Carry Me Home (84 page)

At dusk Bobby nudged Tony. “C’mon. We’re movin out.”

Tony sat up. He did not speak. The order, the movement, felt natural.

“Lights,” Bobby whispered. “Water and sleeping bags.”

They moved south out of the Pennamite clearing back to the Lenape Indian trail. Without speech they meandered back under the hemlocks, deep into the darkening forest, to the spur. Bobby turned northwest. A hundred yards in was the fire circle—nothing lavish, a slight depression, a shallow circular pit perhaps sixteen or eighteen feet in diameter with a small circular ring of stones, maybe thirty inches across, at the center. Stacked to one side was a neat pile of kindling, to the other slightly larger branches, nothing more than two inches thick or two feet long. Overhead a narrow shaft through the hemlocks opened to the sky. There were no berms, no fields of fire, no camouflage. Bobby struck a match, lit the small wood teepee he’d erected earlier, alone. Immediately flames spread, licked up into the air. In the deep woods Bobby and Tony were completely open. Anyone could see them. Yet with the fire they could not see even a foot beyond the larger circle. Tony nearly shit. His response was to flee, to hide in the dark, to shun the exposure. But Bobby sat, his sleeping bag wrapped tightly over his shoulders, and Tony, trying hard, followed suit. Bobby lay larger sticks on the fire. The original teepee collapsed, curled, oxidized, disappeared. In the flickering of the flames, to Tony, Bobby’s face deformed, furrows became crevices, wrinkles became chasms, features became craggy outcroppings. There was no color, no warmth, no life: only time—past, present, future—fused and frozen.

They sat silently watching the fire, mesmerized by the changing forms. After some time Bobby picked a stick from the wood pile; it was perhaps fifteen inches long, an inch and a quarter in diameter. From part of it the bark had fallen away. Bobby held it close to the flame but did not drop it. Instead he broke silence, said calmly, “This is a truth stick. When it is held no one else can speak. To the stick the holder owes an obligation—the obligation to speak the truth. When you begin, you say
hè
, which is the Lenape word of greeting. If you stop and recommence say
làpi
[luh-pee] which means ‘again.’ When you are finished say
wëll
[wah-lee] which means ‘good’.”

“What?!” Tony stared across at Bobby, at his stone face. Then he rocked back, looked up the long dark shaft toward the invisible sky.

Bobby repeated the Lenape words, the explanation.

“You’re kiddin, Man,” Tony said.

“No,” Bobby said.

“Where the fuck did you dig up this shit?”

“It was in one of Granpa’s files. This is the Lenape ceremony of truth. It may have been performed right here for five thousand years. And the truth is, I’m lost. I don’t have the answers I thought I had.”

“That’s what the fuck we’re doin out here?”

“That’s what the fuck we’re doin out here.”

“This is fucked up.” Tony was angry. Bobby shoved the stick at him. He snatched it. “You’re fucked up,” Tony stormed. His rage multiplied, built on itself, spiked. “You’re some sort of fuckin ... workaholic.... You act like nobody’s good enough for you. Fuck you. Fuck your pious help-the-dregs crap. Fuck your goody-two-shoes I fucked up, crap. Truth ceremony! You’re the biggest fucking hypocrite I ever met!” With that Tony whipped the stick back at Wapinski.

Bobby’s arm shot from under the sleeping bag. The stick nicked his ring-finger knuckle, spun, hit his leg. He ground his teeth, grasped the truth stick, restrained his urge to bash Pisano with it knowing full well Tony expected to be bashed, was ready for him to lunge. Bobby’s breath came hard. His hands trembled. “
yuh
o
[yooh-oh]. Okay.” Slower, longer breaths. “I ...” He paused. Bobby could see Tony was still ready to throw off his sleeping bag, ready to get into it. “I haven’t been truthful. Not completely. I wanted you to do the farm but I didn’t tell you about all the other parts.” He could see Tony sink back. “I feel like we’ve been doing everything right but we’re still losing.”

“Yeah,” Tony snapped. “Definition of a Nam vet. Do everything right, lose. That’s me. That’s my cousin Jimmy. Losers.”

“Why?” Bobby pushed the stick out but did not release it. “I got an article says ten percent of the prison population is Nam vets. Says we lost the war. Says we were druggies during the day and praying to God at night we wouldn’t be killed.”

“Fuck em.”

“Right on. But it doesn’t answer the fuckin question, Why? Everything I’ve been reading, everything I’ve been thinking about, all the planning for a program of retransformation ...”

“Of what?”

Bobby did not acknowledge. “It didn’t do any good with Ivanov.” Tony snorted. “And it hasn’t done squat for you.”

“Leave me out of it.”

Again Bobby pointed the stick at Tony. “Loser!”

Again Tony snatched it away. “That’s fuckin right. I’m a loser. Even back in school. If one side picked me, that side lost. If I bet on a Super Bowl team, they’d lose. One hundred fuckin percent.” Tony flipped the stick.

“You didn’t lose at Dai Do.” Bobby held the stick out.

Tony grabbed one end. Bobby didn’t let go. Their hands and wrists were just off-center of the main heat rising from the fire. “What’d you know? We didn’t win, either.” Tony refused to flinch. His hand was very hot.

Bobby too refused to move. “Maybe you did. Just like we did at Hamburger. Even if they called it losing. But I’ve been reading. If they’d never been given the A Shau, they’d never of been able to win farther south.”

“I don’t give a fuckin flyin leap.”

“We gotta learn more ...”

“That’s more of your shit. You can win every fuckin day, you still die, In the end everybody loses.”

“Naw.” Bobby pulled on the stick bringing Tony’s hand into the fire. “That’s two different games. When you came home, were you a loser?”

Tony pulled back. His fingers were baking. “No fuckin way,” he snarled. “When I left we’d been makin progress.”

“Me too,” Bobby said quickly. He was having trouble holding on. “We’d virtually won. Who the hell lost it?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s not till Saigon fell that anybody called us losers. Even though we were out of the country, militarily, for two and a half years! Kick ass of anybody who tells you we lost the war. We didn’t. The politicians did. The American people. Not grunts. We couldn’t even of been called losers before April ’75 because there wasn’t any loss until then. Who lost it?!”

“Not me. Not my cousin.”

“Me neither. So how come we’re losers?”

“Cause maybe ... cause maybe if you’re a loser, it’s not your fault. Nothin’s your fault. Ow!” Tony released the stick, pulled his hand back.

For a long time neither spoke. Occasionally Bobby or Tony added new wood to the fire. The bed of coals thickened, glowed continuously. Sporadic flame tongues leaped. The faces of the two men dried, toughened like jerky; their backs chilled; their muscles tightened.

Now talk came more easily. Tony accepted the stick, passed it back, learned the Lenape words. His mood was less acquiescence, more exhaustion. He wanted to sleep. Bobby said there was no way back without flashlights. They’d brought none.

“You were a grunt,” Bobby said. Tony nodded. “Grunts can do anything.
W
ë
li
.” Bobby passed the stick.

“
Hè
. I might be fucked up. Neurotransmitters. All that stuff they talked about at Rock Ridge. But you’re right. A grunt can cope. But he’s got to have people around him who don’t just listen, but understand. I ... I could tell you some stories ...”

“Tell me,” Bobby injected.

Tony told Bobby about the corpse in the tunnel, about his nightmares, about once grabbing Linda. He moved on to Dai Do, the hand-to-hand fighting, the machetes, how he’d hacked and slashed like a madman in order to save himself and his platoon. Bobby shuddered, controlled his expression.

“You know what my biggest fear in Nam was?” Bobby said. “Getting stabbed. I didn’t care about getting shot. I mean, I didn’t want to get shot. But I never thought about it. But Man, I thought about bayonets.”

“I got stabbed,” Tony said. “Here.” He touched his thigh.

Bobby winced. “I ... I hate being stuck. With anything. Like at the dentist. The moment he touches me, even if I like him, I just think, I’m outta here. I can’t stand ... you know, needles even.”

“No big thing.”

Now their talk was every place. Tony told Bobby about Manny being shot in his arms, and about the village, the mother and the children. He did not tell Bobby about shooting them. He was still uncertain, and he sensed that Wapinski, with his theoretical perspectives, did not want to know about American atrocities. To Bobby it would add another blemish to a record he seemed intent on defending.

Bobby told Tony about Hamburger Hill, about the multiple assaults, about giving the order, about the mud, about losing Americans, not knowing if they’d been wounded, killed, or captured. “It’s the difference between the officer’s perspective and the enlisted man’s,” he said. “You guys would condemn a decision because you had to carry it out. Our condemnation came later. You had to tell this person to walk point, this person to walk his slack. You knew what you were doing. You knew where you were, knew the consequences. We got orders, we gave orders. Sometimes we were mortified by those decisions. We weren’t sitting in some boardroom saying to our staff, ‘I think we ought to buy AT&T. What do you guys think?’ We made decisions that if they weren’t right on, maybe three, four guys died. And you can’t afford three or four guys when you only have thirty. And if you weren’t right on, the guys are saying, ‘That son of a bitch. Where was he? Why’d he lose my friend?’ When I got back, my nightmares ... Shit.”

“
Yuh
o
,” Tony said.

That released Bobby’s tension and he chuckled. Now he was happy Tony was with him. “I had one that repeated for years,” he said. “About triage. It finally stopped. Then it started again when my granpa was dying. But it stopped again.”

They moved on. The mood ebbed, flowed. “I need your fuckin help.” Bobby was nasty, demanding. “I can’t do it alone. Either commit or go.”

“Fine, fuckhead. I’ve been planning to go back to RRVMC anyway. Lick some nurse’s ass.”

“Yeah. Right!”

“Let em take care a me.”

“Enable you to be a fuckhead like Ivanov?”

“Why the fuck not?!”

“What the fuck would turn you on? What would make you ... make you pursue a dream? What would elate you?”

“Elate?!”

“Rev you up? Satisfy you? Be meaningful?”

“I don’t ... Maybe like at the forge.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I’m not there. I’m not paying attention to me. I’m focused. It’s happening. Something’s being created.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “That’s my theory of pure elation. Get out of your self, into a cause.”

“Fuck causes,” Tony said. “They all got causes. Nuclear freeze movements. ERAs. BMWs. Ivanov had a cause—get the head of his dick wet. Fuck people with causes. Causes are fucked.”

“We’re using it differently,” Bobby said.

“I’ve never been more elated than when I was stoned out of my fuckin gourd.”

“Oh boy! You gotta help me. Cause and elation. That’s what makes the world turn. That’s the key to retransformation. It sounds stupid but the final piece of the puzzle is
fun
. Unselfish fun. That’s why we’ve had all these false starts. It wasn’t any fun.”

From across the circle Tony glared at Bobby. For some time neither spoke. Finally Wapinski said, “We had a cause that was greater than our selves and we expanded to a higher level. We went to defend freedom and help establish democracy in Southeast Asia. That’s different than just trying to get laid. Trying to get laid is concentrating on the self. Think about falling in love. When you really fall in love, where’s your focus? Not on yourself but on the other. You go outside yourself. That’s the difference between latching on to a cause with the focus on you, and adopting a cause with the focus on the cause. If the focus is on you it brings stress and kills joy. But if the focus is on the cause you enter a state of elation.”

“Maybe—” Tony shifted, opened his bag.

“Why can’t I grasp it?” Bobby asked. “So much of this self-indulgent self-fulfillment stuff is really shallow, but there is a core there. It’s the key to becoming unstuck. It’s the key to meaningfulness.
Pursue
is the wrong word. But
elation
isn’t. Excitement. Fun. Playfulness. Without that, responsibility becomes drudgery. Without it decisiveness is unsustainable.”

On and on, deeper and deeper into the night; deeper and deeper into each other’s thoughts. “I missed Jimmy’s death,” Tony confessed. “We were putting up the gate. I’d just finished the hinges, remember? I didn’t remember until later. That’s been like a holy day of obligation to me and I didn’t keep it holy. I didn’t even remember it for a week. Even in San Jose I kept it holy.”

“It was partly my fault,” Bobby said. “I’m the one who ran off with his girl.”

“Who? Red?”

“Yeah. I think maybe he wouldn’t of gone back ...”

“Naw. Naw, Man. He was goin back Red or not. She ... you know, Man, she was like his pet. She was ... You know, she wasn’t a cause to him. I mean, he liked her. But he was never committed to her like he was to ... geezo, like even to Li. I wonder if Linda’s still got her drawings. You gotta see em, Bobby.”

“He had a gal there?”

“An orphan, Man. A kid. That was his cause. Helpin them people. Me too when I was at the ville level.”

At dawn they returned to the Pennamite camp, ate heartily, crawled into the lean-to. Before they went to sleep Bobby whispered, “Dear Lord, please bless us and watch over us; deliver us from evil, forgive us our trespasses ...”

Tony, to Bobby’s surprise, completed the beseechment. “And give us the strength and guts to try hard and never give up.” Bobby propped himself, craned over toward Tony. Tony chortled. “Ah, he taught it to me, too.”

He is not in the fire circle but to the side, in the dark, in the blackness of space. The images form, coalesce out of slow churning glowing blue gray black fog. It is a sphere, a skull viewed from the blackness, from the void, viewed from above, beside, before, a skull, a globe drifting in space, drifting away, the jaw opening, slowly, painfully, a silent anguished cry escaping. There is no sound. He is viewing the skull from miles above as it floats, spins slowly in the blackness, and there, there, falling from him a black dot, small, smaller, falling, being pulled into the anguished globe until it is imperceptible a second before it hits against the occipital crown. The jaw again and then the eye sockets—how can they, dead, inanimate—cry in silent pain. The bone cracks at impact, a black jagged hole in glowing blue, one, two, three, four seconds—it seems an eternity as he watches from miles above—then slowly, silently, a cone of gray brain matter explodes toward him, not high enough to touch him, but close enough for him to feel the earth’s pain of millions of man-years of devastation, of death and dying drifting farther until he sees them all, sees the entire galaxy, sees Jimmy and Manny, sees hacked globes rolling, sees the mother, her children, the specks flying from him, they frozen, strong, Gina Michelle Linda ...