The Human Stain

Conning me. Playing with me. Because he knows I know. Here we are alone up where we are, and I know, and he knows I know.

And the auger knows. All ye know and all ye need to know, all inscribed in the spiral of its curving steel blade.

"How'd you find out you had PTSD?"

"A colored girl at the VA. Excuse me. An African American. A very intelligent African American. She's got a master's degree. You got a master's degree?"

"No," I said.

"Well, she's got one, and that's how I found out what I had. Otherwise I still wouldn't know. That's how I started learning about myself, what I was going through. They told me. And not just me.

Don't think it was just me. Thousands and thousands of guys were going through what I was going through. Thousands and thousands of guys waking up in the middle of the night back in Vietnam.

Thousands and thousands of guys people are calling up and they don't call them back. Thousands and thousands of guys having these real bad dreams. And so I told that to this African American and she understood what it was. Because she had that master's degree, she told me how it was going through my subconscious mind, and that it was the same with thousands and thousands of other guys. The subconscious mind. You can't control it. It's like the government. It is the government. It's the government all over again. It gets you to do what you don't want to do. Thousands and thousands of guys getting married and it's doomed, because they have this anger and this resentment about Vietnam in their subconscious mind. She explained all this to me. They just popped me from Vietnam onto a C-41 air force jet to the Philippines, then on a World Airways jet to Travis Air Force Base, then they gave me two hundred dollars to go home. So it took me, like, from the time I left Vietnam to go home, it took about three days. You're back in civilization.

And you're doomed. And your wife, even if it's ten years later, she's doomed. She's doomed, and what the hell did she do?

Nothin'."

"Still have the PTSD?"

"Well, I still tend to isolate, don't I? What do you think I'm doin' out here?"

"But no more drinking and driving," I heard myself saying. "No more accidents."

"There were never accidents. Don't you listen? I already told you that. Not that I know of."

"And the marriage was doomed."

"Oh yeah. My fault. Hundred percent. She was a lovely woman.

Entirely blameless. All me. Always all me. She deserved a helluva lot better than me."

"What happened to her?" I asked.

He shook his head. A sad shrug, a sigh—complete bullshit, deliberately transparent bullshit. "No idea. Ran away, I scared her so.

Scared the woman shitless. My heart goes out to her, wherever she may be. Completely blameless person."

"No kids."

"Nope. No kids. You?" he asked me.

"No."

"Married?"

"No more," I said.

"So, you and me in the same boat. Free as the wind. What kind of books do you write? Whodunits?"

"I wouldn't say that."

"True stories?"

"Sometimes."

"What? Romance?" he asked, smiling. "Not pornography, I hope." He pretended that that was an unwanted idea it vexed him even to entertain. "I sure hope our local author is not up there in Mike Dumouchel's place writing and publishing pornography."

"I write about people like you," I said.

"Is that right?"

"Yes. People like you. Their problems."

"What's the name of one of your books?"

"The Human Stain" "Yeah? Can I get it?"

"It's not out yet. It's not finished yet."

"I'll buy it."

"I'll send you one. What's your name?"

"Les Farley. Yeah, send it. When you finish it, send it care of the town garage. Town Garage. Route 6. Les Farley." Needling me again, sort of needling everyone—himself, his friends, "our local author"—he said, even as he began laughing at the idea, "Me and the guys'll read it." He didn't so much laugh aloud as nibble at the bait of an out-loud laugh, work up to and around the laugh without quite sinking his teeth in. Close to the hook of dangerous merriment, but not close enough to swallow it.

"I hope you will," I said.

I couldn't just turn and go then. Not on that note, not with him shedding ever so slightly a bit more of the emotional incognito, not with the possibility raised of peering a little further into his mind. "What were you like before you went into the service?" I asked him.

"Is this for your book?"

"Yes. Yes." I laughed out loud. Without even intending to, with a ridiculous, robust burst of defiance, I said, foolishly, "It's all for my book."

And he now laughed with more abandon too. On this loony bin of a lake.

"Were you a gregarious guy, Les?"

"Yeah," he said. "I was."

"With people?"

"Yeah."

"Like to have a good time with them?"

"Yeah. Tons of friends. Fast cars. You know, all that stuff. I worked all the time. But when I wasn't working, yeah."

"And all you Vietnam veterans ice fish?"

"I don't know." The nibbling laughter once again. I thought, It's easier for him to kill somebody than to cut loose with real amusement.