Gordon Kent - Peacemaker

So the Madison rounded the toe of the boot and charged up to Naples, and when they pulled into the bay for their last run ashore, the whole battle group seemed to put Bosnia behind them. They poured ashore by the ferry-load and dispersed over the streets like ants on spilled honey. Alan, walking up toward the Royal Palace, could hear some of them whooping a block away. Bad PR, but—get a life!

That night he took his gang to a small restaurant called Pappagallo. They pushed a lot of tables together and shouted back and forth, and some unabashed flirting went on between the men and women that had been suppressed on the boat. A couple of Italian songs and half of them will be in bed together , he thought, and he turned the subject to Bosnia and peacekeeping. It was always the great subject, and it had the same effect now as a cold shower. On the boat, it had almost led to people’s not speaking to each other—Why are we here? What’s our duty? Are we the world’s policeman? What’s wrong with the people in the Balkans? Why can’t we bomb the fuckers?—but now the tone was elegiac, as of people who had done their best and had to leave with things no worse, perhaps no better. Baronik summed up for them. “There’s hope,” he said. He was a little drunk, mostly a bit more laid back than usual, but maybe showing off for the benefit of LTjg Mary Colley. “Folks, there’s hope! Look at all the other places that have had this kind of shit. Neighbor killing neighbor! Village burning village! It does come to an end. It does! Strong government and economic prosperity can break the chain of violence.” His voice was passionate. Seeing doubt in some of the faces, he said, “Look at the Anglo-Scottish border between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries!” Somebody groaned. “Look at the Norman Vexin!” Everybody groaned.

“Look at the time,” Alan said. He waved for the check.

“It will happen, Al!” Baronik said. He glanced at LTjg Colley.

“Of course it will.” Alan remembered the torture chamber in the Serbian zone. Well, maybe it would happen.

Washington, DC.

Mike Dukas pushed open the door of his apartment with a foot and heard his mail, just as it did every night, scrape along the floor as the door pushed it. As he did every night, he thought that the door was a stupid place to put a mail slot. Bending, groaning because he was a short, wide man, he picked up the mail and threw pieces of it at the wastebasket as he crossed the living room. Junk, junk, bill, junk, credit union, bill— and bingo !

He felt his heart lurch. The top of the envelope had a return address for the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. When he tore the envelope, his hands were shaking. Why did it matter so much? Christ, he didn’t get this nervous with a woman!

“… your very impressive résumé … hope to set up an interview within five days … speed of the essence because … suffering … criminals … a need for leadership and your professional skill.” There was a telephone number that he was asked to call during business hours ASAP.

Dukas was grinning. Sonofabitch!

He pulled the door shut and trotted to his car and drove the five miles to the mall where he knew there was a Borders. There, he leaned into the high counter and said to the very young, pretty attractive woman there, “How you fixed for a Bosnian dictionary?”

“Bosnian?”

“Yeah, like the country formerly known as Yugoslavia.”

“I know what it is.” She smiled. “I read the papers, you know. But I don’t think Bosnian’s a language. It’s an ethnic group, but—” She was talking to the computer with her fingers. A really smart woman. “Uh-uh.” And smiled again. “We got Serbo-Croat, though!”

“Whatever!” Dukas said. He reached for his credit card. He felt like a kid.

Fort Reno, North Carolina.

Harry O’Neill paused with his fingers on the envelope, a prayer on his tongue. But it was too late. Last-minute prayers wouldn’t change what was inside.

He put his left index finger inside the flap at the end where it was ungummed, and it tore; he used the finger to tear raggedly the length of the envelope. He glanced around to see if anybody was watching him, but anybody from his class who was there at that time would have his own envelope and would have sought his own alcove in which to open it. O’Neill leaned still closer to the window, shielding himself almost inside the window drapes. He took out the single sheet of paper and unfolded its three sections.

His assignment for the next three years. Paris? Marseille? Or—?

He almost groaned when he saw it. He stifled real sound but wailed inside. He pressed his forehead against the cool glass.

How will I ever tell my father? and then an instant later with a different kind of shame, How will I ever tell Al Craik?

June

Norfolk.

Home is the sailor, home from the sea . He had never learned much of the rest of it. Something about the hunter—“and the hunter home from the hill.” But he wasn’t a hunter. Dukas was the hunter. He was the sailor. And O’Neill? Had he been looking for O’Neill—?

Alan woke. He was home. Relief and gratitude flooded through him. What had he been dreaming—sailor, hunter? He smelled his house, his bed, his wife. His left hand slid across the wrinkled sheet and found her. She made a pleased sound without waking. His hand went up her hip. Squeezed. The dog raised his head. The dog slept on the floor of the bedroom and would have got on the bed in a moment if he’d been encouraged. When Alan wasn’t there, he slept on the floor next to Rose, and he would wake when she did, just like this, raise his head, look at her eyes as he now looked at Alan’s.

“Walk?” Alan whispered.

The dog’s tail thumped on the floor. Alan slipped from the sheets and padded to the bathroom, then to Mikey’s room, the dog following, springing, ready to bark so hard the effort would carry him right off his front feet if Alan so much as murmured walk again. Alan hushed him with a hand on the huge head, caressing the ears, the side of the jaw. He got a big lick on his bare wrist in return.

His son lay on his back, seemingly asleep, but his eyes opened when Alan leaned over him. The light from the hall glinted on the eyes, and the child smiled. Alan’s heart turned over, broke, put itself back together. So this is what it’s like . He had been home for ten days. One night on the ship, drinking coffee on an all-nighter, a shipmate had told him about coming home from a sea tour, always finding his children changed, new. Kids who might one day, unless you were careful, remember mainly that their father was “always away.” He touched his son’s face.

He put on the coffee-maker and got the dog’s leash, and the dog began to prance. The dog wanted to bark; cautioned to stay quiet, he sneezed. His head went up and down so enthusiastically that Alan could hardly get the leash on him. Then they were out the door and into the dawn; he had a momentary flash of dawns on the carrier, one morning when there were no air ops and the great deck had stretched like a field, and the eastern edge of the sky was a bright line like a hot wire. Did some part of him miss it already?

The dog pissed on every vertical object between their house and the end of the block and then got more discriminating as his supply ran low. Beyond the second street was a wood with a kind of stream in it. He let the dog run. Walking along the dark path, listening for the scuffle of the dog in the old leaves, he thought about the dawn when they’d gone to the Serb house in Pustarla. He thought about it a lot, couldn’t get it to settle down into the understory of his mind. The smell of old blood. The tub full of bloody water. The victims. Shooting that guy .