Lies From The Past:
A Viet Nam Tale
**********
Story by
Vicki Smart Penhall
Poetry and Photography by
Wm. Stephen Edwards
Lies From The Past: A Viet Nam Tale
Penhall Publishing
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 by Vicki Smart Penhall
Poetry and Photography Copyright © 2011 by Wm. Stephen Edwards
Edited by Lindsay Penhall Haley
1. Fiction-General
2. Fiction-Poetry
3. Fiction- War and Military
This book is also available in print edition from several independent bookstores and online retailers, and from the author's website: vickismartpenhall.com
Discover other titles by Vicki Smart Penhall at vickismartpenhall.com
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Dedication
To our courageous troops,
both here and abroad.
**********
Part One: REUNION
Part Two: RETURN
Part Three: RESTITUTION
Preface
This story was percolating in my head when I ran into my friend, Steve Edwards, poet and speech therapist for Austin ISD, at a college reunion. At the time I had a son who wanted to get an education and serve his country through a collegiate ROTC program.
As Steve was the only one of our group of friends at Texas Tech to respond to the draft and serve a tour of duty in Viet Nam, I engaged him in a conversation about what, if any, good comes from being a soldier at war. His responses were surprising, and led us to agree to collaborate on my story.
Steve would allow me free access to his wonderful canon of poetry that fit so powerfully between the chapters. He also gave me a compact disc of his service photos from which I took so much inspiration. I have included many of them.
We may not have answered the question that day about the relative value of military service; however, we addressed the issues and concerns that arise from making the unselfish choice to serve. Issues such as physical and mental damage, racial and cultural conflict, drug addiction, and horrific personal losses: those issues are addressed head-on within the lives of the characters in Lies From The Past: A Viet Nam Tale.
The story is fiction. The setting is not strictly geographically accurate, but the places are real and the characters drawn from real people. Vietnam is a lush and beautiful country with as many climate zones and topographical features as the state of Texas, where our story begins.
Lies From The Past: A Viet Nam Tale is not about the clash of political differences. It is not an indictment of leadership or lack thereof of any of the countries involved. The story is about the residual effects of the clash of cultures. Since both the forces in the East supporting North Vietnam and the Western allies of South Vietnam, U.S., France, and Australia were all virtuous, beautiful and meritorious cultures, the reactions and attractions were bound to be mutual.
Lies From The Past: A Viet Nam Tale is a romance in the truest sense of the word: it concerns a man and a woman in a war-time setting requiring sacrifice on scales both massive and miniscule. The book may even be classified as science-fiction except the technologically advanced times we live in make the events plausible. The book is written from a male point of view with, at times, male language. The outcome of the story is both bitter and sweet, as is life
Lies From The Past: A Viet Nam Tale is ultimately about the outcome of lies, ones we tell, ones told to us, and truth omitted, which is a lie in itself. Truth or untruth depends on a number of variables including information and intent. Most of the time, veracity is a matter of choice. In this story, which begins in today’s time and modern places, lies told in the past have life-altering influences four decades in the making.
REUNION
We were soldiers once, and young
But neither now
Death, death, die death
All our breath is borrowed
And I thought there would never be a moment
More weary than then
‘Til I carried this soul for a score and ten
Draped with the death of innocent men
Who died when I lived
Death, death, die death
It’s a terrible “why”
To feel guilty for each waking breath
Steve Edwards
What is that pounding? Why won’t it stop?
The darkness was thick, organic and putrid, interrupted only by silent and blinding flashes of incoming mortar fire.
That’s weird. No sound. Except for that pounding, that relentless, fucking pounding.
“Hey, somebody stop that noise! How can we hear those gook bastards with all that goddamned pounding?”
A mortar rocket lit up the sky, and Corporal David Canfil gaped, not so much in horror as in wonderment, at the sight of dozens of Viet Cong soldiers, faces frozen in death masks, hanging in the palm trees like so many Christmas ornaments.
Shit. Who would string up their dead like that? This can’t be real. No fucking way.
Corp. Canfil ripped his eyes away from the macabre sight upon hearing the stealthy approach of one of his buddies.
Something odd about Simpson. Where is his weapon?
The approaching GI continued to inch forward into the almost stone silent madness.
“Kevin, is that you? Will somebody stop that motherfucking pounding?!”
The GI looked up at Canfil, but it wasn’t Kevin Simpson’s face. It was the gentle face of Maggie Attwood, war correspondent and love of his life, bizarrely out of place in this obscene tropical hellhole.
“Maggie!” he screamed over the pounding, “What the hell!?”
“I thought you might need a kiss,” she called out sweetly, as if they were sitting on a sofa with a couple of root beers.
Maggie reached for her sidearm and produced, instead, a tube of lipstick, Paint-the-Town-Pink by Revlon. She smiled as she twisted up the tube and applied it to her pretty mouth.
“Maggie, what the fuck?” he shouted with sick dread and urgency.
She seemed to be oblivious to the bullets and bombs silently exploding around her as she leaned in to lavishly kiss David Canfil.
David watched in disbelief, with one eye open, as one of the Christmas ornament corpses snapped open its eyes, smiled, and casually, deliberately dropped a live hand grenade between them.
The pounding increased in volume as it slowed down in tempo, becoming distorted and surreal. The world around David and Maggie moved in slow motion. An incoming rocket took on the brilliant aspects of Fourth of July fireworks as it burst overhead. An exotic bird lifted off the ground, wings flapping way too slowly to launch, yet becoming airborne. David moved his eyes toward Maggie who looked curiously at the armed grenade, then tenderly at him, with those eyes.
“No!” he commanded as if saying that would somehow make it not happen.
The enemy grenade burst into fire, fragments, and body parts, blowing David and Maggie in opposite directions.
Suddenly the pounding made sense as David woke up again on a Thursday morning in the next millennium from that ever-recurring nightmare to the sound of his own thundering, heaving breath.
For once, sixty- year- old David Canfil was glad to be alone. He did not need witnesses to the wave of agony that washed over him as he shook off sleep. After forty years of that same horrific nightmare, David marveled at how fresh and intense the pain still was. He stared at the ceiling above his bed, still gasping for breath and trying to slow his heart rate. It was a practiced routine made more and more difficult by his increasing age and deteriorating health.
That reminds me…
David reached for his cell phone and punched the speed dial to his company, Canfil Petroleum Enterprises. He laughed ruefully as he thought how profoundly sad it was that #1 on his cell phone speed dial was his company VP and that there was no #2.
“Yeah, Fred, it’s me. Better get yourself a fresh cup of coffee, I have some news.”
But not too much information…
David held the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he glanced almost passively at the oncology report on his nightstand. He quickly snapped on his cutting edge robotic leg prosthesis and stood up. Fred Sontag, the company’s vice-president and comptroller, returned to the distant phone line as telegraphed by David Canfil’s warm facial expression.
“Yeah, Fred, remember that discussion we had about you running the company when I decide to call it quits? Well, that day has arrived, my friend… Yes, Fred, today.”
Nobody was more methodical in his daily routine than the CEO of CPE. On a typical day, David Canfil was up by five o’clock and out the door by six. Breakfast consisted of black coffee and toast with peach preserves, a habit formed growing up on a West Texas family farm where picking peaches in the orchard was just one of many demanding chores.
Breakfast was accompanied by a systematic and comprehensive reading of the Dallas Morning News and The Wall Street Journal. He especially looked for items concerning the world oil markets and the Dallas Cowboys. He left his Los Colinas condo, which was a stone’s throw from his company building, at the appointed time and immaculately groomed.
Entering the monolithic steel doors of his office by 6:15 A.M., David liked being the first one in the building. It pre-empted the dozens of warm and compassionate hellos by the staff. David was not smug, anti-social, or in the least self-conscious about his missing limb. He avoided the friendly greetings because they jarred him from his thoughts, his head teeming with ideas, inventions, and business stratagem. Some of his many employees believed he never left the seven-story office building, that he lived in the top floor suite that housed a private gym (the generous company gym was on the sixth floor), a small one-bedroom apartment, and a hydroponic vegetable and herb garden.
On the seventh and top floor of David’s building, a private and technically advanced office space was nestled within a tropical indoor garden, and customarily, it was there that David first landed in the morning. Normally, the quiet man would read and respond to his most pressing email by eight o’clock, and by nine he would have read them all. It was then time to eat bacon, rice, and yogurt, and run the tread mill for thirty minutes in advance of his gym workout—well, in truth it was physical therapy but his masculine sense of self would not let him call it that.
David’s physical therapist, Pham Mihn lived in the seventh- floor apartment. He also tended both the herbal and the floral gardens. Pham was a small, muscular Vietnamese man with several advanced degrees in botany and physiology abbreviated behind his name. David knew he had been blessed by the long friendship and healing hands of Dr. Mihn. The daily physical therapy sessions were always painful. Scar tissue is ruthless in its nightly renewal, and Dr. Mihn was equally unyielding in his quest to keep David’s partially diminished muscle tissue healthy and pliable enough to utilize the most sophisticated robotic apparatus available.
The arduous PT session was followed by fifteen minutes of dry heat in a cedar-lined sauna. David’s mind would drift inevitably to his tour of duty in Viet Nam. The rain and humidity were foreign to the farm boy from Lubbock, Texas. Sitting in the comfortable warmth of the sauna, he recalled his Army uniform, wet from rain the day before, still wet the next morning and the morning after that. David had vowed, after returning from Nam, that he would never deliberately expose himself to stifling humidity again. Ever.
“David, it is time,” the gentle voice of Dr. Mihn would rouse David from his troubled thoughts before it was on with his demanding business day.
On a typical day.
Normally.
But this was not a typical day, and things in his life and business were not at all normal. The usual working lunches, meetings and appointments until five o’clock, followed by planning and strategy meetings with Fred that lasted late into the evening were wiped off his schedule today. This day, this morning, everything was different. Priorities were adjusted; routines were halted; and all because of cancer, The Big Casino.
“One year,” the doctor had said, “maybe more, maybe less. Certainly, it is time to put one’s affairs in order, call the family, and so forth.”
David had smiled ironically at that suggestion since he had no family, both parents dead, no siblings, no wives, ex-wives, or children. Not even lovers or sweethearts. After he returned when oil was found on the family farm, gold-diggers had tried to warm up to his money but were, in the end, repelled by his maimed and war-torn body.
Thus, on that particular morning, breaking his routine, David pensively pulled open his nightstand drawer, moved aside some hunting magazines and a half-empty bottle of Crown Royal. Carefully, he withdrew a dog-eared spiral of original poetry, a part of himself that no one knew about. Not since Nam. Not since Maggie. Scratching around for a pen, David held his breath and tried to compose.
What? You damned fool, you gonna write a cancer haiku?
He hurled the spiral across the bedroom in sudden rage.
One year, three hundred and sixty-five days, maybe more, maybe less. What can I do with one stinking year?
Morning stiffness, his robotic appliance, and now cancer in his gut made David’s trip across the sparse but elegant bedroom painful and meticulous. Slowly, David bent down and picked up the spiral. He carefully leafed through the poems, pondered the events and emotions that inspired them, the idea forming in his mind: I will gather the guys—Simpson, Hardy, and Dalton—and treat them to a special reunion. We should, we will visit the Viet Nam Memorial. I’ll bet those mutts haven’t had the guts to go there either.
Hail to the dead!
And the heroes that led
And those who just bled
To the girl that I wed
Who stayed when I fled
The fire that death fed
is now gone.
The earth doesn’t receive red rain anymore
Those of us who came back with our heads came alone
Nothing’s been said or done or felt or thought that can or ever will reach the dead by way of
apology
Or the living by way of warning
Long live the fire!
And pray God keep the dreams alive for the dead
For the price of today and this morning’s light
Was paid in a foreign hell’s dream by an old warrior last night.
Steve Edwards
Booking the flight to DC was easier than transferring power-of-attorney of Canfil Petroleum Enterprises to Fred Sontag, but not by much. The post-911 airport security measures and the hurdle of being on the American Targets List because of his multi-million dollar oil business tested David’s patience and physical endurance. Added to his personal obstacles, the missing leg and the daily pain, locating his old Viet Nam buddies presented its own set of complications.
He knew where Kevin Simpson was. He was a Quantum Physicist and Research Fellow at Columbia University, a title created for him by the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics to justify his office and research lab. David’s generous and anonymous grant which funded Dr. Simpson’s time travel project also provided the department with two additional scholarships. So, Kevin Simpson toiled away in his research lab without the required teaching duties or social demands of regular department scientists.
David hoped that Kevin’s love-life had advanced as much as his research had. Yet, he knew instinctively that the scientist, too shy to chase women, would be the same freckled-faced innocent in maturity that he was as a greenie in the marshes of the Mekong Delta.
David knew that Kevin was consumed with the prospect of traveling back and forth in time, and that he had never married, at least officially. According to the U.S. Army, Pvt. Kevin Simpson had never legally wed a delicate young woman named Tru Tran in the lush rainforest of Viet Nam.
According to the U.S. Army, Pvt. Simpson had never shared a small apartment with her in the French-inspired town of Dalat. After Kevin was shipped out, the U.S. Army, in typical bureaucratic fashion, dragged its heels pushing the matrimonial passport through for Tru.
When the visa authorization came through nearly a year later, the Red Cross informed Kevin, then a freshman at Iowa State, that Tru Tran was deceased. No cause of death was given. Kevin was informed that he had no legal standing to inquire further into her death, since neither the new communist government nor the U.S. Army recognized Kevin’s alleged union.
David was certain that Kevin had never recovered emotionally from leaving Saigon without Tru, and he could certainly relate to that when he thought of Maggie. He also knew that Kevin’s obsession with time relativity was tied to his burning desire to return to that little Vietnamese girl in 1969. David could certainly relate to that as well. Secretly funding Kevin’s research through his charitable foundations, David kept a distant and skeptical eye on Kevin and his research.
Still, what I wouldn’t give to see Maggie again.
**********
Bill-but-they-call-him-John Dalton had been more difficult to track down. The last intel from the Martin Brown Agency David had received on Dalton revealed that he had been living on the street in Baltimore when he wasn’t in jail for being a public nuisance. A sympathetic probation officer had put David in touch with Dalton, currently drying out in a federally funded mental facility. Happily, Dalton was on the mend from his latest encounter with Irish whiskey and PCP. He was lucid when he talked to David Canfil on the phone.
During the tedious conversation, Bill-but-they-call-him-John agreed to fly to Washington on David’s nickel. Initially, Canfil had not given Dalton details about the trip and its purpose; nevertheless, that first night after the call, Dalton had become agitated and had to be sedated with Thorazine before bedtime. Agitated was the clinical term. David would have called it “ape shit” if he had been there.
However, the overburdened probation officer agreed to clean up and outfit Dalton with the $2000 David sent him. After buying half dozen sweat pants and pullovers, the officer invested the remaining $635 in gift cards for McDonalds, Burger King, Popeye’s Chicken and Wal-Mart. Hopefully, Dalton would not trade them for drugs before the old PO could put the troubled man on a plane.
David never knew what to call Dalton—Bill? John? He was branded Bill-but-they-call-him-John when there were too many Bill’s in his Baltimore Irish street gang. It was too confusing to address him by his hyphenated first name, so David called him Dalton. Hell, David had only known the guy for two days when he was assigned to David’s unit.
Dalton had come in wounded and burning with fever from serving as a “tunnel rat” in Cu Chi Province during a special ops mission. The head nurse had sent for Lt. Hardy and Corp. Canfil to help control her new charge. Between the wounds, the fevered delusions, and the random shelling of the camp, Dalton had been a wild man in the grip of terror.
David was glad to see Maggie there at the M.A.S.H. volunteering. In those final years of the war, the field hospitals were scrambling for medical personnel from as far away as Australia, so this pretty southern photojournalist was a popular and welcome member of the staff.
Her intensity and presence forced David to be calm and clear-headed. Even so, it was David’s field lieutenant, Macon Hardy, who took control of the scene, wrapped his big arms around a crazed Bill-but-they-call-him-John Dalton, and rocked him like a baby until well into the night.
David, assigned to Dalton’s bedside for the next two days, listened to the troubled man talk and rave and mumble feverishly, and then talk some more about the horrors of tunnel fighting and the excitement of Baltimore gang rivalries.
True, they only knew each other for a couple of days, but Dalton enjoyed trading stories with David, who had grown up in Texas, cutting calves and rounding up strays on horseback. The two were the most unlikely pals, but such friendships were forged daily in the confusion of that war. Many of those friendships have endured for decades. Certainly, this one had.
**********
Macon Hardy, PhD, had been emailing Canfil from his faculty office at Boston College for the last ten years, so contacting Hardy had been the least difficult.
…If anything connected to Macon Hardy could be termed less than difficult…
As a field lieutenant, he had been anal, fussy, and demanding, assuring himself and the U.S. Army that his soldiers were productive, if not strictly disciplined. He also wanted to assure himself and the U.S. Army that a black man could command respect and get the job done.
As expected, the peckish Professor Hardy had a list of special requests and accommodations, the easiest of which to satisfy was postponing this sudden and spontaneous reunion until the weekend before Spring Break. Surely that would accommodate Kevin as well, and what difference would a few days make to Dalton? David read the remaining email with the image in his mind of a scared kitten named “Bill-but-they-call-him-John” hanging on to a ledge with its claws.
Still, it was not an outrageous request, given Dr. Hardy’s academic obligations as well as paid speaking engagements.
“Mother Macon,” as he was known to his Viet Nam War crew, was preparing for a book release, one Hardy had researched and labored on for ten years, entitled Titans of the Battlefield. This already anticipated tome tracing the strategies of the world’s greatest military leaders was being adopted as a textbook by Boston College, Harvard, and Yale.
Macon had recently smirked at a press conference while he denied interest in the book from the Joint Chiefs of Staff as their new field manual. He knew that in no time dozens of other ivy-league wannabes and private military academies would follow suit.
Macon Hardy believed he was on the threshold of complete financial independence for his entire posterity, as well as holding a revered place in the stuffy world of academe.
So, Mother is a busy guy. Okay, okay, what are a few days?
The delay of a couple of days would also take the pressure off Dalton, somewhat, and Kevin said he had timed his research to “crystallize” or whatever the hell over the Spring Break.
So, the adjustments were made in flight arrangements for Mother to drive to Baltimore and fly with Bill-but-they-call-him-John to D.C. A waiting limo would ferry the two to the Willard Intercontinental Washington Hotel.
David would fly himself, Dr. Mihn, and Kevin in the company jet, and then they would all rendezvous at the hotel. David always stayed at the Willard because the luxurious suites and the softer, lower impact gym were better suited to his logistical needs and therapy. Since no expense would be spared, this stunning hotel was the best choice for comfort.
The delay would also give David several opportunities to massage the fears of his anxious company employees who were understandably concerned about their job security, pension plans, and profit sharing. Working late every night before the trip, David and Fred installed iron-clad provisions for their hard-working team, offering generous retirement packages if they preferred and internal promotions if they qualified. David would have to hire two wizards to replace both of the positions formerly held by Fred, but Fred was ready with recommendations from his own well-schooled staff.
This company prospered because of Fred and his damned attention to detail. He’ll take good care of it. So now, I’ve got to see a probate lawyer…
Having no blood relatives, David’s greatest concern was what to do with all his accumulated wealth. Pham Mihn became insulted at the mere suggestion that he might need David’s money. Had he not invested for his own future from David’s fair salary? And what was all this talk of death? Under Mihn’s care, would David not live for many years to come?
I should probably tell him about the cancer…
Moving along, David assigned his condo for company use, knowing that Fred was likely to move into the beautiful seventh floor digs as soon as he could sell his house in University Park. Disabled American Veterans had benefited from David’s largess for decades, so a perpetual annuity could easily be structured there.
David’s personal passion was his Foundation for Veterans with Missing Limbs. In this advancing technological climate, prosthetics and robotics had combined to create amazing options for active people with missing arms and legs, and David specifically provided funding for wounded soldiers.
…blessings from the Bionic Man…
Endowing his pet project well into the future was a predictable strategy. As for the remainder of his millions?
I guess I will know what to do when the occasion presents itself.
**********
The first occasion to present itself was the reunion of war buddies. No luxury would be spared treating his small ‘Nam brotherhood to a lavish and final excursion. The rooms at the Willard started around $750 per night, and that didn’t include gourmet room service and spa treatments, which Dr. Mihn insisted they have. David also wanted to surprise them, pleasantly he hoped, with a helicopter ride around DC and a walking tour of the Viet Nam Memorial. It was hard to know how these good men would react to The Wall, but David knew he had to go there, and he was running out of time.
It’s funny to think about running out of time before running out of money…
He hoped they would want to go to the memorial with him because, truthfully, David believed they all needed one another to face the solemn black wall that listed the thousands and thousands of soldiers who had died in that terrible fighting.
David knew visiting the Viet Nam Memorial would be hard on the small band of brothers for all kinds of reasons. He worried especially about Dalton, the former tunnel warfare specialist. Bill-but-they-call-him-John Dalton had admired the engineering skills of the Vietnamese who had been building and expanding the tunnels of the Iron Triangle since the French anti-colonial rebellion of the 1950s. Dalton knew all about Vietnamese ingenuity and he knew all about Vietnamese savagery.
Bill-but-they-call-him-John’s assignment in Viet Nam was to seek and destroy the NVA tunnels that had dogged and deviled U.S. troops from the onset. This assignment was given to a special platoon of the smallest and thinnest of Uncle Sam’s conscripted, since larger men could not wriggle down the rabbit holes with packs and weapons.
Dalton was also chosen for the tunnel missions because he had Special Operations classification. He knew the tricks to watch out for, such as Coke bottles with no fizz when they were opened. This meant that the bottle had been previously opened and the contents supplemented with battery acid. Often, young GIs would not realize the bottles had been tampered with until it was too late. That was just one example of his instincts and training.
Regardless of the street-smarts Dalton brought to the table, seeing his comrades-in-arms blown up, bayoneted, and bludgeoned right before his eyes, coupled with his being next down the hole had the residual and lasting effect on Dalton of claustrophobia, severe bi-polar disorder, and a host of other phobias as well. These conditions would periodically and for no obvious reason send him exploding out of his cardboard sidewalk shelters to chase and threaten other delusional homeless folk up and down Baltimore streets and alleys.
Maybe it was wishful thinking on David’s part or the bravado created by enormous wealth and the specter of death; in any case, he was reasonably sure the trip would be healing, comforting, and manageable.
As though to confirm his confidence, the first leg of the trip went like clockwork. Kevin had been enthusiastic company for David on the corporate jet, discoursing rapidly about quantum physics, Imaging, and using QP to affect future events. Dr. Mihn had found the treatise quite absorbing as Kevin prattled on.
Imaging, good. At least he is on to something else besides time travel...
Macon Hardy, always running behind schedule, was grateful to see that Dalton was packed, ready, and medicated out of his gourd for the plane ride. Dr. Hardy was preoccupied with his own dazzling thoughts, and he knew there would be plenty of occasions to interact with Bill-but-they-call-him-John Dalton on this strange and spontaneous escapade.
Before they all knew it, the four wide awake members of the group were having bartender specials at the hotel’s Round Robin Bar, while Dalton snored bountifully in the suite he would be sharing with Dr. Mihn. Thick roast beef sandwiches accompanied the Shimmery Sakura cocktails consisting of Absolut Citron, Campari and sour mix. The food was sumptuous, the laughter comfortably guarded.
When the mirth started to become forced and the silence awkward, Mother Macon redirected the group.
“Okay, David, we’re all here. You have obviously laid out some bucks getting us together in this nice hotel. I know you don’t take vacations—you said work was your R&R. So, tell us, David, what is really going on here?”
David kept his dismal and undisclosed medical prognosis secret as he addressed the table of intellectuals.
“Okay, guys. There is something.”
He paused and looked at each man before he spoke.
“I’m a coward. Pham can tell you how many drugs I take to rise in the morning and how much alcohol I drink to turn in at night, in spite of his organic care. I have wrestled forty years with my disability, and, frankly, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be on this planet—”
“Here, here,” interjected the obsessed and daydreaming physicist..
When everyone else stared fixedly in his direction, Kevin became aware of his misread outburst and proclaimed,
“Sorry, did I say that out loud? I didn’t mean you, David. I meant me not being around, not that I am planning on going anywhere in the here and now. What I mean is...”
“That’s okay, Kevin, I know what you mean,” dismissed David, “My point is, I want to visit the Viet Nam Memorial, and I am too gutless to go alone.”
There was a heavy pause. David continued.
“I realize that visiting this memorial is a very personal thing, and I had always thought that I should and would go alone, but twenty years have come and gone since the damned thing was constructed, and I am no closer to visiting The Wall than any of you. So, will you forgive me for drafting you, again, to confront this thing with me?”
The silence was thick.
Dr. Mihn finally cleared his throat and spoke, “I forced to go to Memorial with group. Otherwise, be proverbial sitting duck in redneck shooting gallery.”
This time, the laughter was truly unrestrained as they finished their meal and went to their separate suites—David and Kevin pairing up, Pham with the snoozing Dalton, and Macon Hardy in a suite by himself to facilitate the numerous phone calls he would have to make and receive. The next morning at ten A.M., they would meet in the lobby for a continental breakfast and the chopper ride. Everyone agreed that a good night’s sleep was in order.
On the way up to the Capital Suite, Kevin leaned toward David and whispered, “I know it has been a long time, but... got any dope?”
garish flame, deep and hellish,
black tar burning at night,
warm and moist, calm night air
the guard tower, tape player turning Woodstock playing,
spotlights here and there on a barbed-wire perimeter,
smoke-filled air “dew” in long sticks, in tiny pipes
for five lonely strangers, a common bond
in common circumstances, on an anonymous night M-60 mounted,
empty Coke cans all around
freaks in a word, but in a deep way in a zone outside sanity,
they have one more time, passed one more day
A Ceremony late at night in the guard tower
with a little help from our friends
one more day has passed, and we live!
And celebrate winning the game one more time with the best brew life has to give
we smoke our toasts, are at peace
and, somehow, feel close
Steve Edwards
Sunrise from the third floor suite was as glorious as weather permitted in Washington, D.C. in March. Today it was raining, having started sometime in the night, and the sky gave no hope of clearing. The rain would not halt the day’s activities unless a strong wind grounded the chopper. Since strong winds were not forecast, the excursion would go forward.
Mostly for this sixtyish crowd, rain was an aches-and-pains factor. Scientist and space cowboy Kevin Simpson could feel the smoky heaviness in his head from the pot and stiffness in his back from decades of slumping behind his computers. Back in his suite, Macon Hardy could feel his bad knee throb when it rained. Pham Mihn felt a slight congestion around his sinuses, which he cleared up in minutes with eucalyptus oil. Bill-but-they-call-him-John Dalton opened one eye slightly, and seeing the grey sky, closed it, rolled over, and dropped back into that long, good sleep that rainy days and Thorazine inspire.
David Canfil’s bad-weather pains were too numerous to count, although he did try to get an accurate assessment for his morning report to Pham. The diminutive native of Dalat had trained David to report accurately the location and severity of his pains in a lifelong recovery from the hand grenade wounds that had maimed and scarred him, leaving him without Maggie and a right leg.
No, sir, whining is not allowed, only pain…
Before a younger Pham had trained him to isolate and concentrate on specific areas of pain with their differing causes, David had awakened every morning screaming that his body was on fire.
David’s friend and holistic healer had been an orderly in Dalat’s military field hospital when David was transferred there to recover from the deadly ambush that had cost him so dearly. Pham had been a gifted young man in the healing arts, using both modern pharmaceuticals and ancient remedies to bring relief to the suffering on the South side of the DMZ. His calm demeanor and tireless care to David’s physical wounds and mental despair earned him gratitude and the Canfil family’s generous offer to bring Pham back to the States with their recovering son.
Pulling his eyes away from the rain outside his window, David lay under his covers wheeling and dealing with his condition.
I’ll feel better after a hot shower. No, wait. Maybe I need my meds first. Where is my leg? I don’t even want to turn my head to look for it. Room service, that’s a good idea. Where’s my cell, I’ll call Pham.
Just then, David heard Kevin stumbling across the living room of the two -bedroom suite to answer a knock on the door. As if on cue, Pham entered with a tray of powerful herbal tea, a variety of healthy muffins, dried fruit, honey, and a small cup with several prescription drugs.
“Oh god, I’m glad to see you, Pham,” called David from his bedroom. “I can’t decide whether to call room service or shoot myself.”
“Bad idea on both counts,” replied Pham tersely.
“Well, kiss my ass then, you big grouch,” fired David back at him.
“Name not Oscar!”
And so the friendly fire continued as Dr. Mihn efficiently poured tea and laid out the breakfast items. David’s pillows were fluffed up to provide back support for breakfast in bed. The wealthy oil mogul was not the breakfast-in-bed type, but Pham could sense the rainy day struggle David was having and swiftly intervened to save his face in front of the others.
David looked past Pham out toward the living room area to see Kevin wandering around in search of some kind of written directions for his life.
I could use some too about right now…
“Hey, Kev,” David shouted, “Come have some of this poison Pham is forcing on me.”
Dr. Mihn fended off the teasing insult as though it was a stone attack. Kevin appeared tentatively in David’s doorway.
“Good morning,” offered Kevin, not quite sure of his next social move.
Dr. Mihn hurried to quietly position a chair next to David’s bedside and the tray of breakfast food. He ushered Kevin in, and just that fast, the awkward scientist was put at ease.
“Pham, thank you. You …are, uh, gracious…,” asserted Kevin in a jerky few words.
“Yeah, yeah very accommodating, a real Mary Poppins,” answered David sarcastically.
There was a comfortable silence as each man gulped down his warm tea, and gnawed on fruit and muffins. Finally, Kevin spoke with a full mouth, reprising a conversation that had been ongoing for decades.
“And another reason we should leap back in time is to see them again—”
“Who?” asked David, trying to pretend he did not remember the tired conversation.
“What do you mean ‘who?’ Tru and Maggie, who else? See, the thing about wormholes, theoretically, is that the traveler should be as close to the parallel target as possible so that the quantum equation will—”
“I know, I know. I’ve read about them.”
“Have you? Where?”
“Uh, I don’t know, some science mag in a dentist office,” stammered David trying to hide his extensive involvement in Kevin’s research.
“Anyway,” David continued, “It is the future considerations, the whatchamacallits—paradoxes—that are the dangerous unknown factors.”
“Those whatchamacallits can be ironed out mathematically,” whined Dr. Simpson.
“And what if the whole universe doesn’t use the same math? What if there is another set of alien physical laws?”
“Okay,” snapped Kevin, “Now you are just messing with me.”
Pham, who had been pulling toiletry items out of David’s suitcase, quietly interjected, “What do you have to lose by attempting?”
Aggravated by the pressure he suddenly felt, David growled, “I am NOT going back to that hell-hole. Not in this or any other dimension. They are dead, Kevin, and going back to Viet Nam is not going to bring them back. I’m sorry. I hate that place.”
Pham looked hurt at the verbal strike against his homeland. David responded with an apologetic glance toward Pham before he continued.
“It’s just that every feeling of pain and loss and brutality I’ve ever felt came from or because of Viet Nam. And even if there was the remotest possibility of landing in the same time, same place, there is no guarantee that things would be any different. They might die in some other way, just as tragically.”
Heavy silence followed. Then David spoke again.
“Look, Kevin, I admire your work. I want you to continue to pursue the possibilities. But you need to accept some realities: one, that time travel may not be possible in our lifetimes...and two, even if we could go back, there is no guarantee that we would not lose them anyway in some other horrible way.”
“So, you are saying our lives are pre-determined?”
“No!” replied David with raised voice. “I’m saying that, in the probability curve of the highest possible outcomes for our free choices, there is also a pretty high probability that they would end up dead—with us alive—than any other outcome in our universe.”
There was a long pause as Kevin the physicist processed David the driller’s scientific insight. Then Kevin stuttered a reply.
“That m-must have been s-some dentist office.”
The silence returned, this time with a fair amount of tension attached. David had not heard Kevin stutter since they had left ‘Nam.
Pham hustled around, gathering clothing items for David’s shower. Ordinarily, David was not assisted in these everyday tasks, having struggled over the years for more independence, but today Dr. Mihn had arranged for the hotel massage staff to loosen up the group for the day’s slated activities. With the current tension and the rain, Pham felt there was no time like the present to get his group cleaned up and ready.
**********
The hotel spa staff had arrived extra early in the D.C. rain and traffic and were in no mood for any rookie-client shenanigans, especially from one Bill-but-they-call-him-John Dalton in the Abraham Lincoln Suite. Dalton had taken the presence of white-coated strangers in his suite as an attempt to restrain and remand him to a hospital or asylum, and he was not about to cooperate with that plan.
After a noisy scene of chasing the naked Irishman through the distinguished hotel suite, and with the aid and assurances of Hardy, Mihn, and the others, the team of masseurs and masseuses agreed to hold the sessions all in the same suite, for the team’s own safety. Dalton had been subdued almost hypnotically by Dr. Mihn who had once seen to David’s panic in the wake of his nightmares.
Thus it was that the therapeutic massage hour proceeded with the four men lined up on portable massage tables like matchsticks. The beefiest masseur was assigned to give Dalton the Deep Tissue Massage and would slam him down on the padded table every time he tried to rise and escape.
Dr. Mihn took the opportunity to meditate in the suite’s atrium with the sliding glass doors open to the cool, damp air. His martial arts exercises were all he needed to loosen up.
Kevin, who received the Swedish Massage Package, was awkward and nervous. Looking from side to side, he took his cues from the others about lying down on a table wearing only a towel while a strange woman pinched and pulled his skin in ways he thought were scientifically impossible.
Macon, obviously knowledgeable in massage etiquette, relaxed wholly into his Radiant Skin Glow Treatment and was clucking on about a new overcoat and matching Fedora downstairs in the Stanley Korshak shop window. He dreamed of how great it would look on him in candid photos that some passing member of the paparazzi might take.
For David, the Sports Massage was his usual painful morning routine. He put on his bravest front for the guys and distracted himself by listening to the light banter of Hardy and the others. Soon their voices became the ambient background soundtrack to his anxious thoughts.
Damn! It is difficult enough to visit the stinking Memorial here in the good old USA. How can Kevin expect me to go back in-country? And for what, some nursery rhyme notion of time travel? It’s bullshit. Sorry, Kev, but it is. Because of the funding, I keep up with scientific journals on quantum physics, but we are a generation away from even trying it. And what if by some extraordinary means we were to locate our lost loves over there in 1969? Are we stuck over there back in that bloody bastard of a war? What if we are all cosmically scrambled trying to get back? It’s crazy. It can’t be done.
David was jarred from his thoughts by a heavy thud as Dalton was once again slammed down on the table by the beefy massage therapist.
“Feel good, don’t it?” assured the muscular masseur to Bill-but-they-call-him-John, eyes rolling back in his head. Dalton tried to reply back in the affirmative, but the big masseur pounded the breath out of him, and the sound came out as a wretch.
Macon Hardy had gone quiet as he mused on the figure he would cut in the new hat and overcoat. He wondered if maybe the New York Times should be anonymously informed that a noted scholar and future historical figure would be strolling through the Viet Nam Memorial cloaked in pensive sadness and flattering new duds. He must give his agent a call.
Kevin was lost in the new sensations of pleasure he felt from the fingers of the schooled and attractive therapeutic masseuse. He looked startled and caught his breath as he realized his slumbering penis might have moved in response. Then he smiled and just rolled with it.
Soon the massage therapy hour ended, and the boys all ambled back to their rooms and separate showers. Pham promised to tend to Dalton personally. They renegotiated their agreement to meet in the lobby for coffee and continental breakfast at 9:30. Everyone wanted to eat lightly before the chopper ride for obvious reasons. And the rain had eased, so the day was getting off to an optimistic start.
So far, so good…
I let them pluck on me, discordant harmony
Trying hard late and soon
To bring a frown
But I turned ‘round
And let them have their tune
For while twisted minds can change a tune and discordant music make
I remain, ‘tis not the instrument
But the discordance I lament
And try the untwisting for the music’s sake
Steve Edwards
Well, I guess I spoke too soon...
Exploding from the far left elevator door into the elegant, golden marble Willard Hotel lobby was a screaming and wild eyed Bill-but-they-call-him-John Dalton followed by an abashed Pham Mihn who was trying to make himself invisible.
Dalton had been sedated when the men had ridden the elevator to the seventh floor the day before, so the group had no concept of the extent of Dalton’s terror of small spaces. Like elevators, for example.
David moved as swiftly as any two-legged man toward the rowdy scene from his lobby vantage point near the French blue chairs and glass tables. Dr. Mihn was already calmly approaching the disoriented Dalton.
Macon Hardy, finishing his purchase in the Stanley Korshak boutique, sighed in disgust at being associated with the sketchy fellow but removed his new hat and overcoat and joined the fray. Kevin also drew nearer to the commotion, turning and making polite and reassuring gestures to the gathering crowd of onlookers.
“Let me do this,” blustered Macon Hardy as he marched straight toward the agitated schizophrenic. The history professor remembered times past with this man, wrapped his big arms around the panicky Bill-but-they-call-him-John, and began to rock him in a standing embrace.
In half a minute, the broken man was whimpering in Hardy’s close hold as Kevin did his best to diplomatically disperse the crowd. David and Mihn looked steadily at one another, non-verbally communicating their misgivings about the adjustment of the poor claustrophobic to the chopper ride. Then, Pham began to search through his leather satchel, retrieving a small vial of clear liquid.
“If you will permit me,” said Pham, moving calmly toward the two fused veterans.
Placing a drop of the liquid on the tip of his right index finger, Dr. Mihn applied it gently to the forehead and temples of the trembling man. Almost instantly, Dalton ceased to quake, his breathing became less labored, and composure set in.
A few seconds later, the group heaved a collective sigh of relief and began gathering their accoutrements, moving toward the waiting limousine. A word from David to the hotel staff, and they quickly prepared a breakfast box of coffee, juice, and sausage rolls to go.
Outside the limo, which was loaded with Kevin, Dalton, and the food, David regarded Hardy and Mihn in reference to the scene they defused inside the hotel. Could these two guys handle Bill but-they-call-him-John if he wigged out on the chopper ride? Mother broke the silence as he addressed Pham.
“That was some quick thinking and effective action in there, Dr. Mihn.”
“Same for you, Dr. Hardy,” Mihn replied with a modest bow. Macon entered the vehicle being careful not to crush his new Fedora.
David halted Pham before he entered the limousine.
“Hey, what was in that gonzo juice you oiled up Dalton with?”
Pham looked sheepishly before he met David’s steady gaze and replied, “Eucalyptus oil and power of suggestion.”
“Great…”
**********
DC Tours provides many options for the capitol city tourist: charter buses, limos, trolleys, barges and boats. Best of all, DC Tours has helicopters that can hold up to six passengers. Because of stepped-up security after the World Trade Center explosions, most flights over the National Mall had been suspended. DC Tours was one exception because of their sterling reputation and many connections to Congress and other political clients.
David thought a helicopter ride would be the perfect vantage point from which to view the Memorial. He always flew to his business destinations, not just because driving for an amputee was taxing, but because the aerial view gave him such perspective on the world.
Somewhere he had read that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote from the vantage point of a third-story loft overlooking a harbor. No doubt, he dreamed of Margaret Fuller’s pretty face, instead of his devoted wife’s. Like his lost Maggie, Fuller was a fem-warrior before her time. David knew one thing for sure, never a day went by that he did not dream of Maggie Attwood’s pretty face, aerial view or not.
The DC Tours chopper made smooth and wide circles over the area on that misty morning, bringing the whole layout of the Memorial Mall into its most advantageous view. The Memorial Mall in Washington, D.C. is artfully laid out with an extremely long reflection pool stretching from the soaring George Washington monument to the giant and emotionally charged Abraham Lincoln Memorial. Along the Mall are numerous smaller plaques and monuments to other deserving of America’s fallen men and women.
The Viet Nam Memorial is elbowed off to the side of the Lincoln Monument. The Wall itself is low and black and V-shaped, materializing from the dense trees, another heavy contrast to the pristine white structures out in the open around it.
The ride was going smoothly thanks to the tireless care by Pham Mihn of the fragile Bill-but-they-call-him-John Dalton. Re-applying the gonzo juice on Dalton’s head before take-off had the same hypnotic effect on him as previously, almost a “side-show in the circus” quality. Dr. Mihn instinctively and consistently played his part as Svengali.