Walking on Water: A Novel (9 page)

The Vietnamese were deadly opponents, and every firefight reminded us of that. The VC created remarkable underground bunker complexes. I remember Tac Fuhn saying to me, “We are close to a bunker.” I said, “Where?” He pointed to the ground and said, “We are standing on it. See the airhole?”

There is one firefight that stands out to me more than the others. We had stumbled upon a huge VC complex. We were extremely outnumbered and taking a lot of fire. I called in a B-52 strike. By the time the planes arrived, most of the enemy had scattered into the jungle, disappearing like sand through our fingers.

Following a major firefight we were required to report a body count, so after the ground was secure and our wounded cared for, we patrolled the compound for dead VC. There was one casualty I’ll never forget. As I approached the still body of a dead soldier I found that she was a woman and pregnant. Her eyes were wide open, and her hand was on her stomach. There were two bullets through her throat, one through her forehead, and one through her abdomen. I don’t know what she was doing in combat, but she had been carrying a gun, which made her a justifiable target.

Justifiable or not, I dreamed about the woman many times. Her wide, lifeless eyes would suddenly blink and she would stare at me, her face distorted with fear and hatred. Then she would ask, “Why?”

The environment itself seemed to be our enemy. I arrived in Nam during the monsoon season, and coming from Colorado I had never seen anything like it. Rain would fall,
uninterrupted, for weeks on end. We were always wet. We didn’t wear socks, as they would only cause fungus to grow. There were times we went more than a week without being dry.

There were also snakes. There was a particularly nasty little green pit viper, with bright red eyes, that hung from trees. They were hard to see and I had a few snap at me as I brushed by. They posed enough of a danger that our medics carried antivenom for them. One of our guys was bit, and even with the antivenom it was several days before he was himself again.

Maybe the most annoying of Nam’s creatures were the leeches. One morning one of my men woke with a leech on his eyelid. By the time we got it off, his eye was pretty messed up. We wore leech garters to keep them from climbing up to the soft tissue of our crotches.

IV

Coming Home

I had been in the jungle for nearly ten months when our platoon was engaged in our largest firefight. Twenty-two of my thirty men were injured and had to be medevaced out. With most of my men out of commission, I was brought back with them to Long Binh. I assumed I would be given a new platoon, something I wasn’t happy about.

While waiting for my orders in Long Binh, I was informed by my commander that my request for an early release to attend college had been granted. I was done. The war was over for me. Two days later it was me walking on the other side of the fence watching as frightened newbies
lined up to take their assignments. As the plane lifted, everyone on board spontaneously broke into applause.

We flew into the Oakland airport, and I kissed the tarmac as I got off. We were taken to a big hangar to be processed out. It took three days for me to be released.

I was still in my uniform as I flew from Oakland to Denver. I didn’t see what some returning Vietnam veterans reported—angry, jeering crowds calling us “baby killers” or spitting on us. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, it just didn’t happen to me. My mother met me at the airport. It had been only eleven months since she’d sent me off from Fort Carson, but it felt like a lifetime. She had changed a lot since I’d seen her last. She had aged. Her hair was completely gray, and she seemed weary.

Just two weeks later I was a student at the University of Colorado in Boulder, wearing bell-bottom jeans and a polyester disco shirt. Reentry into civilian life had its challenges, but having been in Vietnam gave my life context. I remember talking to a fellow student who was upset about our upcoming final. He said to me, “Why are you so calm? It’s half our grade!” I replied, “Because even if we fail, we’ll still be alive in the morning.”

Vietnam was the most controversial of conflicts, and even with my rank and decorations, I wondered if my father would have been proud of me. I discovered that there was a smugness to many of the older vets. Some of them seemed to believe that what they had done mattered and what we had done didn’t. No matter the rightness of the cause, we, like them, answered the call of our country. We felt the same fear, the same pain, and faced the same risks. But, unlike them, we came back not to ticker tape parades and celebrations but to a largely indifferent and ungrateful nation.

We had put our lives on the line for a war that had initially been popularly ratified by both the politicians and the people. We had risked our lives for
their
decisions, not ours, yet they hated us for it. But no matter the country’s schizophrenia, to me the war was more than a news story. It was a part of my life. And though it all seemed to have passed by like a dream, sometimes, in those dreams, I would still see the pregnant Vietnamese woman, her neck and forehead pierced, her dark eyes open, staring at me. And each time she would ask, “Why?”

Why didn’t I know any of this about my father?

It was past midnight when I set down the book. I suppose we as children are selfish by nature, judging our parents in the context not of
their
worlds and challenges but of
our
worlds and how they meet our needs. Even as we mature we rarely think of them as having been young like us.

Reading about my father, more than a decade younger than I was right now, leading a group of men through a murderous jungle, cast him in a different light. He was stronger and more courageous than I had ever given him credit for. He was better than me.

Of course I knew that my father had served in the war, but I’d never given it much thought. I certainly had never understood it from his perspective. The only time we had spoken about Vietnam was when my eighth-grade history class was studying the war and I asked my father if he knew anything about it—which was like asking the pope if he knew anything about Catholicism. Outside of that discussion, he never spoke of it. I didn’t think he was traumatized by the experience, but rather that he had moved past it, and chose not to be defined by it any more than any other experience in his life. Perhaps it had made him more
serious, but, considering his father, I think he would have been a serious person whether he served in the war or not.

I think the war might have affected him in another profound way. It taught him the true and temporary nature of all things—that nothing remains the same forever. Perhaps that’s what got him through my mother’s death.

I arrived at the hospital the next morning eager to talk to my father about what I had read, but he was asleep when I got there. I sat there for nearly an hour, reading, before he woke.

“What time is it?” he asked.

His voice startled me. “It’s nearly ten.”

“I slept in,” he said in a deep voice. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“I’m sorry. Do you want some breakfast?”

He didn’t answer immediately, but looked around the room. “Maybe in a little while.”

“I read pretty late last night,” I said.

“What did you read about?”

“You. Your childhood. Vietnam.”

“Nam,” he said, as if he were speaking of a person. “That was an interesting time.”

“Interesting or terrifying?”

“Both,” he said. Then, surprisingly, he suddenly grinned.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

He looked back up at me. “I just remembered something funny.”

“In Vietnam?”

“I’m sure even hell has its occasional humor,” he said. “This one time after we’d been in the bush for six weeks
they flew us to Long Binh for some R and R. When we landed I was told that we were going to be inspected by a new general, and I wasn’t real happy about that. After fighting in the jungle for more than a month, the last thing I wanted was some starched stateside general casting judgment on us.

“As he looked us over he focused his attention on this one guy, Private Forkey, who was standing kind of slumped. Forkey was regular military. He’d been in the army for eighteen years and was still a private. He’d been promoted to sergeant twice before, but both times was busted back down for insubordination.” My father grinned at me. “Forkey had trouble with authority. The general shouted, ‘Soldier, stand up straight and show some respect.’ Forkey looked the general in the eye and said, ‘What are you going to do? Send me to Vietnam?’

“Even though we tried to keep straight faces, we all burst out laughing. Fortunately, it turned out the general was a regular guy after all, and he said, ‘I guess you have a point there.’ ” My father shook his head. “It was a crazy time. I had these two kids in my platoon from South Chicago. We called them the Polaski brothers, which was funny because they weren’t named Polaski and they weren’t brothers. They were both Polish and had come over together. Those boys were fearless. They had belonged to a gang on the tough Chicago streets and were what we called ‘two or ten.’ That means they’d been arrested and the judge gave them an option, two years in Vietnam or ten years in prison.” My father smiled. “Most of their conversations were about how they would get a mortar back to South Chicago. They eventually devised a plan to bring one over piece by piece.”

“Did they ever do it?” I asked.

“Probably not,” he said. “You would have heard about it on the news if they did. I think it was just an idea to keep their minds occupied.” His eyes grew serious. “In moments of crisis, you do what you need to do to survive. Mentally and physically. You’d be surprised what the mind is capable of.”

“You’re a strong man,” I said.

“So are you,” he replied. He settled back a little in his bed. “So you and Nicole had a talk yesterday.”

“She told you?”

He nodded. “Breaks my heart. She’s a sweet girl. You’re sure you’re not in love with her?”

“It would be convenient.”

“Love is rarely convenient,” he replied. “You still haven’t called Falene?”

“No. Not yet.” Before he could ask why, I changed the subject. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m still here.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“That depends on which alternative destination you’re thinking of,” he replied.

“Want to play some chess?”

He breathed out slowly. “No. Not today. Maybe I’ll read.”

“Can I get you something?”

“I could use one of the newsmagazines. I feel like I’ve lost touch with the world.”

“I’ll find you one,” I said.

I went downstairs to the gift shop and purchased copies of both
Newsweek
and
Time
. When I returned to my father’s room he was asleep again. I read the magazines while I waited for him to wake, but after an hour he was still snoring.

I left the magazines next to his bed and went out to the nurses’ station to see if Dr. Witt was in. A nurse told me that he would be in around one. I checked on my father again, then went out and got some lunch, then went to a bookstore and picked up a couple of thriller novels, then went back to the hospital. When I walked into the room my father was sitting up and reading
Time
. “Thanks for getting these.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “Have you heard from Nicole?”

“She said she’d be here around three.”

“Maybe I’ll leave before she gets here.”

“That might be better,” he said.

It was already a few minutes past two, so I said goodbye and went out to find Dr. Witt. He was in the hall, and he looked up at me as I approached. “Alan, right?”

I was surprised that he remembered my name. “Yes. I wanted to ask how my father’s doing.”

We stepped to the side of the hall. “He’s stable, but I’m not seeing the progress I had hoped for. His heart still isn’t pumping effectively on its own, so he still requires medication and close monitoring.”