“So you’re angry about it.”
“You bet your sweet ass—”
“One minute.” Binford held up a hand. “Now I know we’ve always said anything we wish in here, but today, just today, I’m going to ask you to practice self-control over your language. No swearing. No cusses. Just as an exercise in self-control. Can you do that for me?”
“I guess.” Tony scratched his nose.
“Why the anger?”
“Don’t you see?”
“I see peace. I see a peace treaty.”
“I see a sellout.”
“I see American prisoners coming home.”
“I see my cousin. I see him being killed for no godd ... arned reason. I see the devaluation of his sacrifice. And mine.”
“But you won.”
“Not with the fuckin commie army in place!”
“Okay. Let’s move on. Close your eyes. See Dai Do....”
In early March Binford tried another tactic. “Here!” he shouted. They were in the village just before getting to the woman and children. Binford threw a seat cushion at Tony. “That’s the woman. Pretend that’s the woman. What do you want to do to her?”
“Doc!” Tony glared.
“Show me what you want to do to her!”
“This is stupid. If this were the woman I’d push her down and drill that motherfucker behind her.”
“You’d kill again?”
“Fuck, damn right!”
“Who would you kill?”
“Not this stupid pillow.”
In April 1973 Tony brought in a news article from the local paper. “Listen to this, Doc. ‘The beatings ended only when they fell to unconsciousness, or when they capitulated. Or died.’ These guys really went through a worlda hurt.”
“That’s about the POWs?”
“Yeah. Remember how you thought it was so great of Hanoi to release em. Listen to this. This guy was badly burned. ‘About his condition he said, “My wounds were draining badly, and were full of puss. The smell was terrible. It attracted a horde of flies. I let them lay their eggs on the burned flesh. When the maggots hatched they devoured the dead tissue which served to debride the wound. Later I washed the wounds with my urine to get the maggots off.” ’ Heroic stuff, huh, Doc?”
“Do you think so?”
“Yep. I do. I hurt for this guy.”
“What about for the people he dropped bombs on?”
“You don’t make a distinction, huh?”
“Do you?”
“You bet your sweet ass. He was a captive. A prisoner. Helpless. They were active combatants. Engaged in battle.”
“People pushing bicycles against supersonic fighter-bombers?”
“Able to attack and able to defend. Isn’t that the distinction the Geneva Accords make on treating POWs?”
“What about at Dai Do,” Binford said. “Let’s go back one more time. Who was able to attack and who was able to defend?”
“All of us.”
“The woman ...”
“No. I meant the NVA. And us.”
“Close your eyes.”
“Hm.”
“Can you see the woman?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And the children?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And yourself, Tony?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m down. I’m in the dirt. In the prone firing position.”
“You’re holding your weapon?”
“Yeah. I’m trying to sight ... trying to get a bead on the dink.”
“And what do you see?”
“The woman. And her kids. And I can see this fucker behind em.”
“And you want to shoot him?”
“Yeah. I want to waste im.”
“But you can’t?”
“Right. I can’t get a clean shot. The dumb bitch—”
“You’re angry with the woman?”
“Right on! Dumb! Dumb fuckin frozen! Exposing her kids to fire.”
“And you fire?”
“Yeah.”
“You hear your weapon, feel your weapon, see the flashes.”
“Yeah.”
“Your bullets hit the woman and the children, don’t they.” Tony’s eyes are still shut. His face squinches. Binford continues. “Now you’ve got a clean line of fire on the man with the belt.” Tony moans. “Shoot him.”
“MAHAAAH!” Tony jolts up, eyes open, stares at Binford.
“Did you get him, Tony?”
“Yeah. No. No. He was already dee-dee-in. Splittin. Beatin feet.”
“But the woman and children are dead, aren’t they?”
“He drilled em in the back.”
“No, Tony. You shot them. You shot them because you were afraid the enemy soldier was going to shoot you and you needed to lay suppressive fire even if the woman and children were in the way.”
“Unt-uh.”
“Yes, Tony. You could see it clearly this time, couldn’t you? We’ve stripped away the screen memory. You were scared that day, weren’t you?”
“You’re always scared when you’re in a firefight,” Tony said quietly. “But not so scared you fire up women and children.”
“And you were excited that day, too, huh?”
“Your adrenaline’s pumpin.”
“And you missed killing that soldier earlier and you even needed to be counseled by your superior?”
Tony sighed. “I told you that.”
“And you’ve finally seen what really happened there. Now you know why you’ve been punishing yourself.”
“No, Doc.” Tony’s voice was slow, pained.
Binford’s voice remained calm, firm, bearing down like a heavy weight. “Only an act of commission causes the self-destructive behavior you’ve exhibited. The only way to deal with it, Tony, is to own up to it. Confront it. Then you can come to terms with it. You’re not alone, Tony. Many men err under the stress of combat. You’re not perfect. None of us are. You don’t have to hold yourself up against some impossible John Wayne standard. It’s okay, Tony. It’s okay.”
Tony slid slightly forward in the chair, placed his hands, fists balled, on his thighs. “You really think I shot em?”
“What do you think, Tony?”
Tony canceled his April 17th session. He excused himself by telling John Binford’s secretary that his sister-in-law, Molly, was in labor and he was staying with his brother, lending support. (Adam Pisano was born 18 April at 4:54 A.M.) Tony didn’t call or attend his scheduled May 1st therapy. He worked at High Meadow as he had now for fourteen straight months. He felt moody, antsy. On the 6th his supply of lithium carbonate ran out but he refused to return to RRVMC to pick up his refill. Linda noticed the change but purposefully ignored the signs. She was busy. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she worked eight to five for Dr. Simon Denham and his new group practice. Monday, Wednesday and Friday she worked for Pewel Wapinski. Saturdays and Sundays she attempted to catch up around the apartment and even cram in some study.
Saturday, 12 May 1973, Mill Creek Falls, River Front Drive, the back lawn of Ernest Hartley’s mansion, the wedding reception of Annalisa Pellegrino and Edward Milne—On this joyous and beautiful day, this third birthday of his daughters Gina and Michelle, for Anthony F. Pisano everything again turned to shit.
“You look beautiful.” Tony hugged his cousin.
“And you’ve had too much champagne.” Annalisa hugged him back, turned to her maid of honor to introduce Tony.
“Wait. Just give me one minute, okay? Just a little toast between you and me.”
“Sure.” Her eyes were bright reflecting the sun and the white satin.
“To the unseen best man,” Tony whispered.
Annalisa looked him in the eye. Smiled. “Okay. To Jimmy,” she said.
Tony hugged her again. Then he slipped away, back to the patio where a few friends of Edward Milne were surrounding a keg of beer. Tony stood near them, not really with the
m except when he refilled his cup.
Tony watched the congregated celebrators. John and Molly were there with baby Adam, swaddled, a sun bonnet covering his face, Molly tipping up the brim, showing him off to everyone and anyone. Nonna Pisano sat on a wicker throne chair looking like the queen mother. Uncle James and Aunt Isabella discreetly directed operations. All the aunts and uncles and cousins attended, ate, drank, danced. And friends and friends of friends, after the first serving, came to celebrate, too—more lovely young women than Tony had seen, ever, in one place.
“Check out that one,” one of Edward’s friends said.
Tony moved to the keg to refill his cup.
“Bit old for you,” a second friend laughed.
“You talking about the little one with the nice tits?” a third said.
“Yeah,” said the first. Tony followed their eyes, realized they were talking about Linda. In a way it delighted him, made him proud.
“Boy,” the third said, “I’d like to plow her fields.”
They laughed. Tony laughed with them, involuntarily. Then the second man said, “I heard she’s hot to trot.”
“Man,” said the first, “look at them tits. She’s really stacked.”
Again they laughed. Then the second young man said, “She used to fuck like a bunny for a friend of a friend of mine. He said she’s a dynamite lay, but that her old man’s trouble.”
Tony moved off. He was wounded. He was drunk, angry, wanting to punch someone, wanting to confront Linda right there. He moved down the tree line, between shrubs, gradually closer. He heard his father’s voice, saw the back of his head. “I don’t understand him,” John Sr. was saying. “He’s not like the others. Never has been.”
Tony moved on, closer, angrier yet. Annalisa was sitting in a chair surrounded by almost everyone. Edward knelt before her, was raising her skirt, teasingly pushing the garter higher instead of removing it. The band was playing little flourishes—da-dat-da-dah—with each thrust.
Linda was watching Annalisa, talking to someone Tony didn’t know, perhaps one of the visiting nurses. “I thought Tony was pretty bad off with all he saw,” Linda said to the woman. “But I heard from Susan about one guy out there who just realized he’d killed a woman and her children in cold blood. They say he was so overwhelmed by his behavior that he psychologically blocked it out and supplanted the memory with a total fabrication.”
September 1984
IT KICKS IN. THE dream, the terror. I see a mouth. I see the mouth the same way I see the tunnel; the same way I feel the chopper going down; the same way I see, feel, hear, smell Manny, me, my arms, his face, his chest. I see teeth, a slight overlap of the incisors. I see the gums, pink, gray; the lips, gray; the tongue. I see saliva, spittle, white foam at the corners of the mouth and silvery reflections off the wet chin. I do not see the person. I do not see me. But I sense the person, the hopelessness, the lostness, the shame at being worthless, at being a burden. I sense the befuddlement, the WHY? the HOW? the exasperation yet the lack of motivation, incentive, foresight. I am the mouth. I am a vegetable.
I do not know where to go from here. Ty, Bobby and I are nearing convergence, collision. I want to tell you these stories, ideas, events, theories, simultaneously. But that is not possible.
I did not confront Linda with the fucking like a bunny for the friend of Annalisa’s husband’s friend, but in my state of mind, of self-esteem, I believed it. Why the hell shouldn’t she? She was sensual, beautiful, and strapped to a lead weight—me. God, it hurt. I was raw inside, irate, fragile. Why? The base, the foundation that I’d worked so hard to rebuild, I let it be shattered by one sentence overheard. I was worthless, a murdering scumhead. I was not even worthy enough to pray Grandpa Wapinski’s prayer. Give me the strength and guts to try hard and never give up? Try hard on what? Never give up what? Worthless scum has no reason to be strong, to persevere.
Binford’s guilt therapy had me convinced I should die, rid them of me. I could not touch my daughters, could not hug them, could not play with them, could barely look at them. And if Linda was boffing somebody—probably the guy from Steve’s Lumber—could I have touched her? My mania returned. I slept in the barn at High Meadow, when I did sleep, on the pretext of needing to get in the expanded crops. I skipped out and drank, alone, at the White Pines Inn. I found Big Bonnie again, scored my dope from him, fucked Zookie until I thought my balls would collapse and I’d suffocate in her neck tattoo.
In June I received a letter from Rick. I don’t know how he found me. He was in school, doing pretty well amid the “influx of idiots” and the professor who wouldn’t “let me in class without a haircut. Oh, by the way,” he wrote it just like this, “they did cut my legs off.”
On July ninth, a few days after checking on the flag on Jimmy’s grave, after arranging with the Lutz boys for the crops, without telling Grandpa Wapinski or Linda or my Pop or Jo or Annalisa, I split, climbed back on the Harley, set myself free.
Free. I think of telling you of the homeless who befriended me. Some good people down on their luck. Times were tough. Some crooks. Some crazies. Some zombies. I think of telling you of the runaways—kids—some as young as thirteen. What’s this country coming to?! I think of telling you of all those things I saw, things I did. But why? It is only more of the same. More of the same when I was almost arrested in Montgomery, Alabama. More of the same when I ditched a chick and took her dope and dough in Denver.
Being a two-time loser facilitates being a three-time loser. By time four it was habitual, repeating as if I were strapped to a carousel in purgatory. Intrusive thoughts, frustrations, anger, drugs, booze, splitting, danger-zone, trouble, checking into the VA, going crazy because of untreated or mistreated PTSD that was rubbed raw by current events, by cultural misperceptions, by social ostracism, by guilt therapy and strait jacket cocktails. Then deeper remorse, additional self-incrimination, self-hate.
Why was my Pop able to handle what he saw and I wasn’t? Why were so many Viet vets able to handle their experiences? Why did others, like me, fold, crumble, give in, give out? There are many reasons but, to me, the most unkind booby trap, the most long-term devastation, stemmed from the liquid strait jacket “therapy” from the VMC, and that followed up by the acerbic ambush of guilt-therapy. I think I could have made it home had I not been so damaged, had I been left to my own devices.
Today I have a better grasp. I understand the booby trap of the cocktails—not just the immediate and short-term effects, but the long-term brain damage—the actual atrophying of dopamine receptors analogous to foisting Alzheimer’s disease on the subject. I also understand the ambush of guilt-therapy that became prevalent after the DMS III (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3d ed.) added Posttraumatic Stress Disorders as a mental illness (diagnosis), and after it became perverted by a do-gooder system that did not—a system that set up compensation for failing to heal, and then only if one admitted to the commission of malicious atrocities against civilians or one’s fellow combatants.
A break. I get so wound up about this my thoughts short out, words are supplanted by anger, by fury—rationality is obliterated. So breathe with me. It is a technique Bobby taught. A few deep breaths, belly breaths, and a look about. The night is clear, cold, black sky and stars to the west and north; thin low clouds, and light, to the east. Morning is coming but that light is the false dawn. From up here, it’s almost as though the world no longer exists. It has been destroyed in nuclear war yet without TV, radio, papers, I’ve yet to be informed. The mall lights to the south come on at dusk but they are automatic and maybe even if everyone is dead they would still operate for some time. My fire is not dependent on them, on any of them. Burning apple branches mostly. Cleaning the orchard earlier. Habit. Apple is a hardwood but too full of knots for anything other than small sculptures and firewood. I toss on another piece. Glowing droplets rise against the black curtain of the sugarbush like inverse rain. I follow the riselets, jar the fire for a fresh
storm. First by the thousands, then hundreds, then one by one they die out and only one climbs up over the crown, into the stars.
I came back in February ’74. Grandpa Wapinski was pretty angry with me but he didn’t show it much. His body wasn’t very healthy anymore but he had his tickets to California ready and he was like a little kid with a lollipop, those old eyes glistening. “Come with me,” he said.
“I came to syrup,” I said. “Then I’m outta here.”
“Upset, huh?”
“Why’d she do it, Mr. Wapinski? Why’d she file ...” I broke down that time. I cried and he let me cry. How could I have expected Linda to do anything but? She’d filed for divorce in January. I was out of my head. “Okay.” I finally got the words out. “I’ll accompany you.” I could not have been more lost, more lame, more in need of a shepherd to carry me home.
20
SAN MARTIN, CALIFORNIA, MAY 1973—Bobby was in the Safeway at Sixth and Miwok. He had just handed the cashier a twenty-dollar bill. In his bag he had two large zucchinis, one jar of spaghetti sauce, a box of mushrooms, a pound of mozzarella, a pound of ground chuck, and bread, peanut butter and cigarettes. In his mind swirled the idea to use zucchini slices instead of lasagna noodles. The entire preparation and cooking time, he reasoned, could be cut to a third, because there’d be no precooking.
“Oh, excuse me.”
Bobby startled. Looked back, down. There was a woman picking up a clutter of coupons from the floor. Behind her were eight children, all about the same age. Bobby lifted a foot to give the woman room. She looked up, smiled. His thoughts crumbled. Bobby bent. He did not take his eyes from hers. Behind her the boys were pushing, pulling baseball cards from the exit displays, dashing into the path of shopping carts. The girls each had food items. Bobby fumbled, picked up a coupon, handed it to her. “Thank you,” she said.
“Sure,” he answered. He stood.
She too stood. She was only as tall as his nose.
Carry Me Home Page 55
