“Man,” Sherrick lay back in the lean-to. “You’re a real piece of work. Change everybody. Change the past.” He pointed at Wapinski. “That’s why you believe the way you do. You’re a revisionist. All you’re trying to do is clone yourself. That’s the problem with guys like you. You want to revise personal histories just like you want to revise the war. The thing happened, mister. Motherfuck, I can’t believe I came out here!”
Through the afternoon, into the early evening, the tit-for-tat continued. “If you make a mistake on a collector plate,” Wapinski said, “take it apart and redo it. Quality counts. If you make a mistake in your life, take it apart and reassemble it. Quality counts.”
“Revisionism.” Sherrick spat.
Wap continued. “If you won’t do it for yourself because you need to be punished, do it for the brotherhood. They need you. I need you. You once pulled your weight ...”
“Revision ...” Sherrick twitched. “I don’t need to be punished!”
“Change your focus, Gary.”
“God bless you, Man.”
“You can smell the fertilizer or you can smell the grapes, Gary. What you focus on is what you get.”
“Fertilizer, huh?” Sherrick laughed.
“How you act, Gary, is determined by how you feel. And how you feel, Gary, is determined by what you think about and what you sense. What you sense is determined by what you’re looking for. Fertilizer or grapes.”
“What I think about! I think about booze. I think, ‘Why can’t I stay on the wagon when I’m away from a shithole like this?’ Aren’t you gonna say it? ‘Gary,’”—Sherrick threw his voice into a screechy falsetto—“‘you’ve got so much going for you, why can’t you stay sober?’” His voice reverted. “Because I don’t fuckin want to. I don’t give a shit.”
“I never asked you that,” Wapinski said.
“So what?” Sherrick shot back. “You wanted to. You all wanted to.”
“How can you stay sober and enjoy it?” Wapinski asked. Sherrick stared at him. Wapinski repeated the question.
“All I gotta do is want to.” Sherrick sighed. “I thought you weren’t going to ask that.”
“Ask what?”
“Why I can’t stay sober?”
“I didn’t. I asked, How can you stay sober and enjoy it? If you ask your question, you’ll come up with an answer. If you ask mine, you will too.” Wapinski sat up. It was almost dark. “I gotta git,” he said. “Think about when you were most happy. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Sherrick started. “Whatda ya mean?”
Wapinski was already out of the lean-to.
“I aint stayin here by ...” He poked out. Wapinski was gone.
At first Sherrick thought it was a joke, but night descended. The mosquitos came. And the chirpings, creakings, croakings, buzzings. Sherrick broke into a sweat. He hated being in the woods, alone, without a light, without a weapon, without a pilot, copilot, crew chief. He didn’t want to stay. He didn’t dare leave. He cursed. He damned Wapinski to hell for all eternity. He inched to the back of the small shelter, crouched, wrapped his arms about his legs, rocked quietly. His nares flared at every noise. His ears strained. The night could not have been darker. When was I happy? The thought simply leaped in. In school, his mind answered him. Maybe in the courtroom in law school classes. And in the courtroom when I cross-examined. The answers cascaded in on him. Except the judges were all jerks. Always siding with the junkies. I was a good student. I loved getting my grades. I loved making honors. I liked cleaning up neighborhoods. How can I stay sober and enjoy it?! How ...
When Wapinski returned Sherrick was no longer sweating. Bobby led him slowly, quietly to the fire circle. He flicked a match, set the kindling ablaze, added larger sticks, explained the rules, the vocabulary. “Tonight,” Bobby said, “I will call you Tëme [tah-may], Wolf.”
Sherrick chuckled. That’s cool, he thought.
“Wëli [wah-lee],” Bobby said. “Good.”
“Yuho,” Sherrick responded. Okay.
The talk evolved. The truth stick passed frequently.
“Maybe,” Bobby said at one point, “the only people you respect are conscientious objectors of the antiwar movement, but I don’t know why. You say the antiwar movement stopped the war, but the war did not stop. The war did not stop in ’73 when we left or in ’75 when Saigon fell. They had no effect on ending it. They only affected the outcome. So they’re really not antiwar, are they?”
“Yes they—”
Wapinski held up the stick, continued. “They were simply anti-American–war effort, Tëme. Which I recognize as a valid position. But let’s get the verbiage straight. I was antiwar. I was an antiwar soldier. I tried to stop the violence by winning. They did not try to stop the violence. They did not even see the other side. They only wanted to stop me. And you. We were their focus. And they did. But they didn’t stop the violence and now they’re trying to get to our minds, trying to convince us they did, or that if they didn’t, it was our fault. They still want to control the focus. The people I most respect are the conscientious participants. Conscientious participants, Tëme. Of the COs ... what’s conscientious about ignoring people who are being tortured or murdered? What’s conscientious about standing by while one nation overruns another—” Again Sherrick attempted to object but Bobby raised his voice, raised the stick, pushed on, “OR standing by when one faction within a nation enslaves or overruns the people of that nation?” Sherrick shifted anxiously. Bobby clutched the stick like a tomahawk. “And what’s conscientious about abandoning an ally in the name of ending the war when in reality the war was not ended and our ally was uprooted, forced into third-class citizenship, starved, slaughtered? What’s conscientious about denying the successes of the American effort? Right now everybody, most of the brotherhood, wants to make everybody else, those that didn’t go, believe that the whole time they were over there the entire country was a free-fire zone and they were always in peril. That’s bullshit. You know it. I know it. But it serves a lot of people’s purpose, some of those that went and lots of those that didn’t, to make it out like it was constant peril. Your chances of being killed in Viet Nam—if you were black and from New York City or Washington, D.C.—were less than being killed in your own neighborhood! Tèpi [teh-pee, ‘Enough’].” He passed the stick.
Sherrick exploded. “Revisionist bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!” He shook the stick as he spoke. “I’ll prove it to you. I’ll prove it to you with your own books. You want to run discovery exercises?! I’ll show you discovery. I’ll teach you discovery. You’ve got these guys on wishy-washy bullshit detail. If you seek shallow solutions to deep puzzles, you’ll only solve the surface of the problem.” Wapinski didn’t speak but his eyes bore intently across the fire, into Sherrick. He had seen Sherrick turned on only once before, when he’d asked him for legal advice over Miriam’s attorney’s letter. Sherrick was leaning in close, into the heat. “You’re such a fucking revisionist! What that did to me! What Nam did to me—”
Sherrick clammed up. Begrudgingly he passed the stick. Wapinski grasped one end, forced the other back into Sherrick’s hand so they both held it. “When something’s been misrecorded,” Bobby said, “or only partially recorded, is it revisionism to correct or expand the record?”
“It is,” Sherrick said, “if you change the meaning without justification.”
“Then I think we’re not revisionists.”
“I’ll prove you are.”
“Wëli.”
Again longer exchanges, probes, attacks, withdrawals. “You’re stuck, Tëme, on something that is past, something set, something static. Instead why not be concerned about something now, something ongoing like the circumstances of this veteran community, or of the peoples of Southeast Asia—today?”
Then late, late night, talking about Nam, about incidents, about punishment:
“I think I suspected it even while it was happening.” Sherrick held the truth stick. His head was down, hi
s voice low. “Maybe a second before I opened up ... maybe longer ... You know, Man. I mean all doorgunners fear it. You train so it doesn’t happen. You know it can. You’re always aware of it so you don’t let it happen. You know, you’re right at treetop level. You’re sliding past a hill. Guys down there are callin for help. They’re gettin hit. You’re the cavalry. You’re comin to the rescue. Jungle’s black as the inside of an unlit coal mine at midnight. Black as these woods. You see flashes. You’re told our guys use red tracers, their guys use green. But you get there and both sides are using red and the RTO’s yelling, ‘The C.O.’s been hit. The F.O.’s been hit. Fire on em.’ And you open up. You know how it is. Your adrenaline’s pumpin. Your weapon’s pumpin. Your 60’s like a jackhammer. It’s exploding. You’ve got it in your hands, jarring you, mount or no mount shakin like crazy. Then you’re taking fire and you’re jacked up so high you’re squeezin trying to make the cyclic-rate zoom, wanting to turn the 60 into a hose of solid lead. Then the peter pilot’s screaming, ‘FRIENDLIES! Hold fire.’ You’re so jacked up, you’re firing, hearing him in your ears but not in your head for what seems like a month but is probably half a fuckin second.
“And then you’re back at base refueling, checking for damage, fuck all, and the dust-offs are coming back and there’s six dead and sixteen wounded and you know you got some of em and they’re your own fuckin troops!
“Man ... I knew it. I knew it. I knew it before I fired em up. I was the cavalry. I was ...” Sherrick paused for a long time. Bobby did not speak. Slowly, quietly, Sherrick began again. “Man, no matter what you ever tell me, no matter what the reasons, what the cause, what happened afterwards, I’ll never believe we had any fuckin business being there. We never had any right. For me to have done what I did, Man ... no matter what the gooks were doing to each other ... Man, no matter, there was never, never, ever, a justification for an American presence. You understand?”
Sherrick’s voice trailed off. He passed the stick.
“Tell it to me again,” Bobby said. He passed the stick back.
Sherrick was reluctant. Bobby nodded. Sherrick repeated the story adding times, dates, units, names of his crew members, the number off the rotor on his slick, details and more details. Again he handed the stick to Bobby. Again Bobby handed it back, saying, “Tell it to me again.”
Sherrick sighed. He began a shortened version. As he got to the point where he was about to fire Bobby held up his hand. “I’m sorry. I gotta wiz, Man. Just hold it right there, okay?” Bobby returned. Sherrick finished the story. Again Bobby asked him to repeat it. Now as he got to the point where he’d just begun firing Bobby disrupted the story to build the fire back up. On the fourth go-through Bobby interrupted again, a few words further in, to get the old army blankets they’d brought, to wrap themselves against the predawn chill. The fifth time Bobby stretched his legs, kicked over the fire, caught the corner of his blanket on fire, had to scramble to beat it out. “Continue, please,” he said.
“Continue what?” Sherrick asked.
“You were telling me about your premonition that you were firing up Americans even before you fired.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess it was a premonition.”
“Yeah. You worried about it all the time, huh?”
“Shit, yeah!”
“They bring charges against you, Tëme?”
“No! They knew ... we weren’t the only bird firing. There was no way to tell ...”
“But you know it was you?”
“I think it was me. At least one. Had to be me.”
“Probably was, Tëme.”
“Shi—it happened again. Not—not in Nam. But when I was with narcotics investigation. We busted into this one house. And I knew it was going to happen. We blew away this old, unarmed black guy.”
“You shoot im?”
“No. It wasn’t me. But see, I knew before—”
“Yeah.”
“Really.”
“Yeah, Tëme. When you’re trained to be aware of those possibilities, like you said before, like doorgunners are always aware, then you always have those premonitions, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“And if one comes true, you’ve got to punish yourself because you knew you were going to—”
“But I fired ...”
Bobby’s legs again shot onto the fire.
“... even when they yelled ‘Friend—’ What are you doing??!”
Wapinski jolted, rolled, yelled, “I’m on fah-yar!” The blanket smoldered, the burning wool smelled horrible.
Sherrick burst out laughing.
Wapinski regained his seat. “Tell me again, Tëme, ah, from just as your bird was coming in.”
Sherrick began the story but he couldn’t stop laughing. “I was fah-yar-in ...” He chuckled. “God, you stink.”
“Quick Strike, Man,” Bobby said.
“Huh?”
“I’ll explain later. Hey, you know a lot about school. You were a good student. Why don’t you set up the discovery exercises?”
“Those things?” Sherrick gasped. “Those guys are full of shit. They barely read anything. You oughtta set up mock trials. That’ll force them to compete. They’ll have to work as hard on getting facts as they do on their jobs or when playing soccer.”
1 November 1984
BACK AGAIN. IN THE big barn. On the main floor. On the table adjacent to the sheet metal break. The court has ordered that the equipment—tables, machines, tools, test apparatus, et cetera—“shall not be put up for auction or for sale or in any manner disposed” until the court has made its final ruling.
Seems like a lot of court stuff affects this place. In late ’78 Gary Sherrick hit Miriam, Joanne and Cheryl with a slap-suit on the grounds of harassment and interference with business. Something like that! Sherrick understood the system, knew exactly how to manipulate it. He obtained, in Bobby’s name, a temporary restraining order or a cease and desist order, something, while the court investigated (at Bobby’s request) whether or not High Meadow, as operated, met the terms and intent of Pewel Wapinski’s will.
We pressed on. Everything was getting better, falling into place. More of the High Meadow program jelled. The Quick Strike: Raid on the Brain Solvent—disrupting the meaning associated with the experience that causes one to be stuck and inserting a stairway or a ladder—became a formal, structured process, essential to the early phase of every vet’s program. High Meadow was proving to be highly successful at transforming stuck and bitter men without hope into competent, productive and responsible citizens.
At this point I lost count of who came, who left. Between mid-’78 and mid-’79 we had better than a 100 percent increase in population including our first resident families. This taxed our water supply and sanitation facilities. We built a sewage composting plant, and all waste water was directed into a new, separate pond where by biological means—bacteria, algae and various marsh plants—the water was purified then used for irrigation. This worked so well Bobby attempted to get the town’s Water Quality Authority interested in the concept as an alternative to the now $36 million proposal for a town sewage system and treatment facility. They wouldn’t even look. Bobby attended public hearings, meetings, objecting to the town’s plan as ultimately environmentally unsound and as nothing more than a town-wide tax to subsidize the development of South Hill, the New Mall, and Whirl’s End Golf and Country Club.
By mid-’79 High Meadow had lost, via graduation, nine vets. Three didn’t make it through the program: two by choice; one, Kenneth Moshler, was killed in town in a freak accident where a front tire on a panel truck blew out, the driver lost control and swerved into our newest EES van, pinning and crushing Kenny. For a time everyone was thrown into a retro-state—back to when close friends or hardly known unit-mates could be killed at seemingly any moment. Kenny was buried at High Meadow. That brought us all closer together.
Many of the new guys were hardcore dropouts. They had deeper feelings of self-disgust, longer-
term drug habits, criminal records. They were victims of society and they played the role into which they’d been cast. “Not my fault, Man,” “Shit happens.” “You gotta roll with the punches.” (“Roll,” Bobby’d interrupt. “Not roll over.”) They had little hope, little trust in anybody or anything. I don’t remember a single one arriving without a bad attitude. They were more fucked up than I ever was. Stuck! They couldn’t get off first base. Hell, half of them couldn’t even get out of the dugout.
Because of the expertise long-term residents had acquired in either the solar business or the farm, there developed what was essentially a chain of command. The cherries, the newbies, the newfers, they came to us almost the way the rotation system worked in Viet Nam—new guy in, lowest of the low, in-country training and acclimatization, then into a work-team and the first mission, the newbies pulling the basest duties but always supported by, and always knowing in turn that they were supporting their team, their unit, the entire complex. Knowing too that via rotation there soon would be a new cherry, and eventually they would rise to the top, become short-timers and return to the World.
This was not basic training. High Meadow never stepped back that far. But there did develop more regimentation and requirements. For example, at work, everyone assigned to EES wore blue-and-white uniforms with name tags. This was no different than any other service company with men going into people’s homes. Team leaders required their crews to be clean, tidy, to walk as if they were proud of their product, their team, their organization; as if they possessed total knowledge of the job, were skillful, confident, focused, learning.
Some of the work crews carried this to unexpected heights. Howie Bechtel’s collector builders became The Energy Cell, and Steve Hacken’s EES installers became The Power Pack. They demanded to stay together during PT. They purchased team uniforms—soccer shirts, shorts, socks—and challenged everyone and anyone, including regional league teams. Eventually they set off a scramble for new guys who looked to be promising wings or strikers or midfielders.
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