It was like some kind of answer to a prayer that we got to be together on my leave, wish I’d been able to look up and see you at commencement. But your job interview was important. Your dad is going to have to fix the Nova if you’re going to be driving to Union Gap every day. If not, you can use the Ford. Just keep water in it and get some insurance, please.
I meant everything I said that Sunday night up in the Horse Hills. A year is not a long time at all, in a lifetime. A lot of good ahead of us, a lot more summer nights, a lot of autumns to come. I’d plow snow from your folks’ driveway every night if it meant getting to come inside to you and your righteous hot chocolate.
Lights out. Wish I was there to say that in person.
Love,
A.
They’d had sex maybe, that night. Made some promises. Movie stuff. I reached for the photo again but stopped, and instead flattened the next letter, which had been typed.
Dear Donna,
Landed okay two days ago, billeting in camp (name inked out) east of Saigon. Like an entire little city. No pleasure girls out here, my promise to you is secure.
Rained all day the first day. Had to run two laps around the camp and then Lt. Dawson (my new co.) said, ‘Fuck this,’ and took us all back to the chow hall, where we field stripped and reassembled our M-16s for about three hours, rain pounding down like a herd of horses. Watched ‘The Wild Bunch’ in the mess hall last night, none of the Mexican guys liked the way it ended.
Beautiful sunset night before last, I went out to the perimeter with the tripod you gave me, and dad’s old Leica. Sentry yelled at me, then MPs--military police drove up and pulled my film out on the ground and took my camera. They called Dawson who got me off the hook, walked me back to the barracks, said I shouldn’t have a tripod, just extra weight to carry. Missed the shot, it was dark by the time I got back to my bunk.
This morning two MPs came to my barracks, took me over to see a Captain Ramos, Signal Corp. I stood at attention for about five minutes while he flipped through a folder with my name on it, then handed me my camera and told me to sit down, then asked about a hundred questions about developers, film speed, f-stops, and if I really thought German cameras were all that great. Asked me about infrared film. (Remember those shots I did of the tombstones in Granger?) (You were so freaked out). He took me in the back and they have a BIG darkroom, all B&W stuff though. Two hours later I had two Nikon Fs checked out to me and was attached to the Signal Corp.
I still have to patrol with my platoon, but only carry a .45, and two cameras. I don’t think the VC will shoot a guy with a camera, at least they’ll try to miss the camera. A lot less weight.
Lot of humidity here, nothing like the valley. No mosquitoes on base though, they fog just about every morning.
Wish I could be waking up with you.
Love.
A.
I wondered if he had taken the photos in the bundle, but they mostly looked like Instamatic pictures, dated in the corner by a drug store. Except some of the black-and-whites. So Dad was a photographer? At some point he must have snapped, started cutting people’s heads off. I heard a lot of men changed while they were there, usually for the worse. Never heard of anybody coming back from ’Nam and saying, “Well, I’m sure glad I did that.”
I sat and looked out the back door with the last page of that letter in my hand for ten or fifteen minutes, trying to picture it, and kept thinking about Dennis Hopper with all the cameras around his neck, bat-shit crazy in the jungle.
I flattened the third letter.
Donna,
Yes, I understand completely what you tried to say. I’ve already been here 6 weeks, right? So just ten and a half more months to go. I can do this if you can.
No, they don’t use Polaroids here. Fast isn’t important. Quality is important. Definition. Composition.
I type these because it allows me to say more, and I can do it while I’m at my desk, which makes me look like I’m working. It doesn’t mean I love you any less.
I saw a guy shot yesterday. We were about 20 klicks out and we started taking fire. Corporal in my platoon almost got his arm shot off. I had no idea a rifle bullet could do so much damage. I took a picture of it but Ramos says we can’t really use stuff like that. I can’t stop thinking about it. Except when I think of you.
I’m okay. They don’t shoot a guy with a camera, remember?
All my love,
A.
Yeah. Bullets could do that. There’s a cruelty about getting hit by a bullet. Bullet doesn’t think or deliberate, just tears the fuck out of you. And most people don’t die right away; they’re looking at a part of themselves, knowing they’ve had the fuck torn out of them, and a piece is gone, and they have to think about that, and the whole time every molecule of air is burning like acid. I wonder if she got it, if it made sense, just how much of a shit-storm he was walking around in.
I wanted to read her letters now, whatever it was she sent to him, letters he sweated on, maybe bled on, that probably ended up buried or burned in Vietnam. Letters she wrote when she was young, dreamy and demanding, and wasn’t a drunk.
I spread the bundle of photographs across the table, separating the color shots from the black-and-white. Only one of the square color pictures looked like it was shot in-country: a hazy, yellowed Instamatic shot, rice in the foreground, a village a hundred yards away, a soldier kneeling in the lower right corner with a ridiculously large radio on his back, old steel helmet, radio handset to ear. The rest of the color shots looked like Hawaii, a few in Japan or Hong Kong; one had the Space Needle in the background, Mom smiling, leaning on the rail at a pier somewhere, a man’s shadow approaching. And the one of the boy in front of a red car, Richard and Vicky penciled on the back, looked like central Washington.
The black-and-whites were harder to arrange. Dad was in some of them. I moved them around, trying to create some kind of chronology, maybe watch Dad age, but he never held a camera, and had the same cocky, carefree look in most of them, right up to the photo with the decapitation, which I had set off to the right. There were ARVN soldiers in some of them, and I tried to compare faces with the men in the head photo but found no match.
I studied the roads, tried to get a sense of direction, and eventually figured out that there were two camps—one large camp with plywood buildings, concrete bunkers, in flatland, another in the mountains somewhere: tents, sandbags, really just a firebase, with what looked like 105s in the background, camouflage net all over their barrels. I glanced at the letters; maybe the typewriter didn’t make it out to the jungle camp, and handwritten was best, keeping one eye on the perimeter. The handwritten notes were shorter, to the point, crude sometimes. The last typed note was dated 1 August, 1971.
Dear Donna,
I still can’t believe I’m writing to my future wife! I showed your picture, and the picture of us to most of the guys in the platoon. Dawson looked at your picture and said you’re a sweet heart. I still feel bad that we didn’t have the whole month, but it’s my fault for not making it clear when I’d be back. You needed time with your girlfriends in Vancouver. Just like I spend all my time here with the guys. (joke).
They say the pill isn’t good for you, especially if you smoke, and it might be best if you quit one or the other. Now that’s an exciting idea, huh! I’ve got to put away that idea of a family for another six months. Hope you can wait that long. Sort of taboo to talk about wanting a kid, between guys. I think it’s because nobody wants to start thinking about that because it reminds them how far away they are, from what really matters. Or leaving a kid in the world if we’re dead.
Now that I’ve re-upped, they are going to move me, out of (name inked out) up to (name inked out) to look at film taken from planes, and extra 50.00 a month. After this tour I’m done. Am saving everything I can. I added your name to my account, but you’ll need to go in and sign a card for your signature to work. My dad can tell you how. Almost 3,000 saved last year, tax free. Co
uld go a long way towards a house.
Job with the Herald Republic sounds interesting. I will send you some shots from the Huey, but can’t send bodies and stuff, big ‘faux pas’—French for fucking up.
A lot of people speak French here, wish I’d taken a second semester from Mrs. Rausch. But I was so busy looking at you.
Je t’aime de tout mon Coeur.
A.
I took out the yearbook and flipped through the senior section, looking for all of the Vickys I could find, wondering what sort of girlfriends my mom had, a woman who later in life didn’t seem to have any friends at all, save the checker at the Safeway. Victoria Alicia Mendez. Vicky Bos. The first girl looked very, very Hispanic, a cross around her neck and an expression of insecurity—possibly one of the disenfranchised migrants that came for half a year and wound up in the annual. The second girl looked like a jock, and a few pages later I found her airborne in a long jump.
Donna Palmer worked on the annual staff, though it’s impossible to tell what she did. Another photo, captioned Cool types wait for the game to start, showed a figure I thought might be her, seated in some bleachers with a couple of other girls in miniskirts, all wearing sunglasses.
I looked for Richard from the square Instamatic shot. Richard Nelson. A year behind her. I flipped through the book again, and at first he wasn’t in any of the photos. An out-of-focus guy leaning over a paper cutter in the yearbook staff photo looked a bit like him. The curve of the shoulder, the contour of his hair. I wondered if one of the girls in the room was Vicky.
There were many pictures of Dad, most of them in a football jersey, his shoulders all the wider. One hundred and six yards in one game. Four touchdowns. Thirty points in one game. A one-man wrecking machine. Everybody on the other team probably tried to nail him. In one photo he’d even grown a pencil moustache. I didn’t think high school kids were allowed do that in 1970. I flipped again through the pages. Only kid with a moustache. Even the faculty clean-shaven. Probably a case of the small-town principal turning a blind eye where sports were concerned. Girls must have been in awe.
I picked Dad out at the homecoming dance, glued at the hip to some very willowy blond with hair down to her waist. In another, he’s hugging a Hispanic cheerleader, both of them with a very knowing look in their eyes. Maybe I imagined this. Maybe I wanted Dad to be the ladies’ man I wasn’t. I was 145 pounds when I joined the Army; I didn’t even have a girl to write to, my departure from Colville going unnoticed. When I got out of the Army, 176 pounds, and I’ve managed to keep it solid.
I had to take a break. I slipped on my PT shorts and hit the sidewalk, limp-running three miles east on Appleway, turning off my flinch, focusing on broken bottles and dirty diapers, flattened aluminum cans in the gutters and masses of newspapers matted over the storm drains. I settled into breathing cadenced with my stride, until the road curved back to Sprague where I slowed to a march, wiping the sweat off my wrap-arounds with my shirt. I felt vulnerable. I used to run three miles with twenty pounds on my back, mostly water and ammo, another thirty pounds of body armor, some MREs, 100 rounds for the M240, one 60 mm mortar shell. We all carried at least one. M9 on my right thigh, and of course the M4, or an M21.
I ran another mile or so, and it came easier, left knee still screaming.
A girl, twenty-something, and an older lady, maybe her mom, were jogging the other way. Not many people out at noon. I tried to keep my stride long and my back up until they passed, keep the limp minimal. She was cute. Mom wasn’t bad either. After they passed I slowed to circle and stooped over, knee on fire, watched my sweat drip on the pavement, wondered if I was going to vomit. A billboard on a strip mall asked if I was thinking of giving up God’s greatest gift. A baby? Or suicide? The verbiage wasn’t clear, followed by a web address. No phone number. I think I’ll have an abortion and then kill myself. Wait a minute, I’ll just run up to the internet café and punch up some help. Oh, they’re closed.
I needed to buy a fucking computer; been using the one in the office at my apartment complex, even bought some paper for it, but you had to catch the manager when he was there.
I showered when I got home, blew my nose and cleared my throat loudly, let neighbor-girl Jennifer know I was pretty crude to live with. My head was clearer when I dried off and I sat down at the table and flattened the next letter, which was hand-printed.
Donna.
This is really a disappointment. I worked hard for that money, put my life on the line for that money, literally. There was nothing wrong with the Nova your dad couldn’t have fixed in an afternoon. The Mustang is pretty, you look good in it but WE DON’T NEED IT NOW!!!! And moving to Union Gap doesn’t sound good to me. I know it’s closer to work. But you and I both know you were trying to get away from your mom, and guess what??? You’re still her kid. Isn’t going to change anything but waste a lot of money we should be saving for a house. At least get a roommate. I worry about you a lot. Now I’m worrying about us.
No typewriter here, for me anyway. Not much sleep last night. A couple of big booms at about 0200 and then all kinds of small arms fire from our side, and mortars going off all over the perimeter, shit landing on our tent from 40 yards away, (yeah a tent. TENT) then a pair of Cobras came over, mini-guns buzzing like chainsaws, every fifth round a tracer, for about forty-five minutes. ‘Box’ (we all have nick-names here. Mine’s’ Ricochet’) says Charlie’s probably still out there, in a tunnel somewhere. That whole area, about ten acres, looked like a freshly tilled field when the sun came up. Cool to talk about now, but I don’t want to die over here. Want to come back to you and start up where we left off in July. Please don’t spend anymore. If you sell the Nova put it in the bank. Love you and miss you.
A.
He was what? Twenty? What did a new Mustang cost in ’71? Maybe she bought a used one, but she must have spent almost all of his savings. I was astounded at his patience. At thirty-five I’m pretty cynical. Divorce her ass in a heartbeat. Bad news. I thought of guys in my unit, more so when I’d just enlisted, that talked about their girls doing their best friend, or some guy at college. I realize people change their mind. But to go on and on and on, not owning up to it, just like Mom . . . I flattened the letter on the table and stood looking out over the parking lot.
Jennifer was walking to the dumpster with her trash, all the beer cans together in a recycle bin. Must have been embarrassing for her. Short shorts and high-heeled sandals made of cork, long tanned legs. She swung the bags over and they thumped in the bin. She stepped up on her toes and, like a raccoon in a garbage can, probed with one arm, then the other. She tugged a two-by-four out of the trash, inspected it, and returned to the building. I stepped back from the glass so she wouldn’t see me, embarrass herself. A girl who could salvage. I’d found something else to like about her.
A couple minutes passed and she tapped at my door.
“I got everything you said. I think.” She was holding the two-by like a parade staff.
“Just a second.” Another welcome break. I grabbed the claw hammer and pulled the machete from under the sleeper.
“That’s one big-ass sword.”
“It’s a machete.” I glanced at her. “They cut off heads with them, in some parts of the world.” I pulled it out of the sheath a few inches. “This one has a saw on one side.”
She’d picked up the place some since that morning. The bra was gone. A vacuum sat in the hallway.
Wherever she’d gone, they cut her a piece of sheetrock the same size. Using the hammer’s length, I estimated the distance between studs, cut a length of her two-by-four with the back of the machete, put it in the hole. It wedged almost perfectly. I cut a second one while she steadied the end on a barstool, and I slathered both ends with liquid nail, muscled them into place.
“Oh yeah,” she said.
“You’re going to put more of this”—I held up the liquid nail—”on those, then push the sheetrock in place. Tape the edges, cover with wall compound. You
might have to spread it out pretty far.”
“Can’t we just finish it right now?”
“Gotta let it dry. Then the compound has to dry. Might take a couple of layers to look right. Then paint.”
She thanked me as I picked up my tools. I felt like I’d let her down, something in her body language. “Takes time. Be patient.” I touched her upturned nose.
At the door she rested her hand on the doorframe, fingertips over mine for a second. “Come over for dinner sometime?”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I keep odd hours.”
There was almost nothing in her fridge when she opened it. Living hand to mouth.
I tried to be philosophical. She was like a seed on the wind; hard to say where she’d wind up. Might get her act together, be a lady carpenter five years from now. Where somebody is right now isn’t a guarantee of how life’s going to go for them or the folks around them. I told myself this as I unlocked my apartment, looked at the letters on the table, Mom’s picture in the annual.
4
When I awoke the next morning, Jennifer was curled up naked beneath my arm, hair in my face smelling like cigarettes and pot. I rose up on one elbow to make certain it was her—a lizard tattoo up the middle of her back, head cocked sideways like it was wondering who I was. She murmured, sat straight up on the edge of the bed and walked to my bathroom without turning around, the lizard’s tail swaying side to side. The toilet flushed and she was back, lying into me, and kissed me on the cheek. A mental inventory of the previous eight hours flitted by: fleeting images of her beneath me, above me, at some points an ethereal sense of terror, all mixed up with the night.
“Got a cigarette?” she asked.
“Don’t smoke. Sorry.” For a moment I didn’t know what city I was in, what season it was, the entire morning detached from any other part of my life. I might not know my own name. Keep talking.
“I know I shouldn’t. Trying to quit.” She settled against me, lips against my neck, finger tracing my collarbone. “You had an owie there.”
Finding Sgt. Kent Page 6