THE BIG BARN, AN evening in late May 1978—It was warm. Sherrick was hot. He sat on a box in the shadow of the Slitter, apart from the others. The day’s chores and tasks were complete. The educational exercise—change the meaning by immersing into the truth, Bobby’s first attempt at a Quick Strike program—was under way. Wapinski sat on layout table number 1. Pisano was on number 2. Gallagher, Van Deusen, Thorpe, Wagner, Hull, Mariano ... sixteen vets in all, sat on crates, folding chairs, toolboxes, near the tables. Only Gary Sherrick was to the side, between the jerry-rigged elevator and the Slitter. Steve Hacken had been reading a David Ansen review of the film, The Boys in Company C, from a four-month-old Newsweek. “‘Vietnam,’” he’d read, “‘was not fought like any other war, and it can’t be told the way old war movies were.’”
“What a bunch of crap,” Sherrick muttered. He was just loud enough to distract the few closest to the elevator.
Bobby glanced over. He had not discerned the grumble but he’d seen the others turn.
“‘... the film gives,’” Hacken went on, “‘a fresh and harrowing reading of a struggle so chaotic and irrational that it approaches the climate of hallucination.’”
“What,” Sherrick yelled over, “approaches a climate of hallucination?” Heads snapped toward him. “What?” he barked loudly. He did not look at the group but talked toward the machine in front of him. “The film or the war?”
Hacken stopped. With his thumb on the column he squeezed the magazine. “The film,” he said. “Did you see it?”
Sherrick could not control his voice. It was full of indignation and disgust. “That’s not what it says. Reread it.” Three or four guys groaned. Sherrick had been interrupting all night. Hacken reread the line. Sherrick snarled, “‘Climate of hallucination,’ describes the word struggle. Not the film. Struggle. The war, damn it, seemed pretty fuckin real to me.”
Gary Sherrick had been at High Meadow nine days. He was a genetic alcoholic and he knew it. He knew he was unlike most heavy drinkers and self-dosers. Once they learned why they drank, they learned to control their consumption. In Sherrick, one drink set off an immense craving for another immediate dose of alcohol.
Bobby had formally checked him in. He had made Sherrick fill out the new High Meadow Job Contract and Personal History form that Bobby, with Tom Van Deusen’s help, had designed.
Sherrick had been an alcoholic since his first drink in his sophomore year in high school. For years he’d hid it, denied it, and except for the baseball scholarship incident, he’d held his life together until May of 1975. He’d more than held it together. He’d excelled.
Sherrick grew up in Indiana, attended Indiana University on an athletic scholarship until, in September ’65, because of one drink that had led to one thousand, the school did not invite him back. He dried out. Swore off. He spent three years in the army, April ’68 to April ’69 in Viet Nam, a doorgunner on a Huey slick. By tour’s end he’d been awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, six Air Medals, a handful of commendations. After discharge he returned to Indiana University, graduated in ’71 in the top quarter of his class, with a degree in history and government. For the next four years he worked as a policeman in Indianapolis. At night he took courses in law at the state extension. In 1974 Gary Sherrick was assigned to the Indianapolis PD Narcotics Investigation Division. In early ’75 he took a drink, went on a bender, was released from duty. In the ensuing three years he was in and out of VA alcohol treatment programs eleven times.
“It helped at first,” he’d told Wapinski during that first interview. “But I couldn’t stay with it. I’d go back. Like iron filings to a magnet, it’d pull me. Then I’d check back in to the VA. Bitta bing, bitta bang. It’d be worse. If you’re a repeater, the VA treats you like a parasite. They write things in your file like you’re a manipulator or a malingerer. So you learn to manipulate the system because you get dependent on it same as being dependent on anything else. If you don’t manipulate it, you’ve got nowhere to go. Then they make you feel guilty. You feel worse. Like what’s the matter with me? It drives you to your next drink.”
“Bad question,” Wapinski had interrupted him. “Instead of, What’s the matter with me? ask, How can I stay on the wagon and enjoy it?”
“Yeah,” Sherrick had said. “They said that too. But that’s not what they mean.”
“Look—” Wapinski had tossed Sherrick’s new folder on the desk, “here we don’t keep records on malingering or manipulation. If you need help, we’ll help. All you have to do is follow our rules.”
“What rules, Man?”
“Simple stuff,” Wapinski had said. “No drugs. No booze other than what’s provided, which may not be much. We have a few blowouts now and then. Maybe some wine or beer—”
“I can’t do that.”
“Um.”
“I can’t control it ... if I start.”
“Then don’t start.” Wapinski had moved on. At this point he had never dealt with a genetic alcoholic; he assumed Sherrick was, like many others, a habitual self-doser.
“No individual firearms,” Wapinski had said. “We have community weapons for hunting and target shooting but they’re locked up. We target shoot most Saturdays twelve to three. It’s not mandatory. Lots of guys find it therapeutic. You know the dangers, you’ve seen what a weapon can do. Some guys are afraid of em because of that, because of what they did with em. What we do is let you do it again, with supervision. Like the rifle range.
“Look,” Bobby’d continued, “here it is in a nutshell. You don’t hurt yourself, physically or mentally, and you don’t hurt anybody else. Jessie Taynor, downtown, she’s a big mentally retarded woman, she’s off limits. You touch her, we kill you. No questions asked. You participate in work, PT—basketball or soccer, or, ah, Lorson and Knabe are setting up a weight room—choice is yours. And you participate in our discovery exercises. Thursday nights we meet in the barn, just vets, and talk about what we’ve discovered. As to work, you can work with Tony on the farm, with Van Deusen out on job sites, or with Howie Bechtel in the barn building collectors or assembling duct work.”
“What if I don’t want to?” Sherrick had asked.
Wapinski had eyed him. He did not want a repeat of the Ivanov affair. “You don’t have to,” he’d said. “Some guys start with a period where they just lay back. After a while everybody works. No work, no pay.”
“How long do I have to stay?”
“Ten minutes,” Wapinski had said. “It’ll take you that long to drink your coffee. Look, this isn’t a prison. This isn’t a school. We don’t give grades. We don’t pay except food, board and minimum wage. We can help you out with clothes. If you stay and work, then maybe we pay a little more. Nobody, except you, is going to force you to do more.”
“What if I fuck up?”
“Everybody fucks up sometime. Try not to. Don’t fuck anyone over. These guys can be a mean bunch. At one time, you know, they were all trained killers.” Bobby had grinned. Sherrick had laughed. “More coffee?” Bobby’d asked.
“Hey, let me get it.”
“Sure. Few more things. Keep the swearing down around the kids. And there’s no smoking in my house. My wife doesn’t permit it.”
“Okay. Where do I sign up?”
“You already have.”
“That’s it?”
“Yep.”
“You’re goina just let me come here? Nothing to pay! No obligations! You don’t even want to see my DD214? Maybe I didn’t get an honorable.”
“You’re a Nam vet?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all I need. There’s a desk with drawers and a file cabinet in the bunkhouse. There’s paper and pens. And an address form for if something happens to you and you want us to notify somebody. You can keep it there or I’ll keep it here.”
“What about women?”
“We don’t provide any.”
“Ha! That’s not what I mean.”
They’d talked on. “Tuesday and Wednesday nights are reading and research nights. We tutor each other in everything from salesmanship to solar engineering to history. We’ve got remedial reading and math. Half the guys are taking correspondence courses. Look Gary, there’s two common denominators why anybody’s here. Every guy here is stuck. Caught. Snagged in a past experience. In the meaning they attach to it. If they weren’t stuck they wouldn’t be here. They wouldn’t work for room and board. And they’re all Nam vets. So when I talk about Tuesday and Wednesday being reading nights and Thursday being discovery night I’m talking about Southeast Asia, what it was to us, what it means to us, what really happened, what people think happened, how their thoughts impact upon us.”
“Okay. I got a million stories. Bitta bing, bitta bang.”
“Not stories,” Wapinski had said. “You’ve got to take a vow. That’s the one requirement.”
“A vow?!” Sherrick had rocked back. “Are you guys some kind of cult?”
Wapinski had shaken his head. “Repeat after me. I vow to strive to discover the truth—” Sherrick had half-heartedly repeated the phrase, “to become unstuck ...”
“... to become unstuck ...” Sherrick’s right hand had quivered. He hadn’t been sure if he was supposed to raise it up like a witness in a courtroom.
“... to grow, to expand beyond my self ...”
“... to grow, to expand beyond my self ...”
“... to encompass community, intellectual development, and spiritual awareness.”
Sherrick had laughed. It had seemed simplistic, silly.
In the barn, on his second discover night, Sherrick had been saying, barking, at the Slitter, “... seemed pretty fuckin real to me.”
“Fuckin real to me, too,” Mariano agreed.
“To me it was like a zoned-out nightmare,” Mark Renneau countered.
Bobby put his hand to his forehead. There had been verbal snipes all night. Bad feelings were developing. Some vets were tongue-tied. Mariano looked like he wanted to punch Renneau’s lights out. Norm Casper had turned his back to most of the group. There was an undercurrent of “fuck yous” and “fuck you, toos.” Wapinski had originally imagined these sessions as thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Instead he saw anger, polarization. On no topic were the vets in total accord. Once opened up, every man had strong obstinate beliefs. “Let him finish reading,” Wapinski said.
“‘... moral horrors of the battlefield,’” Hacken read. “‘Though [the director] suggests the distinctive anarchic quality of jungle warfare, he misses an essential factor ... the paranoia that came from not knowing if the Vietnamese were friends or enemies ... the moral lines were never so clearly—and smugly—drawn as they are here ...’”
“For God fuckin sakes.” Sherrick exploded. “If we’re going to debate the moral lines of Viet Nam ... This is stupid. This is fuckin stupid. You guys are a bunch of fuckin idiots.” With that Sherrick walked out from behind the elevator, out to the middle of the floor, sneered at Wapinski, at everyone, and stormed out.
The next week Sherrick did not work in the fields. He had no interest in strawberries, grape vines, grains or vegetables. He did not work in the orchard, nor would he clean the Sugar Shack. He even declined to drive or ride shotgun in a delivery truck. For a time he watched Gallagher, Book and Bechtel assemble collectors, but to him the job was dull, something “any cretin could do.” And he did not like Book. Or Bechtel. To him all the vets were idiots, ants, slaves. He even asked Art Brown how he could slave for a white man after having slaved for white men in Viet Nam.
What Sherrick did was tail Wapinski. “Out to save the world, Bobby?” he chided Wap.
“Somebody better be,” Wapinski answered.
“You’re a throwback, Man. You belong to a different age. Bitta bing, bitta bang!”
“When I was in school,” Bobby said, “in my strength of materials class, there used to be a poster by the blackboard: ‘The only thing needed for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good people to do nothing.’”
“That’s what got us into Viet Nam in the first place. Bitta bing, bitta bang.”
It made the vets angry to watch Sherrick. They knew they were a team. His blatant defiance challenged them. To a man, since the arrival of the eighth or ninth vet, the peer pressure of everyone working, pulling his own weight, had made each fall in line. But not Sherrick. They saw him as an obnoxious slacker. They began to view him as the enemy.
Except Wapinski. “You satisfied with your life, Gary?”
Defensive, but hidden behind a smile. “Why not?”
“Where are you going, Gary? What’s your direction? What’s your target?”
“I’m not going anyplace. I’m fine right here. You said I didn’t have to work.”
“You don’t. I’m just askin.”
The next encounter. “Hey Gary, what are you afraid of?”
“Nothin.”
“You seem like you’re afraid to be a part of us. Man, you’ve been in the scariest situations in the world and you faced your fear. Face it now.”
“You don’t know diddly, Man.”
“Then tell me.”
“Someday. Maybe. Bitta bing, bitta bang.”
Then, on a Tuesday, over coffee, Sherrick. “You were an officer there, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“And in your twenties?”
“Yup,” Bobby answered.
“I was too. In my twenties, not an officer. That’s a different experience than these kids. We were old enough to know better.”
“Yeah.” Bobby laughed. “I guess so. You want to come up to the Poundridge job?”
Sherrick shook his head.
“It’s an interesting job.”
Sherrick stepped back a few paces.
“Gary, you got any idea where you’re going?”
Sherrick didn’t answer.
“What’s keeping you back, Man? What’s holding you down? What do you need to change to get rid of it?”
Sherrick chuckled. But all he would answer was, “Bitta bing, bitta bang.”
The next day Bobby spent an hour with Sherrick in Grandpa’s office. “Why do you want to change, Gary?”
“I didn’t say I do.”
“It’s written all over you, Gary. You’re almost thirty-four, huh?”
“You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”
“You’re perfectly happy, huh? Degree? Law school? Being an ant? A slave?”
Sherrick smiled. “Maybe,” he said. He liked the tête-à-tête, the verbal head-to-head.
“Well, it’s up to you,” Bobby said. “But you know you can better manage your mind. You don’t have to be stuck in neutral. You don’t have to let others get to it.”
Sherrick snickered, “DAARFE-vader, huh?”
“It works for most of us. But you have to learn how to decide. That’s the first step.”
“Like to play in those stupid soccer games?”
“Sure. To play it right you’ve got to make decisions. That’s the beauty of it. And basketball. Everything is player-directed decision making. Yet it requires teamwork. Responsibility to the team.”
“Don’t tell me. When I was in school I had pro scouts after me.”
“So what happened?”
“Maybe I got drafted.”
“Maybe you didn’t really want to be there?”
“What the fuck do you know?”
“You didn’t try to go back. Since you’ve been here, you’ve never acted like you want anything. You don’t even stand like you want anything.”
“I don’t stand ...”
“That’s right. Your posture says, ‘Don’t give me the time of day.’”
“Then why do you?”
“Forget it, Gary. Forget me. Right now look at yourself. What do you see?”
“Whaaa-dd?”
“C’mon, Gary. Play my game. Tell me.”
“Tell you what? Like I hate my wife. Like I don’t have a wife anymore. That I don’t have any kids. Easy for you, Man. Your wife loves you. You got two kids.”
“How do you know she loves me?”
“I can see it.”
“If you wanted to feel loving towards your wife, if you wanted her to know it, how would you have to act? Make believe it’s a new wife.”
“I’d ... I’d ... Hmm. You know.”
“No, I don’t. It’s different for every individual.”
“Well, I’d ... I’d look at her more.”
“Okay.” Bobby pulled out a sheet of paper, wrote down, “Look at her more.” “What else?”
“I’d ah, assist her. You know, physically. Help her carry in the groceries.”
“Good.” Bobby wrote. “What else? This is your old wife. You want to change the way you feel from being angry at her to feeling loving.”
“Um. I’d ... I’d drop my facial expression. When I’m angry I get my face all knotted up.”
“Jaw tight, teeth clenched?”
“Yeah. My hands, too. I ball them into fists.”
“Show me.”
Sherrick hesitated, then made a fist.
“No,” Bobby said. “Stand up and show me the whole posture.”
Sherrick rose. “This is stupid.”
“Do it for me,” Wapinski said. “Okay,” he said as Sherrick rose, made fists, sneered. “Good. Now show me loose jaw and open hands.”
“Like this?” Sherrick loosened totally, not just fist and jaw but arms, shoulders, his entire face. He stood a little straighter.
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Now, how do you feel?”
“I’m not angry,” Sherrick said.
“Okay,” Bobby said quickly. “Now angry again.”
Sherrick transformed to angry.
“Now loving.”
Sherrick transformed back.
“Angry,” Bobby said. Immediately Sherrick tightened. “Loving.” Quickly Bobby alternated. Then, “How did you feel each time?”
“Well,” Sherrick said. “I could put myself into those states.”
“You mean,” Bobby said, “you control the way you feel?”
“Well, right here.”
“But if you wanted to do it, you could?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Then, if you want to feel more loving with your wife, what you have to do is decide to be that way. You’d have to figure out why you want to be more loving. What’s good about it. What’s bad about not achieving it. If you physically transform to the attitude you want to have, you’ll have that attitude. Your mind will follow your body.”
“That’s too much, Man,” Sherrick said. “I don’t believe it.”
Bobby smiled. “Bitta bing. Bitta bang.”
The first of the barn trials were anything but. They were neither trial nor inquest; indeed, the first were not called trials but discovery exercises. As academic exercises they left much to be desired. As a “brain raid glue solvent,” they were ineffective and disappointing. That spring and summer the vets rambled from topic to topic, touching only surface images, the interpretation of the war in popular culture—the first films and novels—and how closely the vets felt these vehicles represented their own experiences.
“I wanta go back to that review of last month,” Mariano said. “I read it. I got some things to say about it.”
They were in the big barn as usual. Sherrick was still in the shadow of the Slitter. George Kamp had come down from Towanda. Tom Van Deusen and Steve Hacken were absent, trying to finish the Maxwell job, pushing hard to install the electronic control panel and make the final hookups before the building inspector arrived.
“It was in the February sixth issue,” Mariano said. “There was that stuff about moral horror, remember? And chaotic or hallucinogenic warfare.”
“Yeah,” Mark Renneau said. “That’s what it was like for me. One long cluster fuck of purple haze.”
“Naw,” Mariano said. “I got the two issues earlier than that one. Here. This one’s on the New Indochina War. Between Cambodia and Viet Nam. And this one’s all about Cambodia. ‘Land of the Walking Dead.’ It’s like these prove that we were right.”
“Bitta bing, bitta bang,” came quietly from the Slitter.
A few vets glanced over. Mariano gritted his teeth. Because he now worked in the office he saw more of Sherrick than the others. And he disliked him more. He disliked Sherrick’s attitude in the bunkhouse. The “house” was communal living. Of all the vets, only Sherrick was a slob. Thorpe had repeatedly told him to straighten up his rack, had helped him the first few times, had nearly lambasted him. “What are you going to do?” Sherrick had confronted Thorpe. He’d relished the antagonism. “Have Wapinski throw me out?” Thorpe had backed off. Most of the vets withdrew, distanced themselves from Sherrick. Even those who were less than neat, as if to heighten the contrast, had doubled their cleaning efforts.
“Commies against commies,” Emil Lorson said. “I hope they all kill each other.”
“Yeah,” agreed Ron Hull. “Why should we give a shit?”
“Yeah,” Mike Treetop concurred. “We all tried to save their silly asses. They want to kill each other, let em.”
“Naw,” Mariano said. “That’s not what I was goina say. I mean, maybe we oughtta let em, but see, like here, like this picture of this baby.” Carl held out the magazine. Wagner took it, looked, shook his head, passed it to Brown. “That baby was about as old as little Paulie. Man, that kid’s no commie.”
“That’s Asian, Man,” Renneau said. “That’s how they treat life. Shee-it, there’s like a billion people in China alone.”
“Yeah,” someone agreed. Most of the guys, however, were quiet, heads down, shaking, disagreeing but not overtly, saddened by the photograph of the bloody, dismembered, dead child.
“THAT—” the voice blasted from the Slitter, “is because of us. Because of America. Because we got involved. That war was a criminal enterprise foisted upon us and the Viets and Cambos, by a bunch of self-serving politicians and generals and by money-hungry defense contractors. What the fuck is the matter with you guys?! Why can’t you admit you were just cannon fodder? If it was up to me, I’d put every one of you fuckers on the stand ... make every one of us stand trial for our part in that carnage. The only people I have any respect for are the conscientious objectors. The rest of us ...” Like all the weeks before, Sherrick emerged, sneered, turned, stormed out.
“Hey,” Mariano yelled. “Bitta bing! Bitta bang!”
Gallagher, Wagner, Treetop, Lorson, others snickered, hooted.
“WHOA!” It was Wapinski’s turn to shout. “He just may have something there.”
“Ah, come on, Bobby!” Tony wanted the peer pressure to force Sherrick into line or from the fold.
“No,” Wapinski said calmly. “He actually may have something. And, every one of us vowed to discover the truth.”
“Do you want to bury this asshole?” They were in the barn office. Carl Mariano was to the side filing receipts and bills. Tom Van Deusen was at the drawing table sketching a detail for the bid for the Fyodor job. Steve Hacken had been popping in and out, asking Van Deusen questions about trim details on the Maxwell job. Josh was at Bobby’s feet, asleep, twitching in his dog dreams, passing gas which could be cut with a knife. Sherrick was leaning over the desk, rereading the letter.
“I just want to do what’s right,” Bobby said.
“You want to get this asshole Rosenwald off your back though?”
“Yeah.”
“You have a copy of your grandfather’s will?”
“Gary, I just want to send him a letter explaining that I have, and will continue to, abide by the terms of the will.”
“Hey!” Gary was brusque. “You have to hit them with quad-fifties. You have to gain fire superiority. Otherwise this guy’s going to overrun your position.”
“He’s representing my mother, sister and brother,” Bobby said. “Not Hanoi.”
“You better wake up, Man. I know guys like this. I almost became one. He’s going to push you so hard you either fight or sell out. You’re not going to have a choice.”
“He can’t. I am abiding by the will.”
“Not the way they see it.”
“But I keep open books. They can go over them. You go over them. They’re—”
“I’d rip you apart in five seconds. You’re in my kill zone, Man. Stop thinking justice. Look at the landlines. Can you justify that cost? What about the bunkhouse? What about paying guys that don’t work? You can’t give away their money.”
“We’re turning a profit and I’m giving them their percentage. Actually, this year I paid them before I took out the capital expenses for the buildings.”
“But after the trucks, huh?”
“That’s strictly part of the business.”
“If you were their attorney, would you see it that way?”
“But that’s the way it is!”
“Damn!” Sherrick smacked his palm onto the desk. “Stop thinking ‘fair.’ These guys don’t care about fair. Think ‘adversary.’ Think ‘enemy.’ Fer God’s sake, Man. You were a company commander! No wonder we lost. You didn’t learn a damn thing about tactics.”
Bobby responded angrily, defensively, “They’re still my family.” He leaned back in the swivel chair. “We’ll try the open approach. If they come after us, we’ll do it your way.”
Sherrick snorted. “Suit yourself, Henry,” he said. “Give em a decent interval, huh? Suit yourself Henry da Kay.”
Despite the adversarial relationship between Gary Sherrick and most of the vets, Steve Hacken befriended him. On Saturday night half a dozen guys went to the White Pines Inn. The place was packed, the music loud, the air smoke-filled, smelling of stale beer and greasy steak sandwiches. Guys out-numbered gals five to one. Voices were loud, sharp. Drinks flowed like spring runoff.
Arguments, bickering, began in the van on the way down. “Don’t give me that crap about pride,” Sherrick accosted Mariano.
“I’m proud, too.” Art Brown backed Carl’s position.
“That’s because you’re stupid, Art,” Sherrick said. “You soul brothers were used. How many times do I—”
Wagner cut in. “Bullshit. We were there together.”
In numbers there is strength. Mariano, Wagner, Brown and Casper held to their position. Hacken felt divided. He had befriended Sherrick because Sherrick was bright, aloof. To Hacken, Gary held a personal power none of the others, except Wapinski, possessed.
Sherrick stood alone. “We raped, we pillaged, we murdered millions with indiscriminate bombings and H & I artillery and you’re proud!”
Inside the bar, angry with each other, they still clumped. Half the patrons were young men in their early twenties. When the vets had been that age they’d felt healthy, strong, invincible, immortal. But every one of them had seen young, strong, mortal bodies shredded, traumatically amputated, blown to pieces. Now in their late twenties to mid-thirties, though some days they felt strong, some days they felt all too mortal, especially when confronted by a younger, larger, more boisterous drinking crowd.
They ordered beers, commandeered a booth, sat where they had the visual advantage of the aisle, the door, the outside, and direct lines of sight to the crossed legs of two nearly identical barflies in black miniskirts perched on vinyl-covered stools.
The first beers went down quickly. The vets began to feel their oats. Except Sherrick. He sat inner-most on the bench. He was quiet. He stared at the mug before him, at the condensation, the water drops growing, reaching critical mass, dripping, miniature rivulets gathering weight, running to the bottom of the mug, forming a circular puddle.
Brown and Casper were in the outer seats: Mariano and Wagner in the center: Hacken sat across from Sherrick. Mariano nudged Brown as one of the barflies shifted, flashed them a crotch. The girl smiled coyly, slithered from the stool, wriggled her skirt down, strutted toward the ladies’ room. “Ooo! I’d like to poke that piece,” Mariano said. Brown giggled. Casper leaned from the booth, his head ass-high, leering at the girl’s back.
“Hey, Aaron!” Wagner called. “How about another pitcher and six cheese steaks with extra peppers.”
“One without peppers,” Sherrick called.
The girl who’d left rejoined her friend. The noise level was rising. They ordered another pitcher. Then another. Sherrick’s beer was going flat.
“If we could get the mortars set up,” Norm Casper said loudly, “the whole town’d be ours.”
“Mortars?” Sherrick leaned over the table. “What mortars?”
Wagner elbowed him. “I got the crates in yesterday.” His voice, too, was loud. “I didn’t think they’d of let me in the depot but Wapinski knew the manager.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Sherrick asked.
Again Wagner elbowed him. He sensed that one of the girls at the bar had heard. “Look guys,” Mariano said matter-of-factly, yet strong, as if he needed to be heard over the jukebox and chatter, “somebody’s got to stay sober enough to remember the password. I don’t want to be shot by the sentries.”
Sherrick still didn’t get it. Hacken leaned over, whispered to him. His eyes turned to the barflies, then back.
Brown joined the other three with loud talk about their armed camp. “... armed to the teeth ...” “... booby traps ...” “... pigs mess with us again they’ll be sorry ...” “... mechanical ambushes ...” “... more tunnels than Cu Chi ...” “... C-4 ...” “... phu-gas ...” “... Hartley’s a pig ...”
Around the table they went bragging, boasting, b.s.ing, except for Sherrick, entertaining themselves and people close by. Then the barflies left with guys who’d talked with them. Around the table of vets the mood fell as flat as Sherrick’s untouched beer.
Sherrick leaned back, snickered. “Idiots,” he muttered. He reached out, grabbed his warm mug.
“Don’t!” Mariano was curt.
Sherrick eyed him. “Who’s going to stop me?”
The others didn’t know what was going on, but Carl had been working in the barn office when Sherrick discussed his drinking problem with Wapinski. Even before they’d entered the White Pines, he decided, not altruistically, nor paternalistically, but out of resentment and brotherhood, that he would not let Gary drink. Mariano’s head came down, his eyes squinted, his jaw jutted, tightened. “Me. Order a Coke.”
Sherrick snorted. He still held the mug. “Watch this,” he said. He began to lift the beer.
Mariano growled. “You touch it, I’ll break your face.”
“Hey,” Casper said, “this is too much for me.” He got up, went to the men’s room. Wagner slid away from Sherrick.
“Me too,” Art Brown said. He stood, went to the bar, ordered another pitcher.
“You touch me,” Sherrick snickered, “you’ll be in jail. I’ll sue you, this place, Wapinski ...”
“Don’t drink it.” Mariano had his hands and forearms on the table, had pulled his bad leg up onto the bench seat, was ready to pounce.
“Go ahead, Gimp! Hit me.” Sherrick’s posture showed nothing but disdain.
“Hey guys ...” Hacken tried to interrupt.
“That touches your lip,” Mariano sneered, “and I’m on you like a mad dog.”
Sherrick winked at Hacken. Defiantly he raised the mug up to his mouth. Over it he said, “I’ll visit you in your cell.”
“You don’t understand, Man.” Mariano was higher. “I’d rather smash your ugly fuckin head and be in the clink than not smash your face and watch you drink.”
Sherrick smiled. His eyes were locked on Mariano. He leaned back, pulled the drink up, tilted his head back, brought the mug to his mouth, began to tilt it.
“Hey!” Wagner’s hand shot out, grabbed Sherrick’s beer. “Hey! Hey Art! Aaron!” he yelled. “Make the last round Pepsis. And get us new glasses.”
Sherrick was afraid. He knew most of the vets didn’t like him. He’d been getting over on them, he’d been abusive, contemptuous. He’d stomped out of seven straight discovery exercises. “Discipline to act, my ass!” he’d glared at Wapinski. “This is a bunch of old ladies grumbling unfounded opinions. Idiots!”
But now Wapinski was gone. With Sara and the boys, he’d flown to California following the death of Sara’s grandparents. In his absence, Mariano, the Gimp, had slide-tackled Sherrick during the last soccer game and nearly broken Sherrick’s back. Bechtel and Thorpe had piled on. Gallagher, who was supposed to be refereeing, who’d called Sherrick for every minor shove, elbow, or high kick, had “missed” it. “Screw this crap about pride, eh!” Mariano had hissed the second time he’d taken Gary down.
Pisano was supposed to take charge in Wapinski’s absence but there was no unity of command with regard to Sherrick. And Pisano had no intention of spending two weeks away from his wife and kids. Thorpe, Gallagher and Van Deusen were next in line, and Mike Treetop below Thorpe on farm matters, and Wagner was moving into second spot on the fire circle–Pennamite Camp truth-stick sessions. Another half-dozen vets had come. Two in Wapinski’s absence, checked in by Mariano. Only Hull, the strawberry man, had left. The bunkhouse was overcrowded. Sherrick was more than afraid.
By the discovery exercise of 6 July, Gary Sherrick was a nervous wreck. All week he’d been snapping his head, looking over his shoulder, sure he was being stalked. He’d tried to talk to Steve Hacken but Hacken had been busy, days, on installations of collector arrays, and evenings, beginning study for an electrician’s license. Sherrick had approached some of the new guys: Wilson, Rooker, Cannello, Murray, Koch and Bixler. They’d all been warned off. He tried Brown but Brown had taken a Fourth of July leave. He tried Carl Mariano.
“Talk to the mirror,” Carl said sternly.
“Yeah, right! Thanks.”
“I’m not kidding.”
Sherrick’s head drooped. He felt he might just as well let them jump him, get it over with.
“I’m not kidding,” Mariano repeated. “Wapinski taught me. Just like he tried to teach you.”
“Teach me what?”
“Go ahead. Look in a mirror. Look at that sneer you’ve always got. See it. Feel it. Know how it feels?”
Sherrick didn’t answer.
Mariano’s voice lightened, he stood straighter, prouder. “Look at yourself, Gary. Take a look at the message your face is sending your brain. Take a look at the message you’re sending others. Wapinski made me do it in a mirror. You try it.”
The vets didn’t let up. Under the silent treatment, Sherrick’s paranoia spiked. On Friday the 7th, Wagner grabbed him. Sherrick nearly pissed his pants. “I’m taking three guys out to the fire circle,” Wagner said. “Across the gap. Why don’t you come? You haven’t been.”
Sherrick began to shake. He hadn’t seen the Indian ladder but he’d heard, he knew. This was it. They’d push him. Say he’d slipped.
“One chance,” Wagner said. “Decide. Go or no go.”
“Naw. Naw, Man. I—I’m going to be reading. Wapinski had some documents he wanted me to read.”
Sherrick did read. He skimmed Frank Snepp’s book, Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End Told by the CIA’s Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam. “It is not too much to say that in terms of squandered lives, blown secrets and the betrayal of agents, friends and collaborators, our handling of the evacuation was an institutional disgrace,” Snepp had written.
The entire war was a disgrace, Sherrick thought. He heard something, lurched, settled back. His concentration was broken by every real or imagined footfall. Sherrick did pull from the reading some ideas, some conclusions. In the margin on one page Wapinski had written, “But Frank! ARVN intelligence correctly identified NVA’s ’75 attack points! You, CIA chief strategist, from your own writings, incorrectly interpreted NVA moves and overrode ARVN command, forced them to improper shifting of their forces! Your mistake led to immediate NVA successes which precipitated Saigon panic, led to loss of Central Highlands, led to final collapse!”
Sherrick added under Wapinski’s note, “What led to Snepp being there in the first place? Would correct disposition of forces have made, ultimately, any difference?”
Ignored, alone, even at mealtime when everyone pitched in, a family, a brotherhood, Sherrick stayed aside, not spoken to, not acknowledged. By the time Wapinski returned in mid-July Sherrick was sullen, haggard, on the verge of a complete breakdown.
In contrast Bobby Wapinski looked great. He looked healthy, relaxed. His nose was dry. He’d gained ten pounds. Sara too looked great. Her dark eyes danced. Their normal somberness, the weight of responsibilities they’d elected to shoulder, had evaporated in the California sunshine. Although there was a sadness over the death of her grandparents and especially that they had never met Paul Anthony (who’d begun to walk the day of the wakes) there was a happy recognition of the fullness of their lives.
Two days passed. Bobby settled in. Sherrick kept his distance. Bobby didn’t notice. Sherrick’s twitching became worse. Everyone held back, waiting, feeling that Sherrick needed to make the first concession. It came on Sunday, July 23d.
“I quit.” Sherrick cornered Bobby, alone, in the tractor garage.
Wapinski glanced up. He’d been cleaning and checking the forge. “Go ahead,” Wap said. “Won’t be your first time. Won’t be your last.”
“That’s it then, huh?” Sherrick had expected resistance.
“Yeah, Gary. There’s no locks. You know that. You really are a manipulator.”
“I thought you didn’t put that in the files.”
“I don’t.” Wapinski turned back to the forge. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t see it, though.”
“I’ll pay you for what I took. What I used. I’ll send it to you.”
“No you won’t, Gary.”
Sherrick huffed.
Wapinski added, “You’re a smart man. You’re probably the smartest guy here. But you can’t hack it. Forget us. Forget what we’re building here. Take the easy way out.”
“Easy way, my ass! Not one of these idiots here gives a rat’s ass about me and I don’t give a rat’s ass about them. I’ll show you. All of you.”
Wapinski smiled. Didn’t answer. Measured the depth of the firebox.
“I’ll show you,” Sherrick repeated.
“Naw, Gary.” Wapinski was very slow, very calm. “You’d have to buck us to do that and no one’s got the energy to buck the brotherhood. We can easily out-flank and outmaneuver you. And that’s just what we’re doing. We’re manipulators, too. See, Gary, whether these guys give a damn about you or not, they give a damn about the brotherhood. You’ll learn. You’re part of it.”
“Well goddamn it then—” Sherrick spun agitated, his arms flailed comically, “then take me. Take me to your goddamned fire circle. I’ll—I’ll—I’ll tell you why ... but just you ... why I can’t accept this shit.”
Wapinski eyed him, bit his lip, attempted to gauge Sherrick’s sincerity. “Why you choose not to accept this shit?”
“It’s not my choice. They—I’m—they made me ...”
“Uh-huh.” Wapinski shook his head, turned back to the forge. “When you hit bottom, come back. Things don’t stop when you’re on the bottom. Life goes on. When you get there, when you understand that, come on back. We’ll start climbing back up together.”
“Shit! What do I have to say?”
“Can you stay like you are?”
“NO!”
“Do you need to work hard to change?”
“Yes.”
“Are you capable of changing?”
“Sure.”
“Are you trying to change?”
“Ye ... No.”
“Why not?”
“Cause I’m stuck here!”
“And?”
“And”—Sherrick was frantic—“and ...”
“And?”
“And I can’t stay like this!”
“What?”
“I can’t stay like this!”
“Um.” Slowly, then terse, fast, “Okay. We move out in one five. You know the routine. Get the rucks. I gotta change.”
It was the same scene, the fire circle, late late night. Only it was Sherrick, not Pisano. And the weather was warm.
“What really gets me, Man, is—is—I—I think I knew ... I think I suspected even while it was happening, I think maybe a second before I opened up ... Maybe long ...”
Bobby didn’t say anything. Sherrick held the truth stick. Earlier, at the Pennamite Camp, Sherrick had reentrenched. He was a tough nut to crack. Once across the gap and through the cathedral his anxieties abated. No one had sent him to his death. Bobby talked to him about eating right, sleeping right, standing right. “Decide. Develop a cause, a reason to become intense. To be cool is uncool. To be uncool is cool. Get hot, Gary.” Bobby pushed on. “Experiment with yourself. Learn your triggers. Use them. Practice switching to confident, to interested, to sensitive. Practice getting into the posture where you care about people, about things, where you care about quality work. Let your physical self lead your brain.”
Sherrick took it as a challenge, not to meet, to surmount, but to resist. “Quality work?” Sherrick laughed. “To me that crap’s got no value. I don’t care about solar panels. And farming stinks.”
“What’s your mission, Gary?” Wapinski refused to let up. “Unless you desire excellence,” he said, “you’ll miss your target. Unless you are on a mission, driven by a cause, you will be outgunned, outmanned, overrun and left on the triage pile of humanity. You’ll be left in the corner to cool.”
Sherrick snickered. “Personal growth bullshit, huh? You Californians ...”
Wapinski cut in. “You’re not an inert object. People grow. You’re right. A lot of that movement is pabulum for the masses, the ticket to fame and fortune for the high priests and practitioners. But there are core insights. No one, no matter how stuck, is completely static. Everyone changes. You get older, fatter, more reclusive, or maybe more widely read, more accepting, a better decision maker. The things to understand”—Wapinski held up a fist, extended a finger with each point—“there’s constant change even if one is stuck in one compartment of his life, and to some extent one can direct that change. Change doesn’t necessarily destroy the foundation you’re built on. It might realign the blocks, reinforce one wing, change a facade, deepen a well, install a more sensitive perceptual system or rewire the rooms for better lighting.”
“Man,” Sherrick lay back in the lean-to. “You’re a real piece of work. Change everybody. Change the past.” He pointed at Wapinski. “That’s why you believe the way you do. You’re a revisionist. All you’re trying to do is clone yourself. That’s the problem with guys like you. You want to revise personal histories just like you want to revise the war. The thing happened, mister. Motherfuck, I can’t believe I came out here!”
Through the afternoon, into the early evening, the tit-for-tat continued. “If you make a mistake on a collector plate,” Wapinski said, “take it apart and redo it. Quality counts. If you make a mistake in your life, take it apart and reassemble it. Quality counts.”
“Revisionism.” Sherrick spat.
Wap continued. “If you won’t do it for yourself because you need to be punished, do it for the brotherhood. They need you. I need you. You once pulled your weight ...”
“Revision ...” Sherrick twitched. “I don’t need to be punished!”
“Change your focus, Gary.”
“God bless you, Man.”
“You can smell the fertilizer or you can smell the grapes, Gary. What you focus on is what you get.”
“Fertilizer, huh?” Sherrick laughed.
“How you act, Gary, is determined by how you feel. And how you feel, Gary, is determined by what you think about and what you sense. What you sense is determined by what you’re looking for. Fertilizer or grapes.”
“What I think about! I think about booze. I think, ‘Why can’t I stay on the wagon when I’m away from a shithole like this?’ Aren’t you gonna say it? ‘Gary,’”—Sherrick threw his voice into a screechy falsetto—“‘you’ve got so much going for you, why can’t you stay sober?’” His voice reverted. “Because I don’t fuckin want to. I don’t give a shit.”
“I never asked you that,” Wapinski said.
“So what?” Sherrick shot back. “You wanted to. You all wanted to.”
“How can you stay sober and enjoy it?” Wapinski asked. Sherrick stared at him. Wapinski repeated the question.
“All I gotta do is want to.” Sherrick sighed. “I thought you weren’t going to ask that.”
“Ask what?”
“Why I can’t stay sober?”
“I didn’t. I asked, How can you stay sober and enjoy it? If you ask your question, you’ll come up with an answer. If you ask mine, you will too.” Wapinski sat up. It was almost dark. “I gotta git,” he said. “Think about when you were most happy. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Sherrick started. “Whatda ya mean?”
Wapinski was already out of the lean-to.
“I aint stayin here by ...” He poked out. Wapinski was gone.
At first Sherrick thought it was a joke, but night descended. The mosquitos came. And the chirpings, creakings, croakings, buzzings. Sherrick broke into a sweat. He hated being in the woods, alone, without a light, without a weapon, without a pilot, copilot, crew chief. He didn’t want to stay. He didn’t dare leave. He cursed. He damned Wapinski to hell for all eternity. He inched to the back of the small shelter, crouched, wrapped his arms about his legs, rocked quietly. His nares flared at every noise. His ears strained. The night could not have been darker. When was I happy? The thought simply leaped in. In school, his mind answered him. Maybe in the courtroom in law school classes. And in the courtroom when I cross-examined. The answers cascaded in on him. Except the judges were all jerks. Always siding with the junkies. I was a good student. I loved getting my grades. I loved making honors. I liked cleaning up neighborhoods. How can I stay sober and enjoy it?! How ...
When Wapinski returned Sherrick was no longer sweating. Bobby led him slowly, quietly to the fire circle. He flicked a match, set the kindling ablaze, added larger sticks, explained the rules, the vocabulary. “Tonight,” Bobby said, “I will call you Tëme [tah-may], Wolf.”
Sherrick chuckled. That’s cool, he thought.
“Wëli [wah-lee],” Bobby said. “Good.”
“Yuho,” Sherrick responded. Okay.
The talk evolved. The truth stick passed frequently.
“Maybe,” Bobby said at one point, “the only people you respect are conscientious objectors of the antiwar movement, but I don’t know why. You say the antiwar movement stopped the war, but the war did not stop. The war did not stop in ’73 when we left or in ’75 when Saigon fell. They had no effect on ending it. They only affected the outcome. So they’re really not antiwar, are they?”
“Yes they—”
Wapinski held up the stick, continued. “They were simply anti-American–war effort, Tëme. Which I recognize as a valid position. But let’s get the verbiage straight. I was antiwar. I was an antiwar soldier. I tried to stop the violence by winning. They did not try to stop the violence. They did not even see the other side. They only wanted to stop me. And you. We were their focus. And they did. But they didn’t stop the violence and now they’re trying to get to our minds, trying to convince us they did, or that if they didn’t, it was our fault. They still want to control the focus. The people I most respect are the conscientious participants. Conscientious participants, Tëme. Of the COs ... what’s conscientious about ignoring people who are being tortured or murdered? What’s conscientious about standing by while one nation overruns another—” Again Sherrick attempted to object but Bobby raised his voice, raised the stick, pushed on, “OR standing by when one faction within a nation enslaves or overruns the people of that nation?” Sherrick shifted anxiously. Bobby clutched the stick like a tomahawk. “And what’s conscientious about abandoning an ally in the name of ending the war when in reality the war was not ended and our ally was uprooted, forced into third-class citizenship, starved, slaughtered? What’s conscientious about denying the successes of the American effort? Right now everybody, most of the brotherhood, wants to make everybody else, those that didn’t go, believe that the whole time they were over there the entire country was a free-fire zone and they were always in peril. That’s bullshit. You know it. I know it. But it serves a lot of people’s purpose, some of those that went and lots of those that didn’t, to make it out like it was constant peril. Your chances of being killed in Viet Nam—if you were black and from New York City or Washington, D.C.—were less than being killed in your own neighborhood! Tèpi [teh-pee, ‘Enough’].” He passed the stick.
Sherrick exploded. “Revisionist bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!” He shook the stick as he spoke. “I’ll prove it to you. I’ll prove it to you with your own books. You want to run discovery exercises?! I’ll show you discovery. I’ll teach you discovery. You’ve got these guys on wishy-washy bullshit detail. If you seek shallow solutions to deep puzzles, you’ll only solve the surface of the problem.” Wapinski didn’t speak but his eyes bore intently across the fire, into Sherrick. He had seen Sherrick turned on only once before, when he’d asked him for legal advice over Miriam’s attorney’s letter. Sherrick was leaning in close, into the heat. “You’re such a fucking revisionist! What that did to me! What Nam did to me—”
Sherrick clammed up. Begrudgingly he passed the stick. Wapinski grasped one end, forced the other back into Sherrick’s hand so they both held it. “When something’s been misrecorded,” Bobby said, “or only partially recorded, is it revisionism to correct or expand the record?”
“It is,” Sherrick said, “if you change the meaning without justification.”
“Then I think we’re not revisionists.”
“I’ll prove you are.”
“Wëli.”
Again longer exchanges, probes, attacks, withdrawals. “You’re stuck, Tëme, on something that is past, something set, something static. Instead why not be concerned about something now, something ongoing like the circumstances of this veteran community, or of the peoples of Southeast Asia—today?”
Then late, late night, talking about Nam, about incidents, about punishment:
“I think I suspected it even while it was happening.” Sherrick held the truth stick. His head was down, his voice low. “Maybe a second before I opened up ... maybe longer ... You know, Man. I mean all doorgunners fear it. You train so it doesn’t happen. You know it can. You’re always aware of it so you don’t let it happen. You know, you’re right at treetop level. You’re sliding past a hill. Guys down there are callin for help. They’re gettin hit. You’re the cavalry. You’re comin to the rescue. Jungle’s black as the inside of an unlit coal mine at midnight. Black as these woods. You see flashes. You’re told our guys use red tracers, their guys use green. But you get there and both sides are using red and the RTO’s yelling, ‘The C.O.’s been hit. The F.O.’s been hit. Fire on em.’ And you open up. You know how it is. Your adrenaline’s pumpin. Your weapon’s pumpin. Your 60’s like a jackhammer. It’s exploding. You’ve got it in your hands, jarring you, mount or no mount shakin like crazy. Then you’re taking fire and you’re jacked up so high you’re squeezin trying to make the cyclic-rate zoom, wanting to turn the 60 into a hose of solid lead. Then the peter pilot’s screaming, ‘FRIENDLIES! Hold fire.’ You’re so jacked up, you’re firing, hearing him in your ears but not in your head for what seems like a month but is probably half a fuckin second.
“And then you’re back at base refueling, checking for damage, fuck all, and the dust-offs are coming back and there’s six dead and sixteen wounded and you know you got some of em and they’re your own fuckin troops!
“Man ... I knew it. I knew it. I knew it before I fired em up. I was the cavalry. I was ...” Sherrick paused for a long time. Bobby did not speak. Slowly, quietly, Sherrick began again. “Man, no matter what you ever tell me, no matter what the reasons, what the cause, what happened afterwards, I’ll never believe we had any fuckin business being there. We never had any right. For me to have done what I did, Man ... no matter what the gooks were doing to each other ... Man, no matter, there was never, never, ever, a justification for an American presence. You understand?”
Sherrick’s voice trailed off. He passed the stick.
“Tell it to me again,” Bobby said. He passed the stick back.
Sherrick was reluctant. Bobby nodded. Sherrick repeated the story adding times, dates, units, names of his crew members, the number off the rotor on his slick, details and more details. Again he handed the stick to Bobby. Again Bobby handed it back, saying, “Tell it to me again.”
Sherrick sighed. He began a shortened version. As he got to the point where he was about to fire Bobby held up his hand. “I’m sorry. I gotta wiz, Man. Just hold it right there, okay?” Bobby returned. Sherrick finished the story. Again Bobby asked him to repeat it. Now as he got to the point where he’d just begun firing Bobby disrupted the story to build the fire back up. On the fourth go-through Bobby interrupted again, a few words further in, to get the old army blankets they’d brought, to wrap themselves against the predawn chill. The fifth time Bobby stretched his legs, kicked over the fire, caught the corner of his blanket on fire, had to scramble to beat it out. “Continue, please,” he said.
“Continue what?” Sherrick asked.
“You were telling me about your premonition that you were firing up Americans even before you fired.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess it was a premonition.”
“Yeah. You worried about it all the time, huh?”
“Shit, yeah!”
“They bring charges against you, Tëme?”
“No! They knew ... we weren’t the only bird firing. There was no way to tell ...”
“But you know it was you?”
“I think it was me. At least one. Had to be me.”
“Probably was, Tëme.”
“Shi—it happened again. Not—not in Nam. But when I was with narcotics investigation. We busted into this one house. And I knew it was going to happen. We blew away this old, unarmed black guy.”
“You shoot im?”
“No. It wasn’t me. But see, I knew before—”
“Yeah.”
“Really.”
“Yeah, Tëme. When you’re trained to be aware of those possibilities, like you said before, like doorgunners are always aware, then you always have those premonitions, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“And if one comes true, you’ve got to punish yourself because you knew you were going to—”
“But I fired ...”
Bobby’s legs again shot onto the fire.
“... even when they yelled ‘Friend—’ What are you doing??!”
Wapinski jolted, rolled, yelled, “I’m on fah-yar!” The blanket smoldered, the burning wool smelled horrible.
Sherrick burst out laughing.
Wapinski regained his seat. “Tell me again, Tëme, ah, from just as your bird was coming in.”
Sherrick began the story but he couldn’t stop laughing. “I was fah-yar-in ...” He chuckled. “God, you stink.”
“Quick Strike, Man,” Bobby said.
“Huh?”
“I’ll explain later. Hey, you know a lot about school. You were a good student. Why don’t you set up the discovery exercises?”
“Those things?” Sherrick gasped. “Those guys are full of shit. They barely read anything. You oughtta set up mock trials. That’ll force them to compete. They’ll have to work as hard on getting facts as they do on their jobs or when playing soccer.”