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