by James Reston
DOCTOR And?
D.J.: Well, we see they’re being pretty slow getting out of the road, so we got to swerve a little bit to miss them. . . . Not a lot, you know, but a little bit. This seems to make the guys in the back of the truck really mad. Like, somebody goes, “Little fuckers!” You know? . . . Then those kids, as soon as we pass, they start laughing at us, and give us the finger. Know what I mean? (HE gives the DOCTOR the finger, to illustrate. The DOCTOR starts to laugh, but then puts his hand to his head, as if knowing what is to come) Yeah. So I’m thinking to myself, “Now where did they learn to do that? That ain’t some old oriental custom. They musta learned it from our guys.” . . . Suddenly the guys on the truck start screaming for the driver to back up. So he jams on the brakes, and in this big cloud of dust he’s grinding this thing in reverse as if he means to run those kids down, backwards. The kids start running away, of course, but one of ’em, maybe two, I don’t know, they stop, you see, and give us the finger again, from the side of the road. And they’re laughing. . . . So, uh . . . everybody on the truck opens fire. I mean, I couldn’t believe it, they’re like half a platoon, they got M-16s, automatic rifles, they’re blasting away, it sounds like a pitched battle, they’re pouring all this firepower into these kids. The kids are lying on the ground, they’re dead about a hundred times over, and these guys are still firing rounds into their bodies, like they’ve gone crazy. And the kids’ bodies are giving these little jumps into the air like rag dolls, and then they flop down again. . . .
DOCTOR (Very quiet): What happened then?
D.J.: They just sorta stopped, and me and these guys drove away. (The DOCTOR waits) I’m thinking to myself, you know, what is going on here? I must be out of tune. My first day in the country, and we ain’t even reached the Combat Zone! I’m thinking, like, this is the enemy? Kids who make our trucks give a little jog in the road and give us the finger? I mean, come on, man! . . . And one guy, he sees I’m sort of staring back down the road, so he gives me like this, you know—(HE simulates a jab of the elbow) and he says, “See how we hose them li’l motherfuckers down, man?” Hose ’em down. You like that? . . . And they’re all blowing smoke away from their muzzles and checking their weapons down, like they’re a bunch of gunslingers, out of the Old West. . . . (HE is shaking his head, HE still has trouble believing HE saw this)
DOCTOR (Measured): Why do you think they did all that?
D.J.: I don’t know. They went crazy, that’s why!
DOCTOR: Went crazy. . . . Were all those soldiers white?
D.J.: I don’t remember.
DOCTOR: What do you think?
D.J. (A little dangerously): I think some of them were white.
DOCTOR (Waits, D.J.. does not add anything): And what did you do?
D.J.: What do you mean, what did I do?
DOCTOR: Well, did you report them to a superior officer?
D.J. (Explodes): Superior officer?! What superior officer? Their fucking lieutenant was right there in the fucking truck, he was the first one to open fire! I mean what are you talking about, man? Don’t you know what is going on over there?
DOCTOR: Why get mad at me? I didn’t shoot those children.
D.J. (Confused, angry): God damn . . .! (Glaring at the DOCTOR) I mean, what are you accusing me of, man?
DOCTOR: I’m not accusing you of anything.
D.J.: Well, I’m asking you! What would you have done? You think you’re so much smarter and better than me? You weren’t there, man! That’s why you can sit here and be the judge! Right? (No reaction form the DOCTOR, except for a tic of nervousness under the extreme tension that has been created) I mean, look at you sitting there in your suit, with that shit-eating grin on your face!
DOCTOR: You’re getting mad at my suit again? You think my suit has caused these problems?
D.J. can’t control his rage and frustration any longer. HE blows up, grabs his chair—as the only object available—and swings it above his head as a weapon. The DOCTOR instinctively ducks away and shouts at D.J. to stop.
Wait a minute! Sergeant! Stop that!
D.J. crashes the chair against the desk, or the floor. HE cannot vent his physical aggression directly against the DOCTOR. After D.J. has tom up the room, HE stands, exhausted, confused, emptyhanded.
Are you all right?
D.J. stares at the DOCTOR, panting. D.J. moves away, into the silence of the room. The DOCTOR speaks neutrally.
How did you feel about being a killer?
D.J.: I didn’t kill those kids, man!
DOCTOR: I didn’t say you did! Did I?
The DOCTOR waits, D.J. glares at him, still full of rage and suspicion. But a deep point has been made, and BOTH MEN are aware of it. A pause.
Did you ever tell people at home about any of this? About Dakto, about the truck?
D.J.: No. I didn’t.
DOCTOR: Didn’t they ask? Didn’t anyone ever wonder why you came home carly?
D.J.: Yeah, they asked.
DOCTOR: Who asked?
D.J.: My mother. Little kids, sometimes. My girl, Bea. . . .
DOCTOR: Sounds like everybody.
D.J.: No, not everybody. A lot of people didn’t give a shit what happened.
DOCTOR: And you pretended you didn’t give a shit, either?
D.J.: What do you want me to say, man?
DOCTOR: But what did you say when your mother or your friends asked you?
D.J.: You guess. You’re the specialist.
DOCTOR (After a pause): All right, I will. You said, “Nothing happened. Nothing happened over there.”
D.J.: Right on. Word for word.
DOCTOR: It’s in the folder.
D.J.: Yeah, sure.
DOCTOR (Takes, words from report in the folder): It also says you “lay up in your room a lot, staring at the ceiling. . . .” (HE waits, to see if D.J. has anything to add)
D.J.: Read. Read, man. I’m tired.
DOCTOR: Did you do that—did that happen to you right away?
D.J.: Right away . . .? No. Well, at first I felt pretty good. Considering. . . . (Trails off) Considering, uh . . .
DOCTOR: Considering that you had just been heavily narcotized, tied up in a straitjacket, and shipped home in a semi-coma. After surviving a hell of death and horror, which by all odds should have left you dead yourself.
D.J.: Yeah. Considering that.
DOCTOR: You felt lucky that you had survived? At first?
D.J.: I just used to like going to bars with my cousin, William . . . my friends. I was glad to see my girl, Beatrice, and my mama. I joked around with them. I tried to be good to them . . . I shot baskets with the kids, down the block. Understand?
DOCTOR: Of course. And then what happened?
D.J.: It didn’t last.
DOCTOR: And?
D.J.: I started laying up in my room. Staring at the ceiling.
DOCTOR: But what happened? What changed you?
D.J.: I don’t remember.
DOCTOR: But you did go numb?
D.J.: You’re talking me around in circles, Doc!
DOCTOR: I’m sorry. . . . This terrible delayed reaction, after a kind of relief—it seems so mysterious, but it’s the common pattern for men who went through your kind of combat trauma . . .
D.J. (With irony): Well, I’m glad to hear that. But I sometimes began to suspect that my girl, Bea, might just prefer a man what can see and hear and think and feel things. And do things! You follow my meaning? A man what can walk and talk, stuff like that?
DOCTOR: Did you stop having sexual relations with her?
D.J.: Well, I have been trying to send you signals, man! You’re none too quick on the pickup.
DOCTOR: Did she criticize you?
D.J.: Not about that. . . . She wanted me to get a job, so we could get married.
DOCTOR: Well. The job situation must have been difficult in Detroit.
D.J.: Especially if you lay up in your room all day, staring at the ceiling. Funny thing about the
city of Detroit—not too many people come up through your bedroom offering you a job, on most days. Did you know that?
DOCTOR: I’ve heard that, yes. . . . Did you stop getting out of bed altogether?
D.J.: No, I put my feet to the floor once in a while. Used to go on down to the V.A. and stand in line for my check.
DOCTOR: How did they treat you down there, at the Veterans’ Office?
D.J.: Like shit.
DOCTOR: Did you know why you got treated that way?
D.J.: It wasn’t just me personally, man.
DOCTOR: I know. But why?
D.J.: You know that a vet down the block from me flipped out last week—jumped up in the middle of his sleep and shot his woman in bed, because he thought she was the Vietcong laying there to ambush him? . . .
The DOCTOR goes sharply on the alert at this, but waits for D.J. to continue. D.J. is profoundly uneasy about his own train of thought.
Man, if I lose my cool again—just, freak out—what’s to stop me from going up and down the streets of Detroit killing everything I see?
DOCTOR (Concerned, quiet): Do you actually think you could do that?
D.J.: How can you ask me that?
DOCTOR: I’m asking.
D.J. (Charging at the DOCTOR): Well what did I do—what did I get that medal for, man? For my good manners and gentle ways?
The DOCTOR and D.J. stare at each other for a tense moment. The DOCTOR starts to fit up another cigarette and filter, but throws the filter away and lights up the cigarette. HE begins to face restlessly. D.J. watches him. Then the DOCTOR abruptly turns back to D.J.
DOCTOR: Tell me when you actually got the medal.
D.J.: You’re making me nervous!
DOCTOR (Keeps pacing): As my grandmother used to say, “That should be the worst would ever happen to you.”
D.J.: That’s the grandmother, could have been a trolley car?
DOCTOR: If she had wheels.
D.J.: If she had wheels. Right.
During this colloquy—in which an ease, a trust seems to be forming between the men—the DOCTOR has restained himself but HE is impatient now to pick up the thread.
DOCTOR: Tell me when you actually got the medal!
D.J. (This story is relatively easy for him to launch into; HE settles into his old chair in the course of telling it): I been home eight, nine months. Then I get this call, they say it’s some army office. They want to know if I’m clean—if I had any arrests since I been back, you know. I tell them I’m clean and just leave me alone. Then two MPs come to the door, in uniform, scare the shit out of my mama. They just tell her they want to find out a few things about me—whether I’ve been a good boy—whether I’ve been taking any drugs. She makes me roll up my sleeves right there (HE does so for the DOCTOR) to show—no tracks, see? When they leave, she is sure I’ve done something terrible, that I shouldn’t be afraid to tell her, that she’ll forgive me anything. And all I can do is sit there in the kitchen and laugh at her, which makes her mad, and even more sure I done something weird. . . . Well, about fifteen minutes later a colonel calls up from the Department of Defense in Washington, tells me they’re going to give me the Congressional Medal of Honor, and could I come down to Washington right away, with my family, as President Lyndon B. Johnson hisself wants to hang it around my neck, with his own hands. He’ll pay for the tickets, he says.
DOCTOR: So, another sudden ride on a jet plane.
D.J.: A goddamn Honor Guard meets us at the airport. Beatrice is peeing in her pants, my mother’s with me, my cousin, William. . . . They got a dress-blue uniform waiting for me, just my size. Shoes, socks, everything. Escort, sirens. Yesterday afternoon for all they knew I was a junkie on the streets, today the President of the United States can’t wait to see me. . . .
The DOCTOR has picked up his cassette recorder while D.J. was finishing the story, and now HE clicks it on. The voice of Lyndon B. Johnson plays, from the award ceremony.
VOICE OF L.B.J.: “ . . . Secretary Resor . . . General Westmoreland. . . . Distinguished guests and members of the family. . . . Our hearts and our hopes are turned to peace as we assemble here in the East Room this morning. All our efforts are being bent in its pursuit. But in this company (The DOCTOR points the recorder at D.J.) we hear again, in our minds, the sounds of distant battle. . . .
The DOCTOR turns the volume down, and the voice of L.B.J. drones quietly in the background, as HE waits for D.J.’s reaction.
D.J.: Ain’t that a lot of shit?
DOCTOR: You wept.
D.J.: I don’t know, I kind of cracked up. The flashbulbs were popping in my eyes, my mother’s hugging me, she’s saying, “Honey, what are you crying about? You’ve made it back.” It was weirdl!
The DOCTOR has turned the volume up again to let a few more phrases from the presidential ceremony play, giving D.J. more time for reliving the moment.
VOICE OF L.B.J.: “This room echoes once more to those words that describe the heights of bravery in war, above and beyond the call of duty. Five heroic sons of America come to us today from the tortured fields of Vietnam. They come to remind us that so long as that conflict continues our purpose and our hopes rest on the steadfast bravery of young men in battle. These five soldiere, in their separate moments of supreme testing, summoned a degree of courage that stirs wonder and respect and an overpowering pride in all of us. Through their spectacular courage they set themselves apart in a very select company . . .”
The DOCTOR underlines these last words—“set themselves apart in a very select company”—with a gesture. Then HE flicks off the cassette recorder.
D.J.: Weird, man.
DOCTOR: Why was it weird?
D.J.: I . . . I don’t know?
DOCTOR: You do know!
D.J.: What are you driving at?
DOCTOR: What did you get that medal for? (Repeating D.J.’s earlier words) For your “good manners and gentle ways”?
D.J. (Stares at the DOCTOR: The DOCTOR stares back): I got that medal because I went totally out of my fucking skull and killed everything that crossed my sight! (Pause) They say I wanted to kill all the prisoners. Me.
DOCTOR: You don’t remember?
D.J.: Nothing. . . . A few flashes, maybe. Those people are all so small. . . .
DOCTOR (HE taps a finger on the cassette recorder, trying to recapture the specific moment THEY have been talking about—in the White House—but HE gradually gets caught up in the intense rush of his own thoughts): So, your mother was hugging you, in the White House, for doing what she had trained you all your life not to do—for being a killer. And everybody was celebrating you for that. . . . And your dead friends from the tank, whom you had tried so hard to bury, came back again, to haunt you. You had to relive that story, that flash of combat when a man’s life is changed forever, when he literally goes crazy, psychotic, in a world of no past and no future, compacted into a few seconds, a wild pounding of the heart, blinding light, explosions, terror, and his whole earlier life slides away from him through a . . . membrane as if lost forever, and all he can do is kill—all that was named, broadcast, printed on a banner and waved in your own face so you can never forget. . . . And you wonder why you wept, why you were confused, why you are here in this hospital? You wept for your dead friends, you wept for your dead self, for your whole life that slid away in the first fifteen seconds of that ambush on the road to Dakto. You were choking on your grief, a grief you couldn’t share with anyone, and you became paralyzed by your guilt, and you still are, and you’re going to be, until you decide to make your own journey back through that membrane into some acceptable reality. . . . Some real life, of your own. . . .
Both D.J. and the DOCTOR seem momentarily stunned by the latter’s outpouring.
D.J.: I don’t know how to do that, Doc.
DOCTOR: I will tell you. . . . (Glances at watch, as if recollecting himself) D.J., do you intend to stay in this hospital for a while?
D.J.: Why do you ask?
&
nbsp; DOCTOR (Reads from folder for an answer): “Maalox and bland diet prescribed. G.I. series conducted. Results negative. Subject given thirty-day convalescent leave 16 October 1970. Absent Without Leave until 12 January 1971, when subject returned to Army hospital on own volition. Subsequent hearing recommended dismissal of AWOL charge and back pay reinstated . . . in cognizance of subject’s outstanding record in Vietnam.”
D.J.: Well, yeah, they can’t do anything to me.
DOCTOR: Because of the medal?
D.J.: Because of the medal. . . .
DOCTOR (After a beat): I’m afraid we have only a few more minutes today. (Scanning his appointments book) I can come down the day after tomorrow, and I’d like to talk with you again. After that, if you want, I can see you three or four times a week.
D.J. (HE automatically readies himself for the end of the hour): Busy man like you? (Light mockery)
DOCTOR: Mm-hm. But I’d like to have you transferred up to New York. I can do that, if you’ll make the request. . . . (HE looks questioningly at D.J.. D.J. does not answer—nor does HE necessarily imply a “No”) Well?
D.J.: We’ll see.
DOCTOR: We’ll see what?
D.J.: We’ll see, when you come down again.
DOCTOR: Can I be sure you’ll be here?
D.J.: You’re looking for too many guarantees in life, man.
DOCTOR: No, I’m not. I’m looking for you to make a decision about yourself.
A knock at the door, and the HOSPITAL GUARD immediately enters.
You can get better, you know. . . .
GUARD: Reporting in for Sergeant Jackson, sir.
The DOCTOR and D.J. look at each other. D.J. gets up, automatically, to go.
DOCTOR (To GUARD): Will you wait outside for a moment? In the corridor?
GUARD: Will do, sir. May I ask, sir, how long?
DOCTOR: Not long. Until the interview is concluded.
GUARD: May I ask, sir, is the interview almost concluded?
DOCTOR: The interview is almost concluded. Just giving a summation.
GUARD: Will wait in corridor, sir, until conclusion of summation of interview. (HE snaps to, gives salute. The DOCTOR waves him off, with his own facsimile of a salute. The GUARD wheels into an about-face and exits to station himself outside the door)
