“Are the trees okay?”
“Seem to be.”
“Then Mr. Lutz ... where he broke ...”
“I don’t know. Maples need lots of water. Maybe that was a different seam. Or maybe just the top. Maybe the trees reached deeper but they needed the whole spring.”
“Oh. I hope it comes back.” Linda moved closer to where Tony was installing a new oil filter. His hands were black and shiny. “What about the strawberries?”
Tony looked at her. A dark feeling descended upon him. His tone changed. “I’m not making squat, you know.”
“Huh?” Linda was taken aback. She had lost six pounds and she’d hoped Tony would notice.
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” Tony tightened the can filter, cleaned the oil smear from the can and the drippings from the frame below.
“What what’s about?” Linda was hurt, defensive.
“This ‘how much did we make’ stuff.”
“I just asked because I—”
“You know what Ivanushka says?” Tony didn’t give Linda a chance to respond. “He said his wife says she lived it more than him.”
“Lived what?” Linda assumed the crossed-arm stance she used to scold the twins.
“His craziness,” Tony blurted. “His combat schizo shit.”
Linda squinted, pursed her lips. “Where is this coming from?”
Tony turned to her. He was leaning forward, one hand out as if ready to jab. “Look. When this place starts making money, I’ll give you my share. I don’t give a shit about money. I owe you. I know. I know you pay everything. Or maybe Denham helps—”
“Denham!” Linda yelled.
Tony clammed up.
“Is that what you think? You think I’ve come here for money?! You think Denham gives me money?! You ... you ...” Linda held her tongue. Then she blurted, “Your daughters’ daughters will live with your psychosis long after you and I are gone.”
That night Aaron Holtz called the Wapinskis. “Bobby ...”
“Speaking.”
“Holtz here.”
“How you doing, Aaron?”
“Good. Hey, this Ivanushka guy ... You give him some money?”
“Yeah. To get his guitar out of hock.”
“You can kiss it good-bye. He just left with some bimbo. They’re headin for the Jersey shore.”
“What?!”
“You might catch im. They were in a big brown Olds with a dented right front fender. Headlight’s cocked out.”
“Shit.”
“You want me to call the cops?”
“Naw. Thanks Aaron. I’ll ... ah ... call ...”
25
SUMMER PASSED, AUTUMN CAME. The gloom at High Meadow was palpable. On the morning of Saturday, 30 October 1976, in the tractor garage, Bobby ordered Tony to pack.
“Fuck it, Man,” Tony said. “Don’t mean nothin. Give me a couple a days.”
“No. That’s not what I mean.” Bobby’s head ached. As things had deteriorated, disillusionment had turned into disappointment with himself. He was about as communicative as the cold forge.
“Fuck, Man,” Tony grumbled. “It’s goina take a few days. I got things here.”
“Pack a ruck,” Wapinski said. “Field pack. Knapsack. Whatever you fuckin Marines called em. There’s one in the shop. We’re movin out in an hour.”
Bobby scowled, left, returned. “There’s rations there too. Three-day resupply.”
The day was crisp, clear. They barely spoke. It was a patrol of two. Tony was acquiescent, pliant. He’d seen Bobby’s enthusiasm die and Bobby’s despair had in turn left him without hope, with nothing but his final-bunker mentality. He had harvested lackadaisically in the attitude of “What the fuck for? To give her money for new dresses to impress Denham?” But he had not given up completely. He’d achieved a state of minimal subsistence, with one and only one, cause. By the time Gina and Michelle entered first grade, Tony’s bunker room was ten-by-ten-by-seven and was shored up with every scrap of pipe, beam and post he could scavenge from every corner of the farm.
They dropped to the pond, picked up the knoll trail through the orchard, up to the cliff edge where they paused to scan the pond. They descended to the spillway, crossed the dam, climbed the back trail, pushed on, scrambled over the old stone wall in the woods, crested the ridge into the sugarbush, into territory Tony knew intimately. Bobby did not stop, slowed only to allow a pair of squirrels the right of way in their trek across the wood. Tony looked out to the high meadow, to the tractor road he’d improved. At the far edge the sugarbush gave way to scrub pines, ash and deformed beech, which grew in the shallow soil above the rock ledge. This gave way to the barren crest rock that led to the gap.
Tony did not know of the Indian ladder, the hand and footholds in the rock face. Still he followed without question. The movement, with direction, with purpose even if he did not know the purpose, charged him. On the gap floor stagnant pools rimmed with ice looked lifeless. They crossed quickly as if crossing an exposed rice paddy, then ascended into the forest of virgin eastern hemlocks and picked up the narrow and ancient Lenape trail that meandered under the 150-foot trees.
“This is the cathedral.” There was reverence in Bobby’s voice. He led slowly, paused for full minutes. His concentration was returning. Occasional sun rays filtered in but the cathedral was dim. At the trail spur Bobby whispered, “Tonight we’ll come back. NDP there.” Quietly he moved on. Twenty minutes later at a small, once-cleared site Bobby de-rucked. “We’ll set up here,” he said quietly. “This is where the survivors of the Pennamite War hid. Recon the north and west. I’ll check out the east.”
An hour later Tony returned. Clouds had begun to form. Crispness gave way to rawness. “Sit rep, negative,” Tony said quietly.
Bobby nodded. He had cleared a small sleeping area, had cut a few branches and made a tight, low lean-to.
“Want me to clear an area for a campfire?” Tony asked.
“No. No fire here. Relax. I’ll be back in a bit ...”
Bobby disappeared like a spirit. At first Tony sat back, rested, but immediately felt antsy. He fiddled with the backpack he’d taken from the barn, dug inside, pulled out a can of soup, opened it, drank it cold. His anxiety rose. He turned at every crinkle of leaf, at every woodpecker’s drumming, every creaking branch in the light breeze. Then he rose. He could not see more than a few yards into the woods. Quietly he cleared the low brush. Within paces he found stones, logs, chunks of sod. He raised the back of the lean-to, dragged in a thick log, clawed out a trench for it, rolled it in place. At the sides he placed stones and sod, more logs, more stone. From the brush he carefully chose the most natural pieces to camouflage the low berms and the lean-to. He cleared fields of fire in all directions—not clear-cutting but thinning so from outside the campsite appeared natural. Even in Bobby’s quietness, Tony spied him on his return at fifty feet.
“What’s this?” Bobby still quiet.
“You can never overimprove a defensive position,” Tony said. He laid another rock onto the revetment he’d built off one side of the trail.
“You can build a Maginot Line,” Bobby said.
Tony eyed him. He hadn’t busted his ass to be challenged.
“False security,” Bobby said. “Makes you less secure because you lose flexibility, agility, vigilance.”
“This?” Tony gestured to the berm.
Bobby shook his head. “Me,” he said. “The plan’s not working. I gotta regroup. I’ve been a fuckin jerk.”
Tony chortled. “Yep.”
“A sucker, huh?”
“You bet your sweet ass, Man.”
“You knew about Ivanov?”
“All he wanted to do, Man, was to fuck your wife,” Tony said. They were now sitting side-by-side, looking out from the shelter. Bobby stared forward. “How come you let him in the house?”
“How else—” Bobby began, changed thoughts midsentence. “What about you?”
“I’d like to fuck
her, too,” Tony blurted, laughed, sputtered between laughs. “Naw. I’m kidding. I mean I would but I’d never do it. Never even hint ... you know ...”
“Why?”
“Why?!”
“Yeah. Why? How come you wouldn’t think of fuckin me over but Ivanov couldn’t think of anything but?”
“I don’t know.”
“I got to understand this, Tony. I’ve got to understand. Otherwise, it’ll never work.”
“Bringing in guys?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe we ought ta put a separate kitchen in the barn. And a bath.”
“Um.”
“You can’t be havin guys goin upstairs when like maybe Sara’s in the shower.”
“It’s a matter of showing trust.”
“It’s a matter of stupidity, Man. I been there. I been in RRVMC. You’re talkin about bringing in psychos ...”
“I was talking about bringin in guys who were down and out.”
“Some of em are schitzo, Man. Fox in the henhouse. Maybe you want to help the fox, but you don’t kill the hens.”
“Umph.” That was hard for Bobby to take.
“Better for us anyway,” Tony said.
“How?”
“Bein separate. Responsible for ourselves.”
“We’d need a new septic system. New well.”
“Piece a cake.”
“God damn it.” Bobby balled his fist, hammered his knee. “I still gotta understand somethin. Why is it that a guy like you, who comes from such a caring family, drops off the deep end? And ...”
“I ...” Now Tony clamped his jaw. How much easier it was to advise than to be advised, to analyze another than to be asked to analyze oneself. “Maybe I was kinda the odd man out.”
“Oh,” Bobby said, not sympathetically, not to draw Tony out, but in simple acceptance.
“Naw. I wasn’t really like outside it. I wasn’t like the black sheep. I was just tee-tee to the side of the main current.”
Again the simple, “Oh,” followed by, “Then why ...”
“Maybe ...” Tony paused. “Maybe because I expected everybody to be like my family. You know, in Nam, the villagers were like that. Not if you were on a sweep going through a ville, but the villagers if you lived with them. My platoon was like that, too. We were family. Even the guys I was with in Philly. We were like brothers. But gettin out, Man. The World hasn’t been like that. I thought people cared. Nobody gives a shit. Maybe I felt not like pushed out, but not looked at. You know, like when somebody keeps their eyes down when you walk into a room. Then like I reacted to it with, ‘Well fuck you too.’”
“Um.” Again the pause to understand, to assimilate. “Like, ‘Fuck it. Don’t mean nothin’?”
“Yeah. But not us. It’s those motherfuckers don’t give a shit. They’re goina blow the whole place up anyway.”
Bobby turned his head, his brow furrowed.
“Nuke it, Man. Bobby, they’re goina blow everybody off the face a the map. Why should we give a fuck?”
“That’s a cop-out.”
“Like hell.”
“Sure it is. If you didn’t give a shit you’d be like Ivanov. Damn it. I can’t figure ... I tried but I fucked up.”
Tony had no more to say. Bobby too was silent. He’d put himself back in the funk he’d been in for months. Overhead the clouds thickened and the air gusted in sporadic dips. The two men lay back, closed their eyes, slept.
At dusk Bobby nudged Tony. “C’mon. We’re movin out.”
Tony sat up. He did not speak. The order, the movement, felt natural.
“Lights,” Bobby whispered. “Water and sleeping bags.”
They moved south out of the Pennamite clearing back to the Lenape Indian trail. Without speech they meandered back under the hemlocks, deep into the darkening forest, to the spur. Bobby turned northwest. A hundred yards in was the fire circle—nothing lavish, a slight depression, a shallow circular pit perhaps sixteen or eighteen feet in diameter with a small circular ring of stones, maybe thirty inches across, at the center. Stacked to one side was a neat pile of kindling, to the other slightly larger branches, nothing more than two inches thick or two feet long. Overhead a narrow shaft through the hemlocks opened to the sky. There were no berms, no fields of fire, no camouflage. Bobby struck a match, lit the small wood teepee he’d erected earlier, alone. Immediately flames spread, licked up into the air. In the deep woods Bobby and Tony were completely open. Anyone could see them. Yet with the fire they could not see even a foot beyond the larger circle. Tony nearly shit. His response was to flee, to hide in the dark, to shun the exposure. But Bobby sat, his sleeping bag wrapped tightly over his shoulders, and Tony, trying hard, followed suit. Bobby lay larger sticks on the fire. The original teepee collapsed, curled, oxidized, disappeared. In the flickering of the flames, to Tony, Bobby’s face deformed, furrows became crevices, wrinkles became chasms, features became craggy outcroppings. There was no color, no warmth, no life: only time—past, present, future—fused and frozen.
They sat silently watching the fire, mesmerized by the changing forms. After some time Bobby picked a stick from the wood pile; it was perhaps fifteen inches long, an inch and a quarter in diameter. From part of it the bark had fallen away. Bobby held it close to the flame but did not drop it. Instead he broke silence, said calmly, “This is a truth stick. When it is held no one else can speak. To the stick the holder owes an obligation—the obligation to speak the truth. When you begin, you say hè, which is the Lenape word of greeting. If you stop and recommence say làpi [luh-pee] which means ‘again.’ When you are finished say wëll [wah-lee] which means ‘good’.”
“What?!” Tony stared across at Bobby, at his stone face. Then he rocked back, looked up the long dark shaft toward the invisible sky.
Bobby repeated the Lenape words, the explanation.
“You’re kiddin, Man,” Tony said.
“No,” Bobby said.
“Where the fuck did you dig up this shit?”
“It was in one of Granpa’s files. This is the Lenape ceremony of truth. It may have been performed right here for five thousand years. And the truth is, I’m lost. I don’t have the answers I thought I had.”
“That’s what the fuck we’re doin out here?”
“That’s what the fuck we’re doin out here.”
“This is fucked up.” Tony was angry. Bobby shoved the stick at him. He snatched it. “You’re fucked up,” Tony stormed. His rage multiplied, built on itself, spiked. “You’re some sort of fuckin ... workaholic.... You act like nobody’s good enough for you. Fuck you. Fuck your pious help-the-dregs crap. Fuck your goody-two-shoes I fucked up, crap. Truth ceremony! You’re the biggest fucking hypocrite I ever met!” With that Tony whipped the stick back at Wapinski.
Bobby’s arm shot from under the sleeping bag. The stick nicked his ring-finger knuckle, spun, hit his leg. He ground his teeth, grasped the truth stick, restrained his urge to bash Pisano with it knowing full well Tony expected to be bashed, was ready for him to lunge. Bobby’s breath came hard. His hands trembled. “yuho [yooh-oh]. Okay.” Slower, longer breaths. “I ...” He paused. Bobby could see Tony was still ready to throw off his sleeping bag, ready to get into it. “I haven’t been truthful. Not completely. I wanted you to do the farm but I didn’t tell you about all the other parts.” He could see Tony sink back. “I feel like we’ve been doing everything right but we’re still losing.”
“Yeah,” Tony snapped. “Definition of a Nam vet. Do everything right, lose. That’s me. That’s my cousin Jimmy. Losers.”
“Why?” Bobby pushed the stick out but did not release it. “I got an article says ten percent of the prison population is Nam vets. Says we lost the war. Says we were druggies during the day and praying to God at night we wouldn’t be killed.”
“Fuck em.”
“Right on. But it doesn’t answer the fuckin question, Why? Everything I’ve been reading, everything I’ve been thinking about, all the plann
ing for a program of retransformation ...”
“Of what?”
Bobby did not acknowledge. “It didn’t do any good with Ivanov.” Tony snorted. “And it hasn’t done squat for you.”
“Leave me out of it.”
Again Bobby pointed the stick at Tony. “Loser!”
Again Tony snatched it away. “That’s fuckin right. I’m a loser. Even back in school. If one side picked me, that side lost. If I bet on a Super Bowl team, they’d lose. One hundred fuckin percent.” Tony flipped the stick.
“You didn’t lose at Dai Do.” Bobby held the stick out.
Tony grabbed one end. Bobby didn’t let go. Their hands and wrists were just off-center of the main heat rising from the fire. “What’d you know? We didn’t win, either.” Tony refused to flinch. His hand was very hot.
Bobby too refused to move. “Maybe you did. Just like we did at Hamburger. Even if they called it losing. But I’ve been reading. If they’d never been given the A Shau, they’d never of been able to win farther south.”
“I don’t give a fuckin flyin leap.”
“We gotta learn more ...”
“That’s more of your shit. You can win every fuckin day, you still die, In the end everybody loses.”
“Naw.” Bobby pulled on the stick bringing Tony’s hand into the fire. “That’s two different games. When you came home, were you a loser?”
Tony pulled back. His fingers were baking. “No fuckin way,” he snarled. “When I left we’d been makin progress.”
“Me too,” Bobby said quickly. He was having trouble holding on. “We’d virtually won. Who the hell lost it?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not till Saigon fell that anybody called us losers. Even though we were out of the country, militarily, for two and a half years! Kick ass of anybody who tells you we lost the war. We didn’t. The politicians did. The American people. Not grunts. We couldn’t even of been called losers before April ’75 because there wasn’t any loss until then. Who lost it?!”
“Not me. Not my cousin.”
“Me neither. So how come we’re losers?”
“Cause maybe ... cause maybe if you’re a loser, it’s not your fault. Nothin’s your fault. Ow!” Tony released the stick, pulled his hand back.
Carry Me Home Page 67
