Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Jessie good,” said Jessie Taynor. She had cannoli cream on her face. “Linda good?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. I’m tired though.”

  “Jessie not tired. Jessie never tired.”

  “Linda get tired.” Linda caught herself, changed her syntax. “I get tired,” she said. “And sometimes a little down.”

  “We go downstairs. Go downtown.”

  “No. I mean sometimes I feel a little down. You know, sad. That’s when I’m glad I have you as my friend.”

  “Jessie Linda’s friend.”

  “I know. Mrs. Meredith ... do you know Mrs. Meredith?”

  “Merra-dit.” Jessie Taynor smiled. “Big house.”

  “Uh-huh. You know, sometimes I get tired of her.”

  “She bitter old bitch.” Jessie laughed.

  “Nooo.” Linda looked compassionately at Jessie. “No. But she treats me more like a maid than a nurse. I don’t really mind. That’s part of the job. But you’d think her family’d help more with that stuff.”

  “Jessie help Linda. Jessie tell Merra-dit go fuck.”

  “No no, Jessie. But thank you.”

  Late that afternoon Pewel Wapinski knocked lightly on Linda’s door. Linda, Gina and Michelle had been on the floor in the small living room, Linda marveling at how Gina had learned to roll over and push herself against her sister until she was sitting up; and marveling at Michelle who still needed help sitting up but who, occasionally, bonked her sister with a plastic Donald Duck rattle. “Mr. Wapinski!”

  “Um.” He stood with his hands behind his back.

  “Won’t you come in?”

  “Jus stopped for a minute,” he said. He brought his hands forward, produced a bouquet of flowers.

  “Oooo!” Linda gasped, surprised.

  “Happy anniversary,” the old man said.

  “Oh, they’re beautiful. Please come in. How did you know?”

  “Remembered it in the paper last year.”

  “In the paper?”

  “Um.”

  “Oh. We must still have been in Boston.”

  “Um.”

  “Did you want to see the girls?”

  “Yep. But I’m bothering you. Those his certificates on the wall?”

  Linda turned. She had forgotten she’d put them back. “Yes. Some of them.”

  Pewel knelt down, bent over, gave first his index finger to Gina, then his thumb to Michelle which she immediately seized and yanked almost toppling him. “Whoa! That’s some handshake, Missy.” He extricated his hand. To Linda he said, “Thank you.”

  “For what? Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  “No. I got to be goin. Said I’d only stay a minute. I know sometimes young boys forget. Those are really from him. Jus through me.”

  “Did he—”

  “No. But he will. And he’d a asked me to bring em if he’d a thought and he’ll think of it later and he’ll be angry at his self for forgetting. Maybe in a month. And then he’ll ask and it’ll have been done.”

  “Thanks so much. That’s so thoughtful.”

  “Maybe you and the missies could come up for dinner some night.”

  “Oh. We’d like that.”

  It was eight thirty. There were no more knocks on the door. Linda was exhausted. She had nursed and changed the babies, put them in the crib, knew she’d be nursing and changing them again in four hours. Now it was quiet. The windows were dark. She did not play the stereo. She was in the living room. She knelt, got down on all fours to pick up the rattles and stuffed animals with eyes that shimmied, tossing them one by one into the old milk crate she’d cleaned and painted for toys. In the corner of her eye she could see the flowers that Pewel Wapinski had brought and her stomach tightened. She sat back on her heels, rocked forward at the waist, pulled her arms in tight, clenched her fist to her face. Tears broke and she cried, sobbed, her arms quivering. “Come home, Tony. Dear God, Tony, please come home. Please come home. Please. Please. Please ...”

  Rock Ridge Veterans Medical Center—There is no time when one is heavily under the influence of Elavil, Thorazine and diazepam. No time, no space, no freedom. The orderlies call it liquid strait jacket. Tony is confused, cannot concentrate, standard effects of Elavil. He has been warehoused a week, no, certainly longer—he does not really care, standard effect of Thorazine. To think tires him, he is tired all the time—standard effect of diazepam. Tony too has come to call his “therapy” liquid strait jacket. He had been repatriated, almost, involuntarily, and this angers him but he cannot hold anger because of the ETD drug combo: 400 milligrams of Elavil each day, 300 milligrams of Thorazine, 40 milligrams of diazepam. One brother he’s met is on 800 milligrams of Elavil, 400 Thorazine. They sleep, eat, watch TV, nod off, watch TV. When they talk they talk of Thorazine, of their strait jackets. They do not talk about combat, about Viet Nam, about their service. This is 1970. If they speak of Marines or Airborne the orderlies take note, report them, their jackets are upped. They are not here because of combat stress. Posttraumatic stress disorders will not be officially recognized for nine more years. They are here because they are psychotic, sociopathic, insane, crazy, nuts. They are here because they are poor, have no jobs in the sour economy, have refused to hold jobs, are difficult, are irritants, are bitter at a society in which—if they’d only get off their goddamned asses, settle down, get on with their lives—they would be provided with everything, absolutely anything, status quo or counterculture or in between. But no, they have essentially given the finger to everyone, maybe given the ultimate insult, attempted to check out of this society permanently.

  It is early morning. Tony does not know the time but the orderlies know, mumble quietly to each other about their charges sleeping and dreaming their Thorazine dreams, sip their morning coffee, read their magazines, prefer that no one wake up—not yet, the expedience of Thorazine, the warehousing of spirit and body by diazepam.

  On his cot Tony is restless. His body is paralyzed, his mind is impaired, but the drugs don’t mask everything, don’t keep everything from the conscious or the subconscious.

  He is afraid. He is afraid he is going crazy. He is afraid he is dying. His heartbeat is irregular. The orderlies have told him not to worry, they’ll watch over him. They have not told him it is another common side effect. He lies there not awake, not truly asleep. Night images splash his mind, sometimes dripping entire episodes of his life—the death of Manny in particular, maybe because one of the orderlies looks like Manny, looks as much like Manny as Tony can remember Manny looking. Except in the episodes. Then he sees Manny, sees him exactly how he was. Sometimes the images are flashes, the third child shot by the NVA, just a still photo in the mind, just the expression on the child’s face, then falling, Tony’s body arching, grabbing his cot, falling, the helicopter at Phu Bai, the blood dripping onto his hand as he reaches to switch off the ignition.

  “All right. Let’s go guys. Everybody up.” The orderlies move through the ward, bang on the metal lockers that stand back-to-back separating two cots here from two there, an aisle between sections, on and on, ward after ward, but Tony is restricted to his ward, Seven-upper, they joke about it. Everyone lights up. Tony smokes Pall Malls. They are his one pleasure even if they no longer taste like Pall Malls. Nothing tastes as it did. He doesn’t know why. They are herded through the motions of daily hygiene and morning meds. Tony can’t shit. He feels bloated. His feet and hands feel puffed, numb. They watch TV. Then they watch more TV. And more TV. And they smoke and nod and on some wards they do talk but on Seven-upper they barely talk at all.

  It is his fifth or eighth or tenth, he can’t concentrate, can’t calculate, session with Dr. Jonathan Freiburg. “I think we’ve been making some progress,” Freiburg says. “Don’t you?”

  Tony nods. He is afraid to open up to Freiburg. Everyone knows Freiburg dictates the strength of the strait jacket.

  “Tony, are there still people you’d like to kill?”

  What kind of fuckin
question is that? Tony thinks. “I killed enough people,” he says. “I don’t want to kill anymore.”

  “And all the people you killed, you killed during combat missions, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I guess. I told you last time that that Storrow Drive thing was an accident. I was responding. I was driving the ambulance.”

  “Um-hmm. Go on.”

  “I was angry at the guy who caused it.”

  “Why were you so angry, Tony?”

  “Because it could have been me. I could have been driving the car he hit. So I was scared.”

  “Yes. That’s a good reason to be angry, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. And I answered a lot of other accidents. Lots of em could of been me.”

  “That’s pretty frightening, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I ... I wasn’t in control.”

  “Go on.”

  “Back in Viet Nam ...” Tony pauses. This was a bad subject unless Freiburg brought it up. Tony, even drugged, knows Freiburg can’t handle it, hates it, condemns him for it. His body language always conveys a don’t-tell-me-about-the-atrocities-you-committed attitude, “ah ... back then I was all spunk and courage but now I’m afraid to talk to people. I’m afraid of most everything.”

  “What kind of things, Tony?”

  Tony sighs internally. Beat him on that one. “Sometimes I’m afraid people can hear what I’m thinking,” he says.

  “Umm.” Freiburg hums.

  “I’m afraid the woman who dispenses the meds at noon knows I can’t get a hard on no more.”

  “Hmm.”

  “But the guys say that’s cause of the meds and sure she knows it.”

  “Do you know that you’ve been on a reduced dosage this past week?”

  “Me?”

  “You haven’t felt it, have you?”

  “No.” Tony immediately thinks about his strength returning but he says nothing.

  “Tony, let’s go back to some of the things you fear. You’ve told me very little about your family.”

  Again Tony sighs inside. Now I got this asshole on the right track. He has never mentioned Linda or his daughters, has said little about his folks. The not-mentioning has developed an inertia that has become drug-confused into a code of silence, a way to protect them. Still he is sad, not mentioning them here, or in the ward, sad, embarrassed, ashamed about denying them, denying the blood from which he’d come, the blood that came from him. Still, it is easier, better, less complicated, this way. “They’re good people,” Tony says. “I don’t want to burden them. With my problems.”

  “Are you afraid you might hurt them?”

  “Who?! My folks! Hell no. I mean, I’d never hurt em. I’m not a violent person.”

  “But you tried to hurt yourself.”

  “I told you before ...”

  “Yes. But even if what you told me is true, I’m not saying it isn’t, but you said you let them hit you. You wanted to be hit. You wanted to be punished.”

  “Maybe it’s because I should be ... I should of been ... I could of become, like, a doctor. I drove an ambulance. I took the EMT course. I could have stayed in school. I’m pretty smart. I should be a student now but I’m not. I’m not anything.”

  “Good. We’ll talk more next time.”

  That was it for a week. Gradually, meaning returned to time. The next week it was more of the same. And the next. Tony hated the place, hated Freiburg, the orderlies, the meds, the stinking TV up on its perch, the smell of the ward. But he kept that to himself. Because he also liked being taken care of, liked the rest from having to make any decisions at all, liked not having to think, not having to be responsible. And all those things he liked he found repugnant, and he found himself liking their repugnancy. When he complained about pain and tremors in his leg, Freiburg interpreted it for him as a “physiological memory of being wounded brought on by his reimmersion into a pseudomilitary environment.” Still he controlled himself, outwardly. Again his dosages were reduced. “They lookin for a maintenance dose,” the black orderly that looked like Manny told him.

  “Maintenance?”

  “Yeah, Bro. You gotta stay on that shit for the rest a your life. You crazy, Man. You know? You a crazy vet. You always gonna be a crazy vet. Except you take your three-a-days. Whatever Freiburg say. Ha! An I wouldn’t even get on that Harley fucked up on Elavil. You wanta sell it?” Then the orderly laughed. “Less, a course, you wanta keep it for knockin yerself off.”

  Tony let the words swirl in his mind. Crazy vet. Crazy vet. I’m not a student. I’m not a doctor. I’m a crazy vet.

  In mid-December they gave him a day pass. He and three other crazy vets went and got pizza at the small restaurant next to the inn on Main Street. They walked, looked at the Christmas decorations, looked in the store windows, ogled some girls all wrapped in coats and scarves and earmuffs, even went in and purchased small gifts for each other and for the lady who gave out the noon meds.

  He had one more session with Freiburg. “Do you ever have nightmares?”

  “Sometimes,” Tony said nonchalantly.

  “You know, if you get up, take a diazepam, you’ve got a prescription, maybe walk just a little, you’ll be able to go back to sleep.”

  Maybe if I ripped your tongue out, Tony thought. He smiled slightly. It was okay for a crazy vet to think that. “I’ll try it if I need it,” he said. “You know, Doc, down deep inside, I know if I apply myself, someday it’s all gonna click.”

  “It will, Tony. For you I’m sure it will.”

  At 9:23 A.M., Wednesday 23 December 1970, Anthony F. Pisano was conditionally released from Rock Ridge Veterans Medical Center on outpatient status. In his pocket he had a hundred-tablet bottle of diazepam (Valium), a thirty-tablet vial of ten-milligram Thorazines, prescriptions for more, two packs of Pall Malls, and a thousand dollars. It was bitter cold. Tony straddled his big Harley FLH V-twin. They’d repaired it before they’d shipped it to him, one more act of atonement. He cranked it a dozen times before it coughed, two dozen before it sputtered, started. Then Tony roared off. Being a crazy vet this was okay.

  There was a time when I was ten when I wanted more than anything a bicycle for Christmas. It was a lean year in our household—1957—I think because Pop was changing jobs. Johnny had turned sixteen on the 22d and Pop had bought him a wristwatch with phosphorescent hands. The tree was tall that year, but skinny. I think Aunt Helen paid for it because Pop had decided it was frivolous to waste $4.99 on a tree which we’d throw away in ten days. Oh, but how I wanted a bicycle—a red Columbia like the one Joey had gotten the year before. On Christmas morning John and Joey and I rushed down—maybe John was becoming a bit aloof being sixteen and all but I didn’t notice it—and even Mark, who was only three and a half that year, rushed down, probably because our ma, Jo, had said something like “Nobody opens anything until we’re all there,” and Joey and I probably pulled Mark out of bed, but three and a half was plenty old enough for him to be rushing and excited too. And there under the tree were stacks of presents, square and rectangular boxes, wrapped, some of them, with last years paper that Jo had of course saved, rectangular boxes with shirts and pants for school, square boxes with wool sweaters that Aunt Isabella knitted and Jimmy and I wore ours to school in January and looked like twins and Mrs. Lusanti, our teacher that year, chided us and we both refused to ever wear them again. There were small packages, too. Red bags with pencils and erasers and plastic protractors, and each had a new pack of baseball cards and we immediately stuffed the gum into our mouths—it tasted like cardboard and felt like eating a baseball card until it softened and the sugar came out. Johnny got another big present, a portable typewriter. Joey got a horn and a newspaper rack for his bike. I don’t remember what Mark got but there wasn’t any bike and I was really sad, really crushed and after Ma and Pop came down I slipped out and went back up to my room and I started to cry ’cause I knew they didn’t love me as much as the others because I’d come so soon after Joey—he wasn�
�t even fourteen full months older than me—and I knew I was one of them mistake kids and that’s why there wasn’t a bike like Joey had gotten last year. A red 24-inch Columbia. Joey could deliver his half of the paper route using his bike with his new basket. I’d have to walk. And then Pop came up and he said, “Tony, come here.” I got up. He didn’t try to comfort me, he just wanted me to do something. He pulled down the attic stairs which were on a spring and folded up and most of the time you forgot it was there except just before and just after Christmas when we’d have to go up there and get the decorations out or put them away. “Come on,” Pop said. “Help me with this.” I was trying real hard not to cry because I didn’t want him to know but I knew he knew and that embarrassed me. “There’s something back up in the corner that I forgot to bring down. It’s under the awnings.” So I went up to get whatever it was and it was a red 24-inch Columbia and I wasn’t sure even who it was for and I was afraid to even smile because I was afraid it wasn’t for me. I didn’t even hear him come up behind me until he said, “That’s your size, isn’t it?” And I couldn’t even say thanks because I couldn’t believe it because it didn’t happen like I wanted it to. It hadn’t been under the tree.

  He sat on the back porch, tight against the wall, shivering, teeth chattering, chain-smoking his Pall Malls. The night was clear. A fingernail moon hung over the porch and lumberyard, over the town and endless mountains. He was thinking about logistics, about infiltration, snipers, intelligence, was thinking about invisibility, how much and how long should he remain invisible. Then he was not thinking at all, not shivering at all because the diazepam was kicking in and accentuating the grass he’d smoked earlier.

  Inside, Linda was finishing up the decorations, the wrappings. At seven and a half months Gina and Michelle were sleeping longer, giving Linda more time in the evenings, more rest through the night. They were too young to be excited about Christmas, yet Linda dutifully, carefully wrapped packages from Santa. She wrapped one for Jessie Taynor, too, just a cheap bracelet, but she wanted Jessie to have something feminine. And for Jo and John Sr. to whom she signed the card, “Love Tony, Linda, Gina and Michelle.” And to Aunt Isabella, Annalisa, Uncle James, Johnny and Molly, Joe and Mark, and Nonna. And to her own mother and father even if her father still would not speak to her.