Okamoto
Howdy! Last week, I asked if you’d like to see more fiction published here. The results of this poll, surprisingly and thankfully, were overwhelmingly in favorem. So while I’m hard at work drafting a new story, here’s one I wrote back in 2021, my most prolific year of fiction production. I do not think I ever submitted it to any literary magazines, as I had a few gripes with its structure, but I feel like there is lots here to like. I’m very excited to finally share this one with the world.
Cassidy’s body was a tapestry of pain. That’s what David first noticed about the man. There were bruises, bite marks, small crimson burns on his shoulders and chest that were decidedly cigarette burns, and a thin sharp scar below his jawbone. He and David were first in line for the shower that morning, and they trampled out into the frozen morning, stripped down to their skin and ducked under the makeshift shower—a bucket dangling from a stake supported by rubber bands. David was shivering, but the fat and muscle on Cassidy’s body stood firm, without a ripple, and he was still and calm, he was like a big red bear, his fat holding on to heat better and keeping his insides warm. David hugged himself. He thought about how his father used to say that it felt good to be a soldier. The greatness of man on a mission. But there was, as David saw it, no greatness to be found in the open fields of Vietnam. Only the ghost of hope, and the shadow of death.
David Okamoto’s father had fought in the Korean War. Having returned home shortly after the Armistice Agreement, Richard Okamoto convinced his family to leave Blue Ash, Ohio behind and settle down in Cleveland. There, Richard started working as a mechanic. A little while later, he graduated to car salesman. They were doing all right, they all agreed, and David’s father attributed all their success to the war. “It opened people’s minds,” he’d say. “For many people, the war was an opportunity. The war showed guys like me what we, what America is capable of. If we can fight to defend others, we sure as hell can fight to defend what’s ours.” Though he was the grandson of an immigrant, no strings tied Richard to the old country—he was an American man, born and bred, and he loved his country; for the most part, the country even loved him back.
In the fall of ’68, David enlisted for the Vietnam War. It was and was not a decision he’d made with his father in mind. Richard had never explicitly pushed his son towards the military life. But that spark in his eye whenever he told them about one of his clients’ sons who’d gone to fight for democracy, it told its own story. And there were other things. With time, his father’s dinnertime tales of war grew longer and more passionate. Sometimes, after such a dinner, he’d track down his old uniform and try to put it on. Then he’d say, “Damn thing still fits, huh?” David’s room, too, had been invaded with green plastic soldiers, makeshift “medals of honor,” and various toy rifles and pistols. David himself wasn’t sure about when he had caught the bug, but he continued adding to the collection on his own. He asked for Sven Hassel novels for his twelfth birthday, begged his mother for a kid-size military uniform one Halloween. Then he started dreaming about being a hero. The last man standing in an open field, blood on his uniform—but not his blood—staring up at his general perched up on a horse, on a hill that eclipsed the sun so that the general was his sun, and raising his hand in salute to this man. On the eve of his twentieth birthday, he informed his father of his decision. Richard Okamoto cried that night. In short order, preparations were made for David’s departure. A special permit needed to be obtained, because David was myopic. His father arranged things with a client who was an optometrist. Then, Richard drove his son to the airport, shook his hand, and left.
David arrived in Cam Ranh Bay in late September and was driven by convoy to a nearby offshoot of the main base. On the way, the men in the trucks were dropped off in pairs, or one by one, along the way, to various outposts. Eventually, his truck was the only one left, and he its only passenger. He felt apprehensive. He expected darkness, and hardened veterans with tales similar to his father’s and the monkish discipline to match. The farrago he found waiting for him out in the road under a dim streetlight almost made him smile with relief.
The sergeant, a burly man with a thick blonde mustache, introduced himself as Carl Schmidt. He looked like a German circus strongman, and his grip on David’s soft hand cemented that picture. But he quickly found that the sergeant was a pleasant and good-natured fellow, and his laugh shook tents like the midnight wind. As for the others, most of them liked David right from the start and made him feel at ease. He did not notice Cole Cassidy until the next day, at the shower stall.
Another thing that struck David about Cassidy was the color of his hair, a shade of red he’d never before associated with human hair. It was a brownish brick red, like wet rust, or like the surface of Mars on the cover of a pulp novel he used to love as a kid. The Desecration of Mars. Cassidy had a tick of running his hands over his scalp every now and then, like some men who rub their nose with their knuckles, as if to make sure it’s still there. Although close-cropped, Cassidy’s hair was undoubtedly beautiful and healthy, and David could imagine how good it would look when he was allowed to let it regrow.
Cassidy occupied the cot opposite David’s. Every night before lights out, Cassidy read from a thick, leather-bound hardcover, a book that even in his thick, meaty hands looked big, and which he guarded like the protector of a forbidden tome, locking it away in his trunk as soon as he was done with it. David learned from the others that this book was a rare edition of Wordsworth’s poetry, and that it was adorned with a crusty red spot, about whose origins numerous rumors circulated the camp. He didn’t know how they’d come by this information, as Cassidy never talked to anybody if he could help it, and, big as he was, nobody tried forcing him to. Strangely enough, however, Cassidy did follow them into the canteen tent every night and watched intently as they laughed and drank cheap bourbon from their tin cups. David didn’t drink; neither did his father ever drink. But boy, oh boy, did the other men drink. They pined for David’s company all the same, and, on many a night, he found himself in the center of their attention. The only other man who never indulged was Cassidy. David sometimes wondered why he even bothered following them, but he couldn’t begrudge a man’s need for company, regardless of his level of involvement in that company. One thing, however, David could not understand. Cassidy watched him. He couldn’t prove it, but he felt it, was sure of it.
One of the men, an Alabaman by the name of Whitey Kowalski, had known Cassidy in middle school. According to him, the story went that Cassidy’s old man, a mean drunk who’d fought in Korea, beat him and his mother black and blue. It was common to see him in school with a swollen eye, Whitey said. David thought back on the bruises. He couldn’t help feeling a pang of sympathy for this man he didn’t know, even though everybody else saw Cassidy as a bad omen.
One day, they received instructions to scout out a nearby village. They were to monitor the area and report back at the end of the day. The “village,” as they discovered, was no more than a shabby collection of shacks arranged like broken teeth in the center of a rice field. They knelt in that field for hours, their knees and backs cramping down in pain, and found nothing to report. They saw neither people, nor animals. The only thing moving in that field was the wind between the rice stalks.
Cassidy proved himself a reliable, if unsettling listener. He had respect for command, but David noticed how he would look Sgt. Schmidt in the eye whenever the sergeant was addressing him. All through the day, he felt a finger of ice creeping up and down his spine. He felt watched, observed. He wondered whether it was Cassidy again, or if they had missed something in the village. If somebody else had truly been watching them.
Nevertheless, Sgt. Schmidt reported the area as vacant. To celebrate their first success and the subsequent moment of relief from duty, the men crowded into the canteen tent with tin cups at the ready. Bourbon was flowing and they were feeling accomplished. The sergeant begged David to sing them all something. He had a very pleasant voice and carried songs from the old country. His great-grandmother had been a famous opera singer in Osaka. Accompanied by his melancholy tunes, they very quickly plunged deeply into their cups. Even Cassidy was nursing a tin cup, looking deeply into it as if lost in thought, and every now and again lifting his head up, it seemed, just to lock eyes with David.
As the night wore on, David noticed a change come into that look. Cassidy trained his eyes upon David with the stillness of a sniper. Everybody else was drunk in short order, but Cassidy kept his glassy eyes steady on him. David felt as if they were two men standing on empty ground, the only survivors of some calamity. For moments at a time, he forgot himself as he contemplated the seemingly infinite, reflective blackness of those eyes.
Cassidy slammed his cup onto the table and began to speak.
“Is this what it means to be a fucking soldier?” He rose to his feet and walked to stand in the center of the room. “A bunch of sad drunks and a mezzo-soprano? Look at yourselves, this is disgusting! If my daddy knew what’s become of the great U.S. Armed Forces, he’d come over here and beat the shit out of every one of you.”
All that betrayed his drunkenness was a faint slur of the soft vowels. He stood up straight as a Panzer gun, closing and unclosing his fists. “Heard you fuckers whisper behind my back. About me, about my daddy. Kowalski told you some things he thinks he knows, and now you think you understand, huh? Let me tell you so you know, boys, you don’t know shit about me.”
The sergeant was awake now and staring at the man. David put out a hand to help him up. “Oh, look at the blind bat there, playing the hero. That’s what you all think this is, huh? A company of heroes? God, you’re so fucking pathetic. There ain’t no place for heroes here. This is a place where people come to die. And where the strong survive.”
Cassidy was getting himself riled up. Every word sent cracks through his armour of composure. David’s vision was dimming and, with his heart pumping in his ears, he couldn’t think. He saw Cassidy reach into a side pocket and felt like he was choking.
“Oh fuck, gun!” someone shouted. The sergeant slapped David across the head, rousing him. Everybody was up and alert and looking at Cassidy. He was waving the gun every which way, pointing it now at Kowalski, now at Sgt. Smith, as he continued to speak. Finally, spit flying from his mouth, he said, “Anyone want to be the hero now? Nah, I know you don’t. You’re all just a bunch of pussies.”
David took a step forward, hands in the air. “Look, man—”
“Don’t you ‘Look, man’, me,” he said, and now the barrel was pointing at David. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Move another inch and I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”
David’s mind was reeling. No, this war was nothing like what his father’s stories had promised. It was survival, though not necessarily of the fittest. It was kill or be killed. They needed to do something. They were eight against one, but Cassidy kept them all in his line of sight.
David took another step forward. “Look. You’re right, okay? My father was a soldier too. And he felt so damn good about it, like, he’d talk about pride and…and glory. But there’s no pride or glory in any of this, is there? Just survival. I understand that now.” He continued to walk as he spoke, small steps, and then he was face to face with the barrel, so close he could smell the metal. It smelled like cold sweat, feverish and dangerous. “Will you put that thing down, please?”
Cassidy blinked. He opened and closed his mouth. Like he was struggling for air. They had that in common, David thought. “Please,” he said once more. Cassidy’s eyes were clearing, and he looked as if he wanted to say something.
David reached with his hand, touched Cole’s forearm, tried to push it down. Come on, his eyes said.
“Fuck you,” Cole said.
He heard the shot before he felt it. And now he was choking. He fell to his knees, felt for his throat with a shaky hand. Then, pain replaced sound. There was only the ringing in his ears. He was underwater, buried, deaf and mute. Above the water, he heard Cassidy cry out.
“I told you. Ain’t no place for fucking heroes here!”
The sergeant and the other men wrestled Cassidy down as David fell against the hard floor. He lay in a pool of his own blood, and inches away was Cassidy, thrashing and screaming to be let go. Fading into the depths, David screamed. But the water was too deep and no one, not his mates, nor his father, could hear him.
This is a gripping story. My favorite sentence is, "Cassidy trained his eyes upon David with the stillness of a sniper."
This story is so thought provoking. Thank you Andrei.