OKINAWA, FRIDAY, 19 JUNE 1968—The day was clear, hot. He had been standing in line for nearly an hour. “NEXT,” the clerk called.
“Pisano. Anthony F. P-I-S-A-N-O.” He waited. The clerk checked the register, gave his crew the last few numbers, again rang out with a loud “NEXT.” Tony stepped to the side. The crew disappeared into the shadows of the giant Quonset hut, then reappeared with four footlockers on a roller cart.
“Okay Pisano, here it is.”
Tony looked at the footlocker. His name was stenciled in black on the top, front and sides. There was a combination lock at the hasp. He attempted several sets of numbers unsuccessfully. “Hey, ah, ya know,” he stammered at the clerk. “How am I supposed to get this open?”
“Ferget the combination?” The clerk’s tone was sarcastic.
“Listen.” Pisano almost said, Listen asshole, but he just wanted to be gone. “Yeah, I forgot it.” He smiled cheerfully. “I been in the bush for thirteen months”—he chuckled a self-degrading chuckle—“who’s goina remember a combination after thirteen months?”
“Hey, Tony,” Al Cornwall said from behind him. “I remembered mine.”
“Ha!” Jim Bellows chided. “He’s a dago. You know, you got to retrain em every few weeks or they forget everything.”
“Bite this, Bellows.” Tony grabbed his crotch, laughed good-naturedly.
“Re-mem—mem, re-mem-mem-member, re-mem-mem, re-mem-mem ...” Bellows began singing, jumping side to side.
Al cut in. “You guys hear what those guys said is happenin in Frisco?”
“Wait a minute, Man.” Tony threw his arms straight up. “I got to get this thing open.”
“They say there’s a war goin on back there,” Al said.
The clerk brought a well-used pry bar. “Ah, hot-damn. Thanks.” Tony jammed the bar behind the hasp. “I knew ya had ta have somethin like this.”
“What guys?” Bellows asked.
“These guys here are all talkin about it,” Al said. “They’re sayin there’s a thing called a hippie that’s slaughterin Marines if they catch em alone.”
“Ooof!” Tony crashed forward as the hasp snapped from the plywood. “What a hassle, Man.”
“There was a guy over at chow ... just back from the World. He’s sayin he couldn’t stand it. Sayin things like, what happens when you get to Frisco is ... you know, he had a little time so he goes to a bar nearby the airport and like ten long-haired, bearded guys surround him. He said they were goina kick his ass but the bartender pulled a pistol and escorted him out. He says it was like he was slime.”
“What’s a hippie?” A Marine farther back in line asked.
“I heard about them,” another answered. “They’re supposed to be real strange. Wear necklaces. The guys! Smoke pot. Stuff like that.”
“Shud up, Bellows!” Tony threw him the pry bar. He didn’t care about “hippies.” As he opened the locker to inspect the contents, he said, “Don’t listen to those idiots, Man. You know, they all the time.... Hey, what the fuck—this ain’t my shit.”
The clerk came over. “Says ‘Pisano, Anthony.’ That’s you.”
“Yeah, that’s me but this ain’t my stuff.”
“Those your records in there?”
“Ahhh ... no. Look! This guy was court-martialed. I’ve never been court-martialed. Honest. Ya know, maybe I deserved to be court-martialed. But I never was. Look at this guy’s shit. He wasn’t squared away, Man. Naw, that aint my service number.”
The clerk grabbed a crewman, and both disappeared with the foot-locker into the bowels of the dark hut while Jim and Al and others continued repeating rumors they’d heard about the hippies of San Francisco and Tony kicked the dry dirt showing a disgust and boredom he didn’t really feel. “This is weird, Man,” he said to his two friends.
“Yeah,” Al said. “Imagine finally gettin out a Nam only to have to fight yer way through Frisco.”
“No,” Tony said. “I mean that footlocker. It’s like there’s somebody else, you know, somebody livin my life.”
“Hey, Pisano,” the clerk called. “This one yours?”
Tony inspected the footlocker. It appeared identical to the other. He tried the combination and the lock opened. “Yeah,” he beamed. “See, dagos don’t forget.”
Anthony Pisano danced and limped through the next three days of processing on Okinawa. His leg was still hurting where he had been wounded six weeks earlier, a wound he had re-injured on his second-to-last helicopter flight in Viet Nam when the bird crash-landed at Phu Bai. He had been en route to Da Nang when the bird was hit by ground fire and the padding inside had begun to burn. The pilot had set it down fast and hard. Pisano’s right thigh muscle ripped from the jounce and the leap from the aircraft.
“Hey,” he had yelled at the pilots as ground crew immediately surrounded the bird and extinguished the flame. “You guys goina take me to Da Nang, or what?”
“Not in that,” the copilot yelled back. They both laughed. Pisano had crashed twice before, the copilot seven times. Controlled crashes. Nam craziness—hard-nosed, twenty-year-old macho. One more adventure. One more jarring to add to the body, one more nonfatal injury to laugh at.
At Treasure Island Pisano said to Jim Bellows, “Ya know, I was standing right here day I left to go overseas. We were just gettin ready to go. And I looked up there.” Bellows turned, looked. “There was some fine California woman kissin her man good-bye right up there. She had a skirt on and she had her foot up behind her like this, kind a wrapped over the lower railin, and Man, you could see all the way to Camp Pendelton.”
“Ooooo.” Bellows squeezed his arms in tight to his torso. “Oooo. OooooOoooo! Let’s go find one.”
“Yeah,” Pisano said. “If they ever let us outa here.” Tony smacked the back of his right hand into his left palm. He had received travel and leave orders that morning, but along with a hundred other Marines, they’d hit a bureaucratic snafu. Again he slammed his fist. “Man, I’m not staying here. They’re just fuckin with us.”
Bellows eyed him. “I don’t know, Man. Paperwork aint right.”
Tony opened his hands like a preacher. His eyes twinkled in the sun. “What can they do?” he asked innocently. “We got orders. They can’t keep us. That’s cuttin into our leave time. I’m beatin feet.”
“Oh Man ...”
“Hey! What can they do, huh?” Tony shrugged. “I’m just a dumb dago. Come on.”
“Okay. Let’s get Cornwall. We don’t wanta be in the airport with just two guys against all them hippies.”
“Aw, fuck em.”
“Okay,” Al Cornwall said, “this is the way it is.” The Marines had broken down into destination groups—those going to New York, to Chicago, Dallas, Philly, St. Louis, moved to their respective gates en masse. “Don’t anybody break up,” Cornwall said. “As long as we’re in a group, there’s no way anybody’s goina fuck with us.”
“Nobody’s goina fuck with us.” Pisano was eyeing an older woman sitting at a dimly lit bar off the bright corridor.
“Hey! Look! We all heard them stories on Okie, right? Maybe nobody’s goina fuck with us, but if the shit starts to fly ...”
Tony turned, leered at Cornwall, pulled his head back, smirked. “Man, there ain’t nobody here in the fuckin airport.”
“Tony.” Cornwall pulled him aside. “Look, Man, there’s an honest-to-God fear factor workin here. If somebody spits at one of these guys, they might tear em to pieces.”
“Geez! Look around. There isn’t hardly anybody in here but us. Only long-haired thing I seen so far is that old dollie with the big ba-zooms.”
“What about that creep over there?”
Pisano turned. A young man was walking down the wide corridor in their direction. He had neatly combed shoulder-length blond hair. He was wearing a three-piece business suit without a shirt. A turquoise-and-silver necklace hung against his skin. His sneakers were untied. “Hey! You!” Pisano yelled in his best DI voice, his right hand jabbing outward.
“Oh Christ.” Cornwall dropped his eyes toward the floor. Several of the Marines fell in behind Pisano. The young man paid no attention.
“Hey!” Pisano yelled again.
The man furtively glanced over.
“Yeah,” Pisano shouted. He gave the man his most-infectious smile, walked out to intercept him in the center of the corridor. “Yeah, you,” he said more quietly. “Ken I ask you a question?”
“Me?!” the young man said.
“I was wonderin,” Pisano said, “ah, see, all of us just got back from Nam and we were wonderin what a hippie is and if you’re one.”
“You’re stoned!” The young man stepped back, then sideways, turning, continuing to face Pisano as he moved down the corridor, finally backing away still in the direction he wanted to go.
“AAaaARRR!” Pisano roared.
The young man spun, ran away.
“I can’t believe you guys,” Pisano blurted between laughs. “Here you been through a year a shit and you’re worried about somethin like that.”
“Passengers holding boarding passes for rows twelve through twenty-seven may now board,” the ground attendant announced.
Pisano got up, shuffled to where other Marines and other passengers were forming a line. He shuffled slowly toward the door, feeling a bit disappointed because the attendant taking the tickets was a guy and not one of the pretty girls he’d seen at the other gates. He handed the worker his ticket and pass and then it struck him that he had forgotten something. “Ah ... wait a minute,” he said to the worker. “I’ll be right back. Don’t leave without me.”
“I can’t hold—”
Tony shouted, “I forgot to call”—he sprinted up the corridor to the phones—“my Mom.”
As Tony deplaned in Philadelphia he smiled and winked at the stewardess, leaned forward and placed an innocent peck on her cheek, then tried to ever so lightly brush the back of his hand across her thigh, barely succeeding to brush her skirt as she stepped back. He did a little jig in the lighted bulbous pod where the ramp sealed against the plane’s body. He checked his reflection in the small window, now black with night outside, then started walking up the enclosed ramp. He felt he looked sharp in his Marine Corps uniform with its three rows of ribbons, carrying his short-timer cane and attaché case, standing tall at five feet eight inches, feeling like a mountain at one hundred and forty-six pounds.
I’m a proud motherfucker, he thought. A Magnificent Bastard. I got my shit to-geth-er, rolled in a tight little ball, and the folks are goina be proud. Two-thirds of the way up the ramp he paused, switched the cane to his left hand, bent and rubbed his right thigh with the heel of his right palm, then straightened back up, threw out his chest, and marched into the terminal.
“Holy shit,” he whispered. He stopped. They grabbed him. “Uncle Joe! Mom! Pop! Who’s this? Maxene?” Thirteen friends and family surrounded him, twenty-six arms tried to hug him at once. He beamed, he hugged back, kissed. He broke loose, did a little jig, then let them hug him again.
Family was important to Tony. Indeed, it was the stories of his Uncle Joe—Tony’s childhood hero who had been a Marine in the Pacific during World War II—that had led Tony to enlist in the United States Marine Corps in August of 1965, two months after his high school graduation, three months before his eighteenth birthday. Tony’s enlistment convinced his cousin Jimmy, son of his father’s sister, Isabella, and her husband, James Pellegrino, to follow suit one month later.
His family and friends had driven down in three cars, one car with four friends from high school, guys who hadn’t gone into the military—Roy, Jack, Donny and Ken—all slapping him on the back, congratulating him, shuffling him toward the baggage claim area, two of them dropping off to try to pick up his cousin Annalisa, Jimmy’s sister, who had just graduated from high school and who was pretty without being intimidatingly beautiful. Tony stopped to let his mother and father catch up, and his eldest brother John and Uncles Joe and James and Aunt Helen, and his cousins Vinny and Maxene. Maxene, at sixteen, was a knockout.
He hugged his mother again, said to his father and uncles as he eyed Maxene, “We can’t talk here. Let’s get outa here and talk in the car. You musta rented a bus. I thought maybe just John, or John and Pa ...”
“We came in two cars.” His mother wiped tears away as she looked at him, grabbed him again, pulled him to her. She was short, coming up only to his shoulders. He winked at his friends over her head. “Your friends came in their own.” Josephine Pisano sniffed. Some strangers were glancing at them. She humbly offered an explanation. “My son. He’s just back from Viet Nam.” She hugged him again, then said, “I think Uncle James wants to ask you about Jimmy.”
“Oh yeah,” Tony said to Jimmy’s father. “I saw him last month up by Gio Linh. He’s doin great. He loves it there.”
“I know,” Uncle James said, concerned, sad. “He sent a letter saying he’s going to sign up for another tour. Isabel’s worried he’ll bring home a Viet Namese woman.”
“Aw, that wouldn’t be so bad,” Uncle Joe said from behind Tony. Joe grabbed Tony by the shoulders, clenched his hands affectionately hard. “If I hadn’t been married when I hit Japan, I might’ve brought home a little geisha girl myself. You feel pretty solid. How’s the leg?”
“I’m not worried about the girl,” Uncle James said. “He’s got that Hollands girl here to come back to. What I’m worried about—”
“Please! Please, let’s just go,” Tony’s mother said. “John, you and Joe get the cars,” she directed her brother and husband. “And Johnny, you and Vinny get Tony’s bags. I want to look at my boy.” She stopped Tony, burst into tears again, hugged him again. “If you only knew what a mother goes through. If you only knew what I’ve been through this year.”
In a few minutes John and Vinny returned with Tony’s bag. The cars were waiting. “Where do I go?” Tony asked light-heartedly. He was hoping to sit with Maxene. Annalisa had already left with his friends.
“You ride with me,” his mother said. “In Uncle Joe’s car. You can sit in back with Vinny and John. Your father and Helen like to ride together and Maxene can talk to Uncle James.”
The Pisano family house in Mill Creek Falls was on the first street to be finished in the ‘old’ New Town subdivision, which had been built between 1951 and 1957 and backed up to the much older Creek’s Bend neighborhood. Over the years Josephine Pisano repeatedly had begged John to sell the house and buy a larger one, but John opted to expand the house and to add a landscaped swimming pool as the central feature of the backyard.
It was nearly midnight. Uncle Joe turned the car onto their street. Tony’s father had arrived a few minutes earlier and Annalisa and Tony’s friends were directly behind. Tony was exhausted from the flights, the travel, the airports. His body was sore from fatigue and sleeping in seats and the jouncing from the last helicopter crash. He had finally relaxed and fallen asleep against his brother somewhere north of Allentown.
Suddenly twenty car horns were blasting him awake. “What the fuck—” He shot up, banged his head on the roof, crumpled to the floor. Lights exploded, flashed. All around people cheered, banged pots and pans, blew whistles. A banner, fifteen feet long, car lights blinking high-beam low-beam high-beam—WELCOME HOME. In the middle of the street Tony’s father stood waving an American flag.
“Hey, what the—aw, no.”
“Welcome home, Tony,” his brother John said. He opened the door, got out, turned to help. Tony froze. Vinny got out the other side, shut the door. He felt self-conscious, ducked into the crowd.
“Tony! Tony! Tony!” They began to chant.
Josephine Pisano turned and looked at her son cowering like an animal on the floor behind her seat. “Tony. What—”
“Get outa the car,” he demanded.
“Come on, Tony,” she urged.
“No,” he barked. “Get outa the car.”
“Tony!” Josephine was beside herself.
“I’m stayin here,” he snapped. He reached out, pulled the car door shut, locked it. Then, staying low, he turned, locked the other rear door.
“What’s the matter?” Josephine began. “All these people.” Her door was open. She swung her legs out but remained seated. “Nonna’s here. Uncle Frank came from Scranton. They came to see you.” The chanting waned. Popping started. Champagne. A neoprene cork thudded on the hood. Tony flinched. “Are you crazy? What are you, a ...”
“Get out,” Tony screamed. His entire body was cramping down, shaking. People began to surround the car.
“Josephine,” his uncle Joe snapped. “Get the hell out and shut that door.”
“Wha-aht?”
Tony’s arms quaked. His right thigh burned as the wounded muscle tightened. “Just get out of the car,” Joe ordered, and Josephine backed out, shocked, embarrassed, in disbelief. Joe started the engine. He backed up quickly making people scatter, then he jammed the lever into drive and sped up the street.
Tony sighed in back. He collapsed against the seat. Uncle Joe made a few quick turns and they were out of the development. “Where do you want to go?” he asked Tony.
“Just around,” Tony said. He sat up on the rear seat, then stuck his feet over the front seat and slithered into shotgun position. Joe didn’t ask anything and Tony didn’t volunteer. They descended, crossed the bridge, drove through a dark downtown, up side streets, across main roads, around the old hangouts. Tony kept his face turned to his window, seeing, remembering, reacquainting. Joe drove back toward New Town. It was after one. He turned down the street that backed to the Pisano house. The party was still going strong.
“You want to go there now?” Uncle Joe asked.
“No,” Tony said.
“You know it was your parents’ twenty-eighth wedding anniversary last week. The party’s for them too.”
“Not yet,” Tony said.
“We’ll drive around again.”
For three more hours, two tours about town and one trip to the highway for gas, Joe drove Tony. At the end of each hour they reconned the party. At four in the morning, the street quiet, only a few lights still burning in the house, they parked and went in.
The next day, before the party restarted, Tony and his father ate breakfast, alone, in silence, in the dining room. Not until they finished their rolls and juice and eggs and only lukewarm coffee remained in their cups did Tony look at his father’s face. Hundreds of images and thoughts and snatches of conversations from all his years flooded Tony’s mind. What’s it like, Pa, to kill a man? When had he asked that? Uncle Joe talked about it, why not his father? What’s this ribbon for, Pa? John Pisano had never volunteered war stories, had never displayed souvenirs. To young Tony, it was his father’s past, an era in his father’s life that Tony could not bring up even if his father did not actually hide it. The first time you’re there, Pa ... but he’d never asked, had never been told ... how do you react?
Tony did not know what he would see in his father’s face when he put his cup down, placed both palms over the table edge and looked up, but he knew what he wanted to see, what he hoped to see. I didn’t panic, Pa, he thought. Never once. Not even when I was in the tunnels extracting bodies and the guys above pulled so hard on the rope the body broke in two and they dragged it over me. Not at Loon. Not at Dai Do. Not when Manny got it while I was holdin him trying to tell him he had a million-dollar wound when the sniper blew his chest apart. Not when I got hit, even. I did my job, Pa, Tony thought. Like you did yours.
John Pisano looked at his son. For one instant his face relaxed, tension left the room. Then he bowed his head, cleared his throat. Now he kept his head down, spoke softly. “Tony,” he said, “you’ve seen things that no man can imagine unless he’s seen them too. Or done them. Not Mark, not Joey. Not even John with all his education. They’ll never understand. You’re different, Tony.” John Pisano raised his eyes, looked sadly at his son. “You’ve been to the mountain. You’ve seen ... God, I hope you handle it better than I did. Jesus God, I hope you do.”
A very much subdued family gathering ensued that evening. Tony apologized individually to each adult and twice to the entire clan. John Pisano said it had been stupid of them to surprise him like that, not even to wake him up and tell him a few blocks before they arrived. Josephine, with the help of her sister Helen and John’s three sisters and Uncle Frank’s wife, Jessie, again prepared an enormous array of food.
“All right,” Josephine called into the yard and throughout the house. “Everybody, at the table.”
“Dear Jesus,” Tony’s father began the grace. He paused as conversation stopped.
Nonna—Grandma Maria Annabella—was holding one of Tony’s hands, squeezing it, repeating over and over, “Always happy. Always dignity. Always a gentleman.”
“Help us,” John Pisano intoned, “to remember that we share life and worship with all men. Help us to defeat hatred within us and let us and all men open our hearts to love, to forgiveness, and to self-forgiveness. Let goodness and kindness come to us and let us bring these gifts to others.
“Deliver us, Dear Jesus, from every evil and teach our hearts to rejoice in Your life.” John Pisano’s voice began to break but it went unnoticed. “We are happy to be Thy children, we are grateful for Your thoughts and gifts.
“And Dear Jesus.” John Pisano stopped, he choked on the welling in his throat, his eyes watered ever so slightly. “Thank You, thank You for returning my son to us. Amen.”
Uncle Joe broke the silence. “AAAaaaaayy! Let’s eat!”
The feast was nonstop. At midnight, Aunt Ann, Uncle Ernie, and their daughters, Maxene, Patty and Julie—named after the Andrews Sisters—packed up to leave. Uncle Joe and Tony were tipsy. Tony walked his cousins to the door, hugged his aunt, shook Ernie’s hands, smiled politely. He followed them onto the small porch, then gave each girl a squeeze. As they walked to their car he stared at Maxene’s legs.
Uncle Joe followed Tony’s gaze, put his arm around his nephew’s shoulder, said, “When I got back from the Pacific....” He started to chuckle, then to laugh. He didn’t finish. They returned to the house. “I’ve got to sit,” Joe said, and Tony deposited him in an overstuffed chair in the living room and meandered back to the dining room for another pastry. Why’s she got to be my cousin? he thought. He could not shake the desire she’d stirred. Annalisa, at seventeen was pretty; Uncle Joe’s daughter, Roseanne, at nineteen, was sexy as hell; but Maxene, at only sixteen, was so delightful Tony simply ached.
Maxene, he thought. Sweet sixteen Maxene. He opened the screen door, stepped into the side yard. The night had become cool and everyone, he thought, was inside. He stood in the darkness eating the pastry, thinking about Uncle Joe’s stories about Guadalcanal and occupation duty in Japan. His eyes adjusted to the darkness. Slowly, out of habit, quietly, he walked to the backyard. The yard was dark except for lights in the pool making the water glisten and the entire pool area glow. Tony paused in the dark by the side of the house. Again he thought of Maxene. Then of a Maxene look-alike—a non-cousin Maxene without the charged taboo of cousin incest. In his mind she was a year older, a year bustier, two-thirds naked. He stopped. He heard someone. There was someone in the shadows of the lilacs at the other side of the pool. Two people. Neat, Tony thought. Neat. Vaguely he wished it were he and Maxene but he stopped the fantasy. After all, he told himself, she is my cousin.
He remained in the dark by the side of the house. The couple at the far side of the pool kissed. Tony imagined the passion in that kiss, began imagining.... He stopped his thoughts. Who the hell is it? he asked himself. He bore his eyes into the darkness. He could make out Aunt Helen’s silhouette. She stepped back, adjusted her dress. His jaw clamped down tight. The rock, the foundation upon which he was built, suddenly turned to sand. His hand edged to the house for support, stabilization. Aunt Helen stepped briskly into the glow from the pool, then to the back door and inside.
Tony’s stomach began to turn. He focused in on the man. Quietly he circled the edge of the yard. John Pisano lit a cigarette, faced the pool. Tony emerged from the shadows, noiselessly approached his father’s back, coiled, uncoiled—POP. “Aaah!” Splash. Tony, like a cat, backed to the shadows, down the yard’s edge, through the screen door and to a seat at the table. He shoved another pastry in his mouth.
For the next three weeks, until his cousin Jimmy returned, Tony’s days were a mixture of culture shock, disgust, elation at being back, overindulgence in Josephine’s cooking, idleness and boredom. His nights were restless.
The first nights he could not sleep at all. He was nervous, anxious, so tense his body ached. His heart beat hard, not fast, but with such pounding that his bed pulsed. It scared him. He felt his heart was about to explode, do to itself what the North Viet Namese could never do. John and Joe, his older brothers, had their own apartment, Mark had his own room. Tony could not recall the last time he’d slept alone. In the Corps he had slept either in barracks or tents or hardbacks, or he had slept in the field in bunkers or foxholes or on the ground, but always he slept near other guys, with their noises, their smells. On R & R he had slept with his Chinese “wife” the entire week. In high school and earlier he and Joe had shared this room.
Tony shut his eyes in the aloneness. He tried to relax by masturbating. He fantasized about getting it on with Maxene. He masturbated a second time fantasizing a ménage à trois with Maxene and Roseanne. He got up, smoked a cigarette. If his father knew that it had been Tony who had given the shove, he had not let on. He had come in, his clothes dripping, had laughed foolishly. “You’re not goina believe what I just did,” he’d announced. “I was looking for Orion and I backed into the pool.” The incident passed, but the kiss, the shove, repeated again and again in Tony’s mind.
He sat on the edge of the bed, looked through the window. The pool lights were off. Beyond the back fence the old homes of Creek’s Bend lay in darkness. Tony sat, tried to think of his preservice life, but the past withdrew. He tried to think of the future, of his next duty station. He would go early, report in early, he thought. He thought again about his father and aunt and he felt, feared, his family, his foundation was collapsing. He thought about the guys he’d left in Nam and he said a prayer for them. He rose again, smoked again. Then he clenched his fist and snapped it in the air and smiled and told himself they’d be all right. In isolation from everything past he watched the sky gray, then turn pink through the trees to the northeast.
The Pisano family returned to their routines. John Sr. went back to his long hours as shift supervisor. John Jr. went back to his accounting office where he handled the books for Uncle Frank’s store along with a hundred other accounts. Brother Joe had graduated college in May and had been accepted into medical school. He was re-taking an organic chemistry course and studying. Mark, at fourteen, was a counselor with the town’s Park Department and was working, or chasing adolescent girls, seven days a week. Only Josephine stayed home and Tony struggled to be the decent, returning son, eating until he was ready to burst, struggling to repress blurting, “Is Pa having an affair? Do you give a shit?”
Then Tony also fell into a routine. He lay awake each night until dawn, then slept, restless, into the afternoon, then showered, shaved, went out with his friends, sometimes with their girlfriends, sometimes with Annalisa. Then he and they got stoned.
If his familial culture had changed little during the time he was away, the culture of his friends, or at least that segment of friends who remained in Mill Creek Falls, had changed drastically.
In high school Tony had been a rock, a hood. He had seen himself as the tough Italian kid from the good neighborhood that backed up to the bad neighborhood. His brothers had all been rah-rahs, preppies, white socks and white boat sneakers. Tony had been a slick. After he left for school in the morning, he would slick his hair back with Vaseline. He was always clean, always sharply dressed. He wore the right shirts, the right shoes with pointed toes, the right pegged pants. To Friday-night dances he wore the skinniest ties and Nehru jackets. He moved with both cliques in school, but after school he socialized with the crowd from Creek’s Bend. By the summer of 1968 every boy Tony knew from his class of ’65 who’d lived in Old New Town, every single one except him and Jimmy, had obtained a 2-S deferment. And every friend from Creek’s Bend was in the service.
“Tonight we go to Shep’s,” Roy said to Tony and Annalisa.
“Oh,” Annalisa said. “I’ve heard about Shep’s.”
“Yeah, it’s super cool,” Roy said. “Shep finally cleared Tony.”
“Thanks to you,” Annalisa said. Her eyes glistened. Tony opened the door of Roy’s new Camaro, watched his cousin as she coyly slid in. Then he slid in beside her, put his arm on the seat back behind her, felt her warmth against him.
“Roll the window up,” Roy said. He pulled a joint from above the visor. Annalisa took it, lit it, passed it to Tony.
To Tony the grass was weak. It had none of the power of the little Nam weed he’d smoked. Still he was surprised how giddy one joint made them. Annalisa began swaying, her eyes became hazy, her demeanor changed from coyly shy to giggly.
“Shep’s got some great stuff, Man,” Roy said. “You’re goina groove on this place. It’s really far out.”
“Cool,” Tony said. “I’m groovin on your vehicle, Man, but I need somethin more.”
“Yeah. You’re really uptight.”
“Yeah.”
Lenny Shepmann’s apartment was on the second floor of a Creek’s Bend four-plex. Tony led Roy and his cousin across the street, then let Roy lead them around to a side entrance. Roy knocked out a familiar series of raps: ta, ta-ta TA ta, ta-ta. A buzzer sounded, the door unlatched.
“Security.” Roy grinned proudly. Tony smiled back. He could see Roy was impressed but he thought the rap was too simple, the charade dumb.
The room was dim, lit by two small candles, airless. Paisley cloth was stapled over the windows. The room reeked of smoke, cats and garbage. The Fifth Dimension’s Aquarius album came at moderate volume from stereo speakers. Tony’s eyes adjusted. Shepmann and two of Tony’s old friends, Jack Roedain and Don Eisner, were sitting cross-legged on pillows on the floor. In the center of the room there was a large elaborate water pipe with a swivel tube and mouthpiece. Jack and Don sat with their backs to the stairs, motionless, apparently well on their way.
Shepmann was across the circle. He was older than the others, bigger, fat, shirtless. He glared at the intruders as if they were his prey. He sucked on the tube. His eyes bulged. Thick rolls of flab spilled over his belt. He held the smoke for a long while, exhaled, smiled a thin-lipped challenge. Tony felt repulsed. Let’s get on with it, he thought.
He was about to speak when without words Shepmann opened his arms and bade his guests to be seated on the remaining pillows, indicating that Annalisa should sit beside him. Tony sat across from his cousin to Shepmann’s left. He watched as his cousin snuggled her rump down into the pillows and crossed her feet under her thighs into a lotus position. Tony tried to cross his ankles with his knees bent but his right thigh would have none of it. He sat with his left leg drawn up, his right sticking out straight, aiming through the water pipe at Shepmann. The mouthpiece passed to Annalisa. She took a deep hit. Then to Roy, Jack, Don, Tony, and back to Shep.
Counter-clockwise, Tony thought. Opposite of Nam. He had smoked marijuana in Nam but it was nothing like this, nothing this intricate. The mouthpiece circled again. The weed was better than that in the joint on the way over. The record changed to the Bee Gees’ Ideas album. Tony closed his eyes. There was little conversation. What was said seemed to be directed at the host, and Shepmann seemed intent on absorbing the praises for his hospitality and the quality of his dope. Roy arranged to purchase some from him, told him about a block of Colombian Red he had heard had reached Scranton.
Shepmann refilled the pipe three times. Each time he asked the angels of the underworld to bless his dope. Each time he bowed to the smoking water bowl and requested his guests to do the same. The mood was quiet, subdued, not quite mellow. Roy turned the stack of albums over and the stereo slowly worked its way through the reverse sides of Ideas, Aquarius, and several more. As the high came on Tony’s face relaxed, his cheeks slackened, his eyes concentrated on the darkness of their closed lids. Tony’s body relaxed, his right thigh felt comfortably warm as if his body had sent a surge of healing into the wounded region. Although his physical tension eased, his feelings of isolation increased. He felt homesick, homesick for his people. He thought about his platoon, about the good times. He did not think about firefights, shellings, tunnels or bodies. Then he heard Annalisa laugh her sweet stoned laugh and his thoughts dissipated. He felt calm. His eyes remained closed. He felt as if he were being engulfed by soft clear light blue, as if blue were a soothing substance.
“Love,” Shepmann breathed.
“Love,” Annalisa giggled.
“Love,” Tony thought. It was a pleasant thought. He thought of Maxene. He heard a kiss. His body tensed. He opened his eyes.
Annalisa was lying back against Roy, her head turned back and up, their mouths meeting. Roy had pulled her tank top up exposing her flat stomach. The candlelight glistened off tiny, fine, almost transparent hairs on her body. Roy moved a hand under her tank top and massaged her breast. Jack had passed out. Don was totally wasted. “Love,” Shep repeated in that low thick voice. He leaned over. The fat bulk of his gut shifted to his side. He kissed Annalisa’s navel.
Annalisa broke from Roy, looked foggily at Shep’s form. She straightened her legs, then rubbed the back of Shep’s head. Again she relaxed against Roy who had raised her top above her breasts and was gently rolling her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. Shep’s mouth moved to her hips as he unsnapped her jeans.
Tony watched. He was confused. Something in him told him he had to stop this, had to protect his cousin. Something else told him he didn’t have the right to interfere. He watched as Shep unzipped Annalisa’s jeans, as his thick fingers curled over the waistband of jeans and panties, as he wrestled her pants down to her thighs. Annalisa leaned forward, removed her tank top, rubbed her hands over Shep’s head and ears, then lay back again kissing Roy more and more passionately.
Shep massaged her, kissed her, pulled her clothes down to her ankles. He fell on her forcing her knees apart. Tony was shocked, excited. Annalisa was more sensual here than in his fantasies. Shep’s face rooted into her. Roy reached his left arm over hers then slid his hand behind her back. With his right hand he grasped her right elbow and pushed it into his left hand locking her arms behind her. He continued to kiss her, to massage her breasts with one hand. She kissed him more tentatively. Her shoulders were drawn back too far to be comfortable but not so far as to hurt.
Tony did not know what to do. He watched. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to leave. He felt it obscene to watch his cousin. He wanted a woman of his own. He wasn’t sure how far to let this go, how much to watch. Shepmann disgusted him. The obese body lying on his cousin’s legs, the semipublic display, the dope hitting his brain—it bewildered him.
Shep reached out, grasped the mouthpiece of the water pipe, sucked in a huge breath. Then he rooted his mouth back deep between Annalisa’s legs and sealed his lips to her vagina and blew. At first Annalisa seemed to sense pleasure but very quickly that turned to displeasure, to pain. She stopped kissing Roy. Shep retreated. Her genitals released a loud fartlike noise and a cloud of smoke. She gasped.
Shepmann laughed. He rolled over on his back laughing uproariously. Roy tightened his grip on her arms. He too laughed. Tony smirked.
“Great pipe,” Shep coughed out between gushes of laughter. “Pussy pipe.”
“Let go.” Annalisa tried to free herself. She was too stoned to make it sound convincing.
Shep rolled back onto her legs forcing her knees to the floor, grabbed the mouthpiece and sucked. “No,” Annalisa began to plead but Roy had grabbed her hair above her forehead, pulled her head back and jammed his mouth over hers. Shep blew her up, rocked back again, again the noise and smoke.
“A smoking cunt.” Shep laughed uncontrollably. Don came to and clapped his hands. “Smoke it, Donny Boy,” Shep bellowed. “You too, Tony. Smoke it.”
Don began to crawl to Annalisa. Tony put his hand out. Don stopped. Annalisa had closed her legs, pulled her knees up, but she couldn’t break free from Roy.
Then Tony moved. He grabbed Roy’s hair and ripped his head back. Annalisa gasped for air. Tony grabbed her arm, squeezed. “You wanta fuck around like this”—he snapped; His voice came high, dope high, then lower—“that’s your business.” His brain was muddled yet he was pissed. “But if I ever hear that you’ve led Maxene into this shit, I’ll—”
“Aw, cool it, Man.” Shep rolled to his knees.
“Fuck you. You’re a disgrace. You’re a fuckin pimp junkie.”
“You smoked my dope,” Shep said defensively. “You smoked my dope.”
Annalisa stood, pulled up her pants, snapped them closed. “Where’s my top?” She was angry, hurt.
“Not like you people,” Tony said. “I’ve been so fuckin high I’ve needed navigation equipment, but I never made a cult of it.”
Tony continued to smoke dope in the evenings but he smoked alone. The old friend-family network—Donny, Jack, his Pop and Aunt Helen, all of them—had changed, unraveled. He retreated within, retreated into a world that was still sane, that was still the same world he’d left. His nights remained sleepless, his morning sleep was wired, restless. He was physically, emotionally spent. And he wanted to get laid.
How he wanted to get laid. He was a returning warrior. A hero. He felt virile, at the peak, at the prime. He felt pressure—physically, hormonally, to have a girl; culturally, amongst his peers even if they weren’t present, to be successful with women, a woman. He needed to make love to someone, but there did not seem to be a single unattached woman in Mill Creek Falls except his cousins.
A week before his cousin Jimmy returned, Tony received a letter from his father, a letter his father had written and mailed at the end of March, sent to him halfway around the world, only to arrive at his unit station after his unit had moved north in country, and then forwarded again and again never catching him before his DEROS, finally completing its earth orbit in ninety days. It took him back to Nam, to his perceptions of the World from Nam. He read it while he sat, alone, in his room.
Dear Tony,
It is Palm Sunday. We went to the monastery for Mass this morning and it was real nice. They celebrate Mass a little differently there. Instead of palms they gave us pussy willows. After Mass we lit some candles and said some prayers for you and Jimmy. I’m looking at your last letter. You sound pretty good. I’m sure, as you say, you’ll “look back on this time with a shit-eating grin.” I pray to God that you do. Maybe I wasn’t in the right units. I never felt that I was “in the best fighting force in the world.” I’m glad you’re having an experience like Uncle Joe’s and not like mine.
The weather has been real cold and we’ve had a lot of snow. Mark’s been home two days this week with no school. Your friend Steve is finally going overseas. He came by and we gave him your address. The war news has been all about Khe Sanh but it sounds like it’s tapering down. It doesn’t look like the president is going to do much to them bastards. He should just keep bombing their cities until they smarten up.
I’ll write again soon. Until then know that even if I don’t write I do pray for you every day. Don’t take any chances and be careful who you trust.
Keep down,
Your Pop
P.S. We’re going to have a big bash when you come back.
Tony shook his head. “How the ...” he muttered. “What experiences, Pa? What did you do? Geez, this ... it’s before Dai Do, before Loon. Before I got hit.” He bit his lip, bit his inner cheek. “How could this have come from here?” He did not, could not, verbalize how he felt. The letter represented something, something that seemed far more real than what he had found.
Twenty-two days after Tony’s homecoming, Jimmy Pellegrino returned to nearly the identical scene, the same welcome home banner, the champagne, the pots and pans and whistles. Tony’s father had suggested they wait one day but his aunt Isabella, Jimmy’s mother, had said, “If you do for one, you do for all,” and Jimmy returned to the same tremendous, overwhelming enthusiasm. Like Tony he froze, withdrew to his room locking the door, letting only Tony enter, not talking to Don Eisner or Jack Roedain, who had come ostensibly to see him but actually to see Annalisa, not even talking to Annalisa.
“What the fucks goin on here?” Jimmy asked Tony.
“I don’t know, Jimmy. Same thing happened to me when I got home.”
“They’re so fuckin noisy.”
“I didn’t even come in the house,” Tony said. “My Uncle Joe drove me around till everybody left.”
“I don’t like this.” Jimmy kicked his bed. He shot his hand quickly, unconsciously through his hair. “I don’t like this,” he repeated.
“Hey Jimmy,” someone yelled through the door. “Come on downstairs. Hey, did you kill some gooks for me?”
“Hey,” Tony shouted back through the door, “we’ll be down when we’re down. Go downstairs.”
“I’m goin,” Jimmy said quietly. “Cover me.”
Tony shrugged, gave him a power-fist salute. “Go for it.” Jimmy opened the window, jumped out. Tony watched him hit, roll, rise and run. Then Tony opened the door and went down.
“Where’s Jimmy? Where’s Jimmy?” It seemed as though everyone asked it at once.
“He went for a walk,” Tony said.
It rained the next afternoon. Tony and Jimmy got stoned on grass Tony had purchased in Creek’s Bend. They sat on the roof of the tool shed in Tony’s backyard and looked down the back street into old Creek’s Bend. The cousins talked, let the warm July rain soak into them. They watched people and cars come and go. They laughed with each other wondering what people thought about them, sitting in the rain atop the tool shed.
“All my Mom could say,” Jimmy said, “was, ‘Jimmy, was it bad there?’”
“I got the same thing,” Tony said.
“I thought she’d shit a brick when I told her I was definitely goin back. ‘Was it bad over there? Please don’t go back.’”
“Aw, that’s what they’re supposed to say,” Tony said. “Jo went crazy when I showed her my Heart. Pop hadn’t even told her. He knew I was still in the bush after I got hit so it couldn’t a been too bad. Man, what a scene.”
They smoked another joint, split a warm beer. Tony told his cousin about Shep’s, leaving out the part about Annalisa. He told him he thought his father and his Aunt Helen were having an affair. “If I had to live with that fuckin hysteria, I’d find somebody else, too.” Then he told Jimmy he thought, maybe, if things didn’t work out at his new duty station in Philly, he’d try and get back to Nam and into whatever unit Jimmy was assigned to.
Then Tony said, “Shit.” And he laughed loudly. The rain had put the joint out. He tried to relight it and they both laughed. “Ya know, while I was over there, I forgot that it rains back here.”
“This isn’t rain. You remember the typhoon....” They broke up.
“I wonder what the guys are doin?” Tony coughed out the words. “I wonder about Doc So—”
“He’s the guy stitched your leg.... Ha.” Jimmy rolled to his side laughing. “He’s probably at Mama-san’s Steam-n-Cream.”
“Ooh, Man.” Tony moaned. “There was this one honey I saw at the airport—right when I get off the plane, you know, up the ramp—Man, she looked so good she coulda sat on my face and farted up my nose.”
“Fart up—” Jimmy squealed. “I love it.” Then he said seriously, seriously stoned, “I gotta show you somethin. Don’t tell my Ma. She’ll fuckin go nuts.”
“What?” Tony rolled to face him. “When you’re done, I gotta ask ya ...” Jimmy rolled up his left sleeve, up past his bicep and over his shoulder. “Oh wow!” Tony exclaimed. “That’s really ... neat.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You show it to her?—Naw, you haven’t been there yet. Where’d you have it done?”
“A guy up in Dong Ha did the ‘Bea.’ But I had to go to Da Nang before I found a guy who could do the honey bee in red like that ... and with all the other colors.”
“Man.” Tony dropped his head, dejected. “I gotta get laid.”
“You comin with me to Red’s?” Jimmy asked.
“You sure you don’t wanta see her alone?”
“Naw. She said she’s got a friend for ya. If we’re goina get it on, we’ll beat feet someplace while you and her friend do whatever you want.”
“Geesh, Man,” Tony said. “I’ve seen half a dozen woman with these guys, ya know, Jack and Don and all. Man, they’re a hassle. It’s weird, Jimmy. It’s like they’re all spoiled brats. I wish I’d meet somebody who was halfway fuckin, ya know ...”
“Yeah. Maybe Red’s friend ...”
“Shee-it. I’ll tell ya though, I know what I’d like to meet. She’d be about five three, five four,” Tony said. In his mind he saw Maxene. “She’d have eyes that were, you know, different. They’d be brown and blue at the same time. Maybe brown or gold around the pupil and switchin to blue as you move out. Maybe turnin almost black. And she’d have auburn hair down to her shoulders. And she’d have a nice smile. A real one. Not some flaky pasted-on grin.”
“Most of the jobs have been for my legs.” Stacy’s laugh was small, pleasant.
“Oh,” Tony said. “I didn’t know models specialized like that.”
“Sometimes,” Stacy said. “Would you like to see my portfolio?”
“Is that okay?” Tony asked. He felt out of place, intimidated, afraid her portfolio might contain naked photos, afraid he wouldn’t know how to react. Bea Hollands and Jimmy had disappeared and left Tony with a woman he did not believe could possibly be interested in him. She was, he was certain, the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes upon—lovelier even than Maxene.
“Yes,” Stacy said simply. Her voice and confidence were reassuring. She left and returned with a large zippered leather case. As long as he didn’t look at her he was okay. Stacy directed him to the sofa, laid the case on the coffee table. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to touch it. “Go ahead,” she said.
Tony unzipped the case, laid it flat. The first page was a typed resume giving her age, measurements, dress and shoe sizes, and data Tony was too nervous to read. He flipped the page. There was a portrait photo of Stacy looking sideways, over the corner of a high, light blue collar that framed her face. Her blue eyes looked directly into his.
“That’s your color,” Tony said.
“I think so too,” Stacy agreed.
Tony turned the pages slowly. Half the pictures were of just her legs, the kind of photo that might be used for a hair remover or stocking ad. He studied the photos, could not look at Stacy. “You’ve got beautiful legs,” he said.
“Would you like me to put on a dress?” Stacy asked.
Tony could hardly speak. He gurgled. Before he could say anything she was up, out of the room. He turned to catch a glimpse of her but she had vanished. He turned back to the first photo. Her face captivated him. It was too beautiful to look at for long.
He turned away, looked about the room. It was just an average room, he thought. Why Jimmy had arranged to come here instead of going to Red’s, Tony didn’t know. Average house, he thought. Not really any better than mine. Maybe bigger. Tony stood, turned, looked into the kitchen. The lights were off but sunlight from the rear deck showed it to be just an average kitchen. Somehow, he felt, for a girl to grow up that beautiful she must have grown up in a very special place. Not here. Not in just an average home. Not in just an average place like Mill Creek Falls. His thoughts shifted to Jimmy and Red. Where had they gone?
Stacy returned in a simple robin’s-egg blue cotton dress, stockings and heels. She stood at the edge of the hall, smiled. Then she spun. The dress rose slightly showing her legs. Tony wanted to fall to his knees, to hug her legs. Her smile was enchanting but as she walked to him his spirit drooped. In heels she was at least three inches taller than he.
They sat on the sofa again, again talked about modeling. “I close my eyes,” Stacy told him, “and I think what I want to look like, and when I open my eyes, I look that way. It’s a visualization technique I learned when I was in school.”
“You sure learned it well,” Tony said. He felt stupid, tongue-tied.
“What’s wrong, Tony?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me about yourself. Bea said you’re a Marine.”
“Hm-hmm.”
“And you’ve been to Viet Nam? I have a friend over there. Maybe you know him.”
“Is he a Marine?” Tony perked up.
“No. He’s in the army. In the parachute division.”
“I wouldn’t know him, then,” Tony said dejectedly. “The Marines and the army don’t mix much.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t have anything against paratroopers, myself. Just Marines and Airborne don’t mix. It’s like throwing water on an oil fire.”
“Oooo! That bad, huh?”
“Naw. Everybody just makes it out like that. This guy, he your main man?”
“Just a friend. Are you always so quiet?”
“I got some, ah ... bad revelations since I came home.”
“Like what?”
“Aw, like my father. I think he’s having an affair.”
“Oh, that’s terrible.”
“Yeah. You know what I think ... I think it’s cause I was in old Nam Bo. I think my mom was such a wreck this last year that she musta drove my father to it.” Stacy didn’t comment. “Hey,” Tony’s tone changed completely, “are you wearing contacts?”
“Hmm?” Stacy smiled, surprised at the question, the change of tone.
“Contact lenses? Colored ones?”
“No.”
“I’ve never seen anyone with eyes as blue as yours. Really.”
Stacy smiled, lowered her gaze.
“Hey, would you like to dance?”
“Where?” Stacy asked.
“Here. Look, I know I’m a short guy but ... ah, if you’ll take your shoes off ... we could put on a few records and dance. I haven’t danced in a long time.”
When Jimmy and Red returned they found Tony and Stacy slow dancing to soft music in the dark.
“Damn it. No.” Jimmy was raging. The argument must have been going on long before they walked in.
“Well what am I supposed to say?”
“Nothin. You’re supposed to listen.”
“I was listening.”
“No you weren’t. You got no idea what I was sayin.”
“I think I understood how you felt.”
“You’re still not listening. Listen with your mouth shut. You can’t hear if you’re talking and telling me what I’m sayin and what I mean.”
“Jimmeee!”
“Come on, Tony. Let’s get outa here.”
On the drive back into town Tony was flying. Stacy had kissed him. “Man, what’s happenin with you and Red?” he asked, but he did not want to talk about it. He wanted his cousin to ask him about Stacy.
“Augh, nothin,” Jimmy said. He was seething. “I fucked her eyes out and we’re layin there and I began tellin her about like, like goin into a ville. I told her about the steam-n-cream and I was tryin to tell her that I didn’t really like goin there. She heard nothin, Man. Nothin.”
“Hey. I’m sorry.”
“Naw. It’s fine. It’ll work out fine. We’ll be back sailin in no time. How’d you make out with her friend?”
“Oh Man, I’ve never seen eyes like this girl’s got.”
“Yeah, she’s pretty. She’s fucked up though. A fuckin tramp, Man.”
“I wouldn’t mind doin some trampin around with her,” Tony guffawed, but he did it against what he was feeling.
“Red said her steady guy left for Nam like a month ago. She’s been fuckin round on him like a bunny. You oughta—”
“What? What guy?”
“Army guy. From down in Lutzburgh.”
Tony Pisano did not have to report for duty until July 22d. On the 20th, the second morning after he’d doubled with his cousin, he packed his seabag, said good-bye to his folks and caught a bus for Philadelphia. That night Jimmy Pellegrino and Bea Hollands announced their engagement.