Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  I was sure Bobby had discovered a program that could, if used on a massive scale, turn around not just the ailing vets but any ailing or stuck group. Farming and EES were vehicles. Any honest enterprise would have worked. I was sure it could be used in prisons, in inner cities, with junkies and juvenile dropouts. Linda could barely believe the High Meadow results. She and Sara established a vets’-wives group and used a modified program successfully.

  Bobby had so many ideas some had to wait. To his collectors and storage equipment designs he did add a new branch—windmills. We built three to pump water from the ponds into holding tanks that fed our drip irrigation systems. These were towering edifices, one very traditional with large blades and its own house, the other two on poles looking like elevated plane props. Bobby wasn’t finished. He began tinkering with mini-mills that could be mounted on roofs, that looked like weather vanes. These mills turned small generators producing electricity which in theory could be stored for later use, but he never developed a battery system.

  Gary Sherrick never worked on the farm, never for EES. He became the director of the High Meadow Institute of Southeast Asia Studies. His countenance changed. No one acknowledged that it was a result of the fire circle. No one acknowledged that Wapinski’s Quick Strike had changed the meaning of Sherrick’s experience, of his premonition and role in the deaths by friendly fire.

  As I review this I would not want one to think adding new associations to a vet’s experience somehow changed or sugar-coated that experience. The opposite is true. We faced the subject squarely, immersed ourselves in our experience, and the overall American AND Asia experience, expanding our knowledge, our understanding. If anything our feelings became deeper, sometimes more caustic, yet every vet became more mobile with his emotions, became unstuck by the new associations and deeper meanings. One can call it developing proper coping mechanisms. We learned how to handle it, NOT to move on or put it behind us. For us there became nothing “post” about our personal traumas—they are with us here, now, forever, as they should be—but, because of our emotional agility, they are not debilitating. Indeed, they have become sources of personal strength, pride and motivation.

  When Wapinski announced that Sherrick would head the institute, there at first arose low grumblings, then a cresting, raucous wave of protest. Sherrick’s posture and expression may have altered but to the vets he had not shown any substantive change. He was still obnoxious, quick to judge, verbally abusive. Yet, within days for some, within weeks for most, the vets understood. This man’s niche was not in physical or design labors but in the volumes and documents of the growing library, within the barn classroom, within the bunkhouse study halls. Quick Raid released in him a sense of urgency, of time wasted. Sherrick was on fire with How Things Work. When someone would ask, “Why are vets powerless?” or bitch, “Why are we voiceless?” Sherrick would respond, “Change the question. Ask, What can we do to have power? How can we have a voice in our own lives?’” If they asked, “Why are we still stuck in Viet Nam?” he’d reply, “How can we become unstuck from our Viet Nam experience of 1966, or ’68, or ’70, and enter into our own lives in 1979? How can we become unstuck from our limited American experience and know the Viet Namese experience? Viet Nam and the Soviet Union recently signed a binding Friendship Treaty. This has set off wave upon wave of refugees. Why? How? What’s going on?”

  By mid-’79 High Meadow had moved on to yet a new phase where Gallagher, Van Deusen, Sherrick, Wagner and I were permanent cadre, and both the farm and EES, beyond being part of the program, were businesses in their own rights. High levels of leadership led midlevels. Perhaps it was Gallagher. In his quiet beliefs, quiet management style, reinforcing Bobby while in turn drawing strength from Bobby; and like a conduit passing strength down, accepting and passing reinforcement up. Call it brotherhood. Call it family. Perhaps it was Van Deusen. Once unstuck, once turned on to learning, his enthusiasm was a beacon for others. Maybe even it was me. By 1979 I could answer farm problem questions with the same authority I once ran a platoon. Area farmers sought me out, studied our innovative techniques of water and soil conservation, pest and weed control. Down our informal chain of command everyone became a leader. Call it personal empowerment.

  New causes. A dozen of us, at one time or another, had been “incarcerated” at RRVMC. We organized a formal protest. We went to hearings at the state capital. We objected to the warehousing and the drugging of our comrades. Everything was going well. We were having an impact.

  I pushed for the development of a winery, drew up plans to carve out a subterranean cavern—cut right into the Pocono sandstone—and put the aging vats there because of the constant temperature. I explained to Bobby we could go through the back of the tractor garage, tunnel in just like Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma. I still had not told or shown him, or anyone other than Linda, the deep bunker.

  George Kamp brought Jim Reitmeyer—not to enroll but to speak to us. Jim was the first in a long series of successful veterans of the Southeast Asia war to address a Thursday night meeting. He didn’t know what to expect any more than we did. Jack had convinced him by saying, “Just let them see you. You’re a role model. Don’t hide from them. Tell them what you do, how you do it.” Jim was the principal of a regional high school in the Towanda area. He’d served with Company F, 52d Infantry (Long-Range Patrol), the Ready Rifles, attached to the 1st Infantry Division.

  Everything was going well. Rick MacIntyre arrived. He stayed only a month but he made a major contribution. Rick was Rick of 2/4, Rick of Philly, legless Rick who was so bitter in the hospital, who was determined to have the doctors cut his legs off at his neck. I don’t know his journey but I know that when he came he brought the concept of limiting beliefs, that is, beliefs that limit the holder to actions consistent with those beliefs. As Rick put it, “I once believed I was a cripple. Then I found out I wasn’t.”

  What an inspiration! He’d already become unstuck. In his first week he descended the Indian ladder, crossed the gap, scaled the far side, spent the night at the fire circle. After seeing him who could refuse to try? Thorpe and I were so proud, and I was relieved of some of my guilt for never having revisited him.

  Everything was in place. Everything we did worked, was working. So why did it attract assault?

  29

  HIGH MEADOW, THURSDAY, 21 August 1979, 6:40 A.M.—Wapinski’s mind was scattered, attempting to solve a score of problems simultaneously. Nothing came out. His body too was bloated. He was in the upstairs bathroom, on the toilet, afraid to push again. Already the water was bright red. Damn, he thought. Damn it. I don’t have time for this.

  He clenched his teeth, rested his forehead on the heels of his hands, his elbows on his knees. His back hurt. Not horribly, just pressure-pain and constipation. His hemorrhoid had been bleeding since Tuesday, since it had blown like a high-pressure line letting go and his pushing had produced the first ptsssssss and the bowl full of blood. Ten months earlier it had happened for the first time and it had scared him. He’d gone to a general practitioner who’d chuckled about the cold “butt-hole scope,” who’d laughed out loud, saying, “There it is. I can see the hole in the vein right there.” Wapinski had felt violated, humiliated. Since that time he’d treated himself with creams and suppositories. It had popped again in the spring and he’d worried but he had not told anyone. That flare-up had gradually subsided, had left him feeling embarrassed, vulnerable, angry, slightly anemic, slightly depressed.

  Bobby rose, flushed, cleaned the red splatters from the porcelain and the seat, flushed again.

  Noah was downstairs. Sara was in the boys’ room. Paulie, in a diaper and T-shirt, was holding her leg. “Igooutsidetoo?” He said it as one word, one long singing sound without any syllable being emphasized. Sara cocked her head questioningly. “Igooutsidetoo?” Paulie repeated. He looked anguished. “Igooutsidetoo?” he said again.

  Bobby looked in. He stood with his buttocks squeezed tight. Sara bent, grasped Pauli
e’s hand. To Bobby Sara seemed bigger this pregnancy than she’d been with either Noah or Paul, and more tired. “Igooutsidetoo?” Paulie pleaded. Bobby chuckled at the babble. Sara kissed the boy. “Sure,” she said. It amaze her how complete and grammatically correct, if slammed together, were his sentences. “After breakfast,” she said. “Then you can go outside, too.”

  Sara turned, saw Bobby watching them. Slowly she straightened, sighed. For five years she had been either pregnant or nursing or both. Noah was four years four months; Paulie twenty-three months. Sara was exhausted. She was not simply taking care of the two boys. There was Bobby, Josh and the house; there was the women’s group, the vets she tutored, and Tony with his new problem. She was six months along; her career was on hold; and she was feeling as if she hadn’t just married Robert J. Wapinski but had married his causes, High Meadow, EES, and the constant chatter about Viet Nam.

  “Talk to your son, will you?” Sara said.

  “Noah?”

  Sara nodded.

  “What’d he do?”

  “I caught him with two pieces of candy this morning and I found broccoli stuffed behind his booster seat. And Josh is still shedding! Can’t he stay outside?”

  Bobby lumbered to the kitchen doorway, spied Noah with half a dozen small cars and trucks lined up in a column on the kitchen table. He was pushing the last, tittering as the first crashed off the table edge. Bobby brightened. Then wailing like a police siren he barged in, twanged “Hold it! You’re under arrest. Anything you say will be held against you.”

  Noah giggled. “Cut it out.”

  “This is the High Meadow vice squad,” Bobby said. “No cutting it out allowed.”

  “Papa!”

  “Ahha!” In a cartoon characterlike voice. “A code name. Write that down, Sergeant.”

  “Papa, what sergeant?” Noah was becoming unsure of his father’s intention.

  “Sergeant Sara informs me that you have been observed perpetrating a vicious vice,” Bobby continued the charade. “That without provocation or permission you viciously attacked and ate two—not one but two—pieces of candy before breakfast!” Wapinski grabbed the boy about his chest, lifted him. Noah squirmed, half-heartedly attempted to escape. “And broccoli behind your booster seat?! Yeck!”

  “Paulie did it.” Noah wriggled to the floor.

  Bobby had been up since five. There were so many things going on, so much to do. Yet his ass was dragging. He blamed it on the hemorrhoid. He blamed it on Sara’s tiredness and his extra effort helping her with the boys. He blamed it on Paul Volker, chairman of the Federal Reserve. The discount rate had been rising steadily since its 1977 low of 4.75 percent. It was now at 11.75 percent. Construction loans, if available, were at 13 percent or more. Bobby blamed his tiredness on all the prominent economists who were predicting recession, and on the national financial columnists who, in spite of the recent Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident and OPEC’s July jolt to oil prices, were declaring that “Energy from the sun may be free but the capital outlay for the collection apparatus is so high it is cheaper to heat, even today, with conventional fuels.”

  High Meadow sales were not bad. The columnists declared a solar water and space heating system would cost between $13,000 and $20,000. EES was installing equivalent systems for $6,600 to $8,000. The columnists claimed the solar equipment would not last long enough to reach a monetary break-even point. Bobby was confident that EES collector panels were of such quality and design they should be trouble-free for forty years. Every collector panel, every control box, every storage system now carried a small engraved brass plaque:

  MADE IN AMERICA

  by Veterans of The Viet Nam War

  Bobby was absolutely committed to quality workmanship, to the belief that only quality workers produced quality work, and that anyone who strove to be a quality worker would be a quality worker. Further, he believed that with superior product design and superior craftsmanship any company would succeed, would ride the rough economic waves of recession, the changing tides of social attitudes.

  High Meadow’s problem was not product, not price, not even buyer resistance. It was simply that High Meadow and EES still had but one full-time salesman. Bobby had tried to induce Tom Van Deusen into a sales role but Tom had shied away. He’d tried Charlie Knabe and Gary Sherrick without success. Erik Schevard showed some interest, but he was still at the beginning of the program and simply wasn’t ready; and Don Wagner, who may have been ideal, was running fire circle sessions full time. Tëpi!

  Bobby was out of steam. Even on the farming side, Bobby was the prime seller. Tony could sell, did sell, but he didn’t enjoy it and always settled for the initial offer. Mike Treetop and Mark Renneau helped, but ... Bobby knew, selling is an art. None of them were sales artists.

  Cash flow was again a problem. Attempting to support thirty-five vets plus three families on the two businesses was stretching High Meadow and Bobby to the limit. Vets were sympathetic—they hadn’t come because of the wage structure—but Bobby insisted they be reasonably paid because that was essential to their understanding of their own worth and their learning successful money management attitudes. Bobby held stringent reins on his and Sara’s expenditures. That too sapped him.

  And, though he had not yet realized it, he was empty because High Meadow had grown so fast that it had outpaced its goals. Each facet of business and program individually was chugging along but collectively High Meadow was adrift, unsure of where it was going. Bobby was so busy selling, acting, re-acting, there was no time to plan, redecide, pick new targets, assess. Elation evaporated.

  In the hour before Sara and the boys rose, Bobby had thought about these problems, about his own energy, about how, in California, he’d planned a running regimen, gotten into shape, finally run the Dipsea and felt strong, full of energy and endurance. And he thought he’d better get back into shape if he was going to keep up with his sons and the vets. Yet after fifteen push-ups and twenty sit-ups he’d been puffing, fatigued. He’d told himself, one higher each day. That’ll do it.

  He’d thought too about Father Tom Niederkou at St. Ignatius who had announced on Sunday that the parish was going to sponsor a family of Viet Namese refugees and would everyone volunteer a little time or clothing or ...

  And he thought about the newest vets, about his conversation last night with Sara. She’d said something about their dreams having been crushed. He’d answered, “That’s a problem, Sar, but that’s not the biggest problem. People have to have dreams for dreams to be crushed. Some of these guys have never had one. Their ‘pipe dreams’ were put down at one or two or three years old and that damaged the dream-making machinery. They have no dreams, no images, no visions. They can’t see themselves being anything other than what and where they are.” As the sun had risen, Bobby’d thought hard about this syndrome being worse than posttraumatic stress because there was virtually no foundation upon which to build.

  Sara came down with Paulie. Now Bobby was at the table, reading a story in the newest issue of Newsweek entitled “The End of the Hmong.” More crushed dreams, crushed dream machines, he’d been thinking. Noah had taken his cars into the living room where he was crashing them against Josh’s legs. Without speaking Sara put Paulie in his high chair, shuffled to the stove where the teapot was whistling. We’re like the 101st, Bobby thought. We’ve got a rendezvous with destiny. A rendezvous with those crushed dreams, with the Miriams, with the dream crushers. It was not yet seven.

  Gary Sherrick was in the barn library. He, too, had been up since five, reading, studying, making notes. The 1979 barn exercise, as he conceived it, would put both the American government concept of the war, and the prime American players in the war effort—from Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger—on trial. Sherrick had had no difficulty persuading the vets to participate, nor any problem getting pro and con volunteers, but the vets had resisted his tight rules of evidence and procedure, issues of law and
discovery phase exchanges. “Damn it.” Sherrick had seethed at Wagner and Mariano. “There’s a format here that’s got to be followed.”

  Mariano had countered, “Gary, I thought you hated attorneys because of that shit.”

  “You dumb shit, no! It’s because they don’t follow it. They twist it, use it to harass the other side, use it to bury facts and evidence.”

  Sherrick wanted to charge the federal government with not being true to the founding principles of the nation. With that as the formal charge, he’d set out to prosecute while Steve Hacken and Jim Thorpe had taken the roles of defense attorneys. The trial was set to begin in October. Currently the vets were in investigation, abstract, and the first phase of discovery.

  Gary continued with his notes. He was adapting a speech delivered in another time. He had been reading Joseph Buttinger’s The Smaller Dragon and The World’s Famous Orations, America, Volume III, edited by William Jennings Bryan. By changing the parties, Sherrick thought, the words could have been spoken in the late ’40s or early ’50s by Ho Chi Minh.

  Who among you, my countrymen, that is a father, would claim authority to make your child a slave because you had nourished him in infancy? ’Tis a strange species of generosity which requires a return infinitely more valuable than anything it could have bestowed....

  Courage, then, my countrymen; our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty....

  If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude more than the animating contest of freedom—go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!