Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning

by Susan Fanetti

  “How long did it take for his heart to fail?” She didn’t know a better way to ask what she wanted to know—had he been sick on Christmas Eve? Could she have saved him if she’d known it was trouble and taken him to the hospital then? She couldn’t put those words in the air, because Aunt Bridie didn’t know Mo might have saved him. She couldn’t face her knowing. So she asked the question as best she could and hoped the doctor understood.

  He did. “Your father had partial or complete blockage in every major artery. The heart attack happened quickly, in probably minutes, but his heart had been failing for a long time. Months, certainly. Probably years.”

  “How could we not have known?”

  “It’s possible he didn’t even know. Until a crisis happens, heart disease can feel like any number of minor ailments. Headache, heartburn, stomachache, even joint pain. For a middle-aged man, that all can feel like normal pains that come with aging. He would have had to tell you something didn’t feel right, if he knew himself.”

  He knew. Mo was sure of it. He knew, and he didn’t say. He probably hadn’t wanted to ruin Christmas.

  The doctor gave her that soft, consoling smile. “There was nothing you could have done. You called the ambulance quickly, which gave him any chance at all. I’m just sorry there wasn’t more we could do.”

  “Thank you, doctor,” Mo said.

  With a nod of acknowledgment, the doctor turned to Aunt Bridie, who was still folded over, weeping quietly and rocking. Robby had rested his head on her back. “Mrs. Quinn, I’m deeply sorry for your loss. I don’t want to bother you, so please stay here as long as you like, and if you’d like to speak more with me, the nurse will page me.” He made eye contact again with Mo. “The nurse will help you with whatever you need.”

  “Thank you,” she said again.

  The doctor stood and set his hand on Mo’s shoulder for a moment of unspoken support. Then he left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Mo turned and added herself to this half-formed knot of family mourning.

  She had lost a mother.

  She had lost two fathers.

  She had lost two children.

  She was without her husband.

  So she clung to what she had left.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  1973

  9 Jan 73

  My Irish,

  I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I can’t believe he’s gone. I hate that I’m not there to hold you and help you and Bridie and everybody. I tried to call when I got word, but I couldn’t reach anybody. I’ll try again as soon as I can. I know a phone call isn’t any help, and a letter is nothing at a time like this. I wish I was with you. That’s true every day, but it’s ten times truer now.

  I love you.

  I’ll be home soon.

  I love you.

  Brian

  ~oOo~

  13 Jan 73

  My Irish,

  I got my orders today! I’m out of here in less than a month. Cornish pulled some strings and got me released early—only about a month or so, and I know it’s too late to be much help to you through everything that’s happened, but GOD I can’t wait to be home with you. And earlier than we thought. This is it, Mo. I swear to God, this is it. I’m not leaving you again. This war is over for us. Just about everybody’s going home now. Even Cornish got his orders. Vietnam can’t do us any more damage, and I am DONE with the Army.

  I’ll try to call with the details when I get them. If I don’t reach you, I’ll send them.

  I love you!

  Brian

  ~oOo~

  By the day Brian was set to board a transport on the first leg of his long journey back to the States, the numbers of US combat troops still in country could practically be counted by hand. A few thousand, and those were boarding outbound planes every day. The United States was pulling out of Vietnam and leaving their ARVN allies to gasp the last breath of the war on their own.

  Intellectually, Brian thought it was pretty fucking shitty of his country to basically force this war on South Vietnam, for its own purposes, to manipulate the country’s democracy for years, to prop up weak leaders, bomb the bejeezus out of the region, strip it of most of its vegetation, leave mountains of bodies and miles-wide swaths of destruction, and then simply pack up and bug out when it became clear there was nothing in it for the US.

  Personally, emotionally, all he could care about was getting on the goddamn plane and never, ever seeing Vietnam again. He wanted home. He wanted Mo. He even wanted a shitty job like the one he’d had at Essert’s, a job that let him go home at night and curl up tight with his girl. Jesus, he couldn’t believe he’d ever been a moody asshole about that job. Exactly what had he had to feel sorry for himself about? A good woman who loved him, and a job that had him working with his hands all day? Pretty much all he’d ever wanted in his life? Yeah, he’d had a son of a bitch for a boss, but so what?

  He knew himself well enough to understand that this rabid frenzy to get home, and the intense loneliness for Mo he’d lived with for nearly a year—again—had cast his memories of the way things had been in a pretty rosy light. That job had been a truly bad scene, and Essert had done his damnedest every day to make him feel worthless.

  Once he was home for a while, if things didn’t change from how they’d been, he’d be a moody asshole again. He knew that, and he didn’t want to get in that bad way again. It wasn’t good for him or for Mo.

  Over the past few weeks, as he’d been preparing to get his ass home where it belonged, Brian had thought a lot about his unhappiness in the life he’d had with Mo. It wasn’t Mo—god, she was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and if he could just carry her off to an island somewhere, and live without the rest of the world pressing in on him, life would be bliss. But his own life had been shit. Some things had to change.

  So he’d been thinking about how to make those changes. Planning was his forte, so he made a plan.

  Number one: he needed gainful work. It chafed him raw not to earn like Mo did. It wasn’t right that her income supported them. All that women’s lib stuff was fine and dandy, he was proud of Mo and how hard she’d worked to be able to do her job, and he didn’t begrudge her the chance to work if she wanted—but a man took care of his family. Period. He needed to be the breadwinner. Period.

  Besides, Mo wanted kids, if they could have them. Someday, she might want to quit working and stay home to raise their family. She couldn’t do that if he was working a deadbeat job for an asshole like Essert.

  He needed a good job. Of course, he’d tried hard to find a better job before and had failed. The economy hadn’t improved much in the meanwhile. But the war was ending; putting the death and destruction and the wild unpopularity behind them all could only brighten the country’s financial future, right?

  And maybe … maybe he could start his own garage. He had always hated working for somebody else, and he’d nurtured a vague dream, one he’d been too chickenshit to let grow into anything more than a fantasy, of being his own boss. Why not make it a plan? He didn’t know the first thing about running a business, but he could learn. He still had most of his share of the family farm money. That was supposed to be for when he and Mo bought a house, but his VA loan could cover that. They didn’t need a down payment.

  So get a solid job first off, something that paid decent, and then find a way to take some business classes or something. He didn’t really want to go to college, but he did have the GI Bill. Maybe junior college would be okay, just to get some business knowledge. And then he’d find a garage for sale.

  Mo was big on future planning—five-year plans, ten-year plans, even retirement plans. For all his strategic and tactical skills, Brian had lived his life fumbling forward. That had to stop.

  So he made a two-year plan, with a single goal: by the end of 1975, he would own his own garage. In the meantime, he’d develop the skills and resources he’d need to do it right.

  As he waited to
board the plane that would begin his journey back to that life, his real life, Brian let himself imagine a future in which he had everything he wanted, and Mo had everything she wanted, too.

  ~oOo~

  Brian boarded a C141a to Okinawa, a city he’d once briefly called home, at the long-ago beginning of his Army career. He cooled his heels a couple days in Japan, waiting for a seat on a commercial jet that would get his ass back in the States. Upside: he was able to process his separation paperwork there and get an itinerary that would eventually put his feet down in Tulsa, which was less than three hours from home. Another upside: he was able to call Mo and finally reach her. He’d been able to try from Saigon three different times and had never connected. But she answered this time, and damn if he hadn’t teared up. His girl, in his ear. Her beautiful voice, its sweet lilt. His Irish.

  His flight across the ocean in a commercial jetliner wasn’t bad. It was wall-to-wall returning servicemen, and a few servicewomen, and the stewardesses were beautiful and sweet. Not that he had any interest in flirting, they all paled in comparison to his girl, but it was nonetheless nice to have a pretty girl smile at him.

  That flight landed him in Los Angeles, and he had a long layover at LAX. He’d thought for a minute that he might leave the airport for a few hours and take in some Southern California sun, but he hadn’t made it five minutes out of the international concourse when he changed his mind and decided there was nothing he needed to see. What a horror that airport was. People all through the concourses were real assholes to men in uniform, sneering and saying bullshit, flipping them off, sometimes even shouting. The next tie-dyed shithead who called him a baby-killer was going to get a knuckle sandwich.

  Brian was in uniform, and no longer in combat. He was in the United States. If he got into a fight in the Los Angeles airport, while wearing his dress greens, he could get rung up. So he got his ass to the USO Center before he broke some California hippie freak in half, and he intended to stay put until it was time to board his last flight.

  The USO was packed and thick with the miasma of about a hundred smokes going at once. When a flight was called and two Marines stood up in a little corner at the back, Brian took one of their vacated seats and ensconced himself. He lit up a Camel and settled back, intending to stay put and out of trouble for the next several hours, until his flight finally boarded.

  “Mind if I bum one?”

  “Sure.” Brian offered the pack and looked up to see a blond Air Force sergeant standing before him. He looked to be a little younger than Brian, maybe mid-to-late twenties, which jived up pretty well for an E-5. It also showed him to be an enlistee, most likely, not a draftee. To get to E-5, he was probably doing four, at least—unless, like Brian, he’d been field-promoted. At this late stage of the war, that was happening less often, though. His name tag identified him as NIELSEN.

  Sergeant Nielsen took a Camel and frowned a little at the unfiltered end, but didn’t change his mind. When he patted around on his dress blues, looking for a lighter, Brian sparked his own Zippo and offered it up.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Nielsen took a long draw from his Camel and made a face as he blew it out. “Shit, that’s a rough hit.”

  Brian smiled. “Filters are for sissies.”

  With a coughing laugh, Nielsen gestured at the other empty seat. Brian had hoped no one would notice it, tucked here in the far corner of the center. “You mind?”

  Brian pulled his duffel out of the way. “What’s mine is yours, my man.”

  Once Nielsen was seated and had his own duffel wedged under his legs, he nodded at Brian’s uniform. “173rd? I thought y’all went home last year.”

  “Long story. I got recalled on special assignment. Saigon.”

  “HQ, huh? Damn. You a lifer?”

  “Nah. Did my four years and two more besides, but I’m done now.”

  “How long were you in-country?”

  This was not the kind of shit he wanted to talk about, not here and not now. Vietnam was in his rearview mirror. But he answered anyway, in as few words as possible. “Four tours. Three trips. ’65 to 67. ’69 to ’70.’72 to’73.”

  “Goddamn, man. And you’re not a lifer?”

  “No, I am not.” The guy was getting on his nerves. He opened his shiny new copy of the latest issue of Motor Cycle Mechanics magazine—gotta love an airport newsstand—and hoped like hell the irritating chihuahua of an airman got the message.

  He did not. “You ride?” he asked.

  “Yes, I do.” Brian sighed the words. He was trying not to be a dick, but he wasn’t interested in making a buddy. He just wanted to get home.

  Nielsen was quiet at last, and Brian read for a few minutes. But now he was curious. Nielsen hadn’t asked if he ‘drove’ a motorcycle, or any of the other ways non-riders talked about bikes. He’d asked the way a rider asks. And Brian never passed up a chance to talk bikes. So he had to know.

  “You ride?”

  Nielsen grinned. “I do. Got a bee-you-tee-ful ’68 Indian Super Scout. You would die if you saw her. She’s the only love I’ll ever need. But I’ve also been workin’ for a few years rebuildin’ a ’45 Harley.”

  “A Knuckle? No shit?”

  “Yeah—I got it for a song off a farm sale near home. They didn’t know what they had. She was just rotting in the back of a fallin’-down barn. I about creamed my jeans when I saw her. What d’you ride?”

  “My main’s a ’61 Harley Duo Glide that I bought new and chopped. I picked up a wrecked ’65 Electra last year, too, but I got recalled a few weeks after I bought it, so all I had a chance to do was take it apart.”

  “What you think of the panhead?”

  Brian shrugged. “It’s a decent engine. Needs a little babying, but it’s a gas to ride—it really hauls ass. You like the Indian?”

  “I do. It’s a classic. But that Harley blat’ll get ya hard, y’know? No sound like it.”

  Brian laughed. “Yeah, I know.” He offered his hand. “I’m D.”

  He didn’t know why he’d given that name, except that he was sitting in a USO center, in his uniform, talking to another serviceman. He’d been called D only in the Army; it was part of the life he meant to put behind him. And yet that name had rolled right off his tongue now.

  Nielsen gave his hand a strong, friendly shake. “The letter? For Delaney, I guess?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it’s good to know ya, D. I’m Oskar, but since my first day of basic, everybody calls me The Dane. Or just Dane.”

  “You from Denmark?”

  Nielsen laughed. “Not me. Past relations. I’m pure, farm-bred, corn-fed red, white, and blue—from a little nowhere town called Dewspring, between Tulsa and Oklahoma City.”

  “You’re shittin’ me. I’m from Oklahoma, too. Shayton, down ‘round Norman. I know Dewspring—there’s that great old bar there, caters to bikers.”

  “Stooge’s, yeah. You know it? My cousin Stu owns it! Damn, small world.”

  “It really is.”

  ~oOo~

  It turned out that Dane and Brian were on the same flight to Tulsa, and with some finagling, they worked it to sit together. Over the course of the three-hour flight, they got to know each other a little. Brian had to admit the guy was all right. They had a lot in common. In addition to their combat experiences, and their shared interests in bikes and anything with an engine, Dane was from a family not much different from Brian’s—both born and raised on an Oklahoma family farm, one Dane was fortunate enough to still call home. Dane’s mother had run off when he was a kid, so he was motherless, too. But his father still lived.

  Dane’s service wasn’t yet over; he had several months left. But he’d been reassigned to Vance Air Force Base, just north of Oklahoma City. Almost home—and he was getting two weeks’ leave before he had to report.

  When the pilot announced that they were in their final descent, Dane asked for Brian’s address and phone number,
and, though he hadn’t been looking to make a new friend, certainly not one who would carry with him the memory of a war he wanted to forget, Brian found himself wanting to keep in touch, too. They scrawled out their information on the backs of their boarding passes.

  “How you gettin’ to Shayton from here?” Dane asked as the plane taxied to the gate.

  “Greyhound.” He’d given Mo all his travel information, all his flights and everything, but he didn’t expect her to drive near three hours for him. He’d told her to pick him up at the bus station in Norman.

  “My old man’s pickin’ me up here. If you want, you can come home with us, stay the night, and I’ll drive you home tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, but nah. It’s a real nice offer, and I appreciate it, but”—he held up his left hand and showed his ring; unlike when he’d been assigned to Bong Son, he’d been able to wear it throughout this whole tour—“I got a woman waitin’ for me at home, and I want to get back to her fast as I can.”

  Dane grinned. “I understand.”

  “You got somebody?”

  “Nah. I’m not the settlin’ down type.” His grin grew, turned wry. “But I won’t be slow about findin’ a woman, that’s for damn sure, so I get it.”

  Brian smiled, but didn’t say more. He was a little offended, in fact. Dane didn’t get it at all if he thought Brian’s impatience to get to Mo was about something as basic as getting laid.

  He had no idea what it was to love like Brian loved.

  ~oOo~

  “There’s my old man,” Dane said and broke out in a boyish grin.

  Brian didn’t want to get in the middle of a family reunion, or get tangled up in introductions, so, as he looked vaguely in the direction Dane had indicated, he said his goodbyes. “Okay, well, it was good to—”