The Third Pillar of Wisdom

By William Van Poyck

Kevin long, Vietnam veteran, ex-prosecutor, current successful defense attorney, increasingly jaded by the grim realities of the arena within which he operates, and still wading through the detritus of his unraveled marriage, spontaneously and uncharacteristically accepts precisely the type of vexing case he’d vowed to forever put behind him: a brutal jailhouse murder in nearby Florida State Prison. Relying upon his jailhouse rat eyewitness, the prosecutor is eagerly demanding the death penalty, making it a case guaranteed to highlight everything Kevin loathes in a system he increasingly questions. Is Kevin’s new client the young, naïve victim acting in self-defense that his mother professes him to be, or is he the ruthless homicidal maniac the prosecutor portrays? When Kevin considers accepting unsolicited help offered by Earl Voorhees, a wily, enigmatic career convict and escape artist whose true motives remain debatable, Kevin must decide whether Earl is a star defense witness just wanting to do the right thing or a Trojan Horse sent by the state to sabotage the case, a desperate man determined to do whatever it takes to win his freedom.
Against this backdrop Kevin agrees to represent Homer Benning, a seemingly self-effacing Jacksonville schoolteacher charged with savagely murdering his elderly rural neighbor, The Widow Nye. An ex-World War II French Resistance fighter with her own brutal past, living out her last days in a faded Victorian mansion occupying a prized lakefront lot being eyed by a real estate developer, her adamant refusal to sell, the state contends, stood between Homer and his own pecuniary dreams. As Kevin wrestles with his psychologically fragile client’s Walter Mitteyesque personality - infused with a brittle rage and a decidedly dark streak – he is less surprised by Homer’s steadfast claim of innocence than by his insistence that the old woman isn’t even dead. Kevin’s investigative sweep gathers up the past and present, arcing from Nazi-occupied France through the bowels of the prison system and Florida’s death row, as Earl Voorhees surprisingly reemerges as a potential bombshell defense witness. Thrown into the mix is the cantankerous elderly trial judge with whispered ancient links to rural south Florida drug smuggling and a sensational, decades-old murder, along with two homicide detectives with their own reasons for ensuring that Homer sits in the electric chair.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Van Poyck
• Release date: Apr 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458095152

William Van Poyck

I am a single dad of 5 children from 21 to 12. I am the CEO of a private 132-bed work release center for men who are transitioning from prison back into society. I spent a total of 18 + years of my life before being paroled in 1984. Ten years later I was given a full pardon from Florida Governor Lawton Chiles. Today I run my own minimum security prison/work-release center. God is good!I am also the State Chairman for the Constitution Party of Florida www.cpflorida.com. I ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010.

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THE THIRD PILLAR OF WISDOM

A novel

by William Van Poyck

Also by William Van Poyck:

Quietus

A Checkered Past

The Third Pillar of Wisdom

1996 by William Van Poyck.

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition 2011

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This book is fiction, and any similarity between the names, characters and events depicted herein, and any real persons is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

DEDICATION

This novel is dedicated to Gerald S. Bettman, my friend, who encouraged me to write.

PROLOGUE

It is said that every story, like a good chess match, has a beginning, a middle and an end, and as a writer I know this to be true. So it is with life. The key is knowing where the divisions lie. While it is true that an individual life can usually be broken down into these discrete parts, when you step back to extend the scope to encompass the panorama of many lives, each richly layered with its own variegated stories, you soon hook onto the never-ending continuum of life itself. Like the loops of a well worn fishing net, each story, each life, links to the next, and so on, until your mind tires at taking in the endless warp and woof of life’s fabric. Where, after all, absent death itself, do you draw the line and mark the end? Endings... I’ve never been very good at them, at discerning where those divisions lie. Life to me never seemed that neat. As a writer, that’s my problem, or one of them, anyway.

Seven years ago I was a hotshot reporter at the Miami Herald and when, after years of grinding the beat, I won a Pulitzer Prize for my investigative series on brutality and corruption within the Department of Corrections, which culminated in the resignation of two state legislators, well, you couldn’t tell me anything. All my life I looked out for myself, pulled myself up by my raggedy bootstraps, out of a stone-cold home, centered in a flint-hard New Jersey slag heap of a broken town, worked and hustled my way through college, depending on nobody but myself and proud of it— proudly confident in my abilities. . . . Proud. There’s that word again. Too proud to acknowledge bad decisions, like when my precious little sister drowned at the city pool after I left early to hang with the fellas. I miss her so much. . . . Too proud to concede any responsibility when my parents died in a fiery car crash on their way to bond me out of jail on a drunk and disorderly charge.

So, perhaps, it was the natural progression of things which led me to decide to write the Great American Novel, to take a sabbatical, sail around the world and grind out my literary masterpiece, my own Cold Mountain. I rented out the house in Coconut Grove, packed up my dog, Spanky, along with a duffel bag of Writer’s Digest how-to books and my old Underwood manual typewriter, loaded everything on a secondhand, forty-two-foot steel-hulled ketch and cast off, driven by ever higher expectation, plagued by ghosts I didn’t even know I had. Yeah, I know, it wasn’t long on originality, perhaps more fantasy fulfillment than realistic goal.

As it was, I didn’t make it much past the Caribbean basin, sailing a rum-drenched circuit around the Gulf of Mexico, from Key West to the Yucatan Peninsula, Costa Rica, Panama, up to the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, St. Kitts, changing islands like counterfeit money, pursuing the literary El Dorado... Just as unoriginal and seemingly as inevitable, I slowly began to drown my writer’s block in an ocean of booze. Exhausting such standards as tequila, rum and gin, I imprudently settled on island-brewed absinthe, straight out of Haiti, that hypnotic, opalescent green, wormwood-flavored liqueur with the intoxicatingly exotic reputation and the elusive promise of mystical inspiration. Later than sooner I learned why the drink, fabled for causing hallucinations, convulsions, insanity, even death, had long been outlawed by the French. I should have been tipped off when I saw that it glowed in the dark . . . Yeah, it’s a hackneyed tale, right out of some tired crime novel genre script, but nonetheless real for it. Personally, I hate the hoary, tortured, drunken writer notion, but what can I do?

It is difficult to admit, or at least it would have been at one time, that my life was saved and turned around by an enigmatic, peripatetic ex-convict who discovered me enveloped in absinthe’s opium-like stupor, prattling away, freely batting about bons mots with thrusting polemics, in a Mexican nightclub. You know the expression, ‘God protects fools and drunks’? he asked me. You qualify for both. His soft, knowing tone stung harder than a slap to the face. Had I not met Earl Voorhees precisely when I did, under just those circumstances, there is no question, at least in my own mind, that I would now be long dead, or pickled and rotting away in some stinking Mexican mental hospital. You’re on your own hegira, he once counseled me, your own journey of escape. I once knew a man like you. A good friend. It ended badly for him.

It was finally through the magic of Earl’s stories, offered only reluctantly at first, but later as a sort of therapeutic instrument (I now know), that I again found those raggedy old bootstraps within my grasp. Through him, with him, by him, and the awful grace of God, I again found my center... I’m a proud man, vain perhaps—did I mention I won a Pulitzer?—and it is supremely difficult to admit to such weaknesses, to concede these truths. But, I am determined to pare away prose and pretense, to jettison all hubris until I’ve cut down to the shiny, bare bone of fact. On this I will not compromise, for without the truth the power of this story wilts away . . . Yeah, the story. Sweeping, undulating—an amalgam of stories, really, clotted together like an old bloody wound. And, some of the best ones I can’t even write—there’s a good reason for that.

Closing his eyes the writer took a long breath, using his diaphragm to pull the bright salt air deep inside, centering himself, as Earl had taught him. With each breath he surrendered the regrets of his life, offering them up like tithes to the subtle pulse of life’s evolving symphony. Breathing deeper, he patiently searched for, found and captured his writing voice, lassoing that prancing stallion with the braided lariat of his mind, pulling it to his chest in a full embrace, until all the pain faded into a colorful anecdote from the past. Then, with one fluid movement he reached out and snapped off the recorder, and pulled his old Underwood toward him, feeling vaguely like a gunfighter strapping on his six-shooters. Then, without further elaboration, he began to type.

PART ONE

Every soul has to learn the whole lesson for itself. It must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know.

----Ralph Waldo Emerson

Connie! he yelled, for the third time. I need those files in here now! And bring me the Huckleberry depositions, too. All of them.

Kevin glanced at his phone light, blinking insistently. Snatching up the receiver, he stabbed the button. Hello. Yes, this is Kevin Long. He scanned his notes, drumming his fingers on the desk. Yes, that’s me. Kevin Long, the criminal defense attorney.

Kevin smiled. Well, ma’am, I appreciate the vote of confidence, he replied, motioning to Connie, framed in the doorway. She bustled in, an efficient whirl of long legs, clicking heels and neat white teeth. Her long, lustrous red hair flowed down her back and swung with her hips like a rubescent pendulum. She laid a stack of files on the desk and picked up the ones flagged with yellow Post-It notes. Covering the mouthpiece Kevin whispered to Connie, Get a hold of Bettman and have him reschedule the medical examiner’s deposition for Thursday, ten o’clock. Handing her a sheaf of papers he added, Get these motions typed up immediately. We need five copies of each. Connie nodded and walked out, leaving behind the faintest aroma of Shalimar.

O’Neil. It is Mrs. Alice O’Neil.

It’s not for me, Mr. Long, and it is not in Massachusetts. It’s my son, Larry. He is there in Florida.

He’s in trouble, I’m afraid. Kevin heard her voice quaver. They have him charged with murder. First-degree murder. He needs a lawyer.

Larry? Why, he is, oh, he’s twenty-two years old. Her voice cracked and Kevin heard a muffled sob.

Jail? I suppose you could call it a jail. He’s in Starke, Florida.

Well, no. No, he is not in the Bradford County jail. He is at Florida State Prison.

Yes, I am certain. He has been there several years. He is a prisoner, you see. And now they say he killed another prisoner.

A few months ago.

"Yes. But Larry does not trust them. They won’t visit him or answer his letters. They’ve only seen him one time and all they talked about was getting him to plead guilty. When I call them they tell me to talk him into pleading guilty. It was clearly self defense, Mr. Long, but they are not even investigating. Nobody will listen."

Please. I’m afraid, Mr. Long. Larry is all I have and now they want to take him away from me. Her voice quavered again.

They want to kill my only son. She spoke with the plaintive earnestness of a travailing mother.

Yes. Yes. Isn’t it barbaric?

No. Larry is adamant. He said we have to get you, Mr. Long. Only you. Larry said you are the only man who can save his life.

So I prayed on it, Mr. Long. I got on my knees and offered up your name in prayer. I prayed a long time, a very long time. And now the Holy Spirit has given me a word of blessed assurance. You are the man who will save my son’s life, Mr. Long.

These are very expensive cases, Mrs. O’Neil, Kevin said softly.

Well, he said, settling into his chair, I have time to listen. He picked up his cup of coffee and drank the rest down. Why don’t you tell me what happened Mrs. O’Neil, and then we will see what we can do.

*****

The morning of the trial Larry’s attorney appeared in front of his holding cell behind the courtroom. A marathon session of bullying, threatening, cajoling and promises followed as the lawyer assured Larry that he faced certain conviction before a hanging judge eager to impose the five-year maximum. There were no grounds for appeal, the lawyer assured him, and a five-year sentence guaranteed confinement in a maximum security prison. There, the lawyer promised, Larry would be gang-raped daily, brutalized beyond imagination, and probably killed. Fortunately, the lawyer had secured a sweet deal for Larry. Just go in, plead guilty, and he would be sentenced to one year in the county jail. With good time, Larry would be out in eight months, maybe less. Like a sucker-punched fighter, Larry stood dazed and confused, his head spinning wildly, overwhelmed with indecision. What would it be, the lawyer kept asking, five years or one year? Life or death? A decision had to be made, right now. Numbly, Larry agreed to take the deal.

Larry stood silently before the judge, an old man who never looked up, as his attorney responded to the court’s rote inquiries. Obeying his lawyer’s strident instructions from the holding cell, Larry answered in the negative when the judge asked if any promises or threats had been made to him. When the judge routinely asked if Larry’s decision was voluntary, and whether he was satisfied with his lawyer’s representation, Larry softly replied yes, without truth or conviction. Then, without an upward glance or moment’s hesitation the judge sentenced Larry to three years imprisonment. Stunned, Larry raised his bowed head, certain he heard wrong. Before he could speak, two deputies hustled him out. His last memory was looking back to see his smiling lawyer huddled with the prosecutor, laughing at a private joke.

Larry arrived at Sumter Correctional Institution, a close custody gladiator school incongruously set in the rural piney woods northeast of Tampa, as a freshman enrolled in a whole new kind of university, a whole new world. Thirty percent of the one thousand convicts were serving life sentences. The average sentence was forty-two years, the average age was nineteen and a half years, and the population was seventy-four percent black. That first afternoon Larry saw his first rape, a timid boy who came in on the bus with him. That night Larry fought desperately with an angry man, earning his first black eye. Two days later he saw his first murder, a blur of whirling hands and one sun-kissed blade, winking and flashing like a newly minted dime, the cancellation of a five-dollar poker debt. The interminable violence gnawed at Larry like an open wound, threatening the security of his soul. Yet he was determined to survive the timeless unseen crucible in which men are forged. The next day he bought his first knife.

The same inmate who sold the knife to Larry also ratted him out about it. The goon squad searched Larry and his locker, found the weapon and locked him in confinement. Larry was charged with possession of a weapon by a state prisoner. Facing an additional fifteen years, he pled guilty and was sentenced to five more years, consecutive to his three-year sentence.

Larry was transferred to Belle Glade, an ancient, violent prison rotting in the middle of sugar cane country. Before he finished unpacking his meager property, two men attacked him, knocking him to the ground and ripping his Timex off his wrist before leaving him, bleeding and dazed, on the floor. That evening, standing in the chow line, somebody punched him in the back of the head. He turned to meet a sea of impassive faces. When he turned back to the front he heard snickering laughs. Again he was punched in the back of the head, dropping him to one knee. Screaming in anger, tears in his eyes, Larry yelled at the crowd, cursing them all. When a guard told him to shut up or go to lock-up, Larry stalked off, consumed with rage and confusion. He approached a sergeant and asked to be placed in protective custody, but when he could not provide names or identify a specific threat, his request was denied. When Larry returned dejectedly to his dormitory he found his locker broken into, his property stolen and his family photographs ripped up and scattered across the floor. On his knees, sweeping up the fragments of his pictures, Larry felt the silent, baleful stares of the watching inmates.

Clenching his teeth, Larry walked the recreation yard, struggling to suppress the mounting fear, fighting the uncertainty that gripped his spirit. When the evening lock-in was called he pulled up an iron horseshoe stake and snuck it back into his loud, overcrowded dormitory. Afraid to shower alone in the filthy gang shower in the rear of the dorm, he climbed under the sheets in full clothes, horseshoe stake at his side, and waited for sleep to come.

Larry awoke suddenly in the dark to find a man’s face pressed against his, a knife in front of his eyes. The man was naked and climbing in bed with Larry, threatening him sotto voce, demanding he roll over. A dam of bitter anger burst inside Larry’s heart and with a defiant scream he jumped up and brought the iron bar crashing down on the naked man. Again and again he hit the writhing man, yelling at him, at everyone, at the top of his lungs.

The naked man had a broken jaw, fractured skull, two broken ribs and a ruptured spleen, while Larry had only an outside charge for attempted first-degree murder. The knife had disappeared, undercutting his self-defense claim, but Larry adamantly rejected the state’s plea bargain offer of fifteen years. When Larry went to trial the naked man testified that it was a lover’s quarrel fueled by passionate jealousy. Two other inmates testified to the same thing and after twenty minutes of deliberation the six-man jury returned a verdict of guilty. Citing his prior possession of the knife at Sumter, and calling him a hardened, violent criminal, the judge sentenced Larry to life imprisonment. He was nineteen years old.

This time Larry was transferred to the big house, Florida State Prison, the state’s only true maximum-security prison. He spent the next three years in solitary confinement, in a small, one-man cell devoid of property. It was close management status, reserved, it was said, for problem inmates. When Larry was finally released into open population he was older, bigger, stronger, and much wiser.

Larry worked in the kitchen, minding his own business, until he became the secret obsession of Lorenzo Epps. When Epps began hanging around Larry’s cell, flashing a phony smile and trying to befriend him, Larry did some checking. Epps was a homosexual psychopath and notorious informant, Larry was told, and the administration let him do whatever he wanted, in exchange for his tips and information. He had been in prison over twenty years and he had more pull than a lot of guards.

He gets obsessed with young guys, a friend told Larry. He likes to pal up to them, pretend he’s their friend. He psychologically wears them down until the guy just gives in. If he won’t give in, Epps will rape him, or try to, anyway. He killed a guy on the V-wing two years ago because he resisted his pressure. He only got ten years, and only spent a year in close management. Larry’s friend shook his head, then added, This guy’s a real animal. If he zeros in on you, you better get a shank.

The last time I got a knife from someone I ended up getting five years for it, Larry said.

Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six, his friend replied.

When Larry awoke each morning Epps was there, his hulking frame filling the doorway, offering Larry coffee and cigarettes. When Larry went to the chow hall Epps was with him, sitting at his table, smiling, talking. Every time Larry showered, Epps appeared like a belated shadow. Initially polite, almost deferential, Epps slowly increased the pressure, making subtle hints, oblique comments—never anything direct enough to guarantee a confrontation, just the constant psychological probing. Slowly, inexorably, like a python tightening its coils, Epps expertly smothered Larry with his oily presence. Finally, Larry stood up to Epps, telling him he did not want him coming around his cell anymore, that he knew what was up, and he was not interested. When Larry finished his prepared speech Epps smiled, then slapped Larry’s face so hard his vision blurred and his ears rang. When Larry looked up, Epps was gone.

When the cell doors were unlocked the following morning Larry was already awake. Before his feet hit the floor Larry’s cell door slid open and Epps stepped confidently through the doorway, a smile on his face and a large, cruel-bladed knife in his hand. Acting on instinct that surprised even himself, Larry charged Epps, tackling him at waist level. As Epps fell backward his feet went out from under him, and in that moment he dropped the knife. On his hands and knees, Larry snatched up the knife as Epps, on his back, scrambled backward like a scooting crab. Larry saw Epps’ expression shift from utter surprise to fear. Larry lurched after Epps, viciously slashing the blade back and forth like a scythe, cutting Epps’ upraised hands and arms. As Epps slid out through the doorway Larry leaped atop him, straddling his waist. Epps reached up and grabbed the naked blade with both hands, trying to twist it from Larry’s grip. Locked in silent, deadly combat, face-to-face, eye to eye, they struggled mightily. Then, Larry savagely head-butted Epps, once, twice, three times, smashing his nose in a spray of blood. Feeling Epps’ grip on the blade loosen, Larry jerked it free, cutting through Epps’ fingers and tendons. Then, with one continuous motion Larry drove the knife deep into the center of Epps’ chest. Epps gasped and his face folded up. Larry pulled the knife out and stood up, panting for air, totally exhausted. Epps feebly scooted backward, but his hands and feet, slippery with blood, found no purchase. Epps stopped, a dazed expression across his face, then looked at Larry. He tried to speak but blood filled his mouth. Then, slowly, with a defeated resignation, he lay back and died in the spreading crimson pool.

Alice O’Neil spoke passionately, her whole frame thrown into every word, and Kevin Long listened carefully as her words painted an intense, evocative portrait. When she finished talking Kevin’s thoughts were a symphony of contradictions.

Does Larry have any witnesses to support his version of the facts, Mrs. O’Neil?

It is not a version of the facts, Mr. Long. That is what happened, she stated. All I know is that the prosecutor has come up with two inmates who claim they witnessed it and that it was Larry who attacked Epps without provocation. They are lying, of course. Larry says they were not even there, they did not even see it. Larry says they are lying to get a transfer to a better prison. He says this happens all the time and that inmates will lie on anyone about anything to get out of FSP.

Well, your son is right about that, Kevin agreed. Kevin had seen it first hand. It was why he hated prison cases. The trials amounted to lying contests, and the state usually produced the best liars. They epitomized the very worst in the system, a system Kevin still believed in even if that belief was but a shadow of its former self. And yet, he reminded himself, he was squarely faced now with a case where a young man’s life might hang upon his diligence.

Here is what I will do, Kevin said decisively, suppressing the doubts. I will go visit your son at FSP. Before I commit myself to this case I want to meet your son. I’ll do it this week, he said, flipping through his calendar. Day after tomorrow.

Oh, thank you, thank you, the woman said passionately. I knew you would do it, Mr. Long. God assured me you would. You are the man who will save my son’s life. It is all preordained. God bless you, Mr. Long.

Thank you, Kevin said, smiling to himself. I’ll connect you with Connie. Just answer her questions and give her the information she needs. I’ll call you as soon as I visit with Larry.

Please, she said, her voice breaking, when you see him, tell him that I love him.

I will, Kevin said gently. Oh, and Mrs. O’Neill?

Yes?

God bless you, too, Kevin said, and then hung up the phone.

*****

Two nights later Kevin Long lay in bed, staring at his ceiling, unable to sleep. Earlier that day he had driven south down Highway 301 to Starke, turned west onto State Road 16 and motored through the tired, pine tree scrubland to Florida State Prison. The huge concrete building squatted menacingly on the palmetto-fringed pastureland like a bad infection, a hulking malevolence that always left a bad taste in Kevin’s mouth. He had met with young Larry O’Neill, who sat across from him in clinking leg shackles and handcuffs secured to a heavy waist chain. Larry was a bright and earnest young man still bearing traces of his Boston College background. But Kevin also saw in his speech and mannerisms the growing patina of convicthood, arms and chest blown up from too many pushups in too many lonely cells, the crude jailhouse tattoo crazy quilting his arm. Kevin sensed his inner strength, as well as his resignation, as he told his story. It was essentially the same elegiac tale he had heard from Larry’s mother, minus the crying and the talk of God’s will. Kevin left the prison knowing little more than when he arrived, still undecided about taking the case.

Kevin closed his eyes and considered young Larry’s prematurely derailed life. He was just nineteen when it all began. Kevin himself was in college at nineteen, his own life on the eve of transformation. Kevin’s thoughts drifted back to his childhood days when the answers to life’s questions snapped into place as easily as his Lego blocks. Living in Miami, his highest ambition was to forever explore the woods and everglades, the young primordial hunter of snakes, turtles, lizards and birds. His biggest childhood thrills came in taking his captured snakes to Mr. Haas, the owner and founder of the Miami Serpentarium, a magical animal kingdom astride US 1, with its huge, white concrete cobra rising high above the passing traffic. Mr. Haas always had time to patiently examine Kevin’s specimens, making insightful comment, rejecting some and paying Kevin for the others: a dollar a foot for venomous snakes, fifty cents a foot for the others. Kevin spent many summer days exploring the compound, watching the crocodiles and alligators, the exotic birds and huge Galápagos tortoises. Mostly he watched Mr. Haast, the world’s foremost herpetologist, as he gave his daily performances for the tourists, skillfully hand catching, and then milking his deadly poisonous snakes. Cobras and rattlesnakes, coral snakes and black mambas, Mr. Haast had them all. Those were Kevin’s happiest years.

Kevin turned over in bed, his mind active with unanswered questions. How long had it been, he wondered, since he was that happy? Yes, he was very successful, as success is commonly measured, possessing the requisite material trappings: an expensive riverfront home that some called an estate, the boats and cars he coveted growing up, the twin engine Cessna he seldom had time to fly. He also had the two divorces, the raging peptic ulcer and relentless insomnia.

Kevin kicked at his bed covers as sleep eluded him. Just nineteen. Kevin remembered being a nineteen-year-old freshman at the University of Florida, an opinionated young man on a football scholarship, sporting a Johnny Unitas crewcut and a Dick Butkus attitude. Imbued with concepts of duty, honor and country he inhabited a black and white world devoid of gray shades. Kevin enlisted in the US Army, eager to do his duty, eventually landing as a bright-eyed first lieutenant on a scorching tarmac at Phan Rang, South Vietnam. With the certainty given to youth he was confident of the rightness of the struggle. Eager to fight he volunteered often for combat patrols. He fought like a man settling scores and his men were soon calling him GI Joe. That was his first tour.

By the time Kevin completed his third and final tour he had devolved into what he once scorned, burned by the fire of cynical disillusionment, smoking pungent Thai sticks and counting down the days to his tour’s end. In between lay certain large moments which plumbed the depths of his heart and fought for possession of his soul.

One such moment found Kevin attached to a six-man forward recon unit dropped behind enemy lines to gather intelligence. They were helicoptered into the rugged, mountainous highlands bordering Laos, northwest of the DMZ, a land of cool mists and thick, green jungle, crowned by a towering tree canopy that filtered the sunlight like an emerald prism. Parrots, monkeys, snakes and eagles abounded while tigers patrolled the rocky outcrops above and elephants wandered below. There, well camouflaged and hunkered down, they spied on a division of North Vietnamese Regulars encamped in the lush valley beneath.

On the morning of the third day Kevin traveled alone to a nearby stream to fill their canteens. Kneeling on the bank, surrounded by dense foliage, he paused to enjoy the mellifluous burble of cool mountain water over smooth rocks and the squawking of colorful parrots flying overhead. A delicate mist, gauzy as lace, rose up from the water like nature’s own breath. Flitting silently through the ephemeral fog was a cloud of small red and yellow butterflies, trimmed in black, dipping and pirouetting across the water’s surface like shimmering dancers in a secret ballet. Kevin washed his face and drank his fill, then filled the canteens one by one. He was almost done when he heard a noise. Instantly alert, he squatted on his heels motionless, his eyes scanning the green jungle wall. Then, directly across the stream from him, the vegetation parted and a figure appeared, not thirty feet away.

It was a North Vietnamese soldier in an olive drab uniform, with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. He was very young, a boy really, with large, liquid eyes and smooth skin over fine features. A gentle smile played across the youth’s face, revealing neat white teeth behind full lips, while his long, straight hair was dark and rich as some tincture of indigo. There was an air of vulnerability about him, a childlike grace that tugged at the edges of Kevin’s mind. Kevin squatted awkwardly, holding his breath, cutting his eyes to his M-16 lying nearby. His heart pounded and he felt the cold sweat sliding down his back as his tightening leg muscles strained in protest.

The young soldier looked around nonchalantly, his gaze sliding over Kevin’s position without recognition. Then, slipping his rifle off, he laid it down and dropped to his knees. Kevin heard the boy laugh softly as he splashed water on his face. Then, just as Kevin had done, he drank his fill from the cool stream. Giggling, the youth stood up, looking up toward the tree tops. Kevin remained absolutely still, barely daring to breathe.

The youth bent over and picked up his rifle. Then, without warning, he looked back up toward the sky and suddenly began singing. Softly at first, then with mounting passion, the boy’s hauntingly beautiful voice rose and fell in the arboreal amphitheater, strangely incongruous in the wartime setting. Though Kevin did not understand the words, the song was enchanting and he instinctively sensed it was a love ballad. At that moment Kevin saw the soldier not as an enemy but as a person, a youngster with dreams, loves, hopes and aspirations not unlike himself. Kevin’s eyes again slid to his rifle and his mind raced to sort out his options. If he shot the soldier the mission was compromised and a division of NVA would be on them in minutes. Kevin watched as the youth sang fervently, eyes closed, face upturned. Inch by inch Kevin slowly eased his hand toward his weapon. The boy’s voice warbled passionately and he leaned back, throwing his frame into his song. Kevin’s creeping hand touched his rifle stock. The final, poignant notes echoed across the opening and the song concluded as