by Joe Haldeman
“It’s the fuckin’ dome, man, the Capitol Dome.” He pointed around the edge. “You got you’ North Capitol Street, you got you’ South Capitol Street, you got you’ Pennsylvania Fuckin’ Avenue. Place they come together is where all you’ senators eat bean soup.”
“You live here too?” Spider said.
For about half a minute he didn’t say anything, rocking back and forth, staring at the empty space inside the puzzle. Then he started to croon. “Sometimes I live in the country,” he sang, a hoarse imitation of Leadbelly; “Sometimes I live in the town. Sometimes I take a great notion … to jump in the river and drown.” He picked up another piece and set it down a couple of inches from the Capitol. “Union Station. Got rails.”
Sanders pulled the blanket tighter and looked back at the ward. “How long they gonna fuckin’ take?” Everybody who wasn’t bedridden had been moved into the day room while the ward was being mopped out.
“Till the day room freezes over,” Spider said.
Sanders crumpled up an empty cigarette pack and tossed it toward the wastepaper basket. It missed. “Got a weed?”
Spider slid his pack of Luckies over. Sanders lit one and coughed. “How can you smoke this fuckin’ shit?”
“Death wish.” He offered the pack to White, who shook his head slowly and started rocking again.
Two big white aides Spider hadn’t seen before came down the corridor into the day room. “John Speidel?” one of them said.
“Him.” Spider pointed at Sanders.
“Fuck you, man.” He held out his dogtags. “I’m Sanders. He’s Speidel.”
“I get confused,” Spider said. “Identity crisis.”
“Give you a crisis,” the other aide said. “Come on along.”
“Where to?”
“You got a date with a angel.”
“Yeah, I bet.” He shook out a couple of cigarettes onto the table in front of Sanders and went with the two men, shuffling, looking pale.
Brush with death
Beverly had found a pair of painter’s coveralls for a dollar at Next to New. They were a couple of sizes too large, baggy and shapeless, so she figured they might prevent Larry and the other guys from putting eyetracks all over her butt.
Larry had already been at the job site for an hour when they showed up at eight. He’d used the time to mask one window and set out dropcloths, ladders, and buckets of paint.
The two other guys who showed up, Vince and Haskel, were white and long-haired like Lee. Vince was nineteen and had gotten his draft notice; he was nervously killing time until he had to report for duty in three weeks. Haskel was a vet who’d been out of the army less than a year. He’d lost two fingers from his left hand in Vietnam and wore hearing aids in both ears. He made Vince nervous.
Larry was a fortyish Puerto Rican who reminded Beverly of a fox, or a weasel. He was small, fast and restless but graceful with tools. His intensity had scared Beverly the first time they met; one long look that made her feel naked. But as she got to know him better, bringing lunch to Lee twice a week, she relaxed around him. He was just as intense with everybody else.
Larry sent Vince out to get everybody coffee and told the other guys to finish the first coat. They were painting the walls and ceiling of a single large warehouse room. He showed Beverly how to mask windows and paint the frames. It was rather delicate, compared to what the others were doing, and Beverly resented the implication that it was “woman’s work.” But the one-inch finishing brush was easier on the hand and wrist than the heavy rollers the boys were using on the walls and ceiling, and it really was the right job for her. She enjoyed taking pains and getting things right. Besides, her right wrist still ached from the weekend’s unaccustomed labor, wrestling boards and hammering nails downtown.
Once everything was set up, Larry went off to another job, tacitly leaving Lee in charge. The morning went by pretty fast. Vince had a big radio, and he amiably alternated between Top 40 and WGMS, the classical station, each half hour. There were ten large windows along one wall. Beverly finished half of them before noon.
They sat on a rolled-up carpet and worked their way through a bucket of fried chicken and a sixpack. Beverly declined beer because she already felt drowsy; she also passed on the joint Lee rolled for dessert.
Haskel sat on the floor and leaned back against the carpet roll. He took one big hit on the joint, but that was all. “Can’t do much shit,” he explained to Beverly. “Takes me back to Nam.”
“You were injured, uh, badly hurt.”
He grunted and pulled up his shirt to show a long puckered scar that ran from his left breast down to his belt. “Same explosion that did my hand.” He gestured. “I already told the guys about it.”
“Go ahead,” Lee said. Vince nodded but looked a little sick.
“It was a mortar round, might have been friendly fire, American.” He blew out a breath. “Killed everybody else, the rest of the crew. We were a one-five-five howitzer.”
“That’s awful,” she said. “Were you in a fire base?”
“Huh uh, no. That’s what was funny. We were in a pussy, ’scuse me, a relatively safe position in a big base camp. We mostly did artillery demos for the new guys. I mean, this place never got hit. But then one night it did.
“We never even got a round off. Started to get incoming, maybe four in the morning, and we were hustling to get inside the emplacement where the gun was, you know, like a low wall of sandbags. About half of us, six, got in and then a mortar round popped right in the middle of us. Cooked off one of our own rounds, blooey.” He took a swig of the beer.
“It didn’t hurt much. I was like just numb. Couldn’t get up.” He fingered a scar on his throat. “Tried to call for a medic but I couldn’t make a sound. It was all dark; I didn’t know what the hell had happened.”
His voice got flat and quiet. “Then somebody popped a star shell or illumination round, and it was really awful. I mean those guys were my buddies, and there they were. Just all over the place. I don’t think there was any piece bigger than a leg. Looked down and saw my own insides and I just fainted. Didn’t even notice the hand. Just fainted dead away.”
Beverly felt a little faint, too. “How long ago?”
“Coupla years.” He drew up his knees and leaned forward so his chin was resting on them. “It’s mostly okay now. I was pretty fucked up for a while, especially since I couldn’t play the guitar. Used to do a lot of rock an’ roll.” He wiggled the two fingers and thumb on his left hand. “Found out I can do electric bass just fine, though. Workin’ on that.
“Lee says your ex is in Walter Reed.”
“He’s, yeah.” She looked at the floor. “He was wounded but that’s not it. He’s in the mental ward. Something happened, I guess, that he just couldn’t handle.”
“He a newbie? I mean, did he have much combat?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he wrote me about everything that happened. But before he was out in the field he was in Graves Registration. He said that was a lot worse.”
Haskel made a face. “Ye-etch. Probably.” He lit a cigarette. “I was in Walter Reed for eight weeks, rehab. Not a bad place, for the army.”
“Did you get mail?”
“Oh, yeah. Dear old Mom wrote me once a week.”
“I keep writing Spider but I don’t get any answers. They don’t let me see him, either.”
“I tell her not to worry about that,” Lee said. “They probably control the mail both ways pretty tightly in a mental ward.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. Nothin’ you can do. Just hang in there.” Haskel stood up and stretched. “Larry gonna check in at one?”
Lee looked at his watch. “Yeah, ten minutes. Let’s look busy.”
Beverly was glad that she worked with her back to the others, so they couldn’t see her tears. She was angry at Haskel for getting through it so well, and angry at herself for feeling mad at him. Angry at the army and the Vietnamese. Angry at Spider.
Th
e sixth version
The new suits were really uncomfortable, the way you could barely move your arms and legs, and the rubber thing clenched between your teeth. Actually, you could go anywhere by just thinking in a special way; the suit’s arms and legs would respond. But you couldn’t move your arm to take the rubber mouthpiece out.
What was the thing for, anyhow? The jungle air was breathable, but not like Earth—lots of chemical smells and something like urine—so maybe the thing was just to keep us from talking to each other. Like asking What the fuck are we doing here? Whose war is this, anyhow? But we rolled along through the jungle, smooth like on wheels, the comealong vines snapping at our ankles, the sky green, green-on-green.
Couldn’t smoke with the fucking mouthpiece on, either, and I’m thinking why are we all dressed in light blue and white, standing out against all this green, and just at that thought it happens—Batman goes down dead and there’s gunfire everywhere, loud, and then Moses explodes in a spray of blood and guts and I lose it, I lose it, I try to run but the suit doesn’t work anymore, I’m helpless, struggling inside the suit, and here comes the man with the skull face, he has things like batons in each hand, he jabs me on both sides of the head and I pass out.
I wake up in the clearing and the man with the skull face shuffles from body to body with his batons. Vultures walk behind him. Even the people who are obviously dead get the treatment: He touches both batons to the temples and there’s this humming sound, and the guy’s brains blow out the top of his head, boiling. My M16’s just a few inches away, but I can’t move a muscle; I’m totally paralyzed. Maybe I’m dead? I don’t have the mouthpiece anymore, though I can still taste it; could I taste it if I was dead? He works his way to me and I try, try to reach the gun but all I can do is make little squeaky noises. He leans over with the batons but instead of blowing out my brains he touches them together. They make a blue spark and crackle and I smell ozone, and he’s gone.
I’m sore all over. I feel like I’ve been in a fight. I’m tasting starch and I wake up in a bed. I guess I’ve gone a little crazy.
Schizo (3)
In 1968 there were relatively few practitioners who would prescribe electroconvulsive therapy, “electroshock,” for patients who exhibited symptoms of schizophrenia. It was the treatment of choice for severe depression, and would still be so used for decades, especially with suicidal patients. It produces relatively fast results.
By the mid-1950s, most schizophrenics were given drugs, or a combination of drugs and psychotherapy, rather than electricity. Some clinics relied heavily on electroshock well into the 1970s, though; detractors called those places “shock boxes.” Repeated use of electroshock, especially in high voltages, can damage the brain, impairing memory and intelligence.
Some lobotomists who preferred electroshock, rather than a conventional anesthetic, prior to stirring the brain with an icepick (see Schizo [1]) used garden-variety line current, straight from the socket. Certain of the psychological changes attributed to transorbital lobotomy were probably due to the jolt instead.
Properly applied, it’s not the electricity per se that affects the patient, but rather the coma induced by the shock. Injected drugs like insulin can bring on a coma with the same desired result, and in fact insulin shock was preferred, for schizophrenia uncomplicated by depression, by most therapists from the 1930s on.
The simplicity and drama of electroshock proved irresistible to some professionals, though, like Captain Folsom. His supervisor might not have approved the treatment for Spider if he had been familiar with the details of the case. But he was not particularly well informed about any of Folsom’s patients. Most of his expertise and energy went into indulging and concealing his own problem, chronic and acute abuse of alcohol and other drugs.
Better living through electricity
Spider had three shock treatments in a week, which made him withdrawn and tired. But he had also gotten a box from home: books and cookies. He drifted out of his lethargy enough to pass the cookies around the ward, gravely going from bed to bed with the coffee can full of homemade gingersnaps. Then he returned to inspect the books.
His old dog-eared Handbook of the Heavens. An introduction to psychology. Conan the Conquerer. A rolled-up map of the Southern constellations.
He wondered about that for a minute. Then he checked the box’s wrapping: it was his old Vietnam address. The box had gone to Kontum and been forwarded here. He ate a gingersnap; it lacked snap.
Interesting. Unless somebody had gone to a lot of trouble unwrapping and rewrapping, the package had not been inspected. He had a hunch they wouldn’t appreciate his having a psychology book. He sat on the bed and read parts of it for an hour. When Knox came in with his pill cart, Spider slipped the book under the mattress.
He traded Knox a cookie for his Thorazine. “Food from home?”
“Yeah, dear old Mom.” He washed the pill down with juice. “Knox, look,” he said quietly. “Am I a schizophrenic?”
“Don’t ask me that, man. I just work here.”
“Don’t give me that shit. You see a hundred schizophrenics a day. Am I one of them?”
Knox looked at his chart and frowned. “You want my diagnosis,” he whispered, “my professional opinion, what I say is that you fucked up in the head. Now, on my way to work, walkin’, I pass three or four people look more fucked up in the head than you. But just because they ain’t in here don’t mean you ought to be out there. See?”
“Okay. But am I a schizophrenic?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you are. You see a guy who’s not there, right?”
“Well, he is there. He’s just not real.”
“Jesus.” He shook his head, hard. “You know what it’s like to talk to crazy people all day long?” He laughed. “Spider, I don’t know what the fuck a schizophrenic is, and I don’t think Captain My Captain does either. I mean, you can say a guy who stares at the wall all day jerkin’ off, he’s probably schizophrenic, and you can say Lyndon Johnson, he probably isn’t, but in both cases you gonna find some guy with a degree say the contrary. So what the fuck. You see little green men, you know somethin’ wrong with you. The label don’t mean shit. Just go with the flow; you get better, they let you out.”
“And if I don’t get better?”
“At least you don’t got to get a job.” He pushed the cart on.
Spider ate another cookie, slowly. It was the first time he’d thought of that possibility. What if they didn’t let him out? Could he wind up like one of those zombies who just sit around and drool?
The man with the skull face appeared on the empty bed next to him, where Sanders used to be until he snapped. Spider tried to project a thought at the apparition. Go away. He stayed about ten seconds and then disappeared, as if to demonstrate who was in charge of the situation.
The book said that schizophrenics had auditory hallucinations. The skull guy didn’t talk anymore. Did that make him more crazy, or less?
Had he ever seen the guy in real life? A clearing up on a hill. Something to do with Sarge, but Sarge was dead. That’s a face he would never forget, the teeth blown out. Slick black blood all over his chest, flies, vultures. What was the deal with the clearing? He’d stuffed C-4 in a tube.
Shit, there was a lot he couldn’t remember. Something real important, something Knox had said.…
He suddenly stood up, cold sweat evaporating all over his skin. Jerking off. He remembered sitting in the car with Beverly, petting. And he was absolutely sure he wasn’t a virgin. But he couldn’t remember anything in between. He couldn’t remember fucking her! Not Beverly, not anybody else.
Knox looked up at him from across the ward. “What’s up, Spider? You okay?”
All he could do was shake his head.
DEROS
The popular illusion of the American dogface in World War II was of a determined “Willie and Joe” kind of guy, a civilian in uniform who came to war unwillingly but waged it with stubborn tenacity, y
ear in and year out, slogging through freezing mud and steaming jungle until Hitler and Tojo were finally brought down.
Indeed, some GIs did have to survive years of combat. But most of them did not come through it well. The government’s postwar analysis Combat Exhaustion said:
… Most men were ineffective after 180 or even 140 days. The general consensus was that a man reached the peak of his effectiveness in the first 90 days of combat, that after that his efficiency began to fall off, and that he became steadily less valuable thereafter until he was completely useless.
Certainly one factor that wore these men down was uncertainty: they might be soldiers for another month or another year or just however long it took for their luck to run out. That was one thing the military thought that it could control when Vietnam rolled around. Instead of sixteen million men scattered all over the planet, they could take care of this one with a few hundred thousand working in a country the size of New Mexico. And each one of them could work for a definite period of time: twelve months or thirteen, depending on rank and branch of service.
So every soldier went to Vietnam with a magic date, more important than any date could ever be for the rest of his life: DEROS, the Date Eligible to Return from Over-Seas.
It backfired. Soldiers developed “short-timers’ attitudes,” being reluctant to undertake dangerous missions when they only had a few weeks, or even months, left in the field. Whenever anyone was killed within a couple of months of DEROS, it added to the superstition that the closer you were to leaving, the more likely you were to be killed, which did wonders for morale. Morale was also hurt by the fact that platoons and companies tended not to develop a group identity, since people rotated in and out on a staggered schedule. If you had only a month till DEROS, you had a lot more in common with any random short-timer than with the FNG the army had just tossed into your platoon.
APRIL
All Fools’ Day