George Chesbro - Two Songs This Archangel Sings

"Let go of Garth first."

"No."

Garth was turning blue. I released the hammer on the Beretta, flipped it in my hand, and offered it to the bearded man butt first.

"I didn't say I wanted the gun," the man continued. "I just asked you to put it away." I dropped the gun into the pocket of my parka. The man immediately took his forearm away from my brother's throat-but he didn't release the hammerlock. "You still haven't answered my question, Mongo. If Veil didn't send you, what are you doing here?"

"We think you've got some answers we need to know."

"What are the questions?"

"What was Veil doing in Saigon near the end of the war, just after he'd been pulled out of Laos? Do you know?"

Shadows moved in the man's eyes, and his jaw muscles clenched and unclenched. "Why do you need to know?" he asked softly.

"It's a long and complicated story. The bottom line is that Veil's in big trouble; somebody wants him dead, along with us. We believe that the key to who's hunting Veil, and why, lies in something that Veil was involved in during the war. It's Veil's past we're hunting, and that's why we're here."

"Oh, shit," the man said as he abruptly released Garth and half turned away. He waved one hand in front of his face, as if trying to chase away invisible gnats-or something else. "So that's finally going down."

Garth and I glanced at each other in surprise as the bearded man suddenly started walking away. Garth picked up his gun, then ran after the man and grabbed his arm.

"Gary, I'm sorry! We don't understand. What's going down?"

Gary Worde shoved Garth's hand away, kept walking. His shoulders were hunched now, as if against the cold. Without looking back he motioned for us to follow him.

Garth and I walked in silence on either side of Gary Worde as he walked west in the dry streambed. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, and his shoulders remained hunched. After a half mile or so he turned to his right and climbed up out of the bed. We found ourselves on a cleared path running up the face of the mountain on which the lookout tower stood. Panting and sweating from the quick pace Worde had set, Garth and I stopped to adjust our backpacks. Still silent, Worde helped us by removing some of the heavier articles from both our packs. He wrapped the articles inside my sleeping bag, hoisted it over his shoulder. Then we started off again.

"What you heard about me in Colletville is true," Gary Worde suddenly said in a quiet voice so low that Garth and I had to strain to hear him. "At least it was true back then. I couldn't-can't-make it anywhere there are people just going through their regular routines day in and day out. The fact that they don't know or think about the things that happened in the war only makes me think about them more; if you will, my memories are like air rushing into the vacuum of other people's forgetfulness or indifference. That's when I get… crazy. It's when the bad dreams come."

Worde shuddered, cast an anxious look at Garth and me. We returned his gaze and nodded, but remained silent. Garth reached out, squeezed his shoulder.

"Some people would say that the army let me out of their nuthouse too soon," the hidden veteran continued as we reached the top of the mountain and walked along its crest. Around us was nothing but forest, rolling hills, more mountains. "That isn't true; I never would have gotten better there. They had me doped up with chlorpromazine, and all I did was sleep all the time. But I still dreamed. I would have died there, and I guess they finally came to realize that. They gave me a permanently refillable prescription for lithium, the name of a shrink at a V.A. hospital in the Albany area, and let me go. I came home to Colletville."

We started down the opposite side of the mountain. Halfway down, beside a swiftly moving stream, was a log cabin which looked sturdily built and came complete with glass windows. Perhaps three-quarters of an acre of forest had been cleared around the cabin, and there were a number of patches of broken ground where I assumed vegetables were grown in the spring and summer. Pelts of raccoon, fox, muskrat, beaver, and deer were curing on stretch racks in the cold air and sunlight. A skinned deer carcass, half butchered and covered with a muslin cloth, hung from an eave of the cabin, and on a chopping block next to the stream lay an ax and a rifle. Cords of firewood were stacked around the sides of the cabin, and smoke drifted up from a stone chimney.

Gary Worde had again lapsed into silence for some time before we'd approached his cabin, and Garth and I sensed that he was trying to center and gird himself for the psychological turmoil talking about the war would entail. Garth and I helped him prepare a meal of venison and vegetables, served on skewers, which we ate sitting on wooden stools around the huge, open hearth in the center of what served as the cabin's living room. Afterward, he brewed coffee and served it to us in carved wooden cups. It was almost sundown before he spoke again.

"Nobody knew how to react to me when I came home," Worde said quietly as he sipped at his coffee. "A lot of people were downright hostile, as if they considered me responsible for getting us into the war in the first place, or for losing it. Most of the people were kind; they tried to understand and help. But others asked the strangest questions; one guy wanted to know how many women and children I'd killed. Pretty soon I stopped answering any questions. I never did fill the prescription for lithium, because I knew it wouldn't help. I began to drink heavily, but that didn't help either. During the day, I couldn't forget all the horrors I'd seen, and every night I'd have nightmares and relive them. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, screaming. After a while I started … screaming during the day. I'm sure you were told that I started to believe there were Viet Cong surrounding the town, waiting to come in and get me."

Without warning, Gary Worde suddenly set down his cup on a corner of the hearth, slipped off his stool, and crouched with his hands over his head. Garth started to go toward him, but he sat back down when I shook my head, signaling danger.

Slowly, like a cobra rising from a basket, Gary Worde straightened up and began to dance to the deadly music he heard in his head. His eyes glowed in the firelight as he flung one arm out, then the other, spun and kicked high into the air. He continued these graceful but deadly karate moves, a series of kata, for close to fifteen minutes, spinning, lunging, punching, and kicking his way around the cabin as he did battle with the demons in his mind, his imaginary enemies marching out at him from twenty years in the past. When he had finished, he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, sighed heavily, and sat back down on his stool.

'"There was nobody to talk to who could understand," the man continued in an even tone, as if nothing had happened. "Nobody except Veil."

"You were in touch with Veil back then?" I asked quietly.

"Yes. The war was over, and Veil had just arrived in New York. Somehow, he'd heard-or guessed-that I was back in Colletville, and he called me. He called a number of times; usually he'd call me from a pay phone, and I'd call him back. We'd talk for hours. He asked me to keep everything a secret-where he was, and even that we were in touch. I did as he asked, even though at the time I didn't understand his reasons."

"You do now?" Garth asked.

The question had come too soon, and once again we were treated to a prolonged period of silence. Garth and I looked at each other inquiringly, but neither of us spoke. Gary Worde's strange and violent dance had convinced us that the man was, indeed, dangerous, and could not be pressed. If he was going to tell us anything, it would have to be in his own time, in his own way, at his own pace.