A Requiem for Crows: A Novel of Vietnam Read online

  A Requiem for Crows

  A Novel of Vietnam

  Dennis Foley

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

  “This much we pledge—and more.”

  John F. Kennedy

  President of the United States

  Inauguration speech

  Jan 20, 1961

  Prologue

  November 1965

  FINISHED WITH DELIBERATIONS, the officers shuffled back into the court room. The grinding sounds of their combat boots and the scuffing of their chairs on the raised platform, built just for the trial, broke the silence. Two colonels, three lieutenant colonels and one major flanked Brigadier General Ben Stratton. They silently took their seats.

  Stratton slipped on his reading glasses, opened a piece of paper folded only once at the midline and read to all assembled in the room, “As President of this court-martial it is my duty to inform you that the members of the court, two-thirds of which were present at the time a secret written ballot was cast, have reached their verdict. As to the charges and specifications, the court finds the accused …”

  Scotty Hayes braced himself for the reading of the verdict.

  Chapter 1

  Belton, Florida—April 1963

  SCOTTY HAYES WALKED DOWN the hallway at Palms High as if he didn’t have a care in the world. There was a bit of James Dean in his walk, Elvis in his smile and Jerry Lee Lewis in his attitude.

  Here and there classmates nodded, said “Hi” or gave him a quiet smile.

  He didn’t seek out eye contact with classmates, but didn’t fail to acknowledge anyone who recognized him with his winning smile or a wave, or even a quiet, “Hi there.” Though not a member of the scholarly elite or athletic royalty, he was popular enough.

  Scotty stopped at his locker, spun the worn combination dial on the warped door with a snap of his wrist and a hint of body English and popped it open with ease. He ignored the fact that the inside of his locker was chaotic and in need of a good cleaning. Crushed, ripped and crumpled notebook pages peeked out of the spaces between rarely used text books stacked at reckless angles.

  He pulled a pencil from behind his ear and flipped it end over end at the triangle opening formed by stacked math, history and chemistry books. He was pleased with himself when the pencil landed inside the small opening on the very first try.

  “Hayes. You goin’ to practice, man?” A classmate slid into a spot against the adjacent locker, a move designed to allow him to speak with Scotty without having to take his eyes off the girls walking the halls and stopping at their own lockers.

  “Mal, have I ever missed a practice?”

  Malcolm Striever jabbed his thumb over his shoulder toward the vice principal’s office. “No, but just about anything might a’ happened in there. For all I know you might be on your way to solitary for ten years.”

  Scotty looked around for other students who might be in earshot. “Hey,” he whispered, “why don’t you broadcast it over the intercom, man?”

  Malcolm lowered his voice. “Well, he didn’t throw ya’ out of school, did he?”

  Scotty smiled. “What? For cutting a few classes?”

  “It could happen. I’m guessing Old Man Skerritt’s about had it with you. Did he give you his ‘Good students are not truant students’ speech? I’ve heard it about once a year since I was a sophomore. I can almost repeat it word for word.”

  “Let me worry about Skerritt.” He playfully punched Malcolm’s shoulder. “Relax. No big deal.”

  Malcolm looked at his watch. “Scotty, we better get on over to practice before Coach Huffman has our asses. Anyway, we get there early I can check out girl’s cheerleading practice and watch long-legged Jeanie get all worked up over you.”

  Scotty pulled his letter jacket from his locker and slammed the door, spinning the combination dial in one fluid move. He threw the jacket over his shoulder and shook his head. “I got about as much chance with her as I do with Marilyn Monroe.”

  “The Marilyn who’s been dead for over a year?”

  “That’s my point.”

  The two walked down the hallway to the exit, Malcolm struggling to control his notebook and several text books, Scotty empty-handed.

  Track practice over, Scotty sat on the long narrow bench in a canyon of athletic equipment lockers. He kicked his spikes into his own with one foot while putting on a dry t-shirt. Like his book locker, his gym locker was a messy collection of dirty socks, some text books, knotted Ace bandages and equipment from three different sports. All of it smelling of

  Malcolm dropped his towel on the bench, pulled a comb out of his own locker and began combing is wet hair, naked.

  “Hey, man! Put some clothes on. It’s bad enough we all got to see your skinny ass in the shower. You can put something on now. Give us a break. There’s only so much ugly we can take.”

  “Fuck you, Hayes. You’re just jealous.”

  Scotty laughed. “Malcolm, you are really not from this planet, are you?”

  A booming voice interrupted them. “Whoa! Hold on, ya’ll. Check this shit out.”

  Scotty and Malcolm turned to find Paul Wynn standing at the other end of the bench still in his track sweats wearing a bright green windbreaker with the word Tulane emblazoned across the chest.

  Scotty knew Paul as an okay athlete who always did his homework for classes. He was not unpopular and as a jock he was unlikely to set a state record or be named to an All American team. But as a football lineman, he had the advantage of being big and nearly impossible to move. Beyond that, he was no one special.

  Malcolm tried to speak while wobbling on one foot and stepping into his briefs. “Where’d you get the jacket, Wynn? You steal it?”

  “Screw you, Striever. A guy from the Tulane’s Alum Association left it with the coach.” He mugged, modeling the jacket. “Cool, huh?”

  Scotty looked back to his locker and pulled out his street clothes, saying nothing.

  “Why you, man?” Malcolm laughed. “You wash his car for him? Or what?”

  “No, asshole. He brought the jacket so he’d have a pocket to put this in.” Wynn held up an opened envelope and waved it for all to see. “My ticket, ya’ll. This is it. Can you believe it? A full ride at Tulane. I’m goin’ to play football for the Green Wave. What are you doing next year, Malcolm?”

  A few cheers and some good natured remarks came from different corners of the locker room. Everyone except Scotty appeared to be happy for Paul Wynn.

  No one noticed the coach watching the whole thing through the doorway to his office. Leaning back in his chair he yelled out, “Hayes? In my office. Now!”

  Malcolm stuck his head through the neck of a sweatshirt. “Shit, Hayes. What did you do, now?�
�

  “Yes, Coach?”

  “Close the door, Hayes.” Coach John Huffman was twice Scotty’s age and more than twice his size. A West Virginia State baseball hat was perched on the back of his head. He nodded at a straight backed chair on the other side of his cluttered office. “Sit. I want to talk to you, Hayes.”

  Scotty quickly searched his memory for something he might have done wrong at practice. He sat stiffly, waiting for the coach to set the tone, watching him for some clue, if only to get out in front of whatever the bad news if only for a fraction of a second.

  With his back to Scotty, Huffman asked, “What do you think about all that out there?”

  “All that, Coach?”

  “Wynn’s good news.”

  “Oh… Good, I guess. He wanted to get into Tulane. To play ball there. Yeah. Good.”

  The coach lifted a sheaf of papers from his desk and then dropped them back onto it. “Grades.”

  “Grades?”

  “Yep. Semester grades. Wynn’s, Striever’s, yours and every other senior’s grades. Wynn’s got ’em. Good ones. And he’s a pretty fair football player on top of it all.” The coach spun his chair around and looked directly at him.

  Scotty knew whatever Coach Huffman would have to say next, it would not be praise for his grade point average.

  “You aren’t settin’ any records. Are you, son?”

  Scotty looked down at his shoes and shook his head. “No sir. I guess not.”

  Coach Huffman sighed and pushed his cap farther back on his head. “I had pretty high hopes for you when you walked onto my ball field three years ago. You were good. I thought we had the time to get you better.” He hesitated and picked up a football wedged between a file cabinet and his in-box. He rolled the ball around in his fingertips as if looking for the laces, about to make a pass then he stopped and looked back at Scotty. “But, son, you never got any better.

  “You see, the difference between you and Wynn is he worked. He didn’t even have the moves you had when he started here, but he lapped you, son. That’s why he’s going to Tulane and you aren’t.”

  Scotty had no reply.

  “Boy, you got t’go into life like you need to go into a football game—with your hair on fire and smoke comin’ out your ass. I was hopin’ you’d do that by now.”

  “I’m sorry, Coach.”

  Huffman pointed out at the door to the locker room. “That’s not going to be you.”

  “What’s not, Coach?”

  “I’m sorry no one’s going to send you a letter or bring you a school windbreaker. You’re not getting a jock scholarship to some college. Ain’t that right?”

  “I guess not, Coach.”

  The coach took a breath and exhaled his disappointment. “You’re a good kid, Hayes. But there’s no fire in you. Colleges recruit boys with ass-kicking ball playing moves and okay grades or better. Can you honestly say you qualify in either category?”

  Again, Scotty didn’t reply. He just stuck his hands into his letter jacket pockets and stared at his shoe laces.

  “We both know the answer, don’t we?”

  Scotty summoned up some optimism, but was unable to deliver it with much conviction. “Coach, I’ll find some way to play ball at some school. I’m sure there’s someone who’ll take me on.”

  “Son, you’re a senior and time’s pretty much run out for you. You frittered away your chances. You can’t create a reputation with what’s left of the school year. Heck, you only got a decent chance of making my track team before you graduate. I’m sure high school has been fun and filled with great memories, but it’s not some place where you’ve done much to launch a sparkling career at any goddamn thing, far as I can see.”

  Scotty didn’t argue.

  “Hell, even if you made the sports page of every paper between now and graduation you got a transcript filled with some pretty shitty grades you can’t ever change. Your record won’t never go away. And how were your SATs?”

  Scotty looked up and shrugged.

  “I’m not surprised. Nobody makes crappy grades and then goes out and smokes the SATs.

  “Look, I’ve enjoyed having you on my teams. You’ve always been easy goin’ and even helpful to some team mates. But I don’t know how to advise you now. You’re going to have to get serious about things or just plain starve to death. If I could, I’d help you, ’cause I like you. But you’ve got to admit you haven’t been leaning into it much. So you go on home and get those wild thoughts of being invited to some college somewhere out of your head. It’ll jus’ mess you up to think it’s gonna’ happen. ’Cause it ain’t. It just ain’t gonna’ happen for you.”

  September 1963

  “I’m goin’ back some day, come what may, to Blue Bayou…” Scotty tried to sing along with Roy Orbison’s voice squeezing through the small speaker of the AM radio perched on the window sill in his room, but soon gave up when he could no longer reach the high notes.

  He finished stuffing a few things into a tired duffel bag once owned by his father. It was one of only two things Scotty had to remind him of Jake Hayes. The other was encased in a small blue box trimmed with gold. He picked it off a makeshift bookshelf in the converted sun porch which served had as his bedroom all through his high school years.

  He opened the box with great care and held it securely in both hands. Inside a blue ribbon, trimmed with red and white, held the brass Distinguished Service Cross Medal against the fake velvet backing. His father, who never even knew he had earned it, only wore it on his uniform at his burial. Jake Hayes was killed in action the day before his twenty-second birthday in Pusan-Ri, Korea. He was a medic with an airborne infantry company decimated by wave after wave of North Koreans. For his actions, he was awarded the country’s second-highest award for valor in battle.

  Scotty held the open medal box and thought about taking it with him. With effort he could summon up his father in his uniform, wearing highly polished paratrooper boots. He was tall and lean. More Scotty couldn’t pull from his memory. Everything else he remembered about Jake was from yellowing photos with scalloped edges Kitty had kept anchored to the black craft paper pages of a few albums.

  Placing the box back on the shelf over his perpetually unmade bed, Scotty looked around his room. The things he would leave behind were a school boy’s things—track medals, a football letter certificate on the wall, his baseball glove. His small homemade closet was half filled with clothes he would have no use for where he was going.

  He swung around on the edge of his bed and looked at the things on the nearby desk. It had been a catch-all and not a place where he’d done any real homework. He fingered the track medal hanging by a ribbon from his desk lamp. He won it at a Divisional meet running the 440 relay with Joe Blithe who was now at State. Below it, the baseball photo of him and the junior varsity team reminded him only two of the eleven boys on the team were still in Belton.

  The only high school in the area, Palms High managed to graduate nearly three hundred students that year from all over the county. For graduates there was little to keep them in Belton. There was no industry and few jobs. The population was mostly farm workers and retirees who couldn’t afford to enjoy the luxuries of towns like nearby Sarasota.

  Graduation and Scotty’s summer had passed without event. He had a couple of part-time jobs. Each ended quickly. Suddenly, the friends he just assumed would be around weren’t. They’d gone off to college, moved away to jobs which filled their days or left Belton for the service. Now it was Scotty’s turn to leave.

  He clipped the strap to the closure on the top of the duffel bag and dropped it into the center of his bed.

  “Scotty? Scotty, you still here, honey?” His step-mother’s voice, husky from chain-smoking Pall Malls and drinking too much Wild Turkey was fading from sixteen hours of working two jobs. Her voice came from her bedroom at the opposite end of the small tract house.

  “Yeah. I’m here.”

  “You won’t leave with
out sayin’ good-bye to me, will you, honey?” Kitty Hayes asked.

  “No. I won’t.” He checked his watch. “I’m not leaving ’til morning.”

  It was well after midnight when he made one final check to be sure he had everything and then found his way to Kitty’s bedroom. He wasn’t looking forward to saying good-bye to her.

  His step-mother had come home from work while he was packing and grabbed something to eat on her way through the kitchen. Scotty could see she hadn’t even taken the time to take off her shoes or finish her sandwich. She had dozed off on top of her built-in Hollywood bed in her small bedroom.

  Careful not to wake her, he gently pulled a lit cigarette from her fingers and crushed it in the overflowing ashtray balanced on a small ledge on the wall near her bed.

  He looked at the tiny tired woman half covered by a throw, still wearing her apron from work. Kitty meant continuity for Scotty. Even though she wasn’t his real mother, she’d been loyal and loving. He had no memory of his real mother who died when he was an infant in a freak railway crossing accident. As long as he could remember, Kitty had been there.

  After Jake died Kitty worked days and nights tending bar, waiting tables and taking odd jobs to pay the rent and keep food on the table for the two of them. She had no other skills and traded her smile, her figure and her energy for a paycheck. Scotty hadn’t noticed how the years had slowly aged her and taken their toll on her. His memories of the two of them playing catch, swimming in the Gulf and watching Bonanza together were as fresh as if they had done those things that week.

  Still, time and loneliness wore on her. He ignored the changes and how she had long since learned to soften the sharp edges of her life with too much bourbon and too many pain killers.

  He unfolded the throw she hadn’t had the strength to spread out before she drifted off and covered more of her small torso only inches from being more off than on the bed. He didn’t want to wake her, but he didn’t want to leave either. He picked up the magazine left open and face down on her small makeup table stool. Reader’s Digest—flipping it over he noticed she had also turned down the corner of a page. It was Kitty’s attempt to improve herself. She had kept a promise to herself to read each issue for as far back as he could remember.