How Can You Mend This Purple Heart (31 page)

“Now that's funny!” Bobby Mac howled.

“I got one better,” Ski said. “I'm gonna get so drunk I won't have a leg to stand on.”

“I'm way ahead of you, man,” Big Al bragged.

“Shit,” Moose shot back. “I'm so damn thirsty I'd give an arm and a leg for a beer right now.”

“Bulldsheet!” Ski stammered. “Let's just get going and I dwill show you who's got dthe hollow leg.”

We filed out the side doors and made our way to the hole in the fence, Big Al riding high on my back. The walk to the Rainbow was filled with energetic talk about beer, girls, and life on the South Broad Street side of the hole.

“Hey guys, what's the occasion?” Eva called from behind the bar.

“Uncle Sam took a dump on Shoff, and we're here to wash him off!” Bobby Mac howled back. “We're gonna need a lot of beer to get rid of the stink.”

“Well, don't get any of it on my bar.” She was drawing the third pitcher as we slid into the last booth just next to the dance platform, the one where she and Earl Ray used to sit.

“Okay, what did Uncle Sam do that he hasn't already done?” Eva asked as she set down two pitchers from each hand.

“They think they're sending Shoff to 'Nam—on a slow boat, no less,” Moose said.

“That true, Shoff?” Eva asked.

“That's what they tell me.”

“He peesed off the big brass over a dyear ago and they didn't forget it,” Ski grinned.

“Must have been serious if they held a grudge this long,” Eva said, sliding in beside Ski.

“They don't forget shit,” Moose said. “The higher-ups are protecting their own asses.”

“What did you do?” Eva asked.

“He told them to go to hell!” Big Al shot in over his glass of beer.

Bobby Mac gave her the details, and as he finished the story, everyone held their glasses up in a frothy salute.

“Okay, let's get down to having a damn good time!” Roger said, taking a big gulp from a full pitcher.

The Saturday night crowd was larger than usual, and it added to the energy already sparking from our table. Eva danced as if it was her last night, and she came over occasionally to give us a smile. Neighborhood couples drank and laughed in their booth spaces, and those at the bar argued over who would buy our next round.

Eva finished her dance to “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I Got Love in My Tummy” and shuffled over to our table with her rum-and-Coke.

“Say, you guys got quiet all of a sudden,” Eva winked. “Was my dancing that bad?”

“We were just saluting one of the best corpsman in the Navy,” Moose said.

“No, to the best corpsman in the Navy,” Big Al said as he raised his glass.

“Yeah, here's to Doc Miller,” Bobby Mac said as he copied Big Al's salute.

“Well, why didn't you bring him with you? Where is he?”

The mood collapsed like a hole blown through a hot air balloon. We all waited for someone to speak.

“He's gone,” Moose said.

“You mean he was transferred?” she asked with a little hesitation.

“No,” Moose said firmly. “He's gone. Vietnam.”

“Oh…I'm sorry. When is he coming back? Do you know?”

“He ain't coming back,” Moose said as he put a pitcher up to his face.

A pall curdled over our small party. Eva put her arm around Ski's neck as if to embrace all of us, said she was sorry, and went behind the bar to cry.

The five or so plastic pitchers standing in sticky overspill were nearly empty, and the lukewarm remnants lay sour in the bottom. The beer suddenly tasted counterfeit.

“What do dyou say we call eet a night?” Ski said.

“Yeah, we may as well head back,” Big Al offered.

“Ain't this some shit,” Bobby Mac snapped. “You think Doc would want us to feel sorry for him? Or worse yet, feel sorry for ourselves? Fuck no. If he were here, he'd kick all of our asses.”

“That's right, man,” Moose said. “Let's have one for Doc.”

“How about another round for you guys?” someone barked from a bar stool.

“Yeah, we could use another round,” Bobby Mac hollered. “But this time, we're buying—for everybody!”

The beer went down like cold vinegar, and we left the Rainbow Bar and Grille and the half-full pitchers to rot in the murky silence that filled the air around our booth.

Once outside, Moose grabbed Big Al by the pant waist and gave him a tug. I felt Big Al's hands tighten around my neck and the pull was enough to turn me sideways.

“Hey, Shoff, like I've been saying, ain't no way you're going to get on that boat.”

“Says who?” I asked.

“Says me,” Moose said. “They can't fuck with you like that, so you ain't going.”

“How am I going to get out of it? I ain't going to Canada.”

“You're damn right, you're not,” Bobby Mac shot out.

“Then what do you plan to do? Hide me on Q?” I said.

“Nope,” Moose said with too much confidence. “We're going to break your legs. You can't leave here with two broken legs.”

I laughed as my eyes twitched, and I felt something crawling in my balls. “Break my legs?”

“That's right.” Moose limped to the side of the building and wrestled loose a concrete block from the dirt. “Been thinking about this all evening, Shoff. It wouldn't take much.”

“How the hell we going to explain it?” The beer was telling me this might be a pretty good idea.

“Shit, we'll just tell them you got hit by a car and they drove off.”

“I don't dknow about theese,” Ski stammered. “Just geeve eet a break.”

“Ain't this some shit!” Bobby Mac cried out. “Let me help you with that, Moose!” His laughter echoed off the front of the Rainbow. “Wish to hell I had thought of it.”

“Okay, Shoff, sit down here and put your legs straight out over the curb,” Moose told me.

“Dyou are serious?” Ski shouted as he stepped toward me.

“Serious as a fucking bad land mine!” Bobby Mac howled.

“C'mon,” Roger said, stepping in to help with the concrete wrecking block. “Ain't no way we can let those bastards get away with it.”

“Damn right,” I slurred. “They can't fuck with me like that. Go for it, Moose.”

“What do you think, Ski?” Moose asked.

“Okay, if eet's okay with dyou, Jeremy,” Ski shrugged.

“What the fuck I got to lose?” I said.

I slumped down to the curb and stretched my legs straight out with the back of my knees flat against the concrete ribbon. Roger and Ski sat down on either side of me and braced me for the shock. Big Al sat in the grass leaning half on his ass, half on his back, propped up on his hands and arms like an easel. Moose and Bobby Mac were standing in the street, the concrete block raised overhead, ready to smash my shin bones.

“You ready for this, Shoff?” I heard Bobby Mac warn.

“An honorary Marine is always ready,” I said with my eyes closed.

“Oh shit.” Big Al squirmed, looking up at the ten-pound block. Moose was holding one end, and Bobby Mac had a grip on the other end with his rubber hand.

“On the count of three,” Roger said.

“Oh shit,” Big Al said again.

“Ready?”

“One.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Two.”

“What the hell are guys doing out here!” Eva came rushing out of the Rainbow. “Good God, what are you doing? Are you trying to kill him?”

“Hell no, we're saving his life!” Bobby Mac laughed as the concrete block slipped and his rubber hand flipped off into the air and went somersaulting overhead.

“Hot damn!” Moose yelled. He lost his balance and the block went tumbling from above his shoulder. I squeezed my eyes back into my head.

I heard a muffled thump and my body tightened up like a snapped rubber band. I felt no pain.

“Sawnoffabeedtch! Look what dyou did to my shoe!” Ski grunted.

The concrete block had missed my legs and landed on the top of Ski's wooden foot, piercing a two-inch gash in the top of his shoe. We sat on the grassy curb and laughed until Roger threw up.

“Good God!” Eva cried. “Just get back to the hospital. I'll call you a cab.”

“No need to,” Moose said, nodding toward the police cruiser turning the corner. Eva smiled without turning toward the “cab” she knew was already on its way.

Sunday morning, we sat quietly outside Q Ward and watched the traffic slide by. Big Al was sitting high in his rocking horse. Moose, Ski, and Bobby Mac had left their limbs by their lockers; their slightly swollen stumps needed a little relief from last night. A couple of pain pills for each of us had brought a sullen quiet to our group. We hung around the ward playing cards and smoking cigarettes on the patio before heading down to the chow hall for a late breakfast.

“We should have done it, you know,” Moose said over a bite of fried eggs. “It's still not too late.”

“Yeah, but I'm sober now,” I said. “Things look a little different than they did last night. Besides, it's a damn ship. It ain't like I'm going on a patrol boat.”

“Tell me about it,” he said with a smile, as he raised his left arm stump.

“Yeah, at least dthey didn't screw dyou like that,” Ski said.

“Well, we all got to be somewhere,” Bobby Mac shrugged.

By mid-afternoon, I had my locker empty, and everything I owned half-filled the newly-issued sea bag. The picture of the old girlfriend was facedown in the bottom of a trash can in the shithouse.

Ski came over to my bunk area and put his arms around me. I hugged him harder than any guy should hug another guy. The American ceetizen Russian kid from New Joisey, his Star of David pendant as dear to him as his Purple Heart, stood proud on his wooden leg and told me how lucky he was to have me as his friend. I dropped my arms to my side, turned toward my empty locker, and pushed back the tears.

“You guys take care,” I said as I reached out to shake hands with the others. As my hand went toward Bobby Mac, he looked past me as if he had seen a ghost.

Standing in the afternoon light of the open side doors of Q Ward was Pappy the sailor man.

“Ain't this some shit!” Bobby Mac hooted. “What the hell are you doing here?”

We all turned and gaped at Pappy, who was rolling his funny sailor cap from hand to hand. He was smiling bigger than Big Al. “I took an early out. Couldn't see driving all the way to Florida just to turn around and drive back here. I got two weeks until I'm discharged from the Coast Guard.”

“Well, son of a bitch,” Bobby Mac laughed. He tossed his plastic hand to Pappy. “Welcome back, Pappy the Sailor! By God, welcome back!”

Big Al rolled quickly over to the open side doors. Pappy's faded blue Buick was parked in its familiar slot like an old comfortable couch. “That's the most beautiful thing I've seen all day,” Big Al said.

“I thought maybe I could make a beer run later on,” Pappy offered.

“Better make it quick,” Moose said. “Shoff here's just getting ready to leave us.”

“Where're you going?”

Moose told Pappy the whole story. “He's on their shit list big-time,” he said, putting his three-quarter left arm around my shoulders.

“No early out for me, Pappy,” I said. “I have a flight in a couple of hours.”

“I'll take you to the airport on my way to Jersey,” Pappy offered.

“Better get going, then. I don't want to hold up a beer run,” I smiled.

I reached out and took Big Al's hand. “Take care, Big Al. Get Pappy here to take you to Rosie's Place.”

He smiled, but it wasn't that big, Big Al smile.

“I'm going to lose my legs a second time.”

Epilogue

IN LATE SEPTEMBER
1970, I stepped on board the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ranger. A few weeks later, we headed west out of San Diego for a nine-month tour to Vietnam.

I never really made the launch of that tour, either.

Just two hours out to sea, I began suffering from an excruciating pain in my side. No matter what I tried, it wouldn't go away. A couple of hours later, I strained my way down to sick bay, doubled over from the pain. X-rays revealed a large stone lodged in my left kidney.

The next morning, during war-game maneuvers, a medic squad transferred me from a gurney to a casualty basket in the hangar bay. I was cable-lifted to the flight deck where a helicopter was waiting to fly me to the Navy hospital in San Diego. As they strapped the metal wireframe basket inside the helicopter, a corpsman gave me an extra shot of morphine “for the road.”

The doctors in San Diego were astonished that I had been sent back to full duty with a steel rod in my leg, and even more astonished that I had been put on board a ship. They placed me on a rigid physical therapy schedule and opened an inquiry into the medical review board in Philly.

I was eventually assigned to the Naval Law Center as a bailiff for court martial proceedings, and once again, it was a piece-of-cake duty. From Friday afternoons until Monday mornings, I had no one to answer to but myself.

For the next five months, my weekends were spent in drug-induced oblivion and drunken escapades to Tijuana, Mexico. I could no longer relate with anyone in the Navy, and the Marines on base wanted nothing to do with anyone not a Marine. It was five months of circumstantial isolation, and I was hell-bent on self-destruction.

The Navy offered me the option of a desk job or a discharge. I didn't hesitate to get the hell out, and they sent me on my way. As part of the separation process, a destination address was required in the event of an unlikely recall back to duty. Based on the information given, travel arrangements were made and tickets were issued for the selected mode of transportation.

I wanted to remain in San Diego, but what little bit of maturity I had gained told me to leave; Tijuana was too close and too convenient. My first destination choice would have been a bus bench on South Broad Street in Philadelphia, but I couldn't remember the address at Rosie's Place. Mom and my brothers and sisters, living without a dad who had abandoned the family, had moved to Ohio.