Walking Wounded

by Chris Lynch

“Get a job, you lazy, privileged punk. Then you won’t have all this time to bother real people.”

  I am about equal parts embarrassed at that and kind of pleased, leaning toward pleased, as I march along and away from this. Until it is his turn again, and he is most definitely following me this time.

  “Yeah, but when I do get a job I won’t be working for the United States Military Monster, destroying an innocent country for no reason at all!”

  I turn crisply back toward the guy and we are together in two seconds. I take a big swing and feel my hand crackle as I connect with his big stony temple.

  “You have no idea,” I shout as he recoils and reaches a hand up to the spot on his head, “no idea whatsoever what we all have been through, fighting for you!”

  I notice a couple of women break off from the group and rush toward us with their signs falling to the ground. “Stop, stop!” they yell, distraught.

  “I knew you were one,” the smaller guy calls. “I just knew it. You stink of death.”

  “Yeah?” I holler at him. “Well you just stink, period. And you did not know, because you know less than nothing.”

  The other guy has straightened up, and he pulls sharply away from the protest women who have grabbed his arms to try and stop him from coming at me.

  “Right,” I say, raising both fists and bracing for him. I feel right and righteous in what I am doing. I feel like I am, in some strange, small way, fighting for us, for the four of us as well as the thousands of us who mostly would rather be home but are doing our bit anyway and do not need to be fighting a whole other depressing and demoralizing fight against know-nothing fathead idiots like these guys, who are probably just covering up their own shame and cowardice by fighting one skinny sailor instead of the Vietcong like I did and Rudi did and Beck and Ivan are still doing.

  Thuump.

  He clocks me one mightily, right on the point of my chin. I see it coming all the way and still can do nothing to stop it as it lands and buckles my knees. I keep my legs under me, line up, and swing at him a little wildly.

  Thuump.

  He’s got me square in the mouth this time, and I feel my legs giving up as I reel backward and he follows me to swing and connect one more time, bang in the mouth again, as I complete my fall onto my back and his meaty momentum carries him forward and down and crunching on top of me.

  He’s mouthing stuff at me that I am not comprehending and I am mouthing stuff at him that I am not comprehending, as the women and that other guy and now more protesters come to pull the guy away and I blink a bunch of times to make out what I am seeing and I take some small victory to note he is looking disheveled and demented and drooling with rage as they hustle him onward down the road and the demonstration itself breaks up and moves on.

  I did something, though. I made a point of some kind. I defended an honor.

  It wasn’t all for nothing. It couldn’t have been.

  There is a cold cloth pressed against my mouth and I am getting assisted to my feet.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up, there, sailor,” Lieutenant Francis says as we walk slowly back to his office.

  “What am I doing, huh?” I say, holding the cloth to the split lip, the wiggly teeth. “Even when I’m armed, I’m only a little bit dangerous. I don’t know why I let myself get involved.”

  “You’re probably too noble for your own good,” he says, pushing the door to the office open and holding it for me.

  “Ah, you could be right about that,” I say.

  The lieutenant turns out to be pretty handy with the first aid. Between a small basic kit he has in the office and a cup of ice from a bar with no sign a few doors away, he’s got me to the point where I can walk the streets without stepping on my own lip.

  “Probably a borderline call whether that lip could use a few stitches inside,” he says, sizing me up when I practice standing.

  “I’m sure it’s this side of the border,” I say. I have a bloodstained gauze bandage in one hand and the cup of ice in the other. I move my jaw from side to side a few times. Hurts some, and makes a grinding sound back there, but I don’t think it’s anything significant.

  “Keep at it with the ice for a while when you get home,” he says.

  I nod, raise my icy cup in gratitude. “Thanks for helping me out,” I say.

  “Thanks for standing up for the Navy,” he says.

  I am laughing on the way out, feeling the lip tearing a bit. “If the Navy needs me to stick up for them, I think they’re in trouble.”

  “I respectfully disagree. I’ll see what I can do for you on that posting, Morris. And I’ll let you know as soon as I have anything for you.”

  “Thank you, lieutenant. I’ll be waiting.”

  More anxiously than ever, since I now feel a little worse about the ol’ hometown, and a little better about the Navy.

  At first I cannot believe my mother’s subdued reaction to my banged-up appearance. Maybe I look better than I thought.

  Or possibly that’s not it.

  “What?” I say as she stands there over the telephone table, all fidgety.

  “Ivan,” she says, and accidentally pauses for breath long enough to freak me right out.

  “Ma?”

  “Sorry, Morris, he’s going to be fine. He’s injured. He’s coming home. For good.”

  For good.

  And I thought a fat lip was going to be the topic of the day.

  Hey Morris Man,

  There everybody was, all our lives, thinking I was the bright one. Bet you’re laughing big about that one right now. You were positively genius in working it out so you got yourself sent home at precisely the right time. This place, old pal, is going out of its mind even more than ever before. Guys are so sick of the stupidity and pointlessness of almost everything we do here that they’ve started just refusing, flat out, to fight. No joke, the grunts are basically at war with the officers because the officers we’re left with are morons and they simply do not care how many enlisted personnel get killed when they’re sent out on search and destroy. Sometimes it’s individuals, and sometimes whole units have started to just defy orders. And a lot of the time when they do go out, they’re just faking it anyway. They don’t really search for anything, and they engage with trees and bushes, shooting them up and even calling in close air cover — meaning me — to come in and blast away at enemy fighters who aren’t there. The war was always stupid, Morris, but now it’s STUPID. It would be a great laugh if it wasn’t a greater tragedy.

  So, let me ask you, oh wise Pledgemaster, how did I wind up over here, BY MYSELF???

  I do trust you have heard that Ivan is coming home.

  I will not lose my mind here, Morris. I won’t. It is the only thing I have left, and I will protect it at all costs. Shall I tell you what that involves at this point? Yes, I shall tell you.

  I rebelled, myself. Or partially, anyway, which I think was pretty magnanimous of me. Yes, sir, I told my commanding officer, the loathsome Captain Gilroy, that I was an engineer and if he gave me any more orders to man a machine gun I wasn’t going to do it. What do you think of that? Didn’t think I had it in me, I bet. I didn’t think so myself. And I told him he has a very good engineer in me as it stands so let’s not jeopardize that. Felt pretty good.

  I don’t know what that’s going to cost me, pal, but I am keeping an eye out. He’s not a nice guy, and he’s a lifer, and the fact that he didn’t say anything at all when I was insubordinate probably means he is in calculated-revenge mode. Maybe he’s just glad I didn’t kill him, which a lot of guys are doing to their officers now. And, since we are basically just going back and forth between riding in on bogus support missions on the one hand, or blasting the heck out of encampments of peasants who don’t do anything for the “war” effort other than pad our body-count totals, maybe he just doesn’t want to call any more attention to what we are and are not doing.

  Maybe if I get away with it and he doesn’t do anything, I’ll see how
far I can push it then.

  I won’t shoot him, though. Probably.

  First thing I’ll do when I do get home is I’m joining up with those Veterans Against the War people and I am going to protest everywhere and scream my lungs out about how wrong this all is. It will be like therapy, maybe.

  Are you worried about Ivan coming home? Are you going to talk to him? I wish I were there with you. This is one thing we should be together for, and that feels like my duty more than anything else right now.

  Even if I don’t know what I would say. Kind of felt like we had plenty of time to think about it, didn’t it? I imagine, with him coming your way, you’re not feeling that way at all now, huh?

  Back to my sanity. I am also writing. Yeah. I sent a couple things to the alternative answer to Stars and Stripes here, called the Grunt Free Press. It’s full of very funny and irreverent stuff about what it’s like here for the forces in-country. Loads of made-up stuff, but all totally true, if you know what I mean. The first thing I wrote for them is good for a laugh, though if my CO reads it I’m not sure he’ll see the comedy. I could be in some hot water. Though, it’s pretty unlikely he would read it.

  There’s a second piece I sent in, too, Morris. It’s not so funny. You’d be interested in it, though. If they run it I’ll definitely send you a copy.

  I can last another month-plus in-country, right? Smooth sailing after that. Sure, I can make that.

  How about you? Any word on your next assignment? Maybe you’ll get something cushy, huh? And close to home. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Anything will be better than this scorched pit of despair, anyway, won’t it? How’s home? I miss it badly.

  Sorry you are on your own for now with The Situation. What will you do? Any thoughts? I don’t even know what to tell you, and when was the last time that happened? Right. Things aren’t at all the way they are supposed to be, are they?

  Take it easy, old friend. Write back soon. I need it more than I used to.

  Peace.

  Beck

  P.S. Rudi has been making me cry lately, like, out of nowhere. I don’t care for it, frankly. If you have any clout there — and I bet you do — tell him to knock it off. Rudi-spirit-goof.

  Boo!

  Ha-ha.

  I got my eye on you.

  The Army for some reason sends me home on a commercial flight, Pan Am, right out of Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon. From there to Honolulu I experience the most luxurious conditions I have ever imagined. The hostesses could not be nicer, and the plane could not be more comfortable. I am offered any food and refreshment I could want, and the other passengers are the most fun bunch of fellow travelers you could hope for, probably since they are mostly US servicemen on Pan Am’s R & R service to go and let their hair down for a few mad days. Though by Hawaii they are mostly gone.

  Even on the next leg, from Honolulu to LA, I am treated to full first-class service. I don’t expect I will ever see the likes of this again, since I surely won’t ever be able to pay for it.

  I don’t know why they gave this to me or who arranged it. Maybe it was a thank-you parting gift or a no-hard-feelings or something.

  It was a great gesture, whatever it was.

  And an awful shame of a waste.

  By the time I land at the airport in Los Angeles, I am more tired and weak and anxious than I was on that truck convoy in Pleiku.

  I ate nothing, did not sleep. I only grunted whenever the poor soul next to me tried to say anything, and to make it worse I kept climbing over him to get to the bathroom to look at the remains of my face. As if it were going to be changeable, like the weather across all these time zones.

  I am in the bathroom at the airport now, and still nothing has changed.

  It is a mess. There is a bandage patch where my eye used to be, and below that is a very obvious divot that represents the exploded bone structure under the skin. They tell me there are several surgeries ahead for me and that the staff at the VA hospital on South Huntington Avenue are going to ultimately be my closest buddies.

  I don’t know about that. I think the face I am looking at is the face I am supposed to have. It’s the face I deserve. Every time one of those pretty and healthy Pan Am ladies looked at me I must have seemed like a stupid dog in a lightning storm, trying to burrow my way into the nice upholstery of the nice ride home the Army got for me.

  What did I do? Lord almighty, what did I do, and where am I going?

  I cannot go home. I cannot do that.

  My connecting flight to Boston is boarding now.

  I got the face I deserve.

  Where is everybody? Where is anybody?

  Why am I alone? Did I do that? Was it me?

  Was it you?

  No.

  No.

  No.

  I hear a last boarding call and then another last boarding call for all passengers flying to Boston. Guys come in and go again and it gets busy but this is my sink. And then it gets quiet again.

  Boarding is now closing for Boston.

  I turn the water on in the sink all the way, and I wedge my big awful aching skull down in there, and I let the cold water run over my scalp and soak right on into my head and freeze it to the point of nearly tolerable numbness.

  Then I turn off the tap and I straighten up and look at myself, with my hair slick and forehead streaming with the runoff.

  I reach up, and I pick at my oversize eye patch, and pick at it some more, like picking a scab that isn’t quite ready to come away just yet. But too bad.

  The glue is quality, I will give them that. But it cannot hold forever. Here it comes now, pulling away with great reluctance but giving in, giving up, and I see the skin try to hold on and the wounds start weeping where the eye certainly can’t, small oozings of blood tears, from the crescents of cut and patch and stitch and someday scar, and finally, the patch is up over my eyebrow, and it is off, and I am who I am now.

  Don’t.

  Please.

  Don’t.

  Hey Beck Man,

  No. Don’t see how far you can push it. Do not. You’re almost home. I have your DERUS marked right here on my calendar, and it is so soon. Then you’ll be back stateside in some easy egghead job, because they won’t waste a big melon like yours. Then before you know it, your ETS will have arrived, you’ll be a civilian again, and it’s hello University of Wisconsin–Madison. Where you belonged all the time anyway.

  I am really sorry, Beck. It was the worst pledge ever. If I pledge not to make any more pledges, will you behave yourself and promise to keep from doing anything rash over there?

  I know it must be hard for you, that stupidity makes you mental and stupidity in war is like oxygen. But you have to do it anyway, or else I’ll be forced to come back there and slap you around.

  I’ll wait ’til you finish laughing. Okay, there now.

  The truth on this end is, I don’t have any idea what to do. I’m terrified that Ivan is coming home. Not that he’ll hurt me or kill me — which he might well do — but because it was different before. Him coming back means The Situation (good name, by the way) is coming back with him. That’s what it feels like. He’s not back yet, which is kind of weird since I thought he was coming last week. But nothing is truly weird now, is it?

  I can’t even look at people. Except for the funeral (you missed a swell time there, pal), I have been avoiding everybody like I’m some kind of rat that just wants to scurry around the baseboards and sewers without looking up at any humans at all. Even my own mother, who has been great but is going to start asking uncomfortable questions if I don’t get out of here soon.

  What were we thinking?? That this didn’t happen? That it would just fade with time or stay in Vietnam and never have to come home with us and we could all be the same ever again, everybody except Rudi? What? Beck, what?

  If he walks in that door right now I have no idea what I will say or do. I mean Ivan, of course. If Rudi walked through I’m pretty sure I would have a heart at
tack and die. I suppose that will probably be it if either one of them walks in, actually. Though if they both walk in together, maybe things will start looking up.

  So, as you can see, old pal, you’re not the only one who is capable of losing his mind. Yours is a better quality mind, though, so yes, do whatever it takes to maintain it. I like the sound of you writing for Grunt. That’s a great idea, and of course they will take everything you write and I can’t wait to see it. How much are they going to pay you? This could be your big break. Though if you write about any of us, you better be sharing the loot.

  I wouldn’t want you to become one of the protesters, Beck. I hope you don’t do it. We’ll just leave it at that for now.

  As for my next assignment, I don’t know for sure yet, but it’s coming. As a matter of fact I am on my way out right now to a meeting I have with the recruiter downtown. I went to see him last week to ask him some things and check out some options. He called me back yesterday to say he has some information for me but wouldn’t talk about it on the phone. So, I was heading out when your letter came and I couldn’t leave without writing you back (ya big baby) and so now I have.

  I think it’s cool you’re a big baby, though. I consider that a good sign, and I will write as often as it takes to keep you from going nuts.

  Don’t go nuts. I’ll write to you again as soon as I know anything about anything. About anything.

  Your pal as long as you don’t protest against me,

  Morris

  Beck! Beck, do you hear me? This is the straw, Beck! This one is the straw!”

  Captain Gilroy is always talking lately about this mythical straw and what is going to happen to some poor camel because of the straw and what I am personally going to do with it.

  Of course I can hear him. I’m just too busy to respond at the moment.

  “You can see; I know you can see as plainly as I can!” I am shouting into the ear of one of our two gunners pouring heavy, brutal fire from the Spooky’s machine guns into a human ants’ nest of a village that is plainly no threat to anybody.