Time of Grace Read online

  “My God, it was hot, and it was dark and dense beneath the trees, like having dripping ceilings over us, thick with vines and undergrowth. It was hard to move without tripping or running into things growing. I could see the shadows and the slashes of light like cat’s claws ripping, but everything was dark green or light green, no other color.

  Alpha went in first, seventy kids and officers. We numbered about the same and were behind, listening, sniffing, and watching. It was so freakin’ quiet. Hinky as hell. I crouched by Barnes. We waited. He went to automatic, then back on his rifle. I felt watched.

  We heard this clicking, as if someone were tapping on shell or crab claws clicking, somewhere. I was looking all around like everyone else, but we couldn’t tell where the noise was; then, all I could hear were AK-47s pattering, and it was all shadows and muzzle flashes all around us. The Viet Cong had ambushed us, and the bastards were in the trees, mowing us down.”

  “They were screaming and shouting. The Cong were so close that we couldn’t even use our mortars that close, so they were ripping us apart, blood flying out in fine mists, body parts showering the air, the stink of blood, soil, rot, and shit all around us. Alpha was down, all screaming, trying to keep moving, but falling in detritus. First Sergeant Barrow was yelling, ‘Go, go go.’ ”

  “A claymore went up, almost deafening us…son of a bitch was so loud…and Alpha was just…all dead or dying…bleeding everywhere. Make no mistake, our blood wetted the soil. But First Sarg kept saying we couldn’t leave our dead. We don’t leave our boys behind, live or dead. So we stayed. He kept yelling that we had to move forward…go…go…go. It was almost too late, and we were about to be left dead, with no one to bring us out, but Lt. Colonel Allen was just standing there.

  It happened in seconds, ya know, but it was like forever. I watched him standing there with First Sarg, yelling that we had to do something. He was bleeding, and the Colonel still stood there staring at something, not saying a word or moving. I guess some thought he wasn’t thinking, or he had lost his nerve or gone into shock, but naw, he knew we were ambushed from freakin’ trees, and he knew it was all over.

  We had no chance. He was looking…looking at a picture of his three little girls, saying goodbye to them in his last few seconds. I saw his head blown off, right then.”

  “First Sarg, bleeding all over, kept moving and yelling for us to move, so we moved, I think. We followed his lead; we fired our rifles and drove forward, fighting for a chance. I blocked Barnes, taking a ricochet to my shoulder, through and through.

  Barnes’ rifle flew into the air when his arm shattered in fat crimson drops. A seam of gunfire opened his gut. He dropped. I didn’t hear the claymore that took my legs, I was seeing Barnes fall, dead, when the thunderous sound made my ears bleed.

  I woke up screaming with Doc Hinger’s eyes boring into mine; he had the most piercing stare. I didn’t know why my legs hurt, but I was trying my damnedest to get up and fight beside the boys.

  Singer kept pushing me down, tying shit around my thighs. Barnes was lying there with his intestines strung along the bushes, face dotted red but peaceful…hellish thing. I managed to see that my pants were tattered, blood soaked around jagged bones, which peeked out above where my knees had been. I didn’t know where my boots were. I ached all over, but it was like fire where my feet should have been.”

  “He told one of the kids who was still alive to keep me awake and moved to the next guy, firing his own gun at the same time. I wasn’t expected to survive, having my legs shattered to bits, bleeding out, and going into shock. But, I did.

  The Viet Cong vanished, going on to another engagement. I was brought out of there, and I recovered over time, physically anyway. First Sarg made it, too. Half died that day; all were wounded; we never found two. Maybe they were just torn to shreds.”

  He sighed bitterly. “And that’s how I ended up without legs.”

  The cadence he used, the word choices, and descriptions told me he had told the story many, many times. He should write it down; he was a natural story teller. Writers do best when they write what they know best. He knew Vietnam.

  I write about crime, fantasy, obsession, and evil. You decide.

  “I’m so sorry, Bobby,” I said.

  “Me too, me too. They said we won, that we held the Cong back there, and defeated them, that we did good, but that’s bullshit. We were ambushed and lost our asses.”

  We sat silent for a while.

  What had happened to my friends? Poison.

  Patsy leaned back. “Has anyone heard from Lu Parrish?”

  Buddy leaned forward, “She was in that air crash in ’72.”

  “Which one?”

  “You remember, it was the Lockheed that crashed into the Everglades, killing a hundred people or so.”

  “Oh yep, the one that went down when it was accidentally switched off auto-pilot or something, and they thought it was way up in the air but was practically in the swamp already?”

  “Can you imagine,” Patsy said, “you think you’re in the air and no lights and then you just crash? She was on that flight?”

  “Yep. She was living in New York, going to school or something, I think.”

  “That’s horrible. Alligators in Florida.”

  I didn’t recall all the details but made a mental note to look it up when I had a chance. I might write about true crime and fantasy, but all sorts of things interested me. That did.

  “I liked Lu.” Colli returned to sit again. I thought maybe she intentionally skipped Bobby’s story.

  “Has anyone seen Nell Reed?” Patsy asked.

  “You didn’t hear?”

  Colli was almost giddy with reciting the negative news. Nell had not fared well, either. “She went wild after she couldn’t do athletics anymore. She lived for it, you know.”

  “Did she get hurt?” I asked.

  “She got something torn up in her knee and hip skiing; you know her family skied every winter in Aspen,” Colli told us. “After that, she bummed out, couldn’t get a scholarship to another school. She used to call me every once in a while.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Right up your alley, David.” Colli winked. “Nell went out to Los Angeles,” Colli said, “with some other girls she knew, to become movie stars or music legends or something like that. Once there, she had a place to live she could barely afford while the girls tried their luck. “Once she called and said she was screwing half the men she knew in order to afford to live and eat.”

  “It’s tough out there.”

  “She was always a pretty girl though and slim.”

  “So are all the girls in California,” I pointed out.

  “One of the girls with her discovered acid and grass, so then they were spending money on that. Nell couldn’t afford it all, so the next time she called, she was working as a call girl; she called it…an escort, ya know…men paying for her company, and she’d dress up and fawn all over them.”

  “A prostitute?” Patsy was wide-eyed again.

  “Yeh, well. Whatever you wanna call it, I guess. At first, I guess it was higher class, such as really dressing up with big money and classy, powerful men, but before long, yep, she was doing some…not too glamorous things.

  She said the men were dodgy, she didn’t dress up, and dates didn’t last that long. Some of the men wanted some weird things, too, so then I guess she was a hooker. I told her to come home and get clean and out of that life, but she said ‘no’ that she could make it.”

  The next call, Nell said she was working the streets of LA where all the girls were diseased, drunk, high, beaten, killed, tired, scarred and old fast. She had to use the drugs just to stand what she was doing and with whom, but the work barely supported the drugs she needed to stand it.

  The poster drug for anti-Vietnam, heroin, was gaining popularity; Nell began supporting a heroin habit, next. She couldn’t keep up with the prices of her drugs, apartment, and food. Her time was spent
being arrested; beaten up by johns, other girls and pimps joining in protests; getting high; and engaging in sexual acts in a dark alley way and smelly cars. She told Colli she would be dead in less than a year.

  Colli went on, “She went to George Spahn’s ranch in ’66, I think, to live there and help with the horses for her room and board. I think she cut way back on the drugs and was off the streets.”

  “Spahn?” I sat up straight. I had written a little about the ranch and set for old westerns when I wrote about Charles Manson.

  “Yep, she called me after she moved there with George and said he called her Texie ‘cause of her accent.”

  One of the Manson followers was nicknamed Tex Watkins.

  “I think George gave them all the nicknames. He had a Texie and a Tex. Nell told me that she had met a new friend there that George called Squeaky.”

  “Fromme,” I muttered, “good Lord, Colli.”

  “Wasn’t that the chick who tried to kill President Ford?”

  I nodded, “Yup.” I finished my drink. “Nell knew her?”

  “Sure did. Nell said the girl got her nickname from George, too, something about him tickling her thigh.” Colli told us. “Anyway, Nell left sometime in ’69, and said, and I quote her here, ‘Charlie and the other girls living there had gotten really weird and scared me.’ And it took a lot, by then, to scare Nell”

  “She knew Manson?”

  “Interesting, huh?”

  I was shocked. I had written about the murders that his followers had committed and had never known about the connection I had to it. It would have felt far more personal had I known. I wanted to go back to my research and look it over, find some clue to Nell that I had missed.

  “She went back to LA, and it was bad again. Then, Nell went back again to the ranch; she missed George even though she called him a kooky, nasty old man. She said he listened way too much to Manson. She was worried that with all that media and the trial, George would be in a bad way.”

  “Spahn ranch burned in ’70…a wildfire, I think,” I said.

  “David, it burned in November of ‘70.”

  “Okay.” I hadn’t recalled the month.

  Colli went on, “Nell went back in July. She was caught there and burned to death.”

  “Hells bells,” I said.

  “That’s crazy,” Bobby said.

  I stood, stretching, asking people what they wanted, and I excused myself to go with Will for more drinks for the table. There was a bar serving for the reunion. I saw more people I knew, shook hands, gave hugs, asked about family, and tried to smile a lot. Will ordered gin and tonics for us, then for everyone else.

  “Did you know about all this that’s happened to these people? It’s awful stuff,” I said.

  “I knew a lot; Brad told you I had a bunch of thoughts about it and had mentioned it to him. He wishes I hadn’t now; it really bothers him a lot. Brad’s smarter than people think.”

  “He helped me sort some ideas, so did Annelle Stevenson. It’s crazy to think anything is really wrong, but several blonde, green-eyed girls have been killed, and it seems, according to Brad, people around that death all get poisoned or something; bad things happen to them. It doesn’t fit, Will.”

  “Maybe we’re reaching. Over imaginative. Maybe we’re just crazy.”

  “Maybe. Bad things happened though.”

  “Bad things happen anyway, David. I don’t know what to think, but I’m keeping an open mind that maybe something is up, and maybe we are all nuts.”

  “I’m going over to Annelle’s tomorrow evening to catch her up on what Brad told me and now all this; she has some more information; why don’t you and Brad come, too?”

  “I’ll be there. Dunno about Brad. It scares him.”

  “It scares me.”

  Will balanced a tray of drinks for the people at our table, adding some soft drinks to sober a few. I grabbed plates and filled them with cheese and crackers, olives, little sandwiches, veggies with dip, fruit, and cakes. I didn’t know how to carry so much, but then a voice said she and her husband had it; it was Cornelia Cowan whoever and her husband Arnold. They offered to carry plates of food for us.

  I watched her walk, trim and curvy in a snug dark blue dress made of satin, her hair was shoulder length, full and tousled about her head. She sat the plates down to say hello to everyone and then turned to me so that I could enjoy those pretty violet-colored eyes and her beauty. I held a gasp.

  A deep, jagged scar ran from her left eye down her cheek and to her jaw, another from a nostril along her upper lip to the corner, and down her chin. On the right side, a scar pulled her eye downward a little, running across the bottom of her eyelashes, and several smaller scars traced her cheek and jaw line.

  “Not polite to stare, David,” she whispered.

  “I…I’m sorry; it’s… ummm good to see you, Cornelia”

  She cocked her head fetchingly. “Car accident. I went through the windshield.” She held up scarred arms. “I have more than this….took thousands of stitches to put me back together again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. Arnie’s a plastic surgeon, and he’s working on me, slowly making me look less of a monster.” She laughed at herself. “But things aren’t bad; I have money.”

  She held her hands out so that I could admire the diamond rings she wore: a diamond wedding set with a stone that was several carats, an amethyst surrounded by diamonds as a cocktail ring on a middle finger, a diamond pinky ring, two more diamond, sapphire, and amethyst rings, and a tennis bracelet with each stone a carat. I whistled appreciatively.

  Arnold shook my hand, “Good to meet you, David. Neely told me all about you, and we have your books. Quite a read there, wow.”

  “Well, I’m honored.”

  “David sure chased after me in college, Arnie; he just had the biggest crush on me,” Cornelia said.

  I winced. No, I had not. I didn’t say anything.

  “I bet all the boys did, Neely.” He leered at his wife, making her coo with delight. She was still a man-magnet, I guessed.

  She flipped her mane of hair again, showing off her curves.

  I sat down, hearing Colli whispering about how badly Cornelia had been injured and how many surgeries she had already endured. “And she lost her boobs; those are fake; they were all cut up or off, along with cuts all over her upper body and legs in the wreck. She wears gel packs in her bra.”

  I glanced back at Cornelia. I couldn’t tell they were a fake.

  We all looked at one another.

  Buddy sighed, “Well, I guess I’ll tell my horror story next. It’s never escaped me how we all seemed to have had some bad things going on, all of us who went to school together, but I was okay until two years ago. We have a farm: me, my wife Anne, and our kids, Amy, Trustin, and Bud, Junior…or BJ. You remember that bad storm two years ago last spring that tore things up?”

  Several of them nodded.

  “The storm made a mess of the barn. So the next day, I was in town when BJ started on the barn, wanting to surprise me, I guess. He went up to the roof to get the tree limbs off and to check it.”

  “I was driving back, and Anne met me on the road, the car covered in dust, beat up from driving so fast on the gravel road. She was screaming and all; I knew it was one of the kids; she’s usually cool and calm.

  Anne was always partial to BJ, him being her first pup, and Amy was my baby girl: she had a hard birth, and we almost lost her. I felt bad thinking it would be okay if it were Trustin the middle. Oh, God, it made me sick even thinkin’ that way.

  I jumped out of my truck, and BJ was in the back seat, laid out, his clothes all burned, black in some places, fine in others, wrapped in a sheet, moaning…and the smell...like burned pork.”

  “After the storm, the electric line wasn’t hiked back up right. The line was way up off from the barn, but something magnetic, they told me later, was attracted to BJ who was standing on the roof. That line swung over.
..arced…they called it.

  Mary, Jesus, and God, it was bad. It burned his hair and the side of his face, blew off part of his muscle on the top part of his arm, and burned down to his hand, taking a finger. Then, the current shot out of his feet, blowing his shoes off with the toes of one foot inside. Its blowing out saved him; if it hadn’t blown, he’d have died.”

  “Anne was looking out the window and saw him fall. The doctors said maybe the fall started his heart going again, but it broke his arm, leg, and a few ribs, as well.

  She wrapped him in a clean sheet and put him in the car, and she was driving hell bent. The other kids were back at the house alone, but I drove like hell to the hospital and called a neighbor to go over to the house.

  The car’s windows were all pocked up and webbed from rocks hitting it, the body was dented up, and the oil pan was busted.

  The nurses and doctor actually went pale seeing BJ that way. So they stabilized him, hooked up an IV and some monitors, and then right fast, the doctors moved him to Dallas. We went home and then drove to Dallas, not knowing if he’d live.”

  Patsy wiped tears from her eyes.

  “He made it. BJ’s a tough boy, tougher than I am. He was in that place for four months. He had so many third degree burns: on his head, face, arm, hand, and foot, screaming every time the nurses scrubbed off the burned, dead flesh and stretched his muscles…removed some in surgery.

  Then the doctors did the skin grafts, and his butt cheeks and thighs were raw meat, bleeding. They removed the ruined toe bones and where his finger had been…so many surgeries. Then he screamed during physical therapy; he was only eleven; it was hell.”

  “Amazing he made it. I’m glad he did, Buddy.” Will patted his shoulder.

  With tears in his eyes, Buddy nodded. “ He has bad scars on his face and arm, flesh just sunken in and shiny, a pretty bad limp; he can’t grow hair on one side of his head, and he has cataracts. He’s getting to be the age when he’ll like girls, but…I don’t think any girl is gonna see past all his scars.”

  Cornelia unconsciously touched her scar on her left side.

  Buddy scoffed, “That ain’t shit, Cornelia; my boy BJ knows he looks like a freak, that people stare at…yours are scratches in comparison.”