Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  He bolted up.

  “I want to run something by you guys,” Bobby said. It was early morning. They were assembled in the big barn, ready for chores, for the day’s work. Outside it was cool, crisp. Inside there was the smell of oil and paint and glass cleaner. “Twenty-one percent of World War Two veterans were discharged because of combat stress. Some could handle it. Some couldn’t. That’s what I’ve been reading. All along the line there are gradations of handling it. We’re the same. Every army’s the same. And whether somebody’s got it really bad or just tee-tee, he’s got to continually deal with his combat experience. Always. There are some things that made it worse for some, easier for others. Guy who was eighteen or nineteen had it tougher than a guy who was twenty-two. Guy who saw multiple heavy contact had it worse than a guy who was at the back of one firefight. Guy who trusted his own values, who wasn’t ashamed of being scared shitless in scary situations, had cushions to protect him. See, I was kinda that guy. Maybe I saw a bunch a shit, but I was older. And I never thought being afraid did anything but made me properly cautious.”

  “I went at nineteen,” Tom Van Deusen said.

  “I was eighteen years eight months when I landed there in ’69,” Carl Mariano added.

  “I was twenty-four,” Don Wagner said.

  “Yeah.” Tony cut them off. “En daylight’s burnin. We’ve got planting to do. I don’t want the roots on those vines drying before they’re in the ground.”

  “Aw, come on, Sarge.” George Kamp laughed. Ever since the sandbag party, he’d buckled down, had taken an interest in the farm, in Bobby’s fledgling program. “They’ll wait a few minutes.”

  “I’m with Tony,” Gallagher said. “Let’s do this tonight. Bobby, we got concrete comin to Holtz’s at one and the forms aren’t finished.”

  “Whoa!” Bobby held up his hand. “Ah ... thought for the week?”

  “Learn something—” Thorpe began; the others chimed in, “every day to improve your self.”

  “Yuho. And DAARFE-vader?”

  “Decide.” They said in unison. “Act. Assess. React. Finish. Enjoy.”

  “You got it.” Bobby turned, releasing them. “Let’s go for it.” The men rose, began scattering. “Carl, let me see you a minute, okay?”

  “Don’t you want me to go with Jer and Don?”

  “We’ll catch up to em. How long you been here?”

  “Ten days.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Okay.” Mariano dropped his head, stretched out his neck, turned his face sideways and up—a suspicious glare—the same habitual posture Tony had had.

  “Are you satisfied with your work here?”

  “It’s a job.”

  “I don’t mean the job, I mean how you do it.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “The hallmark of a High Meadow job is quality,” Bobby said. “It’s absolutely central to our cause.”

  “You goina fire me?”

  “No, Carl. That’s not the way we work. Besides, you’re an independent contractor. That’s the way the place is set up.” Bobby led Carl up the new stairs to the loft and Grandpa’s office. Mariano limped. His right leg and ankle had once been shattered by a concussion mine.

  From below Tom Van Deusen yelled up, “Bobby, should I go with Jer or wait for you?”

  “How many guys will it take to finish those forms?” Bobby countered.

  “They can do it,” Tom said. “But I can be working on the chaseway. You were right about his wife liking the way it looked.”

  “Okay,” Bobby said.

  In the office Bobby pulled out a file of forms, a box of labels, several ledgers. “One of our requirements here,” he said, “is that each independent contractor keep his own records. The jobs you work. Hours. Equipment you supply. You’ve got to have your own checkbook, your own tax file. You can keep them up here or in the bunkhouse. Most guys carry their checkbooks but leave their files here. Periodically I’m going to go over them with you. It’s completely confidential.”

  “I don’t give a shit,” Mariano said. “What do I need this shit for?”

  “Keeps me honest,” Bobby said. “Keeps you honest. Keeps Uncle Sam happy.”

  “Pay me cash. I’m not goina file no tax return.”

  “I told you day-one, that’s one of our requirements. Remember—mainstream. Within the system. No hiding.”

  For forty minutes they filled out forms, applications for checking and savings accounts at The Bank of Mill Creek Falls, and, sketchily—Carl Mariano fighting it all the way—Bobby’s DAARFE-vader form.

  Decide: Pick a high-quality target.

  Act: Advance on your target.

  Assess: Assess your progress.

  Re-Act: If not advancing, attack along a different route.

  Finish: Persevere. Never give up.

  Enjoy: Your actions, accomplishments, the results.

  Bobby added a seven and the letter P. “Then,” he said, “pick a new target.”

  “Ya know, Man—” Mariano said, his neck again extended, “this doesn’t work for me.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  “What da ya know, Man? You got it all. Farm. Business. Wife en kid.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. Except the farm’s not actually mine. I just have the right to use it. And that’s what I’m letting you do.”

  “And I’m suppose to say thanks?”

  “You don’t have to. It might be the courteous thing to do, but I’m not dependent on thank-yous.”

  “You’re really weird, Man.”

  Bobby nodded, pursed his lips, didn’t answer. He packed up the forms, including a hundred dollar check to Mariano. “We’ll stop at the bank on the way.”

  “Goina hold my hand?”

  “Want me to?”

  Mariano snorted.

  “Give me a few minutes,” Bobby said. “I gotta clear up some paperwork.”

  “I aint gonna become like these other guys,” Mariano said. “They act like a bunch a brainless robots.”

  “Naw,” Bobby said. “They’re just on the program. They’ve picked certain quality targets and have committed to them. And they’re enjoying the attack.”

  “That’s not me.”

  “That’s okay. Something I learned from Tony; I learned that self-esteem is more valuable when it’s tempered with periodic self-doubt. Besides, you’ve got to earn it. No one can give it to you.”

  “I still ain’t gonna be like them.”

  “You might be surprised. Quality’s contagious.”

  Bobby knew it was working, but growth was again making money a problem. The vets were understanding, Bobby was open with them as to the overall financial situation. Still, to expand, to pay the vets’ room, board and minimum wage, both the farm market and EES’ clientele would need to increase. Nothing happens, he’d been thinking, nothing can be sustained without a salesman taking an order, without us selling our crop.

  At this point, Bobby was High Meadow’s only salesman. One of his targets was enough salespeople to create enough business to support forty vets—a five-fold increase. With that thought Bobby had scribbled a letter to Tyler Mohammed Wallace Dorsey Blackwell. It had taken Bobby an entire month to find Ty’s location, a medium security prison between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

  Dear Ty,

  How’s it going, man? Took me awhile to track you down. Guess they moved you a few times. I need your help, Ty. I’ll explain in a minute. First I want to tell you I visited your folks and your brother Phillip. Carol’s pregnant again. So is Sara! They’re both due in September. Man, there’s sure getting to be a lot of kids around here. Tony’s living here with me, though he’s been spending a lot of time with his wife and daughters. Anyway, Phillip and Carol are doing well. Little Tyrone’s almost five. Cecilia’s almost three. I didn’t tell them I’d gotten your address—or your folks. But if you tell me to, I’ll give it to them. Your mother sure worries about you. I saw Jessica, too. She’s get
ting very pretty. I met Luwan for the first time. I’ve been over that way quite a bit on business. Life goes on, eh? Anyway, you should know they all wish you were back here.

  Now, I need some help. Remember the community I talked about. It’s becoming a reality, except it’s nothing like I imagined. We’ve got eight Nam vets living here on the farm. We’ve turned the barn into a mill—producing solar heating systems. Business is taking off but I need a good salesman. You’re the best I’ve ever seen. I want you to join us. Use us as a halfway house if you’d like. I’ll submit whatever paperwork is necessary but you’ve got to take the first step—find out to whom I submit, and what I need to do to have you released in my recognizance.

  Ty, you know my business and military background. Most people’s lack of self-respect and their disrespect for others, for honesty, for truth, force us to seek out each other. Their attitudes don’t work for grunts. You once looked for me, but I didn’t understand. Now I’m looking for you.

  Bob

  P.S. If we could boost our sales, we could have a larger community.

  “‘Oh the Thinks you can think, if only you try....’ Dr. Seuss.” Sara had handed him the book for the girls, had recited part of it to him just before he’d left for the apartment, and it kept repeating in his mind as he rode the Harley down Mill Creek Road, across town, over the new four-lane concrete bridge leading to the site of the future south-side Mill Creek Mall. He motored up 154 to Creek’s Bend, thinking now of Blogs blowing by, or was it Rogs rolling round? Think, Think ...

  “Hi ya, Sweet Bumble-lee Beat.”

  “Papa.” Gina ran up to him, hugged him. The late afternoon was warm, the sky still light.

  “Where’s Tumble-lee Treat?”

  “She’s up there.” Gina turned, looked up the back stairs. Tony followed with his eyes. Michelle was on the top step. In her hand were two papers. Gina said, “Guess what? We wrote you letters in school today.”

  “You did?”

  “Uh-huh. Read mine first.”

  “Should I read it before dinner?”

  “Right now.”

  They climbed the steps together. Michelle was timidly waving the sheets. Tony bent, kissed the top of her head. “Tweedle-dee Deet,” he said.

  Gina jumped up and down. “Read mine. Read mine.”

  “Okay.” Michelle handed him one sheet. Tony held it at arm’s length, turned it, chuckled, “On the kwont of ,” it read. “On the count of three ...” He began to laugh. “One, two, three!” And he clapped his hands. Gina hugged him again. “Now let me see yours.”

  Shyly Michelle handed him the printed sheet. Before he was halfway through, his voice broke.

  Memorial Day 1977

  Dear Papa,

  Thank you for fiting in the whor. It is graet you din’t dy. I’m sorry some peepel you now dyed. Thank you aign.

  Love,

  Michelle

  At the door, before she saw his eyes, Linda blurted, “Guess what?! Mark and Cindy eloped!” Then, “Oh Babe, you read Michelle’s paper.”

  27

  MID-CALIFORNIA, MONDAY, 11 JULY 1977—He read the 6 June issue of Newsweek with fascination yet without focus. He studied the photographs yet he barely saw them. He put his head back, closed his eyes. The room was warm, warmer than the unit in the prison. The bed was firm, yet softer than his cot. Still he wished he were there, not here, not for this. Again he looked at the magazine: “Battle over Gay Rights: Anita Bryant vs. The Homosexuals.” He didn’t care. How could he care? How could he care about anything anymore, with what they were going to do to him? At the back of the magazine were reviews of two books about Viet Nam, Larry Heinemann’s Close Quarters and Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War. “Both carry the same message,” the reviewer had written, “that the war was wrongheaded, an unspeakable waste of men ... [a] war that reduced all combatants to a state of savage frenzy in which atrocities became not only possible but desirable.”

  He could barely concentrate. He was angry, angry at them all. “Caputo sent a patrol illegally into a village to seize two Viet Cong suspects. ‘It was my secret and savage desire that the two men die,’ he writes. The suspects were indeed killed, found innocent, and Caputo was court-martialed on charges of murder. The Marines, however, were embarrassed by the affair and dropped the case, allowing Caputo to float back into the real world, where he now wins prizes for his journalism.”

  Not angry, incensed! Fucka been black, Ty thought, they won’t be no journalism prize. They’d hang his ass out on the firin range.

  His thoughts tumbled. Billy Jo Trippan, his readjustment counselor, wanted him to admit to “the opportunities of incarceration.” Ty thought, hang that Uncle Tom’s ass out there too! “Opportunities!” Prison sucked. Worse than LBJ—Long Binh Jail. Not physically worse; this was a breeze. But here he had no links. The brothers weren’t combat brothers. Maybe some were. But they didn’t talk, except for Fats Knutsen, who wanted to organize a chapter of IVA, Incarcerated Veterans of America. A scam! That’s how Ty saw it. Maybe had Knutsen been black ... Ty had never had a visitor, never a letter. Except the one he’d just received from Wapinski.

  “Take your frustrations,” Trippan had said virtually every session, “and convert them. Make them work for you.”

  Every session, like a kowtowing Uncle Tom, Ty Mohammed bowed his head and agreed. Every session his thoughts blasted manically. You don’t know nothin. You ain’t ever goina know nothin. You no idea what I done. How it come back on me. Payback. Payback’s a mothafucka. When I took an ear, He seen. When I snatched a ring, He watched. He a’ready punished me. You got no right. No right. I get out of here, it goin be payback time. You just write down how passive I am.

  “There are a few others,” a woman called in. She came into his room. Behind her were three young white men. “I don’t think you can get a Negro’s to transilluminate,” she said to them. “None of the others’ did.”

  “Do you mind?” one of the young men said politely to Ty.

  The young men were all in loose white summer uniforms. The woman, the resident on duty, in a white lab coat and dark blue skirt.

  Ty stared at them. He didn’t answer. They didn’t really look at him. Resignedly he sat up, swung his feet to the floor, grabbed the back of the hospital gown to keep it shut. Then he went into the closet and two of the interns and the resident entered with him and shut the door. God damn, how he hated this. He lifted the front of the gown, held his penis up and to one side. Two of them, he didn’t look to see who, grabbed his scrotum. Immediately they had the skin pulled taut over a flashlight. “You can feel it right there,” one said.

  “Yeah, but you can’t—”

  “Oh yeah! I’m getting it to transilluminate.”

  “The light’s got to come through the lump,” the resident said. “Not through the sack.”

  “It is,” said one intern.

  “No it’s not,” said the other.

  “Sure, look at it,” said the first.

  The resident bent down, tried to see what the first intern was seeing. “No,” she said. “Even if the lump isn’t so dense as to be opaque, I don’t think—”

  “But look ...”

  “Not with his skin pigment,” the resident insisted. She stood up, turned on her flashlight, looked at Ty and said, “Sorry. I just don’t think anyone can tell this way.”

  It had all begun a week earlier, on the Fourth. They’d been given the day off and Ty had lingered in the unit—a seventy-bed dormitory—a little longer than most of his unit-mates, had taken the time to fiddle with himself—not a lot, just a quick hand passed into his pants, a little friendly self-caress. With seventy of them on a floor designed for thirty—damn place was like living in an overcrowded fishbowl—there weren’t many opportunities. He’d felt it immediately, an acorn cap, a half filbert, stuck to his left testicle. Right on the bottom. It was hard, maybe like half a marble, and securely attached. What the fuck, he’d thought. With one hand he’d maneuvered t
he ball so it was tight to the sack, with thumb and forefinger of the other he’d grabbed the lump, squeezed. It didn’t hurt and immediately he’d thought that that was good. If he’d been sick, if the testicle had been swollen or sore, he’d reasoned, then it would be time to worry. Some sort of infection, he’d thought. But this was just a hard lump. He’d put himself away, caught up to the others. The thought had nagged at him but in the afternoon, playing basketball in the prison yard, he’d forgotten about it. At lights-out he rechecked. He wasn’t certain he’d find it again but it was there—hard, secure—maybe, he thought, a little smaller.

  On the fifth they were back to work, he in the woodshop making three-block ducks—a cube body, a thick dowel neck and a triangular head—for no one and no reason he could imagine. In the back of his mind it nagged him—something’s not right, but he felt fine, healthy, clean. Indeed, he’d been clean, drug-free, since being rearrested. And he’d been warm, and fed, and clothed. He had not gotten his piece of the pie but he could bide his time, waste his time, waste these years, and still formulate his plan. Prison isn’t forever. If he could stay clean on the outside, there’d be no holding him down.

  On the sixth, in the showers, “Whatcha got there, Ty?” Laughs, other guys waiting, fuckin fishbowl, he’d checked himself again, breathed easier. It’s a little smaller, he’d told himself. It’s going away. But he knew he was lying. It was bigger. On the morning of the seventh he’d reported to the infirmary. “Just a cyst,” he said to the doctor. “Huh?”

  “I’m going to send you to a specialist,” the man retorted.

  “Just some pills, right Doc?”