only said I was going to the bathroom!” Wolverine had protested, but it did no good. His mother had opened her Bible and was reading to herself, her lips moving and her finger tracing the words, and she refused to acknowledge her prodigal son.

That was the last time Wolverine saw his mother. Six months later, a few weeks past his eighteenth birthday, with the help of his company commander and the Catholic battalion chaplain—both of whom were sick and tired of having to respond to postcard inquiries about the moral health of his companions—Wolverine petitioned the Judge Advocate General for a change of name. He got the name change he wanted and in the process won a twenty-dollar bet from his first sergeant, who had doubted the Army would approve a name like “Wolverine.” From then on, Wolverine always said that he came from the logging country, where men were men, and sissies who couldn’t take the work and ran off for the soft life of an Airborne soldier were unwelcome to return. It was a good lie, a classy lie. And since Wolverine always told it with a grin, for the most part people believed it.

But there was still no running away from the past, still no escaping the eye of the Lord and the undying concern of his vigilant Christian librarians.

“Sweet Jesus, let’s make us a deal,” Wolverine said as he sat down on his bunk in the team leaders’ tent and lit another cigarette with his survival-pack lighter.

“You keep your propaganda out of my mail call, and I’ll promise that if I die with a weapon in my hand I won’t blindside you when I get to Heaven!”

W
OLVERINE WAS NOT THE
least bit embarrassed the next day, when he came thundering into the team tent, hollering for Mopar and Marvel to get their gear together and meet him down by the chopper pad in an hour, ready to pull a five-day radio relay on Firebase Alexine. Only the day before, he’d promised to kiss ass all the way up the chain of command to LBJ himself—if that’s what it would take to get them out in the field where they belonged. But with Gonzales still on R&R and the team already understrength to begin with, Pappy Stagg was as high up as he had to go, and another dull stint of radio relay was the best mission he could get his new team.

Mopar and Marvel grumbled and bitched as they got their gear together and trooped on down to the chopper pad, but by the time they climbed aboard the helicopter that would take them to Alexine, their attitudes had improved considerably, and they seemed glad to get away from the compound for a while—even if they were only going to dull and muddy Firebase Alexine.

“I know what you’re both thinking—I promised you better than this,” Wolverine allowed when they were finally set up in the radio bunker on Alexine and could lay back, drinking C-ration coffee and waiting for first light, when Team Two-One’s mission—and their own in support of it—was scheduled to begin. “I know it must rag your asses to hear the way those chumps on Two-One were carrying on about their mission—all that bragging about how ‘J. D.’s Rangers’ gonna do this, ‘J. D.’s Rangers’ gonna find that, and so on. But that’s just tough shit. As soon as your man Gonzales gets back, soon as we have a full team, we’ll get our chance to show that crazy nigger J. D. and his band of red-neck cut-throats the proper way to run a Long-Range Recon Patrol. I know I promised you more field time and an end to this radio relay bullshit. But this is the Army, not some pie-in-the-sky Sunday school, and you’re gonna have to get used to the fact that promises don’t count—not even when someone as upright and honest as your new team leader makes them.”

Wolverine smiled, and stretched, and farted contentedly. He and Two-One’s team leader, J. D., went way back. When Wolverine had first come across J. D., they were both young privates fresh out of Jump School, newly assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division and determined to make names for themselves. J. D. had always had more flair than foresight, and back then he’d always been the first to volunteer for anything exciting, difficult, or dangerous. He was the first of their group of new paratroopers to jump number two man, behind the stick leader, where he could see out the door beforehand—which had then seemed a daring and prestigious thing to do. J. D. was the first to make PFC and Spec Four, the first to smart off to their terrifying bear of a platoon sergeant—and the first to be busted back down to Private E-
I
. J. D. was always the first to wade into any beer-hall brawl, the first to drain his mug in chugalug contests—and, of course, he was always the first to tell the world of his exploits.

Wolverine and J. D. had started off together in the same platoon, and then they’d gone their separate ways—J. D. off to Ranger School, first as a student and then an instructor, and Wolverine off to Special Forces. Now, at last, they were in the same unit again, and Wolverine was looking forward to this stint of radio relay as a chance to find out whether J. D. was half as good as he said he was.

“There’s a lot of interesting missions coming up,” Wolverine promised. “And you can count on us getting our share of the fun. Old Stagg might have stretched things a bit to con me into this platoon, but I know he didn’t flat-ass lie. Still, my Mama—bless her holy little heart—she didn’t raise no fool. I don’t take no dicksteppers on my team. If you want to stay with me and come out of this tour alive, you gotta be smart and you gotta be hard. Do you got that?”

“Got it, Sarge.”

“Fine. By first light tomorrow—before Two-One goes in—I’m gonna quiz you both on the codebook. If you don’t have it memorized, you’re gonna be in a heap of trouble. Is that clear?”

“Clear, Sarge,” Mopar mumbled unhappily.

“All right, now. If you got that down, we’ll get along fine.” Wolverine dug a pack of cigarettes out of his rucksack and lit up with his survival-pack lighter. He looked up at the sandbagged bunker ceiling and blew a lazy series of smoke rings. He was taking his time, but he wasn’t through talking just yet.

“Enough of all that,” he said. “We’ll get our missions. But in the meantime, we got us a job of radio relay to perform, and we’re gonna do the best damn kick-ass job of it that this platoon has ever seen. I expect you to practice strict commo discipline, you hear me? No talking over the horn—I want to hear nothing but whispers. You got that?”

Mopar and Marvel nodded glumly, unhappy at being told how to do their job.

“Now, the commo log will be perfect. No breezy bullshit—but I want every damn crackle of static recorded. The maps will be kept up to the minute and the overlays kept dry. You two got that?”

It was Marvel’s turn to respond. “Got it, Sarge!”

“Fine.” Wolverine nodded. “Now, one more thing we best get straight right now: When there’s no officers around, you don’t have to be so damn polite. I told you before, lay off this ‘Sarge’ bullshit, O.K.? I had to make my own name for myself, and I like it. So just call me ‘Wolverine’ and we’ll get along fine. But don’t go forgetting that my namesake’s the meanest motherfucker in the whole North Woods—and I’m three times his size and four times as mean as he ever thought of being. You two bandits got that down clear in your minds?”

“Got it, Sarge,” said Mopar, “we’ve got it coming out of our ears!” As long as Wolverine insisted on talking like a lifer, Mopar was determined to keep on calling him Sarge.

“Very good,” said Wolverine with a smile. “I think we’re gonna get along just fine.”

They did get along just fine, cramped together, all snug and cozy, in the leaky radio bunker on Firebase Alexine. And the field team, J. D.’s Rangers, got along just fine, out in the rain and wind and misty darkness on the rim of the Aloe Valley, for J. D. had grown himself a crop of good sense in the years since Wolverine had last served with him. Or at least it seemed that way, for he had stuck to the high ground, monitoring the trails that led over the ridges from the valley, and even when a twenty-man supply column struggled past his position, slipping and cursing in the rain, J. D. had resisted the urge to open up on them, choosing to sit tight instead, to report them but let them pass by, unaware that they’d been observed.