Evan Hunter: Sons

“You coming, Tyler?” Rudy said.

His helmet was very close to mine, he nodded his head for emphasis as he whispered to me, and metal clicked against metal, and for an instant I thought of a Talmadge playing field and a football huddle, thought I would call a Roger-Hook-Go, after which we would run out there with rifles blazing and pull Lloyd off the trail before they cut him limb from limb, though one limb was already gone, wasn’t it, and Lloyd was dead. I wanted to stay alive. I did not want to die this morning.

“Let’s go, Tyler,” Rudy whispered.

On the other side of the trail, I heard movement in the underbrush, the snapping of twigs, the rustling of leaves. There was a small mechanical click.

“No,” I said.

(Wat Tyler remembers that he would not have died for Larry Peters in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, either, and suddenly wonders if there is anything in this world that he would die for, and realizes just as suddenly that there are a hundred things, a million things he would live for, but none that he would care to die for, thank you. To Rudy Webb perhaps, it was important to pull the body of a black man off a jungle trail after he had been shot to tatters and had his leg blown off, but Wat Tyler does not see how he can help Lloyd now except by staying alive. He knows for certain that if he steps out of these bushes he will be killed in an instant. There is too much to do, he thinks, too much to live for. Go fuck yourself, Rudy Webb, he thinks, you and all the Rudy Webbs of America.)

“Up, Tyler,” Rudy said. “Up or I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

I looked at him in amazement. He had turned the muzzle of his rifle toward my chin, and his finger was curled around the trigger. He was wearing a two-week beard stubble caked with jungle grime, and the armpits of his shirt were stained with sweat, and there was a thin line of spit running from one corner of his mouth, a dull glitter in his eyes. From across the trail, there came another small mechanical click.

“Jerry may have reached Battalion,” I said reasonably and calmly.

“Jerry reached shit” Rudy said. “They cut him down before he said two words into that fuckin’ radio.”

Lloyd had told me, a long time ago, “If you want to stay alive out here, you better start getting angry, Wat. You just listen to your old Uncle Lloyd. He knows all about being angry, ’cause he’s been angry all his goddamn life.” Rudy was angry now, angry at me, and angry at the Vietcong setting up their machine gun across the trail, and angry at Lloyd, too, I think, because it was Lloyd’s dead and riddled body that was making it necessary for Rudy to live up to a ridiculous code, Lloyd’s black and bleeding and smoking corpse that reminded Rudy he was only a man who could be likewise killed and possibly hacked to pieces afterward if good old buddies did not perform for him the service he was ready to perform for Lloyd — even if it meant putting a bullet in my head. There was something completely insane about this. He knew we would not last a minute if we stepped out of the bushes. He knew that we would be killed as dead as Lloyd, and that all of our bodies would be hacked apart, if that’s what Charlie had in mind this morning, and he also knew that the Cavalry might just possibly arrive in time, the Cavalry always arrived in time, didn’t it? There was a whole fucking battalion someplace in this jungle, eight hundred men who had heard all the shooting and who had maybe got Jerry’s radio message, eight hundred men ready to come to our rescue, so what the hell was his rush? I could not understand. I knew only that I did not want to get killed, and that I stood a very good chance of being killed in the next ten seconds, either by my side or their side, it would not make a hell of a lot of difference. A bullet in the head was a bullet in the head.

The machine gun opened up.

(Wat Tyler is hit. He sees Rudy’s face above him, the mouth opening in shocked surprise, the bridge of the nose dissolving into a slow motion shot of a red flower opening, and then Rudy is falling toward him, and the hanging jungle canopy begins to wheel overhead, Hold the ball, Wat tells himself in idiotic litany against the fear, Hold the ball, and clutches his rifle to him like a woman. Rudy’s helmet smashes into his face, his neck snaps back, he thinks for a moment he has broken something in his spine, and then the ground hits him, and he is splayed flat against the earth by a hundred and ninety pounds of muscle and bone.)

I clung to my rifle against my chest, I could smell the tumbled jungle floor, that’s right you little shits, I thought, kill your star quarterback, and smiled, and lay still and helpless, and thought suddenly of something Mr. Jarrel had said in American History I, about Giles Corey being pressed to death in Salem, Massachusetts, because he would not admit he was a witch, rock after rock being piled upon his chest, and all he ever said was, “More weight,” and had died for his refusal to betray his own conscience. I could not move, they had broken something inside me. I felt wet and sticky below the waist. I lay still and waited. An odd buzz hovered over the jungle. I could hear strange voices. I could not understand what they were saying. I thought of Dana. I listened to the voices in bewilderment and fear because I knew now that something terrible had happened to me, that they were all talking about what had happened to me, that maybe my neck was twisted at a funny angle, maybe there was a line of blood trickling from under my helmet. The buzz was incredible. Dana, I thought. Dana, I hurt. Dana, I love you. From the tail end of my eye, through a tiny wedge between my head and Rudy’s shoulder that was pinning it to the ground, I saw a pair of feet in sandals moving swiftly over the jungle floor, saw the bottoms of black pajamas stark against the brilliant sunshine.

(Wat Tyler sees the enemy soldier from a foreshortened angle, the camera shooting up the length of the black silk pajamas to the pinched and narrow face. There is no joy on that face. The camera holds on the tired eyes for only a moment. Wat stares into them, trying to understand something. He is not afraid, he only feels betrayed. And he hurts. He hurts very badly. Look, he thinks, why can’t we just, and the enemy soldier fires a short burst into Rudy’s back, and then swings the rifle past Rudy’s shoulder, and puts the muzzle against Wat Tyler’s cheek, and pulls the trigger.)