13th Valley

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Rufus looked at the letter.

  Wednesday

  July 15, 1970

  Rufus—

  How is the soldier? I spent yesterday with my mother and sister. We went back by the old flat and around. Then my sister and I went up to the Marina to watch the sailboats and then over to GG Park for the flowers. It brought back a lot of memories of the walks you and I used to take.

  Did I tell you I got a new job? It’s with a small art gallery that just opened up on Union Street. The job is giving me an opportunity to really learn that end of San Francisco and also it is giving me an opportunity to see some good works and a lot of junk. I know I can do better than most of it if I just could get myself together to do it. I think I’m losing my ability to paint or to sing. Goddamn! I’m just going to let it all out. It’s killing me, this, this being trapped in a marriage in which one must deny oneself in order to let it be. I have sacrificed my painting to establish a home, to establish your home and to be responsible to you and to not feel like a moocher. At times I hate myself for being what I’ve been in our relationship. It has not been easy for me these past months. God! I haven’t seen you since Christmas—I don’t know why I have a home for us at all. But I can imagine it was hard for you to return to army life too. Or was it? You can rest back on your orders. I must have misunderstood what you said in Hawaii last Christmas. You gave me the idea that you respected my feelings. You’re not supposed to mess up people who care about you. If you can’t care at least a little, you should just leave them alone.

  Don’t think I’m getting a kick out of writing this, because I’m not. I would have preferred to talk to you, but that obviously can’t happen. I would rather have a reaction to what I’ve been saying, but with you I’m used to doing without. I always wanted to bring you into my land of fantasy and then together we could make it all real but you’ve denied the fantasies and have made them impossible.

  Rufus, I do not want to be mean. I don’t want to be bad to you, but everyday this eats at my heart. I think we must separate and go our own ways. Sometimes I lie in bed and think how nice it would be to be touched by you and I think of our early years. Then I think of that Goddamned Army which you joined and how it’s become you and squeezed out the man I knew. I think about Hawaii and I don’t want any part of it. I hated you, what you turned into, what you were in Hawaii. You and your Goddamn men. I don’t know you anymore. I can’t love a man I don’t know.

  Rufus, you’re an SOB. How any man can think he’s so right and be so wrong is beyond me. At one time I would have called you a real prick, but since Hawaii that doesn’t seem to fit too well anymore either. You had me convinced I was completely inadequate. I’m really sick of this.

  Lila

  Rufus Brooks laid the letter down on the desk top, leaned forward and with his elbows on the desk and his hands in his hair, he closed his eyes. He sat there and let his mind flow sadly, not actively directing his consciousness, not inhibiting the fusillade of images and half-developed thoughts, letting his thoughts run from him and Lila. Behind the flow there was a near static image, an image of himself standing on a darkened basketball court in a very large empty gymnasium. He stood with the ball, swinging it in slow motion high over his head, high, keeping it out of the reach of a transparent defender, over his head, well behind his head with both hands, he looking for someone to pass it to, ready to snap the ball with his strong wrists, ready, except, he had no teammates.

  He shifted his head to one hand. His brow was wet in the coolness of the tropical night. The vision changed. He had just returned from the Nam and she, his wife damn-it, and he were in a swank club and a group of white men began harassing them and patting Lila on the ass and rubbing her thigh. Rufus remained calm and delivered a soft warning. The white men had been drinking and words were of little use. White men never listened to black men anyway. Very calmly he rose against the boisterous group, no, groups, of whites. Three large fair-skins encircled him laughing and taunting him and a fourth sat next to Lila, next to his wife, and he put his hand on her thigh, high on her thigh. One of the whites swung a heavy fist and cursed, “Fuck off, Nigger.” Rufus ducked the swing and jabbed the biggest man in the middle of his face, in his eyes, Rufus with his large strong hands, fingers out, going into the big man’s eyes, digging, hooking down and pulling out, using the momentum of the pull to propel his own body forward, kicking sideways with his right foot into the third white man’s balls. Then standing still and tall as they scattered, apologizing, ‘Excuse us, Sir,’ ‘Pardon me, Mr. Brooks,’ and the two on the floor crying, all knowing not to mess with The Ruf and His Lady.

  Brooks sat back, opened his eyes and took a deep breath. He craned his neck back and then looked back at the desk, at the letter and at the forms. He had received the letter on 3 August and had read it only once in the field. The forms arrived yesterday.

  FILED July 17, 1970

  SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO

  IN RE THE MARRIAGE OF

  PETITIONER: Lila I. Brooks

  and

  RESPONDENT: Rufus William Brooks

  PETITION (MARRIAGE)

  1. This petition is for:

  [X] Dissolution of marriage pursuant to

  [X] Civil Code Section 4506 (i)

  Petitioner has been a resident of this state for at least six months and of this county for at least three months immediately preceding the filing of this petition.

  2. Statistical Information:

  d. There are none children of this marriage including the following minor children:

  SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO

  PLAINTIFF: Lila I. Brooks

  DEFENDANT: Rufus William Brooks

  NOTICE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF RECEIPT TO: Rufus William Brooks …

  “Fuck it,” Rufus mumbled without listening to himself. “Don’t mean nothin.” He did not believe his words.

  In the room lighted only by the rising moon he uncovered the clerk’s typewriter and inserted a sheet of paper.

  Early morning,

  13 August 70

  Dear Lila,

  We all make those little mistakes once in awhile which have far reaching repercussions, lasting sometimes, through a perverse geometric progression of events, for all our lives. Little things like signing up for ROTC way back in 1964 in order to have money for school. Little things which control one’s existence far into the unseen and unknowable future. Hawaii and its repercussions have been very heavy with me since that brief interlude and I know it will affect me, both of us, all our lives. However, it need not be paramount to our every decision, it is something I believe we can cope with, can live beyond and can reduce in the future to relative insignificance. That reduction will require our mutual effort, an effort that I cannot begin until I am again back home with you. There are numerous problems that demand my immediate concern, complex problems I am obligated to address while I am here. I can do little to alleviate your distress except to say I will return soon and I love you and want you and want to make your fantasies real.

  Earlier this week I spent, two days writing to the parents of several of my own men who had been wounded. I also helped the company compose a joint letter which we mimeographed for all our families. In the past several months many of my men’s families have received malicious hoax calls. The calls are primarily related to false reports of death, missing in action and desertion. They cause an adverse and traumatic impact upon the unwary and the repercussions upon the man in the field finding his family thinks he’s been killed and are making plans for his funeral are disastrous. My utmost immediate concern is for the welfare of these men. When I leave here I will leave that concern behind.

  In your last letter you mentioned your desire for a separation. How much more separated can we be? My options are clear to me. I have 10 1/2 months of military obligation remaining. I can extend here for 5 months and arrive there a free man or I can be home in 20 days and then I must ser
ve the 10 months on active duty in the States. I can request duty at the Presidio but the probability is low that I will be granted it. I have already set the papers in motion to return, though I have also submitted my extension request. The final decision must be made by 21 August. On this I hope to hear from you prior to that time.

  Brooks paused from typing the letter. He leaned back in the chair with thoughts of a time in their marriage before the army. He had been a graduate student and the pressures on him seemed to be increasing from all sides yet he was coping, he thought, very well. It had been Lila who had … had what? He could see himself in the small kitchen of their walk-up. The sun was just rising. Rufus was reading over class notes and Lila grudgingly preparing breakfast. There was no specialness in the room.

  Look, my love, Rufus had said to himself preparing it to say to Lila. Look, my love, something is going wrong between us, has gone wrong between us and I want to set it straight. That’s all I would have to say, he had thought and we could return to delightful times. If only I could figure just what the problem was. No not I. We. We must do this together, he had told himself, for if I were to set upon it alone she would resent it. Resent. That’s part of it. I resent her … her … her what? We aren’t making love with anywhere near the frequency we did at one time. No, that’s not it. I resent that but that’s a symptom not a cause. She had seemed depressed at that time also. And her depression had fed his resentment. Why can’t she just accept things as they are, work for them to be better but accept those things that are as neither bad nor good? He had risen and seen the sun and thought, ah, today, another day in my life and the sun is out. Then he had woken her and she’d seen the sun and acted as if she’d been betrayed. How dare you rise, her gestures seemed to say. How dare you rise before I’m ready. And she resented the sun. Or she resented the clouds. Or the getting dirty of things. Nothing is constant, he had prepared to say. Everything is flowing. Clean dishes or rooms getting dirty is part of it. He had resented what he thought was her attitude. He had resented the feeling that once done things should stay done. The more he had thought about it the more he found he resented even thinking he had to tell her these things, tell her life is flowing and not static and that the reason she was depressed and found trouble coping, wanted to hide in bed in the morning, was that she was trying to stop life. “It doesn’t work that way,” he had whispered to himself. You have to ride life like a wild horse or like the wind, he prepared the statement. Enjoy life while you’re in the saddle. Direct what you can. But don’t try to cope with it by attempting to tame it. You can’t. It will flow with you or without you and your efforts to stop the flow will only produce depression.

  “If you’re going to start preaching to me again,” Lila had said, “don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything,” Rufus had said.

  Brooks leaned forward, scratched his chin and returned to the typewriter.

  Lila, I want to tell you something I found tonight. In a discussion with several of my men, I should call them my friends, I could feel the old Rufus return. We were discussing the war and racial conflict—they bicker as if they are trying to place blame on someone other than themselves or their particular ancestors—when it came to me … a semantic determinant theory of war. I can feel it, see it, hear it. It may be the most significant lesson that I or anyone may learn from Vietnam.

  I must analyze this, concentrate upon this, answer this. What causes war? The situation here is perfect for study. I’ve brought with me all my knowledge of philosophy. It is dusty and tarnished but it is here, in me. And here are all the elements of war about me. Here are all the major races of mankind, representatives from every socio-economic group, from every government-politico force, all clashing. And the language groups: English, French, Vietnamese, Chinese, American technologese, Spanish. Here a democracy upholds a dictatorship in the name of freedom while a dictatorial governing group infiltrates five percent of its nation’s population to a different country in the name of nationalism. The answer to the question must be here, waiting to be discovered.

  Brooks paused again. In his mind he formally composed his thoughts. Hawaii and pre-army times kept springing into his thoughts. It took a strong effort to repulse them.

  Differences! Inter-people differences and people’s reactions, people’s paranoia. Do we frighten people with our differences? Do others who are different frighten us? The more insecure we are the more defensive we become. If our personal insecurity is built into our national or racial character, passed down from generation to generation, then in order to alter our defensiveness, we have got to change our basic character. And what forms that character? What passes it down?

  LANGUAGE. Thought structured by language. And WHOSE language? English. The white man’s language.

  The causes of war run very deep in white American culture and to this culture black America is being assimilated or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, digested. Our world is coming apart and it is imperative that we analyze the causes and help our world develop a different perspective about conflict.

  Oh Lila, I hope I am not begging the issue between us by digressing. I know that I have failed you, for 18 months have not been a husband at all. Not even a man to you. What? I do not know. An idea, a past tense image that has lost reality? You existed in my soul long before you came into my life. Now you are withdrawing, and in so doing have perhaps withdrawn the essence of my being. From so great a distance, just when one withdraws the other cannot know. Now, with these papers before me, papers printed weeks ago, the loss comes to me in past tense, comes to me at a time when perhaps your own feelings have changed and the emptiness I feel is, in reality, refilled. I have attempted to reconstruct what you must have gone through, what you must have been going through, the thoughts, the anxieties, at the time and just prior to the time you allowed these papers to be sent. I’m sure you suffered silently with the decision for many nights until finally, with nothing to counter the flow of your thoughts, you knew there was no other way.

  Lila, I must decide by the 21st of this month to either extend to January and obtain the 150-day active service reduction or to DEROS from here in 25 days and have ten months remaining to serve. I will wait to decide until the 21st in hopes of hearing from you before then. May I say again, you mean more to me than anything I have ever known. I know I can return, revert to the man you married, grow quickly in the direction in which you’ve evolved, become a unity of spirit with you. You have always been my soul and I believe I have been yours. Before separating our spirits, and this I plead, allow us a chance to reunify. There is in me still the same man you married. He may be blunted by the experience of war, by the army more than the war, but he is not dead.

  Lila, I love you.

  Rufus

  CHAPTER 9

  PIO

  The moon was higher now. It was blunt not crisp, an immense lopsided ovoid emitting soft light into a hazy sky where stars are dim and do not twinkle. Cherry followed Doc and Egan over the drainage ditch by the EM four-holer and up the graveled dusty road toward brigade headquarters. El Paso and Jax had decided to return to their sleeping area but Egan had said to Doc, “Let’s go up to brigade and do our heads a favor,” and Cherry had been pulled along in the excitement which followed the brawl at the Phoc Roc.

  “How’s your head?” Egan asked Doc. He stopped the black man in the middle of the deserted road to inspect the cut on his forehead and feel the lump coming up on the back of his head. “You’re okay,” he said. “Let’s see if Lamonte and the dudes are partyin.”

  “Them white folk,” Doc said. “Them are some crazy mothafuckas. Sucka’d me right up the backside a my head. Mothafucka. Hey, Man,” Doc said to Cherry and Egan as they resumed walking, “I wanta jus say thank you fo helpin me out a there. That mothafucka nailed the backside a my head but good.”

  A few steps farther Doc turned to Cherry. “You handle yourself pretty well. I see you dealin on that on
e dude and I says, ‘Cherry’s gonna be alfuckin-right.’”

  “Them Delta Company mothafuckers,” Egan said looking straight ahead as they walked, “losing their fuckin cool. God fuck. Suckered you but good. Wish I’d gotten a better shot at the mothafucker.”

  “Cherry nailed the fucka,” Doc said.

  “I’m not sure,” Cherry said glancing first at Egan then at Doc and then back at Egan. “I’m not sure I got it all straight what happened.”

  They spoke quickly and quietly as they walked, their words running into each other as the words of men will do when adrenaline is still flowing though the fight is over. “We was jus teasin each otha,” Doc said. “Except fo Jax, Egan here my Main Man. Like best friend.”

  “You coulda fooled me in there,” Cherry said.

  “We were just discussin,” Egan said. He was embarrassed by the warmth of Doc’s statement.

  “You was really dealin on that one fucka,” Doc said. “Eg, your Cherry gonna be al-fuckin-right-on.”

  “Hope I didn’t hurt him,” Cherry said. “I’ve never hit anybody like that before. Not that hard.”

  “He had it comin,” Egan said.

  “I think I might of broken his nose. I felt it crunch. I’m really sorry.”

  “Sorry! Sorry, Mista?! You broke that dude’s nose, he gonna be the happiest luckiest mothafucka round. You maybe saved that man’s life, Mista, if you broke his fuckin nose. You know that?”

  “Hey,” Egan said wanting to change the subject, “these dudes up here are really into their dope. Don’t be a bummer. Okay?”