Vietnam was the first televised war. One of the first reality shows, before actors were paid to act like real people. In living rooms nationwide, Americans watched bombs green as watermelons tumbling above patchwork farms. Villagers in conical hats and ao dais running silently from Pac Man pellets. Thatch-roofed structures, ignited by Zippos, crackling like Duraflames. For most of my generation, Vietnam remains a televised war.
I thought I came here because I was sick of war films and still-shots of my father in his hooch. Yet I retreated to a movie theater, as if the Vietnam outside offered no insight. In my father's Vietnam, women walked from hooch to hooch, buffin' their snatches with white rags. Old fathers sold their daughters for household appliances. Children made weapons out of Coke cans. They didn't seem related to the people outside the movie house: the families waiting in line for a puppet show; an old man guiding Vanessa and me across a busy intersection; a group of hip teenagers in a Mercedes idling at a red light.
Even the women in The Cowboy Saloon, pressing themselves against men in suits, seemed to have little in common with the women my father dealt with thirty years ago. The younger Vietnamese we chatted with in hotels or on tours didn't care about the war, and the older generations were calloused or indifferent or dead. As in most of the world, the Vietnamese we met were busy people who worked to support their families. It is disturbing yet ingenious that many Vietnamese businesses now capitalize on the war. In a single day, Vanessa and I could take a bus tour through Khe Sanh, shoot Vietnamese and American guns at paper targets, drink cocktails called Napalm or Agent Orange, eat dinner at the DMZ Bar, and catch a late-night showing of Hamburger Hill.
I sit up in our bed and reach for my recorder.
"Babe, you gotta hear this. My Dad once told me about this Vietnamese dude who—"
"I'm really not in the mood right now."
"It's not that long."
She sits up. "I don't want to hear anymore. I don't care about the girls he was with or what he spent his money on. I don't get why you're so obsessed with it."
"I'm not obsessed with it. It's not like I'm getting off on these stories."
Vanessa reaches for her water bottle. Then she stands up and tries to turn up the air conditioner, but it's already on high.
"Have you even been listening to yourself on that tape? You snicker each time your Dad says "beaver" or "jugs."
I fight the urge to snicker now. "Oh, come on. Those words are hilarious. I don't condone his behavior."
"Whatever. You stare into every massage parlor we walk past. You take us to that saloon. Then, after I spend all day talking to these women with horrible stories of rape and whatever else, you take me to a movie that's basically a 90-minute rape scene. And you keep playing me these stories about your Dad doing whatever he did here."
"Yeah, but there's a big difference, babe. He didn't rape or kill anyone." My voice echoes off the low ceiling.
"I'm not saying he did, but those women he was with-"
"He was only nineteen! Show me another nineteen-year-old guy who would have done any different."
She shakes her head. "You really think we're only talking about your father right now?"
My face burned. "What?"
"You can't think of any other sketchy situation where a guy doesn't question his behavior?"
I shake my head. "Sure I can. And I can also think of a situation where a woman keeps bringing up the same shit even though the guy and the woman have talked about it a thousand times."
Vanessa nods her head, but not in agreement. She walks to the bathroom and slams the door. The room hums like a phonograph, the needle hissing between tracks. I want to pound on the bathroom door and unload every curse in the book, or knock gently and apologize and tell Vanessa I love her. My mind and body struggle like two negative magnets—a pair of objects that could fit together or push each other away.
I feel fire move inside my head, burn down my throat, smolder in my stomach. I take a long sip of warm water. I want to close my ears. I want to mute my brain. I want to reclaim my spot beside my father on the couch, crack open another peanut, and let Hollywood return me to a Vietnam I remember.
Before we left, I couldn't articulate my purpose for traveling to Vietnam. Now that the trip is almost over, I still can't. Maybe I should have brought him with me. Maybe if he was here now, I could point to the places he stood and ask, "What happened here?" But no matter how romantic I am in my imagination, I can't pretend that my father would suddenly have the answer, that he would turn and look me in the eye and say, "Son, here's what happened. And here's why."
II
STATESIDE
You listenin' to me, boy? He's dead. Believe me, he's dead. Tell ya, though, when I found him, coulda sworn he was sleepin'. Sometimes these tractor trailers they chew 'em up, and then they're no good. Air horn gets 'em all herky-jerky and they don't know which way to go. Bumper musta just clocked this guy cuz he's in pretty good shape. Pass me my knife.
Cars zippin' by, hot cup of coffee in my hand, tryin' to scrape him up without breakin' his neck. I had to touch him a little bit; so what, I'm touchin' him now.
No, I didn't put him in the backseat—what was I, takin' Grandma to church? I put him in the cooler in the trunk.
Right here, okay? See how the fur parts between his ears. Along the spine. Down to his tail. Now this might not be textbook, or whatever, but I like to hang him upside down. Easier to skin that way, instead of, you know, holdin' em up with one hand and tryin' to cut with the other. He ain't gonna bite ya. He's dead. Anyways, I sewed his mouth shut.
Watch. No blood. No guts, just strippin' the hide, like takin' off a coat. Little slimy under there, but that ain't nothin'. And I just keep slicin', over his ribs, his belly, down each leg, slicin' the membrane. Nice and easy.
Gimme those shears, will ya? Oh, what do we got, a little Ted Nugent? Turn this up, boy! Those look like shears to you? Those are them. Hold'm steady and when I clip'm, keep that pan under his throat.
The body's not so tough but the head's a bitch. Gotta be really careful and just use the tip of the knife around the mouth. The nose. Especially the ears.
There we go.
Toss the body. Cuz we don't need, it anymore. 'Less you want to eat him? Tie up that bag, too, or Mom'll freak. Then we dunk the hide in this pickling solution. Wring'm out good and keep'm in the fridge 'til we get the mannequin set.
Some guys use plastic eyes, but I've always liked glass. The way they reflect. Both are tricky, though. If you don't get 'em centered, he'll be all cockeyed, one lookin' for a garbage can, the other caught in headlights. Won't look legit. Put a dab of clay in the socket, then push 'em in.
Now we just wrap the hide around the mannequin. Pull it up around the legs like a pair of Levis. Stretch it over the back. Gently, real gently, pull the skin on the face, get all the features right. Pretty soon you could put him in the backyard and never know the difference. Hand me that needle and thread. Linen thread, not cotton. Cotton'll rot.
We can make him hold somethin', if you want. Drill a li'l hole in his paws and squeeze in a pine cone or some shit. Paws got wire in 'em; we can shape 'em anyway we want. Go outside and see what you can scrounge up. I gotta take a breather anyway.
10
MY FATHER ROSE at 5 a.m., shuffled his calloused feet to the bathroom and slid open the pocket door. After a brief coughing fit, he hocked into the sink. The exhaust fan rattled. A fart kick-started his long piss. Then he blew several quick, hard blasts into his handkerchief. Pocket door slid open, down the stairs, wood creaking and popping, sandpaper hands rubbed along the banister. Muted Weather Channel's blue glow. Silverware drawer, running water, coffee pot. Back up the stairs, bathroom, mug placed on the permanent coffee ring on the sink. Sparked a Winston, let it burn like incense on the wicker shelf. Shower. Scraped his jaw line with a razor, slapped Old Spice onto his cheeks. Down the stairs, checked the weather, coffee cup thunked in the sink. Into his Chevy, first gear, second,
third, and I didn't see him again until four in the afternoon, when he coasted the Chevy back into the driveway, tossed his bloody white apron over his shoulder, and carried the scent of nearly forty years of tobacco and coffee and cold cuts inside.
Seven a.m. My mother officially rose, though she'd been awake for hours, tossing, turning, mumbling. Shuffled out of bed in her pink nightgown. Into the bathroom for a bout with IBS, expelling yesterday's swallowed air. A sigh. Tossed my father's burnt Winston filter into the trash, down the same stairs, same Weather Channel, same coffee pot. Sparked a Marlboro Light. If she were cleaning houses, she took her rags from the dryer in the basement, packed them into a canvas tote, then collected the rest of her supplies: Windex, Lysol, an all-purpose spray called Simple Green, which she swore by.
Perhaps these were her yacht club years, and instead of Windex and rags, she loaded a rectangular plastic bin full of restaurant checks, an enormous printing calculator balanced on top. Or she was a secretary for the dermatologist, so she'd been up since six, showering, blow-drying, ironing, heels clicking on wood, then tile, wood, then tile. Perhaps arts and crafts, wedding albums with thick cotton covers and lace trim, or something called poofs: little, flower-shaped puffs of satin with a metal clip glue-gunned to the back that one could attach to shoes or blouses or use to cinch a pony tail. Or the beauty parlor in the basement, fully-equipped hair-washing station and spaceman dome, which she assured me was for drying the hair of the strange women who entered our home and not for transforming them into a Jetsons character and blasting them into another galaxy.
Maybe this day she worked two or three jobs, loaded all of her equipment into the car, took a final sip of coffee and burst off the porch like Superman from his phone booth, returning hours later for a quick costume change before shooting back out into the world once again. A different role. A different identity.
When I was in elementary school, my father would sometimes let me go to work with him. I sat on the edge of the tub at 5 a.m., stealing sips of bitter coffee in his mug while he shaved. The residual shower steam swirled with his cigarette smoke like the off-shore storms we glimpsed on the Weather Channel. As my father splashed water on his face, I watched the exhaust fan suck the tiny hurricane through its golden grate and wondered what happened to the storms off the coast of Florida or Cuba that never touched land.
"Chilly willy today, boy," he said, tossing me one of his wool hats, which smelled like everything else he owned—Winstons, coffee, gasoline, a hint of Old Spice, a whiff of bologna. I pictured him on a billboard, straddling a dusty horse, cowboy hat tipped over his face, leather reins clenched in his left fist and in his right a small bottle of amber cologne. Work by My Father.
As he finished his routine, I watched the thick exhaust pouring out of his Chevy in the driveway. He dug his old sneakers out from beneath the couch. He held his shoelaces between his callused fingertips, and as he tied, I could almost feel his rough skin guiding a heavy hammer or a baseball bat in my hands. The deli took a piece of almost all his fingers, the flesh slivers ending up "in somebody's ham sandwich, I guess."
He sparked a Winston in the driveway, told me to tie my shoes and hop in the truck. The Fox kicked on: Bob Seger's "Still the Same." My father jiggled the shifter into reverse, and we were off.
We stopped at 7-Eleven, where my father bought a coffee for himself, and a hot chocolate for me. He always peeled off the lid on the walk back to the truck and took several quick sips, as if there were some secret ingredient, something more than caffeine that satisfied him. My hot chocolate was sweet and made me feel like a little kid, which I was. As we pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the Expressway, I timed my sips with my father's.
A few miles before our exit, my father jerked the wheel right and skidded to a halt on the side of the Expressway. My hot chocolate splashed out of my cup and onto my jeans.
"Sorry," he said, staring out through the windshield.
The white line cut through the middle of its body. The head and paws stretched onto the highway. Its legs and tail lay in the breakdown lane. Cars rushed by, shaking the truck and whipping the gray and black fur. My father looked in his rearview mirror and stubbed out his cigarette.
"Hang here for a sec."
He stepped out; I locked my door. The sun was rising, but the highway was still dim and damp. I looked over at the rusty guardrail splattered with tar, never having been this close before. My father stood between the headlights. His long shadow cut across the breakdown lane and stretched into the pine trees.
The animal lifted its head. Slowly moved it side to side. One paw stretched further into the highway, then pulled back, back, back. My father knelt beside it. The animal lifted its head again and looked as if it were chewing, working something from behind its back teeth. Then it stopped.
My father walked past my window and reached into the bed of the truck. He came back with a short metal shovel. The metal scraped the pavement, and a large black part of the animal fell out and slapped the ground. Heat rising like smoke in the cold air.
When he brought it closer, I saw it was a raccoon. I continued staring at the animal until my father dropped it into a black garbage bag. As we pulled back onto the Expressway, I watched the black bag slide from one side of the truck bed to the other.
"What's in the bag, Don?" said a man stocking shelves as we entered Waldbaum's supermarket.
"Special delivery, Tommy. Mind your business." My father smiled.
He carried the black garbage bag down the empty aisles of gleaming linoleum, past orange signs proclaiming deals on Doritos, Entenmann's cookies, Cheerios. Kicked open the scuffed saloon doors marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, passed through a series of heavy plastic strips hanging in the doorway, just like the carwash, I thought.
My father set the raccoon on a stainless steel table, then tied his apron around his waist. He grabbed another apron from a milk crate beneath the table and tossed it in my face. I slipped the neck loop over my head and tried to tie the strings around my waist but ended up knotting them around the middle of my thighs. Then he put on a paper hat; I put on a paper hat. He put on his name tag; I put on a name tag. My new name was Jesus— "a shit-bag part-timer who banged in sick Super Bowl weekend." I looked down at the name on my chest, thinking about all the times I pretended to be sick, tricking my mother into letting me stay home from school. Technically, I had "banged in" sick to school today, but I believed that because I went to work with my father, I wasn't doing anything wrong. We'd tell her later.
"Okay," he said. "Let's get this guy squared away."
He carried the garbage bag over to the walk-in freezer. The large metal handle was coated with frost. My father yanked it open; cold fog billowed out, carrying the sulfuric scent of freezer burn. Frosty steel shelves held piles of carcasses and animal parts: cow ribs, chicken breasts, lamb shanks, pig's feet. We walked past all the other animals, to the back of the freezer. My father picked up a canvas tarp and placed his raccoon beside a frozen deer head wrapped in cellophane—eyes caught in permanent headlights, specks of black tar clinging to its fur.
I spent the rest of the day watching my father slice bologna or make roast beef sandwiches. He gave me a look when an elderly customer requested 1/16th of a pound of low-sodium turkey breast, or when a man asked if my father could slice his ham thin. No, thinner. A little thinner, buddy.
"Perfect," the man said, accepting his order with a toothless grin.
He gave the male customers funny nicknames: Rocko, Charlie, Butch, Guy, Chief, Boss. The female customers he called Toots, Hun, and sometimes, Miss. But as the day went on, the nicknames dwindled, until it was three o'clock, a half-hour before quittin' time, and my father called everyone the same way: "Next!"
Earlier that week in school, an overzealous guest speaker had come to our class to teach us about fingerprints. I believed the man to be a private investigator or secret agent, but most likely he was a criminal justice major from one of the community colleges. He dist
ributed ink pads and pieces of paper which had a box for each one of our prints. Fighting the urge to smear each other's faces or leave a permanent high-five on a friend's back, we listened to the man identify the loops and whorls and arches, explaining that each one of us has a unique print unlike any other person in the entire world. He told us about desperate criminals slicing off their fingertips in hopes of eluding the law.
"But," he said, holding up an inky finger, "they always grow back."
"How long does it take?" one kid asked. We all nodded, anticipating an expert's response.
The man paused. "Not as long as you'd think."
I wanted to ask more questions, but, as usual, I kept quiet, my face burning for answers. How many times can you slice your fingers before you alter your prints? What if this guy was wrong? What if my father's whorls have become loops, arches into whorls, or if now there's nothing at all, no unique markings, the skin as smooth and common as sausage casing?
We punched out. My father slung the black garbage bag over his shoulder, and I followed him out to the parking lot. On the ride home, I dozed off my head knocking against the passenger window. We pulled into the driveway. My father grabbed the raccoon and walked into the house, through the kitchen, into the basement, through the laundry room, beyond his rack of Army jackets with our last name sewn above the pockets. I followed him around his workbench strewn with scalpels, hypodermic needles, and glass eyeballs. As he opened a long, casket-like freezer, I watched him drop the raccoon beside a frozen zoo of squirrels, big-mouthed bass, rabbits, and a hawk.
The Language of Men Page 7
