In January 1946, Corporal Stuart Dulley was discharged from the United States Marine Corps in which he had served since September 1940. His wounded arm had healed as much as it was going to, which wasn’t much.
Other men at the hospital were aching to get back to something. Wives, jobs, hometowns. Stuart’s parents had died in an auto accident while he was in high school, and the aunt with whom he lived afterward had died of cancer during the war. He had no brothers or sisters, no cousins. The town he had grown up in held no allure. He changed out of his uniform and folded it away into a carton. He had nowhere to send it, so he left it under his bed.
In the Corpus Christi bus station he had purchased a ticket to San Francisco for no particular reason. He climbed aboard the bus as soon as the driver opened the door. The bus was empty, so he had his pick of places to sit. He settled into one of the comfortable seats in the center of the bus.
At his feet was a new valise he had bought at the Corpus Christie Kresge, along with three pairs of underwear and two pairs of socks, a toothbrush and a comb. That was the extent of his belongings.
He wished he had remembered to buy a book. He had never been much of a reader, even in the hospital, but he figured he may as well start. Reading would be a good habit.
I know you cannot speak. Trust me. This is for the best.
Perhaps you have heard the stories. That I cut their tongues out and ate them, slit them like grain sacks and swallowed their innards like borscht. Or that I was in KGB and went about on the Moscow trains with the organs of my victims in my attache case.
These tales are fabulous, imaginative, even terrifying. I give you the choice to believe them or not. I will neither conform nor deny my alleged reputation.
Your eyes tell me that you wish to know why. This wish is a human failing. We are comforted by cause, yet words are inadequate. An entire world lies beyond language. It is a perverse irony, then, that words are our only tool for the understanding of causes.
Is experience itself a sort of understanding? This question you will soon settle for yourself.
“Ah. Yes. So it is!” He lifted it to his lips and for a moment I could again see what he’d looked like as a little boy. “Oh, this is good. What is it again?”
“It’s coffee, dear. Just as you like it.”
“With plenty of cream and– and–” He scowled. It was the words that bothered him. He seemed fine with the other things. Faces, names, places. But losing words always upset him.
Marines in combat on Peleliu. September 1944. The men are watching in all directions, since the Japanese were everywhere.
In honor of all those soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors who are dying in the name of America, I give you an excerpt from a story about Stuart Dulley, a young man who joined the Marines in 1940 and got caught up in the hideous machine of war.
Stuart decided Navy nurses were all the same. Sexless and deliberately unpleasant, as though being bitchy somehow abetted the healing process. Maybe it did, because the idea of staying in hospital a single second longer than necessary was anathema to Stuart. He wanted out.
He soon got his wish when they transferred him, first to San Diego and then to a base hospital on Parris Island, where he heard the familiar Marine Corps cadence called by drill instructors throughout the day. After two months there he was sent to an overcrowded rehabilitation center in Corpus Christi where a single orthopedic surgeon oversaw the care of two hundred or so wounded Marines. The Pacific War was hell on limbs, leaving thousands of men handless, legless, footless, armless or some combination thereof. Stuart was one of the lucky few who still had all his extremities, though his right arm hung withered and nerveless in a sling.
Stuart, who had joined the Marines before the war had even started, was astounded by the variety of tiny islands that the guys in his ward had invaded. Some, like Iwo Jima and Tarawa, were famous, but others had whimsical names sounded made-up. Guam. Angaur. Eniwetok. Kwajalein.
The days were pleasant enough. The men sat around a screen porch drinking coffee and playing cards, the handless men practicing with their hooks, legless men pushing wheelchairs. Stuart’s own therapy was painful and humiliating. His right arm, never muscular, had been reduced to ridiculous dimensions, the tiny bicep crossed with shiny red scar tissue, the shapes of stitches giving it the appearance of a badly-sewn doll. Every day he joined the other arm cases for morning exercise as they strapped themselves to various machines designed to improve flexibility and range of motion. It was excruciating, but he kept at it. Gradually he got to the point where it was mildly painful. The doctor implied this was probably as good as it was going to get.
Nights were another story. Nights were the worst. After the sun set it became abundantly clear that the war was not over and would never be over. Sensations of doom and panic and horror and disgust came back with more force than the actual experience. The nighttime ward was filled with the shouts and sobs and screams of men cornered by nightmares.
Naturally, teverybody stayed up as late as they could. They talked and played poker and read by flashlight. Liquor was strictly forbidden, but these Marines were combat veterans, some of them heroes. It wasn’t hard to persuade the orderlies to look the other way when visitors fetched in bottles of whisky and cases of beer.
Even so, there was never enough to go around, never enough to guarantee every man who needed it would find oblivion because every man in the ward needed all he could get, every night.
He flicked on the light. The room had a musty, disused air about it. Stale air and dust, dull and windowless.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“It used to be a barrel house. Bootleggers would store their whiskey here until they could ship it upriver.” He pointed to a trap door in the floor. “This opens right onto the canal. They’d run a barge under it and load up. I heard the prohibition agents were so busy watching the roads they never thought of the river.”
“The canal runs under the building?”
“Yep.” He went to the tall cabinets along one of the walls, selected a key from his ring and undid the heavy padlock. “There’s enough canned food here for a year. The pump in the corner attached to a reverse-osmosis filter, so you’ll have plenty of water. Chemical toilet in stall there. Magazines and books on that shelf.”
“How long will I have to stay here?”
“The trial is set for the fifth, but I imagine Scalario’s lawyers will string it out as long as possible. A month, maybe. Three at the most.”
She felt the despair rise in her. It must have showed on her face, because he came over and put a hand on her shoulder. “We wouldn’t do this unless it was absolutely necessary. This is the only place I’m sure of. You’ll be safe here.”
He sounded so certain. She she almost believed him.
Ramón held his glass aloft. “A toast,” he shouted over the din of the crowd. “To San Sebastián!”
“And his perforated testicles!’ roared Philippe. They clicked glasses and drained the fiery rum in one swallow.
“Another!” Ramón yelled to the barman. All around them the crowd surged shoulder to shoulder, filling the bar and spilling out into the street. Music throbbed through the loudspeakers, the song lost in cacophony. “Who are all these fuckers?” he shouted into Philippe’s ear.
“Revelers!” yelled Philippe. “It’s a fiesta!”
“I think they’re Mexican narcotrafficantes” Ramón shouted. “Look how they’re dressed!” He gestured to the man behind Philippe, a hulking figure in a loud yellow shirt. Philippe turned, catching his glass on the man’s sleeve, drenching him with the dark rum. The man whirled around, face twisted with rage.
“You stupid ass!” he screamed in a Mexican accent, the knife already in his hand.
The neighborhood of La Perla in Old San Juan has only recently begun to from a wave of violence. In 2011, the tiny island’s record 1,136 killings put it on par with civil war zones such as the Congo and Sudan in terms of murders per capita.
The old man turned off the truck. The only sound was the Ford’s engine ticking as it cooled.
“Well,” said Cole. “Guess I better get started.”
“Guess you better,” said the old man.
Cole opened the door and stepped onto the rocky ground. The old man got out and came around to stand next to him. He lit a cigarette. They watched the dawn in silence. The sky went from purple to pink to pale blue as the sun crested the hill.
The old man got into the truck. He started the engine.
A Native American person will undertake Hanbleceya, a vision quest, in an isolated area. In the Lakota tradition, the seeker will go four days without food, water, or contact with another human being. A successful vision quest will put the seeker in contact with a spirit helper or guide. The vision often comes in the form of an animal, a dream, or a song. This guide’ s presence is often signaled by a visionary experience or contact with an animal. Traditionally, a Wičasa Wakan – Holy Man – will advise the seeker and interpret the vision.
“Red leader, rendezvous angels ten over grey beach.”
Angels ten? Far too low. He had no intention of repeating yesterday’s disaster when ops sent them over Dunkirk at 10,000 feet. Three dozen Messerschmitts dove out from the sun and cut the squadron to ribbons. But arguing with ops was like kicking a rubber wall.
“Red leader, copy,” Jameson said into his oxygen mask. He glanced down at the fuel gauge. Plenty for his plan.
He rocked the stick, waggling his wings to get the attention of the other aircraft. Woody, his wingman, looked over. Jameson pointed upward and held up two fingers. Woody nodded and the three Hurricanes climbed to 20,000 feet, throttles wide open.
Down to his left he could see the port of Calais, the ships crowding the harbor. Five minutes later they were over Dunkirk itself. From this altitude, the lines of men waiting on the beach looked small as fleas.
Woody’s voice crackled across the receiver. “Stukas, Jimmy.”
Sure enough, two dozen of the German dive bombers were streaking in at 15,000 feet, preparing to make their run. Jameson toggled the switch to “fire” and jabbed the button to test his guns. The deafening clatter shook the aeroplane.
Anue stands as he speaks. The leader of the Cord People, he is a lean man with both sides of his skull shaved clean, his face painted ochre and crimson.
He holds aloft a bundle wrapped in deerskin. “I tell you this. Our enemies the Hadenosaunee have already made an alliance. Not with the French, but the other strangers.They bring countless new things, many of which are useful. Axes such as the one I showed you. Bowls of a liquid stone that does not burn. The English and the French are enemies, so it is natural that the French become our friends. I have spoken to their chief who has made a village on the Great Water, Champlain. He fought with me against the Hadenosaunee. He does not speak our tongue, but one of the Crows with him did.”
“I heard they are sorcerers,” says Tsayanehn, an older warrior with one eye.
This is an excerpt from my novel-in-progress L’Incarnation, which is largely set in New France in the mid 1600s. In this scene, a delegation of the Wendat Cord People has come to the council lodge of the Wendat Deer People to persuade them to take one of the French Jesuit missionaries into their village. The French leader Samuel d’Champlain made the inclusion of the Jesuits a condition of trade, so most villages reluctantly took them in despite many misgivings. Over the course of eighty years these missionaries produced an extraordinary record of life among these native peoples. Often extremely judgmental, The Jesuit Relationsnonetheless accurately convey many details of a culture that had all but vanished by the mid-1700s.
I.
American students usually do
not know the average
age of a soldier
which is 15, nor
how many
mines
tear
off
legs
in
so
many
countries
where these
very young and
ignorant and emotional
young men fire their machineguns
II.
The young women will believe
anyone who offers anything
different than what other
women always talk about
III.
Old and sitting is good enough, when
what is left of memory turns
and shows only feverdream horror
a world without end and other sacred things
turned upside down, profane and obscene
while some white clad stranger coos and walks off cold
isn’t it
