Cullin Mitch - The Post-War Dream

While Bill McCreedy might have deliberately gone out of his way to be a kind of parody of himself, a one-dimensional hick archetype which had already become a common caricature in any number of B movies or war magazines, he would remain, to Hollis, a tangible person who had actually existed at one time. With that Mohawk which drew the scorn of their platoon sergeant, the expressive sunburned face shining beneath the dimmest of lights, he wasn't unsociable or withdrawn like Hollis, and so, by nature, he relished the lowbrow chatter which probably tempered his own fears — talk of women, tall tales from childhood, the mindless jests, general bull-shitting — the rite of strengthening ties with the brotherhood of soldiers. Yet for all his contempt and swagger and annoying bluster, McCreedy wasn't compassionless or incapable of conveying a genuine Christian demeanor, although, upon reflection, Hollis could only recall one other incident in which he saw McCreedy behave as the Lord would have done.

It was on a desolate road leading from Yongdong, where fleeing villagers and townspeople streamed southward to escape the fighting, the long procession repeatedly sent dashing to the roadsides when retreating U.S. Army vehicles barreled past them. Disoriented by the thick dust spun high by military tires, an elderly monk lost control of his bicycle and swerved into the path of a speeding jeep, his peddling left leg struck by the bumper, his body then thrown over the hood — airborne for a second, his gray robe fluttering, landing with a dull thud behind the braking jeep — as the bicycle continued wobbling forward without him. In the upheaval of dust and halting vehicles and startled onlookers, the monk was crushed beneath the front wheel of another jeep, his certain end occurring at the exact moment that the second jeep's horn briefly rang out. The bicycle, miraculously intact, veered several yards beyond the accident, crashing, at last, on the other side of the road — the contents of its saddle baskets dumped beside a sloping embankment, scattered near the boots of a twelve-man reconnaissance patrol from the 2nd Battalion. While horrified refugees on both sides of the road froze in their tracks, and the caravan of army vehicles rolled to a stop, a sudden quiet overtook the clamor, punctuated only by McCreedy's enraged voice rising among the reconnaissance patrol, shouting, “Son of a bitch!”

Before the dust swirling about the accident had fully dissipated, McCreedy lifted the bicycle, promptly turning it around. With his rifle slung across his back, he straddled the seat, and, shaking his head in disgust, proceeded to ride the short distance to where the monk's slack body was already being dragged from underneath the jeep. But it wasn't the stunned-looking young driver — wiping grime and sweat off his brow with a handkerchief, telling everyone, “Didn't even see him; it's like he dropped out of the sky or something” — who ultimately lowered himself to the body, nor was the monk held by the hands of the white-clad refugees who soon came running from both sides of the road, gawking at the tragedy in hushed voices; instead, it was McCreedy who cradled the old man, bending close to his shaved scalp, briefly uttering something into a bloodied ear, doing so as Hollis watched from afar, a cigarette fuming at his lips, the smoke curling upward into the brim of his helmet.

The monk's killing was, in fact, the first fatality they were to encounter during the conflict, and, in a way, it would be the most benign of all the deaths they were ultimately destined to witness. Yet many years since then, Hollis found himself wondering what it was McCreedy had spoken to the corpse, though at the time he had assumed it was a prayer, perhaps a blessing intended for the monk's departing soul. Or maybe — he considered when revisiting the accident in his mind — the words weren't as ecumenical or holy as he had imagined, maybe McCreedy had kept it simple, base, and impersonal: “Too fucking bad for you, buddy. Tough break.” He would, of course, never really know, and, as such, he finally concluded that whatever had been said was irrelevant: the act of rushing to the accident — lifting that battered body, holding the dead man while others did nothing — was the meaningful part of the memory, if only because it served to remind him that McCreedy was, after all, a contradiction of sorts and, therefore, more human than Hollis had eventually wanted to believe.

And so on that road leading from Yongdong, McCreedy stayed for a while with the monk's body — shaking his head again and again, glancing up at the bicycle he left propped against the jeep and the driver who stood beside it with his eyes down. Before trudging forward to get a better look, Hollis finished his cigarette, blowing a final exhalation of smoke at a blue sky which was unfurling beyond fading currents of dust; just then the sun broke through that brownish filter, casting its rays to the ground, illuminating those items which had been in the bicycle's baskets and were now several feet away from the red cloth which had safeguarded them, two bundles wrapped in fishing wire: a packet of flat, slender lengths of polished metal; another packet of narrow, unfinished planks of wood; the metal and wood being of equal size — approximately twelve inches long and two inches wide, fifteen to twenty pieces per bundle — with hanja characters meticulously carved or etched lengthwise upon each one. A few metal pieces glinted brightly in the increasing sunlight, catching Hollis's attention and blunting his sight for a moment when he flicked the cigarette butt at them.

“Is he a goner?” someone in the patrol asked.

“If he isn't,” someone else replied, “he's about to be.”

Then while McCreedy held the monk, Hollis knelt in front of the old man's possessions, inspecting the bundle of metal pieces which glimmered back at him and reflected his ruddy face. Presently, he reached for the wooden planks, studying the ornate, scroll-like writing, the characters filled in with black ink — messages which would forever be impossible for him to fathom, as cryptic to his memory now as the words he once saw imparted into a fallen monk's ear.

“Wood and metal? What on earth is that going to do to me?” Debra had wondered, upon learning that her chemotherapy infusions were to be a mixture of two drugs: Taxol, derived from the bark of the Pacific yew tree, and carboplatin, from the valuable metal class used to create jewelry. “I'll probably become a robotic tin man with an ax.”

“Surely a tin woman,” Dr. Langford said. “But right now I wouldn't worry too much about that.”

Then the autumn after her five-month therapy had commenced was passed in waiting, the slow, indeterminate days initially marked by the long strands of her hair discovered all over the house; sometimes the hairs ended up in unforeseen places — plastered on the TV screen, resting at the bottom of a coffee mug, hanging from the front doorknob — until, as an act of empowering herself, she decided to take control and buzz-trim her head to a fine quarter-inch stubble. “If it's going to happen anyway,” she said, “why prolong the agony of it?” But soon the velveteen stubble also began shedding, dotting their sheets and pillows like benign, identically made splinters. In a further attempt at empowerment, she eventually stripped off whatever was left of her hair with a lint roller, emerging from the bathroom balder than she had been at birth, her eyebrows, too, no longer existing on her face. She stood before Hollis in an untied terry-cloth robe, her naked body lacking a single pubic hair (the absence of which, she realized soon enough, hampered her ability to use the toilet without making a mess — the thick, curling pubes having previously funneled the urine flow into a well-aimed stream). “Just call me Mrs. Clean,” she told him, clutching the hair-matted lint roller in one hand, concealing her self-consciousness with a grin, even as he appeared mortified by just how thoroughly the job had been done.