Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Hey. You hear that Ty cleared out?”

  “Naw.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t believe he left. I can’t believe he left without saying good-bye. He didn’t even leave an address?!”

  “We didn’t expect him to go yet. We thought he was going to be here.”

  “He’s a neat man, but Man, he had a heavy dose of the flakies. Sometimes he had his sh ... stuff, rolled in a tight little ball. But then it would all spill out ...”

  “This wine sucks.”

  “Anybody see the kids?”

  “I’m switchin back to cider, Man. This stuff’s hurtin my head. Shee-it. I can’t drink no more. One beer knocks me on my ass. Gives me a three-day headache. I used to be able to drink a case.”

  “You read those documents Mariano and Wagner got ... on this Agent Orange shit and alcohol and headaches. Talkin about people not being able to metabolize alcohol and about abnormal EEGs. Right into people’s brains ...”

  “Anybody seen Noah?”

  “... into people’s dicks.”

  “Keep it down, Man. Father Tom’s right behind you.”

  “What! He doesn’t have a dick?”

  “Yeah. But I was reading where it cleaves the DNA chains in your cum so if you knock up your old lady, that’s what causes these multiple birth defects.”

  “Yeah. I read that too. I read that the chemical companies knew it too. A long time ago ...”

  “Anybody seen Bobby?”

  In the barn office, alone, just the three of them, Bobby, Noah and Josh. “Papa?”

  “Um-hmm.” Noah didn’t ask his question. Bobby waited, then said, “What do you want for your birthday?”

  Shyly Noah smiled. Then more broadly. Then he blurted, “A puppy.”

  Bobby pulled back, then nodded, managed a smile. Then he knit his brow, cocked his head, scratched Josh behind the ears, said, “What about ol’ Josh, here?”

  “He’s—” Noah clammed up.

  Gently Bobby asked, “He’s what?” Noah, eyes to the floor, mumbled something. “Hmm?”

  “I ... said ... I want a dog that’s just for me. Josh is too old. And he stinks.”

  “Oh—” Bobby moaned sympathetically, “poor Josh.”

  “He’s your dog,” Noah said. “And I don’t have anyone to talk to.”

  Monday, 8 March 1982—“You need a good lawyer. You need a lawyer who’s like an alley cat. One nasty focused son of a bitch. The nastiest son of a bitch you can find.”

  “Mark, you handle it. Just submit the claim.”

  “You’re a hell of a lot more forgiving than I am.”

  “I’m not forgiving. I ... Look, it’s open and shut. Here’s the proof that I was exposed.” Bobby flipped through the file on his lap. “Here’s the letter from Wilcoxson—on VA letterhead. Nice, huh? Listen to this. ‘In view of the history of exposure to AGENT ORANGE, we feel the probability of this exposure as an etiologic agent is a distinct and serious consideration.’”

  Bobby produced more pages from his file. “Here’s copies of the studies I told you about—‘Impairment of the Blood-forming System by Exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin’; and, um, ‘Chromosomal Aberrations Associated with Phenoxy Herbicides’; and ‘Cytogenetic ...’”

  “Okay.” Mark Tashkor held up his hand. “Look, I’ll file the claim but a one hundred percent disability isn’t just compensation for what you’ve gone through. And anything more is beyond my scope. If we don’t—”

  “Thanks, Mark. We’ll get it. This one’s from Dr. Lilly Dachik. ‘Various courses of androgens have had short duration effects. Robert Wapinski is now totally transfusion dependent and with but a few exceptions requires four units of blood every two-to-four weeks to stay alive.’ I ... Mark, I can’t pay ... yet ... When the IRS releases ...”

  “Don’t worry about it, Bob. We’re in this as one.”

  A month passed. Then another. To Bobby each sunrise seemed a blessing, each day brought new trials, new trepidations. Three times he returned to West Haven, three times nearly scared to death to accept the transfusion, the blood, fearful of another reaction, yet knowing his blood values had declined into the critical zone. One week they made it a family outing, driving up Tuesday, finding a motel with a pool where Noah and Paul could swim and Am could hang on to Sara and be swished through the water; then all taking Papa to the Wednesday “filler-up” clinic; Sara staying with the children, downstairs, praying, concealing her fears; then release, and up to Mystic to the whaling village before the long drive home.

  During this time Bobby “went public” with his disease. He called his brother, tried to make peace, found Brian unaware of, or unwilling to confront, their schism. He talked to the vets, to attorneys, to doctors, to students. He was invited to address distant veterans groups and small classes of school children, and he responded to the degree his strength allowed. He talked to Father Tom and to Johnnie Jackson, to Aaron Holtz and Albert Morris. The latter responded by asking him to be Grand Marshal of the 1982 Memorial Day Parade.

  It was a strange time. Bobby became almost proud of his illness; wore his illness like a badge of courage, like a Congressional Medal of Honor, like a shield or maybe like a mask.

  “It’s a reading from Paul to the Romans,” he told Sara, told Tony, told Dennis and Mark, Juan and Joe.

  Now that we have been justified by faith we are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have gained access by faith to the grace in which we now stand, and we boast of our hope for the glory of God. But not only that—we even boast of our afflictions—we know that afflictions make for endurance, and endurance for tested virtue, and tested virtue for hope. This hope will not leave us disappointed.

  Juan listened rapt. Sara squeezed him. Others seemed embarrassed. Tony stared into his eyes, unconvinced, until Bobby said, “Just accept the part on affliction, endurance, virtue and hope.”

  On Memorial Day he stood on a makeshift stage before the 1883 obelisk in River Front Park. A throng of three thousand citizens had gathered, had cheered him earlier along the parade route, had actually frightened him with their mood, their attitude transformation from seemingly anti-American a decade earlier to seemingly militant patriotism now. Bobby stood, shy, frail, glancing up from the podium, seeing the crowd, attempting to concentrate on a short patch of cleaned and raked gravel between the crowd and the stage, attempting too, to concentrate on his speech, his breathing, hoping his words had meaning but not hearing his own voice, in midspeech not recalling if he’d delivered the beginning.

  We recall the names, faces, shared laughs and hardships of our friends yet what we truly honor on Memorial Day is not just their deaths or their lives but it is their spirit. We honor their belief, their moral heroism. From the distant past to the future it is essential we understand “we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract ... It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here thus far so nobly advanced.” These words, of course, are from Abraham Lincoln’s Speech at Gettysburg one hundred and nineteen years ago.

  We remember, we honor, by continuing to advance that unfinished noble work. Theirs is a legacy and a promise. Ours must be a covenant....

  The covenant of Memorial Day includes the passing of the torch of the values—even if at times those values have been tarnished or corrupted—for which they made the sacrifice.

  Ahhhhhoooooommmm. From faith and covenants Bobby moved on to meditation—bouncing like an ultradense polymer ball; place to place, house, barn, fields, going to pot, to seed; and topic to topic, always shifting, never finishing, never reaching ultimate satisfaction; straw to straw.

  He lay on his back in the barn in Grandpa’s office, alone, without even Josh there by his side, perfectly still, an old OD army jungle sweater folded and placed over his eyes. He saw High Meadow as it was when h
e was a boy. He saw his grandfather and grandmother. He saw Josh when he was a puppy running in the fields, loping effortlessly after butterflies on sunny spring days with soft breezes. He looked inside himself, saw his arterial system, saw his blood, each cell, saw it flowing, saw it fighting for life, battling the hill, the mud, friendly fire, searching for the enemy to find, fix, fight, finish. He saw the marrow chambers, the little factories squeezing out new cells, beautiful smooth, firm, healthy cells. He sent memos to the chambers. “Good job. Quality counts. I love what you do for me. Keep up the good work. I love you.” He sent light beams, cobalt blue beams, high intensity beams, energy beams, reinforcements. “I’m behind you guys. I’m with you all the way. The supply convoy’s ready, packed with all the beans, bullets, and batteries you’ll ever need. And here’s a new weapon, a new treatment, new chemical. Use it in good health. Use it against the bad guys. Get some, good guys. Waste that scourge. Grease em. Knock em out.

  Ahhhhhoooooommmm. Ahhhhhoooooommmm. He saw Sara, saw her smiling, saw that spectacular smile which was iron bars reinforcing him, iron molecules in his erythrocytes. He saw Noah, Paul and Am, he saw them in school, on soccer fields, on stages, he saw them at birth, at present, at high school and college graduations, and he saw himself with them, proud, beaming inside if not outwardly, beaming subdued, purposefully, not wishing to steal from them their glow, their wonderment, whether they knew it, saw it, or not. He saw the next sunrise, the next and the next. Ahhhhhoooooommmmm.

  With meditation he combined exercise. Walks. He was capable of little more. He walked with old Josh, often alone, often up to his grandfather’s grave. He walked with Sara. Sometimes talking, sometimes in silence, thinking, pondering, observing.

  I married the girl of my dreams, he’d think. And she is here with me. We have three beautiful healthy children. I’ve run the farm, the solar business. I think we’ve expanded awareness about environmental issues and veterans’ issues, which overlap. Maybe I’ve helped someone along the way. Now all I want to do ... All I want ... All I ever wanted ...

  “Brian, he’s getting worse. Did you talk to your mother? He needs a bone marrow transplant. He won’t make it without one.”

  “Maybe Cheryl can talk to her. You know how Ma—”

  “Brian! He’s your brother! And she’s your mother!”

  “Sara, I’ve done everything I can.”

  Sara squeezed the phone striving to maintain control. “I know,” she said. “And we really appreciate ...”

  “If I was a match I’d give him some.”

  “I know, Brian. It’s just so frustrating that Miriam and Joanne refuse to be tested.”

  “You shouldn’t have told her they’d poke the needle right into the bone.”

  “God!” Sara snapped. “Bobby’s had it done six times.”

  “Well, you know Miriam. When Cheryl talked to her the first time ... She was, you know, ‘NO WAY!’ She said it was immoral to ask someone who’s sixty-two ...”

  “Oh God.” Sara sighed, closed her eyes. “It could mean keeping her son alive!”

  “Well, like I said, if I could ...”

  “Brian, what about your uncle? Were you able to find out anything about him?”

  “Only that, ah, his name is Fredrick. Fredrick Cadwalder. And he married a Jennifer Morton like thirty-five years ago. In St. Louis. You know, I’d forgotten about him. I don’t think I’ve seen him since I was maybe eight.”

  “Hmm. Thanks. I’ll ...” Sara scribbled the names on a pad, squeezed her hand, tensed her arm in hope. “I’ll follow that up. Ask Joanne again? Please.”

  In late June, alone with Josh, Bobby smelled it. They had climbed through the orchard, crested the knoll, descended to the dam, crossed the spillway, entered the path to the far woods. Bobby took his time, paused, observed, remembered a day with Red, remembered days fishing, remembered the nights and days when the dam almost washed away. He walked slowly, carefully. Then, “Oooo! Smell that?”

  Josh stood by him, looked up; his old body sagged between his shoulders.

  “Geez. Ha! I ... I remember when we first walked back here, Ol’ Boy. Remember? And we smelled that but we couldn’t find it. Maybe a dead raccoon, huh?”

  Josh’s head dropped, swung indifferently to one side, the other. He looked up again as if to say, “If you’ll go on, I’ll go on.”

  And Bobby answered, “Naw, Boy. We’ll go back.”

  That night, returning from a lone trek across the gap to the fire circle, Don Wagner, in his orange plaid pants, discovered the source.

  “Why would it take so long for the body to come up?”

  “This is the shits, Man. This is more fuckin problems.”

  “Poor fuckin Ty.”

  “Yeah. They goina let us bury im here?”

  “What’d his brother say?”

  “It was the boots and all. That’s what weighted him down. And if he didn’t come up because of the gases, you know, the decomposition, maybe because of the ice, then the gases worked their way out and the body became waterlogged.”

  “We’re lucky he had his boots on. That establishes it happened last winter. Man, they’ve been all over the place, again. FBI. IRS. Staters. Hartley’s lackeys. That bitch from 1st Witness News ... that’s all they needed.”

  Two weeks later there was additional fallout. In the barn a score of vets huddled, close, almost like the old days, barn trial days, except closer now, beneath the loft where the Slitter used to be.

  MARIANO: Did you hear that guy, Gilmore?

  VU: He is the one from IRS.

  MARIANO: Yeah. I heard him say, “He was my ears.”

  VAN DEUSEN: Like an informer?

  MARIANO: Yeah. I think.

  PISANO: What the hell did they need an informer for? You guys kept the books open. They coulda come up any—

  VU: It make Bobby sick again.

  PISANO: I don’t believe it. I don’t believe Ty would of done it. He wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t.

  GALLAGHER: They didn’t find anything. There were no signs of foul play. The autopsy said “by drowning.”

  THORPE: Didn’t stop 1st Witness News ...

  VU: My cousins are in Connecticut. Tomorrow I will drive him. I have many connections, now. He has a fever ... an infection ...

  PISANO: I’m sick of this shit, Man. I’m just sick of it.

  WAGNER: I think I got a lead. We have to keep networking.

  GALLAGHER: On what?

  WAGNER: His father, Man. His old man. He’d be like sixty now. Maybe he had a family. Maybe Bobby’s got a half-brother out there that’d be a match.

  Sara felt guilty. She could not accompany Bobby, could not sit with him through another transfusion, through the new antibiotic infusion that would control whatever infection he had, allow his temperature to return to normal. Instead, along with the other newly hired teachers, she was inspecting her new classroom—a third grade in Thomas Jefferson Elementary in Rock Ridge. She felt torn. She liked the principal, a matronly woman in her late fifties. She liked the building, an old, two-story, red-brick edifice whose vacant halls echoed with the click of her heels, halls that seemingly held the smiles and laughs and smudges of thousands of former pupils. She liked that her career was restarting, full-time. But to be away from Bobby, from the boys, from Am who was only two and a half! She did not know if she could pull it off. It was tearing her apart.

  When they returned it was not Bobby who seemed different but Vu Van Hieu. He seemed bigger, stronger. Perhaps it was because Bobby had not shaken the fever, had come back with six different prescriptions, had returned shivering, hunched over. Still, Hieu looked bigger to Tony, too, when he stood next to Carl and Bobby was not present.

  “What’s happenin, Hieu?”

  Hieu put a finger to his lips, “Ssshh!” He leaned forward, indicated for Tony and Carl to come closer.

  “What’s goin on, Man?”

  “Ssshh.” Hieu looked about, checked the doors, windows. They
were in the small mill building on River Front Drive.

  “What is it, Man? You’re smiling like the cat who ate the canary.”

  Hieu looked at him questioningly.

  “House cat that ate the pet bird,” Carl explained. “You know, ah ... never mind. What’s up?”

  Again conspiratorially. “I told you of my cousins, eh?”

  “Up in, uh ... up in New Haven?”

  Hieu nodded. “He say ... you must keep this secret.”

  “Sure.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Okay. I tell you. I have not told Bobby. He is too sick to tell.”

  “What, Man?”

  “Maybe two months, maybe three. They establish International Coalition of Free Viet Namese.”

  “What’s that mean, Hieu?”

  “Ssshh!” Vu Van Hieu squirmed restless as a small child over a secret dessert. “I am among first to join.”

  Tuesday, 10 August 1982—On VA letterhead—“There is no evidence that this veteran had the claimed condition in military service nor manifest to the required degree within one year. There is nothing at this time in the medical literature which relates any exposure to AGENT ORANGE to this veteran’s condition. The letters submitted by the West Haven Chief of Oncology/Hematology provide nothing new or material. Notice of denial of disability is hereby ...”

  Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!

  Anger erupted, spewed massively. How much can one man be screwed? How far could they push him? Now he was over the edge. Now he believed the absolute worst about his government, his society. Now he thought greed controlled all, in retrospect controlled the media, in retrospect controlled the war, controlled why and how and by whom it was fought and perhaps Ty was right in his ambiguous “The Man” because now Bobby was being punished by The Man. Everything he’d worked for now seemed ruined, destroyed, ephemeral. The peace Sara had provided, the joy of his children, the elation he’d gotten from his own accomplishments, from those of the vets; the satisfaction of his tinkerings, his designs—at that moment were meaningless.

  He had long avoided the natural anger of someone who discovers he has a terminal disease; had avoided the bitterness, the feeling of victimization. He had never felt like a victim, never seen himself as a victim, until now, until the denial of his claim, until the VA’s personal rejection of him. The VA denial was so outrageous everything erupted, spewed from Bobby like the explosion from Mount St. Helens. He took it out on himself, on Sara, on Noah, Paul and Am, on Tony, on all the vets.