Family Secrets

by Zina Abbott

  Jennie entered her grandparents’ house behind the rest of the family, planning to quickly divest herself of her purse and tote and the pie she carried in for her mother. Then she hoped to hide away in a far corner of a room where she could observe rather than be drawn into the day’s festivities. That wish was soon shattered when her youngest niece approached her. Jasmine, at the age of twelve, was even more forward and less tactful than she herself had been when she was younger.

  “Mom said you weren’t bringing the runt. How come?”

  Jennie started to stammer, but quickly swallowed and pasted a smile on her face.

  “Your Uncle Gerald is home from Afghanistan for two weeks and Garrett is with him. They are spending Thanksgiving with Garrett’s other grandparents this year.”

  “So, why aren’t you down there with them?”

  “Because I work and I’m in school. At this time of year, all the department stores start the big sales for Christmas right after Thanksgiving. So, I had to stay to get ready for them last night. Plus, I will be working a lot all this weekend.”

  “That’s dumb,” Jasmine said, her face twisted in a grimace. “I know all about Black Friday, you know.”

  “Jasmine, let’s not be rude,” Dahlia said. She had walked into the living room and caught the last part of the conversation. She gave Jennie an apologetic look as she took her daughter by the shoulders and guided her away. That was the cue for the rest of the family to continue conversation as if Jennie’s awkward situation didn’t exist. Everyone, Jennie noticed, except for Grandpa Mike who had come out to welcome Jennie’s father and Jason into the male domain of the family room where football was being played on the wide-screen television. While Jennie had struggled to come up with a tactful explanation for her young niece, out of the corner of her eye, she caught her grandfather giving her the fish-eye. Once she looked him full in the face, Grandpa Mike changed his expression to a weak smile of welcome, although Jennie wondered if she detected a trace of sadness in his eyes.

  “In the event you ladies would like the men-folk to join you at the dinner table when the bird is served,” Grandpa Mike announced as he retreated toward the family room, ”I would like to inform you that halftime will start around two-thirty.”

  ****

  Jennie felt a sense of relief once dinner was over and the last of the dishes and pans were washed and dried. She had remained silent during the meal, and smiled in the appropriate places as the family teased each other or broke out into “remember when” stories. For the most part, this Thanksgiving dinner was very much like past holiday meals that she remembered. She somehow was able to rise above her own sense of loss to see that even though her family members grew older and changes happened in their lives, the family traditions she remembered from her youth continued.

  One thing Jennie did find difficult to do was to enthusiastically join in the conversations between the women in her family. She found herself dividing her attention between them and the responses of the men to the second half of the football game. It was almost with relief that she noted the end of the game. Most of the men vacated the family room furniture to take a break. Only Grandpa Mike stayed seated in his recliner. Jennie moved to retrieve her tote bag and quietly slid onto couch. Without looking her way, Mike put the television audio on mute as he flipped through the channels to find the starting times of the upcoming games.

  Only a narrow end table separated Jennie from her grandfather. She watched him twirl the remote controller in his hand, as if debating whether or not he wanted to change the channel. His eyes stared at the screen without seeing anything. Jennie knew he was tuned into her presence, and was waiting to see if she intended to speak to him.

  “Grandpa Mike, I’m doing this project for this new club I joined,” Jennie started hesitantly. “Actually, my neighbor, Mrs. Moore got me interested in the subject of learning more about our family members by interviewing them. I was wondering if you would be willing to help me with it.”

  “What’s to tell?” Mike said, refusing to make eye contact with Jennie. “I was born in Hawaii. My parents moved to San Diego. We lived there until all the aeronautic plants down there lost their contracts all about the same time. Then we moved to Stockton where my father got a job in a munitions factory. After high school, I started in college. Before I finished, I went into the Army. After the Army, I got a job as a letter carrier with the Post Office when it was still the Post Office before it became the Postal Service. You know the rest from there.”

  “I didn’t know all that, Grandpa,” Jennie said, as she slid her hand into her tote bag and pulled out her questionnaire. She continued to talk as she rested it on her lap. “And I know there has to be more to it. For example, how long had your family been in Hawaii and why did they decide to move to San Diego? Why did you move when all the aeronautic plants lost their contracts? What contracts?”

  Mike turned to look at Jennie, his face void of expression. His eyes then shifted to her hands as he watched her pull her digital recorder out of the bag and quietly set it on the end table.

  “I would really like to know more of the details, Grandpa,” Jennie continued, trying to catch her grandfather’s eye. “I prepared some questions to help me remember what I want to ask you. Is that okay?”

  Mike squirmed in his recliner.

  “I don’t know why you want to know all that stuff,” he said irritably. “It’s all in the past. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

  Mike pressed the button on the remote control to take the T.V. off mute and the music and sound of the advertisement on the television blared into the room.

  “Grandpa, please, just tell me about the war,” Jennie raised her voice to be heard over the commercial. “I know you fought in the Vietnam War. Please just tell me that much. What was it like?”

  Mike muted the television again and his eyes bored into Jennie’s, distress infused upon his face.

  “I don’t talk about the war,” he snapped. “Not ever. Just put those questions away.”

  “Okay,” Jennie said as she slid the papers from her lap back into the tote bag. She picked up the recorder and held it. “I’m sorry, Grandpa Mike. I didn’t ask because I want to ruin your holiday. It’s just that…Well, you know things aren’t going well with me and Gerald right now. Since he has been to Afghanistan, he’s changed. It’s like he’s not the same person I married. Even though he can’t say much about what he’s doing, I know he has been in some dangerous situations and seen some terrible things. You’ve been in combat, too, Grandpa. I was hoping that maybe you could help me understand my husband better.”

  Jennie felt the scrutiny of her grandfather’s eyes upon her. She began to feel sick to her stomach. The last thing she had wanted to do was to upset her grandfather or make him angry at her. She feared she had done both. He turned his head away from her and stared at a blank space of wall over a bookcase next to the television. Neither spoke for what seemed to Jennie an eternity.

  Jennie sensed that her father had re-entered the family room. He sat down in the chair placed at the opposite end of the couch from her. She kept her eyes focused on her grandfather, praying that she had not lost his attention.

  “I mean, I can guess a few things, Grandpa,” Jennie finally continued. “I know what I see on the news. It seems like it is hot and dusty there in the summer and miserably cold in the winter. I know there’s a lot of heavy fighting in very steep hill country, but…”

  “It’s a different kind of hot,” Mike interrupted her.

  Jennie felt her breath catch.

  “I imagine,” Jennie said slowly. “From what I see on the news, a lot of Afghanistan looks rather dry and desolate. Yet, my impression of Vietnam is that it is more tropical, like it gets a lot of rain and has a lot of humidity. Is that what the weather is like in Vietnam, Grandpa?”

  Silence filled the room for several seconds. Then Mike, his words slow and halting, began to describe the countryside of Vietnam.

 
; Jennie was not sure exactly when it happened, but she suddenly realized a change had come over her grandfather. His eyes tightened with an intensity she had never seen in him. His attitude hardened. His voice grew gravelly. Soon, almost every sentence was punctuated with vulgar and profane language that she was not accustomed to hearing her grandfather speak.

  At first Jennie shivered at the change in her grandfather. Then she thought about how Gerald’s language had gone downhill once he returned from his first combat tour. She recalled the times Gerald had grown tense and withdrawn when his thoughts shifted back to overseas, only to afterward shake it off while refusing to discuss with her what he was thinking and feeling, claiming it was nothing.

  Her Grandpa Mike was no longer discussing the weather and geography of the Southeast Asian country. He was talking about him experiencing the weather and the country of Vietnam. She knew then, that in his mind, Grandpa Mike was back there.

  Jennie’s peripheral vision caught sight of her father leaning forward in his chair. Instinctively, she glanced his way. Rob nodded meaningfully toward the digital recorder in Jennie’s hand. Jennie held her breath as she slid her finger over and pressed the 'record’ button. To her relief, her grandfather either didn’t see her or didn’t care that she was recording his story.

  From that point, Jennie stayed as still as a statue with her eyes glued to her grandfather’s face. At the same time, her whole body prickled in a state of extra-sensory perception that made her aware of everything going on around her. She knew when her mother, her arms clutched to her waist, slid quietly to the opening between the eating nook and the family room and leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb that separated the two rooms. She knew when Grandma Jan and Aunt Pat joined her mother, standing slightly behind her while her grandmother’s hand rested in a comforting gesture on Christy’s shoulder. Leon returned and silently settled on the opposite end of the couch. Dahlia and Kenny, quiet as ghosts, filled the doorway leading from the entryway into the family room, each with an arm around the other’s waist. Jason and Jennie’s two boy-cousins were not around. Jennie guessed they were out front throwing a football back and forth to work off the dinner they had stuffed into themselves.

  Jennie held her breath when she sensed Jasmine entered the room. She hoped against all hope that her young cousin would not blurt out something brash that would break the spell. She silently sighed her relief when Jasmine—as if somehow understanding the importance of what was taking place—quietly sank to the floor next to Rob’s recliner and sat cross-legged, her chin propped up in her fists, her eyes glued to her grandfather’s face.

  Oblivious to the rapt audience that surrounded him, Mike shared aloud for the first time in over forty years the story of his year in Vietnam.

  Chapter 19 – Mike

  The first thing I noticed about Vietnam as I stepped off the plane was the stink. Even before the heat smacked me from head to foot, I felt enveloped by the smell that I soon learned was peculiar to Indochina. In time, I no longer noticed it. But, on that first day, as I breathed in the odor of dampness and decay while shuffling down the steps of the airplane, I took it as an omen that the next year of my life—if I managed to live through it—was going to be miserable.

  The Army had taken away so many of the familiar things of my youth, including my first name. I was now known by Carpenter, which was sewn across the top of my shirt pocket. A lot of us guys had nicknames—Hot Lips, Bubbles, Gunrunner—but I ended up with the shortened version of my last name—Carp—like I was a big fish or something.

  It was only after I arrived in-country that I realized beyond any doubt that I had been a fool to let the jealousy I felt toward my older brother mold my decisions. His grandparents, not mine, because he was my half-brother, arranged to get him into Annapolis. The Risners of Virginia had the money and influence to open doors that my own parents and grandparents did not possess. It’s not that I wanted to go to Annapolis. I didn’t. I just did not like the idea that doors that were open for him were closed for me.

  I even made a point to not be an officer, much to my parent’s dismay. I had been going to college, but quit out of boredom after my junior year. My major was in engineering. I hated it. I took a summer job in construction, spending a lot of time operating a bulldozer and a loader. I decided I liked it better than school.

  Once I lost my education deferment, I received my draft notice. My mother encouraged me to enlist in the Navy instead. My father had been in the Navy. In fact, both of my mother’s husbands had been in the Navy when she married them. She pointed out that in the Navy, I would have a better chance of staying out of harm’s way.

  Not a chance. There was no way I was going to set myself up to be compared with “wonder brother” who had used his family connections to get into Annapolis. Rodney may have fancied a military career, but that was not me. The only thing we did agree on was that I was not going to run to Canada to dodge the draft. As unenthused as I was to go halfway across the world to fight some dirty little war in some backwater country I hardly heard anything about growing up, I would answer my country’s call to duty.

  My father was more accepting of my decision to go with the Army than my mother was. He did talk me into enlisting instead of allowing myself to be drafted. He pointed out that, although it would mean an extra year of service, I could choose my specialty. I could possibly choose a field that would help me later in my career outside of the military. Since “Get in, do my duty, and get out” was my motto, having something to show for it later in life appealed to me. So, with that in mind, I enlisted and put in for the engineers so I could operate heavy equipment.

  I told my mother that since she wanted me to become an engineer, that’s what I decided to do. She didn’t think I was very funny. Being an operating engineer was a far cry from getting a college degree in engineering.

  Dad was a little disappointed I didn’t become a mechanic like he was, but he accepted my choice.

  Of course, we all know how well that turned out for me. By the time I got home from Nam, I never wanted to see another bulldozer or scraper ever again, let alone climb into the seat of one.

  But, I didn’t know all that when I stepped off the plane that first day in-country. I just knew that I didn’t want to come across as the greenest of soldiers to the men who had been there awhile. I refused to be distracted and gawk at the exotic sights around me, although I could tell this was the strangest place I could ever have imagined.

  It was called survival. I had already been warned that most men who were killed died in either their first month in Nam or in their last. The first month, because they were too green to know what to watch out for. They were not battle-hardened. The last month was because they were overconfident. After surviving almost the whole year, they thought they had figured out how to dodge the bullet. They relaxed their guard. That’s how a lot of guys bought it and ended up with a one-way ticket home in a body bag.

  That wasn’t for me. If I did die in Nam, it was not going to be because of some weakness or lack of paying attention on my part.

  I was assigned to Qui Nhon, which was where most of the engineer battalions worked out of at the time. Actually, we were in some backwater area about thirty miles away. It didn’t have all the amenities of the base at Qui Nhon proper. We were shuttled into an enclosed compound and assigned to a tent that held the entire platoon. That was our home base for most of the time I was in-country. From there, they moved us to where they wanted us. We could still occasionally get into town, and, more importantly, get to the beach. It was so humid and wet over there, we were always fighting jungle rot and other infections from cuts and scrapes. A day spent swimming in the salty ocean and lounging on the beach helped our bodies heal better than almost any medicine they could give us.

  I thought that by choosing engineers and operating equipment to set up bases, cut roads and carve landing zones, or LZs, as we called them, it would save me from being a grunt on the ground engaging the enemy. T
hat notion was soon dispelled. The top brass over there had a way of pulling us over to help out the combat units anytime we were not heavily involved in our construction projects. They didn’t send us TDY—Temporary Duty—because then they would have been required to pay us more. They just temporarily “assigned” us to one of the combat units. It was their way of making the best use of their tactical resources, I guess, but I hated it.

  When we were stuck doing that, we got in on our share of reconnaissance missions—called recons—and search and destroys—S and D’s—to locate and kill enemy combatants and capture or destroy their resources. The only thing they didn’t make us do is night guard duty, which was good. We did enough of that within our own company.

  When we were still in the states in training, they tried to prepare us for Nam. They taught us how to operate scrapers and dozers on all kinds of terrain and in all kinds of weather. More than once I built firebreaks while the smoke and cinders of a nearby fire nearly suffocated me and stung my exposed skin. I learned how to jump out of perfectly good airplanes. I learned how to rappel down zip lines from a helicopter to land in the seat of a dozer that had been sent down just before me. I learned how to shoot the M-14, and I was pretty good at it, too, plus I learned to use all other kinds of weapons.

  Still, none of that prepared me for Nam. And, once you get there, they don’t think to tell you everything you need to know. You just need to pay attention. You learn, otherwise you’re going to get yourself killed.

  I remember the first time they put me in a Huey to insert us on my first S & D. Partway to our drop-off point, through the roar of the blades, I started hearing popping noises. The guys who’d been in Nam for awhile, without saying a word and as stone-faced as could be, took their steel pots off their heads, turned them upside-down and sat on them. I glanced at them, wondering what they were doing. Then I realized we were being shot at. Daylight was shining through some new holes in the floor of the helicopter. I never got a steel pot off my head and under my butt so fast in my life.