Carry Me Home (11 page)

“What?” Tony rolled to face him. “When you’re done, I gotta ask ya ...” Jimmy rolled up his left sleeve, up past his bicep and over his shoulder. “Oh wow!” Tony exclaimed. “That’s really ... neat.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You show it to her?—Naw, you haven’t been there yet. Where’d you have it done?”

“A guy up in Dong Ha did the ‘Bea.’ But I had to go to Da Nang before I found a guy who could do the honey bee in red like that ... and with all the other colors.”

“Man.” Tony dropped his head, dejected. “I gotta get laid.”

“You comin with me to Red’s?” Jimmy asked.

“You sure you don’t wanta see her alone?”

“Naw. She said she’s got a friend for ya. If we’re goina get it on, we’ll beat feet someplace while you and her friend do whatever you want.”

“Geesh, Man,” Tony said. “I’ve seen half a dozen woman with these guys, ya know, Jack and Don and all. Man, they’re a hassle. It’s weird, Jimmy. It’s like they’re all spoiled brats. I wish I’d meet somebody who was halfway fuckin, ya know ...”

“Yeah. Maybe Red’s friend ...”

“Shee-it. I’ll tell ya though, I know what I’d like to meet. She’d be about five three, five four,” Tony said. In his mind he saw Maxene. “She’d have eyes that were, you know, different. They’d be brown and blue at the same time. Maybe brown or gold around the pupil and switchin to blue as you move out. Maybe turnin almost black. And she’d have auburn hair down to her shoulders. And she’d have a nice smile. A real one. Not some flaky pasted-on grin.”

“Most of the jobs have been for my legs.” Stacy’s laugh was small, pleasant.

“Oh,” Tony said. “I didn’t know models specialized like that.”

“Sometimes,” Stacy said. “Would you like to see my portfolio?”

“Is that okay?” Tony asked. He felt out of place, intimidated, afraid her portfolio might contain naked photos, afraid he wouldn’t know how to react. Bea Hollands and Jimmy had disappeared and left Tony with a woman he did not believe could possibly be interested in him. She was, he was certain, the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes upon—lovelier even than Maxene.

“Yes,” Stacy said simply. Her voice and confidence were reassuring. She left and returned with a large zippered leather case. As long as he didn’t look at her he was okay. Stacy directed him to the sofa, laid the case on the coffee table. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to touch it. “Go ahead,” she said.

Tony unzipped the case, laid it flat. The first page was a typed resume giving her age, measurements, dress and shoe sizes, and data Tony was too nervous to read. He flipped the page. There was a portrait photo of Stacy looking sideways, over the corner of a high, light blue collar that framed her face. Her blue eyes looked directly into his.

“That’s your color,” Tony said.

“I think so too,” Stacy agreed.

Tony turned the pages slowly. Half the pictures were of just her legs, the kind of photo that might be used for a hair remover or stocking ad. He studied the photos, could not look at Stacy. “You’ve got beautiful legs,” he said.

“Would you like me to put on a dress?” Stacy asked.

Tony could hardly speak. He gurgled. Before he could say anything she was up, out of the room. He turned to catch a glimpse of her but she had vanished. He turned back to the first photo. Her face captivated him. It was too beautiful to look at for long.

He turned away, looked about the room. It was just an average room, he thought. Why Jimmy had arranged to come here instead of going to Red’s, Tony didn’t know. Average house, he thought. Not really any better than mine. Maybe bigger. Tony stood, turned, looked into the kitchen. The lights were off but sunlight from the rear deck showed it to be just an average kitchen. Somehow, he felt, for a girl to grow up that beautiful she must have grown up in a very special place. Not here. Not in just an average home. Not in just an average place like Mill Creek Falls. His thoughts shifted to Jimmy and Red. Where had they gone?

Stacy returned in a simple robin’s-egg blue cotton dress, stockings and heels. She stood at the edge of the hall, smiled. Then she spun. The dress rose slightly showing her legs. Tony wanted to fall to his knees, to hug her legs. Her smile was enchanting but as she walked to him his spirit drooped. In heels she was at least three inches taller than he.

They sat on the sofa again, again talked about modeling. “I close my eyes,” Stacy told him, “and I think what I want to look like, and when I open my eyes, I look that way. It’s a visualization technique I learned when I was in school.”

“You sure learned it well,” Tony said. He felt stupid, tongue-tied.

“What’s wrong, Tony?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me about yourself. Bea said you’re a Marine.”

“Hm-hmm.”

“And you’ve been to Viet Nam? I have a friend over there. Maybe you know him.”

“Is he a Marine?” Tony perked up.

“No. He’s in the army. In the parachute division.”

“I wouldn’t know him, then,” Tony said dejectedly. “The Marines and the army don’t mix much.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t have anything against paratroopers, myself. Just Marines and Airborne don’t mix. It’s like throwing water on an oil fire.”

“Oooo! That bad, huh?”

“Naw. Everybody just makes it out like that. This guy, he your main man?”

“Just a friend. Are you always so quiet?”

“I got some, ah ... bad revelations since I came home.”

“Like what?”

“Aw, like my father. I think he’s having an affair.”

“Oh, that’s terrible.”

“Yeah. You know what I think ... I think it’s cause I was in old Nam Bo. I think my mom was such a wreck this last year that she musta drove my father to it.” Stacy didn’t comment. “Hey,” Tony’s tone changed completely, “are you wearing contacts?”

“Hmm?” Stacy smiled, surprised at the question, the change of tone.

“Contact lenses? Colored ones?”

“No.”

“I’ve never seen anyone with eyes as blue as yours. Really.”

Stacy smiled, lowered her gaze.

“Hey, would you like to dance?”

“Where?” Stacy asked.

“Here. Look, I know I’m a short guy but ... ah, if you’ll take your shoes off ... we could put on a few records and dance. I haven’t danced in a long time.”

When Jimmy and Red returned they found Tony and Stacy slow dancing to soft music in the dark.

“Damn it. No.” Jimmy was raging. The argument must have been going on long before they walked in.

“Well what am I supposed to say?”

“Nothin. You’re supposed to listen.”

“I was listening.”

“No you weren’t. You got no idea what I was sayin.”

“I think I understood how you felt.”

“You’re still not listening. Listen with your mouth shut. You can’t hear if you’re talking and telling me what I’m sayin and what I mean.”

“Jimmeee!”

“Come on, Tony. Let’s get outa here.”

On the drive back into town Tony was flying. Stacy had kissed him. “Man, what’s happenin with you and Red?” he asked, but he did not want to talk about it. He wanted his cousin to ask him about Stacy.

“Augh, nothin,” Jimmy said. He was seething. “I fucked her eyes out and we’re layin there and I began tellin her about like, like goin into a ville. I told her about the steam-n-cream and I was tryin to tell her that I didn’t really like goin there. She heard nothin, Man. Nothin.”

“Hey. I’m sorry.”

“Naw. It’s fine. It’ll work out fine. We’ll be back sailin in no time. How’d you make out with her friend?”

“Oh Man, I’ve never seen eyes like this girl’s got.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty. She’s fucked up though. A fuckin tramp, Man.”

“I wouldn’t mind doin some trampin around with her,” Tony guffawed, but he did it against what he was feeling.

“Red said her steady guy left for Nam like a month ago. She’s been fuckin round on him like a bunny. You oughta—”

“What? What guy?”

“Army guy. From down in Lutzburgh.”

Tony Pisano did not have to report for duty until July 22d. On the 20th, the second morning after he’d doubled with his cousin, he packed his seabag, said good-bye to his folks and caught a bus for Philadelphia. That night Jimmy Pellegrino and Bea Hollands announced their engagement.

I
WALKED HERE. DID
I mention that? I walked the last ten miles or so. Kind of a penance. Or a tribute. I left my scooter at Ma’s, packed a ruck and walked here. Mostly in the dark. Guess I felt self-conscious walkin through town with a ruck and these old jungle boots so I left about, I don’t know, when the moon was comin up. Got to the culverts down there about dawn then came around the back way. Real slow. Real quiet. Thinkin some about the old man but mostly not thinkin.

Sun’s low now. It’s too early to hear the evening sounds from the fields or woods. Too early for the deer to show along the edge. All the creatures rest at this hour—except maybe a few nonunion squirrels.

When the sun hits the ridge it’ll disappear quick, like in any mountainous region. I’m going to stay. Stay here. Maybe gather some wood, make a small fire. Talk to the old man the way Bobby used to. He was really somethin. Talk to the deer and the fox and the bats, too. See if they’ve got any answers. Watch the garbage cans. See if the raccoons check em out. They’d stop checkin if there wasn’t any trash for a while. Watch the house, too. See if a light comes on.

I’ve cleared a small spot for sleeping but I don’t expect to sleep. Cleared a spot for a fire, too, but I’ll hold off a few days. No need to announce to the whole world I’m back, back here thinkin about it. Meditating on it. That was one of Bobby’s solutions ... to clear up dreams. He’d call it “controlled dreaming,” say it allows “the subconscious/conscious mind split to reconcile differences.”

Dreams. I still have em. Old ones. Almost like friends now. And new ones. I don’t even think of em as havin begun at Dai Do, but that’s where the shrinks tried to put it. I think they’re wrong. I subscribe to Wapinski’s theory, kind of a Grunt’s Theory of Psychoanalysis. Yeah, for me, Dai Do was there. Yeah, it was traumatic. But it’s like blaming a blown engine on the thing being made instead of on overrevving the sucker. Or maybe more like blaming a crop failure on lack of rainfall in August—but when irrigation is available. Get it? There’s a cause there but it’s not The Cause. Not for me. Like a chemical reaction where the potential for disaster exists in the test tube—but so does the potential for something really good. And it depends on the next ingredient that’s dumped in—not only on what’s there. Shrink said Dai Do was it. Bobby said it was what came later. “The initial traumas may have been traumatic,” he said, “but fact is you handled it then and you could have handled it forever if circumstances had been different. If somebody or something didn’t mess it all up.” One of the guys, this was later but I liked the way he put it, he said, “Your dreams, you know, many times they’re true. They’re right on target. Even when your life is a bucket of shit.”

Dreams! I shake my head. Dreams unfurl slowly, begin like pinpoints then open up ... massive ... a pin prick into a balloon of the unconscious. Not
only
the unconscious but the subconscious and the semiconscious right up the damned ladder rung by rung till you’re dreamin with your eyes about to blow out of your head like a cartoon drawing ... dreaming awake-asleep in another consciousness that prevents sleep, that prevents rest, that prevents rejuvenation.

These problems, their origins, their complications, their multiplications—from not being able to sleep—from being so tired and still not bein able to sleep. Bobby’d say, “But think where we were, where we came from.” And he’d say, “Where is that? Where?! Time, Man. Twelve-hours-out time! It can take up to three months to adjust.” His words. “Blaming sleep disturbances on memories of traumatic events can
cause
additional, more prolonged sleep-disturbance problems.”

Yet they all experienced it. Every one of em! To some extent or another, at one time or another. I’m not just talkin Nam returnees—Viet Vets. I’m talkin all combat veterans. I’m talkin about World War I German soldiers who had no time-zone dislocation yet who suffered the exact same time dislocation. I’m talkin American Rebs and American Union troops 125 years ago. I’m talkin Odysseus. I’m talkin a psychocauldron of wants and emotions boiling out through numbed physical exhaustion. Later, much later, Wapinski had this plaque hanging in the big barn:

If we go back we will be weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope. We will not be able to find our way anymore.... And men will not understand us.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque—1928

After you’d slept forever, Wapinski’d say, “Fuck it, Man! Fuck that shit! Drive on! Take your nitric-acid blood, your swirling brain waves, your numbed-out, drugged-out, burnt-out body—take all that shit, ball it, wrap it, throw it away. And DRIVE ON! If I knew, or if you knew, when we got back life was going to be like it was, we’d all have returned, gone back to Nam, without hesitation. But we didn’t know. And you can’t, and I can’t, go back in some zomboid state.”

But he didn’t say that for years. He had to have his dreams first, like all of us.

It’s almost dark. Lights in town are comin on. The mall lights—parking-lot cool, mercury-vapor pink at this hour—are beginning to glow. Up over the ridge, above the sugarbush, faint stars blur together. The house is dark. Behind me they’re resting, comfortable. No technicolor, full touch, taste, smell, stereo dreams for them tonight.

H
IGH MEADOW FARM, 24
June 1969—He rolled onto his back. Josh adjusted, snuggled against his leg. Bobby moved again. Again Josh adjusted. In his whiskey-induced fog-sleep, Bobby shuddered. His right arm fell over the edge of the mattress. Immediately he jerked it back up, laid his hand across his stomach. Dim light from the bathroom—Grandpa let a seven-watt night-light burn continuously—seeped in through the doorway. At Bobby’s motion, Josh raised his head and shook it, causing his ears to flap, then lay back down, sighed, went to sleep.

Wapinski’s face contorted. He did not move. For hours his mind had been snatching at images, yet the scotch had deadened it, made it lethargic, closed down each sprouting thought before it could take hold. Now the alcohol was mostly metabolized, the toxic remnants washed to the liver and kidneys for sorting, filtering, and evacuation.