by James Aura
When Saigon Surrendered
Copyright 2015 by James Aura
This is a work of historical fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
With many thanks to Vic & Tom.
"Man cannot stand a meaningless life." - Carl Jung
When Saigon Surrendered
Well, it sure left a mark on me, I’ll tell you that. Everything I am, all I feel, the people I love and hate all come through the prism of that night. Grandma was my friend, but we were very different. She always cleaned up after other people and I guess I am one of those that always make the messes. What I remember best was her forgiveness; always forgiving others, never was an end to it. I couldn't see it, still don't. But that forgiveness always drew me back to her. Like smoke slipping out from the chimney of her old fireplace, it always drew me back.
That’s what makes it hard for me to remember that night. You will curl your lip and want to spit. But I don't care. A man can carry something like this inside him for only so long. Then it's got to come out.
It was that night Saigon surrendered. The end of April, 1975. We heard it on the radio. Listened to that announcer kind of cuss it. "We have this report from our wire service. It reads 'Saigon Surrenders.' The last American helicopters with the last Marine guards are gone," he declared. And Saigon has surrendered.
Grandma and I just sat there. We didn't say a word, but I knew what she was thinking.
Bobby Ray's dead and Saigon has surrendered. Just like that. Her only boy and my only Dad, out there in the ground behind Wesley Memorial Methodist Church.
Finally Grandma leaned over and turned off the radio. I stared at the dial and felt like I was going to bust. She told me at the funeral the country needed him. So he went over there and got himself killed.
I was finishing up my freshman year at Auburn, back home at the farm in Kentucky visiting with Grandma and studying for final exams. We were sitting in the front room with all the windows open. The only sounds were the crickets and the wind blowing through the wheat fields outside. I sat at the round oak table that Uncle Wallace had made. I was trying to study some math formulas, with the numbers all running together. I chewed on my pencil and looked over at Grandma.
She was old and battered, like our farm house. Her red hair had streaks of gray and white. The seams on her face looked deeper in that dim light and the creases around her eyes seemed to go on forever. Grandma had a striking appearance; she sometimes had a fierce look, especially when her chickens, sheep or cows were in danger. Then she looked a little like the hawks that circled the farm, but there was not a kinder woman that ever walked the earth. She had on that old calico dress she wore when she fed the chickens. Smelled like sausage grease and bran. She kept on rocking and crocheting the brown and purple slipcover she was making for somebody. She looked at me and her eyes misted over. I couldn't stand it.
"Grandma, I guess we ought to forgive those people for what they did to Daddy."
She laid down her crochet hook and smiled at me.
"You're gettin' it now, Russell. What else is there to do? "
The moon was shining through the screen door. The crickets got quiet and the wind died down. It was so still, I felt like the world had stopped. The blood throbbed in my temples. Then, I started sobbing. I couldn't help it. I leaned back on that old maple chair and just cut loose. It is very unusual for me to cry. You can ask anybody, and they'll tell you that Russell Ray Teague is one of the calmest, most squared-away people ever to darken the Dean’s doorway at Auburn. But that night, I just lost it.
Grandma must have been surprised because her eyes got wider and wider and she began to sob too. Tears rolled off her face right onto her slipcover in her lap. I took a deep breath and calmed the heaving in my chest and lurched closer to her rocker. Then I sat down on the throw rug. The pain in my heart shot up and slapped my face. Grandma once talked about Guardian Angels and how they help us do what doesn't come naturally. Well, if mine was around that night, he was beating me with a cry-stick.
All of this must have been too much for her. Or it was just her time. She leaned over to me, as if to speak and then fell out of that chair right down on the floor. She was breathing, but barely.
You talk about the fear of God. Well, I had it. Jumped straight up and ran for the pickup keys, then ran back to Grandma, then ran back out on the front porch and stood there.
The wind started in again, felt like a rain was coming. It calmed me down. There were no other houses for a mile. Nobody to help. The moon was a torch in the sky. I could see the farm clear as day. Henhouse, barn, wheat fields, the pickup truck and the dim glow on the horizon from town. Big gray storm clouds began to glide over the fields. I just took it all in, as if I might be seeing it for the last time. I looked up and saw the clouds sweeping over the moon. Grandma might be dying on the front room floor.
I knew what I had to do. I stared down at the pickup keys in my hand. I was going to get her into that truck and one way or the other, by God, get her to a doctor. Ambulance would take forty minutes from town. I could make it in half that, if I could remember how to get to the hospital.
A man never knows what he can do until he's got to do it. In the next few minutes I got her off the floor, carried her down the front steps and into the pickup truck. She was heavy, but I was tall and strong. Folks used to look at my feet and say to Grandma, "God don't put a big foundation on a small house, Sally. He's going to be a big man, just like his daddy." I really got sick of hearing that. But it made her proud, and I even heard her say something like that to Uncle Wallace.
When I was younger, she was slow to let me drive the truck. I remember her telling me, "It's old and it's tricky and hard to drive. You keep on with your studies. Your Daddy would want me to help with your priorities. Truck driving can come later. "
She'd smile that crooked smile while I stood there itching to take it to town, where I would drive it around Main Street along with everyone else from school. I cranked the engine and eased into low. Took forever to let out the clutch, but the trees began to move past us. Then we were out the lane and onto the blacktop.
Grandma was slumped against the passenger door. She looked as if she was sleeping and her breathing became more regular. I saw the seat belt was holding her secure and I floored it. "We're headed for help, Grandma," I whispered.
Command, confidence and an overwhelming potency washed over me: Russell, the gallant knight, with sureness of spirit and the smile of the gods, was carrying the woman who raised him into the rainy night. I was Paladin, Tristan and King David. The evil beast that pressed my Grandma into the seat was Goliath, but the steering wheel was my slingshot. We flew into town.
We wound up on Main Street and I began to look for a sign that would direct us to the hospital. I began to panic. This was taking too long. We looped around past the high school and the library. I finally got my bearings and we pulled up to the hospital emergency room in a pouring rain. A big man in a light blue uniform was looking out of the glass doors, hands in his pockets and a frown on his face. He didn't like what he saw. I threw open the door of the pickup and ran towards him. Fell down twice on the slick driveway, scrambling to get inside those doors. He stepped back and stared. “You practicing to drive that pickup at Rockingham, boy?"
"My Grandma is in the truck!" I was gasping so hard, my lungs were on fire. "My Grandma is in that truck, and we need to get her a doctor.."
He chewed on his toothpick, kept his hands in his pockets, looking out at that old blue pickup. He didn't want to get wet. I felt the armor of knigh
thood slipping away.
"I think she is dying and we need to get her some help!" I was nearly as tall as him but he was three times my weight. I struggled to catch my breath. He wasn't moving. I was ready to kill him, but I knew he'd squash me like a bug.
"Russell? Russell Ray?" A woman's voice came from behind us. I turned and saw a woman from my dreams walking towards us. I mean, this really was a woman from my dreams. I'd dreamt about this woman for a year. Golden hair and green eyes like jade. She had a way about her that spoke of homemade bread, and caring for people, and the kind of patience that women have when they help a ewe birth a lamb, or stay up in the night with a baby calf bawling for its momma.
God, she was beautiful. Not like one of those women you see in the New York magazines. There was more to her than that. She was more rounded, more down-to-earth. But she was beautiful. White nurse dress and white stockings and that long blonde hair. Who was this woman coming straight at me from out of a dream-world, with Grandma still out in the truck, and the rain coming down like a waterfall?
Whoever she was, her voice lashed out like a whip at the man standing at the doors.
"Jesse, this young man just told you his grandmother is out in that pickup truck. Are you going to do something about it, or do you want me to call the clinician?" I never saw a man that big move so fast. This was an amazing woman. She had an energy, and a presence that seemed familiar.
Well, I'll tell you what. Old Jesse damn near killed himself wheeling out a stretcher, yelling down the hall for a helper and beating it out to that truck. They wheeled Grandma in fast, but with the kind of controlled gentleness you see with people who have done the same thing time and again. I came in through the doors with them. I thought she was still breathing but couldn’t be sure.
A man who appeared to be a doctor came around the corner, looking at Grandma, striding alongside the stretcher when they pushed it through some curtains into a treatment room. He came back out and asked me some questions, which I answered, best I could, then he disappeared behind the curtains.
I was alone. The dream-woman was gone. I walked in a circle around the lobby then sat down in one of the plastic chairs lined up along the wall. There was nothing else to do. I picked up one of the old magazines they always have in places like that, but I couldn't sit still. Got up and walked to the drink machine. No change, no money, no wallet. I had forgotten my wallet. Not good.
I looked outside. The passenger door was still open on the pickup. Keys must still be in it, too. "I'll move the pickup and lock it," I thought to myself. I went out in the rain and parked it under a big tree at the edge of the lot, then went back inside and waited.
After what seemed like an eternity the doctor and nurse came out, she was shaking her head and dabbing at her eye with a tissue. She disappeared down the hall but the doctor came and sat down next to me.
“Young man, I am sorry to tell you, your grandmother has passed away. We tried, but she was too far gone. It was a heart attack and it was a matter of minutes. If you’d been able to get here sooner, or maybe called the ambulance ”
So there it was. I had stupidly tried to save her, be the hero and instead I had wasted time driving around town, looking for the hospital. Now she was gone. It seemed like the whole thing was my fault.
The doctor asked me what funeral home and I told him the same one that had buried Daddy when the body came back from Vietnam.
When I got to the truck, the dream-woman, the nurse was lying on the seat. She was sobbing. Well, I felt like I'd had about enough excitement for one night. I stood there in the rain, trying to decide whether to go back inside, or get in the truck. She looked up at me, makeup running down a cheek. I held the door open and stood there like an idiot. She had on some kind of perfume and it was mixed with that medicine smell from the hospital. I felt like I was back in a dream. Who in the world was this woman?
I felt embarrassed but I was drawn to her. I'd never made love, but I knew all about it. You don't grow up on a farm with the animals, and all, and not know a thing or two about it. Not that I didn't have plenty of chances.
She had an urgent gleam in her eye. "Russell, get in the truck," she ordered.
I stood there in the rain, gaping at her. She sat up and I slid in behind the steering wheel. Then I remembered, when the medical people were wheeling Grandma inside, somebody had whispered, "Sally," Grandma's name.
It must have been the dream-woman, matter of fact; it had been a woman's whisper. I turned and looked at her straight on.
"Ma'am, how do you know my name and how do you know my grandmother's name?"
She turned her head and stared out the window on the passenger side. I looked her over. She looked young, real young. A hint of perfume drifted over and I felt a flood of memories coming to the surface. I closed my eyes and let the memories wash over me. Where was I? In Daddy's Camaro, after school. He had picked me up and we were headed for Grandma's. That perfume! It was the same fragrance. She, or some other woman wearing that same perfume had been in that car!
More memories, flooding in. Standing in the cemetery on a spring evening, sun just going down. Staring at Daddy's tombstone, rolling the epitaph around in my heart.
MASTER SGT BOBBY RAY TEAGUE
Feb 12, 1935 -Feb 19, 1972
Gave His Life for His Country
Gone but Not Forgotten
There had been a headscarf and a red rose lying on the grave. I didn't know who had put it there. There was hardly anybody but Grandma and me, and I knew it wasn't Grandma. She had planted the peonies. But she would never leave a cut rose. I picked up the scarf and smelled that perfume. It was sweet and soft, like gardenias in July. I had carried it home and kept it in my room a long time.
It was that perfume she was wearing in the truck. No doubt about it.
"You left a rose and a scarf on my Daddy's grave, didn't you? Last year?"
"Russell, I left a lot more than that. I left a whole lot of tears and memories in that cemetery. I loved your Daddy, and I believe he loved me. Russell.. if only he had come back alive.."
"If only, what?"
"We might have gotten married. We were so in love."
I tried to speak, but it just wouldn't come out. I looked down at the floorboard and shook my head. I had the sense that I was understanding a whole lot of things that'd been out there all along, but disconnected. They were coming together. I looked into her eyes, and she put her hand on my shoulder.
"Russell, I would have told you. God how I wanted to take you in my arms and hug you, and talk to you and tell you how I felt about your Daddy, and what it was like when Sally called and told me he was dead, got shot in that place so far away. Russell, your grandmother, did not want me around, said I could never replace Eva in her mind, or his. But I wanted to. I wanted to spend my life with Bobby Ray and, with you too. She wanted you all to herself, Russell. You were all she had left."
I kept connecting all those unanswered questions. Those nights when Daddy would go out and not take me along. Sometimes be gone for a couple of days. The morning he put Momma's picture away in his dresser. He must have found this beautiful woman to take Momma's place. But he knew he was going back to Vietnam and maybe not come back. I felt really angry with him, and with Grandma. Why hadn't they told me? Why did Grandma go to his room and take all those things out to the ditch, a few days after the soldier came with the news?
She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. A woman that pretty had never kissed me before or at least not that I could remember. She smiled a sad, knowing smile.
“Let’s go to my house Russell, it’s just a block away. You need somebody to talk to.”
She got into her car, which was parked alongside the pickup and I followed her down the street to her house. We went inside and she got me some dry clothes. They fit pretty good. I wondered whose clothes they were. She brewed some coffee and we sat on her sofa.
Her name was Kim. It was a name I had heard in passing, somewhere. Maybe m
urmurings between Daddy and Uncle Wallace. We drank coffee and talked, and cried, and remembered Bobby Ray Teague and what a good man he was. I told her stories about Daddy and Grandma and I felt like I had known this woman all my life. I was drawn to her, and I wanted more.
She offered to let me sleep on the sofa but it was after midnight. In a few hours, the cows would need to be milked, and the chickens fed. And there would be no one on the farm to do it. So I drove home and got into bed and tried to sleep. But I couldn’t get Kim out of my mind. I know it was lust, pure and simple.
I thought about one of my heroes, King David. I was drawn to him like shavings to a magnet when I read those tales about him; how he had to have beautiful women around him. Even when he was a doddering old man. They found him the comeliest maiden in Israel and had her come stay with him and take care of him. Her name was Abishag, and I don’t care whether you believe me or not. It’s right there in First Kings. You can look it up.
I stared into the darkness and the guilt burned me like a white flame. Grandma not yet even in the grave and I was coveting a nurse I barely knew. So there it was. I was alone on the farm; my Grandmother was gone because of my stupidity. Thoughts swirled through my head like leaves tossed in the wind, final exams, a funeral, life without Grandma.