Free Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien Page A

lighted lanterns, constellations telling where and when. He felt brave. Tonight, anything was possible.
    When he was empty, he waded down to where the wire entered the sea. He stopped there, washed his face and hands and hair, then waded out.
    For a time he stood in the tower’s moon shadow. Just standing. Not moving and not afraid. It wasn’t much of a tower. From down below, a sapper’s-eye view, it looked rickety and fragile and tottering, just a simple square of sandbags supported by thirty-foot piles. A Tinker Toy in Quang Ngai. He smiled, wondering whose idea it was. An observation post with nothing to observe. No villages, no roads or vital bridges, no enemy, not a dog or a cat. A teetering old tower by the sea.
    He walked once around the tower, looking up at it from various angles, then moved back to the water.
    No, it was not an ordinary night. This night, posted by the sea, he was gallant and wide awake and nimble-headed. His fingers tingled. Excited by the possibilities, but still in control. That was the important part—he was in control. He was calm. Clear thinking helped. Concentrating, figuring out the details, it helped plenty.
    After a time he turned back to the tower, climbed up and resumed his post.
    One-twenty now.
    Smoking quietly, he remembered what his father had said on their last night along the Des Moines River. “You’ll see some terrible stuff, I guess. That’s how it goes. But try to look for the good things, too. They’ll be there if you look. So watch for them.”
    And that was what he did. Even now, figuring how thingsmight have happened on the road to Paris, it was a way of looking for the very best of all possible outcomes. How, with luck and courage and endurance, they might have found a way.
    At one-thirty he moved to the radio, called in the situation report, then smoked another of Doc’s cigarettes.
    Sure, it was swell advice. Think about the good things, keep your eye on Paris.

Nine
How Bernie Lynn Died After Frenchie Tucker
    G et me the M&Ms,” Doc said, and Stink got them, and Doc shook out two candies and placed them on Bernie’s tongue and told him to swallow.
    Sidney Martin, who had ordered Frenchie into the tunnel, and who had then ordered Bernie Lynn to go down to drag Frenchie out, knelt on one knee and looked over Bernie’s wound and then went to the radio to help Ben Nystrom make the call.
    Nystrom was not yet crying.
    Frenchie lay uncovered at the mouth of the tunnel. He was dead and nobody looked at him. He was dirty. His T-shirt was pulled up under the armpits, which was how they’d finally dragged him out. His belly was fat and white and unsucked in. Black clumps of hair were matted flat against the white skin. He had been shot through the nose. His face was turned aside, the way they’d left him.
    “Swallow,” Doc said.
    “I heard it,” Bernie Lynn said.
    “Orphan Six-Three, this is Indigo One-Niner—” The lieutenant’s voice, though he was new to the war, was calm and unbroken. “Request urgent dustoff, repeat, urgent, one KIA-friendly, one urgent friendly WIA … grid … wait on grid.”
    “Swallow,” Doc said. “It’s good stuff for what ails.”
    “Say again, One-Niner.”
    “Urgent,” the lieutenant said without urgency. “Repeat, wait on grid—” He gave the handset to Ben Nystrom and sat down with his code book.
    The earth was shaking.
    “There, man,” Doc purred. “Down she goes. There. Feel better already, huh?”
    “I heard it,” Bernie Lynn said.
    “Sure you heard it. How’s that? Better? We got a ship coming, so … so hold still now. Hang tight and we’ll have you out of here pronto.”
    “Bang,” Bernie said. “Bang! Just like … just like that,
bang!
”
    “Hold still now. Wait’ll that good-shit medicine takes hold, couple seconds or so. You feel it? Feel it?”
    As he spoke, purring, Doc unwrapped another compress bandage and pressed it tight against Bernie’s throat and held it with his