Born on the Fourth of July (10 page)

“Ready!” said his dad. And his father went in back of the chair as he always did and lifted him up underneath his arms so that he could pull his pants up again.

“Good,” said the boy.

His father let him slowly down back onto the cushion and he turned around in his wheelchair to face the door and pushed his chair down the long, narrow hallway to the living room. His mom was there with a tall man he immediately remembered from the hospital; right next to him was a heavy guy. Both of them had on their American Legion uniforms with special caps placed smartly on their heads. He sat as straight in his chair as he could, holding on with one hand so he wouldn't lose his balance. He shook hands with the tall commander and with the heavy guy who stood beside him.

“You sure look great,” said the tall commander, stepping forward. “Same tough marine we visited in the hospital,” he said, smiling. “You know, Mr. Kovic—” he was looking at his father now—“this kid of yours sure has a lot of guts.”

“We're really proud of him,” said the heavy guy.

“The whole town's proud of him and what he did,” said the tall commander, smiling again.

“He's sacrificed a lot,” said the heavy guy, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder.

“And we're gonna make certain,” the tall commander said, “we're gonna make certain that his sacrifice and any of the others weren't in vain. We're still in that war to win,” he said, looking at the boy's father. His father nodded his head up and down, showing the commander he understood.

It was time to go. The heavy guy had grabbed the back handles of the chair. Acting very confident, he reminded the boy that he had worked in the naval hospital.

The boy said goodbye to his mom and dad, and the heavy guy eased the wheelchair down the long wooden ramp to the sidewalk in front of the house. “I've been pushin' you boys around for almost two years now,” he said.

The boy listened as the heavy guy and the commander stood for a moment in the front yard trying to figure out how they were going to get him into the back seat of the Cadillac convertible.

“You're goin' in style today,” shouted the commander.

“Nothing but the best,” said the heavy guy.

“I haven't learned how to …”

“We know, we understand,” said the commander.

And before he could say another word, the heavy guy who had worked at the hospital lifted him out of the chair in one smooth motion. Opening the door with a kick of his foot, he carefully placed him in the back seat of the big open car.

“All right, Mr. Grand Marshal.” The heavy guy patted him on the shoulder, then jumped into the car with the commander, beeping the horn all the way down Toronto Avenue.

“We're goin' over to Eddie Dugan's house,” said the commander, turning his head. “Ya know Eddie?” He was talking very fast now. “Good boy,” said the commander. “Lost both legs like you. Got plastic ones. Doin' great, isn't he?” He jabbed the heavy man with his fist.

“Got a lot of guts that kid Eddie Dugan,” the heavy man said.

“I remember him …” The commander was turning the corner now, driving slowly down the street. “Yeah, I remember Eddie way back when he was … when he was playin' on the Little Leagues. And as God is my witness,” said the commander, turning his head back toward him again, “as God is my witness, I seen Eddie hit a home run on his birthday. He was nine or ten, something like that back then.” The commander was laughing now. “I was coaching with his dad and it was Eddie's birthday. A lot of you guys got messed up over there.” He was still talking very fast.

“Remember Clasternack? You heard of Clasternack, didn't you? He got killed. They got a street over in the park named after him.” He paused for a long time. “Yeah … he got killed. He was the first of you kids to get it. And there were others too,” said the commander. “That little guy, what was his name? Yeah I got it … Johnny Heanon … little Johnny Heanon … he used to play in the Little League with you guys.”

He remembered Johnny Heanon.

“He tripped a land mine or something and died on the hospital ship during the operation. I see his folks every once in a while. They live down by the old high school. Fine kid,” said the commander.

“He used to deliver my paper,” said the heavy guy.

“There was the Peters family too … both brothers, …” said the commander again, pausing for a long time. “Both of them got killed in the same week. And Alan Grady.… Did you know Alan Grady? He used to go to the boy scouts when you kids was growing up.”

The boy in the back seat nodded. He knew Alan Grady too.

“He drowned,” said the commander.

“Funny thing,” said the heavy guy. “I mean, terrible way to go. He was on R and R or something and he drowned one afternoon when he was swimming.”

“And Billy Morris,” said the commander, “he used to get in all sorts of trouble down at the high school. He got killed too. There was a land mine or something and he got hit in the head with a tree. Isn't that crazy?” The commander was laughing almost hysterically now.

“He goes all the way over there and gets killed by a fucking tree.”

“We've lost a lot of good boys,” the heavy guy said. “We've been hit pretty bad. The whole town's changed.”

“And it's been goin' on a long time.” The commander was very angry now. “If those bastards in Washington would stop fiddlefucking around and drop a couple of big ones in the right places, we could get that whole thing over with next week. We could win that goddamn thing and get all our kids out of there.”

When they got to Eddie Dugan's house, both of the men got out, leaving him in the back seat, and ran up to Eddie's doorstep. A few minutes passed, then Eddie came out the front door rocking back and forth across the lawn like a clown on his crutches until he had worked himself to the car door.

“I can do it,” Eddie said.

“Sure,” said the tall commander, smiling.

They watched as Eddie stretched leaning on his crutches, then swung into the car seat.

“Not bad,” said the commander.

The commander and the heavy guy jumped back into the car and the boy could feel the warm spring air blowing on his face as they moved down Eddie's block. The leaves on the trees had blossomed full. They glistened in the sun, covering the streets in patches of morning shadow.

“You're not going to believe this,” Eddie said to him, looking down at his legs. “I got hit by our own mortars.” He was almost laughing now. “It was on a night patrol.… And you?” he asked.

“I got paralyzed from the chest down. I can't move or feel anything.” He showed Eddie with his hand how far up he could not feel and then showed him the bag on the side of his leg. Usually he didn't like telling people how bad he had been hurt, but for some reason it was different with Eddie.

Eddie looked at the bag and shook his head, saying nothing.

“Let me see your new legs,” he said to Eddie.

Eddie pulled up his trousers, showing his new plastic legs. “You see,” he said, tapping them with his knuckles. He was very sarcastic. “As good as new.”

They got to the place where the march was to begin and he saw the cub scouts and the girl scouts, the marching bands, the fathers in their Legion caps and uniforms, the mothers from the Legion's auxilliary, the pretty drum majorettes. The street was a sea of red, white, and blue. He remembered how he and all the rest of the kids on the block had put on their cub scout uniforms and marched every Memorial Day down these same streets. He remembered the hundreds of people lining the sidewalks, everyone standing and cheering and waving their small flags, his mother standing with the other mothers on the block shouting for him to keep in step. “There's my Yankee Doodle boy!” he'd hear her shouting, and he'd feel embarrassed, pulling his cap over his eyes like he always did.

There were scouts decorating the Cadillac now with red, white, and blue crepe paper and long paper banners that read
WELCOME HOME RON KOVIC AND EDDIE DUGAN and SUPPORT OUR BOYS IN VIETNAM
. There was a small sign, too, that read:
OUR WOUNDED VIETNAM VETS … EDDIE DUGAN AND RON KOVIC
.

When the scouts were finished, the commander came running over to the car with a can of beer in his hand. “Let's go!” he shouted, jumping back in with the heavy guy.

They drove slowly through the crowd until they were all the way up in the front of the parade. He could hear the horns and drums behind him and he looked out and watched the pretty drum majorettes and clowns dancing in the street. He looked out onto the sidewalks where the people from his town had gathered just like when he was a kid.

But it was different. He couldn't tell at first exactly what it was, but something was not the same, they weren't waving and they just seemed to be standing staring at Eddie Dugan and himself like they weren't even there. It was as if they were ghosts like little Johnny Heanon or Billy Morris come back from the dead. And he couldn't understand what was happening.

Maybe, he thought, the banners, the ones the boy scouts and their fathers had put up, the ones telling the whole town who Eddie Dugan and he were, maybe, he thought, they had dropped off into the street and no one knew who they were and that's why no one was waving.

If the signs had been there, they'd have been flooding into the streets, stomping their feet and screaming and cheering the way they did for him and Eddie at the Little League games. They'd have been swelling into the streets, trying to shake their hands just like in the movies, when the boys had come home from the other wars and everyone went crazy throwing streamers of paper and confetti and hugging their sweethearts, sweeping them off their feet and kissing them for what seemed forever. If they really knew who they were, he thought, they'd be roaring and clapping and shouting. But they were quiet and all he heard whenever the band stopped playing was the soft purr of the American Legion's big Cadillac as it moved slowly down the street.

Even though it seemed very difficult acting like heroes, he and Eddie tried waving a couple of times, but after a while he realized that the staring faces weren't going to change and he couldn't help but feel like he was some kind of animal in a zoo or that he and Eddie were on display in some trophy case. And the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to get the hell out of the back seat of the Cadillac and go back home to his room where he knew it was safe and warm. The parade had hardly begun but already he felt trapped, just like in the hospital.

The tall commander turned down Broadway now, past Sparky the barber's place, then down to Massapequa Avenue, past the American Legion hall where the cannon they had played on as kids sat right across from the Long Island Railroad station. He thought of the times he and Bobby and Richie Castiglia used to sit on that thing with their plastic machine guns and army-navy store canteens full of lemonade; they'd sit and wait until a train pulled into the Massapequa station, and then they'd all scream “Ambush!” with Castiglia standing up bravely on the cannon barrel, riddling the train's windows.

He was beginning to feel very lonely. He kept looking over at Eddie. Why hadn't they waved, he thought. Eddie had lost both of his legs and he had come home with almost no body left, and no one seemed to care.

When they came to where the speakers' platform had been erected, he watched Eddie push himself out of the back seat, then up on his crutches while the heavy guy helped him with the door. The commander was opening the trunk, bringing the wheelchair to the side of the car. He was lifted out by the heavy guy and he saw the people around him watching, and it bothered him because he didn't want them to see how badly he had been hurt and how helpless he was, having to be carried out of the car into the chair like a baby. He tried to block out what he was feeling by smiling and waving to the people around him, making jokes about the chair to ease the tension, but it was very difficult being there at all and the more he felt stared at and gawked at like some strange object in a museum, the more difficult it became and the more he wanted to get the hell out of there.

He pushed himself to the back of the platform where two strong members of the Legion were waiting to lift him up in the chair. “How do you lift this goddamn thing?” shouted one of the men, suddenly staggering, almost dropping him. He tried to tell them how to lift it properly, the way they had shown him in the hospital, but they wanted to do it their own way and almost dropped him a second time.

They finally carried him up the steps of the stage where he was wheeled up front next to Eddie, who sat with his crutches by his side. They sat together watching the big crowd and listening to one speaker after the other, including the mayor and all the town's dignitaries; each one spoke very beautiful words about
sacrifice and patriotism and God
, crying out to the crowd to support the boys in the war so that their brave sacrifices would not have to be in vain.

And then it was the tall commander's turn to speak. He walked up to the microphone slowly, measuring his steps carefully, then jutted his head up and looked directly at the crowd. “
I believe in America!
” shouted the commander, shaking his fist in the air. “
And I believe in Americanism!
” The crowd was cheering now. “
And most of all … most of all
,
I believe in victory for America!
” He was very emotional. Then he shouted that the whole country had to come together and support the boys in the war. He told how he and the boys' fathers before them had fought in Korea and World War II, and how the whole country had been behind them back then and how they had won a great victory for freedom. Almost crying now, he shouted to the crowd that they couldn't give up in Vietnam. “We
have to win
…” he said, his voice still shaking; then pausing, he pointed his finger at him and Eddie Dugan, “…
because of them!
”