Carry Me Home (103 page)

H
OW CAN I TELL
you the story here of Vu Van Hieu? It is long, complex, a story of woe, a story of courage. Late at night Bobby used to visit him in his cubicle in the old bunkhouse. Hieu would be sitting on the edge of his cot, chain smoking, staring fixedly at the cover of a closed dictionary, concentrating, seemingly absorbing the content by the power of his focus. Bobby would sit, maybe smoke a cigarette with Hieu, maybe say nothing for a while. Then they would talk about Viet Nam. Hieu told Bobby about his war, thirteen years in the ARVN, ’62 to ’75, about his imprisonment. “They say, ‘You come for three days. Three-day reeducation seminar camp.’ They keep me for three years. They keep me much longer but my wife’s father have some money to bribe the guards to let me escape. If I stay, if I not escape, I would not be alive. Sometime for two month they put me in a steel CONEX. You remember the steel CONEX box. My ankles in iron shackles. Eat only one bowl of rice each day. Two cups of water. You read report from the Aurora Foundation. That report has pictures of the CONEX they put me in. You know, they tie our elbows together. Lock us in under the sun for two month straight. Most men die. I can see all my bones because I have no muscle left. When the guard say, ‘Okay, your wife pay. You can escape tonight,’ I cannot go. I cannot stand up. I cannot crawl. I have no skin on the back of my leg, only scab. When I move they break. I cannot escape for three weeks until my wife’s brother come and carry me.

“Then I hide. All Viet Namese people suffer food shortages. Some say America has blocked everybody from giving food to Viet Nam. But why does Viet Nam need anyone to give it food? My country grow food for many millions more people than it has but the communists won’t let us grow food. No one want to work for the communists.”

Hieu seldom talked about himself to other vets. But he talked to Bobby, shared with Bobby his deep sense of shame for having left Viet Nam, his profound desire to return. “It take me nine time to escape Viet Nam. Nine time I bribe this official, that official, this boat captain, that river watcher. Eight time they catch us. Once they send me back to the seminar camp where they work people who have no more money for bribes. They starve them and work them until they die, then they throw them like cherry pits into the jungle.

“The communist always know when someone trying to escape. They always know how many to let be successful, how many to intercept. Half of my people die at sea. These boats very small. Just coastal fishing trawlers. Maybe one hundred people on one boat. No one can move. Some baby born on boat next to some old woman crapping or some old man seasick. Many boats sink. Many attacked by pirates who kill the men and children and take the young women.

“We should have fought the war different. We try to fight on fronts while the communists terrorize our rear areas. We should have fought that way too but LBJ say, ‘No Sir.’ If he said, ‘Okay,’ in 1965, there would be no CONEX boxes, no seminar camps, no pirates, no refugees.

“In Thailand I take classes in English and in American accounting practices. My wife die. My children in Viet Nam with their grandfather. You help me write to Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick at UN. You help me write to President Reagan. Because you are a citizen they must listen to you.

“Bobby, you help me go home. Someday—you hear my words—some motherfuck day, we go back and kick ass. Then I come back here with my children and my wife’s family and my children get American education. They think I’m Eastern! Bullshit! I am fundamental American values.”

T
HE WIND BLEW COLD.
The street was empty. RTL6764 waited. Gilmore had not been in but had been expected within a few minutes, yet the informer refused to wait on hold. Instead he’d walked upriver from the booth by the old two-lane steel truss bridge over Loyalsock Creek; had passed through the small mill area where many of the old brick buildings were now boarded up: had shied from the White Pines, worked his way through the tight, cramped streets of the millworker houses, uphill, past St. Ignatius, into the even more tightly packed homes of the minorities, to the phone booth at the edge of that neighborhood, beside the converted house that was The Church of the Golden Shep herd.

RTL6764 waited, stared back into the neighborhood at the dark angular forms with only an occasional light illuminating drab curtains hung in drab rooms. He stared at the dark rounded hulks of poorly maintained vehicles that lined the twisting darkened streets of the darkie neighborhood euphemistically labeled “minority homes” in a town much like his town. He turned to the booth, an open booth; they didn’t install the kind with accordion doors anymore, at least not in a darkie neighborhood. The wind gusted. A chill caught him, ran up his back, out his shoulders. He didn’t want to call. The excitement had gone out of it. But he was committed—for his people. For my people, he thought. He turned toward the neighborhood. The wind caught his face, made his eyes water, his lips sting. He eyed the houses, the vehicles, thought of the twisted path that had led his people, “only my people,” into the minority neighborhoods of the north, the south, the east, the west. Led them there, kept them there, he thought. Killin em. That’s what they doin. Nine black children in Atlanta, kidnapped, murdered. Half dozen still missin. Cuttin the hearts outta black men in Buffalo. Right down there in Johnstown, wastin black people. How that man put it? You pick up the paper, you read about blacks being killed here, being killed there. It does somethin to your brain. Tells you it’s huntin season on blacks all over again.

He stared into the closest illuminated window. He could see the forms of people moving, but through the curtain, the dirt-coated glass, he couldn’t tell if the forms were male or female. Yet he imagined an old woman, and children being scolded.

A dry, icy draft hit him, pushed him. He leaned into it. It pressed the cloth of his trousers tightly against his thighs and sucked the heat from his legs and his legs and feet were very cold. I done my part, he thought. I wasn’t no rear echelon mothafucka in Nam. I wasn’t no clerk or jerk diving for a bunker every time a mortar landed half a mile away. I picked up pieces. Human pieces. Policin up bodies, strippin em, searchin em, lookin for documents. Shee-it! Intelligence! Never cut out their hearts. They cut out their hearts in Buffalo. God! I know! I know somethin they don’t know. I know they feelin it. I know they felt it first time. First time you touched somebody you killed, you feel it, you feel it jumpin from them, feel it goin right inside you, right into your body. First time you feel it go in and spread throughout you like electricity, like heavy electric syrup. Then you don’t feel it no more. Then they aint nothin but cold meat. Pieces a cold meat. But it’s in you, takin you apart. Honkey racist murders in Buffalo goina die losin their hearts. And Bobby, dinky dau mothafucka, want “to interrupt
my
racism!”

“Internal Revenue. Criminal Investigations. Gilmore.”

He altered his voice. “Stan.”

“Yes.”

“R.T.L. 6764.”

“How ya doin, Good Buddy?”

“I’m freezing my ass off.”

Gilmore chuckled, asked, “What d’ya got?”

“Nothing new. They are still taking federal dollars ... ah, indirect recipients of federal funds. Two new guys this week. Both are on VA entitlements. That puts High Meadow in direct violation of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1972, doesn’t it?”

“Same as before. He’s not screening the participants?”

“He asks. But they’re not going to give up their entitlements. They earned them.”

“Do you have some names for me?”

“Yep. I even have their service numbers.” He turned out from the booth, looked back to the illuminated window. “When do I get paid?”

“Not until the whole thing’s settled.”

For a moment he was quiet. His daughter lived in a house like that, a house with imitation-brick siding, maybe with an old woman like that, scolding. “His attorney says they’re going to beat it,” he said.

“Not a chance,” Stan Gilmore answered.

As things got better, as they seemingly returned to normal, they went from bad to worse. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited High Meadow Corporation with twenty-two job safety violations, and proposed fines of $72,000. Among the “willful” infractions: not displaying an OSHA poster; not training workers how to handle hazardous chemicals (fertilizers); no guardrails on a section of the barn loft (Don Wagner figured they’d have doubled the fines had they ever seen Rick MacIntyre climbing down the Indian ladder at the gap); no safety gates and enclosed safety zone beneath the barn elevator; not using hard hats in the barn; debris on the barn floor; and improperly spliced electric extension cords.

“They might just as well fire me up,” Wapinski said to Mark Tashkor.

“Easy,” Mark told him. “Let me handle it. We’ve got two weeks to negotiate or file a written challenge. Just get something under the elevator, and paper the barn with their damn posters!”

“That’s not it, Mark. They’ll just keep coming back. They want to close us down. They’re killing me.”

“Let me handle it.”

“You know, I had a dream last night. I dreamed I was in supply and that I had two units out by Dak To. One was U.S., one was ARVN. And they were under siege. Both of em. They were being hit. Rockets, mortars, heavy caliber machine guns hidden in caves in the surrounding hills. And I was in supply back in the rear and it was a beautiful day. But I can hear all this activity on the net and these guys are calling for fire support and for resupply. And I was the wagon train; I was the wagonmaster. ‘Move it,’ I’m screaming. ‘Get this show on the road.’ But there’s a glitch. There’s this bureaucratic snafu from higher-higher that’s got us on hold. We can’t move until we get their authorization. We’re raring to go. Calls are coming in for medevacs. These guys are being picked apart and this is going on for days, weeks. And we can’t go out and help. We know they’re out of ammo. Out of food. We’re sitting on tons of it. But we’re not being allowed to go.”

Some things really did improve.

John Sr. sat on the sofa in Tony and Linda’s home. It was noontime, perhaps mid-August. Linda was at work. Gina and Michelle were at a friend’s. Tony was in the kitchen filling two tall glasses with ice, water and wedges of lemon. In an hour and a half Tony would be addressing a growers meeting in Rock Ridge about the expiration of credit reprieves and the deflation of land values. He’d researched the topic in depth, had accepted organizational help from Sara, financial explanations from Vu, and delivery assistance from Gary Sherrick. The example that Tony was using was that of a Midwest farm valued, two years earlier, at half a million dollars. Banks held liens on the land for $260,000 and the owner had been extended $100,000 in credit for improvements and equipment. With 30 percent deflation caused by the recession the farmer was overextended and the bank refused to extend or refinance the loans. Throughout the district others were in similar shape. Ramifications within the community included business closings and layoffs, and the closing of local banks because they had to charge higher rates to cover uncollectables, and new business was going elsewhere.

Tony’s speech and appearance—he was in a suit and tie, had cut his long hair and shaved—to this point had been the topic of conversation with his father.

“Hey Tony, what are these?”

“What’s what, Pop?” Tony reentered the room with the glasses.

“On the wall here?”

“Oh. My certificates.”

“You got three Purple Hearts!”

“Um-hmm.”

“And a Silver Star?! And a Viet Namese Cross for Gallantry?”

“Yeah. It seems like a long time ago.”

“Did you do the frames? These are nice frames.”

“Naw. Linda did em, Pop.”

“This is why you asked me over ... to show me this, huh?”

“Naw, Pop. I wish Mom came too, though. And I wish Linda were here. She’s on call, and you know, if a call comes in ...”

“You know ...” John Sr. said these words slowly. He looked directly at his son but he did not keep his eyes on Tony’s eyes. His throat was tight. “I’m very proud. Look at you. In a suit with a white shirt. Jo would be very proud of you, too. Tony, our Tony, off to deliver a speech. When I see you up there ... When I see what you and Bobby and all you men have done ... What you men are doing up there ... Tony, Jo is proud of you. And I’m very proud of you.”

“Aw ...” Tony stammered. It was, for him, a lot easier to hear criticism from his father, from anyone, than it was to hear compliments. “You know, without you, without all your help ... All the times you and Mom helped Linda when I wasn’t here ... And with the down payment and all ...”

“Hey. What are families for, right?”

“Yeah.”

“But you’ve done High Meadow on your own. You and Bobby. Since I retired, when I’ve been up there these last few months, for the meetings, I didn’t know any of that stuff about Viet Nam.”

“It seems nobody does.”

“I know,” John Sr. said. “I never said this before. I ... Each time I heard or read about World War Two, where I was on the march north through Italy, my insides would grind. I still get angry. I think, like you say up there, I’m still coming to terms with it. When I hear what those boys describe, I see myself. I can see that progression, the assimilating and reassimilating the experience and each added fact or new story. I’ve heard so much crap ... You boys talk about how good you were and everybody only talks about your atrocities. For me, for thirty-six years, it’s been the opposite. I’ve seen people, civilians, they could have been our family, I’ve seen them butchered. I’ve seen them cut down. I’ve seen them blown up. How do you assimilate that?

“I keep wishing,” John Sr. continued, “that I could do something more. I—I feel so limited. I tried to be the best person to you and your brothers and to your mother—”

“Pop, it showed. It always showed. Everyone always knew you
really
cared.” Tony checked his watch. “I gotta go, Pop.” He checked his watch again. He moved closer to his father. “Don’t tell Mom, yet, okay? But I’m bursting to tell you.”