by Rob Rufus
Great. Another ’Nam addict.
I snagged a desk in back. The girl beside me had her face crammed into the pages of a TEEN Magazine. I scanned the cover stories as I got situated.
KEEP OFF THE GRASS—Pot shot at Marijuana
ARE LEFTIES MORE LOVEABLE?—Studies Say Yes
ANATOMY OF A HIPPIE—The Urge to Submerge
THE YOUNG RASCALS—An Interview
She sensed me staring and snapped her magazine shut.
“Hey,” I smiled, “I’m Ronnie.”
“What?”
“I’m Ronnie,” I said, a little louder.
“Oh,” she said. “Hi, I’m Jamie.”
She turned back to her magazine, but then looked over to me.
“You don’t happen to be left handed, do you?” Her tone was hopeful.
Before I could say no, a tall, bald man in a bright-blue blazer scrambled into the room. His posture was hunched, jittery. He looked truly excited to be teaching this subject, which made me nervous as hell. Benji Cutis, one of our beloved class clowns, gulped comically loud, sending a wave of chuckles through the room.
The teacher sat some papers on his desk, then turned to us.
“Ladies, gentlemen, welcome to Government Two. I’m Mr. Donahue. Now, I know some of you may still be on a mental vacation, but I expect that problem to rectify itself as soon as we—”
The intercom above the door hummed to life.
“Hello students,” Principal Yonker said through the speaker. “Welcome back. Before we get to the morning announcements, let us stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.”
The entire class stood up.
We faced the flag above the window. The morning light gave it an ethereal glow. We covered our hearts, our eyes fixed on the flag. Every kid in the building stood the same way: half-awake and barely conscious of our actions, let alone their meaning. Then we mumbled the unkeepable promise of our fathers, once again.
“IPLEDGEALLEGIANCE
TOTHEFLAGOFTHEUNITEDSTATESOFAMERICA
ANDTOTHEREPUBLICFORWHICHITSTANDS
ONENATIONUNDERGOD
INDIVISABLE
WITHLIBERTY
ANDJUSTICE
FOR—”
―
“All I know is this: if Bill says she’s a gook, she’s a fucking gook.”
It was the first thing I heard when I entered the locker room, and I instantly knew who said it. Stink Wilson’s voice was as loud and grating as mine was hoarse and subdued.
Stink wrestled 165, but his imposing nature made him seem twenty pounds heavier. He had a face to match his voice, all raw zits and meanness. Kids like him weren’t usually popular, but he possessed an asset more powerful than looks or charm—horror. Sophomore year, there were rumors he stabbed a colored boy in Old Town. I thought the rumor was bullshit, but wasn’t eager to test that theory.
I turned the corner to find him and Marty at their lockers getting changed. Milo was sitting on a bench nearby, lacing his wrestling shoes and not making eye contact with the two bigger boys. He nodded when he saw me. I nodded back, and opened my locker.
“Bill don’t know what a gook looks like,” Marty said to Stink. “He ain’t never been to Vietnam.”
“Bill knows,” Stink said, crossing his arms for dramatic effect. “His cousin sent him snapshots from Saigon, pictures of hookers. So Bill knows, man, and he said she has that gooky-eyed whorehouse look.”
His words made Milo flinch, as if he’d been stung by something.
“I heard she’s a chink,” Marty responded, “but I’m like, if she is a chink, why don’t she go to the colored school? How’s that even legal?”
Milo’s brow creased cartoonishly low and his leg began to twitch.
“She ain’t colored enough for the coloreds,” Stink shrugged, “but she ain’t white, and she ain’t a chink. Once she sets herself on fire to protest meatloaf day in the cafeteria, you’ll see how wrong ya were.”
“Jesus Christ!” Milo yelled, stomping his foot on the floor.
My back tensed. I tried to play it cool as I changed my clothes, but my nerves were on high alert. I prepped myself for a fight that I wasn’t looking to join.
“I’m fuckin’ disturbed that you two made it past fifth grade,” Milo said. “She’s half Japanese, not Vietnamese, and it’s legal for her to be here because school segregation ended fourteen years ago!”
“Not down here,” Stink huffed.
Which was true. Every school in the state remained segregated despite Brown v. Board of Education, and they’d stay that way for the foreseeable future.
“Watch yourself, spazoid,” Marty said. “Just ’cause you’re a dork don’t mean ya can suss out a chink from a gook from a jap from a goddamn space alien.”
“I don’t have to suss shit out,” he scoffed, “Hana told me she’s half Japanese, that’s a pretty good fuckin’ indication. Y’all just quit it with the ‘gook’ shit.”
Then Milo sighed and sat back down. I could tell he was exhausted by the argument. It was understandable. Trying to reason with these guys was like debating with a goldfish.
“You really talked to her?” Marty asked.
“Believe it or not, Marty,” Milo sneered, “asking works better than trying to decipher Bill’s secondhand jerk-off pictures.”
“Talked to who?” I finally asked, before Marty could reply.
“The new girl,” Milo said. “Hana. I met her this morning on the way to school. Her family moved into the Criswells’ old place, right across the street from us.”
“There goes the neighborhood,” Stink grumbled.
Milo looked back to Stink and Marty.
“You better be careful,” Milo said. “Her pops works for the Browning Corporation, and they just bought stake in the P&P. Hana told me they sent him here to assess the viability of the mill—including the usefulness of the employees.”
Marty and Stink looked at each other nervously.
The Cordelia Island Paper & Pulp Mill employed the majority of men in town. Marty’s dad, Stink’s dad, and pretty much everyone’s dad worked there—everyone but mine, who was six doors down, and Milo’s, who was six feet under.
“Jeez,” I said, feigning concern, “if her dad overheard your racist jive, then—“
“Poof!” Milo said, spreading his arms like a mushroom cloud. “Your fathers will be begging for change on the street, and they’ll sell the mill for scrap.”
Stink slammed his locker. Marty was bigger, so he slammed his harder.
“She lied to you,” Stink snapped. “She lied about the mill, and she lied about being a jap! I bet she’s a V. C. assassin sent here to take me out! High Command knows my boots hit the ground next year, and they’re already scared as hell. Every gook in my path is gonna be dead meat!”
“Yeah,” Marty yelled, “gook meat!”
The two of them busted up as they walked away. Their laughter came from the gut, bellowing genuine glee. The slaps of their high-five echoed off of the lockers as they headed to practice.
―
Night. Home from school. Done with practice. Done with the day.
I stayed in the shower until the hot water ran out and my fingers turned to prunes. The heat helped the pulsing ache that was building in my neck and shoulders. The first practice back was always the worst, and Dad had pushed us harder than usual. My legs were as stiff as tree trunks as I stepped onto the green bathroom rug.
I toweled off, and then combed my close-cropped hair to the side, like Steve McQueen. I slid on my red pajama pants and a fresh white tank top. Steam drifted into the dark, empty hallway as I opened the bathroom door.
Momma and Dad were in bed. Roy was already asleep. I flipped off the bathroom light and moved blindly toward my bedroom as quietly as I could.
I
shut my door, locked it, and then stepped onto my bed. I stood on my tiptoes, arching until my fingers pushed up the ceiling panel above me. I stuck one hand into the opening and felt around until my fingers grazed the handle of my stashbox. I pulled it out carefully and then stepped down off the bed.
In my hand was a yellow Rocky & Bullwinkle lunchbox.
Inside was the arsenal of tools I’d used to get through my brother’s death.
I opened it and took stock of my supply—a ziplocked bag of grass, rolling papers, a half-smoked joint, and three magic mushrooms I was too afraid to eat.
I took the roach from the lunchbox, then put it back in its hiding place.
After the box was secured, I crept down to the kitchen and went through the rarely used side door that led into the garage. I locked it behind me.
I didn’t turn on the light in case someone came down for a midnight snack. Instead, I felt my way through the garage, stopping when my hands touched aluminum. Then I squatted and lifted the garage door up as quietly as I could.
Moonlight poured in. I turned toward the car.
God, she was sparkling. Even in the dark.
Bruce’s 1962 Chevy Bel Air, baby blue with a 409 mean-machine engine. His car had been the envy of the neighborhood kids. It was the sort of car you waved at when it passed you by. She was real fine, his 4-0-9, indeed.
I opened the passenger door and slid into the middle of the bench seat. I pulled the keys from the driver’s side visor, where Bruce had left them. I put it in the ignition—I turned it one click, just enough to get the battery going.
The dashboard lit a dull-green color, like a beer sign with a blown bulb. The light blended with the moon and cast the interior in an airy radiance.
I flipped the radio on.
Aretha Franklin sang “Chain of Fools” through the ghostly waves.
I ch-ch-charged the dashboard lighter, and nodded my head with the beat.
Once it heated up, I pulled it from the cradle and lit the joint. It sizzled when it touched. I brought the joint to my lips and inhaled steadily.
I stretched out my neck, and then rested my head on the back of the bench. I closed my eyes and held in the smoke. I listened to the music. I reflected on the day.
I couldn’t get Stink and Marty out of my head.
Why’d they have to talk like that? Why’d they have to be such assholes?
As a Southerner, I’d been taught that refusing to participate in bigotry was its own type of rebuke. But as a seventeen-year-old, I was beginning to question that logic. Obviously Milo was too, since he shot back at Stink and Marty even though they could cream him without breaking a sweat.
But he still spoke up . . . and I didn’t say shit.
I never fought as hard as I could. Or should.
I exhaled hard enough to push that bummer of a thought from my head.
Smoke filled the cab. The DJ faded up the first bars of the next song.
—boom, ba-boom, boom, ba-boom—
—boom, ba-boom, boom, ba-boom—
It was then that I heard my brother’s voice.
I knew it was my imagination. I knew it was the weed.
But I swear I heard him in the static, drifting out on the back of a song.
“Tell me, loyal listeners, what does become of the brokenhearted? Well, it’s hard to say, baby, even for me, but when Jimmy Ruffin does the askin,’ the question sounds oh so sweet.”
God, Bruce loved that song. “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” had been the crown jewel of his Motown collection.
Jimmy Ruffin sang about the heartbroken world, belting out painful visions in his sad, soulful way. I took another toke and reached for the dial. I cranked the volume up, then exhaled into the green-lit dark. The air suddenly became three-dimensional, a thick, green haze of jungle smoke.
I leaned back in the seat and I thought about my brother and I thought about the war and I thought about hate and rock-n-roll and nothing and nothing and nothing and nothing and nothing at all.
Then I whispered to the radio, a hollow reply.
“I have visions too, man. I have visions, too.”
three
Crack the Sky, Shake the Earth
The first few weeks back at school flowed in a forgettable stream of monotony. Class, practice, work, home—there was no big news, no big deals. Even the news from Vietnam was tame; nightly newscasters made it clear the war was on its last leg. Rumors of peace talks loomed, and it really looked like President Johnson might decide to end the war, after all.
So for the first time in a long time, my thoughts drifted to normal teenage things—like the fact that I still hadn’t met the new girl. I saw her only in glimpses, usually through the window of Dad’s Studebaker as he drove me to school. She walked with Milo in the mornings, but he hadn’t offered to introduce me. When I finally asked him what she was like, he just said she was “sorta intense.”
I had no interest in adding any intensity to my current state, so I didn’t go out of my way to meet her. I let school days stay boring old school days, and weekends be nothing but mindless shifts at the Royal Atlantis, the movie theater where Milo and I worked.
There were only three viewing rooms, so the theater wasn’t as majestic as it sounded. But it was the only theater in town, and it had a neon-green sign bright enough to double as a lighthouse beacon. I was the ticket taker, which was the easiest job in the joint. Milo, however, was the projectionist and pro-bono repairman (he could fix everything from the aperture plate to the popcorn machine.) He did any and every task happily because movies were his passion. He wanted to be a director, or a cameraman, or . . . well, anything, pretty much, as long as it had to do with his obsessive passion for motion pictures.
Me, I didn’t have a passion. Not like that, anyway.
Not like Milo and the movies. Not like Bruce and music.
I’d had a plan, but that’s different.
Now it was gone, too.
But whenever I was taking tickets, I didn’t dwell on such things. I was able to work in the blank state of mind I clung to at school. The whole month was like that—blank and familiar. Everything was thoughtless, fantastically so. That entire month was steady, save one day.
January 30th, 1968.
The Lunar New Year.
Tết Nguyên Đán, as the Vietnamese called it.
Tet, for short.
―
Dad and I found out when we got home from wrestling practice.
Momma was sitting in the den, hunched toward the TV screen with a sour look on her face. Roy was on the floor playing with building blocks.
“What is it?” Dad asked. “What happened?”
“An attack,” she mumbled. “Some sort of attack.”
CBS News was calling it the Tet Offensive. When Dad got caught up on the story, he called it “a goddamn nightmare.” Every American embassy, base, and airfield in South Vietnam was hit with simultaneous surprise attacks. As the newscaster droned on, my spirit dwindled—for months, all I’d heard was that we’d been kicking ass and taking names, but now it was clear that peace was out the window. Our troops weren’t going anywhere, and neither was the draft.
Now it was all I could think about, the draft the draft the draft. I couldn’t put it out of my mind anymore, or pretend it wasn’t coming. I was no longer able to convince myself that Bruce’s death had paid some cosmic debt and left me free from having to worry about being drafted and killed myself.
The fear was in me now, and those numbing efforts were futile. It was just a matter of time before I was smacked out of my grief-induced meditation. I knew it was coming. I felt it. But, in the end, I was still surprised by the force of the hit.
―
The Friday after the Tet Offensive, the Royal Atlantis ran The Graduate. Judging by the size of our openi
ng-night crowd, I wasn’t the only one who’d heard rumors about how salacious it was. Half of the senior class was there, including all the guys from the wrestling team. They made fun of my work uniform as I tore their tickets to the late show.
My boss, Mr. Dori, always left before the last show. So once the movie started and the lobby cleared out, I abandoned my post and went upstairs to the projection room to bullshit with Milo. Every time I did this, the empty upstairs hallway struck me as creepy; the glow of the fake chandeliers was dull, and the echoes of competing films disorienting. I hurried down the matted red carpet to the small door labeled Employees Only. I opened it and went inside.
The small door led to a small room hidden above the crowd. Milo sat in the corner eating a box of M&M’s, paying no attention to the machinery or the images they projected.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey, man.”
I peered out the opening that the camera lens stuck through. I didn’t see any sex stuff happening on screen, just Dustin Hoffman freaking out on a mechanic.
“How’s the movie?” I asked.
“Fantastic. The cinematography’s amazing. Real Euro-style, I dig it.”
“Cool,” I said. He passed me the box of M&Ms.
“Wanna hear something messed up?” he asked.
“Always.”
“The New York Times published the signal the Viet Cong sent their troops before the Tet attacks. Know what it said?”
I shook my head.
“Crack the sky, shake the earth.”
The words sent a visible chill down my spine.
“Yeah,” he said, “I know.”
He leaned on the opposite side of the projector and peered into the theater.
“What are we gonna do, man?” I asked.
“Hope our numbers don’t come up until we figure something out.”
I finished the box of chocolates and threw it at his head. “You’re supposed to be the smart one!”
“Hey,” he said, turning, “what can I say? It’s a low fuckin’ bar.”
