Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Jo would never of understood if I’d said, “I’m going to Boston to be with Linda.” At least that’s what I thought. I mean, her boys didn’t set their life’s course by following girls to far-off cities. Go to Budapest or Timbuktu to go to school, or to Guantanamo Bay or Dong Ha to shoot people, that’d be respectable ... but to Boston to get laid!!!

  Jimmy came back from his second tour more gung-ho than ever but that’s not surprising. He spent the entire time with 4th CAG doing combined action duty. They kept moving him, letting him help set up CAP units in five or six different villages. He was becoming a real papa-san to a lot of people. He loved it, they loved him. And he was great for Marine morale. Sixty percent of the enlisted men in CAPs extended for at least six months. That’s how much they believed in the program. But he came home to completely different circumstances than the first time. This country was different. Our family was different.

  And I was up in Boston with Linda, in an apartment she’d found just off Commonwealth Ave., in Allston, the cheap side of the Ave. with lots of students, versus the swank side, which is Brookline. Linda was studying really hard and working hard too, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. I got a job almost right away—driving an ambulance. Anything, I reasoned, to be near her. She was so damned focused at that time. I was anything but focused—except on her. But she had the drive for both of us. It was Linda who’d gotten the applications, who’d gotten me to enroll at BU where I started classes in September ’69. I was a “conditional” student and had to take a study-habits course that summer—but Linda was really all I could think about.

  “You can control circumstances.” But we didn’t know, hadn’t developed the code, had left previous codes behind. The new code would need to be tempered in the ovens of alienation, estrangement, self-imposed exile, expatriation. Where once we believed in everything and our beliefs were supplanted, suppressed, or shattered, in the void we lost all beliefs or came to believe in someone else’s beliefs. When we lost our beliefs we lost too the adjunct discipline and were without discipline. When we gave our minds to someone else, we adopted disciplines attached to their interests. We wallowed, unfocused, numbed out, wide-eyed, movin ’n’ groovin without thought. We floated, without production, without achievement, without direction, without ideals, without ends. There was no one, no thing, to follow—no leadership of ideas, no models of service, no rituals, no codes.

  9

  BOSTON, AUGUST 1969: TONY was tense, cold, wet. He’d dreamed again but was again unable to recall the dream. Scattered flickerings of city light came in through the narrow French doors. He looked at Linda. In sleep her mouth maintained a slight smile that warmed him but which could not dispel his tension. Quietly he pulled back the sheet, rolled off the bed, fell into a crouch. He scanned the room, the French doors that led to the two-by-six-foot third-floor balcony, the transom light of the interior bedroom door. It was four o’clock in the morning. He heard squealing tires on Commonwealth, the crashing of garbage cans in the alley behind their apartment, the moan of an airliner circling, awaiting clearance to land at Logan, and the barely audible riffs of Judy Collins’s “Vietnam Love Song” seeping up from the apartment below.

  Slowly Tony rose. He stood perfectly still, listening, sensing. He walked around the bed staying close to the foot, away from the French doors, walked to the bedroom door, froze. Again he listened. Linda had studied all afternoon and into the early evening while Tony had watched first a Red Sox–Yankees game, then several game shows. At each break she’d encouraged him to hit the books but he’d been unable to tear himself away from the game and by the time it was over he’d gelled into position on the sofa. She’d finally gotten him up when Rachel and Larry from the studio upstairs came in with a six-pack. They drank quickly. In the heat the alcohol gave them an immediate buzz and they’d decided to catch the T up to Clarendon Street and walk to the Combat Zone—bars, dancing, music, prostitutes, booze, hippies, go-go girls, drugs, more music, more dancing. They met other friends, and all danced and drank till midnight. Then Tony and Linda left, rode the T back as far as Nickerson Field, walked the last half mile, laughing, looking into each other’s eyes, running, chasing each other all the way to Long Ave., Tony catching Linda on the first landing, she escaping then trapping him on the second, laughing, kissing then darting up the last flight, Linda fumbling with the two keys in the two dead bolts Tony had insisted upon, Tony fumbling with Linda’s clothing, unbuttoning her blouse as she’d opened the door and pulled him in by the belt.

  Quietly Tony turned the knob. The bedroom opened onto the living room. This room too was at the front of the apartment building, and it too had French doors and a small balcony. He visually checked the balcony, then the door to the stairs, finally the hallway to the bathroom, kitchen and second bedroom which they used as a study. For a moment he looked at the sofa where earlier they’d made love.

  Tony stepped into the living room. He moved along the sofa to the front wall, to the edge of the curtained French door. Slowly he slid a hand beneath the curtain, checking the lock. He knelt, checked the floor locks, moved to the stairway door, checked the locks there. The hall was dark. He didn’t turn on the light but slid into the darkness. He checked the bathroom, the kitchen, the windows above the alley, finally opening the study door where Linda had a desk clock with a backlit face that Tony abhorred because of the glow it cast, backlighting anyone in the darkness of the room, freaking him out because there could be someone outside, someone who could shoot in without detection. Tony turned the clock facedown, covered it with a dark shirt.

  Now he breathed more easily. He shuffled to the desk, ran his hands to his own small pile of books, felt to the side for the cigarette pack. It was easy during the day to read, to smoke, but at night it was nearly impossible. He removed a cigarette, closed the pack, replaced it. He put the unlit smoke between his lips, touched the tobacco with the tip of his tongue. Now he needed to taste smoke. He moved back to the living room, into the bedroom. Linda had rolled onto her stomach, her feet protruding from the sheet. To Tony she looked wonderful. Downstairs someone had flipped the albums. Judy Collins’s voice seeped up with “All Things Are Quite Silent.” Tony’d read the album, knew the song from which the royalties were being donated “to people dedicated to resisting the United States draft on the grounds that it is unconstitutional, immoral and indecent.” Collins’s voice was soothing. He tried to tune it out. He sat on the edge of the bed tonguing the tobacco, its taste stinging like spicy food.

  Then came shouts. Nothing serious. Kids—13, 14, 15 years old. Tony’s tension skyrocketed, his heart pounded, driving pulsing throbs down his chest to his thighs. He stood. The kids were shouting, cursing, banging a board on the wrought-iron railings of the stairs three stories below. Tony moved to the front wall, edged to the French doors. He shook. He peered out without moving. He wanted to open the door, yell at them, scream, “Get outa here!” but he couldn’t move. He saw two run across the street, rake the board up and down a railing there, shout obscenities at the darkened facade.

  Night after night, after the first awkward nights of May, Tony’s night ritual evolved. After work, study, party, love, sleep, he rose, tense, watched Linda sleep, then walked quietly, vigilantly, protecting, hovering until first light. Through job search and hiring, furniture shopping, opening checking and savings accounts, through school enrollment and life planning—degrees, marriage, maybe a house, maybe a small farm—the evolution continued. Despite breaks when they borrowed a friend’s motorcycle and rode to the bird refuge on Plum Island 40 miles north of Boston, despite the terror and thrill of notifying parents of wedding plans still unresolved—wait until Linda’s graduation, elope now, a church, a hall, here, in Mill Creek Falls, where?—despite it all Tony’s night ritual persisted, evolved through June into July and August.

  A few times Linda too had gotten up. He’d feigned flashes of inspiration, or pulled out VA pamphlets listing entitlements, duration of eligibility, restrictions
, or flipped open his study habits journal. But she’d seen through the scam, sensed his discomfort, knew because of the stories he’d told her that he’d been dreaming about the tunnel or Dai Do or Manny, dreaming something terrible she could not take from him because she could not study and work and love him and be his emotional self. For his part he did not want to tell her any more, did not trust Linda to hear more, afraid she, who’d been so awestruck by his being a sergeant in the Marine Corps, who was so loving, and supportive, would be horrified by his recurrent dreams, would withdraw.

  Ceasing to talk locked a part of him in a cell, froze that part like a butterfly encased in a transparent plastic cube, left him to fit his new role, his new self-image—no longer the dago hick from the Endless Mountains or the Marine Corps sergeant Viet Nam returnee. He had to project a countenance required of the big city with all its blue-jeaned, long-haired male students his age, to project an identity he did not possess.

  At times Tony and Linda did talk, yet he barely made sense anymore even to himself because he no longer remembered his dreams. And Linda, stretched to the very limit, found it easier to make love to him than to try to be his therapist.

  The sky softened. City lights lost their gleam. Tony turned on the television but kept the volume low. For a moment he watched soundless broadcasters—the silent talking heads—but quickly he turned his attention to his study-habits workbook, practicing the concentration technique prescribed, easily answering the few general questions about the “article” he’d chosen to read—a section from his emergency medical technician’s course. He smoked, rose, showered, dressed in the uniform of AmbuStar Ambulance Service, Inc. He brewed coffee, drank a quick cup, woke Linda with a kiss and left for work.

  “Pisano.”

  “Yo.”

  “You work a double today?”

  Tony glanced around the small AmbuStar office. He was the most junior of the drivers. “Yes Sir.”

  “Good. Fill in for Carlucci. You know the streets now. Lewis’ll be with you first shift. And ah—” the dispatcher-owner, Ken Charnowski, checked his clipboard, “I’ll put Pomeroy with you on second.”

  “Those are emergency routes, aren’t they, Sir?”

  “Yep.”

  “Ah, I’ve been doing only, you know, critical care transport, oxygen therapy ...”

  Lewis came over. He was a thin black man, about thirty, Tony’s height. “Pay’s better,” he said quietly. “Help you pay for that engagement ring.”

  “You’re doing the EMT course, aren’t you?” Charnowski was gruff.

  “Yes Sir, but—”

  “Hey, no big thing. Lewis and Pomeroy are qualified. I need a driver. I’ve got two on vacation and Carlucci called in sick. Work his double.”

  “Yes Sir.”

  At nine they answered their first call—a young boy had fallen from a tree and broken his leg. Alvin Lewis gently applied a splint and they drove the boy and his mother across the bridge to Beth Israel Hospital. All routine. At ten thirty they answered their second, a chaotic mess in Tony’s own neighborhood—where Commonwealth Ave. bends from west to south and Brighton Ave. meets the intersection. There, a visiting Taiwanese businessman had misunderstood the lights and T-boned an MTA railcar injuring himself, his two passengers and twenty T riders. Traffic immediately clogged the access. Police, fire and other ambulances had all been dispatched and all fought to get to the scene. Treatment and evacuation took over two hours.

  “Hey,” Alvin Lewis said to Tony after they’d treated several of the passengers, broken out of the clog and delivered two to emergency rooms, “you’re pretty good. You act like you’ve been doing this for years.”

  “Naw,” Tony said. “But thanks.”

  “Really Man. I seen you with the Chinawoman. She was hysterical and in like one second you had it all sorted out and calmed her down. You must of done this someplace—the way you take charge.”

  “Naw,” Tony smiled. “Not this. But, you know ... I was a sergeant in the Corps.”

  “What corps?”

  “In the Marine Corps.”

  “Oh! You mean ...” Lewis waved his hand back and forth pointing out Tony’s window.

  “Yeah. This is pretty tame.”

  “Yeah,” Alvin said. “I bet so.” He became quiet and Tony said nothing more.

  In the high heat and humidity of midafternoon Tony and Alvin answered more calls in South End: two heat prostration cases and one old black man who’d had a heart attack climbing his tenement stairs and who died on the stretcher in the back of the ambulance as Tony drove and Alvin held an oxygen mask over the man’s face.

  At four Lewis left. Tony gassed up, checked the oil and medical supplies, and picked up Quentin Pomeroy, a chubby young man with beautiful shoulder-length blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Through the late afternoon and early evening they were on the road, minor accidents and minor heat-related trauma, and one puncture wound of a young man’s shoulder, which bystanders swore was a stabbing by another young man, a fight over a girl, but which both young men insisted to the investigating officer was an accident. As a favor, Tony took and concealed the switchblade, dropping the evidence as he turned from Tremont Street onto Mass. Ave. heading down toward City Hospital.

  Tony was sleepy. He’d grabbed four Styrofoam cups before they’d left City, filled them with coffee, and stowed them on the shelf above the dashboard. By the time Pomeroy returned with the paperwork Tony had drunk two, discarded them, was drinking one he’d gotten for Quentin. He started the engine, wiped a hand over his face. “Hey, got ya a cup of coffee.”

  “Oh. Thanks, guy,” Pomeroy said. “That’s really white of ya.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Tony chuckled.

  It was near eleven. Tony’d been in and out of the vehicle for fifteen hours, up since four on less than two hours of sleep. Pomeroy too was nodding. Tony aimed northwest toward Symphony Hall, driving sleepily, thinking about nothing in particular other than getting off duty and going home to Linda, thinking fuzzily that he wouldn’t be able to pull doubles when he started school full-time, thinking how he hated it when Linda had doubles. The night dispatcher radioed.

  Pomeroy jolted up.

  In seconds they were wailing up Mass. Ave., lights flashing, speeding to a head-on on Storrow Drive—Storrow, a four-lane limited-access disaster of a highway with nothing but a guardrail between the on-coming lanes, built at a time when cars were rare and forty-five was an average speed.

  The air was still, warm, muggy—air that refracts light, holds it, forms a halo around on-coming headlights, around the harsh blipping bubbletop red, blue, white from the police cruisers. It was as if no time had passed from the moment of the call to the moment he was there, outside the ambulance, hearing the horns, the curses, the wailing of an infant—as if he, they, were slides clicked to a new frame, from sleepy to the hectic horror of the Storrow Drive accident scene.

  More horns. Behind them the eastbound lanes backed up, the cumulative headlights glinted from every shard of tempered windshield, every torn fragment of sheet metal, every pavement smear wet with fluid. There were two cars, both inverted. A Volvo had come from the westbound speed lane, slid, caught the center guardrail and flipped into the east-bound lanes, smashed head-on into a second, spinning both vehicles out, the eastbound Plymouth rolling like a punted football, finally crashing against the outer guardrail and stopping. The westbound vehicle—driver drunk, sleepy, just distracted changing tapes or flipping buttons looking for a different song—had spun on its roof, crashed backward into the center rail.

  Tony smelled gas. Officers closed the eastbound lanes behind them. Others whipped orange-gloved-hands at westbound cars, demanding they maintain the flow, demanding that drivers, passengers, not slow down to gawk. Tony sprinted to the Plymouth, knelt, crawled. There was wailing coming from inside. Pomeroy shouted at one of the cops. Passersby began to crowd near. Tony heard nothing but the wail. He did not search for a source. Instead: Ignition! Ignition key.
On the passenger side the roof was flattened to the base of the windows. He rolled, low-crawled, scampered to the driver’s window. There was blood on the door. Tony lay on his back, his legs kicked up as he forced his right arm in, feeling for the steering column, the key.

  “Get back! Get back!” The cop’s voice was nasty. The growing crowd shifted, milled. Tony felt dripping—warm, wet—then the chain, the key. He turned the key. Now he began to assess the situation. There was still the wailing but the interior was dark—the bright lights from the cruisers, from his own ambulance, from the fire truck that had arrived on a parallel side road, made it impossible to see into the car. A firefighter began dumping bags of Absorb-all about the car. Another firefighter, with a flashlight, bent with Tony, tried to see inside, saw wet shreds on the inverted driver’s door above Tony as Tony too saw them; saw the neck, the hair, the piece of skull—realized immediately the driver’s head had been caught outside during the last rollover, had been trapped between road and car and scraped away. Still there was the wailing. More firemen came, worked the car with bars.

  “Back there. Point it back there.” Tony glanced at the man with the flashlight. He too was young, clean-cut.

  “Christ!” The man aimed the light. Both peered, searched. “What a fuckin mess. You with Dust-Off?”

  “AmbuStar,” Tony answered. They could see the car was full of children, saw the cocked head and glassy eyes of one who was dead, but they could not tell about the others, could not be certain, could not even determine how many.