Carry Me Home (86 page)

From Aaron came the Bancroft job, our first solar collector implant retrofit. Others followed. Aaron had to wait in line for Bobby to schedule his home—a retrofit remodel with Trombe wall, greenhouse, rooftop array, and six-thousand-gallon basement heat-storage unit, EES’s largest to date.

Suddenly there was money for tools—the break, the slitter, chop-saws, ladders.... Maybe it was the money, or luck, or fate, but in early January Jeremiah Gallagher of Williamsport and George Kamp of Towanda arrived; then ten days later came Tom Van Deusen from West Virginia. Each time one came Bobby treated him like he was a ’cruit entering basic training. He’d rant about urgency, about lost years and not becoming a lost generation. Then he’d give them to me and I’d tell them they could sleep for a week but then it was time to get-to, to work. With each of them I pretended to be unstuck. With each I judged the stage of the journey, the rest-stop at which they’d taken refuge.

High Meadow was becoming an institute. Grandpa’s office bookshelves were moved down to the main floor of the big barn—into what had once been a workshop and toolroom. The place was sanitized. Additional shelves were built until, in the coming years, the walls would be completely lined. Farming books and journals occupied one section; another was devoted to solar technology and design; a third to light reading—novels, mysteries, westerns, even comic books; a fourth to Southeast Asia, to the war, the history, the people. In a subsection were Bobby’s first books on veterans, their experiences, their adjustment problems. Here he had Robert Jay Lifton’s
Home from the War
, and works by Charles R. Figley, Seymour Leventman, John Helmer, and Gloria Emerson. In each, in the margins, in his neat hand, were Bobby’s comments and reactions, his agreements and often scathing criticisms. Bobby consumed these books, digested them, assimilated the nutrients and excreted the waste. And he encouraged every vet that came to High Meadow to do the same. Over the years the history section on the war in Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos expanded to more than three hundred volumes; the fiction and memoir section to two hundred and sixty; the PTSD (psycho-socio analysis, help and self-help) to one hundred ninety.
Wounds of War
by Herbert Hendin and Ann Pollinger Haas became almost mandatory reading, as did (when it was published in ’78) M. Scott Peck’s
The Road Less Traveled
, which has nothing—and everything—to do with the combat veteran’s experience. By the end, in 1983, this private library, including children’s books and all the medical texts, had grown to nearly five thousand volumes. It became the legacy of one four-word question: How do things work?

An example: Do you recall Bobby and the different crystalline structures of ice? One cubic centimeter of water at one degree Celsius releases one calorie of energy when it drops to water at zero degrees Celsius. One cubic centimeter of zero-degree water releases eighty calories as it transforms into zero-degree ice. It is this quality of material state transformation Bobby and EES soon began to use in designing thermal storage systems for retrofits and new construction.

How things work. It came to pass that Bobby saw the release and absorption of energy at phase change, or state transformation, as analogy, as a property of humanness. “When one transforms,” he would say, “from a state of egocentric indulgence or a state of being stuck on the self, to a state of expanding beyond the self to mate, to family, to community, energy is released. This energy can be absorbed by others. This is the essence of leadership. This is the essence of all healthy relationships.”

With the energy tax credit passed by Congress during the Carter administration, EES was flying, overwhelmed with business, and making a fairly decent profit to boot. Only Cheryl, Joanne and Miriam were displeased. Miriam challenged Bobby on the expenses for the new well, the septic system, etc., saying they were neither business costs nor necessary capital improvements.

Perhaps they were not the only ones. In the theory of the self one comes to recognize that those who have not expanded beyond the self, those who have remained self-centered or who have returned to a state of seeking self-fulfillment, are energy-absorbers, energy consumers. Parasites. Exactly as I was for almost a decade. Focus on the self is self-defeating. The absorber/consumer ultimately becomes chronically depressed, is always stuck, often manifests a need for punishment or humiliation, at times coupled with a public vengefulness that can appear either sociopathic or altruistic.

I have not been here continually but have left to resupply, to meet with the principals.

H
IGH MEADOW, THURSDAY, 3
February 1977—Tony’s thoughts ran foul. Gallagher was being a pain in the ass. Kamp was so stuck he could barely drag his butt from his rack to the shitter, much less work. And Van Deusen, though he was energetic and enthusiastic, was so scattered he put all his energy into going nowhere. They were all in their late twenties, yet all acted like pubescent teens. Worse than FNGs. Worse than cherries. Rawer than the rawest ’cruit.

It was snowing. They were supposed to be keeping the drive clear for the delivery of the slitter—that machine that could take a ten-foot length of sheet metal and pull it through its rolling cutter in less than two seconds. They were supposed to have cleared the barn floor earlier, too, but Tony had done it, seething, grumbling, cursing under his breath.

That was only the tip of the foul iceberg. On Tuesday, the Pisanos and Pellegrinos had had Father Tom down at St. Ignat’s say a memorial Mass for Jimmy, now seven years dead. It had not been like the one-year requiem. Only Aunt Isabella and Uncle James, and Jo, John Sr., Nonna, and Tony had come. When Tony called Linda, afterward, she told him she’d forgotten. But John Sr. hadn’t forgotten. Nor had John Sr. forgotten that Tony had “chosen” to live in a barn instead of with his wife and daughters. It had been easier for his father to accept Tony’s absence—his living homeless in California—than this nearby “nonexistence.” “I’m sixty years old,” he’d said to Tony after Mass. “Sixty. I never thought I’d live to so hate one of my sons. That’s what you’ve done to me.”

“Pop ...” Tony had begun, but he’d been overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by his father’s anger.

“He doesn’t mean it,” Jo had whispered to Tony. “He loves you just as much as I do. He just doesn’t understand.”

“I ... Ma ...”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Jo had said. “I don’t understand either. Linda’s so beautiful. But you gotta make your own way.”

“Get the fuckin lead out!” Tony barked at Van Deusen.

“Sure. Sure. Sorry. I was just coming back for a shovel.”

Tony slapped his head. “Geez! You guys got the tractor with the plow blade. He’s gonna come in a big truck. He’s not walkin.”

“Oh. Sure. Of course. Sorry.”

Tony sighed. “Look, Tom, forget the ‘sorries.’ Did you clean that section of wall ...”

“Oh! I forgot. I’ll do it in a minute. Let me tell Jer and I’ll be right back.”

Then: “Hey! Hey! I know you.” It was the truck driver. He’d backed the semi with its forty-foot trailer all the way up the long drive, up through the gates, as if he’d delivered to High Meadow a hundred times.

“Huh?” Tom Van Deusen looked up to where the driver was standing in the trailer. Tony, Jeremiah Gallagher and George Kamp had just twisted and rocked the box with the cast-iron base onto a skid so they could use the tractor to pull it into the barn. All three were leaning on the crate.

“No. You.” The driver pointed. “Yeah, it is ...” He pointed at Tony, leaped down. “Ay! Ay Sarge! It is you. Sargeant Pizo.”

Tony remained leaning on the crate, but turned his head up, sideways.

“Augh, you don’t remember me.”

Tony stared, searched the bearded face.

“Thorpe,” the man said. “I was a newby. Fuck a duck, Man. You don’t remember.”

“Jim Thorpe ...” Tony said tentatively.

“Yeah. Dennis. You called me Jim cause at Dai Do, Man, you remember that bad motherfucker, cause you said I ran like I was after the gold.”

“Shee-it!” Tony laughed, straightened. “How the fuck you been?” He still didn’t recognize this man.

“Ha! See, you do remember.”

“Sure,” Tony said. “You joined us ...”

“Yeah, right there. Fer all a six days. Until I got hit.”

“Yeah, that’s right, huh? I remember ... didn’t you ...”

“Just before you left I came back. Just before Loon. But shit. I’ll never forget you and Dai Do. Man, you saved my ass. Hey—” Thorpe looked around, “your place?”

“Naw,” Tony said.

“Nice place,” Thorpe said. The slitter and cast-iron base were off. He was ready to go.

“You remember Dai Do, huh?” Tony now said. Then to the others, “You guys get this thing in there. You don’t need me.” And to Thorpe, “Wait a minute. I gotta talk to you.”

It did not take long to get reacquainted. They had not known each other well. “Naw, Man,” Thorpe was saying. “I’m just a temp. These guys are so busy they picked up a few of us. But they’re cheap, Man. We got no bennies. And soon as they don’t need us, they let us go.”

“Maybe that’s not so bad. No ties, no hassles.”

“Yeah. I got no ties.”

“Married?”

“Separated.”

“Me too.”

“Yeah. I got a kid,” Thorpe said. “Down in Hagerstown. He was born crippled. Right hip was almost backwards. Left arm ... ah fuck it. I couldn’t handle it. Fuck em if they can’t take a joke.”

Tony chuckled. “I’ve got two girls. They’re okay. But I couldn’t ... Hey do you remember the dink with the belt?”

“Dink with a belt?”

“At Dai Do. At that hamlet that afternoon. When that mama-san and her kids got wasted?”

“Oh. Oh shit, yeah. You mean the ones that dink fuckin stitched up the back?”

“Yeah. I ... I been tryin to think, you know, about that time.”

“Yeah,” Thorpe said. “I remember. You were really pissed. That was the shits. Really a rat fuck.”

“Yeah. I think maybe I shot em.”

“You?!”

“Yeah.”

“No way, Sarge. Don’t you remember, you were down tryin to draw a bead on the dink with the belt but they were in the way.”

“Yeah, but I fired. I must a hit em.”

“You didn’t fire, Man. Don’t you remember?”

“No. I ... I remember hearin my weapon ...”

“Naw, that was me. I was across the trail from you. Like six feet away. I was behind that hump in the ground. I couldn’t see the dinks but when that dink opened up I emptied a clip like straight up. I figured it’d maybe scare him.”

“I thought I fired ...”

“Naw, Man. Don’t you remember Samuels teasin you cause you didn’t return fire and that was like twice in one day and him sayin, ‘Fuck the line of fire. Fuck the line of fire.’ I was going to pound his head because he got so annoyin with that ‘Fuck the line of fire.’ You were really upset.”

“Ha! Yeah, huh?” Tony laughed. “Yeah. ‘Fuck the line of fire.’ Ha! Ha! Hahaha ...”

Now Thorpe began to laugh too. “And Maxwell kept yellin at you, ‘What’re you teachin the newby?’”

“Oh yeah.” Tony was laughing almost uncontrollably. “I didn’t fire. I didn’t fire.”

“Geez, Man,” Thorpe said. “How could you forget that?!”

Friday night, 25 March 1977—Noah was asleep. Bobby was reading the local paper. Josh was on the floor by his feet. Rain was coming in sheets, hitting the windows on the south and west sides of the house masking the TV voices. Between gusts there was a constant tatter on the tarps where the roof was still open. “Idiots,” Bobby blurted. He sniffed, swallowed. His nose was red, sore from blowing.

Sara was watching TV. They had barely spoken all day. “Who?”

Bobby dropped the edge of the paper. He was angry about Sara’s low-level yet increasing bitchiness. He was sure it was because he’d said they didn’t have the money to visit her folks and grandparents at Christmas but she denied it, passed it off to cabin fever. He didn’t believe that. Her behavior fit the pattern of several case studies he’d been reading about enablers—cases where the attraction died when one partner, the enabled, began to expand, to become independent. With the Larson job completed, Sodchouski’s underway, and Marrion’s signed up; with the barn becoming a factory; with the vets cooking in their own bunkhouse; and with grumpy Tony, believe it or not, actually singing and smiling and doing the craziest little jigs, Bobby increasingly thought Sara
needed
to tear him down, to make them all dependent, again, on her.

“The town.” Bobby did not want to confront her.

“What now?”

“They want to build an eighteen million dollar sewer plant on the crik below The White Pines.”

“Doesn’t that make sense?”

“That’s more than six thousand dollars per house.”

“Something needs to be done from what I’ve read.”

“For that price you could buy everybody daily bus fare to Williamsport for ten years. Let em shit there.”

Sara clicked her tongue. There was no talking to Bobby when he was in this mood. She sat up. “Listen to that rain. I’m going to check the roof in Noah’s room. Oh! Damn it.”

“What now?”

Again the tongue click. “Another flea bite,” Sara said. “I can’t take this anymore.”

Bobby huffed. “I’ll spray him again tomorrow.”

On the stairs Sara covered her face. She was miserable, frightened. Every day she felt worse. Every day she tried so hard to be strong for him but he didn’t care. It was impossible to do anything, to tell anyone, to seek help. They had been so broke all last year and now, even though there was money coming in, she didn’t dare divert any for personal needs. Even for Noah’s second birthday she’d skimped on the party. But Bobby hadn’t noticed. He’d been off with the dog most of the day. Just a little bit of money, she’d wished, but now she just didn’t dare. It wasn’t, in her mind, hers. She wasn’t working. She wasn’t bringing home a check.

In the living room Bobby was brooding. The Soviets had arrested another member of the Helsinki Agreement group on “laws forbidding acts deemed to defame” the nation. In Uganda Idi Amin was waging a personal vendetta against half his people, and the bulk of American commentators were declaring him a nationalist, or at least asserting that we Americans had learned our lesson in Viet Nam and now knew better than to intervene.