Carry Me Home (10 page)

“Security.” Roy grinned proudly. Tony smiled back. He could see Roy was impressed but he thought the rap was too simple, the charade dumb.

The room was dim, lit by two small candles, airless. Paisley cloth was stapled over the windows. The room reeked of smoke, cats and garbage. The Fifth Dimension’s
Aquarius
album came at moderate volume from stereo speakers. Tony’s eyes adjusted. Shepmann and two of Tony’s old friends, Jack Roedain and Don Eisner, were sitting cross-legged on pillows on the floor. In the center of the room there was a large elaborate water pipe with a swivel tube and mouthpiece. Jack and Don sat with their backs to the stairs, motionless, apparently well on their way.

Shepmann was across the circle. He was older than the others, bigger, fat, shirtless. He glared at the intruders as if they were his prey. He sucked on the tube. His eyes bulged. Thick rolls of flab spilled over his belt. He held the smoke for a long while, exhaled, smiled a thin-lipped challenge. Tony felt repulsed. Let’s get on with it, he thought.

He was about to speak when without words Shepmann opened his arms and bade his guests to be seated on the remaining pillows, indicating that Annalisa should sit beside him. Tony sat across from his cousin to Shepmann’s left. He watched as his cousin snuggled her rump down into the pillows and crossed her feet under her thighs into a lotus position. Tony tried to cross his ankles with his knees bent but his right thigh would have none of it. He sat with his left leg drawn up, his right sticking out straight, aiming through the water pipe at Shepmann. The mouthpiece passed to Annalisa. She took a deep hit. Then to Roy, Jack, Don, Tony, and back to Shep.

Counter-clockwise, Tony thought. Opposite of Nam. He had smoked marijuana in Nam but it was nothing like this, nothing this intricate. The mouthpiece circled again. The weed was better than that in the joint on the way over. The record changed to the Bee Gees’
Ideas
album. Tony closed his eyes. There was little conversation. What was said seemed to be directed at the host, and Shepmann seemed intent on absorbing the praises for his hospitality and the quality of his dope. Roy arranged to purchase some from him, told him about a block of Colombian Red he had heard had reached Scranton.

Shepmann refilled the pipe three times. Each time he asked the angels of the underworld to bless his dope. Each time he bowed to the smoking water bowl and requested his guests to do the same. The mood was quiet, subdued, not quite mellow. Roy turned the stack of albums over and the stereo slowly worked its way through the reverse sides of
Ideas
,
Aquarius
, and several more. As the high came on Tony’s face relaxed, his cheeks slackened, his eyes concentrated on the darkness of their closed lids. Tony’s body relaxed, his right thigh felt comfortably warm as if his body had sent a surge of healing into the wounded region. Although his physical tension eased, his feelings of isolation increased. He felt homesick, homesick for
his
people. He thought about his platoon, about the good times. He did not think about firefights, shellings, tunnels or bodies. Then he heard Annalisa laugh her sweet stoned laugh and his thoughts dissipated. He felt calm. His eyes remained closed. He felt as if he were being engulfed by soft clear light blue, as if blue were a soothing substance.

“Love,” Shepmann breathed.

“Love,” Annalisa giggled.

“Love,” Tony thought. It was a pleasant thought. He thought of Maxene. He heard a kiss. His body tensed. He opened his eyes.

Annalisa was lying back against Roy, her head turned back and up, their mouths meeting. Roy had pulled her tank top up exposing her flat stomach. The candlelight glistened off tiny, fine, almost transparent hairs on her body. Roy moved a hand under her tank top and massaged her breast. Jack had passed out. Don was totally wasted. “Love,” Shep repeated in that low thick voice. He leaned over. The fat bulk of his gut shifted to his side. He kissed Annalisa’s navel.

Annalisa broke from Roy, looked foggily at Shep’s form. She straightened her legs, then rubbed the back of Shep’s head. Again she relaxed against Roy who had raised her top above her breasts and was gently rolling her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. Shep’s mouth moved to her hips as he unsnapped her jeans.

Tony watched. He was confused. Something in him told him he had to stop this, had to protect his cousin. Something else told him he didn’t have the right to interfere. He watched as Shep unzipped Annalisa’s jeans, as his thick fingers curled over the waistband of jeans and panties, as he wrestled her pants down to her thighs. Annalisa leaned forward, removed her tank top, rubbed her hands over Shep’s head and ears, then lay back again kissing Roy more and more passionately.

Shep massaged her, kissed her, pulled her clothes down to her ankles. He fell on her forcing her knees apart. Tony was shocked, excited. Annalisa was more sensual here than in his fantasies. Shep’s face rooted into her. Roy reached his left arm over hers then slid his hand behind her back. With his right hand he grasped her right elbow and pushed it into his left hand locking her arms behind her. He continued to kiss her, to massage her breasts with one hand. She kissed him more tentatively. Her shoulders were drawn back too far to be comfortable but not so far as to hurt.

Tony did not know what to do. He watched. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to leave. He felt it obscene to watch his cousin. He wanted a woman of his own. He wasn’t sure how far to let this go, how much to watch. Shepmann disgusted him. The obese body lying on his cousin’s legs, the semipublic display, the dope hitting his brain—it bewildered him.

Shep reached out, grasped the mouthpiece of the water pipe, sucked in a huge breath. Then he rooted his mouth back deep between Annalisa’s legs and sealed his lips to her vagina and blew. At first Annalisa seemed to sense pleasure but very quickly that turned to displeasure, to pain. She stopped kissing Roy. Shep retreated. Her genitals released a loud fartlike noise and a cloud of smoke. She gasped.

Shepmann laughed. He rolled over on his back laughing uproariously. Roy tightened his grip on her arms. He too laughed. Tony smirked.

“Great pipe,” Shep coughed out between gushes of laughter. “Pussy pipe.”

“Let go.” Annalisa tried to free herself. She was too stoned to make it sound convincing.

Shep rolled back onto her legs forcing her knees to the floor, grabbed the mouthpiece and sucked. “No,” Annalisa began to plead but Roy had grabbed her hair above her forehead, pulled her head back and jammed his mouth over hers. Shep blew her up, rocked back again, again the noise and smoke.

“A smoking cunt.” Shep laughed uncontrollably. Don came to and clapped his hands. “Smoke it, Donny Boy,” Shep bellowed. “You too, Tony. Smoke it.”

Don began to crawl to Annalisa. Tony put his hand out. Don stopped. Annalisa had closed her legs, pulled her knees up, but she couldn’t break free from Roy.

Then Tony moved. He grabbed Roy’s hair and ripped his head back. Annalisa gasped for air. Tony grabbed her arm, squeezed. “You wanta fuck around like this”—he snapped; His voice came high, dope high, then lower—“that’s your business.” His brain was muddled yet he was pissed. “But if I ever hear that you’ve led Maxene into this shit, I’ll—”

“Aw, cool it, Man.” Shep rolled to his knees.

“Fuck you. You’re a disgrace. You’re a fuckin pimp junkie.”

“You smoked my dope,” Shep said defensively. “You smoked my dope.”

Annalisa stood, pulled up her pants, snapped them closed. “Where’s my top?” She was angry, hurt.

“Not like you people,” Tony said. “I’ve been so fuckin high I’ve needed navigation equipment, but I never made a cult of it.”

Tony continued to smoke dope in the evenings but he smoked alone. The old friend-family network—Donny, Jack, his Pop and Aunt Helen, all of them—had changed, unraveled. He retreated within, retreated into a world that was still sane, that was still the same world he’d left. His nights remained sleepless, his morning sleep was wired, restless. He was physically, emotionally spent. And he wanted to get laid.

How he wanted to get laid. He was a returning warrior. A hero. He felt virile, at the peak, at the prime. He felt pressure—physically, hormonally, to have a girl; culturally, amongst his peers even if they weren’t present, to be successful with women, a woman. He needed to make love to someone, but there did not seem to be a single unattached woman in Mill Creek Falls except his cousins.

A week before his cousin Jimmy returned, Tony received a letter from his father, a letter his father had written and mailed at the end of March, sent to him halfway around the world, only to arrive at his unit station after his unit had moved north in country, and then forwarded again and again never catching him before his DEROS, finally completing its earth orbit in ninety days. It took him back to Nam, to his perceptions of the World from Nam. He read it while he sat, alone, in his room.

Dear Tony,

It is Palm Sunday. We went to the monastery for Mass this morning and it was real nice. They celebrate Mass a little differently there. Instead of palms they gave us pussy willows. After Mass we lit some candles and said some prayers for you and Jimmy. I’m looking at your last letter. You sound pretty good. I’m sure, as you say, you’ll “look back on this time with a shit-eating grin.” I pray to God that you do. Maybe I wasn’t in the right units. I never felt that I was “in the best fighting force in the world.” I’m glad you’re having an experience like Uncle Joe’s and not like mine.

The weather has been real cold and we’ve had a lot of snow. Mark’s been home two days this week with no school. Your friend Steve is finally going overseas. He came by and we gave him your address. The war news has been all about Khe Sanh but it sounds like it’s tapering down. It doesn’t look like the president is going to do much to them bastards. He should just keep bombing their cities until they smarten up.

I’ll write again soon. Until then know that even if I don’t write I do pray for you every day. Don’t take any chances and be careful who you trust.

Keep down,

Your Pop

P.S. We’re going to have a big bash when you come back.

Tony shook his head. “How the ...” he muttered. “What experiences, Pa? What did you do? Geez, this ... it’s before Dai Do, before Loon. Before I got hit.” He bit his lip, bit his inner cheek. “How could this have come from here?” He did not, could not, verbalize how he felt. The letter represented something, something that seemed far more real than what he had found.

Twenty-two days after Tony’s homecoming, Jimmy Pellegrino returned to nearly the identical scene, the same welcome home banner, the champagne, the pots and pans and whistles. Tony’s father had suggested they wait one day but his aunt Isabella, Jimmy’s mother, had said, “If you do for one, you do for all,” and Jimmy returned to the same tremendous, overwhelming enthusiasm. Like Tony he froze, withdrew to his room locking the door, letting only Tony enter, not talking to Don Eisner or Jack Roedain, who had come ostensibly to see him but actually to see Annalisa, not even talking to Annalisa.

“What the fucks goin on here?” Jimmy asked Tony.

“I don’t know, Jimmy. Same thing happened to me when I got home.”

“They’re so fuckin noisy.”

“I didn’t even come in the house,” Tony said. “My Uncle Joe drove me around till everybody left.”

“I don’t like this.” Jimmy kicked his bed. He shot his hand quickly, unconsciously through his hair. “I don’t like this,” he repeated.

“Hey Jimmy,” someone yelled through the door. “Come on downstairs. Hey, did you kill some gooks for me?”

“Hey,” Tony shouted back through the door, “we’ll be down when we’re down. Go downstairs.”

“I’m goin,” Jimmy said quietly. “Cover me.”

Tony shrugged, gave him a power-fist salute. “Go for it.” Jimmy opened the window, jumped out. Tony watched him hit, roll, rise and run. Then Tony opened the door and went down.

“Where’s Jimmy? Where’s Jimmy?” It seemed as though everyone asked it at once.

“He went for a walk,” Tony said.

It rained the next afternoon. Tony and Jimmy got stoned on grass Tony had purchased in Creek’s Bend. They sat on the roof of the tool shed in Tony’s backyard and looked down the back street into old Creek’s Bend. The cousins talked, let the warm July rain soak into them. They watched people and cars come and go. They laughed with each other wondering what people thought about them, sitting in the rain atop the tool shed.

“All my Mom could say,” Jimmy said, “was, ‘Jimmy, was it bad there?’”

“I got the same thing,” Tony said.

“I thought she’d shit a brick when I told her I was definitely goin back. ‘Was it bad over there? Please don’t go back.’”

“Aw, that’s what they’re supposed to say,” Tony said. “Jo went crazy when I showed her my Heart. Pop hadn’t even told her. He knew I was still in the bush after I got hit so it couldn’t a been too bad. Man, what a scene.”

They smoked another joint, split a warm beer. Tony told his cousin about Shep’s, leaving out the part about Annalisa. He told him he thought his father and his Aunt Helen were having an affair. “If I had to live with that fuckin hysteria, I’d find somebody else, too.” Then he told Jimmy he thought, maybe, if things didn’t work out at his new duty station in Philly, he’d try and get back to Nam and into whatever unit Jimmy was assigned to.

Then Tony said, “Shit.” And he laughed loudly. The rain had put the joint out. He tried to relight it and they both laughed. “Ya know, while I was over there, I forgot that it rains back here.”

“This isn’t rain. You remember the typhoon....” They broke up.

“I wonder what the guys are doin?” Tony coughed out the words. “I wonder about Doc So—”

“He’s the guy stitched your leg.... Ha.” Jimmy rolled to his side laughing. “He’s probably at Mama-san’s Steam-n-Cream.”

“Ooh, Man.” Tony moaned. “There was this one honey I saw at the airport—right when I get off the plane, you know, up the ramp—Man, she looked so good she coulda sat on my face and farted up my nose.”

“Fart up—” Jimmy squealed. “I love it.” Then he said seriously, seriously stoned, “I gotta show you somethin. Don’t tell my Ma. She’ll fuckin go nuts.”