Chapter

Twenty-One

(Friday, October 5, 2018)

I drive to Mol’s Junkyard with the mid-afternoon sun blaring through my windshield, as indisputable and painful as the truth. Whatever it is, it always hurts. I park the Jeep at a truck stop in Allendale and douse my nerves with stale coffee and heavy metal while I wait for the dark. When the sun sinks below the horizon and the truckers pull in and bed down for the night, I hit the road. Dad is sure to be passed out drunk by now. Or well on his way.

In the glow of my flashlight, Mol’s is straight out of a cheesy horror flick. The kind where you know what’s coming, but you jump and clutch your chest anyway, heart racing. A soft light streams from the trailer, muted by the years-old grime on the windows. The only sounds come from the woods. The hypnotic buzz of the crickets. The animals, darting unseen through the brush. The soft rustle of the wind.

I walk past the old pickup, down the fence line, covering my mouth to block the smell and counting squirrel pelts as I go. I can’t help it. The breeze blows their tails, makes them twitch at the edge of my vision. At least counting gives my mind something to do. By the time I reach the tattered American flag at the perimeter, I’m at thirty.

I skirt under the fence and scan the ground, sweeping my flashlight left to right, until I find a good walking stick. Without it, I’m as vulnerable as a soldier in the thickest thick of the jungle, lost and alone. Because where I’m going—my father’s hunting shed in the forbidden grove of sycamores—there are bound to be traps.

My pace is turtle-slow, cautious. I lead with a tap of the stick, making my way through the knee-high grass, across the field that reminds me of Wendall’s mindscape, toward the tree line. I pass one sycamore, then another. It grows impossibly dark; the space beyond my flashlight, a black hole of nothingness. In that inky stillness, finally, the memory breaks free, casting off its chains like silly string and bowling me over with its strength. Its vividness.

I hadn’t meant to break my father’s rules, the last time I’d come out here, to the sycamore grove. But Roscoe had been missing for two days. At first, I’d only stood at the boundary, whistling and calling into the wind. Then I’d heard something—a dog’s whimper?—and I’d followed it without thinking, the trees complicit in my betrayal. Or had they been against me all along? Soldiers of the wandering ghosts my father warned me about, trapped in limbo between this life and the next. Hapless victims of a bad death.

The trees haven’t changed. They swallow me in their cover, shielding me with their pale bodies as I move. I still remember the way, though the path is grown over. My father had built the shed himself. Before he’d lost his mind, we’d come here together to scout for deer or rabbits, laughing and eating marshmallows straight from the bag.

I duck under a spindly branch, my shoulder brushing against tree bark. The first sign of Crazy Krandel is nailed to the trunk, long dead. I shine my light on the snake, its skin dried out like a raisin. Only the rattle at the end of its tail gives it away. Knowing my father and his traps, it had most certainly been alive and very, very angry when he’d staked it here. Another sweep of the flashlight reveals a large nail in the low-hanging limb up ahead. No sign of a snake though. It had probably rotted and dropped to the ground where it turned to dust like all dead things.

Fifty yards away, I spot the shed. Its silvery gray wood and sheet-metal roof the color of Wendall’s tombstones. It’s leaning a bit but otherwise intact. I feel inexplicable relief and dread, both.

I’d been nearly this close when my father had caught me last time. One hand had whipped me around by the shoulder, the other struck my cheek hard. My father’s eyes, wild as I’d ever seen them. He’d dragged me behind him, inside, muttering about Charlie and how he’d finally realized exactly what I was.

A goddamned spy.

You’ve been working for Charlie all this time, recording me.

Where is it? The wire you’re wearing?

The memory is a drug. It goes straight to my head. I slow my pace even further, taking my time, tapping the ground with my walking stick.

A few steps to the shed and the earth gives way under the stick’s pressure, collapsing onto itself. Good ole punji pit, as my father had said, and I lean over it, peering down inside. But the hole is empty. No finely sharpened bamboo to cripple an intruder.

I study it with awe and horror, poking the dirt-and-leaf cover with the stick. A two-step Charlie, maybe. That would make sense. My father and I had never made one, but he’d told me about the Viet Cong traps where a venomous snake awaited an unlucky soldier. One step. Two steps. Dead. Whatever snake he’d doomed down here had died years ago.

I crouch lower, shining my light into the muck. And lower still. Until a pair of yellow eyes flash at me and I scream, jumping over the pit and landing safely on the other side, my walking stick tumbling from my hand.

I grip my flashlight tighter and let out a shaky breath, a hysterical laugh, as my thoughts race—skunk? raccoon? possum?—but a thwack to my head silences everything.

Shit. Trip wire.

Left ear ringing, I hit the dirt, hard as concrete in the summer drought. I roll onto my back with a groan and watch the pendulum swing above me among the stars. On the end of the rope, a bowling ball my dad had probably plucked out of a dumpster.

The world dims, but before it goes black, I see my father’s face. Not now but then. His mouth frothing with anger as he’d pushed me inside the shed.

The wire! he’d yelled, grabbing at my T-shirt. He began to sob. Where is it? Tell me now or I’ll have no choice.

I’d opened my mouth but found I couldn’t speak.

Tears and snot streaming down his face, he’d held up the rifle and pointed it at my chest. Its barrel, a mouth that couldn’t be satisfied. Strip, he’d told me. All of it.

My eyes roll back as the sky fades in and out. Somewhere, somehow, I hear Dakota’s laughter.

“I’m not a spy.” As if my voice can reach into the past. As if it can carry that far. As if I can still save myself.

****

Fire. My feet are on fire.

From out of shadowy blankness, the thought rushes in with urgency. I open my eyes. Sit up, head throbbing. World whirling like a demented merry-go-round.

Fire.

I look at my feet, shine my flashlight there. Sneakers, intact. No stakes or spikes or rabid animals.

Fire.

Pull up a pants leg. Now I’m dancing.

Ants. Fire ants. Just like the ones that marched in formation to and from the kitchen window every time Dad left a half-eaten can of Beanee Weenees on the counter.

I brush at my legs with desperation, skirting past the dropped bowling ball. I see now how close I’d come. The thick tree cover had broken the ball’s descent, slowing it just enough to stop me from being a strike. A single pin knocked down for good.

I run all-out toward the shed. Foolish, I know. But a part of me would like to die out here, impaled by one of my father’s booby traps. Because he’d be the one to find me. He’d have to live with that.

The door to the shed sticks a bit, but I muscle it with my shoulder, and it gives way to the darkness, dank and absolute. I stumble inside, breaking through a spider’s web and tripping over a few empty beer cans as I swat my legs and gulp in the musty air. On the shelf across from me, I find a half-full water bottle. I uncap it and splash it onto my lower half. Then I cup the rest in my hand and splash my face too, hoping it will ease the dull pounding. Clear the blurry spots from my field of vision.

The fire finally doused, I scan the small room, trying to collect myself. I’ve been trying to do that forever, it seems. Retrieve my scattered pieces. With foolish hope, I pull the tattered cord attached to the end of a bare lightbulb. It flickers briefly, illuminating the dirt floor, the spiderwebbed corners—I delight in its warm glow—before dying with a ceremonious pop. Figures. Flashlight it is, then.

This place is not what I expected. I’d expected evidence, proof of a dichotomy. Innocence or guilt. Good or evil. Father or monster. I thought for certain I’d find it here, the answer I’d been looking for. Instead, I get Olde English, rusted tools, and a cluster of spiders.

But there is one thing I recognize. My father’s footlocker. I’d helped him lug it here. Again, his shrink’s idea. To put some distance between him and the war. As if.

I examine its face, shut tight and sealed with an old padlock. Surely this must be the reason he’d forbade me from coming here. I prop the flashlight on the shelf and take the shovel from its hook. Then I swing it like an axe at the lock, flinching with every strike. I imagine the sound traveling through the cool night air and back to the trailer like a will-o’-the-wisp, sneaking in through the keyhole and rousing my father from his fitful sleep. He’d come lumbering through the grove like a giant, with his rifle at the ready. And I’d have to prove—again—I’m not a spy after all. Only his unlucky daughter.

I stop noticing the strikes and just swing, harder and faster. Until I’m lost in the rhythm of it. Until sweat drips from my nose. Until the grinding metal sends up sparks. Until finally, finally, the lock snaps.

Kneeling beside it, I lift the lid. The underside is plastered with old-fashioned pinup girls. Dad had a thing for buxom blondes. Not unlike my ex-husband, apparently. I lift the first item with care, holding it up to the light and setting it beside me. A slightly moist set of army fatigues, with a large tear in one of the legs. It’s been repaired, haphazardly stitched together with white thread. A helmet, slightly dented. A large tarp and a rucksack, caked with mud that flakes off in my hand as I examine it. As if my father had only just returned from the battlefield.

Further down, I find his medal—the Purple Heart—resting on his neatly folded dress blues. As a girl, I’d coveted it, pinning it to my doll’s dress when my father wasn’t looking. Until I’d learned what it meant and left it quarantined in its box, set in the drawer. The ribbon, once vibrant, is now the drab color of a day-old bruise.

His uniform too has seen better days. I spot one of the missing gold buttons in the corner of the trunk and roll it between my fingers, feeling like I might cry. The last time I’d seen my father in his uniform, we’d buried my mother at Roseview Cemetery. I hadn’t expected him to show. Not after the things he’d done, the way I’d run from him and never gone back. I remember him cresting the grassy hill and taking a place at the back of the small crowd, his face stoic. Not unlike the toy soldiers my mother had hung on our Christmas tree.

I peer down into the empty footlocker. Judging by the length of this thing, there should be at least six more inches of space. I run my hand along the bottom, then rap at it, listening to the hollow thump of my knuckles.

I spring to my feet and search the shelf, retrieving a screwdriver and my flashlight. The beam of light reveals a thin opening at the inner edges of the locker, and I work the flat end of the tool inside, prying up the bottom.

Strip! All of it! Down to your skivvies. My father’s voice comes back to me, and I spin around expecting him to be there, looming over my shoulder. Instead, there’s only the half-open door, drooping from its top hinge and swaying slightly, governed by the wind. And the shadow of a sycamore made menacing by a trick of the light.

Shaking off a shiver, I turn back and reach into the hidden compartment and withdraw a stack of papers, stamped with a red CONFIDENTIAL and bearing the seal of the United States Army. I lean back against the footlocker and begin to read.

Sworn testimony of Private First Class Victor Krandel of Bravo Company, the 4th Battalion of the 10th Infantry, Ground Assault Division

Agent Cooley: Good morning, Private First Class Krandel. My name is Mark Cooley. I am an officer with the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command. Do you understand why you are here today?

Private First Class Krandel: To testify about possible incidents of criminal misconduct during the time of my service in Vietnam.

Agent Cooley: That’s correct. As I understand it, you recently contacted C.I.D. to clarify or retract sworn statements you provided to the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group. Is that correct?

Private First Class Krandel: Yes, sir.

Agent Cooley: And you now allege you have knowledge of misconduct by your superior officer?

Private First Class Krandel: I believe so.

Agent Cooley: Is that an affirmative?

Private First Class Krandel: Yes, sir, I do. Cam Chi was the worst of it.

Agent Cooley: Cam Chi village in Vietnam?

Private First Class Krandel; Yes, sir.

Agent Cooley: Tell us what you recall.

Private First Class Krandel: That night we had orders for a planned operation there. At Cam Chi.

Agent Cooley: When was this?

Private First Class Krandel: December 30, 1969. My friend, John, had been hurt real bad by a booby trap just outside of the village. Damn punji pit. A lot worse than the one that got me a few months later.

Agent Cooley: You are referring to Private John Bailey of Bravo Company, correct?

Private First Class Krandel: Yes, sir.

Agent Cooley: Let the record reflect Private Bailey was impaled by a Vietnamese tiger trap one mile south of the Cam Chi village on December 29, 1969. He was airlifted by MedEvac and succumbed to his injuries that same night.

Agent Cooley: You say there was a planned operation. What were your orders?

Private First Class Krandel: To search and destroy.

Agent Cooley: What did you understand that to mean?

Private First Class Krandel: Officially or unofficially? Officially it meant to kill any enemy combatants—the VC. Unofficially, we understood that meant everybody. Men, women, children. All of ’em.

Agent Cooley: Who gave you those orders?

Private First Class Krandel: We got ’em secondhand. But I figure they came from Pugh down to Grady.

Agent Cooley: For clarification, do you mean Captain Gerald Pugh and Lieutenant Wendall Grady?

Private First Class Krandel: Yes, sir.

Agent Cooley: What happened when you arrived at Cam Chi?

Private First Class Krandel: When we first made our approach, the place looked deserted, so we set up camp and waited a while. We were comin’ off a long trek through some real swampy jungle. I’m talkin’ knee-deep in slime. I was glad for the break. My skin had literally started peelin’ off my feet. That night, Lieutenant Grady handed out pep pills to help us stay awake. Just in case Charlie showed up. At daybreak, one of my buddies saw some mama-sans walking back to the village with water, a few little kids right behind ’em. We asked Lieutenant Grady what to do.

Agent Cooley: Did Lieutenant Grady give any orders at that time?

Private First Class Krandel: Yes, sir. He told me to fire upon them.

Agent Cooley: You specifically?

Private First Class Krandel: Yes, sir.

Agent Cooley: Do you know why?

Private First Class Krandel: I never asked him. That would have been insubordination. But he’d done it before. I was the baby of our platoon. I guess I figured he wanted to toughen me up.

Agent Cooley: What did you do?

Private First Class Krandel: Right off, I tried to finagle out of it. I told him they were just little kids. And he said something like, “Tough petunias, Krandel. In ten years, they’ll be full-sized VC.” I did as I was told. I fired on the group of ’em. Killed two women and five kids. Lieutenant Grady told me I’d done a real fine job. That I’d bumped up his kill count. Our unit’s kill count. Back then, the units with the highest numbers were earnin’ five days R and R at the beach in Vung Tau.

Agent Cooley: What happened next?

Private First Class Krandel: Grady ordered us to set fire to the whole village. If anything moved, we were supposed to kill it.

Agent Cooley: Is that what he said?

Private First Class Krandel: I don’t remember his exact words. It’s been forty somethin’ years. But yeah, basically, smoke ’em out and kill anything that moves. A few of the unit started setting fire to the huts.

Agent Cooley: Did you set fire to anything?

Private First Class Krandel: Not right then. Grady told me to follow him. He’d seen some VC run into a hootch at the edge of the village. So we went in together with our weapons drawn. There were three young gals inside.

Agent Cooley: How old were they?

Private First Class Krandel: Hard to say. Maybe fifteen, sixteen.

Agent Cooley: Were they armed?

Private First Class Krandel: Not that I saw. One of them was hurt real bad. Her leg was all mangled. Grady shot her point blank in the head.

Agent Cooley: Did he say anything to you?

Private First Class Krandel: Not a word. But he ordered me to have my way with one of the girls.

Agent Cooley: He ordered you?

Private First Class Krandel: Well, he sliced off her top with his bayonet and said, “Have a little fun, Krandel. You’ve gotta loosen up.” I told him no, that I wouldn’t do it. He said, “Suit yourself,” and he shot her too.

Agent Cooley: Where did he shoot her?

Private First Class Krandel: In the head.

Agent Cooley: What happened after that?

Private First Class Krandel: He told me I had one more chance to show him I wasn’t a pussy. This time, I attempted to . . . I tried, but I couldn’t perform.

Agent Cooley: What do you mean perform?

Private First Class Krandel: Jesus Christ. I couldn’t get it up. Is that clear enough?

Agent Cooley: Yes, thank you. I want to be sure we have all the facts on record. Then, what did Lieutenant Grady do?

Private First Class Krandel: He shoved me aside and said, “This is how a real man does it.” He raped her while I watched. After he was done, he put the bayonet in my hand and told me to finish her and Zippo the whole place, so I did.

Agent Cooley: Please explain what you mean by finish her.

Private First Class Krandel: I slashed her throat, and then I set her on fire.

There’s more—pages and pages more—but my eyes can’t look away from that sentence. I read it again and again and again, the words taking their gruesome shapes in my imagination. But it’s not a young and frightened Vietnamese girl in a remote village some fifty years ago but my Dakota. Here and now.

I flip the page, look and look away. The kind of one-second, side-eyed glance I’d give my dad on one of his bad days. A how-bad-is-it-really glance. I catch words like napalm, ordered, kill, girl, rape. Another flip of the page, more words. Paranoid, PTSD, therapist, meds.

My stomach bottoms out, dropping like a trap door. But I keep turning, my need to know the unknown outweighing the horror of knowing.

Sworn Statement of Dr. Patty Frank, Psychologist, Veteran’s Administration

August 1, 2016

Victor Krandel first sought treatment at the Veteran’s Administration after he returned from Vietnam in 1971. At that time, he was diagnosed with amphetamine-induced psychosis and post-Vietnam syndrome, which we know today as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Mr. Krandel was prescribed chlorpromazine, an antipsychotic, but he stopped taking the medication after a few years due to the reported side effects, including drowsiness and impotence. Shortly thereafter, his marriage ended because of his wife’s reported concerns about his level of aggression toward her and their daughter, Mollie. She also made allegations of sexual abuse against Mr. Krandel, including marital rape and the inappropriate touching of Mollie, who was approximately six years old at that time. Those allegations were never substantiated.

After being granted full custody of his daughter, Mr. Krandel enjoyed a period of stability, maintaining compliance with a new medication regime and participating regularly in treatment. Treatment records suggest Mr. Krandel’s symptoms of paranoia remained present but were well-controlled with medication. Though his experiences in Vietnam were tangentially addressed in therapy, Mr. Krandel was typically described as reluctant to disclose any information and resistant to change. Diagnoses from that period are consistent with my own: Schizoaffective Disorder (possibly amphetamine-induced) and Alcohol Dependence, though some clinicians suspected Schizotypal Personality Disorder.

In the mid-1980s, Mr. Krandel dropped out of treatment with the Veteran’s Administration. According to Mr. Krandel, he believed the government was controlling him through the use of psychotropic medication, a belief he continues to profess on an intermittent basis. As a result, his compliance with his medication regime has remained inconsistent. Mr. Krandel began treatment with me in the early 2000s, after he was hospitalized on a 5150 psychiatric hold due to his being a danger to others. At the time, Mr. Krandel had threatened a motorist who was stranded outside his compound. Though he was ambivalent about treatment, Mr. Krandel was motivated by the possibility of renewed contact with his estranged daughter and his young granddaughter. As a part of trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, I encouraged Mr. Krandel to provide a detailed account of the severe trauma he sustained during his service in Vietnam, which included serious misconduct on the part of his commanding officer that he had reportedly denied during prior interviews with the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group. Based on my knowledge of Mr. Krandel, I believe his account of events to be true and accurate to—

“What in the Sam Hill are you doing in here? I damn near blew your head off. Ain’t nobody been in this shed for years. I thought you were a wanderin’ ghost.”

I expel a loud breath and toss the papers into the trunk. They scatter like doves against a dark sky. He hasn’t told me to, but I put my hands in the air anyway. Better safe than dead, he’d say every night when we checked the booby traps outside the trailer.

“You happy now?” he asks.

“Happy?” It comes out in a sob. A sob directed at his shadow on the wall, because I can’t turn to look at him. I’m still fifteen, standing before him naked and ashamed.

“You can fit me in one of your neat little boxes like the rest of ’em. Shoot me up with enough meds to kill a horse, ship me off to the loony bin, and call it a day.”

“How could I be happy about this?” I flap my hands, desperately. Like the hooked fish I am. “What did you do, Dad? What did you do?”

The silence is absolute. The crickets go mute. Even the wind holds its breath. I face him, then. Him and his lantern and his trusty rifle. His face, so much like my own. So worn down with shock, incapable of it now. Like a toy that’s been wounded too many times.

“What did you do?” I clench my teeth to dam the rage. It surges up my throat, unstoppable. “To. My. Daughter.” To me. To Roscoe. But that stays unspoken.

“She wanted to get to know her grandpa. I met up with her a few times at the library. What’s the harm in that? I knew you’d blow a damn gasket.”

I see it unfold in a kind of fast slow-motion, spastic as a spliced film reel. Kill, kill, kill. I’ll bash his head in with the flashlight. Hit him till he stops breathing. Kill without mercy! Better yet, the shovel. Then I’ll dig a hole with it and bury him in it. The same way he buried Roscoe. That’s the spirit of the bayonet! No, no. I’ll set a fire and let it devour him. Lick by lick. The same way he—

I stand so fast my head spins. My blood rushing, an electric current. I’m at the wall in one stride, shovel in my hand in a death grip. I rear back, ready to swing.

I go cold, when I see it, the freeze coming from deep inside me.

Strands of hair in the flashlight’s glow cling to a protruding nail just below the shelf. I have to know they’re real. So I reach for them, touch them. They tickle my palm. Real as real could be. I’d know that color anywhere.

It’s not pink, Mom. It’s rose gold.

****

I am drunk. So drunk I probably won’t be able to stand. Yet, here I am driving. Doing a mighty fine job of keeping it between the lines, if I do say so myself. Atta girl, Mollie. A chip off the old—

The thought bobs up and down in my head, a persistent little bugger, until I drown it.

Thank God for all-night truck stops and cheap vodka.

I make the turn into the drive, a little wide, but that’s alright. I never liked that rose bush anyway.

“Holy shit.” That’s how it sounds in my head. But it probably comes out different, soaked in vodka. What else should I say when I see two men sitting on my porch? Side by side and not speaking. I wonder how long they’ve been there, stalemated.

I open the door, and Sawyer moves first. I’m not sure if that makes him the winner or the loser. I was wrong, though. I can stand. Sort of.

“Sawyer,” I say, collapsing against his chest, my body suddenly sandbag heavy. He touches the swollen spot on my temple, and I wince a little.

“What happened to your head?”

That Sawyer. Ever the optimist. As if getting clocked with a bowling ball is the worst of it. I giggle. I can’t help it.

Over his shoulder, I hear a voice. “For God’s sakes, Mol, you’re plastered.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” I’m feeling proud of myself for my clever retort. But I push my luck. “Lieutenant Grant Sawyer, meet my sorry excuse for a Cole. I mean, ex-husband meet my Sawyer. Oh, screw it.”