THE WIND BLEW COLD. The street was empty. He lifted the receiver, dialed the number. Snowflakes fluttered in the lee of the open booth. The sky was gray, not yet dark, late January, late afternoon.
“Internal Revenue Service. Criminal Investigations. Gilmore.”
“Yes.” He altered his voice. “I’m—I’m calling about one of your programs.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m calling about the program you’ve got for turning people in for tax evasion.”
“Yes.”
“You give rewards, right?”
“There’s a program ...”
“Percentage, right?”
“That can be arranged. Who am I speaking with?”
“No. I—I can’t tell you that. I’m talking the anonymous program. I know you do that.”
“In substantial cases ...”
“That’s what I’m talking here. Major fraud. Big time evasion. Maybe a hundred thousand. Maybe a million. None of the penny ante stuff.”
“Can you hold, please?”
“What? No!”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m calling from a pay phone. Don’t try to identify me.”
“No.” In the agent’s voice there was irritation, boredom, apathy. “I’m just getting a file to issue you a number. When you call, identify yourself by the number.”
“How do I get paid?”
“To bearer. Sent to a post office box.”
“Yeah. Yes. That’s what I want.”
“Can you give me some information?”
“First give me a number.”
“Okay. Your number is R as in Romeo, T as in Tango, L as in Lima, six, seven, six, four. Do you want to repeat it back to me?”
“R. T. L. Six. Seven. Six. Four.”
“Now, tell me who we’re talking about.”
“First tell me who you are.”
“I’m Special Agent Stan Gilmore.”
“Mr. Gilmore?”
“Um-hmm.”
“Keep this file open. This is going to be big. I’ll call again.”
Monday, 7 July 1980—
Round and round the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel,
The monkey thought it was a-all in fun,
POP! goes the weasel.
The song was in his head, swirling, mixed with other immediate demands and concerns, new and old, swirling like flakes in a winter storm, Peppin, Zarichniak and Denahee, all, all morning, pulling at him, joy-terror-fear-questioning.
It was Noah’s first day of summer camp, first time on a bus, alone, going off without Sara or Bobby, without Linda or one of the vets. It had taken three months for his night terrors to abate, six for the acting out to subside, nine for him to again appear the confident little boy he’d been before the raid. Bobby thought of him at breakfast. Sara and Am had been upstairs. “What did the monkey say?” Noah had asked.
“I don’t think the monkey said anything,” Bobby’d answered. “Only the weasel. He goes—” Bobby put his right index finger into his mouth, blew up his cheeks, “Pop!” Bobby smiled.
“But Papa, why didn’t the monkey say anything?”
“I don’t know, Noah,” Bobby said. “That’s not part of the song. Just, ‘the monkey thought it was aaa-lll in fun. Pop! goes the weasel.’”
“What did the weasel think?”
“He was being chased by the monkey.”
“But,” Noah persisted, “what did he think?”
“I think he thought it was fun too. Don’t you think it’s a fun song?”
Noah hadn’t answered. Paulie, too, had been quiet, but he was always quiet unless he had something to say. Bobby wasn’t worried about him. Somehow, perhaps because of age or because he’d screamed through most of it and thusly had not seen much, the raid had seemingly not traumatized him.
“Noah?” Bobby said.
“I don’t know,” the boy answered quietly. “I just wanted to know what the weasel thought. That’s all.”
“Hmm.” Bobby had been about to continue when Sara came down with Am dressed in a yellow sunsuit and a big yellow sunbonnet.
“He’s going to miss the bus,” Sara had said to him. Then to Noah, “You don’t want to miss the bus on the first day, do you?”
The bus had come. Sara and Bobby, Paul, Am and Josh had all accompanied Noah on the long walk down the drive. Then quickly Noah, never before having even been in a school bus, scrambled up the stairs as if he’d commuted that way for years. In seconds the bus had gone. Then Paulie had burst into tears because he couldn’t go too.
Bobby was not focused on the here and now. He was checking in Frankie “The Kid” Denahee, the 128th vet, the ex-roofrat, ex-gunbunny. Vu Van Hieu was at a small desk in one corner, bent over the master ledger, entering figures in his impeccable hand. It had taken him one day to learn Bobby’s system. Carl Mariano was at a second desk that had displaced Van Deusen’s drawing table. A third desk was empty. Bobby looked at Denahee, continued talking, not listening to his own words but blabbing on automatic. “We’re brought up with the dual concept sane-insane. But, like in so many seeming logical tautologies it narrows the field and restricts our view of reality. So here we add a-sane, meaning without sanity, or beyond the bounds of reason, but not meaning weird or deranged or crazy. Asane, like baseball, the color green, dreams, intrusive day thoughts. Your reaction, your feelings, like most of us here, are normal and extraordinary. The circumstances, the events you’re reacting to were extraordinary....”
Bobby bent over the organization chart of High Meadow. There were now sixty-eight vets in residence—one of Asian heritage, one indigenous American, six Hispanics, ten of African ancestry, and fifty genetically European or Middle Eastern. The main office or headquarters consisted of Bobby, Tony, Carl, Don Wagner and now Vu Van Hieu. Tony also headed the column titled The Farm. Beneath him, with specific titles, were Thorpe, Treetop, Renneau, Cannello, and Rifkin, then eleven others. Van Deusen (design), Gallagher (construction/installations), Bechtel (assembly), and Mohammed (sales) headed the thirty-seven-man EES unit. Sherrick and Hacken plus five more ran The Institute; and in a new structure, Family Services, two vets assisted Sara, Emma, and occasionally Linda.
“Um ... Where was I? Oh ... ah, for now I’m going to list you under Tony’s command, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Did I mention to you about the grand jury indictments?”
“I didn’t really get that.”
“They’re deciding who to indict. Last year’s trial was of the five administrations starting with Eisenhower. The guys have been working on this year’s candidates for some time. Maybe Ngo Dinh Diem, Ho Chi Minh, Sihanouk, or Jane Fonda. They get pretty lively....”
Again his mind shifted to automatic, the conversation running now here, now there, routine chatter. “Your first ten dollars each week automatically goes into your education fund. After you’re settled you’ll start classes....” Bobby’s eyes shifted just an inch, just enough to look away from Frank Denahee to a stack of mail. A second stack held letters from veterans who wanted to come to High Meadow—or from relatives who wanted to send them. Where to put them? How to support them, have them support themselves? The place was bursting at the seams. The drive was lined with private cars, trucks—many old, rusted, mechanically defunct, making the farm look more like Johnnie Jackson’s Auto Salvage than the pristine mountain meadow farm he’d known as a boy.
“You were talking about classes that are available downtown ...”
“Oh yeah. There’s things we can do up here but there are things we can’t. Couple of guys who were medics are taking nursing courses—”
“Ha!” Denahee snickered. “To change bedpans!”
Bobby’s face turned to stone. For a second he repressed an agitation that wanted to blow, then he released. “Don’t be an idiot! Don’t act like some stupid, spoiled school brat. If you’re interested, we’ll get up into a good course. Aim for RN. Specialize in emergency room care. Or ICU. Shit. I don’t care what you study. Everyone here studies. Quality counts. You come to me, you come voluntarily. We’ll take you in but you’ve got to follow the rules, you’ve got to strive. Look where you’re at! No money. Never learned how to handle it. You told me that yourself. Trouble keeping a relationship. Right? We’re going to confront that. It doesn’t do any good teaching a guy a skill and having him get a job if all he’s going to do is blow his pay. Fact is, you don’t know how to live in this society.”
Vu and Mariano popped their heads up from their work. Carl had never heard Bobby take this tone, this early. Bobby snapped. “You’re number one twenty-eight. Not one guy who’s stayed through a year has fucked up again on the outside. This is basic, modern life skills. You listen in class. You take notes. Part of our in-processing is reading evaluation. If you score low, it’s mandatory you take Sara’s reading class. Mandatory. The circuit includes nutrition. If you put enough shit into your mouth, sooner or later all you can talk or think is shit. Your outcome depends on your attitude ... but I guarantee ... if you put in the effort, it’ll turn your life around.” Bobby puffed, exhausted. He dismissed Denahee, sat slumped, slouched, in his chair, angry beyond reason.
All day waves of agitation rolled over him, receded. His thoughts jumped from project to project, then back to the song, the conversation with Noah, the boy getting on the bus. What effect will it have on him? he thought as he sorted the mail, passed invoices and checks to Hieu, inquiries to Carl. He hefted a letter from the Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, split the envelope with a North Viet Namese Army bayonet a new vet, Michael Yasinsky, had given him. The letter’s type was small, closely packed.
What the hell is this crap? Bobby thought. There were six more paragraphs of tightly compressed words. He skipped them, turned to page 2.
| Changed Item(s) | Shown on return | Allowable payments | Increase |
| Payments to Contractors | $105,750 | $00.00 | $105,750 |
Changes in Adjusted Gross Income
| 1. Total Increase | $ 105.750 |
| 2. Taxable Income per return | 8,474.00 |
| 3. Corrected taxable income | 114,224.00 |
| 4. Corrected Tax | 28,525.00 |
| 5. Credits, as corrected or shown on return | 11.00 |
| 6. Other Taxes, as corrected or shown on return | 3,657.00 |
| 7. Total Corrected Tax | 32,993.00 |
| 8. Tax as shown on return | 1,271.00 |
| 9. Tax Increase | 30,922.00 |
| 13. Interest from 4-15-78 to 15 days after the date of this notice | 12,532.00 |
| 14. Presumptive Negligence Penalty | 2.00 |
| 15. Send this amount to the IRS | 43,447.00 |
Bobby smirked. The figures were ridiculous. If he had had an income of $114,000 in 1978 he’d be living like a king. And if he took everything he now owned—cars, trucks, machines, personal items—the value would not reach $43,000. Bureaucrats! he thought. Error after error. One more thing to straighten out. He handed the letter to Hieu.
On Thursday evening, the 10th of July, the vets met in the big barn amid the tables and machines, half-assembled duct work and plenums, control panels, windmill rotors, dust and debris. There were the usual announcements, old business and new. “We’ve completed the planting of a thousand seedlings on the south side of the knoll above the driveway,” Tony reported. “Four hundred Scotch pine, two hundred each white pine, Doug fir, and Austrian pine. There’s room for another thousand next year; maybe five hundred in ’82. By ’85 we should be able to sell the first of the cut-yer-own Christmas trees. Final figures are in from this spring’s strawberries and, actually, we made almost as much off the market-truck as we did selling to Morris’, the IGA, and RRVMC. We might consider pick-yer-own, there, too, next year. And pumpkins in the entire lower-thirty-six amid the corn. Cannello’s experimenting with them on two acres....”
Bobby was still in a foul mood. Nothing, all week, seemed to break it. Just the opposite. It had been building, getting uglier. Wednesday afternoon Sara had gone into town for groceries, then to see Linda, then Louise Taunton, a member of her women’s group who had missed the last three meetings. By dark Sara had not returned. At ten, with the children in bed, Bobby could no longer stand it. He’d paced, he’d read the newspaper, but he couldn’t focus through a single full paragraph. At every sound he’d been up, down, looking out the windows to the drive. At ten thirty he’d called the Pisanos. Tony had answered. Sara had left three hours earlier. “Did she say she was going to the Taunton’s?”
“Let me get Linda. I was watching a ball game.”
Bobby had called the Tauntons. The line was busy. He’d sat. He’d sprung up. His ass hurt. One more thing. He’d worried about his hemorrhoid—had it become infected? Daily his ass had been getting more sore but the five-hundred-dollar deductible on their medical insurance was enough of a deterrent to keep him from seeking help, from complaining. Except that he had been complaining. Not about his ass. About Larry Peckham and David Quinn. For all the work Bobby had done, for all the programs, the ladders, one foot in front of the other, one rung at a time, he, with Wagner and everyone else, had not been able to make the breakthrough. And Peckham and Quinn were not the only ones. Even Ty, in Bobby’s opinion, was ghosting, getting over. Not on work—he was selling up a storm—but on self-development, on expansion beyond the self.
It was the McDuffie thing, fallout from McDuffie. What had never been a problem before was now a situation to confront. High Meadow did not exist in a vacuum. Ty, Rodney Smith, Calvin Dee and Hector Jackson had set up an informal, exclusive Black Vets group. And they were actively recruiting the newest of the newbies, John Peppin. Bobby saw it as separatist at a time when all needed to come together, as a turning in when he believed they needed to turn out.
Wednesday night at eleven Bobby had called the police. Sara was not yet home. The police receptionist had seemed to shrug, to say, “So.” Bobby had called Tony again. “Where could she be? Where the hell is she?” He’d called the Tauntons ten times. Then he’d called the bunkhouse. He was heading to Louise and Tom Taunton’s as soon as Steve Hacken could get to the house to baby-sit.
Carl Mariano, Jeremiah Gallagher, Mike Treetop, Juan Varga, Ty and Rodney all had come to the house with Steve, all ready to pile into Ty’s gold Cadillac to search for Sara. Van Deusen and Sherrick had shown up with walkie-talkies, a map of Mill Creek Falls, and plans for a house-to-house search. Another two dozen vets in a dozen vehicles were ready to set out when Sara had pulled in wondering what all the to-do was about.
Tony finished the farm report. Tom Van Deusen and Ty reported on EES: Tom on difficulties obtaining the proper anodized aluminum channels for the rafter embedded systems because the company that had been supplying them had gone out of business: Ty on the first drop in orders since he’d taken over sales. “Recession, Man,” he said. “Credit crunch. Bankruptcies are getting pandemic.” Carl Mariano reported an hour-per-man decrease in educational effort, and Gary Sherrick told the assembly the “grand jury” had been unable to decide who to indict.
Bobby clenched his jaw with every can’t-do or didn’t-do that followed Tony’s can-dos and dids. Vu Van Hieu also had bad news. The IRS letter, according to his preliminary calls, was no mistake. There was “at least $105,000 of unreported income,” Hieu said. “Everybody here say they file return, but IRS say not anybody file. Even you have not less than four hundred dollars income, if you independent contractor, you mus file Schedule C and Form 1040. Maybe you owe nothing. Maybe the IRS owe you. You still mus file.”
“Fuck the IRS,” someone called out.
A dozen vets agreed. There was resentment that the newby, the gook, the dink, had moved so quickly into the HQ, into a seeming position of power over them, telling them what papers to file, what they had or had not done. Chatter erupted. The group had been unruly from the moment they’d come together this evening. Some were talking about the Pirates, some about the Phillies, some about a pick-up soccer game Van Deusen and Andre Paulowski of Rock Ridge’s Pulaski Club had set up for Saturday. There was talk about the hostages in Iran, and the political conventions. Reagan and Carter had secured nominations, and third-party candidate John Anderson was polling a strong 20 percent. They talked of the Midwest and the south, baking and turning to dust in the heat wave and drought.
In the corner by the Slitter, exactly as Gary Sherrick had once sat, was Sal Ianez who had lost his left arm at the shoulder to an RPG in 1969. Sal had settled in under Sherrick and Hacken as an institute researcher. The meeting, any crowd, overwhelmed him. He’d withdrawn between the elevator and the machine, slid into a fantasy where he was at a great formal party with beautiful women, powerful men, waiters in tuxedos carrying silver trays of crystal glasses filled with champagne.
At the opposite end of the room between the glass-cleaning and final assembly tables, Frankie “The Kid” Denahee was listening to Steve Travellers soft-voiced tale of the Highlands. Travellers was a two-tour Special Forces NCO, a year in Ban Me Thuot, a year at Duc Co near the tri-border. He was African-American. Earlier that day, in the High Meadow library, he’d read, for the first time in detail, of the People’s Army of Viet Nam, i.e., the NVA’s, policies and treatment of the mountaineers, the Montagnards, the Yards, “his people.”
“My people are good people,” Travellers whispered to Denahee. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what happened.”
Denahee didn’t know either. Not in detail. Not what had happened since ’75. And he felt too new to High Meadow yet to express himself.
“Good people,” Travellers muttered. “Strong people.” He’d said it to himself a thousand times since returning in ’71, to himself because he hadn’t known anyone who would listen, to himself to reassure himself that his people were still okay. “Good, strong people.” His chin wrinkled, tensed, in restrained anguish. He’d inferred the details, yet he’d ignored them, denied them, for five years. For five years he’d blurred details through boozy bloodshot eyes.
“Yeah.” Denahee nodded. “I knew some from when we—”
“Fuck America!” Travellers interrupted. “Fuck the land of opportunity. Fuck freedom. It’s a sham. I’m sick of it. America’s a take-it, grab-it, greedy, slovenly sham wrapped in highfalutin words. There’s not a fucker gives a fuckin flyin leap—maybe there’s some in this room—about my people. My people are being slaughtered. Exterminated.”
A dozen vets were within earshot. Venom expressed, even if one is in agreement, is unsettling. Most guys glanced over, up, away. A few nodded. It was more comfortable to talk about the Pirates or the Phillies.
“This country stinks,” Travellers said. His voice was louder, clear. “Stinks! Shovin Haagen Dazs in their fat faces, lettin my people die.”
“Amen,” said Calvin Dee. He, Hector, Ty, Rodney and John Peppin were at the center of the barn, before the sheet-metal break. Travellers sneered. His expression showed he didn’t believe Calvin understood.
Jeremiah Gallagher moseyed over. “We’re with you,” he said to Travellers.
“Yeah,” Tony said. “We’re here together.”
“Fuck it,” Travellers snapped more angrily.
“Right on!” Ty stood, held up a power fist. Rodney, Hector, Calvin and John joined him. “They doin it to our people.”
Michael Treetop stood. “They’re doing it to all our people,” he said calmly. “Let’s not be doing it to ourselves. This isn’t Liberty City.”
Calvin cackled. “Burn, baby, burn!”
Wapinski watched. He hadn’t been concentrating on the meeting any more than he’d been focused on anything all week. Ty and four black vets stood in the center, defiant, hostile, gesturing with fists. Three blacks remained seated. Dave Bailer stood alone, not gesturing, not hostile. Steve Travellers stood with Denahee, Gallagher and Pisano, angry, a different anger.
Two months earlier the tension had erupted into violence—not at High Meadow but in Florida. In December ’79 a black man, an insurance salesman, a vet, ex-Marine Albert McDuffie, on a motorcycle had run a red light, had been chased by police, had freaked out, led the police on a one hundred-mile-per-hour chase through twenty-five blocks of the city until the police finally trapped him. Angrily the police had beat McDuffie, crushing his skull and killing him. The officers then re-staged the incident to look like an accident, and they falsified their reports. Within days some of the officers came forward, exposed the crime, and four policemen were charged with second-degree murder. The trial was moved to Tampa. In late May an all-white jury had deliberated for less than three hours before acquitting the officers of all charges. Miami’s inner-city black ghetto, Liberty City, went up like an ambush zone surrounded by daisy-chained claymore mines. For three days the city had burned, the night sky glowed, the day sky smogged. Looters and rioters did a hundred million dollars in damages, killed sixteen, injured four hundred. Thirty-six hundred militiamen, essentially an army of occupation, had quelled the bloodied streets.
“You fuckers don’t know ...” Travellers began. He was staring at Ty.
Ty interrupted, parried the comment. “Our people, street people, people of color, people who are with us, they know. My people know this government won’t do anything for them. This government givin handouts, givin businesses, givin houses to Viet Namese boat people. It gives breaks to Cubans. It gives nothin to African-Americans. People aren’t going to sit back and starve. They’re going to fight. Better to die fighting than be a slave in ghetto America.”
“That’s not what—” Travellers moved toward the center. Joe Alamont scrambled out. Black versus black. He wanted no part of it. Most of the white vets stayed seated, exactly like Wapinski. Robert Ortez stood with Ty. “—I’m talking about!” Travellers stopped. “I’m talking about Montagnards. The communists got an extermination campaign going against the Yards.”
“That’s cause they’re dark-skinned.” Ty barked his words. “I’ve been in white homes all over this state. You think I don’t see racism?! Every day?! This is the most racist society—”
“Shut UP!” Steve Traveller’s hands shot forward as if to grab, to strangle. “You bastard! You’ve completely turned what I’m saying. You’re the racist. I’m talking my people.”
“I seen it too.” Erik Schevard stood. “I’ve been reading too. They pulled the rug from under em. I read where the dinks took over my area and carved up half the population. We had this village in our area—the people were Northerners from ’55. They hated the communists. The communists hated them. Had em all listed for death as traitors. I seen a report said the dinks clear-cut the ville and plowed every man, woman and child under ... along with the water bo.”
“Cap it, Man.” It was Joe Alamont. “They’d never kill the water buffalo. That’d be like holding a dude up, stiffin im, then throwin him and his wallet in a dumpster without stealin the money.”
“They’d do that,” Hacken injected, “to teach the others a lesson.”
“That’s it.” Wapinski’s voice was forceful yet low. The bickering ceased. “Steve, is there anything we can do?”
Eyes turned toward Hacken, back to Wapinski, then to Travellers.
“Fuck it,” Travellers muttered. He backed toward Denahee. “I’m ... I’ll be all right.”
“No.” Wap stood, bent as if he had a stomach cramp, straightened slowly. “I mean is there anything we can do for your people? Something. Something short of stealing a SAC bomber and nuking Hanoi.” Travellers didn’t respond. “What about you, Ty? Can you do something positive for your people?”
The meeting continued, not simply that night but on into August and September. Bobby was frustrated, on the edge of control, fighting to hold himself, the vets, High Meadow, together. To Ty, Calvin, Hector, a mixed score of vets: “You want the government to take care of you?! Are you crazy? The government can’t even take care of itself. How many of you guys have spent time at RRVMC? That’s how the government takes care of people. That’s what you want?! What do you think they do in Washington? Figure out how to make you rich? Make you happy? Make you successful? You are nuts. They applaud themselves if they can show—even by smoke and mirrors—a one percent increase in personal income. If you had one percent more, would that make a difference in your lives? One percent! You can have five thousand percent! That’s what we’re working on.”
Then again, “Hey, who have you given control over your life? Promoter Don King, maybe? The baseball owners? Budweiser beer? Some fucking demagogue here or there? A rented gold Cadillac? Who’s controlling you? You or them or it? Did they get to your mind? Madison Avenue ad men? You’ve got the choice. Political demagogues? Right now you’ve got the opportunity. You can use it or blow it. Your choice.”
It was a tit-for-tat game. And Bobby was losing. Throughout this period, as the barn meetings continued, Vu Van Hieu handled the IRS and the retroactive accounting beautifully but he was not able to account for many of the vets who had graduated or who had quit. Perhaps Hieu would have handled it even more elegantly, more efficiently, had it not been for Bobby. Bobby refused to allow Hieu to force the vets to comply with the IRS demands for independent contractor status. At that time he did not realize or understand that to the IRS this demonstrated High Meadow’s willful noncompliance with the law, and therefore justified the IRS’s refiguring of the ’77 through ’79 returns as if all vets had been employees; and as if Bobby, as employer, had willfully not withheld from the employees, nor paid to the government, FICA, Federal Unemployment, and Social Security taxes.
Bobby brought Hieu with him to the first meetings with the case officers. They were open with the government men, explaining that they believed the problem was not theirs but the IRS’s; they explained in detail what High Meadow was, how it worked, how and why he paid the vets, and how they in turn were liable for their taxes which, because High Meadow’s pay scale was minimal, were not much. The case officers seemed amenable, happy to accept Bobby’s explanation. Then the IRS re-sent notice of payment due for 1978, with additional interest charges.
In ensuing discussions, the auditors disallowed Bobby’s claim that the vets were independent contractors responsible for paying their own taxes. In addition, they showed that at least fifteen vets had been receiving veterans disability payments. The IRS then stated that if Bobby attempted to claim High Meadow was a drug, alcohol and behavioral treatment facility, High Meadow would, because its “patients” were receiving federal funds, be subject to all federal laws and regulations—including building access and safety codes, procurement contract procedures and reporting, and reportage of racial composition of staff and patient populations.
In October the auditors went further, stating that because of the unpaid taxes of 1978, all years would be re-examined and present income and contracts might be attached. The fact that Bobby didn’t “own” High Meadow but only held “tenancy for life” rights, set back the IRS attorney’s plans to lien the farm. But Vu Van Hieu (and quickly Mark Tashkor and Jesse Rasmuellen, High Meadow’s attorneys) didn’t believe this obstacle would hold the IRS at bay for long. Vu, Tashkor and Rasmuellen, along with Lucas Hoeller, a Nam vet and corporate tax specialist, set to work, retroactively, reforming all High Meadow activities under a single conglomerate that would allow Bobby to write off “wages” and “care” (bed and board) of the “participants” as expenses.
The IRS agents in turn asked for details of local bed and board establishments, (the value of bed and board they later called barter and treated it as wages, subject to taxation, and soon part of the overall assessment). Hieu was horrified. “These men,” he moaned to Bobby, “they act like your friend but they are not your friend. Many officials just like them now in Viet Nam. These men are your enemy. You must be more cautious. Must have Mr. Lucas Hoeller come every time. And Mr. Mark Tashkor.”
“Naw,” Bobby objected. “This is not Viet Nam. He’s just doing his job.”
“He do his job with vengeance,” Hieu retorted.
“No,” Bobby said reassuringly. “Really, Hieu. He’s looking for a win-win situation, just like us.”
In late October the IRS sent yet another demand. This time they claimed Bobby was liable not just for the previously mentioned amounts, not just for the 7½ percent employer’s contribution on all wages, but 15 percent, plus interest, plus various other penalties, plus—and this was the kicker, “A 100 PERCENT PENALTY FIGURED ON ALL UNPAID TAXES, CONTRIBUTIONS, INTEREST AND PREVIOUS PENALTIES.”
These tax-related events, the entire process, was more than Bobby (or Hieu) wished to grasp—more bewildering, more frightening. Bobby suspected his mother, possibly in conjunction with Ernest Hartley, of being the stimulus behind the IRS probe. For all his reaching out and expanding into the community, his relations with his mother and his family had gone from bad to worse. Only Brian remained cordial, but their talks were never intimate. Still Bobby never missed, never considered missing, paying them their yearly percentage as per Pewel’s will.
What truly frightened Bobby, and Hieu, was one auditor’s comment to Lucas Hoeller. “We never would have caught him had it not been for that informer.”
Sometime between the meetings of October and December, maybe before Sherrick’s cancellation proposal, maybe shortly thereafter, Bobby went to a doctor, again for his ass. And for his knee. “Forget the knee. I want you over at St. Luke’s immediately. You’re all infected.”
“Can they do the arthroscopy at the same time?” Bobby wanted the medical business finished once and for all.
“Just get your buns over there. Take care of them first.”
Time was a cloud. Bobby did not want Sara to know. He instead called Tony who took him to the ER. Bobby was examined, waited, was reexamined, again asked to wait. Finally, “The procedure is called an anal fistula repair,” the doctor explained. “Here, let me show you.” The doctor drew a diagram of the anal sphincter and surrounding tissue. “A fistula,” he said, “is a channel caused by injury or infection. It connects an abscess to an open cavity. You’ve an infection up here. Pressure causes the seepage. You shouldn’t have let it go so long. It’s the infection that’s probably been making you feel so weak. What we’ll do is open up the channel, then suture it back up. But from the inside. See, we cut the sphincter here—”
“Oh,” Bobby moaned. “Oh. I gotta get out of here. I gotta get some air.”
Bobby emerged from the examining room. “Hè.” Tony chuckled. “How’s the ass?” Bobby was ashen. He glanced at Tony. Then his eyes rolled back and he toppled silent as a tree in the woods.
Two days later, after the surgery, the doctor told Sara that Bobby would be fine but that his hematocrit level “was a bit low.”
Still the meetings continued—beyond the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, past the election of Ronald Reagan, through falling inflation rates and Thanksgiving and Christmas and to the new year. As the pressure of the local recession and the pressure from the IRS increased, as the daily news brought new setbacks in the hostage negotiations, as the Soviet expansion into Afghanistan solidified, Bobby intensified his harshness, his demands, on the assembled vets.
“If there’s anyone here who wants to remain stuck, get out. This isn’t a fucking rest home. If you want to be warehoused, go to the VA. If the vow means nothing to you, leave.”
To a man the vets sat quietly, heads hung. “You’re expected to know the truth, the overall picture of what happened there. Why it happened. What America’s role was. The positives. The negatives. What we were up against. What the enemy did. Goddamn it! Today’s social problems are caused or exacerbated by misperceptions dating to Viet Nam. This new racism, this new polarization—skinheads, the Klan, Latin Kings, the Black Mafia, street gangs—their growth is a direct result of the media’s narrow focus on racial tension and violence and its neglect of racial harmony. We’re teetering on the brink of disaster. Individually and as a nation. Do you know that NVA terrorists assassinated a hundred South Viet Namese village leaders each month in 1960? A thousand a month in ’62? People wonder why America has lost its will! Every terrorist incident, every hostage-taking to which America does nothing, destroys our will. Tony, you said this. We were America’s will: the will to survive, to fight, to pull the trigger. And we were wasted by self-serving politicians, by the media, by big business, by the left and the right. And in using us they have killed America. Sherrick, is America over? Are the founding principles dead?
“You guys want to believe the worst about yourselves? Go ahead. Focus on every error, on every failure you’ve ever committed. But be aware, individually or as a nation, it makes us suckers for other people’s propaganda. If it’s you as an individual, go ahead, believe you’re nothing, believe you’re worthless, inept, because you don’t have a tenth of the shit Madison Avenue tells you you gotta have to be anybody. If it’s you, us, as a nation, go ahead, believe the worst because of the skewed perceptions propagated by ourselves, by Americans, about who we were in Southeast Asia.
“But every person here has taken a vow. Repeat it with me. I vow—” Bobby paused, waited for the chastized vets to lock in, “to seek to discover the truth, to become unstuck, to grow, to expand beyond myself, to encompass community, intellectual development and spiritual awareness.”
Again Bobby paused. The vets were silent. “The vow ...” Bobby said. “This is an irrefutable obligation. If you are not willing to take it, or if you are not willing to live by it, LEAVE!
“Gary, how did Sam Adams put it? If ye love the tranquility of servitude better than freedom—and whoever or whatever you give your mind to is your master—go from us in peace. What did he say, Gary?”
Sherrick spoke up. “‘Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.’”
“Um.” Wapinski was motionless yet he seemed to be burning. “Leave. Call us not your brothers. Do you know why you were where you were when you were? Was there valid tactical, strategic or political reasons, or was it totally meaningless? Is it because you were never shown the overall reasons and you, to this day, believe there were none? Maybe you’re right. Maybe not. That’s what the vow is about!”
Gary Sherrick rose. “I propose,” he began, stopped, straightened, cleared his throat. Formally he said, “I propose we place on trial, in this next year, the information, and the sources of that information, to which the American public had been exposed, regarding the entire American–Viet Nam era. In addition I propose that we incorporate the research for this year’s trials of Jane Fonda and Robert Komer into a massive effort to discover the truth or nontruth of that previously mentioned information, and those sources of information, which allegedly have so poisoned our culture that America, as a concept, is endangered and on the brink of extinction.”
“Seconds?” Bobby called.
“Aye.” Forty hands rose.
On December eighth the temperature dropped below freezing, and for twenty-seven days it remained below zero, did not break above freezing until the hostages were released and yellow ribbons bedecked the land. It was as if that record cold winter was naught but one long meeting interrupted by daily events. Guys were hot with the topic, with their research. Arguments disrupted work. Bobby saw this as good. Vets switched basketball teams to be with like-minded players. New vets quickly became engrossed. Vets taking courses at Nittany Mountain involved nonvet students, and some nights the barn and library were packed with more than one hundred “investigators,” “prosecutors,” and “defense-team researchers.” It was an exciting time, a striving time, generally a happy time.
Bobby was still sick, still irritable, still blaming it on allergies or the flu or burn-out or IRS-induced stress. Tony, Sherrick, Vu, Van Deusen, joked with him, chided him, told him just because he had a pain in the ass didn’t mean he had to be a pain in the ass. He took it good-naturedly, but soon the frustration would spike and the ire of slow progress or no progress would grab him and he’d snap at one of the vets and the core staff would find itself buffering the most vulnerable vets from Wapinski’s wrath.
In mid-January Mike Treetop and John Cannello left High Meadow to open their own restaurant in downtown Mill Creek Falls—the Shuke Apeilish Pàkawenikana (Lenape for sugar apple dumpling, or the Apple Fritter). That sparked an immediate celebration but in Bobby it was followed by deeper stress. To Tony he said, “When I was in school, even in the army, I never thought I’d live to thirty. Even when I was first married, I figured thirty. When I married Sara I knew I’d be like Granpa, live past eighty. I’m going to be thirty-five. This IRS bullshit is killing me. I don’t know if I’ll make it another year.”
“Cut the shit,” Tony responded.
“No, Man. They really got me. They don’t want to work it out. Hieu’s right. They don’t want me to be in business. The easiest thing for this agent to do is to shut me down. That makes his life easy. He’s got nothing vested in working it out. The government gets nothing if I close down. And it has to pay these guys’ unemployment. It gets whatever I can pay if I stay open. But these agents don’t care.”
“Yeah, but Man, your guys are going like gangbusters. They’ve been fixing frozen pipes around the clo—”
“Business is great. We’re making money. We’re paying taxes. But the more that comes in, the higher percentage they disallow. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
At this time it was not so much to Tony that Bobby spoke. Nor to Sara. Nor Josh. Not even to Grandpa up in the cemetery. Instead Bobby spent hours talking to Hieu as if Hieu’s trials and ordeals made him the most worthy confidant, as if Hieu was not Hieu at all but was Pewel Wapinski reincarnated.