Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Um ... Where was I? Oh ... ah, for now I’m going to list you under Tony’s command, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did I mention to you about the grand jury indictments?”

  “I didn’t really get that.”

  “They’re deciding who to indict. Last year’s trial was of the five administrations starting with Eisenhower. The guys have been working on this year’s candidates for some time. Maybe Ngo Dinh Diem, Ho Chi Minh, Sihanouk, or Jane Fonda. They get pretty lively....”

  Again his mind shifted to automatic, the conversation running now here, now there, routine chatter. “Your first ten dollars each week automatically goes into your education fund. After you’re settled you’ll start classes....” Bobby’s eyes shifted just an inch, just enough to look away from Frank Denahee to a stack of mail. A second stack held letters from veterans who wanted to come to High Meadow—or from relatives who wanted to send them. Where to put them? How to support them, have them support themselves? The place was bursting at the seams. The drive was lined with private cars, trucks—many old, rusted, mechanically defunct, making the farm look more like Johnnie Jackson’s Auto Salvage than the pristine mountain meadow farm he’d known as a boy.

  “You were talking about classes that are available downtown ...”

  “Oh yeah. There’s things we can do up here but there are things we can’t. Couple of guys who were medics are taking nursing courses—”

  “Ha!” Denahee snickered. “To change bedpans!”

  Bobby’s face turned to stone. For a second he repressed an agitation that wanted to blow, then he released. “Don’t be an idiot! Don’t act like some stupid, spoiled school brat. If you’re interested, we’ll get up into a good course. Aim for RN. Specialize in emergency room care. Or ICU. Shit. I don’t care what you study. Everyone here studies. Quality counts. You come to me, you come voluntarily. We’ll take you in but you’ve got to follow the rules, you’ve got to strive. Look where you’re at! No money. Never learned how to handle it. You told me that yourself. Trouble keeping a relationship. Right? We’re going to confront that. It doesn’t do any good teaching a guy a skill and having him get a job if all he’s going to do is blow his pay. Fact is, you don’t know how to live in this society.”

  Vu and Mariano popped their heads up from their work. Carl had never heard Bobby take this tone, this early. Bobby snapped. “You’re number one twenty-eight. Not one guy who’s stayed through a year has fucked up again on the outside. This is basic, modern life skills. You listen in class. You take notes. Part of our in-processing is reading evaluation. If you score low, it’s mandatory you take Sara’s reading class. Mandatory. The circuit includes nutrition. If you put enough shit into your mouth, sooner or later all you can talk or think is shit. Your outcome depends on your attitude ... but I guarantee ... if you put in the effort, it’ll turn your life around.” Bobby puffed, exhausted. He dismissed Denahee, sat slumped, slouched, in his chair, angry beyond reason.

  All day waves of agitation rolled over him, receded. His thoughts jumped from project to project, then back to the song, the conversation with Noah, the boy getting on the bus. What effect will it have on him? he thought as he sorted the mail, passed invoices and checks to Hieu, inquiries to Carl. He hefted a letter from the Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, split the envelope with a North Viet Namese Army bayonet a new vet, Michael Yasinsky, had given him. The letter’s type was small, closely packed.

  What the hell is this crap? Bobby thought. There were six more paragraphs of tightly compressed words. He skipped them, turned to page 2.

  Changed Item(s) Shown on return Allowable payments Increase

  Payments to Contractors $105,750 $00.00 $105,750

  Changes in Adjusted Gross Income

  1. Total Increase $ 105.750

  2. Taxable Income per return 8,474.00

  3. Corrected taxable income 114,224.00

  4. Corrected Tax 28,525.00

  5. Credits, as corrected or shown on return 11.00

  6. Other Taxes, as corrected or shown on return 3,657.00

  7. Total Corrected Tax 32,993.00

  8. Tax as shown on return 1,271.00

  9. Tax Increase 30,922.00

  13. Interest from 4-15-78 to 15 days after the date of this notice 12,532.00

  14. Presumptive Negligence Penalty 2.00

  15. Send this amount to the IRS 43,447.00

  Bobby smirked. The figures were ridiculous. If he had had an income of $114,000 in 1978 he’d be living like a king. And if he took everything he now owned—cars, trucks, machines, personal items—the value would not reach $43,000. Bureaucrats! he thought. Error after error. One more thing to straighten out. He handed the letter to Hieu.

  On Thursday evening, the 10th of July, the vets met in the big barn amid the tables and machines, half-assembled duct work and plenums, control panels, windmill rotors, dust and debris. There were the usual announcements, old business and new. “We’ve completed the planting of a thousand seedlings on the south side of the knoll above the driveway,” Tony reported. “Four hundred Scotch pine, two hundred each white pine, Doug fir, and Austrian pine. There’s room for another thousand next year; maybe five hundred in ’82. By ’85 we should be able to sell the first of the cut-yer-own Christmas trees. Final figures are in from this spring’s strawberries and, actually, we made almost as much off the market-truck as we did selling to Morris’, the IGA, and RRVMC. We might consider pick-yer-own, there, too, next year. And pumpkins in the entire lower-thirty-six amid the corn. Cannello’s experimenting with them on two acres....”

  Bobby was still in a foul mood. Nothing, all week, seemed to break it. Just the opposite. It had been building, getting uglier. Wednesday afternoon Sara had gone into town for groceries, then to see Linda, then Louise Taunton, a member of her women’s group who had missed the last three meetings. By dark Sara had not returned. At ten, with the children in bed, Bobby could no longer stand it. He’d paced, he’d read the newspaper, but he couldn’t focus through a single full paragraph. At every sound he’d been up, down, looking out the windows to the drive. At ten thirty he’d called the Pisanos. Tony had answered. Sara had left three hours earlier. “Did she say she was going to the Taunton’s?”

  “Let me get Linda. I was watching a ball game.”

  Bobby had called the Tauntons. The line was busy. He’d sat. He’d sprung up. His ass hurt. One more thing. He’d worried about his hemorrhoid—had it become infected? Daily his ass had been getting more sore but the five-hundred-dollar deductible on their medical insurance was enough of a deterrent to keep him from seeking help, from complaining. Except that he had been complaining. Not about his ass. About Larry Peckham and David Quinn. For all the work Bobby had done, for all the programs, the ladders, one foot in front of the other, one rung at a time, he, with Wagner and everyone else, had not been able to make the breakthrough. And Peckham and Quinn were not the only ones. Even Ty, in Bobby’s opinion, was ghosting, getting over. Not on work—he was selling up a storm—but on self-development, on expansion beyond the self.

  It was the McDuffie thing, fallout from McDuffie. What had never been a problem before was now a situation to confront. High Meadow did not exist in a vacuum. Ty, Rodney Smith, Calvin Dee and Hector Jackson had set up an informal, exclusive Black Vets group. And they were actively recruiting the newest of the newbies, John Peppin. Bobby saw it as separatist at a time when all needed to come together, as a turning in when he believed they needed to turn out.

  Wednesday night at eleven Bobby had called the police. Sara was not yet home. The police receptionist had seemed to shrug, to say, “So.” Bobby had called Tony again. “Where could she be? Where the hell is she?” He’d called the Tauntons ten times. Then he’d called the bunkhouse. He was heading to Louise and Tom Taunton’s as soon as Steve Hacken could get to the house to baby-sit.

  Carl Mariano, Jeremiah Gallagher, Mike Treetop, Juan Varga, Ty and Rodney all had come to the house
with Steve, all ready to pile into Ty’s gold Cadillac to search for Sara. Van Deusen and Sherrick had shown up with walkie-talkies, a map of Mill Creek Falls, and plans for a house-to-house search. Another two dozen vets in a dozen vehicles were ready to set out when Sara had pulled in wondering what all the to-do was about.

  Tony finished the farm report. Tom Van Deusen and Ty reported on EES: Tom on difficulties obtaining the proper anodized aluminum channels for the rafter embedded systems because the company that had been supplying them had gone out of business: Ty on the first drop in orders since he’d taken over sales. “Recession, Man,” he said. “Credit crunch. Bankruptcies are getting pandemic.” Carl Mariano reported an hour-per-man decrease in educational effort, and Gary Sherrick told the assembly the “grand jury” had been unable to decide who to indict.

  Bobby clenched his jaw with every can’t-do or didn’t-do that followed Tony’s can-dos and dids. Vu Van Hieu also had bad news. The IRS letter, according to his preliminary calls, was no mistake. There was “at least $105,000 of unreported income,” Hieu said. “Everybody here say they file return, but IRS say not anybody file. Even you have not less than four hundred dollars income, if you independent contractor, you mus file Schedule C and Form 1040. Maybe you owe nothing. Maybe the IRS owe you. You still mus file.”

  “Fuck the IRS,” someone called out.

  A dozen vets agreed. There was resentment that the newby, the gook, the dink, had moved so quickly into the HQ, into a seeming position of power over them, telling them what papers to file, what they had or had not done. Chatter erupted. The group had been unruly from the moment they’d come together this evening. Some were talking about the Pirates, some about the Phillies, some about a pick-up soccer game Van Deusen and Andre Paulowski of Rock Ridge’s Pulaski Club had set up for Saturday. There was talk about the hostages in Iran, and the political conventions. Reagan and Carter had secured nominations, and third-party candidate John Anderson was polling a strong 20 percent. They talked of the Midwest and the south, baking and turning to dust in the heat wave and drought.

  In the corner by the Slitter, exactly as Gary Sherrick had once sat, was Sal Ianez who had lost his left arm at the shoulder to an RPG in 1969. Sal had settled in under Sherrick and Hacken as an institute researcher. The meeting, any crowd, overwhelmed him. He’d withdrawn between the elevator and the machine, slid into a fantasy where he was at a great formal party with beautiful women, powerful men, waiters in tuxedos carrying silver trays of crystal glasses filled with champagne.

  At the opposite end of the room between the glass-cleaning and final assembly tables, Frankie “The Kid” Denahee was listening to Steve Travellers soft-voiced tale of the Highlands. Travellers was a two-tour Special Forces NCO, a year in Ban Me Thuot, a year at Duc Co near the tri-border. He was African-American. Earlier that day, in the High Meadow library, he’d read, for the first time in detail, of the People’s Army of Viet Nam, i.e., the NVA’s, policies and treatment of the mountaineers, the Montagnards, the Yards, “his people.”

  “My people are good people,” Travellers whispered to Denahee. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what happened.”

  Denahee didn’t know either. Not in detail. Not what had happened since ’75. And he felt too new to High Meadow yet to express himself.

  “Good people,” Travellers muttered. “Strong people.” He’d said it to himself a thousand times since returning in ’71, to himself because he hadn’t known anyone who would listen, to himself to reassure himself that his people were still okay. “Good, strong people.” His chin wrinkled, tensed, in restrained anguish. He’d inferred the details, yet he’d ignored them, denied them, for five years. For five years he’d blurred details through boozy bloodshot eyes.

  “Yeah.” Denahee nodded. “I knew some from when we—”

  “Fuck America!” Travellers interrupted. “Fuck the land of opportunity. Fuck freedom. It’s a sham. I’m sick of it. America’s a take-it, grab-it, greedy, slovenly sham wrapped in highfalutin words. There’s not a fucker gives a fuckin flyin leap—maybe there’s some in this room—about my people. My people are being slaughtered. Exterminated.”

  A dozen vets were within earshot. Venom expressed, even if one is in agreement, is unsettling. Most guys glanced over, up, away. A few nodded. It was more comfortable to talk about the Pirates or the Phillies.

  “This country stinks,” Travellers said. His voice was louder, clear. “Stinks! Shovin Haagen Dazs in their fat faces, lettin my people die.”

  “Amen,” said Calvin Dee. He, Hector, Ty, Rodney and John Peppin were at the center of the barn, before the sheet-metal break. Travellers sneered. His expression showed he didn’t believe Calvin understood.

  Jeremiah Gallagher moseyed over. “We’re with you,” he said to Travellers.

  “Yeah,” Tony said. “We’re here together.”

  “Fuck it,” Travellers snapped more angrily.

  “Right on!” Ty stood, held up a power fist. Rodney, Hector, Calvin and John joined him. “They doin it to our people.”

  Michael Treetop stood. “They’re doing it to all our people,” he said calmly. “Let’s not be doing it to ourselves. This isn’t Liberty City.”

  Calvin cackled. “Burn, baby, burn!”

  Wapinski watched. He hadn’t been concentrating on the meeting any more than he’d been focused on anything all week. Ty and four black vets stood in the center, defiant, hostile, gesturing with fists. Three blacks remained seated. Dave Bailer stood alone, not gesturing, not hostile. Steve Travellers stood with Denahee, Gallagher and Pisano, angry, a different anger.

  Two months earlier the tension had erupted into violence—not at High Meadow but in Florida. In December ’79 a black man, an insurance salesman, a vet, ex-Marine Albert McDuffie, on a motorcycle had run a red light, had been chased by police, had freaked out, led the police on a one hundred-mile-per-hour chase through twenty-five blocks of the city until the police finally trapped him. Angrily the police had beat McDuffie, crushing his skull and killing him. The officers then re-staged the incident to look like an accident, and they falsified their reports. Within days some of the officers came forward, exposed the crime, and four policemen were charged with second-degree murder. The trial was moved to Tampa. In late May an all-white jury had deliberated for less than three hours before acquitting the officers of all charges. Miami’s inner-city black ghetto, Liberty City, went up like an ambush zone surrounded by daisy-chained claymore mines. For three days the city had burned, the night sky glowed, the day sky smogged. Looters and rioters did a hundred million dollars in damages, killed sixteen, injured four hundred. Thirty-six hundred militiamen, essentially an army of occupation, had quelled the bloodied streets.

  “You fuckers don’t know ...” Travellers began. He was staring at Ty.

  Ty interrupted, parried the comment. “Our people, street people, people of color, people who are with us, they know. My people know this government won’t do anything for them. This government givin handouts, givin businesses, givin houses to Viet Namese boat people. It gives breaks to Cubans. It gives nothin to African-Americans. People aren’t going to sit back and starve. They’re going to fight. Better to die fighting than be a slave in ghetto America.”

  “That’s not what—” Travellers moved toward the center. Joe Alamont scrambled out. Black versus black. He wanted no part of it. Most of the white vets stayed seated, exactly like Wapinski. Robert Ortez stood with Ty. “—I’m talking about!” Travellers stopped. “I’m talking about Montagnards. The communists got an extermination campaign going against the Yards.”

  “That’s cause they’re dark-skinned.” Ty barked his words. “I’ve been in white homes all over this state. You think I don’t see racism?! Every day?! This is the most racist society—”

  “Shut UP!” Steve Traveller’s hands shot forward as if to grab, to strangle. “You bastard! You’ve completely turned what I’m saying. You’re the racist. I’m talking my people.”

  “I
seen it too.” Erik Schevard stood. “I’ve been reading too. They pulled the rug from under em. I read where the dinks took over my area and carved up half the population. We had this village in our area—the people were Northerners from ’55. They hated the communists. The communists hated them. Had em all listed for death as traitors. I seen a report said the dinks clear-cut the ville and plowed every man, woman and child under ... along with the water bo.”

  “Cap it, Man.” It was Joe Alamont. “They’d never kill the water buffalo. That’d be like holding a dude up, stiffin im, then throwin him and his wallet in a dumpster without stealin the money.”

  “They’d do that,” Hacken injected, “to teach the others a lesson.”

  “That’s it.” Wapinski’s voice was forceful yet low. The bickering ceased. “Steve, is there anything we can do?”

  Eyes turned toward Hacken, back to Wapinski, then to Travellers.

  “Fuck it,” Travellers muttered. He backed toward Denahee. “I’m ... I’ll be all right.”

  “No.” Wap stood, bent as if he had a stomach cramp, straightened slowly. “I mean is there anything we can do for your people? Something. Something short of stealing a SAC bomber and nuking Hanoi.” Travellers didn’t respond. “What about you, Ty? Can you do something positive for your people?”

  The meeting continued, not simply that night but on into August and September. Bobby was frustrated, on the edge of control, fighting to hold himself, the vets, High Meadow, together. To Ty, Calvin, Hector, a mixed score of vets: “You want the government to take care of you?! Are you crazy? The government can’t even take care of itself. How many of you guys have spent time at RRVMC? That’s how the government takes care of people. That’s what you want?! What do you think they do in Washington? Figure out how to make you rich? Make you happy? Make you successful? You are nuts. They applaud themselves if they can show—even by smoke and mirrors—a one percent increase in personal income. If you had one percent more, would that make a difference in your lives? One percent! You can have five thousand percent! That’s what we’re working on.”