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Karma

William Ogden Haynes

Bien Hoa Air Base, Republic of Vietnam 1964
    It took twenty-two hours to get from the Oakland Army Base in California to Bien Hoa Air Base. There, Private First Class John Mattingly was greeted by a wall of heat that felt like entering a sauna. Not only was it beastly hot but he was entering an unknown realm from which he may never return. As he pondered this depressing notion, his attention was drawn across the tarmac to a group of soldiers laughing and cutting-up like kids on summer vacation. They were about to board a plane called the “freedom bird” that would take them back to the world. A world John Mattingly had just left. A world that also had its hot days, especially in the summer on the south side of Chicago.
Seven Years Earlier, Chicago Illinois, Summer 1957
    “Come on you chicken shit. They’re at work this afternoon and we’ll just be there a minute or two” said twelve year old John Mattingly to his friend Stephen Cohen. They were hiding in the bushes by the Russell’s back yard. One of John’s favorite activities was to visit the back patio of the Russell family who lived one block away from his the three story brownstone on the south side of Chicago. The Russells stored wooden cases containing bottles of Coca-Cola behind their house. Regularly, John would sneak onto their patio when they were still at work and pilfer a bottle or two for his own enjoyment but today Stephen was his accomplice.
    “You sure we won’t get caught? I don’t need any more trouble with my parents” said Stephen.
    John looked at him with his hands outstretched “Easy peazy Japanezy man. I’ve done it a hundred times.”
    In a minute John said “One, two, three go!” and the boys ran full tilt toward the patio, picked up a Coke and beat a return path into the bushes, pausing there to see if anyone came out of the Russell house. When the coast was clear, they jogged a block further down the alley that made a corridor between back yards of houses on Ridgeland Avenue and Cregier Street. Further down the alley John showed Stephen how to open the bottles by catching the edge of the metal cap on the top of a fence post and hitting the top of the bottle with his palm heel. The cap would come off and he would have to quickly suck the foam from the newly opened bottle before it ran down the side. Although it was warm, the Coke tasted good and the refreshment was even better because it was free. But it wasn’t just that. It was because they had stolen it without being caught and that was the sweetest thing of all.
    They were out of breath from running down the alley. “I’ve never stolen anything before” Stephen murmured between taking deep breaths and sips of cola. Stephen was also twelve years old and lived in the building next to John on Ridgeland.
    “Well, now you have Steverino! We’re partners in crime!” said John laughing his infectious chuckle that got Stephen cackling too. And indeed, that turned out to be the beginning of their crime spree during the hot summer vacation of 1957.
    John’s parents Millie and Jack, were good friends with next door neighbors Ethyl and Harry Cohen. Both mothers were housewives. John’s father taught engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology and Harry Cohen owned a clothing store downtown in the Loop. The mothers were ecstatic that their sons were old enough to entertain themselves during the summer so the boys would not interfere with the morning routine. At least three days a week, after their husbands went off to work, Ethyl and Millie would go to one or the other’s apartment, have coffee and watch their television show As the World Turns. After eating a light lunch, they would return to their respective apartments for an afternoon of cleaning, cooking and laundry.
    John and Stephen were loners who had few other friends and spent much of their time reading, watching television and jointly playing with miniature plastic army men. You know, the kind that come in a large plastic bag from the dime store. When Stephen and John combined their forces they had quite a formidable army. The khaki army men were of all different types shooting rifles, pistols, mortars and bazookas. Some didn’t carry firearms but were radiomen, flag bearers and medics. They stood, knelt and lay prone on the ground to aim at their targets. The boys also had a squadron of jeeps, tanks, trucks, ambulances and half-tracks. They would place their army in elaborate configurations in the small back yard behind fortifications of stones and branches. They made buildings out of shoe boxes, cutting windows and doors in them for the soldiers to shoot from. After everything was arranged, they would spend the afternoon shooting the enemy with Red Ryder BB guns until all the men and vehicles were tipped over. Then they would gather up the men so they could be set up to fight another day.
    Both John and Stephen were members of Boy Scout troop 517 that met once a week down in the basement of the local Methodist church. Neither boy was particularly enthusiastic about being in the scouts, but their parents wanted them to join because they had agreed that it was a place to learn valuable life skills. They were convinced that building a fire, chopping wood, tying knots and earning merit badges were, as Harry Cohen put it, “Stepping stones to success.”
    In July of 1957, Boy Scout troop 517 was holding a well-publicized drive to collect money for the Cerebral Palsy Association. Ads were placed in local newspapers and flyers were put up on store bulletin boards and nailed on trees saying the scouts would be calling on residents during the month of July to collect cash donations. The troop even provided a laminated card the scouts could read to their neighbors explaining about the fund drive. So, the chute was greased and all the scouts had to do was knock on doors and talk to people who already knew they were coming.
    The first and second weeks of the fund drive the boys didn’t even go out of the back yard. They were too interested in shooting at the latest fortification of army men. But one evening after dinner both sets of parents confronted them about not participating in the troop’s effort to raise money. After all, the mothers had seen the announcements everywhere, were home all day and could see that John and Stephen never left the yard. The confrontation with both sets of parents made it clear to the boys that they at least had to make a token effort just to keep the parents off their backs. Then they could turn in a paltry sum to the scoutmaster and be done with it. So the next morning John and Stephen met in John’s room to don their scout uniforms and set out to solicit donations. The summer uniform had a short sleeved shirt, shorts and knee high stockings. The boys had to admit as they looked in the mirror that wearing the outfit made them feel special. It was impressively decked out with a hat, neckerchief, lanyard, and patches. As John said, “Who the hell could resist a couple of good-looking scouts like us?”
    The boys decided to split up and work opposite sides of the streets. So they started up by Stony Island Avenue and after two weeks had worked their way up to Jeffrey Avenue, an area of about thirty-three square blocks. John and Stephen went door to door asking whoever answered the knock to contribute, helping researchers find a cure for this dreaded neurological condition. Neither boy had the slightest idea what cerebral palsy actually was except that it turned a kid into a spaz. They even mispronounced the term as “cerebrial palsy” as they read their schpiels to potential donors on opposite sides of each street. When they would come out of each apartment building the boys would look across the street and give each other the thumbs up if they scored a donation. Both John and Stephen used old metal first aid kits into which they would place bills and change donated for the drive. Even though the boys thought they would only solicit contributions for a day or two they realized that they liked the people giving compliments on their uniforms and how they were such good boys to be helping out a worthy cause. They decided to continue the collections until the end of July. After the fund drive was over, John spent the night over at Stephen’s apartment. Ethyl made popcorn for them and they watched Shock Theatre’s presentation of The Mummy on WBKB. After lights out, John and Stephen brought out their metal boxes and under the illumination of a Boy Scout flashlight, counted the money they had collected. In two weeks they had accrued over $450.00 mostly in contributions of five dollars or less.
    “Steve, I’ve been thinking. Why should we give all this money to those fucking spazmos? I think we deserve it after all our work” said John.
    Stephen looked up from the pile of money. “You’re not thinking of keeping the money. The scoutmaster would find out because people have seen us on the street collecting it.”
    John replied, “No, I’m just saying we should take a cut. No one will notice. Besides there isn’t a record of how much each person gave except what we write down. We didn’t have to give them receipts of anything. We didn’t take checks so they just gave us some spare cash they had laying around. Besides, we are still going to turn in most of the money to the troop so no one will be the wiser. Think of how many more army men we could buy and maybe a couple of those new Crossman CO2 powered BB guns.”
    Stephen pursed his lips. “This isn’t just stealing a couple of Coke bottles. We could get into really big trouble for this.”
    “Well, the Coke bottles didn’t get us in any trouble and neither will this. Don’t be such a pussy” smirked John.
    The following week each boy put $125.00 into an envelope and turned it in to the assistant scoutmaster at the weekly meeting, keeping $100.00 each. John kept his money in the metal box hidden under some games in the bottom of his closet. Stephen buried his box under a bush in the back yard.
    Three weeks later John and Stephen walked down to Sears and bought two new Crossman BB guns. Ironically, it was Stephen who came up with the strategy. The boys knew that their parents would certainly notice two new BB guns and wonder where they got the money to buy them. While John and Stephen received a $5.00 weekly allowance for doing chores it would have taken them many months to save the money to buy a $50.00 rifle. So, Stephen noted that since none of their parents were active in the scouting program they would have no communication with the scoutmaster. The boys could walk the few blocks to the church for meetings and the parents didn’t even have to drop them off. That’s where the award for fund raising came into play. The boys would tell their parents that they were each awarded $25.00 because they were the top fund raisers in the Cerebral Palsy campaign. They would come home from the scout meeting on Friday night each holding a crisp twenty and a five dollar bill and tell the parents they tied for the fund-raising award. Not only would the parents be proud, but it would explain how they could buy new BB guns by combining their award money with their allowance savings. As John told Stephen through a fit of hilarity, “That was a fucking stroke of genius Steverino... standing there all puffed-up in our uniforms, holding up that stolen money and telling them it was an award for raising the most funds for Cerebrial Palsy...I thought I was gonna shit my pants!”
    Every day the next week Stephen and John played their war games with the new firepower provided by the Crossman Company. The army men took considerably more of a beating from the BBs traveling at a higher velocity, so the boys had to buy more plastic bags of figures to replace the soldiers who were maimed and left ragged from their daily barrage. And as the summer of 1957 ended, the two twelve year old nascent criminals looked back on it as the best summer vacation ever.
Ia Drang Valley, Central Highlands, South Vietnam 1964
    Private First Class John Mattingly was nineteen years old, a draftee and a member of the 1^st Battalion of the 7^th Cavalry Division. He and his cohorts were deposited by helicopter at LZ-X-RAY, a clearing about as large as a football field bordered by a dry creek bed to the west. Upon disembarking the UH-1 Huey, Mattingly scurried to the scant cover to await orders. Since the landing zone was so small it would not take multiple Hueys landing at the same time. Sixteen landings and takeoffs were planned, and John Mattingly was among the first.
    But his initial experience at combat would be short-lived. He was hiding behind a mound of dirt while the other soldiers were disembarking and his thoughts traveled back to the game he used to play, hiding the soldiers and then shooting at them behind inadequate fortifications. Fucking ironic...and now it ain’t no BB gun. If John had been able to track the course of the bullet shot by the sniper he would have seen it in slow-motion traveling toward him. He would have seen the bullet spiral into the area between his neck and upper back before the blackness and bleeding. John was one of the lucky few who were airlifted to a field hospital that day mainly because they could get him on a returning Huey. After getting emergency medical attention from a corpsman he was taken to Da Nang, then Clark AFB Hospital in the Philippines and finally to Great Lakes Naval Hospital north of Chicago.
Great Lakes Naval Hospital, Chicago Illinois, Winter 1965
    Captain Marcus O’Neill, MD stood at the foot of John’s bed in the hospital ward at Great Lakes Naval Hospital. He detached the patient chart hanging on the foot of the bed and started reading.
    John had been dreaming. This time it was about being a kid back on the South side and all the fun he used to have with Steve Cohen, especially in the summer of ‘57. But one lesson he had learned from his time in the army is that he would never again have a desire to shoot guns at helpless plastic soldiers hiding from the enemy. He had been in their situation and it wasn’t a good feeling. In fact he thought when he got home he would have Millie gather up all his plastic army men and put them in a place of honor on his dresser so he could see them from bed, however long he would be confined there. As he opened his eyes he said “Hi doc, how am I doin?”
    O’Neill looked up from the chart. “Well John, you’ve gone through a lot of trauma from that bullet wound. It almost completely severed your spinal cord, but luckily, it only damaged half of it. We call it hemisection of the spinal cord. You are left with what’s called Brown-Sequard Syndrome which results from partial destruction of nerve tracts going from your brain to your legs.
    He looked up at the doctor. “But I can’t move my legs when I want to anymore. Sometimes they move by themselves. They won’t straighten out.”
    O’Neill moved around to the side of the bed. “That’s called spasticity which results in unwanted muscle contractions. There is a chance that it could get a bit better with time. Some people are lucky that way. But even if it doesn’t get better, many people live a productive life even with spasticity. You know, like children who are born with cerebral palsy.”

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