Imagine you’re a novelist, how would you tell your story?” I’d never read a novel all the way through for the reason you know. But all the same I’d started a good few, often more out of curiosity than anything else and, I admit, to convince myself that plenty of books weren’t worth the effort of going any further. I’d noticed that Americans novelists often started with their family background. As if you couldn’t talk about a tree without mentioning the roots. I asked Leitner if I had to follow chronological order and he was categorical: “You’re under no obligation of any kind.” All the same I did what everyone does. I moved a pawn and we were off. He had a notebook by his side but he didn’t use it often. I told him that when I was a child I’d had plenty of time to think about life and death for reasons I would go into later. I know people are adamant that the two things are completely different, and you can understand why. Even when I was a kid, I was fascinated by how much adults prized life and how scared they were of death. Even the most religious of them. I remembered one of our neighbors, a nice woman but so fat her children sometimes had to take her around in a wheelbarrow. She was really religious. An evangelist pastor often visited her. She had what you’d call a pretty crummy life—no money, no husband, restricted movements, three young kids including a daughter who was autistic—and she couldn’t even take a quiet breather because she breathed like a bull. Sometimes in spring, when the weather started to get better, her kids would put her out in the garden. She’d stay there for two or three hours without doing anything. On the other side of the fence, we’d try to stay out of her field of vision because she’d collar you and inflict these endless monologues on you. One time she caught me by chance and kept me there for a whole hour. Caring about other people was too much for her, but contemplating the disaster of her own life was an inexhaustible topic. She told me about her fear of death. Because I was only about eleven, she must have thought I wouldn’t understand what she was talking about. “I’m afraid of nothingness, Al, whatever my life is like down here, it’s better than nothingness. There’s nothing after death, we’re supposed to have a soul that makes us different than the rest of the universe but the flies eat it in a few days.” As she was speaking, a big black fly landed on her damp, greasy skin. That fly gorging itself on that grotesque woman was the perfect image of an unequal struggle. She kept trying to chase it away, but her gestures were too slow because of how heavy her arms were. That fear of death ruined her life, and I was the only person around her who could understand her. I thought maybe I should kill her, to relieve her suffering, then I told myself it was none of my business and anyway nobody would realize I’d acted out of generosity. I’d gotten this far with my story when I started to feel incredibly weary. Leitner was surprised.
“I won’t go so far as to say that I envied that woman for being afraid of death, which is something I’ve never felt, but I did sense that it was a potential source of pleasure. No more than that.”
I started again as if nothing had happened, changing the subject to the size of my father’s feet.
“My father looks like John Wayne. He’s a lot taller than Wayne, but from his face you’d say they were brothers. You can see they’re both good, brave men. Above all they walk the same way. I wondered why for a long time before I discovered they both have small feet for their height. For example I’m seven feet tall and take size 14 shoes. My father was about 6’ 10” and only took size 8. Can you imagine size 8? It’s like walking on stumps.”
I could see that Leitner was pleased with how talkative I was. A patient who speaks without being asked is certainly better than the opposite.
“My father killed more people than I did. At least thirty, and he never even boasted about it.”
“But it was for a good cause,” Leitner said. “Someone once wrote that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. I also killed people, Al, in Normandy in 1944.”
He didn’t seem any prouder of it than my father.
“You think that, in two years, I could enlist for Vietnam?”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Maybe killing with the blessing of my country might rehabilitate me. That’s how my father started. He’d stolen a motorcycle near Los Angeles and cussed the cops who came to arrest him. They found out he was kind of a deserter, because he’d run out on his job in a factory making war planes. He’d been working as an electrician at McDonnell, installing electrical systems in B-25s. He’d had an itch to take to the road and so he decided to take some time off. Since he couldn’t afford a Harley, he stole one and rode up the 101 as far as Olympia. He hadn’t been planning to cross the border or anything, but because they suspected him of desertion, they gave him three years. A few weeks after he went inside, he was offered the chance to join one of the Special Forces brigades that used guys like him. That’s how he got out of prison in Los Angeles. The military police took him on a train to Helena. My father said that when he arrived he thought Fort Harrison was like a movie set. Rows of wooden huts on a vast flat plain surrounded by threatening mountains. Most of the men stationed there had been in trouble with the law, but he soon found out that none of them had committed a murder or a serious crime. They were just petty crooks, street fighters, and my father liked them. Because of his size, nobody ever thought to cross him, but I remember him telling me about his gut fear of violence. He was so afraid, he’d vowed to overcome it, convinced you couldn’t live a decent life if you’re always scared. That bunch of roughnecks eventually knuckled down to training. It was meant to turn them into an elite troop, one of the most highly skilled commando units in the United States Army. A winter spent climbing the Rockies, skiing down between the trees, learning to fly light planes and use all the guns under the sun made them fit for duty. That was all my father ever told me. I know he was sent to Italy. But too many of his buddies died and he’d lost any desire to boast about his experiences. But to me, he was a hero, there was no doubt about it.
“I never really liked Montana. The winters there are colder than the grave and the summers are incredibly hot.”
I’d gotten this far in my story when I realized I was going to checkmate Leitner.