James Isaiah Gabbe: LaRue's Maneuvers | Reading

12-15

They took him from the ward and put him alone in a room where the door locked from the outside and there were wire meshed windows. He noticed these things as he noticed the writing pad and pencil on the table screwed to the floor and the microphone protruding out of the reach from the ceiling. All of that made him uneasy, but he did not say anything because he was tired and wanted only to sleep.

They told him he was suffering from psychogenic amnesia - an involuntary defense against painful experiences that, if recalled, could be disturbing and maybe even destructive. Even so, they encouraged him to work at remembering - they called it “retrieving” - maintaining it was the best therapy. When he tried, the din and fire smothered him an injection, and he escaped the fearful darkness.

One day, the doctors talked about how people can be traumatized by guilt, saying, “Jesse, you told us you were opposed to the war, but you went there. Perhaps you have regrets.” Danbar had a faint recollection he had once been troubled about that but now it did not matter and he told them so. What he did not tell them was he had begun to remember other things that did fill him with guilt. One morning, the doctors found these words scribbled on the writing pad:

Call me LaRue.
You know, the street.
Paint whatever kind of houses on it you
like and whatever kind of people.
And give those people any ideas and
chatter you want.
And color the sky your colors.
That's how I feel,
so near so much that puzzles me,
so far away from myself.

The doctors called that a significant breakthrough and said it was going to be downhill from there. They changed their strategy, bringing up things Danbar had mentioned his first weeks in the hospital: the head that was half a skull, the violin, the bloody tattoos, the face that cried without tears. And again, Danbar started to remember and again he could not bring himself to talk - until a doctor confided, “On more than one occasion, you went on about a captain who was KIA. Who was this captain? Was it you? Were you talking about yourself, Captain Danbar?”

The touched a nerve and Danbar said, “I think you guys are using me. Yeah, using me - like a guinea pig… for a case study. Yeah, a case study about the soldier who thought he was dead… and if he wasn't - he thought he should be. You'll label in the 'war guilt syndrome' or some hoopla. You'll get it published in a medical journal. You'll be honored for contributions to psychiatric knowledge - but I'll end up in a VA rubber room.”

They tried to calm him, but he railed against them, tearing ferociously at his face, and when he tried to run away, they gave him an injection.

258-260

The runaway lights of Tan Son Nhut ran off into the dark in diagonal lines, springing, it seemed, from the shimmering glow of MACV - that off-yellow temple of CAN DOISM and extreme climate control. Why was I putting every ounce of my being into becoming part of the mission - into becoming the soldier I wasn't?

I wasn't self-assured or lethal or invincible. I didn't shake the jungles with zeal and incredible technology and have my way with it.

What was MACV, anyway? What was it when you cut away the rules and regulations and CAN DOISM and all the other hoopla? Was it salvations? Was it shelter? Or was it just electronic white shimmer painted over the junge: an extraterrestrial monolith? A shimmer as illogical and fragile and fleeting as my own life now was. Was it doomed? Would it be smothered by jungle? Would it be smothered by jungle darkness? Would all of it end up just another macabre reminder that powerful empires eventually go to weeds?

A door squeaked on the adjacent roof of Maxim's Bar and Hotel. I stumbled woozily into shadows pricking myself on the barbed wire that sutured the city. Tinny, low-volume rock'n'roll intruded on the melancholy quiet. Peeking over the escarpment, I saw a teenage grunt in fatigue trousers and rubber thongs and a bargirl in an unbuttoned blouse and miniskirt. They undulated in a slow, sensual dance. In the faint glow of a single blue bulb hanging from a clothesline they bussed and fondled.

The tenderness and eternity of the scene in contrast to the scary flashes that surrounded it struck me to the core and left me dangling in their aura with a tear. I no longer heard the distant concussions or saw the Great Shimmering White or worried about the darkness.

The blue vapor cast gently swaying apparitions about the lovers and in my juiced eyes the floated away and then floated back but somehow they were changed. I strained to see and realized the teenage grunt and teenage whore were gone and there were two others. I couldn't be certain… and yet… yes. It was a ponytailed student in an áo dai with birds of paradise and a not so CAN DO dai-úy.

I'd found my shelter. My salvation…

378-379

The colonel talked into the night, and I fixed on every word, wanting him to expunge the horrors, desperate for revelations to comfort. He talked about childhood and daydreams of evil and salvation and knowing the right and embracing god and knowing Jesus and seeing the light. His words came faster and faster, reaching a crescendo. “I - I am evangelist without gospel! Have seen - seen beyond - beyond truth!”

He shifted and moaned, choking on his own being rising up, leaving him. I felt his eye on me and moved closer, touching him but not feeling him and leaning to him to hear him fading away, “What? What did you say?”

“From - her?” His charred hand jerked toward my chest, dropped. My fingers found the violin charm sparkling in moonlight and I touched her and I was in our hammock in persimmon rapture but he choked and I was floundering in the madness and thinking he could not know. Could not know anything about her. He was losing his wits. But he spoke to me. He spoke in bits and pieces, torrents and silences. He told me why he know her. Why I'd been banished to the boonies. Banished to him.

He told me all of it… but… but I can not, will not write about that. No, I will not to write about that. I will not speak about that - ever.

380-382

I wish I could write that I spent what I thought were my final  hours expressing noble sentiments. I wish I could say I pondered the meaning of my life and nearing my death. But when the jets thundered over at daybreak, unleashing a napalm conflagration that boiled the mud and blistered me, I was in much the same state as when the colonel died. I was pondering what Hue would expect of me and how I would be when the final moment came - perhaps with a bullet from my own. 45.

Vanity to the end.

The rest… well, the flyboys pounded hell out of the place. When they were finished, it was serene, almost beautiful, the horror-concealing smoke and mist dancing in a faint, milky breeze, I'm going to make it, it dawned on me, feeling something like exaltation, and I could swear I heard children laughing.

I crawled from bunker, the colonel's sightless eye boring into me, his gaping, soundless mouth calling after me. I stood, surprised I was able to, not feeling the ground under my feet, mindful I'd crapped my pants. I took a couple of steps, and there was a click or swoosh, a flash and I was swallowed by din and fire.

“Easy, soldier,” echoed a voice out of a fearful darkness.
Hot winds searing.
“Got yourself a ticket on a Freedom Bird.”
Can't breathe.
“OK - X-ray.”
Hands pushing - cold, hard.
“One more - for the folks back in the world.”
Voices receding, echoing back.
“Big smile for the camera.”
Spinning in a torrent of shattered images.
“Willya' look it the silly fucker.”
Rising into death.
“He's laughin'.”
Laughing. Laughing? No - no! Not laughing! Crying - crying without tears…

And somehow I ended up at the hospital in California.
And somehow I've finished my story… 

397-398

Julianne, you may tell me my heart was in the right place, and I mustn't blame myself for the terrible consequences of what I did. You may tell me I can never know the real intentions or allegiances of Hue or Miss Bong and both had been in danger before I came along. You may remind me soldiers' deaths - like Groobs' death -  are not always gallant of meaningful. You may tell me that my dear little Lam was perhaps the only true innocent.

I suppose all of that is so. But that is not enough. It will never be enough. What I take with me in life that gives me life is a simple truth: that you can't save the world or sometimes even one being or maybe even your own soul - but you have to try, You have to dream and hope and love and try no matter what.

This was the truth I learned from people I loved and who are gone. This truth I lost in the war. This truth I found again in your dreams, your hopes, your love.

The sun is coming up and the meadowlarks are singing, and I am so grateful to you, Julianne, for knowing that.