Twelve Months (8 page)

I walked for a while. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure how long. As I entered one of the shoddier markets, I noticed an older man selling American dog tags. For a moment, I lost my breath and felt an old rage begin to surface. But I stopped myself and walked away.
Bella and I are here to put the pain behind us, not create more.
It's no longer my fight,
I told myself and felt relieved. Even in my diminished condition, I made record time back to the hotel.

Bella had been waiting, worried.

“Sorry…” I began.

“No,” she barked. “You had my stomach in knots. And besides, I thought we were supposed to walk this one together?”

“I know, but…”

“But nothing,” she interrupted, her voice finally returning to normal. “This is my honeymoon, too, so promise me we won't spend another moment apart.”

“I promise.”

I kept apologizing through the first half of dinner and spent the second half explaining what I'd experienced. My obvious relief removed the nervousness in her eyes.

The hotel advertised dinner in a romantic and stylish atmosphere, which provided good dining options at reasonable prices. I hardly touched a bite and even stayed away from the water and ice. To be on the safe side – and still holding on to some old, misinformed beliefs – I drank an expensive imported beer. Bella reluctantly followed my lead. Though driven by the American dollar, the wait staff was doting. As I played with my chopsticks in a bowl of white rice, Bella asked, “Is that all you're going to eat while we're here?”

“No. I spotted those blue tins of Swedish butter cookies in the gift shop. I plan to pick up a few before we turn in tonight.”

She shook her head and started to chuckle, but stopped. Her face changed. “Is it your stomach? Are you feeling ill?”

“No, no. It's definitely the food,” I confirmed. “The Vietnamese cuisine has never agreed with me.” But it was a lie. The cancer was doing a tune on my entire digestive system and it didn't matter what the cuisine was – I wasn't going to dare take another bite.

The next morning, we headed north to Danang by car. Even with Bella's soothing words, it had been years since I felt that scared. In fact, I didn't remember Dr. Rice's prognosis causing the bone-chilling panic I now felt.

“I'm right here,” she whispered, and I could feel her trying to offer whatever strength she possessed behind her nervous mask.

On the outer edges of the city, the landscape of the countryside was green and calm. There were no explosions, no smoke; no impending doom waiting around the next corner. Once a living hell, the jungle was now a place of beauty and serenity. There were children playing, men and women tending to their rice fields and livestock. Dressed in their cone-shaped peasant hats, sarongs and bamboo sandals, they worked the same way they had for centuries – with oxen-drawn plows.

We passed one small village after another, each populated with stilted one-room huts. The driver went slow – so slow, in fact, that I wondered whether Bella had given him instructions before we left. The people were no longer in hiding, but coming out into the open to greet us. A few times we even stopped to say hello. Several of the locals met us on the roads; others, in the middle of their tiny villages. I tried desperately to look at this world with a different set of eyes, and for a while, I was doing well.

We were just outside Danang when the faint sound of a bell coming through the village startled me. I tried to conceal my anxiety, but Bella's hand tightening in mine told me she knew.

“Remember, I'm right here with you,” she said.

Then I saw it. The bell was tied to a goat's neck. I took a few deep breaths and a long hard look. I needed to brand a different perspective into my psyche. This was my last chance to make new memories and recall this land in a totally different light. I was here to create a different picture, a kinder perspective, and I wasn't about to waste it. Although many of my feelings were engrained, there was also a chance to release some deeply disturbing feelings; feelings that served no purpose but to silently gnaw away and continue to destroy any real sense of peace.

As we made our way into another village, the smell of damp earth and the sun on my face pushed me back into 1968. A pig snorted in a nearby pen. A woman, washing clothes by hand, sang while she did her chores. Our eyes met and she smiled. I smiled back, but felt like puking.

Another hundred yards and we were standing on the very spot where my best friend had lost his life. For whatever reason, I thought I might actually feel the presence of Marc Suse when I reached it, but my friend wasn't here and I was grateful for it.

A small dog scampered out from beneath one of the huts and my stomach turned. I gasped for air twice and felt the world start to spin when Bella grabbed my shoulders and peered into my eyes.

“It's okay, hon,” she assured me in her sweetest voice, “nothing bad is going to happen. We're here to make peace.”

I think I smiled at her, but my mind was reeling out of control. Like a well-planned ambush, it all came back to me in one sudden and violent moment. Once again, I could picture everything as clearly as I did back in '68…

Wet – everything was wet, which is pretty ironic considering it was hell on Earth. The fear was nearly paralyzing, fighting an enemy that looked no different from our ally. Women and children were as lethal as any man; people fighting for their survival, while we simply fired at anything that moved in front of us. We were boys who were called forward as men by a country that would later despise our every move. Our greatest fear was that the twelve months spent in the bush would become who we were and not just what we'd been forced to do.

The tastes of sulfur and mud came back, as though they were still packed in my nasal cavity. The disturbing sounds of shelling pierced the air; grown men screaming, calling for “Mommy,” while the color in their faces drained out of them and the world turned cold. The horrid sights of healthy men cut to pieces by machine gun fire, or vanishing by taking one wrong step, appeared before me once again. But the worst were the smells. The smells of charred human flesh were so vulgar that it made my skin crawl; a nightmare made complete by the rancid odors of a smoking corpse, its eyes open and teeth bared.

My buddies – men I'll never forget, faces I wish I could – the best of them perished in a dense patch of jungle that no one ever cared about. Like me, those who made it out might have been tasked with the hardest mission of all – living with all we saw; all we suffered; all we caused.

And then it came into focus, the day that had tormented me for my entire life.

Led by our platoon sergeant, Ruggiero, we were humping through the bush one morning, just talking and laughing. Suse was smoking a butt, his sleeves rolled up revealing his tattoo; a U.S. flag crossed with the flag of Italy, the word “Goombah” etched beneath it. Cabral was going on about fast cars and how he was going to race when we got home. I looked over at Cal. As usual, he was silent and distant. He'd gotten his girlfriend, Karen, pregnant before we shipped out and it haunted him something awful. He probably endured more pain than any of us. And when Karen had their daughter, it was even more difficult for him.

We were strolling along, when all of a sudden a single shot rang out. A sniper!

Suse was my best friend, something any rational man should avoid during war. And he paid back the favor exactly the way I should have expected. He died a quick and violent death. He took that sniper's round right in the forehead and that was it. Such a death wasn't as dramatic as most folks imagined. We were talking and laughing one second, and an echo later, he collapsed onto the red mud like a dropped bag of bricks. The moments following this played out, and still do, like some psychedelic slide show – our squad firing wildly, the vegetation all around us flying into the air, as though some demented sushi chef had been cut loose from the asylum…

I could no longer hold back. I dropped to my knees and mourned my friend's useless death. In the distance, I could hear Bella crying with me. While my body convulsed, I cried so hard and for so long that I believe I might have actually made peace with the same patch of earth I'd once helped destroy.
How could we have committed such horrors against each other?
I questioned. Four decades later, the answer seemed so obvious.
Because we thought we were separate. We thought we were superior.

I remained on my knees for a while, paying homage to my deceased comrade. I pictured Suse's face one last time; his forehead tanned and smooth, his cocky smile juggling a cigarette.
I'll be seeing you again soon, buddy
, I silently promised.
Real soon.

While my wife waited patiently for me to return to the present, I considered the price my friends and I had paid. The effects of Vietnam had been devastating.

When I got home, life was nothing more than another test of survival. I married my sweetheart, Bella, and returned to work at McKaskies, but I was lost.

For five solid years, though I tried like hell to hide it, I felt so guilty for coming home unscathed – which I now know couldn't have been any further from the truth. I felt incapacitated for years. There was a force that pulled at me and though I didn't want to go, my tired mind gave in. The tunnel of depression was so dark that I could see no end. Carrying a tremendous weight upon my shoulders, I only wished to rest, perhaps sleep forever, but the fear of staying made me forge ahead. I sensed there were others in the tunnel, but a vicious loneliness tore at my soul. Each step was agonizing, as I went nowhere. I wondered if anyone even knew I was lost; if anyone even knew how to pull me out. Many times, a tormenting fear welled up inside of me. I'd reached despair and questioned whether it was the end. But I also wondered,
What if it's one more step?
But it was more than one more step. It took years of small, cautious steps and the love of a compassionate, understanding woman to finally guide my heart and mind back home.

“You okay?” I heard someone ask.

I looked up to find Bella standing by my side, as she had throughout our entire life together. Her face was pale and drawn. She looked like she'd been through a war of her own. I grabbed for her hand and kissed it. “It's finally over,” I told her, “let's go home.”

“Thank God,” she said and melted into my arms to finish healing my soul.

The following morning, as we made our way back to the airport, I glared out the taxi window as intently as I had when we'd arrived. From the vegetable peddlers to those who slaved in the rice paddies, there was no hatred or blame felt by these people; a truth found easiest in their eyes. Even their native tongue – a language I quickly grew to despise during my last visit – appeared friendly in tone. The Vietnamese were an honorable people, treating each other with mutual respect; something many of my own countrymen now lacked.

When we reached the airport, the cramps in my abdomen threatened to bend me in half and I realized my pain was no longer emotional. It was now just physical. I tipped the driver, forced down a pain pill and grabbed our bags. The man smiled at me and bowed longer than he needed. I wasn't sure whether I deserved the respect or not – I even felt a pang of guilt because of it – but this was a new generation. Though their country sustained far more damage – physical, emotional and psychological – these people had forgiven the sins of the past and put it all behind them.
It's a lesson I should have learned long ago
, I thought,
but at least I learned it before it was too late
. I felt blessed for the trip and turned to my wife. “Thank you,” I told her, as we entered the terminal.

“You don't have to thank me,” she said and searched my face. “Feel better?”

I nodded. “I do. But the food's still horrendous,” I fibbed.

She laughed all the way to the plane.

Riley, Michael and the kids greeted us at the airport. I was never so happy to be tackled to the ground. “Get off of Grampa,” Riley scolded the kids.

“Don't you dare,” I told them, and accepting every ache and pain because of it, I tickled them both into a fit of hysterics.

On the ride home, I sat in the back of the van with my clingy grandchildren, while Bella filled Riley and Michael in on the details of our healing pilgrimage.

After dinner, the kids and I began working on the puzzle. Before long, Bella entered the room with Riley and Michael. They were all smiling.

“What's up now?” I asked.

“I've been thinking,” Bella said. “Why don't you make a wish list – a ‘no regrets'
list
–
of everything you've wanted to do in your life and never got a chance to?”

Instinctively, I shook my head. “I don't have the time for that.”

She smiled at me, gently. “But you do, Don. You do have the time.” She sat on the arm of the chair. “Pick the top five and let's go do them. What do you say?”

“We think it's a great idea,” Riley chimed in and elbowed Michael to agree.

I placed another piece into the puzzle and looked at the kids, who were also nodding in agreement. “Do it, Poppa!”

They're right,
I thought.
I never took the time to pursue any of my dreams. I was too busy working
. “I guess you're right,” I said, realizing,
It's now or never.

“Let's live life for all it's worth!” Bella added.

“This means you'll have to learn to relax and enjoy life, too,” I said, half-teasing her. “No more cleaning the house every day. No more running around doing errands for hours on end. Can you do it?”