Veteran Avenue

by Mark Pepper

  ‘In the Legion you have to know your heritage. The Americans aren’t the only people to get their arses kicked in Indochina. The French were sent packing in fifty-four after Dien Bien Phu. I just carried on the history lesson – read up on Vietnam. It’s become a bit of a passion.’

  Virginia nodded but was more intent on what remained in the box. She reached in and removed two letters.

  ‘Think this is any of our business?’ she asked.

  ‘Chuck made it my business. I can read both if you like.’

  She wavered, but gave him just one. She went over to the camp bed, sat down and pulled the letter from its envelope. John sat at the table with his, and they both began to read to themselves.

  ‘Hayley, you have another visitor.’

  The nurse’s voice infiltrated a groggy slumber, mercifully blank. It brought Hayley to the borderland – not awake, not asleep. Her eyelids were leaden but she didn’t want them to open. If she did, she knew she would see Larry leaning over her, flowers in his hand, nothing in his heart.

  ‘Hayley, wake up, dear, your mom’s come to see you.’

  Her mom? How could her mom be here? No, it had to be Larry in disguise. No, that was silly. Perhaps a dream. Drug-induced wish-fulfilment, her crazed brain delivering what reality could not.

  ‘Darling, it’s me.’

  A different voice. Familiar. God, this was a shitty dream; so cruel.

  ‘Thank you, nurse.’ That sweet voice again.

  ‘You’re welcome.’ A door closing.

  ‘Hayley, please open your eyes.’ The words now full of tears.

  She had to investigate. Her consciousness clawed upwards through the medication and prised her eyelids apart.

  ‘Oh, Mom ...’

  ‘That bastard,’ Marie said. ‘Look what he’s done to my baby now.’

  ‘I’m okay. I will be,’ Hayley said, and joined in sobbing.

  ‘I’ll kill him for this.’

  ‘I did try.’

  ‘I mean it. Why not? I wouldn’t live to see the trial.’

  ‘Don’t, Mom. Don’t talk that way. He’s not worth it. It’s over between us.’

  ‘But look at you.’

  ‘I’ll heal. Don’t spend your last months in hatred, Mom, please. You and I need to make the most of each other. It’s been so long.’

  Marie tried to calm herself. ‘Well, at least he’s in jail now.’

  Hayley looked away.

  ‘What? He’s still out there?’

  ‘Mom, please leave it.’

  The younger generation made no sense, and Marie shook her head. There followed a lull in which their tears dried.

  ‘I brought you some flowers. The nurse has them, she’s finding a vase.’

  ‘Thank you. I saw you’d been to Dad’s grave. The roses were beautiful.’

  ‘I go when I can.’

  ‘So how did you know I was here?’

  ‘Amanda. We knew each other in the old days. She called me, told me what had happened.’

  The smallness of the world made Hayley smile. ‘Amanda used to be your agent?’

  ‘No, when she was an actress. Why didn’t you have someone call me?’

  ‘Look at me, Mom …’

  ‘I understand. Listen, darling, Amanda and I talked, and we agreed you should stay with her for a few days when you get out. I’d love to have you with me, but, if Larry wants to find you, mine’s the first place he’ll look.’

  ‘And if he does come, you’ll be on your own. I don’t want that.’

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ Marie said simply, and Hayley understood.

  ‘Mom ... did Amanda tell you about Malibu Mischief?’

  Marie nodded. ‘You’ll make it, don’t you worry. It’ll all come to you, Hayley. Success, happiness, love with a new man, a good man.’

  ‘Feels a long way off.’

  ‘You’ve had a rough ride.’

  The nurse knocked and entered, carrying a vase exploding with mixed carnations. She set them beside the TV and they were left alone again.

  ‘I wish I could hold your hands,’ Marie said sadly, staring at her daughter’s bandaged palms.

  ‘I know,’ Hayley said. ‘Me too.’

  A battalion of emotions was trooping through John’s head. He felt faint with the onslaught. Having seen active service, there was nothing new under the sun. In civilian life, if his heart suffered, if his head ached, it could never rival the affront of war. But the sheer improbability of what he now held in his hands put him into a mental frenzy that was totally unprecedented.

  ‘John!’

  ‘Mmm?’ The only sound he could manage, his eyes still glued to the words.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  He blew a long sigh through his lips.

  ‘What does it say? I’ve asked twice.’

  He snapped himself out of it and looked at her. ‘You first. This is ... worth waiting for.’ He placed the letter face down on his thigh.

  Virginia smiled dubiously. ‘Okay. Well, this was mailed to an address in Haines; we passed through it after we left Baker City this morning. Chuck’s home before this place. It’s from his daughter-in-law, Harry’s wife, Marie, dated February nineteen seventy-seven. The gist of it is she’s breaking all contact. She’s met someone new and wants a fresh start. She doesn’t want Chuck muddying Hayley’s head with talk of the past. Hayley’s her daughter, the girl in the photo you’ve got, and that photo was actually sent with this letter as a final keepsake for Chuck. It’s all pretty sad stuff. Really makes you feel for the guy.’

  ‘Hayley …’ he said fondly. ‘Is there a sender’s address?’

  ‘Venice Beach. But Marie says they won’t be there if he comes looking. Says they’re moving upstate. Won’t say where.’

  ‘So Chuck receives this letter, two months later he has a dream, and a month after that he’s living here. Smacks of wishful thinking to me. Daughter-in-law craps on him in a letter so he chooses to believe God’s smiled on him in a dream. I suppose that has a warped kind of logic, but where did he think I came into the equation?’

  Virginia shook her head. ‘So what’s in yours?’

  ‘Uh, might be best if I just read it word for word. It’s not long.’

  He turned the sheet over and began, and he could feel his heart thudding in his voice.

  ‘It’s dated November sixty-nine. Sent from the Wadsworth Hospital, Veterans Administration, Westwood, Los Angeles. “Dear Mr Olsen, you’ll have been notified by now that Harry was KIA. I’m very sorry. I knew your son. We were close. I know he was soon to become a father. Please pass on my sympathies to his wife, and when the kid’s old enough please let him or her know how Harry died. I know you won’t have been told the details. He died saving my life. I took a round, that’s why I’m back in the world. Wasn’t for your son, I’d be dead. Maybe you wish I was. That’s okay. Shrinks here say I got survivor’s guilt. I don’t know. I just want to get back there. I will too. I’m on the mend. Won’t make no difference. We’re going to lose this war. Kennedy knew how to use Special Forces. LBJ and Nixon don’t know shit. Wrong targets, wrong weapons, wrong times. Charlie’s dying in droves but that won’t stop him. The American people don’t have the same stomach. Sometime soon they’ll say enough. Maybe then we can meet, talk about Harry. But I reckon not. The Nam’s in my blood and the Nam’s thirsty for blood. I reckon it’ll take mine same way it took your boy’s. Be proud, Mr Olsen. As we say over here: Sergeant Harry was Number One. The best!”’

  Virginia absorbed it for a moment, then asked an obvious question: ‘Who wrote it?’

  ‘How do you feel about coincidences?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s signed, “Spec Four, Dodge L Chester”.’

  ‘Let me see that.’

  It wasn’t a request. Virginia launched off the camp bed and snatched the letter from his hand. She read it standing up, and John could tell from her face she knew it was the genuine article. How much d
id handwriting change over the years? Not enough, it seemed. She appeared to review the letter several times before turning her eyes to him. Her stare was a mixture of confusion and accusation.

  ‘Who are you, John? What the fuck is going on here? You say a coincidence? You believe that?’

  ‘What else?’

  She didn’t have an answer, but John could sympathize with her doubts. To term their discovery a coincidence seemed pitifully inadequate. The odds against such a conspiracy of circumstance made winning a lottery jackpot look like an evens bet.

  ‘Virginia, what else?’

  She rested against the table. ‘I don’t know ... what if Chuck was right, and as a kid you were unwittingly involved in some … psychic occurrence?’

  ‘To what end?’ John asked.

  ‘Finding all this stuff,’ she said.

  ‘Again, to what end?’

  ‘Oh, John, how should I know?’ Virginia said, plainly irritated. ‘Maybe this will somehow help my dad. Aren’t you open to that?’

  He nodded. ‘Perfectly. I’d be happy if it did. Doesn’t mean I think it’s anything supernatural. I don’t believe in the occult. When you’ve seen charred and dismembered corpses spread out across the desert, it tends to negate your more fanciful thoughts on life and the universe. One corpse leaves a lot of people in mourning. Multiply that one corpse by a thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand, and how many lives get destroyed as a result? Because I don’t care how religious or higher-minded you think you are, or how much you believe in life beyond the grave, if you lose someone close you’re going to get screwed up. If you want to believe in an unseen dimension, go ahead, but I happen to think it’s just mumbo-jumbo for people with too much time on their hands and space in their heads.’

  ‘You mean stupid people. You’re saying I’m stupid.’

  John realized how badly his mouth had run away on him. ‘No, I ... I’m not, I just ... shit.’

  ‘A hundred years ago, a rocket to the moon must have sounded pretty stupid.’

  She went back to the camp bed, sat down and pulled the blanket up around her shoulders.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said lamely.

  ‘Your problem is you’re too closed, you lack imagination. And don’t preach to me about loss, John. I’ve lost a mother, a brother, and every day I wonder is this the day my dad blows his brains out.’

  John wasn’t about to argue and make it worse. The snow was not letting up and the light was already dying out of the sky. If they were going to spend the night on that mountain together, they would need each other.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Whatever I might say, I’ve been knocked sideways by this. We’re conditioned by experience, and mine hasn’t given me any point of reference for what’s happening here. I call it a coincidence because I can’t make sense of it any other way. That’s just me. I’m sorry. And I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you have both intelligence and beauty to spare.’

  It took a few seconds for Virginia to reply. ‘Are you cold?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Getting.’

  She gently smiled forgiveness and opened the blanket off one shoulder.

  After his third night in the VA Medical Center, Dodge awoke with an inexplicable feeling of hope. Inexplicable and unprecedented. His bedtime knockout pill had sent him deep. Beneath his dreams was a place without image and sound, the land of a sixth sensation. Dodge felt he’d been swirling in circles all night, as though caught in the revolving violence of a hurricane. But he’d never felt in any danger and had always felt close to a perfect tranquillity within the vortex, like falling into the eye of a storm and finding respite there. All this he took as a kind of parable: he didn’t have to escape the maelstrom his life had become since Vietnam. Perhaps he never could. But it didn’t matter because there was still peace to be had if he only knew how to accept it.

  Hawg seemed to know, and Dodge was suddenly fascinated by the man. The pilot of a gunship, Hawg must have rained some serious lead down on the villes of Pleiku. That had to weigh on a man. Yet if he had not quite made peace with his demons, he was at least on speaking terms with them. He seemed to accept them as a permanent fixture in his psyche, and could anticipate the worst of their fury. Instead of running from the looming storm, he stopped in a safe place until it blew itself out. In this hospital he was understood, and knowing that was perhaps a cure in itself.

  Since Hawg’s visit the day before, Dodge had been thinking a lot. He realized he was still battling vainly for possession of a soul he had lost decades ago. His unwillingness to talk throughout the years had only fed the guilt, which was sustenance enough for the gnawing malevolence inside. Dodge wanted to understand Hawg, how he coped, how he talked to himself. Having always avoided fellow veterans, Dodge suspected this was now the perfect time for that long-feared communion. He had to prise off the lid. Emotionally, something had to release, or next time it might not be just inanimate objects he destroyed. And, unless things changed, there would be a next time – he didn’t doubt that for one second.

  He left his room and walked down the corridor, checking through the open doors. Nearing the secure exit, Dodge found him.

  Hawg was at his wire-mesh window, one wheel flush to the wall, head turned, staring out. His hair hung in a ponytail over the back of the chair almost to the base of his ruined spine.

  ‘Hey, bro,’ Hawg said quietly, without looking round.

  Dodge realized Hawg must have been blankly de-focused to have caught his arrival in the glass. He wondered where his mind had been, and for how long. He entered the room.

  ‘See anything interesting out there?’

  ‘Nah,’ Hawg replied, nose to the mesh. ‘Not for years. How about you?’

  Dodge came and stood next to him. Down below were the extensive grounds of the US Veterans Administration, dissected by a busy Wilshire Boulevard. Across the 405 he could see the Los Angeles National Cemetery, Westwood village, the UCLA campus, and the long climb up to his home in Beverly Glen. It was a beautiful day, and Dodge felt even more strangely inspired.

  ‘I see life,’ he said.

  ‘Is that what you see? Life? You think that’s life? That’s not life, that’s bullshit,’ Hawg said, and wheeled himself away to show his disgust.

  ‘What’s bullshit about it?’

  Hawg spun his chair around. ‘I can’t speak for you, Dodge, but I ain’t been alive since the war. In Vietnam, I had a life. I loved the fucking Nam. When you got death breathing down your neck, that’s when you feel truly alive. You can’t have one without the other.’ He nodded to the window. ‘People out there, all they do is fucking exist. There’s no life out there.’

  Dodge had got it wrong: there was nothing to learn from Hawg. He was no less screwed up, he just had different regrets. Dodge was beginning to feel quite fortunate, and not simply because of his physical state compared.

  ‘What are you saying, Hawg? If you’re not ducking rounds, there’s no point living? Sounds a lot like jealousy to me.’

  ‘You mean ignorance is bliss? Fuckin’-A it is.’

  ‘Hawg … you can’t hate people for not knowing.’

  ‘I don’t hate people.’

  ‘Sure you do. You don’t see that?’

  ‘Ah, fuck you, blood. And get the fuck out of my room.’

  ‘Shit,’ Dodge said with a smile, ‘have I just gone from being your bro to being a plain old blood? Why not just call me nigger and have done with it?’

  ‘Okay, nigger, get the fuck out of my room.’

  Despite asking for it, Dodge was stunned. In Vietnam, racial harmony was no abstract concept. With Charlie on the warpath the only color that mattered was olive drab. Even forty years on, how could a veteran disrespect that?

  ‘Wanna know something, Lieutenant Peckerwood? It was probably a nigger like me saved your sorry ass in Pleiku after you got shot down. Chances are, you got picked up by some recon unit full of us blue boys. We got all the shitty jobs.’

  �
��Are you leaving?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you stay and I’ll go.’

  Hawg rolled himself quickly into the corridor and picked up speed.

  ‘Come on, bro,’ Dodge mocked, following and keeping pace. ‘Let’s parley – like you wanted. You came to me, remember? Into my room yesterday, spouting your paraplegic wisdom, putting me down ‘cause I won’t talk about it, and now you don’t want to hear a few home truths yourself? Why not?’

  ‘Leave me alone, I don’t have to talk to no fucking niggers!’ Hawg shouted, palming his wheels faster.

  Up ahead, a cleaner had stopped soaping the floor, and was watching the trouble coming his way. Passing him, Dodge grabbed his mop and thrust it through the spokes of Hawg’s wheelchair, spilling him out of his seat to sprawl on the wet linoleum. Hawg immediately starting to drag himself along, his useless legs pulling out a shiny trail like a slug.

  Even as Dodge stepped on Hawg’s ankle, he was dimly aware how abominable his actions were, but Hawg’s insult had soiled the only decent memory he still had of Vietnam: the kinship of battle, and the ultimate sacrifice, regardless of color or creed.

  ‘Get the fuck off of my leg!’ Hawg demanded.

  ‘You fucking redneck. I got problems because I was there; you’re fucked up because you had to leave. I have nightmares ‘cause of the people I killed; I reckon you lie awake thinking of all the people you didn’t get to kill ‘cause they broke your back.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘You know something, Hawg, you’ve really been a help to me. I don’t need a shrink. You’ve made me see it could be a whole lot worse. At least the only person I hate is me. You, you twisted son-of-a-bitch, you hate everyone.’

  ‘Get some help!’ Hawg told the cleaner, who belatedly slapped a nearby wall button, activating the alarm.

  Dodge sneered. ‘The only thing you love is that chair.’

  ‘I beg your fucking pardon?’ Hawg said indignantly.

  ‘Sure, it makes you feel what you did was okay because you got dealt some payback. You think it evens the score, makes it okay for you to go on wishing you were back there.’

  Four orderlies in white tunics appeared at the top of the corridor and came running, followed by the VA cop. Dodge released Hawg’s leg and stepped away, but discovered that the orderlies were happier to play it safe rather than go on trust. Dodge was charged to the ground and restrained, and pretty soon a doctor appeared, and then a needle.