Blood Memory

Chapter 23

The Vietnam Veterans Building is closer to Malmaison than the public library, so I go there first. Situated in the city’s main public park, the small, one-story building began its life as the pro shop of the public golf course. The Vietnam vets took it over when the golf course was expanded to eighteen holes and a new pro shop built in another part of the park. They used it for support group meetings, for parties, and for a place to hang out besides home.

The dilapidated building sits on a long slope below the oak-shaded public playground that Natchez kids have used for sixty years. Overlooking the playground is Auburn, an antebellum mansion that serves as headquarters for one of the local garden clubs. Across the lane from Auburn stands an old steam locomotive, a sort of living museum for children. In the distance I see the public swimming pool, the only decent pool where black children can swim en masse in the city. It’s been closed for the past four years, due to lack of money for repairs. Down the long slope from the vets’ building, red and green tennis courts bake in the sun, surrounded by the grassy, fenced triangles of Little League ball fields.

I expected to find my father’s sculpture inside the veterans’ building-where I last saw it-but as I pull into the parking lot, I see the shining rotor blades that crown the piece jutting over the roof. Have they mounted it on some kind of pedestal? I get out and walk around the corner.

A house-size structure stands on the lawn, built of wooden poles hung with parachutes and camouflage netting. Inside the netting is a grass hut, and in front of the hut an army tent forms the centerpiece of a simulated military campsite. A steel beam rises out of the center of this scene, and mounted atop it is my father’s sculpture: a brushed-steel Huey helicopter with a wounded soldier suspended from its belly by a winch cable. It’s one of the most realistic pieces my father ever did. Most of his work-especially the later stuff-was far more abstract, like the tall tree standing between the twin staircases at the public library. But the ascending helicopter pleased everyone. What it’s doing in the middle of this thrown-together display puzzles me, though.

“Can I help you, miss?”

A heavyset man with a grizzled beard is walking toward me. He wears army fatigue pants, a black MIA T-shirt, and Harley-Davidson motorcycle boots. A gold earring decorates his left earlobe, and a braided, silver ponytail hangs over his right shoulder. He looks to be in his late fifties.

“I hope so. My dad sculpted that helicopter up there. I came by to see it.”

A smile lights up the man’s face. “You’re Luke Ferry’s kid?”

It feels good to be recognized as something besides William Kirkland’s granddaughter. “That’s right. Did you know him?”

“Sure. Not real well, of course, but he came to a few meetings here. Kept to himself quite a bit. But he did this helicopter for us. I tell you, for anybody who served in Nam, the Huey medevac is a thing of beauty. Like a guardian angel coming to pull you out of hell.”

I nod, unsure what I’ve really come for. “I thought you kept it inside the building.”

“We do, most of the year. But on July Fourth, the priest from St. Mary’s does the blessing of the fleet out at Lake St. John. There’s a boat parade out there, and contests for best float. We do one every year for the MIAs. To keep up awareness, you know? We’ve put your daddy’s chopper on there four years running.”

“It’s been sitting out here for the past month?”

The bearded man looks embarrassed. “We had tarps on it till today. I’m actually here to break down the float. We brought it back from the lake on a flatbed, and this is as far as we got. Everybody was a little drunk. But, man, people love to see that Huey coming up the lake. Gives ’em a good feeling inside. Specially these last couple years, with all the boys overseas now.“

I find myself smiling. “Daddy would have liked that.”

The vet nods, then sticks out his hand. “Jim Burley, miss. Proud to know you.”

“Cat Ferry.”

Another smile. “Cat, huh?”

“Short for Catherine.”

“Oh, I get it. Well, what can I do for you?”

Tell me my father was a good man. “Well, I was only eight when my dad died, so he never really told me about the war. Do you know much about what he did over there?”

Burley thinks for a bit, then scratches his thick beard. “Why don’t we sit down in the shade over here?”

I follow him to an olive-drab picnic table beneath an oak tree and sit opposite him. A bumper sticker stuck to the top of the table reads, FOR THOSE WHO FOUGHT FOR IT, FREEDOM HAS A FLAVOR THE PROTECTED WILL NEVER KNOW.

“Your dad was a quiet guy,” Burley begins. “I guess you know that already. A few years younger than me, Luke was. Served his tour a couple years after mine. Lots of guys who come in here are quiet types, but they tend to open up after a while. Luke stayed quiet. He wasn’t unfriendly or anything. Just needed a little more space than most people, you know? The war did that to some of us.”

I nod, trying to picture my father inside the little building, or even sitting at this picnic table. He needed a lot more space than most people.

“All I really know,” Burley says, “is that Luke didn’t pull no run-of-the-mill tour. Way I heard it, he was a crack shot long before he got inducted. Hunted all his life out at Cranfield, probably. So when they took him into the Airborne, they made him a sniper.”

“A sniper?” I’ve never heard this before.

Burley nods. “That’s a tough job. One-on-one killing, you know? And not in the heat of battle, either. To do that job, you gotta be able to kill in cold blood. And unless you got a screw loose somewhere, that takes something out of you.”

I can’t believe no one in the family has told me this. But maybe they didn’t know either. “Do you remember anything else?”

Burley takes a deep breath and sighs. “Couple of the guys wangled a few facts out of Luke. The picture we got was this. Your daddy was taken into some kind of special unit. Sort of a raiding unit. The kind they used to go into places we weren’t supposed to be in.”

“Like where?”

“Like Laos and Cambodia.”

An inexplicable shudder goes through me. I close my eyes and see Nathan Malik sitting before me, telling me about his stone Buddha. I brought it back from Cambodia.

“Do you know for sure that my father was in Cambodia?”

“I don’t know nothing for sure, honey. But it was one of those places. Anyway, there was some trouble about this unit he was in. Accusations of atrocities, that kind of thing.”

I shake my head, more from surprise than disbelief.

“The government got up an investigation for a bunch of courts-martial. Then they just dropped it all. Flushed the whole thing down the Pentagon toilet.”

“When was this?”

“Some of it during the war, I think. Soon after it happened. Then again later on. I think Luke was dead by that time, though.”

“Look, Mr. Burley, I want you to be straight with me. Do you think my dad was involved in war crimes?”

The vet thinks about this for a while. “I tell you, Cat, looking back on it now, a lot of what I done over there seems like crimes to me. But when I was there, I didn’t think twice about it. It was part of the job. The rules of engagement didn’t cover half the situations you ran into. It was survival. Hindsight’s a luxury we didn’t have. Now, a lot of Hollywood movies don’t show nothing but grunts cutting off ears and killing women and kids. And some of that happened, I won’t lie. That and worse. But most guys just served their tour and did the best they could to be honorable men.”

“I’m sure that’s true. But I’m not here about them. I want to know about my father.”

Burley gives me a heavyhearted smile. “I’m telling you about him, though it may not sound like it. I’m telling you that whatever Luke did, you ain’t gonna be able to understand by looking backward from the USA thirty-five years later. I’m not excusing atrocities or anything like that. I’m just sayinghell, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

A deep sense of frustration is building inside me. “Is there anybody I could talk to who might know more specific information? Somebody Daddy might have confided in?”

Burley shrugs. “There was a black guy Luke was pretty tight with for a while. Some of the brothers don’t come around here as much as they could. We try to make ’em welcome-a vet’s a vet, you know?-but it was the same in-country. Especially after sixty-eight, when Dr. King was assassinated.”

“Do you remember this guy’s name?”

“Jesse something. Can’t quite recall his last name.” Burley waves back toward the building. “Ought to have it inside, but I don’t. Our records are for shit right now. Computer’s busted. Jesse was in the Airborne, too, I remember that. Different unit from your daddy’s. Same unit Jimi Hendrix served in. Jesse was real proud of that.”

“Was Jesse from here?”

“No, Louisiana. Down the river a bit. St. Francisville, maybe.”

“You can’t remember his last name?”

Burley squints like man looking into bright sunlight. “I know itI just can’t get it. Old-timer’s disease, you know? Wait a second. Billings? No. Billups? Billups, that’s it! Like the gas stations we used to have around here. Jesse Billups, Spec 4, 101st Airborne.”

I’d hoped I would recognize the name, but I don’t. Glancing down the hill toward the tennis courts, I wipe sweat from my eyes. I played tennis down there a few times. In another life, it seems now. I look up at my car but feel no inclination to drive anywhere. “Do you need help taking down the float?”

Burley laughs. “I don’t need it, but I’d sure love the company. I know you got better things to do than hang around here, though.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Hey!” He slaps the picnic table with a beefy palm. “You ought to be able to find Jesse real easy.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re Dr. Kirkland’s granddaughter, right? Grew up over in that big house, where Luke lived in the barn?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Jesse was related to the housekeeper over there. Second cousin, or nephew, something like that.”

My scalp and palms are tingling. “To the housekeeper? You mean Pearlie?”

“ Pearlie. That’s it!” Burley laughs. “Jesse used to talk about her some, and not all of it good. His mama was related to Pearlie, some way.”

I stand so suddenly that I feel light-headed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Burley, I need to go.”

“Sure. No problem.”

“Thank you so much.” I’m already walking backward toward my car.

“Hey, listen,” Burley calls. “Don’t you worry about what your daddy done over there. He came back alive, that’s the main thing, right there.”

Is it? I wonder, trotting toward the Audi. I wonder.

“He made us this Huey,” Burley says. “Anybody makes something that pretty and gives it away for free, he’s gotta be all right down deep. You know?”

No, I don’t, I think, climbing into the car. I don’t know anything anymore.