The Daisy Ducks (21 page)

"Do you think he'd mind if I stopped by?"

She kept rubbing her lower lip and staring off down
the cove with a worried expression. She seemed to be deciding
something and asked me to have a seat on one of the metal porch
chairs. I had seen these on almost all the porches in the South:
metal armchairs painted green or gray, with a back like a giant
scallop shell. I sat down. Through the curtained window I could see
her talking on the phone. Five minutes later she was back on the
porch.

"You can go on down there. Second house on this
side of the road. Her name is Sairy."

I thanked the widow and left. At the second house I
parked the bike and walked up to the porch. This house was in fine
repair. It had shutters that were painted canary yellow. The porch
railings and screen spindles were gothic gingerbread, freshly
painted. Sairy Royce—I assumed her name was really Sarah—came to
the door and opened it halfway. She seemed torn between welcoming me
with open arms and kicking me off the porch.

"Mrs. Royce? I'm Dr. Charles Adams. Your son
Bill and I have a mutual friend, a man Bill was with in the army."

"Bill was in the air force, mister. And why are
you here?"

"Another friend of Bill's is missing, and I was
hoping to ask your son when he last saw him."

She looked me up and down.

"Your name is Adams?"

"Yes ma'am."

She opened the door and asked me inside.

"I know some of your kinfolk, Mr. Adams. They's
a whole bunch of Adamses over to Shooting Creek. Nice folks. You sit
down and I'll fetch you some tea."

So she did. Perhaps she thought I was going to call
on my kinfolk as well, since I was in the neighborhood. She brought
the tea and some cookies, sat down in a straight-back chair with a
woven seat, and looked at me keenly. Sairy Royce was pretty, with
bright blue eyes under iron gray hair. Her teeth were perfect. Too
perfect.

"You're not from the war, Mr. Adams? Billy
hasn't never met you?"

"No ma'am, he hasn't. But I've been in touch
with several of the men he knew in the war. Is he here now?"

"Oh no. He's out working. I think work is the
best thing for him. He and some friends bought an old bottomland farm
nearby and they're working it. He usually comes home for dinner,
which is in about three hours. But I don't know if it would be good
for him to see you or not. You know, the memories of what all
happened to him might come a-stormin' back in his mind, you see."

"I understand. And I wouldn't want that either.
What exactly did happen to him anyway? Did he ever tell you?"

"Oh Lord yes. He talks to me about it, but only
me. His daddy lives down in Georgia now, hasn't been home in fourteen
years. So there's only the two of us. He sees his cousin Eddie—that's
the house you was just at up the cove—and his other friends, is
about all. But anyway, what happened to Billy that made him so sick
was later on, just before we pulled down the flag and got out of
there. When the Communists moved in on Saigon. All those people and
children murdered . . . and all the things that he'd worked so hard
for and risked his life for . . . it was just too much for Billy for
a while. So he spent some time in a special hospital in the
Philippines and got home last July—like a gift from God. And I
thank the Lord ever day for it. No more fightin' for Billy. He still
hunts a lot. We all do here in the mountains. But no more killin'."

"Amen," I said.

"Amen."

"Listen, why don't you let me write down some
names on a slip of paper. When Bill comes home for lunch, show him
the names, and if he'll talk with me, fine. If not, I'll go back
where I came from."

She said that sounded fair. I remembered what Pete
and Jimmy had told me about being too pushy with these people. I told
her I would phone her shortly after noon, to see what Bill wanted to
do. I thanked her for the hospitality and left. I wondered how I was
going to kill the three hours until lunchtime—called dinnertime in
the South—as I left Royce Cove Road for the highway. When I got
back into town, I realized it would be handy to know where the farm
was that Royce had bought. Of course, if I'd asked his mother it
would have set her on edge. I needed to fade back into the bush and
observe unseen. The more I thought of this approach the better it
sounded . . . and the more I realized my bike was very conspicuous. A
bright metallic-red German motorcycle with a Massachusetts plate does
tend to stand out a bit in the Smoky Mountains off season. I took my
steel thermos bottle into the diner I'd visited earlier and had the
waitress drop two teabags into it, some milk and sugar, and top it
off with hot water. It was now ten. With nothing else to do, I headed
back to where Royce Cove Road left the twisty highway and turned off
the road into a copse of thick trees opposite the mouth of the cove.
There was no sun in there, and the morning was chilly anyway. I took
a space blanket from my saddlecase, folded it twice, and used it for
a seat. The tea would also help keep me warm. I had my binoculars
out, too. I sat and waited. In the two hours I sat there, four cars
came and went. Two pickups, a station wagon, and a sedan. One of the
pickups, a tan Ford with a long antenna, swept up the cove road just
before twelve. I couldn't see who was at the wheel. Ten minutes later
I left my observation post and stopped at a gas station to call
Sairy. She answered, saying Bill would see me, but only briefly. I
returned to the house. The first thing that caught my eye was the tan
pickup in the driveway. Sairy came to let me in. She said that Billy
was in the back room, listening to records.

"He tuckers easy, Mr. Adams. Please don't stay
too long."

Bill Royce rose from the couch to greet me as I
walked into the sunporch. He was taller than I, but not as tall as
his air force comrade, Fred Kaunitz. His hair was light brown and
very thin, long and brushed back, which accentuated his
near-baldness. He wore aviator glasses with steel frames. The first
thing I noticed about Bill Royce was his eyes. All the other Ducks I
had met had flat eyes. Dead eyes. Eyes that revealed the total lack
of emotion and tenderness in the mind and soul behind them. Eyes that
could watch a man die on the stake without flinching. But this pair
of gray-green eyes that looked into mine were sensitive and—in the
words of Mike Summers—idealistic. He looked studious, thoughtful,
and caring. And that, I decided, is why he couldn't take it. That's
why his soul had cracked under the horror of Southeast Asia.

"I can still remember most of it, Mr. Adams,"
he said as we sat down. "They gave me ECT treatments at first,
but your memory comes back."

He took the last sip from a can of root beer and
tossed it into the wastebasket. Royce had barely a trace of Southern
accent.

"Just call me Doc, Bill. Most people do."

The record was playing a Chopin piano piece. "I
can remember almost all of it. I just don't like to think about it.
Have you seen any of the other guys on the patrol?"

"Yes, three of them, including your leader,
Roantis. By the way, about eight weeks ago, he was shot while leaving
my house. He almost died. We're still trying to figure out who did
it. Do you have any ideas?"

"No. Absolutely not. I haven't been around
soldiering now in years. I've lost touch. Is he going to recover
fully?"

"Probably. He's especially anxious to find Ken
Vilarde. He wants to make contact with him."

Royce looked down and shook his head sadly.

"And while I was sick in Manila, and being put
back together again, piece by piece, cell by cell, he didn't make
contact with me. None of them did."

Offhand, I couldn't think of an appropriate response,
so I looked down at the brown shag carpet and listened to Chopin.

"Ken Vilarde . . . Who knows? I thought he had
decided to be a career man. On my last patrol through Cambodia with
the Daisy Ducks, that's when I knew I never wanted to be a career
man."

"What happened on that last run?"

"Well, we helped destroy a village."

"You mean old Siu Lok's village?"

He looked at me quickly, sharply.

"Who told you? Roantis?"

"Yes. He said the village was about to be
overrun by Khmer Rouge guerrillas. You arrived in time to save it, at
least temporarily."

"That part is true. But I think ultimately we
were as much responsible as the Khmers. That's what makes the whole
thing so sad."

"I've heard that war generally is."

"You've never been in war? In action?" he
asked me.

"No."

A thin film of sweat had formed on Bill Royce's upper
lip. He wiped it off with the back of his hand and sniffed, then
scratched his nose nervously. He excused himself and headed for the
john, returning a few minutes later with another can of root beer,
which he sipped in small doses. He kept sniffing and sipping for a
while. I sensed that the fatigue and strain of the interview was
beginning to take a toll. What the hell, I thought, I may as well ask
the question.

"Bill, do you recollect taking anything from
that village after your first visit? That is, before the Khmer Rouge
came back and tortured old Siu Lok to death?"

He looked up in surprise.

"He told you the Khmer Rouge tortured Siu Lok?
Hmmm . . . That's interesting, Doc, because I'm not sure it happened
that way at all. I'm not saying it didn't, or couldn't have . . . I'm
just saying it's a little strange. You see, when we went back the
second time, Roantis and Vilarde went on ahead. They told the rest of
us to wait and they'd signal if they needed help. We were bushed
anyway, so we went to earth and crashed for a couple hours. Before
long, here comes Ken and Liatis back, saying that the Communists had
apparently killed the old chief. But they never saw it happen. And
the funny thing was, when we all went walking through the village
again, everybody there was terribly afraid of us. They gave us
everything we asked for immediately—not making excuses or stalling
like villagers usually did. They wouldn't look us in the eye. I just
had a strange feeling."

"Are you saying it's possible that Roantis and
Vilarde killed the old man?"

Royce paused and sniffed, scratched his nose again,
and wiped his face. He tapped his feet on the shag rug. He ran his
hand through his hair in agitation.

"No. I'm not saying it. I'm saying this, Doc: in
that jungle there, a million miles from home or friendlies, anything
could happen. Those villagers looked very scared our second pass
through. Very scared. We all commented on it. I don't know. I just
got thinking afterward, why did those two go on alone? Why weren't we
all together, like the first time?"

“
Okay, and you took nothing from the villagers on
the first pass-through?"

"Certainly. We always did if they were willing.
We needed food."

"Anything else? Any valuables?"

"No. There was nothing in the village of any
value I could see."

"That's funny, Bill, because Roantis said you
all split up a potload of community relics on the first visit there.
Kaunitz and Summers say the same thing. Now you say there were none."

"If the others took anything, they sure didn't
tell me."

"Did you ever see anything strange in Roantis's
pack?"

"No. I didn't go looking in his pack."

"Uh, how soon after the second visit to Siu
Lok's village were you lifted out?"

"The next night, I think. Or maybe the night
after. We were heading west that trip, and the chopper came and got
us." I sat there in the sunporch staring at the shag carpet for
about a minute. What the hell was going on anyway? All the versions
of the story were different, which was understandable, considering
the lapse of time. Yet Royce's version differed markedly from the
others. Considering his recent ill health and the other men's
stories, I shouldn't believe him. But I did. At least, I was
convinced he was telling the truth as he was able to reconstruct it.
I decided to take a big chance. I excused myself and went outside to
the bike, then returned with the photograph in my hand. I showed it
to Royce, whose upper lip was weeping again.

"What's that supposed to be?" he asked.

"It's a religious idol, a statue of Siva, which
Roantis took from the village, a gift from grateful Siu Lok."

"And you believe it?"

"Why wouldn't I?" I answered. But the
answer didn't satisfy me. I had had vague doubts about the statue
before, and now they seemed stronger and more focused.

"Well, for one thing, a statue this big and
heavy would be noticeable in a rucksack. The Ducks traveled light, as
the others must have told you. Secondly, you don't see Hindu deities
in Cambodia or Vietnam; they're Buddhist countries. It would be like
finding a Lutheran in Mexico. Know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean. Listening to you, I sense
a college education. Right?"

"Oh yeah. I had a full academic scholarship to
UNC. Did some post-grad work too. Then along came Vietnam and I
wanted to be a hero. I always wanted to fly, so I joined the air
force, then volunteered for all the special training available.
Except for jump school, which was hell, the rest was interesting,
almost fun. I shouldn't have done it, Doc. Should not. It's wrecked
my life."