A Fountain Filled With Blood

“I bounced down through some trees, and next thing I know, I’m on the ground. Right away, I knew I had broken both my legs. I’m looking around for Mac, when the whole sky lights up. The slick had crashed and exploded. And I could hear…there was so much noise, but I could hear guys screaming and screaming like animals trapped in a burning barn.” He paused for a moment. “Then over the sound, I can hear Mac. Above me. He’s kind of sobbing and moaning. And for a while, in the light from the fire, I could see what had happened to him.” He shut his mouth for a moment. “I don’t know how long it went on. When I remember it, it seems like an hour, but it couldn’t have been. Mac hanging in the tree, going, ‘Kill me, Christ, kill me,’ and crying. And the noise from the chopper dying down, the fire burning out. And I knew…knew Charlie was closing in on us, and that as soon as the VC heard Mac, they would find us. So I…I took the lieutenant’s gun and I…did what Mac wanted.”

She took his hand in hers and squeezed hard.

“They came about a half hour after. They didn’t find me, and no one else was alive, so they went away after awhile. I tried dragging myself a ways, but where could I go with two broken legs? So I gave up and laid there in the brush beneath the tree until this squad of marines came around and hauled my ass out.”

Clare laid her other hand on top of his. “How long were you there?”

“Two days.”

“Beneath the tree.”

“Yeah.” He looked at her directly for the first time. “Only three people have ever heard about this. And you’re the third.”

She rubbed his hand between hers.

“I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you. I—” She shut her eyes slowly and then opened them again. “I hurt. For what you had to go through. For the boy you were. For what you have to keep in your head.”

They were both silent for a moment. He felt lighter somehow, as if he’d been lifting weights for a long time and then put them down and taken a cool shower. Tired out, but fresh at the same time.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For being there. For going over and doing what you did. For being faithful to your country even when what your country asked of you was terrible and futile and confused. Thank you.”

He started to laugh. “Only you, Clare. Only you.”

He let go of her hand and stood up, his legs trembling and his sides aching. Clare rose in front of him, holding his glasses. He hadn’t even realized they had come off.

He put them on and glanced up the last hill. No signs of fire. He recalled, from the weekly volunteer fire department’s report, that the hazard was low to moderate. Still, it didn’t mean they weren’t in danger. He looked downstream. God. Right now, he felt as if he would collapse if he had to take one more step.

Clare touched his arm. Her hand was still wet. “Do you…Should I…” She pressed her lips together and shut her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she said, “What do you need to do right now and how can I help you?”

He felt an ache, a tenderness so real, he thought he might see a bruise on his sternum if he looked beneath his soggy shirt. He knew if he wanted to, he could lie down in the ferns and have her bring him handfuls of water. Knew that if he sent her ahead to find help, she would do it. Knew if he said he couldn’t go on, she’d make a travois for Waxman and drag him out of this forest. She didn’t need him to be the leader, to make decisions, to stand in front. And because she didn’t, he found he could take that one more step after all.

“Let’s head downstream.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “If it doesn’t take us anywhere, at least it’ll be easier than hiking over these hills.”

She looked at him carefully, as if measuring his ability against his words. Then she smiled. “Let’s go.”

Once more, he shouldered the backpack and took Waxman’s head while she took his feet. As they walked, he kept an eye out for a branch they could sling through the webbing to carry it on their shoulders, but there were no sturdy eight-foot-long pieces of wood conveniently left about. Instead, there was a thick bank of ferns, and the occasional root or stone to avoid. The constant whack—although it was never regular enough to anticipate—of the aluminum spars hitting him in the calves slowed him down.

The heat squeezed him like a hand wringing a sponge. His shirt didn’t dry out, but warmed, until it seemed a solidified part of the humid air. Except for the gurgle of the stream and the swish, swish as they strode through the ferns, the woods were quiet. Even the usual insect droning was muted. He could feel the tension tightening inside him, the creeping fear that he was exposed, open to fire. He knew it was dumb, that there were no snipers lurking in the Adirondacks, that what he and Clare had to fear was a turned ankle or heat stroke, not a sudden shattering report through the leaves. That green and heat and wet didn’t automatically add up to death.