by Doug Stanton
Some kids his age dressed in jeans walk by; one of the guys is wearing a bandanna and says to Stan as he passes, “Hey, man.”
“Hey, pardner.” Stan’s hoping they keep walking. He doesn’t want any conversation about Vietnam.
The kid looks at Stan. After a moment, he says, “Hey, did you kill anybody over there?”
Stan just kind of winces. He doesn’t know what to say. He wonders, How does he know? Do I look like a killer?
“Hey, I’m talking to you. Did you kill any children?”
He’s just numb and doesn’t quite get why this guy is on his case.
“If any of your buddies died, I hope it was painful,” the kid says.
That’s too much. Stan can’t take it any longer. “You say one more thing, I’m going to come out of this chair for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Right here, right now. I know a hundred ways to kill you. Pick one.”
He’ll later consider how immediate his response is, as if he’s been suddenly engaged in a firefight.
A businessman sitting at the next table interrupts.
“Knock it off,” he tells the kid.
“Am I talking to you?”
“You’re not, but leave him alone.”
The kid and his friends reluctantly walk away.
“Thank you,” says Stan, thinking he’s found an ally.
“You know, I don’t support you or the war either,” says the businessman, “but what they were doing—it wasn’t right.”
He returns to his newspaper, leaving Stan sitting there, alone with his thoughts, which are grim. He senses his homecoming will be anything but heartwarming.
• • •
When he boards the commercial plane in San Francisco, he marvels at how nice it is to sit on soft cloth seats and look out a plane window at something other than a battlefield. He can faintly see his reflection in the glass. Does he look like a Vietnam veteran—a killer? He still has the squared-away haircut, the hard tan, but is this the look of a killer? He knows he’ll stand out in a crowd of civilians.
As he did two years earlier when he boarded the bus back in Gary and contemplated this question, he still believes he’s someone who serves, who loves. Yet he’s killed so many. It’s hard to square this circle.
Stan has discovered there are three people you fight for: your buddy, yourself, and your family. You fight to stay alive so you can see your family again. He sits on the plane missing the camaraderie he’d felt among his platoon. It’s an ache. It is love. He would like to bolt from his seat. He would like to get up and walk back into the war.
The nice woman sitting in the seat next to him does something surprising. She calls for a flight attendant.
“Excuse me,” she says, “I’d like to find another seat.”
Stan is unsure at first that this nice person is talking about him.
“I know,” says the attendant. “We tried to find a seat for him where no one else had to be next to him.”
“Excuse me,” says Stan. “I’m sitting right here. I can hear what you’re saying.”
The nice lady gets up and follows the attendant. Stan sits there, dumbfounded. He looks at himself in the reflection of the window: Do I look crazy? Do I smell? Why does this person hate me?
Vietnam, he thinks. Vietnam. This nice lady doesn’t want to know who I am.
• • •
He returns home on December 20, 1968, determined to spend his thirty-day leave happily and eagerly reacquainting himself with his former life. He’s thrilled to see his brothers and his father, who appears to have aged considerably in the two years since his mother’s death.
His mother’s absence is a palpable presence. He misses her terribly. Except for his family, he feels out of touch with almost everyone around him. He wants to avoid situations where he might have to talk about what he did in Vietnam. At the same time, he does want to talk about it. Only Dub understands what he’s experienced in combat.
He’s bothered by the fact that he doesn’t have an idea what he’s going to do for a living when he gets out of the Army. His father says he can get a job working in Gary, at Bethlehem Steel as an ironworker apprentice. They’re hiring, and the pay’s good, so why not? Maybe it’s not a bad idea to stick around home and settle down.
What he thinks most about is the fact that he’s still alive. He realizes his job in Vietnam had been to stay alive and that the platoon accomplished this job by killing. Upon reflection, he understands that it’s not the killing he did that bothers him; it’s the dying. By this, he means he’s troubled by the deaths he’s witnessed, seeing so many eyes close for good.
He misses the fighting. In his heart there’s a hole that he can’t fill.
• • •
He tries to fill the hole by going to bars and fighting. Other nights, tired of this, he poses as a college student. He’ll tell the girl at the bar, when she asks what he does, that he goes to college. For so many, this would seem an innocuous statement. But for Stan, at this time in the American epoch, it’s like migrating to a new country. It feels to him that he’s telling a huge lie, which he is, of course, but attached to the lie is immense embarrassment. It’s also nerve-racking to pretend to be someone he’s not. This rubs against the grain of who he is, beginning in his childhood when his father made him stand up for himself and fight for his right to be himself, even pitting him against the high school kid who’d extorted him on his paper route when he was in sixth grade and the kid was a senior in high school. That was what his dad taught him: fight for yourself. And so that’s why pretending to be a college student is so hard, aside from the fact that he doesn’t know anything about what it’s like to be in college.
He feels like a dumb kid from Gary, Indiana, who went overseas like a sucker and killed and bled and now he’s home and pretending to be a college student because he feels shunned for serving in Vietnam. Yet at the same time, it’s been the most important thing he’s ever experienced. And to boot, the young women he meets have this sixth sense that picks up right away that he’s been over in the Nam. One of them asks him what his GPA is in college, which seems an odd question, and he eventually realizes he’s being asked because the girl doesn’t believe that he’s a student. He chooses a GPA of 3.5, something respectable but not off the charts; there’s a part of him that is a very honest liar. Or the girls ask what college he attends, and he might say Arizona because of his dark tan. If by chance the girls knows the place, well, that’s horrible and he’s sunk. But still, even the pain of this is better than identifying himself as a Vietnam vet. In short, the homecoming experience feels like death or a series of deaths: he died many times in Vietnam, or at least parts of him died there, and now he must die again each time he sees the look in the girls’ eyes when he tells them he’s been in Vietnam. It’s a look of contempt and fear and curiosity.
One day he’s walking to the mailbox outside his house and meets a neighbor, a World War II veteran, grabbing the mail too, and the old codger says, “Hey, there, Stan Parker, haven’t seen you in a while,” and Stan thinks, That’s funny, because I haven’t been home in quite awhile. He begins to explain that he’s been in Vietnam and lets on that it wasn’t so easy over there. The fighting was less front line to front line and, well, the body count was really important. As Stan is going on about the intricacies and the weave of this war, such as only one veteran can explain to another in a brotherly shorthand, the old guy cuts him off and says, “That’s all right, son, we don’t need to talk about any of that. I spent four years fighting in Europe. Your combat in Vietnam lasted twelve months.” And the old codger, the World War II veteran, turns and walks back to his house. That’s pretty much a showstopper, and Stan never again speaks about Vietnam with this neighbor, nor, for that matter, with any other veterans at a VFW or American Legion Hall. He doesn’t feel welcome in these places, and over time he’ll discover that other Vietnam veterans feel the same way about these World War II–era fraternities.
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• • •
On Christmas Eve, he goes out late and gets into a helluva fight, a fight to end all fights, and the fighting feels good.
It’s been a long night when he walks into the diner near dawn for some breakfast. Sitting in the restaurant is a guy named Carl Calhoun, whom Stan has known since early high school. They’ve never gotten along. And in that way by which high school differences can grow into unspoken adult grievances, Calhoun has this grudge against Stan Parker. Maybe he doesn’t like the way he walks, all that swagger, or the way he combs his hair, but when Stan walks into the diner, he finds his youngest brother, Bruce, sitting in a booth and Bruce tells him that Carl Calhoun is gunning for him. “I’m around,” says Stan. “I’m not hard to find.” He doesn’t give this much thought. Carl will fight him or not fight him. It’s like Stan is not really in this world. He’s walking through it, but the things he walks past don’t really touch him.
As Stan passes through the restaurant, he catches sight of Carl, who glares at him. Stan takes a seat in a booth with a couple of his friends and watches as Carl gets up and leaves. Fine, Stan thinks. If you don’t want to be in here with me, that’s fine. He starts talking with his buddies.
About that time, one of them says “What the hell!” and Stan looks up to see his brother Bruce standing face-to-face with Carl Calhoun. Calhoun reaches out and punches Bruce in the face. Bruce drops to the floor, and Calhoun walks out of the restaurant.
Stan’s reaction is instantaneous. He’s up and crossing the room and bursts into the street. Snow is banked along the sidewalks. Stan walks up to Calhoun, who starts to say something like, “I’m going to give you a chance to leave or I’ll punch you too,” when Stan hits him hard. Carl doesn’t finish the sentence. He goes down on the sidewalk. Stan picks him up and slams him against the rims of his own car. Calhoun tries to get up and into his car, and when he opens the door, Stan says, “Oh, you want in this car?” And he starts slamming the door on Carl’s head. He falls unconscious.
One of Carl’s friends walks up and says to Stan, “You think you’re pretty bad, beating up a guy you’ve already kicked the shit out of? Why don’t you try me?” And before this guy can say anything, Stan hits him too. He jumps on him and hits him again as he lies on the sidewalk. Another of the Calhoun crowd steps forward to challenge Stan: “So you think you can kick my ass?”
“Come over here, and I’ll show you.”
The guy walks up. Stan really doesn’t know what the guy’s thinking. He gets to Stan and just stands there. Stan waits for him to take a swing, but he doesn’t. Maybe he’s losing his nerve, Stan can’t tell. He drops him with one punch.
This last guy’s girlfriend is standing next to him when this happens, and she starts screaming. She walks up to Stan and punches him in the face so hard he literally sees stars. He didn’t know women could hit so hard. His knees buckle, but then he regains his balance.
A crowd has gathered on the street and somebody grabs Stan from behind and says, “That’s enough.” He can hear sirens. Somebody says “Cops!” and whoever is holding Stan lets him go. Stan runs back inside the restaurant and finds Bruce, who’s still groggy, and then he runs back outside and gets in his car, his GTX, and waits for Bruce to come out so they can get away.
Bruce comes out of the diner, looking around; he can’t find the car.
“Bruce,” Stan yells. “Over here!”
The sirens are getting closer. Bruce gets in. Stan throws the car into reverse and is about to speed away when a cop car pulls in behind him and then another blocks his way out front. The cops jump out with guns drawn and yell, “Out of the car, now!” Right behind them is an ambulance, lights flashing.
Stan gets out of the car.
“Who did this?” the cops shout. There are three bodies on the pavement, bloodied and not moving. The crowd yells back “He did!” and the people point at Stan. The cops are taken aback. One guy did so much damage? One guy? One of the cops tells Stan, “You’re under arrest,” and gets out the handcuffs. Stan doesn’t resist. The fighting happened so fast, Stan barely remembers the punching. He had just reacted.
“What about my car?” he asks as the cop puts on the cuffs.
“What do you mean, your car?”
“It’s brand new,” says Stan. “Everything I own is in that car. I’m not going to jail without it.”
“How do you propose we get it to jail?”
Stan says, “Let me drive it.”
“You think we’re stupid?”
“I don’t think you’re stupid. Just follow me.”
Another cop chimes in, “I got an idea. Pull your boots off.”
“It’s wintertime,” says Stan.
“If you want to drive, pull your boots off.”
Stan takes off his cowboy boots.
The cop says, “Get in.”
Stan gets in the GTX. The cop reaches in with handcuffs and locks Stan to the T-shaped Hurst shift sticking up through the car floor. He cuffs the left hand to the steering wheel. And then they cuff Stan’s left foot to the clutch. The cop stands back and says, “Now try to get away.”
Stan’s thinking, You idiots; all I got to do is drive away.
But that’s not what he’s going to do. He has no intention of running. He follows the cop car to the station. The cops go into the station, and some other cops unfamiliar with the situation come out and tell Stan to get out of the car.
“I can’t get out of the car.”
“Get out of the car.”
“I tell you, I can’t get out of this car.”
“Why not?”
“I’m handcuffed in here.”
“Really? Where are the arresting officers?”
The original cops walk out of the station, ready to unlock him, but none of them can remember who has the correct key. It takes several minutes to get everything sorted out and to free Stan and his brother.
“We’re in trouble now,” says Bruce. “You’re going to jail.”
“I ain’t going to jail,” Stan told him. “That other guy started the fight.”
His brother doesn’t have to tell him he’d beaten up Carl Calhoun pretty bad. Stan knows it. He and his brother march into the police station, empty their pockets, and spend the night in jail.
In the morning, they call their dad.
“Where are you at?” asks their father, worried.
“I’m in jail,” said Stan.
“What are you doing in jail?”
“I got in a fight.”
“Didn’t I tell you not to get your brother in trouble? Is he with you?”
“Yeah, Dad, he’s right here in jail with me.”
“Okay, all right. I’ll be over there in a little bit.”
Stan doesn’t know if his father will be upset. When he shows up, he asks, “Did the other guy punch your brother?” Stan says that he did punch Bruce.
“You did the right thing. We’ll tell the judge that.”
His father posts bail and calls an attorney, who asks him the judge’s name. His father tells him and the attorney says he won’t take the case. “I don’t want any part of this. Let your public defender take care of it.”
As far as Stan and his father figure out, the judge who will hear the case does not like Vietnam veterans. He is apparently famous for being hard on veterans returning from Vietnam who disturb the peace. On top of this, he doesn’t like people who drink alcohol. In short, Stan is about to go before a judge who has a rep for hating vets. True or not, that’s the rumor, and he and his father don’t know how to meet this challenge. The attorney tells them both that Stan is looking at going away for maybe three years on felony charges of assault and battery based on the severity of the attack. Carl Calhoun has had to be put in a body cast and hospitalized; his recovery is expected to take months. The others were all taken to the local hospital with major trauma. Stan and his father are unsure of what to do.
Shortly after, a man starts calling Stan’s house and l
eaving messages to call him back. Stan ignores the calls. He’s still going out at night to drink on the town. He knows his court date is nearing, and while it seems he’ll be heading to jail, he isn’t quite sure what to do about this except to do nothing. His father says the man wants to talk with Stan about his “predicament.”
Stan finally calls him back. “What’s this about?” he asks.
“You got in a fight about a week ago?”
“Uh-huh. That’s right.”
“I happened to watch that fight, I was impressed. I ain’t never seen anybody knock out three people so fast.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re good.”
“You want to hire me as a fighter or something?”
“No. But I looked into your case. You’ve got a felony against you. You’re going to jail.”
Stan waits, doesn’t say anything. He feels he’s moving into uncharted water.
“You need to see me,” says the guy. “I can help you.”
Stan agrees to meet the mystery caller. A few days later, he’s parking outside an abandoned-looking warehouse on the outskirts of Chicago. He walks inside and finds himself in a waiting room. Soft light filters through high windows. A couple of beefy fellows in suits lounge around, reading magazines.
“Can I help you?” one of them asks.
“My name is Stan Parker.”
They press a button on an intercom. “Hey, boss, Mr. Parker’s here.” They send Stan right in.
Stan looks around the paneled office. From the anteroom, the place had looked like a dump, but this office is really something. Nice paneling. A leather couch. The mystery man turns to look at Stan.
“Have a seat. Can I get you anything?”
“I’m fine. You wanted to see me about this fight I’m in?”
“Let me tell you what’s going on. Your name is John Stanley Parker. You’ve just come back from Vietnam. You’re highly decorated. You got in a fight the other night. I watched it. You punched the lights out on those guys. I ain’t never seen a good fight like that. But you got arrested, and I watched the entire thing. You’re going to jail.”