“Why not?”
“It’s a research facility, not a tourist attraction. The work we do there is sensitive. And it’s certainly not fodder for tabloid television.”
She flushed, and I could tell that she, too, felt nettled now. “This is not tabloid television,” she practically hissed. “This is journalism in the public interest. We are investigating a major news story here—the disrespect being shown here to the bodies of American servicemen. I will go to the university’s president or board of trustees if that’s what it takes to get your cooperation.”
“I am cooperating,” I insisted. “I’ve checked our files, I’ve confirmed what you asked me to confirm, and I’ve explained—or tried to explain—what we do, and why. But I can’t let you go roaming around in there with your camera, looking for lurid footage. Because turning you loose in there with a camera and a big chip on your shoulder? That would be treating the dead with disrespect.”
She stood up so suddenly her chair scraped the floor and nearly toppled backward. If looks could kill, the glare Athena Demopoulos shot in my direction would have laid me out like a lightning bolt, and I’d have joined the ranks of the dead—veterans and civilians alike, indistinguishable in death—who were mustered out, and falling apart, behind the fence of the Body Farm. “Cut,” she snapped at the cameraman. “We’re out of here.” Then, to me: “But we will be back.”
Of that I felt sure. Awfully and dreadfully sure.
PRESSING THE HEELS OF MY HANDS INTO MY TEMPLES, I worked my scalp in slow circles, first in one direction, then in the other, trying—but failing—to release the tension. Next I closed my aching eyes and rubbed them with the thumb and fingers of my right hand.
The Nashville reporter had the basic facts correct: We did have the remains of four veterans at the Body Farm. All four had come from Nashville. All four had died, during the prior eighteen months, at the VA Hospital there, and when no next of kin had claimed their remains, Nashville’s M.E. had sent the bodies to me for research. Nothing underhanded or sinister had been done; the men had simply died alone and unloved. In that regard, those four—the Nashville Four—were like too many other veterans, especially Vietnam War veterans.
Vietnam: I myself had been lucky enough—young enough—to stay out of the war. I turned eighteen during the war’s final year; the draft hadn’t yet ended, but I had a high lottery number—high enough that I didn’t get drafted. By that time most Americans seemed to agree that Vietnam had been a foreign-policy failure: an unwinnable fight, and a terrible waste of lives. As a result, our conflicted feelings—our national shame, it might even be called—had created an unwritten but undeniably tragic domestic policy: a policy of pretending that Vietnam had never happened, and of turning a blind, indifferent eye to Vietnam vets and their postwar troubles.
The College of Social Work at UT was large and well regarded. One of the faculty there—a friend of mine—had made a long-term study of Vietnam vets. What he’d found had shocked me. Twenty or more years after returning from Southeast Asia, four out of five Vietnam vets still suffered from chronic symptoms of PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder. Compared to nonveterans, they also had higher rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide. And unlike veterans of World War II, who were widely celebrated as national heroes, Vietnam vets tended to be unappreciated, unacknowledged, sometimes even scorned. It was almost as if we were all avoiding eye contact with a homeless beggar—a beggar who might, come to think of it, be a Vietnam veteran.
I didn’t know the specific stories or circumstances of the four veterans who had ended up at the Body Farm. All I knew was that in the end, no one had cared enough to claim them, to arrange for the honor guard and the folded flag and the well-kept grave their service should have earned them.
Who had contacted Channel 4 about the story, and why—and why now, at this particular time? Initially, I’d assumed that the reporter was pursuing the Janus story, and when she’d started talking about veterans, I’d wondered if she was working some sort of angle related to Janus’s Air America stint in Southeast Asia. But her barrage of questions and accusations had quickly made it clear that this was a Tennessee story—a Body Farm story—and a veteran story. For all I knew, we might’ve had dozens of veterans’ corpses at the Body Farm over the past dozen years. Was it really high-minded concern about the treatment of dead soldiers that was behind this, or was there some unspoken subtext—some power play or hidden agenda? The reporter had dodged my question about who her source was. If I pressed the point, I felt sure that she’d bristle and bluster and begin waving the freedom-of-the-press flag as if she were its lone standard-bearer and staunchest defender.
Still rubbing my temples and eyes with one hand, I used the other hand to call Kathleen. “I’m back,” I told her glumly. “I need you to feel sorry for me for just a minute.”
“I didn’t realize it was such a hardship to come home,” she said, her tone hovering somewhere between teasing and defensive.
“I didn’t either,” I said. “I was really looking forward to it. But then I had the trip from hell. And then things got even worse.”
“Poor baby. What’s wrong? Tell me about it.”
So I did, skipping the trip and going straight to the ambush interview by the TV reporter.
“Sweeps week,” she said scornfully.
“What?”
“Sweeps week. It’s when the networks pull out all the stops. They measure their ratings—their viewers—during sweeps week. The higher their ratings, the more they can charge for ads. So they show blockbuster movies, sensational stories, anything they think’ll get viewers. Don’t take it personally, hon. It’s all about money, not about you.”
“It sure feels like it’s about me,” I squawked. “It’s my work—my facility; my reputation—in the crosshairs of that . . . that . . .”
“Language, Bill. Language.”
“That reporter. That mudslinging, muckraking, holier-than-thou reporter. Am I allowed to call her that?”
“Of course, sweetheart—to me. I wouldn’t say it to her, though. Not unless you want every television viewer in Nashville to think you’re a grumpy old man.”
“Grumpy? Me? Hmmph,” I said. “I’ll be nice as pie. She’ll be eating out of my hand.”
“If I catch her lips anywhere near any part of you, her next story can be about her colonoscopy. The one I administer with her own video camera.”
I laughed, in spite of myself. “I should’ve come to your office instead of my office,” I said. “I’m thinking I might have gotten a warmer welcome.”
“I’d’ve been nice as pie,” she cooed. “You’d’ve been eating out of my hand.”
“Hold that thought for a few hours,” I told her. My spousal flirting was cut short by the buzz of my intercom. “Rats,” I said. “Peggy’s buzzing me. Probably more bad news. See you at home.” I pressed the intercom button. “Tell me you’ve good news, Peggy.”
“Can’t,” she answered. “You’ve told me never to lie to you. Do you want door number one, or door number two?”
“Excuse me?”
“You have two callers on hold. The dean’s on line one, and the general counsel’s on line two.”
“The general counsel? As in Amanda Whiting, UT’s top legal eagle?”
“Bingo.”
“Jeez,” I said. “If line three rings, don’t answer—it’ll be the Angel of Death calling.”
“No, he’s coming to see you in person,” she cracked. “He’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“Swell,” I said. “I’ll tell the dean to talk slow—that way maybe I can skip the lawyer altogether.” The truth was, I rather liked the general counsel, but given that the Channel 4 reporter was probably already badgering her, I doubted that she was calling with good news. The dean, on the other hand, had long been a reliable, agreeable ally, from the moment I’d first pitched my unorthodox research program to him, years ago. How many years? Ten? No, twelve, I realized as I pressed
the blinking button. That was 1992. Where does the time go?
“Hello,” I said to the dean. “Are you calling to fire me?”
“I can’t,” he said. “You’ve got tenure. Good thing, too, because you’ve stirred up a hell of a hornet’s nest.”
“I didn’t stir it up,” I protested. “I just happened to be standing near the tree. Somebody else took a whack at the hornet’s nest. I don’t know who, and I don’t know why.”
“Actually, I’m calling to make sure you know I’m in your corner,” he said. “You do good work. You’re a credit to the university. Let me know if I can help.”
“You good with a pair of tweezers?”
“How’s that?”
“It might take you and me both to pull all the stingers out of my hide.”
He chuckled. “You’ll be all right. Good luck, Bill.”
“I need it. Amanda Whiting’s on the other line.”
“Ah. You do need it,” he agreed, and for once I wished he weren’t quite so agreeable.
GENERAL COUNSEL AMANDA WHITING WAS LESS agreeable than the dean had been. “We’ve got one hell of a mess on our hands,” she said. Her words were muddled, and for a bizarre moment I wondered if she was drinking. Then I heard the clatter of a knife on a plate, and I realized she was eating. “How do we clean this up and make sure it never happens again?”