The Forgiven

by Mike Shepherd

  I was reluctant at first, but the alternative would be to flunk out of school, so I decided to go. The counselor there addressed the drinking first. “It’s one of the symptoms of PTSD,” she said.

  “But I was drinking a lot before I went to Vietnam.”

  “Is there alcoholism in your family?”

  “Both of my parents.”

  Revealing this opened the door on my tumultuous childhood, and she determined that, as a result of this, I suffered from an early onset of PTSD, which was only aggravated by my Vietnam experience. The drinking aggravates the condition, she said. She suggested that I attend AA meetings. I thought I was too young for that, so I decided to try to quit on my own. It worked for a while, until spring, when outdoor rock concerts took place at nearby Giant City State Park, and I went along with the crowd, smoking dope and drinking cheap wine.

  Ironically the Vet’s Club sponsored the concerts. They knew how to party, so naturally, Trudy, a vet’s groupie was there. I spotted her from afar, dancing with a guy I knew from The Club. I was tempted to cut in, but it looked like they were really into each other. I found myself feeling a little jealous even though what we had was nothing more than a one night stand. Nonetheless, I had come away from it liking Trudy – she was a good spirit.

  Being out in the sun and wind all day getting stoned, I became a little burned out. I needed to get out of the elements, so I went home and crashed. In the middle of the night someone came knocking on the door. I peeked out the window and saw a woman standing on the porch. I flicked on the porch light and saw, to my utter surprise that it was Cathy, the hostile hippie chick. “What the hell did she want this time of night…,” I wondered, “…to get on my ass about Vietnam again?”

  But she seemed sober so I opened the door. I could see that she was crying.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Can we talk?”

  “If it’s about Vietnam, no.”

  “I’m sorry to say it is about Vietnam, but I’m not here to harass you about it. My brother’s been drafted and he’s going there in the infantry. I’m afraid he’ll be killed.”

  “Come in.”

  We sat at the kitchen table.

  “I’m feeling terribly frustrated, Mick. I’ve been so outspoken against the war, and now my brother will be participating in it. Can you give me some reason to support it?”

  “Sure, to stop the spread of Communism.”

  “What’s so bad about Communism?”

  “You’ve participated in the antiwar demonstrations here at SIU, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “If you lived in a Communist country you wouldn’t be allowed to. You’d be imprisoned or executed. In places like the Soviet Union and Red China dissidence is considered a crime. Stalin and Mao have murdered millions for it. So has Pol Pot in Cambodia.”

  In response to my argument, Cathy was silent for moment, then she reached across the table, held my hand and looked into my eyes, smiling.

  “I’ve been going to AA and I’m working on Step 8 which says to make a list of all persons we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all, so I’d like to say I’m sorry, Mick, for giving you such a hard time on Halloween.”

  “I must admit it was hurtful, but that’s in the past. We’ll let bygones be bygones. So tell me, why did you decide to go to AA, at such a young age?”

  “In a word, hangovers. I couldn’t handle the hangovers.”

  “I know what you mean, maybe I should go someday, but I’m not ready yet. I enjoy the buzz too much, hangovers notwithstanding. Only problem is, my drinking has caused me to flunk out of school.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m working at a tree nursery to save enough money to go to Austin, Texas. Heard that’s a hip place to be, and the winters are mild.”

  “I’ve heard the same thing.”

  “Wanna go get breakfast at Mary Lou’s?” I asked. “I think she opens at 5. It’s about that now.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty hungry.”

  CHAPTER 5

  By August I had saved enough money to make the trip to Austin. Before I left, I went to the library where Cathy worked, to say goodbye.

  “When are you leaving?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Would you like to come to my place tonight for dinner?”

  “That’d be great. What time?”

  “Say around seven.”

  When I arrived, to my surprise, Cathy was drinking wine.

  “I stopped going to AA,” she sheepishly explained, as if she needed to. “But I’m not as out of control when I drink now. I’m more at peace than I used to be, especially regarding the war, since my brother is participating in it, and I’ve finally come to the conclusion, with a little help from you, that it’s being fought for the freedom of the Vietnamese people.”

  “I wish I could say the same. With every passing day I’ve become more and more aware that it may be a lost cause.”

  “How so?”

  “We’re beginning to withdraw some of our troops. Eventually, I believe, we’ll be turning the entire war over to the South Vietnamese. If we do I’m afraid they’ll surely be defeated without us. That light at the end of the tunnel we hear so much about will be from North Vietnamese Army tanks invading the south.”

  “Well I hope my brother gets home before that happens.”

  Cathy poured a glass of wine for me, and she topped hers off, then she toasted to my trip to Austin and our friendship, and in the mellow glow of the candle light, as we ate, I secretly envisioned her as a potential lover, should we meet again someday.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was a sunny Saturday afternoon when I left Carbondale. I drove down through Cairo at the southern tip of Illinois, and across the Mississippi River into the vast bottom lands of southeast Missouri. Shimmering heat waves rose from the road ahead, looking like pools of water on the pavement. Even the breeze blowing through the windows of my station wagon felt hot. I grew thirsty and stopped at an old gas station for a pop and directions to the next highway heading west into northern Arkansas. As I got into the hills the air cooled and the drive was pleasant with the road shaded here and there with trees. By and by I came to a lake that required a ferry crossing.

  “God’s country,” I said to myself, which made me laugh a little. Ever since Vietnam I had stopped believing in God. No benevolent creator would allow such a thing as war, I had decided, especially wars of religion like those being fought in the Middle East and in Northern Ireland. Yes, I had lost faith. Now I worshiped at an altar called a bar. This made me laugh, too. I wanted to find a bar soon. No road trip would be complete without a few beers. I’d find a bar or two in Eureka Springs, where I planned to spend the night, but I’d need to eat before I started drinking. I pulled over at a little hamburger stand a few miles from Eureka Springs to coat my stomach with grease, which I’d heard was good to do before one drank. I devoured a cheeseburger and fries.

  Eureka Springs, I knew, was a tourist town built into the rocky hills and ravines of the Ozark Mountains. The natives called them mountains. For the Midwest they were. The streets wound around and up and down through the town, which consisted of old turn-of-the-century buildings housing restaurants and souvenir and antique shops. I parked at the bottom of a hill on a side street. This was where I’d sleep that night, in the back of the station wagon.

  I walked around until sundown, looking in the windows of various stores, which appeared to cater mostly to antique hunters, until I came to a place that had a neon beer sign in the front window. Just what I was looking for. I walked in. It wasn’t very busy, perhaps because it was still early. I sat on a stool at the bar and ordered a beer. While waiting, I looked up and saw above the back bar, a large mural of a wagon train heading west across the plains, where a herd of buffalo gr
azed. Appropriate for a place called Buffalo Bob’s.

  By the time I had started on my third beer, it had become dark outside, and the place was crowded and noisy. But the room quieted down when a young bearded man with long red hair like mine, sat on a stool and began to play a guitar and sing songs. I didn’t recognize the tunes – the singer must have written them himself. His voice was strong and passionate, and he told good stories. One in particular caught my ear – a song about a Vietnam War veteran coming home.

  “A Jet Lag War,” was the title of the tune, and it contrasted previous wars, in which soldiers came home in ships that took several days, sometimes weeks, to traverse the oceans, with Vietnam soldiers who came home in jet airliners sometimes just one day removed from combat, and were expected to fit back into normal society, literally overnight. Some just couldn’t readjust so quickly. It was uncanny how my story paralleled the musician’s songs. The only difference was that the guy in the song turned to Jesus to help him get through his difficult times. That was something I didn’t do any more because I was totally disillusioned with religion because of the war, and what my sisters and I went through as children, living with a maniacal, alcoholic mother. I had prayed for some relief from the chaos, but it never came, except briefly when our grandparents took us in. When mother took us back again, the chaos resumed.

  The jet lag song was the only one with a religious theme; the others were about wanderlust and drinking, with which I identified closely. I had, after all, wandered into Arkansas, where I ended up drinking, which, as usual, made me uninhibited. I applauded the musician loudly whenever he finished a song. This attracted his attention of course, and when he took a break he came over to me and introduced himself.

  “Name’s Jeff,” he smiled.

  “Mick. What’s happening, Jeff?”

  “Everything, man. Where ya from?”

  “Illinois, Carbondale,” I replied.

  “Carbondale, huh? I’ve been there. Hip little town.”

  “Are you from around here?” I asked.

  “Tulsa. Originally Chicago though. Lots of people from Chicago here. Popular place to retire.”

  “But this is a younger crowd,” I observed.

  “Yeah, most come over from the university in Fayetteville. Do you smoke?” Jeff asked me out of the blue, in a low voice, almost whispering.

  I grinned. “Not cigarettes.”

  “No, I mean, well, you know,” Jeff said.

  “Oh, okay, yeah, I do on occasion.”

  It was a habit I had picked up in ‘Nam. Many GIs had. Pot was plentiful over there.

  “Care to join me for a toke up the street before I start my next set?” Jeff asked.

  “Okay.”

  I followed him outside. We went up the street – literally. It had a steep incline. We went into an alley about a half block away. The alley was short. It led to a cliff where dilapidated concrete stairs descended about 25 or 30 feet below. We stopped at the edge, and Jeff produced a joint. He lit it, took a hit, and passed it to me.

  “So what d’ya do, Mick?”

  “Nothing now. I was a student, but I flunked out. So tell me, Jeff, do you make a living playing your music?”

  “Enough to pay the rent, with a little left over for food, and gas and this.”

  We passed the joint back and forth a couple of times, then Jeff smothered it with a thumb and index finger that he had wet with spit, and put it in a shirt pocket.

  “Gotta get back to the gig, nice meet’n’ ya, Mick.”

  “Yeah, same here.”

  The rest of the night became a little foggy, because I drank more until last call. Jeff had quit playing, and most of his audience had left. I was the last one to leave, but a few people were standing around outside. They were watching something going on down the street at the bottom of the hill.

  “What’s happening down there?” I asked.

  “The cops are rounding up vagrants,” somebody said.

  “You live around here?’ one of the bystanders inquired.

  “No.”

  “Then you better make yourself scarce if you don’t have a place to stay, or they’ll haul your ass off to jail.”

  I had planned on sleeping in my station wagon. To get there I’d have to pass the police. I started down the hill, but before I got very far they came up to me and asked where I lived. I said Illinois.

  I decided instantly that I would not go to jail just for being on the street, after all there was no martial law in effect. They asked to see my driver’s license. As soon as they handed it back, I had decided to take off for the alley up the street, where Jeff and I had been smoking. The very second my license touched my finger tips I started running. It was a difficult run up such a steep incline. The cops were older, they wouldn’t be able to catch me. I ducked into the alley, but I was going so fast I wasn’t able negotiate the stairs step-by-step, so I leapt off the cliff and quickly realized it was further to the ground than I had anticipated. I began to tumble forward, and landed face first in thick spongy underbrush. I bounced back up and dashed through a dense stand of trees, when suddenly the ground beneath me gave way. It wasn’t ground after all, but old chicken wire overgrown with vines that stretched across a deep creek. I landed on my buttocks and back hard on round rocks submerged in shallow water. I lay just as I landed trying to be still, stifling my heavy breathing and listening for the police.

  There was an opening above me in the chicken wire through which I had fallen, but much of it, still covered with vegetation, had remained intact, keeping me fairly well camouflaged. I heard rustling in the underbrush, but no voices. After a while the rustling ceased; I continued to lie perfectly still.

  They could be standing nearby, listening quietly for me to make some noise – if they thought I hadn’t run all the way through the woods.

  The water began to feel cold on my back, rump and legs, and my sweaty face stung from the scratches the broken chicken wire had made. One of my legs, which was folded underneath me when I landed in the stream on my back, began to cramp. I stretched it out slowly, to relieve the pain, and soon, woozy from the ordeal, I passed out.

  When the sun came up in the morning, I felt that it was safe to move. I stood up slowly. Every muscle in my body was stiff, but I was able to climb out of the creek bed on the chicken wire, and I made a beeline to where I had parked my car. It was gone. The cops had probably run the Illinois plates and found that the car belonged to me, remembering my name from the Illinois driver’s license. They had it towed after I ran from them, so I was forced to turn myself in to get it back.

  At the station one of the cops greeted me.

  “I ain’t tryin’ to be a smart Alec or nothin’, son, but after that fall you took last night, you better turn to Jesus!”

  After I got the car back, which entailed paying a towing and storage fee, I continued on to Austin. While driving I thought about what the cop had said about turning to Jesus. There was no doubt that I had lucked out escaping serious injury taking that fall, but I doubted whether it was because of divine intervention. I was more inclined to think that it was just a matter of luck, but of course I really didn’t know for sure. It could have been luck bestowed on me by Jesus, I supposed. For me to even consider such a possibility was a step in the right direction toward restoring my faith. I wanted so much to have faith in something.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was a long drive to Austin and I drove straight through, stopping only for gas and food, and visits to the john. When I arrived on a Monday afternoon I checked into a motel and caught up on some sleep. Tuesday morning, feeling well-rested I drove around to familiarize myself with the town. It was bigger than I expected, being the state capital and home of the University of Texas. Looming above the campus was the infamous Texas Tower, from which Charles Whitman gunned down several people a few years earlier.

 
; Around noon I stopped at a taco stand downtown for lunch. There was a newspaper machine nearby. I bought a paper and sat on a bench overlooking the Colorado River to eat while I scanned the classifieds hoping to find a place to rent right away. It would be too expensive to stay in a motel night after night.

  There was a relatively cheap furnished efficiency being advertised by a bank. It was located in a section of south Austin called Travis Heights. I called the number and arranged to meet the bank’s property manager that afternoon at the apartment. It was a block from a nice little linear park with a rocky stream running through it. A privacy fence enclosed a yard at the back of a house with a larger apartment at its front.

  Pleased with the place, I paid two months rent in advance, assuring that I’d have a roof over my head until I could find a job. This left me with barely enough money to buy food, gas, and a cheap six-pack or two now and then.

  Consulting the newspaper I saw that landscaping jobs were plentiful in Austin, because it was a semi-tropical city with a year-round growing season. It didn’t take long to get hired because I was experienced in that line of work. Most of the men I worked with were Mexican-Americans. They worked hard and said very little except to each other, in Spanish, which left me feeling somewhat alienated. One of them, a guy named Ramon, who was the foreman of the crew I worked on, was courteous enough to speak to me in English. We gradually became friends, and occasionally had a beer or two after work on Saturday nights, at a Mexican bar on East 6th Street. A band played there and they sounded remarkably similar to a polka band, featuring an accordion. After getting primed on Coronas, Ramon danced to the music with a pretty little lady named Maria who was also a regular there.

  She had a younger sister, Bonita, to whom they introduced me, and we enjoyed sitting at the table drinking while watching Ramon and Maria dance. Between musical numbers they returned to the table and we all conversed in both English and Spanish. Ramon and Bonita interpreted for me and Maria who spoke only Spanish . Bonita spoke primarily in English, her accent made her speech sound delightfully exotic.