Carry Me Home (20 page)

“Yes, I do. Family’s really important to me.”

“To me, too.”

“When I get married I want to have a better marriage than my folks.”

“But they had a lot of good years, you said.”

“Yeah. I think they did. They hardly ever talk to each other now. And my Pop and Aunt Helen ... my mother’s sister!”

“I know. You told me. I’d like to meet your grandmother someday. She sounds like such a neat lady.”

“Yeah. ‘Dignity. Always dignity.’” Tony chuckled but it was now a pained laugh. “Like my father.”

“But he was always good to you?”

“Oh yeah. When he was around. I mean it was usually like he was always working.”

“Well, that’s better than my dad. It was ... I mean, one day we were really close, then somehow it all changed. He became the strict disciplinarian. It was nothing for him to use his hand. If he got really angry he’d use his belt. I used to hate him for that.”

“Geez.”

“I mean I’ve just distanced myself from him. But anytime we’re together now there’s a wall. There’s a debate. If I don’t watch it, sparks fly.”

“That’d really bother me,” Tony said. “I mean, like if I had kids. I remember one time ... I shouldn’t tell you this.”

“Yes you should.”

“It was at Dai Do.”

“Where you got stabbed.”

“Um-hmm. But it was a lot earlier in the battle. I saw this guy grease a lady and three kids. Three beautiful little kids.”

“You mean kill them?!”

“Yeah.”

“What did they do to him? Did they charge him ...?”

“No. Linda ...”

“I think those are war crimes and men like that should be—”

“Whoa! He wasn’t one of ours.”

“Who?”

“Look, I’ll tell you the story, then you’ll understand.”

“But ...”

“This happened to me so just listen.” Linda slid to Tony’s side. As he spoke he stared at the tent roof. “We came on to this village, you know, a small cluster of hootches. Shacks really. And we were catching some fire from the surrounding area so we went through the normal steps—yelling for the civilians to come out, to get out in the open, to get out of the area. I mean we knew there was like a battalion of NVA—”

“Viet Namese?”

“North Viet Namese Army. Communist soldiers. They were in the area, but you know, it all went down okay. The people came out, we dumped in a shitload of firepower, and we went into the ville. And while we were in there, I mean there’s this hootch in front of me, across a walkway ... kind a path, like an aisle between the hootches. There’s a double row running this way and a perpendicular row like this and I’m across the intersection of the two paths from this one hootch. And I’m trying to look down both paths and my platoon’s just coming in behind me. There isn’t any fire in the village but there’s fire all over the god damned place. And this is my sector of responsibility, you know, and I’m really nervous. People are counting on me.”

“Where were the children?”

“I’ll get to that. I’m looking down one way and out of the corner of my eye I see something move and I spin an snap in—”

“Snap ...”

“I’ve dropped to one knee and snapped my rifle up to my shoulder ready to fire—locked, loaded, safety’s off, my finger’s on the trigger. This is a combat situation. There’s shit flyin. And coming out of this hootch is a Viet Namese man, like twenty yards away. He doesn’t have a uniform on or anything like that, but he’s got on this really heavy leather belt. I remember seeing the belt because I never saw a Viet with one like it. And this dude’s running. I mean he’s running like hell and you know your natural instinct is to grease the fu—you know, to shoot the bastard. But I didn’t. I hesitated because this guy didn’t have a weapon. Or I didn’t see one on him. I didn’t know, you know, was he NVA, VC, or was he just a peasant who freaked out. See, if he was uniformed, I’d of busted caps at him. Or if he had a weapon. But I didn’t know, and when I decided to shoot he was already down the path and out behind a hootch and gone.”

“Well, thank goodness.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said too. I thought maybe he had a weapon under his shirt or something, but maybe not. And I thought if he had a weapon he’d probably have shot me first while I was looking up the other path and he’d probably been watchin me, waiting until I was looking the other way. Maybe he was a trail watcher, you know, counting us. Still, I thought I did the right thing. You know, you’re supposed to identify your target before you shoot. We weren’t trigger happy like some of the stories I hear now, back here. You identify your target and you see beyond the target too so you don’t hit somethin you don’t want to hit. And I reported it and the gunny says, ‘Okay.’ And I say, ‘I think I shoulda shot im.’ And the gunny says, ‘Naw. You maintained your presence of mind by not firing because you couldn’t fully identify the target.’ I felt okay about it until later that day and we’re like at the next ville up the line and the shit’s really hitting the fan. We’ve got platoons to each side and we’re going in and the NVA—this is an old move—they’d like taken all the civilians and had them huddled in an irrigation canal and all of a sudden they make the civilians run out toward us because that makes a human screen for them to maneuver behind. But we knew it cause they’ve done it to us before so we’re yelling at the people to split and come like in two columns forward and we’re going to go up the middle with one squad while one squad watches each of the columns to make sure they’re really all unarmed civilians. And there’s one family just back by the canal—just this lady and three little kids—and they froze and I can see this guy on the other side, like a direct line from me through them to him and he’s armed, he’s got an AK and I’m running forward, me and Manny, and we’re yelling for them to get down but all four of em are frozen like statues and then this motherfucker cuts loose with his AK and he’s not even aiming at us but only at them and he cuts them to pieces, and we don’t even get off a shot because we’re diving for cover and just ... just so horrified. But I got a glimpse of him and I’m sure he had on this big leather belt. And I fuckin sat there and cried. I’m sorry ...”

“Oh Tony. Tony.” Linda had tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry too. You shouldn’t of ever had to see that. Oh God.”

In the morning they made love again, laughed again, slept till noon, got up, dressed, built a big fire and made brunch. As he watched Linda turning flapjacks and frying hamsteaks and perking coffee, as he saw her settle into the job, mastering the art of keeping all three pans cool enough so the food didn’t burn, as he looked at her auburn hair just reaching her shoulders, as he caught the opalescence from her eyes, Tony thought with every ounce of his being a thought he’d had for eight weeks, a thought that had become stronger with every moment he was with her:
I’m going to marry you Linda Balliett. I’m going to marry you someday.

Pisano stood barefoot, crouched, in only his skivvies, in the dark. The tile floor felt cold. He did not remember getting up. The momentary release from the confines of the city and the Corps that he had experienced during the camping trip had evaporated. His dreams had returned. Again and again he awoke sitting up, snapping in, or on his feet, poised. His heart would be racing, his body coated in sweat, his breath exhausting like bellows. But unlike his earlier dreams, though these were in full color, taste, sound and smell, though these still terrified him because he could not control them, these vanished the moment he woke and he could not recall details.

Chris Crocco was snoring. The night before had been a late night, a one-day-early celebration of Tony’s twenty-first birthday, and the 193d birthday of the United States Marine Corps. There had been no notifications on Saturday and only one burial that Gene Lambert had handled. Linda had gone to French Creek to prepare for Tony’s Thanksgiving visit with her family. So Tony, Chris, Lambert, and Reggie Williams, decked out in dress blues, had all escorted Lieutenant Kevin Mulhaney and his fiancée to a Marine Corps ball at a downtown hotel where Chris and Reggie had gotten drunk and obnoxious and nearly ripped Mulhaney’s fiancée’s dress off her shoulders and Lambert and Tony, drunk as they too were, had had to escort Crocco and Williams out, then return and apologize and listen to Mulhaney first quietly threatened them with “serious consequences,” then in the foyer lambast them until Lambert let loose with a projectile vomit that splattered over most of the carpet and soaked Mulhaney’s spit-shined shoes and half his pant legs. Before Mulhaney could come completely unglued, Tony had whisked Gene out of the hotel, into a cab, and back to their barracks.

Tony straightened, arched his back. His head ached a vodka-and-whiskey-sours headache. He glanced toward the noise of Crocco’s snoring in the dark and the thought popped into his mind that it was not Crocco there in the dark but Rick, without legs. Pisano shook, brought his hands up, dragged his fingers down his face. He shook again, inhaled deeply. Then he went to the stereo, picked up the unopened cards and letters that had arrived late Saturday, and went to the head.

Tony sat on the toilet. The glare of the fluorescent lights felt like it was ricocheting inside his eyeballs. He squinted. There was a card from his mother and father, nothing elaborate but actually signed by both instead of by Josephine for both; a card from Uncle James and Aunt Isabella, one from Annalisa, and one from Aunt Helen. There were letters from his brother John and from Jimmy Pellegrino. He decided to save Pellegrino’s. As he opened his brother’s he thought about not having told any of them about Linda. The thought angered him, the thought that he needed to justify Linda to these people. His next thought, of this lovely girl who actually liked him, maybe loved him, this woman in whose presence he was in a perpetual state of both pride and sexual excitement—this thought eased all the pain. He fantasized about her and put the letters and cards down and masturbated. Then he returned to the letters.

Tony—

Happy birthday and congratulations. You’ve made it to 21. Now you’re truly a man.

Tony, you forgot Jo’s birthday. That was really a bad move. You were the only one who forgot. She was 52 on the 17th. You should call her and wish her a belated birthday. You know that she worries about you all the time. I think even more now than when you were overseas. You don’t see it because you’re never here, but her worrying is giving her an ulcer and I think it’s driving Pop insane. Maybe she’s got a reason to worry. When you were home on leave this last time you were pretty weird and I think that scared Jo.

Uncle James heard from Jimmy and it sounds like he’s got an easy job. I think he said a “getting over” job where he doesn’t have to work too hard and where he’s not where they’re shooting all the time.

I want to back up a minute. You should know that Jo and Pop know that you and Jimmy were smoking marijuana out back on the toolshed. Good Grief, Tony, couldn’t you be more discreet! I mean the stuff is illegal. That was really a stupid move. You’d better set it straight with the folks or you’re going to kill Jo with worry. Well, I just wanted to wish you a happy 21st. Hope it’s GREAT!

John

Sin Loi
, motherfucker, Tony thought. He’s worse than an old woman. Shit. I’d better call her. Tony opened Jimmy P.’s letter. It was neatly written and clean, unlike most letters written in the field, and decorated with three beautiful fine-line drawings: one of a water buffalo pulling a plow, one an old man’s portrait, and finally a sketch of Jimmy holding a small Viet Namese child on his lap.

Hey Breeze—

Shitload of news here. I’m in a hootch in my own ville. How do you like that! We’re part of Operation Le Loi—Accelerated Pacification. Really it’s not new but only CAP (Combined Action Program) expanded and under a new name. It’s working as well as the old CAP program and living and working with these people is really terrific. This, to me, is what the whole thing is about. While I was on leave the NVA sprang another offensive but it failed miserably. The villagers here don’t want to have anything to do with them because of last Tet and then the May offensive. It makes my job so easy. We’re part of 4th CAG (Combined Action Group). I think 4th CAG’s plan calls for two dozen Marine rifle squads to be paired with a like number of Viet Popular Force platoons—each pair assigned to its own village. 4th is responsible for Quang Tri–Dong Ha–Cam Lo area.

Anyway, I really love working with these people and the villagers are great. The sketches are by Li, my hootch maid and best friend. She’s eleven, very pretty, and as you can see very talented. She’s blind in her left eye and a bit of a gimp from having stepped on a mine two years ago—a mine some jackass forgot he’d put out one night on ambush. She and her brother both took pellets from a claymore. The jackass, probably some army stooge, didn’t aim it right otherwise Li would have been history. Li’s really a neat kid and if I could I’d adopt her. Can you imagine the cow Isabel would have over that! Ha!

Other things going on. You know LBJ ordered a halt to all air, naval, and artillery bombardments of the North. What a dumb shit. Intel already is showing a major NVA build up in and just above the Z, and major new supply shipments coming in through Laos. Hq of 3d Marine Div is really pissed. These guys know it’s only a matter of time before we begin getting hit again. Already, in one week, the number of incidents around here, all along the Ben Hai River, and—you’re goina love this—around Dai Do, have increased. Same time, our CAPs are getting better and we, along with a few army units and some regular ARVN, are providing security for about 70% of all of I Corps’ three million civilians. If Nixon undoes Johnson’s fuck-ups we’ve got a good chance of ending this stupidity—forever.

Hey, by the way, I got a letter from Red and she said to say hi to you. She also wrote saying Stacy was asking for you, that if you call her she might say yes to going out!

Okay, signing off from this beautiful place—it really is a beautiful country.

J

Four hours later Tony called Linda at her parents’ home in French Creek. After a brief exchange of pleasantries Linda would only say, “We’ll talk when I get back to Philly.”