After the Flag Has Been Folded

I
came across an awful story the other day. A story of an American soldier. Tim O'Brien tells it in his book,
The Things They Carried.
O'Brien has mastered the art of telling the ghastly tales of the American war in Vietnam.

I'm careful about when I read his stuff. I don't read his prose while eating. I don't read it before bedtime. I don't read it if the kids are around. Simply because his words make my stomach convulse, my heart pound, and the fissures in my soul ooze with confusion and anger. I think Sunday school teachers ought to give their seniors a copy of
The Things They Carried,
instead of those insidious religious books which project a ridiculous Daddy Warbucks image of God. I don't know about you, but I hope the God at my side isn't such a namby-pamby.

I need a powerful God. One who can handle the raw realities of life and death. One who can carry his own weight at the front lines and back me up if I need it. I've been needing that sort of God a lot lately.

Which leads me back to the story O'Brien told about a dead man named Curt Lemon. Here's what O'Brien recalled of his death:

“In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turn sideways. He laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree. The parts were just hanging there, so Dave Jensen and I were ordered to shimmy up and peel him off. The gore was horrible, and stays with me. But what wakes me up twenty years later is Dave Jensen singing âLemon Tree' as we threw down the parts.”

O'Brien said that you can tell a true war story by the questions it raises: “Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, âIs it true?' and if the answer matters to you, you've got your answer.”

I've been asking lots of people questions about the American War in Vietnam, and about my father.

In a sense, I feel like I've shimmied up a tree to pick through my father's remains. It's an unpleasant task. One that haunts my sleep and startles me throughout the day.

Here's what I know so far: Dad was asleep in his tent when he was hit with shrapnel from a mortar round. He had a wound in his gut and one in his backâthe one nobody noticed until he died. The medic who was sleeping in the same tent as Dad got shot in the butt. Forrest Gump didn't make it up. Lots of guys in Vietnam really did get shot in the butt. I wish Dad had gotten his ass blown off. He'd likely have lived through that. But instead, he died, in a muddy LZ, about twenty miles from base camp at Pleiku. It took nearly an hour before he bled to death. Fierce rain pelted the camp all day long. I like to imagine that every soul in heaven, including Almighty God, was weeping for my father. He died July 24, 1966. A Sunday.

On my desk, next to my keyboard, is a picture of my father. He's wearing combat boots, army greens, and a grin so sweet it makes my heart drip with sorrow. Behind him, standing three deep in places, is a row of children. Some are grasping cans of army rations. Others have their hands folded, as if in prayer. All are barefoot. One is wrapped in an army shirt. Others are wrapped in army blankets. Some have bright smiles. One has a gaping, ulcerated sore on his left leg. He's smiling anyway. Behind the kids, stand two soldiers whose names I don't know. And behind them, pointed away from the picture, is a U.S. Army 105 Howitzer.

Sometimes kindly folks tell me I need to get over Vietnam. Just forget about it. Sometimes I wish it myself. But as O'Brien notes in his book: “That's the thing about remembering, you don't forget.”

I can't get down out of this tree until I'm sure I've removed every last shred of my father. These remains are all I have left of him to hold on to.

PROLOGUE

Losing you ripped
my heart out.

Its phantom aches
daily.

I
DON'T REMEMBER
M
AMA CRYING WHEN
G
RANNY
R
UTH DIED BUT THE DAY AFTER
she gathered together all the pillows in the house and went into the room where her mother's foot-pedaled sewing machine stood silent.

Taking the pair of black-handled scissors, she cut open the tops of Granny's pillows. Aunt Blanche asked Mama what in Jehoshaphat's name did she think she was doing, cutting up all the pillows like that. Mama answered something about finding a crown inside one of those pillows Granny Ruth had fashioned from chicken feathers.

I sat on the floor beside her trying to catch flying feathers.

“Sometimes,” she explained, “when a person sleeps on a pillow for a long time the feathers will mold together to make a crown. I don't know why it happens, but Grandma
Louisa had two crowns in her pillow. My aunt kept them in a glass jar.”

I stayed in that room all day hoping Granny Ruth had slept on her pillow long enough to earn a crown, but Mama never found any.

She still has the pillows she made from those leftover feathers, but Mama hasn't slept on any of them long enough to form a crown for herself. Ever since that day when the man in the jeep showed up, she's been much too busy to sleep.

Part I â¢ 1965â1966
the year of winter moons

CHAPTER 1
the man in the jeep

A
T FIRST
I
NEVER EVEN NOTICED THE JEEP, WHAT WITH TRYING TO TIE UP THE BULLDOG PUP
. G
RANDPA
H
ARVE
was sitting in a mesh lawn chair nearby, his dead arm slung down between his legs. His good hand flicked a cigarette stub.

“Karen, you hold her,” Mama instructed over my shoulder. “Frankie, tie that in a double knot.” Daddy's best buddy, Dale Fearnow, had given us a prize bulldog as a gift that day. We were all gathered outside the trailer house trying to figure out where to keep such a creature in a yard that had no grass or fence.

We hadn't lived at Slaughters Trailer Court in Rogersville, Tennessee, very long. It was just a dirt hill with six trailers slapped upside it. One was ours, and one belonged to Uncle Woody, Mama's oldest brother. I'm sure given the situation Mama would have rather not lived in any place named Slaughters.

Folks often laugh when I tell them I grew up a trailer park victim. But when I drive through places like Slaughters, like Lake Forest or Crystal Valley, or any of the other trailer courts I once called home, I ache for the children who live there. And for the circumstances that led their mamas and daddies to make homes between cinder block foundations and dirt yards.

This was late July 1966. Just like any Southern summer, the days steamed and the nights stewed. I found myself missing the ocean
breezes of Oahu, where we had last lived with Daddy. We'd left the island just a month before, shortly after I finished third grade. We had family in Rogersville, where both my parents had grown up.

“I knew the minute I saw that jeep,” Mama told me later. “There aren't any military bases in East Tennessee.”

I don't remember having any premonitions myself. I was used to seeing jeeps. We had lived near military bases all my life. Fort Benning. Fort Campbell. Schofield.

“Shelby Spears?” the soldier asked. He was clutching a white envelope. His fingers trembled.

“Yes?” Mama replied. Her whole face went taut as she clenched her jaw. She turned and handed the pup over to Brother Frankie. Little Linda hid behind Mama, rubbing her bare toes in the dirt. “Finish tying him up,” Mama instructed.

Then, pulling down the silver handle of the trailer door, she stepped inside. The soldier followed.

I looked over at Grandpa Harve. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. A white straw hat shielded his drooping head. Sister Linda followed the soldier. I followed her. Frankie followed me.

For years now, I have tried to remember what happened next. But it's as if somebody threw me up against a concrete wall so violently that my brain refuses to let any of it come back to me. I suppose the pain was so intense my body just can't endure it.

I recall only bits. Crying. Screaming. Hollering like a dog does when a chain is twisted too tightly about its neck.

Frankie was sitting cross-legged on the blue foam cushion that served as the trailer's built-in couch. He pounded the wall with his fists. “Those Charlies killed my Daddy!” he screamed. “Those Charlies killed my Daddy!”

Grasping Mama's hand, Linda buried her face in her thigh.

I was confused. Who was Charlie? Who was this soldier? Why was Mama crying? “What is it?” I asked. “What's happened?”

“Daddy's dead!” Frankie yelled back at me, punching the wall again. “They've kilt our daddy! I'm gonna kill them Charlies!”

I had never seen Mama cry before.

Not even that December night in Hawaii when Daddy left us.

Sister Linda was six years old and was already asleep when Daddy and Mama asked Frankie and me to come into the living room. “We need to talk,” Daddy said.

He'd never asked us to talk before. Not officially, like he was calling together his troops or something. Mama sat real quiet beside him on the red vinyl couch. Frankie and I sat on the hardwood floor, dressed in our pajamas, ready for bed.

“Frank, Karen,” Daddy said, “I believe you both are old enough now to understand some things.”

I was thankful he recognized my maturity. After turning over a whole can of cooking oil on top of my head earlier that evening while helping Mama in the kitchen, I was feeling a bit insecure about my status as the family's oldest daughter. I was nine years old.

“You both know who President Johnson is?”

We nodded in unison.

Daddy continued, “There's a country that needs our help, South Vietnam. President Johnson has asked me to go.”

“Where's Vietnam?” Frankie asked.

“Whadda you gonna do there?” I asked.

“It's in Southeast Asia. We'll be helping protect the country from communism.”

Tears stung. Not because I understood what communism was, or that Daddy would be in any danger. Simply because my daddy would be leaving me.

“Frank, you're the man of the house now,” Daddy said. “I need you to take care of your mama and sisters.”

“Yes, sir,” Frankie replied, his voice too steady for a boy of just eleven.

“Karen,” Daddy said, looking directly at me, “you need to help Mama take care of Linda. Okay?”

I nodded.

I held my tears until after I hugged Mama and Daddy and climbed into bed. Scrunching myself between the cold wall and the edge of my mattress, I began to cry.

A few minutes later Daddy flipped on the light. On the bed next to mine, curled into a ball like a kitten, a sleeping Linda didn't even twitch. “Karen?”

“Yes, sir?” I said as I wiped my nose on the back of my forearm.

“Are you crying?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied. I tried to shake the shivers from my neck.

“Why are you crying, honey?” Daddy asked.

“I'm scared,” I answered.

“Scared of what?” Daddy walked over and sat down on the edge of my bed.

“That you won't come home!” I wailed. Like monsoon rains, powerful tears rushed forth.

“Karen,” Daddy said, smoothing matted hair back from my wet cheeks. “I'll come back. I promise.”

Picking me up, he let me cry into his shoulder. He smelled of Old Spice and sweat. “But I need for you to stop your crying, okay? It upsets Mama.”

“Okay,” I said, sucking back the last sob. I didn't want to upset anyone.

“G'night, Karen.”

“G' night, Daddy. I love you.”

“I love you too, honey.”

He flipped off the light. Grabbing my pillow, I sought to muffle the crying that grown-ups can control but children never can.

Daddy left early the next day, before the sun tiptoed over the horizon. He kissed me good-bye, but I barely woke in the predawn darkness.

F
ROM
V
IETNAM,
Daddy sent pictures of barefoot children in tattered clothing. He sent Linda a Vietnamese doll wearing a red satin dress, and me one wearing yellow. Vietnamese colors for happiness and luck. And he wrote letters, promising he'd be home soon.

Daddy did return for a short visit. His orders called it an R&R, a rest-and-recuperation trip. The order is dated May 8, 1966. The papers issue Daddy a leave for Manila in the Philippines, effective May 10. Skip a couple of spaces over from “Philippines,” and in another type and ink are the words “and Hawii.” Later, Daddy swore to Mama he'd gotten ahold of a typewriter and changed his order, just so he could come home to us again. He laughed every time he told Mama about that.

It was pitch-dark outside when Mama locked us inside the house and left to go pick up Daddy. Frankie, Linda, and I sat on the vinyl couch waiting for them to return. I was having a hard time staying awake. Earlier that week Frankie had dared me to stick my hand in a wasp hive in the banana tree out back. I'd done it, trusting, as Frankie claimed, that all the wasps were long gone.

Liar. Liar. Liar. I got stung countless times. My hand swoll up till it looked like a brand-new baseball mitt. The doctor had given me sleeping pills and told Mama that I needed to keep my hand elevated. I'd taken the pills off and on all day long. After a half hour or so, waiting for Daddy, I gave up the struggle and returned to Mama's bed. I was there, asleep, when I heard Daddy's playful voice and Linda's giggles. I was sore that everybody else had been awake to greet Daddy.

“Hey there, Sleepy-head,” he said when I stepped into the room.

“Hey, Daddy,” I replied, climbing onto his right knee. Linda was sitting on his left one.

“Couldn't wait up for me?” he asked.

“I tried,” I said.

“Let me see that hand,” he said, taking my right hand into his. He studied the swollen hand. “That must've hurt.”

I glared at Frankie. “Yes, sir. It did.”

“Guess you won't be sticking your hand into hives again anytime soon.”

“No, sir. I sure won't.”

Frankie grinned. Mama and Daddy laughed. Linda snuggled closer to Daddy and giggled some more. I continued to glare at Frankie. I couldn't see what everybody thought was so funny.

Daddy had changed since he first left us in December. He was thinner. Malaria, he told Mama. I asked her what malaria was.

“A mosquito disease,” she said.

We'd had plenty of mosquitoes in Tennessee. They could leave big welts on a girl's ankles and belly. But I never knew bites could make a person lose weight. Daddy looked awfully thin to me. Like he hadn't had a hot biscuit or plate of gravy in a month of Sundays. Even his hair looked thinner. He had a worrisome look in his eyes, too. Like somebody who spent too much time reading and studying and still couldn't figure out the sum.

I was in the kitchen one afternoon when Daddy told Mama about a little girl he'd seen get blown up by a bomb. That troubled him. It troubled me too, after I heard about it.

Daddy said the girl would come to the camp, and he and the other soldiers gave her C rations, pennies, gum, or candy, whatever they had. Frankie and I liked to get into Daddy's C rations, too. Not because the food tasted good. It was really awful. Most of it smelled and looked like cat food. We just liked the cans because they were painted army green. When we ate from them, we pretended to be soldiers in the jungles, just like Daddy.

Daddy leaned his chair back on two legs as he took a draw from his cigarette. A little bit of the Pet milk he'd poured over his bowl of cobbler earlier had turned the color of peaches.

“The Viet Cong strapped a bomb around her,” Daddy said, recalling the moment he'd seen the little girl explode. Mama stood by the
kitchen sink, drying a plate, listening to Daddy. She didn't say a word. “She was just a little girl, about Linda's size,” Daddy said. “She was always asking me for pennies, for gum. They strap these kids with bombs and send them into our camps. There's nothing we can do.”

Daddy took another drag from his cigarette and mashed the end of it into his plate. Mama just kept drying dishes. I studied the sadness on my daddy's face. He looked defeated. Tired. Plumb worn-out. I walked over and wrapped my arms around his neck from behind. He patted my hands. “Hey there, Sissy,” he said.

“Hey, Daddy,” I replied.

“Wanna go for a ride?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Run go get Linda,” he instructed. “She can come with us.”

Daddy loved to take Linda and me riding on the moped in between the rows of pineapple fields near our house. He'd found the moped in a ditch one day and brought it home and fixed it up. If something had an engine, Daddy could get it to run. He'd spend hours lying on his back underneath a car, tinkering with its parts. I don't ever remember any car we ever owned breaking down. But Daddy always found some sort of reason to spend his Saturday afternoons underneath the car's hood. The only thing he seemed to love more than fixing car engines was driving cars. Fast. He and Mama shared that, too. Their lead-footed ways.

One day, back in 1957, it had gotten him into a mess of trouble and practically killed Granny Ruth. He had her in the passenger seat beside him when he was broadsided on a highway outside Knoxville. Granny Ruth was hurt real bad. She spent weeks lying in the hospital bed. Mama says Granny Ruth never did fully recover from that wreck. She died from a stroke in 1962, shortly before we left for Hawaii.

Mama didn't like Daddy taking us girls out on the moped. She wouldn't ride it with him except for a time or two, down to the end of the street. And she wouldn't watch as we whizzed in and out of
the red dirt roads of Wahiawa's pineapple fields. But Linda and I loved it. We squealed with delight, especially when Daddy revved up the engine.

“Faster, faster!” Linda would scream.

“Yeah, faster, faster!” I'd chime in.

Our hair, hers dark, mine blond, would whip every which way about our heads. Daddy would yell at us, “Hang on tight!”

Linda sat in front between his legs and gripped the bike's handles. Daddy kept one arm around her. I sat on the back, grasping his waist. Sometimes, when he wanted to go really fast, he'd have one of us wait in the fields while he took the other out. “Safer that way,” he said.

He wouldn't go far, but he'd go as fast as the bike would take him. It was probably only zero to thirty in five minutes, but Linda and I felt like we were going at the speed of light. It was better than a Scrambler ride at the fair. Plus, we got the extra kick of having Daddy all to ourselves.

During that time he was home in May 1966, Daddy took Linda and me for several rides in the pineapple fields. He took Mama fishing along Oahu's North Shore. And he tossed balls with Frankie in the driveway. He ate hot biscuits and milk gravy that Mama made.

Daddy didn't talk much of war or of Vietnam. Other than the story of the little girl, I never heard him mention it again. He cleaned his gear, shined his boots, and grew sadly quiet as it got closer to the time when he had to return. He didn't make me any more promises. But this time I wasn't worried about his leaving. He'd come home just like he'd said. I figured he'd be home again soon enough. So on May 20, 1966, I barely woke at all when Daddy came in to kiss me good-bye.

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