Send Down the Rain(38)
I slid my hand into hers. I drove several minutes. Trying to find an entry. “I was in a bad way . . . I’d seen a lot that wasn’t good, and it clung to me. I was trying to shake it and couldn’t. I wanted nothing more than to be with you. I just didn’t want you to have to be with me.”
She reached up and placed her index finger on my lips. “But what if I wanted to be with you?”
“The guy that came back wasn’t the guy that went away. He was a powder keg, and even I didn’t know when I’d go off. Even now I have flashbacks and I’m not in control. You just have to trust me on that one. When I came home, so much in me was ‘off.’ The part in me that felt had been blown up. Literally. I landed in California to Berkeley kids spitting through the fence at me. Throwing rotten fruit. And I could not understand that. I’d just spent twenty-four months trying to stop people from dying, and then these people I didn’t even know cursed me as I walked off the plane. I looked around and wondered, What is wrong with this world?
“We had to spend a few days debriefing in this huge warehouse. The military wanted to know what I knew. Most guys went home in a day. Me, they were still talking to after two weeks. They wanted me to re-up. I said, ‘No, thank you. I’ve done my time.’ All I wanted, the only thing that kept me alive in that terrible place, was the thought of coming home to you. Of a life with you. Of walking that beach and letting you and those waves wash all the evil off of me. So they finally let me go. I looked out the window and those kids were still screaming at the fence. I asked my CO, ‘Do I have to wear my uniform out of here?’ He said, ‘You can walk out that door however you want.’ I threw my uniform in the trash. I threw all my medals in the trash. I threw everything having anything to do with the military in the trash and slipped out the back door in civilian clothes.”
I glanced in the rearview as a new T-top Corvette approached and passed us in the left lane. Tanned couple. Laughing. The guy was driving with one hand. Holding the girl’s hand with the other. Her long hair was flapping in the breeze. They were singing a song I couldn’t hear. He accelerated and their red taillights disappeared in the distance. It was a good picture of us. Most everything we’d ever dreamed and never lived was silently passing us by.
“Given all I’d encountered, the military recommended a few weeks at a war treatment program. I had a feeling that was a good idea, so I spent a month there. Trying to put the pieces of my mind back into one skull. After a month I checked myself out and rode a bus to the Cape. Thumbed a ride to the restaurant, and when I got there, I found a party in full swing. I was so excited. I—” I paused. Looking at her. Her eyes were trained on me.
“I had bought a ring before I came home. Silver. A green stone. They said it was an emerald. Had it in my pocket. I walked up the steps. And there was my older brother, dressed in military uniform, a chest full of medals, holding your hand. His ring on your finger.” I paused as the memory returned. “I knew if I stayed there, I’d kill him. But I’d seen a lot of that and I had enough control of my faculties to know that would not fix the hurt in me. So I threw the ring in the ocean, returned to California, re-upped, and did two more years in a country where my government denied my existence.”
She was quiet awhile. Then she whispered, “Tell me about the war.”
I sucked between my teeth. “I’ve spent the last four and a half decades trying not to think about the war. It’s difficult.”
“Any good memories?”
“When we first landed, the first time, I was stationed at a place called Camp California. Sort of a play on words for all the drafters. Anyway, we had these outhouse-things, tall metal buildings, built over a fifty-five-gallon drum. Given that many soldiers, the contents of the drums had to be burned twice a day. My first day in-country, they asked for volunteers for poop duty. We had another name for it, but you understand. I raised my hand. Every morning and evening, when we weren’t on patrol, we’d pull those drums out, fill the remainder with diesel, light it, stir it, and then tend it while the fire burned the contents. Nasty work, but easy. During the rest of the day, I lay in my hammock on the beach and watched what happened on base. It would pay dividends later.
“One of the guys that tended the fire with me was Tex Lewis. Great big ol’ guy. Our second month in, we got in this mess one night and he got hit. Bad. I laid his head across my lap. He asked me to pray the Lord’s Prayer over him. So I did. I prayed and watched the light slowly fade from his eyes. Somewhere in that moment, that’s where the anger came in. And I let it. I told myself that if I was to get home to you, if I was to make it out of that godforsaken place, then I had to forget what I loved and learn to be worse than the guys outside the wire. So I did.
“When I re-upped and they sent me back, I didn’t take anything off anybody. I built myself a hooch on the beach of the South China Sea and hung a hammock between two palm trees. I’d lie there at night and listen to the bombs in the distance. They were always bringing in entertainment for the guys at the rear, and one night they brought in this lady singer. Beautiful. Sultry. Sang like a canary. And for some reason she picked me. It was the strangest experience. During the evenings, she’d hop on a helo and they’d take her to another base, where she’d entertain the troops. I’d hop on another helo and they’d drop us in a country we weren’t supposed to be in, and we’d serve death for dinner and then fly out. And then she and I would meet at my hooch, I’d bathe in the ocean and wash off the blood, and then we’d walk hand in hand down the beach like two normal people. The crazy thing was how normal it felt, when it was anything but.”