Greg Iles - Blood Memory

“Hardass don’t like strangers,” he explains.

“You named your horse Hardass?”

“People call me hard-ass all the time behind my back, so I figured I’d let ’em know I know it.”

He climbs onto the porch and sits against the wall of the cabin. I sit on the top step and brace my back against the rail. There’s no doubt that Jesse Billups works hard for a living. He has to be fifty to have served in Vietnam, but his stomach is still as tight as a teenager’s. His arms don’t bulge, but the long muscles in them ripple with every movement. His face is another matter. It’s hard to get an impression of his looks; I can’t really see past the scars yet.

“Diesel fuel,” he says in a ragged voice.

“What?”

“This face I got. I was cleaning toilets at a firebase when Mr. Charlie dropped a few mortar rounds on us for Christmas. We used to burn our shit with diesel fuel. I was standing next to five burning drums when the round went off. Covered me with shit and burning diesel. Would have been funny except for the infection I got from it.”

“I’m sorry.”

He gives me a cynical wink, then takes a pack of Kool menthols from his back pocket. Lighting one with a silver lighter, he inhales deeply, then blows blue smoke away from the porch. He seems to be settling in for a long talk. After another deep drag on his cigarette, he turns his dark eyes on me.

“You here to ask about your daddy?”

“I heard you knew him pretty well.”

This seems to amuse Jesse. “I don’t know about all that. But me and Lukie hung together some, yeah. A long time ago.”

“I was hoping you could tell something about what happened to him in the war.”

“You know anything already?”

“Somebody told me he was a sniper. I didn’t know that. They also said he was part of a unit that was accused of war crimes. Do you know anything about that?”

Jesse snorts in derision. “ War crimes? Shit. That the craziest expression I ever heard. War is a motherfucking crime, start to finish. It’s only people who don’t know that be talkin’ ’bout shit like war crimes.”

I’m not sure how to continue. “Well, there must have been some unusual events, at least, for the army to talk about prosecuting his unit.”

“Unusual?” Jesse barks a humorless laugh. “Yeah. That’s a good word.”

“Can you tell me anything?”

“Luke told me a little about that. He was a country boy, see? That’s what got him in trouble. He knew how to shoot. I’m a good shot, but that boy was something with a rifle. Like he was born holding one. Wouldn’t kill nothing after the war, though, not even deer for food. Anyway, the army made him a sniper. And he did that job for a couple months. Then they took him into this special unit called the White Tigers. Supposed to be a all-volunteer thing, but I think the CO pretty much volunteered anybody he wanted into it. That’s how old Lukie got stuck.”

“The White Tigers? What was the purpose of the unit?”

“They was put together for one reason. What they call incursion into enemy territory. Only this incursion wasn’t exactly legal. The Tigers went into Cambodia to try to hit the Cong where they hid from our bombers.”

“Do you know what happened there?”

“Same shit that happened a lot of other places, only worse. The Tigers went from village to village looking for weapons, VC, or VC sympathizers. Thing was, they didn’t operate like we did over in I Corps. In Cambodia, they didn’t wait around to get shot at. They went in there to scare the shit out the people, keep ’em from helping Mr. Charlie. To deny the enemy sanctuary and interdict lines of supply, MACV would have said. Double-talking motherfuckers. Anyway, they had some bad boys in this Tiger outfit. Hard cases from other platoons. So naturally, they did some bad shit.”

“What exactly falls into that category?”

Jesse stubs out his cigarette and immediately lights another. “Assassinated tribal chiefs and VC paymasters. Punished anybody known or suspected of helping the VC or the Khmer Rouge. Questioned people vigorously.” He laughs bitterly. “That means torture.”

“My father did some of this?”

He nods deliberately. “That was the job, you know? That shit happened down where I was, too. Especially shooting prisoners so you wouldn’t have to drag them around with you. But if the wrong officer saw you, you could get in bad trouble. Luke’s outfit was different. In the Tigers, it was the officers instigating the shit. Cutting off heads and leaving them on sticks to scare the Khmer Rouge. Taking girls from the villages and using them for recreation. Getting-”

“Wait a second,” I cut in. “You mean they kidnapped girls and raped them?”

Jesse nods like it’s no big deal. “Sure. That’s how the CO rewarded his men. When his boys did good, they could pick a girl from a village and keep her for a couple days.”

“What happened to the girl when they were done with her?”

Jesse raises his hand and makes a quick slicing motion across his throat. The deadness in his eyes makes me shiver. “I told you they done some bad shit.”

“How did my dad feel about that?”

Jesse shrugs. “He blamed the government. Shit, that’s who put him in the middle of it. He didn’t ask for that. And what could he do about it? Way out in the bush…the whole operation off the books…CO had the only radio. So Luke did what he had to do and got the hell out.”

“What about the war crimes investigation? Who started that?”

“Some rat in their unit, probably. Somebody looking to get his name in the papers.”

This doesn’t sound right to me. “Reporting that kind of thing seems like a good way to get dead. It must have been someone with a conscience who first went public.”

Jesse shakes his head. “All I know is, when the government questioned Luke, he didn’t tell ’em shit. The government dropped the investigation, end of story.”

Jesse takes a drag from his cigarette, inhaling so deeply that he seems to draw sustenance from the smoke. As I watch him, it strikes me that his lean frame is not the result of good health. It’s almost as if the fat that a normal human would accumulate is being consumed by a deep-banked anger.

“Well, do you think-”

“What you come down here for?” Jesse growls with sudden intensity. “You didn’t come here to talk about no Vietnam.”

“Yes, I did.”

He barks another laugh. “Maybe you think you did. But there’s something else behind these questions.”

I look away, hoping to hide the guilt I feel over what my grandfather told me today. Because that’s what I feel, I realize. Guilt. That’s why I’m asking these questions. If my father really did those things to me, something must have pushed him to it. And if it wasn’t the war, then what else could it have been but me? I’ve always craved attention, and I’ve always been very sexual-

“Hey,” says Jesse. “You look like you about to cry on me.”

I tilt back my head and blink away tears. “You’re right. I don’t know what I came here for exactly. I was hoping for…something. I don’t know what.”

“You looking for some kind of explanation for the way Luke was? Hoping I’d tell you he was a saint or something, behind that closed-up face of his? He was just a dude, like me. We all got good and bad deep down inside.” He points a long-nailed finger at me. “But I ain’t telling you nothing you don’t already know. I can look in your eyes and see that. You Luke Ferry’s kid, I know you got both inside of you.”

Now the tears come, too many to blink away. “Why did my daddy spend so much time down here, Jesse? What was it that drew him?”