Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  The Major continued by saying that he was not a political person, but it seemed that ever since the ’73 Peace Agreement was signed, the South Viet Namese have been losing. He added that even reduced US aid and support would mean the survival of South Viet Nam. He said, “Now I talk to you as a friend. So I feel very bad and believe that my country may fall, but I will die fighting for it. The problem I will have is to understand why it fell when so may Americans and Vietnamese have died for a good cause.” This reporter responded that I knew he was tired and had to rest, and take heart—everything was far from being lost....

  In parting the Major said, “Only the Americans, the ones who have stayed and fought with us, understand the Viet Namese. Unfortunately, the rest of the free world does not understand, nor care.”

  The man paused again, shuffled through his stack of reports and letters. “Here’s a State Department AirGRAM from the American Consul in Can Tho, dated February 6, 1975. ‘During the heavy fighting of December and January ...’” Bobby Wapinski found himself shaking his head and thinking what heavy fighting in December?

  ... most public attention was focused on gains made by the NVA/VC forces against GVN defenders. Can Tho 0021 related a few examples of particularly effective performance by the Republic of Viet Nam Armed Forces during this period.... Attached ... account ... of the December 6 defense of a village in Vinh Long Province by 60 Popular Forces and Rural Development (RD) Cadre against 200 Communist attackers ...

  ... We would point out the following. First the RD Cadre are not a fully trained, heavily armed military force. They are instead lightly armed, government employees whose function is to bolster civil services in rural areas of Viet Nam. Secondly, the reader should note the extremely limited but highly effective use of artillery during the attack. Finally, we would remind the reader that the battle at Hoa Tinh village is only one of dozens of such incidents that occur throughout the Delta every week....

  Outside. “You sign up, Man?”

  “Yeah,” Tony responded. “You?”

  “Yeah,” Bob said. “But ... shit, Man. There’s so much happenin. Granpa. Sara’s due in two weeks ...”

  “Yeah. How can you go, Man?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. But how can I not?”

  “God Damn It!” Ten days had passed. There had been no call. Tony had spent six nights at Old Russia Road—sleeping in the office-mobile, preparing gear, unbeknownst to Sara, for Bobby and himself. The South Viet Namese city of Da Nang, one of Tony’s areas of operation during his tour, had come under heavy bombardment on the twentieth of March, and by the twenty-first the handwriting was on the wall. Still there was no call. All that night, Tony had raged silently, had gotten drunk, silently, inside the car. At first light he’d taken the car and driven to the Marine Corps recruiting office in San Rafael.

  “How come Da Nang’s fallin?” he demanded.

  “Calm down, Pal.” The recruiter had just unlocked his office in the basement of the post office.

  “Why the fuck didn’t they leave the 3d Marine Division there?”

  “Pal, they’ve been on Okinawa for two years.”

  “What about the 1st?” Tony had demanded.

  “Camp Pendelton, Pal. Where you been?”

  “Why aren’t they still up by the Z?”

  “Here, Pal. Have a sticker.”

  “Yeah. Give me ten a them.”

  “Sure.”

  “An ten a them. An them. An them.”

  “How bout a cup a coffee, too?”

  “I’m goina pound somebody’s fuckin face!”

  “Take it easy, Pal. Milk en sugar?”

  “Fuck, I shoulda stayed in. I shoulda stayed. This wouldn’t be happenin. I wanta go back. We’re goin back. We’re a ground swell.”

  Now, at noon, back at the cottage, with Bobby and Sara nowhere in sight, he stood on the roof of the office-mobile screaming, “God Damn It! I’m a bastard! I’m a Magnificent Bastard. And I’m goddamned fuckin proud!”

  He jumped down, peeled the back off another bumper sticker, carefully aligned it, stuck it to the center of the driver’s door. He stood back. The sticker said the few—the proud. There were stickers on every door, on the front and rear bumpers, on the fenders, inside on the dash. He’d plastered stickers to the basketball backboard, the pole, vertically on the thin poles holding the downhill fence. Long stickers: I’M A MARINE. THE MARINES. UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS. Round stickers: the Marine Corps emblem.

  “Oh Man. He’s got these little pigeon legs. He’s so beautiful.”

  “Kids are neat,” Tony said. He and Bobby were on the roof of the Chevy, toasting the birth of Noah Pewel Wapinski. It was late Saturday night, the 22d of March 1975. Sara and baby Noah were in San Martin Canyon Hospital. “You got a son, Man. Do right by him.”

  “Oh yeah. You gotta see him. He’s so tiny. Only six pounds fourteen ounces. He was born at eight fifty-one. Man, that was the neatest thing in my whole life. I saw the head. I saw his head crowning. I was right there.”

  Tony bit his lip but he did not let his feelings show. “It’s somethin, huh? Hey, how’s your grandfather?”

  “Aw, no change. Linda said she’d see him tomorrow and tell him. God, Man! I could lose my job, my house, my life. No big thing. But I can’t lose my kid. I could make it or not, Man. Sara could make it without me. But Noah. He can’t make it without me.”

  Bobby and Sara spent the 23d of March, their first anniversary, in the hospital with Noah. On the 25th, the day they brought Noah home, Pewel Wapinski, eighty-five and a half years old, stopped breathing and died. Lynette, Sara’s mother, came to Old Russia Road. Bobby flew back for the funeral.

  The late March winds were warm, sweeping in from the south. Bobby glanced down from the cemetery on the east ridge. More than a hundred people had come. The Pisanos and Pellegrinos, the Lutzes and the women from St. Theresa’s Guild, and Father Tom Neiderkau. Bobby had not been surprised by them but he had been by Johnnie Jackson, a wiry, middle-aged black man, and his family, who owned Mill Creek Auto Salvage and Junkyard and who told Bobby, without elaboration, that had it not been for Pewel’s help, he would have lost his business in 1962. And by old man Willings and Ernest Hartley, the mayor of Mill Creek Falls, and members of all the Five River Front Families; and old Pete the barber, and Jessie Taynor and Mrs. Franklin and Mr. Morris ... “He helped me ...” “He laid out my store ...” “He organized ...” “My sons went to him for ...” “He once ...” And by Stacy Carter.

  From the cemetery Bobby looked down at the house. It was badly in need of repair. The front porch was settling, the stone piers deteriorating beneath and the posts rotting at the base. The mortar of the chimney was disintegrating and several bricks were missing from the top tier. A gable trim board, rotted around its nails, had popped loose. Everything needed paint, inside and out. Down the drive, wheel ruts and gullies were about to make the house inaccessible, fence sections were down, the old gate sagged on broken hinges. And although some of the fields had been turned in recent years, the back of the high meadow was more new woods than grass.

  The night before, after the wake, Bobby had talked with Linda. “You know, we’ve been married over five years,” Linda had said. “We solved the same problem a hundred times but it never stayed solved. It would be like it was happening for the first time all over again.”

  “I know what you mean. Not exactly, but ... When I was married the first time ...”

  “It’s like pouring energy into a bottomless pit,” Linda had said. “It just drains you faster than you can replenish.”

  “Yeah. He told me how he used to hit you. About almost cutting off one of the girl’s hands.”

  “He didn’t used to hit me.” Linda had looked queerly at Bobby. “Maybe he bumped me once or twice,” she had added. “And that thing with Michelle’s hand, he did that because he was really irritable. But it wasn’t like it was on purpose. I’m sure he didn’t know her hand was in the door.”

  “He didn
’t tell me anything about it. Just that he almost cut it off and that he abused you.”

  “I hit him a lot more and a lot harder than he ever hit me. What was bad was we never knew who he was going to be. Maybe he was going to be happy and doing those little dances he does, or maybe he was going to be the other guy. Completely impossible. Or the quiet one, withdrawn then exploding. But Bobby, when I met him, and that first year or so, that was the best year of my life.”

  “You’re still going to go through with the divorce, though, huh?”

  “You can’t have a marriage when only one spouse shows up,” Linda had said. “You know, his biggest mistake was not staying in medicine. He had a real aptitude and he loved it. But he never believed in himself.”

  Bobby glanced back at the grave. Buried, he thought, next to Brigita. The two people that loved me more than all the world. How hard it was to step away, to join those in the house. “Granpa. And Granma,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back.” Again he turned, then returned, whispered. “You’ve got another great-grandson.”

  For a long while, after everyone had gone, Bobby just sat. Then he called Sara. They talked for hours. “God, Sara, I feel like I’m going to burst. I’m so full of this place and of Granpa I think if I don’t talk I’ll burst.” Part of the time she talked while Noah nursed and she put the phone to her breast so Bobby could hear the baby swallow. She told him all the local news except the part about Tyler Mohammed being arrested. They talked again the next day, the day Da Nang fell, and again the next. Sara told him about Josh’s acceptance of the baby, and about every burp and coo. Each time she ended with, “Hurry home.”

  “As soon as the legals are settled,” he answered.

  Most of the time Bobby was alone in the house, packing up perishables, or alone in the barn wondering if he should pack and send all of Pewel’s drawings and notes to the Old Russia Road cottage. Sometimes he walked through the orchard but he never made the circuit over the knoll, the spillway, up the west ridge to the sugarbush. Often he ventured to the cemetery. Linda came a few times. She’d arranged to work full-time for Simon Denham and his group.

  On Thursday, April 3, he drove Grandpa’s old Chevy to the reading of the will. “I don’t think I understand,” Bobby said to the lawyer after the first reading. Bobby, Brian, Joanne and Miriam were present.

  “It’s really quite simple,” Michael Willings said. “You understand about the personal items, what’s going to the church, what’s going to each of you.”

  “Yes.”

  “What he’s set up here is called a tenancy for life. And it’s conditional. Essentially, Robert, he’s giving you the farm, if you want it, but—”

  Miriam made an odd hum, interrupted. “Don’t be greedy, Rob. Don’t be like your father.”

  “But, Mom—” Bobby smiled happily, “I am. Like you’ve always said. I’m just like my father.”

  “Just wait a minute,” the attorney said. “You’re not to make this decision for thirty days. With the weekend, I’ll give you until May 5th, okay?”

  “That’s fine. I’m still not sure I understand ...”

  “The farm, Robert, is yours, for as long as you live. Upon your death the ownership will be divided equally among your heirs, Mr. Brian Wapinski, Ms. Joanne Wapinski, and Ms. Miriam Cadwalder Wapinski. Also, the conditions state that you must keep open books, that for ten years, fifteen percent of the net profits you derive from the farm, no matter how that profit is derived, shall go to those here—five percent each. Let me read you a note that he wrote to Robert but that is for all of you to hear.

  Dear Bob,

  I know you will not sit upon your talents, nor will you bury them for safe-keeping, but you will set them to work for your good and for the common good. Take care of your brother and sister and your mother. Make the most of what you are, of what you have in your head and your heart, and of what I bequeath to you. You can do it, Robert. I know you can. Think of the possibilities.

  Love,

  Grandpa

  Phone conversation, 10 April, Old Russia Road: “Bobby.”

  “Yes. Tony?”

  “Yeah. You gotta come back down, Man. Things are brewin. We’re goin back. Be here Monday. They’ll have details. And we gotta get Ty. We gotta get him out.”

  “Out?”

  “Okay. Over and out.”

  On the sofa Sara was nursing nineteen-day-old Noah, praying through her exhaustion that Noah would fall asleep and for once stay asleep. He’d become colicky, had been awake most days nineteen hours. “Who was that?”

  “Tony.”

  “Oh. How is he?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “I wish we could do something for him. And Linda.”

  “Me too. Do you want me to take Noah for a while?”

  “No. He’s comfortable. If he starts again, you could put him in the Snugli and hike over to CondoWorld.”

  “Sure.”

  Then on Monday, on the roof, sixteen-strong, half-sitting against the alley-side parapet, half on cardboard sheets on the tar and gravel. “Listen to this, Man ‘Rather than leave the necessary number of guards with the captured soldiers, the NVA shot them through the feet so they could not escape.’”

  “What is that?”

  “Classified State Department Telegram. Signed by the U.S. ambassador. This is only three days ago, Man. See. ‘NVA/VC Treatment of People in Recently Captured Areas.’ Goina be a fuckin bloodbath, Man.”

  “Can I see that?” Bobby asked.

  “Sure, Captain,” the man said. “Let me show you one more line. Here, ‘... recount the following massacre: the vanguard of the convoy stopped for the night short of Phu Tu hamlet, probably about the same time the massacre of the rear was ending at the floating bridge. About a thousand people near the front ... VC ambush ... The group was cut to pieces, despite its obviously being mostly civilians....’”

  Bobby looked at the photostat pages. They’d been re-marked unclassified, but otherwise the roof rat was right. Bobby read on.

  Ban Me Thuot ... The hamlet’s PF and PSDF, with no outside help, held out under constant attack until two days after Ban Me Thuot itself had fallen ... enemy tanks rolled in then and shelled the church to rubble. All but a few of the surviving population had taken refuge, and died there....

  Later in the day [14 April], in a clearing, they were surrounded by about fifteen Motolova trucks that began driving at high speed through the crowd, the drivers apparently trying to kill as many people as they could ... fifty or sixty were killed....

  Bobby held his head. It was nearly impossible for him to grasp the extent of the collapse, the horror. “We still going back?” The words came pained. He felt torn. Noah, Nam, High Meadow, tenancy for life, San Martin, roof rats, Sara, Saigon—where did his allegiance lie? He looked at the man with the documents. The others were quiet, still, staring at different angles into the early evening sky.

  “If we could get there ...” Bobby began, stopped. “It’s late but maybe not too late. Did they really get a hundred thousand?”

  “That’s the word. There’s like five thousand down in San Diego ready to go. But it’s falling so fast. Man, ABC reported like a week ago, that the war was already lost.”

  “If they could hold,” Bobby said, “we could counterattack.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We all agree. We’re going back.”

  “You got it, Captain. There it is.”

  After the meeting broke up Bobby and Tony remained on the roof, spoke quietly inside Tony’s box. “I just don’t fuckin believe it, Man,” Bobby said. “That it could happen just like that. Like that.”

  “Yeah. I guess it can, huh? But they’ll stop em. We’ll go. Launch the counterattack.”

  “Hm.” Bobby fidgeted, dug his heels into the tar and gravel until Tony tapped his leg indicating that was a no-no. “Anything more on Ty?”

  “They got him on fraud, tax evasion. I don’t know what else.”
<
br />   “I can’t bail him out.”

  “I know. We’re hoping they’ll release him on a PTA, a promise to appear.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m really sorry about Grandpa.”

  “Yeah. He ... he was like my—” Bobby’s voice broke, “my dad.”

  “Yeah,” Tony said. “I could see that. I been flippin out ever since he had the stroke. Really weird dreams.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought I was the only one having those.”

  “Oh, Man,” Tony said. “I’m like haunted. Between this shit ... Man, I lay down and I see em issuing us 14s or 16s but we don’t have any ammo. And we’re moving up. We’re waitin for the onslaught. If they kill me, it’ll be the first time in five years that I’ll be at rest.”

  “Geesh.” Bobby was shocked by the depth and intensity of Tony’s feelings.

  “Hey, go home to your wife and kid. If anything happens, we’ll call.”

  On April 17th Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge. At Xuan Loc, twenty-four miles northeast of Saigon, the ARVN 18th Division reinforced with a regiment of the 5th and a “brigade” of the Airborne, had been battling first two, then four NVA divisions. Four more NVA divisions were sweeping toward Saigon from the south, two from the north and three from the northwest. The government had all but run out of tactical air support and the allied troops at Xuan Luc were down to their last rounds. Above San Martin, in the Old Russia Road cottage, with Sara sleeping on the sofa, Noah in his crib, and Josh snoring under the dining table, Bobby flipped TV channels. He’d watched CBS’s report on the NVA massacre of South Viet Namese officials, and NBC’s coverage of Kissinger’s speech. To him, things were getting more and more disgusting. On ABC Howard K. Smith said we should give aid to South Viet Nam—the one hundred and first day of the ad absurdum and now moot debate.