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Chapters 26 & 27

Summary: Chapter 26, The Nature of the Dark

The men of Charlie Company at Thuan Yen are all young, ranging from eighteen to twenty-four years old. After the massacre, they continue to fight in Vietnam. Nights are the hardest because that’s when the shame comes. The men never go back to Thuan Yen, and despite talk of an investigation, nothing happens. Some nights, Sorcerer imagines himself back in the irrigation ditch, but over time, the entire day begins to feel more like a dream. For reasons John can’t explain to Kathy, he extends his tour for another year. Sometimes while in combat, Sorcerer would see corpses of people murdered at Thuan Yen, including those he killed. Sometimes he tells them to go away. If they refuse, he calls for artillery.

Two months before John’s return to the United States, he takes an office job. He now must perform the trick of creating a new future for himself. One night, John sneaks into the office and edits the muster roll listing all the soldiers. Next, he finds the folder for Charlie Company’s reports and edits his name out of them. Lastly, John creates a stream of paperwork that assigns himself to Alpha Company. Since he was known as Sorcerer, he thinks he will be safe. Most soldiers didn’t even know his real name. One week later, John goes back to the States. He calls Kathy from the airport but hangs up before she answers. On the plane, even when he puts on civilian clothes, he thinks of himself as Sorcerer.

Summary: Chapter 27, Hypothesis

This hypothesis focuses on what John might have done the night Kathy disappears. John wakes up several times, sweating. He whispers, “Kill Jesus” and gets out of bed. In the kitchen, he boils water in the teakettle. While John waits, he understands the disgrace he has experienced, not just the election, but the revelation of his secret. The newspapers showed pictures of the dead at Thuan Yen and included detailed testimony. Kathy’s expression the morning the article came out was empty.

John takes the teakettle into the living room, where he pours boiling water over several plants, all while nodding and laughing. When the kettle is empty, he returns to the kitchen and boils more. Teakettle in hand, John moves to the bedroom. He loses time, but when he returns to consciousness, he finds himself by the side of the bed, watching Kathy sleep. The teakettle tips forward, and Kathy’s eyelids fly open. She looks at him, puzzled, and steam rises from her eye sockets. She jerks and shrieks. The room smells of scalding. John watches Kathy’s skin bubble and blister. His mind cycles through all the possible causes for what he’s done now and then. He hears the voices of the Vietnamese women and children. Kathy shudders again and then lies still.

John carries her to the boathouse and puts her in the boat. He takes the boat out on the water. He is now Sorcerer. He rows out a few hundred yards. He weights her body with rocks and eases her over. Then Sorcerer tips the boat so it sinks. Eventually, he finds himself back on the dock. Later, John wakes up in bed. He reaches for Kathy, but she’s not there.

Analysis: Chapters 26 & 27

Chapter 26 recounts the immediate aftermath of the massacre. The choices John makes in his final year in Vietnam demonstrate both calculation and impetuosity. He writes to Kathy that he is reenlisting for reasons he can’t verbalize. Chapter 17, however, included a longer excerpt from this letter, including, “I have to take care of a few things, otherwise I won’t ever get home. Not the right way.” As he has yet to completely forget that day, being trapped at the bottom of the irrigation ditch, John has to remain in Vietnam and finish the job of erasing his past. John throws himself into this task, performing heroic deeds, which is ironic since he claimed he was going to Vietnam for love, not to be a hero.

As the text makes evident, Sorcerer has a hard time banishing John’s ghosts. In that final year in Vietnam, he still hears the voices of the dead at Thuan Yen. Sometimes John can make them go away, but when they refuse to leave, he forces them out with gunpower: “He would fire up the jungles. He would make the rivers burn.” There are two ways to read this section. Sorcerer could be viciously attacking other Vietnamese people who have the misfortune of being mistaken for the dead at Thuan Yen, which would mean that Sorcerer is now showing the vengeance and hatred of the other soldiers in Charlie Company. Or Sorcerer could be channeling his rage at the trees and the bamboo and the rocks. As with so many questions in the book, readers can find no clear answer.

By the end of his tour, Sorcerer feels like he has erased enough of his memory to allow himself to go home. Now comes his final trick in Vietnam: removing his presence from Charlie Company. The premeditation behind this endeavor would be shocking except that as a magician, John has a long history of careful planning. He’s even thought about how to erase his presence from the memories of his platoon brothers as they mostly knew him as Sorcerer, not John Wade.

Chapter 27 recreates a possible final violent aftermath of John’s devastating experience at Thuan Yen. The hypothesis is that the election, the stories about My Lai, or both have allowed John’s repressed memories of the massacre to surface. That night in the cottage, the night of Kathy’s disappearance, much in the same way he did in the previous chapter when he unleashed artillery, John sees the enemy everywhere. First in the houseplants, so he kills them out of necessity. Then in Kathy. John pours boiling water into her eyes because he has always used them to measure her love for him. What would her eyes tell him now? As John watches Kathy die, his mind runs through the numerous insanities of Vietnam that led him to his moment, like sunlight, his father, and secrecy. Yet John couldn’t identify even one reason for his actions. At this point, John is the culmination of all his negative experiences. His continued repression of them has taken him to the literal boiling point. Afterward, John sinks Kathy’s body in the lake, and along with it, his memories of what he did float out of his consciousness. Sorcerer has taken over. The next morning when John awakens, he has no memory of what happened and reaches for Kathy, just like always. Significantly, when he goes back to sleep, he “returned to the bottoms.” Sorcerer knows what happened. Sorcerer, who always loved Kathy, will be with her at the bottom of the lake, deep in John’s repressed memories.

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