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.
_____
