IT IS LATE. LATE in the day. Or maybe not so late, just dark because of the rain, the clouds. I hear thunder approaching. It is late in the year for such a storm, the kind of storm that used to make so many of us anxious as if the thunderclaps were artillery bursts; the kind of storm that brought thoughts, images, of monsoons, of jungle valleys or hilltops, Hamburger Hill for Bobby, mudslides, hamburger hills for so many under monsoon rains and darkened skies late in their year.
I’m sitting on the loft floor, my legs dangling, like from the side of a Huey, over the main assembly area, over the flanger machine. In the dimness, before the tables, they emerge as if it were 8 October 1981. There are the vets, most anyway, some of the wives, families. In addition there are students from Nittany Mountain College, and Professor Tilden and his associate, James Alban, an instructor in history; and Montgomery McShane. From town there are dozens including Ernest Hartley, Jr. and Detective Don Fredrickson (to keep an eye on things?), and Uncle James and John Pisano, Sr., my Pop.
Gary Sherrick is beaming. He is prepared, has prepared the teams through general allegations, bills of particulars, discovery, detailed interrogations and requests for documents and records (research exchange). Sherrick is beaming with pride. This is his masterpiece. He has coached, lectured, cajoled and encouraged. “There is a politically correct way to think about the Viet Nam War,” Sherrick has said. “There is an academically acceptable perspective from which to write about the war. There is a socially agreeable position; and there are media-tolerable projectibles. These manners, perspectives, positions and projections have fluctuated over the years but have swayed only slightly since 1968 when Lyndon Johnson declined to run for a second full term, and when Walter Cronkite converted and established an acceptable antiwar posture for nonradicals. That these ossified perspectives are narrow seems to have bothered few politicians, academics, John and Jane Does, reporters, editors or film makers. And after nearly a decade and a half most everyone is in agreement—and most everyone, because of the exact narrowness of the perspectives, is half wrong.”
Sherrick, obnoxious Sherrick, sounded more like Wapinski all the time. “It is only through ever wider, patient research and deeper analytical knowledge that we can gain true understanding of any complex issue. And it is only through true understanding that we can plot reasoned courses of thought and action.”
And there is Wapinski, as judge, sitting on the collector assembly table 1, now with his feet on the sheet metal break, which had been pulled over for a job I no longer remember, with the jury and the recorder, the bailiffs and opposing attorneys, the witnesses and researchers, observers and guests, and even ol’ Josh, all before him, about him, above him sitting on the floor of the loft with their legs dangling. “I vow”—as a judge he would not put up with bullshit, with games; this was truth-seeking, not adversarial or even competitive judicature—“to become unstuck, to grow, to expand beyond my self ...”
There is a lightning flash. Two. Three. Four. Now thunder, deeper darkness, heavier rain. Light, dark: a polarization accentuating differences. I can barely see the room now. The formal charges are about to be read.