Born on the Fourth of July (11 page)

Suddenly it was very quiet and he could feel them looking right at him, sitting there in his wheelchair with Eddie all alone. It seemed everyone—the cub scouts, the boy scouts, the mothers, the fathers, the whole town—had their eyes on them and now he bent his head and stared into his lap.

The commander left the podium to great applause and the speeches continued, but the more they spoke, the more restless and uncomfortable he became, until he felt like he was going to jump out of his paralyzed body and scream. He was confused, then proud, then all of a sudden confused again. He wanted to listen and believe everything they were saying, but he kept thinking of all the things that had happened that day and now he wondered why he and Eddie hadn't even been given the chance to speak. They had just sat there all day long, like he had been sitting in his chair for weeks and months in the hospital and at home in his room alone, and he wondered now why he had allowed them to make him a hero and the grand marshal of the parade with Eddie, why he had let them take him all over town in that Cadillac when they hadn't even asked him to speak.

These people had never been to his war, and they had been talking like they knew everything, like they were experts on the whole goddamn thing, like he and Eddie didn't know how to speak for themselves because there was something wrong now with both of them. They couldn't speak because of the war and had to have others define for them with their lovely words what they didn't know anything about.

He sat back, watching the men who ran the town as they walked back and forth on the speakers' platform in their suits and ties, drinking their beer and talking about patriotism. It reminded him of the time in church a few Sundays before, when Father Bradley had suddenly pointed to him during the middle of the sermon, telling everyone he was a hero and a patriot in the eyes of God and his country for going to fight the Communists. “We must pray for brave boys like Ron Kovic,” said the priest. “And most of all,” he said, “we must pray for victory in Vietnam and peace throughout the world.” And when the service was over, people came to shake his hand and thank him for all he had done for God and his country, and he left the church feeling very sick and threw up in the parking lot.

After all the speeches, they carried him back down the steps of the platform and the crowd started clapping and now he felt more embarrassed than ever. He didn't deserve this, he didn't want this shit. All he could think of was getting out of there and going back home. He just wanted to get out of this place and go back right away.

But now someone in the crowd was calling his name. “Ronnie! Ronnie!” Over and over again he heard someone shouting. And finally he saw who it was. It was little Tommy Law, who had grown up on Hamilton Avenue with all the rest of the guys. He used to hit home runs over Tommy's hedge. Tommy had been one of his best friends like Richie and Bobby Zimmer. He hadn't seen him for years, not since high school. Tommy had joined the marines too, and he'd heard something about him being wounded in a rocket attack in the DMZ. No one had told him he was back from the war. And now Tommy was hugging him and they were crying, both of them at the bottom of the stage, hugging each other and crying in front of all of them that day. He wanted to pull away in embarrassment and hold back his feelings that seemed to be pouring out of him, but he could not and he cried even harder now, hugging his friend until he felt his arms go numb. It was so wonderful, so good, to see Tommy again. He seemed to bring back something wonderfully happy in his past and he didn't want to let go. They held on to each other for a long time. And when Tommy finally pulled away, his face was bright red and covered with tears and pain. Tommy held his head with his hands still shaking, looking at him sitting there in disbelief. He looked up at Tommy's face and he could see that he was very sad.

The crowd had gathered now watching the two friends almost with curiosity. He tried wiping the tears from his eyes, still trying to laugh and make Tommy and himself and all the others feel more at ease, but Tommy would not smile and he kept holding his head. Still crying, he shook his head back and forth. And now, looking up at Tommy's face, he could see the thin scar that ran along his hairline, the same kind of scar he'd seen on the heads of the vegetables who had had their brains blown out, where plates had been put in to replace part of the skull.

But Tommy didn't want to talk about what had happened to him. “Let's get out of here,” he said. He grabbed the back handles of the chair and began pushing him through the crowd. He pushed him through the town past the Long Island Railroad station to the American Legion hall. They sat in the corner of the bar, watching the mayor and all the politicians. And Tommy tried to keep the drunken Legion members from hanging all over him and telling him their war stories.

The tall commander, who was now very drunk, came over asking Tommy and him if they wanted a ride back home in the Cadillac. Tommy said they were walking home, and they left the American Legion hall and the drunks in the bar, with Tommy pushing his wheelchair, walking back through the town where they had grown up, past the baseball field at Parkside School where they had played as kids, back to Hamilton Avenue, where they sat together in front of Peter Weber's house almost all night, still not believing they were together again.

I
AM WATCHING
the young couple walk along the beach. They are walking on the wet sand just where the waves wash up to the shore. The girl is holding his hand and she is laughing. Oh I want so badly to be that guy with her. I want to feel, I want to feel again, I want to walk with a woman, I want to be just like that guy who is walking with her along the beach. Please God, I say, I want it back so bad. I will give anything, anything, just to be inside a woman again. I think of approaching them. It would be so difficult. What could I say? “Excuse me, would you like to pull my chair across the sand? Or maybe you'd like to carry me over your shoulders and I could hold your hand laughing …” NO NO NO NO, that's not right! That's not fair! I want it back! They have taken it, they have robbed it, my penis will never get hard anymore. I didn't even have time to learn how to enjoy it and now it is gone, it is dead, it is as numb as the rest of me.

I watch the other women now. I see their long slim legs standing pretty. I start to get excited, my mind racing with fantasies, and then the hurt comes.…

Oh God, I never dreamed that this could possibly happen, that this part of me that had made me feel so good when I was young, that this wonderful thing that no one ever seems to want to talk about … has gone, has suddenly disappeared. It has happened so fast, so quickly. What can I do, how can I ever get it back? Everyone says it is such an important thing, but nobody wants to talk about it. The Church says if you play with it, it is a sin. Now I can't even roll on top of a basketball, I can't do it in the bathtub or against the tree in the yard. It is over with. Gone. And it is gone for America. I have given it for democracy. It is okay now. It is all right. Yes it is all right. I have given my dead swinging dick for America. I have given my numb young dick for democracy. It is gone and numb, lost somewhere out there by the river where the artillery is screaming in. Oh God oh God I want it back! I gave it for the whole country, I gave it for every one of them. Yes, I gave my dead dick for John Wayne and Howdy Doody, for Castiglia and Sparky the barber. Nobody ever told me I was going to come back from this war without a penis. But I am back and my head is screaming now and I don't know what to do.

Every night after he had been to Arthur's Bar, he would push up his old man's wooden ramp. He would stop at the top in his chair, knocking the big blue milk can into the bushes, cursing under his breath and opening the screen door that his old man would leave unbolted. It was always two or three in the morning by then and he would try to slip into the house without waking anybody even though he could barely push the chair. Every night he stopped next to the crucifix and stuck his fingers into the holy water. Oh Jesus, he mumbled to himself, you gotta help me, you gotta find me a woman, someone to love this broken body of mine. He would make the sign of the cross with the holy water just as he had done when he was a kid. Oh Jesus, please Jesus, you gotta help me, you gotta give me strength. This broken body ain't gonna mend and it's gonna be this way for a long time and you gotta help me now Jesus you gotta help me somehow. Sometimes the dog would come up to him and he would tap it softly on the head. Well, here's a real friend, someone I can count on. He would turn the chair and push it down the narrow hallway, past the bookshelf, banging his hand against the wall, cursing, then pushing the chair angrily into his room. He would stay up all night sometimes, sitting by the typewriter, trying to forget the war, the wound, by putting words down on paper.

there was a soldier

tapdancing softly in the rain

above the coffin

six feet above, the people praying

They had to carry him out of Arthur's Bar one night. The people were still dancing and the band was blasting really loud and he was screaming. There was a girl. He wanted to dance with her and squeeze her, kiss her soft face and take her home.
Here, don't worry about the chair, we can leave it here, we can go to your apartment and I can take your clothes off. I can lie with you and stroke your long slim body. I can kiss you and make love to you. We can make babies and I can tell you about the war. We can make lots of babies.

He was very drunk, drunker than he had ever been. The whole place was spinning and it became very hard to hear anything but a great rushing sound that roared in his ears like a terrific storm. “You got to get out of here,” they were telling him. “You got to get in the car and go home.” They slowly lifted the body into the small car. He was laughing now, laughing and singing Irish songs. “Hurry up now,” he could hear them saying. “Hurry up now and we'll get you back home.” They all seemed to look like funny cartoon characters moving the numb limbs of his lower part into the front seat of the car. “That's right, that's good now,” they were saying. Some girl was laughing in the back seat and the driver told her to shut up. “Are you okay, is everything all right?” said his friend.

“He's really drunk, really smashed,” said the girl. “We got to get him home right away.”

“How are his legs? Are his legs okay?”

The rubber urine bag. He moved his hand slowly down his leg to the rubber urine bag. It was as hard as a rock and his pants were soaked and it was all slowly soaking into the seat.

“He's pissed all over the fucking seat,” said the girl. “What should we do?”

“Get him home. Drop him off.”

They got him to the house and lifted him out into his chair and there was the front seat of the car all soaked. It was very late and the young girl almost seemed in a panic. The two boys pushed him up the wooden ramp his father had built with his own hands. He had put it all together just before he came home from the hospital. His old man had worked long and hard on the ramp to make it just right for his son who had just come home from the war. It was a piece of art, just like the special room with the shower. Every piece had been cut to fit and there were two long smooth handrails. The whole thing was painted red like the house. The old man had worked hard on the ramp, like he had worked hard in the food store for twenty-five years, like he worked hard at everything he ever did in his life.

His mother screamed when he came in. She was still screaming hysterically when the old man bent down and lifted him up onto the little bed. He laid the body gently down and began to hook up the plastic tube. Then he took the piss-soaked pants off and undid the rocklike rubber piss bag from his boy's leg.

“I'm fucked up, I'm fucked up,” the boy was saying.

His mother went racing in and out of the room. “He's drunk, he's drunk,” she repeated to the old man. “We've got a drunk for a son.”

The old man didn't seem to hear her. He grabbed a warm washcloth and began scrubbing his son. The last thing he did was to connect the rubber tube that went into the boy's penis to the long plastic tube that went into the bag on the side of the bed. That was what the nurses in the hospital had taught them to do. It was very important to connect the rubber tube in the boy's penis to the plastic tube when he went to bed at night. So that everything would run okay. So that everything would be all right. So he did it just the way they had told them and after pulling the sheets and covers up over the body and just below the shoulders of his son, the old man walked out of the room.

The lights went out in the house. The boy turned slowly over until he had propped himself up on both elbows with his head pushed down into his pillow. He wanted to forget the terrible night. He wanted to forget it and everything else, the numb legs, the unfeeling numbness. He was lost, more lost than he had ever been in his life. Lost in some kind of limbo land of the dead. He wanted to explode, to get out of this crazy numb body and be a man again. He wanted to be free again, to walk in his back yard on the grass. He wanted to run down to Sparky's and get a haircut, he wanted to play stickball with Richie, to swing the bat, to feel the gravel on Hamilton Avenue beneath his feet again. He wanted to stand up in the shower every morning with the hot water streaming down his back and off his legs.

It was now very clear that this thing was final like death.

No one, he thought, ever wanted to think about final things, dead things, things that ended abruptly or could not be explained. Once someone died, he thought, people just put them in the ground, they put them in the ground and stood above the grave saying words that helped explain why there was an end to the person, words that were beautiful like the flowers and the big stone, words that helped others realize that it wasn't the end, but only the beginning of a wonderful thing. It was so easy for them to say the words, to deny the finality. Why weren't they saying the words over his bed? Why weren't they telling him that this whole thing, this whole crazy numb thing, wasn't final? But for him there were no words and no people, nothing to tell him things would be beautiful again. This end was no beginning. It was starting to become very clear that there would be no change in his condition, no reconciliation with the half of his body that seemed so utterly lost forever. He was in the rain, trapped, and there was no one. It was ugly and cold and final.