The Last Battle

Keith Lucinas lay dying in a valley where hidden guns had long, gibbering dialogues. He did not know how long he had been there before he regained consciousness. He was at first aware only of the battle that still ranted, tattering the darkness. Only later did he feel the searing pain rip across his left side and travel through the marrow of his left leg. He gritted his teeth in an attempt to endure the wretched pain. His curly brown hair, plastered with sweat, outlined his face. His blue eyes tried to focus on the flashes that shattered the night. Long red ellipses separated the blue-black air from the blue-black earth. He slid another inch toward death.

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Where is my division, he thought, trying to divert his attention from the pain. They had left him; perhaps they hadn't even noticed he was missing. They were probably driving to Ayer now for a beer, the roll of exhaust from the jeeps mingling with the cloaked midnight sky. He was beyond feeling despair. Nothing to do but wait, no doubt for death, as it advanced, arms outstretched, waiting to deliver the fatal kiss. He became delirious from the loss of blood and found himself (much to his regret, as he had always deplored the stereotyped dying victim's leaning on remembrances to find some meaning to his life) thinking back to the meadow.

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***

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A group of his friends had sat dangling their legs over the edge of a rotting pier, which stretched over a small lake. They were from the University in Chicago which Keith occasionally attended, more for social reasons than educational. He took a course in astronomy—theories of origin, expanding galaxies, quantum mechanics—a course that did not require constant attendance.

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Steve, a Chicagoan, was talking diffidently about himself "…so I'm taking another course in writing. Hopefully my ideas will take some definite form."

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"Hmph," was the comment of Steve's wife, Ren.

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"How old are your plans now? Ten years?" said Keith.

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"Ten years old and still twining out in new directions," Steve answered. "My first novel will be about writers and bookies in Chicago."

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"Well, I have a five-year plan not to write anything at all. Besides, your only problem is that you're a victim of the Thought Police," Keith rallied.

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"Oh sure," said Steve, staring. He wondered why Keith hadn't some commitment, either to himself or a cause.

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"The Thought Police," continued Keith elaborating his statement, "is the oppressive force, the censor or some other creation of the mind, that freezes us in our ruts and stays our hands upon our pens and brushes."

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Steve considered this. There was something to what Keith said. Steve had spent ten unproductive, interior years trying to write. He had felt that self-denying could get you something as long as you didn't become a blank person in the process. Perhaps he would get lucky now. A word could lead to a train of thought, a manifest freight coming along rusted, weed-flagged lines for the first time, up to the metalled road of light. Steve looked hard at Keith, but before he could ask Keith anything further on the Thought Police, the afternoon mail arrived, creating a diversion.

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The mail's contents seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary. There was the "Daily Press," devoting some of its pages to the raging Vietnam War, the usual assortment of bills and occupant-addressed envelopes, but also placed in the mail was an intruding envelope addressed to Keith. "Greetings" was the first word Keith read. Underneath, there was the usual invitation from the United States Army. It was signed by the chairman of the local draft board.

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How can this be, thought Keith. I'm sitting here among friends with some summer bugs contending for attention. I can't believe in such disaster's being sent to me. How can this war, such an alien, fragmenting anarchy, be set loose on the ordered world that surrounds me? He felt a coming ugliness in the slippery gray coil of his intestines. A black and swollen depression closed down around him. There was no sense in resisting. The University wouldn't mind losing him, and he couldn't picture himself in perpetual exile; better to flow with the times.

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***

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He had had a short training period. All he could remember now was the speech the form master gave: "The battle of liberty may one day be won by this regiment," he said, reviewing the rows of raw recruits. "The regiment," he told the under-strength company, whose eyes were being tear-gassed by the cutting gusts of the September air, "the regiment will serve its country well, and…" The rest of his words were drowned out.

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Derek, a black man who had escaped by luck and struggle from the slum only to face more problems in the army, stood at Keith's left. He gave a long groan. Another man on Keith's right swayed in the breeze.

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The form master was finally coming to a close. "Now Captain Strong will drill the regiment in the manual of arms before-uh-mess. Let's show him (unintelligible phrase) the dedication to the army." Derek emitted another groan.

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***

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With Derek also disdaining the war, Keith had found an ally. The train ride to the airbase was barely tolerable. There was a pond of vomit in the vestibule. Fat barrack bags fell in the aisle. There was a pervasive smell of smoke and sweat, and only orange drink (the hawker was scarcely able to support his business through the teeming train), drunk lukewarm with a straw, was available to calm the tension of going overseas. There were also sailors asleep in the deep waters of the previously purchased, now empty, pint across their knees. A soldier and a WAC were involved in one quite indivisible vestment of blue serge. Keith looked out the window and saw the miles stretch onward.

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***

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They had arrived in a Vietnamese village by twilight. On the road they had taken, amber flares shot into the air above the fast growing dark.

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"What was that for?" Keith inquired.

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"Welcoming party, maybe?" Derek replied.

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"Doubt it," said Keith, as they both heard the tank engines ululating. They had no sooner arrived when enemy street fighters attacked a set of buildings. The stationary American force in the town quickly acted. Canisters were fired, and the impacts punctured the drum roll of exhaust made by the tank engines. Eventually, the firing ceased.

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Keith and Derek, along with some of the other company, went to Ayer for some beer. Ayer was the archetype of post towns, with its scruffy yellow-brick, two-story business blocks, shut shops, and bright bars.

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"You know where that money goes on pay day," commented Keith. They watched the M.P.'s snuff out a flash fight in front of a bar, and saw a jeep burn rubber to arrest two ready, wary, cruising girls whose buttocks counter-rotated down the main street.

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There were 'Nam veterans in the troop boots and chests awash with medal ribbons. They stared down knots of the new recruits, high on Colt 45. Derek and Keith walked into a store which had a misplaced decorum. Men in black bow ties waited coolly on Derek and Keith, their guns and clubs concealed behind the counter. Derek caught sight of a gun, nonetheless, and mentioned to Keith to get the six-pack and leave.

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As they were leaving town they passed an army ambulance with its beacon on and the siren whining. From the overpass of the road back they could see a divisional convoy bound westward. Double strands of lights, strung clear back to the third ridge, were advancing slowly at intervals.

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"What do you suppose that means?" said Derek, indicating the lights. Keith didn't answer as he was thinking how he was going to have to adjust to Vietnam in order to survive. Yet he felt pressured for time, something he had never felt in Chicago. He thought that the damnable quality of the war was that the government used his time, his life, to fight for their victories. He was being asked to believe in a war that he had had no part in starting. In the sudden face of death his life had acquired a new meaning. Perhaps, before, others had found some significance in him, yet he had been unaware of having any particular merit. He had been too busy traveling the path taken by countless others, a path toward self-realization, traveling blindly, searching with an energy that encompassed many thoughts and experiences. The government was now utilizing this energy for its own purposes, and Keith could not now think of the sudden value of his life, but only of survival. He could think only of existing. The battle on the hill splattered flashes of red. Towns away, he heard dogs barking.

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***

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That was what Keith heard now as the dawn approached. He was extremely cold, and as he was unable to move, helpless. Would his parents sense that this was the last of times for him. He could see them in the kitchen when they received the news of his death. The battle which had claimed little of their attention would now be clouded by a black, decedent shape of sorrow. How would his father break the news to his mother? Probably he would lean, straight-armed, against the door, delivering the news as soon as he could speak.

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"Dorothy? It's Keith. Keith. Keith—." A long intake of breath. "He's dead. Keith is dead. The telegram came earlier, but I didn't know how to tell you. He died in a battle." She would weep. Her son, the best that any mother could have, he would be buried and mourned by all good men.

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Bitterness crept into Keith's thoughts. Politicians could make all the speeches they wished in defining the shape of things to come in the war. They could go to the solid geometry of Washington and wait to meet the President, Washington where each head was stuffed with a recent residue of dead Euclidean theorems: dome hemispheres, spire cones, room cubes, and pillar cylinders. Then they would be informed that the President sent his sincere regrets but could not make it. Instead, the could tour more of Capitol Hill, whose will prolonged the war.

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The sun's rays flapped to spite Keith's eyes. We're afraid to admit what has happened to what we were once fighting for, or at least to say so, was Keith's last thought. He thought he saw buzzards swooping above him, and the deserted battle area decreeing: here are what flowers there are and what hope. His death sank into him.

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This short story appeared in the 1971 edition of The Venturer.

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