Vietnam

87

Hutch finds a friend in the jungles of Vietnam.

 

Originally published in the zine, Venice Place Times I.

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A calendar the size of a credit card tucked away with a red-circled date. We all had one. Countdown to home.

One year. One year is what I would do. I dropped out of pre-med school to be a medic in the army. I had basic paramedic training. No doctor, but it would do on the field.

“Ken, you’re crazy,” my father said as he circled me like a matador in the living room of our white collar, white bread, white-walled home. “You’re giving up college to—to—to get yourself KILLED!”

“I want to serve. I hate war. I hate us being there. But I won’t shirk my duty. I’m no better than anyone else. I won’t dodge while other guys just like me are over there fighting. I don’t agree with the war, but I am going to support my country. I’d rather do that than stay here and complain about it. Lots of guys are over there that don’t want to be over there. I’m not waiting till they draft me. I’m not a coward.”

What a speech.

What idealism.

Dad slapped my face.

The only time he ever hit me in his life. His voice was full of controlled rage and love.

“I’ve been in war, Kenneth. It’s not glamorous. It’s not a cause. I know what it can do to people. I don’t want to lose you to that godforsaken conflict. I’ll do anything to keep you home. Beg you if I have to. I can pick up the phone and fix it for you. You know I can. It’s not too late.”

I looked at him, not father to son, but man to man, for the first time. The grandfather clock ticked beside me. The Oriental rug under my feet seemed very hard.

“My decision,” I said calmly. I could still feel the sting in my cheek. “I’m going.”

He cried.

He cried all night. Hiding behind his closed bedroom door, my mother’s soothing voice mingling with his wretched one.

I was surprised when he drove me to the bus stop the following morning. He shook my hand and told me goodbye. Feelings were strained, but he was man enough, and father enough, to put his feelings aside to see me off.

“See you in a year, Dad,” I whispered. I gave Mom a kiss on the cheek.

I climbed on the bus and took a back seat, leaving them with a handful of other parents. I took one last look at them over my shoulder. The sight of his brave arm around her shoulders and holding her together is still painted on my mind to this day.

***

A one-year rotation.

I was sent, like so many other men, to Vietnam to replace a company of men that were either finished with their tour and were coming home, or had died in combat.

***

Basic training.

“No Jews in our barracks!” was the outcry.

Three guys were crowding him against the wall. I walked over to them without a word and started punching.

“His blood is red!” I panted at them. “And he’s willing to shed it just like you are!”

First night at basic training, and me and Starsky spent it in lock-up for fighting. We’d whipped those soldiers so bad they ended up in the infirmary.

We had nothing better to do than sit on our bunks getting acquainted.

“You didn’t have to do that, bronco,” he said with his head tilted back while pinching his bloody nose.

I held a handkerchief to my split lip. “There are a lot of things we don’t have to do in this world. But we do them. Like this war.”

He let go of his nose and raised his head up to look at me. “Why are you here?”

“Standing up for my country. Even when I may not agree with it. How about you?”

He unlaced his boots. “Here for my little brother. They won’t take brothers at the same time, so….”

“You volunteered so he wouldn’t have to come?”

He nodded and tossed his boots into a corner. “Hopin’ this’ll be over in a year and he won’t have to come then either.”

I can’t begin to describe the instant respect I felt for him. Such sacrifice.

“Your brother know how lucky he is to have you?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He’s my brother.” Then he settled back against the wall and looked at me. “You a college boy?”

“Was a college boy.”

“Law?”

“Pre-med.”

He grinned. “You left the comforts of college to serve?”

I nodded.

“Your dad approve?”

“Hell no. Yours?”

He rubbed a finger under his nose and looked away with a small shrug. “Nah. My pop’s dead.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Died when I was a kid.”

“What happened?” I asked carefully. “Car accident? Heart attack?”

He was picking at the blanket with thoughtful, loving fingers. “Shot down,” he said with a small shrug. “He was a cop. I was there when it happened. One minute we were crossin’ the street, the next a car goes by with a machine gun and mows him down….” He lay back on the bed and folded his hands behind his head, just gazing up at the ceiling.

End of conversation.

“I bet he’d be proud of you for doing this for your brother.”

“Yeah, well….” Time to change the subject. “You’re a medic, huh?”

I took my T-shirt off and settled back onto my pillow, noticing how cool the dogtags felt—almost chilly, and important—against my skin. “Yep.”

“You allowed to fight?”

“I’ll be busy helping the wounded, but yes, if I want to fight, I can fight.”

“I’d like to be an MP. I got an idea to be on the police force like my dad.”

“In New York?”

“I don’t live in New York. California. Los Angeles to be exact. My Ma still lives in New York, though.”

“No kidding? I live in Minnesota, but I have relatives in northern California, and my dad has a cabin there.”

He raised up on his elbow. “Yeah? My Ma sent me to live with relatives in northern California after Pop died.”

I raised up on mine. “Why do you want to be a cop, Starsky? Serve and protect?”

“Nope. Catch lowlife criminals and put ’em away. If I ever get shot up you can come and doctor me up, right?”

I laughed. “Yeah, just look me up in the Yellow Pages.”

“You’ll be makin’ big dough one of these days.”

My turn to shrug. “Money doesn’t interest me that much. My father has plenty of it. I respect that he’s worked hard for what he has, but in the end, money can’t buy everything.”

He winked. “I gotcha. You and your high-class idealism want to ‘make a difference’. Want to ‘reach out’.”

I threw my pillow at him, making him go “Ow!” when it hit him in his busted nose. He had a way of cutting through the bull and getting straight to the truth.

“Actually, I want to do something a little more fulfilling than delivering groceries to people.”

“Hey, that can be VERY fulfilling. Get to meet some cool chicks that way. Tip or two. You can’t knock a job just ’cause it doesn’t come with a college degree. And you don’t have to be a doctor to help people.”

“I didn’t say, or mean, anything like that.”

“Yeah, I know. I just wanted to get you steamed up.”

“Make you a deal. You don’t make remarks about my high-class idealism, and I won’t make remarks about your working-class romanticism.”

He threw my pillow back in my face, right in my busted mouth. “Deal.”

***

With basic training over, we were loaded onto planes and shipped overseas, touched down, and were piled onto buses and trucks, driven through villages, where we could only stare at the squalor—shanties, naked children, black-pajama-clad peasants fighting to plow muddy rice paddies with their water buffalo.

“And I thought the ghettos were bad,” Starsky muttered in the seat beside me.

Since I was a medic, I was ordered to give a lecture en route to the jungle on malaria and heat stroke and leeches. Basic jungle hygiene and first aid instructions. So I stood up on the bus and gave a quick lecture.

Starsky listened as if I were Moses giving the Ten Commandments.

We arrived in khakis, went home in khakis. In-between time, which was combat time, we wore green fatigues.

We were fighting within twenty-four hours of our arrival, which meant we were thrown into the blood and guts of it pretty quickly.

Mud. Swamp. Heat hovering around 100 degrees most days. Humidity. Carrying 60 pounds or more of supplies and arms. Vegetation. Leeches. Little water. M16s. Exhaustion.

Each day was always the same: Watch your back. Watch everybody else’s back. Sudden bursts of confrontation from nowhere and everywhere, a smattering of bullets, a limb lost, some screaming, over as abruptly as it had started, like a splattering of firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Sometimes we didn’t even see who was killing us, and we didn’t see who we were killing. Sometimes all we heard was the screaming and dying.

We had platoon leaders, but sometimes they weren’t even around, or signals got crossed, communications were bad, so we did a lot of fighting on our own.

Welcome to the jungle.

Starsky and I were not—no one really was—prepared for the onslaught of combat. No one prepared us for the gore and the screaming, though Dad had tried to— At first, we stuck together like a couple of scared puppies. He’d grab my sleeve to hang on. Sometimes I’d grab his. Adrenaline, that flight-or-fight mode we were in 100 percent of the time, made our senses and nerves super sharp and sensitive. But then things happened, soldiers got injured, a fallen soldier needed to be replaced, and that’s how we got separated.

We gave each other a long look before separating in the jungle, knowing full well it could be the last time we’d ever see each other. I’d made a good, fast friend, but under the circumstances, the shooting, the howling, I didn’t really know how to say anything to him, let alone goodbye.

So we didn’t say anything. We just nodded to each other, and that seemed to say it all.

***

Moving through the villages.

Traps set for us.

Exploding bombs.

Screaming.

Somebody’s foot snagged a trip-wire and there was a boom.

Booby traps.

Land mines.

I was there to help the wounded. And I could, and did, but this… this one soldier was… he was blown in half… and he was still alive, still screaming… too much for my mind to handle.

I stood in frozen panic at the carnage around me, at the wounded, the dying, an open target, rooted to the ground while bullets chopped the ground at my feet and into the trees around me.

And then Starsky was there. I don’t know how he knew I’d frozen and needed help. He ran at me and tackled me into a ditch while the bullets whipped through the jungle air above our heads.

A white-hot fire high in my chest told me I was shot, and I was falling, but Starsky caught me and was lowering me gently to the jungle floor. I couldn’t move, I could barely breathe, God, I was supposed to be helping people….

“If….” I couldn’t talk, but I had to try. I gasped at the searing pain in my chest. It felt like a hot poker boring in.

Starsky was lifting me up into the crook of his arm, pressing his hand to the wound in my chest, his eyes calm, but still so emotional. “Sshh. Hutch, don’t talk.” He loosened the chinstrap of my helmet a little to help me breathe and swallow.

“If….” I had to. I had to say something. I was losing energy and consciousness. Going into shock. “If I don’t make it… please look my father up… Richard… and tell him I did my best. I want him to know that. Tell him I have no regrets.”

“No way,” he whispered urgently. “No talk like that, hear? You’re gonna make it.”

Gunfire all around. The Vietcong would finish me off if they found me, and Starsky knew they would get him too, but he still stayed.

“Get the hell out of here,” I whispered.

“Shut up, huh?” he said lugging me to my feet, but not before checking to see if the coast was clear. “I’m not leavin’ you.”

He draped my arm around his neck and held me up with his other arm around my waist, and started through the dense jungle. Bullets bit the ground around us. Zinged through the air over our heads. I still carried my machine gun, and shot one of the VC’s when they came close. Starsky’s hands were too full of me to carry a gun, so I had to do the shooting for both of us.

When a group of them came at us, he said “Grenade”, and I snatched one off his belt, bit the pin out with my teeth, and heaved it into the advancing party.

The explosion scattered them dead to the ground like bowling pins.

“Starsky, go on. Get out of here. I’m slowing you down.”

He ignored me and moved me through the jungle as if he were saving his life instead of mine.

I was growing faint and disoriented, and knew I could very well die from shock alone. I was losing a lot of blood.

“Hospital!” I half-laughed and half-cried. I was flipping out from pain and shock I guess. “Where’s a damn hospital?”

“Foxhole,” he panted, and we found one up ahead, where we tumbled down into it next to some soldiers.

He tore my medical pack open. I was light-headed, passing out, and the last thing I heard besides the mortars exploding all around us was him shouting, “Medic needs a medic! Help me here!”

***

I woke up in the army hospital to find Starsky circling at the foot of my bed like a worried shark. One arm was in a sling. He’d been grazed in the shoulder while helping me, and neither of us had known it at the time.

“Hey, pal.”

His grin, a hopeful, human, and real sight in the middle of all this hell, was refreshing—a feeling of home.

“You saved my life,” I said hoarsely, wishing I could think clearly through the massive painkillers.

“Had to,” he shrugged. “What were we gonna do without a medic?”

I gave him a groggy laugh.

“Guess you’re goin’ home, huh, Hutch? Honorable discharge and all.”

“I told you my name is Hutchinson.”

“Yeah, well, I like Hutch better.” He scribbled his address and phone number onto a piece of paper, then pressed it into my hand. “Don’t lose it. We’ll keep in touch. Give me yours, okay?”

I gave him my address and he wrote it down. And then I took off my dogtags and put them over his head. “Till we meet again?”

He nodded.

The hospital staff came to load me onto a helicopter, which would then load me onto a plane to take me home.

I clutched his address tight in my hand.

That’s when he leaned over my stretcher, a tough street kid with tears in his eyes. “See ya, bronco.”

I reached my right arm up to give him a quick hug, even though it hurt. “Take care of yourself here, Starsk. I’ll write you.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

And that was it. He helped them carry me to the helicopter and load me inside, and although I couldn’t see him looking once I was in and the door slid shut, I just knew that’s what he was doing when we lifted off—watching me leave till he couldn’t see the helicopter anymore.

***

The woman with the long curling hair looked at me in her doorway.

I could hear the TV news on behind her. Vietnam was in everybody’s home now. But different. Here, the guns couldn’t hurt them, and the blood didn’t get on their hands, and they didn’t have to worry about the enemy’s bayonet being in their faces. They could turn it off with the push of a button.

But that was okay. That’s the way it was supposed to be. It was okay that they could turn it off. They shouldn’t have to know about war as intimately as we did. Who would want them to? That’s what we soldiers were for. I could take the slurs and their flag-burning. I could fight for freedom and rights like that. Even the objectors’ freedom and rights to feel their way.

“Hello, Mrs. Starsky.”

I could see him in her eyes—stubborn, playful, fiery, mischievous.

She saw my uniform, and my left arm in a sling, and paled a little. She must have thought I was somebody with bad news, so I smiled and held up a picture somebody had taken of Starsky and me sitting together on the bus that had transported us to the jungle. We looked bright and eager in our khakis.

She gasped when she saw it. “Oh my. My David. He…” She burst into tears. “Is he all right? Why are you—?”

“We’re friends, Ma’am. I thought I’d pay you a visit. Tell you he saved my life.”

She looked at me, her eyes soaking me all in, from head to foot. Then she called over her shoulder. “Nicky! It’s about your brother!”

Nick, who was barely eighteen, came bounding up behind his mother, his cheeks full of sandwich. He wiped breadcrumbs on his pants before shaking my hand.

“Hiya,” he managed around a mouthful. “You with my brother over there? He doin’ a lot of fightin’? Is it really that bad? They say it might be over soon, so maybe I won’t have to go, huh? Some guys I know are sayin’ they’re queer just so’s they can stay out. I don’t have to resort to that when Davey’s year’s up, do I, Ma?”

“Nickolas!” his mother screeched in a half-laugh, half-scold.

Full of sandwich. Not a care in the world.

And that’s the way Starsky wanted it to be. That’s why he went in his brother’s place. This rascal’s Keds would never touch Vietnam soil.

***

Dad ran down to the front gate when he saw me getting off the bus, Mom right behind him, her apron billowing around.

“Ken!” he roared, his face red and teary as he threw open the gate. He grabbed me in a hug and picked me up off my feet to swing me around.

Mom was crying hysterically, waiting her turn to welcome me back. “Rich! Be careful with his arm!”

Dad chuckled and cried at the same time and smooched me all over my face. He hadn’t been this excited since… well, never. I thought he was going to explode all over me.

Mom pried us apart so she could hug me too, while Dad brought out his handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes.

“Oh my,” he sobbed. “I can’t believe it.” He looked heavenward. “Thank you, Lord. Thank you for bringing him back safely.” He folded his handkerchief and tucked it away, then looked me over more thoroughly. “Damn. You look fine in a uniform, son.”

I smiled a little and handed him a leather case with gold hinges.

He knew what it was before he even opened it, and I saw the lump move in his throat as he moved his hand over the top of the closed lid.

“I’m proud of you,” he whispered, and then opened the case to reveal my purple heart.

Mom gingerly rubbed my arm, which was still in a sling, as if she could make it all go away.

“I’m okay, Mom. Really. But I wouldn’t have been if it hadn’t been for David Starsky.”

“Oh?” she sniffed as she blotted her eyes with a tissue. “You made friends? That’s nice dear.”

I smiled and put my arm around her. “He saved my life. Next year… when he goes home to California after his tour… I want to be there.”

***

++++Vietnam Letters++++

Dear Starsk,

Your pal Hutch, as you like to call me, here. Hope you’re dry and in one piece. Wouldn’t hurt to wear two helmets on your head, you know.

I stopped by to see your mother on my way home. She’s a fine lady. Brags about you non-stop. Met Nicky too. What a kid. He’s working as a DELIVERY BOY! Meeting cool chicks and getting a tip or two I’ll bet.

Mom and Dad were upset that I took a bullet, but are secretly glad I got to come home. I gave Dad my purple heart. One of these days, when he’s gone, I’d like for you to have it.

I hope you get to meet my girlfriend, Nancy. She’s a sweet girl. Thinks I hang the moon. I think you’d like her.

The weather is warm and sunny today. I’ll be outside washing my car and listening to some Kenny Rogers and the First Edition on the tape player, and maybe some CCR. I’m not going back to college. Dad’s furious, but getting shot has made me see that life is too precious to live it someone else’s way. I’m going to find something meaningful. After the kill-or-be-killed pace of Vietnam, not much compares, energy-wise. Without sounding corny, I want to do something important with my life. I know you’re not laughing. You feel it too.

Maybe it’s in First Aid, I don’t know. Maybe I want more than that even. I’ll take another year of paramedic training and think about it.

I know it’s a mess over there, Starsk. But hang on and do the best you can, and remember I’m with you in spirit. Come home safely so we can celebrate.

Your pal, Hutchinson.

Well, okay. Hutch.

***

Dear Hutch,

Hiya.

Thanks for the letter. Mail is like gold here. Hearing from someone from home, especially from someone who’s been here in this hellhole, makes it a little easier to take.

I don’t make friends here anymore. I refuse. Because everybody around me gets wounded or dies. I’m glad you didn’t die. You came real close, though.

Thanks for stopping off to see Ma and Nick for me. I sure miss them. And thanks for always telling me about the good things of home, and the little things of home. It keeps me human. Keeps me from going crazy, and gives me something to fight for. And look forward to.

Your pal,

Starsk

***

I paced around on the ground while his plane was unloading, watching the soldiers filing down the steps.

The noise of the planes was loud, but I didn’t care.

He was coming home.

My parents didn’t come with me. They said they’d meet my friend some other time. And I would have brought his aunt Rosie, but she was in the hospital with gallstones. His mother’s plane was late, which I knew would disappoint him, but at least she’d be here. Nick said he was flat broke and couldn’t come to greet his brother. He said no, even when I offered him money. He had an important “business deal” he couldn’t get out of. But hell, it didn’t matter, as long as I was there.

I watched the faces of the soldiers as they descended the steps in their khakis and canvas bags. Some faces held a certain experience to them, a certain maturity, or world-wisdom that they hadn’t boarded their plane with a year ago. Others had a world-weary look, like they just wanted to crawl into a dark closet and stay there forever. Some were smiling. Some were crying.

My buddy Starsk… his face hadn’t look like the others. He had managed not only to survive, but to conquer his time in Vietnam. He’d had to shoot people he didn’t want to shoot, just like me, just like everybody else. But he had some inner rainbow that lit up his whole face. It’s what kept him going, no matter what else was happening to him or around him.

It was energizing and special to me. It’s what made him risk his life for me in the jungle. What kept him looking for me on the streets when I was strung out on heroin. Kept him looking for me when I was trapped under my car in the canyon. And searching for Callendar when I was dying alone in a bed with the plague. It was a rainbow of life and love and hope and honor and loyalty and humor.

“HUTCH!”

He didn’t seem to notice that his family wasn’t here.

I think he knew that I was somehow his family too.

“STARSK!”

He was bounding down the stairs, laughing and crying both.

Like a fool I ran to him and flung my arms around him, picked him up and swung him around.

His duffel bag dropped to the ground.

We looked like long-lost brothers who hadn’t seen each other in fifty years.

“You’re in one piece!” I exclaimed as I pushed him back to take a good look at him.

“Yep!” he said as he slung an arm around my neck. “Made it!”

I picked up his duffel bag and we started to my car. “I want you to see my new pad. You can stay as long as you like. My door’s always open.”

“Thanks, Blondie,” he said ruffling my longer hair. “Think I’ll take you up on that.”

I pulled a brochure from my hip pocket and handed it to him. “What do you think?”

He looked down at the cover photo of the Los Angeles Police Academy and smiled.