Chapter Four

When the telephone rang in the parish office of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church off Poplar Street in La Porte City a little after nine o’clock on Saturday morning, February 21, 1970, the thin, stooped late-middle-aged country priest assumed it was just another mother whose child, sick with a midwinter cold, would be unable to attend catechism classes that day. He unhurriedly walked to his desk and, lifting the receiver, was surprised to hear an entirely unfamiliar male voice ask for him by name.

“Father Otto Shimon?”

“Yes-s-s?”

“Father Shimon, this is Master Sergeant Fitzgerald. I’m with Fifth Army Headquarters.… Do you have an O. E. Mullen in your parish?”

“‘O. E. Mullen’?” Father Shimon repeated, giving himself time enough to move to the chair behind his desk and ease himself down.

“That’s right,” Fitzgerald said. “I was just talking to the priest at the Carmel parish and—”

“That would be Father Rahe at St. Mary’s,” Father Shimon interrupted, then added, “Sergeant,” because he had been a captain in the Army during World War II and served now as chaplain for the local American Legion chapter in La Porte.

“Yes, sir, that’s the one,” Sergeant Fitzgerald said. “Well, the Father, Father Rahe, thinks he has a Ralph Mullen in his parish, but I’m trying to locate an O. E. Mullen and I thought perhaps you—”

“That would be Oscar Eugene Mullen,” the priest said. “He’s listed in the phone book, however, as Gene Mullen, hence”—Father Shimon chuckled—“your, ah, confusion.”

“Then this O. E. Mullen is in your parish, sir?”

“Yes-s-s, Gene Mullen’s in my parish.” The priest did not like this sergeant’s tone; he was being altogether too businesslike. “As a matter of fact, Sergeant, the Mullens have always been very good members of th—”

“May I see you this morning, sir?”

“Me? This morning, Sergeant?… Fitzgerald, you said it was?”

“Fitzgerald, that’s right.”

“A fine old Irish-Catholic name,” Father Shimon said still trying to be congenial, still fighting down the apprehension rising within him. “You are, I presume, Catholic?”

“No, sir, Episcopalian,” Fitzgerald said. “Please, Father Shimon, it’s important I see you this morning. As soon as possible.”

“About Gene Mullen?” Father Shimon asked, his lips suddenly dry. “Is there something, ah-h-h, wrong?”

That morning the sun had finally broken through the flat pearl-gray overcast that had been brooding over the Mullens’ farm. Although the temperature hovered near freezing, the week-long Arctic winds had ceased, and at last it again felt warm enough to be outside.

Gene Mullen walked back from the mailbox to the house. As he climbed the stairs into the kitchen, he called out, “Letter from Mikey.” He dropped the bills, the Des Moines Register and the second-class mail on the kitchen table and tore open the envelope. Peg wiped her hands on a dish towel and put a kettle of water on to boil.

“What’s he say?” she asked. “When did he write it?”

Gene glanced at the top of the letter. “Dated the thirteenth,” he said. “Let’s see now ‘Dear Mom and Dad: Went down off the hill to get a haircut and clean up, but ended up hitching a ride to Chu Lai. Went to the MARS station by chance—they were open and not busy—so got a chance to call. Suppose it was midnight at home and guess you were surprised—’”

“Oh,” Peg said, “he must have written this the same day he called.” Gene had not been home when Michael had telephoned from Vietnam eight days earlier. Peg had written “Mike called” on an envelope and left it on the kitchen table for Gene to read following the late shift at John Deere. It was twelve thirty by the time Gene returned to the farm, and after reading the note, he woke Peg up. She told him that she had spoken with Michael for only about a minute and a half and that before hanging up, Michael had said, “Good-bye, Mom, it’s so bad here.…” Peg had been so depressed that she hadn’t felt like waiting up to tell Gene when he came home and had simply left him a note. She mixed Gene a mug of instant coffee, brought it to him at the kitchen table and sat down. “What else does he say?”

“He says, ‘… guess you were surprised,’ … now, here: ‘Will be on the bunker line about two more days, then back out into the field.’”

“Ugh!” Peg groaned. “That means more search and destroy.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Gene said. “He’s been doing company sweeps like he wrote in the other letter.”

“Same thing,” Peg said.

“No, it isn’t,” Gene insisted. “A company sweep is—”

Peg waved her hand impatiently. “Go on with the letter.”

“All right, all right. He says, ‘Glad that all is well—weather here been rather good. Have decided not to take R&R if I can get a drop. So ’til later, hang loose.’” Gene looked at the letter more closely. “Hang loose’?”

“Hang loose, you know,” Peg said, “take it easy.”

Gene shrugged. “‘So ’til later, hang loose, Love Michael.’”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Gene said. He passed the letter across the table to his wife.

Peg read through it quickly, “Oh, see,” she said, “he’s decided for sure to ask for an early drop. You remember the letter before last Michael said he was writing the University of Missouri to get the necessary papers.”

Michael hoped to be released early from Vietnam so that he could be readmitted to the Agriculture School. Peg and Gene discussed for a moment what they thought his chances were; Michael himself had written that he felt they were very good. The only part of his letter that bothered them was that he would again be going into the field, that he wouldn’t be in the relative safety of the fire base bunker line anymore. Still, in one of his first letters, Michael had written that he was in “probably one of the better places over here,” a comparatively quiet part of Vietnam.

“So he might be coming home in June,” Gene said.

“Looks that way,” Peg said, “knock wood.”

Gene finished his coffee and stood up “Well, Mother,” he said, “I guess I might as well try to fix the television antenna for you.”

“What’s it like outside?”

“Fine,” Gene said. “Cold, but it’s fine. The wind’s stopped.”

He buttoned up his heavy woolen red and black plaid lumber jacket, turned off his hearing aid, put the earplug into his pocket and went outside.

The windblown television antenna was attached to a post near the east side of the farmhouse. Gene was just coming around that east corner, blowing hot breath on his fingertips and trying to remember where he had last put the light wrench he would need, when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed two automobiles turning into his driveway. Without his hearing aid he had not heard them approach and he fumbled beneath his lumber jacket for the earpiece, inserted it and thumbed the volume up.

Gene thought he recognized the first car, believed the parish priest, Father Shimon, had one like it, but that second car.… Gene read the black letters painted on the Chevrolet’s olive-drab door: U.S. ARMY—FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY. Gene’s chest tightened, and he stood still while the priest and the Army sergeant stepped out of their cars and slammed shut the doors.

Gene watched them walking toward him as if in slow motion, their footsteps thundering across the metallic crust of the drifted snow. He tried to see beyond the country priest’s black metal-framed glasses to what might show in his eyes. But Father Shimon’s downcast lenses reflected only the snow. Not until the priest forced himself to look up did Gene recognize the fright, the despair, the agony within them, then very quietly Gene asked, “Is my boy dead?”

Father Shimon halted so abruptly that the Army sergeant, who was following, bumped into him from behind. “Gene,” the priest said, “this is Sergeant Fitzgerald. He’s from Fifth Army Headquarters. He.…” Shimon was silent.

Gene looked beyond Father Shimon to the sergeant and asked again, “Is … my … boy … dead?”

“Let’s go into the house, Gene,” Father Shimon said. “I want to talk to you there.”

“No!” Gene said, not moving. “I want to know! Tell me, is … my … boy … dead?”

“I can’t tell you here,” Father Shimon said, his hand fluttering up toward Gene’s shoulder. “Come into the house with us … please?”

Gene spun away before the priest’s pale fingers could touch him.

Peg Mullen heard the back door open, heard Gene rushing up the stairs into the kitchen, heard him shouting, “It’s Mikey! It’s Mikey!” His voice half a sob, half a scream.

She hurried out of the sewing room in time to glimpse the Army uniform entering the kitchen. Peg found Gene standing with his back to the sink, clutching the counter behind him, the Army sergeant halted just to the side of the doorway. Father Shimon, between them, had removed his glasses to wipe away the steam. Peg started to move toward her husband but had to turn away. Never had she seen such terrible devastation in his face, so raw a wound. She looked next at the sergeant, who avoided her eyes by glancing at the priest whose job it was to tell them. But Father Shimon would not stop wiping his glasses, and Peg, feeling herself wanting to scream, to kick over a chair, to thrash about, to do anything rather than listen to this awful silence a moment longer, saw her husband’s lips move as if to say, “It’s Mikey,” but no sound would come out.

Peg scowled at the Army sergeant and said, “Michael died on Thursday.”

Thursday morning, upon waking up, Peg had burst into tears for no apparent reason. Off and on that entire day she had cried, and so that Gene wouldn’t know, she had spent the morning by herself down in the sewing room. She decided to make new curtains for the boys’ room, and she sewed and sewed but would have to stop because she would begin crying again and couldn’t see the material through her tears. She would wait for the tears to pass, pull herself together and sew some more until finally, a little after two o’clock, when she heard Gene leave for the John Deere plant in Waterloo, she stopped sewing altogether.

The following day, yesterday, Friday, Peg had awakened not sad, just angry. No matter what Gene said to her she snapped back, contradicting him, defying him. And seeing the hurt and confusion in his face, she wanted to apologize but instead became angrier still for feeling that need. At noon Peg felt she simply had to get out of the house. She drove off to spend the day with friends who shared her feelings about the war, with whom she could talk about how worried she was, how frustrated she felt trying to find something meaningful to do.

Before Michael had been drafted, the war had appeared so far away, so purposeless and distant. But when Michael was sent to Vietnam, the war no longer seemed remote. A month after Michael was assigned to the Americal Division, Peg wore a black armband on October 15, Moratorium Day, to indicate her opposition to the war. The same day, in La Porte City, an American Legionnaire backed her up against the post office wall, told her she was a disgrace to the country and ordered her to take the armband off. Peg brushed his arm aside and told him, “You better get with it, you sonuvabitch!”

Still, Peg realized, she had never actively campaigned against the war. She had written letters to Jack Miller, Iowa’s hawkish Republican Senator to express her opposition. Each time the Des Moines Register carried an account of an Iowa boy’s death in Vietnam, Peg would forward the clipping to the Senator’s office in Washington with the note: “Put another notch in your gun, Jack.” She had written several letters to President Nixon, pleading with him to end the war. She joined Another Mother for Peace, but really, Peg had to concede, her opposition so far had been limited and ineffective.

Yesterday she had not returned to the farm until dusk and, to keep busy, had begun to clean house. For the next six hours she scrubbed and dusted, waxed and polished, pausing only at ten o’clock for the late evening news on television, There was an account of an accidental shelling at Bien Hoa by South Vietnamese artillery resulting in the deaths of about a dozen American men. The story stuck in Peg’s mind when she went back to cleaning, and at midnight she called one of the friends she had seen that afternoon to ask if she had watched the news. They talked about how the accidental shelling seemed to epitomize the stupidity and wastefulness of the Vietnam War. Peg told her friend how busy she had been cleaning, that she had felt this compulsion to polish the house from top to bottom. The friend asked Peg if she were expecting visitors.

“No, none that I know of,” Peg had said. “I don’t know what’s going on with me—I really don’t. But whatever it is,” she added, “I’m ready.”

The Army sergeant did not answer her, so Peg spoke again, “Did Michael die on Thursday?”

“Why do you ask me when he died?” Sergeant Fitzgerald said. “I haven’t told you your son is dead.”

Peg glared at him with such utter contempt that the sergeant flinched. “You know the Army doesn’t come to tell parents that their sons are wounded!” Peg said. “You know the Army comes only when they’re dead!”

The sergeant again turned to the priest, waiting for Father Shimon to break the news, to speak. But the priest was incapable of talking.

Very slowly, deliberately, almost threateningly, Gene Mullen pushed himself away from the sink and moved toward the two men. “Now I want to know the truth!” he told them. “Is … my … boy … dead?”

Sergeant Fitzgerald looked at the priest, then back at Gene and said, “Yes.”

And, “Yes-s-s-s,” Father Shimon said, too, as if he had been holding his breath all this time. “Yes, Gene, yes, Peg, I’m sorry, yes-s-s-s.”

Gene sagged as if hit. He looked at Peg and she at him. Gene stumbled backward until he was again against the sink. He shook his head to and fro like a groggy fighter trying to clear his brain. He began to cry gentle tears that welled up hot in his eyes, overflowed and traced down his cheeks. “Why?” he said to no one in particular. “Why?”

Peg had moved to the kitchen table and stood now gripping the wooden rung of a chairback until she felt herself under enough control to speak. Then she asked the sergeant how Michael had been killed.

Sergeant Fitzgerald sorted through some papers and pulled one out. “I only know the official casualty message given me by Fifth Army Headquarters this morning over the phone.”

“Read it,” Peg said.

The sergeant lifted the paper to the light. “It states that ‘Sergeant (E-5) Michael Eugene Mullen, US 54 93—’ so on, ‘died while at a night defensive position when artillery fire from friendly forces landed in the area.’” Sergeant Fitzgerald’s hand dropped. “I’m sorry … I really am very sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Mullen.…” He put the paper away and began buttoning up his trench coat as if to leave. “Generally, at this time,” he said, “families of casualties prefer to be alone with their priests—”

“Sit down,” Peg said quietly.

“Perhaps,” Sergeant Fitzgerald was saying, “tomorrow would be a better time to—”

“Sit down!” Peg repeated firmly. “We’re going to talk about this message, this, this official casualty report.”

Gene watched the sergeant leaf back through his papers, start to say, “Mrs. Mullen, I only—”

“Sergeant,” Gene ordered, “read that thing again.”

Fitzgerald cleared his throat. “‘Sergeant (E-5) Michael Eugene Mullen, US 54 93 22 54, died while at a night defensive position when artillery fire from friendly forces landed in the area.’” He looked up from the paper. “That’s all it says … really.”

“Listen,” Gene said, “I was a master sergeant in the United States Army, myself, during World War Two, and I … and I.…” He stopped, no longer certain what the point was that he had wished to make.

“We’re going to talk about this message,” Peg said. “I want you to explain it to me. This word, what do you mean by ‘friendly’?”

“It merely means that it wasn’t enemy artillery,” the sergeant said. “Your son was killed by friendly fire.”

“Friendly fire? Friendly fire?” Peg repeated incredulously.

Sergeant Fitzgerald shrugged lamely. “It means any artillery from forces not the enemy.”

“Not the enemy! Goddamn you!” Peg cried, beating the chairback with her fists in frustration. “You couldn’t even give him the … the decency of being killed by the enemy!” She glared at the sergeant. “These, these ‘friendly forces not the enemy,’ how come the word ‘American’ isn’t used?”

The back door opened, and Michael’s younger brother, John, finished with his chores came up the stairs and into the kitchen. He peered curiously at the Army sergeant first and next at the priest, then at his mother and father before quietly taking a place by the door.

“Why wasn’t the word ‘American’ used?” Peg repeated.

“Because it wasn’t ‘American,’” the sergeant said.

“And why wasn’t the word ‘accidental’ there?”

“Because, Mrs. Mullen, it wasn’t an accident.”

“Wait a minute,” Peg warned ominously.

Sergeant Fitzgerald began talking about the accidental shelling at Bien Hoa.

“We know all about Bien Hoa,” Peg snapped.

“Well,” Sergeant Fitzgerald said, “this is how and where your son was killed.”

There was a sudden moan, and before Peg could reach John, his knees buckled and he collapsed onto the floor. Gene rushed over and, with Peg, eased their son into a chair. “Oh, poor John,” Peg said, “are you all right?”

“Take it easy, son,” Gene said.

“Michael’s dead?” John asked.

“What were you thinking?” Peg asked him. “I thought you knew. I thought seeing the Army car.…”

“No, I never, I never thought of Michael,” John said. “I thought they were after me! That I’d done something wrong!”

John had registered for the draft only five days before.

“What happened to Michael?” he asked.

“This sergeant is telling us,” Peg said.

“But is he …? Is Michael …?”

“Yes, son,” Gene said. “Mikey’s gone.”

“And now,” Peg said, whirling on the sergeant, “we want to know how, and we want to know why!”

“You said you heard about Bien Hoa.…”

“Bien Hoa?” Peg said. “You don’t know very much! Michael wasn’t anywhere near Bien Hoa. My son was three, four hundred miles from there!”

“Good God,” Sergeant Fitzgerald said, “it must have happened all over Vietnam that night.” He sat down at the kitchen table. “You understand, how it could have happened,” he said. “The Vietcong infiltrated these South Vietnamese artillery units, got onto their radio channels and called in the wrong artillery coordinates so that when the ARVN artillery fired, they hit Americans.” Sergeant Fitzgerald apologized for not having any more information than was contained in the official casualty message and added he did not want to say positively that this was what had happened to Michael, but the Vietcong had infiltrated ARVN radio channels in the past, and this is what might have happened to their son’s unit.

Sergeant Fitzgerald next explained that the Mullens had the right to request a special escort to accompany Michael’s body back from Vietnam. If they had some special friend of Michael’s in mind, someone whom they would like to have return with Michael’s remains, they should let him know.

“Well, it’s so soon, so sudden …” Peg said. “Michael had so many friends, I really don’t know.…”

“There’s no need to decide now,” Sergeant Fitzgerald said, “Either myself or another survivors’ assistance officer will call you tomorrow. Now,” the sergeant said, “What funeral home do you want your son’s body delivered to?”

Peg and Gene looked at each other speechlessly.

“Well, we don’t know,” Peg said.… “We really don’t know yet.”

“How long will it be before Michael … Michael’s body returns?” Gene asked.

“Just as soon as they have a plane full,” Sergeant Fitzgerald said.

Peg said, “I know it won’t be long then.”

“One more thing, Sergeant,” Gene asked. “When will Michael’s death be announced on the news?”

“After I notify Fort Leonard Wood that I’ve seen you, they’ll release it. That should be about two hours from now.”

“Two hours!” Peg protested. “You can’t! You’ve got to give us time to tell our other children. Our daughters are away at college, and we can’t let them hear about it on the radio. You’ve got to tell them to hold back the news.”

“Can’t you call them?” Sergeant Fitzgerald asked. “You’ll have at least two hours.”

“They’ll be in classes,” Peg said. “I won’t be able to reach them until tonight. Can’t you wait?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Mullen, I’m only a sergeant. I can’t tell the Army what to do.”

“I can!” Peg said angrily. “I’m not afraid of the Army or the Pentagon. If you won’t do anything about it, then I’ll … I’ll call Senator Hughes in Washington. He’ll help.”

“Look, Mrs. Mullen,” Sergeant Fitzgerald said, “you don’t have to do that. I’ll tell Fifth Army you want them to wait. They won’t release the news until you give them the go-ahead.”

“Gene, I can’t just tell Mary and Patricia over the phone. They’d.…” She shook her head helplessly.

“What about your sister?” Gene asked.

“Louise?” Peg thought for a moment. “She could maybe drive to Kansas City and pick up Mary.…”

“If there’s nothing else …” Sergeant Fitzgerald said. He was standing by the door, ready to leave.

“I’ll walk you out,” Gene said.

“That’s not necessary,” Sergeant Fitzgerald said. “Oh, and, Father Shimon? You’ll stay a little longer, won’t you?”

“Of course, Sergeant, of course,” the priest said.

Peg looked at Father Shimon and shrugged. Back in November, after a Sunday service, she had stopped on the way out of church to ask Father Shimon to say some special prayers for Michael. “You’ve got to pray for him, Father,” she had said. “He hasn’t got a chance!”

“Oh, I know, I know,” Shimon replied, taking Peg by the arm to move her out of the path of his other parishioners. “I do pray for him, I’m praying for him every day. We pray for all our servicemen.”

Peg telephoned her friend in La Porte to tell her that Michael was dead and to ask if she would be good enough to drive the seventy-five miles to Iowa City to inform Patricia, who was a senior at the University of Iowa there. Peg next called her sister, Louise Petersen, and asked her to pick up Mary, who was a freshman at Rockhurst College, Michael’s alma mater, in Kansas City. Then she telephoned her brothers, Bill Goodyear in Omaha and Howard Goodyear in Pittsburgh. She did not cry. She kept the calls short; she remained strong and in control of herself. She informed them only of what she knew so far, that Michael had been killed by South Vietnamese artillery. Her brothers told her they would arrive at the farm as soon as possible. When she finished, she saw that Sergeant Fitzgerald had left and Gene was waiting to use the phone.

Gene telephoned the local newspapers and television stations and gave them what little details he knew and begged them not to release the news until they had been able to inform their daughters. While Gene was doing that, Peg began drawing up a list of those persons they would need to contact.

“Now, Peg,” Father Shimon said, joining Peg at the table, “ah-h, I didn’t know Michael very well and I’m sure you’ll want, ah-h, someone else to say the mass.…”

“Well, yes,” Peg said. “As a matter of fact, we’ll want Father Hemesath to say the mass.” Father Gregory Hemesath of New Haven, a small town in Mitchell County, northern Iowa, was an old friend of the Mullens’.

“That’s just fine,” Father Shimon said. “You write down whoever you want and I’ll ask them. I’ll bow out and won’t have any part in the, ah-h, funeral mass.”

“We’ll want music, too,” Gene said, pausing in mid-phone call. “Michael always liked good music.”

“Whenever we went to Kansas City,” Peg said, “if there was any good music being played, Michael would take us to hear it.”

“As you know,” Father Shimon said, licking his lips, “our church doesn’t have an organ.…”

“So it’ll be Sister Richard and the Don Bosco High School Chorus,” Peg said.

“Oh, all right,” Father Shimon said, “that’s fine. That’s just fine.”

“And I’d like Father Hirsch to say a few words,” Peg said. Father Robert Hirsch was the principal of the Don Bosco High School in Gilbertville where all the Mullen children had gone. “And I want a White Funeral.…”

“I can’t, Peg,” the priest said, shaking his head. “I can’t have one.”

“Why not?”

“Because when the permission order came to change the service, each parish had to request the permission from the archdiocese.…” In the Black Funeral, the then-traditional Catholic mass, the priests wore black vestments. The mass mourned the departed, and its prayers were directed toward the salvation of the sinner’s soul. In the White Funeral, which had only recently been introduced, the priests wore white vestments. The funeral service marked the deceased’s entrance into eternal life. It was a celebration of the resurrection rather than a mass of mourning. “I didn’t want the change,” Father Shimon told Peg, “so I ignored it.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Peg said, “All you’ve got to do is have it now. We had one only two months ago when that La Porte boy from the Jesup parish died in Vietnam.”

“Nope. Nope. Nope,” Father Shimon said, “I can’t do it.”

Peg regarded him coldly, then lowered her head and went back to work on her list.

After a moment, Father Shimon stood up. “Well,” he said, “I, ah-h, probably, ah-h, should be going.”

“Fine, Father,” Peg said.

A few minutes later they heard the priest’s car driving away. Gene, off the telephone, came over to the kitchen table, too. There was nothing that they could do while waiting for the rest of the family to arrive but make a list of those friends who would want and need to know that which they themselves were still scarcely willing to accept: their son Michael was dead.