Straight In My Head

     I didn’t bother to lock the door. I knew I would never be back to the small apartment. Everything that mattered to me was in the knapsack slung over my shoulder and in the saddlebags of my Harley. I didn’t look back, just walked straight to the motorcycle and stowed the pack in the cargo pack behind the seat. I threw my leg over the bike and settled into the saddle. I fired the engine and listened to it idle for a minute or two before I jammed a Bob Seger tape into the player.
The first Harley I owned was a 1957 Duo Glide. It was the same size as the Electro Glide but it didn’t have a stereo or electric starter. I love the music, but I’m not sure the electric starter adds much; I suppose that’s the price of progress.
I dropped the big machine into first gear, engaged the clutch and pulled away from the site of twenty-three years of personal warfare. It started for me in Vietnam and it had never ended. I spent four years in Vietnam, and I guess I would have stayed there until I got killed or the war ended if a mortar round hadn’t gone off ten feet away from me one night in the Delta.
     I recovered consciousness in the Philippines three days later. I spent the next six months at Brooke Army hospital in San Antonio, Texas. At the end of that time, the Army said I was fit to go home but not well enough to be a soldier. They gave me my final paycheck and a one-way ticket home.
     They didn’t bother to tell me the slight limp I had wasn’t the only thing that had changed about me. They didn’t bother to tell me that I wasn’t the same person I had been before Vietnam. I guess I’m a slow study. It took me almost twenty years to figure that one out. In that time, I had more jobs than I can count, blew three marriages and put countless gallons of alcohol through my system, all in an effort to get back where I had been before a Northwest Orient flight dropped me off in the Republic of South Vietnam.
   Mobile, Alabama had been my home for the past three years. I dried out in Mobile and put the finishing touches on my third marriage all while working on gulf oil rigs or stevedoring on the Mobile Docks.
   Now I had hung it all up. No job, no woman, and no more booze. I had the Harley, something over two thousand dollars in cash and a little box of tarnished medals and faded ribbons, as I pulled out of the city at midnight, heading north on Interstate 65.  I had no plans or destination, only a vague idea that I would stop at the cemetery in Birmingham and maybe talk to my old man; put a rose on his grave, or something like that.
     After that, I had an idea that I would ride to D.C. and see the cherry blossoms and stand in front of The Wall. I knew I was going to have to that eventually and cherry blossom time seemed to be as good a time as any.
     I passed through Atmore, Evergreen, London, and Garland; small towns that to me were only exit signs on the interstate. I kept pushing north. It was 3 a.m. when I rode into Montgomery. I didn’t see a half dozen cars in the state capital, and in less than fifteen minutes, I was through the city.
Just north of Montgomery I stopped for gas at an interstate convenience store. I shut the Harley down at the outer pump island, got off and stretched, then removed the gas cap. As I reached for the gas nozzle, an old car pulled up to the pump beside me. It was a 1954 Plymouth, two-door sedan, just like the one I owned when I was nineteen years old.

                                              **********
      I finished high school in 1963, then I went to a junior college in my hometown, Hartley, Florida, a small town in the northeast corner of the state. After a year of junior college, I felt like I was ready for the big time. I enrolled at Henderson State, a tiny school forty miles south of Birmingham. I did well my first semester at Henderson. Just before Christmas, my roommate, Jim Dooling, dropped out of school and enlisted in the Army. Five months later, in the spring, about this time of year, Jim was in Vietnam.
     Jim didn’t last long in Vietnam. Less than two weeks after he arrived in-country his company was overrun in an ambush. Only three men survived. Jim wasn’t one of them. His mother called me when she got the word. I just stood in the hallway of the dorm holding the phone to my ear. I couldn’t speak. If I had been able to talk, I don’t know what I would have said. Finally I hung up, walked back to my room, gathered my stuff, threw it in the old Plymouth and started for home.
     It’s funny, but I can still remember, I almost stopped by The Diner on my way out of town that night. Jim and I had spent a lot of time there, drinking black coffee and eating greasy hamburgers served up by Red, who was the owner, the short-order cook and the waiter.  Red was an old, dried-up codger and a pretty smart, redneck philosopher. I wanted to tell him about Jim, but I just couldn’t do it. I knew I would bawl if I tried, and I just wasn’t up for that. When I passed The Diner, I was already so blurry-eyed that I could barely see. I just kept driving.

**********

I guess I must have tripped out for a few minutes thinking about that night over twenty-three years ago. The speaker beside the gas pump came to life and the attendant inside the store called out, “Hey, Mister, are you going to stand there all night holding the gas nozzle?” I looked toward the store and waved to let her know that I was still alive. I finished fueling and started inside to pay before I noticed the old Plymouth was gone.
     About forty miles north of the convenience store, I realized that I was near Henderson State. There was no interstate when Jim and I went to school there, and I wasn’t sure I could remember the number of the highway that went past the school. I was pondering the question when my headlight picked up a road sign. It read, “Henderson State – Next Exit.”
     That’s convenient, I thought, and I decided to ride through the campus just for old time’s sake. I left the interstate and started up the exit ramp. Ground fog was beginning to rise from the fields and make the landscape fuzzy, in places obliterating it. I’m not big on riding in the fog or rain, so a break seemed to be in order. I hoped I could find a cup of coffee and a place to relax for a few minutes. I didn’t figure there was a chance The Diner would still be there after all these years, but I have to admit that I thought of the place so hard, I could almost taste Red’s coffee, always served in heavy white mugs.
     I turned left at the top of the exit ramp. There was no sign, but I was almost sure that was the way to the school. I rode three or four miles on the deserted highway. The fog was getting heavier. I slowed the bike to forty miles an hour and was considering pulling off on the shoulder when I saw lights ahead at what appeared to be a service station or store. As I got nearer, I could make out a lighted sign and I almost fell off the Harley – glowing through the fog I read – The Diner.
     It was the same sign. I realized as I turned into the parking lot that nothing had changed in the more than twenty years since I had last been there. The small frame building was still neat and clean. Spring flowers were spilling over the edges of pots hanging from the eave of the small porch. There were no cars in the parking lot, but inside, I could see a man behind the counter, his back turned toward me, scraping down the grill.
     I parked the motorcycle and stood beside it stretching and staring at The Diner as memories flooded my head. I couldn’t believe that it was still there, much less that it didn’t appear to have changed at all. I shook my head and walked to the front door. As I stepped inside the man at the grill called out, without turning to look at me, “Out late aren’t you, Billy Boy?”
     I almost dropped right there. It was Red, the only person who had ever called me Billy Boy. He hadn’t even turned from his work, yet he knew it was me despite all the years that had passed since I last saw him. He must be eighty years old, I thought, then I was shocked again when he turned toward me with that famous ear-to-ear grin on his face. He wasn’t a day older than the last time I had seen him.
“Sit at the counter, Bill Boy, looks like it’s just me and you for a while.” He turned back to the coffee urn and beginning filling a mug. I thought of a number of questions; “How did you recognize me? Why haven’t you aged a day since I last saw you over twenty years ago?” I picked one and blurted, “Red, nothing has changed since I was here last. How did you manage that?”
Red didn’t answer. He kept pouring coffee. At first I thought he was ignoring me, then I realized that he hadn’t heard the question at all and something inside me said he wasn’t going to hear that question or any other along that line. I decided to play it his way.
     Red turned back to the counter and placed a steaming mug of coffee in front me and another one on the backside of the counter. “I think I’ll join you, Billy Boy, if you don’t mind. Things are slow and probably will be until the breakfast crowd shows up.”
We each took sips of the strong, hot coffee before Red spoke again. “I heard about Jim today. I also heard that as soon as you finished talking to his mother you dropped out of school, packed your stuff and told some of your friends you were going home to enlist in the Army.” He paused, then quickly added, “Now, don’t worry; I’m not going to try to talk you out of it.”
     I almost choked on my coffee. That had happened almost twenty-four years ago and Red was talking about it like it had been this afternoon. He didn’t seem to notice my reaction. “I’m glad you took time to stop by and see me on your way out. There are some things I want to tell you.”
I looked up at the old man and for the first time I saw my reflection in the mirror behind the counter. I almost didn’t recognize myself. No beard, no receding hairline, no wrinkles, no gray; it was me twenty-four years ago. I’m dreaming, I thought.
Red touched my hand, and I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t a dream. I looked blankly at the old man and he continued, “You don’t’ have to say anything, Billy Boy. Just drink your coffee and let me talk for a minute, okay?”
     I could only nod my head. “You probably won’t believe this but I know how you feel. I enlisted in the Army during the Second World War for the same reason you are going to enlist. My best friend was killed and that was all I needed. Now here’s what I want you to get, and you need to get it right now, and you need to remember it, Billy Boy.”
I gazed into Red’s eyes. When he was sure the he had my total attention he said, “There are going to be times when you can easily forget why you are in Vietnam or later you may forget why you went. It’s important that you never forget. You are going to Vietnam for Jim and you are going for yourself. You are going because it is the most honorable thing you can do.”
     I was finally able to talk, “I’m not sure what you’re getting at Red. Wasn’t, or rather, isn’t Vietnam about freedom, and Communism and all of that?”
Red didn’t hesitate, “Hell no, Bill Boy. This war, like all wars, is about politics, men’s egos, and money. If you go to Vietnam believing it’s about freedom, you are going to get caught up in something you can’t handle.”
     “What do you mean, Red?”
The old man looked directly into me with a gaze that felt like it when right to my heart, “Billy Boy, we are going to lose this war. We are going to lose it because we have no reason to be there. We are going to lose it because we aren’t committed to winning it. We are going to lose it because Ho Chi Minh is committed to winning at any cost.”
     Red paused and sipped his coffee. His eyes went out of focus, and he stood that way for a longtime. I finally prompted him, “What’s going to happen when it’s over, Red?”
     The old man brought his attention back to me. “The country will be divided over our participation in the war. For years after it’s all over, we will be split over the issues. Then we’ll grieve because we lost. That’s what will get you if you don’t remember why you went to Vietnam.”
     I didn’t ask the question, but it must have been written all over my face. “Billy Boy, the Veterans of the Vietnam War, the men and women who serve there, will end up carrying the grief of the country if they don’t remember why they served. If they don’t remember that they, as individuals, didn’t lose the war.”
     Red’s words hit me like a hammer. For more than twenty years, I’d been ashamed of being a Vietnam Veteran. I had grieved. I had forgotten about Jim and the 58,000 other men and women who had given everything. I had forgotten how proud I was when I marched into the airport at San Antonio, wearing my new dress uniform, complete with the ribbons and badges, that proclaimed my service in Vietnam. All I had remembered was the shame and grief of America. Somehow, I had assumed that I was responsible for that.
     I straightened and breathed deeply, allowing that almost forgotten feeling of pride to flood through me. The change must have been noticeable because Red smiled for the first time since I’d walked in. “That’s right, Bill Boy. When it starts to get you down, you remember this night and what we’ve talked about. You do that, and you’ll be all right. There’ll be a lot of Vietnam Veterans, just like you, Billy Boy. Remind them all that they did the most honorable thing they could have done. Tell them to remember it that way and be proud.”
I took a long sip of coffee. When I put the cup back on the counter, the door opened and four men, talking nosily, came into the diner. One of them shouted, “Hey, Red, what’s for breakfast?”
Red touched my hand, “I’m glad we had a chance to talk, Billy Boy. Good luck to you.”
When I pulled the Harley back on the highway, I knew I was sitting taller and feeling better about myself than I had in years. I didn’t look back. I didn’t need to. I pointed the Harley north, heading for D.C. and the Vietnam Memorial. I was going to talk to Jim … tell him what Red had said … I was going to tell him that I finally had it straight in my head.

More books – and short stories by Bert Carson

Tennessee Waltz

It took me twenty-seven years to make it from Alabama to the Vietnam Memorial, "The Wall," in Washington, DC. It wasn't the distance that kept me away. Anyone can drive from my place to The Wall in twelve hours.  In fact, I came within a hundred yards of completing the trip, not once but twice. The first time was the day after my District Manager and my wife fired me. Twelve hours later, I was sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial looking at The Wall. I don't know how long I sat there. After a while I got up, walked back to my old pickup, and drove home.

Ten years later, I came home from the mill where I work. It isn’t much of a job, but I haven't had much ambition in a longtime. I walked up to my cabin and called Jimbo, my old blue tick hound and the only friend I had in the world. He didn’t answer. I walked around back and saw him curled up in his old rocking chair. I knew he was dead. I pulled his battered old quilt over his haunches, turned and headed back to my truck. I drove straight through and ten hours later, as the rising sun woke Washington, I was once again sitting on the steps below Abraham Lincoln.

I looked across the expanse of grass, through the trees, at The Wall and cried for a while.  Then I went back to my truck and drove home. I wrapped Jimbo in his quilt and buried him on the side of Lookout Mountain. Yesterday, with no trauma to prompt it, I drove back to the Wall. I walked along the sidewalk across from the Lincoln Memorial, glanced at Abe, gave him a little salute and kept walking. I knew I would make it this time.

The sun had been up less than twenty minutes.  The helicopters, mostly Hueys, were already making their regular runs back and forth from places I didn’t know, to the White House. It was fitting that Hueys would be flying on the day I finally made to The Wall, for I’d spent almost three years flying Hueys in Vietnam.

I didn’t fly a shiny, leather upholstered, well-insulated model like those that flew over The Wall on their VIP sorties. I flew stripped down, patched, dirt and bloodstained models. In the language of my time, I was a “Slick Driver.” A slick was a stripped down Huey: no doors, a nylon-seated bench that ran its width and four crewmen – pilot, copilot, crew chief and a door gunner. Our primary job was transporting troops in and hopefully out of isolated landing zones.

I flew thousands of missions, sometimes a hundred or more in a day. In three successive tours in Vietnam, all with the Nomads, I lost many friends. The list included two copilots, four door gunners, a crew chief, a company commander, a platoon leader and countless others… and I lost The Tennessee Waltz.

The Tennessee Waltz was the toughest loss. It wasn’t a man. The Tennessee Waltz was a helicopter, four men and a dog. That’s right, a dog. JoJo was his name. And even though the army doesn’t know it, JoJo’s name is on The Wall with the rest of the crew of The Waltz. That’s exactly where it should be.

The Nomads weren’t always called the Nomads. Aviation units in the states aren’t allowed to adopt a nickname, or non-standard helicopter markings, individual headgear, or any number of other things that units in Vietnam did. When the Nomads arrived in Vietnam in 1966, they were C Company of the 225th Aviation Battalion, just another helicopter outfit in a place suddenly overrun with helicopter companies.

In their first eight months in Vietnam, they were reassigned to the 181st Aviation Battalion, then the 217th and finally the 335th. They went from one end of the country to the other before they finally stuck in the Delta with the 335th. By that time, helicopter units all over Vietnam were coming up with names for themselves. After three in country moves in eight months, and by unanimous vote, the men of C Company renamed themselves The Nomads. Within hours of the vote they realized they had a problem. No one knew what a Nomad looked like, much less how to paint one on the front of a Huey.

Other companies in Vietnam had names like Nighthawk, Robin Hood, Boomerang and Greyhound. Those companies had no problem coming up with a logo and painting it on the nose of their ships. The Greyhounds didn’t have to paint a thing. They asked the Greyhound Corporation for help and received decals for each of their helicopters. Finally, Major Simmons, the Nomad’s Company Commander threw up his hands and said, “Ok, each crew can paint a mascot or name of the front of their Huey.” As an afterthought he added, “Just try to keep it semi-tasteful.”

You can imagine the results of that directive. The Aussies, stationed next to us, began to call us the HNW Combat Aviation Company. They explained that HNW stood for “half naked women.” That was the general trend until Captain Ed McKinney appeared on the flight line with the outline of the state of Tennessee painted in dark red on the nose of his Gunship. Inside the distinctive outline of the state, lettered in bright red were two words, “Tennessee Waltz.”

Ed, his copilot, Roy Gill, door gunner Sam Heredia and crew chief Carl Green were already legends in the company. No matter how hot the situation everyone knew that you could count on them to take the heat off. That’s the job of a gunship crew, protecting the slicks while we were loading and unloading troops.

With Tennessee Waltz painted on the nose of their ship, they became even bigger legends. Now both sides could easily identify them. 9th Division and 5th Special Forces began to ask for Tennessee Waltz when they knew the landing zones were going to be hot.

The entire crew of Tennessee Waltz volunteered for a second tour in Vietnam as long as they could continue to fly together. At the end of their second tour, they signed up for a third. By this time, they lived together, sharing a four-man tent near the flight line. It was unheard-of for enlisted men and officers to live together, but it just seemed natural for the crew of Tennessee Waltz to do it.

About halfway through their first tour, a dog joined Tennessee Waltz. The way I heard it, they were covering the extraction of a Special Forces Team one afternoon. The slicks pulled the A Team out just ahead of a company of Viet Cong who were in hot pursuit. With the slicks safely way, Captain McKinney made one more pass over the empty landing zone. That’s when Sergeant Green, The Waltz’s crew chief spotted the dog heading for the center of the LZ with VC hot on his heels. Green shouted over the intercom, “Captain, there’s a dog in the LZ in bad need of a ride.”

Captain Ed McKinney loved dogs more than he loved most men. He didn’t hesitate, pressing the intercom transmit button as he swung The Waltz back toward the landing zone, “Get him on quick, Carl, the Cong are going to own this place in two shakes.”

The dog ran into the middle of the LZ and stopped just like he knew that he was about to be dusted off, like it happened every day of his life. As soon as Ed put the skids on the ground the dog ran for the gunship. He jumped from ten feet out, and Carl caught him in midair. Both of them went down in the middle of the Huey. Sam screamed into the intercom, “He’s on, Sir. GO!”

Tennessee Waltz sprang into the air like it had been shot from a gun. None too soon either, as rockets and mortars suddenly rained down on the LZ. Carl named the mutt, JoJo. He said that when the pint-sized, black mongrel barked, it sounded like he was saying “JoJo, JoJo.” After he explained it, you could almost hear it.

Carl and Sam made a harness for JoJo. When they flew he was tethered onto the bench beside Carl. When Carl was hanging out on the skid firing his M60 machine gun, JoJo sat on the bench taking in the action like it was nothing at all. That dog was one of the coolest heads under fire that I have ever seen.

With almost three tours complete, I guess the men and the dog of Tennessee Waltz knew they were on borrowed time, but they didn’t talk about it nor did they become more conservative. If anything, time made them even more daring. They went up against overwhelming odds over and over, and they won. The legend of Tennessee Waltz continued to grow. I guess that’s the way legends work.

Late one September afternoon, I was flying back from Vung Tau. I had made a run down to pick up some engine parts, and, of course, as many cases of chocolate milk as my crew chief and door gunner could scrounge. We were halfway back to our base camp, enjoying the quiet afternoon when our battalion radio channel came to life.

“Any ship near LZ Tall Tree, we have a gunship down, over.”

I hit my radio transmit button, “HQ, Nomad 5, we are less than ten clicks from Tall Tree, over.”

“Roger, Nomad 5, 9th Division reports that one of our guns took a direct hit and is down at the edge of the LZ, can you check it out?”

I had already banked into a steep right turn when my copilot responded, “We’re on the way.”

Nose down, throttle wide open we were screaming toward Tall Tree within seconds when we got the second message, “Nomad 5, it’s Tennessee Waltz that’s down.”

I couldn’t speak. I just clicked my transmit button twice to acknowledge that I’d received the message.

We saw the smoke two or three minutes before we were over the crash. There was nothing we could do. The gunship was scattered over a one-hundred yard swath through the middle of the LZ. The only part big enough to identify was the nose cone, facing up. I pulled a tight circle around it and we saw in bright red lettering, “Tennessee Waltz.”

I continued to circle. That was stupid, but I guess I was in shock. Four of my best friends and the greatest little dog I have ever known… all gone, just like that. I came back into the moment when heavy automatic weapon fire ripped into the bottom of my Huey. The control column tried to shake itself out of my hands, and half my gauges bottomed out while the other half flew into the red.

I knew I couldn’t put down in the LZ. I turned in the general direction of our camp while Red Nixon, my copilot, began screaming out our coordinates. Theo Smith, my door gunner, and Jimmy Wilson, the crew chief, were throwing out engine parts and chocolate milk as I fought to keep the Huey in the air. Two miles later the engine flamed out and I put it down in a rice paddy. Jimmy and Theo pulled their machine guns as Red and I flipped switches, shutting down what power was left in the slick. The last message from headquarters came through as Jimmy opened my door and began to help me out of the cramped cockpit.

“Nomad 5, hang on, guns are on the way, but it’ll be at least fifteen minutes before they get to you.”

Jimmy and I groaned at the same time. We knew there was no way we would last fifteen minutes against a battalion sized unit of VC. We set up the two M60s on the dike of the paddy. Our only other weapons were the thirty-eight caliber pistols that Red and I carried.

We lay on the dikes facing the direction of the crashed Tennessee Waltz. We could hear the Viet Cong charging toward us making no effort to cover the sound of their advance. They knew we had no immediate help coming.

The first wave of them broke out of the jungle and began plunging through the tall grass toward the feeble dike we were huddled behind. Jimmy and Theo opened fire. The VC kept coming. I screamed, “Cease-fire, save your ammo,” I’d heard that in a couple of John Wayne movies. It was a pretty dumb thing to say since they were less than a hundred yards from us and closing fast.

The silence after the M60s stopped firing was uncanny. Suddenly, it was shattered by the unmistakable sound of a fast moving Huey. The VC heard it too, but they were too far from the jungle to hide. The gunship flying at treetop level appeared over the jungle then dropped to top of the grass, flying full-out less than ten feet off the deck. It must have been traveling at a hundred and thirty knots or better. It was on top of the VC in seconds, twin Gatling guns blazing, and door gunner and crew chief each with a foot out on the skids firing M60s.

The first gun run was over in seconds, and the Huey flashed in front of us. I saw JoJo sitting on the crew chief’s bench as calm as if he was taking an evening stroll through the company area. Sergeant Green switched the M60 to his left hand and saluted as they passed. I returned his salute as best I could from my prone position.

The gunship made a tight turn and came back for another pass. This time we were looking right at the nose of the ship, at Tennessee Waltz. The second pass wasn’t necessary. It was mostly for show and we did enjoy the show. The gunship continued its course and was quickly lost to our eyes and then our ears. Ten minutes later, two gunships and a slick from the Greyhounds picked us up. We didn’t report that Tennessee Waltz saved our lives. In fact, we never even talked about it among ourselves. I guess we figured that talking about it would probably take away from it somehow.

The Nomad Company Clerk loved JoJo better than anyone except the crew of The Tennessee Waltz did. He told me later that when he sent in the casualty report he sent in five names. He added Corporal JoJo Green to the list. I didn’t believe him until yesterday, when I finally made it to the wall. I looked up at panel 68, row 7, and read, CPT Ed McKinney, CW2 Roy Gill, SP4 Sam Heredia, SP5 Carl Green, CPL JoJo Green.

I couldn’t help it. I cried, actually I bawled, then reached out and ran my fingers over the names and shook like a scrub oak in a gale. I don’t know how long I stood like that. Finally, there were no tears left. With head bowed, I started back toward the pickup. I heard the sound of a Huey passing over, but I didn’t pay any attention. I’d been hearing them all morning. Then a little kid shouted, “Mommy, Mommy, look at the funny helicopter.”

I looked up just as a B Model Huey gunship flew slow and low over the mall. It was dirty and patched, armed with twin Gatling guns and two M60 machine guns. It made a tight turn over the reflecting pond and headed toward me. In the early morning light I saw on the nose, “Tennessee Waltz.” As it passed, I saw JoJo sitting on the crew chief’s seat. Carl was standing in the doorway, his dark helmet visor was lowered, but I knew it was him. He grinned and saluted. I snapped to attention as best I could and returned the salute. Then they were gone.

I felt a tug on my pant leg and looked down. The five-year-old who had first spotted The Waltz was looking up at me. “Do you know that dog, Mister?”

I couldn’t talk but I managed to nod.  He stared at me for a few seconds and asked, “How about the men? Do you know the men, Mister?”

It took me a while to get it out. Finally, I managed to say, “Yes. Yes, I know them well. They are my best friends.”

His mother gave me a funny look, snatched the boy up and hurried away. I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes, and heard Lacy J. Dalton singing:

“I was waltzing with my darling to the
Tennessee Waltz.
I remember the night and the
Tennessee Waltz.
Now I know just how much I have lost…”

Going Home

Going Home

When they showed up at the house, mother would announce their arrival with undisguised disdain, “Your gang is here.” 

In my mind, they simply became, My Gang.  I knew from conversations we had through the years that each of us thought of the five of us that way, and it was clear that my mother’s distain extended to the four other mothers represented by my gang.  We didn’t care what they thought of us.  That wasn’t our problem.

We were about as unlikely a group of friends as you would ever find.  We had nothing in common beyond our friendship, which, in fact, way more than friendship.  Hell, let me be clear here, we loved each other long before the term “unconditional love” came into vogue.

The five of us were Pat, Jack Jack, Edward, Tim and me.  The Gang was formed September 8, 1956, the first day of school at Elksville High School, in Elksville, Florida.  I was fourteen years old, a freshman and a new kid.

If you’ve never heard of Elksville, I understand.  A month earlier, I had never heard of it either, and on September 8, 1956, I fervently wished I’d never heard of it at all.  My family moved there in late July because Elksville was the location of my father’s “great job opportunity.”  No one asked me if I wanted to move.  They just told me the time that the movers would arrive and instructed me to have all my things ready.

And so we moved from a small town in central Alabama to a smaller one in north Florida.  In spite of that, ten minutes after the first bell rang; I’d twice been accused of being a Yankee.  Then when I answered roll call in home room with a familiar, “Yes Ma’am,” instead of the acceptable, “Here” or “Present,” Jerry Simpson, who would be the captain of the football team, turned toward me and said, “What are you?  Some kind of Redneck?”

That’s when I met Pat and Jack Jack.  Before I could say anything, Pat said, “Jerry, why don’t you shut your mouth?”

To which Miss Pridmore said, “Pat, go stand in the hall.”

At that, Jack Jack called out, “Miss Pridmore that’s just not right.  Jerry started it.”

“That’s enough Jack Jack.  You go stand in the hall with Pat.”

After homeroom, Pat and Jack Jack fell into step on each side of me like guardian angels, and we headed for Biology, another class we shared.  That’s where I met Edward and Tim, who had already grabbed two of the five desks on the last row in the room.  Pat, Jack Jack, and I took the other three.  A couple of minutes later the bell rang and the teacher, Mr. Hall, finally turned from the blackboard where he had been writing a welcome and the first week’s assignments.

As soon as he was facing the class everyone hushed.  Slowly his eyes swept the room.  When they got to the back row he made eye contact with each of us starting with Tim and ending with Pat.  Then he said, “Mr. Shaw, it appears you’ve added a new member to the gang.”

“Yes Sir, Mr. Hall.  This is Lee.  He’s from Alabama.  He’s new to Elksville, and he needed someone to show him around.” 

Mr. Hall considered that for a second then said, “Are you sure the four of you are the best choice for the job?”

Jack Jack replied, “There’s no one better than us, Mr. Hall.”

That broke the tension in the room, and someone even had the courage to laugh before quickly stifling it.  Mr. Hall’s gaze shifted to Jack Jack.  “Jack Jack, you four would not have been my choice for guides, but be that as it may, no disturbances from the back of the room.  Is that understood?”

The four original members of the gang replied as one, “Yes, Mr. Hall.”

Pat elbowed me in the ribs, and a half a beat later I added, “Yes, Mr. Hall.”

Though I didn’t realize it then, that was the moment I officially became the fifth member of The Gang.

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You never forget the people and the events that make you what you are, and more than anyone or anything else in my life, my gang influenced and shaped my life.  We went through high school together.  And to many people’s surprise, we graduated together.  On graduation night, we even agreed to go in business together.  At the graduation party, while everyone was drinking and hitting on each other, we sat in the corner and went through about a hundred paper napkins, sketching out our business plan. 

The next day, we pooled every penny we had and then counted the pile of crumpled bills and loose change we’d put in the middle of Pat’s dining room table.  The total was $363.78; enough for everything we needed to open My Gang’s Fresh Catfish.  Elksville is located on the Apalachicola River between Gerald and Apalachicola Bay.  Next to our love for each other, our second love was the river.  We each had a small boat, each a third or fourth-hand outboard motor, and like Huck Finn, we practically lived on the river.  A commercial catfish venture was a natural for us.  To the surprise of our parents, former teachers, and classmates, we were a success from the beginning.  I can only imagine where the company would have gone if John Kennedy hadn’t discovered Vietnam.

Six months after we started the business, we realized that we were going to be drafted.  Before that could happen we visited our friendly U.S. Army Recruiter and made a deal.  We didn’t want much, just to stay together.  That was so easy the old sergeant had trouble keeping the grin off his face.  Five months later we followed each other off the chartered Northwest Orient 707 at Binh Hoa, South Vietnam.

We were as successful in Vietnam as we had been in our catfish business and surprisingly we found we rather enjoyed the place and the work.  For the first time, we felt appreciated for our work.  Pat was promoted to Staff Sergeant with waivers for time in service and time in grade; Tim, Jack Jack, Edward, and I were each Specialist Four, one pay grade below Pat. 

We reenlisted for three more years and stayed in Vietnam.   Two months into our third tour, I came down with a major ear infection.  It was so bad the flight surgeon wanted to ship me to Japan, but I talked him out of it by agreeing to stay in the dispensary until I was well.  I didn’t have a problem with that, because the infection made me so dizzy I couldn’t walk. 

The gang came to visit every night after flying their missions.  Then one night they didn’t show.

************

That happened almost fifty years ago.  In those fifty years I’ve been married twice, divorced once and widowed once.  I made a lot of money with my company, Online Performance Auto Parts.  When Margie, my wife, died, three years ago, I sold the company and cleared over five million dollars from the transaction.  That’s not a bad return from a one thousand dollar initial investment, not to mention the fact that it supported me and Margie in fine fashion for over ten years before I sold it. 

Margie and I didn’t have children.  I don’t belong to a church or social organization.  There is no one left in my life that I care about.  Since I sold the company my gang is never far out of my thoughts… thoughts that usually end up with me wondering what would have happened if I’d gone on that last mission with them.  Would we be together now, wherever they are?  And as weird as it sounds I knew that we would be, just like I know that Pat, Tim, Edward, and Jack Jack have been together every moment since that day.

Without conscious thought I began building the car for no clear reason that I could find, though I didn’t think about it too much as I worked.  About half way through the construction a thought began running through my mind like the words of a song you hear and can’t shake.  The thought was this car will take you home.   I couldn’t shake the idea and I didn’t have a clue what it meant.  I just kept working.

That thought was running through my mind like a mantra when I pushed the car out of the garage for its maiden run.  Long before I fired it up, I began thinking of the car as the beast.  The night I turned the key and heard the two electric fuel pumps begin moving high octane fuel to the two monster Carter carburetors on top of the high-rise manifold bolted on top of the 650 horsepower Chrysler Marine Hemi engine, I knew I had christened it correctly.

I live just off Highway 431, half way between Guntersville and Huntsville, Alabama.  I drove slowly down my long driveway, monitoring the gauges and listening to the engine.  All the readings were normal, better than normal actually.  As the car moved forward, it rocked back and forth, an effect of 650 horsepower ready to be unleashed.

At the highway, I waited for a north bound tractor trailer to pass, and then I pulled onto the asphalt and turned south.  There was no traffic ahead.  I looked in the review mirror and noted there was no traffic behind.  I overcame the urge to slam the accelerator to the floor and compromised.  I fed it fuel at a fast but controlled rate.  At fifty, I shifted into second gear, engaged the clutch and increased the fuel flow.  At ninety, I shifted to third, and though I didn’t intend it to happen the rear tires broke loose for a moment, and left rubber on the cooling pavement.  I smiled to myself, as the thought that the machine was the vehicle that would take me home transformed from a faint idea to a knowing; a knowing that I was going home – I was about to rejoin the gang.  At 125 miles per hour, I shifted into fourth.  For the first time, the engine smoothed out and began to show just what it could do.  I’d installed a 160 MPH digital speedometer in the center of the dash.  At 140 I shifted into fourth and a few seconds later the sending unit that fed the speedometer fried.  I felt the front end getting light and out of the corners of my eyes I realized that the landscape on both sides of the highway was an indistinct blur.  The silly grin on my face grew until…..

****************

Jimmy Griggs, an Alabama Highway Patrolman for eleven months and twenty-one days was parked in the entrance of an abandoned dirt road about a hundred feet from Highway 431.  He heard the car coming even before he saw its headlights through the bushes that hid him from the view of south bound traffic.  He had never heard an engine that sounded like that.  He cranked the cruiser and waited.  Three seconds later a set of highlights flashed by his hideout.  In spite of his knowledge of automobiles, he didn’t have a clue what make or model of automobile had just blown by him.

In one motion, he turned on his head lights, blue lights, and siren as he smashed the accelerator to the floorboard.  The cruiser fishtailed onto the road.  It took all of Jimmy’s attention to bring the vehicle under control.  With that accomplished, he raised his eyes and looked ahead.  The road was straight for three miles and it was empty, totally empty.  He braked, pulled off the highway, turned off all the lights and shut down the engine.  He got out of the car and moved to the middle of the south bound lane.  Standing there patrolman Griggs listened for any hint of a mechanical sound; an engine, squealing tires, even an accident.  He listened like he never listened in his life.  All he heard were normal night sounds; crickets, a few tree frogs, and the occasional pop from the cooling engine of his cruiser.  Then he heard and seconds later felt the soft sound of a fresh breeze coming from the south.  It rustled the grass and the scrub bushes on the side of the road and finally it caressed his face.