And Spare Them Not

 Part 2 of 2

 

 Max walked into Gordy’s Club, a working-class bar not far from the office building where he’d reported to work for thirty years. He took a seat at the bar, ordered a beer, and waited for Combs to arrive. It was mid-afternoon and the place was nearly empty. He didn’t expect to see anyone he knew, not until after quitting time.

Roy Combs walked in and stood near the door, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He was about six feet tall with a solid build. He wore rumpled slacks and a short-sleeved shirt that revealed powerful forearms. His hair was cut high and tight, military style, and his expression was that of a pissed-off football coach. He saw Max and nodded toward a booth against the wall. The men shook hands, exchanged awkward small talk, then Max got down to business.

“So, what’s up, Roy?”

“Okay, here’s the deal, Max. We are gonna need you to testify.”

“What? You’re shitting me. I told you I won’t do that. You want me to get my family killed?”

“We don’t have any choice. The judge threw out Sonny’s confession.”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“Sonny’s got some young hotshot lawyer. They claimed the confession was coerced. The judge ruled in their favor. It’s out.”

“Wait a minute…you video tape those things, don’t you? You have it all on tape.”

Combs looked away, agitated. “We don’t have a tape. The camera malfunctioned.”

“Malfunctioned? Malfunctioned my ass! What did you do, Roy? You didn’t tape it. You didn’t even try—”

“Let it go, Max—”

“You beat it out of him!”

Combs glared at Max, eyes blazing. “That little motherfucker spit in my face! Spit in my face, Max, and called me a faggot. You’re damn right I beat it out of him.”

“And this is what I fought for in Vietnam? Life, liberty, the Constitution, the American Way? So that you can beat confessions out of gangbangers?”

“Don’t throw the Constitution at me, old man. I served in Desert Storm. I put my life on the line against Saddam’s Elite Guard. Don’t play ‘holier than thou’ with me.”

The bartender called in their direction, telling them to keep it down or take it outside. They glared at each other, both of them breathing hard, their fists clenched on the table. Combs broke the silence.

“Look, we’ve still got the gun. And we’ve got your testimony. The DA says he can get a conviction.” He paused for few seconds. “One more thing…with the confession thrown out, they set bail. Sonny and the other two are out on the street.”

Max felt sick, as though he could vomit his beer right there on the table. He wanted to break the longneck bottle over Combs’s head. “And what if I won’t testify?”

“Come on, Max. We have your statement. We can subpoena you, treat you as a hostile witness, force you to tell the truth. Or go to jail for perjury.”

Max had no way of knowing if this was true. He stared at Combs for a long time. “You knew this all along, didn’t you? That you’d force me to testify. You lying bastard! And how long before Sonny finds out that I’m a witness?”

“I don’t know. It’s in the DA’s hands. It’s called discovery. They have to let the defense know all the evidence against him.”

“And what will you do to protect my family?”

“We’ll do what we can, increase patrols in your neighborhood—”

“Increase patrols? That’s it? That’s all you got?”

“Hey, it’s all we can afford. Our budget is cut to the bone—”

Max bolted out of the booth and headed for the door and the parking lot. He sat in his car for a long time, his head resting on the steering wheel, fighting for composure. He was still there when Roy Combs left the bar.

***

It was the same dream, over and over again, through all the years since Vietnam. Max stood on a muddy jungle road and watched the flamethrower reach out and ignite a hut. The flames leapt into the sky, black smoke billowed upward, one hut after another. Women and children streamed down the road, carrying a few meager possessions, the children crying, the women wailing. No men. Where were the men? All dead, fuel for the inferno? Or in the jungle, watching, waiting?

This is what it had come to in a country where you couldn’t separate the friendlies from the hostiles, where the guy next to you died at the hands of a child with an assault rifle, where you looked into the eyes of the people you were fighting for and saw that sick, twisted mixture of fear and hatred. Why? Because you were destroying their country with napalm and agent orange and carpet bombs and your flamethrowers from hell.

The same dream, over and over, until tonight. Tonight one of the children on the road turned toward him and held out a plate of cookies. It was Ellie.

Max usually jolted awake from this dream drenched in sweat, his breath coming in great gasps. But tonight was different. Tonight he could only lie there and cry. He was awake for a long time then, trying to push the images and the questions out of his mind. How could he answer for the things he had done, and how was he different from Sonny? Who was that brilliant general who said, “Unfortunately, we had to destroy the village in order to save it”? And how many villages had they saved? He refused to remember; he would not count them. And so the dream would come again and again.

***

The District Attorney’s office called to let Max know the trial date had been set. Jury selection would begin in two weeks. They would meet beforehand to go over his testimony and prepare him for cross examination. It had taken sixteen months to reach this point, the wheels of justice grinding away, slow but relentless.

Max was ready, at least as ready as he could be, and he felt an eerie calm now that decisions had been made and set in motion. His daughter and granddaughter were settled with family in Minnesota, two thousand miles away. His house was nearly empty, everything he owned donated or sold on this thing his daughter showed him called Craig’s List. There were a few pots, pans, and utensils in the kitchen, his meager wardrobe in the bedroom closet, his recliner in the living room, along with a framed portrait of Stella on the fireplace mantle. His footsteps echoed as he walked through the house.

He filled his days with routine. Two mornings a week, he attended minyan at the synagogue where he’d been a member since the mid-seventies, and he observed Yahrzeit and attended services to say Kaddish for his parents and for Stella. He read voraciously, went to lunch at favorite cafés, and stopped by Gordy’s for a cold beer or two. And of course, there was his beloved garden. This year’s crop of tomatoes had been exceptional, even by Max’s standards. He’d given away so many that he was sure the neighbors were sick of tomatoes. Some of the rest he’d turned into soup and stocked his freezer with plastic containers filled with the red-orange liquid.

He had sold his bed, and now he slept in the La-Z-Boy. Among the stack of books next to his chair was Stella’s dog-eared volume of Tanakh –The Holy Scriptures. In Deuteronomy 25:19, he had underlined these words: “…you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heaven. Do not forget it!” And in I Samuel 15:3: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not…” Amalek, who attacked from the rear, plundered the sick and the weak, and murdered women and children.

Max would not forget.

Propped against the wall, just behind the chair, was his Winchester 11-87. The twelve-gauge shotgun was a relic of his days as an avid duck and pheasant hunter. Max had given up the sport when most of his hunting buddies either died or moved away. Now the well-maintained 11-87 stood loaded and ready, one shell in the chamber, four in the magazine. With the trial date set, he was sure they were coming for him.

***

The night they came, Max was wide awake. Since the call from the DA’s office, he’d developed the habit of setting an alarm for a little after 2:00 a.m. when the bars closed, figuring they would get a load on before heading his way.

The old black Honda Civic with the faded paint job and bright chrome wheels rolled slowly past the house, circled the block and rolled by again. Car doors slammed, Max’s signal. He turned the recliner sideways and positioned himself behind it, one knee on the floor, the shotgun resting on the arm of the chair.

Two figures walked across his front lawn, up to the low shrubs that grew in front of the living room window. One of them carried a heavy tool with a long handle. They peered in through the window, and then, unable to see anything or anyone, they went to the front porch. A sledgehammer blasted the wooden door frame to pieces, splitting the stillness. The door swung open and the two men moved into the room.

“Oh, Maxie…old ma-an…where are you?” The man in the lead called out in a sing-song voice. The one behind him laughed softly.

Max squeezed the trigger and the shotgun blast rocked the room. The first man flew back against the wall and crumpled to the floor. A new shell was in the chamber and Max pulled the trigger again. He saw a series of muzzle flashes and braced for the shock and burn of the bullets heading his way. The shock and burn never happened. The slugs slammed into the wall behind him. Both men were down on the floor, moving, but just barely. Max stood up and walked the few steps across the room. The second one through the door, the one who had returned fire, was Sonny—Amalek himself.

Max waited, the shotgun ready. Would someone from the Civic come running to provide backup? But then came the sound of the engine racing as the car sped away. He looked at the bloody mess on the wall and at his feet. Should he fire one more shell into the chest of each man? No need. They were no longer moving.

He placed the shotgun on the recliner and went through the kitchen and into the garage. He retrieved a five-gallon can and brought it into the house. He would douse the bodies and the walls with gasoline until the can was empty, then stand back and toss a match into the room. The little wood frame house would be saved, just like all those huts and all those villages in Vietnam.

Instead, he stood motionless, staring at Stella’s portrait on the mantle, tears clouding his eyes.

He set the can on the floor, pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed 911. The dispatcher led him through a series of questions, confirming his name and address, and the fact that two men had been shot while breaking into his home.

“I’m sending the sheriff and an ambulance, Mr. Silver.”

The ambulance wasn’t necessary, but he didn’t argue. “Okay…and you should notify Sheriff’s Detective Roy Combs. This is his case.”

Max traced the bullet holes in the wall with his finger as he spoke to the woman on the phone. He thought about Minnesota and his daughter and granddaughter. He could not wait to be with them. Several questions played in his mind. It was late September now: were the leaves there starting to turn color? Would they need to purchase new clothes for the Minnesota winter? And what varieties of tomato grew there?

Sirens grew ever louder as the call ended.

_____

Note: Elvira Campos of North Highlands, California, was shot and killed as she sat in the front room of her home on May 18, 2013. She was ten years old. This tale of vengeance is for her.

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