Carry Me Home (92 page)

“What about women?”

“We don’t provide any.”

“Ha! That’s not what I mean.”

They’d talked on. “Tuesday and Wednesday nights are reading and research nights. We tutor each other in everything from salesmanship to solar engineering to history. We’ve got remedial reading and math. Half the guys are taking correspondence courses. Look Gary, there’s two common denominators why anybody’s here. Every guy here is stuck. Caught. Snagged in a past experience. In the meaning they attach to it. If they weren’t stuck they wouldn’t be here. They wouldn’t work for room and board. And they’re all Nam vets. So when I talk about Tuesday and Wednesday being reading nights and Thursday being discovery night I’m talking about Southeast Asia, what it was to us, what it means to us, what really happened, what people think happened, how their thoughts impact upon us.”

“Okay. I got a million stories. Bitta bing, bitta bang.”

“Not stories,” Wapinski had said. “You’ve got to take a vow. That’s the one requirement.”

“A vow?!” Sherrick had rocked back. “Are you guys some kind of cult?”

Wapinski had shaken his head. “Repeat after me. I vow to strive to discover the truth—” Sherrick had half-heartedly repeated the phrase, “to become unstuck ...”

“... to become unstuck ...” Sherrick’s right hand had quivered. He hadn’t been sure if he was supposed to raise it up like a witness in a courtroom.

“... to grow, to expand beyond my self ...”

“... to grow, to expand beyond my self ...”

“... to encompass community, intellectual development, and spiritual awareness.”

Sherrick had laughed. It had seemed simplistic, silly.

In the barn, on his second discover night, Sherrick had been saying, barking, at the Slitter, “... seemed pretty fuckin real to me.”

“Fuckin real to me, too,” Mariano agreed.

“To me it was like a zoned-out nightmare,” Mark Renneau countered.

Bobby put his hand to his forehead. There had been verbal snipes all night. Bad feelings were developing. Some vets were tongue-tied. Mariano looked like he wanted to punch Renneau’s lights out. Norm Casper had turned his back to most of the group. There was an undercurrent of “fuck yous” and “fuck you, toos.” Wapinski had originally imagined these sessions as thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Instead he saw anger, polarization. On no topic were the vets in total accord. Once opened up, every man had strong obstinate beliefs. “Let him finish reading,” Wapinski said.

“‘... moral horrors of the battlefield,’” Hacken read. “‘Though [the director] suggests the distinctive anarchic quality of jungle warfare, he misses an essential factor ... the paranoia that came from not knowing if the Vietnamese were friends or enemies ... the moral lines were never so clearly—and smugly—drawn as they are here ...’”

“For God fuckin sakes.” Sherrick exploded. “If we’re going to debate the moral lines of Viet Nam ... This is stupid. This is fuckin stupid. You guys are a bunch of fuckin idiots.” With that Sherrick walked out from behind the elevator, out to the middle of the floor, sneered at Wapinski, at everyone, and stormed out.

The next week Sherrick did not work in the fields. He had no interest in strawberries, grape vines, grains or vegetables. He did not work in the orchard, nor would he clean the Sugar Shack. He even declined to drive or ride shotgun in a delivery truck. For a time he watched Gallagher, Book and Bechtel assemble collectors, but to him the job was dull, something “any cretin could do.” And he did not like Book. Or Bechtel. To him all the vets were idiots, ants, slaves. He even asked Art Brown how he could slave for a white man after having slaved for white men in Viet Nam.

What Sherrick did was tail Wapinski. “Out to save the world, Bobby?” he chided Wap.

“Somebody better be,” Wapinski answered.

“You’re a throwback, Man. You belong to a different age. Bitta bing, bitta bang!”

“When I was in school,” Bobby said, “in my strength of materials class, there used to be a poster by the blackboard: ‘The only thing needed for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good people to do nothing.’”

“That’s what got us into Viet Nam in the first place. Bitta bing, bitta bang.”

It made the vets angry to watch Sherrick. They knew
they
were a team. His blatant defiance challenged them. To a man, since the arrival of the eighth or ninth vet, the peer pressure of everyone working, pulling his own weight, had made each fall in line. But not Sherrick. They saw him as an obnoxious slacker. They began to view him as the enemy.

Except Wapinski. “You satisfied with your life, Gary?”

Defensive, but hidden behind a smile. “Why not?”

“Where are you going, Gary? What’s your direction? What’s your target?”

“I’m not going anyplace. I’m fine right here. You said I didn’t have to work.”

“You don’t. I’m just askin.”

The next encounter. “Hey Gary, what are you afraid of?”

“Nothin.”

“You seem like you’re afraid to be a part of us. Man, you’ve been in the scariest situations in the world and you faced your fear. Face it now.”

“You don’t know diddly, Man.”

“Then tell me.”

“Someday. Maybe. Bitta bing, bitta bang.”

Then, on a Tuesday, over coffee, Sherrick. “You were an officer there, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And in your twenties?”

“Yup,” Bobby answered.

“I was too. In my twenties, not an officer. That’s a different experience than these kids. We were old enough to know better.”

“Yeah.” Bobby laughed. “I guess so. You want to come up to the Poundridge job?”

Sherrick shook his head.

“It’s an interesting job.”

Sherrick stepped back a few paces.

“Gary, you got any idea where you’re going?”

Sherrick didn’t answer.

“What’s keeping you back, Man? What’s holding you down? What do you need to change to get rid of it?”

Sherrick chuckled. But all he would answer was, “Bitta bing, bitta bang.”

The next day Bobby spent an hour with Sherrick in Grandpa’s office. “Why do you want to change, Gary?”

“I didn’t say I do.”

“It’s written all over you, Gary. You’re almost thirty-four, huh?”

“You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”

“You’re perfectly happy, huh? Degree? Law school? Being an ant? A slave?”

Sherrick smiled. “Maybe,” he said. He liked the tête-à-tête, the verbal head-to-head.

“Well, it’s up to you,” Bobby said. “But you know you can better manage your mind. You don’t have to be stuck in neutral. You don’t have to let others get to it.”

Sherrick snickered, “DAARFE-vader, huh?”

“It works for most of us. But you have to learn how to decide. That’s the first step.”

“Like to play in those stupid soccer games?”

“Sure. To play it right you’ve got to make decisions. That’s the beauty of it. And basketball. Everything is player-directed decision making. Yet it requires teamwork. Responsibility to the team.”

“Don’t tell me. When I was in school I had pro scouts after me.”

“So what happened?”

“Maybe I got drafted.”

“Maybe you didn’t really want to be there?”

“What the fuck do you know?”

“You didn’t try to go back. Since you’ve been here, you’ve never acted like you want anything. You don’t even stand like you want anything.”

“I don’t stand ...”

“That’s right. Your posture says, ‘Don’t give me the time of day.’”

“Then why do you?”

“Forget it, Gary. Forget me. Right now look at yourself. What do you see?”

“Whaaa-dd?”

“C’mon, Gary. Play my game. Tell me.”

“Tell you what? Like I hate my wife. Like I don’t have a wife anymore. That I don’t have any kids. Easy for you, Man. Your wife loves you. You got two kids.”

“How do you know she loves me?”

“I can see it.”

“If you wanted to feel loving towards your wife, if you wanted her to know it, how would you have to act? Make believe it’s a new wife.”

“I’d ... I’d ... Hmm. You know.”

“No, I don’t. It’s different for every individual.”

“Well, I’d ... I’d look at her more.”

“Okay.” Bobby pulled out a sheet of paper, wrote down, “Look at her more.” “What else?”

“I’d ah, assist her. You know, physically. Help her carry in the groceries.”

“Good.” Bobby wrote. “What else? This is your old wife. You want to change the way you feel from being angry at her to feeling loving.”

“Um. I’d ... I’d drop my facial expression. When I’m angry I get my face all knotted up.”

“Jaw tight, teeth clenched?”

“Yeah. My hands, too. I ball them into fists.”

“Show me.”

Sherrick hesitated, then made a fist.

“No,” Bobby said. “Stand up and show me the whole posture.”

Sherrick rose. “This is stupid.”

“Do it for me,” Wapinski said. “Okay,” he said as Sherrick rose, made fists, sneered. “Good. Now show me loose jaw and open hands.”

“Like this?” Sherrick loosened totally, not just fist and jaw but arms, shoulders, his entire face. He stood a little straighter.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Now, how do you feel?”

“I’m not angry,” Sherrick said.

“Okay,” Bobby said quickly. “Now angry again.”

Sherrick transformed to angry.

“Now loving.”

Sherrick transformed back.

“Angry,” Bobby said. Immediately Sherrick tightened. “Loving.” Quickly Bobby alternated. Then, “How did you feel each time?”

“Well,” Sherrick said. “I could put myself into those states.”

“You mean,” Bobby said, “you control the way you feel?”

“Well, right here.”

“But if you wanted to do it, you could?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Then, if you want to feel more loving with your wife, what you have to do is decide to be that way. You’d have to figure out why you want to be more loving. What’s good about it. What’s bad about not achieving it. If you physically transform to the attitude you want to have, you’ll have that attitude. Your mind will follow your body.”

“That’s too much, Man,” Sherrick said. “I don’t believe it.”

Bobby smiled. “Bitta bing. Bitta bang.”

The first of the barn trials were anything but. They were neither trial nor inquest; indeed, the first were not called trials but discovery exercises. As academic exercises they left much to be desired. As a “brain raid glue solvent,” they were ineffective and disappointing. That spring and summer the vets rambled from topic to topic, touching only surface images, the interpretation of the war in popular culture—the first films and novels—and how closely the vets felt these vehicles represented their own experiences.

“I wanta go back to that review of last month,” Mariano said. “I read it. I got some things to say about it.”

They were in the big barn as usual. Sherrick was still in the shadow of the Slitter. George Kamp had come down from Towanda. Tom Van Deusen and Steve Hacken were absent, trying to finish the Maxwell job, pushing hard to install the electronic control panel and make the final hookups before the building inspector arrived.

“It was in the February sixth issue,” Mariano said. “There was that stuff about moral horror, remember? And chaotic or hallucinogenic warfare.”

“Yeah,” Mark Renneau said. “That’s what it was like for me. One long cluster fuck of purple haze.”

“Naw,” Mariano said. “I got the two issues earlier than that one. Here. This one’s on the New Indochina War. Between Cambodia and Viet Nam. And this one’s all about Cambodia. ‘Land of the Walking Dead.’ It’s like these prove that we were right.”

“Bitta bing, bitta bang,” came quietly from the Slitter.

A few vets glanced over. Mariano gritted his teeth. Because he now worked in the office he saw more of Sherrick than the others. And he disliked him more. He disliked Sherrick’s attitude in the bunkhouse. The “house” was communal living. Of all the vets, only Sherrick was a slob. Thorpe had repeatedly told him to straighten up his rack, had helped him the first few times, had nearly lambasted him. “What are you going to do?” Sherrick had confronted Thorpe. He’d relished the antagonism. “Have Wapinski throw me out?” Thorpe had backed off. Most of the vets withdrew, distanced themselves from Sherrick. Even those who were less than neat, as if to heighten the contrast, had doubled their cleaning efforts.

“Commies against commies,” Emil Lorson said. “I hope they all kill each other.”

“Yeah,” agreed Ron Hull. “Why should we give a shit?”

“Yeah,” Mike Treetop concurred. “We all tried to save their silly asses. They want to kill each other, let em.”

“Naw,” Mariano said. “That’s not what I was goina say. I mean, maybe we oughtta let em, but see, like here, like this picture of this baby.” Carl held out the magazine. Wagner took it, looked, shook his head, passed it to Brown. “That baby was about as old as little Paulie. Man, that kid’s no commie.”

“That’s Asian, Man,” Renneau said. “That’s how they treat life. Shee-it, there’s like a billion people in China alone.”

“Yeah,” someone agreed. Most of the guys, however, were quiet, heads down, shaking, disagreeing but not overtly, saddened by the photograph of the bloody, dismembered, dead child.

“THAT—” the voice blasted from the Slitter, “is because of us. Because of America. Because we got involved. That war was a criminal enterprise foisted upon us and the Viets and Cambos, by a bunch of self-serving politicians and generals and by money-hungry defense contractors. What the fuck is the matter with you guys?! Why can’t you admit you were just cannon fodder? If it was up to me, I’d put every one of you fuckers on the stand ... make every one of us stand trial for our part in that carnage. The only people I have any respect for are the conscientious objectors. The rest of us ...” Like all the weeks before, Sherrick emerged, sneered, turned, stormed out.

“Hey,” Mariano yelled. “Bitta bing! Bitta bang!”

Gallagher, Wagner, Treetop, Lorson, others snickered, hooted.

“WHOA!” It was Wapinski’s turn to shout. “He just may have something there.”

“Ah, come on, Bobby!” Tony wanted the peer pressure to force Sherrick into line or from the fold.

“No,” Wapinski said calmly. “He actually may have something. And, every one of us vowed to discover the truth.”