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"I don't understand why you're here."
"What were you doing out by my houseboat?"
"Sit down. Do you drink wine or do you want some fruit?"
"No, thank you."
He put a cigarette in his holder, but he didn't light it. His eyes looked across the yard where some gray squirrels were running up an oak tree.
"I wanted to apologize," he said.
"Oh?"
"For all the things that have happened to you. You shouldn't have been involved in it."
"Cops automatically become involved when you break the law."
"I've brought you serious grief, Lieutenant. Some of it was done without my knowledge, but ultimately I'm responsible. I offer you my apology now. I don't expect you to accept it."
"I came here for a personal reason, too. I won't be the one who comes up your walk with a warrant. Somebody else will do that. But I think I'm the only one who knows why you got into this Elephant Walk project, or whatever you call it."
"What makes you privy to my soul, Lieutenant?"
"You were a soldier's soldier. You're not a right-wing crazy. You have the reputation of an honorable man. I suspect that people like Wineburger, Julio Segura, and Philip Murphy make your skin crawl. But you went on the other side of the street with the lowlifes and the paranoids and started shipping arms down to Central America. A couple of innocent people are dead in this country, and God only knows what damage those guns have done in Guatemala and Nicaragua. So a man who probably doesn't respect politicians in the first place has become part of a political conspiracy. It doesn't fit, does it? I think it has to do with your son."
"Maybe you're well-intentioned, but you're being intrusive."
"I was over there, General. Your knowledge and mine won't go away. But you've got to look at it for what it is. You can't bury something awful inside yourself, then pretend it's not there while you fight another war that makes you break all your own rules."
"What do you mean?"
"The massacre at My Lai. You're blaming it on your son. Or you're blaming it on the VC that made him set those mines."
"No."
"Yes. Tear it out of yourself and look at it in the light. They captured him around Pinkville and made him string mines through those rice paddies. Then Calley's people got blown up by those same mines before they went into My Lai."
He set the orange and the paring knife down on the table. His hands were flat on the table's surface. His eyes blinked rapidly and I could see the pulse in his neck. His deeply tanned, smooth skin was spotted with the sunlight shifting through the oak leaves overhead.
"I've apologized to you. I'm deeply sorry for what's happened to you. But you haven't the right to do this."
"It wasn't your son's fa
ult. He was forced to set those mines, and you have to forgive him for it. Maybe you even have to forgive the people that made him do it."
"Do you know what they did to him?" One blue eye trembled at the edge.
"Yes."
"They put his head in a cage full of rats."
"I know."
"He didn't like the army. He was going to medical school. But he was never afraid of anything."
"I bet he was a fine young man, General. A friend of mine over on Magazine knew him. He said your kid was first-rate."
"I don't want to talk any more about this, if you don't mind."
