part 1 of the story
It Ain’t Necessarily So (After(1)“You’ll Be Sorry”)
Charles Hayes
The 1st took 86 rounds of 82mm mortars that night and many wounded, mostly from the administration section which had taken a couple of hits right next to their hooch. Two people were killed in action. One was a captain who had only been in country two weeks. He was standing up outside his hooch and giving directions when a big piece of shrapnel took out a large chunk of his neck, killing him instantly. The other one, which I refused to believe at first, was my friend. He had been riddled from head to toe. When they removed his radio, along with the worthless flak jacket, one of his arms came off. He had almost made it to the bunker line when he got hit. One of the black grunts jumped out of the trench and drug him in. He later told me that my friend never knew what hit him. A couple of weeks after that the grunt received the bronze star with combat V for valor. My friend got a purple heart and an aluminum box. His war was over.
***
“You’re a dingbat,” Archie Bunker said. “Everybody knows that colored people don’t eat other fruits if there is watermelon available.”
The crowded room of TV watchers burst out laughing. I was already uncomfortable. I pulled into myself even more while at the same time trying to act like I also thought it was funny.
Out of the Marines and back from the war for just a couple of days, I had not heard of “All in the Family.” Nor had I been exposed to the hippie culture sweeping the country. While grinning like a fake Cheshire cat and trying to swallow the huge lump in my throat, I looked around at the laughing people in the small apartment living room. Even one of my older friends back from Vietnam before me seemed truely amused. Was I stuck somewhere beyond society at large? In most things I felt that way. Even when it came to dating there was some existential element missing. I knew about the Civil Rights Act and how it had begun to change society. My highschool had participated in some of the first Appalachian school segregations. It had gone smoothly and many of the hill people of my area had started to change. In only the year I had been at war could all that have collapsed so deeply? More than a little confused with the shock of coming home from war, I was in a constant state of anxiety. Maybe when I returned to college in a couple of weeks I could concentrate on my studies and find some niche to really return home. It had to be better than the puppet life I felt I was living. Plus, since the Veterans Administration would pay the cost, it was a way for me to go on. I had no real desire to enter the workforce and I didn’t even know about unemployment benefits. My ambition reservoir was empty but that did not make me uncomfortable. I was more than ready for the counterculture.
Having walked into the free love environment of the University, I gradually adjusted to this new way of life. There was support where there had been none earlier and since I could no longer be drafted, I felt kind of privileged. It was time for fun but there was always a lot of insecurity. The drinking and drugs managed to mask that most of the time. The same might be said for much of the student body. The University more or less provided a bubble for such behavior. I liked the bubble. Rat races other than the ones in Experimental Psychology Labs were not for me. But with time all things must pass and, having acquired a wife by that time, I was looking at graduation. However my wife, Julie, had radically different perspectives when it came to that.
(2)Julie was a New Jersey girl and a fine artist. Her art work and good looks were what initially drew me to her. Half Italian, she had a fiery temperament that pursued life as a course that must be accomplished, come hell or high water. Ambition was its driving force. She wanted to go to Boston and leap for the golden ring after graduation. While I was attracted to most parts of her personality, I wanted no more war of any kind. Whether it be on the lands of others or on the wheel to the golden ring. Discovering my wife’s rapacious ambition and hidden agenda for the big city thoroughly surprised me. I was suddenly faced with a war of the spouses or acquiesce. I wanted neither.
While waiting for the cap and gown ceremony, which I would not attend with Julie, I tried to change her mind.
“Haven’t we had fun here in the mountains? Clean air, pretty rivers,” I said. “Out there we will not be protected like we are here? My grades are good, I know the faculty, and I can go to graduate school.”
“No,” Julie replies. “I have a friend in Boston, he can put us up until we get our own place and find work. We need more money.”
“I know we don’t have much money but I still have educational benefits left and I can put in more hours at the bar. The city is crowded and dirty. Here the air is clean and though West Virginia might be a little backward, it is beautiful.”
“I hate WestVirginia !!”
Surprised not only by her hatred but also by her avarice, I rolled over. Despite my successes at school and getting through an unwinnable tour of duty, I needed Julie perhaps a bit too much. And she needed me to take her where she wanted to go. For me that was enough. I could never rescue enough. I began to load the VW.
Almost next to the Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park and a short walk to Kenmore Square, Peterborough Street, with its affordable apartments, became a quick home for me and Julie. We both found jobs and began to enjoy the nice places of the city like The Commons and the summer concerts that were held there. In that Spring and Summer of 1972 Boston was a welcoming place for young people. Sunny days along the Charles River with its nice bicycle path for bike rides to work in Waltham, enhanced our young years. It began a time of liberalism for me except for the failure of my vote against my old Commander and Chief. However, McGovern did carry the State of Massachusetts but it was the only one. For me that was really hard to believe. How could all those people vote for Nixon? Most of Boston liked McGovern and the peace movement. I was standing at the main transit station in Harvard Square when John Wayne came through there riding a tank in support of the war. The people, though surely curious, didn’t appreciate it. Neither did I. I only saw the killing.
At home, as summer turned to fall, life with Julie was becoming strained. My resistance to the status quo and getting ahead while you can made me an alien to Julie. With bigoted and superstitious opinions she would target me for my lack of ambition. And equate that with my worth. In my defense, I tried to give it back but I didn’t have the talent nor the stamina for it. After so long a time and with absolutely no thought to it, almost like Pavlov’s dog that would salivate when presented with a certain object, I would lash out. And suddenly, I would be wrong...a loser.
I left.
***
The third floor apartment over the bar where I was again employed had burned out. The windows were gone and the snow blew through the charred interior almost covering the blankets that covered me and my mattress. Pat, my upper floor neighbor popped out of an adjoining doorway and invited me over for a little pot gathering. I crawled out from my nest and followed him over to his place. It was just him, Amy, his girlfriend, and me. They had a repaired room, electricity and a little space heater to go with their mattress and blankets. To me it seemed like a big step up. It was warm. For a little while we smoked and talked and the abject poverty that we all shared was irrelevant.
As I returned to my nest so Pat and Amy could get naked I knew my life could be worse. There could be no neighbors. Or neighbors who were Julie’s Bostonian friends that had me pegged for a hillbilly miscreant.
I had not gotten through even a semester of graduate school before withdrawing. My life was just serving up tons of beer and cooking short orders during the afternoon and evenings. Of course the rent was free which provided cheap labor for the bar. Noone complained. It was just sort of a hand to mouth existence where I and the others lived day to day.
Jobs came easy for me. By spring I had a better place to live and was delivering flowers for a local florist. I never completely cut my ties to the bar. By helping repair one of the burned out apartments I was able to make a cheap home of it.
The bar was the center of my life. It was where my social skills and philosophical leanings were most relevant. I only worked to eat. I admired Thoreau and, like him, I didn’t let my life become my work. It was to be my sport. I had always taken that seriously and had even paid homage to the remains of his cabin at Walden Pond. Maybe Julie had known this all along and had only used me for in-state tuition. But I had loved her. Maybe I still did.
One day when I returned from a long flower run and entered the shop the manager stopped me with an uncharacteristic smile while at the same time seeming to appraise me and my impending reaction.
“There was a pretty girl with a black and white beagle in here looking for you,” she said.
My heart seemed to drop to my stomach. I only knew one person like that.
“Was she dark haired and kinda short?”
“Uh huh, I told her you were on a run. She just thanked me and left.”
I didn’t know how but somehow Julie had found me. I must find her?
I couldn’t. Waiting at the bar, for I knew that that was where she might look, I drank too much and started a fight. In short, I made a bad mistake and got my ass kicked good. I stumbled home and looked in the mirror at my swollen face and black eyes. That’s when Julie walked in.
It was just a matter of minutes before we were in bed. Passions were high, particularly with Julie and her passionate crescendos. Like several other times during such situations she burst out with words that completely surprised me.
“Oh my God! Your face!! You really are a redneck, aren’t you!?”
I knew she didn’t expect an answer, that she was just emoting, but I never forgot it. Her Bostonian elites had thoroughly indoctrinated her about me. However, I knew that her words were about as far from the truth as one could get. Still I loved her. That had to somehow be more powerful than the influence of the ignorant natives she had fallen in with. In love’s afterglow the happiness of being together ruled all including Julie’s ambition and my lack of anger control. We decided that in two weeks I would return to Boston. That was it. Life was like today’s Nike check mark. I would do it. Promptly, she was gone, back to Boston.
My job enticed me to stay but it was useless. In a week I tied some things to the sissy bar of my motorcycle and took the back roads north toward Boston.
I spent a couple of days camping and while going through the New York Catskills I stopped to have a look at Rip Van Winkle Mountain. When I stopped for gas I listened for the sounds of a bowling alley. Hearing none, I asked a gas station worker if I was in the right place. He assured me that I was and said that Rip had already awoken and was wandering about. His friendly chatter and jovial words welcomed me back to the North. It felt good.
I got to Boston a little early and found Julie living with an older woman and her brother in a large house just off Commonwealth Avenue. It was a little further out and more refined than the Peterborough/Fenway section of the city. Julie was a little standoffish and subdued about my arriving early. That warning sign was not lost on me but I was committed and doing my best. It was many bridges and a long way back to the South. I tried to be nice to everybody but I could tell that the older woman was one of the new generation of man haters. She pushed constantly for a match in tennis which I had not really played since long before the war. When finally she beat me she puffed around like she was some sort of Billie Jean King. I absolutely didn’t care about the match. Actually, I was glad that I had lost. I had known that my visit there would get worse otherwise.
Right away I got another job at the research center where I had previously worked. However this time they hired me in my field.
The Behavioral Sciences Unit of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Research Center For Mental Retardation was located on the grounds of the Fernald State School for the Mentally Retarted in Waltham, Massachusetts. It was a nice place to work and some of the people I worked with were renowned in the new and expanding philosophies of mental health. It was a really good break. There had been no interview, introduction, or anything else. They knew me and simply hired me on the spot. I stepped into some of the most forward mental health research in the nation. There were no hillbilly miscreants located there. The idea of having one would have been laughable. My slight lilt and clipped words were only what they were.....an accent. The pay was decent and it allowed me to approach Julie about starting over with our own place. I figured that the people we lived with wanted me gone but wanted Julie to stay. When everybody found out about my quick new job dark smirks disappeared and the private chumminess with Julie increased. I was not paranoid about what was going on. I wanted my wife back and I knew that paranoids also have real enemies. Quickly I got a large bottle of “the people’s” wine to celebrate my job and took Julie outside on a nice day for the occasion. She had to leave some sort of private conversation with the older woman to accompany me outside and seemed not that happy with my employment luck. Just surprised, almost to the point of being shocked. She quickly put on a judgemental, somewhat removed demeanor when I spoke of getting back together. I had come back to Boston to be with her. Surely this was what had been intended.
“Julie, we can get our own place and be together again. You don’t have to worry about any of the bills. I will take care of everything.” I said. “Just please don’t fight me so hard about how I do things.”
Already negatively fired up, Julie almost screamed, “What?! I am not your slave!!! There are too many things you just can not do properly!! Your attitude is all wrong and it brings me down!! Your sign is water and mine is fire. Your water always puts out my fire!! You’re not right for me! You’re not right for anybody!! You always mess everything up!! You..you’re....not good.........!!!
I had to interrupt, “That’s crazy! You’re not being fair about this! What do you want from me? What do you want me to do?...... Hit you?”
“Yes!!!!”
I shook my head and stared at the grass beneath our feet. It was over.
The next day the older woman said that she was acquainted with someone in Newton who needed a housemate. She indicated that, to her, he was a little strange. Coming from her, that meant nothing to me. I left immediately.
The house was big and my housemate was strange to Julie’s housemate because he was a smart, divorced M.I.T. graduate pioneering the evolution of the computer age. He mostly traveled on business and was gone a lot. We got along well and never had a cross word between us. The neighborhood was a secluded, quite Jewish area with easy access to work and the other parts of the Boston area. I liked it there. It was a good place to come home to, sit at the kitchen table, look out the window that overlooked a nice quiet park, and drink cocktails or straight up and chasers until bedtime. For a couple of years I did little else. Julie stopped by a couple of times early on. One time to be serviced and one time for moral support after a lost love. For the lost love visit we went to the sea. I fished and she sun bathed. It was mostly a quiet time but when we talked I gave her moral support because she was hurt. However I kept it out of the erotic realm. I didn’t want to be used as a pick me up again. That was the last time I saw her. Except for motorcycle rides to the Berkshire Mountains most of my recreation came from the work place during breaks and after work with the people that worked there. That was until I met the sister of one of my co-workers at an after work softball game. Her name was Mandy Black.
Enjoy the remainder of this story in the next issue of cc&d magazine...
(1)”You’ll Be Sorry”: Charles Hayes CC&D Magazine
(2)”High Road”: Charles Hayes CC&sD Magazine
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