“Very.”
Darzell nodded, satisfied. “You ever hear of My Lai?”
“You mean the massacre?”
“The slaughter, yeah.”
He looked at Becky, but she knew about My Lai, too. Most everyone did. In 1968, a company of U.S. soldiers murdered five hundred villagers in what, even now, was considered the worst atrocity of the war. There’d been no reason for the killings—they’d found no VC in the village, met no resistance—but over the course of that day, a company of U.S. soldiers systematically slaughtered innocent men, women, and children, blowing them up with grenades and rocket launchers, lining them in ditches and gunning them to death. Infants. Pregnant women. Anything that moved, breathed, or crawled. There’d been a massive cover-up followed by congressional hearings, a trial, national outrage …
Darzell had been clear about questions, but I couldn’t help myself. “My Lai was U.S. Army. Jason was a marine.”
“All very true, but Vietnam is a big, out-of-control, great, ugly mess of a war.” Darzell blew smoke, and stared me down with those hard, brown, soldier eyes. “You think My Lai is the only place bad shit happened?”
30
Darzell was right about one thing. Telling the story took time, and in the warm sunlight of after, I felt disjointed, cold, and overawed. Thoughts of my brother, the things he’d done …
“How about I drive this time?”
Becky took the keys, and I looked back at the pool hall, squinting in the bright light. Darzell was still inside, but his father stood in the open door, giving me a long look and a somber wave before stepping back into the gloom.
“Come on, handsome.”
Becky got me back to the car, and inside. Even behind the wheel, she left me alone; as if she understood the kind of processing I needed to do in order to understand the many pieces and all the complicated ways they fit.
“It’s not fair,” I finally said.
“No, it’s not.”
“I don’t know him at all. I don’t think anyone does.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I ran the movie Darzell had put in my head, a silent reel of bodies in a blood-soaked river, of all the people dead, and all the ones not dead. “Why didn’t Jason tell me? Jesus, Becky. Why didn’t he tell any of us?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did.”
“It makes sense, though. The drugs. The way he is.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“That I know the truth? I don’t know. I feel like my head is going to explode.”
“Just breathe, okay? In and out, nice and deep.”
I closed my eyes, and did as she asked. When I opened them again, I had no idea where we were. “Wait. Where are we going?”
“You trust me, right?”
“I do.”
“So trust me.”
She showed cool eyes and a slender smile, so I watched the city pass, thinking of cops, reporters, and prosecutors, thinking, They don’t know him, either, none of them do …
Ten minutes later, I knew where we were. The abandoned hardware store. A tumbledown and familiar house. “We’re going to your place?”
She flashed another slender smile, but drove past her street, turning at the next one, and pulling to the curb at an empty lot with old, small houses on either side. “Come with me.”
She took me into the vacant lot, and we clambered through the foundations of a long-gone house, then out the other side, and down a steep bank, wading through waist-deep kudzu until trees appeared and the vines grew up and over. She pulled me deeper into the forest, and when we reached the creek, she turned along the bank, parting vines until the same pool of deep, clear water appeared.
“You remember our swim?” She slipped off her shoes, entirely serious. “How about a real one this time?”
When her shirt came off, the bra came with it. She blushed only a little, and I thought of all the times I’d seen her at the quarry, browned by the sun and sleek as a seal. She helped me out of my shirt, and kissed me. Her breasts flattened on my chest, and I felt them there, small and warm, a brush of skin before she stepped back and removed the rest of her clothes. The blush was still there, but she turned for the pool, crooked a finger, and tossed off a knowing smile. “Are you coming or not?”
I undressed and followed her into the pool, moving close until there were mere inches between us. “Why now?” I wanted to know.
“Because I was watching your face, and not Darzell’s.” She moved closer until we were touching. “Did you know that you were crying?”
“Only at the end.”
“I thought it was beautiful.”
“Why?”
“Because he made you believe in what you were doing.”
“I already believed.”
“But there’s a difference between duty and love. You wanted to help Jason because he’s your brother—that’s the duty. Darzell made you love him.”
It was true. She was right.
“Kiss me,” she said, and that’s what I did.
Softly.
Adoringly.
“Now, love me,” she said, and I did that, too.
Later, with Becky stretched beside me on a bed of ferns and moss, I thought for the millionth time that the day was barely real: the touch of our bodies, the foundations of childhood we’d burned down together. Even now the lines of her were like forgings on my skin: one leg across my own, her fingers twined into mine.
“Regrets?” she asked. In response, I held her tighter. “Can we do it again, then?”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
It was becoming my favorite question.
Much later, we dressed self-consciously, the awkwardness passing only when Becky caught my eye, and grinned. “The clothes came off a lot easier.”
After that, it was familiar and easy, her hand in mine as we made our way uphill through the old trees hung with ivy and kudzu. At the car, Becky pushed her hands into her pockets, shoulders rising as she measured me in a knowing, still-amused way. “Was that your first time?” I blushed furiously before she took pity. “It was pretty awesome.”
“The second time was better,” I said.
“Really? I thought, the third…”
She grinned again, and I kissed the curving lips, one hand on hot denim and the other on hot metal. Only the breeze was cool, and that’s because it was getting dark.
“So…?”
She broke the kiss as if dusk on the street ended more than the day. Sadly, I felt the same truth: that time may have stopped for a while, but only in the place we’d been. “This has been good,” I said.
“Good, but real.”
“Next-level stuff,” I agreed.
“So…?”
She said it again, but this time it was about Jason rather than us, the shadow of the day. “I’ll go home, I suppose. Talk to my father.”
“Will you tell him what we learned?”
“About Jason?”
“Maybe it will help.”
I nodded, but had my doubts. I was still so angry.
Even if my father believed …
Or if he already knew …
Becky took me home in Dana’s car, and the quiet between us was a comfortable one. We said goodbye at the bottom of my parents’ driveway, and what I saw in her eyes was like a jewel to carry in my pocket, and take out if the night got long. After she left, I stayed outside to watch stars come alive as purple light was drawn off like a veil. The air was heavy with the perfume of my mother’s garden, a blend of climbing rose and camellia, of Princess Blush and heliotrope, hibiscus and Plum Mist, hydrangea and dogwood and daffodil—a glut of plants and vine I was embarrassed to know as well as I did.