Family Secrets

by Zina Abbott

  We vets tended to take our morning break at the same time. We all sat together in the swing room so we could support each other. It didn’t matter that we weren’t all from the same service or that we never knew each other in Nam. We were there. We knew you can’t turn off being combat-ready just because you made it back home. Even the old guys from the other wars understood that.

  This, of course, set us apart even more from the others. When I heard people at work bad-mouth vets, I’d get so angry it was all I could do to not give them a piece of my mind. But, I knew if I did that, it would just reinforce their opinion that because I had fought in Vietnam, I was nuts.

  I tried to hang loose as much as possible. I protected myself from the idiots by getting a radio and earphones which I wore while I was in the office casing up the mail. It helped me ignore everyone around me. It was always a relief to leave for the street. On the route, I just delivered mail and didn’t have to say much to anyone.

  I started as a PTF, a part-time flexible, but quickly got on as a T-6. That meant I worked on five different routes, covering the relief days of the regular carriers.

  One of the regular carriers warned me right after I started to be sure to take my lunches and ten-minute breaks out on the route. They were built into the route time. If I tried to impress my supervisor by skipping them to get back earlier, I would just end up with more work. Also, I wouldn’t score any points with the regular carriers who did take the time and might end up looking bad. So, I kept to myself, did my job, stopped for lunch each day and took my ten-minute break each afternoon.

  Two of the routes were close to this one park I liked to stop at. I regularly parked my mail jeep under the trees for both my lunch and my break. It was quiet and peaceful, a good place to unwind after being stuck in the office most of the morning. Although the heat was nothing like Vietnam, summers in Stockton were hot enough that it felt good to stay in the shade. With one exception, I enjoyed watching the people, even the children who gravitated to the playground equipment. I kept my distance from everyone.

  The exception was the hippies that usually gathered at this one cluster of picnic tables shaded by some of the fullest trees in the park. Them, I tried to ignore. At first I sneered to myself when I saw them. To me, they were no better than the VC in Vietnam. I had no use for flower children who wandered around waving their fingers in the peace sign while mumbling, “Peace, man,” through sappy smiles. Most of them were war protestors and were quick to bad-mouth anyone who supported the war or had fought in it.

  I would have been able to ignore the hippies most of the time if it weren’t for this one blonde. Unlike some of the women there whose hair hung straight down on either side of their faces from a center part, her hair was blonde and framed her face in curls. I could see that her eyes were light in color. She had radiant, clear skin that glowed with a light tan. Although she was slender, through her peasant blouse and skirt or embroidered jeans, I could see that she had full breasts and curvy hips. She was beautiful.

  But, that is not what intrigued me about her. I’d seen a lot of pretty girls once I got back home. I never could get interested in any of them, even though I was subjected to some pretty heavy flirting from a few who hoped I would ask them out on a date. But those girls were good girls who were looking for husbands, not just looking to get laid. So I ignored their flirting. Like I said, I still felt pretty hollowed-out from being in Vietnam. I felt like I had nothing to offer. I was not prepared to get close to anyone on a personal level, especially someone female.

  So, this hippie woman’s beauty alone was not enough for me to be drawn to her. It was her singing.

  Like the others, she was there to work on handcrafts to sell. Some of their finished wares were displayed on a blanket spread on the ground at the edge of the sidewalk where they could be seen by potential customers. They could also be easily picked up if anyone spotted a patrol car in the area. Some of them worked on leather crafts, some made jewelry, and some embroidered on clothing. One guy worked with wood and occasionally assembled birdhouses.

  But she worked with stringing beads. Sometimes, she made jewelry. Other times, she threaded the beads on lengths of cord she knotted to make belts and potted plant-hangers. Crafts must have bored her easily, because she often set her projects aside and picked up her acoustical guitar and sang.

  Her voice was strong and carried across the park. Frequently she sang the ballads and folk music that were popular then. Other times, she sang anti-war songs, or songs with hidden meanings, referring to smoking pot.

  I didn’t like the anti-war songs or the druggie songs. I had seen too many men in Nam smoke pot or use cocaine. They thought it helped them deal with the stress of war, but as far as I was concerned, they too often became a hazard to themselves and the men around them. I had nothing nice to say about any kind of dope. Still, I listened because her voice mesmerized me.

  It wasn’t long before she realized I came to the same place in the park several days a week to hear her sing. Even on my relief days, I found myself driving my truck to the park to eat lunch. On those days, since I was not limited to my half-hour lunch break, I sometimes stayed for hours.

  After awhile, without looking my way at first, as soon as I arrived at the park and settled in, she picked up her guitar and started singing for me. The others caught on to what she was doing and I could see them tease her between songs. She just laughed at them and tossed her hair out of her face and started a new song. It was always with regret on the days I worked that I had to leave to finish the route when I saw the time for my break had ended.

  I wanted her. Even though I didn’t know anything about her other than what I saw and heard at the park, I yearned for her.

  I told myself I was stupid. She was a flower child, for crying out loud, and was against everything I stood for. Once she found out I had been to Vietnam, she would refuse to have anything to do with me. It would never work.

  That was my head talking. I knew I wasn’t ready to make good decisions about women. I knew that if I got involved with anyone, I needed to date a woman who believed in the same values I did. Problem was, I didn’t listen to my head very well in those days. I was still too messed up from the war. No matter what my brain told me, the rest of me was drawn to this woman like a fire feeding on oxygen. Every time she sang and looked my way, I wanted to walk over and clutch her to me and take her to bed so bad that it hurt.

  I froze, paralyzed with shock, the day she walked over to my table and sat on the bench across from me. I had just finished eating my lunch. She introduced herself.

  Sherrie. Her name was Sherrie. If it had been up to me, I could not have chosen a prettier name for such a beautiful woman. And, I mean, up close she was still as beautiful as she appeared at a distance, only I could see the faint smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and that her eyes were a beautiful sky blue.

  Then she asked for my name. Somehow I stumbled through the introduction and asked her out on a date. To my surprise, she agreed. I found a parcel notification slip in the jeep and wrote down her address and telephone number.

  That night I took her out to dinner at an Italian restaurant she said she liked. Then, because it was still light out, we walked around a safe part of town watching the leaves start to turn. We talked. I listened with surprising patience as she told me why she was against the war. She had picked up a lot from the media, a lot of it not true. I can’t explain the anxiety I felt when I told her I had returned from Vietnam earlier that year.

  The first question she asked was why I hadn’t fled to Canada when I first got my draft notice. I explained to her that I was from a military family and I believed in being patriotic, even if I didn’t like everything about the war I had been called to fight in. Besides, the Canadians were over in Vietnam, too. I had an occasion once to talk to one of them over there who was very vocal about how his fellow citizens back home felt about Americans running to Canada to flee the draft while their own boys
were being sent over to fight the war. To my relief, at the end of our conversation, she shrugged her shoulders as though it didn’t really matter to her.

  Once the dark caught up with us, I took her home to her apartment, a studio with everything but the bathroom and a dressing area all in one room. She invited me in. My head warned me decline and leave. But, like I said, I wasn’t listening to my brain too well those days.

  That woman believed in free love. I don’t mean she made herself available to me. I mean she came at me like gangbusters and practically dragged me into her bed. The condition I was in, I didn’t stand a chance.

  We saw each other every night for several weeks after that. Although we didn’t approach each other the days I stopped at the park, we couldn’t leave each other alone when we were together at night. The passion between us burned white hot and I felt sure that all my dreams had come true. But, like I said, it lasted only a few weeks.

  After that, when I called her on the telephone, she begging off seeing me, insisting that she felt sick. With a depth of sadness I cannot describe, I suspected that she had tired of me, and that, for her, it was over.

  Then, as I watched her at the park, I realized by the way she looked and acted that she really wasn’t feeling well. Her face appeared drawn and her body slumped in a manner foreign to her. She seemed listless as she worked on her beading projects. She stopped looking my way. Most telling, she stopped singing. Sometimes she strummed her guitar a few times, started a song, but then she laid it aside without finishing her song.

  One night, I showed up at her door unannounced. I shoved my foot between the door and the frame before she could shut it in my face. I told her how worried I was about her. I begged to talk to her a few minutes. To my surprise, she let me in and pulled out a kitchen chair for me.

  That night, she told me she was pregnant. She had been on the pill, but, she admitted, she did not always take them every day like she should. Sometimes, she went days without taking any before she remembered and started them again.

  I refused to jump to any conclusions because I had no illusions about her lifestyle. I held my breath when I asked if it could be my child.

  Sherrie’s mouth twisted into a rueful smile. She confirmed that she was, without a doubt, pregnant with my child. She usually was not exclusive with her bed partners, but she had become bored with the men in her circle of friends. She hadn’t been with anyone else for a couple of months before me, nor had she been with anyone else during the time we were together, or since.

  In spite of the depression wrapping around me because I knew that I had been nothing but a temporary diversion for her, I did what I considered to be the right thing. I asked her to marry me. I still wanted her. I told her I loved her.

  She said no. That was when she told me that she was planning to get an abortion. She had been avoiding me because she didn’t know how to tell me, or even if she wanted to tell me. She started to shake and cry, insisting that she couldn’t stand the thought of having a baby. She never intended to get pregnant. She hated being sick and feared giving birth. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck with a kid for years to come.

  Something triggered in my brain and everything came into focus for me. I no longer felt so hollow inside. I felt alive and filled with a purpose. I was through with people close to me being killed, and me not being able to stop it. Part of me made up part of this baby. It was a living being. Suddenly, saving that baby, Sherrie’s and my baby, became the most important mission in my life.

  I tried my best to calm her. I asked her again, I begged her, to marry me and have our baby. I assured her I would provide for her. I would help her take care of this baby and not hold her back from those things that were important to her.

  She still wasn’t convinced. In a fit of anger, she shouted that she was sorry she had told me. Once she started screaming at me, I yelled back. That night we had the first of many fiery arguments. She tore into me, telling me what she really thought about me fighting in Vietnam. I argued back with everything I had in me.

  We had the baby-killer discussion. Oh, yes, during our time together I had listened without much comment to all her nonsense about how horrible and amoral the soldiers in Vietnam were. She had repeated the sensational news reports distorted by the anti-war protestors, including accusations we were heartless baby-killers.

  But that night, I gave her my version. I asked her, what did she expect us guys over there to do when our lives were threatened? A lot of times, our men out on a search and destroy found only women and children and maybe a few elderly men when we went through a village looking for weapons. We pulled everyone out of their hooches. We usually had someone with us who knew enough Vietnamese to order the villagers to stand in the street with their hands held out so everyone could see them. We all knew of too many cases where a woman or child combatant slipped away, grabbed a grenade and threw it into a group of our soldiers. So, we warned the villagers that if they moved, they would be shot. We knew it didn’t matter if the grenade that killed or wounded our men was thrown by a Viet Cong soldier or a village child. The men were dead and maimed just the same. It was them or us. We warned them, and if they ran, we shot them to protect ourselves.

  Sometimes, in war, there were no good choices. It was either kill a kid who could be a threat to you and your buddies or watch your buddies and maybe you, too, get slaughtered by some kid. After it was all said and done, we were expected to live with that.

  I was shaking and could hardly keep my voice steady as I told her about the time I nearly bought it because of a kid. I and a buddy in my squad, Sanders, were running late reporting to the gravel pit where we were to pick up the material we needed for the road project we were working on. As we rounded the bend, we saw loaders and trucks by the loading area, engines running and belching diesel smoke in the air. But there was not a soul in sight. We saw no movement as we reached our places in line. We wondered where everyone had gone off to. It was when we got off our rigs and started investigating that we found them. They were all on the ground.

  Every day, this sweet little Vietnamese girl about eleven or twelve years old used to come to the pit with a box full of candies and treats which she would sell to us. The guys all liked her friendly smile and shy mannerisms. Each day we gathered around her to buy our goodies. She was one of the friendlys, or so we thought. I don’t know who got to her, or what they threatened to do to her or her family, but that day when the men gathered around her, she pulled the pin on a grenade. She blew them all apart, killing everyone, including herself.

  I was shaking something terrible once I finished telling my story to Sherrie. I had never told anyone about this incident before or since until now. Those men were from my platoon, a couple of them from my squad, dead on the ground in front of Sanders and me, all because of some sweet little Vietnamese kid.

  When I could speak again without choking up, I demanded to know how Sherrie could despise soldiers whose lives were threatened under those circumstances. I asked her, how could she look down on men who sometimes caused a Vietnamese child’s death in order to protect themselves when she planned to do away with our baby, denying it a chance at life, simply because having a baby was inconvenient for her?

  Maybe there are those who would have accused me of bullying her. I don’t know and I really don’t care. I couldn’t save all the kids killed in Vietnam any more than I could save all the guys sent over to fight in that war. All I cared about at that point was saving my own child.

  Chapter 26 – Mike

  Sherrie finally agreed to marry me and have the baby. While I was there, I convinced her to call her mother. I was hoping by doing so, she wouldn’t change her mind once I left. Later, I called and told my parents.

  To say my mother was not very happy with me under the circumstances would be an understatement. She was particularly perturbed, especially since she didn’t know I was seeing anyone and I had never brought Sherrie home to meet the family. I promised to bring
Sherrie up the following week on Thanksgiving Day. I hoped that by then Sherrie and I would have worked out the details of when and how we were going to get married.

  Sherrie was about two months pregnant, and I was all for a quick drive up to Reno to get married. I hadn’t taken into account her mother. By Thanksgiving, Sherrie’s mother and aunt had driven out to California to plan the wedding. Once my mother learned the two were in town, she invited them to spend the holiday with our family. After dinner, the three older women, with minimal input from Sherrie or me, went about the process of planning our wedding.

  I must hand it to Sherrie’s mom. My mother loves to entertain but is easily flustered. But Sherrie’s mother is one organized lady. Since Sherrie was her only daughter, she had no intention of letting her get away with a quick wedding in Reno. Sherrie still was not feeling well, so she threw her hands in the air and told her mother to do what she wanted. She just wanted to get it over with.

  Ellen made plans for getting the invitations printed, an engagement picture taken and printed in the paper, and reserving a nearby Lutheran church and its social hall for the wedding and reception. She set aside time for her and her sister and Sherrie to shop for a dress. She also scheduled the day Sherrie and I would pick up the marriage license.

  As parents of the groom, my mother fretted and made plans to get the tuxedos reserved, flowers ordered and a photographer hired.

  About the only input from me that they listened to was when I told them I would have my next long weekend—a Friday, Saturday and Sunday off—the second weekend in December. We set that Saturday for the wedding day. What a production! I was glad all I had to do was to make it to the engagement photo session, be fitted for the tux, get the license and show up on time to get married. As it was, though, I almost forgot the wedding bands.

  We didn’t have much of a honeymoon. Sherrie felt too sick. We moved into her studio until we could find a one bedroom apartment where they would let us have a baby.