THE HEALING OF SK by Bruce Bentzman
"You're not dead!" I said stupidly.
"That's right, I'm not," he reported cheerfully.
"But how --"
"Look, Jerry, I can't explain it now; I'm on the road. I'm begging you to
keep my existence a secret. Absolutely no one must know."
"Are you in some kind of trouble?"
"You could get me into trouble, but it's just legal trouble. I assure you, I
don't believe I've done anything immoral. There is no danger to anyone,
except a threat to my liberty. But, Jerry, I really want to see you. I want
to talk with you. I'll answer all your questions. I've got questions, too.
My God, you're married! Who is she? Anyone I know?"
"You've never met her."
"Well, all that can wait. Can I see you?"
"Yes, yes,"" I exclaimed, "of course you can. I've got plenty of room --"
"No, it can't be that way. Here's how it is, Jerry, can you meet me in
Baltimore on Sunday at seven p.m.? Do you know Baltimore?"
The conversation went something like that. He arranged a meeting at the Inner
Harbor, at a place called Santa's House, which he felt sure I could find.
What happened next? After that brief telephone conversation it was a matter
of calming myself. I was breathing hard and my heart was beating up a storm.
I could not concentrate on anything else. I think I went home early.
Arriving home, my wife asked me about my Army buddy. I told her the truth,
repeating the conversation I had with SK. My wife can be trusted with my
secrets. Still, I refrained from giving his real name, or the details of our
childhood together. I told her that I wanted to meet with SK first, that I
would tell her more afterwards. She had no problem with this, and for her it
was easy to sleep that night. I had difficulty sleeping that night and the
next. My thoughts were knotted around SK.
Why had I even thought he was dead? How had I come by that information? I
had been told and I had believed, but I had never read any mention of his
death. Simply believing what I had been told, crying about it, and never
bothering to investigate further, that was it.
My imagination toyed with highly fantastic plots. If I had sat down to write
the story prior to our meeting, I might have had myself and him being caught
up in a conspiracy of spies. Perhaps he was horribly disfigured and didn't
want to be seen by anyone else but me. Another consideration was that I was
being made the victim of a cruel hoax, but to what end? Or maybe I was really
meeting a ghost, that SK had died in Vietnam. Still, SK was the sweetest guy.
I could not, for all the stories I had concocted, imagine that he would be
capable of doing me any harm. Not SK. Not even if he was returning from the
dead. My fantastic plots were not needed. SK's story was more fantastic than
I had imagined.
I left the house that Sunday afternoon, driving my wife's white Taurus,
leaving her the Thunderbird, which was scheduled Monday morning for a tune-up.
I traced Interstate 95 south to Baltimore. As the highway bent along the
bottom of Philadelphia, I encountered the thick traffic of sports fans leaving
Veterans Stadium. The Eagles were playing the Cardinals that Sunday and I
believe the Eagles won. Distancing myself from Philadelphia, the traffic
became horrendous. I meshed with the traffic of people returning home at the
end of the long Thanksgiving holiday. Traffic would clot, packed bumper to
bumper for miles at every toll, or bridge, or the all too frequent
construction sites that plugged the route. Then came the rain and fog.
Sometimes it would rain hard, sometimes not at all. Mostly, it was sticky
mist that would smear the windshield. Long after I should have arrived in
Baltimore, at the hour of our arranged meeting, I was still wedged tightly
into traffic miles from my destination.
SK's family moved into my corner of suburbia the Summer before third grade.
It was in Miss O'Neil's third grade class that we became friends. So you see,
SK and I had been friends for a long time. He had two stepfathers during the
time I knew him. His real father died in the Korean War. His mother died
while we were in the service. I didn't know, at the time I was driving to
Baltimore, if her death occurred before, or after, SK's strange disappearance.
I would know a good deal more before that day was over. Despite SK's claim
that we were Army buddies, we never met during our service, and I had good
reasons for believing he was dead in Vietnam.
He was drafted soon after we graduated High School. I was in my first
semester at college, and we had talked on the telephone the night before he
was to board a train for boot camp. That was the last contact I had with him
until the Thanksgiving weekend, when he called me again.
After a year of college, I temporarily dropped out of school and enlisted.
Who would understand my reasons if I tried to explain them now? I was
confused. They shot King. My grades went to shit as I campaigned locally for
Robert Kennedy, and they shot Kennedy. After the second Kennedy, I was seeing
conspiracies everywhere. When I did the unthinkable and enlisted, no one who
knew me could believe it. It was done; I was in Air Force Intelligence and
assigned to MACV in Saigon. I was there during SK's disappearance.
I had heard stories about a soldier who stripped naked and ran into enemy
fire. Some said he had gone dinky-dao, some said he had bummed out on drugs,
and, at least once, I heard the story that he walked calmly into the enemy as
a calculated suicide. I thought it was standard military mythology until I
bumped into a mutual friend at the Texas Bar and learned that the soldier of
legend was SK.
It was nine o'clock when I finally reached downtown Baltimore, two hours late.
There was very little traffic, so I could drive slowly along the street that
edged the Inner Harbor's mall. The rain had temporarily stopped and it was
quite warm, despite it being November. There were a number of people walking
about the well lit shops. I didn't recognize any of them as being SK, but
then, would I have recognized him?
I parked the Taurus and went searching along the promenade that bordered the
harbor. Tugs and ferries were tied up and deserted; also, an old three master
named the Constellation. I think she was undergoing some repair, or
restoration, at that time. The entire mall was beautifully lit for Christmas
with white bulbs, their thousands reflected by the thousands in rain puddles.
The shops were all closed at that late hour.
I had no idea what Santa's House would look like, though my friend said it
would be easy to find. I asked instructions from a leisurely stroller. He
turned me around to the small glass pavilion I had passed. It stood all by
itself. The doors of the pavilion were locked. Peeking through the glass, I
saw that toys and ornaments were strewed about, and I could make out Santa's
unoccupied throne. It was a tiny place, and I wondered if he had meant to
meet me inside, which would have been plainly difficult and not sensible. I
remember thinking at the time that SK had failed to consider the possibility
of rain at our meeting, but, for the time being, the dense atmosphere
refrained. I was two hours late and sure I had missed him. I turned around
and looked right past him.
The figure approaching me was unfamiliar. This fellow had a beard that clawed
high up his hollow cheeks. Still, he continued his approach wearing a big
grin and glittering eyes that stared directly at me. Then I knew it was him.
They were his eyes and his thick shock of unkempt hair. It was his jolly
bounce and long strides. He wore a long raincoat, unbuttoned and flapping
like a cape from his still slender body, his hands in his pants pockets. I
never moved. He stepped right up to me and halted within reach. His smile
broadened to show his teeth.
"Hello Jerry," he said.
"Hello SK," I said. Then I jumped at him and hugged him. I squeezed long,
and tightly, and was aware of him squeezing me. When we pulled apart, I saw
that he too was crying. How silly we must have seemed to each other, crying,
and we both broke into a hearty laughter.
We fell into a babble, the nature of which began with me being married and
having children, and he being without wife or kids; how he found me in the
phone book and was grateful I still lived in the old neighborhood; and a
general accounting of old friends, which quickly gave way to a recounting of
shared memories. I joked about his beard, and he joked about the weight I
have gained. Somewhere during this quick exchange, we had agreed we were
hungry. We walked, and talked, and everything was closed at the Inner Harbor,
so we wandered, or were directed, to a Bennigan's a few blocks away.
SK was living in Canada with his new name. Over dinner he explained matters
to me in a low tone. What is it the UCMJ says: after thirty days AWOL you are
regarded a deserter. After 180 days a deserter you are dropped from the
military rolls. During the war a caught deserter was sent by a civil court to
prison. But SK was MIA; missing in action. Missing in action and presumed
dead, yet sitting across the table from me.
When he set off on this pilgrimage, pilgrimage being his word for it, he
wasn't sure if he was going to look me up. He was on his way to Washington DC
to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He asked me if I had seen it and I said
I had not. He asked me if I wanted to join him. We stepped from the
Bennigan's into a pouring rain and we ran for the parking lot. We drove to
Washington DC in my wife's car. During the drive he told me his story.
As he tells it, although he was drafted, at heart he was a conscientious
objector and had considered running to Canada, but he didn't. In the Army
they tested him and he was pretty smart. They presented him with the
opportunity to become a medic. This appealed to him. So SK became a medic,
but he was obliged to enlist to acquire the extended training. Following his
training he was sent to Vietnam.
"Coming of age in Vietnam," that is how he described it. There were so many
prostitutes. He hadn't expected them to be so beautiful, and young, and
inexpensive.
They were announcing withdrawals of American troops and Ho Chi Minh was dead,
but the war went on, and being a medic, he often witnessed the worst of it.
His world grew uglier. He heard about the Mylai massacre, and, while others
made excuses, SK knew it could be true. He became oppressed by statistics,
figuring, as each day added to the length of his stay, how his luck would not
hold. He considered desertion, as we all did at some point.
He thought about the stories of soldiers who had deserted while on R and R.
But there were also stories that they didn't desert, that they had instead
been caught naked in the bed of some cathouse in the Philippines, or Bangkok,
by the local Communists. Still other soldiers had gone native in Cholon.
This had its appeal. SK had discovered he was adept at learning languages,
and could converse, somewhat, in Chinese; more so in Vietnamese. He became
caught up in the allure of the Orient. Without the war, maybe he would have
made his way to the Far East. Still, the war was there, and he found himself
posted to a fire-base in the Central Highlands.
He knew that I was in Saigon. He had learned of me from a letter received
from back home. He tried getting a message to me, but, for some reason, I
never got it. Perhaps everything would have gone differently if he could have
just spoken to an old friend. Then news of his mother's death reached him.
I record all this here not knowing which particular played a part in his later
behavior. So far I have described feelings that were experienced by many of
us over there. Only, SK was probably more sensitive than most. I cannot
imagine someone more out of place in a war zone.
He was called into his commanding officer's bunker and was told of his
mother's death. He was offered the first chopper out of camp in the morning.
The curious thing is that SK did not want to go home. He explained to me that
he knew his mother was dying even before he was drafted. She had breast
cancer. He didn't want to be there to witness the progression of his mother's
chronic illness. He didn't want to see her suffer. With a half-baked notion
typical of adolescence, he found it easier to be sent to Vietnam and avoid
seeing his mother die. He explained to me how he thought becoming a medic
would accustom him to death, would teach him a way of dealing with suffering.
And he thought the military, in general, would somehow prepare him for a life
alone in the real world. He was not prepared for the deep immersion into
universal pain and destruction. Now with his mother dead, he saw how
cock-eyed was his idea of escaping into a war zone. He felt stupid, shameful,
filled with self-hatred; too late he realized he should have been there with
his mother. Now that she was dead, there was nothing; no plans, no
preparations, and no desire to go on.
SK informed his commanding officer that he did not wish to be sent home. The
captain assured him his services were not necessary, that they would have no
difficulty replacing him. He told the captain that his services were not
necessary stateside, either, and that he just didn't care to go. The captain
found this attitude distasteful and instructed SK that he had better find
himself aboard that chopper in the morning, for he would not stand to see one
of his men fail to do their duty. "Honor they mother," the captain
pontificated.
"I was being sent no place from nowhere," SK remarked to me from the passenger
seat, while staring blankly out the windshield.
Twelve men were thrown together for a night patrol. SK, who was originally to
be included, was spared. The sergeant knew he was going home and dismissed
him. Another medic was forced. The other medic thought the whole thing to be
damn unfair. He had just been out. SK had little difficulty persuading this
other medic to swap. When SK presented himself at the gate, the sergeant
expressed his annoyance, but didn't want to delay and didn't want to be
without a medic.
As SK was telling me this story, I thought I could see where it was going. He
wanted to commit suicide. Why else would he give up the chance of returning
to the safety of home? Why else would he, instead, maneuver so vigorously to
go on patrol? I said this to my friend, and he said it was not quite suicide,
at first. When they passed outside the protection of the concertina wire, he
felt absolutely fearless. He found himself empty, with "no goals, no plans,
no desires; in other words, without a future." The idea of continuing to live
seemed tiresome to him, and he viewed the possibility of dying as convenient.
I remember my own fear. I carried my thirty-eight to the showers every day I
was in Vietnam. Paranoia was high and nowhere was safe. I lived, briefly, in
the relative security of an air-base three miles wide. There would be rocket
attacks and I lived in a flimsy Quonset hut. We kept our boots by our beds
because someone was burying razor blades in the dirt floor of the bunkers.
How much harder, then, it must have been for my friend. In High School, he
was skinny and never went out for sports. I could not picture him on a
fire-base, seventy-five yards wide, surrounded by a hostile jungle
Into this jungle a dozen men went to spend the night. SK had no recollection
of how long, or how far, they traveled. He was thinking how, if he didn't die
that night, he would let the Army send him home, and he would never come back
to the war. He would go to Canada, or Mexico, as soon as he hit the States.
The dozen men took up positions along a narrow path in the jungle, before
night became its darkest. The path was one possible approach to their base.
If the Vietcong should come that night, then they would be caught in an
ambush. The men dug shallow foxholes behind fallen tree trunks, having to lie
flat to be concealed. While most of them probably worried about the limited
rounds of ammo they were able to carry, SK thought about how he had failed his
mother, he thought about four students recently dead at Kent State University,
and he thought about how unsuspecting the first Vietcong soldier would be when
picked off, should any be making their way down the trail. Nine out of ten
times, at least, nothing would come of a night patrol; but to the
disappointment of some, the satisfaction of others, shadows moved in a line
along that trail.
The enemy came in single file and at a distance from one another. SK's patrol
fired on the unsuspecting enemy. The M16 is like a toy, if you don't happen
to be standing in front of it. On automatic, it spits fifteen rounds in an
instant, and there is almost no kick. You can hold the rifle in one hand.
They were two to a foxhole, and the fellow who shared the hole with SK was
pressed flat to the ground, not aiming, not even looking. He held the rifle
in one hand over his head and blasted blindly into the general direction of
the enemy. With the magazine emptied, he would pull it out and turn it over
-- it was the habit to tape two magazines together, inverted. When the second
was emptied, he discarded it for the next two, and went on firing. SK never
fired a shot. Medics were not suppose to carry arms, although in this war
they frequently did. In the flashes of light from the ends of barrels the
jungle became visible. SK watched his buddy endlessly shooting rounds off
over his head at an unseen threat.
"And I thought to myself," he said, "that the guy just wanted to live. The
guy didn't want to be there." At this point he stopped. I waited for the
story to continue.
"You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to," I told him. I really
wanted to know. He was at the very part of his story I was most curious
about, but I thought it kinder not to press him.
"But I want to tell you," he said. He just wasn't sure, himself, why he did
what he did. He went on with his story.
He had undressed. He took off every article of clothing, except for his
boots. He even removed his dog tags. His partner in the hole never saw a
thing.
"I'm not sure why I did it. I was sick of the war, and of myself, and, I
think, I wanted to be rid of both." SK stood, and walked away from the
enemy's fire. He expected to experience a bullet thudding into his back, but
it didn't come. As he walked away, calmly, he slowly began to feel fear
return. The time passing made him anxious. He began thinking he might be spared, and sensed that thinking was turning into hoping. Someone yelled his
name. Then there were many of the voices of his patrol calling out for him.
All the while the shooting continued.
"No one tried to stop you? No one went after you?" I asked. He said no. I
guess that could make sense. What he did was insanity; why waste yourself for
the insane. Also, considering the degree of drug use in that war, even while
on patrol, one isn't always thinking of the right moral moves, so lots of
times you'd just fend for yourself. How many of those guys might have been
beyond dealing with their own situation? I did wonder if SK, who had already
admitted that he couldn't cope, might have been high, although he denied it.
Of course, he could have been lying to me. His entire story could be
fabricated. He admitted to being confused at this part of his tale.
As he walked naked into the jungle his anxiety grew. He started to think he
would pass out. With a taste of the possible, though wholly unplanned for,
success at escaping, his courage began to return. Most of the shooting had
stopped. There was no more yelling. He had reached a path and started up it.
Then he heard others running up behind him. He didn't even bother to turn
around and see who they were. They grabbed him by each arm and they rushed
him forward. Vietcong. He was not to be shot, after all. At least not then.
They were taking him prisoner and he offered no resistance. All his plans
had failed him. Having imagined a quick death, he now considered the
prospects of torture.
It was some distance, and time, before they slowed their pace. The trio was
stopped by an officer. In very bad English, the officer tried to question
him. SK feigned to not understand, for he knew the enemy would try to learn
the size of his patrol. For not answering, he received the butt of a rifle
against his cheek and jaw. They pulled him off the ground, the inside of his
mouth bleeding and his head dizzy, and the officer put the question to him
again. The blow had made him indignant, proud, and courageous. Saying
nothing, he presented his chin for the next blow, but it didn't come. Instead
he heard them say, "he won't talk," and, "he's crazy." They laughed at his
nakedness. He knew enough of their language to know he was safe, for the time
being. The officer ordered no harm to come to him. They blindfolded him and
lead him further from the protective confines of his base.
At a place where the terrain became difficult, he had trouble walking, falling
at least twice. The blindfold was removed, only to be reinstated when the
going was easy. Eventually, he became aware of the morning light leaking
through his blindfold. He was also drinking the blood that was continually
filling his mouth, and wondered if it would ever stop.
In telling the story to me, SK could not remember the number of days he was
kept moving. Three or four, he thinks, moving mostly at night. Several times
he heard choppers, but he and his captors must have been hiding from view.
The choppers never came close. Perhaps they were looking for him.
They arrived at a village. He had acquired pants and shirt by this time, but
he has no recollection how. He was tied to a post in the bright sun, though
his eyes were still kept covered. The villagers came to taunt him, scorn him,
and throw dirt and such at him. At the sound of distant aircraft they rushed
him indoors.
It wasn't long before he was brought into a room for interrogation. The
blindfold was removed. Three men sat behind a table. One man, an
interpreter, stood between him and the three. Only one man at the table did
the questioning. SK refused to answer, until they came to the subject of his
earlier nakedness. He told them he had become sick and tired of the war, so
he quit. This struck the three men as amusing. They discussed it among
themselves. A chair was ordered for SK. Cigarettes were offered. The
conversation turned to questioning him about his family. As far as SK was
concerned, he no longer had a family, being an only son, his mother dead, a
stepfather he cared nothing for, no uncles, a couple of aunts and cousins he
hardly knew. The three uniformed men talked among themselves, not realizing
how much their prisoner understood, and what the prisoner understood was that
he was being sent to Hanoi. What was SK thinking? He was thinking what a
great story he would have to tell his grandchildren, if he lived to have them.
Then one of the three men behind the table spoke to him in fine English,
telling him that, maybe, he would be able to help end the war.
The blindfold was never put back on, and he was now moved as much by day as by
night. The route they followed carried a lot of traffic, mostly people
pushing bicycles laden with supplies going South. He commented to me how
clever this seemed. The bicycles could carry a great deal, and yet, traversed
a very narrow path.
After a night in a village during this trek to Hanoi, he learned a little of
what it was like to be on the ground during a bombing. They had just awakened
him and feed him, and were on their feet ready to commence the journey. He
never saw or heard the bombers, but heard the bombs exploding. The ground
violently quaked, and to the rear, the way they had just come the day before,
the jungle went up in fire and smoke. He threw himself down behind a tree and
covered his ears.
I suggested that maybe he wasn't in Vietnam. Maybe he was being marched along
one of the Ho Chi Minh trails in Laos. This was certainly a possibility, he
said. Operation Linebacker, I told him. We had missions flying out of Guam;
B52's flying at 40,000 feet, dropping 500 pounders. Carpet bombing, I told
him. He was lucky not to be under it. I've felt the ground shake from fifty
miles away and have watched cement powder shower from the ceiling.
"Not very discriminating bombing, Jerry," he said to me. What could I do but
agree. It wasn't my doing. I would have never approved, but I didn't make
any difference.
The bombing took place in the morning, moments after day break. The group SK
had been traveling with was now split and sent in different directions,
perhaps because of the bombing. Three soldiers were left to guard him and he
did not continue the journey to Hanoi that day. By afternoon the victims of
the bombing began arriving, crying and wailing to his guards. He saw clearly
the injuries done to them. They were not soldiers, at least not obviously so.
They were children, mothers, the elderly, as well as young men and women. To
the shock of his guards, SK shouted pleas in their tongue, begging to be
untied, to help the injured, calling out that he was a medic. He was released
and went to work without antibiotics, salves, painkillers, or bandages; all
these things were left with his uniform in a foxhole in another life.
He was directing fires to be built and for water to be fetched. He covered
burns in rags that were first boiled and then cooled. He set broken limbs in
rags and bamboo. He applied tourniquets and severed useless limbs with a
bayonet. As time went on, more victims arrived into a now growing camp, many
being carried. It seems word was spreading of his medical talent. As the
first night came, SK was ordering shelters to be built. In time even some
medicines and medical equipment arrived from somewhere, but the bottles and
jars were not labeled in English. A team of volunteers formed around him.
Deep into the night more and more victims arrived. It was necessary to
practice a form of triage. Food from a nearby village also began arriving.
He ordered others to clear the dead away and bury them. He sought opium for
his burn victims and amputees. The numbers increased, and when the day
returned, he was still at it. He had those with concussions resting, deeming
it too risky to move them along mountainous trails. By the second night a
doctor arrived, a Frenchman, or maybe Belgian. SK had no spare energy to
wonder what the European doctor was doing there, and there was never an
opportunity to ask. They worked side by side. SK had three years of French
in High School that hardly proved serviceable. The doctor spoke English like
SK spoke French, but they communicated to each other in both languages and
Vietnamese.
According to SK, it was during these three days and two nights of attending to
blast victims that he regained the desire to live. The war which had robbed
him of hope, or care, now resurrected him with a purpose. By the third day
many had died, but many had been saved. The few victims that were still
arriving were being cared for by the doctor. SK was permitted to sleep
without being bound, and he slept deep and peacefully, content with himself,
despite the war still around him.
It was the doctor and one of the guards that woke him from his wonderful
sleep. The guard spoke English and they had come to talk. Did he really
strip naked and walk into their hands? They asked why? He repeated his story
of how he was tired of the war. They asked if he wanted to go back to being a
soldier? He told them he would never soldier again. The doctor gave him a
cigarette, shook his hand, and smacked his shoulder with the flat of his free
hand. The day was just breaking and the mountains were cloaked in mist. The
guard lead him into the jungle. At some distance from the village, this guard
pointed one way, over the immediate mountain, and said, "that way is Vietnam
and the war." He turned SK in the opposite direction and pointed again. "You
go that way." SK said he must have looked dumbfounded at his guard. "You
have escaped," his guard said. The guard turned his back on SK and left him.
He spent nearly a year in Laos avoiding the Communist insurgents. He found
refuge with the Hmong. During the war the CIA secretly recruited the Hmong to
make assaults against the North Vietnamese. SK had to resist being rescued by
the Hmong, who were also in the business of returning downed American fliers.
The war had reached Laos and, SK claims, there were even incursions by
American soldiers. Nevertheless, the Hmong were a most hospitable people, and
during his stay, SK became a novice of Buddhism. By the time he entered
Burma, to avoid the growing numbers of militant Communists, my old friend was
wearing a saffron robe and possessed a shaved head. Was he really a Buddhist?
My friend said it was as much a means for survival as it was a keen interest,
and at times a growing affinity.
By now we had arrived at our destination, Washington DC. He summed up his
story of roaming Burma for more than a decade while I parked near the
Washington Monument. All those years without getting caught, even with a visa
I don't believe you can stay legally in Burma for more than a week. I
questioned SK about this.
He said he didn't know about being a tourist, but he kept to the hills and the
wilderness. He lived and studied as a monk, swapping what the Army had taught
him for folk medicine. His reputation for healing spread. The civil
authorities were willing to ignore his existence, while tribal chiefs and
warlords offered him protection. Wherever he traveled in the teak forests of
Burma, he was received as a welcomed guest. There were very few doctors in
the countryside. He was happy and he accepted no pay for his services, beyond
food or shelter. As an itinerant monk, the precepts of Theravada Buddhism
hardly permitted him from excepting more. When his medical services were not
needed, he turned his hands to carving. The mountains were filled with
talented craftsmen who taught him.
Of course I asked him why, if he had been so happy, did he leave Burma? He
explained how towards the end he became too well known. There was a French
photographer and an Australian journalist, working as a team, who had learned
of him and sought him out. The three became friends and they were willing to
be convinced to not reveal him. He had become a useful informant and guide.
He acquired books from them with which to keep notes and make sketches, for he
had long become a student of the culture in which he was living. The end came
when a combination of circumstances began to weigh heavily against him. This
part of the story he was reluctant to share with me in any great detail. He
said he didn't want to get some very important friends into trouble. He had
become ill at the same time as there was a heightened awareness and growing
disapproval among the civil authorities of the influence he had with the hill
people. The Australian journalist had not been able to sit on his story.
There were also people in high places who wanted certain favors of him that he
refused to do. Fortunately, the Frenchman and the Australian put him into
contact with a third party at an embassy. Arrangements were made and, for his
safety, he was spirited out of the country to "someplace in Europe." He
didn't tell me where. Nor do I know how he got from Europe, where he was
briefly hospitalized and cured of whatever it was that had him sick, to
Canada.
He came out of Canada to visit his mother's grave, the first half of his
pilgrimage, but he didn't want to stay in the old neighborhood for any length
of time, for fear he might be recognized. The Vietnam Memorial was the second
half of his pilgrimage. While still sitting in the parked car, he concluded
his tale by asking me not to share it with anyone, at least not for a couple
of years. After two years, he instructed me, he was sure that it would be
okay and that I could blab. By that time he would be a legitimate citizen of
Canada.
It was still raining off and on. The low hanging storm, lit by the city's
lights, tumbled across the sky like a mad river. Leaving the warm car, I was
stung by a cold wind and spray.
Neither of us had a clear idea where the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was, but we
were both sure it was on the mall. We climbed the hill towards the Washington
Monument aglow in powerful lamps. There was the loud flapping of the flags
that encircled the tower, the harsh wind trying to rip them from their posts.
Except for us, no one was out on this uncomfortable night. We scanned the
mall towards the Capital for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and saw nothing
that appeared obvious. Towards the Lincoln Memorial the rolling terrain and
clumps of trees offered more promise of concealing our memorial. We made our
way across the soft ground unaware of the paved trails and their helpful
signs. If we talked, I do not recall what about.
Suddenly there it was, a gash, a black scab on the earth. The dark stone was
covered in a sheen of rainwater. The panels of stone formed two wings, the
two wings joining in an angle. As we approached the memorial, a glowing
Washington Monument was reflected in the left wing, so clearly that it seemed
I stood between two Washington Monuments. Later, I would see the Lincoln
Memorial reflecting from the right wing. On that awful night, I remember only
one other person being there when we came upon the memorial, a young woman,
attractive from the distance at which we stood. She seemed a bit too young to
have been the wife of one of the dead, although it doesn't seem so long ago
that we were that young and swallowed up in that war. Perhaps the young woman
was a daughter, or a sister, of one of the names in the stone.
She began crying, or was she crying all along; I don't remember. SK and I
looked at each other, and we both knew that her crying tugged at our hearts.
Still, we kept our distance and watched her from the corner of our eyes. She
pulled a handkerchief from her pocketbook and wiped her nose. She said
something to the stone of the memorial and departed in the opposite direction.
We moved in for a closer inspection of what now was seen to be a wall of
names, the long list of every US soldier to die in that war.
We didn't know that there was a guide mounted at either end of the wall, with
the names alphabetized, because we had not arrived along a path. SK didn't
need it. The names were listed in the chronological order of their deaths.
He intently searched the wall in a very specific area. Then he ran a finger
along the names, the same spot several times over. He collapsed against the
wall sobbing, his legs folding, and his cheek sliding down the polished
stone's surface. I was quickly by his side, kneeling next to him. He tried
to speak but choked on his words. There was nothing to do but hold him. I
was crying, too.
After rising and stepping a little way off, he managed to explain himself. He
had searched the wall for the names of his companions, those who were on that
night patrol with him. There was his name, yet instead of being followed by a
diamond shaped dot, as followed all the other names I could see, they had
placed a small cross at the end of his name. The cross, he informed me, was
for those who are missing. If at a later date it is learned that the soldier
is alive, a circle is to be carved around the cross. Still, his own name was
only a marker for him. He used it to seek the names of the others in his
patrol, who, if they had been killed that night, would have had names there
near his own. To his profound joy, they were not there.
The moment had passed. We lingered and studied the wall a bit longer. SK
found and pocketed a tube of lipstick, which he believed may have fallen out
of the young girl's pocketbook when she had pulled out her handkerchief.
Emotionally exhausted, we took our leave. He had me drive over to the Howard
Johnson Hotel in Crystal City, where he had a room reserved and insisted that
I should share it. During the drive over, he asked me if I thought him a
traitor. I took a moment to consider, then sincerely told him no.
"Besides," I said to him, "you did something far more than drop acid, party,
and protest the war; you actually went into the world and worked at healing
it. In some ways that makes you a hero in my book."
We got drunk at the Howard Johnson. We started in the bar. When the bar
closed, we completed the job in his room. We shared the floor with a gaggle
of high school students, who I suppose were on a class trip. They slammed
doors, were rowdy in the hall, and played pranks, like screaming, or knocking
on our door and disappearing.
SK talked about our High School years twenty years before, and really the last
time we knew each other. How much we've changed and how much we haven't. SK
said something like, "kids are different today. Like them we were
meaningless; but unlike them we sought meaning." I felt SK found meaning; I'm
not so sure about myself. We talked, I don't know for how long, and I don't
know when I fell asleep.
Monday morning I woke and he was gone. He left me a short message, which, if
I had saved it, I could have recorded here. As I remember it, it informed me
that he enjoyed his visit, that he was getting married, and that he would keep
in touch. I never heard from him again. It has been more than two years, so
it should be safe to write about him, now. Maybe he will read this and get in
touch.
I stayed the extra day in DC visiting a few museums and thinking about my
Sunday meeting with SK. Before leaving, I drove to the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial, to see it one more time. It was another terrible night of rain.
All those names, were they squandered in a war with no value? All those many
names. They were my generation. In a few years mindless brats "without
meaning" will probably cover the wall in graffiti. In a hundred years there
will be no one left to say, "I lived among them and I remember them." They
were real and they all had existences. I knew some of them.
I sought his name on the wall and I found it. Around the cross had been drawn
a red circle with the sheen of lipstick.
It began with a telephone call to my wife. He told her he was an old Army
buddy and wanted my business number, which she gave him. I remember my
secretary popping her head through my doorway to remind me she had someone on
hold who would not leave his name. That was three or four years ago, the
Friday after Thanksgiving of eighty-eight or eighty-nine. His voice came over
the telephone beginning with something like, "do not say my name," or, "do not
speak my name aloud." I thought it was a prank. I remember the voice
becoming familiar by increments and then recognizing it, and then realizing
something was entirely wrong about hearing this voice. I was listening to a
dead man. He wasn't exactly an Army buddy, but he was someone known to me
since childhood. I suppose I still shouldn't use the name, even though he has
a new one. I shall refer to him as SK for 'someone known'.
...................... 
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