by Joe Cassilly
“The doctor says you will probably never walk again,” he paused and then added for effect, “for the rest of your life.” I had the sense that he was telling me that this was my punishment for not following his advice. We looked back at one another. There was a long silence.
“I know,” I said, “they told me that in the hospital in Japan. I just laid there for a while trying to understand and when I did, I just cried.”
“What, a Ranger cry,” my father said mockingly. I was so angry with myself for thinking I could talk to him. “Did you say that to make me feel bad or make yourself feel good?”
My father stepped forward, grasped his wife’s arm, and began pulling her toward the door. I had not seen him since then, but I would, if it would make my mom happy.
I looked back at my mother. She was gazing at the Christmas tree. She looked back at me. I felt as if she had been reading my mind for the past several moments. We talked about Christmas presents, the relatives, the tree they got this year, and the Christmases we remembered from past years. My mom took the tray from the nurse and fixed the hamburger and fruit salad for me. I told her that the Army must have spent all its money on lunch. After dinner, she began gathering her things to leave; it was a three-hour drive home.
I cleared my throat. “They tell me that after the first of the year, they will be sending me to the V. A. hospital in Richmond. That’s another two hours of driving.”
“I’ll be there,” she said as she pulled on her coat.
“I know. Thanks.”
She walked up the aisle and stopped by the nurses’ station. I could see her speaking with Lt. Staunton. My mom was holding her hands in front of her as if she was preparing to catch a ball. The nurse would nod. Suddenly, it appeared that my mom was crying. The nurse stepped forward and hugged her, patting her back. After a few seconds, my mom squared her shoulders, wiped her eyes, and left. The nurse looked at me and went back to her desk.
Just before 11:00 p.m., the nurse made her rounds. I wanted to stop her and ask her about my mom, but she seemed in a hurry. She ignored my attempt at small talk. She probably wanted to get home and enjoy what was left of her holiday. I watched the late news. There was a story about how the troops in Vietnam had celebrated Christmas.
It was after midnight when Susie Staunton slid a chair beside my bed.
“Your mom asked me not to say anything to you, but I think you should know. She is very depressed. This thing between you and your father is tearing her apart. She doesn’t know how to get through to either of you. She doesn’t think he will let you come home.”
“So who said I wanted to go to his house,” I said with irritation in my voice.
“That’s beside the point. Your feelings for each other are destroying everything she values in life, being a wife and mother.” She paused and stared out of the window. Without looking back, she asked, “What is it you want to do later?”
“Well, didn’t you know I’m gonna try out for the Baltimore Colts,” I said caustically. She would not look back at me. I softened my voice and lowered my eyebrows. “I guess I’m going to college since it appears my brain is the only part of me that works like before.”
“You need to tell your mom this. Let her know that you have ambitions and plans and are thinking of life outside of the hospital.”
I nodded in agreement. “Thank you,” I whispered. She reached over and patted my hand. Then there was a silence.
“I thought that you would have been home with your husband today,” I said.
“My husband had a paper that has to be at his publisher’s and exams to grade, so he stayed at the university. It’s in Illinois.”
“I can’t believe it. If I were your husband, you’d never be alone at Christmas.” She smiled but her face was sad and thoughtful.
“So you gonna take any time off?” I asked trying to change the mood.
“Tomorrow, I am going with some friends to Vermont to go skiing. You want to come?”
“Sure, you think anybody would notice you smuggling me outta here?”
She stood, her face moved down toward mine. She studied my features. Her eyes looked into my eyes and then at my mouth and she gave me a very soft kiss. Her tongue licked my lips.
“Goodnight, Jake.”
“Goodnight, Suzie.”
As she walked away, I traced the feeling of her lips on mine with the tip of my finger. “I’m going to miss you,” I called out in a loud whisper. I knew that she heard me.
6
Her New Start
She had not gone to Vermont. Instead, she was watching small mountains of snow flash past the jet windows as it landed in Chicago. She had burned with resentment over her husband’s excuse to avoid being with her over Christmas. Then Jake’s remark about how Jake would not have left her alone compelled her to come home. She had not let her husband know she was coming. She did not want him to have several hours to prepare for the coming confrontation. She took a cab from the airport.
Blowing, swirling snow was hitting her eyelashes as she walked up the front walk; the windows were dark and forlorn. She pulled her car keys out of her pocket and found the key to their Chicago townhouse. She twisted it in the lock but it didn’t turn. She pulled the key out and looked; it was a different brand from the lock. The bastard had changed the locks. She felt under the metal railing and pulled loose a small magnetic box. She removed the key from it and quietly opened the door.
She gently put down her bag and stood in the dark foyer listening. There was a woman’s coat on the hook and a small bag on the table. There was music playing upstairs. She moved up the stairs, putting her feet next to the wall where she thought the steps would be less likely to make a squeak. She moved down the hall toward some muffled sounds. She opened the bedroom door a crack and peered in. She heard grunting and saw her husband’s naked back, shoulders, and head moving to and fro above the bed. She softly closed the door.
Her throat tightened and tears pushed out of her eyes; they were not from sorrow but from rage. She quietly made her way downstairs and went to a desk. In the top drawer, she felt around until her fingers closed on the cold steel of a pistol. She would kill him and then the bitch he was humping. She drew the slide back to put a shell in the chamber, but there was no bullet. She thumbed the release and the empty clip dropped into her palm. She caught herself as she was about to throw the useless thing through the window.
She reached back into the drawer and slid the contents forward, looking for a box of bullets. There weren’t any, but there were bank savings pass books, the deed to the townhouse, and some bonds, a checkbook and cash and his wedding ring. She stuffed the pistol and all the papers into the pockets of her coat. She heard the water running through the pipes. Someone was in the shower.
She called a cab but they told her it would be thirty minutes or more before they could get though the snow. She told them to pick her up at the Dublin Pub on the corner. She left her house and made her way across the street and down to the small neighborhood bar on the corner. She took a table by the window where she could watch for the cab but she could also see the front door of the townhouse. She ordered an Irish coffee and a bowl of chowder.
She was warming her hands around the large mug and sipping the whipped cream from the top when the door to the townhouse opened. It was difficult to see what the bitch looked like in the dark, obscured by snowflakes. The woman crossed the street and was going to pass right in front of her window seat. Suzie peered out, wanting to see what her husband had thrown her over for. The dark figure walked into a streetlight’s glare. It was a girl, young, pretty, maybe eighteen or nineteen. Just as quickly, she walked into the darkness.
“You all right, Miss?” asked the bartender, looking at her ashen face with her mouth hanging open. Her hands were shaking and she was spilling her drink. Not only was she being cheated on, but that God damned piece of shit was screwing his students.
“Oh God,” she muttered, “I hope he had not be
en doing that while we were living together.” Of course, that was how she met him, as his student. She wondered if the girl knew he was married. Then she thought, That is how old Jake is. It was an hour before the cab got there.
The cab slipped, slid, got stuck a few times, but finally arrived at another house. She saw the glowing Christmas tree through the front window. Green and red lights lit two trees on either side of the front walk. Her knock on the door was answered by her mother who began laughing and crying, pulling Suzie inside, calling for her husband and Suzie’s sister, taking her bag from her, and pulling her coat off. Before Suzie could remember how she got there, she was seated at the dining room table with smiling faces on every side, a plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes and Christmas gifts that her sister had brought out from under the tree.
They had talked and laughed, looked at photos and Christmas gifts. Her mother handed Suzie the Christmas stocking she had made for her daughter even though Suzie had told her mom she would not be home for Christmas. Her dad went to bed. Her mother, sister, and she were on their second bottle of wine when her mother asked, “So, Susan?”
It was the Irish; that question could get you all the knowledge in the universe. When her mother called her “Susan,” it meant she’d take no nonsense or lies and probably knew the answer already. Suzie told her everything.
The next morning, they started at the bank where they closed out every account and cashed every bond. She pawned his wedding ring. Then, her mother took her to a lawyer. By the time she caught the plane back to Washington, the process for the divorce had begun.
7
The Bed Bath
A few weeks earlier, before Christmas, just after Thanksgiving, they were getting ready to operate and remove a piece of bone that was pressing on my spinal cord. I was flat on my back. A cable system attached to the tongs pulled my neck into line. I could not sit up or roll over. They would put a mattress on me with a hole for my face, lock it into place, pull pins holding the mattress I was lying on and roll me over every four hours and four hours later roll me back over. That day, I woke up freezing. I had pulled my blankets up over my head. I was shivering violently. A man’s voice spoke to me, “Aren’t you a little cold?”
“I yi yamm freezing.”
Hands gripped the blanket and tried to pull it off of my head. “Nnnno, I’m too cold don’t take it off.”
“Well the reason you’re so cold,” the voice explained, “is that your head is the only part of you that is covered. The rest of your naked body is lying here turning blue for all the world to see.”
The hands re-arranged the sheets and blankets over me. I saw that the hands and voice belonged to Doctor Butcher. Why a guy with that last name would become a surgeon I always wondered. The doctor touched my head. He then walked to the cart that the nurse was pushing around and took a thermometer. He slid it under my tongue. “If you get sick, we will have to delay the surgery,” he said. A few minutes later he came back with an armload of blankets. He put three of them over me. Then, he looked at the thermometer. “Ninety-four!” He put two more blankets over me.
I grinned at the doctor. “Does this mean my fever has broken?”
“It means that you’re dead.”
The nurse had reached my bed and the doctor ordered a couple of hot water bottles to be tucked in with me. A short time later, one of the student nurses who came to the ward three days a week carried in hot water bottles. Her name was Cynthia Ward. I had called her Cindy once and received a haughty glare and silence. She never stopped just to chat with the patients, never said “Hello” or “Good morning.” She did what she was assigned to and got the hell out of there. I wondered if she thought spinal cord injuries were contagious. Maybe she thought smiling caused wrinkles.
“I guess you won the raffle to get me as a patient,” I said, trying to break the silence. Her upturned nose parried my attempted humor. She kept working as if she had not heard a word. Her manner made me uncomfortable.
“This our last class here before the end of the semester,” said a voice from the next bed over. It was another student nurse named Cathy.
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s so nice to hear the sound of a human voice.” Cynthia roughly shoved the water bottles under the blankets. She looked at me to see if I felt anything. “Am I your assigned patient today?” No response. Each student nurse was assigned one patient to care for and write notes on.
“If I die today, do you have to repeat the course?” There was a laugh but it came from Cathy; Cynthia strutted away.
At about 10 a.m., Cynthia came down the aisle pushing a cart with two basins, two towels, and two washcloths. Harvey, a loudmouthed patient that I had never seen because of the position of our beds, called, “Look out Jake! She’s coming for your body.”
Cynthia pushed the cart next to my bed. She then went and pulled the long curtains, which slid on tracks in the ceiling around the bed. She dipped a washcloth into a basin, wrung it out, and handed it to me. “For your face” were the first words that she had spoken to me. I scrubbed my face and handed it back. She put on a pair of rubber gloves. She then wet the washcloth, rubbed soap on it, and took my hand and pulled my arm outstretched. She then began roughly scrubbing, working between each finger and up to the shoulder. I grinned to myself and wondered if she would like the story of the last time before I was injured that a woman gave me a bath.
In the base camp at Cu Chi, there were two steam baths. I had always heard stories about the one nicknamed “Steam and Cream” down the road from our company area. I had never gone there. One night, though, I was sitting with the Dutchman drinking straight scotch, because there was nothing else to drink. The Dutchman was shipping home in a week. He could not take his stash of liquor with him. He had divided it into equal portions for each night he had left in country. This particular evening, it was a fifth of scotch he had to finish to stay on schedule.
His name was van Jooser something or other, which everyone gave up on and called him the Dutchman. He was a great horse of a man and would have probably killed the scotch all by himself but he had poured me about six ounces in a water glass and asked me to sit with him. The Dutchman was reminiscing about all the good times he had with the Rangers in Vietnam. He said he would sign up for another tour, but this was the end of his second tour. He hadn’t seen his old lady in almost two years. She had already told him if he didn’t come home after this tour, she would leave with the kids and he would never see them again.
All of the sudden, in the middle of his memories, he jumped to his feet, grabbed my arm, and pulled me to my feet.
Cynthia had finished rinsing one arm and had taken hold of the other.
He breathed his booze-soaked breath into my face and said, “I want to go to the Steam and Cream one more time.”
I had finished most of my scotch. I felt tipsy and tired. I let myself be pulled out the door. The pouring rain and driving wind quickly sobered me up in the few minutes it took to walk there. I stood dripping wet in a little entry room. The Dutchman must have been a favored customer because the old pap-san at the table beamed with recognition. The Dutchman, feeling the effects of the scotch, marched over and picked the Vietnamese, who was a foot and a half shorter, right off the floor in a bear hug.
“Papa-san,” he boomed, “I bring baby-san,” pointing to me. “We want numbah one girls.” He pulled out his wad of military script and counted out some bills. I figured the storm must have been keeping anyone with brains away since it looked like we were the only ones there. Around another small table sat four Vietnamese girls playing cards, chattering, and watching the Dutchman out of the corners of their eyes.
He roused me with a slap on the back. “Hey, kid, we’re lucky. Papa-san was just gonna close the place down ’cause business has been slow, but he says ’cause I’m such a good tipper, we can each have two girls.” He started toward the table, but before he could reach it, one of the girls, the prettiest by my thinking, jumped up, ran over,
and grabbed my arm. She began hollering at the old man, the tone of her voice fearful.
The old man translated, “She say you crazy, you drunk, you hit her and hurt her.” That was the Dutchman all right, I thought. When he had been drinking, he could get real mean.
“Why you little bitch,” said the big hulk, starting toward her. She jumped behind me and pushed me into his wrath.
“Dutchman, Durtchman,” I hollered into the face of this homicidal maniac, trying to get his attention away from the girl. “You brought me down here to show me a good time, the good old days. Look, why don’t you take the other three girls and I’ll take this one. That’s fair, right?” I was saying anything that came to mind and hoping that it would knife into that booze-soaked brain before he knocked me through the wall and stomped the shit out of the girl.
Suddenly, the Dutchman’s face brightened, “Yeah, I never had three girls.” He turned and pulled out his wad and handed each of the three girls some bills, glaring at the girl behind me to emphasize that she would not be getting any of his money. I breathed a long sigh of relief.
Cynthia pushed down the blankets and started scrubbing my chest. I should have been thankful she wasn’t using steel wool.
The Vietnamese girl took my hand and led me into the back. I stood there beside some lockers not sure what to do next. She reached up and began unbuttoning my shirt. The Dutchman and his three girls came back and, while they were trying to undress him, he would pat their asses and squeeze their tits. They kept dodging him and working. The next thing I was aware of, my girl had unlaced my boots and was trying to get me to lift my feet out of them. She put the boots in a locker with my shirt. She unbuckled my belt and I pushed her hands away.