by Dennis Foley
“But those guys been fighting somebody or another for a hundred years. Who am I to tell them how to go to war when I’ve never been shot at?”
“Scott, they’ve been fighting the North Viets the same way they fought everybody who’s ever invaded their country back to the time they were throwing rocks at each other.” Russell leaned forward and poked his index finger into the table top. “What they need is a lesson on the kind a hustle you got. They need an attitude change, not new tactics or weapons.”
Scotty took a sip of his beer and shook his head. “You sure have a lot more confidence in me than I do.”
Russell leaned back in his chair. “You think that’s news to me?”
They were silent for an awkward moment while Scotty let it all sink in. He was going to Vietnam and experiencing all the same anxieties known to every American soldier from Gettysburg to the Pusan Perimeter in Korea.
“Hey. You just go over there and do what an old boss of mine told me to do when I was a young NCO like you, ‘Act right and do good stuff.’ Nobody can expect more of you.”
Scotty looked around the room. “Now, more and more NCOs are starting to show up back here after a tour over there and I want to ask them what it’s like, but I get the feeling too many of them aren’t happy with us Shake and Bake NCOs.”
“Forget it. They didn’t like it when some of us nineteen year-olds went from PFC to buck sergeant in Korea either. When wars heat up so do the promotions. If they didn’t do it they’d have an army of privates. Anyhow, since Napoleon, every soldier’s war is different than the one the guy in the next foxhole experienced. You just go do your best.”
“Sergeant, ah, Ace, I’ll do my best. The last thing I want to do is fuck up.”
Russell pointed his index finger at Scotty’s bright new chevrons. “You earned those stripes because those Tac NCOs thought you could hack it. I don’t have to tell you how good those guys are. You know it. If they said you should be a sergeant then you shouldn’t have to worry about screwing up”
Scotty heard him but still wasn’t persuaded. “I hope you’re right. I sure don’t want to embarrass anybody.”
“Hey. Speaking of anybody, how’s your mom?” Russell said.
“Kitty? I saw her last Christmas. I got to go home on leave for a week. She’s just wearing down. She can’t work much any more, but now I’ve claimed her as my dependent so Uncle Sam’s helping me pay for her and get her some medical help. She’s got emphysema, whatever the hell it is.”
“Enlargement of the alveoli in the lungs. Eventually the walls of the tiny air sacs collapse. Usually involves chronic bronchitis, chronic cough and over production of sputum.”
Scotty gave Russell a surprised look.
“Hey, don’t you think an old war dog like me remembers his Special Forces medical training? You think all I got out of it was a green beret?”
“I forgot. But you’re right. That’s what it is. She’s just having an awful time with it. But she’s got a girl who comes in a couple times a week to help around the house and cook some stuff up for her to eat. Still I’m afraid I’m looking at the beginning of the end. And, I’d rather get my ass kicked than think of not having her around.”
“I lost my momma when I was a kid. Let’s hope you get luckier.”
Scotty spoke up over the heartbreaking sounds of a steel guitar punctuating a Hank Williams song competing with the noise and the laughter only heard on Saturday afternoons in most NCO clubs. His face brightened. “I’m going to see her next week. I’ve got thirty days leave on the way to Saigon and I’m going to spend all of it at home.” He shook his head. “I’m sure lots of things need fixing around the house and I’ve got to find out just what the story is. If I listen to her tell it she’s ‘doin’ fine.’”
Russell motioned to the bartender for another round. “That’s good. I’m sure you’re about ready for a break after over a solid year of training.”
Scotty laughed. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
“You just think I’ve got a heart of stone and an ass made out of bumpers, don’t you?”
They both laughed. Then Scotty asked, “What about you? They going to keep you here pounding out Basic Trainees for the rest of your career?”
“No sir.” Russell killed what was left of his beer and waved back at a friend who pointed at him as he entered the club. “I’m on my way to Southeast Asia myself. Got my orders last week.”
“Vietnam?”
“Well, yes and no.”
Scotty gave him a puzzled look.
“I’m going to put my green beret back on. I’ll be going to 1st Special Forces Group in Okinawa. It means I’ll be there on paper but deployed somewhere in Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia. So count on me holding up my end.”
Suddenly, a war that seemed so far away and so unfamiliar to Scotty was filling up his life and his thoughts. Others in his graduating class received orders for Vietnam. Around the main room in the NCO club he could spot NCOs who recently returned from Vietnam by their MACV combat patches worn on their right shoulders. Over the bar the black and white television set had some news footage from Saigon, and now Russell.
Scotty wanted to ask Russell about Vietnam, about what he really should believe. He’d heard it all in training but how much of it was real? What could he really expect?
“Hey? You already there?”
“There?”
“Vietnam. No extra credit for showing up there early. Finish your beer, we’ll get refills and order something to eat.”
“Sorry,” Scotty said. “I was there. I got to tell you it’s got my ass puckered.”
“That’s good,” Russell said. “You go over there thinking you’re some kind of bad ass and they’ll be shippin’ your ass home in a tin box courtesy of the Quartermaster.”
“I just want to think I can hack it.”
He surveyed his quarters examining everything. The few GI furnishings in the single room were cleaned, windows washed, drawers cleaned out, trash and butt cans emptied and the floor swept and mopped.
His blouse hung on the door of his locker ready to be put on as his last act before turning out the lights and locking the door one last time. Satisfied he hadn’t missed anything, he turned his attention to his wall locker. He ran his hand across the empty top shelf as a final check to be sure he’d cleared out all the odds and ends stored there, some items to go with him, some headed for the trash.
On the bottom shelf his duffel bag sat folded precisely to the inside dimensions of the locker. He picked it up surprised to also find his father’s old duffel bag tucked neatly under his. He’d forgotten he’d used his father’s bag to carry his things from Belton to Fort Benning The very same things the Army made him throw out before his first day in the Army was over.
He unfolded the newer bag, readying it for stuffing. It smelled of an oil unique to all heavy canvas items issued by the Army. On its side was stenciled Scotty’s name, rank and serial number. But his eye was drawn back to his father’s bag on the bottom of the locker. His father carried with him to Korea and someone else had sent it home with his belongings after he was killed. He dropped his bag and picked up his father’s. Faded stenciling on the bleached-out, scarred and scuffed duffel bag read: Hayes, Jacob T., Sergeant, RA911413202.
There had been a day like this one for his father too. He’d finished difficult combat training at Fort Benning and packed his gear into the old bag when it was new and dark green. Jake Hayes too had been a newly-minted paratrooper headed off to a war in Asia.
Kitty had a photos of Jake in his uniform the day he left for Korea. It was a different uniform than Scotty wore—Ike Jacket and brown paratrooper boots, both a hangover from WWII. But the paratrooper’s badge over the chest pocket on his blouse was the same as Scotty’s new wings. And at his side was the duffel bag, new then and ready to travel.
Scotty changed his mind. He refolded his bag. He would pack his things in Jake’s bag—a combat soldier’s bag.<
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During all these preparations to leave Fort Benning the sergeant across the hall played The House of the Rising Sun over and over again on a portable record player with a speaker less than a third the size of the 45 RPM record itself. At first, Scotty enjoyed the music. But after the fifth time silence was better than more of Erik Burden’s depressing song of the seamier side of New Orleans, poverty, despair and ruin.
He yelled, “Hey, don’t you have another record?” A door slammed and the music stopped.
He quit packing long enough to check his watch. He always thought he was one of those guys who didn’t get homesick, but the closer he got to leaving the more he looked forward to Belton and Kitty, sleeping in and even just wearing civilian clothes for a change.
Others in his training platoons had suffered with bouts of homesickness but not Scotty. He’d never been one of those guys who talked endlessly about being home and going home and friends and girls back home. He wasn’t the type who shared letters or subscribed to a hometown newspaper which always seemed to arrive after a showdown with a Doberman.
He never let thoughts of home torture him. When it crept into his mind on the long nights on field operations or during training in the neck-deep black and slimy oatmeal of the Georgia swamps he tried to think of something else. If he longed for anything at all, it was for Kitty’s laugh.
He was eager to walk in his front door feeling he’d accomplished something, proud of something. Something difficult. Something few other new soldiers had done. Even playing ball in school he’d never walked into his house with a feeling of pride, a feeling of singular accomplishment.
Forcing the last of his clothing into the bag he envied civilians who could carry as many suitcases as they wanted. Soldiers were restricted to wearing uniforms while they traveled and carrying only one duffel bag to get a military rate on planes and buses. He slammed the duffel bag on the floor several times to make room for the last item.
“Hey! Hayes?”
Scotty heard the voice from the floor below. “Yo,” he replied.
“Your ride’s here, Sarge.”
“Thanks. Tell ’em I’ll be right there.” Scotty quickly stuffed his shaving kit into the bag, snapped the hook on the strap closing the top of the duffel bag and made a quick check of his lockers for anything left he might have left behind. He pulled his blouse from the hanger and put it on but not before jumping up once to see if anything remained on the top of his wall locker.
From below he heard the same voice, “Hey! You miss this ride to town, you miss your bus, man!”
Finding nothing there, he took his cap from the top of his footlocker and placed it squarely on his head, measuring two-finger’s width from the top of his right eyebrow to the lowest point on the brim of his overseas cap—as regulations required the cap to be worn.
He hoisted the heavy bag by its strap and took one last took around the room, partially to say good-bye but also to look for anything he might have left behind.
The room had to be cleaner and neater than when he moved in. It was the Army way of doing things: Leave it better than you found it. It would never have entered Scotty’s mind before Fort Benning, before Sergeant Asa Russell, before Army training. Now he wouldn’t ever think of leaving a room with something out of place, something needing cleaning up, no matter how late he was.
“Hayes. This is your last chance, man! This truck has to get over to the motor pool now!”
“Be right down,” Scotty replied.
Chapter 10
HE’D DECIDED TO GET THE STRAIGHT STORY before seeing Kitty. She’d been dodging his questions in his letters and phone calls about how she was feeling and what the doctor told her. “Not as bad as you think,” she kept saying. “You don’t have to worry about me, baby. Just got a little cough.”
The doctor took his glasses off and cleaned them with a handkerchief he produced from his jacket pocket. “You see, emphysema is an enlargement of the tiny air sacs in the lungs and the destruction of their walls.”
He put his glasses back on but still peered over the top of them at Scotty. “You need those sacs to transfer oxygen into your bloodstream and take away the carbon dioxide.”
“Destroyed sacs? It all sounds pretty awful, Doctor,” Scotty said.
“That’s only part of it. Most emphysema patients suffer from other complications, some scarring, excess mucus and occasional muscle spasms. It seems to be more fatal in men than women, if it’s any consolation for you.”
“You mean Kitty can live with this?”
“I mean she’s less likely to die if she behaves herself.”
“Can’t you heal her or cure this? I mean, is there a shot or something?”
“No. We can manage it. We can’t cure the disease, but we can treat the symptoms. Unfortunately, the damage is done. No medication or treatment can return her to the way she was before her lungs started to turn to leather.”
“Shit! So what can she expect?”
“Respiratory complications, bacterial infections, bouts of coughing and production of some disgusting sputum. Patients like Kitty can expect to suffer from shortness of breath, lethargy, bronchial attacks, influenza, pneumonia and even weight loss and possible swelling of her legs as the disease causes her heart to malfunction.
“I’m prescribing appropriate medications for her condition and from time to time I may need to put her on portable oxygen.”
Scotty heard the words—cold and clinical as the doctor spoke them, but he could only think of all these things happening to Kitty, his Kitty, not just any patient. He interrupted the doctor. “What do I do?”
“First and foremost, keep her away from cigarettes and smoke filled environments.” He raised his finger and waved it at Scotty. “Before you say anything, I’ve known Kitty damn near as long as you have, son. She’s trying to convince me and she’ll try to convince you she’ll quit smoking, but she needs to keep tending bar—”
Scotty held up his palm. “I’ve got it, Doc. You don’t have to paint a picture for me. If I have to tie her leg to the kitchen stove, she’s not going back to Murphy’s.”
“Good. Now, if she feels up to it, she can wait some tables now and then. But make it an outdoor restaurant. Absolutely no smoking or smoke-filled rooms. Remember, her lungs don’t care if she’s in a smoke-filled bar or a smoke-filled restaurant. Got it?”
“Roger that.”
“You know the very best thing you can do for her?”
“What’s that?”
“Make her want to get better. Give her some good reasons to live life and enjoy it. Get her moving and keep her attitude on the right side of this thing. Depression’s as much of a killer for her as her damaged lungs.”
Scotty stood and stuck his hand out. “Doc. Thanks for what you’re doing for Kitty. Count on me to hold up my end. But I’m …”
“But you are leaving again.”
“Yes. Vietnam.”
“I’ll medicate her. You do what you can to motivate her. Call, write. Whatever you can do. If it gets bad enough I’ll contact the Red Cross and they’ll clear it with the Army for you to come home on compassionate leave. That’s how it works.”
Scotty stared down at his boots and thought about what the doctor had just said. “How bad does it have to get?”
“Near the end.”
Scotty hoisted his duffel bag up on his shoulder and walked along the sidewalk outside the medical office. Two blocks to the bank. He had to make sure his allotment would continue to go to Kitty’s checking account. She’d go under without what he was sending. And he wanted to open a safe deposit box for Kitty where he could leave a copy of his will. He needed to be sure the bank knew how critical it was for the money to get to her account uninterrupted. Mostly, he wanted a face and name he could contact from Vietnam.
He patted his blouse to make sure the envelope containing the will was still tucked into the inside pocket. His will. He’d be twenty his next birthday and words like will, life insu
rance and survivor benefits were new and awkward for him to think about. What would happen to Kitty if he didn’t come back from Vietnam? She had no one else.
The bank staff understood his needs. He tucked the two banker’s business cards into his wallet and slipped it back into his hip pocket.
“Scotty? Scotty Hayes?”
He looked around for the voice and saw someone standing backlit by the blinding sun coming through the huge glass window of the bank’s front. He thought he recognized the voice. “Mal? That you?”
Malcolm Striever stepped closer to Scotty and stuck out his hand. “How the hell you been, man? Jesus, look at you!” He stepped back and mugged at Scotty’s uniform as if trying to decide if it was right for Scotty and if it met with is approval. “Shee-it, man. You look like a regular fucking Audie Murphy, Hayes!”
Scotty waved at Malcolm to stop the theatrics. As Malcolm circled Scotty and made more of a fuss, Scotty recognized the patch over the pocket on his coveralls. Orange State Plumbing. Malcolm’s hands were blackened; his nails broken and dirty. He even seemed to be making an attempt at growing a Beatles’ haircut. But with his tight curls it wasn’t working. Finding Malcolm working for a plumbing company was the last thing he expected to find on his return. Scotty searched for the right words. “Yeah, it’s me. How you been, Mal? You good?”
Malcolm waved an opened envelope ragged at the edges. “Just dropped in to cash my paycheck. You know. Got to pay those bills. They just keep coming. So, how long you gonna’ be here, man?”
“Few weeks. I’m on leave. On my way to Vietnam.”
“No Shit! I been watchin’ all that Tonkin Gulf stuff, man and I’m startin’ to get worried they’re going to tag my ass. Every time I get the mail I expect to find a letter from the Draft Board.” He laughed, “So I try not to go to the mailbox.”
“I’m sure they can handle things over there without your help,” Scotty said releasing his old classmate’s hand.