Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  I am the Will, he thinks, but I can no longer control the Will. He nods more deeply. His nightmare expands. There are heads, three, huge, bigger than beach balls, eyes, beautiful, exquisite eyes.... Tony’s entire body convulses violently, jarring him back awake, alert. He is cool, wet. His nares are flared, feel permanently splayed trying to sense the wind. Now he is angry, furious at his demons, at his horrible thoughts, at his disgusting self. He should be so happy, elated. He has two beautiful daughters, each with wispy strands of red hair, with exquisite eyes, he thinks, like Linda’s. And his thoughts are on seeing them die, causing their deaths, killing them!! He cannot stay down, cannot stay still. He paces, frantic, in the dark, frantic, holding the shotgun, panicky, afraid he’ll quit again, afraid he’ll drag them down, afraid ...

  “Go home, Babe. You look terrible. Didn’t you sleep?”

  “I’m okay. Really. How do you feel?”

  “I’m exhausted.” Then Linda laughed. “God, look at this. I’m already soaking wet.”

  Tony was sitting on the edge of her bed. He slipped a finger into the neck of her nightgown, pulled it out glimpsing her skin. “Mmm-mmmm.” He laughed with her.

  “Of course, it’s just colostrum. There won’t be any milk for a few days.”

  “Of course.” Tony chuckled.

  “That Gina, I think she takes after you. She’s already a little barracuda. She wants to feed all the time.”

  “And Michelle?”

  “She’s a little lady.”

  “And what can I do for my big lady?”

  “Nothing, Babe. I just want to sleep. They’ll bring them back from the nursery when they wake. Babe, why don’t you go home? Were you up all night?”

  “Yeah, I think I will. I was like speeding all night. I’m goina go up and see Mr. Wapinski first. And my pop. We need a car.”

  “You’re a Viet Nam soldier, eh?”

  “No, not me, Mr. Wapinski.” Tony and Pewel Wapinski were in the Sugar Shack, the small outbuilding where the maple sap was boiled down.

  “No?”

  “No Sir,” Tony answered.

  The old man stared at the boy. “Why do you say that?”

  “Sir?” Tony was struggling with the last of the ash from the firepit under the huge evaporator tank. He’d enjoyed the work, was sorry it was over.

  “I know who you are,” Pewel Wapinski said. “I read the papers. I know your uncle James and your pa, too. From church. Even if I don’t go much. Now why do you say that?”

  Tony was stunned. The old man had never let on. Tony had felt anonymous, free.

  “You served in Viet Nam,” Pewel said flatly.

  “Hm-hmm,” Tony mumbled. He wanted to leave, grab his pay, split.

  “Then why do you deny it?” To the old man, the boy was virtually the same age as his grandson.

  “Because they hate us, Mr. Wapinski. Because everybody hates us for having been there.”

  “Humph!”

  “And they try and make us hate ourselves.”

  “That skin a yours don’t look so thin to me.”

  “It’s not my skin. It’s my ears and eyes.” Tony paused. Pewel said nothing. “I’m done here,” Tony said.

  “Come back next week,” Pewel said. “We’ll plant the lower field. And turn the high meadow.”

  “I won’t be here. I’ll be in Mexico,” Tony snapped.

  “Mexico?”

  “Or maybe Wyoming. There’s so much shit comin down, if I stay here I’ll kill someone.”

  “Yer pa know?”

  “Nope.”

  “You goina tell im?”

  “Nope.”

  “When—”

  “Soon as you pay me.”

  “Want me to call yer pa? Let him know?”

  “Sure. In a few days. Just tell im I’m tired of the killin.”

  Part II

  Expatriation

  August 1984

  SIX-IN TEEN-OUT. SEVEN-IN TEEN-OUT.

  Counting breaths. Trying to meditate through it.

  I’m just over the west ridge at the edge of the sugarbush, out of sight of the house, the big barn, the outbuildings. A short crawl to the ridge in the light would reveal the high meadow, the vineyard, pond, all that rests in the arms of the ridges. But I will not go, will not look, in the dark.

  Night descends with a vengeance. It is very dark. There is no moon, no stars. There is a wind. Cutting. Raw. Sometimes I can read the wind but I cannot read this wind. Heat lightning flashes to the west. I hunker down. At fields’ and orchard’s edge weeds and brush grow quickly, thick, to armpit height. Like a buck on his day bed, I’ve crushed a small area, left a thin trail, a single field of fire to me; me, low, hugging the earth, camouflaged beneath a poncho, beneath wild brushweed, beneath darkness. Wind swirls the weed tops. Rain begins. Droplets lash my face. I close my eyes, let the rivulets run awash on my skin. Lightning moves closer. I lie perfectly still. My heart is racing. My eyes are closed yet I see flashes—not just the lightning but thousands of overlapping flashes taking up random quarters or thirds of my eye-frame. Interspersed are a million pinpoint flashes. My brain is speeding out of control. Forty-in two-out. Forty-in three-out. Forty-in four-out. Thunder rumbles.

  I cannot describe how angry I was during this period. I cannot come close. Even now when I think back to that time I am enraged, livid, pissed beyond words. Damn, shit piss damn. That doesn’t even begin ... That’s surface anger. That’s what splashes from the spout of a boiling teakettle, the splattering mist of mad agitation, symptomatic of what’s within except what’s within you can only guess at. You can’t see it. You can’t see the numb volcanic rage feeding itself without sensing itself; a self-consumptive fury that the VA’s perverted therapists labeled guilt-ridden, depressive, schizo-psychotic; that commentators deemed deserved purgatorial flame—that is, blame the victim—until later when they recognized the victimization (without recognizing their role as assailant) and assuaged themselves by pitying us only to rob us of any vestige of pride, of humanity. And when they decided to heal the national gash, they identified it as its veterans and not themselves, decided to heal us, as if we’d started the entire affair and somewhere had taken an aberrant route. If only they could design a program ... If only they could figure us out ... Fuck em! They couldn’t and can’t figure themselves out—don’t realize that they have an effect on every man who is not an island. Perhaps this is what drove us to High Meadow, but that is much later—which is perhaps what has driven me here, now, an island in the weeds, a renegade on the rural edge of civilization practicing evade, avoid, escape. Their sickness, their unwillingness to recognize it, their scapegoating or displacing it, was the trigger of rage, was the very heart of the out-of-controlledness that has held sway over America for fifteen years and that shows no indication now, in August 1984, of self-correction BECAUSE there is no recognition of the source problem, of the depth and breadth and scope of this 3-D mosaic problem. The rage they cause, the overwhelming fury they describe as being set off by trivial events—which is the definition of neurological impairment or psychosis—because they do not recognize their provocation of us, do not recognize the great frustration that would redefine our rage as ordinary, justifiable anger. Rage, justified or not, causes further problems, more rage—unjustifiable rage—because rage damages the brain, imbalances frontal lobe chemistry, and fosters “disinhibited” dementia. More simply: some of you motherfuckers drove us crazy.

  Nearly every Viet Nam returnee I know split. Bobby called it expatriation. From east they went west; from north, south. Or some, like me, went no place and every place—the road, the open, unending, ever-shifting road. As near as I can tell, virtually every one of us at some point or another moved because of restlessness, alienation, an itch within; moved, got the fuck out, beat feet, skyed. Some hid it in corporate transfers, like Tashkor and Rasmuellen, who later became our attorneys at High Meadow; some hid it in numbed-out self-medication; some in their own planned “accidental
” permanent checking out.

  One problem was the seemingly amorphous shades-of-gray conflicts in everyday life. Enemies were indefinable, indistinguishable—CONTRARY to popular myth, UNLIKE Nam where the enemy was definable and distinguishable, just elusive, excellent at self-camouflage, able to leap uncrossable borders to unassailable sanctuaries. But back in the World, there seemed to be only gnawing, ungraspable problems eroding strength, integrity, resolve. Bobby called them Gumption Suckers. Spirit usurpers. Like being in thick pea soup, like Nam mountaintop fog so thick your eyes played tricks on you and when they told you there was something out there, you saw things that were not really there—and when they told you there was nothing, something unseen would emerge and grab your rickety ass. Who was the enemy? Certainly it varied man to man, woman to woman, vet to vet. Demons: the absence of full-blown Post Traumatic Stress Disorder does not mean one is not continually attempting to cope with his combat experience. More ambiguous, insidious enemies: The System, drugs, agent orange, crime, money, the Me Generation, bad marriages, the VA, prison, filmdom, and the media. But again I am far ahead of myself. I still did not know Bobby Wapinski. And he too had a row to hoe.

  11

  Under all is the land. Upon its wise utilization and widely allocated ownership depend the survival and growth of free institutions and of our civilization.... The interest of the nation and its citizens requires the highest and best use of the land.... the creation of adequate housing, the building of functioning cities, the development of productive industries and farms, and the preservation of a healthful environment.

  —The Preamble to the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Realtors

  SAN MARTIN, CALIFORNIA, Sunday, 14 June 1970—It was cool, wet, already the wettest June on record and June not even half over. It was barely five A.M. Wapinski parked his Chevy sedan on Aaron Road, just out of town. He’d driven from Bahia de Martin Mobile Home Community, under Highway 101, north on First Street, west on Miwok Road—The Strip—driven in the rain past the darkened downtown stores, past “his” office, Great Homes Realty, to Aaron Road where he turned right and descended to the small gravel parking area and trailhead by San Antonio Creek.

  He was vaguely aware of the overcast, of the smell of Josh’s damp fur, of this anniversary date. He got out, opened the back door. “C’mon Josh. We don’t have much time.” Bobby checked his watch: grabbed his vest, rod and reel, bait can and hat. It was less than half a mile up Cataract Trail to the first dam and lower reservoir, maybe three-quarters of a mile to the hole he wanted to try first before he worked his way up the north side of The Res, as everyone called it, to the upper section of creek where he’d been told by Coleman there was decent trout fishing. Wapinski had in mind he would meander along the upper creek to the Upper Reservoir and fish that small lake too before he headed out at ten thirty to be back by noon to be cleaned up and to his open house—his first listing—by one P.M. “C’mon Josh! Get the lead out.”

  Away from the road the trailside quickly became dense with fir, pine, scrub oak and beech, a stand of redwood, more pine and oak cloaking the slopes from the river up to North Peak. In the stream the water was high. The rain came steadily, not hard. Bobby crushed his hat down on his head; Josh lagged a dozen paces back.

  Before the first dam there was a picnic area and the trailhead for Gold Mine Trail which ran away from the creek and into the glades and grassland on the east slope. In February Bobby and Red had followed Gold Mine for a hundred yards, then fifteen feet to the side into a small secluded clearing where they’d made love. He paused, reflecting on that one time which now seemed long ago. When he and Red had returned home they’d found the envelope without return address and the obituary of James Pellegrino, and Red had cried and Bobby had tried to comfort her but she hadn’t wanted his comforting. Instead, she’d discarded the article. That night Bobby’d picked it from the trash, reread it, filed it in the bill box, then gone out and walked to town, to Miwok Road where he’d watched kids in Camaros and Firebirds and Bonnevilles cruising The Strip, older people with older sedans pushing cartloads of groceries from the all-night Safeway, two officers in a police car, barely older than the kids they tailed. For a moment that night he’d hated it all. For a moment he’d thought he did not belong there, did not belong in a town or a city or with people, but belonged in the hills, in the woods, alone.

  Bobby climbed to the base of the dam. The gates were high. Four-inch-thick water crested the concrete barrier, shot down the slides, roiled and foamed at the base.

  The morning after they’d learned of Jimmy’s death, Red had been up early, off to work before Bobby realized she wasn’t taking the day off. That night she’d worked late. The next day was the same. And the next ten.

  “Please don’t be upset if I work seven days a week,” she’d said. Perhaps it was early March when he’d suggested another hike. “Just right now I have to. You’ll have to share me with my work.”

  “All work and no play ... you know,” he’d said apologetically.

  “Really,” Red had answered as she’d donned her new suit jacket, “when I get home.” She’d come to him, kissed him. “Maybe I should have kept working for that friend of my father’s but he was, you know, just creepy. And besides, it was only ten thousand. If I make only one sale a month I’ll have more take home....” She hadn’t finished but had checked her watch and said, “I’ve got to go. My appointment.”

  Quickly he climbed the trail stairs beside the dam. He breathed deeply. Three flights and he had to rest. Their loving had returned for three days straight, then subsided again: yet because of it he believed that the hiatus had been an aberration, a temporary result of heavy work schedules, initial adjustment to their reunification, and the shock of Pellegrino’s death. Now he did not analyze the long chasms at all.

  Wapinski topped the dam shoulder, struck out briskly for the three-tree deadfall overhanging The Res and the hole he wished to try. The Res trail was raked gravel, in places at water’s edge, elsewhere meandering into the trees. Bobby set his bait can on the trail, removed a fat night crawler, worked the hook into the soft body below the radial ring. The worm squirmed, elongated, thinned to the diameter of ten-gauge wire. “C’mon you little slimehead,” Wapinski muttered. The hook tip broke through the worm’s side. The rain increased in intensity. Josh nuzzled Bobby’s hand. “Not now,” Bobby snapped. He backed the hook tip into the worm’s seeping side then manipulated the skinny body over the barb, around the curve, until the entire hook was concealed. Josh shimmied, throwing mud droplets from his coat, covering the side of Bobby’s face. “Geez!” Bobby lurched, the rod slipped, fell, pulled the line, the hook tip broke through the worm and stuck in Bobby’s finger. “Ow-ooo!” He pulled it out. Shot a glance at the dog, then at his watch—twenty to six—then back at Josh. “Just sit there. I’m goina go down and get us some fish.”

  Day broke gray. The rain increased. Bobby stepped off the trail, slipped, caught himself, gritted his teeth. All he wanted to do was fish but his mind wasn’t with it. New thoughts, half thoughts, rushed in, on. The nation’s economy ... another sharp increase in the jobless rate ... sharpest continuing climb since 1958 ... California jobless rate up to 5.9 percent ... real estate market tightening ... his first listing, a twelve-year-old four-bedroom home in the Martinwood subdivision with pool for $41,500 ... $4,000 overpriced ... never sell it ... eating nothing but raw rice and the office’s coffee-service sugar cubes ... like being socked in without resupply ... Cambodian Incursion elation, Kent/Jackson State depression ... fuck em all I gotta eat, I gotta sell ... anniversary of Hamburger Hill come and gone without my notice except Coleman and Bartecchi mentioned something ... 1/506th at a place called Ripcord ... Grandpa’s letter ... knee-deep in maple syrup?

  Wapinski flicked the rod tip aiming under the deadfall. The worm arced in low, just nicked a twig, caught, then whipped around a branch wrapping the line tight. “You slimehead,” Wap growled. He pulled. He yanked. The rod be
nt, the branch swayed, the worm remained tangled. “Shit. First damn cast!” He reeled in as much as possible, grabbed the line beyond the rod tip, pulled until it snapped. He tied on another hook, impaled another worm. The rain came harder. He cast again, timidly, the bait falling short of cover. He let the worm sink, reeled in, added a split shot eighteen inches up the line, recast and caught the same branch as on his first cast and again couldn’t dislodge the hook. His ire multiplied. Again he reeled in, snapped the line, tied a new hook. One fuckin year, he thought. One fuckin year home. No dough. Lots of bills. Living off Red, who’s intermittently frigid ...

  San Martin considered itself to be a canyon town, a perfect all-American community, a municipality with well-kept homes, manicured lawns, excellent schools, and state-championship quality tennis, golf and baseball teams. That very little of the town actually stretched back along San Antonio Creek into the ravine—it wasn’t really a canyon at that point but a pass between South and North Peaks—made no difference to anyone.