Authors: John M. Del Vecchio
“Oh Babe ... wait.” She sat up.
“I’m sorry. But it’s getting late.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s just about six.”
“Oh God! They’re all in the basket, Tony.” She yawned.
“I looked.”
Linda sighed. She rose, groggily slipped into her satin bathrobe. “It’s freezing in here. Why don’t you have your shirt on?”
“You said you’d rub that cortizone cream into my shoulders.”
“Oh. Yeah. You really should see a dermatologist.”
“Maybe. If this doesn’t work. But I gotta do somethin cause carrying those boards is killin me.”
For the next half hour Linda readied Tony for work—including remaking his sandwiches and repacking his lunch. When he went to leave, he kissed her tenderly, squeezed her ass with one hand, rubbed a breast with the other. She shook him off. “Babe, don’t do that. Go. I’ll see you tonight. What are you going to do about school?”
Things had changed, perhaps had changed the moment two weeks earlier when Tony had grabbed Linda’s head and thrown her from the bed. There had been no sex between them. Linda dismissed it as exhaustion from work, school, taking care of the apartment and her husband, and growing the fetus. She had no desire to have Tony.
Early evening, the blasting revs of the Harley filled the alley, then died. A few moments later, “There’s a card from your folks, Babe. Must of got held up in the mail. You’re home early.”
“Huh?” His utterance was curt.
“A card from—”
“I heard you.” Tony plopped down on the couch. “Those assholes,” he said. His voice was controlled but bitter. “I’m so fuckin tired of working with assholes. I’ve seen things they can’t even imagine. And I’m a good worker.”
“What happened?” Linda sat on the coffee table opposite him.
“Nothing. I’m just so damn tired. And you should see the crap they’re building. None of em give a flyin leap. With my hands”—he held up his right hand, examined it as if it were a bear paw—“I could push over one of those boxes. They grease the fuckin nails so they slide in. But by the time they finish a wall the nails are already poppin out. Shit! Those condos aren’t rigid until they slap up the sheetrock!”
“Did you say something?”
“I told Stites. I told a couple of guys I was working with. They look at me like I’m nuts.”
“What did Mr. Stites say?”
“He gave me some bullshit about meeting code. Half the guys nip Old Grand Dad or toke up.”
“You don’t.” Linda got up, stepped to the stereo shelf where she’d left the card.
“Maybe some.” Tony leaned forward. His arms hung limp from his shoulders, his fury spent. “I’m not a goddamn head. Not by a long shot. And I’m no juicer. But, Babe, if I get fired—”
“Would they?”
“We ... this weekend ... down on the cape ... maybe we should put it off.”
Linda handed Tony the card, sat beside him, put a hand on his shoulder. Lethargically he opened it. “For Our Son With Love ...”
Under the verse Josephine had added:
Lovingly, Mom and Dad. We’re anxious to have you and Linda here for Thanksgiving, with John, Joe and Mark. I get to see Joey at least several times a month, but you and Linda seem so far away. Here it is your birthday and I’m talking Thanksgiving. But we want to see you. Call collect.
P.S.: Johnny’s bringing home his new girlfriend.
“Tony, will you read this now?”
“Naw, Uncle James, I don’t think I oughta. You know, not here at the table. Later.” They were at his mother’s house. Earlier Tony had been upset. He’d wanted Linda to see the Pisano family Thanksgiving tradition, contrast it with last year. “We decided to do it different this year,” Josephine had said. “This year we’ll be like Lutzburgh. With a turkey.” “Ma,” Tony had objected. “You gotta be kidding. No pasta! No braciola! Geez. For this I coulda taken Linda to HoJo’s.” And he’d been upset by Aunt Helen’s presence and by the beginning of Jimmy’s letter, which he’d started in the kitchen.
“Please,” Aunt Isabella said. Everyone had finished eating. “Really, we can’t make heads or tails of it.”
“Read it later, Tony,” John Sr. said. “In private.”
“It’s not good dinner talk,” Tony agreed. He cut and served himself second servings of the apple and pumpkin pies.
“Hey, Tony.” Joe pointed at Tony’s plate. “Who’s pregnant anyway? You or Linda?”
Aunt Helen pinched his cheek. “He is getting a little heavy, isn’t he?”
Linda patted his cheek on the other side, “I like it,” she said. “And with all the lifting he’s doing”—she socked his chest—“look how strong he is.”
“Geh-yett off it!” Tony poked Linda’s belly. “I know what the scale said when
you
stepped on it....”
“That’s enough!” Josephine stopped him. “She has to gain. It’s not healthy if she doesn’t. Now read!”
“Ma! Even Pop says no.”
“Don’t ‘Ma’ me. You sound like a cow. Read.” John Sr. quietly excused himself, left the table.
“Geez.” Tony flashed his hands straight up. “Okay. But ...” He read aloud.
Dear Mom and Pop,
Save these notes for me. Mr. K. was up here from Saigon for four hours. I overheard him talking to our head honchos (the top brass, Pop). This is evil. I would have expected it from LBJ but I thought Nixon would be different. You know I’ve developed a deep compassion for the South Viet Namese people and for their military forces. I’ve worked and lived extensively with Popular Forces. [You can rewrite this and send it to the newspapers.] I’ve lived at hamlet level, I’ve helped set up CAFs (combined action forces)—training mostly old men and young kids to defend their villages. I love it. I love them. There’s no getting around it. They are superb. They might be rice farmers but they want to learn. They want to be able to defend themselves. They treat me and all CAP and CAG personnel with a great deal of respect. I have shared food with them, slept in bunkers with them, stood watch, gone on patrol with them. Although they are peasants, they are better soldiers than us simply because they know how to walk in their own area, down their own paths, through their own groves. We don’t. We learn, but they’ve known since childhood. And they know who belongs and who doesn’t. I teach them how to tear down an M-14 or an M-1 carbine, how to shoot straight, how to build a bunker, drive a jeep, make up a watch schedule, call in artillery when they’re attacked. I thought I could teach them about moving at night. Forget it. They taught me! These guys don’t have uniforms. They’ve got old weapons—some impossible to get ammo for. Still they’ve developed into a force to be reckoned with. Constantly they come to us with information (to MIT—Military Intel Team). We have come to depend upon them—they depend on us.
That’s why that bastard from Saigon has me so riled. What I overheard was this. “We’re pulling out. Don’t tell anybody,” K said. “We’re going to pull out and let the communists have the country.” He told them, absolutely instructed them, “Don’t waste your people on the indigenous population. Cut back materiel and effort.”
I almost fragged the bastard. I think mainly he means the farthest out villages and hamlets—which is exactly where CAG operates and where we’ve had great success. How will this bode for the next circle in? Seems to me, it will make “that” circle the outer ring of our defenses.
The bottom line is this. We’ve been used. The PFs and RFs have been used too, but we’ve been used far worse. Men get used in every war, but they’re especially wasting us in this one. I think, if we really are pulling out, and who’s higher in country than K, I think we’ll see it as the dumbest thing we’ve ever done in our entire history. All our efforts, wasted! This country pockmarked for nothing.
The real sad part, if we pull out, is we will have wasted the virtues of an entire generation of American boys—its will, its patriotism, its concern for those beyond our own borders. What will be left? We are the Will. We are those who have said we will defend those who cannot defend themselves from tyranny. We are the Will. We are those who have said, “We will squeeze the trigger in defense of liberty, in defense of self-determination, in defense of self-rule.” We are the will and they are wasting us. That will have a profound and detrimental effect on America for a long time. And the South, with M-1s and M-14s, won’t be able to withstand the North. Again—for America, if we destroy the will to go
conventional
, the alternative warfare will be much more horrifying. I am the Will. The Will is being destroyed!
Tony stopped reading, stared at the letter, worked his tongue anxiously against his teeth, did not look up.
“What do you think?” Uncle James asked.
“Who’s Mr. K.?” Isabella pressed.
“What’s he talking about, ‘destroying the will’?”
Tony looked up. He felt grave. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t know.”
“Is this about the peace protestors? Burning flags, indeed! Or the Chicago Eight? Or this My Lai place?”
All Tony would say is, “I don’t know.” He read the remainder of the letter, which was cheerful, newsy. Li had sold a sketch of three marines and three PF soldiers to a major British magazine. She had sketched a portrait of Jimmy with his new rank insignia. The fighting, very sporadic, was going well for the ARVN, the RF/PF, and the Americans. Viet Namization was heavily underway farther south, but in I Corps the region’s security still depended upon the Americans.
“I still want to know about this Mr. K.,” Uncle James said.
“I see it this way,” Tony finally responded. “Jimmy’s a professional Marine now. He knows what he’s doing and I trust him. I’ve got complete faith in him.”
At dusk Tony and Linda rode through Old New Town and New New Town, circled back through Creek’s Bend, then down, across the river into Lutzburgh, up River Front Drive, past the great homes, the Mansions of the Five Families. Then they looped back behind the town offices, down Second Street to Mill Creek Road, through the Warehouse and Small Mill area, across the old truss bridge and back to Tony’s folks’ home.
All the while Tony kept feeling—I should be there. I should be helping out. I’ve left them. I should be there to help them win. He thought about K. but he didn’t know if K. was Komer or Ky, Kissinger or a code name. And all the while Linda clung to Tony’s back, trying to stay warm, trying to squeeze her husband in that special way that transmitted her love and her warmth.
“Tony,” Linda said before they got off the Harley, “you don’t know how lucky you are. This is a wonderful town. I could live here.”
So things went through November and December and into January 1970. Tony and Linda spent a shallow, walking-on-eggshells Christmas in French Creek, spent New Year’s Eve back in their own apartment. Tom McLaughlin, Chas and Cathy, Alvin Lewis and his wife Luann, and Tom and Gina, all stopped in on their way to parties but at midnight Tony and Linda celebrated alone. “It’s going to be a great year.” Linda kissed her husband.
“To the best year of our lives so far,” Tony promised. “To the three of us.”
Then came finals and Tony’s last papers. For English 101 he wrote an essay titled, “The Hidden Pullout: To Will or Not To Will.” Still he worked for Stites and Emerson, a mule in the coldest month of the year. On the twelfth of January Tony received his first grade, a B in Western Civilization. Then came a C in Spanish, C in Biology and B in Religion. Linda was thrilled. On the cold night of the seventeenth Tony rode in from Watertown, the wind in his face numbing his nose, his lips, his unshaven face even through two layers of scarf, freezing the skin of his exposed forehead above his goggles, below his now long thick dark hair and the brim of his watch cap. He refused to wear the Bell Star he’d purchased—except when Linda rode behind him. He stopped at BU to see if Groesbeck had posted grades. “Incomplete,” was written opposite his name.
He was dumbfounded. He stumbled away, muttering, anger growing, hoping it was a mistake, thinking he’d have to come back during the day, miss half a day’s work, talk to Groesbeck. Then he rethought the conversation he’d had with Groesbeck where the man had agreed that Tony could turn in his essays at Groesbeck’s office. Now Tony thought Groesbeck had played him, had fucked him because he didn’t like him, fucked him because of the “Hidden Pullout” essay, the “will to squeeze the trigger” paragraph. Tony went back to Groesbeck’s door, rechecked his grade. He checked the entire list. All of Groesbeck’s Girls, including Nguyen Thi An, had received A’s; the plain-looking and the boys had all received B’s; Tony’s grade was the only variant.
For half an hour Tony circled the blocks about BU. He crossed the BU bridge into Cambridgeport, circled, came back, putted in and around the apartments of the thousands of students who occupied much of the area. Vaguely he searched for An, vaguely—thinking he’d ask her if she knew Mr. K. from Saigon. He’d learned she was from Saigon—that her family had a home in the resort area near Da Lat. Her father was an importer and an adviser to President Thieu.
A week later Groesbeck withdrew Tony’s incomplete, changed the grade to an F for “missing more than half the classroom hours.” Tony was confused. At first he did not recognize that his 2.3 grade point average without his English mark was now a 1.875 average, and that as a “conditional” freshman he was on academic probation; he did not realize that he could not work days and be a full-time day student; did not understand that he had, in effect, dropped out. When the realization hit him he bought two pints of Jack Daniel’s, shared one with the carpenters, drank one himself, and late afternoon on the twenty-sixth of January, 1970, James Stites of Stites and Emerson Construction of Boston, fired Anthony F. Pisano, also of Boston, for “drinking on the job.”
So things went and thus it was two days later Tony was in the apartment when the phone rang.
Tony is slumped on the couch. Linda is in the study. From the stereo, volume low, seeps the rich voices of Gary Puckett and the Union Gap...something about trying so hard, about striving, about her not coming around. Tony tenses up.
Outside it is cold, the wind of Commonwealth Ave. rattles the old French doors, teases its way though cracks to puff out the curtain. Tony’s eyes are shut. In two days he has not slept for more than one hour straight, has not slept when not stoned or drunk in weeks. He has been thinking about school, about jobs, about Linda and the baby.... The song doesn’t want their love to crumble... Tony has not carried a single thought to completion but as each solution begins to congeal in his mind, he allows it to be replaced with words from one of his albums. He worries because he is not union, has not yet joined, word might spread he’d been drinking on the job—actually that he was a troublemaker, greased nails indeed!—and in the dead of winter jobs were scarce; that Linda at five months pregnant would slow down, would soon need to take a leave of absence—he’d spent too much money on weed, on booze, on accessories for Jimmy’s Harley—there isn’t much in their accounts. He wants Linda to quit work, wants her to want to quit—some level, not conscious—she is working, he isn’t; she is going to school, he isn’t; she is handling the apartment, food, clothes, bills, he isn’t. He lifts his legs, flops, scrunches deeper into the cushions, flips restlessly. He opens his eyes, cranes his neck, stares through the curtain at the muted dusk, looks up, about the room, back to the French doors, the billowing curtain. He sits up, his feet still on the sofa, scratches his shoulder, scratches his right thigh at the scar, crashes back onto the couch jamming his eyes into the pillow, forcing the pillow to force his eyes to stay shut. He feels as if the music is guiding him.... Still he can see light. ...molding him like clay... Babe, you can be my sculptor. Up again, down again. He puts the pillow over his face, tries to let his mind run on its own, go its own course ... tell me what to do ... He hasn’t thought about it in a long time but suddenly he can see Annalisa, naked, with Shepmann, held by Roy. The image is pleasant, disgusting, exciting, like watching a porno flick, gross, she is his cousin and he knows they are about to hurt her. His mind floats.... There is Dai Do. There is Jimmy at Dai Do.