The Night Before Easter

There are numerous personality typing systems, from Myers-Briggs to Keirsey Temperament. Most of them offer so many possible types for each individual that they render themselves ineffective by the sheer number of possibilities. Fifteen years or so ago two women in Vancouver, B.C. discovered a system that placed each person in one of two categories. I never met the women or attended one of their seminars and now it isn’t a possibility since they never published their work, dissolved their partnership, and went their separate ways. I heard about their work from my wife and instantly found it captivating, as has everyone she has shared it with. I quickly determined which of the two types I am when Christina told me that morning people are one type and night people are the other. I’m a night person and that’s why I have this story to tell you and, by the way, that’s the last time I’ll mention the typing system.

I’m a runner, a nighttime runner. I began running in 1979, when I was 37 years old. My first run started at 10 pm, July 2^nd and ended very shortly after it began – running wasn’t as easy as I had thought it would be. However, I’m persistent and I was blessed with a friend, an ultramarathoner, who kept me going when I probably would have quit otherwise. Now I’m well into my 30^th year of running.

I’d guess that I’ve logged over 30,000 miles running, from one side of the country to the other and in a half dozen countries, in all kind of weather, and often when I wasn’t up for it – I even ran when I was in body cast from an auto accident. I’ve seen a lot in those years and miles. Some of it was memorable. The events I’m going to tell you about are among the most memorable…

It started in 2002, Saturday night, March 30, the night before Easter, to be exact. I was running my normal six mile loop, from our home in Huntsville, Alabama, through Five Points, then downtown, around Big Spring Park, up Lowe, Franklin, Echols, and then left on White. It was a quiet spring evening with little traffic downtown or on any of the streets I had traveled. I was running easy down the long incline before my right turn on Randolph when I saw a movement in the yard of a two story, pre-civil war house at the corner of White and Randolph. I slowed and looked closer just as a figure rose up from behind the low hedge that fronted the house – it was a man with an Easter basket, so intent on hiding eggs that he had not noticed my approach however, his dog, puppy actually, had noticed. The brown ball of fur barked, took two quick steps in my direction and stumbled over his own feet. The man laughed, I stopped running and we laughed together.

“A little late for a run isn’t it?” he asked.

“No, it’s never too late for run; however, it’s often too early.”

We laughed together again and I turned back to my run, “Have a good Easter,” I called over my shoulder.

“Thanks, you too… and be careful out there in traffic.”

I forgot the incident, or at least I thought I’d forgotten it, until Easter eve the following year. I recalled it as I put on my running shoes, stretched, ran through five points, around Big Spring, and up the hill on Echols, the one that gets steeper each year. As I ran down the hill on White, a block from the Easter egg house, I realized that I was going faster than I’d gone in years. I made myself slow down a bit then I heard a bark and saw the puppy, now almost full grown, rear up on the fence, his tail wagging. A voice called, “It’s alright Sandy, it’s our running friend.”

I stopped at the gate and said, “It’s good to know that some things don’t change.”

He smiled and said, “Yes, that is good.”

“Have a great Easter,” I said.

“You too,” he called after me, “and be careful out there in traffic.”

The next year, 2004, I thought of little else but the man and his dog the whole day before it was time to run. Blocks before I got to his house I thought, ‘this is stupid. Twice, yes, but three years in a row, no way.’ That didn’t stop me from picking up speed blocks before the house and focusing on the yard from the moment it came into view. A half block away I heard the bark and saw the now, very big Sandy, hanging over the front gate. His master was waiting in the spot I’d last seen him the year before.

“It’s good to see you,” I said.

“You too,” he said, absently scratching the big dog’s head.

“Have you got all the eggs hidden?”

He glanced at the hedge, “Yep, just finished when I heard you coming.”

I started to move away, “Have a very good Easter.”

“You too… and be careful out there in traffic.”

2005, 2006, and 2007 were carbon copies of our first three meetings, then last year, I had a revelation of sorts before I began my
Easter eve run – this would be our 7^th night before Easter meeting – did his kid’s still hunt Easter eggs?

There was no bark when I approached the house. I was concerned until I saw Sandy sitting beside the gate. ‘Too old,’ for the usual show I thought and quickly amended the thought by adding, ‘but he’s there, waiting for me.’ My Easter friend approached the gate when I stopped running. “Mind if I ask you a question?” I said.

He grinned, “Ask away.”

“Are you really still hiding Easter eggs after all these years?”

He laughed, “You caught me,” he said. “Sandy and I were just waiting for you.”

“I was hoping you would be,” I said. “Have a great Easter.”

“You too… and be careful out there in traffic.”

Last night he and Sandy were in the yard just as they have been for the past seven years. “It’s good to see you,” I said.

“It’s good to be here,” he said, and I heard volumes that remained unsaid.

“Have a great Easter and I’ll see you next year.”

Sandy barked as he said, “You too… and be careful out there in traffic.”

Okinawa

Wolfe Cemetery is a small, very old, carefully maintained, rural cemetery; shaded by ancient oaks, an unused church on it’s southern edge, it is hidden from the view of thousands of motorists who speed past it each day, on U.S. Hwy 231.

The cemetery is in Allen County, a few miles south of Scottsville, Kentucky. I found it by accident when I stopped at a convenience store that now resides on the land between it and the highway.

With a few minutes to spare, I decided to walk though the ancient, long ago hallowed ground. I started down the graveled entrance road that leads to the church. As I walked I realized that somewhere in the distance I heard Amazing Grace being sung, too slowly, by a small group of people. I stopped looked toward the dark building; there was no sign of life there. I turned toward the cemetery; there was no one there either. That didn’t stop the choir though, so I shook my head and walked on toward the graves, the words of the hymn, penned by John Newton, a reformed slave ship captain, rolling through my head:

Through many dangers, toils and snares...
we have already come.
T'was Grace that brought us safe thus far...
and Grace will lead us home.

In the northeast corner I walked among the oldest graves, most of their headstones so worn by time and weather as to be unreadable. At the northern edge of the cemetery I turned back toward the highway on a little used service road that runs around the edge of the property.

The headstones were newer there, though still not new, most of them dating back to the 40’s and 50’s. The new ones marked the graves of spouses who had joined mates who departed earlier. I looked at my watch, realized it was time to go, and headed purposefully toward the end of the road and my car. That’s when I saw a new, white granite headstone, and I knew my appointment would have to wait.

I stood in front of the white stone and began reading the words carved there:

7^th Division

PFC Lloyd L. O’Neal

5-16-21 4-19-44

“Lost his life in the heroic defense of Okinawa Island”

Sixty-five years later, someone remembered Lloyd and cared enough to put up this new headstone. Not only did they remember him; they had a photo of him affixed to the headstone at the top center. I bent closer and examined the picture; Lloyd O’Neal was Matthew McConaughey’s twin. I did a double take and looked again to confirm it; yep, Lloyd looked just like the male lead of Sahara, We Are Marshall, Failure to Launch, and many other hit movies.

I couldn’t shake Lloyd from my mind, so when I got home I did some research and found that it is almost 7,500 miles from Allen County, Kentucky to the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa, Japan – the site of the last major battle of WW II. The battle began late in March and lasted 82 days.

More than 100,000 Japanese troops were lost, along with hundreds of thousand civilians and over 50,000 Allied troops, including Lloyd O’Neal, who died less than a month before his 23^rd birthday.

The biggest trouble Matthew McConaughey has found him self in, as far as his fans know, occurred in 1999 when he was arrested for disturbing the peace; specifically for playing the bongos, in his own home, while naked. Matthew was 28 years old at the time.

The biggest trouble that 22 year-old Lloyd O’Neal ever faced took his life, 7,500 miles away from home, in a pitched battle for a piece of real estate that the Allies believed to be the key to the defeat of Japan, since it is located only 340 miles from the mainland.

The fighting on Okinawa ended six weeks after Lloyd O’Neal died. The Japanese were beaten although they had not yet surrendered. It was obvious to everyone who understood political and military power that Japan could no longer mount an offensive military action anywhere in the world. In spite of that, the U.S. dropped two atom bombs on the Japanese just weeks after the fighting ended on Okinawa.

Today, over sixty years later, Japan is our number one trading partner and a powerful ally in world politics and today we are fighting two new major wars with no prospect in sight for their end. Before we initiated those two wars we fought in Korea and Vietnam and other less noteworthy places.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians on both sides have died, with nothing to show for their lives; no peace has been won. Wars are initiated by politicians for money and for the support of the people they govern. Wars begin when politicians fail to gain money and support through their conventional, day-to-day maneuverings.

In three hundred years, in various wars, the United States has taken the lives of millions of people, both theirs and ours, along with property, natural resources, and the possibility of a peaceful future for the world.

Isn’t it time to turn the most expensive government that has ever existed back toward its stated objective as noted in the Declaration of Independence?

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Isn’t it time to give the Lloyd O'Neal's of the world a chance to live; to be movie stars, or doctors, or even politicians; or maybe drunks and losers; or just common, ordinary, everyday husbands, fathers, grandfathers….?

Isn’t it time?

66

The day I signed into the unit, and as near as I can remember, every day until I signed out, some sixteen months later, the First Sergeant told me the same thing, “Jackson, what you see isn’t your problem, it’s the thing that you don’t see that will take your ass out.” Then he said, “See with your eyes, your hands, your ears, your nose, until you are seeing with everything.”

For a long time that didn’t mean much to me but because he kept hammering the message home I kept trying to find out what he meant. Then one day, a flight of ten Huey’s, each carrying seven soldiers from the 9^th Infantry Division approached a landing zone for what was to be a routine insertion. I was the door gunner on the lead chopper. I leaned over my M-60, looking for “The Thing” that I knew would take me out if I didn’t see it and suddenly I understood what the First Sergeant had been telling me. I could see, not with my eyes or any of my other senses, but with my gut. I could see everything and though it all looked the same through my eyes it wasn’t the same. I clicked my intercom button and shouted, “Abort the landing, Sir… Abort now.”

I was flying door gunner with Lieutenant Bogdue, the flight commander. I’d been his door gunner for three months and we’d come to trust each other totally in that time. He didn’t question what I had just reported; instead he keyed his mike and transmitted to the rest of the flight, “Abort the landing. Climb out now.”

As he was speaking he applied full power, stopped our descent, pulled back on the controls and we began grabbing altitude. We swept over the trees on the far side of the landing zone and instantly began taking small arms fire. At that distance it was ineffective but if we had landed we would have been dead meat. There must have been a company of VC hiding in ambush at the edge of the landing zone and though I couldn’t tell how many rocket launchers and mortar tubes they had, I’m sure there was more than enough to take out our flight of ten Huey’s if we had touched down in the LZ.

In seconds we were out of danger, then, in my head, as clearly as if he had been there, I heard the First Sergeant saying, “Jackson, that was The Thing and if you hadn’t seen it, it would have taken you and the rest of the flight out.”

We landed just before sunset. Parked in our revetment, and I unclipped my M-60 from the pivot rod, carried it around to the left side of the ship where Jerry Henderson, the Crew Chief, handed me his M-60. I carried the two weapons to the armorer’s shack, walked through the door, and saw the First Sergeant standing at the counter. I knew he had been waiting on me and I was right. He looked straight in my eyes with that show-stopping stare he was famous for, and I froze, then a smile that I’d never seen before split his face and he said, “Damn good job, Jackson. You keep seeing like that and you’ll make it through this thing.”

Forty-five years have passed and I still hear the First Sergeant and I still practice “seeing,” which I’ve come to think of as simply being totally present. I guess that it’s not a practice anymore but just the way things are for me.

…………………….

A month ago, late on a Tuesday night, probably close to midnight, I was driving home. I’d been working in South Alabama, a four hour drive from Huntsville. I was still forty miles away, just past Guntersville, going north on 431. The highway was totally deserted and I expected it would be for the next twenty-five miles. That’s when I saw The Thing. It was the first time I’d seen it in years but there is no forgetting The Thing once you’ve seen it. A person not trained by the First Sergeant would have only seen the taillights of a couple of vehicles pulled off on the shoulder a mile ahead, too far away to make out any detail, but I knew it was The Thing.

I reached between the seats and pulled the tire knocker, an 18” tapered piece of aged oak, 2” around at the base and 3” at the top, out of it’s bracket on the backside of the console. A section an inch in diameter and 8” deep had been drilled out of the top and filled with lead. Truck drivers use them to check tires to make sure one of their tandems hasn’t gone flat. Of course there are other uses for a tire knocker.

The small end had been drilled through and fitted with a leather strap. Without looking I slid my hand through the strap and got a good grip on the handle. By then I was almost on top of the two vehicles, the front one, a large SUV, probably a Ford Navigator, I thought, but I couldn’t see enough of the back to be sure because a beat up old pickup was parked directly behind it.

A tall, red-haired woman, her back to the passenger side of the SUV, was facing a grizzled man wearing overalls and a t-shirt that might have once been white. There were two other men, younger carbon copies of the first, standing behind and to the side of the older man. One of them was directly behind the man confronting the woman; the third was two steps toward the rear of the SUV, his back to me. It was obvious that all three were totally focused on the woman.

I heard the First Sergeant, and saw him out of the corner of my eye, he was sitting in the passenger seat, “You’re right Jackson, it is The Thing.”

I didn’t have time to answer or look directly at him. He didn’t expect me to. I hit the brakes hard, the back brake shoes on my Jeep Wrangler are oversized, as are the front calipers, when I want to stop, I can do it quickly. I slammed to a halt behind the pickup, turned on the four off-road floodlights mounted on the roof light bar instantly bathing the scene in white light.

In a split second I was out of the Jeep and headed toward the closest of the three men. I was within a few feet of him before he registered the sound of my footsteps and the addition of the light. He turned, saw my gray, almost white hair, and said, “This is ain’t none of your business old man…” I don’t know what else he was going to say and I didn’t stop to listen. Without a word, I brought the tire knocker around with all the force I could manage. Its arc terminated just above his left ear and he dropped where he had been standing.

The crack of the tire knocker finally got his nearest companion’s attention. He saw his friend on the ground, looked up at me but if he was going to say anything it never made it to his mouth. He raised his left arm in a half-ass defensive move and I brought the tire knocker under it. It smacked into his ribs and I knew a couple of them had broken. He dropped to his knees, his mouth moving like a fish suddenly snatched from the water.

I heard the sound of ripping material, looked at the third man, and saw that he had ripped the woman’s snow white blouse from her throat to her beltline. I screamed, “Stop!” which finally got his attention. He turned toward me, released his hold on the woman’s arm and she slumped straight down. Just then I felt the second man grab my left leg. I looked down, took aim and caught him in the side of the head with my right foot, just the way I kicked a football when I was a kid. He released my leg and went limp.

I knew the third man was coming for me. When I raised my eyes he had already started a round house right hook toward my head. He watches too much TV I thought, stepped back and his fist whistled harmlessly past my nose. I pulled the tire knocker directly back, grasping it with both hands, and came forward with it like it was a battering ram used by swat teams to smash open doors. The leaded end sank into his groin and he screamed like a wild animal caught in a varmint trap as he rolled into the classic position men hit in that spot have taken since the beginning of time.

He opened his mouth, I thought to speak, but breathing was all he had on his mind. I looked at him and then the other two, and decided there was no longer an immediate threat from The Thing. I stepped to the woman, still slumped, sobbing, beside her vehicle. I slipped my windbreaker off and put it around her shoulders, took her elbows in my hands and gently raised her to her feet. She looked at me, did a double take and refocused, “Why, you’re old.”

“Yep, I am,” I said, and added, “Sixty-six to be exact.”

I zipped the windbreaker to her neck and she threw both arms around me and managed to say, “I think you must be God.”

…………………….

A cell call and five minutes later we were joined by an Alabama Highway Patrolman and two Marshall County Deputies. The deputies talked to the woman, who had told me her name was Penny Hanks. She, lived in Huntsville and had been going home from a birthday party in Guntersville when the men in the pickup pulled in behind her and began flashing their lights and blowing their horn. Thinking she had a flat tire or some other mechanical problem she had pulled off the road. Within seconds the three men were beside her open window, one of them reached inside and grabbed her keys, another opened the door and pulled her out, and then half dragged her to the passenger side of the vehicle. The older one, apparently the leader, told her they were going to rape her and cut her throat and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to stop it. Just then she heard a vehicle coming and prayed that whoever was driving would stop; I did.

The Highway Patrolman called for two ambulances and within minutes the rednecks were strapped on stretchers and loaded. An EMT told the Highway Patrolman, “They’ll all live but for a long time they’ll know they were here. One has a concussion, one has broken ribs and a concussion, and the third one will be pissing blood for a while.”

“Good,” was all the Highway Patrolman said, and then he turned back to me, looked down at my driver’s license, attached to his clipboard and asked, “Mr. Jackson, you’re 66 years old. There were three of those no- goods. What were you thinking about?”

I thought back to the moment when I knew I was about to have another run in with The Thing. “Actually, Trooper,” I looked at his name tag but before I could read it he said, “Mr. Jackson, just call me James.”

“OK, James,” I said, “I was thinking two things, actually. First I thought that if I didn’t stop nobody would and then I thought I need to make sure that I keep all three of them in front of me.”

I don’t know what he had expected me to say but I could tell that wasn’t it. He looked at me and then laughed, a deep, honest laugh that seem to rise up from the toes of his spit shined boots. Finally he said, “Mr. Jackson, that’s the best answer I’ve heard to any question in my whole life.” He looked back at the blank form on his clipboard and said, “Now tell me exactly what happened.”

I did. When I finished I said, “I guess there is a bleeding heart judge or prosecutor somewhere who is going to believe that I violated those men’s civil rights and charge me with something. He looked straight in my eyes and said, “You’re half right Mr. Jackson. I’m sure there is a judge or prosecutor who would charge you with something but that isn’t going to happen because there isn’t going to be a report at least not the report you just gave me. Ms Hanks isn’t going to press charges and even if she did there was no rape or murder so, the charges would be minor at best. What’s going to happen is, I’m going to write a report that says that I found those three on the side of the road and it appears that they ran into some men who beat them pretty severely but they refuse to talk about it so that will be the end of the matter.”

He paused and I felt the wind blowing off the lake and heard tree frogs in the distance, “Does that sound about right to you, Mr., Jackson?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said, “I’d say that is dead on.”

He handed me my license, holding it a moment longer than necessary. I looked in his eyes and he said, “Mr. Jackson, my grandfather died in Vietnam before I was born. More than anything I can think of I’ve wished I had met him…” He choked a bit, I waited. Finally he said, “Tonight I think I did.”

Back in the Jeep, tire knocker secured in its place, moving along at 65 miles an hour, just as I had been thirty minutes earlier, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the First Sergeant in the passenger seat. I turned toward him and he grinned, “Damn good job, Jackson. You keep seeing like that and you’ll make it through this thing.”