The World Played Chess (28)

“He says, ‘William Goodman?’

“‘Yeah.’

“‘You’re leaving. Now. Get in.’

“I was confused because I still had something like twelve weeks before my DEROS. I thought it was a mistake.”

“What did you do?” A stupid question I regretted the minute it left my mouth.

“You know,” William said, a wistful smile spreading on his lips, “I almost stayed.”

“Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

It didn’t sound like a question, and even if it had, I figured it was rhetorical. For once the frontal lobe kicked in and I kept my mouth shut.

“But in the midst of all that craziness, crazy is the only reality you know.” William shrugged. He lit another cigarette, blew out the smoke, and sipped another beer. “I was amped on adrenaline and all the drugs I’d been doing, and I was thinking that what I had known in New Jersey, what I had left behind, was no longer real. Vietnam was real. It was where I belonged.”

“So you stayed?” I asked, thinking it the craziest thing I’d heard.

“This Polish guy from Philadelphia, who we called Cheesesteak, punched me, hard, in the shoulder and said, ‘Shutter, get in the fucking Jeep, man. Don’t be a hero.’ That was something my mother said to me the morning I boarded the bus to boot camp. ‘Don’t be a hero.’ It was like she was calling me home. So I got in the Jeep. I still wonder what I would have done if Cheesesteak hadn’t knocked some sense into me. The driver took me straight to the transport helicopter and wished me Godspeed. When I got on the helicopter, I realized I didn’t have my ditty bag.”

“What’s a ditty bag?”

“A duffel bag. When I was embedded at Firebase Phoenix, I’d been sending my film rolls to a lab in Da Nang. I had a buddy from film school, a lab rat working there. He made me copies of the best photos and sent them back to me in these canisters. He said mine were the best photographs he’d seen from military or civilian photographers. I kept the cans in my ditty bag.”

“And you didn’t have it,” I said, the picture becoming clear.

“But I didn’t want to ask anyone about it because I was worried they’d realize they made a mistake, that they sent me home from Nam before my DEROS, and they’d send me back, or that I’d draw attention to the cans and they’d take them.”

“So what did you do?”

“I kept my mouth shut, went home, and waited four months until my stuff arrived. I figured I’d be working as a reporter and photographer at the New York Times in a matter of days.” He smiled, but it was wistful. “They didn’t send the cans.”

I was aghast, and angry. “Why not?”

William took another drag, blew out the smoke, and took a swig of beer. “Initially they said they didn’t know what I was talking about. They said the cans must have been lost.” He shook his head. “Guys had been trying to ship home all kinds of shit—their rifles, pistols, knives. The military got wind of it and started searching bags. If they found stuff, they confiscated it and threatened to prosecute.”

“Why would they take photographs?”

“Because they didn’t want them to wind up in the press. The war was getting enough bad publicity at home from civilian photographers embedded over there. The marines didn’t need one of their own embarrassing them.”

“But they were yours.”

William shook his head and pointed the cigarette at me. “The military said I didn’t own the photographs because I took them during my service. Therefore, the marines owned them.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Another shrug. “Maybe, but they said I signed something that said I forfeited all rights to the photographs. Didn’t matter what they said; the photographs were gone.”

I couldn’t get past the loss. I knew that without those photographs, William was just a guy with a camera. “Did you ever find out if they took them or if they were really lost?”

He nodded. “I kept the cans with the photographs in the same bag with my medals, and my medals made it home.” He took another drag on his cigarette. “It was my own fault. I had contemplated mailing the photographs home, but sending home a package from the bush wasn’t that easy, and it’s likely they would have searched the cans before shipping them and found the photographs anyway. I thought it safest to carry them home with me.”

“You must have been pissed,” I said.

William smiled like I was the most naive person on the planet. “I was home, man. I was home. And I had all my body parts. I never thought that would happen. I figured that if they wanted their photographs of their war, they could keep them. I was done with it. I was done with them. I was done with Vietnam. The way I looked at it, I beat Vietnam. I made it home.”

I guessed that was true, and I was sure it was paramount, but I kept thinking there had to be a way to fix the situation. After a few moments, I asked, “What medals did you get?” I thought the medals would have improved his chances of getting a job at a newspaper.

William shrugged. “The Combat Action Ribbon is the one that really counts. That says you fought, that you were in the shit, that you weren’t just support at the rear. That and a Purple Heart.”