Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning Read online

  But they upset Faye, so he stuffed them under his shirt, wore them close against his skin. Which was where they belonged anyway.

  He made the sofa bed, tucking the sheets and blankets neatly around the thin mattress, folding up the frame and returning the cushions to their places. Then he fluffed the pillows and set them in a tidy stack on one side of the sofa.

  He opened the curtains and looked out on his sister’s little postage-stamp yard. Hiram was a nothing little town, caught in a limbo between semi-urban Oklahoma City and college-town Norman, with rural Oklahoma bumping up against its sides, and oil fields under its feet. It didn’t know quite what it was supposed to be.

  Lenny and Faye lived in the town proper, a mile or so off Main Street, in a neighborhood several blocks square of little square houses on little square yards, like a patchwork quilt, the seams of the patches marked with identical, waist-high chain-link fences and smooth, pale, perpendicular concrete streets. Their house was pink, though Faye corrected anyone who said so and informed them that the color was salmon, not pink.

  Lenny worked the oil fields as a rig mechanic foreman. Brian had worked for the same company, too, apprenticing at Lenny’s side, for a few years in and right after high school, getting his certification—and then he’d decided he needed more than this square little life.

  The aluminum swing set in Faye and Lenny’s back yard was the same set as their next-door neighbors on either side, absolutely identical, except that Faye and Lenny had chosen the two-seat glider to hang next to the two single swings, and their neighbors had both chosen the seesaw.

  Something brushed Brian’s leg, and he jumped, ready to fight. But it was Paul, his little three-year-old nephew, wearing the flannel cowboy pajamas he’d gotten for Christmas. Sucking his thumb, holding the leg of Brian’s jeans with the other hand, he looked up with round blue eyes. Innocent.

  Brian cleared his throat and shook off that blast of shock he’d felt at the touch. “Hey, pardner. I smell breakfast. Should we go see what your mama made up?”

  Paul nodded and popped his thumb out to lift his arms. He wasn’t much of a morning person, his nephew, and didn’t have much to say until after breakfast, but he got his point across. When Brian left for war, Paul hadn’t been a year old yet. Still a baby, unsteady on his feet and only a few words in his bank. And an only child.

  Brian picked him up. He smelled of baby shampoo and flannel sheets. Innocence.

  Closing his eyes and tucking his nose against that soft skin, Brian just held him for a moment.

  ~oOo~

  Brian carried Paul into the kitchen and set him at his place, where the Oklahoma City White Pages and Yellow Pages were stacked so he could reach. There was a pitcher of orange juice on the table; he poured a plastic cup half-full and handed it to his nephew.

  Lenny sat at the head of the oval table, the sports section of The Daily Oklahoman spread out before him. But his attention was to his side, where Jamie slept in a crank-up swing. Lenny was turning the crank in careful increments, trying to power it back up without waking his son.

  “Sit down, Brian,” Faye said from the stove, where she was frying eggs.. “I’ll make you a plate.”

  “Thanks.” He sat and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the table. The rest of the paper was still folded up near his place. The top-of-the-fold story was something about Washington DC. He counted his blessings and didn’t pick up the paper. News from Vietnam was more than he could take this morning.

  Lenny got the swing going and returned to his paper, but didn’t start reading. Instead, he picked up his coffee and gave Brian a level stare. “Don’t look like you’re plannin’ to go with me today.”

  To try to get a job back on the fields. Brian shook his head and rubbed at his shoulder. “Not yet. Still need to do some healin’.” Two months ago, he’d had a hole in his chest bigger than his fist. But it wasn’t really that wound that still needed to heal.

  “Maybe you’d heal up faster with somethin’ to do.”

  He wasn’t talking about the wound in his body, either, Brian knew. But what was wrong in his head was why he couldn’t work yet. He didn’t know how to be with people like that, not anymore. He’d never been great at it in the first place. “Not ready, Len.”

  His brother-in-law nodded and went back to the paper.

  Faye set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of her eldest son, and a plate of three eggs, sunny, four sausage patties, and a piece of rye toast, cut crossways, at Brian’s place.

  His stomach chuffed happily. That was something he’d acclimated to right away—good damn food, made the way God intended. Hot, greasy, and fresh off a kitchen stove. “Looks great, sis.”

  She put her hand on his head and tousled what was becoming a mop. In the jungle, nobody got overly twisted up about uniform regs. Men kept their hair short because it was fucking hot and humid like a sauna, but they were doing their trims themselves, for the most part, sometimes with pocketknives. He’d slicked it up for the trip home in his dress greens, and had let it do whatever the fuck it wanted since. Shaggy was what it wanted.

  “I’ve got an appointment at Sally’s this afternoon. There’s the barber right next door. You want to come with me? We can stop by the soda shop after. And I could use some help with groceries, too. The boys are a handful on my own.”

  He lifted her hand off his head and gave it what he hoped was an affectionate squeeze. “I’ll go into town with you, but I don’t need the barber.”

  Faye laughed and tugged on his mangy beard. Closing in on thirty years old, but he still couldn’t yet grow thick facial hair. His chin had only finally filled out in the past couple weeks, and his mustache was annoyingly fairer than the rest of it. But he’d let that grow like it wanted, too, and his cheeks were getting bushy.

  “Yeah, you do. Unless you’re thinkin’ about bein’ one of them hippies.”

  Brian smiled. “Hell no.” Fuck those fucking traitorous college shitheads. He’d like to shove a Bouncing Betty up their collective ass.

  Being against the war was one thing. Fuck, by the time he’d been pinned down with his company on Dak To, he’d lost any sense of what the hell they were doing there, and he’d joined up full of righteous patriotism. But in his two years in-country, he’d watched hundreds of men, dozens of friends, die in gory pieces. He’d almost been one of them. He’d stood baffled and heard the insane, pointless, suicidal orders he was to carry out, he’d led men he loved straight to their deaths on the word of fools radioing in from safety, and he’d seen right up close that the men losing their lives, their bodies and souls, were all just plastic pieces in politicians’ game of Risk. So he understood being against the war.

  But those hippie motherfuckers were protesting the troops. The men putting their lives on the line every minute for their country, because the people they trusted told them it was their duty. Fucking assholes rich enough for college, entitled enough not to risk anything but their time, stood at the gates of Army and Marine posts and Navy and Air Force bases and screamed filth at the men coming home from horror, men wounded even if they’d somehow managed not to be injured. Men who’d been living under a constant hail of bullets and bombs, bathed in the blood of their friends, fighting desperately to take an objective, giving up their lives to the effort, only to have the higher-ups abandon it immediately after.

  They’d carried their buddies off every battlefield in parts, not even sure which part went to which body. They’d lived in mud to their chins, in filth and pain and squalor, never for a moment out of danger. They were just kids, many barely out of high school, too young to grow a beard, patchy or otherwise, and they’d done what they were told because they’d been told this war was a just war, a fight for freedom and democracy. They’d been told the enemy was vicious, monstrous—and they’d seen it to be true, every time they picked up a boot with a bloody stump in it. Every time they found part of a head still in a helmet.

  They were supposed to be the good g
uys, the side of right. Truth, justice, and the American way.

  And then they came home to be reviled.

  Now that he was out of uniform, Brian would take it as his job to manually realign the thinking of any motherfucker who got near him with a bad word for the men fighting this stupid fucking war.

  “I might stop in at the barber.”

  ~oOo~

  He didn’t get a haircut or a shave. In town, as Faye went into the beauty parlor, towing her kids along, Brian tried to go into the barber. But it was full of old men talking politics, which meant talking about Vietnam, and he’d made it less than five minutes before he had to get his ass out of there. The World War II vets were almost as bad as the hippies. They’d fought a war and thought they knew. But what they knew was different. Their war had been truly righteous. So they didn’t know this one.

  Instead, he’d gone into Sally’s and collected his nephews, under the guise of being a good brother. He’d taken the boys to the soda shop and waited for Faye to join them. Then he’d driven her to the market and helped her with groceries. He’d built Tinker Toys with Paul that afternoon, and they’d watched reruns of The Big Valley and Bonanza on afternoon TV.

  Lenny came home, and they had a couple beers while Faye fixed supper. Brian did the dishes while Faye bathed the boys and Lenny watched the news.

  It was all a normal day in a normal life in a normal Oklahoma winter.

  When the dishes were done, Brian was surprised to hear what sounded like news still on the television. He tried to time it so the news had given way to Bewitched or The Lucy Show, or maybe that Star Trek show that had started while he was in-country.

  Hanging the dish towel on the oven door handle, Brian went to the living room. Lenny was in his easy chair, sitting forward, his after-supper beer forgotten.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Brian asked, watching the stuttering video on the screen. It was the middle of the night in ‘Nam.

  “The North Vietnamese attacked during the night. A bunch of places.”

  “But it’s Tet. It’s their biggest holiday. There’s always a cease-fire for Tet.” He came all the way into the room. “Fuck, that’s Saigon! Did they fucking take Saigon?” His heart swelled and pounded, shoving blood too quickly through veins that had only sewed back up a few weeks ago. His whole chest ached. The pain throbbed down his arm.

  “I don’t know,” Lenny said.

  Of course he didn’t know. There was no reason he needed to, from his square little living room in Oklahoma. This safe little place where war never came.

  “I gotta go,” Brian said, and turned to the door.

  “Brian! Where—”

  He was out the door, shoving his arms into his coat, before Lenny finished the question.

  He still had the keys to Faye’s station wagon in his pocket, but he didn’t take that. Instead, he heaved up the door to the garage. Parked inside, under cover since he’d put it against the back wall the day before he’d left home for Southeast Asia, was a 1961 Harley Davidson panhead chopper. His pride and joy, once upon a time. He’d ridden through all contiguous forty-eight states in that saddle. Back in the days when he’d felt trapped in his little square Oklahoma life and wanted to spread out and see what more the world had to offer.

  Now he knew. What the world had to offer was blood and pain, greed and cruelty. Empty promises and lies stuffed full.

  He uncovered the bike and took the keys off Lenny’s pegboard. After more than two years, it probably wouldn’t start. Even if it did, it was a windy twenty degrees on a dark January night. He had his coat on, but no gloves. He didn’t know how long his bad shoulder would hold up, managing the onerous weight and fickle steering of his chopper.

  It needed a couple kicks, but it started. And Brian didn’t care about the cold, or his shoulder. Nothing he could do to it here would approach the pain he’d felt over there.

  He just had to ride.

  ~oOo~

  Four weeks, he’d been home, and hadn’t thought to ride. All that time feeling trapped in Faye’s house, in Oklahoma, in his own head, where the jungle twisted through his every waking and dreaming thought, and he hadn’t thought to ride. He hadn’t healed enough yet, sure—he probably hadn’t healed enough even now—but he hadn’t even thought of it. That joy, that freedom, had been bludgeoned out of him.

  But fifteen minutes in the saddle, and Brian’s head was light. The wind in his face blew the war right out, let him breathe, let his heart settle. The cold was dry and sharp, the perfect opposite of the wet heat of the jungle. It lanced across his knuckles, his cheekbones, as if it meant to slice him open, and it felt fucking fantastic. Anything that was not Vietnam was a blessing. Even frostbite.

  He had a destination in mind, but he took the long way to it. Right now, on a bike he’d left behind before he became a different man—a monster, like Lenny had said—Brian was himself again, and in no hurry to let go.

  ~oOo~

  He rode to the VFW hall in Norman. It was a place where old soldiers spent their days reliving their time of glory, and he’d already come to dislike it, but he knew Collie would be there tonight. Collier Berhardt had been a career Marine and was a veteran of both Korea and Vietnam. Like Brian, he’d gone over in the first big push in 1965.

  Though he’d made it through Korea without taking a hit, he’d made it only nine months in Vietnam before a bullet in the face had taken out an eye and the hearing on that side, and put the end to his military career.

  He’d been in and out of ‘Nam early, while there was still a thought they were fighting the good fight, but Collie had been in Korea. He was smart, and he was cynical, and he knew.

  They’d met less than a month ago, the first night Brian had come to the VFW to try to find his fit somewhere. Collie had seemed to sense his need. He’d bought Brian a couple beers and got him talking. He was about the only human being in the whole United States of America Brian felt like he could talk to—and like he never had to say a word and could still be understood.

  Brian walked into the VFW. The television was on, but the special news report had returned to regularly scheduled programing, diverting the attention of the sheep back to blue skies and funny redheads, reassuring them all that what was going on on the other side of the world was nothing to worry about, nothing to fear. They could go on living their square little lives.

  “D!” Collie called and raised his hand. “Barkeep! We need whiskey!”

  Brian crossed the room and shook the hand Collie dropped and offered to him.

  “I knew you’d show up tonight, “ Collie rasped in the voice of an old Marine NCO. “Ain’t this some fuckery we got goin’ now?”

  “Yeah. Fucking hell. What do you know?” Brian sat at the table, ready to talk.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mo pounded on the bathroom door. “Maggie! Come on! Quit faffin’ about!”

  Her first class today started at eight o’clock, and she was still in her robe and pajamas because her fifteen-year-old cousin was hogging the house’s one bathroom.

  “I just need five more minutes!” Maggie shouted back.

  She had to be sitting at her desk when class began. Professor Stenowski tortured latecomers, and Economics was hard enough without becoming the target of his abuse. Besides, the spring semester had only four weeks left, and she could not afford to miss a lecture with finals coming up so soon.

  Mo kicked the door. “AGGGH, I’m gonna batter ya!”

  “Maureen Quinn! Enough with that racket!”

  Mo stepped back and turned in the hallway to face her aunt. “Sorry, Aunt Bridie. But she’s makin’ me late for class!”

  The door opened, and Maggie sauntered out just then, the picture of innocent ignorance. Her hair was in a ponytail, with a teased pouf at the top of her head, and she wore a cute flowered, sleeveless dress—long enough to get her out of the house in it, but short enough to get her pretty legs noticed. However, in the forty-five minutes she’d spent hogging the bathroom, her
bra size had grown about four cups, and her mother noticed that at once.

  Aunt Bridie grabbed her daughter’s arm and snatched at the neckline of her dress, reaching in and plucking wads of tissues out. “Absolutely not! I’ll not have my daughter struttin’ around like a tart!”

  “Ma! Stop!” Maggie wailed, and suddenly there was practically a brawl in the hall, mother and daughter wrestling over wads of tissues—which hadn’t looked like anything else anyway.

  Served Maggie right. Mo used the distraction to duck, at last, into the bathroom and hurry through her morning ablutions.

  As she stripped from her nightclothes, Mo caught sight of her body in the mirror. She didn’t need tissues. She’d needed a bra since first class, while she was still in Ireland, and she still remembered the way Aunt Bridie had looked at her when she’d stepped off the plane. Her aunt had expected a little twelve-year-old girl. But Mo couldn’t remember ever being a little girl, not truly. She’d always looked, and felt, older than her years.

  Now she was nineteen. She was a good girl, but her aunt was ever on the lookout for her to become what she apparently seemed to be.

  As she stepped into the tub for her lukewarm shower—Maggie had hogged the hot while she’d hogged the room—a sharp rap on the door drew her attention.

  “Mo,” Aunt Bridie called. “I need you to take Maggie to school today. She’s runnin’ late and can’t miss first period.”

  Of course. Mo dropped her head to the tile wall and gave it a nice hard rap. Then she opened her mouth to protest—if she had to stop by the high school, she’d miss her own class for sure—but decided there was no time for that spat. And, well, knowing she was going to miss Econ took the pressure off right now, at least. She’d have to get the lecture notes from somebody.